Life in B Flat (Science and Spirituality)

The Earth School

2011-05-22T21:20:00.006-04:00

Many people wonder why there is so much difficulty in life. If we make a life plan before incarnating, why do we plan on so much suffering?

The reason is that the earth school is not just a school where one learns facts. For example, you cannot learn to play the piano from a book. You must develop skills from actually trying to play a piano. But the purpose of the earth school is more complex than that. In the earth school, one does not just learn facts and skills. In the earth school, one has experiences that change one's character in ways that make him fit for the higher levels in the spirit world.

In our earth life, we find that people can become qualified intellectually for a position of high responsibility and sometimes people who are qualified for such a position are not morally or ethically qualified. For example a district attorney may prosecute someone whom he knows is innocent. A doctor might perform unethical medical experiments on people. The leader of a country might oppress his countrymen in order to obtain political power and economic benefits for himself.

This type of thing cannot happen in the spirit world because qualifications needed for positions of high responsibility in the spirit world are not just intellectual, they are also spiritual, moral and ethical.

These qualifications are developed through experiencing the difficulties of the earth life.

It is necessary to experience unpleasant situations in life and to be unaware of the purpose of those situations in order to develop spiritually. If every thing was easy and pleasant in your life, you would become lazy, stupid, and selfish. If you knew the purpose of your life plan, you could do what you knew was necessary to complete it without really believing it was the right thing to do. That is exactly what the earth school is intended to prevent. The lessons of the earth school will teach you to do what is right because your experiences have developed your character, not because you know what you are expected to do.

There are many reasons suffering is necessary for this to happen. Suppose a spirit wants to become a manager of a geographical area in the spirit world. He must develop the character traits necessary. In some incarnations he might incarnate as a leader or government official in his earth life. But also important to his education is incarnating in a place where there is bad government. The best way to learn to hate evil and love goodness is to be a victim of evil. If you hate someone, you would not want to be like him. If you hate a dictator because your life was hard living under a dictatorship, you would not want to be a dictator too.

(This is also why it is a mistake to judge people who seem evil. Someone must play the oppressive dictator so that spirits can develop distaste for dictatorships.)

This is also why spiritual entities do not intervene to prevent people from doing evil to each other. If there was some mysterious force that prevented people from stealing, no one would ever learn not to steal. We learn from the consequences of our actions that good actions have good consequences and bad actions have bad consequences. We have to have to be left to experience these things for ourselves in order to learn. We have to have the freedom to be evil in order to learn to prefer good.

A good way to understand how your earth life develops your character is to consider the person you were when you were half your current age. Now consider who you are today. Which person would you prefer to go through the rest of eternity as? The person you are today or the person you were when you were half as old as you are now?

Paranormal Journalism

2009-11-30T08:12:00.001-05:00

Anomalist.com recently linked to Paranormal Journalism:

Paranormal Journalism, a reporting class at Northwest Missouri State University, is designed to teach a new generation of journalists to cover all topics with an open mind. Check back weekly to follow their journey into the supernatural world that surrounds us all.

Here's a teaser from one of their articles:

It was snowing as Bryan and his seven friends pulled up to the house. Upon arriving in Villisca around three o’clock that afternoon they had taken a tour of the house, been told all of its stories, and had signed all of the liability waivers, but no consent form could prepare them for the experience that would happen that night. ...

Notes of Seances with D. D. Home. By William Crookes, F. R. S.

2009-11-25T17:40:00.002-05:00

From: Notes of Seances with D. D. Home. By William Crookes, F. R. S. p98. The Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research Volume VI 1889 - 1890

The seance excerpted below took place at the home of William Crookes. There was sufficient light for everyone present to see everything that occurred. The accordion which was seen and heard to play by itself was purchased by Crookes. Under these conditions the medium, D. D. Home, could not have used any special mechanical apparatus to produce levitations, play the accordion, produce raps, or create any other of the phenomena that was observed.

Page 117:

(VIII.) SUNDAY, July 30th, 1871. Sitting at 20, Mornington-road.

Present:- Mr. D. D. Home, Mr. Wm. Crookes, Mrs. Wm. Crookes, Mrs. Humphrey, Mr. Wr. Crookes, Mrs. Wr. Crookes, Mrs. I., Miss A. Crookes, Mr. H. Crookes, Mr. T., and at 11p.m. Lord A.

In the dining-room round the dining-table.

During the former part of the evening the gas was lighted; during the latter part the room was illuminated by two spirit lamps.

...

The accordion was held by Mr. Home in the usual position under the table. Whilst it played Mrs. I. looked beneath and saw it playing. Mr. Home removed his hand altogether from it, and held both hands above the table. During this Mrs. I. said she saw a luminous hand playing the accordion.

The gas was now turned out, and three spirit lamps were lighted.

Loud raps were heard, and, the planchette moved across a sheet of paper, leaving a mark with the pencil.

The lath moved some inches.

The accordion, which had been left by Mr. Home under the table, now began to play and move about without anyone touching it. It dropped on to my foot, then dragged itself away, playing all the time, and went to Mrs. I. It got on to her knees.

Mr. Home then took it in his hand, where it played, and delivered the following message by chords in the usual way:-

"Our joy and thankfulness to have been allowed to make our presence manifest We thank you for your patience and we thank GOD for His love."

Mr. Home got up and stood behind in full view of all, holding the accordion out at arm's length. We all saw it expanding and contracting and heard it playing a melody. Mr. Home then let go of the accordion, which went behind his back and there continued to play; his feet being visible and also his two hands, which were In front of him

Mr. Home then walked to the open apace in the room between Mrs. I.'s chair and the sideboard and stood there quite upright and quiet. He then said, "I'm rising, I'm rising"; when we all saw him rise from the ground slowly to a height of about six inches, remain there for about 10 seconds, and then slowly descend. From my position I could not see his feet, but I distinctly saw his head, projected against the opposite wall, rise up, and Mr. Wr. Crookes, who was sitting near where Mr. Home was, said that his feet were in the air. There was no stool or other thing near which could have aided him. Moreover, the movement was a smooth continuous glide upwards.

Whilst this was going on we heard the accordion fall heavily to the ground. It had been suspended in the air behind the chair where Mr. Home had been sitting. When it fell Mr. Home was about 10ft. from it.

Mr. Home still standing behind Mrs. I. and Mr. Wr. Crookes, the accordion was both seen and heard to move about behind him without his hands touching it It then played a tune without contact and floating in the air.

Mr. Home then took the accordion in one hand and held it out so that we could all see it (he was still standing up behind Mrs. I. and Mr. Wr. Crookes). We then saw the accordion expand and contract and heard a tune played. Mrs. Wm. Crookes and Mr. Home saw a light on the lower part of the accordion, where the keys were, and we then heard and saw the keys clicked and depressed one after the other fairly and deliberately, as if to show us that the power doing it, although invisible (or nearly so) to us, had full control over the instrument.

A beautiful tune was then played whilst Mr. Home was standing up holding the accordion out in full view of everyone.

Mr. Home then came round behind me and telling me to hold my left arm out placed the accordion under my arm, the keys hanging down and the upper part pressing upwards against my upper arm. He then left go and the accordion remained there. He then placed his two hands one on each of my shoulders. In this position, no one touching the accordion but myself, and every one noticing what was taking place, the instrument played notes but no tune.

Mr. Home then sat down in his chair, and we were told by raps to open the table about an inch or an inch and a.half.

Mr. T. touched the point of the lath, when raps immediately came on it.

The planchette, which was on the table resting on a sheet of paper, now moved a few inches.

Sounds were heard on the accordion, which was on the floor, not held by Mr. Home.

The corner of the paper next to Mrs. Wm. Crookes (on which the planchette was standing) moved up and down. (These three last phenomena were going on simultaneously.)

I felt something touch my knee; it then went to Mrs. I., then to Miss A. Crookes.

Whilst this was going on I held the bell under the table, and it was taken from me and rung round beneath. It was then given to Mrs. I. by a hand which she described as soft and warm.

The lath was now seen to move about a little.

Mrs. Wm. Crookes saw a hand and fingers touching the flower in Mr. Home's button-hole. The flower was then taken by the hand and given to Mrs. I. and the green leaf was in a similar manner given to Mr. T.

Mrs. Wm. Crookes and Mr. Home saw the hand doing this, the others only saw the flower and leaf moving through the air.

Mrs. Wm. Crookes held a rose below the table; it was touched and then taken.

The sound as of a drum was heard on the accordion.

The lath lifted itself up on its edge,then reared itself upon one end and fell down. It then floated up four inches above the table, and moved quite round the circle, pointing to Mrs. Wm. Crookes. It then rose up and passed over our heads outside the circle.

The planchette moved about a good deal, marking the paper.

The cloth was dragged along the table.

Whilst the lath was moving round the circle, the accordion played a tune in Mr. Home’s hand whilst Mrs. Wm. Crookes's hand was also on it.

Mrs. Wm. Crookes put her hand near the lath, when it came up to it, and moved about it very much.

The paper on which the planchette was resting moved about us as if by a hand. Many present saw a hand doing it. (Mr. Home and Mrs. Wm. Crookes saw this hand.)

Mr. H. Crookes saw a luminous hand come up between Mr. Home and Mrs. Wm. Crookes.

Some time during the evening Mrs. Wm. Crookes's handkerchief, which had been in her pocket, was taken out of it by a hand.

I saw something white moving about in the further corner of the room (diagonal to door) under a chair. On my remarking this, a message was given by raps:-

"William! take it."

On getting up and taking it I saw that it was my wife's pocket handkerchief tied in a knot, and having the stalk of the rose which had been taken from her tied up in it. The place where I picked up the handkerchief was fifteen feet from where she had been sitting.

A glass water bottle which was on the table now floated up and rapped against the planchette.

Mr. Home said: "I see a face. I see Philip's face. Philip! Brother I"

The water and tumbler now rose up together, and we had answers to questions by their tapping together whilst floating in the air about eight inches above the table, and moving backwards and forwards from one to the other of the circle.

Mr. H. Crookes said a hand was tickling his knee.

A finger was protruded up the opening of the table between Miss A. Crookes and the water bottle,

Miss A. Crookes, Mr. H. Crookes, and Mrs. I. were then touched.

Fingers came up the opening of the table a second time and waved about.

The lath, which on its last excursion had settled in front of the further window, quite away from the circle, now moved along the floor four or five times very noisily. It then came up to Mr. T., and, passed into the circle over his shoulder. It settled on the table and, then rose up again, pointing to Mrs. Wm. Crookes's mouth.

The lath then went to the water bottle and pushed it several times nearly over, to move it away from the opening in the table. The lath then went endways down the opening.

The tumbler moved about a little.

The lath moved up through the opening in the table and answered "Yes" and "No" to questions, by bobbing up and down three times or once.

A hand was seen by some, and a luminous cloud by others, pulling the flowers about which were in a stand on the table. A flower was then seen to be carried deliberately and given to Mrs. Wr. Crookes.

Another flower was taken by the hand and brought over to Mrs. Wm. Crookes; it was dropped between her and Mr. Home.

Raps then said

"We must go."

The raps then commenced loudly all over the room and got fainter and fainter until they became inaudible.

The seance then broke up.

Fear of Ghosts

2009-11-23T15:32:00.001-05:00

There seems to be good evidence that fear of ghosts is innate. This evidence consists of reports of apparitions causing terror in animals. A number of these are recounted in Miracles and Modern Spiritualism by Alfred Russel Wallace (co-discoverer of the theory of natural selection). They are told in the section "Are There Objective Apparitions" in the subsection "Effects of phantasms on animals". Here are a few examples:

I have already mentioned the case of the female figure in white, seen by three persons floating over a hedge ten feet above the ground, when the horse they were driving suddenly stopped and shook with fright.
...
In the remarkable account of a haunted house during an occupation of twelve months by a well-known English Church dignitary, the very different behaviour of dogs in the presence of real and of phantasmal disturbances is pointed out. When an attempt was made to rob the vicarage, the dogs gave prompt alarm and the clergyman was aroused by their fierce barking. During the mysterious noises, however, though these were much louder and more disturbing, they never barked at all, but were always "found cowering in a state of pitiable terror."
...
In the account of haunting in a house at Hammersmith near London, which went on for five years, where steps and noises were heard and a phantom woman seen, "the dog whined incessantly " during the disturbances, and " the dog was evidently still afraid of the room when the morning came. I called to him to go into it with me, and he crouched down with his tail between his legs, and seemed to fear entering it."
...
In the remarkable account by General Barter, C.B., of a phantasmal pony and rider with two native grooms seen in India, two dogs which immediately before were hunting about in the brushwood jungle which covered the hill, came and crouched by the General's side, giving low, frightened whimpers; and when he pursued the phantasm the dogs returned home, though on all other occasions they were his most faithful companions.

If animals are naturally afraid of ghosts, then people might be also. There are certainly many cultural influences that may cause people to be afraid of spirits. Scary ghost stories, horror movies, and religious admonitions against communing with spirits are some of them. However, an innate fear of spirits may be the underlying reason people are afraid of spirits and that might be the reason these cultural influences got started in the first place.

I think fear of spirits is unfortunate. It's a form of prejudice. Many people don't realize how hard it can be for a spirit to communicate with a loved one who is still on the earth plane. Sometimes the best the spirit can do is to tap on the wall or turn the lights on and off. And what happens? The people in the vicinity become terrified. Sometimes they move to a new home. Other times they call an exorcist. Either way, a new story about "evil spirits" starts making the rounds - even when there is nothing evil about the spirit.

Isn't that a terrible way to welcome Grandma who might be trying to see how her beloved grandchildren are doing? As a society we have a lot to do to learn to accept spirits and treat them fairly, the way they deserve.

Ectoplasm and Materialization

2009-11-22T12:42:00.005-05:00

Michael Tymn has an excellent series of blog posts on ectoplasm and materialization of spirits.

Ectoplasm is a substance some mediums are able to produce with the help of spirit guides during a seance. It is drawn from the body of the medium and it can be manipulated by spirits. Ectoplasm is used as an interface between the spirit and the physical world. One of its uses is to allow a spirit to take on a physical form which can be seen and sometimes heard speaking during the seance.

If you weren't aware of this phenomenon it might seem incredible. However, many eminent scientists and investigators including Charles Richet (Nobel prize winner in Physiology and Medicine), Alfred Russel Wallace (Co-discoverer, with Charles Darwin of the theory of natural selection), Sir William Crookes (Inventor of the cathode ray tube), and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Medical doctor and author of Sherlock Holmes Stories) have studied this phenomenon and verified it as fact.

These blog posts by Michael Tymn explain the details and include photographs of ectoplasm coming from mediums and spirits materializing. They also include many convincing proofs of the reality of this phenomenon:

The final part of the series will be posted on Dec. 6

Many books and other references by or about the people mentioned in Michael Tymn's posts are available on-line.

Phenomena of Materialisation by Baron Von Schrenck Notzing
Thirty Years of Psychical Research by Charles Richet
Researches into the Phenomena of Modern Spiritualism by Sir William Crookes
There Is No Death by Florence Marryat
"The Voices" and "Glimpses of the Next State" by Vice Admiral W. Usborne Moore
The Blue Island by W.T. Stead through the mediumship of Pardoe Woodman and Estelle Stead
Camp Silver Belle Booklet by Lena Barnes Jefts
Silver Belle Materialization Séance Epharata, Pennsylvania 1953 Ethel Post-Parrish, Medium Jack Edwards, Infra-Red Photographer

Alfred Russel Wallace mentoned above is the author of Miracles and Modern Spiritualism.

Also of interest are these photographs of the medium Jack Webber producing ectoplasm. The photographs are from the book "The Mediumship of Jack Webber" by Harry Edwards.

Mesmerism: How Science Adapts and Adopts Spiritual Phenomena

2009-11-20T12:10:00.001-05:00

Over at Dean Radin's blog there is a post speculating that the study of quantum entanglement may lead mainstream science to the discovery of telepathy.

It will be nice if and when that happens, but I doubt one discovery will overthrow materialism.

The example of how mesmerism evolved into hypnotism shows how science corrupts a spiritual phenomena when it is adapted and adopted by mainstream science.

Mesmerism is a paranormal phenomena first demonstrated by Franz Mesmer a German physician who was born in the 18th century. The mesmerist "mesmerized" the subject merely by waving his hands around the person in a process called "making passes". This was believed to demonstrate "animal magnetism". The subject came under the influence of the mesmerist the way a steel needle may be magnetized by rubbing it with a magnet. Being mesmerized was a form of spiritual healing and in some cases could lead to psychic perceptions such as clairvoyance or obedience to the thoughts of the mesmerist.

At first, mesmerism was considered complete hogwash by mainstream scientists. In the long run, the facts couldn't be ignored when patient after patient underwent painless surgery after being mesmerized in the days before anesthetics. However, mainstream scientists digested only what they could swallow and mesmerism evolved into modern hypnotism. Spiritual healing was jettisoned or replaced with suggestion. Psychic perceiving was relegated to a fringe anomaly and ignored by most scientists. Passes were replaced with a verbal induction into a deeply relaxed state.

(Therapeutic touch is a modern method of energy healing similar to mesmerism in that the healer moves their hands near the patient but without touching them in a manner that is similar to the passes of mesmerism. However the patient is not entranced. This is practiced in some hospitals by nurses in the US, but it is not generally accepted by mainstream science.)

From studying the example of mesmerism, one may speculate that if telepathy is demonstrated by physicists, it will not end science's materialist orientation. Scientists studying quantum entanglement and telepathy may discover the interface between the spirit and the brain at the quantum level, but scientists may not recognize the spirit's role in the process of telepathy. Instead, they may start searching for a physical link between brains. If this happens, it could take another century or more for science to take the next step towards full knowledge of our spiritual nature.

