Michael Prescott's Blog

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. 

Reading up a little on information theory, I came across this instructive exchange at:

http://ask.metafilter.com/57039/Is-the-Universe-made-of-information

Question: 'Is the universe made of information? I'm talking about when "information" is NOT used to describe data exchanged between sentient beings. I keep hearing about how "the universe is information" or "the universe is a quantum computer." '

One of the answers: 'There is no difference. Information is information, whether exchanged between sentient beings or not. What is a sentient being, anyway?

'If you think about the world for a moment, what is it?

'The stuff you see around you every day is made out of various chemical compounds. Chemical compounds are made of atoms. Atoms are made of subatomic particles such as protons, neutrons and electrons. Subatomic particles are made of quarks and leptons.

'What are quarks and leptons made out of? Modern physics doesn't have a good answer. Practically, they are just probability density functions that have certain parameters. For a mathematically inclined person, it is reasonable to think of them as collections of numbers that get plugged into the wave function. Numbers are information, so one way to think about the "fundamental" nature of the universe is information flow.'

A working hippopotamus

In his outstanding new book Science and the Afterlife Experience, Chris Carter includes a tidbit about famed medium Gladys Osborne Leonard. It seems that Mrs. Leonard's control, Feda, sometimes had trouble relaying messages from discarnate communicators. On some of these occasions, a sitter would report hearing another voice in the room – a disembodied voice, apparently belonging to a frustrated spirit intent on correcting Feda's mistake.

Feda: He says you must have good – What? Hippopotamuses?

Direct voice: Hypotheses.

Feda (more loudly): Hippopotamuses.

Direct voice: Hypotheses – and don't shout!

Feda: I'm not shouting. I'm only speaking plainly.

In the spirit (so to speak) of Feda, I'd like to suggest a working hippopotamus of my own.

In the comments thread of my post "An end to hedging," Matt Rouge offered up a very interesting idea. He wrote:

I've got your mechanism of survival and a pretty crushing argument against super-psi — all in one.

Yes, this is the thing I harp on from time to time, but I think it's the paradigm shift that will make a lot of things click. I also don't claim much originality. Viz. Plato and friends.

Here we go:

1. Information is indestructible (feel free to call it "form" per Plato et al. The concept should be fairly clear).

2. Human beings have an information content. Our thoughts. Our actions. The positions of every molecule in our bodies. Everything.

3. The information content of each human being is indestructible. It is not an "object" that can cease to be. Moreover, our information is not a static thing that is merely "written down" somewhere but, reflecting the life that it mirrors, is itself living.

Our information content, or form, is what survives death. There's your mechanism — pretty simple.

Now, as for super-psi. What is psi but accessing information? So accessing the information content of the deceased and accessing the deceased him/herself is the same thing. Thus, the concept of super-psi presents no problem whatsoever for survival. In fact, it merely ends up reinforcing it.

This paradigm also solves the issue of dualism. There is no need to explain how spirit interacts with matter, since spirit is simply living information.

Anyhow, there ya go. 

I've had a long-standing interest in the idea of information as the ultimate reality. In the past I've linked to the website The Bottom Layer, which argues that the paradoxes of quantum mechanics can be resolved if we look at subatomic entities (photons, electrons etc.) as bits of data rather than as physical objects. I've also linked to some technical articles exploring the idea that the entire universe can be understood as a virtual reality simulation. Matt's comment got me thinking along those lines again.

But what does it mean to say that information is the ultimate reality? What is information, anyway? The definition can be tricky, and there is a whole field – information theory – devoted to the study of this arcane topic. I don't pretend to be an expert in it. I approach the question in simple terms. When I think of information, I think of an encyclopedia. An encyclopedia, after all, is chock-full of information.

And what is that information? Words, mostly, as well as some graphs, charts, and photographs. In short – symbols. And each symbol can be reduced to a binary code. The entire contents of the encyclopedia can be digitized in this way, with all the information presented in terms of ones and zeros. 

In fact, it is possible to reduce any physical object — a table, a car, a tree — to binary code. It would require mapping the object in point-by-point detail and digitizing those coordinates. In theory, at least, every object can be represented by ones and zeros.

How about thought itself? We think in terms of words and pictures – i.e., symbols. And we already know that symbols can be expressed in binary code.

Now, it's an open question whether or not the key feature of human thought – self-awareness – can be reduced to binary form. Can information become self-aware? Or is awareness, as such, fundamentally different from the content of consciousness? It might be argued that thoughts are the object of our awareness, and that the relationship between thought and awareness is the basis of self-awareness.

