Michael Prescott's Blog

Comments policy

Okay, after a brief experiment with comments moderation, I am turning moderation off. The reason, frankly, is that it's too much of a pain to log on to TypePad several times a day and approve various comments. 

For the record, I did not refuse to publish any comments during this period, so if your comment did not show up, blame a TypePad glitch, not me. 

I am sure everyone now understands the polite, respectful, non-combative tone that I hope for with this blog. I'm not a fan of the modern culture of angry shouting epitomized by cable news shows. I like quiet, courteous discourse that treats all opinions* with respect. 

(*Well, maybe not all opinions. Someone once commented that Adolf Hitler was a great hero who should be fondly remembered. I ridiculed his comment and banned him without a second thought. Let's say virtually all opinions ... )

I apologize for being impolite myself in some of my comments on the last thread. In particular, I apologize to Julio Siqueira, who felt the brunt of my pique through no real fault of his own. 

In other news, I'm currently rereading Peter Fenwick's The Truth in the Light, a very enjoyable overview of NDEs. Most of the cases he cites are anecdotal, having been reported some time -- even decades -- after the fact, but they are still of considerable interest.

Better late than never

Last year Stephen Braude sent me a link to a YouTube video in which he is interviewed about his paranormal investigations and writings. Unfortunately, because I was about to take a trip at the time, I never looked at the video and forgot about it until now.

Today I rediscovered the email and watched the interview, which is really quite interesting. I found Braude's discussion of a table-tipping event particularly enjoyable.

The video runs about fifteen minutes and can be viewed here.

A last look

In the comments thread of the last post, Kris put up a link to a Time magazine story from 2007.  It was published on January 19, three years ago almost to the day.

Yes, it's anecdotal, but it's part of a growing body of anecdotes of this sort. Ronald Reagan, in the last stages of Alzheimer's, is said to have had a similar, though less dramatic, moment of lucidity immediately before he passed on.

"At the last moment when his breathing told us this was it, he opened his eyes and looked straight at my mother. Eyes that had not opened for days did, and they weren't chalky or vague," Reagan's daughter Patti Davis wrote. "They were clear and blue and full of life. If a death can be lovely, his was....

"In his last moment he taught me that there is nothing stronger than love between two people, two souls. It was the last thing he could do to show my mother how entwined their souls are and it was everything."

Anyway, the Time essay is a wonderful story, and if anyone hasn't read it yet, please do.

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The comments thread accompanying the article about Ronald Reagan contains many interesting stories. At the very least, these unsolicited comments give some idea of how common this phenomenon is. Most people probably don't talk about it, for fear of ridicule, but if they feel safe, they will open up:

My Father-in-law also had Alzheimer's and just before he died knew where he was and who his wife was. Perfectly lucid.

Both my parents had such a clear-eyed episode, and it feels incredible to the living. It's unmistakable. The hospice people ( angels in the flesh) told us this happens often at the very end.

My father too. You're right.

Reminds me of when my dad died. A similar thing happened.

I saw something very similar when my mother-in-law died 9 years ago, and when my wife died 7 years ago. Both died from cancer, at home, under hospice care rather than in the hospital.

My mother, who after suffering with cancer for 3 months and didn't recognize any of us for weeks, opened her eyes right before she died, looked at her 3 daughters who were sitting bedside, she looked each one of us in the eye, smiled, and went to be with God. 

I was present with the family when my father in law died a few years ago. His cancer was at such an advanced state that he was nearly catatonic before he passed. In the last few minutes of his life, as his labored breathing got worse, his eyes opened fully and focused on each of us standing by his bed. They then focused on the door and he tried to speak. I remember looking behind me several times to see what was there and, of course, could not. I will forever believe that he said goodbye to all of us and greeted his "escort". I will one day have to ask him.

My paternal grandfather died in October 2002 at the age of 93. Other than arthritis, he was healthy until 24 hours before his passing. His kidneys stopped working suddenly and his blood pressure dropped to the point where he was virtually unconscious. Just before he died, my dad says he became alert and said "take me Lord Jesus, take me."

It reminds me of when my dad died too; so I believe this.

