Michael Prescott's Blog

Upscale

The recently published book Debating Psychic Experience, edited by Stanley Krippner and Harris L. Friedman, includes some brief but fascinating speculation by parapsychologist Dean Radin about a possible connection between psi and quantum mechanics. Though such claims are often lambasted by critics as mere New Age handwaving, Radin points out that there is a growing body of empirical evidence suggesting that quantum effects are not limited to the smallest scale of existence.

He writes,

The open question [is] whether quantum effects operate in the brain. This is an active debate, with some arguing in the affirmative (Josephson & Pallikari-Viras, 1991; Stapp, 1999), and others in the negative (Smith, 2009). While the debate continues to unfold, it is worth considering that quantum interconnections easily observed at the microscopic scale do not magically vanish in macroscopic systems. They just become more complex. Our present ability to detect connections in macroscopic systems is rapidly advancing, and there is already evidence that quantum effects are found not only in exotic conditions, but in everyday macroscopic systems.

For example, according to Vedral (2008), "Traditionally, entanglement was considered to be a quirk of microscopic objects that defied a common-sense explanation. Now, however, entanglement is recognized to be ubiquitous and robust" (p. 1005). Physicists have observed high quality quantum correlations in diamond that persist on millisecond time scales at room temperature (Neumann et al., 2008), in macroscopic mechanical membranes (Thompson et al., 2008), in photosynthesis (Engel et al., 2007), in electronic circuits (Ansmann et al., 2009) and in avian magnetonavigation (Solov'yov & Schulten, 2009). These developments, all occurring since the turn of the twenty-first century, suggest that quantum processing in the human nervous system is no longer unthinkable. Indeed, given the pace of progress today in quantum biology, it seems inevitable. What is the consequence of this "new" reality for understanding psi?

It means that we need to reframe our understanding of physical objects and what they may be capable of, including the brain. The quantum brain would no longer be exclusively locked inside the skull; parts of it would reside beyond the classical boundaries of space and time. This means that brain processes responsible for ordinary perception, and all the other cognitive processes studied by the neurosciences, may be influenced not only by local sensory information, but by impressions received from what common sense would label "at a distance."

With the brain viewed as a quantum object, people who are asked to keep each other "in mind" would be entangled not just emotionally, but physically. Those brains might "co-process" information regarded as important by both individuals, and as such these psychophysical entanglements might explain the remarkable coincidences reported between separated loved ones and identical twins. For example, Playfair (2003) reports a case (one of many) in which a healthy man suddenly experienced a suffocating pain in his chest while hundreds of miles away, at the same moment, his identical twin was suffering a heart attack.

[Debating Psychic Experience, pp.124-125] 

 

A peek at Darien

Vitor Moura sent me an interesting article by NDE researcher Bruce Greyson, which appeared in the December 2010 (Vol. 35, issue 2) edition of Anthropology and Humanism, a journal published by the American Anthropological Association. Titled "Seeing Dead People Not Known to Have Died: 'Peak in Darien' Experiences," the article lists a number of deathbed vision cases. As far as I know, only the abstract is freely available online. 

There are so many cases, I can't excerpt them all. What follows are some of the more interesting ones. All of the quoted material is from Greyson's article and consists of Greyson's summaries in his own words. 

One very early case was written up by Dr. Henry Atherton in 1680. The doctor's teenage sister, 

who had been sick for a long time, was thought to have died. Indeed, the women attending to her saw no breath when they held a mirror to her mouth and saw no response when they put live coals to her feet. Nevertheless, the girl recovered and related a vision of visiting heaven, which her relatives dismissed as “dream or fancy.” The girl then insisted that she had seen several people who had died after she had lost consciousness. One of those she named was thought to be still alive; however, her family subsequently sent out inquiries and confirmed that the girl was correct.

It's interesting that even in that more religious age, her family’s knee-jerk response was a skeptical dismissal. Some things never change!

A case written up in 1882 by Frances Power Cobbe

described a woman who, as she was dying, suddenly showed joyful surprise and spoke of seeing three of her brothers who had long been dead. She then apparently recognized a fourth brother, who was believed by everyone present to be still living in India.... Sometime thereafter letters arrived announcing the death of the brother in India, which had occurred prior to his dying sister recognizing him.

