Michael Prescott's Blog

Proof of life

I'm reading an advance copy of Michael Tymn's new book Resurrecting Leonora Piper, which I'm enjoying quite a lot. (I'll post a review when I've finished it. By the way, although the official publication date is January 14, it looks like Amazon is selling the book now, in both print and Kindle editions.) 

The book is not a biography of Mrs. Piper, but a detailed examination of her mediumship, with an emphasis on the most impressive communications. Tymn acknowledges that there was a great deal of nonsense produced throughout the decades-long course of Mrs. Piper's trance sessions, and there were times when she drew a blank for a particular sitter or made too many errors to be credible. But there were other sessions - quite a lot of them - when she would produce copious quantities of verifiable information, some of it unknown to anyone present, and much of it impossible to obtain by research or guesswork.

Still, doubts persisted. One such doubt was the often-repeated objection that the communications were too trivial to be taken seriously. Tymn quotes William James:

The prima facie theory, which is that of spirit-control, is hard to reconcile with the extreme triviality of most of the communications. What real spirit, at last able to revisit his wife on this earth, but would find something better to say than that she had changed the place of his photograph? And yet that is the sort of remark to which the spirits introduced by the mysterious Phinuit are apt to confine themselves.

James goes on to concede that occasionally Mrs. Piper's spirit control, Phinuit, did give "long lectures to us about our inward defects and outward shortcomings, which were very earnest, as well as subtle morally and psychologically, and impressive in a high degree," and that these monologues were "probably superior to anything that the medium could produce in her natural state." 

Still, the "triviality" issue remained a sticking point. For some people, it is a sticking point to this day. 

I must admit, I've never quite understood this objection. To me, it seems obvious that a discarnate spirit seeking to establish its identity would have to rely on trivialities - minor details that only a few people would know. In fact, the more trivial and obscure the details, the better. How else could the spirit provide proof that it is who it claims to be? What could be more convincing than to hear the medium make reference to a little-known fact that only the sitter and a few close family members were aware of?

As it happens, at the moment I'm also reading Victor Hugo's Les Miserables. One of the most dramatic scenes involves the ex-convict Jean Valjean identifying himself to the authorities in a courtroom. Valjean has been wanted for petty theft for several years, but has thoroughly remade himself, becoming a wealthy and respected factory owner and the mayor of a thriving town. Circumstances compel him to come clean before the court and subject himself to arrest and imprisonment again.

But first he must convince the court that he really is who he says he is. No one will believe him. They think the mayor has gone mad. Such a highly esteemed public figure cannot possibly be the lowly and despised ex-convict. 

Valjean, however, knows how to prove his case. Three men in the courtroom served their prison sentences with him. 

He turned to the three convicts, and said:—

"Well, I recognize you; do you remember, Brevet?"

He paused, hesitated for an instant, and said:—

"Do you remember the knitted suspenders with a checked pattern which you wore in the galleys?"

Brevet gave a start of surprise, and surveyed him from head to foot with a frightened air. He continued:—

"Chenildieu, you who conferred on yourself the name of 'Jenie-Dieu,' your whole right shoulder bears a deep burn, because you one day laid your shoulder against the chafing-dish full of coals, in order to efface the three letters T. F. P., which are still visible, nevertheless; answer, is this true?"

"It is true," said Chenildieu.

He addressed himself to Cochepaille:—

"Cochepaille, you have, near the bend in your left arm, a date stamped in blue letters with burnt powder; the date is that of the landing of the Emperor at Cannes, March 1, 1815; pull up your sleeve!"

Cochepaille pushed up his sleeve; all eyes were focused on him and on his bare arm.

A gendarme held a light close to it; there was the date.

The unhappy man turned to the spectators and the judges with a smile which still rends the hearts of all who saw it whenever they think of it. It was a smile of triumph; it was also a smile of despair.

"You see plainly," he said, "that I am Jean Valjean."

The demonstration suffices, and Valjean is again condemned to prison. 

Notice that all of his proofs are trivialities. Knitted suspenders ... a burn mark ... a tattoo ... Nothing heavy, deep, or philosophical about that. Yet it's the most effective way he could possibly establish his own identity. 

Why would otherwise intelligent people have trouble grasping this simple point? Perhaps it's an indication of how hard the ego-mind works to avoid dealing with the implications of mediumship. 