Will this happen? I hate to make predictions, especially about the future, but historically there is very little reason to be optimistic that one discovery will eliminate materialism. Science tends to evolve gradually rather than drastically.

Anecdotes in Psychical Research

2009-11-19T16:17:00.002-05:00

I've started another blog: Anecdotes in Psychical Research. There will be a new anecdote each day. I am beginning with Death-Bed Visions by Sir William Barrett

Skeptical Misdirection During the Era of Psychical Research

2009-11-17T13:00:00.000-05:00

The page Skeptical Misdirection on my web site has been updated with a new section: Skeptical Misdirection During the Era of Psychical Research

This section covers deceptive tactics used by skeptics to "debunk" some of the genuine mediums of that era. Subsections include:

Skeptics Pay for False Accusations Against the Holmses
False accusations against Sir William Crookes
Houdini's assistant admits planting false evidence of fraud.
Harry Price, debunker, exposed by his loyal associates.
Helen Duncan, framed by the British government.

Arthur Edward Stilwell

2009-11-16T15:35:00.000-05:00

Today, the Anomalist linked to an article by Brad Steiger about Arthur Edward Stilwell at hauntedamericatours.com. It's an interesting story about how Stilwell was guided by spirits to build a business empire. Interestingly, Stilwell used a method of communating with spirits similar to the method I describe in my web site. Steiger describes it briefly in the article:

He would lie down in bed alone in a dark room.
He would next focus his mind on his immediate problem and allow himself to drift off into a sort of half sleep.

Eminent Scientist, Nobel Prize Winners, Who Were Trained Observers and Initially Skeptics, Became Convinced of the Reality of Paranormal Phenomena.

2009-11-15T16:03:00.006-05:00

Some people will argue that the average person is not a good observer and that if they have a belief in paranormal phenomena, their bias will influence their perceptions and they may be susceptible to fraud or misidentifying ordinary phenomena as paranormal. For this reason, they argue that reports of paranormal phenomena are unreliable and should not be taken seriously.

However, this reasoning doesn't hold up when you consider that many eminent scientists of the past including Nobel Prize winners who were trained observers and initially skeptics became convinced, by their observations, that certain paranormal phenomena are genuine.

Before the development of modern electronics, observation was a much more important part of scientific education than it is today. Without radio telescopes, electron microscopes, analog to digital converters, and other instruments that make measurements beyond the range of human perception, scientists had to use their own senses to do their work and developing powers of observation was a significant part of their education.

Therefore, when Nobel prize winning scientists of that era such as Charles Richet, Marie Curie, Pierre Curie, and other eminent scientists like Robert Boyle, Alfred Russel Wallace, Oliver Lodge and William Crookes describe their observations, especially during controlled experiments, those observations have to be taken seriously. Particularly because most of them began as skeptics until their observations convinced them otherwise. A trained scientist, especially of those past times, was an objective and skilled observer and because of their skepticism cannot be considered analogous to a "true believer" who's bias might influence their perceptions.

All those arguments that call into doubt the ability of ordinary persons who believe in the paranormal to make reliable observations actually reinforce the compelling nature of the conclusions of these eminent researchers. For the most part, they began as skeptics so their bias would work against perceiving paranormal phenomena. The evidence must have been extraordinary to compel them to change their minds against their preexisting bias. As trained observers and skeptics their conclusions that paranormal phenomena are real must be considered reliable and compelling.

Web Site Updates

2009-11-15T11:08:00.001-05:00

There have been some recent updates to my web site

Alfred Russel Wallace has been added to the page on Eminent Researchers. Wallace discovered the theory of natural selection at the same time Charles Darwin did. Wallace started out skeptical of mediumistic phenomena, but his great powers of observation, the same ones that led him to formulate the theory of natural selection, led him to conclude that mediumistic phenomena proved the existence of supernatural intelligences.

This exposes a skeptical fallacy. Many skeptics believe that the theory of natural selection explains the origin of life and and humankind, and therefore belief in supernatural entities is unwarranted. However, Wallace, one of the discoverers of natural selection believed otherwise. This fallacy has been added to the page on skeptical fallacies.

An explanation of another fallacy has also been added to the page on Skeptical Fallacies. Many skeptics believe that past life memories recovered during hypnosis are caused by suggestions or leading questions by the hypnotist. This is not correct. Many psychologists have independently and accidentally discovered past life regression therapy when doing ordinary regression therapy when they simply instruct the subject to "go back to the origin of the problem". False memories of the current life are never generated this way, but memories of past lives are frequently recovered from this process.

Resistance to Psi

2009-11-12T23:15:00.014-05:00

Why is there so much resistance to psychic phenomena in some portions of society?

Genuine psychic phenomena have been produced by ordinary people throughout the history of humankind. However, these phenomena were rejected by science for "political" reasons, not empirical reasons, when the scientific revolution deposed religion as the ultimate source of knowledge. Besides being seen as allied with religion, psychic phenomena is a competitor of Science as a means of obtaining information about the universe. Therefore, some modern scientists have a lot of cultural baggage that prevent them from seeing the otherwise obvious evidence that some paranormal phenomena are real.
Some religious leaders reject psychic phenomena (see the comment at the top of the link) because those phenomena threaten the dogmatic teachings of their religion. It undermines their authority as the source of information on the afterlife, God, and other spiritual subjects. In some cases it also subverts their role as an intermediary between the individual and supernatural entities.
Some people hold a grudge against religion because they have been harmed psychologically by overly dogmatic upbringing, or because some religion condemns their lifestyle choices. They may choose to vilify anything that relates to the supernatural, including psychic phenomena.
Certain government agencies have spread disinformation about the reality of psychic phenomena to discourage other countries from developing psychic means for spying and sabotage, and to protect the secrecy of their own government's programs to develop those capabilities.
Some debunkers make a living disputing every paranormal claim and sometimes misrepresent the empirical evidence because real paranormal phenomena jeopardize their career and life's work. Their livelihood is based on media exposure to sell books, raise money, and generate more media exposure, and as a result their influence is far greater than their qualifications in the field should warrant.
Many people who, because of their education, accept the authority of scientists, suspend their critical thinking in order to embrace the debunkers' deceptive "logic" because it allows them to hold on to their world view in the face of empirical evidence, including scientific research, that demonstrate genuine psychic phenomena. People resist changing their world view because it requires admitting they were wrong or misled.

There are many unique social forces resisting the acceptance of psychic phenomena.

Nobel Prize Winning Scientists Marie Curie and Pierre Curie Conducted Psychical Research and Believed in Paranormal Phenomena

2009-10-30T12:28:00.004-04:00

I recently updated my web page on Eminent Researchers with entries for the Nobel Prize winners Marie Curie and Pierre Curie.

Marie Curie
(Nobel Prize for Physics and Nobel Prize for Chemistry)

Marie Curie was the first woman awarded a Nobel prize and she was the first person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes.
According to Wikipedia...
Her achievements include the creation of a theory of radioactivity (a term coined by her[2]), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two new elements, polonium and radium. It was also under her personal direction that the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms (cancers), using radioactive isotopes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie
Marie Curie participated in experiments with the medium Eusapia Palladino.
According to the "Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia"...
The Institut Général Psychologique of Paris carried on extensive experiments in 43 sittings from 1905 to 1907. Pierre and Marie Curie were among the investigators. ... The Curies regarded mediumistic séances as "scientific experiments" and took detailed notes. According to historian Anna Hurwic, they thought it possible to discover in spiritualism the source of an unknown energy that would reveal the secret of radioactivity.[12]
http://www.answers.com/topic/eusapia-palladino

Pierre Curie
(Nobel Prize for Physics)
Pierre Curie was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1903. According to Wikipedia:
Pierre Curie (15 May 1859 – 19 April 1906) was a French physicist, a pioneer in crystallography, magnetism, piezoelectricity and radioactivity, and Nobel laureate. In 1903 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics with his wife, Maria Sklodowska-Curie, and Henri Becquerel, "in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Curie
According to the "Occultism & Parapsychology Encyclopedia"...
On July 24, 1905, Pierre Curie reported to his friend Gouy: "We have had a series of séances with Eusapia Palladino at the [Society for Psychical Research]."
It was very interesting, and really the phenomena that we saw appeared inexplicable as trickery—tables raised from all four legs, movement of objects from a distance, hands that pinch or caress you, luminous apparitions. All in a [setting] prepared by us with a small number of spectators all known to us and without a possible accomplice. The only trick possible is that which could result from an extraordinary facility of the medium as a magician. But how do you explain the phenomena when one is holding her hands and feet and when the light is sufficient so that one can see everything that happens?[13]
http://www.answers.com/topic/eusapia-palladino

Controlling Drowsiness: Calming or Stimulating the Mind During Meditation

2009-10-07T03:53:00.006-04:00

During meditation, you can sometimes overcome hindrances such as a turbulent mind or a drowsy mind by controlling the rate of your breathing, your posture and by opening or closing your eyes.

Breathing slowly can be relaxing, and if the mind is turbulent, breathing slowly can help calm the mind. However it can also lead to drowsiness. In the case of drowsiness, breathing a little bit faster may help one become more wakeful.

This effect may be due to two factors. Changing the rate of breathing may change CO2 levels in the blood and the activity of breathing faster may be enough to make one more wakeful.

Meditating with the eyes closed is also more relaxing than meditating with the eyes open.

If you start off a meditation session with a turbulent mind, you can calm it by breathing slowly with closed eyes. Then, if you get too drowsy, you can open your eyes and also increase your rate of breathing a bit.

If you start off drowsy you can try breathing a little more rapidly and with your eyes open. That can help fend off drowsiness.

In cases of extreme drowsiness, standing up while meditating can help you to remain wakeful. If needed, you can stand with your hands on the back of a chair to help you keep your balance. However, in some cases it might simply be necessary to get some sleep before meditating.

In cases of extreme mental turbulence, you can try meditating while lying down or doing relaxation exercises.

These techniques should help you to maintain a state that is relaxed yet awake, and tranquil yet alert, which is the ideal state for meditation.

Treatment for Spirit Possession

2009-10-07T03:50:00.002-04:00

Here is a case described in boingboing.net of an apparent possession where there was evidence that it was caused by a spirit. Treatment with drugs for hallucinations seems to have relieved the symptoms.

NCBI ROFL spotted this 1994 scientific paper extract describing an Indian man in the UK who blamed his crimes on ghostly possession. When exorcisms failed, he was treated for paranoid schizophrenia. That apparently helped.
...
Treatment commenced using trifluoperazine and clopenthixol. RESULTS. The patient underwent remission during neuroleptic treatment, despite previous evidence of genuine possession. CONCLUSIONS. Many cultures give rise to apparently genuine cases of ghost possession. Neuroleptics may relieve symptoms of exorcism-resistant possession.
...
So this might be an otherwise unremarkable psychiatric case if it were not for the fact that the prison chaplain, and several of the patient's cellmates, saw the spirit possess the patient as a ghostly mist. The chaplain was convinced this was a genuine case of possession, as had priests from several other faiths who had previously carried out exorcisms on the patient.

Chs4o8pt has Moved to a New Host

2009-10-07T01:55:00.000-04:00

My web site, chs4o8pt, has moved to a new address: http://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/

Hallucinations

2009-09-02T17:46:00.001-04:00

Sometimes when people are able to communicate with spirits they wonder if they might be having hallucinations. Here are a couple of articles that discuss hallucinations and should help readers to understand them better.

Macular degeneration can cause hallucinations:

When seated at breakfast and looking out of his window into the garden, he had on several occasions seen a kind of illumination within which not just one but a number of figures appeared, walking in a column. They were, seemingly, all male, some wearing hats, others caps. They would silently advance towards the window then turn to the right near the garden shed, but one figure would often break away from the others at this point and come right up to the window as if peering in at Don, before it too moved out of sight to one side.

Hearing voices:

What H.V.N. does dispute is that the psychological anguish caused by hearing voices is indicative of an overarching mental illness. This argument, disseminated through a quarterly newsletter, numerous pamphlets and speeches and alternative mental-health journals, are as voluminous and diverse as its membership. But H.V.N.’s brief against psychiatry can be boiled down to two core positions. The first is that many more people hear voices, and hear many more kinds of voices, than is usually assumed. The second is that auditory hallucination — or “voice-hearing,” H.V.N.’s more neutral preference — should be thought of not as a pathological phenomenon in need of eradication but as a meaningful, interpretable experience, intimately linked to a hearer’s life story and, more commonly than not, to unresolved personal traumas. In 2005, Louise Pembroke, a prominent member of H.V.N., proposed a World Hearing Voices Day (held the next year) that would “challenge negative attitudes toward people who hear voices on the incorrect assumption that this is in itself a sign of illness, an assumption made about them that is not based on their own experiences, is stigmatizing, isolating and makes people ill.”

Two Meditations

2009-08-04T12:33:00.002-04:00

Counting the Breath

Sit comfortably, breathe naturally. Count exhalations. After you count ten of them, start again at one. When you get distracted by stray thoughts and lose count, it's okay, it is expected and an important part of the process, just resume counting starting with one.

Getting distracted by stray thoughts is part of letting them out. Going back to counting is part of letting go. In this way you calm the mind by letting out and letting go of thoughts and emotions.

When you notice thoughts arising, pay attention to how you feel in your body. Are there emotions that accompany the thoughts? Are there sensations in your body that accompany the emotions?

Consider this type of meditation not a way to develop concentration but as a technique that helps the mind to calm down. You should do it in a relaxing manner. If you find yourself doing it in a way that is tense, try to be more relaxed.

Walking Meditation

Walk at a normal walking pace. Count to three as you take three steps while inhaling and then continue counting to six as you take three more steps while exhaling. Then start over. You don't have to inhale for three steps and exhale for three steps, you can use what ever number of steps happens to feel right for you.

(It's not good idea to do walking meditation where there is a lot of automobile traffic if you will be crossing streets.)

More about meditation can be found at my web site.

Suffering

2009-07-23T02:19:00.000-04:00

Everyone seems to have their own special cross to bear. It may seem unfair and unpleasant, but there is a very good reason for it.

We incarnate here in the physical world is to learn. We learn best by solving problems. We can't learn through solving problems without having problems.

Life is too easy in the spirit world. You don't need food or shelter there. There is no disease. It's hard to have problems in that situation. That is why we have to incarnate here in the physical world. We need a place to go where we can have problems and learn from them.

Life's problems are not always what they seem. When we have a problem, sometimes the solution is to fix the situation to make the problem go away. However some problems do not have this kind of solution. Sometimes the purpose of the problem is to teach us to be patient, to endure, or to gain understanding so we can have compassion for, or be able to assist others in a similar situation.

Karma

2009-07-19T09:39:00.003-04:00

Michael Prescott recently posted an article about his religious beliefs on his blog. He says he favors Spiritualism and gives a brief description of his beliefs but without mentioning the Principles of Spiritualism. He also mentions a technique for communicating with spirit guides that sounds similar to one I describe on my web site.

In the comments, there is some discussion about how our actions in this life affect our conditions in the afterlife. If there are different levels in the afterlife, for example, higher levels for more advanced souls, then something must make a spirit fit for a certain level and unfit other levels. If we learn from our experiences on earth, then that learning may change us and those changes can cause us to become fit for a higher level.

It is hard for many of us to understand why we incarnate because we seem to lead ordinary lives. But when we return to the spirit world, we are able to understand why we incarnated and then we see how our lives changed us and how we affected other people. If we incarnated to learn a certain lesson and didn't learn it, we won't advance. If our actions had negative effects on other people, we may regret that and want to work to rectify those effects while in spirit or in a subsequent incarnation.

Meditation: Calming a Turbulent Mind

2009-07-12T08:55:00.003-04:00

Meditation can be used for many different purposes and there are many different types of meditation to accomplish those purposes. However, if the mind is very turbulent, it can be difficult to meditate. In this situation, a person might want to calm their mind because they prefer feeling calm or they might want to calm their mind in order to do a particular type of meditation such as spirit communication or spiritual healing.

There are various ways to calm a very turbulent mind:

One simple method is just to meditate for a longer period of time.
If you have music running through your mind, make that the focus of meditation - use it like a mantra.
Use different forms of meditation to help calm down. When the mind is turbulent use a type meditation that is more active. As you calm down, use successively more passive forms of meditation. In the Zen center I used to go to, in the morning practice, they would start with bowing practice, then do chanting practice, and then do sitting meditation.
Just sit and let your mind rant. You will get bored of its repetitiveness after a while. This is a type of insight and well worth observing. When you notice you can meditate, start your timed meditation practice.
Have a balanced meal of protein, complex carbohydrates, and fats. All of these nutrients are necessary for proper brain function: protein for neurotransmitters, fats for cell membranes, and carbohydrates for energy. This will help calm your mind. A multivitamin or a B complex stress vitamin formula might also be helpful. Try meditating 1 hour after eating.
Try doing yoga or relaxation exercises before meditating.
When the mind is way out of control, it can be due to fatigue. (Inhibitor neurons fatigue first. This is why factory workers during the worst of the industrial revolution would leave work after 16 hour days making the same repetitive arm and hand motions they made all day on the assembly line.) If you've been using the mind all day long and it may be running in circles because of fatigue, try having a balanced meal (above) and then getting some sleep before you meditate.

Nonviolence

2009-07-06T06:00:00.000-04:00

There is a lot that has been written about nonviolence as a set of tactics and as a strategy for bringing about changes in a society. Many people believe that nonviolence won't work against a ruthless opponent. However, nonviolence is like ju-jitsu where the opponent's strength is used against him. The better one understands the tactics and strategy of nonviolence, the better one will be able to know when and how to apply it. Good starting points for anyone who wants to learn more are the wikipedia article on nonviolence and the Albert Einstein Institution web site:

People who have studied or lived through one or more nonviolent revolutions have a lot of well thought out ideas on the subject. For example, two possible of aims of nonviolent struggles can be separating a regime from its means of exercising power, and delegitimizing a regime in the eyes of its subjects and the rest of the world by forcing it to demonstrate it's repressive nature.

