But ... how?

My post on Michael Shermer's anomalous experience has prompted the question: how can "the other side" possibly coordinate such episodes? What is the method?

I don't pretend to have any kind of definitive answer to this question. But I can hazard a couple of guesses, at least in regard to an experience of my own.

Shortly after my mother passed away, I was talking to myself out loud – a habit of mine – and I said (paraphrasing from memory), "I think life after death can be proven by the standards of civil court, even if not by the standards of criminal court. In other words, it can be proven by a preponderance of the evidence, even if not beyond reasonable doubt."

A couple of hours later, I had to change the batteries in my TV's remote control. To see if the new batteries worked, I used the remote to turn on the TV. I had no idea what channel would come on or what programming might be scheduled for that time of day. The show that appeared was a soap opera, and the first words I heard were those of an actor portraying an attorney. He was telling his client that there's a difference between the standards of evidence in civil and criminal cases. In civil cases, you need to prove your case only by a preponderance of the evidence, while in criminal court, you must prove your case beyond a reasonable doubt …

Although this could, of course, be dismissed as a chance coincidence, I found it very meaningful. Other anomalous events occurred during the same period.

But how could it possibly work? Are we supposed to believe that the "spirits" arranged for the television show to feature that particular dialogue exchange at precisely that moment?

Well, here are two notions about how it might have happened. The first does not involve "spirits" at all. It's simply a matter of psi – in this case, premonition. If I had a subconscious premonition that I was going to see that dialogue exchange in a couple of hours, it might have filtered through my subconscious and emerged as a thought about life after death, a subject that was very much on my mind anyway.

The second possible explanation is similar, but it involves "the other side." Here we have to assume that those who have crossed over can see at least a little bit into the future. Personally, I think that our whole idea of the "present moment" needs to be revised somewhat. It appears that most people have at least a subliminal impression of events that will happen one or two seconds in the future. What we think of as "the present" may be a somewhat elastic bubble of time encompassing the immediate past and the immediate future – perhaps a total of two or three seconds in all. Though we are consciously aware only of this immediate split second, on an unconscious or subliminal level we seem to be aware of more than that.

Conceivably, those who have crossed over have an expanded bubble of time and can see an hour or two into the future. I doubt they can see much further; long-term projections made by those on the other side seem to be generally inaccurate. But shorter term predictions may be more reliable. After all, there is no shortage of people who say that they received a supernatural nudge or warning that saved them from danger a few seconds, a few minutes, or even a couple of hours later. As just one example, the writer Dean Koontz has said* that he received a mysterious phone call the day before his mentally ill father attacked him with a kitchen knife. The phone call consisted of the warning "Be careful of your father," and the voice on the line sounded like that of his dead mother.

If we assume that those on the other side can see a little bit into the future, then we might imagine that somebody knew I was going to overhear those particular lines of dialogue on the soap opera later that day. Then it would be, perhaps, not an impossible task to subtly inject the same line of thought into my subconscious and prod it in the direction of conscious awareness.

Notice that in neither of these cases would it be necessary to actually affect the content of the television show itself. It's a matter of anticipating that I would happen to see that part of the show, and then using this random event as the basis for a synchronicity.

I realize that this conjecture does not answer the question of how Michael Shermer's radio could have suddenly started playing when it was apparently completely inoperable. Truthfully, I have no idea. I do recall reading an account of an EVP researcher who disabled a radio for a public demonstration and then received apparent communications over it, even though the device should have been rendered useless. But I haven't been able to track down the story online. And even if I could find it, it wouldn't explain the mechanism that was used. Conceivably, some kind of ability to directly influence the electromagnetic spectrum (as may have been the case in Koontz's phone call and other "phone calls from the dead") could be involved.

===

* The relevant comments by Koontz are found in the fourth-to-last paragraph of the linked article.

