Book review: Science and the Afterlife Experience

Science and the Afterlife Experience is the concluding volume in a trilogy by Oxford-trained philosopher Chris Carter, who previously brought us Science and Psychic Phenomena and Science and the Near-Death Experience. Together, the books meticulously build a case for the proposition that mind is more than simply an emergent property of matter, and that materialism is fatally flawed because it cannot deal with a raft of evidence for paranormal phenomena and postmortem survival. All three books are outstanding contributions to the field of parapsychology, but Science and the Afterlife Experience trumps the other two and brings Carter's extended argument to a dramatic conclusion.

Part of the reason I enjoyed this book so much is strictly personal. In it, Carter deals with the categories of evidence that I happen to find most interesting: children's past-life recollections, apparitions, and mental mediumship. He spends the bulk of his time on mediumship, offering an impressive review of some of the best cases investigated by the Society for Psychical Research and its American counterpart. He also devotes considerable time to an overview of the famed cross correspondences, providing the best and most reader-friendly summary of this complicated evidence that I've seen.

Not every line of evidence for the afterlife is explored. Past-life memories obtained under hypnosis, electronic voice communication, and physical and materialization mediumship are either not mentioned or cited only in passing. I agree that these categories are more problematic, and I think it was a wise decision to omit them from a book aimed at the general educated reader. While there are legitimate examples in each of these categories, the effort involved in weeding out fraud or delusion is considerable, and it makes more sense to focus on more clear-cut evidence.

When I began the book, I was a little bit concerned that Carter's approach might be a little too briskly paced for its own good. He covers the subject of children's past-life memories in only 50 pages, and handles the equally broad subject of apparitions in another 50 pages. I wondered if it would be possible to provide convincingly detailed expositions of all this evidence in relatively short treatments.

It turns out that it is. Carter selects his examples carefully, and weaves further examples into his rebuttals of skeptical arguments, covering a considerable amount of ground with economy and skill. Unlike hefty tomes such as Irreducible Mind or Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, Science and the Afterlife Experience does not seek to overwhelm skeptical objections with a tidal wave of cases (a perfectly valid approach in its own right). Instead, Carter zeroes in on each topic with surgical precision, selecting some of the very best cases and addressing only the most serious objections. The result is a book that can be read quickly, but which will also reward rereading and detailed study. 

It's in his coverage of mediumship that Carter really shines. He provides clear and persuasive accounts of the investigations into Leonora Piper and Gladys Osborn Leonard, stressing the seriousness of the investigators, their gradual evolution from skepticism to "super-ESP" explanations and finally (in some instances) to complete acceptance of life after death. He addresses the super-ESP position in depth, demolishing its claim to be simpler and more parsimonious than the afterlife hypothesis, and supplying a wealth of cases that strain super-ESP past the breaking point. 

Perhaps the most impressive of all this evidence are the cross correspondences. Carter devotes three chapters to the subject, summarizing several cases and making it abundantly clear that no non-survival hypothesis other than willful fraud on the part of all the mediums and researchers can explain them. He also takes pains to point out that mere logical possibilities unsupported by any empirical evidence (for instance, the undisprovable idea of a massive fraudulent conspiracy) simply have no weight, and should not be confused with reasonable possibilities grounded in evidence. The conflation of these two types of "possibility" is a key tactic used by debunkers, and it is illegitimate. 

The last portion of the book may be the most surprising. Having concluded that postmortem survival is a proven fact — a fact established beyond reasonable doubt — Carter boldly explores the messages that come through mediums to paint a picture of the dying process and the next stage of existence. Much of this material will be familiar to readers of this blog, though rarely has it been so ably summarized. But including it in a philosophically oriented book for the open-minded skeptical reader is, as the media might say, a "gutsy call." Someone less sure of his position, or more hesitant about expressing it, might have left out mediumistic accounts of Summerland and higher spiritual planes. To Carter's great credit, he carries his thesis to its logical conclusion, bravely identifying the source of the channeled books The Road to Immortality and Beyond Human Personality as F.W.H. Myers — not "Myers" in quotes, not a purported or alleged Myers, but simply Myers. He also briefly addresses the idea that the universe's creativity, as manifested in the origin and evolution of life, may result from "the action of minds," and (quoting geneticist Michael Denton) that the universe "gives every appearance of having been specially designed for life." 

