On Deanna's "Granddad" thread, Bruce offered this response to the reservations I expressed about the evidential value of channeling:

"In your post to Deanne you said:

>> Please believe what meets your needs, but at least try to grasp the alternative interpretation.  That is, the medium could have read your mind about the chicken, the lollipop, and the pigeon and then misinterpreted this as a contact with your granddad. <<

We have no way of testing either hypothesis, in this case;

hypothesis #1 the medium was actually in contact with the deceased Grandad,

hypothesis #2  the medium was reading Deanna's mind.

The historical evidence you site with other mediums during other times really has no bearing on the hypothesized contact between this medium and Deanna's Grandad.  We could each site historical examples to support real contact or false contact by mediums in the past to support our own hypothesis.  

We can argue our own favored hypothesis, and attempt to get others to admit ours might be the correct one, or believe ours in place of theirs.  But, since we can't test either hypothesis, in this case, wouldn't you agree, Don, that Deanne's hypothesis is as equally likely to be true as yours?

Deanne's experience is at least anecdotal evidence that real contact may be possible, and points to the need for structured research to settle the question.  What is needed to settle the question of the reality of afterlife contact is a well designed experiment, data gathering and data analysis.  Lacking that, the hypothesis remains untested and is neither proven nor disproven."
_______________________________

I agree with Bruce about the need for more research and applaud Gary Schwartz's research, despite it's flaws.   I would also encourage Deanna to continue her exploration of spiritualism, despite my reservations.  But I am unhappy with the way Bruce frames his two hypotheses.  Rather than critique his approach directly and generically, I will use his position as a launching pad for an extensive summary and assessment of the evidential value of the  best of channeling.  In the process, my quibbles about Bruce's way of framing the issues should become apparent.  I'm taking this approach because the issues are so complex and because it is precisely the unique specifics of great channeling that will most intrigue readers.

I will begin tomorrow by assessing the relevance of Leonora Piper to the super-ESP explanation of channeled evidence.  She is clearly one of the most outstanding and closely scrutinized American mediums of all time.  As this thread develops, my posts will draw from several sources, most notably from two of the best books on the subject: John Heaney, "The Sacred and the Psychic: Parapsychology and Christian Theology" and David Fontana, "Is There an Afterlife?  A Comprehensive Overview of the Evidence."  Heaney and Fontana complement each other's research very well.   Please be patient.  It will take me some time to distill out the most decisive evidence and analysis.

Don

While waiting for Don's post, I feel compelled to make a statement here.  The notion of ESP is often likened to a sixth sense we all have, but is allegedly underdeveloped.  However, implicit in the idea of "ESP," or "mind reading" is that we have a mind.  That consciousness is not an accident of evolution.  If consciousness were only an illusion, there would be no mind to read.  If we were all the sum of our electrochemical reactions and neurotransmitters, the notion of mind/soul would be our own illusion (as many physiologists have theorized).  

To me then, while this thread has promise, I find it interesting that those who believe in the "primacy of matter," (thanks for this one Dave) readily accept ESP as an alternate explanation for consciousness learning things about another individual.  You can't have it both ways.  Either we are all just a constellation of physiological processes who have evolved enough to falsely think of ourselves as having a mind and soul, or we truly do have a mind and soul.

If one person can read another's thoughts even from a distance or under what we now consider isolated conditions (like remote viewing), one has to conclude that we already are much more than an evolutionary accident.

My two cents,

Matthew

Well, why WOULDN'T Deanna's hypothesis be just as likely as yours, Don?
And why is the Christian view more correct than, say... the Buddhist view? Or the ancient Aztec view? Or the traditional Japanese Shinto view for that matter?
Yeah sure, you've got a list of books for me to read... (ALL from a Christian slant, BTW.)
Give me SCIENTIFIC PROOF of Christianity's veracity, Don... and then I'll take your (frankly bullying) stance on other people's views more seriously.
But as long as it is something based purely on FAITH, I'll NEVER take it seriously. Blind faith is a worthless thing for knowing the truth, Don. Blind faith didn't give us antibiotics, or send men to the moon (it got humanity into a lot of wars though, and you COULD make the argument that war speeds up tecnological innovation...) If there was a personal God... well, "he" gave us brains for a REASON, Don. I suspect it was to USE them to the BEST of our ability... no?
Or does "he" require us to "check our brains at the church door" and live our lives as if we all had I.Q.'s of 73? To simply listen to "Those Who Know Better Than Us" (i.e. priests, preachers and other fleas on the body politic...)  And all the time "God" pretends he doesn't exist, and leaves us with nothing but a dead... dusty... musty... foggy... (not to mention incredibly DULL - ever tried reading the Bible without falling asleep, Don?) OLD BOOK as evidence of his existence? If so, WHY to all the above? Answer me THAT.
P.S. I mentioned SCIENTIFIC proof, Don. And I DON'T mean Duane Gish-style "Creation Science" (complete with humans and dinosaurs living together a'la "The Flinstones.") Ditto for "anecdotes" I can go hunt up on Snopes.com... anecdotes aren't really to be trusted anyway. (Do you believe in all the Bigfoot stories over the past 30 years, Don???)
Bring on the Proof,

B-man

Religion cannot help this discussion one bit

Adding religion to this debate means that people begin to pursue religious means/explanations  to either ESP or medium ship.

Separate religion...please!. For me it is like talking about the merits of 2 different routes to a city and then squabbling over which type of transportation is used!

Considering this thread as part of the original thread...

Why can't someone define what will be accepted as "proof" beforehand? That is what would make it scientific....

but even in science things are often obscurred. Lots of statements are made without having to be backed up and there is less noise over that than there is over mediumship.

For example, this statement from a current article (emphasis mine).

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/health_science/articles/2006/01/30/peanut_allergy_epidemic_may_be_overstated/?page=full

"One widely held theory -- endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics -- is that allergy might be avoided if the mother stays away from peanuts and other likely food allergens during pregnancy and breastfeeding and that children shouldn't be given them until at least 2 years of age. But supporting research is absent."


Now why don't people make noise over the American Academy of Pediatrics making unproven statements? Yet we live by what they say.

Why are you so offended by someone who feels her grandad communicated with her from beyond? Do you get angry when the American Academy of Pediatrics makes unproven statements?

What constitutes scientific evidence of valid communication from a deceased person?

Since I got no response to it on the original thread, and since it seems relevant to the question at hand, Don, critique, please, my story of the ghost who counted sheep...

"The most independent varification I ever got was sheep.  Our household ghost was asked to prove himself by telling how many sheep we had had here.  My daughter *knew* we had had two.  The ghost (Ted) said three.  She said no, he said yes, she said "Two!!" he said "Three!!".

So she came and hunted me up, asked me how many sheep.  I told her three, one had come and gone long ago.  Neither she nor her boyfriend (serving as a somewhat reluctant medium) knew we had three sheep.  I had no idea they were talking to Ted, let alone quizzing him on the livestock, I was on the computer doing something totally unrelated, and I would have said "Two" if he hadn't been so insistant and reminded me that we had indeed had three total.

Why in the heck she picked that question, other than that we had fairly recently butchered a crippled sheep for a friend, escapes me totally. "

THE MEDIUMSHIP OF LEONORA PIPER (1859-1950)

Leonora was initiated into her gift at age 8 while playing in the garden.   She suddenly felt a sharp blow on her right ear and heard a prolonged S sound followed by the words, "Aunt Sara not dead but with you still."  Terrified, she notified her Mom who noted the exact time.  It was soon confirmed that Aunt Sara had died on that day at that time.

As a fully developed medium, she displayed the astounding ability to channel two different discarnate entities at the same time, one entity through automatic writing and the other orally!  Her automatic writing was typically scribbled with her eyes closed and her head resting on the table.  When she emerged from her trance, she had no recollection of her channeling because, as her spirit control Phinuit explained, she had no access to her brain while out of her body, and so, could store no memories within it.  I am hard pressed to dismiss the role of spirits in this channeling, especially in view of how impressive her verifications can be.

For example, consider the 5 years that George Pelham served as her spirit control through both her automatic writing and her entranced voice.  A skeptic, George had promised his friend, investigator Richard Hodgson that if he died first and survived, he would try to demonstrate his survival to Hodgson's satisfaction.  George allegedly became Leonora's spirit control just 5 weeks after his untimely death.  Fontana explains how Hodgson was convinced that Leonore really could channel George:

"During the 5 years concerned he [George] recognized at least 30 of Mrs. Piper's sitters who were known to him in life, never once claimed erroneously to know any of the 120 or so sitters with whom he had been unacquainted, and referred correctly to many other people who were not present but who had been familiar with him.  Furthermore, he displayed all the keenness, intelligence, and other [personality] characteristics possessed by George Pelham in life, and convinced a large number of Mrs. Piper's sitters that it really was he. (Fontana 125)."  
 
Still, there is some reason to believe that Leonora did not channel the spirits of the dead, but rather gleaned her impressive information through ESP.   Let me offer 5 reasons for my reluctant conclusion:

(1) Leonora was a psychic as well as a medium.  She demonstrated the psychic ability to remove the scent from flowers and cause them to wither in a few minutes.  She was also adept at psychometry, the paranormal ability to deduce details about both living and dead people simply by holding objects that they once owned.

(2) Soon after his death in 1905, Richard Hodgson allegedly served as Leonora's spirit control.  The eminent psychologist, E. Stanley Hall, went for a sitting with her and asked "Hodgson" to contact his niece Bessie Beals.  Miss Beals came through Leonora and communicated extensively.   But in fact the cunning Hall had made Beals up.  When the exposed "Hodgson" was confronted with this ruse, he tried to wriggle out of his embarrassment by claiming that he had been mistaken about the name and that the person he channeled through Leonore was in fact a Jessie Beals who was related to another sitter (Heaney 176).

(3) "S. G. Soal...visualized incidents with an imaginary friend, John Ferguson.  He then went for a sitting with the medium, Blanche Cooper.  The incidents he visualized came forth as though communicated from beyond death (Heaney, 176)."

(4) In my view, Leonora's perspective on her own channeling can be an important factor in assessing her ability to contact the dead.  The New York Herald quoted her as preferring the ESP theory as the most plausible scientific explanation of her gift: "I do not believe that spirits of the dead have spoken through me when I have been in the trance state...It may be that they have, but I do not affirm it."    She would later claim she was misquoted, but admitted, "Spirits of the dead may have controlled me and they may not.  I confess that I do not know (Fontana 125)."  If not even Leonora is fully convinced, then neither am I.

(5) I have described the Gordon Davis case in other posts, but only superficially.  It is perhaps the strongest case of all for the ESP interpretation of channeling.  In my next planned post, I will analyze this case in much greater detail.  It raises the possibility that spirit impersonators might be responsible for some channeling and this possibility arises from Leonora's use of Dr. Phinuit as her spirit control.  But more on this in a future post.

Don

NOTE TO CHUMLEY, LUCY, AND CRICKET:

Brendan, it is bad enough that you refuse to read books on the paranormal and spirituality.  But it is even worse when you make absurd assumptions about books you've never read.   Fontana is not a Christian; he is a hard-core and very rational New Ager, whose book I highly recommend.  

Lucy, far from being "offended" by Deanna's experiences, I am deeply impressed by them and have urged her to continue her spiritualist explorations.  I simply have reservations about their true significance, as should be obvious from this post.  Cricket, your case is very impressive and not what the mere ESP interpretation might predict.

I must state this again.  ESP, if proven to exist and verifiable, is a proof of consciousness existing independent from biology.  This is an important point.  My neurological network, my neurotransmitters are, what a physiologist would say creating the illusion of self and mind.  One brain is quite different from another.  The neural connections are vast and varied.

If communication can occur from a distance, it would imply that an unknown mechanism can transcend the differences in the networks of various brains, different chemistries,  electrical impulses, perhaps quantum effects (which I personally believe are important) and patch things together to make sense of it.  

In some ways then, ESP is just as astounding as verification of the afterlife because it supports the notion of a mind or spirit as a coherent entity that is more than just random neurochemical processes.  ESP may even support the fact that Mind is independent from body.

