Book notes

For a long time I’ve toyed with the notion of doing a nonfiction book about the paranormal – specifically life after death. But I was always put off by the immensity of the task. I thought I would have to summarize masses of evidence and combat a bewildering array of skeptical objections. It all seemed like too much work, and I wasn’t sure anyone would want to read it, anyway.

But after reading Julie Beischel’s recent book, Among Mediums, I had a small epiphany. Her book is short, breezy, and eschews arguments with skeptics in favor of simply laying out some basic facts and possibilities. Additional resources are available in the appendix, but the book itself is intended to be a quick, easy read. And I started to think: Hey, maybe I could do something like that.

I might not. I don’t finish every project I start. But at the moment here’s the way I’m leaning.

My working title is How Things Are (Maybe). The structure is simple. I take you from the moment of dying, through the transition to the afterlife, and onward to the bigger questions of where you go from there and what it all means. The tone would be casual, almost conversational, and not overloaded with detail. I might expand on some of my points in endnotes, and I would also provide a bibliography for those who wish to investigate further. The whole thing would be pretty short and would be available only as an e-book.

I never seem to write things in their proper chronological order. In this case, I started with the very end of the book, the wrap-up that tries to make sense out of it all. The approach I take is one I’ve explored a little bit on this blog, to decidedly mixed reviews. Some people just don’t like looking at things this way, but to me it makes sense, or at least as much sense as any “theory of everything” can make.

My other decision was to preview the book in bits and pieces as I work on it. That way I can get feedback which, I’m sure, will make the final book much better. (Assuming, of course, that there is a final book – I reserve the right to drop the whole thing at any time.)

What follows, then, is the very last part of the book, in the form of a rough draft. I wrote this without consulting any notes, and it’s possible I got some of the physics wrong. Readers who are knowledgeable about physics are encouraged to point out any mistakes. In fact, readers are encouraged to supply any feedback at all, although just saying “You suck!” will not prove very helpful. It would better to explain exactly how and why I suck.

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How Things Are (Maybe) - final section 

A subatomic entity can behave like a particle or a wave. This is not at all the way objects in everyday life behave. In fact, it’s not consistent with the behavior of objects as such. It’s more consistent with the way information works.

An object cannot be both a particle and a wave, but information actually does have this quality. When we talk about a wave in this context, we’re really talking about a probability wave – a distribution curve representing all possible positions that the electron (or photon, or whatever) might occupy at a given moment. And what is a probability wave except mathematical information? It is an exact representation of all possible outcomes. And what is a particle? It is the one particular outcome that is actualized in any given case.

In other words, an electron can behave like a wave when its position is not determined, and it can behave like a particle when its position is determined. But what, then, is an electron? An object – or a mathematical construct, a bit of data?

Note that the electron’s behavior is directly affected by how it is measured – and can be affected even retroactively. That is, the electron’s status as a wave or a particle will vary, in some circumstances, depending on measurements made after the experiment has been run. What matters is not the physical act of shooting electrons through slits, but the mental decision on how to measure them – even if that decision is made after the fact.

Again, this is not at all how objects behave, but it is the way information behaves. The decision on which calculations to perform will determine what mathematical outcome we end up with, just as the decision on which measurements to make will determine whether the electron is expressed as a particle or a wave.

Another oddity of the subatomic realm is quantum entanglement. Two electrons, once paired, will continue to affect each other even when separated by any amount of distance, and are able to affect each other instantaneously – too fast for any signal to pass between them. If the spin of one electron is altered, the spin of its counterpart will be simultaneously altered in a corresponding way, even if the two electrons are at opposite ends of the universe.

If we think of electrons as objects, quantum entanglement is baffling. But if we think of them as pixels on the computer screen, the paradox disappears. A computer screen refreshes many times each second. Behind the scenes, the computer is constantly processing information, and with each screen refresh, the icons and graphics on the screen will be altered to reflect the latest calculations. The computer doesn’t care if pixel A is on the extreme left side of the screen, and pixel B is on the extreme right side. The physical distance between the pixels is irrelevant to the information processor’s calculations and to their visible expression. If the “rule” is that a change in pixel A necessitates a complementary change in pixel B, then as soon as that calculation is made and the screen refreshes, both pixels will be appropriately altered.

Interestingly enough, the computer analogy also gives us a way to solve one of the world’s oldest logical paradoxes – Zeno’s paradox of the arrow. Zeno argued that motion is impossible. To prove it, he asked us to consider an arrow in flight. The arrow’s path can be broken down into smaller and smaller units, and in the smallest of these units the arrow will be standing still. How, then, can it ever get anywhere, if its apparent motion consists ultimately of static positions? How can movement arise from immobility?