In the Epilogue, Carter notes that "not one of my books was written to change the minds of the dogmatic pseudo-skeptics. They were written only as an appeal to those with an open mind on the subjects discussed." He adds,

I believe our species has much growing up to do. Many of us have outgrown the comfortable smugness of the religions developed during the infancy of the human race. Yet we now find ourselves experiencing a rather troubled adolescence, with all its attendant doubt, dismay, and spiritual crisis. In the adolescence of our species we are struggling to find answers to questions that haunt us. But if there is one thing this book should have made clear, it is that the modern choice is not between blind religious faith and the pseudoscientific ideology of materialism. There is a third alternative, one that requires neither a leap of faith nor the denial of evidence. Our science and philosophy have evolved to the point at which they can finally come to grips with some of the deepest questions the human race has struggled with in the dark for thousands of years.

Science and the Afterlife Experience is a milestone contribution in that struggle. It is perhaps the best book I've read on evidence for life after death — and I've read quite a few. I recommend it highly. 

Comments

[Bruce Siegel]

Wow--sounds good! Thanks for that. I was thinking I would pass this book up as it seems to cover ground I've studied endlessly. I may just have to change my plan.

[Bruce Siegel]

"the universe gives every appearance of having been specially designed for life."

For me, that doesn't go far enough. I would change it to: The universe gives every appearance of being life, designed.

Or perhaps: life, imagined.

But not a computer. :o)

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

Michael,
Based on your previous recommendation of Chris Carter's work I purchased all three of his books. I have to admit that I am having a difficult time staying awake while reading his latest effort. I'm about half way through so maybe it will get better. For me, so much of what I have read is a rewriting of material which I have previously read in many other works. I agree though that it is an easily readable book when compared to "Irreducible Mind" or other similar tomes but for me it is, so far, just a rehash.

I was disappointed that Chris Carter apparently is not aware of the Patience Worth/Pearl Curran evidence related to spirit survival. For me the Patience Worth story is the most perplexing and at the same time, believable account of "evidence" of the spirit world. In that case there is a great amount of tangible material produced directly by Patience Worth, in many forms, including poems, novels, plays, aphorisms, and repartee that anyone can pick up and read and consider; evidence of a high order that was produced by a spirit of some kind whether the spirit of Pearl Curran, the spirit of Patience Worth or an over-soul that contained both Patience and Pearl and other personalities who lived perhaps in other periods of time or in non-time. Not only is there this tangible evidence but within the body of the writings by Patience Worth and Pearl Curran one may find a reasonable spiritual philosophy of life and death that is beautiful and cogent and to which one can relate and believe.

On the other hand if one wants spooky ghost stories to read on a dark rainy night, if one wants disembodied voices, floating trumpets, and ectoplasm, Patience Worth will disappoint. Her evidence is of a high intellectual spiritual order that appeals to writers, philosophers and others who are able to put together her multiple threads of evidence which she provides by all of her work into a whole fabric of reassurance that a spiritual world exists. A world in which Patience Worth lives.

I cannot recommend strongly enough that anyone interested in spirit survival read all of the materials written by Patience Worth and Pearl Curran. I know this is a big undertaking for some but willingly taken by those who really need tangible evidence. I think that it is only by considering this material in total, that is, by considering the language (s), knowledge of history and customs of people and cultures of bygone times and circumstances of the life of Pearl Curran, someone with an 8th grade education, that the conclusion that there really is a spirit world becomes almost irrefutable. I think that writers, especially, will find her work amazing.

Now there are some who may say that Pearl Curran used "super psi" to obtain her information including archaic Anglo-Saxon language and historical events and locations, or failing that, say that Pearl Curran exhibited dissociation or multiple-personalities. These are not believable explanations for anyone who had read the works of Patience Worth and studied them.

[Bruce Siegel]

Amos, did you actually read her books like The Sorry Tale (if I got that title right)? I did a lot of reading ABOUT her, many years ago, and like you, I found her case really impressive. (In part because of the almost complete absence of Latin-derived words in her writing--a tricky feat!)

A few of her poems were meaningful to me.

But I tried reading The Sorry Tale twice, I think, and found it REALLY hard and dull going, and had to stop after just a few pages.

[Michael Prescott]

"On the other hand if one wants spooky ghost stories to read on a dark rainy night, if one wants disembodied voices, floating trumpets, and ectoplasm, Patience Worth will disappoint."

Carter doesn't deal with disembodied voices, trumpets, or ectoplasm. He eschews physical mediumship altogether.

From the little I've read of Patience Worth, I agree with Bruce - her prose is largely unreadable today.

From a survival standpoint, the main problem with the Patience Worth case is that there is no evidence that the historical Patience Worth ever existed. It is therefore fairly easy to dismiss her as a creation of Pearl Curran's subconscious mind. OTOH, her ability to rattle off complicated poems on the spur of the moment challenges what we ordinarily think of as the limitations of the mind.