Author Sandie Gustus has let me know about a book that may be of interest to readers of this blog. It's called Less Incomplete, and it deals with out-of-body experiences and how to interpret them. A good description is found here:

http://www.sandiegustus.com

Pim van Lommel, Peter Fenwick, and Brenda Dunne have all expressed support for the book.

I haven't read Less Incomplete yet, but since it sounds intriguing, I thought I'd mention it and post a link to the Amazon sales page for the print edition:

http://www.amazon.com/Less-Incomplete-Experiencing-Condition-Physical/dp/1846943515/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1356732353&sr=1-1&keywords=less+incomplete

Less Incomplete is also available in a lower priced Kindle edition.

The diamond

On a regular basis, I practice guided meditations, in which I try to achieve a mild trance state and then ask questions of a "spirit guide." I'm very much aware of the possibility – in fact, the probability – that much of the information I receive originates in my unconscious mind. However, I'm of the opinion that the boundary between the unconscious mind and the spiritual realm is pretty fuzzy, and that we can't access spiritual sources of information without going through the unconscious.

This idea ties in with what has been called the imaginal realm, a sort of twilight zone midway between physical and spiritual reality. A certain tolerance for ambiguity is, I think, necessary in carrying out these highly subjective experiments.

(Incidentally, I think an inability to tolerate ambiguity lies at the root of much skeptical thinking. Skeptics, in my observation, tend to see things in terms of black and white, true or false, objectivity or subjective, with little or no gray area. But spiritual explorations of the type that we talk about on this blog require a willingness to explore the uncharted no-man's-land between hard physical facts and subjective imagination.)

Well, anyway, I do these meditative exercises. A few weeks ago, when I was sick with acute sinusitis and probably running a slight fever, I had some unusually vivid and convincing meditative experiences. These could be chalked up to mental aberrations brought on by an elevated temperature, but I prefer to think that, in a state of illness, the etheric body may be more loosely connected to the physical body than usual, leading to more direct access to the spiritual realm. I could be wrong.

One of these meditations was particularly meaningful to me. I've been reluctant to post about it, because it doesn't contain any new information, and its impact was largely emotional. I doubt I can convey the emotional qualities of this meditative exercise in words. But I decided I might as well try.

Before I go on, I should point out that none of the information contained in this exercise was new to me. It could easily have come from my unconscious mind. I had encountered this imagery before, in reading about life after death. The only thing that makes the experience seem like more than a regurgitation of stuff I'd read is the fact that it packed an emotional punch.

That particular day, I was not feeling well at all, and because it was a Sunday, I couldn't get hold of my doctor to obtain the antibiotics I needed. Since I knew I couldn't reach him until Monday morning, I basically made the decision to shut down – to lie on the couch, drifting between sleep and a half-awake state, and wait until the next day to do anything. I hardly moved, except to use the bathroom and take medicine, throughout the succeeding 24 hours, and I ate almost nothing.

During this time I practiced various meditations, and as I said, they were more vivid and clear than usual. In one case, I asked what my soul was like.

I was shown an image of a diamond, brilliant and multifaceted. But this was no ordinary diamond. It was alive. The facets, which were far more luminous than any real-life diamond's, were in constant motion. They were constantly shifting positions like the pieces of a mosaic, creating patterns that were intricate and harmonious. It did not appear that there was anything random about these patterns; rather, they seemed to involve the working-out of some larger scheme, much in the way that notes of music can be used to work out the themes and melodies of a musical composition.

I was told that this diamond was my true soul, and that the individual facets were merely contributing elements. The real me, the eternal me, was the diamond as a whole, even though I wasn't aware of it in everyday life.

These living and moving facets each represented some persona that my larger soul had adopted – presumably in some previous (or perhaps future) earthly incarnation. The sum total of all these facets made up the diamond itself.

Let me expand on this a little. The diamond could be seen as the so-called "group soul" often discussed by metaphysical writers. But I was given to understand that the "group soul" is something of a misnomer, because actually we are talking only about a group of personae; the diamond/soul itself is our own personal soul in its purest and highest form. To think of it as a group soul is to imagine that our individual self is just one of the facets of the diamond, when in fact our soul consists of all the facets and more, because it includes the core of the diamond as well. Thus we are much greater, much more all-encompassing, than we might think. 

What was most strongly impressed on me was the sheer beauty of the soul. It seemed to me that this soul was the most beautiful and precious thing in the world. Of course, I'm not just talking about my own soul, but about any human soul. The impression I had – and this is where the emotional impact came in – was that if we could only grasp the magnificence and perfection of our own souls, we would have a whole new perspective on life, and negative things (such as the illness I was experiencing) would pale into insignificance.

