Gasbag's grab bag

A miscellany of mystifying musings from me.

Do You See What I See? is a children's book from medium Katrina-Jane, written and illustrated in a deliberately childlike style. Its purpose is to comfort small children who see apparitional visions. Book description: 

Having gone through a childhood with no help or instruction as to what she was experiencing, Katrina-Jane brings you this book with her desire to help children to believe that they are loved and safe and that what they are seeing and hearing is perfectly normal. This book is certain to calm and soothe your children and to help them understand that what they have is a gift and to cherish it. Bring joy and tranquility to your children today by reading them this lovely bedtime story.

I don't know how many children have such experiences, but I would imagine that any who do would benefit from this charming little book.

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Another new book, this one for grownups, is The Medium Who Baffled Houdini, by Elaine M. Kuzmeskus. It narrates the career of Mina Crandon, known in parapsychology literature as Margery. It's the most thorough account I've seen of this enigmatic figure, who remains controversial today.

 

In his attempt to debunk Mina, Houdini allegedly resorted to planting a folding yardstick on her person (a tool used by fake physical mediums to move objects outside their reach in the dark). The book downplays a later controversy that discredited Mina in the eyes of many psychical researchers — a thumbprint purportedly produced by an ectoplasmic spirit turned out to belong to the dentist who had given Mina the wax used for the impression — but there's still a lot of good information in here. The author told me:

While the book is written as a story, it is backed by over 200 citations, including a review of the research conducted by the American Society of Psychical Research and Harvard University.... I also did an extensive study of physical phenomena for a previous book, Séance 101: Physical Mediumship. Having witnessed table tipping, direct voice, trumpet mediumship, and materialization first-hand, I know that physical phenomena is possible. Even though Margery was not a perfect medium, at times her life was plagued by alcoholism and mischief, she truly possessed a remarkable gift of physical mediumship.  

Incidentally, I wrote an essay on the Crandon case back in 2003. 

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At the moment I'm reading How Jesus Became God, by Bart D. Ehrman. It's an excellent rundown of the evidence that Jesus was seen in various ways by his earliest followers — as a mortal man who was elevated to divinity after death; as a man elevated to divinity upon his baptism; as a person who was divine from the very moment of his conception; and as an eternal divinity who preexisted his earthly life. There were also differences as to the degree of Jesus' divinity — was he God's chief angel, or a hypostasis of God (Wisdom and Logos were two possibilities), or the co-equal of God himself? 

In his discussion of the apparitions that led some of Jesus' followers to believe he had been resurrected, Ehrman mentions two studies from psychical research: Henry Sidgwick's pioneering study of apparitions, which led to the SPR's "Census of Hallucinations" (later written up as Phantasms of the Living), and Bill and Judy Guggenheims' work on after-death communications.

As an agnostic, Ehrman clearly believes that all such experiences are grounded in psychological and neurological factors. For those who are open to the idea of actual contact with the deceased, Jesus' apparitions can be seen as actual events no different from the vivid, multisensory apparitions reported by some people today. It does not necessarily follow that Jesus was God or uniquely endowed with divine qualities, any more than a visit from one's deceased aunt establishes that she has been elevated to godhood. Since Jesus' followers already believed that he was the messiah and that general bodily resurrection would accompany the end of the present age, they naturally interpreted Jesus' apparitional visits as proof of his physical resurrection — the "first fruits" of the universal resurrection to come. 

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There's recently been some discussion on this blog of why life can be so difficult. Maybe the simplest answer is that we live in a dualistic reality, in which spirit has been rather crudely and not altogether successfully grafted onto matter.

The more I see of human behavior, the more I think that a great deal of it can be explained in terms of anthropology, evolution, social conditioning, and biological needs. Much of the time we behave automatically and unconsciously. We hoot and jeer to express displeasure or clap our hands to express delight, we band together in defensive groups, we engage in threat displays, etc. Higher consciousness competes with animalistic reflexes and instincts originating in a limbic brain conditioned by the age-old struggle for survival. In such a world, it's inevitable that there will be a mixture of high and low, of elevated thought and base primitivism. The same individual who pontificates on "what a piece of work is man" can casually murder an eavesdropper by running him through. 