If Zeno had owned a PC, he might have solved his own paradox. The pixels on the screen never actually move. They are static. But because the screen is constantly refreshing, and because the pixels are drawn in different positions with each new refresh, the appearance of motion is created. We can drag the cursor across the screen, and it appears to be moving, but it is really a series of still pictures being refreshed and altered at a very high rate.

So let’s say Zeno’s arrow is equivalent to the cursor on the screen. As Zeno correctly stated, it is never actually in motion. But behind the scenes, our information processor is performing the necessary calculations and refreshing our four-dimensional reality “screen,” and it is those calculations and the resultant changes in the arrow’s position that create movement as we know it.

At this point it probably sounds like I’m suggesting that we all live in the Matrix, or that our universe exists on the hard drive of somebody’s laptop. (If it does, I hope it’s a Mac, because they don’t crash as much.) But actually I’m not saying that. The computer analogy is just that – an analogy, a metaphor, a way of thinking about it. I can’t begin to comprehend how it all really works, but I doubt that our 21st century technology, nifty though it is, can serve as an adequate model. 

Still, whatever the details, it does appear that the space-time universe, at root, behaves more like information than like an assemblage of objects. It’s also noteworthy that the mathematical formulas necessary to describe this reality are often confoundingly simple. Kepler’s laws of motion and Einstein’s e = mC squared are remarkably elegant equations. There is no obvious reason why physical reality should be expressible in such terms. But if all physical things can be reduced to information, and if all physical events are the result of processing that information, then we might expect the basic rules governing the system to be as simple as possible. After all, these calculations would have to be performed untold quadrillions of times every second; simple formulas would clearly be better.

All of this leads us to the idea of a cosmic information processor – a nonphysical system existing outside of the four-dimensional space-time universe and actually governing the universe by means of the calculations it performs. Our everyday reality would be analogous to the artificial reality of a computer game – except, of course, that we are fully immersed in it and unaware that it is a mere construct. Even our own bodies are part of this constructed reality, and serve as our avatars, allowing our consciousness to explore and interact with this ever-changing environment. Consciousness itself, however, is not ultimately rooted in the space-time universe; as we saw earlier*, when our consciousness is viewed as a whole (incorporating all levels of awareness), it is outside space and time, much like the cosmic information processor itself. We might even think of our individual consciousness as a small branch of this immense information processing system, and we might think of the cosmic information processor as something akin to a mind in its own right. 

Moreover, there is no reason why this particular reality is the only one that can be generated by the cosmic information processor. Indeed, most computer games have various levels of constructed reality; as the player develops more skill, he or she advances to progressively higher levels.

I think you can see where I’m going with this. In a system such as I’ve sketched out, there is no problem with migrating from one level of reality to the next. In fact, it’s all part of the game! And as you rise higher, maybe your ability to look behind the scenes and tap into the cosmic information processing system improves. Maybe your consciousness can learn to directly influence the calculations and thus their visible and tactile expression in the “real” world around you. Maybe, after eons of advancement, you will reach a point where you no longer require the comforting illusion of a constructed reality at all. Maybe at that point you will simply immerse yourself in the information processor itself, rejoining the ultimate source of your own identity. And maybe this unimaginably complex information processing system, which exists outside of space and time as we know them, and which is the source of our own consciousness or soul, as well as the “ground of being” for all physical things, is essentially what we call God.

Maybe.

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*"as we saw earlier" - in a previous section, not yet written, but corresponding roughly to this blog post. 

Comments

[Lawrence]

Hmm I sent in a fairly long comment yesterday, but it didn't seem to go through.

Anyhow just in reply to Juan above, I just don't think Chris Carter gets to grips with the *actual strengths* of super-psi anywhere, and the *actual weaknesses* of mediumship communications past and present, and not in that interview you link to likewise. Acknowledging that the super-psi idea exists without getting into the heavy meat of this theory/hypothesis whatsoever, so as to dismiss it because one prefers survival, is not good enough. Well not to those of us who have not made our minds up.

I do admit to being impressed by the NDE research (albeit it does have its problems), and if anything was to cinch the argument in favour of survival, that would be it. Mediumship has holes big enough to steer oil tankers through.

[Art]

According to several NDE descriptions there really aren't "minds" but just "mind" and so "super psy" and "life after death" are essentially the same thing. Like the hive mind of the Borg collective. Each Borg is tuned into the Hive mind. Perhaps some Mediums are able to tune into the Hive mind and pull out bits of information and make sense of it?

[Juan]

Acknowledging that the super-psi idea exists without getting into the heavy meat of this theory/hypothesis whatsoever, so as to dismiss it because one prefers survival, is not good enough.

Carter does not favor survival because he prefers it, but because it is the direct inference from the available data. Also Stephen Braude in his book Immortal Remains takes seriously the super-psi hypothesis regarding mediumship and he is finding that the afterlife hypothesis is the most likely hypothesis.

Mediumship has holes big enough to steer oil tankers through.