I believe Don does make several good points.  Firstly, I have heard Robert Bruce say that many low level entities constantly try to trick and confuse people for their own amusement.  So one should be careful about taking things at face value.  

Second, ESP may be possible, but the case of Piper does not prove she did not channel, even if some of her contact was related to ESP.  She may have had access to the great subconscious - where both spirit and thought forms are.  So she may have thought animaginary friend was a spirit.  This in no way means she did not also channel spirits.  

Don's points are worth considering.  Keep thinking and evaluating.  

Matthew

I've gone back and forth on the possibility of ESP in the sheep case...technically, I knew that there had been three sheep, but I didn't know they were talking about it, didn't remember it at first, and certainly wasn't thinking about ghosts or sheep at the time.  I wonder how far into someone's head ESP can reach if the person is not thinking about the subject in question or anything even related.

This looks like one of those endless loop arguments that never goes anywhere.

Respectfully, might I point out that the world in which we live is the world in which we BELIEVE we live, regardless of other facts.  In the world, as we generally believe in it, you are you and I am me and never the twain shall meet because we are two separate and independent individuals.

However, there was an instant of creation in which One manifested itself by producing Many, all of which were manifestations of the One. You are how that appears today. Thus, my head and your head are manifestations of the same thing, so there's no big surprise that we can share thoughts. As I grew together with my wife I found that she relaxed away the barriers (as did I) and we began to share thoughts.  At death, all the separations fall away, although we retain the identity associated with viewpoint, and we defintely can share thoughts. In fact, we gain that ability in this life when we attain nirvastarka (or nirvakalpa if you prefer) samadhi.

Those thoughts stated,  problem of proof, as it is being reviewed here, is this:  "In a world in which there is no possibility of connecting minds, we seek to prove that one mind can interact with another so as to transfer information. "  

That proof cannot occur because it is self-negating. As Bishop Berkeley pointed out, two things cannot interact unless thay have a common point at which they touch, a point shared by all participants. Separated minds cannot communicate. Minds that communicate cannot be separate, so their communication is not "extra" in any sense.

Put differently, the usual definitions for ESP imply a situation in which ESP cannot occur, and conditions in which such phenomena do occur are generally not those in which we could claim ESP.

d

Dave, as usual I am awed by your response, and it complements what I was trying to say.  Point well taken.  ESP implies a connection between two minds through a means of communication, like a telephone, which if scientifically explained would just be another "sense" like hearing.

However, ESP implies the connection of two minds.  And admitting that there is a mind/consciousness is something that basic science is loathe to do.  We are more than the some of our parts (take water, neurotransmitters, electrochemical reaction - shake, baste, and voila!).

Thanks
M

Thanks Doc-

Since we live not in a world that others define through physics etc, but in fact we live in the world in which we believe, my objection to most experiments in ESP is that we first set up conditions in which, so far as we know, we cannot communicate. Then when we communicate we call it ESP.

To set up conditions that assure non-communication effectively sets up a belief system.  This is like prayer, which has been shown to be effective in healing, except that it works in reverse. We are "praying" (or believing, "as if a grain of mustard seed") that no communication can occur. ur prayers are generally answered, except for a small statistical edge.

My personal view is that we'd do a lot better to simply set up a couple casual loctions, according to some plan known only to the experimenter. Then, we allow any kind of communication that might occur, whether by means of vibrations through the earth, sound, electrical impulses, or whatever.  I'm willing to bet that this would give more effective results. However, the accusations of confounding would increase.

In my undergrad days I had to run two experiments, one of which was to look at ESP in card calling with a Zener deck. One guy had about 20% accuracy, which came to a chance probability of less than one chance in a thousand with my setup. Obviously, he was "psychic". So he said that was impossible. As a scientist he was unwilling to believe he could do anything so bizarre as ESP. The next time through my deck he had something like 99% errors, which was significant (improbable) to one more decimal place,  In other words, his "prayer" was to make errors the way he thought he "should" and he selected errors at a rate possible by chance only one time in roughly ten thousand.

To my knowledge, nobody has ever been able to quantify the "expectation" effect in success or failure.

d

I'm grateful for all the thoughtful replies and expect to alter my preconceived agenda to address some of them.   Today, given the interest expressed in the mechanics of ESP, I thought I'd outline parapsychologist Eleanor Sidgwick's neglected theory about how ESP might operate in channeling.

She theorizes that discarnate spirits are in telepathic communication with the sitter rather than with the medium.  In her view, the sitter unconsciously serves as the receiving station from the spirit world and the medium serves as the amplifier and loudspeaker.  The medium picks up astral communications telepathically from the sitter.  Fontana (129-130) laments the neglect of Sidgwick's theory and implies that ingenious tests might be devised to test it.

At first blush, her theory nicely explains two troubling facts about even the best mediums.  
(1) Some sitters receive more verifiable and superior communications from mediums than others.  Indeed, for some sitters, channeling frankly seems a dreadful failure.  

(2) Her theory might also explain how impressive contacts can be made with people relevant to the sitter but unknown the the medium.

The chief difficulty raised by her theory is its apparent inability to account for proxy sittings in which the sitter serves as a stand-in for an absent third party and where neither the medium nor the sitter has any personal link with the astral communicators.   Proxy sittings can yield impressively verified details and  have potential as a rebuttal of attempts to invoke ESP as a way of dismissing the validity of channeling.   I will discuss proxy sitting research in future posts.  They may owe their success to subtly unique dynamics.

Don

On the basis of his family's "sheep case", Cricket asks, "I wonder how far into someone's head ESP can reach if the person is not thinking about the subject in question or anything even related."
________________________________________
Cricket's question is addressed by David Fontana's experience with medium Doris Smith a few weeks after his mother's death.  David's mother came  through Doris and, among other things, accurately described her embroidered bag, her green book for recording telephone numbers, and David's initialed cigarette case with a floral decoration.    David was familiar with all three artifacts, but knew nothing about the initials and floral decoraton on the cigarette case until he later retrieved it.   This identification is all the more remarkable because Doris knew David didn't smoke!

David Fontana's reaction to all this aptly addresses Cricket's question:

"I had no thoughts of the embroidered bag, the green book, or the cigarette case.  I had no conscious recollection of the decoration on the cigarette case, which I had not looked at closely since I was a boy.  The idea that Doris trawled through my unconscious in order to pick out these details--or that she picked up the cigarette case from my unconscious and then clairvoyantly "saw" the details of the decoration for herself--could hardly be taken seriously by anyone other than those unhappy with the very idea of survival.  And if Doris had access to my unconsious, she would have found far more vivid and far more emotionally charged memories of my mother than obscure details to do with a forgotten cigarette case."

Don  

Ian Stevenson has researched telepathy and offers good evidence that, while one can telepathize words, phrases, ideas, and images, one cannot telepathize a skill.   Channeled cases of prolonged xenoglossy require a linguistic skill that cannot be dismissed as ESP.  Dolores Jay channeled Gretchen who allegedly lived in Germany over a century ago, though her earthly identity was never verified.   Stevenson found that "Gretchen" spoke German intelligibly and gave sensible answers in German to questions posed to her in German.  Stevenson thoroughly researched  Dolores's life and established to his satisfaction that she had never studied German.   Such cases cannot be dismissed as ESP, but it must be remembered that xenoglossy can be a primary symptom of demonic possession.  Still, I deem Dolores's gift genuine.    

A famous parapsychologist and founders of the Society for Psychical Research all died around 1900: Edmund Gurney, Henry Sidgwick, and Fred Myers.  Shortly thereafter various women began to produce scripts through automatic writing and oral channeling which claimed to originate chiefly from Myers and Gurney.  Each of the women was generally unacquainted with what the others were channeling.   Over a period of 30 years a system of cross-correspondences appeared in the scripts.  Scattered allusions to classical myths (e.g. Ovid and Virgil) and to English poets like Browning and Keats) only became coherent when linked with messages from other mediums.   It was like a an elaborate jigsaw puzzle which was reminiscent of the style and literary knowledge of the 3 deceased scholars.   Tellingly, before his death, Myers had predicted in a book that proof an afterlife would eventually come from a group effort from the other side.  I doubt that this phenomenon can be dismissed as ESP.   It seems more likely that the deceased Myers organized the fulfilment of his earthly prophecy.

Don

Nothing can be dismissed as ESP, because ESP is not a physically defined science.  If there is an "unknown communication between two minds," then we are not dealing with simply neurotransmitters and electrochemical impulses located within a physical body.

ESP is proof of a quantum conscious mind and possibly a soul - if it is proof of anything.  

Matthew

Matthew,

In his book, "The Sacred and the Psychic," John Heaney surveys the major theories invoked by parapsychologists to account for telepathy and clairvoyance.   He identifies one theory as the most popular because it is the most consistent with the research and anedotal data.  He summarizes this theory thus: Telepathy and clairvoyance are "an unknown form of energy which does not cross space but which reaches inward to the essential psychic center of a person.  At this center a transpersonal mode is reached where all humans and perhaps all reality are united.  This is similar to the Collective Unconscious of Carl Jung  (p. 20)."  

Even if channeling connects the living and the deceased, it involves telepathy.  I summarize Eleanor Sidgwick's theory of how this might occur in reply#12.   What divides parapsychologists is the question of whether even the best of channeling can be dismissed as JUST telepathy and, therefore, as irrelevant to the question of survival.  In my analysis of case studies, I am trying to make the case that at least some cases represent genuine contact with the deceased.

Don    

Don,

That is fascinating, since I have not read "The Sacred and the Psychic," yet I have come on my own over time to the identical conclusion that that "at a person's center, there is a transpersonal mode is reached where all humans and perhaps all reality are united."  Accessing this area, is I believe at the heart of placing intent, changing reality, prayer, remote viewing, and connecting with God.

I appreciate now that you are only trying to distinguish ESP from affirmed contact with the deceased to show that the deceased are out there, not to discredity whatever ESP is or is not.

For a devout christian, you are surprisingly open minded in your true beliefs, Don.  You stir things up, but you have good intentions at your core.



Matthew

AN EXAMPLE OF A PROXY SITTING

Edgar Vandy and his friend NJ wanted to go swimming in an outdoor pool on a country estate. Both changed into their swimsuits in bushes 200 yards from the pool.  Edgar, a poor swimmer, walked to the pool about 3 minutes before NJ.  When NJ arrived, Edgar was face down in the pool, drowning.  Edgar slipped from NJ's grasp and began to sink.  NJ went for help and returned too late.  The inquest concluded from the bruises on Edgar's chin, right shoulder, and left side that he dove off the board and hit his chin hard on the bottom.   The Vandy brothers were sure that Edgar didn't know how to dive; they thought he slipped while trying to exit the pool and hit his head on the edge.  They hoped mediums could clear this up.

Proxy sittings are held to eliminate the possibility of the medium gaining information by cold reading or by reading the sitter's mind.  Drayton Thomas was asked in a letter to serve as a proxy sitter by the Vandy brothers to determine how their brother died.  Thomas knew no names or other details.  Before he agreed, he arranged a sitting with Gladys Leonard to contact his own deceased family members, not to contact the dead brother.  Her spirit control, Feda, suddenly mentioned the initials  H and M which fit the intials of Edgar's brother Harold and his recently deceased sister, Minnie.  Feda then added: "This may be a proxy case about someone who went out through falling..."

The rest of Feda's material is strikingly on target.  I will append clarifying comments in paretheses:

Feda added: "The person concerned was not a boy but not old [Edgar was 38] and had met with a tragic accident involving a fall...No one was at fault.  He had a funny feeling in his head, which he had had before...He realized the importance of air...At the dragging something was...wrong interpretations given to certain proceedings
[The murky pool had to be dragged to recover the body.]."

As Fontana observes: "Taken independently, these comments may not be very impressive.  But in the context that the Vandy brothers subsequently had with..other mediums..., they contribute importantly to the case (191)."  For example, Edgar's brother, George, later had a sitting with Miss Campbell who was told nothing about Edgar or his death.  Yet she revealed several details about Edgar's life and family.  She addressed the question of how Edgar died [My clarifying comments are in parentheses.]:

"You have a brother in the spirit world who died as a result of an accident...His death was quite sudden.  He disagrees with the verdict...No one saw him fall.  He shows me water.  Was there water in connection with his death?  He was dressed in a short swimming suit [Yes, he had borrowed the swimsuit of NJ's sister!] His clothes were at some distance from where he was [Yes. 200 yards].  He struggled to get his breath.  The body was in the water for some time before it was found (Yes, at least 2 or 3 minutes]."