But let's leave that aside. Let's assume, for the sake of of our working hippopotamus, that everything we know of as consciousness can ultimately be reduced to symbols, which in turn can be reduced to binary code: ones and zeroes, on and off, yes and no, true and false. 

In that case, it would appear that everything in the physical world – all physical objects and all thought – could ultimately be nothing but binary code.

Picture a vast sea of ones and zeros, an almost limitless expanse of code. This information is not stored in any physical matrix. It is, instead, an information matrix that underlies the physical world.

This awesome expanse of pure information would include both a database and a program. The database would be all of the code that relates to specific items – physical objects, individual minds. The program would be that part of the code relating to universal laws, ratios, and principles – cosmic constants like the speed of light, basic relationships like e = mc², everything we know as the laws of nature, and perhaps also universal laws of other kinds (karma, say).

A program implies a programmer – some mind responsible for writing the code. But perhaps in this case we might look at things differently. We might say that the program is the programmer. If smaller bits of code can stand for individual minds, perhaps this ocean of binary code in its entirety is a Cosmic Mind. When the program crunches the numbers in its database, it is the Cosmic Mind in action. The program and the database are the Cosmic Mind working things out.

At this point, the analogy with a computer has broken down, because the programs that run the computer are distinguishable from the programmers who wrote them. The analogy breaks down in a different way also. A computer is, of course, a physical thing. The data stored in its hard drive consist of electrons in certain patterns. To be useful, the computer must be capable of projecting pixels onto a display, which requires still more electrons interacting with a screen.

But the information matrix that (we are speculating) underlies all physical reality is not made of electrons and is not projected onto any sort of physical screen. The information does not have to be converted into reality; the information is reality. If we perceive tangible, physical objects, it's only because the information-processing capabilities of the system are designed to create this persistent illusion.

I realize there are many ambiguities, gaps, and problems with this hippopotamus of mine. Still, it's interesting to consider how this approach might relate to various anomalous phenomena and other mysteries. Here's a short list.

Remote viewing. One of the oddest things about remote viewing is that the viewer can obtain information about a distant target if he is merely given the geographical coordinates – the latitude and longitude. It seems strange, at least to me, that these numbers, which are essentially meaningless to the person receiving them, can nevertheless allow him to tune in to the target location. But if everything is ultimately information, and if the remote viewer is somehow tapping into this information matrix directly, then those geographical coordinates may be all he needs to direct his search.

Psychic healing. The database contains everything that exists in reality, which means that a state of optimal health for any given individual is at least potentially available. There may be an enormous number of pathways that an ill person's life can take, only a small fraction of which will lead him to health. But suppose it is possible for the psychic healer to tune in to the information matrix and scan the range of possible paths in order to select one that leads to the desired outcome with minimal obstruction and delay. The idea is to find the path of least resistance to a healthy state. By analogy, we might think of a chess-playing computer that runs through the whole range of possible responses to an opponent's move, then chooses the optimal response.

The goal-directed nature of psi. Many researchers have remarked that psychic abilities seem to be goal-directed. The psychic may not have any idea of the mechanism, but simply by focusing on a desired result, he can make it happen. This perhaps is explicable in terms of the chess-playing analogy. Out of hundreds or even thousands of possible pathways, the psychic is able to select one that will lead to the desired goal in the most efficient and direct manner. I'm not saying the psychic is consciously aware of choosing among these various paths — only that, at the level at which his mind tunes in to the information matrix, he is able to perform an overview of the available options and home in on the best one.

Morphic fields. Biologist Rupert Sheldrake has argued that there may be such things as morphic fields, which control the development of the embryo, the repair of damaged tissue, the migratory patterns of birds, the social activities of insects, etc. Conceivably these fields could be understood as information already available in the cosmic database, which is simply applied by the program to each new instance (embryo, wound, flock of birds, hive of bees, etc.) as it crops up.

Apparitions. There has been a long-standing debate about whether apparitions are physical phenomena or purely psychic manifestations. But if the individual essentially is information, then an apparition simply results from one or more observers tuning in to that information. This could explain why apparitions are sometimes seen by certain people in a room and not by others (a fact that suggests they are psychic phenomena), yet also often behave as though they possess physical reality (because, being information, they are as real as any other part of reality — which is all information). 

