Such stuff as dreams are made on

The current edition (Vol.77, No. 912) of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research includes a generally positive review of Michael Tymn's book Resurrecting Leonora Piper – a book I liked a lot. The reviewer, Alan Gauld, is best known for his meticulous study Mediumship and Survival, which takes a close look at some of the best documented mediums and examines the competing theories of spirit communication and super-psi (or super-ESP).

Although Gauld likes Tymn's book in many respects, he does object that it doesn't deal with the "the quite numerous cases in which one of the best-evidenced and most plausible communicators claims to have met with one of the most implausible ones and to be much impressed by him, thus tying the genuineness or otherwise of the two together."

As an example, he tells the story of Dean Bridgman Connor, a young man who was reported to have died in Mexico. After his father dreamed that Dean was still alive, Mrs. Piper was brought into the case, "with the result that for a good part of 1896 agents of the family were guided by Phinuit and G.P. [two of Mrs. Piper's spirit guides] from hospital to hospital and prison to prison in the south of Mexico seeking but always supposedly just missing the elusive Dean. Other spirits were co-opted into the search. Meanwhile the Piper controls in Boston repeatedly assured Dean's relatives that he was still alive. This story unfolded over many sittings, mostly still unpublished. But the following year an enterprising and level-headed journalist who took up the case was able to prove conclusively that Dean had died as originally reported …"

Not only was the entire chase a waste of time, but some of the spirits who allegedly participated lacked all credibility. One of them was announced to be Julius Caesar, still clad in his "helmet, armor and sword," though spelling his name Caezar in written communications. Gauld asks, "Under such circumstances could any of these interlinked communicators possibly be supposed 'genuine'?" If "Caezar" was a fictional persona of Mrs. Piper's subconscious, couldn't G.P. (George Pellew) be equally fictional? Yet Pellew is often cited as one of the best-attested discarnate figures to come through Mrs. Piper's mediumship. 

It's a fair point. On the face of it, the whole story certainly does sound like an absurd confabulation, or, at best, like super-psi run amok. And the same could be true of many of the personalities that crop up in mediumship - especially the spirit controls used by trance mediums. Many of them do seem "preposterous" (Gauld's description of Mrs. Piper's "Imperator") and silly - like Mrs. Piper's early spirit control "Chlorine," supposedly an American Indian girl, or Mrs. Leonard's flighty spirit control "Feda," or the innumerable Indian chiefs, buccaneers, and notable historical figures who appear in the record. 

All of them could be no more than false personas created by the medium's subconscious. But in light of some of the things we've been discussing recently on this blog, another possibility presents itself.

If we assume that the self consists of pure awareness that is in some way entangled with a particular information matrix, then there seems to be no reason why Imperator or any of the others could not begin as an idea – a sort of thought-form – and then acquire autonomy as awareness became attached to that thought-form. This notion, by the way, is consistent with the channeled material attributed to Jane Roberts's Seth. (I believe it has also been suggested by Matt Rouge in some of his comments here.)

In other words, the line of demarcation between an authentic "spirit" and a "subpersonality" of the medium may not be as clear-cut as we would like to think. The subpersonality, given sufficient substance by the accretion of detail, and serving as a point of attraction for the I-thought of pure awareness, might possibly become a "spirit" in its own right.

Perhaps something like this happened in the famous case of Philip, "the imaginary ghost." As recounted by Owen and Sparrow in Conjuring Up Philip, a group of Canadian experimenters invented a wholly imaginary historical figure named Philip, then sat in séances until an entity purporting to be Philip showed up, announcing himself by raps and table movements. The phenomena were reported over a number of sessions and were documented by multiple witnesses. At one point, one of the sitters rather recklessly informed Philip (with whom the sitters were communicating via a system of raps) that he was merely a fictional persona; the raps abruptly ceased, and it took a sustained effort to get them started again.

Adherents of the super-psi theory naturally cite the Philip case as good evidence that so-called spirits may be only manifestations of the collective unconscious of the sitters. Spiritualists counter that the entity calling itself Philip may have been a low-level, earthbound spirit attracted to the séances, just as mischievous spirits are said to be drawn to Ouija boards.

The thought-form idea offers another explanation. Perhaps Philip began as a thought-form generated by the collective minds of the sitters, but at some point acquired a degree of autonomy as the I-thought was attracted to it. In this case, Philip was both a thought-form and a spirit, or perhaps he inhabited a borderland between the two states.

The same might be true not only of Imperator, Rector, and the other rather high-flown spirit controls who dominated Mrs. Piper's later séances, but also of the enigmatic Dr. Phinuit, whose earthly existence could never be verified despite a search of the historical records. Perhaps other spirit controls, such as Chlorine and Feda also began as thought-forms and acquired reality as they developed.