This explanation presupposes that if there is a plan underlying our experience, it is not a perfect plan. It is more like an improvised, cobbled-together plan that does the best it can with the materials available. A castaway making a floatable vessel out of whatever he can find on the beach can't hope to build a luxury cruise ship. He'll have to take his chances on a leaky raft. 

It may not be entirely satisfying to take this view. There is something more compelling about the idea that if we could pierce the veil and see what's really going on, all would be perfect oneness and perfect harmony. But maybe not. Maybe perfection is impossible, even in principle. A perfect plan would require infinite knowledge, and perhaps infinity (whether spatial or informational) is logically impossible. Maybe we're all just making it up as we go, and since we don't know exactly what we're doing, we can't help but get a lot of things wrong. 

Comments

[Bruce Siegel]

Michael said:

". . . in the God scenario there are only two options: 1) God is willing to inflict horrible misery on humans (and other life forms), or 2) God is not omnipotent (he is limited in some way, and the pain and suffering are a result of his inability to do anything about it)."

Option #3: There's nothing *but* God in this universe, in various states of self-remembrance and forgetfulness. And in order to know the greatest joy, he is willing, at times, to experience the deepest pain.

[david r]

Michael, I take it you don't believe that there is a God in any NDE account then?

[Michael Prescott]

NDErs talk about an encounter with a Being of Light, sometimes visualized as a person and sometimes as ball of energy. Christians have been known to identify this being as Jesus, while people of other faiths make different identifications, and still other people call it God or Love, etc.

My guess is that Kenneth Ring is right in his suggestion that this Being is our higher self. I suspect that, while incarnated, we lose touch with most of our consciousness, which is submerged like the nine tenths of an iceberg that lies underwater. Intense mystical experiences, including NDEs, allow us to access this "hidden" self, which we may objectify as a foreign entity.

[Luciano]

MP said: "My guess is that Kenneth Ring is right in his suggestion that this Being is our higher self."

Could this Higher Self of ours be a part of God?

[Saj Patel]

Wanted to touch on the whole fairy thing again as I found this essay on the connectivity between Tolkien & Jung's imagination (and Faerie as the connective place of the Imaginal):

Becca Tarnas' The Red Book and the Red Book: Jung, Tolkien, and the Convergence of Images

http://beccatarnas.com/2014/05/16/the-red-book-and-the-red-book-jung-tolkien-and-the-convergence-of-images-2/

[david r]

So you believe your higher self is God? Did your higher self create the universe?

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

Saj:
Thank you so much for that link. It sets me on a whole other journey that,unfortunately for my ADD when it comes to reading, will be difficult for me to follow to the extent I would like. For some reason I am fascinated with Carl Jung. While I have not read extensively about him, I think he may have been experiencing and thinking about some of the things that those who frequent this blog discuss. I particularly like the following and quote a little bit of it.

"Intimations of the imaginal explorer Jung would become were present from his childhood, particularly in his relationship to his dreams, visions, and sense of having two personalities, one of whom he felt was connected to an earlier historical period. Jung referred to these two personalities simply as No. 1 and No. 2. No. 1 was the personality who corresponded with his age and current time in history, a schoolboy who struggled with algebra and was less than self-assured. No 2. Jung felt was an old man, who perhaps lived in the 18th century but also had a mysterious connection to the Middle Ages. Yet No. 2 was also not tied to history or even time, for he lived in “God’s world,” a boundless, eternal realm. Jung described this realm as follows:

Besides [personality No. 1’s] world there existed another realm, like a temple in which anyone who entered was transformed and suddenly overpowered by a vision of the whole cosmos, so that he could only marvel and admire, forgetful of himself. . . . Here nothing separated man from God; indeed, it was as though the human mind looked down upon Creation simultaneously with God.

In another description, Jung writes how he felt when experiencing life as personality No. 2, saying,

It was as though a breath of the great world of stars and endless space had touched me, or as if a spirit had invisibly entered the room—the spirit of one who had long been dead and yet was perpetually present in timelessness until far into the future. Denouements of this sort were wreathed with the halo of the numen."

Paragraph 3 above from Jung sounds to me like what someone stepping into 'heaven' would experience'

Ah, sometimes I feel that we all are trying to reinvent the wheel. There is so much written material out there, written by great men of high intelligence from the past that I think, if it were possible, I should read all of their thoughts before I presume to think that I know enough to have a new thought of my own.