My mother was dying of cancer in December of 1988 and had been unconscious after surgery for two days. As she was gasping her last breaths, I held her hand and told her "Mom its Dan, I'm here with you." She never opened her eyes but to my amazement she said my name aloud and then took her last couple of breaths.

I have heard of people who even after being in a coma, rose up on their beds and exclaimed the beauty of something, some place, that only they could see. People have called out in greeting to loved ones, long dead. The mother of a friend of mine, dying of cancer, described seeing Jesus, that He was on a field of grass with a crowd of others, and was calling her to come dance with Him.

My dad was dying of cancer and heavily medicated. I was stationed in the Azores (a long way from California) when my mom's neighbor called and said I had to get home as my dad was terminal with cancer and didn't have long to live.... It took me 5 days to get to the hospital. All my siblings were already there and my mom was with my dad. My mom woke dad, he looked at her very groggily, then I took his hand, he looked at me and became very lucid and had a look of great surprise and then it seemed like he was looking over my shoulder and went back to sleep. He died about 30 minutes later. Mom said he was waiting for me to get home.

My sister's gramma-in-law actually came back to her senses and recognized everyone just before she passed, after years of suffering from Alzheimer's.

My mother experienced something similar with her husband at the moment he died. No question in my mind there was a moment of lucidity just before he passed into eternity.

When my grandmother was dying after suffering from years of Alzheimer's, she opened her eyes and was as lucid as any person without the disease. Before she took her last breath she looked me in the eyes and said, "I see Wesley and he is so handsome. I see Jesus." Then she smiled a beautiful smile and breathed her last. Only the nurse and I were there with her and we both rejoiced at her release. Wesley was my father who had passed prior to her passing. My grandmother had not spoken for over a year and the only sounds she had made were grunts and such. When my father was dying of cancer 4 years prior to my grandmother's passing he was was comatose for the last week of his life. When we knew the end was near we called my brother in. My mom, my brother and I were around his bed praying and singing hymns. At one point I leaned down and whispered to him, "Daddy, you can go now. We will be alright. We will take care of mama." He opened his eyes and looked at me and moved his lips as if to say "thank you" and with that he was gone.

My grandma passed away last February, I wasn't at her bedside when she passed, but she had a heart attack stabilized briefly and was pending surgery. She was very afraid to have surgery, then took a sudden turn towards death. My cousin was at her bedside and said at the very end My grandma opened her eyes wide, held up her right hand and said " Oh dear Lord, I'm Going " then passed.

I entered the ICU room where my father was held after an unsuccessful surgery. He was talking to "someone" in the empty chair next to him. He was describing buying seed at the Feed Store - mustard seed. My dad loved turnip greens, but couldn't stand mustards, but mustard seed has a clear meaning in our faith. Soon he was laughing and waving at "friends" peeking through a window he pointed to the very middle of the room. The nurse just brushed this off as ICU narcosis, but I knew he was seeing spirits. It was actually a comfort to know he was going Home.

My mom died of cancer almost 19 years ago (still can't believe it) In the month before she died, the cancer was affecting her brain & she no longer recognized my father, me or her beloved grandsons. But when the ambulance came to transport her to Hospice, she turned to my father and in a lucid moment told him "I talked to Ya-Ya (my grandmother, her mother) last night and everything is going to be okay." My father knew at that moment that she was very near the end. She died about 28 hours later.

My grandmother said she saw an angel coming for her hours before she died. A week before he passed away, my father told us he grasped a baby's hand that reached out to take him home but he had not seen all of his kids yet and waited to die until he had. (The family always believed the baby that reached out for him was the child who was miscarried by one of my sisters.) One of my uncles who died at home surrounded by his family had been in a near-coma but awoke and smiled at all of them moments before he took his last breath.

My father collected antiques and historical memorabilia. He had about 10 antique clocks (that used to chime and bong just a few seconds apart and admittedly was sometimes very annoying). We returned home from the hospital after he died and discovered that 3 of his clocks had stopped at 9:38PM...listed as Time of Death on his death certificate.

Mixed signals

In my last post I reviewed the new book by Roy Abraham Varghese, There Is Life After Death: Compelling Reports from Those Who Have Glimpsed the After-Life.

