Michael Prescott's Blog

From the archives: Things to do on Jersey when you're dead

This post is from 2008. If I were writing it now, I might give more attention to the possibility of low-level spirits communicating through the planchette, rather than focusing on "ordinary" psi. 

The title, by the way, is a pun on a movie called Things to Do in Jersey when You're Dead. Or at least I thought it was. I was sure I'd seen an ad for a movie with that title. But when I looked for it just now, I could find no reference to it online. I have no idea why I thought there was such a movie. Anyway, the title seems a lot less clever now. 

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For two years during the early part of his long exile from France, Victor Hugo engaged in regular séances using a planchette – a forerunner of the Ouija board, which worked by tapping out words one letter at a time. Two small tables were employed, a three-legged table perched atop a four-legged one. The tilting of the tables produced the taps. Hugo and his family and friends, exiled to the Isle of Jersey (and later the Isle of Guernsey) would gather in the evenings and coax messages from the Beyond. Hundreds of messages were received, and the material appears to have had a profound effect on Hugo's thinking and on the writing of Les Miserables, in which he was presently engaged.

This intriguing corner of the great novelist's life is exceptionally well documented in Victor Hugo's Conversations with the Spirit World, by John Chambers. Chambers, the first person to translate the séance transcripts into English (in an earlier edition of this book), does a fine job of evoking the atmosphere of the exiles' home away from home, their bitter homesickness and burgeoning fascination with the occult. His book is unusually well written for a study of this kind, laced with keen character sketches and absorbing sidelights on William Blake, James Merrill, and Kabbalah. He presents the facts without undue speculation and lets his readers draw their own conclusions.

The first question to ask is, naturally: Were these phenomena really paranormal? Nearly always, Victor's elder son Charles – who seemed to have the most natural mediumistic ability – would be one of the two persons operating the planchette. Charles' constant participation has led some critics to suggest that he unconsciously fabricated the messages to please his domineering father. But some of the messages were tapped out in languages of which Charles was ignorant – Hungarian and English, for instance. And in some cases (e.g. the January 22, 1854 séance, described on p. 113 of Chambers' book), Charles did not operate the planchette.

Other apparently paranormal events that took place in conjunction with the séances cast additional doubt on the skeptical view. When dogs throughout the area began barking in the night, the planchette told them sternly to shut their mouths – and they did. Strange singing was heard in different parts of the house when Hugo's son was ill. A communicator calling itself the Lady in White arranged for a rendezvous at three AM; no one was bold enough to keep the date, but at three AM the Hugos' doorbell inexplicably rang.

Some of the spirits' statements are intriguing and possibly prescient. Distance, we are told, is illusory, and the entire universe can be found in – and reconstructed from – its smallest part. These ideas remind John Chambers of Michael Talbot's book The Holographic Universe, which explores the cosmology of David Bohm.

But for the most part, the communications are rather banal. Nothing of evidential value was produced, and the sitters don’t appear to have pressed the spirits for proof of identity. When the spirits did make factual claims about their earthly lives, these claims were often wrong. The great Carthaginian general Hannibal, purportedly speaking through the planchette, described the city of Carthage as a vast expanse of six thousand temples on streets three hundred feet wide. This grandiose portrayal does not tally with any historical or archaeological findings. (On the other hand, when "Shakespeare" insisted that he had not died on April 23, 1616, we might wonder if it was the shade of Edward De Vere that the sitters were hearing from ... But the channeled Shakespearean drama produced by the sitters, though highly interesting and creative, does not bear any resemblance to the earthly Bard's work.)

Then there is the case of the Lion of Androcles. At times the sitters heard from the spirit of this beast, famous in folklore for having spared Androcles in the arena. It is, of course, quite unlikely that this folktale was based on fact, and even more unlikely that the noted lion was communicating with the Jersey exiles from beyond the grave. But what makes the Lion especially relevant is an incident that occurred on April 25, 1854. The Lion-persona, tapping out a lengthy poem, suddenly stopped after writing the lines

They raise against the saints their sacrilegious paw
And bury their blood-stained claws in the liv–.

A pause followed after which the Lion rewrote the last two lines, which apparently dissatisfied him. But in the interim, Victor Hugo wrote his own ending to the stanza, and showed his work only to one person (who, like Hugo, was not operating the planchette). Hugo's lines read:

They ripped open the saints dying in the mire
And their hideous claws enlarged the wound
In the side of Jesus Christ.

We are told that "almost immediately" after Hugo had written these words, the tapping recommenced, and the planchette spelled out

Their paws ripped open the martyrs here and there in the mire
And Jesus Christ slipped their claws into his wounds,
For a gift of nails to the gibbet.

The close similarity of the two verses suggests that the planchette operators – or the planchette itself – picked up the imagery from Hugo's own mind. But since the planchette operators had not seen Hugo's lines, the message must have been communicated via telepathy or via some even more mysterious influence.

In the final analysis, if we view the sessions as spirit communications, they are unconvincing and unsatisfying. But if we view them as Consciousness interacting with itself – Consciousness creating a kind of feedback loop between the sitters on the one hand and the planchette on the other – then things get more interesting. To read excerpts from the transcripts is like reading an inner dialogue carried out at the unconscious level between Hugo and himself (with occasional contributions from other members of the party). The sessions perhaps can be best understood as the externalization of the unconscious, a breakdown of the seemingly solid barrier between objective and subjective experience. The stream of consciousness running through the deeper channels of Hugo's mind seems to have been objectified, brought out into the open. In a deep sense, Hugo was talking to himself.

No wonder, then, that the tables mostly told him what he wanted to hear. The tables reported that Hugo's archenemy Napoleon III would die in two years – when actually the dictator lived another two decades. The discarnate Shakespeare opined that French was superior to English. Other spirits verified Hugo's theory of a cycle of reincarnation that proceeds through the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, and his idea of the universe as a vast darkness, with only the shining stars retaining God's pure light.

The strengths and weaknesses of the communicators matched Hugo's own talents. The spirits were good at improvising poetry and long, eloquent monologues; so was Hugo. The spirits were useless at composing music, even when Mozart himself ostensibly spoke through the planchette. Hugo had no musical training.

The appearance of so many famous names among the spirits – Aeschylus, Plato, Galileo, Shakespeare, even Jesus – also makes sense in terms of Hugo's psychology. No one ever accused Victor Hugo of being humble. His self-regard bordered on megalomania. Who would seek him out, if not the spirits of world-historical heroes like himself? Nothing less would do.

And what of the more abstract or surreal entities, such as Civilization, Death, and Idea, or Balaam's Ass and the Lion of Androcles? In the highly intellectual atmosphere of Hugo's salon, large abstract concepts and mythological or folkloric imagery must have been part of everyday conversation. It was how these people talked, part of their mental furniture. And Hugo had a particular fascination – part sentimental, part mystical – with the idea that animals are ensouled, and was especially fond of the Lion of Androcles tale.

How about the most consistent, overarching motif to appear in the communications – that the earth is a prison, a penal colony for wayward souls? It matches up quite closely with the gloomy outlook of the dispirited, homesick exiles, persecuted by a dictator, stranded among fellow outcasts on a tiny outcrop of rock. All the more reason to believe that the tilting tables were reflecting the sitters' own ideas and feelings back at them. Perhaps the isolation of their exile, and the intense emotions it stirred up, actually made it easier for the sitters to access the unconscious mind, or universal consciousness itself.

Whatever the explanation, Victor Hugo's Conversations with the Spirit World is a superb contribution to literary history and to the study of the paranormal. I recommend it highly.

Sudduth on survival

Dr. Michael Sudduth is the rare academic who takes evidence for postmortem survival seriously – seriously enough, in fact, that he's written a book about it for a scholarly audience: A Philosophical Critique of Empirical Evidence for Postmortem Survival. 

I have to admit I haven't read the book. I did start it, but I'm afraid my philosophical education (limited to a couple of introductory courses in college) is too meager to properly read and digest its contents. That's why I was happy to discover an online interview with Dr. Sudduth in which he summarizes his arguments in terms that even a layman like me can (I hope) understand.

I should add that Dr. Sudduth is a good friend of mine on Facebook, and I hope that my critical remarks will be taken as constructive criticism and not merely as bashing his point of view. I also acknowledge that a brief interview can't possibly present the full scope and nuance of his arguments.

With that said, let's take a look at some of what he says in the Q&A.

His basic point, as I take it, is that the philosophical arguments that survivalists make are flawed, and that while the evidence may (at least for the sake of argument) be taken as valid, the conclusions drawn from it are unwarranted. He says that survivalists "haven't provided a good enough reason to believe either of [their] two main claims":

... [first, that] survival is at least more probable than not, if not highly probable relative to the total evidence [and second, that] survival provides the best explanation of the relevant facts. ... [Survivalists] argue that survival is probable or very probable because it provides the best explanation of the data.

He goes on to say that survivalists make unwarranted and self-defeating assumptions.

First, there are general assumptions about what the evidence for survival should look like. In the absence of such assumptions, there's no plausible inference from features of the world to the claim that persons survive death. In much the same way, if I don't know (or reasonably believe) what the evidence that Mr. X committed the crime should look like, I can't plausibly regard any crime-scene fact as evidence that Mr. X committed the crime.

Let's start with this analogy. As I see it, the problem with it is that it has no counterpart in the real world. There is never a case in which you don't know or reasonably believe what the evidence that Mr. X committed the crime should look like. No one is ever quite that much in the dark.

Here are some ways you could know if Mr. X is at least a plausible suspect:

1. Mr. X left a signed confession at the scene
2. Mr. X left his fingerprints on the murder weapon
3. Mr. X's monogrammed handkerchief was found stuffed in the victim's mouth
4. Eyewitnesses observed Mr. X leaving the scene.

You can multiply examples indefinitely. The point is, it is impossible to imagine a situation in which an investigator would have no idea whatsoever of what might constitute evidence of Mr. X's involvement in a crime. That degree of ignorance is impossible in the real world.  