Synchronicities. There may be a very large number of possible paths that an individual's life can take in the course of a day, only one of which will lead to a meaningful confluence of events — a synchronicity. But suppose there is a pressing need for the individual to experience this synchronicity and receive whatever message or meaning it holds for him. If so, it may be possible to choose the one path in particular that will point to that outcome. The individual may be unconsciously accessing the information matrix and selecting the path of least resistance to a synchronicity. Or perhaps the path is arranged by some other mind, even that of a discarnate individual serving as a kind of guardian angel or spirit guide.

Abiogenesis. The origin of life remains deeply mysterious. Statisticians argue that random combinations of molecules cannot explain the origin even of individual proteins, let alone the complex machinery of a living cell, with its detailed instructions encoded in RNA or DNA. This has encouraged some people to believe that the hand of God essentially reached down and formed the first cell from scratch. But perhaps the view of reality as ultimately an information matrix gives us another option. Out of the trillions of possible pathways that those molecules in the prebiotic soup could take, let's say there was one path — statistically implausible in the extreme — that would lead to a functioning cell. That path might still require thousands of years of painstaking assembly, but it would be the only path to the desired outcome. If some mind – the Cosmic Mind, or some other – were able to select this path to the exclusion of the others, then the first living cell would eventually and inevitably come about, despite the very heavy odds against it, because the deck would be stacked in its favor.

Forteana. The term Forteana covers a variety of bizarre, anomalistic reports, such as dead fish raining from the sky, or encounters with supernatural creatures (werewolves, the Mothman, etc.), or UFO sightings. Many of these episodes are probably hoaxes, urban legends, or simple mistakes, but some of them probably do have a basis in fact. But how can things like this happen? Perhaps they can be seen as glitches in the system – data-processing errors that crop up unpredictably and are usually corrected before long. Such glitches would imply that the system is not perfect, but why should we assume that it is? In fact, it seems clear that the system does not always run optimally. "Miracles" of all kinds are unusual precisely because they represent an optimal outcome attained in the briefest possible time. Most outcomes are not optimal, at least in terms of our conscious goals and intentions. 

Given the pain and suffering of life, the frequency of natural disasters and debilitating illnesses, "the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to" – given all that, it may be reasonable to assume that the system, though unimaginably more complex then any human undertaking, is far from flawless.

This would further imply that the Cosmic Mind, however exalted, is not omniscient or infallible. Perhaps it is still learning from its own mistakes.

Commenter J9 points me to this summary of Sam Parnia's forthcoming book, which apparently draws on the AWARE experiments:

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread872432/pg1

From the summary, it doesn't sound as if there were any breakthroughs with regard to NDEs.

An end to hedging

I received a copy of Chris Carter's new book Science and the Afterlife Experience the other day. (It was a review copy–i.e., a freebie. Yes, there are some perks to running a blog about paranormal phenomena.) I haven't had a chance to read more than a little bit of the book so far, though I've certainly enjoyed what I've read. But I admit that I did skip ahead to glance at Chapter 18, titled “Is Survival a Fact?” In it, Carter observes that there are 3 categories of convincing evidence:

1. proof beyond all doubt

2. proof beyond all reasonable doubt

3. preponderance of the evidence

Though I didn't read further, from the book's packaging I gather that Carter concludes that number 2–proof beyond all reasonable doubt–is the most reasonable position with regard to postmortem survival.

These words reminded me of a powerful synchronicity that I experienced a few years ago. A close relative of mine had died a couple of days earlier. I was thinking about this and about the evidence for life after death. Out loud, I said to myself, “I think it's fair to say that life after death could be proved by the standards of a civil trial, but not by the standards of a criminal trial. That is, it could be established by a preponderance of the evidence, but not beyond all reasonable doubt.”

An hour or two later, I had to replace the batteries in the remote control for my television set. In order to test the new batteries, I used the remote to turn on the TV. This was in the middle of the day. I never watch TV during the day and I had no idea what would be on, or even what channel would appear. What came up was a soap opera, and the very first lines of dialogue I heard were spoken by an actor playing an attorney, who was telling his client (I paraphrase from memory): “You have to understand, Gloria, that there are different standards of evidence in a civil trial than in a criminal trial. In a civil trial you only need to establish your case with a preponderance of the evidence, not beyond any reasonable doubt.”

In combination with various other synchronicities, dreams, and unusual occurrences around the same time, I found this event very meaningful.