Comments

[Claudio from Italy]

Michael, you was referring to the famous experiment done under controlled conditions, of Marcello Bacci, from Grosseto (Italy). Here is an article of mine taken from my website, hope the ol'good google translator will help. May be there is more on "Il Laboratorio" FBook's page, because the experimenters work there, in Bologna.
https://it-it.facebook.com/pages/Laboratorio-Interdisciplinare-di-Ricerca-Biopsicocibernetica/105958502816386
About Shermer's ADC: what if the "spirits" put energy into electronic devices and our neurons, too? A transistor and a cerebral cell are both electronic switches... Just a a tought of mine.
-----------------------------------
Article on Marcello Bacci.
from: http://www.webalice.it/cipidoc/studio4.htm
-------------------------------------
Un eccezionale staff di Studiosi mondiali delle Transcomunicazioni Strumentali (ITC) si é riunito lo scorso 5 Dicembre2004 a Grosseto, nel laboratorio di Marcello Bacci, uno -se non il più grande- dei tanti ricercatori che studiano il fenomeno delle "Voci dall'Aldilà", balzate recentemente agli onori della cronaca, grazie al discusso film-horror "White Noise". La Dr.ssa Anabela Cardoso, il Dr Mario Salvatore Festa, il Prof. David Fontana ed il Dr Paolo Presi, hanno controllato, fotografato, filmato e registrato, tutto cio' che accadeva nel laboratorio, non riuscendo a trovare spiegazione alcuna alleLa Dr.ssa Cardoso voci che si "materializzavano" dalle vecchie radio a valvole preferite dal noto ricercatore Toscano. Bacci si occupa del fenomeno da oltre trent'anni, e, pur non essendo totalmente convinto che si tratti proprio di comunicazioni con gli "Spiriti," non ha mai abbandonato tale ricerca.

Eccezionalmente all'esperimento erano stati ammessi anche una trentina di "Amputati", soprattutto Mamme, che frequentano il Sig Bacci da sempre e che hanno ricevuto moltissimi messaggi dai loro Figli di Luce. Bacci si sintonizza sulle onde corte usando due vecchie radio, che vengono centrate sulla stessa lunghezza d'onda, in "bande" comprese fra i 7 ed i 9 Mhz, solitamente prive di stazioni trasmittenti. Mentre uno dei due apparecchi continua a trasmettere solo "rumore bianco", dall'altro si odono voci che rispondono a tono alle domande poste dai presenti e che li chiamano addirittura per nome, facendo così cadere l'ipotesi che si tratti di interferenze radio pure e semplici. Come già fatto altre volte, Bacci ha pian piano smontato le cinque valvole del vecchio ricevitore e, nonostante cio', la trasmissione non si é interrotta. I tecnici presenti, tutti di altissimo livello, non hanno trovato indizi di possibili trucchi, né lo stesso Bacci é riuscito a dare una spiegazione scientifica del fenomeno. Ad un certo punto, l'apparecchio radio, una Nordmende, Fidelio del '50, privato delle valvole, é stato addirittura spento e, nonostante la spina fosse staccata, le voci hanno continuato a farsi sentire dall'altoparlante per molti minuti.
Ai tecnici di radiofonia, vien fatto sapere che le valvole rimosse erano le due per la ricezione in FM (Tipo ECC 85) e poi successivamente, anche le tre ECH81, utilizzate dcome convertitrici AM/SW.
In tali condizioni NESSUN RADIORICEVITORE AL MONDO SAREBBE IN GRADO DI EMETTERE ALCUN SUONO!
Uno dei Ricercatori ha addirittura osservato tutti i movimenti di Bacci, rimanendo poggiato col mento sulla sua spalla per controllare, alla luce di una comune lampadina, eventuali "trucchi" da prestigiatore, senza trovare nulla di sospetto. Dopo circa una ventina di minuti dall'inizio dell'esperimento, Bacci ha esclamato "Stanno arrivando!" ed infatti dal rumore di fondo sono emerse, chiarissime, diverse voci (cinque o sei) che hanno parlato prima in Italiano, poi in Inglese e Spagnolo, rivolgendosi agli ospiti stranieri presenti. A parte qualche debole fenomeno di distorsione, le "voci" erano quasi sempre "normali" a differenza di quanto comunemente si ascolta da questo tipo di contatto, risultando intelligibili per il 70% del lungo contatto. Il tecnico Franco Santi ha anche attentamente ispezionato l'interno della radio durante la seduta, alla ricerca di possibili frodi, ma non ha trovato alcun trucco in grado di spiegare la strana trasmissione. Naturalmente la PdA sta indagando per capire per quale motivo un simile eclatante esperimento non sia stato pubblicizzato dai mass-media e nemmeno da Internet, dato che varie ricerche condotte sui più noti motori (come Google e Virgilio), non hanno dato alcun risultato positivo, almeno per quel che riguarda siti Italiani.
---------------------------
Best regards.

