Book excerpt, part two

This is the second of a three-part series of excerpts from one (first-draft) chapter of the book I'm working on.

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You’ll notice that many of the cases I cite (though by no means all of them) are pretty old, dating back to the early 20th century or even to the 19th century. There are two reasons for this. One is that I simply find these old cases interesting. The other is that modern cases can be dismissed by skeptics on the grounds that people today have been influenced by paranormal TV shows and movies. For instance, if someone today reports a near-death experience, a skeptic may say that near-death experiences are so widely known in popular culture that the person probably just picked up the idea and imagined the whole thing. This objection carries less force if the near-death experience took place more than a hundred years ago, long before the term “near-death experience” had even been coined, and long before medical resuscitation had become as common as it is now. We will look at just such a case shortly.

First, let’s look at an out of body experience that took place in April 1880. It is reported by F.W.H. Myers in his book Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death (pages 200-201, abridged edition). The narrator is a Mrs. Crans, whose daughter had died a few months earlier, leaving her son-in-law a widower. She tells us:

After lying down to rest, I remember feeling a drifting sensation, of seeming almost as if I was going out of the body. My eyes were closed; soon I realized that I was, or seemed to be, going fast somewhere. All seemed dark to me; suddenly I realized that I was in the room; then I saw Charley [the son-in-law] lying in a bed asleep; then I took a look at the furniture of the room, and distinctly saw every article – even to a chair at the head of the bed, which had one of the pieces broken in the back … In a moment the door opened and my spirit-daughter Allie came into the room and stepped up to the bed and stooped down and kissed Charley. He seemed to at once realize her presence, and tried to hold her, but she passed right out of the room about like a feather blown by the wind … I told [several people] my experience, and the following Sunday I wrote, as was always my custom, to my son-in-law, Charley, telling him of all my experience, describing the room as I saw it finished.

It took a letter six days to go from here to Dakota, and the same length of time, of course, to come from there [to] here; and at the end of six days judge of my surprise to receive a letter from Charley telling me thus: “Oh, my darling mamma Crans! My God! I dreamed I saw Allie last Friday night!” He then described just as I saw her; how she came into the room and he cried and tried to hold her, but she vanished. Then at the end of six days, when my letter reached him, and he read of my similar experience, he at once wrote me that all I had seen was correct, even to every article of furniture in the room, also as his dream had appeared to him.

Mrs. Crans lived in New York, while Charley Kernochan lived in Central City, Dakota. (The Dakota Territory was not split into the states of North and South Dakota until 1889.) Her out-of-body experience therefore involved a visitation to a place approximately 1500 miles away. But again, distance seems to be one of those mental categories that are not found when tuning in to an altered state of consciousness.

What can we say happened here? In her restful state, Mrs. Crans seems to have undergone a change in the level of her consciousness, which she perceived as “a drifting sensation … almost as if I was going out of the body.” (Remember that changes in perception, and therefore in the kind of reality we perceive, accompany changes of consciousness.) She experienced a sensation of speed, which is very common in such cases; think of the well-known “tunnel phenomenon” in near-death experiences. It’s not necessary to believe that she was literally flying like Superman, only that with her mind temporarily cleared of the limiting concepts of gravity, distance, and physical laws and constants, she was able to follow her thoughts without obstruction. Her thoughts led her to her son-in-law’s room, which she perceived accurately – in fact, it seems that she perceived it with supernormal clarity, noting every detail of the furniture in what was presumably a dark environment. This kind of heightened perception is another feature often reported in out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences, and again probably relates to the alteration of consciousness that dispenses with limiting mental categories. Some people who’ve reported a near-death experience have said that they experienced 360° vision, and a few persons who were born blind have even reported visual perceptions during an NDE. As their consciousness shifts to a higher “frequency,” the nature and method of their perceptions necessarily will shift also.

It may seem odd that Mrs. Crans could see the room so clearly and yet could also see her “spirit-daughter.” How could she see entities from two different realities – physical reality and spiritual reality – at the same time? Again, the frequency idea (with an analog tuner) comes in handy. Remember “ghosting”? It’s possible to hover between two frequencies, picking up both signals simultaneously. In this case, it appears that Mrs. Crans was in just that state of mind. She could perceive physical reality – in fact, more clearly than usual – but she could also perceive the spirit form of her daughter. Or think of the movie crossfade. At or near the halfway point, elements of both scenes will be visible together.

Such a state of mind may actually be pretty commonplace. There are many reports of so-called earthbound spirits who have not made a full transition to the spiritual plane. They are said to wander the earth, able to perceive living persons and also some spirits. Like Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense, they may not even know they are dead until some helpful spirit or medium communicates this fact to them. And even after hearing it, they may not believe it. These are people who really have gotten “stuck” between frequencies and are hovering in a kind of limbo, a confused state from which they emerge only with difficulty.

As far-fetched as all this may sound, it’s not inconsistent with what we might expect if something like the frequency idea, in combination with Kantian epistemology, is true. We would expect any shift in consciousness to be accompanied by a shift in the nature of our physical reality; and we would expect that there could be an overlap between different levels of consciousness and therefore different planes of reality. We might also expect that physical death would initiate such a shift, and that some of those shifts could be temporarily incomplete. ...

Comments

[Jean W Falls]

Thank you. I've read your posts with great interest over the years. The deceased wife's kiss was similar to an experience I had following my mother's death a few years back. After speaking aloud and requesting a sign of her continued existence, I received a light kiss on the lips, not once, but two mornings in a row -- while in a groggy, just waking up state. I think she did this twice to make sure, as a 'doubting Thomas,' that I wouldn't dismiss it. I was in that in-between state you reference, thus allowing this communication. Thanks again.

[Bruce L Siegel]

Good example, Michael, nicely explained. Shared experiences—as perhaps best exemplified by Moody's shared nde's—are particularly hard to explain away.

[Paul]

That’s lovely Jean.

[Jean Falls]

Thank you, Paul. That, and some other communications I’ve received from my dad, have been life altering. Best to you and yours.

[Paul]

Yes Jean. No one can argue with personal experience in such matters. It trumps all the theorising in the world (no disrespect to MP).Kindest regards

[Paul]

I have to say Michael, having read a lot of the evidence, I don’t find your ideas on this at all far-fetched.

[Roger Knights]

"The other is that modern cases can be dismissed by skeptics ...."

Please capitalize Skeptics when referring to scoftics!