Alfred Russell Wallace is another man of great intellect. I find that he too, could have been a welcomed contributor to discussions on this forum. Read him if you have the time and inclination. - AOD

[Michael Prescott]

"So you believe your higher self is God? Did your higher self create the universe?"

No, I think NDErs misinterpret their higher self as God.

Similarly, when some NDErs and other mystics say they've glimpsed infinite knowledge, my guess is that they have glimpsed the non-infinite (but still significantly expanded) knowledge of the higher self.

[Bruce Siegel]

AOD quotes Jung:

"Besides [personality No. 1’s] world there existed another realm, like a temple in which anyone who entered was transformed and suddenly overpowered by a vision of the whole cosmos, so that he could only marvel and admire, forgetful of himself. . . . Here nothing separated man from God; indeed, it was as though the human mind looked down upon Creation simultaneously with God."

I like this because it counters Michael's hypothesis that our higher self is somehow separate from God.

"a vision of the whole cosmos . . . nothing separated man from God." This is not exaggeration or metaphor. Jung is stating the plain truth, as so many others have done.

Michael said:

"Similarly, when some NDErs and other mystics say they've glimpsed infinite knowledge, my guess is that they have glimpsed the non-infinite (but still significantly expanded) knowledge of the higher self."

And my guess is that those who agree with you, Michael, are hoodwinked by our limited human perspective into assuming that *all* viewpoints must be similarly incomplete.

Remember—during an NDE, an experiencer is no longer human. He exists outside that frame of reference. While still harboring the human, he now recognizes it as but one tiny part of himself.

[Julie Baxter]

I remember seeing a BBC TV interview with Jung, from the early 1960's, in which he said he didn't believe God exists he knew (with all certainty) that God exists. I wondered then, and still wonder, what made him so sure. Anyway, it was a very engaging interview.

Just thought I'd mention something here, while we're on the subject of self, that I heard yesterday and which I've been giving some thought to. A friend of mine called round to deliver a Christmas cake that she'd made for me and happened to mention that her aged mother has suddenly plunged from senility into full-blown dementia. She said it's very sad to see her mother endlessly repeating her times tables in a attempt to keep her brain functioning and reduce her overall sense of confusion. I couldn't help wondering what or who was the rational being trying to keep a handle on those failing mental processes.

It's said that we never know when we're insane. But if we do know, so very acutely, when we're suffering from the kind of brain degeneration that characterises dementia then I don't see that there can be much doubt about brain/mind duality.

Just my twopennorth on this mild but blustery early Christmas Eve here in the UK.

[Bruce Siegel]

Julie said:

"I remember seeing a BBC TV interview with Jung, from the early 1960's, in which he said he didn't believe God exists he knew (with all certainty) that God exists. I wondered then, and still wonder, what made him so sure. Anyway, it was a very engaging interview."

In addition to all his previous mystical experiences, Jung had an NDE not long before he died. It was immensely important to him.

[Julie Baxter]

Are you able to offer an account of Jung's description of his NDE, Bruce, or, perhaps an online link to the same?

I've always found his insights fascinating, but hadn't realised that he'd experienced an NDE.

[Michael Prescott]

Here's Jung's account of his NDE:

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/notable/carl-jung.html

[Simon Oakes]

Here is the short extract from the Face to Face interview with Jung Julie flagged up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxT1MvRpurE

And here is a more extended extract from that same interview where Jung unpacks a little more on the meaning of death and how he distinguishes belief from knowledge:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWAicIovVzU

Cheers

Simon

[Julie Baxter]

Thank you for the link, Michael. I read Jung's autobiographical book, 'Memories, Dreams, Reflections' sometime in the mid 1980s and, as I read the link, I recognised the excerpt. At that time, the concept of the NDE wasn't commonly known or recognised and the abiding memory, for me, had been of his prediction of the doctor's death. At the time of reading, I was regularly experiencing precognitive dreams and interested in the similar experiences of others. Perhaps we see and understand only that which we are ready to see and understand at any given time.

Ps. Merry Christmas! x

[Julie Baxter]

And thanks for the links to Jung's BBC interview, Simon. I hadn't thought of looking on YouTube, but I'm pleased to know that I remembered his words correctly. It's very many years since I saw that interview - and then only the once. But it has remained with me as a very important insight into Jung's personal views on life and death (and other such trivia).