Personally I think Patience probably was a genuine spirit, but I wouldn't think this unless I already believed in postmortem survival and mediumship/possession. So I think Carter was right to steer clear of this case.

[Paul]

I am looking forward to receiving my copy next month in the UK. There is so much material Chris Carter could have included I expect many of my own particular favourites will not make an appearance.

I don't get the impression the book is intended to be a compendium of evidential phenomena as such.

[Matt Rouge]

I read the second book based on Michael's recommendation, and I plan to get this one too. Thanks for the excellent review!

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

Well, yes Bruce I have read "The Sorry Tale" as well as "Telka", "An Elizabethan Mask", "Hope Trueblood", "The Pot Upon the Wheel" and many of her poems and miscellaneous writings. I have to say that reading Patience Worth does not come easy. It took me many years of consideration of her work to understand her use of language. I don't think it is "unreadable" but it is not an easy read. I find it very beautiful and it conjurs up images in my mind as if I am seeing the scene as she sees it.

I have heard the argument before (Professor Stephen Braude resorts to it in his consideration of the Patience Worth case) that since there is no evidence that the historical Patience Worth ever existed then, as I suppose the thought continues, she and her work are somehow invalidated. I really don't understand why this is so crucial, that a young peasant woman living in the 1600s in rural England, with no land, or money, no birth certificate, unmarried with no children should have left evidence of her existence for easy perusal in the 20th and 21st century. I myself have relatives, who died at a young age in the 20th century in the USA, who were buried out in the back yard on in a cemetary with no tombstone that I venture to say, that after my passing no one will know that they ever existed as nothing was left behind that they lived.

Reading Patience Worth takes effort and time which people of today, accustomed to pithy sound bites, are not willing to invest. I encourage those of you, especially on this site, to take the time and put in the effort to read Patience Worth.

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

Permit me to post one of my favorite poems of Patience Worth. It is one of her poems of love titled "Predestined Love". See if you find it unreadable.

"Can I then hope to tear from out my heart the song 'twould tell thee?
Were I to sing to the woodland, 'twould be thy song.
Or should I pipe of happy days when thou wert absent from my life,
Thoud'st creep within the singing and every note be thine.
Or should I make a song unto my saddest season,
Thou still would'st sing, e'en through my sorrowing.
Thou who art but the essence of my song's wine
Hast blossomed long before, within its very grape,
And ripened with my season's heat and cold.
Who then denies that from my first voiced crooning,
Thou hast been the vibrant chord?

[Michael Prescott]

I agree that some Patience Worth poems are very nice, but her prose is a struggle even for those, like me, who've read a lot of 19th century literature. Anyway, the fact that Carter failed to include your favorite case is no reason to diss the book. He didn't include my favorite case either (the R-101 disaster ), but I got over it.

[Juan]

Hello Michael. I have not read the book by Chris Carter, but I wonder if Carter discusses research on the astral body, such as Karlis Osis experiments:

http://www.alextanous.org/sites/default/files/172_370278175.pdf

For your review, I would say that Carter does not address the question of the astral body, but this seems wrong to me, because I think the idea of ​​something analogous to the astral body is inextricably linked to the question of the afterlife, although the term "astral body "is now outdated. And the case of R-101 disaster should also have been treated.

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

OK Michael, I have been reprimanded. I'm over it.

[.]

I guess it's hard to judge a piece of poetry fairly after four hundred years (is it) or so. But lines such as 'were I to sing to the woodland' and thou who art but the essence of my song's wine'...erm, probably wouldn't make a fortune out of it.

[Smithy]

Currently I am reading Carter's latest.

It's impressive, no doubt about it. However, the section on Reincarnation could have included more modern cases, such as the one about little boy James Leininger.

Nevertheless, it deserves a 5-star review on Amazon.com I would think.

But I am "anxiously" awaiting the one-star review by Dr Woerlee (aka Gerry) who has the nasty habit of burning down to the ground all books on NDE, OBE, reincarnation, the paranormal, and so on and so forth...