Nevertheless, despite such experiences, I've persisted in playing it safe in most of my discussions of postmortem survival. As long-time readers have probably noticed, I've avoided taking a definite position, and when discussing particular cases, such as examples of mediumship, I'll use words like purported, alleged, apparent, arguably, and seemingly.

I think a certain hesitation and caution can be appropriate when dealing with ambiguous and controversial material, especially given well-known examples of fraud or mistaken observation that have bedeviled the whole subject of paranormal phenomena. Nevertheless, there comes a point where I think you do have to take a stand. It's not practical to hold off making a final decision forever, to leave the issue permanently tabled with no prospect of resolution. Caution can turn into cowardice; fair-mindedness can become wishy-washiness. And terms like purported, though they have their place, can become weasel words if they serve as a substitute for a clear evaluation of the facts.

The truth is that after fifteen years of studying this subject–mostly armchair study, I admit, but I'm not sure that's the worst way to learn about it–I can no longer reasonably deny the clear-cut, virtually self-evident conclusion to be drawn from an enormous mass of documented evidence collected from all over the world, via many different lines of research, in conjunction with countless anecdotal accounts. It is clear to me that there is an overwhelming likelihood that consciousness does survive physical death, that the process of dying is essentially what near-death experiencers and mediumistic communicators describe it as, and that conditions in the next plane of existence can be at least roughly understood by those who've taken the time to learn about them.

There remain countless questions, perhaps the most troublesome being that of reincarnation and how exactly it fits into this overall scheme. But there are always questions. We have many questions about the way our physical world works too, but that doesn't mean we are unable to come to any definite conclusions about it. We may not know exactly how quantum mechanics can be reconciled with relativity theory, or how to explain wave/particle duality, or exactly how neurotransmitters affect the personality, but we certainly know the boiling point of water and the speed of light. Ignorance about some things doesn't justify doubt about everything.

In other words, after fifteen years I'm prepared to say not just that life after death is supported by a preponderance of the evidence, but that it is a fact established beyond reasonable doubt. And while there may be problems with some of the evidence, these problems do not justify a wholesale dismissal of the mountain of evidence that's available to anyone who cares to look.

Now, in saying that an afterlife is proven beyond reasonable doubt, I don't mean to suggest that anyone who doubts life after death is necessarily being unreasonable. Most people are unacquainted with any of the evidence in this area; and a reasonable person who simply hasn't looked into the subject and knows nothing about it is certainly entitled to assume, in line with the general drift of materialism and physicalism among Western intellectuals today, that postmortem survival is a nonsensical notion. It can take years of immersion in the relevant literature to become convinced that the case is proven. People who haven't made this effort are not unreasonable; they're just busy with other things.

On the other hand, I do think that people who claim to have taken a thorough look at the  literature and yet persist in saying there is no convincing evidence are being unreasonable. If the collective efforts of serious researchers from many continents over a period of more than a century–researchers who, in many cases, began as skeptics themselves; researchers whose number includes some of the most illustrious names in science, psychology, and philosophy, even Nobel Prize-winners–if all those efforts are dismissed as being simply unbelievable and not worth taking seriously, then the critic is applying a standard of belief that no body of evidence, in any field, could ever satisfy. 

Too many of the so-called skeptics–I mean professional skeptics, not laypeople–operate like defense attorneys who are determined to muddy the waters, confuse the jury, exploit technicalities, and game the system in order to win debating points at the expense of the truth. Their approach all too often consists of tendentious hairsplitting and obvious logical fallacies, like personal attacks, question-begging, and appeals to emotion.

As many people have pointed out, the term skeptic is not really appropriate for people who operate this way. Skepticism implies neutrality, a willingness to look at the evidence without prejudice and follow it wherever it may lead. A great many of the self-styled skeptics clearly have an agenda, usually rooted in materialism and secular humanism, and have made up their minds long before they began their “investigations,” which consist mainly of cherrypicking the weakest examples or focusing on a few dubious details in an otherwise impeccable case. Like the defense team in the O.J. Simpson murder trial, they subject each drop of blood to endless analysis and speculation, creating a climate of doubt and a fog of confusion, without troubling to notice that there is a trail of blood leading directly from the murder victims to the suspect's car and from the suspect's car to his house. They pick apart each leaf on the branch of a particular tree, but never acknowledge the forest.