Let's take a more realistic example. Suppose we're looking for life on Mars, but we don't know what Martian life might consist of. In that case, it might be argued that we can't know what evidence for Martian life should look like, so we can't plausibly regard any discovery as evidence of Martian life.

It's the same situation as the crime scene. But notice that, in the real world, we have made efforts to look for Martian life via robot probes. How is this possible? Well, even though we don't know what Martian life might consist of, we can make certain foundational assumptions, taking care that these assumptions are as conservative as possible. For instance, we might assume that any form of life will exhibit the property of metabolism. Then we would search for signs of metabolic processes. If we find a possible metabolic process, we proceed to make further tests in an attempt to distinguish it from some other type of chemical reaction. None of this requires claiming to know anything in detail about the nature of Martian life, or even being certain that Martian life does or can exist.

Is this assumption ad hoc, arbitrary, and unwarranted? I would say no. It is perhaps the most bare-bones assumption possible. And in any investigation, we have to start somewhere.

How would this apply to postmortem survival? Dr. Sudduth mentions mediumship, NDEs and OBEs, and reincarnation cases as the topics addressed in his book, but for simplicity let's limit this blog entry to the study of mediumship. We need to make just two foundational assumptions in order to begin this study: first, that if consciousness survives death, it can sometimes communicate through a medium; and second, that if such communications take place, some of them can include verifiable information.

Note that we are not insisting that consciousness does survive, or that it can communicate, or that it can retain and convey specific facts. This is an if-then proposition. And the assumptions are not arbitrary. As with Martian metabolism, they are the most conservative assumptions we can make if we intend to make a scientific study. Mediumship can have no scientific value if the medium produces no communications, or if the medium produces communications that can never be verified. Only if there are communications and some of them can be verified is there any point in studying mediumship at all. Our beginning assumptions are the only possible basis on which we can proceed. And in fact, this is the basis on which the earliest serious investigations, sponsored by the (British) Society for Psychical Research, were conducted.

It's true, of course, that as investigations into mediumship continued over the decades, and as thousands of pages of case studies were written up, more characteristics were attributed to postmortem consciousness than simply its existence, ability to communicate, and ability to supply verifiable facts. But those later attributions were the result of the empirical evidence that was being collected. It's similar to finding evidence of a metabolic process on Mars, conducting intensive research on the sample, and learning a host of new things about it. The new things were not part of the original assumption. They were the result of the investigation, not the beginning.

It's necessary to make this point because, later in the interview, Dr. Sudduth says: 

... we really can't say with any reasonable degree of assurance what we should expect survival evidence to look like in any particular case. We only get there by making further assumptions. So simple survival does not logically entail (nor make probable) a surviving self that retains all the right stuff: the stock of memories, desires, intentions, and perceptual abilities and causal powers required for ongoing lifelike interactions with our world and that would justify identifying a person as the same as (or the continuation of) some previous personality. We need auxiliary assumptions to bulk up a generic or simple survival hypothesis (or theory) into a more conceptually robust hypothesis or theory) that can plausibly account for the data.

In my opinion, this gets the actual situation backward. It's not the case that investigators  have added assumption upon assumption as research has proceeded. What's happened is that they've added empirical fact upon empirical fact. The countless pages of transcripts, with independent verification of many details, have pointed investigators to certain conclusions about the nature of postmortem consciousness. Those conclusions are no more arbitrary than the conclusions reached in any other field of inquiry that depends on facts. It's only natural that, as we learn more about a subject, we'll be able to say more about it. That doesn't mean we're making a host of arbitrary assumptions. We're stating what we know, or at least what we think we know based on the evidence.

The early investigators were looking for any sign of verifiable communications. When they obtained such communications, they proceeded to test them in various ways – by proxy sittings, the use of anonymous or pseudonymous sitters, book and newspaper tests, the so-called cross correspondences (information provided in fragmentary form by different mediums that made sense only when put together by the researchers), etc. The intention was to determine the limitations of this purported postmortem communication and to see if it could be distinguished from "ordinary" ESP. All of this seems perfectly rational to me. In what other way could such studies proceed?

Distinguishing mediumistic communications from ESP has, of course, been an ongoing issue in parapsychology. Because the kind of ESP that would be required to produce the more compelling evidence in medium studies is unusually robust, it has been called super-ESP or, more recently, super-psi. Dr. Sudduth prefers the term living-agent psi. He argues that survivalists are guilty of

a (perhaps unconscious) logical sleight-of-hand … Survivalists routinely contrast a simple survival hypothesis and a robust living-agent psi hypothesis to show that living-agent psi – unlike survival – is overly complex and relies on assumptions that are ad hoc or lack independent support. But when survivalists wish to focus on the explanatory advantages of the survival hypothesis, they contrast a simple living-agent psi hypothesis (which explains very little) and a robust interpretation of survival.

Up to a point, this is a valid criticism. There's a tendency for survivalists, myself included, to minimize the capabilities of psi and to maximize the purported capabilities of postmortem communicators. Exaggeration does come into play.

Moreover, I think it's likely that some – perhaps most – mediumistic communications do, in fact, result from living-agent psi. This same conclusion is reached by Arthur Ellison in his valuable book Science and the Paranormal.

But to argue that living-agent psi is a satisfactory explanation for all mediumship strikes me as implausible. There are cases that fall well outside the range of any known living-agent psi, and which have been examined in scrupulous detail in some of the better-known books in the field. See in particular Mediumship and Survival, by Alan Gauld, and Immortal Remains by Stephen E. Braude.

I can't cover all such cases here, but let's pick one of the more famous ones – the famous case of Runki and his missing leg. Because I wrote up a fairly detailed summary of this case last year, I'll present only a shorter recap here. For details, you can always refer to my earlier post, or even better, to the original report by Ehrlunder Haraldsson and Ian Stevenson. In brief: 

Beginning in 1937, an Icelandic medium found his séances repeatedly interrupted by a (purported) spirit who at first refused to give his name, but who eventually identified himself as Runki. Runki said he'd drowned in 1879 (58 years earlier); his body, swept out to sea, was only partially recovered. He was very upset that one of his leg bones had not been properly buried. Sometime later, a new sitter joined the circle. Runki was excited by this new arrival, stating that this man had his missing leg! Eventually it transpired that Runki believed the leg bone had been interred in a wall of the man's house shortly before he bought the place. Inquiries were made, and some locals dimly recalled finding a leg bone during a beach excavation circa 1920, passing it around, and eventually opting to place it inside the wall in 1921, when the house was remodeled. In 1940, in response to Runki's insistence, the wall was opened, and a leg bone was found. It was given a proper burial, after which Runki pronounced himself satisfied, and no longer disrupted the séances, though he did go on to function as the medium's "control."

This case was carefully investigated by Ehrlendur and Stevenson, and appears to be genuine. The various facts about Runki were scattered among different, extremely obscure, archived but unpublished documents; no one document contained all the information. Since Runki died almost 60 years before he announced himself, there were virtually no people left alive who'd known him. (A grandson did remember him as being unusually tall, which was something the communicator had said about himself. The human femur found in the old house belonged to a tall man, though it was never proved to be Runki's.) He apparently was not that well known locally even in his lifetime. Moreover, the Runki communicator had a distinctive personality and clearly defined likes and dislikes, and he was aggressive about insisting on recovery of his leg. 

How would living-agent psi account for all this? Initially, the man who owned the house wasn't even part of the circle. Nor did he know about the leg bone hidden in a wall. But let's say he unconsciously became aware of the leg bone via clairvoyance. He would then have to somehow connect the leg with Runki, who'd died six decades earlier. He would need to clairvoyantly access multiple archived documents containing scattered references to Runki's death and burial. Then he would have to influence the medium (whom he had not yet met) to bring out all this information at a séance, even though no one in the circle had any interest in or connection to Runki, and to construct a vivid persona of a low-level earthbound spirit with an obsessive interest in his missing leg bone. Presumably his own decision to join the circle sometime later would have been directed by a subconscious need to resolve the situation.

Dr. Sudduth says:

[Survivalists) miss how the kind of survival hypothesis that adequately accommodates the data requires assumptions that are at least as complex, ad hoc, and lacking in the way of independent support as those adopted by the defender of the living-agent psi hypothesis in the interest of accommodating the data.

Is this true in the Runki case? It seems to me that the living-agent psi assumptions listed above are far more "complex, ad hoc, and lacking in the way of independent support" than the survival hypothesis. Moreover, the "assumptions" made by survivalists are mostly not assumptions at all, but – as we previously considered – the result of an ever-increasing body of empirical evidence.

I concede that the survival hypothesis fails to explain how Runki knew that his leg bone (or any leg bone, whether or not it was actually his) was hidden inside a certain wall. His ability to pinpoint the concealed bone may well qualify as a kind of "super-psi" in itself. It remains mysterious under any interpretation of the case. But in other respects, Runki's knowledge and behavior are consistent with an un-evolved spirit (Runki himself said he had no wish to evolve: "It is fine to be as I am”) who naturally was familiar with the details of his life and death, and who retained his coarse personality and cravings for snuff and rum.  

On the other hand, as far as I know, there's no body of empirical evidence to suggest that a living person can perform all the complex psychic gymnastics required in the Runki case. Evidence for living-agent psi is strong and convincing, but nearly all researchers agree that psi is generally a weak, marginal ability that comes and goes, and which is typically detected only by large-scale statistical studies.

There are, of course, standout cases of more dramatic psi abilities, but does any known case incorporate all the abilities hypothesized above? 

I concede that it's logically possible that psi could be this robust in a few people. But a logical possibility does not constitute reasonable doubt. (See Chris Carter's  Science and the Afterlife Experience for discussion of this point.) If we had to give equal weight to every logical possibility, no matter how far-fetched, we could never get anywhere in our reasoning. A defense attorney might argue that Mr. X's signed confession was forged, that his fingerprints were planted, that the monogrammed handkerchief was stolen, and that the eyewitnesses were bribed by the real killer. All of these are logical possibilities, but unless the attorney can show that they're realistic possibilities, they aren't worth considering. 