As I mentioned in that post, the book features a Foreword and Afterword by Raymond Moody, famed author of the 1975 classic Life After Life, which first popularized NDEs. In the years since that book's appearance, Moody has taken an equivocal and sometimes puzzling stance on the subject of NDEs. This ambivalence continues in the material he contributed to Varghese's book.

The Foreword presents a clear overview of the NDE phenomenon, couched in terms that strongly suggest that the experience is what it appears to be: a preview of the actual dying process.

But what Moody giveth with one hand, he taketh away with the other. In his Afterword, he tells us that NDEs may not be evidence of anything. Having traced the "narrative structure" of NDEs in the Foreword, he now says that this structure merely "creates the illusion that near-death experiences could be 'evidence' or even 'rational proof of an afterlife.'" (My emphasis.) In case there is any doubt about his position, he concludes, "I remain unconvinced that there is life after death or that reason can prove it."

Now, if he means merely that life after death may not be provable by the scientific method, I'm inclined to agree, as I've previously argued. But he seems to mean more than this. He apparently thinks that reason and logic as such -- at least as they are conventionally understood -- cannot encompass an afterlife, even in principle.

He adds, however, that he is working on new "supplementary rational principles" that will "activate untapped capacities of the mind" and perhaps shed light on the question. "The new approach," he says, "may even entail that parapsychological kinds of reasoning about life after death are intrinsically incoherent." As one example of why ordinary logic precludes life after death, Moody says, "Remember that 'There is life after death' is patently self-contradictory. And logic rules out self-contradictions."

This is mere verbalistic cleverness. "There is biological life after biological death" would certainly be a contradiction, but that's not what anyone means by "life after death." What is meant, obviously, is that there is a continuation of consciousness after biological death. This claim is certainly debatable, but it is not self-contradictory unless one begs the question by assuming that consciousness cannot operate in the absence of biological life. So I can't say I'm very impressed with Moody's reasoning, or very interested in the "supplemental rational principles" he's mapping out.

I'm also a bit perplexed by Moody's antipathy toward the "paranormal" in general. Moody complains about "pseudo-scientists and true believers [who] foster their defective reasoning on emotionally vulnerable, anxious, or grief-stricken people." By "pseudo-scientists" he presumably means parapsychologists, the people whose reasoning (as quoted above) may be "intrinsically incoherent." Elsewhere he refers to "self-deluded pseudo-scientists and 'parapsychologists'," putting the word parapsychologists in quotes. These people are contrasted with "serious scholars." Whoever these serious scholars are, it's clear that, in Moody's view, they are not working in the field of parapsychology.

I don't know which parapsychologists Moody's been reading, but I see nothing incoherent in the reasoning of Charles Tart, Dean Radin, Charles Honorton, and J.B. Rhine (among many others), and I would regard all of them as serious scholars.

Moody's distaste for the paranormal strikes me as more of a visceral reaction than the product of careful thought. He seems to see the subject matter of this field as simply beyond the pale of sober, serious research. His disdain is palpable when he complains about "one well-known organization devoted to the study" of NDEs that has occasionally made room for paranormal phenomena. "At times," he writes, "there has even been a tinge of New Age beliefs or an overlapping interest in mediumship!" (Exclamation point his.)

I'm hard pressed to see why Moody should lodge this objection. This is a man, after all, who built a psychomanteum in his house and then wrote a book about it called Reunions: Visionary Encounters with Departed Loved Ones. Someone who sets up a mystical sanctum designed to let people enter an altered state of consciousness and commune with their deceased friends and relatives hardly seems to be in a position to criticize an interest in mediumship! (Exclamation point mine.)

All told, I find Moody's comments rather strange and a little sad. He seems uncomfortable with the series of events that led him to be connected with afterlife research. Perhaps he never imagined Life After Life would prove so popular, and now he feels trapped in a role that doesn't suit him.

Personally, I think Moody will be remembered as a breakthrough figure in afterlife studies. I only wish he would embrace that legacy, rather than distancing himself from it.

Book review: There Is Life after Death

Roy Abraham Varghese is a Christian writer perhaps best known for having helped persuade philosopher Antony Flew to discard atheism in favor of theism. In cooperation with Flew, Varghese then wrote a book called There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.

