Michael Prescott's Blog

Field reports

The Supreme Adventure: Analyses of Psychic Communications, by Robert Crookall, was published in 1961. It consists of reports describing the dying process, culled by Crookall from various books about mediumship.

There are two points of particular interest about this material. First, even though it was collected from a variety of sources spanning many decades, it displays a remarkable set of similarities. Second, it anticipates descriptions of the dying process reported by near-death experiencers -- descriptions that were not popularized until the mid-1970s.

Of course, some near-death experiences were reported before that date. In fact, in some of his other books Crookall himself collected accounts that he classified as out-of-body experiences, but which today would be called NDEs. (The term "near-death experience" was not coined until 1975, with the publication of Raymond Moody's book Life After Life.) But in the years before the development of advanced medical technology, NDEs were rare , and the distinctive elements of an NDE do not appear to have been widely known. It is therefore of some interest that so many mediums, ostensibly conveying messages from the deceased, indicated the very same elements that would later be understood as characterizing an NDE.

A preview of The Supreme Adventure can be read on Google Books; the book itself is available from Amazon and other online retailers. Trying to summarize all this information inevitably does a disservice to Crookall's work, because its most interesting aspects are the repetitive similarities among the various accounts, and these details must be lost in any brief recap. Still, an overview at least gives the flavor of the book.

Crookall divides his accounts into "natural death" and "enforced death," pointing out interesting dissimilarities between the two. For our purposes, we will limit the discussion to natural death.

Here are the main features of the natural dying process, according to Crookall:

1. The call. The dying person consciously or unconsciously calls out to departed loved ones, who arrive to assist in the transition.

2. The life review. Crookall: "Communicators often declare that, in the early stages of transition, they experienced a panoramic review of their past earth-lives." This review is impersonal and nonjudgmental.

3. Leaving the body. The messages spoke of rising out of the body and floating in the air, then passing through a tunnel or passageway, while experiencing an expansion of consciousness. (Much more about the tunnel accounts is found here.) The deceased persons frequently met friends who had passed over before them. They also reported seeing "a cord of light" connecting the spiritual body to the earthly body -- a cord that snapped at the moment of irrevocable physical death.

4. The sleep, or the second death. For a short time after death, many communicators indicated that they existed in a half-conscious or unconscious state, which was apparently necessary to recharge their energy and help acclimate them to their new environment.

5. The awakening. After the sleep, communicators described coming back to full consciousness. As one said, "Death really is just a sleep and an awakening." (p. 39)

6. The judgment. This experience is held to be separate from the earlier life review, which is nonjudgmental. Crookall calls the judgment "an emotional and a personally-responsible review of the past earth-life which, with average people who die natural deaths, occurs within a few months (reckoned in our time) of 'passing'.... The 'Judgment' takes place after the 'second death' (which occurs, with average men who 'pass' naturally, some three or four days after their transition)." One communicator is quoted as saying, "The judgment-bar is the innermost of yourself." (p. 43)

7. The assignment. Each spirit gravitates toward the sphere of existence that is most closely aligned with his or her personal development.

Crookall notes that many communicators go on to describe conditions in these celestial spheres: "'Communications' of the unverifiable type deal with innumerable subjects -- the supposed conditions of the after-life, the 'spheres', 'planes' or environments in which the 'dead' live, their occupations and activities, their relationships to each other and to us mortals, the methods by which they communicate with us, their 'lecture halls', 'libraries', 'hospitals', etc. Many who have made a study of the numerous independent accounts of such matters have pointed out that they exhibit remarkable similarities and that, although they cannot be taken as literally true and exact descriptions, they must, presumably, refer to reality of some sort. A study of such matters will not, however, contribute towards a demonstration of survival." (p. 5)

Perhaps not, but it is, at the very least, interesting that some modern NDErs, who presumably had no acquaintance with mediumistic messages or spiritualist teachings, describe the afterlife environment in much the same terms, right down to the lecture halls, libraries, and hospitals.

Getting back to the specific steps enumerated by Crookall, we can see that the most obvious similarities with NDEs are found in #1 (the call), #2 (the life review), #3 (leaving the body), and #6 (the judgment). These similarities include: a panoramic review of one's past life; separating from the body and hovering over it; moving through a tunnel; and meeting deceased loved ones, who often are reported to assist in the transition. At least one communicator said there was a light at the end of the tunnel, and in general, the tunnel experience seems to be reported as an interval of darkness followed by new light. Crookall regards the tunnel experience as something like an extended blackout.