Edgar's other brother, Harold, arranged a sitting with Miss Bacon who informed him:

"The one you want has only recently passed out.  You are not sure of the way he did so...It was an accident.  I feel as if I had been drowned...A private kind of pool, like a swimming pool.   Had a blow to the head before he passed over ...not diving...catching his foot on the bottom...drawn under...He remembers going under and feeling a distinct blow to the head.  [True, there were bruises on his chin and his tongue was bitten through] The water should have been transparent  and bottom not bricked in, grass at the bottom." [True, the pool was fed by an underground stream.  The bottom was slimy and the water was cloudy]... someone swimming there at the time." [NJ only swam there while Edgar was drowning.]

Two other mediums produced similarly impressive results.  The channeled material of all 4 mediums contacted are consistent with the confusion shown by the drowning man himself.  Some commentators deem this one of the most impressively evidential cases for survival of all time.

Don

A MEDIUM PREDICTS ITEMS IN TOMORROW'S PAPER:

Charles Drayton Thomas conducted several tests with Gladys Leonard and her spirit control Feda.  Gladys is one of the most gifted mediums of all time.   I will limit myself to describing her ability to consistently channel the nature and location of items that would appear in the next day's edition of "The Times" before these were made public and before the paper's  print setup was established.  These tests are important because they cannot readily be explained as telepathy from living minds.

Over many trials, Feda, speaking for Thomas' deceased Dad, identified items that would appear the next day in designated positions on the front page of "The Times", a page which at that time (1919) contained only a number of long, closely printed columns giving notices of births, marriages, deaths, memorials, and other personal details.  The results were overwhelmingly positive.  For example, Thomas' Dad revealed that his son would find  his own name (Charles) to the `left of column 3, rather more than 1/3 down;' that a little above his name would be the name of his wife (Clare); that his wife's age (51) would appear within an inch of these names; and that two of his father's names (Thomas and John) would be half-way down column 1.  None of the names in brackets were actually mentioned during the channeling, but the names in the paper usually fulfilled the predictions and pointed to the correct locations for the names.

When Dr. Dyson's deceased brother replaced Thomas' Dad as Gladys's communicator, information was revealed which was entirely unknown to Thomas, but which related only to his friends.  For example, he was told that the name of Dr. Dyson's deceased brother (Dyson) would appear half-way down the first column  in the next day's "Times"; that close by would be Dr. Dyson's own name or `one almost similar' to it (Actually, his second name, Andrew appeared 2 1/2 inches away); that a little below would be the name of a place that the Dyson brothers had visited and enjoyed (Filey, one of their favorite vacation spots); that a little above this would be the name of a mutual friend of theirs (In fact, the names of 2 close friends, Jones and Davies. appeared.); and that near the top of column 1 would be the name of a great friend of Dr. Dyson (Jack) who had passed on and who was with his deceased brother.  With the exception of  "Jack" and the name "Dyson", none of these names were known to Thomas.  Of the 25 newspaper tests that took place in the first phase of this work, 18 produced good results, 3 were inconclusive, and 4 were failures.  This ratio remained constant for all subsequent tests.

When his Dad was communicating, Thomas was certain that the information came, via Feda, through his Dad and not from another source.  Both before and during the newspaper tests,  Gladys Leonard had convincingly channeled his family's names and events, both present and past.  Sometimes an apparent failure turned out to be a success, thus lessening the chance that the information came via ESP from Thomas' mind.  

During one newspaper test, Thomas' Dad said through Gladys: "He has the idea that soap is mentioned at the top of the page.''  But the word `soap' did not appear at the top of the page in the  next day's "Times". When Thomas mentioned this failure to Feda at his next sitting, she replied, "He says it was the name of a famous soap maker; he sensed it; so he did not know whether soap was mentioned or some name suggesting soap; he was just reminded of it."  When Thomas rechecked the first column at the top of the page, he found the name of a soap-making family known to his family 20 years prior.

Such test results should even make the Amazing Randi blush!

Don

Great verifications, Don.

Brings up interesting questions for me.  I have heard it said that the more spiritually advanced the soul, the less earthly issues matter to them.  If someone is in a heaven, or a "focus 27" are they really going to be attempting to help read tomorrows's newspapers?  It makes me think that only more earthbound spirits or those still caught up in the material world can do such verifications.  Of course, I could be wrong on this.

I wonder if some mediums can only see spirits of a certain vibration; recently deceased souls who haven't moved on.  Of course, if there is no time after we die, then we could communicate at any point after death.  Why don't we here more from Moses, or others of thousands of years ago?  They may have no current earthly ties left and that could play into it.  

The verifications are certainly food for thought.  

Thanks Don

M

THE MOST BIZARRE DROP-IN COMMUNICATOR EVER

Runolfur Ronolfsson made his abrupt and uninvited appearance at the regular 5-person circle of famous Icelandic medium, Hafsteinn Bjornnson in 1937.  All 5 later signed an affidavit swearing that the ensuing details are true.  RR was rude and uncouth, initially even refusing to offer his name: "Call me anything you like...What the hell does it matter to you what my name is?"  When asked what he wanted, RR shockingly repied that he "was looking for his leg" which he claimed was "in the sea." When Ludvik Gudmansson joined the circle, RR greeted him as if he knew him and insisted that his leg was in LG's house.  LG had never heard of RR and could make no sense of his absurd claim.

RR dropped in on another seance a few months later and his brusque manner gave the impression that he had shoved current communicators aside.    Only now did RR volunteer his name and recount his bizarre story.  He had tried to walk home drunk in October, 1879.  RR had paused to rest on the beach and consumed a lot more booze.  Totally smashed, he had fallen unconscious and been washed out to sea in a suddenly erupting storm.  His body had not been recovered until January of the next year.  By then "dogs and ravens" had torn it to pieces.   The remains, less a missing thigh-bone, were buried in Utskalar Churchyard  The thigh-bone had been washed out to sea, and when it subsequently washed up again, it was passed around until it wound up in LG'S house.  

When asked for some verification of this,  RR appealed to the "church book of Utskalar Church."  He also gave the information that he had been 52 when he died and had been a very tall man.  These details were later confirmed.    

LG tracked down the carpenter, AP who had built his house.  AP admitted  that he had placed a bone between the inner and outer walls because it "would not be in the way there" and its unknown identity made it ineligible for burial on consecrated ground.  With AP's direction, a wall was opened, an unusually long thigh-bone was found, and was then buried in a casket at Utskalar Church in a respectful ceremony. RR channeled his gratitude, reformed his character, and was now eager to serve as the medium's spirit control to help other communicators (Source: David Fontana, 154-55). 

Don

I began this thread by quoting Bruce’s reply to one of my earlier posts on channeling:
“The historical evidence you cite with other mediums during other times really has no bearing on the hypothesized contact between this medium and Deanna's Grandad.  We could each cite historical examples to support real contact or false contact by mediums in the past to support our own hypothesis."
______________

I have just described some of the best verified channelings of all time and I’d wager that at least some of these cases involve genuine contact with deceased loved ones.  I agree with Bruce that more "well-designed experiments” are needed to test the claims of channeling.   But I don’t believe the distinction between “real contact” and “false contact” is as clear-cut as Bruce seems to feel.  In my view, the answers to the ensuing 5 questions casts a pall of suspicion over ALL channeling:

(1) What if sitters request contact with fake deceased relatives and the mediums still oblige with a very impressive channeling?                

(2) What if the spirit control of mediums with impressive verifications can be proven to be a fraud?   What conclusion would that warrant about other spirit controls whose self-professed identity cannot be verified?                                                  

(3) What if a drop-in communicator could provide amazing verifications even involving precognition of the future, and yet, be later proven a fraud?            

(4) What if it can be shown that the attribution of channeled materials to discarnate friends and relatives reflects a culturally conditioned bias?  

(5) What if mediums who try to abandon the channeling profession to become a conventional Christian are viciously attacked by spirits they formerly believed to be benign and very helpful?  As I will now illustrate, channeling can be significantly called into question on all 5 grounds.

(1) As already mentioned, Leonore Piper is one of the most impressive mediums ever.   She had the uncanny ability to channel two entities at the same time, one through automatic writing and the other through entranced speech.   Psychologist G. Stanley Hall had a trick up his sleeve when he went for a sitting with her. She was currently using the spirit of Richard Hodgson as her control.   Hodgson had formerly investigated her, but had recently died of a massive heart attack.  Hall asked Hodgson's spirit to contact Hall’s niece, “Bessie Beals,” so that he might speak with her.  Miss Beals was duly introduced and proceeded to communicate with Hall through Mrs. Piper.  Actually Bessie Beals did not exist.  She was a figment of Hall’s mind.  “Hodgson,” in embarrassment tried to wriggle out of the situation, saying that he had been mistaken about the name.  He said that the person brought was a Jessie Beals, related to another sitter.  Dr. Samuel Soal...visualized incidents with an imaginary friend, John Ferguson.  He then went for a sitting with the medium, Blanche Cooper.  The incidents he visualized came forth as though communicated from beyond death!  

(2) Some spirit controls seem clearly fraudulent.  While Richard Hodgson was still alive, he thoroughly investigated one of Leonore Piper's spirit controls named Phinuit in 1892.  The Phinuit persona claimed to be the spirit of a French doctor whose full name was Jean Phinuit Scliville and who had lived in the early 1800s and had practiced medicine in London, France, and Belgium.  But he was unable to speak more than a few French phrases, displayed no more knowledge of medicine than the average layman, and had never (according to medical records) attended the medical schools at which he claimed to have studied and practiced.  Hodgson initially concluded that Phinuit was just a secondary personality of Mrs. Piper which either erroneously believed itself to be or falsely pretended to be the spirit of a deceased French doctor.   But Hodgson later changed his mind and now concluded that some of the material produced in a trance by Mrs. Piper seemd to go beyond what might be obtained by thought transference from the sitters and thus seemed to suggest real contact with the dead. In his words, “Among these (comunicators) are more than half-a-dozen intimate friends of my own, who have produced upon me the impression...that they are the personalities I knew, with characteristic intelligence and emotion, questioning me and conversing with me under difficulties.”  It seems doubtful that Hodgson would have changed his mind if he had lived to discover the Gordon Davis case, which I shall now describe.

(3) At a sitting with medium Blanche Cooper on Jan. 4 ,1922 , Dr. Samuel Soal’s deceased brother unexpectedly said, “Sam, I’ve brought someone who knows you.”  Then in a very clear, strong, and familiar voice, Gordon Davis began to speak through Cooper.  Davis was an old school acquaintance whom Soal believed to have been killed during World War I.  Davis seemed to verify this when he said, “My poor wife is my only concern now--and my kiddie.”  Soal thought he recognized Davis' tone of voice with its fastidious accent.  The communicator used forms of expression that typified the real Gordon Davis' speech  (e.g. “old chap”; “confab” instead of “meeting”).  Davis spoke of the school they had attended, Rochford, and provided details of their last conversation.  He proceeded to refer correctly to persons, places, and events from their school days.  At two ensuing sittings on Jan. 9 and 30, 1922, Davis gave a detailed description of his house, its contents, and the arrangement of its contents.  

To his great surprise, Soal learned in 1925 that Davis was still alive after all and went to visit him.  A great deal of the channeled material about the house proved to be correct.  But Davis and his "wife and kiddie” had not moved into the house until over a year after the relevant sitting!  Davis' diary showed that during Soal’s sittings he had been seeing real estate clients.  Only around the  time of the sittings did Davis even inspect this house for the first time.   But Davis did not move into the house until a year later.  More importantly, the furnishings of the house had not been planned in advance!  Yet the details channeled earlier turned out to be correct: a large mirror, lots of paintings, glorious mountain and sea scenes, very big vases with funny saucers, two brass candlesticks, and a black dickie bird.  Two of the paintings were only done after the sittings!  So much of the material channeled in the later sittings about the house must be ascribed to precognitive telepathy (John Heaney, 176-177).  And this precognition surely casts doubt on the authenticity Gladys Leonard's repeated channeling of many details posted in specific columns of tomorrow's newspaper.