You also have to understand the shortcomings of violent means to understand the benefits of nonviolent action. For example: Violent tactics will put the revolutionaries and the regime on identical moral ground which may reduce internal and external support. Violent means may also increase the risk replacing the regime with an equally repressive one.

Meditating in Daily Life

2009-07-04T06:12:00.001-04:00

The way to turn many ordinary activities into meditation or mindfulness practice is to focus your attention on what you are doing rather than letting your mind wander into the past or future.

There are also many other techniques. You can focus your attention on your movements mentally noting each movement you make. You may be able to use the technique you use in sitting meditation (ie. observing the breath, or repeating a mantra), during other daily activities like washing the dishes or taking a walk.

It's possible to meditate many hours a day this way, however that also means it's possible to over do it. People also need time to integrate their experiences and this means one should provide adequate time for ordinary thinking about the past and future.

Mediumship

2009-06-29T16:00:00.001-04:00

Different mediums connect with spirits in different ways. When I was taking classes in mediumship at a Spiritualist church, the first thing I would perceive about a spirit was a picture of them in my mind's eye. We used the term clairvoyance to refer to visual psychic perceptions. A lot of mediums are primarily clairvoyant but also get other types of impressions. Some mediums primarily get feelings or hear words, but that is less common. Hearing spirits is called clairaudience.

With the visual images that I perceived, sometimes there would be other information attached. I would know what I was seeing, and I would know things about it. It was like an email with attachments. It seemed to me that the easiest way for spirits to get through to me was visually, but once I had the "packet" and knew it was psychic, they knew I'd notice the other information.

When I was in class, one of the hardest thing for the spirits was, I think, to convince me that the mental impressions I received were psychic and not my imagination. The way they would help me realize this was by showing me things from weird angles or placing them off center. If you imagine a house you imagine looking at it from the street in the center of your visual field. Once in class, I saw a house from two feet away and looking along the side of the outside wall. It seemed pretty obvious to me that I wasn't imagining that.

Being clairvoyant has the advantage that you can describe the spirit and the sitter will generally be able to recognize who it is. The spirit can also show you what they did in life. Clairvoyance is great for identifying the spirit. The disadvantage of clairvoyance is that the spirits have to use symbols to give a message. I would occasionally get feelings, and less often smells, and words. When I got words, even though I use the term clairaudient, I felt the words in my mouth as if I was saying them rather than hearing them.

One of the hardest things about mediumship was putting psychic perceptions into words. You have to develop an appropriate vocabulary to say things without offending people and to describe what you see. It was a skill I didn't have much practice at. I had plenty of experience putting things into words from writing corporate e-mails and writing on technical subjects from work life and graduate school, but that was not the same as what I had to do in mediumship. Having to put things into words also gives your analytical brain a chance to color the information with inferences, deductions, and associations which leads to errors in the reading. I think being clairaudient must be easiest for the medium. They just repeat what they hear.

By the end of a reading I would often get a feeling of the personality of the spirit like the way you have a mental idea of the personality of someone you know. One spirit in particular had a really cheerful attitude. Attitudes are contagious when you are perceiving them psychically. Just communicating with him make me feel cheerful. I didn't want the reading to end.

A close emotional bond between the sitter and the spirit or the spirit and the medium usually results in better communication between the spirit and the medium. This is consistent with the findings of parapsychology which have shown that emotional involvement correlates with better psychic functioning.

The problem of coloring psychic information with inferences, deductions and associations is a problem that also came up in remote viewing research. Remote viewers call it "analytic overlay". This is described some of the popular books on the remote viewing research and in the military remote viewing manual available on the internet. The methods the remote viewers have for detecting and dealing with analytic overlay are very good. I think mediums could learn something by studying the systematic and scientific approach that was taken when remote viewing methodology was developed.

It would be interesting to have mediums go through a remote viewing course and remote viewers go to a mediumship class. I suspect a lot would be learned by both groups of psychics and by researchers from cross training. With mediumship, there are spirits working to help the psychic, so it would also be interesting to see if there was some way to measure or identify that there is something different occurring with mediumship than with remote viewing.

It is unfortunate that mediumship has not been studied with the same systematic scientific approach that remote viewing has been and also that systematic and scientific training methods for mediumship have not been developed. There has been a lot of research into mediumship but none that I am aware of into training methods.

It is very valuable that the method of training for remote viewing was developed at the same time a systematic methodology was developed for doing it. That makes a big difference in studying remote viewing scientifically. It would be nice if an analogous system existed for mediumship. When the researchers are thoroughly familiar with the teaching methods and the methods for doing the task, they are better able to design experiments to study the process, find better ways of doing it, and discovering the natural laws that determine how it works.

Spirits get better at communicating the more they do it. In my opinion, this is one of the strongest arguments against super-psi as an explanation for mediumship. This is also why I think scientists who study mediumship should work with a development circle of advanced students. The deceased relatives of these students have a lot of practice communicating through the other class members and are very good at it. A blind study where the medium doesn't know who the sitter is should give very good results. The results could be judged by having a sitter try to distinguish a reading that was for him from a reading that was for someone else. In this situation, it doesn't matter that the students know all about each other's deceased relatives because the reading and judging are done blind.

Hearing Music During Meditation

2009-06-27T13:22:00.002-04:00

Hearing music is not a common experience during in meditation but it happens occasionally. In some cases there may be a neurological explanation but it can also be due to psychic perception.

Meditation tends to increase one's psychic receptiveness. It calms the mind allowing one to become aware of faint mental impressions. Certain forms of meditation, particularly those involving visualization, calm the left hemisphere and stimulate the right hemisphere. The left hemisphere tends to be analytical and verbal. The right hemisphere tends to be visual and intuitive. It is believed that psychic perception is a right hemisphere function. Left hemisphere analytic thinking tends to interfere with psychic perceptions by coloring any psychic impressions that might be perceived with inferences, associations, and deductions.

If you become deeply relaxed while meditating and you hear music, it might be a consequence of being in the hypnogogic state. This is the state of deep relaxation that occurs just before falling asleep. It is common to hear sounds and see vivid imagery when in the hypnogogic state. Some of these perceptions are psychic but not all. If you spend a lot of time in that state by doing relaxation exercises, you can learn to tell the difference between psychic and normal mental perceptions.

I've heard music during meditation a few times. Once was during a class in mediumship. The air conditioner was blowing and making white noise during the meditation session. Then, the white noise somehow changed into music. I was the only one who heard it. When I described the music I heard (acoustic guitar), the physical description of the spirit I saw, and the manner of death I felt, one of my classmates recognized the spirit as a deceased cousin who had been a musician and had played that type of music.

Overlaying voices on top of white noise or other frequencies is a common technique used by spirits to communicate with the physical realm. In electronic voice phenomena (EVP), spirits add their voices to tape recordings of white noise. There was a medium who produced direct voice phenomena but had to have music playing to do it. The spirits somehow modulated the sound waves in the music to create voices. There is a book "The Ghost of 29 Megacycles" that describes devices spirits helped to design that broadcast ultrasonic audio frequencies over shortwave radio and somehow between the transmitter and receiver added their own voices in the normal audio range. This allowed people and spirits to have a normal interactive conversation. It required a medium (the human inventor) but the spirit and human team were trying to make a device to allow any spirit to communicate to communicate with any human.

Sometimes I wake up from sleep with a popular song going through my head and the lyrics are meaningful for some situation going on in my life. I tend to attribute this as a means by which spirit guides communicate with me because in some cases it seems precognitive. But I suppose it could be due to "Uncle Psimon" (Unconscious Psi).

There was a period of several weeks where every few days I would wake up with a very spiritual song going through my head. I don't usually buy CDs and I hadn't bought one in years, but something made me get CDs with those songs on them. Then, the Spiritualist church I had been going to suffered a schism and I and a few others started a new church. We didn't have anyone who could play the keyboard so we used my CDs with those spiritual songs instead of hymns.

Sometimes hearing music during meditation can be a perception of music that comes from the spirit world. This music can also be accompanied by colors. A number of books written by spirits through mediums say that in the spirit world, colors are associated with music. It's hard to know how reliable this information is, but they describe concerts where music is performed where color is an effect of the music and is considered by the composer when writing the music. In another case, a babbling brook is described as musical and colorful. If you are interested, there are a lot of books about life in the spirit world at Spritiwritings.com.

Zen

2009-06-26T06:00:00.001-04:00

Charles Tart has a funny blog post about what to do if you feel sleepy during meditation. One tactic he mentions is to have someone hit you with a stick if you doze off. This is what they do in Zen monasteries.

At the Zen center I used to go to they had something like this. The stick was long and wide so the pressure was spread out. It didn't hurt. They hit you on the muscles just to the side of the spine. They said this was an acupressure point.

The guy who wields the stick walks around during the meditation sessions. When he gets to you, if you want a whack, you put your hands together and lean forward. Mostly people do it because they're bored or want an excuse to move. Zen is very regimented, you're not supposed to move during sitting meditating. Historically this is because nobles sent extra sons to the monastery to get good karma for themselves, but their sons were not always enthusiastic monks. They could be disruptive if not kept under rigid discipline. I suppose if one fell asleep, good whack would wake him up.

In Zen group meditation sessions, they alternate sitting meditation with walking meditation. In walking meditation, everyone walks in a line one behind the other with the most senior monk in the lead. Once I was on a retreat and the instructor was nodding off during the sitting meditation. During the walking meditation, he would try to wake himself up by walking as fast as he could. We were at a Zen temple out in a rural area. We did the walking meditation outside where there was nothing to get in our way. The instructor was not a wizened old Zen master. He was a young athletic monk. His could walk fast. It was hilarious - we were wearing meditation robes and they were trailing behind us because we were going so fast.

In Tart's post, he mentions that full lotus is the traditional posture for meditation. In the Zen center I went to, many beginners would use the half lotus which is easier to sit in. The problem with this is that in the half lotus, for some reason, you can't tell when your leg is falling asleep. It was quite common when there were new students to hear them stomping around during the walking meditation (if they didn't fall over) because they started walking and had no sensation in one leg. If you have no feeling in your leg it is very hard to walk. When it happened to me, it was like one leg was walking on a trampoline. Every step with that leg felt like it was sinking into the floor despite the fact that it made a sound like a flamenco dancer.

I tell more about my experiences at the Zen center on my web site, where I also have a page on how to meditate.

Spiritual Crisis Intervention

2009-06-24T15:18:00.004-04:00

Many of you may be following the events that are occurring in Iran. It may seem like there is nothing you can do. But, there are two ways that anyone can lend spiritual assistance to those who are suffering. You can help by:

Prayer
Spiritual Healing

Prayer

If you pray about the situation please pray for "the highest good" or "God's will be done." It is impossible for us as individuals scattered around to world to know what is the best solution to this crisis. The higher spiritual beings do know. If we as individuals pray for any particular outcome, some will be praying for one thing and others may pray for the opposite. In this way we might counteract each other's intentions. Let those spiritual beings who can intervene at our request make the decision about what is for the best. If you have time, take five or ten minutes and engage in repetitive prayer. Repeat a prayer such as:

Oh God, please intervene in in Iran. May thy will be done.
Oh God, please intervene in in Iran. May the result be for the highest good.

Spiritual Healing

Spiritual healing is not well understood. It is not a substitute for mainstream medicine, it can be used along with mainstream medicine or when mainstream medicine is not available. Spiritual healing is not faith healing. Faith is not necessary. It can be used on animals and infants who don't even understand what is being done. When most people use spiritual healing it more like therapy than an operation. It may not bring about an instant, miraculous cure, but repeated treatments can help.

A method of laying-on-of-hands spiritual healing is described on my web site. This web page also explains how you can send healing to those at a distant location. For those who want to send healing for whoever may need it most, you can use a prayer such as:

Oh God, please move healing energy through me to Iran, to give them healing where it is needed there for the highest good.

Repeat this prayer while visualizing healing white light coming down upon you from a higher realm. Continue for five or ten minutes.

If you have any doubts about the effectiveness of spiritual healing please read "The Effect of the Laying On of Hands on Transplanted Breast Cancer in Mice", (pdf) by William F. Bengston, David Krinsley, Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 353-364, 2000.

Sensing the Qualities of Qi (part 2)

2009-06-24T06:00:00.001-04:00

Yesterday's post, Sensing the Qualities of Qi part 1, described a qigong healer's ability to sense the qualities of the qi of cells growing in laboratory cultures. He was able to detect that a culture contained abnormal cells even though he was told the cells were healthy. As a spiritual healer myself, I wondered what qigong training methods are used to develop this ability.

I was able to find out the name of this form of qigong at the Healing Ways web site. The form is called External Qi Healing (Wai Qi Zhi Liao)

External Qi Healing (Wai Qi Zhi Liao): Qigong includes a sophisticated system of health assessment and non-contact treatment called External Qi Healing (EQH). The healer learns to tap into a well of healing energy in nature and "funnel" it through his or her body. Unlike some purely intuitive systems, EQH includes exercises that increase sensitivity to energy fields and efficacy of treatment. The more you practice External Qi Healing exercises and meditations, the more effective your healing treatment.

The way to learn External Qi Healing is described in External Qi Healing A Primer... (pdf) by Rich Mooney at the National Qigong Association web site:

Extra exercise #1: From Posture Three, that is the palms facing each other at chest height, slowly and gently exhale, (not harshly like when you do a tension exercise), and bring the palms close to each other, but not allowing them to touch. On the inhale, let the hands expand away from each other for the duration of the inhale, or until they are spread about 2 feet away from each other.

It seems the way you develop sensitivity to the qi field is to do a type of meditation where you hold your hands with the palms facing each other, moving them together and apart slowly in synchrony with breathing. This makes perfect sense. As you move your palms together and apart you move them through your own energy field so you develop sensitivity by observing your own field.

This exercise is similar to exercises that are taught in other forms of energy healing. Most commonly this is used to help people recognize that energy healing is something that you can perceive very easily. Beginners are often told to bring their hands close together and notice if they can feel anything. Most people do. So it makes perfect sense that repeating this exercise will, over time, make one more sensitive to the energy field around living things.

If you have any doubts about the effectiveness of spiritual healing try reading "The Effect of the Laying On of Hands on Transplanted Breast Cancer in Mice", (pdf) by William F. Bengston, David Krinsley, Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 353-364, 2000.

The method of spiritual healing I use is described on my web site.

Sensing the Qualities of Qi

2009-06-22T06:00:00.001-04:00

There is evidence that qigong healers can sense the qualities of the energy field of cell cultures. In her book "Extraordinary Knowing", Elizabeth Mayer quotes from the article "The Qi Question: Is It More Than a Beautiful Form of Hypnosis?" by Garret G. Yount, Ph.D., (Spirituality and Health, summer 2001, 36-38). The quote describes an incident that took place during an experiment designed to measure the effects of qigong healing on cells in culture. Qigong healers were able to correctly sense that the cells in a culture were unhealthy despite being told otherwise.

We deal with all this so routinely in the lab, I didn't think to mention it to the qigong master in our first experiment. We simply handed him a dish with cells growing in it, and said, "There are normal cells in the dish. Please give them a healing treatment. We hope to see them grow well, even more than untreated control cells." That was the procedure. Seems straightforward, right? This qigong master had agreed to the task and I figured we'd let him take his time and do his thing with the dish. But after treating the cells he came out of the treatment room shaking his head. "Those cells are not normal," he said. "They are very abnormal, so I didn't try to make them grow. I tried to eliminate them."
I was feeling skeptical about the whole experiment and my first reaction was one of sheer irritation. I tried to be polite but I told the man he was frankly wrong. There was no question. These were normal brain cells. He came right back, just as confident as I'd been. He defied me outright. "No," he said, "they are not normal. I sensed an abnormal qi."
Well, at that point, it hit me. I realized there were in fact only one hundred normal healthy brain cells in that dish, and they were growing on top of ten thousand tumor cells in the process of committing cell suicide. So, if this healer could in fact perceive anything about the cell culture as a whole, we might perfectly well expect he'd take notice of the dying tumor cells, not just the much smaller percentage of healthy cells. At that point, I backed up and explained the nature of the culture to him. He nodded and let me know that now everything made sense.
That episode intrigued me. Maybe this man really was able to perceive something quite unknown to me. Our experiments have unfolded from there.

A reprint of the article can be found at National Qigong Association web site.

In "Extraordinary Knowing", Elizabeth Mayer Ph.D., describes some of the scientific evidence from parapsychology as well as personal experiences of psychic phenomena. I highly recommend it.

Spiritual Healing

2009-06-21T07:00:00.001-04:00

I haven't done any clinical trials, but I have had some positive experiences using spiritual healing. on myself.

I've also been a healer during services at Spiritualist churches. At one time I was training to get certified by the association of churches we belonged to so I have several Affidavits of Healing by people attesting to the fact that they felt some benefit from the healing. None of them are miraculous. For example, one person felt cold symptoms relieved, another felt relief from depression, one had her knee which felt "out of place" pop back into place, one felt difficulty breathing was relieved.

I've also had several people tell me they experienced unusual effects when I didn't tell them I was sending healing to them from a distance.

Spiritual healing is not well understood in our culture. People hear it and think of miracles. In reality, when used by the average healer, it's more like therapy than an operation. Its effects accumulate gradually over time rather than occur all at once from a single treatment. It is different from faith healing. Faith is not required. Spiritual healing can be used on infants and animals who have no understanding of what is being done and therefore do not have faith. Also, it is not advocated as a substitute for mainstream medicine, although it is recommended to be used in conjunction with mainstream medicine.