Let's conclude with a fanciful analogy. Suppose that somebody tells you to find a billaquoot. You ask what a billaquoot is. You're told, "Never mind about that – just find one!"  It should be obvious that you'll be at a loss. You literally don't know what you're looking for. You won't know what the evidence of a billaquoot should even look like. If you're determined to do something anyway, you'll have to make assumptions about how a billaquoot might look or what behavior it might exhibit. These assumptions can't help but be groundless and wrong because the term "billaquoot" is meaningless.

Now we have to ask: Is the term "postmortem consciousness" equally meaningless? This seems to be the position taken by Dr. Sudduth, unless I've misunderstood him (which is always possible — again, I'm no philosopher). He seems to be saying that nobody can know anything about postmortem consciousness, and therefore there's no way to find evidence for it without making a host of unwarranted, groundless assumptions that are just as arbitrary as assumptions made about the billaquoot.

I don't doubt that postmortem consciousness is a tricky thing to define or describe, but I disagree that it's as empty of meaning as a nonsense word. Some meaning can be attached to it, and investigations into survival have historically begun with the barest possible definition or description, which has been expanded and refined only as more information comes to light.

Moreover, this is how things work in any area of investigation. How did we ever study gravity or electricity or microorganisms when we knew nothing about them? We started with vague notions and progressively refined them. How is the study of survival any different? 

Solving a cold case

Note: I've been doing some preliminary work on a possible book about the afterlife. The book would involve an overview of the dying process, interspersed with case histories supporting various points. What follows is the first case history I've written for this project. Because it is aimed at a general audience, I explain certain details that are probably already familiar to most readers of this blog.

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Perhaps the most famous case of the "drop-in communicator" type took place in Iceland more than eighty years ago. It was extensively researched by Erlendur Haraldsson and Ian Stevenson, who wrote it up in  an article called “A Communicator of the ‘Drop In’ Type in Iceland: The Case of Runolfur Runolfsson,” published in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research (Volume 69, January 1975, pages 35 – 39).

The case involves Icelandic trance medium Hafsteinn Bjornsson, who held regular séances as a sideline from his full-time job at a radio station in Reykjavík. In 1937 a new communicator intruded on one of Hafsteinn’s séances, stating, “I am looking for my leg. I want to have my leg … It is in the sea.”

For months, this stranger continued to make regular appearances, continually demanding his leg while refusing to give his name. His personality was distinct – and distinctly unpleasant. He was rude, sensual, and addicted to physical pleasures like snuff, coffee, and alcohol. Roughly a year and a half after his debut, he finally identified himself as Runolfur Runolfsson, who died at age 52 half a century earlier. “I lived with my wife at Kolga or Klappakot, near Sandgerdi. I was on a journey from Keflavik in the latter part of the day and I was drunk.” He stopped at a house, had more to drink, and departed for home in a very inebriated state. On the way, he made the mistake of resting on a rocky outcrop on the shoreline, where he consumed still more alcohol from a bottle and then fell asleep. “The tide came in and carried me away. This happened in October, 1879. I was not found until January, 1880. I was carried in by the tide, but then dogs and ravens came and tore me to pieces.” His scattered bones were gathered up and buried, but his thigh bone (the femur) was missing. “It was carried out again to see, but was later washed up at Sandgerdi. There it was passed around and now it is in Ludvik’s house.”

Ludvik was Ludvik Gudmundsson, who had joined the séances a short time earlier. Upon Ludvik's arrival, the excited communicator, still maintaining his anonymity, had said that the new sitter knew about his leg and that the leg was now in his house.

The newly identified Runolfur, who became known more familiarly as Runki, added that confirmation of his story could be found “in the church book of Utskalar Church.” Some of the sitters found Runki’s name, date of birth, and age at death given in that book – all just as he’d stated.

As for the missing femur, it proved to have been placed inside the wall of a room in Ludvik’s house when the building was remodeled, sometime before Ludvik took possession of it. The recovered bone was buried in a religious service. After this, Runki became more cooperative; he even went on to serve as Hafsteinn’s main spirit control.

What of the other claims made by the communicator? Runki said he lived with his wife at Klappakot; records showed that he lived with a woman who bore him three children (though she may not have been his legal spouse). Shortly before his death, he was living in Klappakot. A clergyman’s record book summarized the presumed details of his death – he went missing “on his way home from Keflavik during a storm [and] is believed to have been carried along by the storm down to the beach … where the sea carried him away.” This accords with Runki’s account, except that in his telling he went to the beach by choice. Of course, the clergyman could only speculate about the precise sequence of events. The same records indicated that Runki was 52 when he died, and that his dismembered remains were buried in January, 1880. All of this matches Runki’s postmortem testimony.

Yet another local document, discovered years after the séances, noted that, “People guessed that the sea had taken him when he sat down exhausted,” which was what the communicator himself had said.

The case isn’t perfect. A determined skeptic would point out that contemporaneous notes on Hafsteinn’s séances often were not made or were later lost. There was a question as to whether Hafsteinn could have learned some (though not all) of the details of Runki’s death by visiting the National Archive; records show that he visited the archives after Runki had identified himself and supplied his history. Hafsteinn said he simply wanted to see for himself the documents that some of his sitters had located, which seems perfectly reasonable. There’s no indication that he had earlier located these documents on his own, but it is a hypothetical possibility. The femur, though generally assumed to belong to Runki, was never definitively linked to him; a plan to exhume Runki’s remains for testing had to be abandoned when his precise burial spot could not be located in the crowded, poorly marked churchyard.

But while some holes can be punched in the case – or in virtually any case – by someone absolutely determined to debunk it, it seems unlikely in the extreme that Hafsteinn, who engaged in mediumship only as a sideline, would have gone to the great lengths necessary to track down several obscure documents archived in different locations, or that he would have known anything about the femur concealed inside the wall of an old house in a town he’d never visited. Nor could he have known in advance that Ludvik, the house’s owner, would join the circle. Nor would he have had any reason to maintain the fiction of a querulous, hostile, anonymous communicator breaking in on séances for more than a year before providing any identifying information. The idea that fraud can adequately explain this case is far-fetched at best.

But what about super-ESP? To believe that Runki’s story was pieced together via super-ESP in the medium’s mind, we have to assume that his subconscious had clairvoyantly accessed those same obscure documents, as well as clairvoyantly viewing the hidden femur – or perhaps reading the mind of the carpenter (still living) who’d placed the bone inside the wall. All of this would have been done to support the fiction of a communicator who had died more than fifty years earlier and who was unknown and unrelated to anyone in the group. It is hard to see any motivation, even on a subconscious level, to carry out this elaborate deception, nor is it likely that ESP, even in its most robust form, would be this efficient and creative.

Moreover, as Haraldsson and Stevenson point out, the Runki case “cannot be satisfactorily interpreted on the basis of the cognitive [i.e., strictly factual] details alone … Advocates of the hypothesis of telepathy between the medium and living persons must also account, in our opinion, for the vivid impersonation by the medium of a character quite different from his own.”

Perhaps most important, Runki displayed an unwavering commitment to retrieving the lost bone – a highly purposeful mindset consistent with the psychology of a man who, although deceased, retained a rather crude attachment to physical pleasures and to his own physical body.

Final ventures

Here is a last series of excerpts from A Venture in Immortality, by David Kennedy. See the previous two posts for other excerpts.

In trance [the medium] Albert Best spoke to me. "Ann is here again, she is saying something about Sauchie. (This is a village in Clackmannanshire.)  I replied that yesterday I had officiated at a wedding where the bride came from Sauchie. He continued, "The groom was another Kennedy, not you, Iain." I agreed that the name of the groom was Iain Kennedy. Next followed, "What did you do to the best man? … Ann says that you did something discourteous but not intentional to the best man!" This was absolutely true. I absent-mindedly closed the official reception without giving the best man the customary opportunity of replying to the toast to the bridesmaid.…

"Ann says you must attend to your socks and buy a few more pairs. You had a hole in one that you wore at the wedding." Again true. To my horror I discovered at the function that a hole was showing above the heel of my shoe. "There is something wrong with your shoe which you are wearing. Take it off." I took off my shoe and discovered that the sole was separating from the upper part on one shoe. This was totally invisible and could only be seen by probing at the joint of upper and sole with a pencil. Still more remarkable facts were to come. Albert, in trance, continued: "Ann is saying that there is something wrong with a light". Now as it happened the bulb in my study burned out the previous night when I was about to finish work and go to bed. I had made a mental note to buy a new 250 watt bulb but had not yet done so. I told Albert Best that my study lamp had gone out. Now this coincidence was a perfectly good explanation of what he claimed Ann had said, "Something wrong with a light". There was a pause and silence for almost half a minute. "No. This is not the light she is talking about. She says that the light could be dangerous." Another pause, then, "Would you please," she says, "check the lights on your car when you leave here. There is something wrong with one of them and that could be dangerous." Immediately after the session I went outside to where my car was parked and tested the lights. I found that my near-side side lamp was out. I also found that the wire behind the side light assembly was hot after the lights had been on for a few minutes.

Here was a source of danger, both of fire and the obvious danger of driving at night without a front side-light. There was no conceivable way in which Albert Best could have been aware of this defect in my car. He had not even seen my car for weeks and in any case it was mid-summer and I would not have my lights on. In addition, there was the heating of the wire behind the light assembly. I am particularly impressed by this piece of evidence from Ann. It could not be known to any human agency, of this I am convinced. This is an example of something which is quite outside any kind of telepathic explanation. It is simple and yet it fulfills all the requirements of a non-telepathic condition....

It appears to be possible for helpers and loved ones on the other side to be aware of sources of potential danger and to try to give warning. This kind of evidence is very difficult to explain except on the survival hypothesis. [pp. 124-126]

In a first-time meeting with another medium, Mrs. Constable, some very good evidence was obtained.