Why is channeling not discredited in this way more often?  Well, ask yourself how often you are mistakenly informed that your friend has died.   Was the medium able to exploit Soal’s mistaken faith in Davis’ death as an aid in the process of reconstructing Davis’ personality and future by precognitive telepathy?  Or were the medium (Blanche Cooper) and sitter (Sam Soal) duped by an impersonating spirit?

(4) Shamans understand their mediumship to put them in contact with spirits and demons as well as with deceased people.  In earlier centuries Neoplatonists also practiced trance mediumship, but attributed it to the agency of gods or demons rather than to discarnate humans.   Likewise, witches from the 17th and 18th centuries ascribed their channeled material to demons.  Perhaps the modern attempt to identify spirit controls with deceased personalities reflects the wishful thinking of modern cultural prejudice.  Why is Leonora Piper’s spirit control (Phinuit) lying about his true identity?  Why did Sam Soal’s alleged brother lie about bringing Gordon Davis’ spirit through?   Or were these people simply deceived?

The length of this post makes it seem advisable to answer question #5 in my next planned post.

Don

The critique leveled against channeling in my last post would not in itself lead me to discourage the curious to regularly seek out mediums.   As I said, though most of them are bogus, a few of them do seem to occasionally put the sitter in touch with their loved ones.   The reason I discourage people from reliance on mediums is best illustrated from two case histories,  the first of which I summarize in this post and the 2nd of which I will summarize in my next planned post.    My source is Raphael Gasson's book, “The Challenging Counterfeit.”

(1) RAPHAEL SEEMS “CALLED” TO BE A MEDIUM:

“I was walking along one of London’s streets, my mind very disturbed, not knowing what to do or where to go, when suddenly I actually saw a replica of myself standing in front of me!... Spiritualists would say that I saw my etheric body...As I looked at this strange vision of myself, the vision spoke and said, `Follow me’.  Being ready for an adventure, I followed, but...I felt my whole body being lifted up and my mind went completely blank.   The next thing I knew I was sitting in a small [Spiritualist] church where a woman was speaking....[She] pointed...at me...and told me my name....I didn’t know her at all.  She then went on to tell me that she knew of the strange experience that I had just undergone, and added a description of one of my music professors and commented on the remark he had made recently concerning a new musical composition  which I had just completed.  She told me that I was a medium and had been watched by spirits all my life....She elaborated my situation and said that God had seen all my difficulties and had sent the “spirits” to come to my aid and get me to the meeting (6).”  Raphael used his mediumship to comfort the bereaved and heal sick bodies.  His gift seemed to be  vindicated by many paranormal verifications.   Is it possible that so much good might be achieved through an evil entity?

(2) RAPHAEL GETS A SIGNAL THAT HIS CHANNELING
    IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS:

“One day I met a man claiming to be a Rational Spiritualist....He believed neither in a personal God nor in prayer...Hia oddest claim was that he was a master in black magic and that he knew that the spirits controlling him were evil spirits, but doing good work!  He said there were too many people calling themselves Christian Spiritualists which was dishonest, as a Spiritualist obviously could not be a true Christian.  This shook me a bit; he invited me to conduct a seance at his home for a test, but I was convinced nothing would happen since our viewpoints were so radically opposite.  I was confident that my spirits were good spirits and his were evil....We decided that we would both go into trance...and allow our `spirits’ to communicate and see what happened....The seance lasted about an hour and when we both came out of the trance, the members of the seance were asked for their opinions and I was astounded to find that everyone agreed on it being a most spectacular seance.  My spirit helpers were conversing with the other medium’s helpers, and apparently they were all friends together.  Several other seances followed ...Similar results were obtained each time [7-8].”

(3) DIVINE SYCHRONICITIES NUDGE RAPHAEL
    TOWARDS CHRIST.

One day, Raphael heard a Protestant pastor preach against channeling and he later conversed with him.   Raphael was indignant because the pastor obviously had a poor grasp of what mediums actually believe and do.  Nevertheless, that worship service exposed Raphael to the marvelous presence of Christ.  Christ was now on his trail and would use a series of synchronicities to woo him into a profound new relationship:

“Just after  this conversation with the pastor, I attended what turned out to be my last seance, of which I was the acting medium, and...the controlling spirits attempted to take my life. I could not understand this at the time, but it has become evident since that they know I was on my way out of their control and into a life controlled only by Christ (10).”

Raphael soon has a life-changing experience of the grace of God, but still imagines he can remain a Christian Spiritualist: “I thought...these `good spirits` would now work closer with me than ever before. However, to my surprise, they stayed away completely!...I also found that I was unable to fulfill any engagemens to take any meetings or seances,
as it happened that I was prevented each time by some unexpected event, and never attended another spritualist meeting from the day of my conversion (11).”

(4) THE DEMONIC DISGUISE OF CHANNELED
     ENTITIES IS UNMASKED:

Raphael begins to testify in church to his new relationship with Christ, but “each time I testified, attacks came in some way or another.  Beforehand, dizzy spells made me so weak that I had to clutch something to remain standing up, let alone speak.  After I had testified and returned home, ...my once familiar spirits attempted to get me into deep trance again, against my will...SEVERAL TIMES THEY SUCCEEDED IN USING MY OWN HANDS TO ATTEMPT TO STRANGLE ME.  It was only by standing on the promises of God...and the pleading the power of the Blood of Christ and by much intercessory prayer...by the saints, that these evil spirits were eventually overcome (12).”

Deanna and Juditha, please be careful!
Don

Human beings are complex, with both good and evil tendencies.  It is rare that a seemingly virtuous man does not have their shortcomings or that a seemingly evil wretched man has no virtues.  Why should a spirit be any different?  

The idea that channeled readings must originate from evil spirits who will disappear magically if the medium becomes a true believer seems a bit bizzarre.  I believe that much information may come from a less than divine source from the afterlife - but less than divine does not necessarily mean pure evil.  If there is a field that our subconscious connects to of "everything," if remote viewing taps into this field, perhaps spirits who have passed over may access it more freely.  Perhaps in doing so, they can give verifiable information and possibly, predict things.
    Would Jesus/the christian God necessarily be against this?  No more than he would be against the Monroe institute, Bruce's imagination method, Kundalini or other manners of exploration.  
    If one's attempt is to heal others, comfort others, and verifiable information is received, does it matter if the source may be a confused spirit or an angel?
    Don, some of what you acknowledge to be true on this website would smack of heresy and blasphemy to a bible thumping evangelist - you know that as well as I.  I think from your posts that you believe in much of what is posted on this site: about thought and belief creating reality, about our connection with the divine, about free will.  
    Still, your examples are interesting, well written and entertaining - I'll give you that.  I still wouldn't discount mediums based on Raphael's experiences alone.
    Also, as I noted before, if a medium channeled a living person, I would wonder whether it wasn't misdirected perception - almost like remote viewing mistaken for contact with a dead person.

Matthew

[Matthew:] "The idea that channeled readings must originate from evil spirits who will disappear magically if the medium becomes a true believer seems a bit bizarre."
_________________

In my view, most channelings are bogus creations of the mediums' psyche, but the best cases appear to be genuine contacts with the deceased.  Beyond this, at least a few cases appear to be sinister contacts with malevolent spirits, whether demonic or human.  In my next planned post, I will describe Johanna Michaelsen's channeling horror story chillingly described in her mesmerizing book, "The Beautful Side of Evil."   Comparisons to Raphael's and Johanna's experiences might be invited with Robert Bruce's possession described in his book "Practical Psychic Self-Defense," pp. 136ff.

For the reader's convenience, I will repost a portion of my report on RB's experience.   Robert was doing an exorcism on a child and, frustrated that he was unable to defeat it, he offered himself to the neg in replacement of the child thinking he'd get rid of it later. The neg accepted his offer, and Robert discovered he was in over his head. This is what happened next:

"...Soon, I began losing control of my body, one part at a time. The first episode of this was while reading; my arm moved on its own, picked up a book, and tossed it on the floor. This shocked me, but I still felt okay. I did not sense anything evil or threatening in or around me. Incidents of brief loss of control increased over the next two weeks. It was not long before I knew I was in deep trouble."

"The episodes of loss of control culminated in an incident in which I lost control completely. I was on a roof-top car park, lifting my baby son from my car. As if a switch had been thrown, I suddenly lost control of my body. Powerless, I was marched like a puppet carrying my son to the edge, even while I was fighting my own muscles every step of the way. I suspected the Neg in me was going to make me throw my son off the roof and then have me jump."

"The strength of the mental pressure I felt was unbelievable. I did not hear voices or experience insane thoughts. This was not a compulsion. I was sane and rational. I just had no control of my body, as if suddenly struck with physical paralysis and someone else was now running my body. Thankfully, with a supreme act of will and some much-needed luck, I broke free of the puppet-like state at the last possible moment. But I no longer trusted myself after this event."

"A couple of days later, I woke up (I seemed to have been sleepwalking) and found myself in the nursery with a raised ax. I got rid of the ax. I found myself back there the next night with a carving knife. I tried everything I knew of to rid myself of this Neg, but whatever I did was not enough. I was faced with only two "logical" choices: I could turn myself into a mental hospital or commit suicide. Then, I came up with a third option: I could surrender to my higher self and let it lead me out of the darkness rapidly overtaking my life. I sensed this would be difficult and probably kill me in the process anyway, but I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. I could always kill myself later."

RB proceeds to detail his fight with the neg out in the bush. Bruce left home for his family's safety and spoke candidly about how he thought he wouldn't be coming back alive.  RB's horrorifying encounter with the demonic illustrates the danger of spiritual arrogance and presumption.   It took great humility for Robert to admit this life-threatening error.

"[Matthew:] "If one's attempt is to heal others, comfort others, and verifiable information is received, does it matter if the source may be a confused spirit or an angel?"
________________________

You bet it matters!   In his psychological analysis of the characteristics of evil, psychiatrist M. Scott Peck identifies 4 psychodynamics that find independent corroboration in Scripture.  Peck demonstrates how these 4 traits can be detected in narcissistic parents, possession cases, and group evil (e. g. the My Lai massacre in Vietnam).  One of Peck's 4 traits is this: evil cleverly blends truth and error to set up a lie.   Such deception can exploit people's good intentions to an evil end like spirit infestation.   Raphael's desire to help others was used aa a pretext to gain more an more control over his spirit.  Robert Bruce got possessed because he wanted to free the young child of his possessing entity, but chose a foolish tactic to achieve this end.   In the real possession case that inspired the movie "The Exorcist,"  the young victim just wanted loving communication with his late aunt Harriet through a Ouija board.  In the final analysis, it matters little whether we label the possessing entity a confused discarnate human or a nonhuman evil entity.  What matters is the harm that such entities can do.

Don  

Don-

I'm beginning to wonder if maybe those who become possessed are somehow unwittingly inviting such possession.  Maybe it takes two to tango so to speak.

The reason I say this is because, if possession is truly a one sided thing initiated by an evil entity, you would think we would hear of many thousands, even millions, of such cases.  A small child would be an inviting and highly vulnerable target, yet verified cases involving children are far and few between (thank goodness).

You might argue that a young child (or a rational adult for that matter) cannot possibly give his or her consent.  That's true to the extent we understand consent, but maybe it's far more complex than we know.  Otherwise the number of victims would be astronomical.

R

Rondele,

It does seem that most cases of possession are the result of unwitting invitations.   The trick is to determine what counts as an "invitation."   Pentecostals often experience wonderful healings and overpowering experiences of God's love and grace.  But toxic forms of Pentecostalism can attract a disproportionately large number of possession cases.  One reason for this is their practiced openness to the Holy Spirit's control.   Some believers treat speaking in tongues like a fetish or a drug high; they seek the exhilarating effect of the gift rather than intimate communion with the Giver.  In the process, they open their minds to control from unknown entities just as practitioners of the Ouija board sometimes do.  