More Information

Turning off Psychic Abilities

2009-06-20T07:00:00.003-04:00

Some people have unwanted psychic experiences and are unable turn their off their psychic perceptiveness. These types of experiences may involve contacts with spirits or unconscious psychokinesis (PK, poltergeist like phenomena).

The best advice on what to do in this situation comes from a medical doctor who is also a medium. The advice is to start a meditation practice and also to see a psychological councilor to deal with the emotional issues that are often released by meditation. Unwanted PK is often a sign of some type of psychological conflict so it makes sense that dealing with emotions will be involved in resolving the phenomena. However, it is important to find a councilor who understands that psychic phenomena are real and who will know the difference between hallucinations and psychic perceptions.

One type of meditation that has worked in this situation is Vipassana, or insight meditation. There are some on-line audio files by Dr. Charles Tart that explain how to do this type of meditation: Mindfulness 101

During insight meditation, you observe the sensations in the body. By developing a greater awareness of bodily sensations, you may notice what it feels like to decrease your level of psychic perceptiveness. Once you notice this feeling, you may be able to do it intentionally.

Meditation also helps to calm and relax a person and helps one to develop equanimity. This can help you cope better with unwanted psychic perceptions.

More information on meditation is available on my web site.

Book Review: Immortal Remains: The Evidence for Life after Death by Stephen E. Braude

2009-06-19T07:00:00.002-04:00

In his book "Immortal Remains", Stephen E. Braude examines the evidence for life after death. Braude is a philosopher and this book is heavily laden with philosophical arguments and analysis. In that way it is different from other books that just report the evidence for the afterlife. The book discusses how well the survival hypothesis and the super-psi hypothesis fit the empirical data. It isn't written for the reader who is new to the subject so I would recommend such readers do some background reading first. Any of the following would be helpful to read before tackling "Immortal Remains":

A Lawyer Presents the Case for the Afterlife by Victor J. Zammit:
21 Days into the Afterlife by Piero Calvi-Parisetti, MD
"Is There an Afterlife?" by David Fontana.

There is also a page about the Evidence for the Afterlife on my web site.

You can get the flavor of Braude's thinking from the following on-line articles from SurvivalAfterDeath.org.uk:

In "Immortal Remains", Braude raises a lot of ideas for discussion and tries to consider all sides of the issues. It is worthwhile reading the book to be exposed to those ideas. However another philosopher might not agree with every point Braude makes, so a reader who is not trained in philosophy should not accept everything in the book simply because of Braude's academic credentials.

Braude covers some of the best evidence (but not all of the best evidence) and gives many references.

The book covers the following types of evidence in detail:

Drop-In Communicators
Trance Mediumship
Reincarnation and Possession
Haunting
Transplant Cases
Out-of Body Experiences

It includes an analysis of the following cases:

Cagliostro
Runki's Leg
Mrs. Piper
Mrs. Leonard
Sharada
Patience Worth
Bishen Chand
Antonia
Sumitra/Shiva
Thompson-Gifford Case

Braude's reasoning is philosophical and somewhat complicated. Actually, I have to admit that I didn't follow how he came to some of his conclusions. Braude's main conclusion is that the evidence justifies the belief that some individuals survive for a time after death. He bases his conclusion on the argument that survival is slightly favored by the empirical evidence over super-psi but what really tips the scales in favor of survival is something which he calls "crippling complexity".

Crippling complexity is based on the assumption that there are certain factors that that interfere with psi, such as psychics getting in each other's way psychically, or adverse geomagnetic conditions. The more ways psi needs to be used to produce a result, the greater the susceptibility of that result is to this interference. Explaining the evidence for the afterlife using the super-psi hypothesis would often require that a psychic access information from multiple sources. The survival hypothesis explains the same phenomena with only one source of psychic information. Therefore super-psi is more susceptible to crippling complexity than the survival hypothesis. Braude likens it to the fact that obtaining information from several radio stations is more problematic than obtaining information from just one station. The more veridical information in a case, the stronger the effect would be. Therefore, cases with a lot of veridical information are better explained by the survival hypothesis than by super-psi.

Braude emphasizes that when analyzing the evidence for the afterlife, one must examine the empirical evidence both for and against. However, I didn't completely follow Braude's explanation about what empirical evidence there is that supports his theory of crippling complexity. Braude also didn't specify any means to quantify the effects of crippling complexity which I think would be helpful in justifying the claim that it actually pertains in cases of survival evidence.

However, it is interesting that his own theory, as he says, tips the scales in favor of survival. When analyzing of the evidence for survival, Braude advocates a psychological analysis of the people involved to assess whether or not super-psi is a reasonable interpretation of the case. If there are reasons to suspect that living people might benefit psychologically from a phenomenon, there is reason to suspect they might be using psi unconsciously to produce the phenomenon. I think it would be helpful in assessing Braude's analysis of the evidence for life after death if Braude was psychoanalyzed to determine if he benefited psychologically from his finding that his theory of crippling complexity tips the balance in favor of survival.

Another area where I had trouble following Braude's reasoning was when he concluded that super-psi is a better explanation than survival for the Patience Worth case. Patience Worth was a spirit who communicated literary works of the highest quality through a medium.

The samples of Patience Worth's work reprinted in "Immortal Remains" included this one:

Mrs. P.: The world is crying for proofs of immortality.
P.W.: To prove a fact, needst thou a book of words, when e'en the sparrow's chirp telleth thee more?
A tale unfolded by the Bishops' drudge may hold the meat for thousands, while dust and web are strong on his Eminence. The road to higher plains leadeth not along the steeple.

Results from Meditation

2009-06-18T07:00:00.004-04:00

When choosing a form of meditation you have to consider:

What the particular type of meditation is purported to do for the practitioner.
How realistic it is that someone will attain those results.
If it takes years of meditation in a monastery to get the purported result, it might not be realistic for the average person to expect to get that result.
Whether or not that type of meditation really gives the results it is purported to.
Sometimes a type of meditation doesn't really do what it is said to do.

You should pick a type of meditation that is likely to give you results that you want.

There is a lot written about the results of various types of meditation that is either not realistic for the average person or simply false.

I know of someone who could easily attain the state that in Zen is called kensho - union of subject and object. This is supposed to demonstrate the oneness of all things and eliminate the delusion of self. This person wasn't transformed by the experience and thought it was not terribly enlightening. It was just a state. It would be unfortunate if someone else made a great effort for many years to attain the same ability to enter the state of kensho and after all that effort came to the same conclusion.

I also know of someone else who spends many hours a day meditating for the purpose of releasing their flow of Kundalini energy to get it to flow in a way that is not disruptive. My opinion (based on my own experiences) is that they are misunderstanding their situation and will never accomplish what they hope to through meditation. What they need to do is change their diet and life style to reduce levels of stress hormones in their body.

In my opinion, what is realistic for the average person to get from meditation is:

The reduction of egoism from noticing thoughts that arise during concentration meditation.
A greater awareness of emotions from Vipassana (insight meditation).
A calmer mind and relaxed body from relaxation exercises or meditation.

All of these eventually lead to increased equanimity. There are also types of meditation for:

If someone wants to experience altered states of consciousness, there is nothing wrong with trying the types of meditations said to produce them. But the practitioner should understand what the likelihood of attaining that state really is.

One last example: out-of-body experiences (OBEs). There are many meditation-like exercises said to induce OBEs. However, while OBEs seem real to the experiencer, people who can induce OBEs and obtain correct verifiable information while out of body are rare. This suggests that for many people an induced OBE is more like a dream than a real spiritual experience. (Spontaneous OBEs are probably more "real" than induced OBEs.) It would be unfortunate for someone to spend a lot of time and effort to learn to induce OBEs and then discover that they are not "real".

Also see:

Meditation

Varieties of Mystical Experiences

Reading E-Books Off-line

2009-06-17T07:00:00.001-04:00

There are a lot of links to free e-books and other on-line documents on this blog and on my web site. It might be helpful to readers if I explained how to read these off line. Usually if a document will take more than a few minutes to read, I convert it to a text file and read it on a PDA. I have a Pocket-PC and I use the Handibook2 e-book reader software. (The PDA and software are quite old so I don't know if that software is available for current PDA's. Also, newer PDA's may be able to handle non-text documents better than old ones, so you might not need to convert to text to read a document on a newer PDA.) If you read a lot, you may save money in the long run by buying a PDA and reading free-e books from the internet.

If you try using a PDA or other type of e-book reader such as a kindle and you read a lot, try to notice if you wrist or shoulder starts to hurt. You may need to be careful of how you hold the device or how long you use it to prevent wrist or shoulder aches. Also, if the PDA uses standard batteries, you might consider buying rechargable batteres. If the unit comes with a rechargable battery try to notice if you have to place it in a docking cradle to charge it. It can be awkward to use the device while charging if it can only charge in a docking cradle. It is better if the recharger plugs directly into the unit itself.

I've also used a type of bed side tray to read from a laptop computer while lying in bed. This might be an alternative if you want to read a lot of e-books and don't have a PDA. This type of tray stands next to the bed but extends over the bed. It is similar to the type of tray you often find in hospitals but is designed to hold a laptop computer. It works, but is a bit too confining to be really comfortable.

Converting E-Books to Text Files.

If an on-line document is not already in text format, sometimes it can be tricky to convert it to text. Here are some methods for converting on-line documents to text:

(Some on-line documents may have copyright restrictions on how you can use them. Please do not use these techniques to voliate any copyright restrictions.)

Save as text. If possible choose "save as" from the file menu on the application you are using to view the book, and save the book as a text file. This is obvious and simple, but it doesn't always work....
Pdf files that are page images. If you have a pdf file where each page is a scanned image, you can't simply save as text since there is no text in the file. What you can do is print to a file and select fax as the type of printer. On the printer settings try to set the resolution to 300 dpi if you can. If the settings don't go up that high, set them as high as you can. Name the file with a .tif extension. Then you can use optical character recognition (ocr) software to convert the .tif file to a text file. I use Text Bridge which came with my scanner. There is also freeware ocr software. When I last tried it, it didn't work well, but that was several years ago. Hopefully newer versions will work better.
Locked pdf files. Some pdf files are in text format but have saving to text disabled. You can print these files to a generic postscript printer and then open these file in gsview. Gsview is a freeware software package that allows you to view and convert postscript and pdf files to various formats. From gsview you can convert to text by going to the edit menu and selecting text extract.
If that doesn't work, sometimes you can open the pdf file in gsview and then save as a pdf file by slecting convert from the file menu. Then chose pdfwrite as the device on the dialog box that opens. This new pdf file should let you print.
If that doesn't work you can always fall back on the ocr method.
Single HTML files. If the document is in one large html file you can either save to text from your browser or select all and copy and paste into a text document.
Multiple HTML Files. If the e-book is in multiple html files, check the web page to see if there is a link to view the whole book on one page or download the book in one file. If not, it is usually not too hard to simply open each file and copy and paste them successively into a text file. I have written programs to download a list files and paste them together but I rarely use it because it is really simple to just open the html files and paste them into a text file.

Sources Of Free E-Books

The sources listed below are not a complete list. You can find many more sources of free e-books on the internet by using an internet search engine like google or yahoo.

Spirituality and the Afterlife.
- E-Libraries. Sources of free e-books listed on my web site.
- Recommended Books A list of recommendations on my web site. Has links to free e-books.
All Subjects
- ManyBooks This site has books sorted by subject so it is a good place to browse for something to read. They have books from other e-libraries so they can be a good place to start looking for something to read.
- Project Gutenberg It can be a little hard to browse the catalog, but if you know what you are looking this site is very good.
- archive.org
- Google Books Not all of the books here are free. You have to check for a "Download" link near the top of the right hand column.
Science Fiction
- Baen Free Library
- Baen CD at the Fifth Imperium

The Thompson/Gifford Case

2009-06-16T07:00:00.001-04:00

I recently noticed that books.google.com has many of the volumes of the Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research from 1922 and earlier available to download or read on-line. This includes the original report of the Thompson/Gifford case which is described in A Case of Veridical Hallucinations, by J.H. Hyslop, Proceedings American Society for Psychical Research volume III, 1909, p. 1-469.

The Thompson/Gifford case is one of Montague Keen's "Twenty Cases Suggestive of Survival". Frederic Thompson was influenced by the spirit of the artist Robert Swain Gifford to paint pictures that Gifford had left uncompleted in life. A brief description of the case can be found on survivalafterdeath.org.uk. I have a link to the full list of twenty cases on my web site along with links to sources of more information. Many of the reports by the original investigators are available on-line.

Links to on-line versions of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research and Journal of the Society for Psychical Research are also available on my web site in the section on On Line Classics in Psychical Research and on the web page Web Guide to The Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research.

Alternatives to Meditation

2009-06-15T07:00:00.003-04:00

It can be helpful to understand what the different components of meditation are because the different components have different effects. When you understand the components you can pick an choose which ones are right for you.

Components of Meditation

When distracting thoughts arise during meditation, we let go of them and come back to the focus of the meditation. This process causes us to notice our thought and we see that our thoughts are constantly changing and running around out of control. This teaches us that our opinions and attachments and aversions are not real, they are just temporary states that arise unintentionally. Because of this, if we keep up a meditation practice over a long period of time, the force of our attachments and aversions weakens. This effect stays with us even if we stop meditating because it is something we learn about ourselves. It can improve the quality of our life because things upset us less when we have weaker and fewer attachments and aversions and that can improve our mood.
Concentrating on some focus of attention or just the present moment and letting go of interrupting thoughts also has the effect of calming the mind. This helps us relax because a racing mind will stir up emotions, start us planning for the future, and remind us of regrets of the past - the things by which we make ourselves upset.
Meditation is relaxing for the mind and body and it makes us feel good. This is due to the relaxation response. It lowers our levels of stress hormones, and I suspect increases levels of neurotransmitters like serotonin. Relaxation is part of why meditation also calms the mind. This is a temporary effect and you have to meditate often if you want to keep in this state.

A person doesn't have to engage in all three of these activities. If someone feels reluctance to meditate or restless during meditation, it might be because there is some thought about to rise up from their unconscious mind and they somehow know it will not be pleasant to work through. In a case like this, a person shouldn't feel obligated to work through it if they don't want to. Many people in this situation just decide not to meditate, which is unfortunate because there are an alternatives. There are other practices that can give the benefits of relaxation with out having to watch the mind and work through emotions. In a situation like this, a good alternative to meditation might be something relaxing like yoga, relaxation exercises, taking a walk, or even just a short nap.

The Icelandic Physical Medium Indridi Indridason

2009-06-14T07:28:00.003-04:00

The career of physical medium Indridi Indridason is described in The Icelandic Physical Medium Indridi Indridason by Loftur R. Gissurarson & Erlendur Haraldsson, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 57, 1989, 53-148. The paper is from Dr. Erlendur Haraldsson's web site. Indridason's career as a medium was cut short by illness after only four years. He died in 1912 at the age of 29. During his brief career, he produced most of the phenomena that other physical mediums have produced, including levitations, appearance of lights, odors, direct voice communication, materializations, apports, and poltergeist phenomena. Indridason was Iceland's first medium and the Experimental Society in Iceland was formed for the express purpose of investigating his mediumship. During his seances, his hands were held by someone selected to be the "watchman" to rule out fraud as an explanation for the phenomena that occured.

The paper is interesting and entertaining to read ...

Levitation (p 75):

During the period when the seances were held in members’ homes, Indridason is reported to have levitated sometimes up to the ceiling, which he touched with his head (Kvaran, 1910, p45 Nielsson, 19l9b, p.344 Thordarson, 1942, p. 13). Sometimes he even bumped his head harshly against the ceiling and complained about “pain in his head” after sittings (Kvaran, 1906, p.26). According to Kvaran it was difficult at first to observe the levitations of the medium because of the darkness. But the noise, especially when he crashed down on the floor, resulted in complaints from neighbours, and at least twice the Society had to find another flat to hold their seances (Kvaran, 1906, p.26; 1934).

Evidential Clarivoyance (p 76):

... on the evening of 24th November 1905, when a personality, who had previously appeared but not identified himself, introduced himself as Mr. Jensen (a Danish surname) for the first time through Indridason at a séance (Kvaran, 1910, p.46; Nielsson, 1922a, pp. 14-15; 1922b,p.456). Nielsson reports (1922b,p.456) :—

The first evening he manifested himself through the medium, he told us that, during the half-hour pause while the medium was being allowed to rest in the middle of the sitting, he had set off for Copenhagen and had seen that a factory was on fire in one of the streets of the city. He told us that the firemen had succeeded in conquering the fire. At that time no telegraphic connection between Iceland and the outside world had been established, so there was no means of hearing about that event. This happened on 24th November 1905, Next day I went to see the Bishop of Iceland, the Right Reverend Hallgrimur Sveinsson, who was my uncle, and stated to him what Jensen had told us, and asked him to put it down and be a witness, whether this proved true or not. At Christmas the next boat came from Denmark, and my uncle looked with curiosity through the Danish paper, Politihen, and to his great satisfaction observed the description of the fire. Both day and time were right. Jensen was also right about the factory. It was a tamp factory at 63, Store Kongensgade.