The biggest difference between these mediumistic communications and NDEs is that, in NDEs, the early life review is frequently seen as an opportunity for passing judgment on oneself, while in the accounts collected by Crookall, judgment does not take place until a second, later life review. Whether or not this difference is significant is debatable. One might speculate that the NDEr is allowed to learn from his life review ahead of schedule, while he has the opportunity, before being sent back to his physical body. Since his "death" is only temporary, he would not get the chance to go through the extended life review if it was delayed.

Note that the most distinctive feature of the NDE life review -- the sense that one is not only re-experiencing one's own life but also directly experiencing the effect that one has had on others -- is reported by some mediumistic communicators in their description of the judgment: "Each incident brings with it the feelings not only of oneself alone but of all those others who were affected by the events." "One is faced with the effects emotionally of all one's actions." "All the pain he had given to people he experienced himself, and all the pleasure he had given he received back again." "He becomes aware of all the emotions aroused in his victims by his acts... He becomes purified through his identification with the sufferings of his victims." "I have been shown the effects of all my acts upon other people's minds. Their thoughts were shown to me." (pp. 42-45)

Of course, NDErs do not report the second death (#4), subsequent awakening (#5), or permanent assignment to a particular plane (#6). But this is to be expected, since these events -- according to the mediums -- take place only after the silver cord has been cut and death is irrevocable.

The impression I get from comparing these reports with NDEs is that the NDEr is something like a visitor on the celestial plane. He does not have the opportunity to become fully acclimated to his environment (which is the purpose of the second death), nor is he permanently assigned to any particular spiritual sphere. Whisked out of his body before the appointed time, he is allowed a reunion with departed loved ones, a chance to commune with his higher self (or God, or however we look at the "being of light" who appears in so many NDEs), a chance to learn from his past life, and a glimpse of his future home. But he does not go through all the steps that would accompany the full and final dying process.

Nevertheless, the early steps taken by the NDEr dovetail pretty neatly with the accounts provided by mediums. Despite any differences, there are obvious parallels between the two sets of reports.

The recurrent similarities in mediumistic communications could perhaps be explained as the product of the general environment of spiritualism; the mediums, it might be said, simply picked up these ideas from spiritualist literature and then perpetuated them. But most people who've reported an NDE are not spiritualists, and probably have no knowledge of esoteric writings. It is more than doubtful that the average cardiac arrest patient who describes an NDE has spent any time poring over the works of Swedenborg or Blavatsky, or reading the obscure books cited by Crookall -- books like Philip in Two Worlds, by Alice Gilbert (1948) and Shadow Land by Mme. d. Esperance (1897), to choose just two of the titles in Crookall's extensive bibliography. Yet the NDErs consistently report many of the same details, sometimes in almost the same words.

I think it's because the mediumistic communications, or at least a great many of them, are genuine, as are the NDE accounts. There are commonalities between them because they are reports of the same reality -- a reality the rest of us will get to explore for ourselves soon enough.

Dreamtime

A while ago, I posted some thoughts on Robert Monroe's out-of-body experiences. I remarked that many of his astral adventures had a dreamlike or nightmarish quality, and I wondered if maybe he was experirncing hypnagogic hallucinations.

That's still possible, but more recently I've become aware of the very large body of esoteric literature purporting to describe the stages of transition from this life to the next. One of the points consistently made by this literature is that the earliest stage of transition often involves immersion in a dreamlike environment. In this netherworld, the experiencer encounters beings and objects that are actually projections of his own mind - his hopes, beliefs, and fears. Adding to the confusion, the experiencer is typically in a trancelike state that impedes clear thinking.

Robert Crookall, who compiled many accounts of the afterlife from a variety of sources, maintained that it takes some time - usually about three days - for the deceased person to fully liberate himself from the remnants of his physical being. During this stage, the person's mind is clouded and his perceptions are unreliable.  

I have not read the Tibetan Book of the Dead, but from what I understand, it warns against being deceived by exteriorized manifestations of one's own mind during initial postmortem experiences.

The topic is somewhat hard to address because different writers use different terminology. Terms like etheric body, astral shell, soul body, spiritual body, etc. are employed with a multiplicity of overlapping meanings. But the general point seems to be that when the physical body dies, the nonphysical body remains attached or connected to it for a time, and during this time there can be confusion and misperception. Part of the purpose of esoteric works like the Book of Dead was to caution people not to be taken in by these illusions.

Robert Monroe's more bizarre OBEs might best be understood this light. Similarly, the psychic predictions made by some near-death experiencers - which frequently fail to come true - may be seen as products of mental confusion rather than legitimate insights. We might also consider other dreamlike or phantasmagorical qualities of some NDEs as examples of this transitional state. When skeptics point to NDEs in which fantasy figures like Santa Claus make an appearance, one possible response is to observe that such encounters are fully consistent with thousands of years of esoteric teaching.