But how do very young children get possessed?   Can evil entities exploit a child's love of imaginary playmates?  My cousin E was only 3 when the entity that my uncle had just exorcised in a house entered the car and tried to possess E instead.  His eyes rolled up in his sockets and he screamed all the way home.   Admittedly, his parents' prayers delivered him; so it may not be correct to say that he was ever actually possessed.   However, for adults, the situation seems more clearcut:  the people unwittingly seem to invite the entity in.

Don

A SECOND NEGATIVE CHANNELING CASE

Like Raphael Gasson, Johanna Michaelsen initially believed in her blossoming mediumistic gift.  She was a Yoga teacher who was heavily involved in the New Age movement.   She recalls: "During meditation vivid scenes of at least 15 different incarnations had filled my mind..., giving me a deep understanding... of what I needed to suffer in order to achieve perfect unity with God (138).” She shares her story of how she was deceived and liberated in her gripping book, “The Beautiful Side of Evil.”  

For over 14 months, Johanna works with a celebrated Mexican Indian shaman named Pachita and her spirit control Hermanito.  Hermanito identifies himself as an ancient healer who was killed by the Spaniards (123).  Johanna offers this plausible enough rationalization for her work with Hermanito: “Was there not a crucifix on the altar and a picture of Jesus?...We were constantly told to elevate our thoughts to God and to say the Lord’s Prayer.  Besides, what purpose would Satan have in healing and doing good works (102)?" Hermanito performed major surgery without anaesthesia and dumfounded Western doctors who saw "him" in action.  Johanna reports: "I had washed the blood of over 200 operations from my hands. I had seen anything from the removal of brain tumors to the replacement of vertebrae and lung transplants (131).”

But Johanna was an honest spiritual seeker who revered the Christian God in her New Age way. Before the psychic surgery, she would pray like this: “Almighty God,...help me now to become an instrument of your hand....Guide us now in this work.  Help us discern what is false and of our imagination from what is of You.  Protect us from any evil being who would hinder this work (95).”  

She would not have to wait long before her prayer was answered: “I was praying intensely as Hermanito cut open a woman’s abdomen when suddenly he looked up and pointed to me: ‘Hurry, get her out of here...It is just a precaution; she has a most powerful spirit protecting her.’  He looked up as he said this, and for a moment I was paralyzed by the hatred I saw in his face (104).”

On her sister Kim’s advice, Johanna goes to a Christian retreat center in L’Abri, Switzerland, where she bonds with a female counselor named Birdie.  One night there, Johanna prays: “I’m willing to give up yoga and Pachita and all the rest if I’m wrong.  But if not, then I’m putting all this nonsense aside and going on with it at Pachita's.  God, let me see the truth!’  I had no idea how literally God would answer that prayer (146).”

“The night of November 15, 1972, ...I walked alone on the slippery path to Birdie’s chalet...A dense black fog was forming all around me, blotting out the path.  Within seconds I could see nothing.  The dark mist was swirling, alive, filled with the presence of something more monstrous than anything I had ever before encountered.  Voices began whispering, hissing incoherent words and laughter in my right ear.  An ice-cold breath touched the back of my neck under my hair.  `Hermanito, help me!’  I gasped.  The voices shrieked in hideous laughter.  `We’re going to kill you!"

"I panicked and broke into a run.  Something like a giant fist slammed into my back between my shoulders.  I pitched forward in the thick darkness and instinctively reached out to break my fall.  My fingers found the branch of a small bush and clung to it.  I tried to scream out `Jesus!’ but an iron hand closed upon my throat choking off the word.  All  I could do was scream in my mind, `Jesus, Jesus, help me!’ `He can’t help you!’ the voices shrieked.  `He can’t help you!’"

“Birdie hurried me into her little prayer room and closed the door.  She took my hands in hers and began praying....The room seemed to have been taken up in a giant slow-motion whirlwind... Outside [the window] I could see the faces of countless demons, contorted, twisted in indescribable rage....[Birdie:] `Satan, in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, I command you to be gone!  I forbid your presence here.  I claim the protection of the blood of Jesus upon us...’ Instantly, the faces vanished.  The room stopped spinning was filled with a peace beyond all my understanding.  They were gone (146-148).”  

Johanna has now renounced her former New Age beliefs, including reincarnation, and has become a devout Christian.  I myself have nothing against yoga.  I do believe that channeling at its best can mediate genuine contact with the dead and have documented some of the best evidence on this thread.  But I consider most channeling bogus, not necessarily evil.  Still, negative experiences like Raphael's and Johanna's prompt me to discourage any who ask my advice from sitting with mediums.

Don  

[Matthew:]  "I would also like to hear your opinion about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  ..If...other new age sources have a similar metaphysical doctrine, does it truly matter, if Hilarion was factually incorrect about those instances?  Assuming your critique correct, then we either have a true channeling with a fake entity, or a false channeling.  Does that necessarily invalidate the entire thought, explanation and doctrines?"
_________________________________________

You have already read my critique of Hilarion.  He claims a prior incarnation as St. Paul, but makes provable errors in his narrations about Paul's life.  He implausibly identifies Jesus as the reincarnation of Moses.  He implausibly alleges that we have a "religious gene" and that, in "a while", "the deeper understanding of the religious gene" will cause "dogmatic religions" like Christianity to be "dismantled." He claims that natural disasters like Katrina are triggered by "the highest evolved helpers and guiardians."  All of this strikes me as absurd.
 
Matt, your question is hard to answer because channeled entities disagree among themselves.   Many take reincarnation for granted, but other eminent mediums like Susy Smith are adamant in their channeled repudiation of reincarnation.  In this regard, they find support from the most in depth NDEs like Betty Eade's and from Emanuel Swedenborg's astral explorations.   ES carries special weight with me because he provides by far the best verifications and he explains in detail how he discovered that his earlier astral experiences of past life recall were in fact mistaken experiences of memory fusion with encroaching spirits.    

I also take into account M. Scott Peck's discovery that a basic characteristic of evil is its use of the truth to set up a lie.   I assume that some channeled material provides genuine revelation.  But I ask myself what sort of lies might I expect from cunning channelings that mask evil intentions.  I would expect moral relativism because this has the potential to undermine belief in good and evil and to contaminate a loving spirituality with accountability.  Of course, much channeled material (e. g. Seth, Elias, Ramtha) denies the good vs. evil polarity.  I'd also expect the most sacred truth of Christianity to be emphatically undermined.   As you know, I have devoted considerable space to explaining this teaching in my Spitifre thread.   Channeled entitites like Seth, Elias, Ramtha, and the bogus Christ persona behind ACIM all repudiate the redemptive significance of Christ's atoning death.  In his psychiatric study of possession cases, Peck similarly  observes the need of the demonic to repudiate Christ's sufferings on the cross.  In fact, the philosophy of possessing entities seems strikingly similar to that of many channeled entities.  What makes these observations more ominous is the homicidal reaction of seemingly benign channeled entities when the medium (e.g. Raphael Gasson and Johanna Michaelsen) decide to become conventional Christians.  

I then ask myself: why would spirit controls like Phinuit lie about their identity and why would these controls exploit a sitter's false belief in someone's death and then fake a recreation of that person's personality and proceed to impressively verify that identity (e  g. the Gordon Davis case)?  I ask myself if the entity's malevolence is already indicated in the tendency of channeling prior the 19th century to attribute most channeling to a demon or a god rather than a discarnate human.

I then ask myself how channeled entities could be so bad if they did a lot of good.  But then I recall that the evil entities channeled by Raphael and Johanna healed the sick before their evil persona was ultimately unmasked.  I am reminded of Paul's warning about paranormal manifestations: "Even Satan can disguise himself as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14)." I am reminded of Jesus' warning: "On that day, many will tell me, `Lord, Lord, we prophesied in your name and cast out demons in your name and performed many miracles in your name.'  But I will reply, `I never knew you.  Go away; the things you did were unauthorized (Matthew 7:22-23)."  Despite all this, i do not categorically reject all channeling, but I discourage people I know from resorting to mediums.  

Don

Don-

As always you give us a full course meal that needs to be thoroughly digested.  Yes, truth is given up to a point, but whether the whole truth and nothing but the truth is given, that's what we have to watch out for.

Let me repeat an account of afterlife contact that I heard on the radio last year.  The person telling the story had lost her dad, and she was describing the scene in the family parlor as friends and family gathered to comfort her grieving mother.  For those who have already read this, I apologize in advance.

Anyway, as they were talking and remembering her dad, suddenly the vase resting on top of the tv set rose into the air.  It moved across the room to where the grieving widow sat.  It then suddenly dropped to the floor, shattering into many pieces.

All of the people in the room witnessed this event.  Two of the people actually reported seeing a pair of transparent hands carrying the vase altho they didn't see the full body.

Now, here's where the story gets even more intriguing.  The husband, while alive, often told his wife how much he hated that vase and how he wished she'd get rid of it.  The smashing of the vase, after the initial shock of it wore off, became convincing evidence in the minds of the mother and daughter that the husband/father was still very much alive.  They ended up laughing over the incident, relieved and at the same time finding his unique way of letting them know he survived death to be really funny.

Now, the woman recounting this story came across as extremely credible.  Granted, she could have been making the whole thing up.  I wish there was a way of following up on this story.

But, if true, it raises the $64,000 question- why don't the other 99.9% of us whose loved ones have died get the same kind of convincing evidence that death is not final?  Why is it that in this case, it seemed so easy for the guy to do?  As I recall, the daughter made a point out of saying that he was just an ordinary guy with an ordinary life, like millions of others.  

Maybe there really is a "thin place" where the membrane between the two worlds is transparent and the family just happened to be at one of those places.

Who knows?

Rondele,

I often remind posters of a striking finding in a study of ADC contact.  50% of Americans and 48% of the British report convincing contact with their deceased loved ones, generally within the first year after their passing.   After a year, such contacts become less frequent--a fact that demands explanation.  But, Rondele,  I'm confident that very few of these contacts rise to the evidential level of the inspiring account you've just shared with us.  Still, I think such breath-taking contacts are made more often than you might think.  So I propose to answer your question in two separate threads. First, I will post in one place some of the most impressive postmortem contacts that I have encountered.  Second, in my next post, I will try to give my most thorough response yet to your question of why our deceased loved ones don't contact us more often in the spectacular manner of the Bauerle case.

(1) On "Coast to Coast" last Tuesday, George Noory interviewed Catherine Lanigan, the author of "The Jewel on the Nile" and "Romancing the Stone."  Catherine has had NDEs herself and recently authored a book entitled "Divine Nudges" which records wonderful verifications of an afterlife.  She documents cases of hospital and hospice workers who themselves witness angelic visitations to patients facing imminent death.  

For me, her most striking example illustrates a high-grade  "physical" verification that rivals your Bauerle story.  Dr. Lerna shared this amazing account of his female patient's passing in a Houston hospital.  Shortly before her passing, Lerna witnessed a glow on her face as she was conversing with an unseen angel.   Afterwards, she cradled a 3 1/2 inch feather in the palm of her hand that the angel had given her.  She told Dr. Lerna that the angel had come on a take-away mission and that she would shortly pass over.  But the angel wanted her to give Dr. Lerna the feather that the angel had created and placed in her palm.  Lerna kept it in a plastic bag in his office.  Within a month, the feather began to shrink, and within a few days, it detematerialized altogether to demonstrate its etheric origin!

(2) Dr. Lerna's experience is strikingly similar to one of my own during my United Methodist pastorate in the Finger Lakes region of New York.  I had just preached a sermon on Jesus' Transfiguration.  In this story Peter, James, and John witness the return of Moses and Elijah from the afterlife to converse with Jesus on a mountain about His pending atoning death.  I concluded the sermon by blurting out something I never intended to say and immediately regretted saying.  I assured the congregation that some of them would have their own "mountaintop" experience in the coming week.  Later I thought to myself, "Great!  Now when nothing happens, what are your people going to think?  Why did you make that rash claim?"

Here is what happened that week.  John, a retired Kodak executive, went mountain climbing with his wife in Colorado.  On a tiny ledge, he found a nice ring that fit him perfectly.  I didn't share his excitement at this discovery--until Bob called.  Bob had lived in his new home for only 3 years.  He had just discovered his late mother's lost ring on his made bed---a ring he hadn't seen in 40 years!  He excitedly called his friend to share the news.  His friend was absolutely astounded because he too had just discovered his Mom's lost ring on his bedroom dresser!  