[Claudio from Italy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFLHom23GCo
In this video you can see Bacci.

[Kathleen]

I have no answer to how unfortunately, but back in the spiritualism heyday, I think it was pretty common that spirits were thought to be able to manipulate energy. Eventually, they could use landline phones, and now, there are accounts of them using cellular phones.

One interesting comment on the original article about the skeptic and his radio was that humid conditions made a brief circuit connection possible. But why just on that one day - June 25th - I'm sure there were many humid days to follow.

[Art]

What if there is only one consciousness and we make it happen ourselves? There is no universe that exists separate from our thoughts about it. It doesn't exist independently from us. We are somehow influencing or partially controlling the environment around us?

Or the Universe is like a fractal and one bit of consciousness breaks off or influences another "fractal" of the Universe, like a crystal growing, and that is why actors show up on TV shows soon after we think of them, and numbers that we thought of suddenly appear, and synchronicities happen so often?

Like throwing a rock in a pond ripples spread out and influence the water around them, and we see reflections of our thoughts rippling out in space-time around us. One thought influences the Universe around us and we see reflections of that thought rippling out into the Universe that we ourselves are creating?

[Jake Busey]

I love your blog and visit it daily mike but this post is just silly. A few seconds ahead, a few seconds before. It sounds like a Labrador trying to understand algebra. Just accept some things r unexplainable and enjoy the mystery and beauty of it.

[Art]

Our separateness from the Universe and everything else is an illusion. We and the Universe are one. The reason synchronicities happen is because the Universe doesn't exist separate from us.

"Although no words were exchanged in that brief eye-to-eye encounter, it seemed to me the message was clear: "So, for a moment, you see. Relax. Don't take yourself so seriously! All is well. We are forever one."
Excerpt from Dr. Taudo's transcendental experience, from Transcendental Experiences of Scientists,
http://issc-taste.org/arc/dbo.cgi?set=expom&id=00070&ss=1

[Boo boo]

I agree. We are one.

[Paul]

I think it's a very interesting post Michael. It basically answers the question I had in mind in responding to Julie's post. It's the only way I can get my head round such coincidences being manipulated.

[Julie Baxter]

"The future casts its shadow before it." - Goethe

Speaking of the future, at the age of nine years I had a psychic intimation about the way my life would unfold, and it was absolutely right. The only reference I've ever found to the kind of experience I had is the term 'information bomb' but, unfortunately, I can't remember who coined that phrase or in which book I read it. But it was exactly like that; I felt as if some kind of energy/wave containing volumes of information passed through my head in a fraction of a second and gave me a full understanding of where my life would take me and what I needed to avoid.

[Boo boo]

I think Debunking Denialism, the Vexen Crabtree blog, Silly Beliefs site, and many other skeptical websites will be ranting and raving about Michael Shermer's experience like the people on his blog. Lol

[Bruce Siegel]

"The only reference I've ever found to the kind of experience I had is the term 'information bomb' but, unfortunately, I can't remember who coined that phrase or in which book I read it.'

Julie, I've read about this sort of of experience in a number of sources. Robert Monroe comes to mind. Here's part of a conversation I just found online:

First person:

"A term created by Robert Monroe that means "Thought Balls". R.O.T.E. stands for Related Organized Thought Energy which is transferred from one soul to another."

Second person:

"I haven't experienced a rote where someone that I could see in the astral threw a rote ball at me. But, I have experienced downloads of information, or rotes while OBE. I've never known where they came from. I just always assumed they were either from my OverSoul or from Source.

"With my limited exposure to them, they seem to be experienced to me as a large volume of information that included not only the information, but the experience of the information. It's something that I can comprehend in full while OBE, but afterwards, it's way too much information for me to remember the specifics. It's like my tiny human brain just can't go there without exploding. Seriously. :shock: The biggest rote experience was of being Source, and knowing everything at once. There was no receiving of information per say, I just became. Later, it's like a dream that you know you had, that the information was important, but you can't remember the details. I can't even comprehend right now knowing everything. But, I know it happened. And, it almost fried my brain."

Is this what you're talking about?

That last part, by the way, describes what I believe to be the core mystical experience, described by NDErs and altered state journeyers like myself: becoming Source and knowing/being all that is.

It's where we're all headed! (And come from.)

[Paul]

@julie is it possible that intimation you had actually influenced the decisions you made in some way and hence shaped your life? A kind of self fulfilling prophecy?