She began, "You are working on a book just now but I feel that you have got stuck. Leave it aside for the moment and tonight just try to relax and scribble down any ideas that come to you, for half an hour or so." Suddenly she stopped, as though interrupted by someone whom she could hear, but who was not audible to me. "What's that you say? It's a lady speaking, she says, 'Tell him not tonight because he has to go out tonight'." I replied that I had an afternoon appointment but that I was free this evening and intended to be at home. "Oh no!" was the reply. "She says you are going to get a telephone call which will change your arrangements in the next few hours."

Mrs. Constable continued, "There is a lady here comes – the lady who spoke just now – a lovely lady – very beautiful – especially her hair. She says, 'Tell him it was my teeth.' She had trouble with her teeth. She is very quiet – shy. She does this to her mouth (here Mrs. Constable put her hand over her mouth) as though she used to hide her mouth or her teeth with her hand."

I must emphasize how completely accurate this description is of my wife. She had a shallow palate and gums. For years of her life, until she died, she was plagued by the problem of finding dentures which were comfortable and even wearable. All together she had four sets of dentures at the time of her death. We used to have a private joke between us. She would say to me, "If I ever come back to you after I die, I'll just put my hand over my mouth and say, "Remember my teeth'."…

At 12 noon, a few minutes after I arrived home, I received a telephone call from the [people I had an afternoon appointment with]. The call was to ask me if I would mind coming out in the evening instead of the afternoon....

This knowledge on Anna's part of the course of the next few hours and the fact that I would be involved all evening might be brushed off as coincidence; a guess on the part of the medium. Yet if it were so, it was a detailed guess because it also mentioned a telephone call changing my plans. The chances of my plans for an entire evening being changed by something of this nature are very, very slender. It has happened to me once in the last two years. I regard this as a significant type of evidence of a non-telepathic nature. [pp. 141-142]

From a session with Albert Best:

Finally, Albert Best continued, "Ann is very light-hearted and as she goes off she says again to you, 'Enjoy yourself, you need relaxation' and smiling broadly she says, 'Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum.' You'll hear about that later she says.…"

On the veridical nature of the statements, my first comment is that as I write this twenty-four hours later, I have just been handed a present of a bottle of Jamaica Rum by a member of my congregation who has returned from holiday. [p. 152] 

Refreshingly, Kennedy acknowledges his own biases; and he includes some trenchant remarks about belief and disbelief:

This is a tendentious book. It begins with a theoretical belief in survival and communication and proceeds to show what happened in one particular instance when one's theories become existential problems. I believe that to acquire this amount of evidence of survival in so short a time would probably not be possible for most people. I was fortunate in so far as my wife and I shared a knowledge of psychical research over twenty-five years and latterly came to accept that evidence as strong enough to say that we both believed in survival. We were therefore agreed that when death parted us we would, whichever of us went first, and it seemed likely to be Ann, try to produce for the other one on this side the best evidence possible.

My part in this was to make this possible by having fairly frequent sittings with mediums of known quality. The fortuitous part which figures so largely is the fact that I knew Albert Best, one of Britain's finest mediums.…

At the same time it is fair to warn the reader that I have been pleading a case. I believed in survival and I hoped strongly that after Ann died I would receive evidence. I am not objective in this; but because I am aware of my desire to find myself in contact with Ann I have tried to guard against hearing what I desire to hear. All my sittings with mediums which were prearranged were tape-recorded and I am satisfied that I did not convey information.

I have experienced sittings with mediums which were unsatisfactory in the sense that the messages were vague and could have applied to anyone. This happened on three or four occasions during the six months since Ann died… One becomes able to recognize easily the medium who is simply filling in. Sometimes I have been convinced the filling in was conscious and fraudulent. At other times I felt that the hotch-potch of unrecognized names and allusions was not consciously fraudulent. Nevertheless, sterile and abortive sittings of this nature do take place and while I have not written down the details, it is fair to warn the reader that looking for evidence of survival has its setbacks too....

I do not claim that any one incident described in this book should stand on its own. I do claim that at least in the view of any fair-minded person a strong "prima facie" case for Ann's survival is established by the totality of the evidence presented. Human beings cannot leave existential questions in the vacuum of suspended judgment. They either make the leap from probability to belief or withdraw into disbelief. This may well depend on emotional factors in each of us. [pp. 156-159, 165]

Further ventures

More excerpts from A Venture in Immortality, by David Kennedy. I'm finding this book very worthwhile. Yes, it's true, as Amos Oliver Doyle pointed out in the previous comments thread, that all these stories tend to blur together after a while. But it's also true, as Art observed in the same thread, that if we don't remind ourselves of the uncanny accuracy and specificity of these narratives from time to time, they will lose their persuasive power.

Anyway, here are more reported after-death communications from David Kennedy's wife, Ann.

While Kennedy was riding on a train with the medium Albert Best, there was this spontaneous communication:

Albert put down his book and in his excited typical stammer which I had come to recognize as the indication that he was getting something, he said, "Ann is just behind me, she asked me to tell you about the slipper". I said nothing and Albert paused for a few seconds as he often does while getting a message right. Then in more confident tone and slower and louder voice, "When your wife's personal effects were brought back from hospital were there blue slippers. No wait. There was only one blue slipper, the other was missing."

He continued in his confident tone as he seemed to see things more clearly, "Your wife is giving this as evidence, you understand? In your wife's toilet bag she says there were three complete sets of dentures which came back from hospital. She is also saying, Teresa. The same toilet bag had a blue container of talcum powder and a triangular small bottle of toilet water." Albert continued, "Your wife was with you this morning when you took out a large silk handkerchief and used it to wrap something in. This morning before you left the house". "Now," said Albert, "she is singing a song which you should recognize. She is singing 'C'est si bon'. She is going now but says as she goes she knows about the Royal Stuart tartan."

Here indeed is concentrated evidence. Nothing vague but precise facts, one after another. First the blue slipper. This evidence was completely accurate. One blue slipper only came back in Ann's effects from hospital, the other was missing.

There were precisely three complete sets of dentures in Ann's toilet bag returned from hospital.… I should also say I was completely unaware of how many sets of dentures she took to hospital or how many were in her plastic toilet bag.… [Kennedy had to check in order to confirm the report. He had been understandably reluctant to go through his late wife's personal effects.] 

The name, Teresa, is Anna's mother's baptized Christian name. She has never used his name since she was married.…

The blue container of talcum and triangular bottle of toilet water was [sic]  in the bag as described.

At nine o'clock that same morning, in my home alone, I took out the only silk handkerchief I possess, a large white silk handkerchief and used it to wrap the microphone of my pocket tape recorder to protect it when I placed it in my traveling case. Albert had never seen this handkerchief at any time. "C'est si bon" was one of Anne's favorite songs which she used to hum. Finally, a week earlier Ann's mother and sister had brought had bought a Royal Stuart tartan large traveling rug as a cover for the sofa.

Kennedy is at pains to point out that he is "not on close personal terms" with Albert Best. "During the last six weeks I have only spoken to Albert Best by telephone and then only when he telephoned me. In many of these telephone calls Albert Best asked me for information or advice, particularly in relation to orthodox churches. [Kennedy was a minister.] ... Although Albert Best telephoned me, I very rarely telephoned him, unless it was for the purpose of trying to arrange a private sitting for someone. From the very beginning I made a point of guarding against the danger of being on familiar chatting terms with Mr. Best because I was always conscious of the over-riding necessity of reducing to a minimum the possibility of conveying information to him. After over twenty-five years experience of psychical research, I am at least aware of the danger of saying in someone's company such remarks as 'Anne and I loved that tune' or 'We had a wonderful holiday there, once'. It may sound calculating, but I have throughout this period and before it, always been aware that the unique mediumship of Albert Best would be the keystone of much of the evidence of survival which I hoped to make available to others. Thus the necessity of keeping myself aloof from this gifted medium, not to cloud the value of the evidence."

While Best was performing a healing procedure on someone else, he spoke to Kennedy, who happened to be in the room:

Once again, in trance and while healing, Albert Best said, "Who is Mrs. Murray, East Kilbride," addressing me. I replied, "That is my wife's sister". "Ah, yes!" replied Albert Best. "Your wife was talking about her. She says that she was with you when you posted a postcard to her sister when you were in London. You posted two postcards at the same time, on Monday of this week. She also says that she was with her sister when she got your postcard."

After a short pause, "You had fish before you came out here, sole, and it wasn't Dover sole. Your wife says you cooked it in a pot and you didn't clean the pot properly. Clean it again when you go home, will you?"

All of this was accurate, including the poorly cleaned pot, which still had traces of fish clinging to it. His wife had been a stickler for cleaning the dishes.

Here is a possible example of EVP, electronic voice phenomena. It comes up in a sitting with another medium, Mrs. Findlater, who says: 

"When you bought that new recorder," (I had bought a new cassette pocket recorder a few weeks previously) "you relaxed and spoke into it. Your guide was there and when you played it back you heard a word spoken twice which startled you because you didn't remember saying that word. The word was OM – OM or God." This again is startling. I did speak a little poetry and some nonsense into my recorder and thought it curious that I had spoken the word OM twice. I concluded that I must have said this word out of my subconscious without being aware of saying it. Yet the voice did seem strange. Yet here almost a month later a woman, Mrs. Findlater, claims that my wife is speaking to me and that a group of those on the other side were responsible for this word which startled me on playing back what I had spoken into my recorder. No living soul knew of this except myself.