True, but those holes are not as big as the holes in the super-psi hypothesis, since the afterlife hypothesis is a direct inference from the data as the super-psi hypothesis is conceived only as a replica to the afterlife hypothesis. Besides these holes can be filled with a greater knowledge of mediumship, as Michael Tymn ago on their website:

http://whitecrowbooks.com/michaeltymn/

[doubter]

Mediumship has holes big enough to steer oil tankers through.

These are some excerpts from Leonora Piper sittings in 1895 on the planets Mars and Venus, and the Sun. Such fantasies and the fictitious nature of many of the controls, evidently based on imagination or the minds of the sitters, reduce the credibility of the medium. Or at least they increase the mystery of this phenomenon, since a lot of this kind of material came through in addition to many extremely evidential readings. It is as if the talented medium goes into a state in which she is extremely sensitive to picking up either misinformation from a variety of sources (her own subconscious, lower entities, the minds of the sitters or the popular imagination), or good paranormally derived information from discarnates, from the living, or from other kinds of ESP. A complicated mixture.

(from Holt: On the Cosmic Relations, at Google Books):

On Mars

Present: W. R. N. (Professor Newbold)

(Piper control "Sir Walter Scott"):
"We turn our air ship towards the planet Mars and as we draw nearer and nearer, we begin to see objects and people. We then look again down upon the earth and then into Mars and see what comparison ... we can make as to its inhabitants with those in Mars a strange looking lot of people, very dark in color. They seem to be very intelligent yet not altogether like our friends on earth. They are more like the animal in shape (Do they stand upright?) Oh yes, ... (Can you describe the inhabitants more closely?) Ah yes we see these people as it were half man half animal yet wonderfully advanced with their inventions (What are the canals in Mars?) I have described the roads, walks, the icebergs..."

On Venus

(sitter Professor Newbold): "You mean then that Venus is passing through a stage analogous to the carboniferous era on the earth?"
(Piper control "Sir Walter Scott"): "I do, only it is more perfect and real at this stage. Birds, insects and flowers grow in this atmosphere only when the time comes for the flowers to decay they simply droop, wither and fall, then immediately others spring up and fill their places. Now we stop for a moment and wish that we could remain here for always, yet we are not satisfied, we long to see more."

On the Sun

(Newbold): "Sir Walter, is the sun all fire, or has it a solid core ?"
("Scott"): "The word is not familiar to me, sir. Oh There is a solid body, sir, which I am now going to take you to see. We feel destined to reach this foundation i.e. you desire to do so. Well now we move on towards this fire, now reach its borders and notwithstanding the extreme heat we pass through it and we find ourselves upon a solid bed of hot clay or sand. This is caused by gravity understand where we are we have now reached the limit, we find it very warm and deserted like a deserted island. We wish to find its inhabitants if there are any i.e. if it has any. Now we see what we term monkeys, dreadful looking creatures, black extremely black, very wild. We find they live in caves which are made in the sand or mud, clay etc. Now, sir for that I will be obliged to discontinue our journey until some future time."

[Michael Prescott]

Those are very good points, doubter. I think it's clear that mediumship consists of a large element of (usually unconscious) confabulation. This, of course, doesn't explain the veridical information that does come through.

The simplest explanation is one offered by Arthur J. Ellison in his book "Science and the Paranormal." Ellison characterizes the subconscious mind, or at least the active part of it, as "George," which is the nickname given to the automatic pilot on airplanes. As Ellison sees it, George is somewhat distinct from our waking conscious identity. George is loyal, trusting, dogged, and not very bright. He will believe whatever you tell him, and will follow any instructions as best he can. If a hypnotist (bypassing the conscious, critical mind) tells George that he is a chicken, George will act like a chicken. If George believes he is experiencing the wounds of Christ, he will manifest stigmata. If George believes that all dogs are dangerous, he will generate a phobia about dogs, which the conscious mind will be hard-pressed to overcome.

In mediumship, George is fully involved. He has access to the world of the collective unconscious, which is essentially the spirit world, and he can bring through spirit communications. But when asked to do something that requires confabulation, he can do that too. Remember, he does whatever he is told, and he is clever but not wise. Asked to describe an extracorporeal trip to Mars, he will freely invent one. Asked to communicate with "Bessie Beals," who never existed, he will invent Bessie. Perhaps George even invents the spirit guides themselves - Phinuit, Feda, various American Indian figures. (Or maybe not; I don't know what's going on with spirit guides.)

Ellison went further than this, promulgating monistic idealism. I don't think I would go that far. Lengthy excerpts from his book can be read here:

http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2007/04/a_world_of_idea.html

[Michael Prescott]

By the way, it might be asked: if George is so smart, why do we need the spirit hypothesis at all? Why can't all mediumistic communications be confabulations crafted by George?