[Alexander1304]

Hello all,
As Michael pointed out,the mental mediumship is the best ting we have related to the evidence of the afterlife.My personal involvment in the afterlife was precisely that - the story of my favorate writer/psychologist visited famous bulgarian clairvoyant/mental medium(blind) - and his conviction that he had a conversation through her with his other/grandmother.
But painly,recently I discovered that mental mediumship is very vulnerable for various non-survivalist interpretation,although all of them talk about (super)ESP.Some claim that Mind appears to be limitless,other point to telepathy,cryptomnesia etc,paranormal researcher Carlos Alvorado(whose interview with Michael Tymn appears appears on http://www.aspsi.org/,in his article about mediumship also talks,that survival is mostly disregarded by parapsychologists today,and value of mdiumship is that it taught something more about this world,but not other.Also such parapsychologists as William Roll and John Palmer were more to ESP rather than to survival.Another book,that I mentioned by Frederick C.Dommeyer "Persons,Body,Death"(1965) also explains cross-correspondence,Leonora Piper and newspaper tests from ESP poisition,and claims that it is more "rational",mentioned C.D.Broad,wo claimed that ESP requires lesser assumptions.Ironically,as I know,C.D.Broad eventually accepted survival,cause evidednce was too great for him.
In book "Introduction to Parapsychology" C.Witt and Irwin touch survival,they seem to stay "neutral" on the question,but claim that |"Drop-In" is also not proof
On the other hand,recently I've read(briefly) Arthur and Joyce Berger "Fear of Unknown" where Arthur says that ESPers stilll have to explain certain cases of mental mediumship,that DOESN'T appear to be eplained by any (super) ESP.Also on this site

http://www.juliaassante.com/reflections/problems-and-methods-of-afterdeath-communication-and-mediumship-research/

"Furthermore, DMILS or any form of super-psi and reservoir hypotheses cannot explain afterdeath communication that takes the form of dialogue, even arguments. Nor can they explain instances in which the dead tell us about something that they and only they know, something that occurred after their deaths."

Also interestinsg aticle by Scott Rogo on Michael Tymn's site ,where Rogo presents 2 cases,and states that good case for life after death can be built just on these 2:
http://whitecrowbooks.com/features/page/thoughts_on_survival_of_consciousness_by_d._scott_rogo

So,the critical question for me: is mental mediumship is STILL good and firm as evidence for life after death?

Of course,there are Findaly and Randall,that delt with direct-voice,and skeptics didn't say anything about them,although I've seen that E.Wriedt was found to be a fraud.
And Juan,for astral body - there was conference in England called "Subtle Body" : https://www.scimednet.org/sapphire/main.php?url=/subtle-body-conference/

[Michael Prescott]

"OK Michael, I have been reprimanded. I'm over it."

I didn't mean to scold. I just think the book deserves support.

Juan, the book does not discuss Osis's experiments. There is some brief discussion of the astral body, I believe, in the last section. IIRC, it is confined to excerpts from channeled literature.

Carter's approach is not to exhaustively cover all the good cases, but to select a few of the best cases, closely examine the debunkers' arguments, and show how the evidence holds up. I think it works well. There are other books that try to cover as many cases as possible, which is another valid approach.

The book does feature an extensive bibliography, so interested readers can explore further on their own.

[Ray]

@alexander

Are you referring to obscure reference in Etta Wreidts Wikipedia entry that a scientist proposed the sounds were caused by flammable powder? That is absolutely absurd and doesn't even warrant a rebuttal. If that is not what you a referring to do you have a source for how else she was accused of being a fraud?

[Alexander1304]

@Ray
Yes,something like that.
Here is the entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristian_Birkeland
"In 1912 it was the medium Etta Wriedt from Detroit, famous for her "spirit trumpet", who was exposed as a fraud. Mrs Wriedt's "trumpet" should have been speaking with the "spirit voice" of, among others, Hypatia,[16] but in Norway the "trumpet blows" were exposed as explosions produced by potassium and water. Professor Birkeland exclaimed on that occasion, "I'm supposedly against all witch burnings, but a teeny weeny one in honour of Mrs Wriedt would not have been in the way."

[Douglas]

Alex, the 'exposure' as a fraud sounds very dubious to me, given the fact that the good professor does not even appear to have been there, instead attempting to 'recreate' the phenomena in norway! Maybe somene can dig up more about this, but it sounds like the usual skeptic crap.

[Alexander1304]

Douglas,don't get me wrong.I'm not "debunker" in any way,I've just recently read a lot about super-psi and other attempts to explain away the evidence for the survival,and also found this one about Wriedt...I've NEVER found mention of fraud about John Sloan and Emily French,though.I'm ignorant in this area,and when I got into cross-fire about pro- and con- survival issue,I got REALLY confused.As I told,I've always been the keen towards mental mediumship,and as I found it is exaclt this area that appeared to be the most targeted for antui-survivalists...So far the best I can say that there are DO appear to be cases in mental mediumship,reaincarnation,apparitions,and perhaps NDE that CANNOT e explained by super-ESP.
"L.E. Rhine, on the basis of her studies of spontaneous cases, comes to the conclusion that there are several cases where it appears that the deceased personality had induced the experience and a few cases where the initiative of the deceased person is the only possible explanation."