Kennedy remarks on "a curious piece of evidence in this series of communications…. This is, in the case of the mediumship of Albert Best the lapse of two months before the first sporadic messages from Ann begin to come through. I would describe Albert Best as pathetically eager to be able to bring me the comfort of a solid reassuring item of evidence from Ann in the two months following her passing and yet he was perfectly honest with me. 'I simply get nothing at all, not even a sense of her presence.'… Now if the telepathy hypothesis is a valid one, or if the more elaborate and speculative theory that somehow a gifted medium has access to the forgotten memories of anyone who ever had any contact with Ann [i.e., super-psi], be correct, the question arises, why should this extended telepathy or access to a universal pool of knowledge not operate from the moment of Ann's death? Why should there be eight blank weeks following Ann's death, when there is complete silence on the part of this gifted medium?… On the telepathic hypothesis this delay is unaccountable. On the other hand in terms of descriptions given by our loved ones and others from the other side, this delay is understandable and consistent."

The delay, as he goes on to say, is normally explained by spiritualists as the time necessary for the recently deceased person to adjust to afterlife conditions and recover from the trauma of dying, as well as from any lingering medical conditions that may obsess the mind. In Ann's case, she apparently continued to feel a shortness of breath – a condition that plagued her in her final months on earth – even though, in her postmortem existence, it was all in her mind.

Though I'm quoting some (but not all) of the best evidence in this book, I'm not able to include the author's extended ruminations on the relationship between spiritualism and the Christian church, his analysis of philosophers like Kant and Heidegger, and many other interesting subjects. The book, though sadly out of print, is worth seeking out.

Get me to the church on time

A Venture in Immortality, by David Kennedy, is a 1973 memoir about a series of after-death communications from the author's wife. The book is out of print and available only from used booksellers. I'd never heard of it until it came up on Michael Sudduth's Facebook timeline; Dr. Sudduth seems to have a good opinion of the book, so I decided to track it down. I'm now about 60 pages into it, and I agree that it's well worth reading. 

David Kennedy was an engineer who, in middle age, became a minister. He and his wife Ann were intelligent, well-educated people whose idea of an enjoyable evening was to read passages from Plato to each other. They regarded each other as soulmates, and their happiness persisted despite Ann's chronic health problems, stemming from an incurable heart condition. After Ann passed away, David was understandably grief stricken, but before long he began to receive some remarkably evidential messages via mediums.

What makes the book so worthwhile, beyond the author's obvious intelligence and sincerity, is that both he and his wife had a longtime interest in psychic phenomena and life after death. They were thoroughly familiar with the investigations of the Society for Psychical Research and had plowed through back issues of the SPR's journal from 1906 forward. As a result, Kennedy is in a good position to evaluate the evidence that comes through, distinguishing between solid hits and more neutral statements that might apply to any number of people. He is also open to the hypothesis that mediums rely on telepathy and clairvoyance rather than communication with the dead, and he is always on the lookout for communications that would strain the ESP hypothesis to the breaking point.

Here are two interconnected episodes found early in the book that especially impressed me.

Sunday, 15 March was my Communion Sunday and in the Church of Scotland Communion or the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper is only celebrated twice or three times a year in most churches. It can mean two long and exhausting services, each lasting for 1 1⁄2 hours with interviews between each service and a hasty snack in the church. One may arrive at the church at 10 a.m. and return home at 4 p.m. literally exhausted and depleted of nervous energy.

Normally, when my wife was alive, I would stretch out on the sofa and sleep deeply in total exhaustion for about an hour and a half. Then at about 5:30 p.m. Ann would come through from the bedroom and awaken me in preparation for going out at 6 p.m. for my evening service.

On this particular Sunday, March 15, I came home as usual at 4 p.m. exhausted. Rather foolishly I lay down on the sofa and in minutes I was deeply asleep. So deeply asleep that I am certain I would have slept for hours blissfully removed from the prospect of an evening congregation assembled and no minister arriving to conduct the service. I was deeply asleep. Gradually I became aware of the intrusion of a bell continuing to ring. The ringing continued and I slowly awakened to the fact that the telephone was ringing.

I staggered from the sofa, still half-sleep, picked up the telephone and heard a woman's voice say, "Is that the Reverend David Kennedy? My name is Mrs. Lexie Findlater. I am telephoning from Grangemouth (a town 40 miles away). Your wife is impressing me so strongly that I have to telephone you now. I have tried to write a letter and put off this feeling but I am being told that I must telephone you now, now, she is so insistent, yet I have no idea why. Your wife is simply saying, 'Get out now and use the old notes'. I don't know what it means but I had to do this."

Now Mrs. Findlater, it will be remembered, was the medium whom I had met in the two private interviews described earlier, the first one two weeks after my wife's death. She only knew my name and not my address. She had to find my address and telephone number from directory enquiry. It took amazing confidence and courage to telephone a person who was almost a total stranger and then say that she did not know why she was telephoning except that my wife was impressing her that she had to do this.

I thanked Mrs. Findlater for telephoning and explained to her that if she had not telephoned me at this moment I would have slept right through the time of my evening service – it was 6 p.m. when she telephoned. I just had time to grab the notes of an old sermon, rush into my car and arrive at the church, get into my robes and 'make it' for the 6:30 p.m. evening service.

Now here is a case where my wife claimed that she saw me sleeping deeply, likely to miss my evening service. It was her habit to awaken me. There was only one way to get me to my church in time. She could not herself impress me, so she impressed strongly a more sensitive person, this woman 40 miles away, and got the thought across that she must telephone me. In other words, Ann managed to do for me what she had always done, awaken me on this particular Sunday. I had always relied on her to do this. If there is a better example of loving concern and intervention from our dear ones on the other side, it would be difficult to find.

Yet this is not the end. Three days later Albert Best [another medium, who, unlike Mrs. Findlater, was a personal friend of the author – MP] telephoned me and after an amazing message from my wife, concluded by saying "And Ann says, 'For heaven's sake get an alarm clock and don't sleep in again at the end of the week'."

Now comes the amazing evidence of that telephone call from Albert Best. Before the telephone rang I was in the middle of the kind of job a man has to learn to do for himself when he is living alone. I decided that my yellow pullover was in need of washing. I knew the general rules about washing woollens carefully and gently in warm water and soap flakes. I'm afraid I was overindulgent with the soap flakes. Anyhow, in a short time I had the basin overflowing with soap suds in a rich lather while I squeezed away at my yellow pullover.

Just then the telephone rang. Albert Best on the other end. "Are you shampooing, I mean not your hair, something woollen? I see lather, suds overflowing and something woollen in the basin. Your wife is saying that she was watching you doing this." I told Albert that I was actually washing a pullover in soap suds when he interrupted me. He replied, "Well, your wife is saying, 'Put in the black pullover while you're at it, the one with the egg stains on it, it needs washing badly'." Then followed the remark about getting an alarm clock which I have already referred to. Needless to say there was a black pullover, with egg stains, which I had forgotten about and which badly needed washing.

What does one make of this? Is it a fantastic form of telepathy in which an ordinary ex-postman has powers which would make him a fortune on stage or television? In which he knows not only exactly what I am doing, but the contents of my linen cupboard? Or is it the more reasonable explanation that my wife, who was always fussy about my dress and appearance and also insisted on doing these washing jobs right to the end, is still close and still aware and still concerned and because of the unique situation of my being in touch with a gifted medium, is able to show that same concern from beyond the barrier of death? [Pages 44-46, 1987  trade paperback edition]

Miscellaneous musings of meager merit

A grab-bag of brief items ...

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In an email to me, Michael Tymn, who wrote an introduction to Pierre Emile Cornillier's The Survival of the Soul (discussed here), noted my concern about the emphasis on suffering in the book's mediumistic communications. He said,

What you call "suffering" I would call overcoming adversity. I see that as the key to spiritual evolution.

Actually, I think this is a good way of looking at it. If there is no adversity to overcome, there can presumably be no progress. And perpetual existence without challenges — without "adversity" — would probably be both pointless and boring.

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Brian Whitworth reports that Chapter V of his project on "quantum realism" is now complete. The first five chapters of this work-in-progress are an in-depth application of the rules of computer processing to the observations and paradoxes of quantum physics. On his website, he explains:

In physical realism the physical world is real in itself while in quantum realism it is the output of quantum processing, i.e. virtual.

The material is pretty technical, but I've found it of great interest.

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On a related note, Marcus Arvan has posted two essays speculating that "the physical universe is a timelessly existing array of information comprising a vast, possibly infinite variety of branching 'time-lines,'" and that free will is possible because consciousness chooses which timelines to experience. He writes,

The joint choices of all conscious observers "collapse" possible paths through the multiverse at every given instant to a single, intersubjectively experienced (or "actualized") reality....

[This theory] takes the most plausible aspect of the Everett [many-worlds] interpretation – its assertion of numerous physical universes, to account for quantum indeterminacy – while denying its most implausible feature: its implication that all universes in the multiverse are equally “actualized.” [The theory] accomplishes this by assigning to consciousness the role of “universe actualizer.”

He analogizes the situation to a peer-to-peer networked computer simulation such as certain online multiplayer games, in which

each game console contains and plays a game DVD. Each game DVD 
consists of an array of information containing a vast range of possible “pasts, presents, and futures” within the game.... Each player’s choices on their own game console are processed by the network so that the joint choices of each player – choices not causally determined by any “physical law” within the simulation – lead each game console hooked up to the system to read complementary lines of code on the DVD to ensure that the physical laws of the simulation are not broken. This allows each player on the network to experience the same virtual environment from different points of view.

His essays "A New Theory of Free Will" and "A Unified Explanation of Quantum Phenomena?" are worth a look. They were brought my attention by our commenter "doubter" in the comment thread on this post.