Though I've called them skeptics in the past, I think from now on I will call them debunkers. The word debunker is neutral, not insulting like other some options (denier, scoffer, etc.). The so-called skeptics themselves often describe themselves as engaged in debunking, so they can't reasonably object to the term. But unlike the word skeptic, the word debunker suggests an agenda; it suggests that the person is actively seeking to invalidate a certain claim. And this is true of most of the so-called skeptics most of the time.

I might add that debunkers are not always wrong. Far from it. Some of the cases really are weak and deserve criticism. I've played the role of debunker myself, particularly in regard to some (though not all) claims of materialization mediumship. Debunking can be a perfectly legitimate and useful activity, but it is an activity dictated by an agenda, and the word captures this connotation in a way that the word skeptic does not.

One more thing. When I first started writing online essays about the paranormal and life after death, back before I had even launched this blog, I was trying to convince other people to take the phenomena seriously. By now, however, I can honestly say I'm not concerned about converting other people to my point of view. First, I don't think people can be converted by argument; they have to choose to investigate the subject for themselves, in their own good time. Second, I don't see it as my obligation to “enlighten” anyone else, nor do I necessarily see myself as more “enlightened” than other people who may not know much about life after death, but who may know a lot than I do more about many other things. And third, I think if you step back from the ego-driven conflicts of everyday life, you get a sense that everybody is where he or she ought to be at any given time. Nobody is doing it "wrong." Even our so-called mistakes serve a purpose, and contribute to the rich mosaic of earthly life. So why try to change anybody? Not only is it useless and rather arrogant, but it may even be counterproductive in the grand scheme of things.

Ultimately I can only be responsible for my own opinions and conclusions, not for anyone else's. For a long time I'd been leaning strongly toward the idea of life after death, but I hadn't fully committed to it. That policy made sense up to a point. But that point, for me, has been passed, and to persist in using qualifying adjectives and self-protective caveats would be, I think, dishonest and hypocritical.

So yes, according to my best reading of the evidence, there is life after death–no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

What it all means, and where we go from here, are separate questions, of course.  

=======

By the way, Chris Carter's book is now available in a Kindle edition. 

Chris Carter's latest

Science and the Afterlife Experience, the third of Chris Carter's books exploring evidence for paranormal phenomena and life after death, is now available at Amazon and Amazon UK.

I enjoyed the first two entries in this series very much, and learned a lot from them. This final volume in the trilogy explores mediumship, apparitions, and past-life recall. I'm sure it will be very worthwhile.

Posted with Blogsy

Hunk of junk? So they thunk!

If you suggest that there are indications of a higher, organizing intelligence underlying the structure of the cosmos and the complexity of life, you will be told (by some) that science says otherwise. A common talking point is "junk DNA," the  worthless detritus that makes up 80% of the human genome. How could any self-respecting Universal Mind saddle us with so much trash? 

Except now it turns out that junk DNA ain't so junky, after all.

In the words of philosopher Gomer Pyle ...

September 08, 2012 in Science | Permalink | Comments (7)

One thing that frustrates me about paranormal research is that the field seems to suffer from a pervasive case of short-term memory loss. People are constantly announcing “new” approaches that turn out to replicate work that was done decades or even generations earlier.

A recent example is the statement released by John M. Fischer upon receiving a John Templeton Foundation grant of $5 million for research into life after death. Fischer makes it sound as if no one has ever conducted any serious, sustained, properly supervised, peer-reviewed research in this area. Readers of this blog know that nothing could be further from the truth.

A less egregious, but still slightly irksome, example came to my attention today, in the form of a recently released book by Jeffrey A. Marks called The Afterlife Interviews: Volume 1. Marks is a medium who sat with 14 different individuals who asked him questions about the afterlife. He conveyed his answers to them, and then organized these replies into a book – or apparently two books, since this is Volume 1. It's an interesting idea, I guess, though it seems to me it would have been better to use a variety of mediums and see to what degree their statements dovetailed.

But what got me a little ticked off was that, even though Marks styles himself as a paranormal investigator, he seems to be largely unaware that the territory he's exploring is far from new. I should point out that I haven't read Marks' book itself, only an excerpt from the introduction that's available on the Amazon sales page via the “search inside” feature. Still, that was enough to suggest that the author knows little about the vast amount of channeled material describing conditions on "the other side." His only acknowledgment of it is a) a short discussion of Emmanuel Swedenborg; b) a passing mention of "glimpses of what the nature of the afterlife was like" in communications studied by the Society for Psychical Research a century ago; and c) Geraldine Cummins' book The Road to Immortality, which purportedly channels F.W.H. Myers. 