Now he's back with a new book, There Is Life after Death, in which he argues that human beings are "transphysical" beings -- a union of physical body and nonphysical soul -- and that the soul continues to exist after bodily death. In support of this view, Varghese relies primarily on near-death experiences and what he calls "After-Life Visitations" (ALVs). The latter include Marian apparitions and what are usually referred to as "crisis apparitions" (though Varghese does not use this term). One of the most interesting ALVs involves the appearance of C.S. Lewis in the home of a severely depressed friend, biblical scholar J.B. Phillips. Looking "rosily radiant," the recently deceased Lewis said simply, "J.B., it's not as hard as you think." This statement -- and the accompanying manifestation -- worked wonders for Phillips, who recovered his will to live. Amusingly, when Phillips shared the story with a bishop, the cleric replied breezily, "My dear J___, this sort of thing is happening all the time." (Pp. 158-159)

Varghese makes many good selections in the NDE and ALV evidence he presents, though his choices are clearly influenced by his Christian beliefs. He includes the full story of Howard Storm's NDE, with its hellish elements and eventual salvation, brought about by Storm's desperate prayer to Jesus -- a life-changing event for Storm, who was an atheist at the time of his NDE and afterward became a minister.  (Incidentally, anyone who insists that European health care is invariably superior to America's might ponder Storm's harrowing ordeal in a Paris hospital, where he was left unattended, in agony, without benefit of painkillers or any other treatment, for more than eight hours, no doctors being on call and no surgeons being available to operate on his perforated intestine. The hospital staff appeared quite content to let him die. But I digress.)

There Is Life after Death pulls no punches in critiquing "physicalist" theories that claim that consciousness can be reduced to brain chemistry. Varghese cites leading neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga as saying that, as far as brain research is concerned, "We are not a few miles down a long road; we are a few inches down the long road." Writes Varghese:

Gazzaniga notes that theorists like E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett "know about as much on the human brain as a second-year graduate student in neuropsychology." He notes that the area is simply not their field. He acknowledges that Wilson is a great zoologist and then adds, "Dawkins, I'm afraid, is now just a PR man for evolution. He's kind of like John the Baptist -- he goes around announcing the imminent arrival. Dennett, of course, is a philosopher and doesn't pretend to know anything about the brain. I think it has distorted the whole discussion." [p. 190]

For Varghese, the "first-person" nature of consciousness is not amenable to physicalist explanations or even to scientific methodologies as such. It is not tangible, quantifiable, or physical. As he writes in the second paragraph of the Prologue, "... the I, the center of our consciousness and unifier of our experiences, makes us see things from a first-person perspective unlike anything else in the physical world." (p. 19) Part Two of the book, which runs about sixty-five pages, is largely devoted to making this argument.

Part One is more concerned with building an empirical case for life after death on the basis of NDEs, ALVs, and the nearly universal belief in an afterlife. To develop the latter argument, Varghese engages in a quick survey of world religions. Here his commitment to Christianity is most obvious, as he devotes a scant ten pages to all other faiths, then spends thirty pages on the Judeo-Christian tradition. Moreover, he seems to assess other religions largely in terms of their compatibility with Christianity. Hence, Buddhism and modern Hinduism are dismissed as relatively late developments of the original Vedic Hinduism, which Varghese sees as more authentic. Why? Apparently because Vedic Hinduism does not include reincarnation -- and since reincarnation is not part of Christianity, Varghese is eager to discredit it. In a later chapter, Varghese goes out of his way to debunk Ian Stevenson's reincarnation research, making use of nitpicking skeptical arguments that he would surely reject if they were applied to NDEs or to the Bible.

This same approach -- evaluating the evidence in terms of Christian teachings -- surfaces in Varghese's attitude toward other kinds of afterlife evidence, such as mediumship. He simply dismisses this evidence out of hand, refusing to consider it. His rationale is that only "spontaneous" phenomena are free from suspicion of fraud; therefore "induced" phenomena like mediumship must be ruled out of bounds.