[Luciano]

Bruce, I´d love to know more about becoming Source/God, what a wonderful experience it must be!

[Matt Rouge]

Here's my thought on how it "works."

Beings in the Afterlife are at 5D or higher, which encompasses 3D. We are not in different worlds, merely at different "levels" in the same world.

As you know from your 4D dreams, it is possible simply to think of something being a certain way, and so it will become. 5D is no different (although it is drastically different in terms of stability and vibrational purity as compared to chaotic 4D).

Our 3D world is very difficult to influence on the macro level through thought alone, but this is far from impossible. A being in 5D probably just focuses his/her thoughts on what s/he wants to change, and so it becomes. It would take more effort than in 5D, but the mechanism would essentially be the same.

Plus, I think it is easier to change things that don't violate our consensus consciousness. It is relatively easy to gain information via psi because it could be a lucky guess or intuition. It is much harder to move objects with the mind (though far from impossible, as Sandy has demonstrated) since the world doesn't believe it's possible right now. (Once macro PK became "proved," however, I think that would change drastically.)

Thus, in Shermer's radio event, the spirit would simply imagine the radio coming on with appropriate music playing. And it happens. There is no great violation of consensus consciousness, since, hey, they were trying to fix the radio and maybe it just worked for a moment.

As Bruce has noted, all is consciousness. In any dimension, the radio exists as a thoughtform of some type. It is just that in 3D the rules governing the thoughtforms are tighter than elsewhere.

[Douglas]

Julie,

As Bruce has highlighted, the first thing I thought of when I read your post were descriptions of Robert Monroe's 'ROTES', packets of energy bound up and transferred from one consciousness to another. It seems to be a common form of non-physical communication.

It has been described many times in different ways, but Monroe's description and terminology is distinctive in putting a quasi-scientific terminology around it.

On receiving a ROTE, sometimes all the information is downloaded and understood immediately. At other times, the information has to be 'unpacked' and absorbed bit by bit.

[Julie Baxter]

YES! That's exactly what I'm talking about, Bruce. It's only ever happened the once, but I somehow recognized whatever it was that was communicating with me, and it all seemed very normal and natural - albeit astonishing! I can still remember the feeling as if it happened yesterday.

At the time I was unhappy and angry about a family incident and was in the process of doing something petty but very spiteful. The information bomb (the sudden intimation) stopped me in my tracks, literally, and, to paraphrase, told me there was no need to allow myself ever to feel or behave like that because I would, in time, get virtually all I could ever wish from from life and I wouldn't even have to do anything to make it happen. Oddly enough, that's exactly how my life has panned out.

But it was more like a remembering; a being brought back to my senses if you will. In less than a second I was transported to an understanding that is wordless, timeless and infinite. I wish I could explain it better but I can't. It's trying to describe the ineffable.

@Paul: No. The events of my life have been influenced far more by the actions of others.

[Julie Baxter]

Ps: Paul, on second thoughts, I think that experience gave me the confidence to let life happen rather than trying to over-organize or control events. In as much as that is so, it did influence the shape of my life.

[Paul]

Thanks Julie.

[Julie Baxter]

"On receiving a ROTE, sometimes all the information is downloaded and understood immediately. At other times, the information has to be 'unpacked' and absorbed bit by bit."

It was understood fully and immediately, Douglas. No question whatsoever about that.

[Matt Rouge]

Julie,

That is awesome. It sounds like a message from the Higher Self to me...

[Julie Baxter]

But what/who is the Higher Self, Matt?

[Claudio from Italy]

Michael, what if "the otherside" dried the batteries of your remote control? This phenomenon it often described by many "ghostbusters". In this case, the only "synchronization" required is to calculate the exact time between the change and the phrase you had to listen to.
Only my 1 cent worth.

[Roger Knights]

The cartoon figure Mr. Natural once told his foil, trying to jog him out of his fruitless obsession with What's Going On, that "The whole universe is completely insane."

Within that frame of reference, the radio's odd behavior is no longer problematic. It even fits if the universe is mostly sane (ordered), like a deck of cards, but contains a joker that the foil (Shermer) didn't want to acknowledge previously.

[Bruce Siegel]

"Bruce, I'd love to know more about becoming Source/God, what a wonderful experience it must be!"

Thanks for raising the question, Luciano. Nothing gives me more pleasure to think about, and to try to remember.