It's interesting in this connection to note some early communications purportedly from the deceased F.W.H. Myers, as described by physicist and psychical investigator Oliver Lodge in his 1909 book The Survival of Man. Lodge quotes "Myers" as complaining about some earlier seances:  

I could not say it, but they were translating like a schoolboy does his first lines of Virgil - so terribly confused and inaccurate. But somehow I could not help it. It was not me communicating, yet I saw it going on ...

The medium's spirit control then explained to Lodge:

He [Myers] said it was not he, but neither was it fraud. He does not want you to stop the phenomenon, he wants to study it. You are not to say it was wrong and get it stopped. He likes to watch the somnambulistic thing at work. It is not he that is doing it, and yet he is looking on. He does not see how it is worked, but he finds this more interesting than the genuine communications. He did not rattle the curtains either ... but it was not cheating, and he does not want you to make them think that they are cheats. He does not know how it is worked, but he is studying and he thinks it will help a great deal if he can understand how the cheating things that are not cheats are done ...

He says he is finding out how honest non-phenomena are to be accounted for. Apparently dishonest phenomena are phenomena of extreme [interest] apart from the spirit which purports to be communicating. [Emphases added.]

Is it possible that Myers, who was well known to the investigators and mediums, existed in part as a thought-form in their minds, and that this thought-form acquired a degree of autonomy, thus "becoming" a sort of pseudo-Myers or Myers doppelgänger, while the real Myers looked on in helpless fascination?

Perhaps there's no truth to any of this. It certainly could sound like special pleading - a far-fetched notion intended to explain away discrepancies in mediumistic communications. Still, there's a certain imaginative appeal (at least) in the notion that we can spin off our subpersonalities into autonomous children, who then go out into the world and leave us, their parents, behind.

And of course, it all raises the question: Are we the same kind of spin-offs? Did we ourselves begin as thought-forms, and acquire a personal identity only when we had achieved a certain level of reality?

It's enough to make us think that Shakespeare's Prospero was right: 

                                   We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on; and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep. 

Comments

[no one]

Just curious - Can we be sure that the level headed journalist actually proved that Dean was dead? Is the evidence very strong and convincing (you know I don't trust journalists at all)?

Not that it matters much to me, personally. I am realizing that awareness abhors a vacuum. If there's a real spirit out there wanting to communicate, a gifted medium will make contact and pass the message along. However, if the real spirit is not available for some reason, the consciousness of the medium and the sitters will create one - sometimes convincingly with super psi and/or PK and sometimes by purely meaningless confabulation.

One of the best ideas - from an explanatory standpoint - that was ever proposed on this blog is that of the "functional entity".

[no one]

What I'm thinking is that there is only one mind and we are all functional entities arising from it. We can create new functional entities in the same way we, ourselves, were created. This is a little disconcerting, but I think it is pretty much how it is.

[Michael Prescott]

Here's another summary of the Dean Bridgman Conner case:

http://tinyurl.com/jvsxbrk

The author offers a possible explanation for the spirit controls' fallibility, in terms of the trancelike, half-asleep state that controls are said to enter in order to interface with mediums.

Here's a book about the case, called "The Quest for Dean Bridgman Conner":

http://tinyurl.com/k4zxc4e

This book appears to have been written by the journalist in question.

Both books are available as free downloads; the second one in particular would give a lot of detailed info, for those who are interested. (I'll try to give "The Quest ..." a read when I have the time.)

[Michael Prescott]

"What I'm thinking is that there is only one mind and we are all functional entities arising from it. We can create new functional entities in the same way we, ourselves, were created."

That's essentially what I'm suggesting, too.

[Art]

"What I'm thinking is that there is only one mind and we are all functional entities arising from it." - no one
----------------------------

That's the message many near death experiencers bring back also.

excerpt from Michelle M's NDE:
"I remember understanding the others here.. as if the others here were a part of me too. As if all of it was just a vast expression of me. But it wasn't just me, it was .. gosh this is so hard to explain.. it was as if we were all the same. As if consciousness were like a huge being. The easiest way to explain it would be like all things are all different parts of the same body."
http://www.nderf.org/NDERF/NDE_Experiences/michelle_m%27s_nde.htm

[no one]

"That's essentially what I'm suggesting, too."

That's what I thought.

I'm still interested the mechanics of what keeps a functional entity glued together as such. I guess Myers was intrigued by the same question.

[Cyrus]

This seems like an interesting theory on the origin of spirits. They exist in a persons dreamlike imagination and then graduate from abstract to physical form, then physical form to mature spirit.

The problem with this theory is that we tend to imagine idealized people, over the top characters, absurdly evil characters, etc - read any work of fiction (right Michael??) i sense there is such thing as old and new souls, and not characters born with pre existing traits like this.