God had arranged for John's discovery of the ring on the mountain ledge to get me to associate rings with a "mountaintop experience."  The  mothers' rings from heaven echoed the return of Moses and Elijah from the afterlife to be with Jesus and His disciples on the mountain.  Not long before, I had preached a sermon on the Parable of the Prodigal Son in which I stressed the role of the Father's ring as a symbol of God's love for those who return to God after going astray.

I left that church and moved to Buffalo.  A few years later, Bob called me and I remarked that his Mom's ring must now be a real treasure---a reminder of her survival.  Bob confessed that both his Mom's ring and the ring of his friend's Mom had mysteriously vanished within a couple of days!  Apparently, these etheric rings suffered a similar fate to that of Dr. Lerna's feather!  I was sorry Bob hadn't told me about this sooner because I had lost touch with John and wanted to know if his mountaintop ring had also vanished.

(3) These verifications with materializing objects are paralleled by the family encounter with Mother Nellie by a Presbyerian minister (Howell Vincent) and his family:

"On at least two occasions this radiant mother had come to Rea in visible, tangible form and  talked with her. In 1933, I was privileged to be present at one of thse heavenly visits by [the late] Mother Nellie.  toghether with Rea I talked with Nellie, fully recognizing her face and form and voice.  I saw he place her hand on Rea's head in blessing, and I SAW HER GIVE REA A FLOWER, A CALENDULA, WHICH WE PRESSED AND KEPT.  At that time 3 other members of our famiy were present, including Rea's second mother, Agnes, and they all saw Nellie and talked with her, as Rea and I did.  We were all wide awake and walked about the room with Nellie (Howell Vincent, "Lighted Passage," 25)."

(4) Leonard was a man of unimpeachable integrity and kindness--a dear friend whom I had often visited.  I had supported him in his agony over his health problems and those of his wife, brother, and cousin.  So I was surprised that he seemed so little affected by the tragic deaths of his son Jeff and his family in a private plane crash.  Curious, I finally asked his wife Helen about this when Leonard wasn't around.  She glowed and said, "Oh, Leonard received confirmation that his son's family was OK after the crash."  More curious now, I wondered why Leonard had never shared this story with me.  So I gingerly waited for the right time to ask him.  He grew misty-eyed and shared his incredible story with me.

A day or so after the funeral, Leonard got into his son's pickup to do some errands.  As he approached the end of his driveway, hs noticed someone ernerging from the deep ditch and approaching the truck.  It was his son Jeff!  Leonard was paralyzed with shock.  Jeff walked up and asked, "Dad, do you mind if I take the truck for one last spin for old time's sake?"  A numb Leonard quickly moved over and let Jeff drive.  Jeff reassured him that his wife Karen and their 2 kids were OK on the other side.  Jeff then clarified his investment and overall financial situation to help his Dad tie up loose ends.  Finally, Jeff turned left on a deserted country road, drove about 2 miles, and stopped the truck.  He mused, "Dad, I love you, but I'm not permitted to go any further."  He got out of his truck, walked towards a nearby clump of trees, and vanished just like the deceased baseball players in the movie "Field of Dreams."  Leonard drove home, still in a state of shock.  

The next day he was still overwhelmed with grief and decided to go for a long walk in the woods behind his house.  Overwhelmed by sadness, he sat down on a log and wept profusely.  Then he heard footsteps.  It was Jeff's deceased wife Karen.   She approached him and asked firmly, "Didn't we tell you we were all OK?  You get back in the house and comfort Mom!"  This second incident broke the back of Leonard's grief.

Leonard now gazed into my incredulous eyes with a pained expression on his face.  He sensed my skepticism and confessed that he had kept this experience a secret out of fear of ridicule.  i could not help my skeptical facial expression.   This account is so disanalogous to my life experience.  But it is perfectly analogous to Jesus' resurrection appearances in which He allowed his wounds to be touched and cooked and ate fish with his disciples.  I felt ashamed at my reaction because I had badgered Leonard to share his story and because he is an absolutely credible witness.  Rationally, this experience is the most compelling evidence for postmortem survival I've ever encountered.

(5) I met Phyllis at a wedding reception.  She was a very stoic but attractive doctor with a PhD in medical research.  Her mnther had recently died and Phyllis couldn't deal with this; so she didn't.  Phyllis was then so badly injured in a car crash that she had her first NDE.  She ascended to a "mall that wasn't really a mall" in Paradise.  It was "a mall of white light."  A mall band played beautiful music in the background.  At a table in front of her sat her mother.  Her mother scolded her: "You haven't come to terms with me death yet!  Get on with your grieving process!  Your stoic attitude is holding back my progess over here!"  A sulking Phyllis returned to her body, still unable to grieve.

A year later, she contracted a life-threatening illness (some type of cancer, I think).  In the hospital, her illness took a turn for the worse and she had a second NDE.  Back she was in the same mall in Paradise and there again sat her angry mother at a table.  Her mother again scolded her: "Why won't you listen to me?   You need to come to terms with my loss!"   Then her Mom did something interesting.  She pointed to the table and said: "You have to make this table vanish!"  Evidently, the table was a symbol of the unresolved baggage between Mon and daughter.  
A depressed Phyllis found no consolation in the unearthly music that was being played in the background.  Finally, defeated, Phyllis moaned: "Well, I guess I'll just return to my body now."  Her mother snapped: "No, you're not ready yet to go back.  You go with these young men."  Immediately two men in white medical attire appeared to escort her to "an elevator that wasn't really an elevator.  It was an elevator of white light."  She was taken to some sort of Healing Center in Paradise where some sort of procedure was performed on her which she couldn't understand.  But when she returned to her body, she was completely healed and didn't need the surgery that was supposed to be performed on her.  I lost touch with Phyllis and don't know if she was ever able to release her emotions and grieve the loss of her mother.

I have shared some of these incidents before, but decided to repost them because of their potential accumulative impact.  I could multiple such examples.  Spectacular verifications of survival are  admittedly uncommon, but are not as rare as one might imagine.

Don

   

Don-

These are all wonderful stories.  There does seem to be a parallel regarding the mild "scolding" attitude that comes across from the deceased to the physically living regarding Leonard's daughter in law and Phyliss' mother.  

But the more striking parallel exists in my vase story and your Leonard story.  In both cases, the deceased were able to physically affect the environment.  Moving a vase, driving a truck.....I always heard that the deceased are unable to move physical objects.  Their etheric hands go right thru physical things.

So now we have two questions to ponder.  (1) Why are such convincing cases of afterlife contact so relatively rare and (2) How are the "dead" able to manipulate physical objects?

I have read where they can disrupt electrical fields of energy....dimming lights, causing phones to ring, causing fragrances to appear, etc.  But I presume cases comparable to lifting a vase and especially driving a truck to be rare indeed.  What say you?

Rev. Vincent's account is also stunning.  I'm told by his grandson that those who knew him had zero doubt about his integrity and credibility.  As you know, he also performed retrievals of those killed on the WWII battlefields.  Allied troops or the enemy, it didn't matter.

So I look forward to your post explaining why such vivid afterlife contacts don't happen more often.  And if you have any insight as to how a spirit can drive a truck, I'd love to know!

Roger

Hi Roger,

One reason is, while the deceased in question seem rather 'normal' perhaps the were more spiritually advanced than the average and so have greater control of the M-band radiation (remember a certain percentage of people have experiences they never talk about too)?

If you believe those like Cayce or Monroe, then some people, and perhaps many people in the far past and future, had such a control of energy as to even recreate a body-vehicle, or a piece of real corn, etc.

 Cayce had the experirence of having a coin manifest for him, which he connected to his mother who had passed.  

 I would say such control of energy to move and manifest physical objects is still fairly rare.  And not every Soul who can do such, actually does it.  

 Btw-- I agree with you about some places acting as amplifying areas for nonphysical experiences.   The ancients connected these to a concept called Ley lines, and the places where some meet are particularly 'thin' areas of physical and nonphysical.  These areas are similar to the Chakras in the human body, the central energy vortex where many meridians interconnect.

 The similarity between both Earth ley lines, and human Chakras is that these are connected to Planetary and Star energies, supposedly.

 Or, do you remember Bruce's account of the Bermuda Triangle, where during certain alignments with Uranus, there is a dimensional portal of sorts opened up in the Triangle area because there is a large remnant piece of crystal core there?

 According to the C.W. he talked to, everything that disappears in the B. Triangle, during these certain alignments, actually ends up on Uranus.

 Personally, i don't want to test out this theory!

 How bout it Don, wanna try it out?

PART I: WHY OUR DECEASED LOVED ONES SO RARELY CONTACT US IN AN UNMISTAKABLE WAY:

Rondele's questions are as important as any that can be asked to advance our understanding beyond our stagnant assumptions.  His questions are best addressed by astral insights in Emanuel Swedenborg's classic, "Heaven and Hell:"

“We have two memories, an inner and an outer, or a natural one and a spiritual one. We are not aware that we have this inner memory.  How much better the inner memory is than the outer one!  The contents of our outer memory are in the world’s light, while the contents of our inner memory are in heaven’s light.  It is because of our inner memory that we can think and talk intelligently and rationally.  Absolutely everything we have thought, said, done, seen, and heard is inscribed on our inner memory....Things that have become second nature to us and part of our life and therefore have been erased from our outer memory are in our inner memory (463, note b)."

After death, adult memory “stays fixed and then goes dormant; but it still serves their thinking after death as an outmost plane because their thought flows into it.  This is why the nature of this plane and the way their rational activity answers to its contents determines the nature of the individual after death (#345)."

".All that remain are the rational abilities that now serve as a basis for thinking and talking.   We actually take with us our entire natural memory, but its contents are not open to our inspection and do not enter into our thought as when we were living in this world...To the extent that our spirit has become rational by means of our insights and learning in this world, we are rational after our departure from the body (355).”
 
“The reason our outer memory goes dormant as far as material things are concerned is that they cannot be recreated.  Spirits and angels [= discarnate people] actually talk from the affections and consequent thoughts of their minds, so they cannot utter anything that does not square with these...I have talked with any number of people who were regarded as learned in the world because of their knowledge of such ancient languages as Hebrew and Greek and Latin, but had not developed their rational functioning by means of the things that were written in those languages. Some of them seemed as simple as people who did not know anything about those languages; some of them seemed dense, though there still remained a pride as though they were wiser than other people (464).”

“I have also talked with some people who had believed in the world that wisdom depends on how much we have in our memory and who have therefore filled their memories to bursting.  They talked almost exclusively from those items, which meant that they were not talking for themselves, but for others; and they had not developed any rational functioning by means of these matters of memory.   Some of them were dense, some silly, with no grasp of truth whatever (464).”

“Our rational faculty is like a garden or flower bed, like newly tilled land.  Our memory is the soil, information and experiential learning are the seeds, while heaven’s light and warmth make them productive...There is no germination unless heaven’s light, which is divine truth, and heaven’s warmth, which is divine love, are let in.  They are the only source of rationality (464).”    

“One particular spirit lamented the fact that he could not remember much of what he had known during his physical life.  He was grieving over the pleasure he had lost because it had been his chief delight.  He was told, though, that he had not lost anything at all and that he knew absolutely everything.  In the world where he was now living, he was not allowed to retrieve things like that.  It should satisfy him that he could now think and talk much better and more perfectly without immersing his rational functioning in dense clouds, in material and physical concerns, the way he had before, in concerns that were useless in the kingdom he had now reached (465).”

“Since the natural objects that reside in our memory cannot be reproduced in a spiritual world, they become dormant the way they do when we are not thinking about them.  Even so, they can be reproduced when it so pleases the Lord (461).”  

This last comment might be a key to understanding how our deceased loved ones can just occasionally contact us and even offer stunning verifications, despite the memory problems that might otherwise inhibit such communications.  