The medium's arm dematerializes (p 78):

Perhaps the most mysterious phenomenon observed with Indridason started on 18th December 1905 (Kvaran, 1906, pp.27-32; l9l0,p.45) when the sitters heard some creaking sounds in his arm while he was in a trance state. At Kvaran’s home the next day, Indridason, while awake, wrote automatically about the serious concern the controls had about the experimenting séance that was to be held the following evening. The controls stressed in this automatic writing that the sitters would have to be very calm and quiet, otherwise the medium’s life could be in danger. An “operation” would be carried out on him but he was not to have any knowledge about that beforehand so he would not be worried. At the séance during the evening, Indridason’s left arm apparently became invisible and intangible for a while. Here is Kvaran’s description, based on extensive notes taken during the séance (1906,pp.27-32):-—
Then I shall allow you to hear what happened at the séance the next evening (19th Dec.). After the usual séance beginning, a song from us and a prayer from the control, the control seemed to go away for a while. Then the medium said:
“Hi! I’m glad to see you come. But what are you going to do with all those knives? —No, no, no!” (Goes into the cabinet). “No, no, this is not allowed.”
The control’s voice: “You be careful!”
Now for a while one could hear cries of pain from the medium coming from the cabinet. Then he came out of the cabinet and said, as if very unhappy:
“When are you coming back with it?”
Then the medium came to me (I sat at the back of the hall), handed me the empty left sleeve of his jacket and said with the control’s voice:
“Take hold here, carefully! You can touch with caution,”
I touched, but could not find the left arm.
The control: “Take the jacket and be careful! Take it from the right side! [Probably, start by taking the jacket off the right shoulder.] I will put him outside; the air is more refreshing there. [Probably, take Indridason out of the séance room.] I’m afraid that, if it becomes too hot, he will bleed.”
The medium then went out into an empty room at the front of the hall and stayed there for a while. Then he came back in and went into the cabinet.
Then I was called up by the control’s voice: “Would you see if his nose is bleeding?”
I asked if I could then light a match.
“Yes, but you may not have the light on for a very long time.”
I lit a match and saw that it was not bleeding. The medium was lying on his right side on a mattress inside the cabinet. I checked again to see if I could find the arm. But the result was the same.
The medium: “Ah, where are you going with it? Where is it?”
The control: “Check now carefully whether you can see any phenomenon in front of you; perhaps someone will be able to see something waved; my relative’s arm, for example.”
We searched carefully around us in the hall, but didn’t see anything. However, two sitters felt a cold, soft hand touch their faces. I was again invited to search the shoulder, and I did it as carefully as I could, but did not find the arm.

Materializations (p. 82):

Kvaran (1910, p.47) and Nielsson (1922b, p.456) report that shortly before Christmas 1906 sittings were being held in two rooms in Kvaran’s house (one fairly large room and a small adjoining bedroom). During sittings in the large room, the smaller séance room started to become filled with very strong whitish light. In this light appeared a human being that purported to be the discarnate Mr.Jensen. He first appeared between the curtains (probably, curtains between the rooms), in the small room, and shouted, in a genuine and typical Copenhagen Danish accent, “Ka’ De se mig?” (in English: “Can you see me?”) (Kvaran, 1934; Nielsson, 1922 a, p.20). The control personalities had said they required the small room for their own use. Kvaran’s wife and Thorlaks son say that Jensen always asked as he appeared, “Can you see me?” (Thordarson, 1942, pp. 102, 109). Kvaran (1910, p.47) continues: — Then Jensen became visible in the [selfluminous] light. In the New Year he showed himself in the living room, where we sat. He was dressed in a white, very fine robe, which reached down to the floor. The light radiated from him and we saw him in various locations in the room, Sometimes he stood very close to one of us. Once he stood on a sofa and behind his shoulders was something like a tiny sun on the wall. This was a very beautiful sight. Sometimes he stood on the chair-back behind the medium.

Poltergeist (p 93):

Indridi is starting to dress again and is putting on his trousers, but I walk into the outer room and stand there. Then Indridi screams for help once more. I run into the bedroom to him. But then I see a vision that I shall never forget. Indridi is lying horizontal in the air, at about the height of my [Thorlaksson’s] chest, and swaying there to and fro, with his feet pointing towards the window, and it seems to me that the invisible power that is holding him in the air is trying to swing him out of the window. I don’t hesitate a moment, but grab around the medium where he is swinging in the air, and push him down onto the bed and hold him there. But then I notice that both of us are being lifted up. I scream to Thordur Oddgeirsson and ask him to come to help.
...
Mr. Oddgeirsson went into the bedroom, but a chair was hurled at him and fell beside the stove in the outer room. Mr. Oddgeirsson moved aside to avoid the chair and went on into the bedroom. Mr. Thoriaksson was then lying on the medium’s chest. Mr. Oddgeirsson lay down on the knees of the medium, whose whole frame was in motion on the bed. Then a bolster, which was under the medium’s pillow, was thrown into the air; it fell on the bedroom floor. Simultaneously the candlesticks which were in the outer room came through the air and were flung down in the bedroom.

Direct Voice (p 123):

A friend of Hannesson reported to him the following incident (Hannesson, 1924b, p.267):— A friend of mine was once invited to a séance of the Society, previous to my going there. He was a good singer, but a humorist and jester. Before he went, he told me where he was going, and that he had a trick up his sleeve for the ghosts. He seemed to look upon the manifestations as rather a joking matter. When he came back he was amazed at the ghosts and their performances, and said that this was not altogether natural. “I had heard,” he said, “that Mr. N.N. [probably a deceased person] was appearing there and singing, and I knew that he used to be an excellent duet singer. I thought I should soon find out if there was here the question of a trained singer or not, but for a further certainty I was going to offer to sing with him a duet. He appeared, and I did as I had intended. He agreed and consented to my taking the lower voice while he was to take the higher. I purposely began too high so as to make him break, but I failed miserably in my reckonings. He sang the higher voice with such power that the whole house resounded and I was absolutely amazed.” My friend thought it very improbable that there was in the whole town a singer who could do what this “voice” had done.

As you can see, despite being from a scientific journal, it's a good read.

Dr. Erlendur Haraldsson

2009-06-13T07:00:00.001-04:00

I just found the web site of Dr. Erlendur Haraldsson He co-authored several papers with Ian Stevenson. A lot of his work available to download from his web site.

His papers include:

Erlendur Haraldsson & Ian Stevenson (1975). A communicator of the "drop in" type in Iceland: The case of Runolfur Runolfsson. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 69, 33-59.

The above case is frequently cited to refute the super-psi hypothesis because the spirit was not related to the medium or sitters, gave verifiable information, and communicated for reasons that were meaningful only to himself. He gave the location of a thigh bone hidden in a wall and asked that it be buried because it was from his own corpse.

Loftur R. Gissurarson & Erlendur Haraldsson (1989). The Icelandic Physical Medium Indridi Indridason. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 57, 53-148.

Erlendur Haraldsson & Ian Stevenson (1975). A communicator of the "drop in" type in Iceland: The case of Gudni Magnusson. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 69, 245-261.

This paper describes the drop-in case of Gudni Magnusson. He suffered an injury after running out of gasoline in his truck. He died as he was being taken by boat to a hospital.

Here is how the information came through Finna, the medium's control spirit:

Finna then said: “He was alone in a car on his way over a mountain pass and then the car broke down. I see clearly how he crawled under the car and then something inside him tore. He died from that.” I asked: “Did he die immediately?” Finna said: “No, he managed to get to his home, and then I see he was carried by boat. He was brought to a doctor. I see the boat between fjords and that he died on the way in the boat.” I asked: “Can you tell me between what fjords he was to be brought [for medical care]?” Finna said: “I cannot get that, but Eskifjordur is what he has most on his mind.”

When they tried to verify the information that came through the medium, this is what they found out:

There is a married couple here [in Eskifjordur] by the name of Anna Jorgensen and Magnus Arngrimsson. The husband has worked for a long time at road building both in Mulasyslu and Thingeyjarsyslu, and in recent years his wife has always lived with him wherever he happens to be working. . . . One of their sons . . . who was about 20-21 years of age [he was actually 24 at the time of his death, see below], was a truck driver and had been for the past two or three years. He had often worked with his father in road building. Last fall this young man, whose name was Gudni Magnusson, was very busy with his truck driving and he left in the morning to go to Vidifjordur, a rather long and strenuous journey. Then later in the day he went to Reydarfjordur. After reaching there he left for home. His truck was not running well and the trip took longer than usual. He was alone. When he was crossing the mountain pass between Reydarijordur and Eskifjordur, the truck ran out of gasoline. So he left the truck and went down to Eskifjordur to obtain some gasoline in a can. That meant a walk of four miles each way and when he returned home he was exhausted. During the night he experienced extremely severe pain in the stomach. Einar [Astrads, the writer’s husband and the physician of the area] was sent for and went to him, but could not diagnose his condition at first.
The next day Einar had to go to Reydartjordur and stayed there the whole day. in the evening he received a telephone call at Reydarfjordur asking him to come quickly [back to Eskifjordur] because Gudni’s condition had become very critical. Einar was also asked to bring with him the army doctor stationed at Reydarfjordur if that would make it easier to help Gudni. The [two] physicians arrived at nine o’clock in the evening and they saw immediately that the young man was in a very critical condition and probably suffering from some internal rupture or intestinal obstruction. They could do nothing with the patient where he was. They therefore decided to send the young man at once to the hospital at Seydisfjordur. They could not use an airplane because, being October, it was already dark. They therefore took Gudni in a motorboat, but he died on the way between Nordfjordur and Seydisfjordur. This is what we here know about this incident. When I read your letter, I naturally thought of this young man because his name was Gudni Magnusson, and although this was not an automobile accident, the young man was working with a truck and working strenuously.

Fanny Ruthven Paget & Caroline Larsen

2009-06-12T07:00:00.002-04:00

Michael Tymn has a new post on his blog: A Near-Death Experience to Die For.

It's about Fanny Ruthven Paget's book "How I Know that the Dead Are Alive". The book describes a long near-death experience the author had during an illness.

Her book is available free to read on-line or download at archive.org.

"My Travels in the Spirit World" is a similar book by Caroline Larsen. It's available free to download in pdf format from spiritwritings.com, or to read on-line at magic7.com.

Meditation and Emotions

2009-06-11T07:00:00.003-04:00

I recently took a look at Charles Tart's blog It looks very good. I left a comment on a recent post titled Meditation to Repress Emotions?.

The subject of emotions arising during meditation is something that ought to be considered by a beginner when he is just getting started. Meditation will unleash emotions. A beginner might start out thinking meditation will make him feel calm and serene. But it is also possible that this calmness of mind will lower defense mechanisms and eventually open an emotional Pandora's box. Beginners need to understand the potential for emotional turmoil. Working through emotions can be immensely healing in the long run but is can be difficult to go through. Not everyone wants to take that path. Some people may already be going through turmoil in their lives and they might not need any more. Dealing with emotions should be something that is chosen not something stumbled upon.

Vipassana or insight meditation is a good meditation for helping to get in touch with emotions. But concentration mediation will not let you hide from emotions either. The experience of Gopi Krishna who wrote "Living with Kundalini" is a good example demonstrating that concentration meditation will not let you hide from emotions. Gopi Krishna had a severe Kunalini experience while doing a type of concentration meditation. From my experiences with Kundalini "energy", I understand it to be caused by the release or expression of strong emotions. If muscle tension coincides with repression, then the release of emotions can have effects that are also experienced in the muscles and this I believe the cause of the symptoms and sensations that comprise the experience of Kundalini energy.

If a student begins asking about emotions arising during meditation, a teacher should make sure to explain the potential for an emotional upheaval exists in addition to the potential for serenity.

As I describe on the meditation page on my web site (linked above), an important part of meditation is finding the right balance between letting out and letting go of emotions. Each person has to find the right balance for themselves. If you focus too much attention on emotions (letting out) you may reinforce negative attitudes, but if you ignore emotions (letting go) they may lurk in your unconscious and cause difficulties in life.

It is also important to understand that there are different causes of emotions and the way to deal with an emotion depends on it's source. Some emotions come from how we think about things. Meditation is very good at helping with these emotions. When we sit and meditate we can't escape our thoughts. Even if we try hard to concentrate, thoughts will arise anyway. During meditation, we get a good look at these thoughts and emotions and we begin recognize how pointless they can be. We learn that they are not reality, they are just in our mind, and then their grip on us weakens.

However some emotions have a firm biochemical basis independent of our thoughts. This often occurs with depression or anxiety. Some people might have low levels of neurotransmitters or high levels of stress hormones. Meditating can strip away a person's defense mechanisms and bring these underlying emotions into their conscious awareness. Once these issues are out in the open it might not be easy to put them back. Beginners at meditation should be aware of this. Meditation can help cope with these issues but will not solve the problem. Sometimes changes in diet, lifestyle, or getting more exercise can be of greater help with these emotions than meditation.

Anyone who is interested in meditation as a means to calm the mind should also understand that substances like caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, sugar and refined carbohydrates, can create mental turmoil. Anything that effects the brain will interfere with equanimity. These substances work in subtle ways, the effects may accumulate gradually and be difficult to notice. They can also cause withdrawal symptoms so the situation can get worse if you try to give them up. However, a healthy lifestyle can do as much for calmness of mind as a meditation practice. The two together are worth the effort.

Varieties of Mystical Experiences

2009-06-10T07:00:00.001-04:00

I've released a new page to my web site: Varieties of Mystical Experiences I discuss some of the mystical experiences I've had and how a western world view may influence our understanding of ancient tradtions.

One day, near the end of that long evening session, I was meditating, gazing at the wooden floor, (in Zen it is customary to meditate with the eyes open) and I felt myself being pulled forward out of my body for a few seconds. A minute later it happened again for a longer time. During this time I had no sensation of my body at all, the only thing I was aware of was the perception of the floor in my visual field. Because it was the only thing I was aware of, it seemed to me that I associated my self with that thing. I knew I existed but I didn't know where. I knew this image of the floor existed. It seemed natural to associate this image with my self. It seemed like I was this image of the floor.
This was without a doubt the "non duality of subject and object" described in the definition of kensho. It proved to me that the sense of self is subjective. It is also consistent with the filter model of consciousness which says that the brain does not produce consciousness but filters it. When the brain is quiescent from meditation it may filter consciousness less and we may have expanded consciousness such as this awareness of the oneness of subject and object.

Varieties of Mystical Experiences

Survival and Super-Psi

2009-06-09T07:00:00.001-04:00

When a psychic obtains information without the use of the bodily senses, it is called extra sensory perception (ESP). Some researchers believe that phenomena which seem to be evidence of spirits and the afterlife are really due to the psychic functioning of living persons. This type of psychic functioning is called super-ESP or super-psi. In the case of trance mediumship, the medium is presumed to obtain information using super-psi and then unconsciously impersonates or dramatizes the spirit.

Super-ESP is defined differently by different authors.

Hornell Hart in Survival Versus Super-psi defines super-ESP as

The use of telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and retrocognition to obtain information from anywhere in the world and from any time.

Hornell Hart's definition was proposed to explain how a medium might get information about a dead person needed to dramatize their personality when the information is not available through telepathy from the minds of the sitters. According to Hart's definition, the medium has access to any information in the conscious or unconscious mind of any person anywhere in the world or from any other source (such as events or documents) from any time in the past or future.

Neal Grossman in Further Thoughts on Super-psi: A conversation. defines superESP as:

Non-propositional knowledge obtained through ESP.
In the article, Grossman explains that knowledge about facts, "knowledge-that", is propositional knowledge. Other types of knowledge, "knowledge-how", such as skills, are non-propositional knowledge.

Grossman's definition of superESP explains how a psychic might use ESP to get the skills needed to dramatize the spirit of a deceased person. The ability to obtain facts through ESP doesn't explain how a psychic might obtain skills. To play a piece of music on the piano, you have to practice. No amount of reading about playing the piano can replace practice. One way skills are transmitted psychically is through mediumship. A medium in a trance may be able to speak in a language they never studied. In this case a spirit is controlling the medium's body and the skills come from the the spirit. Super-ESP, or super-psi, refers to the ability to obtain skills through psychic means from sources other than spirit influence. Some researchers who don't believe in the afterlife, believe super-psi allows a psychic to obtain skills and the psychic may demonstrate those skills while dramatizing the spirit.

The Evidence for Super-Psi

There is empirical evidence that supports the super-psi hypothesis. Some of this evidence comes from psychology where it is known that multiple personality disorders or hypnosis may cause people to exhibit alternate personalities that behave like some of the spirit controls of trance mediums. Other evidence for super-psi comes from parapsychology where experiments have demonstrated that ESP is not limited by time, distance, or the complexity of a task.

However, much of the evidence said to show that super-psi is the explanation for evidence of the afterlife comes from trance and other forms of mediumship. Much of this evidence is based on spirit controls of mediums who act like an alternate personality of the medium and whose identity cannot be verified and/or who give incorrect information when asked questions about the spirits they claim to be communicating for or otherwise act inconsistently with the character they purport themselves to be.

There seems to be a flaw in this reasoning. Super-psi proponents point out the possibility of super-psi based on evidence from psychology and parapsychology. But, then they identify examples of flawed mediumship that don't live up to the capabilities of what they say super-psi can achieve. Yet super-psi proponents assert these cases of flawed mediumship are instances of super-psi in action and conclude that mediumship that does yield verifiable evidence of identity of the spirit is a result of super-psi.

It is hard to understand how this flawed mediumship could be due to super-psi. According to the believers in super-psi, super-psi should give verifiable and correct information. If these mediums were using super-psi, their mediumship should be verifiable and accurate. Since it is not, then it is either not super-psi or super-psi is not capable of accurately portraying a deceased individual. In either case this is not evidence that super-psi is the explanation for accurate mediumship.

In fact there is another explanation for some flawed mediumship and it is based on empirical evidence not convoluted logic.