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I've now read Mary Rose Barrington's article on Geraldine Cummins in the June 1966 issue of The Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, and I think it was somewhat misrepresented by a commenter who said it "debunked" Cummins. Barrington does suggest ways in which Cummins might have known or guessed some of the material she "channeled"; some of these suggestions are more plausible than others, and a few seem like a stretch. But in the end, she is impressed by the sheer wealth of detail related about Cummins' subject, Mrs. Winifred Coombe-Tennant. She writes,

How has the very convincing, three-dimensional Winifred been built up from glimpses of newspapers and reference books, and from casual gossip? Quantity must surely count for something, and the sheer amount of fact, the effortless flow of background knowledge, and the apparent consistency of characterization must make one pause and wonder how much of Miss Cummins's life could have been spent in listening to idle talk about Mrs. Coombe-Tennant, in whom she had no particular interest. Assuming any normal source of information, how could Miss Cummins have come to know that when she was young Winifred 'used to think the prayer in our prayer-book to deliver us from sudden death an odd and mistaken supplication. It was one in which I never joined'. Has Miss Cummins read this somewhere in a newspaper or magazine? Or has some friend happened to say to her 'Mrs. Coombe-Tennant, who's a friend of mine (but not of yours) once told me that until the death of her daughter she never used to join in the prayer for delivery from sudden death etc. etc.' If unamusing anecdotes of this sort were told about Mrs. Coombe-Tennant, she must have been one of England's most thoroughly talked about women.

Barrington concludes with a more general caution against hyper-skepticism, or (as we like to call it) Skepticism:

Frequent references to improbability and unlikelihood in the last few pages prompt a short consideration of what meaning can reasonably be attributed to such words in the context of psychical research. On one view, anything is more likely than survival (or indeed any other paranormal process), and it matters little whether the event taken into comparison amounts to fraud by men thought to be honest, stupidity by men thought to be clever, malobservation by experienced observers, unaccountable results obtained using reliable apparatus and materials, multiple coincidence, gross misreporting, or all these improbabilities occurring together. On this view we should be bound to reject the evidence of several dozen reputable scientists who all declared that jointly and severally they had seen apples falling upwards; so long as the phenomenon remained unpredictable and unrepeatable, their observations would always have to be deemed delusions, conspiracies, jokes, or whatever, because these natural eccentricities were more probable than behavior contrary to the known laws of gravitation.

It seems to me that the flaw in this way of thinking is the attempt to assess the likelihood of paranormal states and events, and I would argue that a classification in terms of likelihood is meaningless except when applied to familiar situations. ... To say that however improbable the ways and means, survival must be considered even more improbable is not meaningful.

I would not call this a debunking, even though some of the details channeled by Geraldine Cummins have been challenged. As Barrington says:

This does not, however, dispose of 'Swan on a Black Sea'. There remain the personality of Winifred, the mass of background knowledge, and a handful of details some of which are noted here; others may well occur to other readers.

Unfortunately I don't think this article is available online. 

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Finally, I was struck by a particular dialogue exchange in Umberto Eco's novel The Name of the Rose. The narrator and his companion witness a monk confess to horrendous crimes committed in his younger days:

"And we burned and looted because we had proclaimed poverty the universal law, and we had the right to appropriate the illegitimate riches of others, and we wanted to strike at the heart of the network of greed that extended from parish to parish.… We killed to punish, to purify the impure through blood.… We had to kill the innocent as well, in order to kill all of you more quickly. We wanted a better world, of peace and sweetness and happiness for all.… We had to shed a little blood.… The fact is that it did not take much, the hastening, and it was worth turning the waters of the Carnasco red.… We had to hasten the course of events.…"

His whole body trembling, he rubbed his hands over his habit as if he wanted to cleanse them of the blood he was recalling. "The glutton has become pure again," William said to me.

“But is this purity?" I asked, horrified.

"There must be some other kind as well," William said, "but, however it is, it always frightens me."

"What terrifies you most in purity?" I asked.

"Haste," William answered.

Book Review: The Survival of the Soul

White Crow Books recently released a new edition of a 1921 study of mediumship called The Survival of the Soul and Its Evolution after Death, by French artist Pierre Emile Cornillier, focusing on his seances with a young model named Reine. After Cornillier mentioned his interest in table-tipping experiments, Reine wanted to try it for herself. On their first attempt the table spelled out a message advising Cornillier to hypnotize Reine. This unexpected order was obeyed, and Reine began channeling purported spirits. Eventually a high-level spirit named Vettellini took primary control, directing Reine's development as a medium and answering many questions posed by Cornillier.

The book, which runs more than 400 pages, is a record of 107 such seances. All the sittings were witnessed by Cornillier's wife (perhaps in part to rule out the salacious rumors that dogged other psychic investigators, like William Crookes), and some were witnessed by other persons, as well.  

An introduction by Michael Tymn points out that respected paranormal writer Robert Crookall named this book as his personal favorite among paranormal titles. Even so, The Survival of the Soul has been largely forgotten until now. 

I found the book consistently interesting, though not without flaws. On the plus side , there seems to be no doubt that Reine did manifest clairvoyant abilities. Assuming that Cornillier has reported the seances honestly — and I have no reason to think otherwise — Reine quickly developed the ability to observe distant locations and report on them with accuracy. So many specific examples are supplied that no other explanation presents itself except outright fraud on Cornillier's part. (Deception on the part of Reine would not explain her ability to describe people and events unknown to her, or to correctly divine the contents of sealed boxes.)

As a record of psi abilities manifested under hypnosis, Survival is a valuable text. It makes me wish that more such work was being done today. Putting mediums under hypnosis could be a way of reviving the nearly lost art of full-trance mediumship without the lengthy training period normally required for the development of this skill.

When we come to the communications from the spirits themselves, things get more complicated and more ambiguous. Many of these communications have a ring of truth, and yet there are errors and confusions that make it hard to know what’s really going on.

Reine tells us that the spirits she sees are differentiated by color. The lower spirits are reddish, the higher ones bluish , and the highest of all (at least of those known) are white. Interestingly, this color scheme corresponds to the ancient system of chakras, which associates the red end of the spectrum with the lower part of the body and the blue end with the higher faculties, while, in some variants, pure white represents a still higher level of development. Neither Cornillier nor Reine gives any indication of prior knowledge of chakras.

Asked if there are signs that reveal the evolutionary level of an incarnated spirit, Vettellini replies that there are one or two. "First, bonté [kindness, benevolence]. But bonté that understands: that is to say, an indulgence for others proceeding from a deep knowledge of the human soul. This bonté is intelligent and recognizes the necessity of sanction and severity. Bonté severite [benevolence and strictness] is, then, one sign to remember. Second: interest in the humble, the unimportant, the weak – an interest which is necessarily accompanied by indifference to social success, honors and position. And, finally, all inclination for philosophical speculations, all preoccupation in the mystery of the Au-Delà [the Beyond], and all effort to penetrate that mystery, – this is evolution itself!"

Naturally it would be nice to believe this last point, since it means that readers of this blog are already spiritually advanced. 

Certain statements attributed to Vettellini seem consistent with the results of more recent parapsychology research. For instance, Vettellini informs Cornillier that in some table-tipping exercises, no spirit is present , and the illusion of spirit contact is produced by the combined subconscious energies of the sitters. This is reminiscent of the famous Philip experiments, in which a wholly fictional spirit was made to engage in conversations (via raps) with the sitters.

Vettellini tells us that more highly developed spirits can choose to forego another incarnation and continue their evolution on the astral plane, though this is "more difficult" even than "the slow ordeal of incarnation." He explains the divergent messages from the spirit world on reincarnation and other topics by saying that spirits at different levels of development have different levels of knowledge. His vision of the spirit world seems more consistent with the between-lives regression studies of Michael Newton (also involving hypnosis) than with the channeled texts of Anthony Borgia or the direct-voice mediumship of Leslie Flint. There is no mention of gardens and cottages, of small homely details and ordinary life. Instead Vettellini's "Au-Delà" is an ethereal realm of shapeless spirits who can recall all their incarnations and in some cases assist in planning their next sojourn in the physical world.

The most complete explanation of the discrepancy between Vettellini's messages and those conveyed elsewhere  is offered late in the book: "By their fixed and persistent ideas Spirits, unconsciously, produce images around them – illusions of which they themselves are the first dupes and which also mislead the disincarnated souls in their environment. … And this is a … source of errors in communications that are quite sincere but which, as information, are no more dependable than is any other hallucination. ... In astral life Spirits of slight evolution seem as a rule to perceive only these image illusions."

This explanation is consistent with thoughts posted on this blog, and with channeled statements attributed to F.W.H. Myers in Geraldine Cummins' book The Road to Immortality, statements that characterize the so-called Summerland as a "plane of illusion." (It is also broadly consistent with the teachings of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which warns against being taken in by exteriorized thought-forms.)

Throughout Cornillier's book there is much talk of fluids and vibrations, which seems to suggest that reality consists ultimately of waves in a conducting medium. This may simply reflect standard spiritualist language or the physics of the day, which understood subatomic particles to be waves in "the ether." Even so, it's interesting to note that the idea of reality as essentially wave patterns is not inconsistent with the more modern "holographic universe-information matrix" idea. If each person consists of a point of consciousness bound to a nexus of information, and if this information affects the informational patterns around it in a manner reminiscent of the interaction of waves, then some sense can perhaps be made of Reine s search for a given person 's unique "fluid" (informational pattern) and of the idea that some "fluid" remains in items that a person has handled or created. There may also be some deeper meaning in the image, conveyed by Reine, of the high-level spirits making strange wavelike motions in an attempt to reconfigure the patterns of future history — as if seeking (in modern terms) to modify informational currents that exist only as probability distributions until they are actualized.

Vettellini's communications stress the importance of the interaction between soul and body. The life, talents, and capabilities of the incarnated human being are, we are told, determined not exclusively by the soul's level of development but by the innate qualities of the biological organism. A first-class brain can be paired with a relatively undeveloped soul. As Vettellini puts it, in a quote deemed memorable enough to grace the new edition's back cover, “The brilliant ones, even those who have great intellectuality, are often no more advanced in evolution [than the lowest souls]. They have had the luck to incarnate in an organism so perfect, so supple, that it is the organism which does all the work — a well-trained mount gives an air of skill to the most ignorant horseman.“ Ouch!