OBE adept, Robert Bruce, confirms ES's astral insights from the perspective of memory problems created by shifts in focus from one astral plane to another.   Robert reports on the problems he encounters when trying to extract memory information from spirit visitors to astral "hospitals":

“Memories of their earthly life also seem vague, much like how a half-forgotten dream is remembered by a living person.  Many spirits only seem to be aware of their present reality, that of being in the hospital scenario for an indeterminate length of time.  Some spirits, however, do have vague memories of their earthly life, and of coming from other dimensional areas; but have so far given me only very sketchy details....The most common response I get from asking spirits what it’s like where they come from is: `It’s really lovely there and everyone is so nice.  I don’t understand this.  I’m very sorry.  I know it well, and can picture it in my head, but I just can’t describe it to you.’”

“The surreal and dreamlike quality of memory of spirits I have encountered in these astral hospital areas may be caused by their being too far away from their natural, base-level of consciousness at the time.  Astral R & R hospital-like areas may be somewhere in between [spirit worlds and the physical dimension].  It seems that any shift away from the natural base level of consciousness, either for a spirit being or a human being, causes them to have a surreal experience and memory translation problems.  This...accounts...for the many difficulties and vagaries common in spirit communications and channeling in general.”

Robert Bruce's insights may have profound implications for deceased souls who might otherwise want to retrieve their loved ones who are "stuck" in lower or hellish planes.  

Psychiatrist George Ritchie experiences one of the most in depth NDEs ever recorded.   In his book "Return from Tomorrow,"  he describes his astral visit to a university-like learning plane below Heaven.  His visit seems to confirm the insights of Emanuel Swedenborg and Robert Bruce about the dormancy of earth memories there: "Whatever else these people might be, they appeared utterly and supremely self-forgetful--absorbed in some vast purpose beyond themselves"

Advanced souls may find it very difficult to cope with the spiritual vibration of lower spiritual planes through which they must pass to reach the earth plane. In his excellent book, "Living On: How Consciousness Continues and Evolves After Death," Paul Beard distills the insights of the best of classical channeling about the formidable barriers to successful retrievals from hellish planes:

“To enter these areas fills rescuers with a deep sense of distress; these helpers, sensitive men and women, can themselves become affected and drawn into some of the purblind emotions they seek to lift from others, and it they remain too long in this area they declare they can, to some extent, be temporarily overcome by them.  For the price to be paid in order to reach these minds is to lower their own consciousness and concepts to a level acceptable to, and capable of being understood by, those they hope to rescue.  Evil is powerful at its own level, and clearly a rescuer needs sterner qualities than those of the self-congratulatory do-gooder (88-89).”

One of the most memorable posters on Bruce's AK board was a fellow who had just mastered the OBE state.  He was reluctant to continue his exploration because of terrifying experiences he had when he descended to the lower planes.   He said he was overwhelmed by the toxic atmosphere and could barely resist succumbing to its hypnotic pressure to perform evil acts consistent with the defining purpose of those particular planes.  His negative experiences independently corroborate the revelations of the mediums reported by Paul Beard.

Advanced souls in the heavens may have other good reasons for their reluctance to try to contact earthly loved ones.  For example, they may be well aware of the cunning role of spirit impersonators from lower planes and the potential dangers they represent to surviving loved ones.  Advanced souls may not want to encourage their earthly loved ones to open their naive spirits to such deceptive spirit contamination and its dangers.

I must now explain why, despite these problems, some discarnate souls do succeed in providing remarkable, even "physical," verifications of their survival.  I must also explain why channeling can just occasionally be genuine and how all this squares with the biblical teaching about the ability of the saints to monitor our spiritual progress here on earth.   I will address these issues in my next planned post.  

Don

Don-

Since our physical brain is the repository of all of our earthly experiences, and therefore our memories, it seems logical that the death of the body/brain would also mean the end of the spirit's earthly memories.  

Maybe what survives is not so much the specific memories but instead the psychic imprints of the more significant earthly experiences.  A person who was a celebrity and used to lots of adulation and praise might result in his/her spirit having attributes of importance or arrogance.  A person who was beaten down in life, emotionally and/or physically, might have a defeatist or fearful attribute after death.  And so on.

But the spirit might have only a fleeting memory of the specific circumstances that were faced while alive.

I seem to recall it was Ginny who had OBEs in very low levels while attempting retrievals, but maybe I'm wrong.  If even an adept has problems as Beard reports, you have to wonder about the fate of those trapped.

I look forward to your next post.

PART TWO: WHY DON'T MORE OF OUR LOVED ONES REASSURE US FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE?

At first sight, the apparent postmortem loss of memory might be seen as as argument against the validity of channeling and an argument in favor of either demonic impersonation or a Super-ESP interpretation of ADC.  Bu I propose an alternate theory.  According to Classical Channeling, the dead eventually graduate from "the illusion of Summerland" (Focus 24-26) and then experience the Judgment, an in depth past life review:

“He [the deceased] is also now obliged to experience within himself the thoughts and feelings, the pains and pleasures which his actions caused in the lives of other people; exactly what he caused them to feel he, in turn, feels in himself now (Paul Beard, "Living On," p. 99).”

Beard then asks a profound but neglected question: “Some of the persons with whom he has had contact will still be on earth.  How then is it possible for their side of interlocked experience to be accessible to him during the Judgment (105)?"

One reply to this question is that Akashic records can be tapped which record all such experiential information.   But this reply suffers from a total lack of verification.  A related solution is to visit the Education Center in Focus 27.  Bruce Moen asks:

"Would you like to know every detail about any event in human history?  Go to the Education Center and Helpers there will show you how to access the information."  

Occasionally, posters recount their alleged visits to the Education Center.  When they do, they usually just find confirmation of their New Age orthodoxy.  If asked why they didn't ask for something decisively verifiable, they typically answer: "That's your agenda, not mine."  I find this brush-off hard to accept.  Suppose their research in the Center uncovered the cure for Cancer or even the location of Jimmy Hoffa's remains.   Suppose further that they could replicate similar impressive discoveries.  Then their astral visits could potentially change human destiny and spark a worldwide interest in astral travel and retrievals.  Why wouldn't every astral explorer want that?

According to A. Pauchard (a channeled discarnate), the in depth postmortem past life review "is not a continuous state" but rather "comes and goes, takes place and passes, one doesn’t know how or when ("Living On," p. 104).”

The reactivated and enhanced memory needed for this past life review is probably a vehicle used by our deceased loved ones to communicate with us. Perhaps a telltale sign of communication from this state is an attempt of our loved ones to reconcile, make amends, or tying up loose ends.  I have shared Phyllis's story of her 2 NDE contacts with her deceased mother in "a mall that wasn't really a mall."   Her Mom urges her to come to terms with her death, so that she can "move on" in the spiritual realm.  I suspect that Phyllis's Mom is being contacted during her in depth past life review and that she is being held back by remorse over flaws in her relationship with her daughter.

So how does this extended period of past life review end, together with its opportunities to contact earthly loved ones?   The answer may be illustrated by George Meek's mind-blowing research on an ADC machine that recorded the voice of George Mueller, a deceased engineer.  Meek theorized that the right medium might be able to receive instructions on how to build an ideal machine for recording the voices of the dead.  William O'Neil served as a effective channel for Mueller.  Here is a brief list of just some of the incredible details about Mueller channeled by O'Neil: Mueller's social security number/ his degrees and the colleges where he earned them/ his daughter's address/ a club membership/ various honors/ his employment history/ his publications and inventions/ and much more.  

All of this information was later verified.  Some of it was channeled by O'Neil and some of it was communicated via "voice' on Spiricom, the name of Meek's ADC machine.  Mueller issued instructions on how to build the machine, and then his voice on Spiricom suggested ways of upgrading this machine.  Fontana's investigation is able to rule out fraud or ESP as an alternate interpretation.
 
In 1981 Mueller made it clear that "he was beginning to shed his dense earthly vibrations and starting his progression upwards" through his world's various levels of consciousness.   It became harder for him to communicate through Spiricom, and so,  he began to issue instructions on the machine on how to build a more advanced model that would enable him to remain in contact.  But Spiricom fell silent before Mueller completed these instructions.   Apparently he had a limited grasp of his "ascension" process and could not control it.

A second setting for ADC is the lowest plane (Focus 23 or Hades).  Emanuel Swedenborg discovers that “the first state after death...rarely lasts more than a year for anyone (HH 498).”  This insight fits neatly with one study’s discovery that the overwhelming majority of contacts with deceased loved ones take place within the first year of their passing.  And why should such spirits find it easier to communicate with their loved ones in the first stage of the death process?  The reason is evident from Robert Monroe’s description of Focus 23:  

“A level inhabited by those who have recently left physical existence but who either have not been able to recognize and accept this or are unable to free themselves from the ties of the Earth Life System.  It includes those from all periods of time (UJ 249).”

The earthbound state of spirits trapped in Focus 23 may allow them to monitor the progress of others on earth better than those in higher planes.  Longtime residents of Focus 23 can manifest as poltergeists through mischievous psychokinetic activity.  The case that Rondele heard about on Tom Bauerle's radio program may be a case in point.  In the presence of witnesses, a deceased man levitates a vase he hated in life, transports it across the room, and drops it in shattered pieces.

David Fontana has personally witnessed such poltergeist phenomena in a lawnmower repair shop and an adjoining garden-accessories shop in Cardiff, Wales.  A few years before, a little boy had been hit and killed by a car just outside.

The phenomena satisfied these 4 conditions for distinguishing PK events mediated from the living from PK events caused by the dead (Fontana 64ff.):

(1) "The phenomena should not be tied to the comings and goings of any particular person."  In the Cardiff case, the phenomena occurred in the respective absence of each of the 5 witnesses.  It all began with large stones being thrown on the roof, but soon stones, keys, and old pennies (1912) were being thrown at machinery inside the shops.  Tools on elevated racks began swinging for no apparent reason and a blue flame shot out from an ornamental brass shell case.  When the employees came to work in the morning, the floor was often littered with materialized apports.   The witnesses challenge the discarnate boy to send money and several 1912 pennies materialized. When the witnesses jokingly asked for more, over 100 pounds materialized.  

(2) "There should be evidence of intelligent behavior, such as the arrangement of objects into patterns in an empty room." In the Cardiff case, the phenomena (e. g. the layout of kitchen cutlery on a table and the materialization of 5-pound notes) took place while the premises were locked and unoccupied overnight.  Fontana and the other witnesses would throw stones into a corner, only to see them thrown back by an unseen hand.  The witnesses the threw stones at a brass shell casing, only to see an unseen hand pelt that same casing with stones.

(3) "The behavior exhibited by the poltergeist should be alien to the known aims and purposes of the agent." In the Cardiff case, the 5 witnesses feared that the constant stone throwing inside might jeopardize their business.  

(4) "Paranormal phenomena should take place which so far as is known are beyond the capacity of living agents."  There is no evidence that living agents can produce the kind of PK effects witnesses at Cardiff.

Verifiable contacts with the recently deceased can be particularly impressive.   I've already recounted my friend Leonard's report of his dead son Jeff's return from the grave to drive his old truck and inform Leonard about his financial investment situation.  ES contacts the recently deceased friend of a merchant from Elberfield.  ES accurately expounds in great detail the different positions the merchant and his deceased friend took during the last conversation on the subject “the restitution of all things.”  ES informs the merchant that his friend "is not yet in heaven; he is still in Hades.”  

But why don't all loving souls reassure their family within, say, the first month of their death?  If people die from a long, debilitating condition, they may need a year or so to convalesce and adjust to their new spirit plane.  Perhaps most of the dead quickly ascend beyond Focus 23 to A BST where their earth memory quickly fades.  

Future research might focus on decisive differences between the 50% who claim contact from their dead family members and the  50% who do not.  For example, do the bereaved and her dead beloved share important beliefs or personality traits that facilitate their astral contact?  What about those who have never been contacted in this way?  Do they or their deceased loved ones share beliefs or personality traits that inhibit their chances of communicating?

And what should we make of incidents of ADC in which the deceased communicate with the living long after their death, but apparently not during their past life review phase?   I don't know how anyone could make the latter distinction.  The astral discovery of postmortem memory loss finds independ support from Emanuel Swedenborg, Robert Bruce, and George Ritchie's NDE.  Any contradiction between their insight and alleged communications from the afterlife urgently needs explanation, especially if my twofold explanation proves inadequate.