One of the observations that helped convince Richard Hodgson that spirits exist and can communicate through mediums was made when he began to understand the source of errors in Mrs. Piper's mediumship. This happened when spirits began to communicate through writing rather than by using the control Phinuit as an intermediary. Hodgson learned that there are many conditions that caused confusion in the communicating spirits. Confusion was caused by unfamiliarity with the conditions that occur when communicating through a medium, and by the transition from physical life to spirit life, or by a long period of illness or mental turmoil preceding death. When spirits communicated by writing and controlled the medium themselves, their confusion was apparent. When spirits communicated indirectly through the spirit control Phinuit who spoke for them, confusion on the part of the communicating spirit was obscured because Phinuit was acting as an intermediary. This explains some of the failures of spirits to correctly answer questions aimed at proving their identity, and it explains some instances when Phinuit was inaccurate. These same phenomena are likely to explain other cases where flawed mediumship is purported to be evidence for super-psi. More information on Hodgson's research on the mediumship of Mrs. Piper can be found in the post Mrs. Piper: Evidence for Survival After Death

Hodgson's observations weaken the case for super-psi because they provide an alternative to the super-psi hypothesis to explain flawed mediumship and they are based on empirical observations not supposition.

The Evidence For Survival After Death

There are several phenomena that seem to demonstrate the existence of spirits and the afterlife which are not easily explained by super-psi and for which the survival hypothesis seems much more likely. This type of evidence involves phenomena that are independent of any living person and often involve highly accurate information about a deceased individual. It provides a strong argument for survival as an explanation of those phenomena.

Sometimes drop-in communicators who are unrelated to the sitters or the medium communicate through a medium. They do this for reasons of their own which have nothing to do with the sitters or the medium. This shows they are independent of any living person. Furthermore, their identity is verifiable and they give accurate information about their life that is not know by the medium or sitters.

The cross-correspondences were a form of message spontaneously received in parts by several mediums working independently. The parts of the message often consisted of obscure literary allusions unknown to the mediums and made no sense to any living person until put together after all the pieces had been received. This demonstrates that the communicator retained the specialized knowledge of literature he had when living, that he was still creative, intelligent, had initiative, had organizing and coordinating abilities and was independent of any living person.

Spirits have to learn to communicate through mediums. In certain forms of mediumship, such as direct voice, trance, or materializations, spirits demonstrate a learning process. They may have difficulty communicating on the first attempt and they usually communicate more clearly and more naturally after several attempts. This indicates the spirit exists and is learning to communicate through the techniques of mediumship.

Richard Hodgson, who studied the medium Mrs. Piper, observed that characteristics of the communication varied with the communicators and did not depend on the sitters. The communicators seemed to be independent of any living person. Some spirits were never good at communicating. Some spirits were better than others at communicating names. All spirits had trouble communicating at first but improved with practice. This difficulty in communicating could be overcome with the assistance of other spirits. Spirits seemed to be confused for a few days just after death. Stray thoughts from the spirits (not the medium or sitter) seemed to leak through into the communications as if the spirit was having difficulty controlling the means of communication and private thoughts were being transmitted unintentionally. These thoughts reflected subjects that would be of particular concern to the spirit such as situations involving living relatives but which were unknown to the sitters. The spirits of young children recently deceased had clearer memories of early childhood than spirits who had died many years before. Spirits of young children recently deceased tended to communicate more clearly than adults recently deceased. Spirits responded to questions intended to prove their identity correctly but not always in ways the sitters expected. Sometimes the communicating spirit was unable to give information that was in the conscious mind of the sitter. On occasion, a spirit would not know the name of a sitter they were thought to know. Difficulty in communicating names was a common characteristic of the communication. If the investigator ran the sitting like a telepathy experiment, less evidential information was given through the medium. If he treated the spirit in a sensitive and soothing manner like an actual person communicating under adverse conditions, the communication was improved.

This is explained in more detail in Mrs. Piper: Evidence for Survival After Death

Communicating with spirits has eliminated haunting phenomena that had occurred with several successive residents who were unrelated and unknown to each other. The super-psi hypothesis can't explain this because it assumes there is a living person who is responsible for the phenomena. If the people in the house change, then according to the super-psi hypothesis, the phenomena should stop.

Children who remember past lives sometimes have birthmarks on parts of their bodies where they sustained an injury in the remembered past life. Invoking super-psi to explain this doesn't make sense. Is the fetus psychic?

During death-bed visions (and other situations) multiple people who are not mediums see the same spirits. There are various ways this is demonstrated to be an objective phenomena and not a hallucination. Sometimes a person attending the dying sees the same spirits the dying person sees. There is also a case where the spirit who helped a dying person make the transition, described how they did that through a medium. When the investigators contacted a relative of the dying person they were able to get confirmation that the dying person saw the spirit and the spirit used an unusual phrase also reported by the medium. The medium and the dying person were unknown to each other and this separation is evidence that the phenomena are independent of any living person. Several examples of confirmed death bed visions were discussed in the previous post: Death-Bed Visions Confirmed

These examples of phenomena which appear to be due to survival after death are independent of any living person. The super-psi hypothesis cannot easily explain them, and they are very strong evidence for survival after death.

Brain Injury Expands Consciousness

2009-06-08T07:00:00.000-04:00

There was a very interesting article published in the dailymail.co.uk on June 1 2009:

Masterstroke: Man who couldn't even draw stickmen wakes from brain surgery... as a talented artist

For most, stroke and brain surgery can be devastating but for Alan Brown it sparked a previously unseen talent... as an artist.
When Alan, 49, emerged from a gruelling 16-hour operation following his stroke, he found he had become a reborn 'Michelangelo' and was able to paint and draw with incredible detail.

This is strong evidence that the brain does not produce consciousness but restricts it. I discussed this topic previously in the post Scientific Theories of Psychic Phenomena Part 3 The commonly held materialist view of the brain is that it produces consciousness. However the view that consciousness exists independently from physical matter and the brain filters or transmits consciousness has more empirical support.

Chris Carter explains this in his article:

Does Consciousness depend on the Brain?

The argument in its essence is that the transmission and production hypotheses are equally compatible with the facts materialism tries to explain - such as the effects of senility, drugs, and brain damage on consciousness - but that the hypothesis of transmission has the advantage of providing a framework for understanding other phenomena that must remain utterly inexplicable on the basis of the materialistic hypothesis. The materialists simply deny that these other phenomena even exist, as they rightly realize that the existence of these phenomena threatens their ideology with extinction.

It is extremely unlikely that a brain injury could cause the same changes in the brain that learning a skill would produce. If an injury to the brain can give a person a new talent, that suggests that the talent originally existed in the non-physical consciousness but the brain was restricting that talent from expressing itself in the physical organism. The stroke may have damaged the part of the brain that restricted the talent from emerging. This might then allow the patient to become more fully conscious of his innate abilities.

Death-bed Visions Confirmed

2009-06-07T07:00:00.001-04:00

Death bed visions occur when a dying person sees spirits who have come to help him make the transition at death. Death-Bed Visions by William Barrett gives many examples of this phenomena. There are known cases where those attending the dying also see the spirits. Chapter 6 of Barrett's book describes an example of this.

A short time before she expired I became aware that two spirit forms were standing by the bedside, one on either side of it. I did not see them enter the room; they were standing by the bedside when they first became visible to me, but I could see them as distinctly as I could any of the human occupants of the room....
Just before they appeared the dying girl exclaimed, 'It has grown suddenly dark; I cannot see anything!' But she recognized them immediately. A smile, beautiful to see, lit up her face. She stretched forth her hands and in joyous tones exclaimed, 'Oh, you have come to take me away! I am glad, for I am very tired.'
As she stretched forth her hands the two angels extended each a hand, one grasping the dying girl's right hand, the other her left hand....

There is also a case of a death-bed vision being confirmed through a medium. It occurred while Richard Hodgson was investigating the medium Mrs Piper. During one sitting, a spirit communicated through automatic writing and explained that she had attended someone on his death bed and had spoken to him using an unusual phrase. A relative of the deceased who was with him at his death-bed was contacted and confirmed that the dying man claimed to have seen the spirit. The relative spontaneously told what the dying man said of the spirit including the use of the unusual phrase given through the medium. An account of this is related in:

A FURTHER RECORD OF OBSERVATIONS OF CERTAIN PHENOMENA OF TRANCE by Richard Hodgson L.L.D. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research Vol. XIII. 1898, p 284 - 582

See the foot note on page 378:

The first writing of the sitting came from Madame Elisa, without my expecting it. She wrote clearly and strongly, explaining that F. was there with her, but unable to speak directly, that she wished to give me an account of how she had helped F. to reach her. She said that she had been present at his death-bed, and had spoken to him, and she repeated what she had said, an unusual form of expression, and indicated that he had heard and recognised her. This was confirmed in detail in the only way possible at that time, by a very intimate friend of Madame Elisa and myself, and also of the nearest surviving relative of F. I showed my friend the account of the sitting, and to this friend, a day or two later, the relative, who was present at the death-bed, stated spontaneously that F. when dying said that he saw Madame Elisa who was speaking to him, and he repeated what she was saying. The expression so repeated, which the relative quoted to my friend, was that which I had received from Madame Elisa through Mrs. Piper’s trance, when the death-bed incident was of course entirely unknown to me.

In this case from the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research Volume VI p 20-21, four people see the same spirit. A woman on her death bed sees her sister. A woman in the room with her also sees the spirit. Two women outside the room see the spirit pass through the door. All of them recognize the spirit as the deceased sister of the dying woman.

From Miss Pearson, 15, Fitzroy-square, W.C. April, 1888.
...
Mrs. John Pearson was in the room, Mrs. Coppinger and myself in the back room; the house lighted up on the landings and, staircases, our door wide open.
About 1 or 2 a. m. on the morning of December 23rd, both Mrs. Coppinger and myself started up in bed; we were neither of us sleeping, as we were watching every sound from the next room.
We saw some one pass the door, short, wrapped up in an old shawl, a wig with three curls each side and an old black cap. Mrs. Coppinger called out, "Emma, get up, it is old Aunt Ann." I said, "So it is, then Aunt Harriet will die to-day." We jumped up, and Mrs. John Pearson came rushing out of the room and said, "That was old Aunt Ann. Where is she gone to?" I said to soothe her, "Perhaps it was Eliza come down to see how her mistress is." Mrs. Coppinger ran upstairs and found Eliza sleeping in the servants' room. She was very awestruck but calm, dressed and came down. Every room was searched, no one was there, and from that day to this no explanation has ever been given of this appearance, except that it was old Aunt Ann come to call her sister, and she died at 6 p.m. that day.
...
In a separate letter of the same date Miss Pearson adds
"I now remember my aunt saying 'her sister had come for her, for she had seen her.'"

In this account from the "Journal of the Society for Psychical Research" Volume XI 1903-1904 p 187, two women attending a dying boy see the spirit of his deceased mother also attending to him.

On Sunday evening, June 28th, 1903, about 9 o'clock, I and the sister were standing at the foot of the bed, watching the sick one, who was unconscious, when suddenly I saw the mother distinctly. She was in her ordinary dress as when with us, nothing supernatural in her appearance. She was bending over her boy with a look of infinite love and longing and did not seem to notice us. After a minute or two she quietly and suddenly was not there. I was so struck that I turned to speak to the sister, but she seemed so engrossed that I did not think it wise to say anything.
The little patient grew gradually worse, until on Tuesday evening, June 30th, I was summoned to go at once. When I arrived at the house he had passed away. After rendering the last offices of love to the dear little body, the sister and I again stood, as on the Sunday, when I said, " M--, I had a strange experience on Sunday evening here." She quickly replied, "Yes, mother was here; I saw her." The young girl is not given to fancies at all, and must have been impressed as I was.

Negative Proof

2009-06-06T07:00:00.000-04:00

There are two points that are often raised during debates on the existence of the afterlife.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
You can't prove a negative.

The first statement, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," is true. Lack of evidence of something does't prove it doesn't exist. I have no evidence that you are reading this, but you are.

The second statement is false. It is possible to prove a negative. It can be proved false under the laws of formal logic. If you don't believe this, go to the store and try to pay $5 for $10 worth of goods. When the cashier says you didn't pay enough money, just say "Sorry, you can't prove I didn't pay enough because you can't prove a negative." The cashier will prove the negative (you didn't pay enough money) by counting the money you paid and showing it is less than $10.

But what about this statement:

You can't prove spirits and the afterlife don't exist.

If you can prove a negative, how do you do it in this case?

Just because it is theoretically possible to prove a negative doesn't mean it is practical in a real world example. It's easy for the cashier to count the money you paid, but one spirit existing somewhere in the universe would be sufficient to prove spirits existed. How could a skeptic search the whole universe to prove there are none?

One possibility might be for the skeptic to demonstrate the proof of the assertion "some spirits exist" is invalid. He could do this by showing that all the evidence said to prove spirits exist is invalid.

But if absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, then even if a skeptic disputes all the evidence said to show that spirits exist, and demonstrates you can't justify belief in spirits, then he still has not proved spirits do not exist. So why should he go to the trouble of disputing the evidence for spirits? It still won't prove they don't exist.

Does this get the skeptic off the hook? Is he right that he doesn't have to justify his position because it is impossible to prove spirits don't exist? Can he win the debate that easily?

No. In a debate each side must prove their assertions. If a skeptic doesn't believe in spirits, he must explain why. Usually his disbelief is based on rejection of the evidence said to demonstrate the existence of spirits. Therefore in a debate, the skeptic is required to justify his position of disbelief by proving that what is asserted to be evidence for the existence of spirits is invalid. He doesn't have to prove spirits don't exist, he only has to prove there is no justification for belief in spirits.

Mind Machine Interface

2009-06-05T07:00:00.001-04:00

A few days ago, The Daily Grail had a link to the Interchange Laboratories web site:

Interchange Laboratories, Inc. has developed a mind-machine interface technology that has the advantage of being non-contact and non-invasive. This technology operates without the need for detecting low fidelity brain waves or nerve signals.
The MMIP technology is based on interactions at the subatomic level where the distinction between mind and matter disappears and effects become instantaneous over any distance
Research conducted at Princeton University’s PEAR Laboratory (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research) has shown that non-contact mind-machine influence is a quantifiable phenomenon unconstrained by time and space, (non-local phenomenon).

I asked Dean Radin about this in the comments section on his blog. A brief conversation ensued.

There is a pdf file on the Interchange Laboratories web site describing some of their research. Their system consists of a computer connected to an electronic device that can be influenced by psi at the quantum level called a mind machine interface processor (MMIP). The computer displays the MMIP output on a graphical user interface. If a user mentally influences the MMIP, the changes appear on the user interface.

This connection between the psi detector and computer seems to me to be a first step towards another more advanced approach to a psi interface. It might be possible have a person try to mentally influence the MMIP and have the computer watch how that effects the MMIP. Then software could analyze what happens and the computer could learn how different intentions of the individual influence the MMIP. Instead of requiring a person to learn to control the MMIP, the computer learns to interpret how the person affects the MMIP. This might be a good application for a neural network architecture.

Once the computer is trained, each user would influence the MMIP in their own individual way and the computer, which has learned how to translate the changes in the MMIP to user intentions, would control a device according to its interpretation of the user's intentions. The computer might update its understanding of the users intentions periodically to accomodate changes in the user's influence on the MMIP that might occurr over time.

The computer might be able to recognize different users because of characteristic ways each would influence the MMIP. This could provide security and increased sensitivity. The computer could only allow recognized, authorized users to control devices. Fourier transform analysis might allow the computer to separate out one individual's intentions from psychic noise or from other user's who might be trying to influence the MMIP at the same time.

If the mental effects on one MMIP are not subtle enough to distinguish between different users, perhaps an array of MMIPs in one, two, or three dimensions would have enough resolution.

If this technology becomes widespread, the individual characterisits of each user might be stored in a portable form such as an magnetic strip on an ID card or data on an RIFD chip. That way the user would not have to train every device they used.

Scientific Theories of Psychic Phenomena Part 3

2009-06-04T07:00:00.001-04:00

Part 1
Part 3, continued from Scientific Theories of Psychic Phenomena Part 2

The Filter model of the brain

I haven't discussed the filter model of the brain before on this blog. Briefly, the filter model of the brain says that the brain does not produce consciousness it filters it. Consciousness exists separately from the physical brain and the brain restricts the faculties of consciousness that we have when in the physical body. This is discussed in more detail on my web site on the page on skeptical fallacies where the fallacy Consciousness Is Produced by the Brain is discussed.

Someone might question whether the filter model of the brain can be falsified. Any change in mental function can be explained by it. If mental faculites are increased, as sometimes occurs when a head injury leads to increased psychic perceptiveness, it can be ascribed to reduced filtering by a damaged filter. If mental faculties are decreased, as may occur after a stroke, it is ascribed to less transmission through a damaged filter. This seems to be exactly the situation Karl Popper was concerned about when he developed his falsifiability criteria.

However the filter model makes several predictions which if found to be false would disprove the filter model:

Consciousness can exist independently of the brain.
When consciousness is separated from the brain, it's faculties should be increased.
The brain does not produce consciousness.

The possibility of testing the filter model with these tests demonstrates that the filter model is a scientific theory.

A common, but baseless, objection to the first test might be that one can't prove a negative, one can't prove consciousness doesn't exist independently from the brain. The idea that you can't prove a negative is a fallacy which I discuss on my web site You can't prove a negative. This is baseless because it is sufficient to either prove consciousness can exist independently of the brain.

In fact, the first test has already been passed. Part 1 of this post has discussed this. Further evidence is given on my web site in the chapter on Evidence for the Afterlife which describes the evidence demonstrating that consciousness survives the death of the physical body. Thus the filter model is not just scientifc, it is confirmed by empirical evidence.

The second test has also been passed. The evidence that conscious faculties are increased when the mind is separated from the brain comes from reports of Near Death Experiences (NDEs). People who experience NDE's are able to perceive more than they do when in the body. They report seeing in 360 degrees and seeing colors that they do not see when in the body. Blind people report seeing during NDE's. Some near death experiencers report being able to communicate telepathically with other beings. Some report understanding that time is just an illusion or that they seem to have access to all the knowledge in the universe.

