Miscellaneous meanderings

Lately I've been noodling around with the idea of doing a series of blog posts on R. Craig Hogan's 2008 book Your Eternal Self, a sort of primer on evidence for dualism and immortality, which I briefly reviewed when it came out. There are several reasons why this book would seem like a logical choice for such a series. For one thing, it's aimed at a general audience and does not get bogged down in discussions of super psi, philosophical conundrums, and endless skeptical debating points. For another, the complete text has been put online by the author, so anyone can follow along even without buying the book (though I'm sure the author would appreciate it if you did buy a copy).

Anyway, I'm not sure if I'll go through with this idea or not, but I was on R. Craig Hogan's website today, checking it out, when I noticed a couple of things of interest.

First, Hogan has come out with a new book that seems to be a follow-up to Induced After-Death Communication, which he coauthored with Dr. Alan Botkin. I found that book extremely interesting, inasmuch as it detailed a new therapeutic method to help patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Botkin found that about 70% of these patients could be greatly helped, even cured entirely, if they were placed in a light trancelike state and encouraged to get in touch with their deceased loved ones.

The new book, Guided Afterlife Connections, written by Hogan and Rochelle Wright, discusses an offshoot of Botkin's method. According to the writeup, it is possible for a trained "facilitator" to place the patient into communication with a deceased loved one and obtain significant relief from long-standing emotional problems. From what I can tell, the basic method is the same as that used by Botkin, but it's always interesting to see new case histories and further developments in the technique.

Anything that makes it easier and more commonplace to have such experiences may prove helpful in advancing our spiritual understanding. In this respect, practical applications such as IADCs are perhaps the most promising area of research right now. NDEs are wonderful, but relatively few people have them, and unless you're going to emulate the characters in Flatliners (definitely not a good idea!), NDEs cannot be delivered on demand.

In fairness, though, I should point out that one commenter on my post about Botkin said he had undergone an IADC session with one of Botkin's colleagues and was unimpressed. His first comment is here. Craig Hogan responds at length to that comment and others here. 

Another book listed on Hogan's website that caught my eye is called The Fun of Dying. Written by Roberta Grimes, it describes the dying process from a spiritualist perspective. How often are the words "fun" and "dying" seen together? On the basis of the title alone, this one might be worth a read! 

Comments

[Bruce Siegel]

Michael, thanks for telling us about Craig Hogan's (relatively) new book. I just read an excerpt from it on Amazon, and what I've seen so far looks intriguing. Like you, I've been impressed with Botkin's work, so I think I'll pick up this new study.

By the way, I just read Hogan's long comment linked to above. Quite a rich article in itself! I guessed he understands that making a good impression on your blog is an important marketing move. :o)

[Leo]

Anyone is interested in the amazon discussion by Metalhead on life after death v.s super psi discussion you can go here.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R1TN03OT1GZ1M1/ref=cm_cr_rev_detup_redir?_encoding=UTF8&asin=1908733225&cdForum=Fx2BXVUZHV2PATQ&cdPage=5&cdThread=Tx1WS987BIFMCXE&newContentID=Mx2XJOGAIN0JY54&newContentNum=49&store=books#Mx1OUTLR4XPORNR

[John]

Quote"NDEs are wonderful, but relatively few people have them, and unless you're going to emulate the characters in Flatliners (definitely not a good idea!), NDEs cannot be delivered on demand."Quote

Well, I don't know if relatively few people have them. Also, there are probably a lot that go unreported.

Pim Van Lommel suggested that in this interview on Skeptiko:

http://www.skeptiko.com/pim-van-lommel-transformed-by-near-death-experience-research/

He said that, in a conference on NDE's at a university hospital, a doctor said that it was all nonsense, and he didn't believe a word of it. Then, a lady got up, and said that she was one of his patients who had an NDE, and that he (the doc) would be the last one she would tell.

BTW, great blog. I have read through a lot of different threads. The topics and the conversations are pretty top-notch. Keep up the good work.

[doubter]

It seems suspicious to me that with IADC the departed soul just appears, presumably regardless of how long dead, whatever its current state of consciousness, wherever it has gone and is now doing, etc. And apparently there is instant forgiveness regardless of the circumstances.

The IADC phenomenon looks to me like it is related to past life regression therapy, in that probably what is really happening is the deep unconscious or subliminal mind trying to heal itself by seizing on whatever suggestions are offered by a therapist. The patient comes to the therapist for help for the problem. The therapist offers a worked-out theory, such as that a particular eye movement technique induces a state of consciousness in which healing can take place through summoning a deceased person for communication (or that hypnotic regression to a key past life event will release the trauma's effects in the present life). The therapist's induction method then gives an excuse for some level of the deep psyche to relieve the distress along with the confabulating or generating of the sort of experience expected from the therapy.

If this hypothesis that it is really the subliminal mind in operation is anything like the truth then it would not be surprising if Hogan, Botkin and others would find that in addition to IADC a number of different related techniques would also seem to work in healing psychological problems. Moody's psychomanteum (mirror gazing) seems to be related. It also would be expected that it wouldn't work very well with people who are not very suggestible and who know a lot about the subject and are very rational, left-brain oriented. I don't know if there is any research on this aspect.

The other side of the coin is that Botkin claims that suggestion by the therapist, at least during the actual induction, prevents the phenomenon from occurring rather than enhancing it. And a few cases where there was verifiable information transferred previously unknown to the patient seem to indicate there was actual communication with the deceased. And apparently there are shared IADCs. So it's the usual tension between desire for certainty and the complexity of the real world.

[[email protected]]

Off topic, my grandmother died on Saturday during the early morning hours. She would have been 100 in September. My mom woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep which is unusual for her. She'd like to think there was a connection.

Best to all of you,
J9

[Michael Prescott]

Sorry to hear about your grandmother, Janine. It's always hard to lose someone who has been part of your life, even if she has reached the age of 99.

[[email protected]]

Thanks, Michael.

[Rebekah Maccaby]

Thank you for the Ayn Rand post I stumbled across. The next time someone tries to convince me her work isn't utter garbage, I will say "So, do you also think sociopathy is the highest moral state for human beings?"