In 1885, Eleanor Sidgwick wrote up an interesting case involving a singer identified only as Julia X, who had been briefly employed six or seven years previously by an affluent lady. Now the employer was dying. On her deathbed she was coolly discussing business matters, when

[s]uddenly she changed the subject and said, “Do you hear those voices singing?” No one else present heard them, and she concluded: “[The voices are] the angels welcoming me to Heaven; but it is strange, there is one voice amongst them I am sure I know, and cannot remember whose voice it is.” Suddenly she stopped and, pointing up, added: “Why there she is in the corner of the room; it is Julia X.” No one else present saw the vision, and the next day, February 13, 1874, the woman died. On February 14, Julia X’s death was announced in the Times. Her father later reported that “on the day she died she began singing in the morning, and sang and sang until she died.” 

Here's one reported by pioneering psi researchers Edmund Gurney and F.W.H. Myers in 1889. 

Gurney and Myers also described the case of John Alkin Ogle, who, an hour before he died, saw his brother who had died 16 years earlier, calling him by name. Ogle then called out in surprise, “George Hanley!” -- the name of a casual acquaintance in a village 40 miles away -- before expiring. His mother, who was visiting from Hanley’s village, then confirmed that Hanley had died 10 days earlier, a fact that no one else in the room had known.

In 1899, Alice Johnson described the case of the dying Mrs. Hicks, who 

looked earnestly at the door to the room and said to her nurse, husband, and daughters, “There is someone outside, let him in.” Her daughter assured her there was no one there and opened the door wider. After a pause, Mrs. Hicks said: “Poor Eddie; oh, he is looking very ill; he has had a fall.” Her family assured her that the last news they had heard from him [her son, who was thousands of miles away] was that he was quite well, but she continued from time to time to say, “Poor Eddie!” Some time after she died, her husband received a letter from Australia announcing their son’s death. He had suddenly become feverish the day of his mother’s vision and was found dead, having fallen from his horse at about the time of his mother’s vision.

Another early psi researcher, James Hyslop, wrote in 1908 about a case involving two children both suffering from diphtheria. 

Jennie, age 8, died on a Wednesday, a fact that was intentionally kept hidden from her friend Edith. At noon on that Saturday, Edith selected two of her photographs to be sent to Jennie, providing evidence that she still thought Jennie to be alive. Shortly thereafter she lapsed into unconsciousness, but that evening she awakened and spoke of seeing deceased friends. Then suddenly she said to her father, in great surprise, “Why, papa, I am going to take Jennie with me!” She then reached out her arms and said, “O, Jennie, I’m so glad you are here,” lapsed back into unconsciousness, and died.

One of the more interesting stories in Hollywood history is the development of Technicolor, which is vividly described here. The system was the brainchild of Herbert Kalmus and his wife Natalie. It came as news to me that Natalie Kalmus, in 1949, reported a deathbed vision perceived by her sister Eleanor. In her final moments, Eleanor 

began calling out the names of deceased loved ones whom she was seeing. Just before she died, she also saw a cousin named Ruth and asked, “What’s she doing here?” Ruth had died unexpectedly the week before, and Eleanor, because of her condition, had not been told.

Ian Stevenson, best known as an indefatigable researcher of children’s past-life memories, wrote up a case in 1959. The dying person was an elderly lady. 

When the doctors said that she did not have long to live, her grandchildren gathered around her bed. Suddenly she seemed much more alert, and the expression on her face changed to one of great pleasure and excitement. She raised herself slightly and said, “Oh, Will, are you there?” and fell back dead. No one named Will was present, and the only Will her family could recall was a great-uncle who lived in England. Not long after, her family received word from England that her brother Will had died about two days before her death.

Some near-death experiences include elements of deathbed visions. In 1968 John Myers 

related the case of a woman who, in an NDE, perceived herself leaving her body and viewing the hospital room and saw her distraught husband and the doctor shaking his head. She reported that she went to heaven and saw an angel and a familiar young man. She exclaimed: “Why, Tom, I didn’t know you were up here,” to which Tom responded that he had just arrived. The angel then told the woman that she would be returning to earth, and she found herself back in the hospital bed with the doctor looking over her. Later that night, her husband got a call informing him that their friend Tom had died in an auto accident. 

Another NDE with a deathbed-vision component was reported by pediatrician and NDE researcher Melvin Morse in 1990. A cancer-stricken 7-year-old boy 

told his mother that he had traveled up a beam of light to heaven, where he visited a “crystal castle” and talked with God. The boy said that a man there approached him and introduced himself as an old high school boyfriend of the boy’s mother. The man said he had been crippled in an automobile accident, but in the crystal castle he had regained his ability to walk. The boy’s mother had never mentioned this old boyfriend to her son, but after hearing of this vision, she called some friends and confirmed that her former boyfriend had died the very day of her son’s vision.