For me, what matters most about the experience is how it *feels*. And in trying to describe that, I run into the problem of how to talk about feelings of love, joy, power, togetherness, ultimate safety, beauty, hilarity, compassion, and surprise -- all raised to the nth degree -- how to do justice to all this without seeming to exaggerate!

But the thing is, we all experience those feelings daily, at least to some degree. So there's nothing about the ultimate mystical experience that is completely foreign to any of us. Far from it!

(Boy, do I feel uncomfortable ending two consecutive paragraphs with an exclamation point. But removing either one makes me feel worse. That's what happens when you talk about stuff like this.)

[doubter]

Matt Rouge - "Thus, in Shermer's radio event, the spirit would simply imagine the radio coming on with appropriate music playing. And it happens. There is no great violation of consensus consciousness, since, hey, they were trying to fix the radio and maybe it just worked for a moment."

The radio coming on spontaneously like that does seem to violate "consensus consciousness" in that it involves some sort of highly analytic mind outside of this physical world figuring out the best engineering solution to the problem, then implementing it. An external entity paranormally exerted work and energy to physically alter some of the components and circuits of the radio. An unnatural event, where perhaps for instance a couple of faulty transistors were temporarily repaired at their base, emitter or collector junctions and/or corroded circuit board trace breaks bridged, and the tuning circuit manipulated. At the moment the radio came on it wasn't being repaired by humans - it was just sitting on a shelf.

It must have been carefully planned and was probably made possible by the radio's particular failure points happening to be temporarily repairable using minimal energy introduction from outside. Minimal energy like in the production of paranormal "raps" through the exertion of small forces to release the already-stored stress energy trapped at certain wood beam to wood beam or wood beam to nail interfaces in ceilings and walls (requiring the intelligence doing this looking into the detailed physical structure of the ceilings and walls to find the most strategic contact points).

[Bruce Siegel]

"Our separateness from the Universe and everything else is an illusion. We and the Universe are one. The reason synchronicities happen is because the Universe doesn't exist separate from us."

For me, Art's explanation is the most interesting. Here's why.

How can you read my mind? You can do it because ultimately, we are both part of the same Mind. Knowing me, is really knowing yourself at a deeper level.

It's somewhat similar with precognition. How can I know the future? Because the future is part of the larger Now. So knowing my future (or my past) is, from a spiritual perspective, as unremarkable as knowing my present.

I'm also convinced that matter is conscious, even at the molecular level. Too many mystical experiences, including my own, bear witness to that for me to doubt it.

Besides, if the universe is truly created from Source's substance (which for many of us is the core metaphysical truth), how can any part of the universe NOT be conscious?

Now I'm not saying that radios are aware of themselves *as radios*, but they are made of the same conscious stuff as you and me.

So yes--at the ultimate level of cosmic unity, you and I and Shermer's wife's grandfather, *are* that radio.

A book I'm now reading says it nicely: "God didn't create the universe. God IS the universe."

Maybe her grandfather was able to momentarily align with spiritual oneness in such a way as to empower him to make that radio play.

Maybe having an influence over an earth object, from the standpoint of a spiritual being, is like you or I lifting a finger.

Yay! Starting today, and for the next 8 days, I'm on my every-six-week break from working on DoctorKeys.com (the project that's at the heart of my retirement strategy). Gives me time to do things like participate fully in this wonderful forum.

[Luciano]

Beautiful, Bruce! Thank you so much :)

[Art]

Every once in a while the veil is lifted and we get to see the Universe the way it truly is. The illusion we live in is "torn" and we are able to catch brief glimpses of the inner workings of our Universe. On this plane we experience separateness but in the spiritual plane that separateness simply does not exist.

from Roger Ebert's final moments with his wife,

"But the day before he passed away, he wrote me a note: "This is all an elaborate hoax." I asked him, "What's a hoax?" And he was talking about this world, this place. He said it was all an illusion. I thought he was just confused. But he was not confused. He wasn't visiting heaven, not the way we think of heaven. He described it as a vastness that you can't even imagine. It was a place where the past, present, and future were happening all at once."
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/news/roger-ebert-final-moments

[irh]

The problem I have with stories like the one featuring Koontz above (whose books I happen to really enjoy, making that anecdote particularly interesting to follow up on) is that they tend to start sounding a bit more embellished, at least with regard to the of the super specific details that add depth and dimension to the experience - the more closely you look.