"Psychometric ESP, mediated by some object can also account for such cases. However, cases collected by Ian Stevenson, where persons have talked languages or performed skills not learned before and where birth marks have been related to injuries in the previous life (PK through sympathism?) are suggestive of actual reincarnation."

http://www.psychology4all.com/vgm-parapsychology-revised.htm

[Joshua Cearley]

@Douglas I can second it; from the tone of voice (and I think he's on Mind-Energy too) Alexander1304 is just concerned about the arguments for super-psi being compelling and cause less social friction.

I think we can all agree we need more people doing serious study on the field of survival; Rhine et all have more or less succeeded in having survival research scrapped and replaced with Psi research. Who cares if mediumship is super-psi, really? If you find a way to develop potent mediums and find out it's just super-psi, then you still have a means of tapping that psionic power; super-psi proponents can't tell you how to actually do anything useful with psi, while some prominent OBErs can actually give you tips on manipulating your own "astral body" to experiment with.

Astral Pulse's forums have a thread of people talking about verdical validations of OBE observations, and I think these are more productive uses of time for serious study than say.. using RNGs and wishful thinking to make unfalsifiable claims to global consciousness. One you can check anywhere in the world for almost nothing, the other requires millions of dollars in equipment and analysis. Which one is going to make you believe in either field more?

I haven't read Schwartz's papers; I've read an amount of his work is not following good protocols and he has on occasion unblinded the study or injected himself in to it, which if true is a lot lower grade than some of [A]SPR's work.

[Roger Knights]

Sunday night on Coast to Coast AM radio (midnight--2am Pacific time) has this:

Negative NDEs
Sun 09-30
In the latter half (12-2), Nancy Evans Bush talks about her negative Near Death Experience, in which she was told that nothing matters, and her life wasn't real. She'll also share stories of others who've had similar NDEs without a white glowing light of love.

Link to her site: http://www.dancingpastthedark.com/

[Alexander1304]

As I understand,if you read ONLY pro-survivalist interpretation,of course you'll believe in that.The picture seems to get more complicated if you read the opposite intepretations,a la Phine.It is all described good in Hornell Hart's "Enigma of Survival".More over,ESPers claim that ESP reuires less assumptions while survival hypohesis involed unknown entities as "spirits".Again,don't get me wrong - I'm not anti-survivalist troll,I"m really confused.I'm going to purchase Chris Carter book,perhaps it will silence super-ESP for me.Riht now I really don't know what to think about mental mediumship,although at leat currently,from what I've read,there appear to be cases that ESP cannot explan.
Also from my link above,L.Rhine suggest that at least SOME apparitions cannot be explain in other terms,as initiative of the dead,and there re cases for reincarnation that appear to be best explained by REAL reincarnation.
I've never gone into EVP and ITC - seems too far-fetched to me.
Some parapsychologists claim that the prospect for distinguishing between survival snd super-ESP are bleak - did I fall into this trap? My eys are on Windbridhe Institute now...

[Joshua Cearley]

@Alexander1304 The author of the "Adventures of a Student Medium" site also proposed that ESP simply /was/ spiritual disconnection and interaction, and that in many cases you were just either having your spirit (or guide) do something, or asking one to. He said this is an even simpler version of ESP. Indeed it would be, but you would have to prove spirits first. And yes, EVP/ITC is very sketchy; a lot of EVP is hearing what you want to hear, and there is a lot of debate over the methods used. ITC is a better way to go forward if you can unite a good medium with engineers, since I think refining the ITC process would give a better means to use scientific instrument to prove spirits (and would be the killshot for materialism, if you could pull it off.)

[Alexander1304]

@Joshua Cearley: What do You think of A.Findlay - John Sloan and E.Randall - Emily French work? These are neither mental nor ITC,but direct voice...

[Joshua Cearley]

@Alexander1304 I'm not intimately familiar with their work. Direct Voice is only meaningful as evidence if you can demonstrate the voice is similar, and these researches were done before everyone had voice prints to compare. There's the Flint recordings, but the original sound quality of them is not very good and there's no original voiceprint for comparison. There's maybe Ghandi's, but from reading debates it doesn't sound as though the Ghandi spirit voice sounds like Ghandi is actually known to have sounded.

I don't doubt mediumship entirely because of it, but we can't rule out people hearing the voices as ones they knew because they really wanted to; not unless we have objective evidence of similar sounding voices. Until then, all we have is the messages they wrote down and we can just as well refer to mental mediums for that--they're simpler to develop too.