Befogged

Many people complain that mediumistic communications are disappointingly trivial or obscure, and that the purported communicators forget basic facts they should remember. In his fascinating 1961 book The Supreme Adventure, Robert Crookall explores several explanations for these anomalies. One of them is that the communicators, in order to make contact with earthly minds, must "lower their vibrations."

"Their minds," Crookall writes*,

are then more or less dulled and their descriptions may, in some respects, resemble those of the temporary inhabitants of Hades conditions [a transitional state immediately after dying] : they may complain of being "befogged", "semi-conscious", "drowsy", "dreamy", "suffocated", "not all there", etc., and their mental condition may affect their memories and therefore their messages. Jane Sherwood transmitted a typical statement on this subject. "Coming back is difficult... One has to lower one's vibration -- something like going into a trance or being drugged or finding oneself again in the misty, half-alive state."

He goes on to cite the researcher Richard Hodgson, who

compared the condition under which a discarnate communicator contacted a mortal friend with that of two mortals who were obliged to communicate with each other by employing a messenger who was dead drunk!... On one occasion, [the discarnate] Myers, communicating, said it was "like entrusting a message on which infinite importance depends to a sleeping person"; on another it was like "dictating feebly to a reluctant and somewhat obtuse secretary".

Mrs. Gladys Osborne Leonard was told by a communicator that "sometimes the spirits who are not ordinarily in touch with the earth conditions would find themselves overcome by a sleepy, dreamy condition when actually entering physical vibrations...."

And he makes reference to a case cited by Hereward Carrington.

A communicator said that he had performed a certain act during his earth-life. Actually, it was known that he had not performed this act -- but he had made the same statement when, in the course of passing, he had been in a delirium. The suggestion is that, in order to attune with the medium and communicate, he had had to lower his vibrations in near-earth level: this caused him to re-enter the pre-death delirious state and so he mechanically repeated a statement which was, nevertheless, erroneous.

To buttress his point, Crookall assembles a lengthy collection of quotes, some of which I reproduce here. These quotes are taken from a variety of sources, including popular books and more academic studies. First, here are quotes attributed to discarnate communicators.

"When we come to you a portion of ourselves rests. We are in a drowsy state... it makes it easier for us to pick up the earth-vibrations and talk to you."

"When we plunge down into your atmosphere we feel stifled at first and can't think -- but improve with practice."

"I am, as it were, but semi-conscious while communicating it communicating thus.... It is one of the reasons for fragmentary communications."

"In my own sphere and place it would all be clear, but I now find a difficulty with my memory which is curious..."

"As I speak to you, I am not manifesting with complete consciousness. Much of which I am normally aware is indistinct to my vision. I am troubled by the miasmas of earth."

"Only a part of the consciousness [of the communicator] is getting through to earth conditions".

"In all these matters my memory is perfectly clear when I stand free and unhampered in the spiritual atmosphere, but somehow when I return into earth's atmosphere, so many things become hazy and incomplete."

"In certain circumstances we are only able to communicate with a fraction of our mentality here, which means that the messages get through to you in a hazy state... There are degrees and layers of consciousness... the whole personality" is not engaged in communicating -- that which communicates is "ourselves as we were on earth", the greater and higher levels being asleep.

"I am more awake than asleep, yet I cannot come just as I am in reality." (This was the discarnate "George Pelham" speaking to Dr. Hodgson through the medium Leonora Piper.)

"You [mortals] to us are more as we understand sleep and, in order for us to get into communication with you, we have to enter into your sphere, as one like yourself, asleep. This is why we make mistakes..."

"When we... desire to communicate through some sensitive, we enter a dream (or subjective) state... If we are but slightly entranced we are detached from the memory of concrete facts in our past life... we are frequently unable to communicate through the medium's hand or voice many exact facts about our past career on earth, sometimes not even our own names.... My perceptions, when adjusted to earth, are not rapid in their working.... When we seek to communicate, we... slow down our processes of thought... I may compare the experience with a passing from active life into a still, sleepy world..." (This was the discarnate "F.W.H. Myers" communicating through Geraldine Cummins.)

"It is not my whole self talking."

"If you will wait for me, I will remember all... I seem to lose part of my recollection... I intended to refer to Uncle John, but I was somewhat dazed... Strange, I cannot think of the word I want... I am working to keep my thoughts clear."