I don't recall if Arthur Ellison addressed this question directly, though he may have. In any case, my answer is: I don't think George is all that smart. I think he is sort of like a computer connected to the Internet – he has access to an enormous amount of information, but very little brain power or common sense of his own. If he has to confabulate in order to produce the simulation of a personality, it usually isn't very convincing. In fact, it can seem downright ridiculous, like the tongue-tied William Shakespeares and philosophically inept Aristotles that show up in some séances. As I said above, even the more preposterous spirit guides may be George assuming a guise that, in his naïveté, he regards as "spiritual."

Often these unconvincing personas are blamed on "low-level spirits," but I think George may be the culprit more often than not. His intentions are not malign, and he is not really trying to trick us; he is just doing what he thinks is expected of him. He has little or no moral sense and basically just exists to carry out instructions - again, like a computer.

On the other hand, I very much doubt that George would be capable of transforming himself into, say, Patience Worth, who combined impressive literary talent, genuine creativity, and sly wisdom. I also doubt that George could successfully simulate the personality of somebody's loved one – a person who was known intimately by the sitter. After all, if he was that talented, then why couldn't he do it all the time, and spare us the unconvincing impersonations?

[Ray]

Michael,

I am currently reading Geraldine Cummings The Road to Immortality and the purported communication from Myers more or less states that the mind of the unconscious medium always influences the communications. Now one could also argue that this was coming from Geraldine Cummings mind as an excuse...who knows?

[Michael Prescott]

In one of those Cummins/Myers books, there's a long passage about a stage of physical incarnation that takes place inside stars - the Realm of Flame, I think "Myers" calls it. It's very poetic, but it didn't strike me as too credible. It may be an example of unconscious confabulation in Cummins' own text.

Yet I don't think all of her writings can be dismissed that way. Most parts of the "Myers" books are much more convincing, while another of her books, "Swan on a Black Sea," may be the most impressive channeled document ever produced in terms of capturing the deceased individual's personality and recording obscure but verifiable details of her life.

[doubter]

In Chapters X and XI of Cummins' Beyond Human Personality the Sun and the stars are described as being composed of two unique kinds of atoms, each different from "terrestrial atoms": first, "the radiant solar atom, responsible for the light and heat of the sun, the material out of which the bodies of solar men are made", and "the heavy solar atom, of a liquid character, constituting the center of the sun and stable stars". As noted, the channelled Myers claims that Man in one level of spiritual existence inhabits the Sun, as "the solar race of men". In fact all of the planets are supposed to have been or to be in the future inhabited. Another tidbit: Jupiter is supposed to have 8 moons. This is the knowledge of 1935. Now we know there are at least 63.

So, the channelled information from "F.W.H. Myers" that relates to science is fantasy built on a little knowledge of physics and astronomy circa the early 1930s, and is contradictory to now known scientific fact.

Unfortunately it would seem to be reasonable to extend this kind of explanation to much of the "spiritual wisdom" of the other parts of the "F.W.H. Myers" communications. The teachings could perhaps have been derived from the many spiritualist books that Cummins was exposed to, so that her channelings reflected a certain train of thought prevalent in her circles in the 1920s and 1930s. At least this is a hypothesis. Of course even if this is the case it doesn't establish that the channelled spiritual philosophy isn't closer to the truth than most.

[Michael Prescott]

There are similar problems with the "scientific" parts of Kardec's "Spirits' Book."

[Ray]

You're right doubter every time I am about to cast off the shackles and proclaim survival is 100 percent certain I am drawn back by such inconsistencies. Very frustrating but then again that is me needing to know with 100 certainty and it is my psychological hang up

[Art]

"You're right doubter every time I am about to cast off the shackles and proclaim survival is 100 percent certain I am drawn back by such inconsistencies." - Ray
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But there is a connection between NDE's and the holographic universe theory and quantum physics that no one has ever been able to adequately explain away to me. I find this connection very evidential.

[nbtruthman]

Michael, "doubter" is plagiarizing me and several others most recently...

"So, the channelled information from "F.W.H. Myers" that relates to science is fantasy built on a little knowledge of physics and astronomy circa"

from

http://bit.ly/14rchBe

He's "forests" once again is my bet.

[Michael Prescott]

Let's see if doubter can explain this. His comments, in general, have been of high quality. (Of course if he's just been quoting other people without attribution, the quality is second-hand.)

[doubter]

I use the alternate name nbtruthman on the mind-energy forum, and saw nothing wrong with using a few of my own words again, rather than composing new words to express the same thoughts.

Here "forests" impersonates me in order to make trouble. It seems there is no limit to the misinformation and deception "forests" will resort to.

[Michael Prescott]

I checked, and found that nbtruthman's comments originate from the same IP address as doubter's - except for nbtruthman's latest comment, which comes from an IP address not used before on this blog. So yes, it was someone (presumably Forests) making trouble again.