Again, while I cannot really convey the feeling I got, I came away with an extraordinarily strong impression that our soul – mine, or yours, or anyone's – is an object of exquisite beauty, unfathomable complexity, and ultimate perfection. Even the flaws that we perceive in ourselves are not really flaws, but elements necessary to a larger harmonious whole.

There are many wonderful things in our physical reality, including stars and galaxies, but the impression I got was that each of us, inasmuch as we represent this diamond-like perfection of the soul, is a far more wondrous and valuable thing than any physical object.

Now, as I said at the start, there was no new information conveyed to me in this exercise. The image of the soul as a diamond is part of the channeled material attributed to Silver Birch, who suggested that our individual earthly lives are facets of this diamond. For instance: 

What I have said is that the human individuality is not always a single entity but a facet of a larger diamond. These facets incarnate into your world for experience that will enable them to return to the diamond and add to its lustre and radiance. [source; scroll down to "On Reincarnation"]

This idea has been reiterated by other sources, and it was familiar to me from my reading. It always resonated with me as being probably true. So it's not surprising that it would come up in my meditation.

Do I think the meditation was a genuine insight into the nature of spiritual reality? Yes, I do, though I can't expect anyone else to share my conviction. I've had other meditative experiences now and then – only a few, unfortunately – that shared the same quality, which I've come to recognize as a sign of a particularly intense spiritual insight. As best I can describe it, it is the feeling of my whole body tingling with a kind of pleasurable electric current and suffused with indescribable joy, coupled with a sense of peace and acceptance, "the peace that passeth all understanding" - the sense that everything is all right and there is nothing to worry about, complain about, or fear. It is a sense of having seen through the trivialities of everyday existence to some much more fundamental and reassuring reality. I suspect that this is what the Gospels mean when they talk about "the Kingdom of Heaven," which is "the pearl of great price," and which "is within you." 

By the way, it is largely because of experiences like this that I'm not too sympathetic to people who say the universe is ultimately malicious or irrational or arbitrary, and that we may end up in a bad place just as easily as a good place after we die. My strong impression – entirely subjective, and certainly not provable – is that there is a logic, order, justice, harmony, and larger purpose to existence, and that if we merely surrender ourselves to this higher purpose we will end up in a very good place indeed. Perhaps the idea of Hell has its roots in the possibility that some people will willfully cut themselves off from this higher purpose out of a refusal to practice self-surrender. Possibly this also suggests the value of learning to practice self-abnegation and non-egoic thinking here on earth. 

In any case, while I'm sure I've failed to convey the impact of my meditation, it may at least be helpful to try seeing each of the people you meet and deal with - even the more obnoxious ones - as representing a shining facet of a perfect diamond, more pure and more beautiful than any precious stone we could ever know on earth.

Merry Christmas!

There's a book out called Theory of Reality: Evidence for Existence Beyond the Brain and Tools for Your Journey, by David O. Wiebers. I haven't read the book and have no idea if it has merit, but what's interesting is that Wiebers is an MD described as a "neurologist and neuroscientist." Here's a Q&A:

http://www.medindia.net/news/Interviews/expert-explores-theory-of-reality-and-near-death-experience-part-i-111401-1.htm# .

A $9.99 Kindle edition of the book is here:

http://www.amazon.com/Theory-Reality-Evidence-Existence-ebook/dp/B00A3VLILG/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1356198146&sr=8-2&keywords=wiebers+theory+of+reality

Is this a new trend? Neurologists taking psi and survival seriously? Probably not. But it's a start.

Our own commenter Roger Knights has a guest post on the widely read site Watts Up With That. WUWT takes a skeptical position on anthropogenic global warming.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/12/16/notes-from-skull-island-why-skeptics-arent-well-funded-and-well-organized/

IrrationalWiki

A while ago, a reader pointed me to a brief entry about yours truly on the anti-paranormal site RationalWiki. I doubt many people actually read this site, so the fact that the entry is largely inaccurate doesn't really bother me. Still, having nothing better to blog about right now, I thought I'd go through it line by line and separate the true statements from those that are, well, not so true. 

Here goes! 

Prescott grew up in New Jersey where he attended Wesleyan University, majoring in Film Studies. He has had some success as an author of a number of horror and suspense novels which have sold over one million copies in America.

This is all true, except that the number of copies sold has climbed to about 2.5 million. Thanks, ebooks! 