Traveling up a beam of light sounds somewhat like the classic "tunnel" experience, and the crystal castle is reminiscent of the buildings constructed of glass or other transparent materials that are often reported by NDErs and mediums. These structures are sometimes said to be made of pure thought. 

In their 1993 book Final Gifts, hospice nurses Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley reported the case of an elderly Chinese lady, terminally ill with cancer, who  

had recurrent visions of her deceased husband calling her to join him. One day, much to her puzzlement, she saw her sister with her husband, and both were calling her to join them. She told the hospice nurse that her sister was still alive in China, and that she hadn’t seen her for many years. When the hospice nurse later reported this conversation to the woman’s daughter, the daughter stated that the patient’s sister had in fact died two days earlier of the same kind of cancer, but that the family had decided not to tell the patient to avoid upsetting or frightening her. 

The same authors related

the case of Peggy, a young hospice patient dying of lymphoma. One day, she seemed to the visiting nurse much more bright, radiant, and active than usual. She reported that the previous day she had been drifting in and out of sleep, remembering back to a happy time in her childhood when she and her brother were taken in by a beloved aunt. She woke up with a start when she felt a warm, caring hand on her shoulder, and looking around behind her saw her aunt, who lived in another state, smiling and touching her. She felt her aunt with her off and on all day, and late that night her uncle called to say her aunt had died at the same time that she was first awareof her presence.

A case reported in 1995 by a medical doctor, K.M. Dale, centered on a 9-year-old boy, Eddie Cuomo, 

whose fever finally broke after nearly 36 hours of anxious vigil on the part of his parents and hospital personnel. As soon as he opened his eyes, at 3:00 in the morning, Eddie urgently told his parents that he had been to heaven, where he saw his deceased Grandpa Cuomo, Auntie Rosa, and Uncle Lorenzo.... Then Eddie added that he also saw his 19-year-old sister Teresa, who told him he had to go back.... Later that morning, when Eddie’s parents telephoned the college, they learned that Teresa had been killed in an automobile accident just after midnight, and that college officials had tried unsuccessfully to reach the Cuomos at their home to inform them of the tragic news.

The oldest case included in Greyson's study dates all the way back to A.D. 77 and appears in Book 7 of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History. It concerns two Roman brothers, Corfidius the elder and Corfidius the younger. (In those days of high infant mortality, it was not unusual for siblings to share the same name.) The elder brother was pronounced dead, and funeral arrangements were made. Unexpectedly, however, the elder Corfidius spontaneously revived and announced to amazed onlookers that  

he had just come from the house of his younger brother. He reported that the younger brother requested that the funeral arrangements he had made for the now-revived older Corfidius be used for him instead, entrusted the care of his daughter to his older brother, and showed his older brother where he had secretly buried some gold underground. As the older Corfidius was relating the account of his NDE, his younger brother’s servants burst in with the news that their master had just unexpectedly died; and the buried gold, of which no one else knew, was found in the place indicated by the revived older brother. 

====

P.S. The term "peak in Darien," used to describe deathbed-vision cases, comes from Keats' poem "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," and refers to the moment when Cortez and his men climbed a peak in Panama and discovered the Pacific Ocean lying before them -- a wholly unexpected vista. The Peak in Darien was the title chosen by Frances Power Cobbe for her 1882 book on life after death, which includes some deathbed visions. 

Book review: Debating Psychic Experience

Not long ago, the publisher of the new book Debating Psychic Experience kindly sent me a review copy. I found the book very interesting, but also so densely packed with arguments and counter-arguments that a brief review would not do it justice. For that reason, in this post I'm largely focusing on just one portion of the book: a lively and sometimes acrimonious exchange of views between Ray Hyman and Chris Carter. Even though I've narrowed the scope of this review, I still can't cover all the points made by each of these writers. What follows are only some of the highlights.

First, an overview. Debating Psychic Experience, published in 2010, is is a serious give-and-take between skeptics and parapsychologists (or those sympathetic to parapsychology) aimed at an academic audience. It is edited by Stanley Krippner and Harris L. Friedman. The contributors are Dean Radin, James E. Alcock, Ray Hyman, Christopher C. French, Michael Shermer, Chris Carter, Richard S. Wiseman, Stephan A. Schwartz, Damien Broderick, and Elizabeth Loftus. 

Ray Hyman contributed two essays to the book. The second one, titled "What's Wrong with Materialism?", is his rebuttal of Chris Carter's earlier chapter "Persistent Denial: A Century of Denying the Evidence" -- surely a title calculated to raise the hackles of any committed skeptic! 