Consider this version of the story - published on the Psychology Today blog, that communicates the underlying idea of the experience above, but WITHOUT the specific reference to his father. (e.g. - the warning is BE CAREFUL...and *not* "Be careful of your FATHER", which is considerably different in light of the experience that followed)

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/shadow-boxing/201309/phone-call-the-dead

Also - the degree of certainty he seems to convey to one writer (Per the psychology today blog post) that it was actually the voice of his mother, is much less concrete than in the second. (the one you link to above)

In my experience (which I'm sure folks here will disagree :-) Lots of the "phone calls from the dead" style stories share this sort of inherent inconsistency, as do many other exceptional experience phenomena, insofar as you can track down their re-telling with some degree of accuracy. (in this case, both articles included "quotes" for Koontz's own words, which you would hope (or imagine) are his exact retelling of the experience without alteration - meaning he changed or added some critical details that make the story sound far more exceptional, or precognitive, or paranormal, than they would without them)

Having had some similar experiences myself that I struggle to properly contexualize, or even wonder how much of my own memory is embellished based on what I want to be true (the idea that disembodied spirits can use the telephone being one of those things :-) I do tend to try to look for inconsistencies in these sorts of re-tellings, and unfortunately....in far too many cases, they appear pretty close to the surface, no deep digging required.

[Douglas]

But what/who is the Higher Self, Matt?

Posted by: Julie Baxter

Hi Julie,

I would recommend Anthony Peake's work. He's an English researcher who has done a great job of looking into the concept of the higher self, or what he refers to as 'the Daemon'.

The term 'daemon' does not refer to anything evil. The original term was definitely referring to a benign intelligence which follows you through your life and offers guidance via hunches, dreams, or, in rare cases, direct manifestation. The Daemon, while being independent in some way, is also an aspect of the self in some way, more commonly known as the 'higher self' in today's terminology.

Most famously, Socrates had is own 'daemon' which advised him throughout his life.

The Romans had a similar concept, which they referred to as your 'genius'. The genius was your divine aspect, and again, it offered guidance, and indeed we still use the term in a related way, 'the genius of creativity' etc.

Once Christianity came along, they didn't like the idea of a daemon/genius guiding a human being instead of god. Instead they viewed the concept with suspicion, and over time the definition of 'daemon' was subverted to mean 'evil spirit' and given altogether evil connotations.

Despite this, I believe the divine part of ourselves continues to communicate with us and offer guidance as it always has, provided we listen.

Anthony Peake's 'The Daemon': http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Daemon-Guide-Extraordinary-Secret/dp/1848377215

[no one]

irh, "Having had some similar experiences myself that I struggle to properly contexualize, or even wonder how much of my own memory is embellished based on what I want to be true (the idea that disembodied spirits can use the telephone being one of those things :-)"

First, always be careful of taking what you read in the media with a grain of salt. They are sloppy, don't fact check and frequently edit to slant to whatever opinion they hold and wish to convey to the public. That different media accounts contain different versions of a story with different facts could very well be a result of any of the above.

Now, as for wishful thinking playing a role in interpretation of anomalous experiences, I think you are correct, but it's not always in the way you imply; to enhance the paranormal aspects. Quite the opposite. IMO, often people who have these experiences are impressed - maybe "shocked" is the better choice of words - with the paranormal implications when the event happens, but then later start to "remember" the event in a less than paranormal light. This, I think, is an ego defense mechanism. It's like, "Did that really happen? No. Couldn't have." and the ego mind fills in less threatening details.

[Matt Rouge]

irh,

You could be right, and depending on the person, that kind of thing can definitely happen. But for me the opposite thing is more common: I have incredible things happen to me that I forget later, or I can't recall as much detail. So instead of becoming more detailed, my stories would tend to go in the opposite direction.

doubter,

||It must have been carefully planned and was probably made possible by the radio's particular failure points happening to be temporarily repairable using minimal energy introduction from outside.||

I don't think that's how it works. I think the spirit just imagines the change or action, perhaps has to strongly will it, and the change or action follows the flow of imagining.