Prescott owns a blog where he posts on paranormal, spiritualism and topics related to life after death but has not actually done any experiments or investigations into parapsychology other than read books on the topic.

True, except that I've consulted four mediums over the years. That's the limit of my personal investigation. 

On his blog he claims that everything from mediumship to levitation is scientifically valid. 

Basically true. I do think that genuine physical mediums can levitate tables and other objects, and even themselves. The book Sittings with Eusapia Palladino, by Everard Feilding, gives a good account of Palladino's ability to levitate objects. D.D. Home's ability to levitate himself was not scientifically tested, but was reported by hundreds of eyewitnesses in scores of seances conducted in good light. On the other hand, many levitations and other purported physical phenomena have been faked, and the fraudulent cases seem to outnumber the authentic ones. Great caution is necessary in exploring this area. 

He usually rants against "materialist skeptics", and even opposes those within parapsychology who are skeptical about certain phenomena. 

I'm definitely against dogmatic debunkers who call themselves skeptics, and I don't think materialism offers a complete explanation of reality, though in a more limited context it is an undeniably powerful approach, as shown by the momentous successes of modern science. Not sure what the bit about parapsychologists refers to. 

Prescott rejects the psychological explanation for the paranormal, he also rejects hallucinations as an explanation for certain phenomena. 

True, though so vaguely worded that it means little. Hallucinations may explain some phenomena, such as certain UFO sightings, certain Marian apparitions, and some ghosts and hauntings. But I don't think hallucinations can account for the careful observations of experienced investigators, especially when they are working as a group. Again, I'd point to Feilding's Sittings with Eusapia Palladino. (The book is hard to find, but is thoroughly summarized, with many lengthy excerpts, in Stephen E. Braude's The Limits of Influence.) Feilding and his colleagues had debunked over one hundred physical mediums and fully expected to debunk Palladino, an eccentric character who was known to cheat when she could. Nevertheless, they found the phenomena she produced under close observation and tight controls to be inexplicable by normal means. The prominent magician Walter Thurston later seconded their opinion. Palladino's sessions with Feilding and his fellow researchers were recorded in real time by a stenographer, were typically conducted in adequate light, and were sometimes documented with photographs. I don't see how hallucination can explain the results in these and similar cases. 

According to Prescott even ectoplasm is genuine though if he had done some real research into experiments carried out by scientists during seances he would see that ectoplasm is universally discredited even amongst other parapsychologists since all investigations into the substance turned out to be butter, muslin and the result of fraud.

My most complete discussion of the messy subject of ectoplasm is probably "Getting a Rise out of Ectoplasm." The article covers evidence for ectoplasm but also skeptical objections. My conclusion is that the objections don't address the very strongest evidence. So I guess the RW piece is correct in inferring that I think ectoplasm is genuine, though I'd hedge my bets and say it may be genuine or there may be something more going on that we don't understand. 

The latter part of the quoted statement is inaccurate. I've written extensively on fraud in materialization mediumship, and I even got into a months-long online dispute with Australian researcher Victor Zammit over this very issue. I've often cited sources showing that ectoplasm can be nothing but cheesecloth or muslin - for instance, M. Lamar Keene's The Psychic Mafia and Harry Price's article "The Cheese-Cloth Worshippers," which debunked Helen Duncan. To the dismay of Duncan's admirers, I've also posted photos showing Duncan with supposed "materialized spirits" which are clearly puppets. Here are two such photos, taken from "The Cheese-Cloth Worshippers": 

 

Some of the articles that I've posted in the Essays section of my author website deal with fraud in physical mediumship. These include:

"Of Dinosaurs and Phantoms: Some Dubious Phenomena" (the mediumship of Marthe Beraud, aka "Eva C.")

"Of Dinosaurs and Phantoms, the Sequel" (more about Eva C.) 

"The Two Faces of Margery" (the mediumship of Mina Crandon) 

I also wrote an article called "The Dark Side of the Paranormal," dealing with the issue of self-deception and delusion. 

For other examples, search the archives of this blog (using the Google search box on the left side of the page) for keywords like "cheesecloth" or "David Thompson" (a medium who I felt was not adequately controlled in test seances). 

Since turnabout is fair play, I'll say that if the author of the RationalWiki piece "had done some real research" into what I've written, he would have seen that I've covered the waterfront in this area pretty thoroughly - so much so that a frustrated Victor Zammit labeled me a "skeptic." 