The third test, proving the brain does produce consciousness will also falsify the filter model of the brain. The fact that it may be currently impossible due to technological limitations to make this proof, does not alter the fact that if it was proved, it would falsify the filter model. The possibility of this test is sufficient to demonstrate the filter model is falsifiable and is therefore scientific.

An electronics engineer can examine a radio reciever and determine that it does not generate the signal it recieves and converts to sound. A scientist should be able to examine the brain and determine how it works in the same way. The research that is currently being conducted by neuroscientists to prove the brain produces consciousness may eventually reach a blank wall like an engineer tracing the signal all the way back to the antenna of a radio and then not being able to go any further and concluding that the radio is a reciever.

The electronics engineer doesn't have to know anyting about radio waves nor should the scientist have to know anything about non-physical consciousness. The engineer only needs an amplifier and and oscilloscope and he can trace the signal. Similarly the scientist only needs to understand the physical mechanism of the brain.

The same electronics engineer can analyze a computer and show that all the behavior of the circuts are determined by the physical elements of the computer. If the brain produces consciousness, the scientist should be able to do the same thing for the brain. If you properly understand the brain you will know how, for example, an impulse to move your arm originates. If you can't explain how that impulse originates by the mechanism of the brain then you have to look for something outside the brain to explain it.

If someone says a computer is a receiver for radio waves you can falsify it by demonstrating the behavior of the computer is explained by the properties of the physical elements comprising it. If someone says a brain is a filter for consciousness you can falsify it by demonstrating the behavior of the brain is explained by the properties of the biological elements comprising it. Neuroscience will eventually resolve this question.

How might the filter model be proven? Perhaps some exremely improbable quantum phenomena will be found to occur in the brain on a regular basis. If nothing known to science can explain it, scientists will have to look for some new phenomena which may lead to the "discovery" of consciousness.

Scientific Theories of Psychic Phenomena Part 2

2009-06-03T07:00:00.000-04:00

Part 2, continued from Scientific Theories of Psychic Phenomena Part 1

Crisis Apparitions

When an apparition of a person is seen near the time of his death, it is called a crisis-apparition. Evidence of crisis-apparitions comes in the form of anecdotes because their occurrence is not predictable and can't be studied in a laboratory. Because of this, initially it was not known if there was a true correlation between a sighting of an apparition and the death of the individual.

A previous post on this blog, Studying Personal Experiences, describes an investigation into crisis-apparitions. The investigation was intended to determine if there was a correlation between the death of a relative or acquaintance and seeing an apparition of them. If there was a correlation, it would seem to be an important area for scientific investigation because the known laws of science could not explain what could cause such correlation to occur.

The test to determine if there was a correlation between seeing an apparition of an individual and the time of their death was very simple.

The coincidence of seeing an apparition of an individual near the time of his death should occur more frequently than can be explained by chance.

Failure to pass this test would show that there was no correlation between seeing an apparition of a person and the time of his death. In that case, crisis-apparitions would be no different from other hallucinations and no more worthy of special investigation than other types of hallucinations.

The investigators who carried out this test made a survey from which it was possible to determine the frequency at which apparitions were seen by members of the population of England. Then, using data on frequency of deaths, the probability of someone seeing an apparition of someone by chance coincidence near the time of his death was calculated. This was compared to the actual frequency of crisis-apparitions. It was found that seeing a crisis-apparition occurred much more frequently than chance coincidence could explain.

If this investigation had shown that crisis-apparitions occurred at a frequency expected by chance, the investigation would have falsified the theory that there is a correlation between a sighting of an apparition and the death of the person.

However this investigation demonstrated that there is a correlation between the death of a person and an apparition of a person being seen. This is an extremely important result because no known laws of science can explain it. It demonstrates that crisis-apparitions are a real phenomena worthy of scientific study.

To be continued...

Scientific Theories of Psychic Phenomena Part 1

2009-06-02T07:00:00.001-04:00

A previous post, Karl Popper on Falsifiability, discussed the philosophical basis for confirming a theory with empirical evidence. That post explained that for a theory to be scientific it must be supported by evidence and to be considered supported by evidence a theory must pass a test that failing would prove the theory false.

Having explained this criteria, the next step will be to examine a few paranormal theories and see if such a test can be devised and if those theories have passed such a test. In this way it will be shown that certain paranormal theories are not just scientific, (ie supportable by empirical evidence), but also actually supported by empirical evidence.

There are three phenomena that I will discuss. Two of these phenomena have been discussed in previous posts. They are the mediumship of Mrs. Piper which I discussed in: Mrs. Piper: Evidence for Survival After Death and crisis-apparitions which I discussed in: Studying Personal Experiences . The third phenomena will be the filter theory of consciousness.

Belief in survival of consciousness after death.

Several tests of the theory of the survival of consciousness after death come from Richard Hodgson's investigation into the mediumship of Mrs. Piper. This research is described in:

A Further Record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of Trance by Richard Hodgson L.L.D. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research Vol. XIII. 1898, p 284 - 582:

In his investigation, Hodgson observed "communicators" that would communicate through Mrs. Piper while she was in a trance. There were different hypotheses proposed to explain them. They included deliberate fraud, alternate personalities, telepathy, and spirits.

Tests for the hypothesis that the communicators were spirits included:

Communicators should have knowledge that is unknown to the medium and the sitters.
Communicators should have knowledge that the person they claimed to be had while living.
Communicators should demonstrate mannerisms and patterns of speech of the person they claimed to be.
Characteristics of the communication should vary with the communicator independently of who the sitters are.

Failure at any of these these tests would rule out the spirit hypothesis as an explanation Mrs. Piper's mediumship.

In fact, the mediumship of Mrs. Piper passed all of these tests.

The details of the investigation are in the Proceedings. Hodgson found that the communicators were not a result of fraud, and that they had knowledge unknown to the medium and the sitters. The communicators exhibited gestures, patterns of speech, and personal knowledge of the person they claimed to be. ( Communicators also showed an interest in living friends and relatives, and demonstrated that they maintained current knowledge about them.) Characteristics of the communication varied with the communicator not with the sitters. Spirits communicating shortly after death had difficult communicating. Spirits that suffered a long illness or mental turmoil before death had more difficulty communicating. Spirits who were communicating for the first time had difficulty coming through but learned after a few attempts and could be assisted by other spirits. Some spirits were never very good at communicating. Other spirits were particularly good at communicating names. These variations in characteristics of the communicators were unaffected by who the sitters were.

Based on this evidence, Hodgson believed the communicators were spirits.

If communicators knew only what the medium knew, the spirit hypothesis would be falsified. If the communicators did not demonstrate personal knowledge and characteristics of the person they claimed to be, the spirit hypothesis would be falsified. If characteristics of the communication were found to vary with the sitters, for example if some sitters always brought through strong communicators and other sitters always brought through weak communicators, then the theory that the communicators were independent entities would be falsified.

Based on this empirical evidence one can see that belief in the afterlife is supported by empirical evidence, it has passed several tests that could falsify it and therefore belief in the afterlife is scientific.

To be continued...

Induced After-Death Communication

2009-06-01T07:00:00.004-04:00

Michael Prescott has reposted his article on Induced After-Death Communications. Induced after-death communication (IADC) is a therapy developed by a Veteran's Administration psychologist that helps patients with post traumatic stress syndrome. The therapy allows the patient to communicate with the spirits of those who's death was involved in the traumatic experience of the patient.

Another good article on IADC can be found on Michael Tymn's Blog.

The IADC web site is also worth a look.

I see IADC as a breakthrough in spirit communication techniques. It is the patient who has the experience not the facilitator. Also, any therapist can be trained to be a facilitator. In contrast, when you go to a medium, the medium has to have a lot of training and must also have special innate characteristics to do the mediumship and then you still don't get to see the spirits, it is the medium who does.

This is the type of breakthrough one would like to see coming from a parapsychology lab. I wish more parapsychologists were interested in afterlife research.

I would like to see more applied research of this type. It is exactly this type of discovery - something that helps the ordinary person to experience psi without a mystical intermediary - that will expand belief in psi and the afterlife. The benefits to the experiencer is also something that has the potential to generate government funding for further research.

On my web site I have a section that discuss other practical applications of psychic phenomena: If paranormal phenomena were real we would see signs of it in society.

Karl Popper on Falsifiability

2009-05-30T22:30:00.001-04:00

It is often said that for a theory to be scientific it must be falsifiable.

This thinking comes from the work of philosopher Karl Popper.

Popper noticed that there were some theories that seemed to be able to explain everything within their scope. No matter what conceivable situation you imagined, the theory could explain it. True believers would consider this universal application as confirmation of the theory. Popper did not agree. He recognized that the theory might be true, but it can only be confirmed if it can pass a test where failure of the test would disprove the theory. This means a theory can only be confirmed if it can be falsified. If a theory can't be falsified, it might be true but it can't be confirmed.

Science involves testing hypotheses through empirical means, either through experiment or observation. For a theory to be scientific it must be confirmable by empirical means. According to Popper, for a theory to be confirmed it must pass a test in which failure would falsify the theory. Therefore, a scientific theory must be falsifiable, otherwise it cannot be confirmed by empirical means.

This view distinguishes theories that are simply consistent with the evidence from theories that are supported by evidence. It is about whether a theory can be confirmed and how to confirm it. It is not about whether a theory is true or false - an unfalsifiable theory might be true. Unfalsifiability simply means a theory is not supported by empirical evidence even if there is a vast amount of evidence consistent with the theory.

Popper described how he developed this philosophy in the article:

Science, Pseudo-Science, and Falsifiability by Karl Popper, 1962

In the article Popper, explained how vacuous theories are always confirmed:

I may illustrate this by two very different examples of human behaviour: that of a man who pushes a child into the water with the intention of drowning him; and that of a man who sacrifices his life in an attempt to save the child. Each of these two cases can be explained with equal ease in Freudian and Adlerian terms. According to Freud the first man suffered from repression (say, of some component of his Oedipus complex), while the second man had achieved sublimation. According to Adler the first man suffered from feelings of inferiority (producing perhaps the need to prove to himself that he dared to commit some crime), and so did the second man (whose need was to prove to himself that he dared to rescue the child). I could not think of any human behaviour which could not be interpreted in terms of either theory. It was precisely this fact -- that they always fitted, that they were always confirmed -- which in the eyes of their admirers constituted the strongest argument in favour of these theories. It began to dawn on me that this apparent strength was in fact their weakness.

He contrasted this with Einstein's theory of relativity which could be tested. If the theory didn't pass the test, it would be proven false.

With Einstein's theory the situation was strikingly different. Take one typical instance -- Einstein's prediction, just then confirmed by the findings of Eddington's expedition. Einstein's gravitational theory had led to the result that light must be attracted by heavy bodies (such as the sun), precisely as material bodies were attracted. As a consequence it could be calculated that light from a distant fixed star whose apparent position was close to the sun would reach the earth from such a direction that the star would seem to be slightly shifted away from the sun; or, in other words, that stars close to the sun would look as if they had moved a little away from the sun, and from one another. This is a thing which cannot normally be observed since such stars are rendered invisible in daytime by the sun's overwhelming brightness; but during an eclipse it is possible to take pictures of them. If the same constellation is photographed at night one can measure the distances on the two photographs, and check the predicted effect.

Popper explained that a theory is only confirmed by a passing test that if failed would falsify the theory.

Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability; some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.
Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory.

He compared the psycho-analytic theories to relativity.

The two psycho-analytic theories were in a different class. They were simply non-testable, irrefutable. There was no conceivable human behaviour which could contradict them. This does not mean that Freud and Adler were not seeing certain things correctly; I personally do not doubt that much of what they say is of considerable importance, and may well play its part one day in a psychological science which is testable. But it does mean that those "clinical observations" which analysts naïvely believe confirm their theory cannot do this any more than the daily confirmations which astrologers find in their practice.

He concludes:

Thus the problem which I tried to solve by proposing the criterion of falsifiability was neither a problem of meaningfulness or significance, nor a problem of truth or acceptability. It was the problem of drawing a line (as well as this can be done) between the statements, or systems of statements, of the empirical sciences, and all other statements -- whether they are of a religious or of a metaphysical character, or simply pseudo-scientific. Years later -- it must have been in 1928 or 1929 -- I called this first problem of mine the "problem of demarcation." The criterion of falsifiability is a solution to this problem of demarcation, for it says that statements or systems of statements, in order to be ranked as scientific, must be capable of conflicting with possible, or conceivable, observations.

Studying Personal Experiences

2009-05-30T07:00:00.005-04:00

The psychical researchers of the late 19th century wanted to extend the methods of science so that personal experiences could be studied quantitatively and objectively.

Their first attempt was to use a survey to help make sense of anecdotal information about crisis apparitions. The survey was called "the census of hallucinations". They tried to do a representative survey of the British population asking a simple question:

"Since January 1, 1874, have you when in good health, free from anxiety, and completely awake had a vivid impression of seeing or being touched by a human being, or of hearing a voice or sound which suggested a human presence, when no one was there ? Yes or no ?"

If a subject answered yes, they requested further information. If the event seemed to include veridical information, they sought corroborating testimony from other witnesses such as family members to whom the subject described the hallucination at the time it occurred.

This is described in: "Phantasms of the Living" by Edmund Gurney, Volume 2 Chapter XIII "The Theory of Chance Coincidence"

Next, using sources of information on the frequency of deaths such as "Supplement to the 45th Annual Report of the Registrar-General", they calculated the expected probability of having a hallucination near the time of death of a relative or acquaintance. From this they were able to demonstrate that the frequency of crisis apparitions (seeing an apparition of someone near the time of their death) was much too high to be explained by chance coincidence.

The census of hallucinations is also described in The Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. Many articles on the census can be read in the Proceedings on line at books.google.com. These articles can be easily found using the Web Guide to the PSPR on my web site:

Unfortunately, the ambition of extending the scientific method to the study of personal experiences withered when a new generation of researchers turned toward easily replicable laboratory experiments when that methodology had come into vogue in the 20th century.

Mrs. Piper's Control Spirit, Phinuit

2009-05-29T07:00:00.003-04:00

Lenora Piper was one of the most investigated mediums of all time. In a previous post ( Mrs. Piper: Evidence for Survival After Death ) I described how it was proved she was psychic, precautions investigators took to rule out fraud, and why it was believed that she obtained information from spirits rather than through telepathy.

Was Phinuit a Spirit?

One uncertainty about Mrs. Piper's mediumship that I have felt was unfair was the suggestion that one of her control spirits, Phinuit, was not really a spirit but an alternate personality of the medium. It seemed to me that other spirits, who gave a lot of evidential material, acknowledged he was a spirit. That seemed to be strong evidence in favor of him being a genuine spirit.

I was reading the 1898 report by Richard Hodgson in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical research and I saw that Hodgson made the same point:

A Further Record of Observations Of Certain Phenomena of Trance by Richard Hodgson L.L.D. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research Vol. XIII. 1898, p 284 - 582

On page 369 Hodgson wrote:

Now, to give Phinuit his due, notwithstanding all his shortcomings and delinquencies, I was inclined to think, even before the publication of my previous report, that Phinuit believed himself to be a "spirit." (Proceedings, Vol. VIII., p. 57.) But there was so much that was inferior about him that one could not attribute any force, on the ground of either his intelligence or his sincerity, to his persistent affirmations that he was a "spirit" and giving communications from "spirits." But we must, I think, allow some weight to such statements when they are made persistently by a continually increasing number of coherent personalities manifesting directly through Mrs. Piper's trance, and characterised by a high moral tone, a pervading sincerity, and a deep earnestness of purpose, who individually insist that they are the persons we knew in bodies incarnate; when they all make their statements from the point of view that would naturally belong to such persons under the conditions in which they claim to be; and when they stoutly resist any suggestions to the contrary. Those who adopt the hypothesis of telepathy from the living must clearly recognise the fulness and completeness of many of the personalities which they suppose to be fictitiously formed in connection with Mrs. Piper's trance, and the inversion, as it were, of the conceptions of living persons; so that there is produced this marvellous simulation of the "deceased," accompanied not only by their specific memories, but by the presentation of each character in its unity, showing a clear self-consciousness, a working intelligence of its own, and a morality in no case less than that of the persons concerned when living, but showing rather a more definite upward movement, a stronger determination towards the "things that are higher." And yet with all this apparently complete independence and power of reasoning and lofty ethical aspirations, they must be regarded as either lying or mistaken about the fact of their existence itself, and must be assumed to be, one and all, merely fragments of Mrs. Piper.

Hodgson is saying that the spirits who communicated through Mrs. Piper and proved their identity said that Phinuit was a spirit. Since they were the spirits of reliable people and therefore unlikely to lie, it is reasonable to conclude that Phinuit really was a spirit.

Spiritualism and Science

2009-05-28T07:00:00.004-04:00

Dean Radin's blog has a new post: My faith was broken ...

It's about criticism published elsewhere on the internet of the NPR story I blogged about a few days ago. The criticism argued that parapsychology is an attempt to use science to support religion.

I thought that was amusing.

To a Spiritualist, the idea that parapsychology is a means of supporting religion is comical.

While parapsychologists are struggling with small effect sizes and decline effects in their labs, and at the same time debating the merits of the the super-psi hypothesis to explain the evidence for the afterlife, spirit communication and spiritual healing are facts of every day life for Spiritualists.

The ancient Egyptians built the pyramids without scientists, the Romans built roads across Europe without scientists, the Chinese developed gunpowder, and movable type without scientists. Ships sailed across the seas long before Bernoulli discovered the principle which explained their motion. In certain fields of endeavor, science is not necessary. As any shaman knows, psi is one of them. In fact, our understanding of psi would be further advanced without Science because mainstream science has only hindered research on psi.