The casual reader could logically conclude that until now, no one -- with the exceptions of Cummins and Swedenborg -- has offered a detailed explication of conditions in the spirit world. 

Marks writes:

I have observed that the history of ghost research has always been wrought with the simple question “Why?” But to me, it needed to go a bit further. Not only the “why,” but to ask from the ghost's own point of view, “what is a spirit's life like?” It was a perspective no one had really taken before, at least not to my knowledge. Some of the questions I asked were: “Do you still perceive the movement of time?”; “Do you notice a tunnel of light following you?”; “Do you ever get hungry?”; “Do you sleep or are you always awake?” Despite what some in the spiritual/metaphysical community have said, there are spirits who are willing to talk about the nature of the afterlife.…

So when I kept hearing that single all-important critique of modern mediums–“Why don't they tell us what the Other Side is like?”–I knew from my research at haunted locations asking EVP questions to ghosts (who are existing “in-between” our world and the Other Side), that I could do the same for spirits who had crossed “through the light” all the way over to the Other Side. Why not? I have been a practicing medium for over a decade. Perhaps the reason other mediums have not gotten answers is because they're too focused on assisting their client, who can admittedly get caught up in the moment of communication, or they don't believe they can get sensible answers.…

What do these possibilities [ i.e., the communications] present?

A view, as we have never been offered before, on the nature of surviving death and what awaits us – straight from the mouths of those who are there.

The trouble is that the view on display in The Afterlife Interviews is hardly one “we have never been offered before.” From what I can tell, it's entirely in line with a vast amount of  pre-existing material, including -- in no particular order --Life in the World Unseen, by Anthony Borgia; Testimony of Light, by Helen Greaves; Raymond, by Oliver Lodge; The Blue Island (channeling W.T. Stead), by Pardoe Woodman and Estelle Stead; Through the Mists, by Robert James Lees; Spirit World and Spirit Life, by Charlotte Elizabeth Dresser; Gone West, by J.S.M. Ward; Letters from the Light, aka Letters from a Living Dead Man, by Elsa Barker; The Spirits' Book, by Allan Kardec; and Intimations of Immortality, by Robert Crookall.

This is by no means a complete list. I'm not sure anyone could exhaustively catalogue all the titles in this sprawling category. The literature is so extensive that Richard Matheson, who found himself impressed by it, was able to create a comprehensive and detailed picture of the afterlife for his novel What Dreams May Come -- a book that includes a lengthy and valuable bibliography. And it's not as if this material is terribly obscure. Matheson's novel was made into a big-budget movie, after all. 

Now, much of this allegedly channeled material is questionable. I find that Borgia's book, for instance, reads like fiction, and parts of Cummins' two books channeling Myers are hard to swallow. But the point is, this ground has been trod before. In fact, it has been covered so thoroughly that I'm not clear on how another book, coming through a single medium, can add much to what has already been written. Of course, there's always room for more data -- but must we believe that just because the data are recent, they represent "a perspective no one had really taken before"?  

I wonder what it is about paranormal research that has us perpetually reinventing the wheel. Rather than building on the work of those who came earlier, each new generation seems determined to start from zero. It's hardly the way to make progress -- either in this life or the next. 

Every movement has its bad apples, and this certainly includes the Spiritualist movement that swept North America and much of Europe in the 19th century. But when we think of Spiritualism's bad apples, we're probably inclined to remember fraudulent mediums, unscrupulous spirit photographers, and other hucksters who were exposed by journalists, skeptical magicians, and the diligent efforts of psychical researchers. 

There's one set of bad apples, however, that deserve their own special mention: the Bloody Benders of Kansas. 

Who were the Benders? They were a family of four, though the details of their family relationships remain ambiguous to this day. Wikipedia tells us, 

The family consisted of John Bender, his wife Mrs. Bender ..., son John Jr. and daughter Kate. While Bender mythology holds that John and Kate were brother and sister, contemporary newspapers reported that several of the Benders' neighbors have stated that they claimed to be man and wife.

The clan migrated west in 1870 as part of a larger community of Spiritualists, settling in Osage. The younger Kate styled herself as a medium and held seances for the locals. She also claimed healing powers, and advertised lectures on Spiritualism. 

But the Benders' interest in death wasn't limited to communications from the afterlife. They took a rather more active role in the matter. They were, in point of fact, serial killers; and from 1871 to 1873, they murdered more than a dozen people, burying many of them in the apple orchard near the inn. 