Hyman's hackles are clearly up. He writes, 

Unfortunately, I have to conclude that Carter's chapter comes close to consisting of an ad hominem attack against critics of parapsychology. His emphasis is on the alleged worldview that compels the critics to go to any lengths -- including deliberate suppression of data. Indeed, there are, and there have been, vocal skeptics who have behaved in ways that might justify some of Carter's concerns. On the other hand it is a logical fallacy to dismiss a person's criticisms on the basis of their alleged motivations and mindsets. Worse, attributing motivations and worldviews to critics on the basis of flimsy gossip makes for misleading and irrelevant arguments.

He goes on to characterize Carter's essay as a "diatribe," and makes it clear that he feels personally maligned by it. 

Here I think Hyman, in his prickly defensiveness, simply misreads the entire thrust of Carter's argument. Carter is not saying that the skeptics of psi are wrong because they are materialists. He is saying that skeptics of psi are wrong because they have not come to grips with the evidence. Having made this point, he goes on (as a related, but separate, issue) to ponder the question of why intelligent, knowledgeable people would be resistant to the evidence. His hypothesis is that they find the evidence upsetting because it threatens their deeply held beliefs, which can be labeled "materialism."

And indeed, the publicly stated attitudes of some prominent skeptics, notably those associated with CSI (fomerly CSICOP), seem to substantiate this reading of the facts. CSI has been explicit in saying that any widespread acceptance of psi by the scientific community would undermine the foundations of science and threaten civilization with a descent into a new dark ages. In any case, Carter is not launching a crude ad hominem attack, as Hyman believes; he is merely trying to understand the motivations of people whose continuing obstinacy in regard to a growing body of evidence is, as Yul Brynner would say, "a puzzlement." 

Hyman also seems to misinterpret what Carter means by materialism. It is clear from the context that Carter is referring to the Newtonian worldview of a clockwork universe. It is this paradigm that, he says, has been exploded by developments in quantum physics and other fields. He is certainly correct; the Newtonian clockwork universe is passé. Yet, in objecting to the idea of psi, some critics often tacitly assume that the Newtonian world-picture remains intact. When they say that psi is impossible in terms of the laws of physics, they must mean Newtonian physics; they cannot mean quantum physics, since, as Carter points out, prominent quantum physicists have endorsed the possibility or even the reality of psi.

When Hyman argues for methodological naturalism (a term he does not use, but which is clearly meant), he is on reasonably firm ground; but when he conflates methodological naturalism with Newtonian physics, he has overreached. The two are by no means identical. Methodological naturalism is entirely consistent with quantum physics, the most thoroughly tested and empirically validated theory in the history of science. And when Hyman suggests that the only alternative to materialism is some "brand of supernaturalism," he is again overreaching; it is possible to reject Newtonianism without embracing the supernatural. Psi need not be supernatural, and few contemporary parapsychologists would say that it is. Psi is not consistent with Newtonian physics, but it may well be consistent with quantum physics; or to put it another way, psi may not be consistent with materialism, narrowly defined, but it may be consistent with naturalism, broadly defined.

In general, Hyman seems to adopt the weakest and most uncharitable reading of Carter's positions, possibly so he can mount a straw-man argument in response, or possibly because he simply cannot read criticism of his own position in a fair-minded way. Indeed, what struck me the most about Hyman's response to Carter's essay was how personally he took Carter's remarks. Even if he did feel personally slighted, it might have been a better debating strategy to conceal this reaction, which only makes him look petty and vain.

Perhaps the major point of contention between the two involves Hyman's work for a government committee that produced an official statement -- the National Research Council Report -- essentially denying any and all evidence for psi. The chairman of the committee, John Swets, told the press, "Perhaps our strongest conclusions are in the area of parapsychology. The committee finds no scientific justification from research conducted over a period of one hundred thirty years for the existence of parapsychological phenomena." Hyman chaired the subcommittee on parapsychology, and selected James Alcock to provide a second opinion. Both Hyman and Alcock were members of CSICOP at the time and were known for their criticisms of parapsychology. Incidentally, Alcock contributed two skeptical essays to Debating Psychic Experience, one of which is rather tellingly titled "Attributions about Impossible Things." 

With both Hyman and Alcock apparently convinced in advance that psi phenomena are "impossible things," the conclusion of the report was inevitable. Carter, in presenting the whole thing as little better than a put-up job, relies heavily on US Army Colonel John Alexander, who investigated many of these subjects himself as part of his military duties. In 1989 Alexander wrote: 

... the only person assigned to the committee who had had any previous familiarity with the parapsychological research literature was Ray Hyman -- who was known from the outset to have his mind already made up.... Thus, I questioned from the beginning the issues of "bias" and "objectivity" as they related to the committee's constitution. For it seems clear that [Dr. George] Lawrence, and then Hyman and James Alcock ... proceeded on an intentional path to discredit the work in parapsychology.... Throughout the parapsychology section of the EHP Report, the committee referred only to those published articles that supported its position and ignored material that did not. 