"Our first reaction is that of being encased, feeling very limited... In the process of entering the medium, we lose much of our thoughts, ideas and knowledge, all so clear to us a moment or two previous to our contact with the body, and so, on many occasions, the controlling spirit cannot answer some seemingly simple questions from the sister concern.... The feeling of being limited and encased fades away after a few times of trance."

"All your mind is not in your brain at one in the same time: you have your conscious and your sub-conscious mind. He [the communicator] also develops a conscious and a sub-conscious section when he comes here... The part left outside the medium's mind forms, for the moment, his sub-conscious mind. When you wish to recall what your conscious mind has lost, you try to obtain it from the sub-conscious... It is more difficult for him than for you, because a smaller portion of his mind is operating in the medium... You see, therefore, why he cannot, while controlling, think so clearly or remember so much as you can." (This was Gladys Osborn Leonard's control "Feda.")

"It is so suffocating here. I can appreciate their [i.e., former communicators'] difficulties better than ever before."

"After you die the soul suddenly seems to expand... When we communicate with you, we have, in a sense, to form a body; a body that will compress the soul again to the dimensions of that before we cast off the [physical] body.... The whole thing is a strain. When we speak to you we are in an unnatural condition."

A discarnate named Nellie, communicating through Mrs. Piper, said that the discarnate Myers was "much more lively" and "much more wakened up" in his normal spiritual life than when he was speaking through the medium.

In addition to these and other quotes from mediums, Crookall cites the conclusions of researchers. James Hyslop wrote,

The general supposition which, to the mind of Dr. Hodgson and myself, explains the persistent triviality of the communicating spirit at the time of communicating (not necessarily in his normal state in the spirit world) is in a sort of abnormal mental state, perhaps resembling our dream-life...

And Hereward Carrington wrote,

They [i.e., discarnate communicators] experience great difficulty in holding their thoughts together connectedly during the process of communication... This does not mean that they are ordinarily in this confused state, but (very often) as soon as they come in contact with the medium's psychic atmosphere and magnetism, they become confused and their minds tend to wander as they would in delirium or in a state of trance... It is because of this that many of the messages we receive commence well but dwindle off into incoherence and triviality.

Besides lowered vibrations, Crookall suggests other reasons for unsatisfactory communications. These include the likelihood that many communicators are earthbound spirits in a state of confusion, that some apparent communications result from the medium reading a discarded "astral shell" or reading the minds of the living, and that communicators may not know which parts of their messages actually get through.

He concludes,

Mortals, not unnaturally, expect communication with departed souls to be as simple and straightforward as is conversation between mortals. But it cannot be so: conversation is simple, communication is complex. It is particularly complex in those cases in which the communicator must retard his mental activities in order to attune with the medium.... A man whom we knew in earth-life to be of a well-informed and clear-thinking type may communicate inaccurate or vague statements: he may, nevertheless, be doing his best to get through. The claim that a communicator may forget details of his past life -- even his own name -- is paralleled by what can occur in partial anesthesia or hypnosis. The argument often advanced, therefore, "That can't be X -- it must be either the sub-conscious mind of the medium or an ignorant impersonating discarnate personality" is not necessarily sound.

-----

*All quotes are from pp. 216-224. In quoting Crookall, I have omitted some of his italics and single-quote marks, because I feel he overuses them.

The tunnel

Lately I've been reading The Supreme Adventure: Analysis of Psychic Communications, by Robert Crookall. In it, Crookall collects many accounts of the dying process from a variety of sources and examines them to see if they tell a more or less consistent story. His idea is that if the details of the story are consistent and cannot credibly be explained by collusion or coincidence, then there's good reason to believe that these details are true.

One particularly interesting detail is the well-known "tunnel" through which the spirit is said to travel after leaving the body. This imagery became famous in the 1970s when the term near-death experiences was coined by Raymond Moody, but Crookall's book precedes Moody's by 14 years and contains the same imagery.

Crookall writes,

A common symbol used in describing the act of shedding ... the Physical Body is that of passing through a 'tunnel' (or a 'door', 'passage', 'tube', 'shaft', 'hole', 'funnel', etc.): this is clearly related to the 'momentary coma' [experienced upon separating from the body], though lasting somewhat longer and, perhaps, with some dim consciousness, of existence if not of environment. There are many considerations which strongly suggest that in this symbol a genuine experience of a surviving soul is indicated.

He then lists a number of statements "by people who left the body other than by death and who use identical symbols" -- that is, by people who had out-of-body experiences (astral projection) or, in some cases, what we would now call near-death experiences. (Where possible, I have given the date of the published account.)