There would be a lot more Julius Caesars (like the medium dreamt up) and imaginary, funky people running around if this were true.

[Barbara]

A very good post. The discipline of physical reality would be required to bring thought-imagined spirits into line. Without it, they would have to feed on other spirits with a firmer centre of being or wander terrified and vulnerable in the void.

[Elevated]

In his book “Psychics, Prophets and Mystics: Receiving Information from Paranormal Sources”, Jon Klimo discusses so-called channeled subpersonalities including Seth and Ramtha, and suggests 85% of the information comes straight from the personal unconscious of the individual in question; similarly, in cases of different voices coming through a medium in séances. He also suggests that unintegrated subpersonalities are responsible for our artistic talents.

What cannot be accounted for as being already part of us is speculated as coming to us from external sources (perhaps higher selves as Ken Wilber has it). We are not unitary, and it is reasonable to believe that any higher self would also have to be multiple – we might access the personality and archetype we need from the net of Indra according to our state of development and our environmental needs.

Wilber himself asserts that Atman is ultimately One Being, but this is surely illogical in terms of any meaningful manifestation – multiplicity is unavoidably the result of self-expression and in any given environment, apparent consistency of individuality in an evolved, sentient being would surely have to be by the domination of some of its personalities by the fittest one.

As for the Philip tulpa you mention, it gets much worse that this, doesn’t it? Terry Pratchett’s “Small Gods” for instance, is a satire which demonstrates only too well just how gods proliferate and are sustained by those who believe in them.

[Barbara]

Nice one, Elevated.

No one - there's a forum for functional entities or tulpae:
http://articles.tulpa.info/

[doubter]

"Here's a book about the case, called "The Quest for Dean Bridgman Conner":

http://tinyurl.com/k4zxc4e

This book appears to have been written by the journalist in question."

I scanned the book. The reporter Anthony Philpott comes across as a keen observer, very familiar with and by no means unfriendly to the work of the Society for Psychical Research. He was initially convinced of the validity of Mrs. Piper's communications on Dean Bridgeman Conner, but on further research in Mexico he concluded that all of her information about Conner being kidnapped was false, but interlarded with considerable amounts of verifiable information derived by telepathy from the family and friends of Conner and from the mind of Dr. Richard Hodgson. The reporter felt the episode only made a case for telepathy and unconscious confabulation, not survival.

Apparently Hodgson put an awful lot of faith in Piper's communications on this case, and was crushed when it fell apart. In his desire for proof of spiritism Hodgson lost any objectivity as a researcher, according to Philpott. Hodgson made some accusations against the reporter, which he later retracted according to Philpott.

From page 242 of the book:

"I talked with the people who had known him (Conner) and worked with him, with those who had tended him in his illness, with the woman who had closed his eyes in death, with one of the men who had carried the body to the grave, and with the superintendent of the cemetary who saw that the grave was closed on the mortal remains of Dean Bridgeman Conner.

Then I faced the professional men who had examined the hair and teeth (of the exhumed body) and broke down their testimony (that the body was not that of Conner)."

[Matt Rouge]

Great post, Michael! I am constantly in awe of your posts. I could not write a blog on this topic at this high level of quality, consistency, and frequency.

||"What I'm thinking is that there is only one mind and we are all functional entities arising from it. We can create new functional entities in the same way we, ourselves, were created."

That's essentially what I'm suggesting, too.||

I think this is correct.

Averroes (Ibn Rushd) had great insights in this area, I believe (http://www.iep.utm.edu/ibnrushd/#H7)

||A number of other problems remain in Ibn Rushd’s doctrine of the soul and intellect. For instance, if the material intellect is one and eternal for all humans, how is it divided and individualized? His immediate reply was that division can only occur within material forms, thus it is the human body that divides and individualizes the material intellect.||

and...

||In the Tahafut, Ibn Rushd speaks of the soul as a faculty that comes to resemble the focus of its intention, and when its attention focuses more upon eternal and universal knowledge, it become more like the eternal and universal. As such, when the soul perfects itself, it becomes like our intellect. This, of course, has impact on Ibn Rushd’s doctrine of the afterlife. Leaman contends that Ibn Rushd understands the process of knowing as a progression of detachment from the material and individual to become a sort of generalized species, in which the soul may survive death. This contradicts traditional religious views of the afterlife, which Ibn Rushd determines to be valuable in a political sense, in that it compels citizens to ethical behavior.||

[Michael Prescott]

I've now read most of Philpott's book and agree with Doubter's assessment and summary. It's an interesting read, though padded out with some rather tedious travelogue material about the colorful characters and scenic vistas Philpott encountered in Mexico (I skimmed or skipped over those passages).

It certainly seems clear that Mrs. Piper's communications in this case, while having some paranormal components, were off-base in their continuing insistence that Conner was alive. Exactly how to explain this in light of her undoubtedly correct communications in other cases is an open question.