Clearly stung by Carter's attack on the committee's work, Hyman mounts a lengthy defense. He decries Carter's version of events as an "urban legend" and insists that the committee behaved responsibly. Some of his points are well taken, but on the whole Hyman makes too many questionable assertions to be really persuasive. For instance, he claims he selected Alcock simply because Alcock was well-versed in the subject matter, and for no ulterior motive. But clearly this is disingenuous; there were other people equally well-versed in these controversies who could have brought a more neutral or disinterested perspective to the investigation than Alcock, who has been vociferously and intransigently hostile to psi research for decades. Hyman obviously chose Alcock, at least in part, because he knew that Alcock would agree with his own preconceived conclusions.

Hyman also says he allowed parapsychologists to review his and Alcock's findings. This, he implies, ought to clear him of any charge of bias. But letting parapsychologists comment on the report after it was already finalized amounts to very little. As far as I know, no parapsychologists' comments were included in the official report. The only dissenting view that ever saw daylight belonged to Robert Rosenthal -- a psychologist, not a parapsychologist, who found himself impressed with the psi data. Carter observes that committee chairman John Swets actually took the extraordinary step of attempting to suppress Rosenthal's contribution to the report. Despite going into tedious detail on other aspects of the committee's work, Hyman does not even comment on this point. 

The exchange about the NRC Report dominates the debate between Carter and Hyman, but there are other issues, as well. In particular, Hyman has many criticisms of the ganzfeld and autoganzfeld experiments, which are generally viewed as the strongest laboratory evidence for psi. He claims that the "autoganzfeld experiments failed to replicate the original ganzfeld data base. In the original data base the average effect size was derived from studies that all used static targets. The autoganzfeld experiments used both static and dynamic (action video clips) targets. Only the dynamic targets produced a significant effect. The results on the static targets were consistent with chance and differed significantly from the results on the static targets in the original data base."

Carter responds that this version of events is nearly the opposite of the truth. He writes,

The original ganzfeld experiments used quasi-dynamic targets (ViewMaster "slide" reels) in addition to completely static targets. Studies using the ViewMaster reels produced significantly higher hit rates than did studies using single-image targets (50% versus 34%). Meta-analysis of the original data led to the prediction that dynamic targets would show greater results than static targets. This prediction was in fact strongly corroborated.

In other words, the fact that psi was shown to be more effective in perceiving dynamic targets had been predicted on the basis of the original studies, and the prediction was vindicated by the subsequent, more stringent studies. 

Hyman goes on to complain that some experimenters were not able to replicate the ganzfeld results. On page 159 Carter includes a table listing all autoganzfeld experiments conducted from 1991 to 2003. The initial autoganzfeld experiments were carried out at Princeton; later experiments took place in North Carolina, the Netherlands, Scotland, and Sweden -- in short, at laboratory facilities around the world. These subsequent trials produced reasonably consistent hit rates, with outlying results of 27% (close to chance) in one study and 47% in another (involving artistically gifted subjects), but with the remaining six results clustered around 34%. In other words, the Princeton autoganzfeld results were not a fluke; they were repeatedly duplicated by independent researchers at other labs. 

Perhaps showing a touch of desperation, Hyman further argues that there has been a "decline effect" in the autoganzfeld studies. This often-repeated claim has been exploded as a canard so many times, it's amazing to see it still appear in print. The only "decline" that occurred was in new exploratory studies that tested different, previously unanalyzed aspects of psi. For instance, there was an attempt to test for auditory psi by seeing if subjects could psychically perceive musical passages; results were no better than chance. This is entirely different from testing for psychic perception of visual images, and conflating the two sets of data only serves to confuse the issue.

Carter concludes bluntly, "It seems clear that Hyman and the other counteradvocates have lost the ganzfeld debate." 

Naturally I approach this subject with a strong bias in favor of psi -- a bias that I like to think is supported by my extensive reading on the subject. From my (hardly neutral) perspective, Carter comes across as serious, knowledgeable, and persuasive, while Hyman comes across as thin-skinned, overly emotional, and less than reliable in his presentation of the facts. Will the average reader come away with this impression? I'm not sure. Though the book is intended to be a balanced presentation of both sides of the issue, the skeptics dominate in terms of page count. I count ten essays critical of parapsychology versus five essays sympathetic to parapsychology (with three more-or-less neutral essays contributed by Damien Broderick and the editors). 