A tad biting, perhaps, but this viewpoint jibes with speculations on this blog about the symbiotic relationship between soul and body. It is not so much that the brain is a receiver of consciousness; it’s that the brain, like the Mars Rover, receives instructions from afar but also enjoys a degree of autonomy, and, in sending back data to Mission Control, can directly influence the next set of instructions it receives. (This analogy is taken from The Biology of Belief, by Bruce Lipton, as I recall.) 

The value of all these esoteric claims has to be judged by the accuracy and plausibility of other statements made by Vettellini that are susceptible of verification or falsification. Unfortunately, his track record in this respect is far from perfect.

For one thing, he insists that cremation ordinarily cuts all ties between the spirit and the earth, making it impossible for the discarnate spirit to communicate, because the astral (or "fluidic") body has lost its anchor to the physical world. Of course, in the 21st century cremation is quite common, and it does not seem to have impeded after-death communications, so this claim seems doubtful at best.

Another more-than-questionable claim involves the birth of twins. Vettellini says that "two or more Spirits cannot be captured (incarnated) at the same moment. One single coition can give birth to only one child. This is absolute. It is only by repetition — the period of receptivity may extend over several days — that a second Spirit may be captured by a new penetration of a spermatozoon into the ovule." This strong claim directly contradicts what is known about sexual reproduction today. Yes, fraternal twins are the result of two separate sperm cells penetrating two ova (though this usually happens in a single coition), but identical twins are the result of one sperm cell penetrating one ovum, which later splits in two.

Vettellini's record as a prognosticator is not much better. He is able to predict small details with accuracy, such as the timing of an unplanned trip. But when it comes to the big picture, there are problems. His most earthshaking prediction concerns a world war that is soon to erupt — but this is not either of the world wars we are know. This one will involve a general uprising in the European colonies, which will destabilize the world and precipitate Europe's invasion by China and Japan. In the ensuing chaos, European civilization will be utterly destroyed. We are told that high-level spirits are attempting to derail this catastrophic chain of events by altering the future so that the war, though disastrous, will not mean the end of civilization. 

Late in the book, Cornillier calls out Vettellini on this missed prediction, but Vettellini sticks to his guns, insisting that the war between Europe and Asia is inevitable and has only been temporarily postponed. "It was true at the time, and it is still true now. ... WHAT REINE SAW, WILL BE. Let these visions stand as they were written in your notes, FOR THEY WILL BE REALISED — though at what moment I cannot say." (The capitalization is in the original.) Still later, Vettellini changes his tune, saying the catastrophe has been averted: "Reine made no mistake. It was to be. But we have driven it back." 

How about the other spirits that speak through Reine? One identifies himself as a composer who went by the name of Nicolo, and who gives his dates of birth and death as 1775 and 1808. He says that he moved to Paris in his 20s and enjoyed great success there, before dying at age 43. “All was exact — facts and dates,“ Cornillier tells us after checking the historical record. Not quite. First, there must have been a mistake somewhere, since someone with those dates of birth and death would have been 33, not 43, when he died. In any event, modern sources say Nicolo was born in 1773 and died in 1818. 

On another occasion Vettellini refers to Nicolo as "Isouard," confusing both the medium and the author until Vettellini explains that Isouard was Nicolo's real name (true) and that he disliked using it (a detail Cornillier says he was able to verify).

A second composer who comes through is Méhul. In this case, dates and other information are correct. Cornillier made an effort to confirm some of Méhul's more obscure claims and found evidence supporting some of them.

Another spirit, personally unknown to anyone at the séance, gives many details about herself, including the great secret of her life: that she took a priest as a lover. Remarkably enough, Cornillier was able to confirm all of these details, including "the existence of a priest in the intimate life of this woman." This point was verified by somebody who knew her well and confided in the author's wife.

For me, the book conveys a slightly gloomy impression. We are told repeatedly that suffering and struggle are part of our evolution, and that we must suffer through many earthly incarnations and many astral planes, apparently with no relief in sight, no matter how high we rise. (Oddly, although this theme is repeated throughout the communiques, it never occurs to Cornillier to ask just why suffering is necessary in order to make progress.) We are also told that much of life is determined by an impersonal Fate, over which we have no control, while other aspects can be adjusted and modified by our own will or by the desperate improvisations of high-level spirits, as in the case of the impending war. The implication is of a rather chaotic universe, whose events are partly preordained and partly ad hoc, and of a reality that remains largely mysterious, with even the highest (known) spirits ignorant of their ultimate purpose.

The depressing nature of some of the communications is reinforced by the sad travails of little Reine, who, besides being desperately poor and wholly uneducated, is chronically ill with fever, bronchitis, rheumatism, neuralgia, etc. In probably the majority of sittings she is suffering from some malady. 

The mood brightens in later chapters, with Vettellini stating, "Amongst the average Spirits many are happy. In death, as in life, there are the anxious, and the happy-go-lucky. To sum it up: when lucidity is once recovered [after the usual period of disorientation following death], the soul capable of spiritual interests and joys is happy; the soul whose happiness depends upon material pleasures, regrets [leaving] the earth. It is logical."

Overall, Cornillier's book is something of a mixed bag. I don’t doubt the author's sincerity, and I do think that genuine paranormal phenomena were taking place, as evidenced by Reine's verified descriptions of distant places and her correct predictions of upcoming events in her (or Cornillier's) life. Moreover, many of the spirit communications ring true and cast new light on much-debated questions. Offsetting these positives are the incorrect predictions and inaccurate scientific pronouncements. Of course these inaccuracies could be attributed to garbled communications, the interference of low-level spirits, and so forth, but such explanations are not terribly persuasive. Cornillier himself was clearly troubled by some of these issues, even complaining to Vettellini that a prediction that's subject to change is no prediction at all! 

Whatever its faults, The Survival of the Soul is an engrossing record of an unusual experiment in mental mediumship, and White Crow Books and Michael Tymn both deserve credit for bringing it to the attention of a new audience. I recommend it as an important historical record in the serious study of the Au-Delà. 

From the archives: Bird droppings

Here's a post from 2009, which refers back to John Edward's old show, Crossing Over, which even then was off the air. Although the specific content is dated, the basic point remains valid: any evidence, no matter how good, can be rationalized away.

I've updated the link to my essay on Edward. The original link to SkepticReport still works.

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Today I happened to look at an essay about medium John Edward that I posted on my Web site back in 2003. I found it interesting on two levels. First, I seem to have been a lot snarkier back then! Second, I was much less convinced of the reality of mediumship than I am now.

The other thing I noticed was that in '03 it was still necessary to explain what a "blog site" is.

The reason I reread this old essay was that I remembered a particularly weak skeptical argument used to debunk one of Edward's more impressive televised "hits." The argument was made in an article called "Birds of a Feather" that appeared on the Web site SkepticReport in 2002.

Here is the relevant part of the transcript, as reproduced by SkepticReport:

John: Why is Niagara Falls significant?

Lady 1: We was just there.

John: You were just at Niagara Falls, ok.

Lady 1: Me and my daughter.

John: Did you find a feather there?

Lady 1: Yes, and my daughter…

John: Did you tell your daughter that was from daddy?

Lady 1: Yes.

John: Ok, this is a validation that he was there for you, ok? ‘Cause he’s showing me the feather. Lucky for you that’s my mother’s symbol when she communicates with me. I find feathers. So it was a very easy symbol for me to get. But I need to validate for you that is was definitely, definitely him there for her.

Lady 1: Thank you.

So Edward told the woman that he was getting "Niagara Falls," and in fact the woman had just been there. He then asked if she had found a feather there, and the woman said yes. He then asked if she'd told her daughter that the feather was "from daddy" (deceased). The woman confirmed this, too.

Sounds pretty good to me. But SkepticReport will have none of it. Here is their explanation:

But what of the feather? Isn’t that a fantastic piece of evidence?

Not really. According to the 35th Annual Niagara Falls Christmas Bird Count on Saturday, December 29th, 2001, a total of 101 species of birds were found, and a total of 49,744 birds in Niagara Falls, NY.

There are also quite a few photos on the web from Niagara Falls with birds in them:

[Links to bird photos are given.]

Tons of birds on these ones.

I think we can safely say that it would not be uncommon to find a feather at Niagara Falls.

OK, then: What about Niagara Falls itself?

What does John Edward actually say about Niagara Falls? “Did you tell your daughter that the feather she found at Niagara Falls was from her Daddy?”

No. Previously in the reading, we have learned that Catherine has lost her husband. First, John Edward asks: “Why is Niagara Falls significant?” He doesn’t say anything about the nature of the significance. He asks Catherine!

From there, she tells John Edward that she was there with her daughter. Since birds are commonplace there, it would be likely if the daughter found a feather – it is fun for kids to find feathers.

Immediately after, Catherine – tearfully – begins to tell John Edward that “her daughter” – and then John Edward breaks in and asks about the father.

It takes three steps, and after each, John Edward asks a crucial question. It doesn’t take a genius to see what is happening here.

According to this argument, Edward's references to a) Niagara Falls, b) finding a feather there, and c) the mom telling the daughter that the feather was a gift from her departed father were all lucky guesses or obvious logical inferences. Money quote: "Since birds are commonplace there, it would be likely if the daughter found a feather – it is fun for kids to find feathers."

Now, really. I mean, come on. (Hey, I just found some of my missing snark.)

I have no doubt that there are many birds at Niagara Falls, and it was hardly necessary for SkepticReport to cite bird counts and bird photos to establish this uncontroversial point. (I'd guess that these citations were added to make the article look more "scientific.")

As a matter of fact, there are lots of birds everywhere, except maybe Death Valley. I've lived in several different parts of the country, in widely differing climate zones, and have never found any shortage of birds, even in urban areas.

Even so, I have rarely noticed any feathers on the ground, and to the best of my recollection I have never seen a kid pick up a feather. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but it's not the sort of thing you see every day. ("Hey, look, there's another kid picking up a feather. Third time today.")

Moreover, I have never heard anyone tell a child that a feather was a gift from a deceased parent, or anything of the kind. Actually, I don't think I've ever heard been part of a conversation about picking up bird feathers in any context.