[Ray]

Re Etta Wriedt

That professor was also deaf and in another article on answers.com it said that the report was dismissed as a serious exposé by his piers. I keep my guard up so I am not fooled but in this case we have a hardcore materialist scientist with an agenda, suggesting that intelligent conversation in different languages were carried out by exploding powder. It only takes one dubious skeptikal stab at how it was done to make a genuine medium seem fraudulent. Also I take these online encyclopedia entires with a grain of salt.

Source for other article : http://www.answers.com/topic/etta-wriedt

[Ray]

Re Evp and ITC

I find most Evp work dubious because of the interpretation that is needed. However direct radio voice (drv) seems very compelling as the voices of the dead talk directly into the device very clearly and no playback is necessary. On the Scole documentary some engineers and scientist conducted a voice print match on drv from a spirit who communicated and matched it up to a recording from when she was alive and it received a 97 percent match. I would like to see more of these voice match tests in controlled experiments.

[Paul]

@ Joshua
I am not sure it's fair to say Independent Direct Voice is only meaningful from an evidential point of view if the voices are similar.

Even if the voices are similar but there is no evidential content then I don't really see the value since there is no evidence to properly identify the communicator. Perhaps a voice-print comparison would add credibility but only if it matched and I can think of a number of reasons why it might not even if the communicators were who they are claimed to be. There are plenty of people able to mimic the famous very well with no need for any for of mediumship.

If the voices are not similar but there is evidential content then I would see that as valuable; I know I could determine whether I was in communication with someone I knew without even needing to hear their voice, with sufficient content.

Then there is the question of how the phenomenon is produced. If it can be shown that the voices are independent of the medium, then this is certainly potential evidence of something 'paranormal' occurring but not, of itself, evidence that the purported communicators are who they claim to be.

IMHO, independent direct voice is of no real evidential value unless a) the communicator is recognised, in terms of the content of the message, by someone who knew them well, and b) the method of communication is shown to be genuine.

[Ray]

Piers= peer sorry

[Joshua Cearley]

@Paul
The way the Flint debate I was referencing went, it was argued that "direct voice" is a value-added component of mediumship. If the message is verifiable but the voice is no different than the medium just talking out loud, then the value of having the spirit's voice directly is not there and the title is meaningless. If the messages aren't verifiable, then it doesn't matter what method is used.

@Ray
"Direct Radio Voice" is what ITC is. You have a medium act as a beacon to draw the spirits nearby, then you use an electronic instrument for them to speak with. Unfortunately to do this in a very controlled and skeptic-busting manner, you need expensive RF/EM shielding to rule out undesired interference compared to the desired interference. That's why I say ITC is a good avenue, if anyone could get it working again to develop it further it would be a very powerful tool for survival and/or psi.

I wouldn't put much faith in the Scole experiments. They sound interesting, but from what I've gleamed they gave full control to the subjects and didn't maintain very good security over later sessions. If they were as tight of evidence as they could have been, you would probably hear them referenced more often. To make it worse they seem to have declared it a success after this, instead of moving the control stick around and seeing at what level of lab control the phenomenon disappears at.

Knowing where mediumship and/or psi disappears at tells you a lot about it. Ertel wrote that it takes a while in a lab for psi performance to come back (compared to a house), and Persinger shows that generating EM storms causes problems with remote viewing (and inverse-storms seem to make it easier). Other then that, you either get the labs giving full control to the medium (Scole, sometimes Schwartz; interesting results, occasionally catches fraud, but isn't tightly controlled) or single runs of "you must score perfect or you fail" (Randi; tightly controlled, but completely oblivious to potential needs of the enactors.)

[Ray]

The example I gave was not part of the Scole Experiments. It was on the Scole documentary but was a controlled experiment done with itc medium marcello Bacci. All the valves of the radio were removed and put into a device that made radio signals impossible to receive and the spirit voices still came through. See details of experiment here: http://www.worlditc.org/h_01_bacci_particular_experiment.htm

I am weary of Scole but this was not part of that experiment sorry should have clarified.

[Paul]

@joshua I think we are agreed. It is the factual content which makes the mediumship evidential not whether it sounds the same. The fact that it sounds the same is added-value, provided the evidential content is established.

However the difference between the medium 'talking aloud' and the independent voice (irrespective of the quality of the voice) seems to me as different as that between having a direct conversation with a friend and having someone else convey their words.

Your original remark stated: Direct Voice is only meaningful as evidence if you can demonstrate the voice is similar is,IMHO incorrect as it stands.