Some of the skeptics do a pretty good job of concealing what I believe to be their agenda. Richard Wiseman, in his essay "Heads I Win, Tails You Lose," claims that the preceding "collection of essays makes me very concerned." Shedding crocodile tears, he declares he is worried "because after over one hundred years of parapsychological research there exists no real consensus on the most fundamental question facing the field -- does psi exist? Worse still, time is running out... Indeed, I believe that if parapsychology continues on its current trajectory, university-based psi research has only another few years to run." Those who are familiar with Wiseman's history of questionable conduct and dubious assertions will take his claims with more than a pinch of salt, but the uninformed reader just may be taken in.

Meanwhile, some of the pro-psi arguments are problematic in their own right. In his essay "The Antique Roadshow," Stephan A. Schwartz, who has done yeoman's work in applying psi to archaeology, tries to discredit the critics of psi by comparing them to other "denier" movements, namely creationism and "climate change deniers." As something of a climate change denier myself, I'm not overly impressed with this approach. It seems to me that the highly pejorative term "denier" ought to be reserved for people who are denying facts that are almost universally uncontroversial among educated people, such as the Holocaust or the moon landings. Applying this term to anthropogenic global warming or to parapsychology strikes me as premature and unfair. (As far as creationism is concerned, I have no sympathy for young-earth creationism, but I do think there may be merit to the arguments of Intelligent Design theorists like William Dembski, who apply information theory to evolution. Psi itself may possibly play a role in evolution.) 

Although I wish the pro-parapsychology side had been given equal space with the skeptics, I still found Debating Psychic Experience to be a worthwhile , illuminating -- and often surprisingly entertaining -- read. Perhaps the best thing about the book is that it is clearly aimed at an academic audience, incidentally giving the lie to Wiseman's lament that university-based parapsychology is on the verge of extinction. While the book could have been bolder, I applaud the effort to bring a serious debate about psi into the classroom. I hope it finds the intelligent and open-minded audience it deserves.

The NDE with a thousand faces

Lately I've been reading about Joseph Campbell's theory of the "monomyth" -- the basic story that lies at the heart of most mythology and folklore, and which informs the structure of novels and screenplays even today. Campbell laid out the theory in his famous book The Hero with a Thousand Faces -- which I admit I haven't read, though I plan to get to it when I can. For the moment, I've been reading a simplified presentation of Campbell's ideas in Christopher Vogler's well-known how-to guide, The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, which applies the monomyth to the field of screenwriting. Many websites lay out the theory in its essential terms; look here or here, for instance.

The gist of the monomyth is simple enough. It's the story of the Hero's Journey. The hero begins in the ordinary world, living his ordinary, commonplace, and not entirely fulfilling life. He then receives a Call to Adventure, often brought to him by a Herald. He may resist the invitation (Refusal of the Call), but eventually yields, often after receiving Supernatural Aid. He enters an unfamiliar and possibly dangerous new world (Crossing the Threshold), frequently encountering Threshold Guardians who block his entrance and must be defeated, outwitted, or turned into Allies. In the latter case, the initially threatening Threshold Guardians turn out, upon closer inspection, to be friendly forces.

Having entered into a new world, the hero embarks on a Road of Trials, encountering various challenges, obstacles, and opportunities for growth. He may meet symbolic figures that embody the key persons in his life: mother, father, lover. Campbell labeled these encounters the Meeting with the Goddess, the Atonement with the Father, and the Woman as Temptress. At the climax of his journey, the hero experiences an Apotheosis and receives his reward, the Ultimate Boon.

He has now accomplished his mission and has only to return to the ordinary world. Not infrequently, however, he resists the imperative to go back (Refusal of the Return). Either he changes his mind, or he is compelled to retreat back into the ordinary world, once again Crossing the Threshold and making his Return. Now back in his familiar environment, he finds himself both inwardly and outwardly changed. He is a Master of Two Worlds, with newfound powers and understanding -- a hybrid being, with one foot in the phenomenal world and the other foot in the noumenal world. Campbell points out that this can be the most challenging part of the experience: "For if he has won through, like the Buddha, to the profound repose of complete enlightenment, there is danger that the bliss of this experience may annihilate all recollection of, interest in, or hope for, the sorrows of the world; or else the problem with making known the way of illumination to people wrapped in economic problems may seem too great to solve." [The Hero with a Thousand Faces, page 29.]

Many stories can be understood in terms of this basic structure. But what struck me, in reading about it, is that much the same structure is found in the near-death experience.