There are obvious problems with this approach. First, not all mediumship is induced; there have been spontaneous cases. Second, stringent precautions against fraud have been taken in the investigation of some mediums. Third, a good deal of Varghese's own religious tradition is clearly grounded in mediumship. What were the Hebrew prophets if not channelers, entering a trance state to convey messages from the spirit world? Though Varghese would be scandalized by the notion, it can be argued that Jesus himself was one of the world's great mediums. Was not the Transfiguration an "induced" event?

At any rate, I don't think Varghese is really rejecting mediumship because it is "induced." I think he rejects it because the Bible warns against communing with spirits, and because some of the messages conveyed by mediums contradict Biblical teachings.

Perhaps even more oddly, Varghese rejects paranormal phenomena in general, claiming that even ESP remains dubious and unproven. This is a strange position to take, given the author's  belief in NDEs, the intercession of the saints, apparitions of Mary, visitations by deceased persons, and the resurrection of Jesus, all of which surely qualify as paranormal events.

Speaking of resurrection, Varghese maintains that actual bodily resurrection will eventually follow a period of existence in the spirit world. He claims that this view is found in most other world religions, but his survey of those traditions is too brief to make the point convincingly. My own impression is that bodily resurrection is a feature of the Abrahamic religions (Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), but not of most other faiths.

There's also the question of Hell. Varghese is keen on defending the reality of Hell as a state of everlasting separation from God, with no possibility of redemption. No doubt this is one reason why he disdains mediumship and Spiritualism, which often teach that punishment in the afterlife is temporary, and that everyone will eventually progress to an exalted, heavenly state.

When it comes to Heaven, Varghese can offer little besides vague assurances of eternal bliss. Having rejected mediumistic communications, he cannot rely on descriptions of the afterlife environment provided by generations of mediums, so he is reduced to saying, "Heaven is indescribable in  terrestrial terms ... [S]peculation about Heaven in purely human terms is pointless  because, by its very nature, the immediate knowledge and love of God is something man cannot enjoy in this life and hence cannot  describe or grasp ... Heaven is a union with the Creator of this immense universe, with the Author of all the love, joy, and goodness around him, with the One in Whom all these are found in perfection." He adds, "It may seem here that we are slowly backing into abstractions leaving in our wake a trail of tortuous verbiage."

Why, yes. Yes, it does.

Overall, I found There Is Life after Death a mixed bag. A good deal of interesting and informative material is to be found here, and it is presented in a lively and engaging style. I learned some new things and enjoyed large parts of the book. At the same time, I felt that the book not infrequently descended into Christian polemics, and I found the author's disparagement of parapsychology annoying and often uninformed. In a postscript to this review, I'll quote some of his statements so you can judge them for yourself.

Another feature of interest in the book is Raymond Moody's contribution of a Foreword and Afterword. Moody says some rather provocative and, to my mind, peculiar things. But I'll cover this in a separate post.

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P.S. Here are some selected quotes from There Is Life after Death, illustrating the author's disdain for various categories of afterlife evidence that don't appear to fit his Christian worldview.

We have to assemble all the claims concerning the after-life that have spontaneously emerged in the course of history. I emphasize "spontaneous" because claims involving mediums, ouija boards, channeling, hypnotic regression to past lives, and the like are "artificial" and hence, in my view, inadmissible. They are induced from "this world" and can well be accused of being "manufactured" or manipulated. [P. 31]

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Only those phenomena that emerge spontaneously can be considered free of obvious taint. [P. 37]

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And here we have to address the New Age reincarnationists. Although they profess open-minded intolerance, the reincarnationists dogmatically deny the possibility of the human person being able to continue as the same person after physical death. In their view, at the point of death, what was you in this life morphs into another person, a process that continues in successive lives until you "dissolve" into the Universal Spirit." [P. 39]

---

On the other end of the spectrum [from conservative religionists] are the New Age/Gnostic liberals who do not believe that our choices here can have consequences in the hereafter and that there is such a thing as evil. Any report that involves divine displeasure with human evil or the possibility of freely chosen endless separation from God ... is suppressed or simply dismissed. [p. 56]

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It is true that, for lack of a conceptual home, NDEs have been appropriated by the New Age carnival of psi, channeling, energies, crystals, astral bodies, OBEs, and the like. [P. 57]