[Pavel Chichikov]

Anyone who believes that the Christian faith is comfortably smug or the product of elementary minds does not know it very well.

[Douglas]

Hi Joshua, i liked that you mentioned the Astral Pulse forums. I used to be a moderator there (gandalf). I edited the Frank Kepple phasing material :-)

I've not been there for a while though.

[Alexander1304]

I'm definetely going to purchase Chris Carter's latest book,it deals with 3 categories wich precisely have been thoght by me as the strongest evidence,tough he ut it in different order.For me,order of "magnitude" goes like that: 1.Mental Mediumship 2.Reincarnation 3.Apparitions

As I pointed,it turned out that Mental Mediumship is the "easiest target" for ESPers,but,nonetheless,as pointed ot by some authors/researchers there appear to be the cases that ESPers have hard time to explain.
My impression is ,that ESP is most often used not as scientific tool,but some kinfd of ideology by people who simply deny/unable to accept spirit communication/life after death.As Arthur Berger stated in "Fear of Unknown"(the book which I'm also going to purchase) - no matter what convincing evidence may come,debunkers will always find something to explain it away,and there will be no end to it.
I found that before Immortal Remains" Stephen Braude wrote mostly on ESP,but in "Immortal Remains" he concludes that weight goes "slightly" toward survival,sins ESP has "crippling complexity".
As I mentioned in earlier post,H.Irwin and C.Watt stated that prospect appears bleak for sistinguishing between survival and super-ESP.Fortnately,there are other opinions on the matter,as "Irreducible Mind",A.Berger and others.Again: my eyes now are on Windbridge.org

To my more confusion,I've recently read article about NDE,how certain types of NDE defeat ESP and make good case for survival.Confusion because I've never taken NDE as something that can be argument for survival...

[Joshua Cearley]

Maybe it would be best if both fields just united under a temporary banner; just call it the elemental study of Sus, or some new neutral term that encompasses both. Once more is understood it would be more viable to debate ESP v. Survival, but since there's so much crossover between the two they could very well be simultaneously correct or based on a different force entirely. I sense super-ESP is a bit of a (successful) divide-and-conquer strategy, since it splits the research that benefits both fields in to an argument (while materialist study can deride both as disorganized, pseudoscience, and that they should receive all the attention.)

[Alexander1304]

There is interesting interview with physicist James Beichler on Mike Tymn's blog,where he states that afterlife/super-psi DON'T conflict with each other: http://whitecrowbooks.com/michaeltymn/entry/life_after_death_and_super-psi_do_not_conflict_says_physics_professor

Also,recent interview with Julie Beischel:
http://www.aspsi.org/feat/life_after/julie_beischel_interview.php

[Alexander1304]

Here is the critics of the mediumship:
http://barenormality.wordpress.com/category/mediumship/

[Pavel Chichikov]

THE WITCH OF ENDOR

Contact heaven by atonic radio
Hello? Hello? Come in.
This is Madame Gloria speaking
From a trance in France

Yes, your uncle Bill is here
He wants to thank you for the socks you knitted
And sent to him last Christmas Eve
And please don’t grieve

The weather is quite balmy here, and we
Need no socks or shoes
It never snows, oh no
And everywhere you look an orange grove

That will be two hundred dollars please
Service charges for the time
The usage of a private line -
And this is Uncle Bill to say I’m fine

No need for organized religion
You can send by carrier pigeon
Which I can easily arrange
Here, I’ll make one out of muslin

A ticket on the astral plane
Easy to fix up and punch
I’ll take another hundred for my lunch
Trances are so difficult and strange

Beware, beware
Your uncle isn’t there
And what there is you never want to meet
Nor does it wear wool stockings on its feet

Pavel
September 30, 20012

[Alexander1304]

Regarding links above about criticism of mediumship research,I just got e-mail from Dean Radin: "This blog just repeats standard skepticism. The author does not appear to be interested in, or perhaps capable of, a serious analysis of the evidence."