[Duck soup]

Personally, I believe the future is already known, I think we plan it from before we begin life but don't ask me why someone would plan a horrible life for themselves, I have no idea.
This account of a "down to earth" gardener is interesting. A figure appeared to him before he had a cardiac arrest and told him to move to the front of the building he was working behind so that someone would find him when he dropped, presumably.

http://www.thetelegram.com/News/Local/2013-10-12/article-3426660/Living-with-Death,-Part-4:-A-brush-with-the-afterlife/1?utm_content=buffer8d0c1&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Buffer

The guy is just so straightforward,he doesn't seem to be the kind of person that would make something up.

[Duck soup]

Oh and the Aware results are out tomorrow published in the Resuscitation Journal.

Gerald Woerlee will be drowning his sorrows...or not, we'll see.

[Michael Prescott]

No One and Matt, I think you're both right in saying that often we have a tendency to forget or downplay anomalous events. The book "Sittings with Eusapadia Palladino," by Everard Feilding et al., provides very good examples. (Much of it is quoted and summarized in "The Limits of Influence," by Stephen Braude.)

Personally, I've found that unless I write down a synchronicity or accurate premonition almost immediately, I will forget it. Within an hour I'll recall only that *something* unusual happened and I'd meant to write it down, but I won't be able to bring back any details. It's like being aware that I had a vivid dream, but being unable to bring it into conscious recollection.

Roger Ebert's words, delivered to his wife only a short time before he died, come back to me: "It's all an elaborate hoax." Perhaps we forget because we are not supposed to see through the illusion.

As I recall, a study of NDErs showed that even several years after their initial report, they still narrated the experience in the same way, without embellishment. OTOH, some media-hyped NDEs, such as Betty Eadie's, do seem to have been embellished and rewritten over time.

[Michael Prescott]

Regarding AWARE, I think we already know that nobody saw the targets. However, there seems to have been at least one veridical NDE in which a patient reported details that he or she should not have been able to know. Unfortunately there was no target in the room where that NDE took place.

[Duck soup]

That's true, Michael. Anyway they've been long time coming and the study is continuing indefinitely.

[Julie Baxter]

"I would recommend Anthony Peake's work."

I'm already familiar with Anthony's work, Douglas. But,somehow, I can't get comfortable with his scattergun approach.

[no one]

Matt, "I think the spirit just imagines the change or action, perhaps has to strongly will it, and the change or action follows the flow of imagining."

I really don't know, but if I had to work up a theory, I'd say that is indeed pretty much how it works on the spirit side. It would probably work and feel very similar to how it is for us when we do lucid dreaming and cause changes in our dream environment.

Experiences with deep psychedelic states, OBEs and Native American "medicine men" confirm for me that our reality - even the physical - is a lot more pliable and fluid than we normally think it is.

However, I also think that often these spirit effects are somewhat dependent on a temporary loosening of our own ego control. A death in the family, some other trauma, mediation, drugs, hypnogogic sleep states or just plane "spacing out" allow us to be more susceptible to perceiving the paranormal. So, in other words, spirits (or Spirit) may very well be attempting contact frequently, but we can only perceive that contact infrequently because our minds are not usually sufficiently open.

Sometimes, though, a spirit can knock so loudly on our door that it cannot be ignored no matter what our mindset.

BTW...Contrary to popular opinion, I do not think that "belief" directly has much to do with it; perhaps only indirectly in that one who believes will tend to not disregard or downplay the phenomenon once it has occurred. I favor technique over belief. Whether or not they are consciously aware of it, IMO people who relatively frequently have valid paranormal experiences have learned how it feels to be in tune and have learned how to use that feeling (or sense) to adjust their receiver to the right wave lengths for paranormal reception; perhaps very much at will - and, again, perhaps very much subconsciously - when they have a need to.

[Matt Rouge]

Micheal,

Yes, I had remembered you talking about how you forget your experiences. I have noticed that when I do readings for people, even if they have some big hits, I tend to forget them. I guess I get a little trancey. In certain paranormal contexts, it seems that forgetting is easier than remembering.

[Art]

Emotion and memory are linked. The more emotional the experience the more powerful and long lasting the memory it creates. Life's lessons have to evoke enough emotion so that they are able to overcome the lack of separation and time and space on the other side.

We here in this life can't begin to comprehend the overwhelming feelings of oneness and connectedness (as reported by NDE'ers) on the other side. They also often say that time and space simply didn't exist on the other side.

So the soul comes here and experiences separation and time and space and learns what it's like to be inside controlling a body, and it does it enough so that by the time it leaves it has experienced enough so that it doesn't forget after it transitions to the other side (heaven).