For 150 years, while Science has been ignoring psi, Spiritualists have been demonstrating psi, educating people about psi, and training people in the use of psi. During that entire period, Science has been trying to deny the existence of psi. When it comes to psi, there is more intellectual honesty in Spiritualism than mainstream science.

Parapsychology and psychical research are interesting and I hope eventually they will increase our knowledge about psi. But, even though you can find support for Spiritualism in psychology, parapsychology, and quantum physics, right now, Spiritualists are years ahead of the scientists when it comes to using psi. Parapsychologists will find more support for their science in a Spiritualist church than a Spiritualist will find support in parapsychology labs for many years to come.

Transition After Death

2009-05-27T04:32:00.003-04:00

Michael Tymn has a new blog post: What is the "Second Death"?

In this article, Michael Tymn describes a transition stage spirits go through. It starts immediately after death and lasts up to a few days. During this stage the spirits are often confused, but they become mentally clear after the transition is completed. The completion of this transition is sometimes called "the second death".

Based on what I have learned of the subject, I definately agree that this transition stage occurs. But, I wouldn't use the same term for it. "Second death" sounds traumatic. What actually happens is not at all traumatic. It is more like an awakening than a death.

Richard Hodgson, who studied the trance medium Mrs. Piper, reported that spirits would communicate through her in a confused manner for the first few days after death. This seems to indcate that there is a short transition phase for new spirits. I discussed this in a previous post: Mrs. Piper: Evidence for Survival After Death. This transition stage was one reason Hodgson thought Mrs. Piper's mediumship was really due to spirits rather than telepathic perception of thoughts from the sitters. The quality of communication varied with this characteristic of the spirit (the length of time since death) rather than some characteristic of the sitters. Sitters might have many spirits communicating with them through Mrs. Piper, but only the recently dead would be confused.

I also know an objective clairvoyant medium (she see's spirits in the room with her) who finds it easier to communicate with new spirits before they complete the transition even though the new spirits are often confused. She reports that initially spirits are in what sounds to me like an "earth bound" condition, but when they adapt to their new reality, they move on to what might be called a "higher state". After this transition, they appear to her less like the physical beings we are when incarnated and they commuincate more with images than words. This seems consistent with something Michael Tymn reports as also being a part of the second death. During that process, one layer of a series etherial bodies is shed.

It's a very intersting blog post and well worth reading.

Web Guide to the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research

2009-05-26T13:10:00.004-04:00

I have added a Web Guide to The Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research to my web site. It's a web page with the tables of contents of the volumes of the Proceedings that are available to view on line at books.google.com. You can search through the tables of contents and if you find an article that interest you, there is a link to the same volume at books.google.com where you can click on a link to view the article. This link will take you to the Web Guide

Faith In Psi

2009-05-24T08:37:00.006-04:00

Can parapsychology help people understand their own spontaneous psychic perceptions?

When people experience a synchronicity, they often think it is a sign telling them something. A Spiritualist might say it is due to the influence of spirit guides. Gary Schwartz might say it is evidence of a Guiding Organizing and Designing (G.O.D.) force in the universe. I think most parapsychologists would say that it is due to unconscious psi.

If the parapsychologist is right and it is unconscious psi, should it still be interpreted as a sign? Here's an example to illustrate the question: At one time I was unhappy with my job, and during that time, for some unknown reason I decided to go somewhere that was very uncharacteristic of me to go. While I was there, I met someone I knew and that meeting led to a job offer allowing me to leave the job I was unhappy with.

The Spiritualist or Gary Schwartz might say in that situation I should take the new job because there is a benevolent intelligence leading me into the coincidence

Assuming this situation is not just a coincidence due to chance, what does parapsychology say about it? Can a person rely on their unconscious psi to work for their highest good? How far can they trust it? Would it definitely be in their long term interest to change jobs or might it solve a short term problem but in hindsight turn out to be a bad decision after all? Will a foolish person use unconscious psi for their short term benefit without regard to the long term consequences? If someone had self destructive tendencies could their unconscious psi act to their detriment rather than for their benefit?

I suspect many parapsychologists assume psi is good. If a synchronicity occurs, don't they assume they used psi unconsciously for their own benefit? But isn't that just like believing benevolent spirit guides or a G.O.D. force set up the synchronicity? Don't parapsychologists have faith in psi the same way many religious people have faith in a higher power? It seems that parapsychologists have "faith" not in spirits but in psi. It is a sort of awe of the paranormal as opposed to the supernatural.

However, the Spiritualist might attribute negative consequences of a paranormal event to undeveloped spirits leading them astray. Parapsychologists often attribute poltergeist phenomena to unconscious psi, so they must believe that sometimes unconscious psi can be due a result of mental dysfunction and is not necessarily a product of "higher intuition". But I am not aware that parapsychologists have any lore to warn them when to be wary of unconscious psi in the form of synchronicities, gut feelings, or premonitions.

It seems to me that this is one of the areas parapsychology might make a significant contribution. If they can understand how unconscious psi might be used for good or ill, that might help the average person decide what to do when faced with a "sign from God". It would be an important application of the science in the every day life of the individual. It would demonstrate parapsychology's superiority over the Spiritualist or G.O.D. world view.

Telekinesis Proved In 1871

2009-05-23T17:27:00.001-04:00

William Crookes tested the psychic Daniel Dunglas Home in 1871 and proved telekinesis is real. He tested Home in laboratory conditions that prevented fraud. Crookes even jumped up and down on the apparatus to prove it couldn't be moved by Home if he tried to cheat.

Crookes' book, "Researches into the Phenomena of Modern Spiritualism", has diagrams of the equipment and wind-up chart recorder graphs showing the spontaneous movements.

It even has a drawing of the cage in which the accordian was seen to be playing itself.

Here is a link direct to that chapter.

NDE Evidence for survival

2009-05-23T13:59:00.001-04:00

Do Any Near-Death Experiences Provide Evidence for the Survival of Human Personality after Death? Relevant Features and Illustrative Case Reports
EMILY WILLIAMS COOK, BRUCE GREYSON, AND IAN STEVENSON Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 377-406, 1998

The article discusses the characteristics of NDEs that are most likely to provide evidence of survival of consciousness. It concludes that certain features of NDEs when occuring together in the same experience provide strong evidence of survival. These features are:

Vivid imagry and sensations at a time of decreased physiological functioning.
Out of body experience.
Perception of verifiable information that would not be obtainable through the normal senses.

Individually these characteristics might be explainable by other means but together they argue strongly for survival. Several NDE cases are described. The paper spells out the type of evidence that would argue for survival, but they do not conclude that currently available evidence is sufficient to prove survival. This is because of a lack of cases investigated with sufficient rigor.

From the article:

One of the main reasons that near-death experiences have generated so much interest in recent years among the general public is because they seem to provide evidence that consciousness survives the death of the physical body.
...
We describe three features of NDEs - enhanced mentation, the experience of seeing the physical body from a different position in space, and paranormal perceptions - that we believe might provide convergent evidence supporting the survival hypothesis. We then describe 7 published cases and 7 cases from our own collection that contain all three features. These cases are all -with one possible exception - some what deficient with regard to their recording and investigation, but they exemplify the type of case that should be identified earlier and investigated more thoroughly than these have been, and that may then help us decide the extent to which NDEs can contribute to the evidence for survival of consciousness after death.
...
In sum, the NDE features that seem to us to have the most potential for contributing to the evidence suggesting survival after death fall into three broad categories. First, there are those features suggesting enhanced mentation at a time of diminished physiological functioning, including a rapid, detailed, and often extremely vivid revival of memories (Stevenson & Cook, 1995), complex and vivid imagery and sensations, and lucid cognitive functioning. Second, there is the experience of viewing one's physical body and the immediate environment as if from a spatial location different from that of the physical body. Finally, there are those cases in which the person has gained previously unknown but potentially verifiable information, usually either by viewing distant events or by meeting deceased persons. The first group of features suggests that mental clarity is not entirely dependent on physiological functioning; the second suggests that consciousness can function apart from, if not independently of, the physical body; and the third group suggests that NDEs are not entirely subjective in origin. Separately, none of these features provides compelling evidence for the survival of consciousness after death, since they all might be explained by other normal or paranormal mechanisms. Taken together, however, and particularly when all three types of features occur together in individual cases, the hypothesis of survival begins to seem more worthy of consideration.

Can Positive Thoughts Help Heal Another Person?

2009-05-23T13:47:00.002-04:00

Npr.org has an interesting article on the healing power of thought.

Can Positive Thoughts Help Heal Another Person?
by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

In the mid-1990s, when having HIV was akin to a death sentence, Ironson noticed that a number of patients like Kaplan never got sick. Ironson wanted to know why. And she found something surprising.
"If you ask people what's kept you going so long, what keeps you healthy, often people would say spirituality," she says. "It was something that just kept coming up in the interviews, and that's why I decided to look at it."

The article also describes research being done by Dean Radin:

After running 36 couples through this test, the researchers found that when one person focused his thoughts on his partner, the partner's blood flow and perspiration dramatically changed within two seconds. The odds of this happening by chance were 1 in 11,000. Three dozen double blind, randomized studies by such institutions as the University of Washington and the University of Edinburgh have reported similar results.

Michael Prescott: Everything old is new again

2009-05-23T13:37:00.002-04:00

Michael Prescott has reposted a great article exposing an example of skeptical deception:

Everything old is new again: Let's get Serios
by Michael Prescott

The article discusses Ted Serios who could psychically impress images on photographic film. Prescott exposes not one but two skeptics who tried to debunk Serios and made no mention of the the fact the Serios worked under controlled conditions that prevented fraud. One of the skeptics even listed the conditions but said they were a "preposterous set of controls" included in a challenge to him to try to produce the phenomena by ordinary means. He made no mention of the fact that the psychic he was trying to debunk worked under those conditions.

Mrs. Piper: Evidence for Survival After Death

2009-05-23T12:33:00.009-04:00

Mrs. Piper: Evidence for Survival After Death

Mrs. Piper, a trance medium, was one of the most tested mediums of all time. In the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research in 1898, her primary investigator, Richard Hodgson, published the opinion that her mediumship was most likely due to communication from spirits.

Precautions Against Fraud

Richard Hodgson was a skeptic. He had investigated Madam Blavatsky and exposed her as a fraud. Hodgson's investigation of Mrs. Piper proved she was psychic. Her trance was genuine, it was not a normal state of consciousness. She gave sittings under controlled conditions. Sitters were not introduced to her by their correct names and most of the sitters were unknown to her. While she was in trance, she gave correct information about deceased individuals she could not have elicited by means of cold reading. She was watched by detectives and her mail was read to prove she did not investigate sitters before their sittings.

There was no doubt that Mrs. Piper was psychic. By the time Hodgson published his report, the main question in the minds of psychical researchers was whether she obtained her information through telepathy and unconsciously mimicked the personality of spirits or whether her mediumship was genuine communication from spirits. Hodgson's opinion, based on his extensive records of sittings and many hours attending sittings with the medium, was that her mediumship was genuine communication with spirits.

Evidence for Survival After Death

Hodgson's Five Main Points of Evidence For Survival After Death

Hodgson gave these five main reasons why he favored survival after death over telepathy as an explanation for Mrs. Pipers mediumship:

Skill in communicating varied with the spirit not the sitters. If Mrs. Piper obtained information from the sitters by telepathy, the quality of the information should vary with the sitter not the spirit.
- Some spirits were never good at communicating.
- Some spirits were better than others at communicating names.
- During otherwise successful sitting where some spirits were able to communicate clearly, sometimes certain spirits well known to the sitters were not able to communicate clearly. This often occurred with spirits who had suffered from a long illness or a mental disturbance at the time of death. This confusion in a communicator was sometimes unexpected by the sitters particularly when the person was noted for clear thinking in life.
All spirits had trouble communicating at first but improved with practice.
- This occurred even when the sitters were experienced and had had other spirits come through.
- Difficulty in communicating could be overcome with the assistance of other spirits. Telepathy does not explain this.
Spirits seemed to be confused for a few days just after death.
- This confusion was not due to changing the sitters. It occurred when the sitters remained the same.
Stray thoughts from the spirits (not the medium or sitter) seemed to leak through into the communications if the spirit was having difficulty communicating.
- These thoughts reflected subjects that would be of particular concern to the spirit such as situations involving living relatives but which were unknown to the sitters.
- These stray thoughts were thought to explain some of the seeming failures of spirits to correctly answer questions aimed and proving their identity. This is not explained by telepathy.
- When spirits communicated by writing and controlled the medium themselves, confusion was apparent. When spirits communicated indirectly through speech by the spirit control Phinuit, confusion on the part of the spirit was obscured because Phinuit was acting as an intermediate. This explains some of the failures of spirits to correctly answer questions aimed at proving their identity, and explains some instances when Phinuit was inaccurate. This is also not explained by telepathy.
Characteristics of children communicators
- The spirits of young children recently deceased had clearer memories of early childhood than spirits who had died many years before. This was not explainable by telepathy because the the sitters often had clear memories of the spirit's early childhood.
- Spirits of young children recently deceased tended to communicate more clearly than adults recently deceased. This is not explained by telepathy.
- Spirits of individuals who died in childhood express themselves as though they had grown during the intervening time. This occurred even when they were still thought of as young children by the sitters.

Other Evidence Not Consistent With Telepathy

Spirits unrelated to sitters sometimes came through to give messages to friends not present at the sitting.
Spirits responded to questions intended to prove their identity correctly but not always in ways the sitters expected. For example, a spirit was asked for a nickname of another person and replied with a nickname that had been used but was not the one expected by the sitter.
Sometimes the communicating spirit was unable to give information that was in the conscious mind of the sitter. This is inconsistent with telepathy.
On occasion, a spirit would not know the name of a sitter they were thought to know. This suggests telepathy was not occurring.
Difficulty in communicating names was a common characteristic of Mrs. Piper's mediumship. This is also inconsistent with the hypothesis of telepathy.
If the investigator ran the sitting like a telepathy experiment, less evidential information was given through the medium. If he treated the spirit like an actual person communicating under adverse conditions, the communication was improved. Beneficial treatment included maintaining a soothing manner, and letting the spirit say what he chose rather than subjecting him to a cross examination.

Richard Hodgson's report on Mrs. Piper is available to view or download on-line.

A FURTHER RECORD OF OBSERVATIONS OF CERTAIN PHENOMENA OF TRANCE by Richard Hodgson L.L.D. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research Vol. XIII. 1898, p 284 - 582

Article p. 284.

Table of Contents for Volume XIII.

Section: Indications That The Spirit Hypothesis is True, p 370.

Summary of Evidence for the Spirit Hypothesis: bottom of p. 391.

Life in B Flat (Science and Spirituality)

The Earth School

Paranormal Journalism

Notes of Seances with D. D. Home. By William Crookes, F. R. S.

Fear of Ghosts

Ectoplasm and Materialization

Mesmerism: How Science Adapts and Adopts Spiritual Phenomena

Anecdotes in Psychical Research

Skeptical Misdirection During the Era of Psychical Research

Arthur Edward Stilwell

Eminent Scientist, Nobel Prize Winners, Who Were Trained Observers and Initially Skeptics, Became Convinced of the Reality of Paranormal Phenomena.

Web Site Updates

Resistance to Psi

Nobel Prize Winning Scientists Marie Curie and Pierre Curie Conducted Psychical Research and Believed in Paranormal Phenomena

Marie Curie (Nobel Prize for Physics and Nobel Prize for Chemistry)

Pierre Curie (Nobel Prize for Physics)

Controlling Drowsiness: Calming or Stimulating the Mind During Meditation

Treatment for Spirit Possession

Chs4o8pt has Moved to a New Host

Hallucinations

Two Meditations

Counting the Breath

Walking Meditation

Suffering

Karma

Meditation: Calming a Turbulent Mind

Nonviolence

Meditating in Daily Life

Mediumship

Hearing Music During Meditation

Zen

Spiritual Crisis Intervention

Prayer

Spiritual Healing

Sensing the Qualities of Qi (part 2)

Sensing the Qualities of Qi

Spiritual Healing

Turning off Psychic Abilities

Book Review: Immortal Remains: The Evidence for Life after Death by Stephen E. Braude

Results from Meditation

Reading E-Books Off-line

Converting E-Books to Text Files.

Sources Of Free E-Books

The Thompson/Gifford Case

Alternatives to Meditation

Components of Meditation

The Icelandic Physical Medium Indridi Indridason

Dr. Erlendur Haraldsson

Fanny Ruthven Paget & Caroline Larsen

Meditation and Emotions

Varieties of Mystical Experiences

Survival and Super-Psi

The Evidence for Super-Psi

The Evidence For Survival After Death

Brain Injury Expands Consciousness

Death-bed Visions Confirmed

Negative Proof

Mind Machine Interface

Scientific Theories of Psychic Phenomena Part 3

The Filter model of the brain

Scientific Theories of Psychic Phenomena Part 2

Crisis Apparitions

Scientific Theories of Psychic Phenomena Part 1

Belief in survival of consciousness after death.

Induced After-Death Communication

Karl Popper on Falsifiability

Studying Personal Experiences

Mrs. Piper's Control Spirit, Phinuit

Was Phinuit a Spirit?

Spiritualism and Science

Transition After Death

Web Guide to the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research

Faith In Psi

Telekinesis Proved In 1871

NDE Evidence for survival

Can Positive Thoughts Help Heal Another Person?

Michael Prescott: Everything old is new again

Mrs. Piper: Evidence for Survival After Death

Mrs. Piper: Evidence for Survival After Death

Precautions Against Fraud

Marie Curie
(Nobel Prize for Physics and Nobel Prize for Chemistry)

Pierre Curie
(Nobel Prize for Physics)