The whole "explanation" is an obvious example of rationalizing after the fact. If Edward had said that the woman's husband was run over by a dump truck in Newark, maybe SkepticReport would cite statistics and photos proving that there are many dump trucks in Newark. When you think of Newark, aren't dump trucks the first thing that come to mind? And since people sometimes get run over by dump trucks, it was easy for Edward to guess that the husband had died this way. Why, when you think about it, it's just common sense!

SkepticReport also points out a minor and debatable discrepancy between the show's transcript and the way it's written up in Edward's book Crossing Over. Here's how part of the exchange is described in the book:

“Did you find a feather there?” I asked her.

“Yes, and…” Catherine was crying.

“Did your tell your daughter that was from Daddy?”

“Yes.” She buried her face in her hands.

SkepticReport makes much of the fact that Catherine's words "Yes, and my daughter ..." were shortened to "Yes, and ..." in the book. Is this significant?

I don't think so. First, I saw a rerun of this episode of Crossing Over after reading the SkepticReport article, so I was paying close attention. If my memory is correct, there was crosstalk at this point, and Edward, talking very fast as usual, actually said, "Did you tell your daughter ..." at the very same moment when Catherine was saying, "... and my daughter." In other words, he was not reacting to her statement, but talking over it and partly drowning it out.

Second, and more important, the mere fact that Catherine said "and my daughter" would not lead most people to infer that Catherine told her daughter that the feather "was from Daddy." There are countless ways the statement "and my daughter" could have concluded.

It's probably silly to spend this much time on a trivial and foolish debunking exercise from seven years ago. The SkepticReport article, however, does illustrate an important point: No matter what kind of hits are obtained, no matter how specific they are or how unlikely or how meaningful to the sitter, they can still be rationalized away by a determined doubter.

Summerland, Dreamland, Disneyland

If we look at channeled descriptions of the afterlife, we observe a fair amount of consistency, but also notable omissions and anomalies. Even in the most detailed narratives, we get no clear sense of what people do all day. We are told about their pleasant lives spent relaxing in a garden, or attending a symphony, or visiting with friends in a parlor, but there is little indication of a daily routine. Occupations seem to be limited to caring for new arrivals in hospitals or sanatoriums, and engaging in creative or scientific work; but in neither case do we learn nearly as much as we would like. We are told of wonderful new inventions and artistic creations dreamed up by scientists and artists on the other side – scientists and artists who are apparently eager to share their work with the living – yet we are seldom privy to the details. Shakespeare may be writing his most glorious poetry in the afterlife, but no communicator sees fit to quote it for us. Edison may have come up with fascinating new inventions, but they remain unknown to us on earth. There are exceptions – the occasional medium who claims to receive symphonic compositions by the great masters, or someone who obtains a patent on an invention that came to him in a dream – but these are rare.

For the most part, our afterlife communicators seem unable to describe what they do to pass the time. They also seem curiously unable to describe their own homes. We are told that the houses can be quite large, yet the only rooms that are described, for the most part, are sitting rooms in which company can be entertained. What about all the other rooms? Is there a kitchen? Doubtful, since we are told that only the greenest of the new arrivals still feels the need to eat. A bathroom? Presumably not, since the astral body has no digestive system. A bedroom? Unlikely, since sleep is unnecessary and there is no nighttime. But what, then, are all those other rooms in those large houses? What purpose do they serve? What's in them?

Such omissions are explained by believers as resulting from difficulties in communication. But it seems odd that all the varied communications received throughout more than a century should suffer from the same difficulties. And it is especially odd that communications that are impressively detailed, even verbose, still fall short when it comes to describing major facets of the next life.

In considering this, it may be good to remember that almost all communicators who exhibit any intellectual advancement remark on this next phase of existence as, in some sense, an illusion. Perhaps the most notable example is the allegedly channeled F.W.H. Myers, speaking through Geraldine Cummins, who referred to the next plane as "the plane of Illusion," "Illusion-land," "Shadow Land," and "the Lotus Flower paradise."*

The lotus flower, it should be remembered, was said to be eaten by addicts who were transported into a blissful fantasy. Dictionary.com defines the term "lotus eater" as:

1. Classical Mythology. a member of a people whom Odysseus found existing in a state of languorous forgetfulness induced by their eating of the fruit of the legendary lotus; one of the lotophagi.

 

2. a person who leads a life of dreamy, indolent ease, indifferent to the busy world; daydreamer.

Myers, a classical scholar with a deep interest in Greek mythology, would have known both meanings.

Most often, this plane of "dreamy, indolent ease" and "languorous forgetfulness" is called Summerland, a term suggestive of an endless summer, which in turn suggests the long, lazy, timeless days of childhood. A common theme of the more advanced communicators is that Summerland is a fantasy or illusion created by the common subconscious memories, expectations, and desires of its inhabitants. Myers: "In Illusion-land you do not consciously create your surroundings through an act of thought. Your emotional desires, your deeper mind manufacture these without your being aware of the process."

Summerland is, in other words, a kind of shared dream. Now, a dream has a certain internal logic, yet there are typically omissions and even absurdities. Dreams involve sequential events but no clear sense of time. In a dream, we may engage in familiar activity repeatedly, even obsessively. We may find ourselves dreaming of the same behavior or situation over and over again. Dreams feel real and meaningful, but if, upon awakening, we try to retrieve the details, they often prove elusive or  nonsensical or trivial. Insights glimpsed in dreams, which seem extraordinarily important in the moment, are almost always exposed as trite when we recover them in our waking state.

All of this is arguably relevant to Summerland, as described by communicators. It has its own logic, but also its omissions; remember those mysterious extra rooms in people's houses, which are said to exist, but which are never described. Or remember the vagueness with which people address the question of their daily routine. The people of Summerland, and of lower astral planes, are said to engage in certain kinds of repetitive activity: on the lower levels, alcoholics continue to seek liquor, while the argumentative and violent continue to quarrel and fight; in Summerland, gardeners enjoy their gardens, artists paint their pictures, scientists work in their laboratories. Great insights are claimed, yet for the most part, the insights that come through the communications are disappointing and often dissolve into vague abstractions. Here's an example, again from the channeled Myers via Cummins:

Our surroundings are of a metaetheric character … It contains atoms of the very finest kind. They pass through your coarse matter. They belong to another state altogether …

Actually, though I call them atoms, they would appear to you to be of a fluid character …

This world beyond death … consists of electrons differing only in their fineness or increased vibratory quality from those known to earthly scientists. These very subtle units are extremely plastic and, therefore, can be molded by mind and will.

As physics goes, this is pretty thin soup.

What we see, I think, is that our communicators are very much like our dream selves. They are sure they have marvelous insights, but for the most part these don't hold up very well in the light of day. They talk blithely about all the wonderful things they do, but their actual activities seem confined to a few habitual behaviors learned on earth. They inhabit beautiful homes, but can't describe them. They hear beautiful music and exalted poetry, but can't convey it. Their scientists work in vague laboratories doing vague things – much as the average person today knows, in a general way, that scientists are smart people in lab coats who are surrounded by test tubes and cyclotrons and who come up with new discoveries of some sort.

It is, perhaps, rather childish. This fact leads skeptics, understandably enough, to dismiss the whole thing as patent silliness. But there's another way to look at it.

Dreamland – the country of sleep – is the playground of the subconscious. If hypnosis has taught us anything, it is that the subconscious is tractable and compliant. It believes what it is told. It has limited critical faculties. It is childlike and trusting.

Summerland, to the extent that it is a shared dream or a kind of mass self-hypnosis, reflects the same qualities. It seems simplistic because the subconscious mind is itself simplistic. It resists critical analysis because the subconscious mind falters in the face of critical analysis. It is persistent, because the subconscious mind sincerely believes whatever it is told and takes at face value whatever it is shown. 

The most fluent mediums and automatic writers enter into a trance in order to make contact with communicators. It is said that they must match the communicators' "vibration." It is not clear exactly what "vibration" means in this context, but one possible implication is that the communicators themselves are in a kind of trance state, at least while they are communicating, and maybe even when they are not. The people of Summerland, we are told, do not need to sleep. Is this because they are asleep already? The dreamer, typically, does not know that he dreams. The dream, for him, is reality, vivid and immediate. It persists in a sequential but curiously timeless fashion, seeming complete and logical despite its lacunae and contradictions. 

Summerland may be a world of sleepwalkers. A fantasy world, created by the combined intelligence of the subconscious minds of its inhabitants, minds that are imaginative but limited, more sensual than intellectual, trusting and not critical. A world created for rest and recuperation, for amusement and recreation, for exploration and learning – a kind of Disneyland of the Spirit. Just as Disneyland has its sub-theme parks  – Adventureland, Fantasyland, Tomorrowland, etc. – so Summerland has its own geography, its various communities organized around different belief systems. There appears to be a Christianland, complete with pearly gates and choirs of angels; Englishland, a bucolic countryside with thatched roof cottages; Ozland, an Emerald City of gleaming skyscrapers; and many more. And there are lower planes – what we might call Suicideland, where despairing souls linger in a self-imposed purgatory; and Warriorland, where ignorant armies clash by night; and Boozeland, where the search for hedonistic thrills continues pointlessly and insensibly.

Among spiritualists, it is generally understood that the lower planes are illusions experienced by people in a state of something like self-hypnosis or unhealthy self-absorption. But the same may be true of our friends in Summerland, as Myers and other advanced communicators have actually said. The full implications of their statement have perhaps not been appreciated.

In short, we sometimes wonder why communicators cannot convey trenchant details, stunning insights, and dizzying creative triumphs. We chalk it up to a bad connection, a translation error, a glitch. But maybe the explanation is simpler. Maybe, as far as Summerland is concerned, there is simply nothing more to convey.

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*All Myers-communicator quotes are taken from Chris Carter's Science and the Afterlife Experience, which in turn quotes Geraldine Cummins' books Beyond Human Personality and The Road to Immortality.