"I seemed to float in a long tunnel. It appeared very narrow at first but gradually expanded into unlimited space." (1952)

"Suddenly there appeared an opening, like a tunnel, and, at the far end, a light. I moved nearer to it and was drawn up the passage." (1950)

"A constant preliminary to the loss of consciousness is the symbolic passing through a pitch-black tunnel." (1953)

"I was falling ... down a dark, narrow tunnel or shaft ... Sometimes the speed is so tremendous that one gets the effect of tumbling through a hole into a new sphere."

"I find myself going down a long dim tunnel ... At the far end is a tiny speck of light which grows, as I approach, into a large square, and I am there!"

"In one of my own experiences I seemed to pass through a tunnel in a dream-like state and emerged through the opening at the end into a scene of bright sunlight." (1956)

"I was hurried off at great speed. Have you ever looked through a very long tunnel and seen the tiny speck of light at the far end?... Well, I found myself... hurrying along just such a tunnel or passage." (1935 near-death experience)

Crookall includes a 1946 mystical experience:

"I closed my eyes and watched a silver glow which shaped itself into a circle with a central focus brighter than the rest. The circle became a tunnel of light proceeding from some distance on in the heart of the Self. Swiftly and smoothly I was borne through the tunnel."

And a number of statements from people who had an out-of-body experience under anesthesia:

"I was in a long tunnel with a light at the end... I knew that if I could only get to the light at the end I should understand everything." (1935)

"I seemed to float down a dark tunnel, moving towards a half-moon of light that was miles away."

"On being given ether I was moving, at a terrific rate, through what seemed to be a tunnel."

"I found myself in an avenue of trees, slowly moving farther and farther from my body... I continue to advance along the avenue towards a brilliant light at the end of it." (1955)

"I found myself proceeding along a straight black tube with hardly any room to move." (1894)

What is most interesting is that these statements agree with communications through mediums.

"I remember a curious opening, as if one had passed through subterranean passages and found oneself near the mouth of the cave... The light was much stronger outside."

An alleged discarnate who said he helped people make the transition said he tried "to make this passage through the tunnel as happy as possible." (1931)

Another communicator said he traveled through a "dark tunnel" while leaving his body. Yet another spoke of "traveling down a tunnel".

A 1926 communicator said: "I saw in front of me a dark tunnel. I stepped out of the tunnel into a new world."

These ostensible communicators also seem to agree that returning to the physical body can require going through a tunnel. This is true even if the discarnate entity is trying to temporarily enter the body of a medium.

"Do not look at me too critically: to try to transmit through the organism of a medium is like trying to crawl through a hollow log." (George Pelham, communicating through Mrs. Piper to Richard Hodgson)

Another discarnate compared entering a medium's body to getting into "a sort of funnel" (1948).

One would-be communicator failed to get through: "He was able to see the light in the darkness of a long funnel. But he doubted so much that it went out. He was frightened for fear he would never find his way back." (1936)

Interestingly, Crookall notes that the tunnel symbol "is also used for describing the experience of reentering the Physical Body" in what we would today call near-death experiences. "This also is felt as a brief coma, 'blackout', or passage through a 'tunnel' (depending on the duration of the experience)."

One NDEr said, "I turned away from the bright light... and entered a gloomy tunnel. I fought my way back to a tiny light in the distance... When I got back to the light, I found myself back in bed."

Crookall even quotes an account given by Plutarch in A.D 79 (On the Delay of Divine Justice) in which a certain Aridaeus suffered a severe fall and was momentarily startled out of his body. Surviving the fall, he felt himself reenter his physical shell. "Then, as though he were suddenly sucked through a tube ... he lit [i.e. alit] in his body."

However, Crookall notes that most people appear to have only a momentary blackout, rather than the full tunnel experience, when they reenter their bodies. He cites a 1923 study of out-of-body experiences in support of this statement. Modern studies of NDEs also find that the tunnel phenomenon is more commonly remembered when leaving the body than when returning, and that the return is often much more rapid.

It appears, then, that the tunnel phenomenon is not easily explained as a neurological quirk. Neurology might explain the experience of the tunnel in NDEs, when the brain is presumably shutting down. It does not explain the tunnel imagery in more routine out-of-body experiences, such as astral projection experiments, when there is no physical damage to the brain. Nor does it explain the persistence of this imagery in mediumistic communications ostensibly originating from the deceased, who are describing their own passage - either their passage out of the body upon death, or their passage into the medium's body for purposes of the séance.

And remember that all of the above quotes were collected prior to 1961, the publication date of The Supreme Adventure. This rules out the conjecture that the tunnel with a bright light at the end is merely a "meme" originating in Raymond Moody's 1975 bestseller Life after Life and popularized by the media.