Michael Tymn: Paid Debunkers: How the Public Is Misinformed by the Media and Academia About Psychic Phenomena

Michael Tymn has a new post on his blog: Paid Debunkers: How the Public Is Misinformed by the Media and Academia About Psychic Phenomena. It is well worth reading. Here are a couple of excerpts to excite your curiosity:

Schwartz, who had done some significant research with clairvoyant type mediums at his University of Arizona laboratory, stressed that there are two sides to each story – the medium’s and the skeptic’s. However, when the researcher, such as himself, found evidence favoring the medium’s side, the TV producers and other media people found it necessary to call in a paid “skeptic” or debunker to “balance” the issue. In effect, the TV producers saw Schwartz as having joined sides with the medium, as if he had become the medium’s advocate, and therefore insisted that “balance” be restored with a paid debunker, who, in all likelihood, had done no research of his own but based his arguments on debunking theory, such as cold reading, chance guesses, etc. The contestants in the debate then became the medium and Schwartz on one side versus the debunker on the other side, when it should have been the medium vs. the debunker with Schwartz as the judge. Instead of the viewing audience appreciating the strong evidence supporting mediumship, the desired result was a draw or a standoff. And so it seems that this was also the desired result of this academic anthology.

...

Crawford brought in a scale large enough to hold the medium while she was sitting in her chair. He discovered that when a table was being levitated, the weight of the table, usually around 16 pounds, was transferred to the medium through the psychic (ectoplasmic) rods extending from the medium. Most of the time, the transfer of weight would be a few ounces short of the weight of the table. Further experimentation revealed that the extra weight was being transferred to the sitters in the room, who apparently furnished small amounts of the “psychic force.”

Copyright © 2012 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Charles T. Tart: Hovering on the Threshold of the Dream World

Here is an article by Charles Tart that describes a technique for maintaining the hypnogogic state. I think it is quite interesting because it seems to corroborate the method of psychic development I have described on my web site.

Lie down comfortably on your back, eyes closed. A quiet, fairly dark room helps. You can let all of your body relax except for one forearm, which is held vertically upright, resting on its elbow. You’ll quickly find tactile vertical as the position in which it takes almost no effort to keep your arm balanced there. The hand can also be kept balanced vertically too, but sometimes I find it easiest to just let my hand fall to some relaxed position. It’s the forearm position that matters.

Now you just calmly observe your mind as you continue to relax. If your forearm starts to tilt to the side, gently bring it back to vertical, to the minimal effort position. As you slide toward sleep, the imagery of the bhavanga, from vague, amorphous shapes and colors to full dreamlets, will manifest.

The skill you eventually learn is to keep a little attention on the forearm, such as by lightly checking on it every few seconds, and when it starts to tilt – this happens as you start sliding too far down into the bhavanga – gently make it balanced again. You now have a biofeedback device, your forearm, that enables you to hover on the threshold, far enough into the bhavanga or hypnagogic state to observe a lot, but which gives you gentle feedback if you sleep too far into the falling asleep zone, and which gives you even stronger feedback – the arm falling and hitting the bed – if you go all the way.

...

I came across this technique while still a teenager, reading old journals on psychical research and parapsychology. I can’t find the exact reference, my journals don’t go back that far, but I think it was a little article titled something like the “Four-eyes Technique” in an issue of the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research in the early 1900s. The author had figured this balancing technique out and was using it because he thought it would help ESP messages get through when they couldn’t penetrate the everyday noise of his conscious mind.

Copyright © 2012 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Zerdini's World

Zerdini has started blogging at Zerdini's World. If you are interested in mediumship you will undoubtedly enjoy this blog. Zerdini has had vast personal experiences with some of the world's best mediums. Previously, he has posted and comented at various places on the internet but now his accumulated knowledge is being collected in one place. I've known him to be very helpful in answering questions and providing additional information, so if you have questions please don't hesitate to comment on his new blog.

About the Author:

I have over fifty years experience of mediumship having sat with some of the world’s finest mediums.

This website is about mediums and their mediumship – both mental and physical.

It has come about as a result of the many questions I’ve been asked on various blogs, forums and other websites.

There is a great deal of valuable information on mediumship, it is spread across many different sources. I decided to make some of my own experiences and knowledge available on one website so readers can make up their own minds, or at least begin the search for their own evidence.

Copyright © 2012 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Ectoplasm and Materialization

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 Mystery of Ectoplasm - Part I

• The Mystery of Ectoplasm -- Part II

• Thought Imagery & Ectoplasm (Part III in a series)

• Ectoplasm, Part IV: Do you know what you look like?

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.

Copyright © 2009 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Mesmerism: How Science Adapts and Adopts Spiritual Phenomena

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.

Copyright © 2009 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Arthur Edward Stilwell

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.

Copyright © 2009 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Karma

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.

Copyright © 2009 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Fanny Ruthven Paget & Caroline Larsen

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.

Copyright © 2009 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Meditation and Emotions

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.

Copyright © 2009 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Transition After Death

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.

Michael Prescott: Everything old is new again

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.

Copyright © 2009 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.