Prescott also believes all of the victorian seances and mediums were genuine yet ignores any data on the contrary. There are many books published and even papers written in journals written by psychical researchers (eg. Society for Psychical Research) in that era who had exposed many of the victorian mediums as using trickery yet Prescott ignores all of this data. 

Untrue. I've talked a lot about fraud in the Victorian era. I even considered the possibility that the whole Spiritualist movement of that era was a "mania." I've written that Florence Cook and Rosina Showers fooled William Crookes; that Arthur Conan Doyle was tricked by many dubious characters, including the Davenport Brothers; that many aspects of physical mediumship were routinely faked with the help of hidden equipment and secret accomplices; that the regurgitation of wadded-up cheesecloth is quite possible, and not far-fetched as some claim; that Spiritualist predictions that there would be no Second World War and that the Spiritualist movement would soon sweep the globe were wildly off-base; that Victorian spiritualist Florence Marryat played fast and loose with the truth in her memoir; that many of the later phenomena produced by the Fox sisters wre fraudulent; etc.  

I've also written about more recent instances of dubious phenomena. I've pointed out that infrared photography of materialization mediumship at Camp Chesterfield, a Spiritualist compound, revealed costumed accomplices sneaking in through a hidden door; that Sylvia Browne's annual predictions have been grossly inaccurate, and many of the public statements she has made in psychic readings have been proved wrong, sometimes hilariously so (as when she stated that Madalyn Murray O'Hair's remains would never be found, when in fact they had already been uncovered); that Victor Borgia's "channeled" books about the afterlife read like fiction; that some otherworldly electronic communications described by Mark Macy bear a disturbing resemblance to plot elements of Philip Jose Farmer's "Riverworld" sci-fi series; and that an allegedly paranormal image on Macy's website was obviously Photoshopped (which I proved by superimposing the original image over the altered image).

These are just the topics that occur to me offhand. There are many more. 

Users in debates who post on the Skeptiko website usually cite Prescott as a source that materialism is false and mediumship has been proven.

I don't read that forum, but I'm happy to think this is true! 

Critics point out that Prescott does not look at the data objectively and that he is a promoter of pseudoscience.

True, in the sense that critics undoubtedly do say this. Of course one could just as easily write, "Critics point out that skeptical debunkers do not look at the data objectively and that they are promoters of an outdated worldview grounded in classical physics." Sauce for the gander! 

I found the article's inaccuracy hard to understand, since even a cursory review of this blog would show that I'm skeptical about many specific cases. A possible explanation is suggested by this postscript to the RW piece:

See also

• Michael E. Tymn

I certainly don't mind being linked to Mike Tymn, whose books and blog posts I enjoy, and whom I consider a personal friend, even though we've never met in real life. However, he and I don't see eye to eye on everything. In particular, he's much more impressed by materialization mediumship than I am, and he is generally not interested in discussing fraud. He once told me that since he's convinced that the phenomena are real and the debunkers are wrong, he sees no need to present their objections. I understand his point of view, but I don't share it. 

The RW entry on Michael Tymn appears to have been written by the same person who wrote my entry, and is even more slipshod. (Tymn's last name is repeatedly misspelled in the body of the piece.) Some of the language is very similar to language used about me: 

Tym [sic] is also dishonest in his books for using selective studies and ignoring data contrary to his beliefs. For example, he does not mention ectoplasm (a substance claimed by spiritualists which spirits materialise in) throughout his books as this supposed substance in all scientific investigation has been found to be the result of fraud and made out of butter, cheesecloth, plastic dolls or newspaper clippings.  

It appears, in short, that the writer assumed (incorrectly) that Mike Tymn and I are in complete agreement on materializations, Victorian fraud, and so forth. Or perhaps, in his slapdash way, he simply got the two Michaels mixed up! 

Overall, the article on me is a slippery and sloppy piece of work, and the one on Michael Tymn is much worse. Surely a site that prides itself on "rationality" can do better than this. Otherwise, one might be tempted to think that "rationality" is merely a catch phrase serving as a cover for shallow, uninformed dogmatism. 

And we certainly wouldn't want to believe that!

:-) 

Roger Knights shared a link about a recent ABC telecast called "The Sixth Sense," which presents a generally positive case for psi phenomena. I haven't watched it yet, but for those who are interested, the hour-long show (with some commercials) can be seen here:

http://abcnews.go.com/watch/2020/SH559026/VD55243015/2020-1026--the-sixth-sense

Among the topics discussed is Dr. Eben Alexander's NDE, the subject of his book "Proof of Heaven."