If we knew the whole truth, and the whole story, about God and life after death and this side being only a hoax or illusion - the lessons we experience wouldn't evoke enough emotion to be able to overcome the lack of separation and time and space in heaven. So after we transition back to the other side we'd simply melt back into the oneness and we'd lose our sense of uniqueness and separateness - which I believe is the main reason for us being here in the first place.

We don't live for just ourselves. The lessons we learn are shared on the other side due to those overwhelming feelings of oneness and connectedness. Read Randy Gehling's NDE description on the near-death.com site.

[Luciano]

NDEs... I think spirits in the other side make some NDErs forget their experience (not against their will), so that the life game can go on and on. That's why they are so difficult to study.

Matt, I agree that spirits do create their immediate reality on the other side when they wish to do it. I think it's not crazy to believe they have great influence on this side of the curtain, too.-

[Simon Oakes]

On the subject of AWARE here's an interesting article in one of the UK's leading newspapers:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/11144442/First-hint-of-life-after-death-in-biggest-ever-scientific-study.html

If this had appeared in the tabloid Daily Mail, such an article would have meant less because the Mail is much more sympathetic to the paranormal (as, I think, UK tabloids are in general). But the Telegraph is a different kettle of fish.

Finally, a quick word search reveals nothing as yet on this has appeared in the more left leaning titles i.e. the Independent & the Guardian. The latter ran an OK interview with Parnia last year, so it's possible this will be reported sensibly. On past form, however, my money's on something debunking from Susan Blackmore turning up sooner or later.

[Douglas]

While is may be jumping the gun to comment on AWARE just yet, there has already been some talk that the methodology of using targets is flawed. Maybe future studies (or extensions of the AWARE study) should just focus on straightforward veridical reports of the surroundings, as NDE reports have always done.

It was always going to be a long shot to depend on someone in an NDE state to report on a small target or other deliberately placed item in a room and to attach any kind of significance to this with everything else that is going on. The priorities of researchers and those of the NDEer do not match.

What is significant though, is that Parnia was (from what I can gleam from interviews) suitably impressed with even the very limited results he did get to warrant further study. He reckons he is on to something and with more focused study and improved resuscitation techniques, the number of positive reports should rise significantly.

[CLAUDIO]

http://www.southampton.ac.uk/mediacentre/news/2014/oct/14_181.shtml#.VDQd5mccRkg
Original article here.

[Boo boo]

Skeptics/materialists will be ranting and turning red in the face with NDEs on the news. :)

[Julie Baxter]

"Sometimes, though, a spirit can knock so loudly on our door that it cannot be ignored no matter what our mindset." - no one

I wrote something about this on Paranormalia a couple of weeks ago. I know when I'm 'in touch' and I know when I'm not. It has a great deal to do with how focused I am on the practical issues of my life. When my mind is more relaxed and open I know that I'm never alone; and it's a very comforting feeling.

[Luciano]

Regarding Parnia's article: most of what patients recall does not correspond with a typical NDE... feelings of peace and detachment from the body. Yes, some awareness was there, but it consisted of feelings of fear and drowning.

Only 9% of the interviewed people had what we associate with a typical NDE (the OBE experience, the ceasing of suffering, the verification of events that were out of their normal sight), I think the others just felt what someone being resuscitated might feel.

[Claudio from Italy]

One white crow is enough to say that not all crows are black!

[doubter]

Matt Rouge - "I don't think that's how it works. I think the spirit just imagines the change or action, perhaps has to strongly will it, and the change or action follows the flow of imagining."

It seems to me that the rarity of dramatic paranormal events like the radio case is evidence that there must be major constraints in the process by which the spiritual world can affect the physical. One obvious possibility is a limitation in the amount of energy that can be transmitted across the interface. This would also lead to the use of minimal energy techniques like EVP (manipulating already existing electrical noise).

Another constraint or limitation would be in the ability of the intelligences involved to understand the intricacies of the physical mechanisms/phenomena they are trying to interfere with. In the radio case they needed to have the equivalent of a degree in electronics with a specialty in radio communication. If the turning on of the radio tuned to just the right station was achieved by the spirits just imagining the desired results, then this is a sort of magic, a design and plan (complex specified information resulting from intelligent analysis) appearing out of nothing.

I think this sort of paranormal event can't begin to be understood without starting with the nuts and bolts of the intelligent analysis and actions that had to be behind it.