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It should be pointed out also that we are not arguing for the ideas of an astral body or ethereal energies and auras. Such claims, in any case, are quasi-scientific in nature because they concern a physical reality. As such, they should be tested scientifically, and science tells us that there is no evidence for their existence. [P. 59]

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What is remarkable about NDE research is the number of highly specialized doctors and distinguished scientists that have (a) conducted research on the phenomenon and (b) come away convinced that we are dealing with a non-physical phenomenon. This stands in contrast to the rarity of high-caliber researchers working on reincarnation and other New Age predilections. [p. 60]

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... there is no necessary link between NDEs and alleged paranormal phenomena. Whether or not paranormal or parapsychological phenomena take place is a different question from whether or not NDEs are legitimate after-life experiences. In other words, our acceptance of the validity of NDEs does not mean that we are simultaneously accepting any claim of the paranormal. Likewise, we are not bound to accept any of the claims of spiritualists and mediums and others who claim to have esoteric knowledge of "the other side." These latter claims are highly suspect for various reasons not least of which is the fact that they are not spontaneous in the same fashion as NDEs.

The debate on whether paranormal phenomena such as telepathy take place is a legitimate one. But the jury is still out on this question as it was a hundred years ago." [Pp. 79-80]

---

Some of the [overly] elaborate NDE accounts seem very much like contemporary versions of the historically worthless private revelations of Gnostics and seers. [P.  81.]

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The renowned philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper rejected belief in life after death while noting that the accounts of mediums and spiritualists are positively unattractive. [Quoting Popper:] "Most terrible of all prospects appears to be the prospect which the people who believe in psychical research and spiritualism seem to offer. That is to say, a kind of ghostly semi-existence after death, and one which is not only ghostly, but which seems to be intellectually on a particularly low level -- on a lower level than the normal level of human affairs. This form of semi-survival is probably the most unpleasant form which has so far been conceived. I do think that if there is anything in the idea of survival, then it would have to be different from anything we can imagine in order to be tolerable." [P. 112]

With regard to the Popper quote, I would point out that a consistent claim in mediumistic communications is that the communicating spirits must "lower their vibrations" and enter a trancelike state in order to convey messages through the medium. Thus the poor quality of many (but not all) such communications reflects the difficulties inherent in the process, not any permanent loss of mental function. Indeed, some communicators display a high level of intelligence and alertness, and nearly all of them insist that, when not in contact with the earth, their mental powers are far superior to any they manifested while physically embodied.

A communication ostensibly from the discarnate F.W.H. Myers, via the medium Alice Fleming ("Mrs. Holland"), put it this way: "... the nearest simile I can find to express the difficulties of sending a message – is that I appear to be standing behind a sheet of frosted glass – which blurs sight and deadens sound – dictating feebly – to a reluctant and very obtuse secretary. A feeling of terrible impotence burdens me – I am so powerless to tell what means so much – I cannot get into communications with those who would understand and believe me."

Singin' those Avatar blues

Boy, was I wrong about Avatar's box office performance. I never thought a CG epic about big blue aliens would garner such huge grosses. The film is now on track to be at least the #2 commercial hit of all time (although if the numbers were adjusted for inflation, it would rank much lower).

I still haven't seen it, and really don't care much about it, but today I came across an interesting news story with a possible NDE connection. It seems that some fans of the film become deeply depressed after seeing it, because they long to return to the immersive, beauteous world of Pandora.

From the article:

"I wasn't depressed myself. In fact the movie made me happy ," [a Web site administrator] said. "But I can understand why it made people depressed. The movie was so beautiful and it showed something we don't have here on Earth. I think people saw we could be living in a completely different world and that caused them to be depressed."

A post by a user called Elequin expresses an almost obsessive relationship with the film.

"That's all I have been doing as of late, searching the Internet for more info about 'Avatar.' I guess that helps. It's so hard I can't force myself to think that it's just a movie, and to get over it, that living like the Na'vi will never happen. I think I need a rebound movie," Elequin posted.

A user named Mike wrote on the fan Web site "Naviblue" that he contemplated suicide after seeing the movie.