In an NDE, the experiencer begins in the ordinary world, the world of the living. Then, because of illness or accident, he feels the approach of death. In most cases he resists death and struggles to go on living, but at some point he gives up the fight. Sometimes this is because a spiritual figure(s) appears to him, soothes his fears, and invites him on his journey (deathbed visions). It should be noted that dying people often conceive of their future in terms of taking a trip; this imagery has been reported by hospice workers, nurses, etc. *

With or without his spirit escort(s), the person finds himself hovering outside his physical body, then traveling through a tunnel or a dark void -- Crossing the Threshold. When he arrives at the far side, he finds himself reunited with departed loved ones, typicallyincluding his mother, father, and spouse (if his spouse has predeceased him). He relives the key events of his life from infancy onward, assessing the lessons he learned and the mistakes he made. Encountering and sometimes merging with a being of pure light, he achieves Apotheosis -- transcendence, a higher state of consciousness, a sense of unity with all things, and an understanding of the master plan that underlies the physical world. 

At this point of exaltation, the near-death experiencer is rudely informed that he must return to the physical world. Or he is given the option of returning, and must weigh the pros and cons. In most cases he resists the idea, and is either be talked into it or forcibly ejected from the heavenly realm. One way or another, he retraces the route he followed (Crossing the Threshold) and is once again embedded in his physical body (Return). But his transcendent experience has left him changed, with a new, more spiritual outlook, with an ecumenical worldview that embraces all faiths and all peoples, and possibly with amplified psychic powers. He may feel oddly cut off from society, alienated, unable to fully articulate the lessons he has learned, frustrated by his inability to communicate his insights to those around him.

Of course, the above description of an NDE is somewhat stylized. Very few NDEs follow this exact pattern, but all of them contain some of the above elements in more or less this chronological sequence. The parallels between this comprehensive NDE and Campbell's monomyth are pretty clear.

It's also worth pointing out that some NDEs have "hellish" or nightmarish qualities. In the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the newly deceased person is said to confront beastly creatures that threaten him; but if he sees below their superficial appearance, he will find them transformed into friendly and helpful beings. This corresponds closely to the Threshold Guardians of the monomyth. 

What accounts for these similarities? I can think of three possible explanations.

The first explanation is that it's simply a coincidence. The Hero's Journey is so broadly defined that it can encompass almost any narrative. But I don't think this is quite convincing. The parallels are too specific to be brushed aside. 

The second explanation is that the monomyth is so deeply ingrained in the human psyche that there is a natural tendency to reorder any unusual experience in terms of the Hero's Journey. In other words, after the fact, the mind tends to organize the images and events of the NDE into a familiar pattern -- a pattern known to us from countless fairy tales, novels, movies, etc. This is possible, but it would leave open the question of why the monomyth is such a deep and universal part of our thinking, and how the monomyth arose in the first place.

The third possibility, and the one that I'm partial to, is that the monomyth itself arose out of NDEs, or NDE-like episodes, early in humanity's prehistory. Let's suppose that thousands of years ago some rare individuals reported near-death experiences. Perhaps they were given up for dead and miraculously revived, or perhaps they deliberately induced the experience through psychoactive drugs or shamanic rituals. (Cave paintings are theorized to have been rendered by shamans attempting to preserve the visual memory of their otherworldly experiences, which were probably brought on by hallucinogenic plants.) 

These NDEs, or hallucinatory pseudo-NDEs, would have become part of the culture and sacred tradition of the tribe, passed down from one generation to the next, embellished by storytellers, eventually serving as the root structure of multifarious folk stories. The common structure of this folklore would simply reflect its common origin in NDEs and related shamanic vision quests. 

If this is true, it could explain why accounts of near-death experiences can hold such dramatic power even today. The stories reverberate on a deep level because they are consonant with the deepest narrative structure of folklore and myth -- a structure that, in turn, is grounded in the primordial NDEs of our distant ancestors. Like the iconic snake swallowing its tail, the NDE is both the origin and the terminus of our deepest myths.

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*See Final Gifts, by Maggie Callahan and Patricia Kelley, two nurses who specialize in caring for the dying. In Chapter 6, "Preparing for Travel or Change," they write: "Contrary to popular belief, ... dying people know they are dying, even if no one else knows or has told them. They attempt to share this information by using symbolic language to indicate preparation for a journey or change soon to happen. Travel is a clear metaphor often used to describe this need to go forth -- to die." Examples are provided, including one dying man who kept asking for his passport and his ticket, and another who asked when the tide would be going out so he would know when to sail. 

Pre-adapt or die!