The murder method was simple. Wikipedia again: 

It is conjectured that when a guest would stay at the Benders' bed and breakfast inn, the hosts would give the guest a seat of honor at the table which was positioned over a trap door that led down into the cellar. With the victim's back to the curtain Kate [the younger] would distract the guest, while John Bender or his son would come from behind the curtain and strike the guest on the right side of the skull with a hammer. The victim's throat was then cut by one of the women to ensure his death. The body was then dropped through the trap door. Once in the cellar, the body would be stripped and later buried somewhere on the property, often in the orchard. More than a dozen bullet holes were found in the roof and sides of the room and the media speculated that some of the victims had attempted to fight back after being hit with the hammer.

By the time local suspicions were finally aroused and the bodies were dug up, the Benders had fled. Despite scattered reports of their arrests or deaths, their fates were never confirmed. 

So what's the point of this post? None, really. I don't think the Benders reflect on the Spiritualist movement in general, which mostly involved decent, well-meaning people. In fact, Spiritualism played an important part in both the abolitionist and women's suffrage movements. 

Mostly, I just find the story interesting because I'd never heard of the Benders until recently, and their weird, violent pathology makes a dramatic contrast to the doctrines of peace, love, and immortality that they preached. 

And I can't help wondering about young Kate, in particular. Could she have had any genuine mediumistic talents - and if so, what sort of messages might she have received from those whose throats she'd cut? 

 

Starting from zero

One thing that frustrates me about paranormal research is that the field seems to suffer from a pervasive case of short-term memory loss. People are constantly announcing “new” approaches that turn out to replicate work that was done decades or even generations earlier.

A recent example is the statement released by John M. Fischer upon receiving a John Templeton Foundation grant of $5 million for research into life after death. Fischer makes it sound as if no one has ever conducted any serious, sustained, properly supervised, peer-reviewed research in this area. Readers of this blog know that nothing could be further from the truth.

A less egregious, but still slightly irksome, example came to my attention today, in the form of a recently released book by Jeffrey A. Marks called The Afterlife Interviews: Volume 1. Marks is a medium who sat with 14 different individuals who asked him questions about the afterlife. He conveyed his answers to them, and then organized these replies into a book – or apparently two books, since this is Volume 1. It's an interesting idea, I guess, though it seems to me it would have been better to use a variety of mediums and see to what degree their statements dovetailed.

But what got me a little ticked off was that, even though Marks styles himself as a paranormal investigator, he seems to be largely unaware that the territory he's exploring is far from new. I should point out that I haven't read Marks' book itself, only an excerpt from the introduction that's available on the Amazon sales page via the “search inside” feature. Still, that was enough to suggest that the author knows little about the vast amount of channeled material describing conditions on "the other side." His only acknowledgment of it is a) a short discussion of Emmanuel Swedenborg; b) a passing mention of "glimpses of what the nature of the afterlife was like" in communications studied by the Society for Psychical Research a century ago; and c) Geraldine Cummins' book The Road to Immortality, which purportedly channels F.W.H. Myers. 

The casual reader could logically conclude that until now, no one -- with the exceptions of Cummins and Swedenborg -- has offered a detailed explication of conditions in the spirit world. 

Marks writes:

I have observed that the history of ghost research has always been wrought with the simple question “Why?” But to me, it needed to go a bit further. Not only the “why,” but to ask from the ghost's own point of view, “what is a spirit's life like?” It was a perspective no one had really taken before, at least not to my knowledge. Some of the questions I asked were: “Do you still perceive the movement of time?”; “Do you notice a tunnel of light following you?”; “Do you ever get hungry?”; “Do you sleep or are you always awake?” Despite what some in the spiritual/metaphysical community have said, there are spirits who are willing to talk about the nature of the afterlife.…

So when I kept hearing that single all-important critique of modern mediums–“Why don't they tell us what the Other Side is like?”–I knew from my research at haunted locations asking EVP questions to ghosts (who are existing “in-between” our world and the Other Side), that I could do the same for spirits who had crossed “through the light” all the way over to the Other Side. Why not? I have been a practicing medium for over a decade. Perhaps the reason other mediums have not gotten answers is because they're too focused on assisting their client, who can admittedly get caught up in the moment of communication, or they don't believe they can get sensible answers.…

What do these possibilities [ i.e., the communications] present?

A view, as we have never been offered before, on the nature of surviving death and what awaits us – straight from the mouths of those who are there.