[Joshua Cearley]

@Alexander1304
I tore that blog's "summary" to shreds on a post awaiting moderation on another forum, but the cliff notes for here:

He seems to take three cases, one involving Schwartz (which we're already well aware his subjective bias is a contaminant; Windbridge's post-Schwartz work has even stricter standards now) and two of which apparently don't claim mediumship. Because a paper that doesn't claim mediumship failed to prove mediumship, this is the "strongest evidence against" it. Then he takes a failed result by Wiseman as further vindication. The summary confesses that the author completely ignores everything [A]SPR ever did, makes no mention of Windbridge or non-Schwartz studies, and seems oblivious to Wiseman's own selective biases. One interesting note is Wiseman was involved with a meta-analysis of Ganzfelds, and "proved" they were not significant. When proponents criticized his assertion by pointing out he meta-analyzed tests which were very dissimilar to the original (which is supposed to be a no-no, but skeptics get free passes apparently) and re-balanced the results on similarity to a well-performing test the results were once again significant. Wiseman didn't retort; he sort of slumped aside and later made the comment that he agreed some components of ESP were proven by normal standards, then invoked Sagan's extraordinary evidence yardstick.

[Alexander1304]

@Joshua Cearley : He has few posts there about mediumship,he mentions some reasearchers,as A.Roy and T.Robertson,another post dedicated to Windbridge/Beishcel,and another to Emily Kelly.But it all seems VERY biased,he even doesn't mention ESP there.I think Dean Radin said it good in my above post.
Also I got e-mail from Mark Boccuzzi,who works together with Julie Beischel : "As a rule, I don't review or respond to criticisms of research that have been posted on blogs. If the author had anything new to bring to the table s/he would be writing letters to the journal editors, having their comments peer-reviewed, and added to the scientific literature - or even, better, conducting their own research and getting it published in peer-reviewed journals."

Good point.If I follow this (good) rule,I'd probably save a lot of time/energy

[James J.]

@Alex, on pp. 155-156, Carter addresses the issue about positing the existence of spirits. He quotes Curt DuCasse, who points out that if "minds" is substituted for "spirits," the problem largely vanishes. The only question, which Carter takes up on pp. 267-268, is whether or not minds can exist apart from their bodies, and the majority of the book is devoted to showing that that's a more reasonable explanation than fraud for at least the best cases.

[James J.]

Err, more reasonable explanation than either fraud or ESP.

[Alexander1304]

Thanks,James.As I told I'm denitetely going to purchase Chris's book after my vacation.
Right now I'm just trying to find a way to stop to be like WEATHERCOCK,i.e
from what side wind blows,to that side it turns.
I mean,when I read good arguments for the validity of mental mediumship- I follow there.Next day I may read somthing like the blog I mentioned - and I follow opposite way.I try to think about applying of critical thinking as much as possible here...
Bias may be on both sides,but it seems that on "debunker" side it is much more.
At least 3 books I've read appear to be completely unbiased - C.D.Broad "Lectures on Psychic Research",A.Gauld "Mediumship and Survival",and S.Braude "Immortal remains".I don't know about "Irreducible Mind",but D.Fontana's "Is there an Afterlife" appears to be somewhat biased.Especially Broad's appears to be unbiased ,because at the beginning of his book he admitted that he disliked the idea of personal survival.He ended his book with open-ended conclusion,but somewhere I've read that eventually he accepted survival.

[Pavel Chichikov]

Alexander:

In traditional, orthodox Christian teaching one is forbidden to use the services of mediums, seers, et. al. not because of a wish to maintain unjustly some kind of spiritual monopoly, but because access to the mystery of what lies beyond death may only be achieved by the act of dying and through the free gift of the Lord of life and death.

There are considerable spiritual risks to any other course. Please see the last stanza of my poem for an example.

[Michael Prescott]

Sorry, Pavel, but I don't think you'll find many takers here. Most of us are interested in an empirical approach, though admittedly it is often augmented with speculative musings. Any approach grounded in faith in ancient texts isn't going to fly - which isn't to say that those texts are wrong, only that they're at best supplementary evidence . (And as I pointed out earlier, the New Testament tells us to test the spirits, not to ignore them, and early Christian meetings included spontaneous prophecy, i.e., mediumship. Jesus himself seems to have been a formidable medium and psychic healer, as were some earlier Jewish prophets.)

[Sophie]

Michael,

I apologise for being completely off-topic, but I must ask you something: Do you know anything about the Munroe Institute and its meditation programs? (Dr Eben Alexander commends them. He is now the Director of Research there.) The little I know suggests that this Institute might be/become rather significant. Given Dr Alexander's association with it, it will probably attract a good bit of attention (i.e., more than it already has) once his book is released towards the end of this month.

[Douglas]

People speak very highly of it, i have read all three of monroe's books and i have the hemi-sync program on cd.

Those who have attended their courses have generally spoken highly of them.

The writer and afterlife explorer bruce moen attended the institute as well.
Skeptics have been unable to undermine the institute and attempts to brand it as a cult have not been successful, mainly because the institute promotes individual exploration and interpreration, not ramming dogma down attendees' throats.