[no one]

Cyrus, "There would be a lot more Julius Caesars (like the medium dreamt up) and imaginary, funky people running around if this were true."

I don't think so because I think the creation of a functional entity depends on the intent of the creator. If we don't realize the ability to create these things then we are going to be focusing our intent on very normal personalities. If we think we are going to be contacting our deceased Uncle George we are holding in our thoughts the image of old Uncle George and the entity we create will be very much like him. Theoretically, we could focus on a Count Dracula or a Superman and create entities with those personalities and attributes, but who goes into a sitting looking to do that; or even believing/knowing it possible?

Some investigators hold that demon possessions are a result of the focus of creational intent (quite subconsciously) being placed on the demonic - meaning that the possessed person and/or those tied to her has created a functional entity of a demonic nature that has taken over her body/mind. I am thinking this is probably, indeed, what happens.

" Leaman contends that Ibn Rushd understands the process of knowing as a progression of detachment from the material and individual to become a sort of generalized species, in which the soul may survive death."

Castaneda echoes this perspective; only a "man of knowledge" can achieve life after physical death by virtue of having learned to fluidly shift his awareness across all bands of reality within the human realm of potential.

My personal perspective on all of this has evolved dramatically over the past few months. I am no longer so sure that mediums - good ones/non-fraudulent ones - are talking to actual distinct disincarnate entities. Or they are, but they aren't.

I am thinking that our way of understanding this stuff is too dichotomous and too mechanical. Functional entities, super psi, spirits of the deceased, persistent information storage in some sort of universal database may all be useful analogies that are each accurate enough and yet not accurate enough at the same time.

The problem starts with how we understand and think about ourselves. That concept that extents to how we think about everything else.

We are always erecting dichotomies - real/not real, me/not me, etc where there really are not such clear cut divisions.

[N/A]

>> If "Caezar" was a fictional persona of Mrs. Piper's subconscious, couldn't G.P. (George Pellew) be equally fictional? <<

Or, some "spirits" like to lie? Why is this possibility rarely mentioned? Why assume that all spirits are "nice"? Look at all of the living manipulative a-holes. Why couldn't they stay that way (for a while) after death?

[Anthony McCarthy]

I don't usually pay much attention to spirit mediums but it seems to me kind of odd to suspect that, if there are spirits, that they would all be perfectly 1. honest, 2. accurate, 3. consistently accurate or honest. Some might be, as has been reported, malevolent, wishing and trying to cause harm. Some might be like blog trolls playing some kind of game that we don't perceive. It's in the rare and, unquestionably, instances in which information is given that can not possibly be explained any other ways that evidence for this can be obtained. The misses could be due to many other things but, when the hits couldn't be explained any other ways, force a conclusion that something else is happening.

[Matt Rouge]

no one,

Great comment!

I think the "spirit = information" perspective can be relevant here.

I think sometimes mediums are accessing the Akashic Records *about* the person but are not talking to the person. Is this like super-psi? Absolutely. But the error of super-psi lies in not understanding the spirit AS information.

There is a lot of information about a person that is *not* the person.

For example, Michael Prescott is a living, breathing person. But he is not the only source of information about himself. I can read his books, read his blog, talk to his neighbors, perhaps even look back in time to access things he said in the past.

That is why the one spirit mentioned above could be confused about the communication that was going on supposedly with him. The medium was probably accessing information about him that was mostly accurate but was nevertheless not having a conversation with him.

Similarly about "Cezar." The medium could be looking at information *about* J. Caesar but not actually talking to him.

The line between *about* and *to* can be extremely thin, I believe, per no one's comment.

Of course, there are also pure functional entities, such (as seems to be) the Phinuit control.

[Matt Rouge]

I need to correct myself:

||There is a lot of information about a person that is *not* the person.||

It *is* the person but not the person qua conscious (or trans-conscious) entity.

The things I said in the past *are* me but not what I am saying currently. Keep in mind that karma literally means "action" in Sanskrit. That which is *about* us *is* us in one sense but not necessarily in all senses.

[steve em]

The Buddhist perspective on self is fairly well stated in the following quote

"Buddha declared that it is neither the exact same person nor a completely different one who experiences the results of karma. Just as one cannot step into exactly the same river twice, since the flowing water is always changing from one moment to the next, so too are we never exactly the same person, because the conditions and processes which constitute our lives are also always changing from moment to moment. On the other hand, neither are we completely different, because, like the stream whose currents fall into consistent patterns depending upon the consistency of their supporting conditions, so too the continuity of individual "mind-streams" depends upon the continuity of their causes and conditions."

William S. Waldron (2007-03-16). The Buddhist Unconscious: The alaya-Vijñana in the Context of Indian Buddhist Thought (