The trouble is that the view on display in The Afterlife Interviews is hardly one “we have never been offered before.” From what I can tell, it's entirely in line with a vast amount of  pre-existing material, including -- in no particular order --Life in the World Unseen, by Anthony Borgia; Testimony of Light, by Helen Greaves; Raymond, by Oliver Lodge; The Blue Island (channeling W.T. Stead), by Pardoe Woodman and Estelle Stead; Through the Mists, by Robert James Lees; Spirit World and Spirit Life, by Charlotte Elizabeth Dresser; Gone West, by J.S.M. Ward; Letters from the Light, aka Letters from a Living Dead Man, by Elsa Barker; The Spirits' Book, by Allan Kardec; and Intimations of Immortality, by Robert Crookall.

This is by no means a complete list. I'm not sure anyone could exhaustively catalogue all the titles in this sprawling category. The literature is so extensive that Richard Matheson, who found himself impressed by it, was able to create a comprehensive and detailed picture of the afterlife for his novel What Dreams May Come -- a book that includes a lengthy and valuable bibliography. And it's not as if this material is terribly obscure. Matheson's novel was made into a big-budget movie, after all. 

Now, much of this allegedly channeled material is questionable. I find that Borgia's book, for instance, reads like fiction, and parts of Cummins' two books channeling Myers are hard to swallow. But the point is, this ground has been trod before. In fact, it has been covered so thoroughly that I'm not clear on how another book, coming through a single medium, can add much to what has already been written. Of course, there's always room for more data -- but must we believe that just because the data are recent, they represent "a perspective no one had really taken before"?  

I wonder what it is about paranormal research that has us perpetually reinventing the wheel. Rather than building on the work of those who came earlier, each new generation seems determined to start from zero. It's hardly the way to make progress -- either in this life or the next. 

Those twisted Benders

Every movement has its bad apples, and this certainly includes the Spiritualist movement that swept North America and much of Europe in the 19th century. But when we think of Spiritualism's bad apples, we're probably inclined to remember fraudulent mediums, unscrupulous spirit photographers, and other hucksters who were exposed by journalists, skeptical magicians, and the diligent efforts of psychical researchers. 

There's one set of bad apples, however, that deserve their own special mention: the Bloody Benders of Kansas. 

Who were the Benders? They were a family of four, though the details of their family relationships remain ambiguous to this day. Wikipedia tells us, 

The family consisted of John Bender, his wife Mrs. Bender ..., son John Jr. and daughter Kate. While Bender mythology holds that John and Kate were brother and sister, contemporary newspapers reported that several of the Benders' neighbors have stated that they claimed to be man and wife.

The clan migrated west in 1870 as part of a larger community of Spiritualists, settling in Osage. The younger Kate styled herself as a medium and held seances for the locals. She also claimed healing powers, and advertised lectures on Spiritualism. 

But the Benders' interest in death wasn't limited to communications from the afterlife. They took a rather more active role in the matter. They were, in point of fact, serial killers; and from 1871 to 1873, they murdered more than a dozen people, burying many of them in the apple orchard near the inn. 

The murder method was simple. Wikipedia again: 

It is conjectured that when a guest would stay at the Benders' bed and breakfast inn, the hosts would give the guest a seat of honor at the table which was positioned over a trap door that led down into the cellar. With the victim's back to the curtain Kate [the younger] would distract the guest, while John Bender or his son would come from behind the curtain and strike the guest on the right side of the skull with a hammer. The victim's throat was then cut by one of the women to ensure his death. The body was then dropped through the trap door. Once in the cellar, the body would be stripped and later buried somewhere on the property, often in the orchard. More than a dozen bullet holes were found in the roof and sides of the room and the media speculated that some of the victims had attempted to fight back after being hit with the hammer.

By the time local suspicions were finally aroused and the bodies were dug up, the Benders had fled. Despite scattered reports of their arrests or deaths, their fates were never confirmed. 

So what's the point of this post? None, really. I don't think the Benders reflect on the Spiritualist movement in general, which mostly involved decent, well-meaning people. In fact, Spiritualism played an important part in both the abolitionist and women's suffrage movements. 

Mostly, I just find the story interesting because I'd never heard of the Benders until recently, and their weird, violent pathology makes a dramatic contrast to the doctrines of peace, love, and immortality that they preached. 

And I can't help wondering about young Kate, in particular. Could she have had any genuine mediumistic talents - and if so, what sort of messages might she have received from those whose throats she'd cut?