"Ever since I went to see 'Avatar' I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na'vi made me want to be one of them. I can't stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it," Mike posted. "I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and that everything is the same as in 'Avatar.' "

Other fans have expressed feelings of disgust with the human race and disengagement with reality.

Sound familiar? It reminds me of the emotions often reported by near-death experiencers, who find themselves longing for a beautiful, ethereal world that puts Earth to shame, while feeling disconnected from their everyday lives.

Of course, all this says nothing about the veridicality of such experiences. Avatar is a fantasy, after all. One might argue that its powerful emotional impact on viewers shows that the NDE, for all its emotional effect, is only a fantasy, as well.

Alternatively, one might argue that the film deeply touches some people precisely because it reminds them of "the other side," recalling memories of a blissful, ecstatic experience that had previously been suppressed.

The article includes more quotes about the intense effect the movie has on some people. Check it out.

It's an interesting phenomenon, even for those of us who wouldn't know a Na'vi from a Wookie.

An old-time radio classic

Zerdini, who sometimes comments here, recently pointed me to an article he wrote about a 1933 séance involving direct-voice medium William Cartheuser.

I haven't researched this event on my own -- actually I'd never heard of Cartheuser until now -- but the story certainly makes interesting reading and, on the face of it, sounds like remarkably good evidence.

However, in Googling "William Cartheuser," I found that some people who accepted other mediums as genuine nevertheless apparently regarded Cartheuser as a fraud. One was Hereward Carrington, and another was Nandor Fodor.

A balanced view of the subject is provided in this excerpt from The Case for Life after Death, by Elizabeth E. McAdams and Raymond Bayless, which is online here:

Bayless sat a number of times with William Cartheuser, a physical medium who gained considerable notoriety in his day. He apparently produced phenomena by trickery as often as he could. He used a flashlight equipped with a pinhole for "spirit lights"; he squirted water about with a water pistol; he picked up his trumpets and whirled them about with masterly skill; he calmly reached about, creating "spirit touches"; and he even walked about the séance room producing phenomena. But in spite of these habits he possessed genuine telepathic ability and in all probability had some authentic ability as a physical medium as well. Additional discussion of Cartheuser can be found in Hereward Carrington's The Invisible World. [p. 54]

Luckily, Carrington's book is online, and although it is only a "limited preview," the entire section on Cartheuser -- pages 68-93 -- is available. Carrington clearly had very good grounds to be suspicious of Cartheuser, yet he did conclude that "a small residuum" of the phenomena were worthy of further study. This residuum included uncannily accurate touches (by the trumpet) in a pitch-dark room; a few instances of overlapping voices produced by the medium; isolated bits of information from Cartheuser that seemed impossible for him to have known by any normal means; and one test in which a light was rigged to go off if Cartheuser left his chair. In this test, the light stayed on throughout the séance, yet "touches and other phenomena occurred nevertheless at considerable distances" from the chair.

These indications of genuine mediumship are balanced by very obvious signs of deception on many occasions, as recounted in Carrington's book.

At the end of the day, I don't have enough information to evaluate Cartheuser. My impression is that he might be similar to Eusapia Palladino (a comparison also made in the McAdams-Bayless book): someone with genuine abilities but a tricksterish personality, who freely used deception when possible.

In any event, I enjoyed reading about the "séance of the century" and thought others might, also.

An impossible dream?

There has been a surprising amount of effort expended over more than a hundred years to scientifically establish the reality of life after death. Yet, while a great deal of evidence has been collected, it falls short of providing absolute proof. At best it suggests a very strong probability of life after death, but it has not clinched the case. Why?

Some would argue that absolute proof is rare in any empirical investigation. Science generally operates in terms of probabilities, not absolutes. The philosopher of science Karl Popper went so far as to say that no theory can be proven true; theories can only be falsified, i.e., disproven. If a theory survives concerted attempts at falsification, it may be provisionally accepted as true, but there is always the chance it will be falsified later.

But while abstract theories may not be provable, empirical facts are. And one would think that life after death, if it is real, would constitute an empirical fact and would therefore be susceptible of proof.