A previous post raised the issue of pre-adaptation in evolution. The idea remains controversial, but if it is true, it could point to a design or plan built into the DNA of all living things from the outset. In his book The Science of God, Gerald L. Schroeder makes a case for pre-adaptation, which I've excerpted below. 

Schroeder is an interesting figure - a trained scientist who tries to reconcile modern scientific data with the Bible. Since I view the Bible as a compendium of myth, legend, poetry, fiction, and a dash of history, I'm not particularly sympathetic to this project. I don't much care if the Bible can be made to seem scientifically prescient, any more than I care about seeing the Epic of Gilgamesh reinterpreted as a forecast of quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, I find Schroeder's books fascinating because he thinks outside the box of materialism and explores concepts like an information-based cosmos (see his book The Hidden Face of God). 

In this excerpt, Schroeder considers the implications of the Cambrian Explosion - the sudden worldwide emergence of advanced life forms from very primitive antecedents circa 530 million years ago. How, he asks, did simple protozoans and sponge-like creatures become complex, articulated, lobster-like trilobites virtually overnight? 

Over three billion years spanned the gap between the immediate appearance of one-celled life on the just-cooled Earth, 3.8 billion years ago, and the explosion of multicellular life 530 million years ago. Perhaps during those eons, random mutations in the one-celled antecedents of all modern life stored genetic material containing latent (neutral) information potentially useful for the impending explosion of animal complexity. This would then be available for expression suddenly and simultaneously at the inception of multicellular life. Species of modern algae and protozoans have the space in their DNA for this neutral information. Each of their cells contains as much as one hundred times more DNA than a cell of any mammal, including humans. Since micro-fossils of primordial algae and protozoans have shape and size similar to modern specimens, it may be inferred that their genetic library was equally large.

We know that the genetic material of many plants and animals contains blocks of latent information able to be immediately expressed by changes in the environment or by single mutations. Chickens are known to grow hair, not feathers. Horses are born with multiple digits. Human babies unfortunately at times emerge from the womb with their "gill slits" still open. Both mammals and birds produce gill arches during embryo development, but then both mammals and birds, according to the fossil record, share a common origin as primitive fish. Marsh plants when submerged in water develop a leaf structure different from that of the same plant grown on dry land, even when cloned and therefore genetically identical.

According to the "latent library" theory, all this information is quietly present in the genome, waiting for the cue to be expressed. When the marine lizard ichythosaurus appears suddenly in the fossil record with an outer shape essentially that of a fish, or a land mammal becomes fish-like in shape as the arise for the whale, we may be witnessing a stored shift of preexisting genes from latent to active states. Fossils of what appear to be ancient primitive whales having small vestigial hind legs have been found in India and Pakistan. If the fossil record is correct, the phylum Chordata, of which both lizard and mammal are members, has at its base primitive fish. Some fish-like genes are certainly held in the genomes of modern land-based chordates, hence the occasional gill slits of human babies and the gill arches and yolk sacs of mammal embryos. Reorganization and expression of stored genes could account for a rapid "evolution" of the fish-like characteristics of these species....

The obvious questions with regard to algal and protozoan genome size are: why does an algal cell or an amoeba retain so much genetic capacity? And why, within this huge genetic library space, would a primordial protozoan have stored information related, for example, to jointed limbs or vertebrae? There would be no immediate benefit to the amoeba and so no genetic reason for them to maintain this neutral information in their DNA. If it were not neutral, then its expression was clearly not in the forms as expressed in the Cambrian animals.

The concept of a latent library posits a mechanism very different from the classical theory of evolution wherein random mutations provide changes in morphology. Nonetheless, primordial preprogramming of life's developments is exemplified in the morphogenesis of the eye. A gene group, Pax-6, is a key regulator in the development of eyes in all vertebrates. Its analog (a very similar gene) has been found to control development of the visual systems of mollusks, insects, flatworms, and nemerteans (ribbon worms). These represent five of the six phyla that have visual systems. (The sixth phyla with vision has not yet been studied.) The molecular similarity among these analogs is nothing less than astounding. The paired domain of the gene contains 130 amino acids. The match of these amino acids between insects and humans is 94 percent! Between zebra fish and human the match is 97 percent.

Could five genetically separate phyla have evolved these similar genes individually by chance?... The likelihood that random mutations would produce the same combination five times is 10 [to the power of 170] raised to the fifth power.

There is no way this same gene could have evolved independently in each of the five phyla -- it must have been present in a common ancestor. The gene that controls the development of eyes was programmed into life at at a level below the Cambrian. That level is either the amorphous sponge-like Ediacarans or one-celled protozoa. But neither has eyes. 

[pp. 90-92, The Science of God, Gerald L. Schroeder]