Of course, some facts are easier to establish than others. An afterlife, by its nature, would be extremely difficult to prove simply because it presumably exists on a different "level" or "plane" of reality than the one we presently inhabit. It would not be "empirical" in the same sense that a rock or a tree is empirical. But I think there's more to it than that.

Actually, I have started to think it is probably impossible, even in principle, ever to obtain objective proof of life after death. Note that I am talking not about evidence, which is abundant, but about conclusive proof, which remains elusive and perhaps always will.

I could be all wrong about this. These are relatively deep waters, and I may be out of my depth. My perspective depends on the very tricky distinction between objective and subjective, a distinction that has bedeviled people who are far more philosophically sophisticated than I am.

Nevertheless, for what it's worth, here's what I've been thinking.

First, what do we mean by "life after death"? Ordinarily, at least in Western culture, we mean the survival of the individual as an individual. Absorption into some undifferentiated cosmic Oneness might be a kind of life after death, but it's not what we typically are talking about.

But what is the individual? Clearly, in this context, we mean the unique consciousness of a particular person -- the "I," or sense of self.

And here's the rub. Consciousness, by its nature, is a subjective state.

The only consciousness we know directly is our own. Strictly speaking, we cannot be absolutely sure -- we can't prove -- that other people are conscious. We observe their behavior, and from it we infer consciousness. To put it another way, we know that our consciousness directly influences our behavior, and so we assume that other people's behavior has its origins in their consciousness. And this makes sense. It's a perfectly plausible inference ... but still only an inference.

Since we cannot know someone else's consciousness first-hand, we can only rely on other people's statements about their inner state, and on extrapolation from our own personal experience. In short, we draw an "inference to the best explanation."

I'm not denying that this is, in fact, the best explanation. I don't doubt that other people are conscious. I'm only pointing out that we can't access other people's state of being, just as they can't access ours. Consciousness is inherently subjective. As such, it resists any attempt to prove its existence objectively.

Note that this is the case even in the case of ESP. Impressions plucked from someone else's mind are known to us only because they appear in our particular field of consciousness. We still cannot experience the other person's consciousness, his sense of self.

Now, if this is true regarding other human beings who are alive and interacting with us directly, it would be even more true of discarnate beings accessible to us only through an altered state of consciousness or through some intermediary, i.e., a medium. We can't prove that the subjective state of consciousness operates in other living beings, and we can't prove that it persists in those who are no longer physically alive. The best we can do is find pointers that imply such a conclusion -- pointers that make the inference more plausible.

If information coming through a medium is specific, detailed, and likely to be known only to us and to the deceased person who is allegedly communicating, and if hints of that person's distinctive personality also come through, then we may very well feel justified in concluding that our deceased friend really is conveying a message to us. This is arguably an inference to the best explanation, if other possible explanations, such as conscious or unconscious fraud and self-delusion, are ruled out. But it still isn't proof in any absolute sense. It can't be, because objective proof of the reality of a subjective experience is impossible, and the discarnate being's consciousness (like all consciousness) is subjective.

We may just have to accept the fact that no objective proof can actually be attained in this area. The best we may be able to hope for is that we personally become convinced by our own experiences, but not that we can convince others who have not shared our experiences.

I'm not sure this matters very much, since the purpose of life is not convince others to agree with us. But those who are hoping for some slam-dunk, irrefutable, objective proof that will render all skepticism obsolete may be dreaming an impossible dream.

Poetry corner 2010

The New Year is traditionally a time for resolutions. I don't make resolutions anymore, because I've found I don't keep them. But for those with more self-discipline (or more optimism) than I, here's a poem that gives us all something to shoot for.

It's probably my favorite poem. Yes, it's doggerel, like most of Kipling's poetry. But like the best of Kipling, it's doggerel of a high quality. And I love its high ideals. If today such sentiments are seen as old-fashioned, it's only because we live in a decadent age.

As is always the case with Kipling's verses, it is best read aloud.

Fun fact: Kipling's sister, Alice Fleming, was an amateur medium of some repute. To save her family from embarrassment, she was always known as "Mrs. Holland" in written reports. She played a large role in the famous "cross correspondences." Details here.  

And now, our poem ...

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If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

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(Source:  everypoet.com )