Don  

Don,

It is plain for all to see that you are disturbed by the notion that we lose our interest in our earthly loved ones as Robert Bruce believes.  I believe that we just don't have sufficient information to make that determination.

The process of ascencion to different planes of existence may make standard communication more difficult.  That does not mean that we necessarily lose memory as we ascend in our consciousness.

In a channeled work from the 1800s, a "sinner," describes his death, and slow rise from the earth plane/focus 23 level through higher planes by learning to serve others and experience PUL.

http://www.angelfire.com/ne/newviews/wsltoc.html

He does not see his father or mother in the lower, hellish realms; not until he has ascended or progressed and repented/helped others is he aware of their existence.  His deceased father first makes himself known to his son through a still living beloved woman:

'And as I turned away I beheld his spirit standing by us, just as I had seen him last in life, only with a glory of the spirit world upon him such as no mortal eyes have ever seen. My father--so long parted from me, and to meet again thus! We had no words to greet each other with but "My father" and "My son," but we clasped each other to the heart in a joy that required no words.

When our feelings had calmed down again we began to speak of many things, and not least of her whose love had led me so far upon my upward path, and then I learned that this beloved father had helped, watched over, and protected us both; that he had followed me during all my wanderings both on earth and in the spirit land, and had protected and comforted me in my struggles. Unseen himself he had yet been near, and unceasing in his efforts and his love. All this time when I had so shrunk from the thought of meeting him he had been there, only waiting an opportunity to make himself known, and he had come at last through her who had so much of my love, in order that he might thereby link us all three more closely together in the joy of this reunion. '

The sinner in this channeled work, later only meets his mother when he has ascended a little more with good charitable work and understanding.

Thus, depending on your sources, you may believe that either the deceased "lose interest" / lose memory, as Robert Bruce would have us believe or that they are constantly still loving and interested but due to our lower vibrations/energy, we may not see or feel the communication until we have progressed ourselves.

There is ample evidence that those on higher focus levels may look down on lower ones, but not vice versa.  It therefore makes perfect sense to me, that rather than a lack of desire to communicate, or a loss of memory, the ability to communicate in a common conventional way may be made more difficult.

Call me an optimist, but I prefer the notion that as we ascend, our love for our loved ones and all of humanity increases exponentially.  While we may not appear to them in human form then, we may be assisting and shining our spirit down in other ways for their benefits.  These events may take time for people to finally see.

Matthew

But Matthew, it is not just Robert Bruce who reports the memory problems of the deceased.    You are ignoring a consensus from 3 very different sources: Robert Bruce's OBEs, Swedenborg's astral projections, and George Ritchie's impressive NDE.   And no one comes close to ES in terms of the quality of his verifications.  

Such memory problems are less likely to express wishful thinking than the always available chatty dialogue that mediums too glibly allege with the deceased.  But the quality of verification for channeled materials is more dubious than that for these other impressive sources.  I mean, just read Ritchie's awesome book about his NDE.   In my view, Rondele's question about why so few of our loved ones contact us is not so easily bypassed.

Don

This is an interesting topic, to be sure; however,
I believe that in ES's visits to the afterlife he discovers that married couples live on in that state i.e. married. How does that square with the "forgetfulness" view?  Or is it because, in some
spiritual sense more than just physical, that they
are truly one; thus, how can one forget one's self?

Furthermore, as I related in an earlier posting, I received an ADC from my husband 20+ years after
his death.  There may be truth to the idea that perhaps an affinity or awareness of some sort  is
essential.   When we first met we experienced, he
more than I, both a physical and mental manifestation.

It was a grey, overcast day when we met.  I had just stepped out on the doorstep of the place where I had spent the night.  Suddenly, a brilliant ray of light engulfed me.  My future husband was at the foot of the stairs that led from the doorstep where I was standing.  The sudden, intense light
drew his attention to me.   He later told me that he
clearly heard a voice say, "She is the one."   He was
not a religious person so, as you may imagine, it was really a memorable moment for him.

Not so very much later in our relationship, but before he told me what he had heard, I, too, heard
a voice.  This is what it said, "Yes, right, perfect."  I
never did share this with my husband although now
I can't imagine why I didn't.   As far as a description
of the voice, it sounded masculine.  

Before re-establishing connections with remnants
of my husband's family rather recently, I had for
some time been receiving "junk mailings" addressed to a person with an odd, but very mas-
culine name.   Imagine how I felt when I discovered
that the name was the same as a a nephew of my  deceased husband.

Another interesting anomaly occurred with my
then future husband and 3 very elderly aunts of
mine.  I was really very happy about how much they adored him.  Doted on him would really be
apt.   After his dreadful death, one of them came to
me with an old family picture of my grandmother's
brother.   She said they all thought I should see
the picture.  Except for the fact that this relative
had what is in common parlance called a "wall
eye,"  my great uncle and my deceased husband
looked like twins.  

All I know is that this resemblance probably was what made his relationship with my family almost instantaneously a close one.  As his life was to end
in heart beat of time, he had not a moment to spare.

Recently, I did attempt to communicate with my
husband through the use of a medium.  Much of
it, I believe, was "fluff" or filler, but the medium did
tell me it was a difficult connection because of the
high vibration needed.  He claimed that he heard
but that it was though listening through water.

He did, though, describe my husband's personality
to a "t"--cool, and extremely level. I asked him if the
time I thought I had seen my husband was actual or not.   He said that he heard my husband laughingly say that it was.  Also, he suddenly told me where the apparation of my husband had been seated when I saw him.  He also had previously correctly stated that my husband had a double name. As with many of nordic extraction, his last
name was a double one.



 

Vikingsgal,

Thank you for that.  Personal experience is always highly valued on this site.  At least by myself.  You raise an interesting point, and I think Don fully admits the paradox in his posts as well.

ES was one of the most profoundly verified and scientific of all explorers.  He had such profound insights and such a keen mind.  I can't say that I know the same of Robert Bruce; Bruce appears remarkable,  but he filters his astral experiences through his own belief systems, just as Robert Monroe did.

However there are literally thousands of NDEs where people claim reunions with parents, children, husbands, wives, pets, long lost loved ones, dead for decades.  If these were not mere fantasy, then how to explain that contact?  Clearly these contacts go against the "memory loss" theory, and indeed support my alternate supposition that communication in a standardized way may become progressively more difficult, but the loved one may still be there and care.

Remember, the one Achilles heel in the argument for memory loss is that a living soul in the physical plane (Bruce, Swedenborg, etc.) is trying to make sense of the astral/heavenly existence while still incarnate.   Although these strong minds may try to understand the other state of being, question those spirits they meet, they are still filtering the responses they get back through their incarnated brain and form and what belief systems they have (what "baggage" they carry).  Robert Bruce sees frequent negative encounters with demons/negatives that many other well known mystics and mediums don't.  Why?  I believe because this is where his mind drifts and focuses.

I can't pretend that the "memory loss" theory is either right or wrong, we need more to go on.  However, your story along with the evidence of countless NDEs with loved ones who passed decades before, and the nature of timelessness and love of heaven, lead me to believe that to forget our loved ones eventually is not a forgone conclusion.

I should also add one other point; that of free will.  Both on biblical grounds and in ways that most of us would support from common sense, we seem to be given free will to act and "be" in all stages of our existence.  The mandatory loss of memory, in some ways seems to negate the expression of our desire or free will (unless of course, you argue that we decide it is time to forget our loved ones as we ascend).

Thanks for sharing your experience.

Matthew

Matthew-

I had read the Wanderer material sometime back, thanks for the link.

I really think, as I've said before, that all of our efforts to figure out the afterlife, attempts to build an EVP device, trips to mediums, all of it...it's all background noise and static.  It all adds up to nothing much more than a diversion from what we should be doing while on earth.

Isn't that the main message from the Wanderer?  The importance of showing compassion to others?  What is the point of all of this exhaustive research and ponderings about the afterlife if it diverts us from focusing on helping others?

We can discuss and debate the afterlife until we're all blue in the face, and not be one iota ahead of the game.  If computers and the internet had been around 50 years ago, I doubt someone like Mother Teresa would have spent much time typing posts speculating about what it's like on the other side.

She was too busy doing far more important and worthwhile things on this side.  Life is too short and too unpredictable to essentially waste it in these dead-end pursuits.

Rondelle,

I have read your recent posting about the specu-
lative thinking we're all engaged in on this site.

Perhaps you are right about M. T.; however, no one
should attempt  to be a duplicate of another.   Was
her work more important than speculatively reason-
ing together?  In a way, it looks to me that many
here are trying to arrive at a place that is free of
a llimitation/fear that has been with mankind simply
forever.

So, although an individual may believe that such efforts are entirely self-centered, really such a
seeker is actually becoming a vehicle of a sort for another type of consciousness.  For many of us
this effort may represent our attempt to "go
all the way" in this life just as M.T. attempted to
in hers.  Personally, I do not feel qualified to sit
in judgment about the relative merits of these
two divergent paths; however, I do see that both
of them have the Force of Love behind them

May the Force be with you!  
 

I want to reflect further on the apparent contradiction between postmortem memory dormancy and ADC with the living.  To understand this post, readers are encouraged to review posts #34 and #36 on this thread.  As already noted, Emanuel Swedenborg discovers:  “We have two memories, an inner and an outer, or a natural one and a spiritual one...Absolutely everything we have thought, said, done, seen, and haard are inscribed on our inner memory (#463, note b).”

Surely the permanent and perfect retention of our earthly memories implies that these memories will ultimately be restored to us.   Otherwise, what point would there be to their unconscious retenton?   True, our full memory will be restored for our ultimate in depth past life review.  But after this review, do these memories again become dormant?   ES never addresses this question.  If earth memory does again become dormant, it remains intact in our inner memory.   To what purpose?   Surely it will ultimately be restored to consciousness as we evolve.   It is very frustrating that ES fails to confirm this truth.      

ES also muddies the waters on this issue by observing that our natural memories "can be reproduced when it so pleases the Lord (HH #461).”  Apart from our ultimate past life review, under what circumstances does "it so please the Lord" to restore our earth memories?   ES doesn't tell us, but perhaps God restores our memories for the task of greeting our loved ones as they pass over.  If so, this might explain how soul mates can find each other and remain together.  And it seemed to "please the Lord" to restore the earth memory of Father Gemelli's Dad to the point where his Dad left that inspiring message on his son's tape of Gregorian chants.  

Our deceased loved ones do not necessarily need to reactivate their full earth memories to contact us.  They can fill in their memory gaps by tapping our memories of our life with them:

“No angel or spirit [= discarnate humans] is allowed to talk with one of us from the angel’s or spirit’s own memory, only from that of the individual in question (HH #256).”  

But without their earth memories, why would our loved ones take the initiative to contact us in the first place?  Two replies come to mind: (1) Perhaps, these contacts are sometimes triggered by our strong desire for contact with them.  George Meek's ADC device only worked in conjunction with Willian O'Neil's role as a spirit channel.   O'Neil's gift of focused intent may have empowered the late George Mueller to imprint his voice on the Spiritcom machine.  (2) In his visit to an astral hospital, Robert Bruce creates the impression that discarnates vary considerably in what they recall.   Some seem to recall nothing, while others retain vague memories  much like how a half-forgotten dream is remembered by a living person."

Don

p.s. NOTE TO RONDELE
Many people are so heavenly-minded they seem to be of no earthly use.   Still, compassionate living might not be realistic apart from a well-nurtured spirituality and this spirituality might depend on a greater confidence in the reality of the afterlife and a discovery the principles that govern postmortem wellbeing.   In this respect, I am haunted with Jesus' comment to atheist Howard Storm during his NDE.  Jesus explains: "The love of God, the love of neighbor, and the love of self are inseparable parts of a whole that cannot be divided.  Without the love of God, there cannot be true love of another."

Don,

Thank you for the interesting material.  In your
final comments about the totality, I was reminded
of Leigh Hunt's poem, Abu Ben Adhem.   Do you
perchance recall it?  It seems relevant to me.

Again, thank you for your sincere commitment.

A NEGLECTED BIBLICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE CAPACITY OF OUR DECEASED LOVED ONES to MONITOR OUR SPIRITUAL PROGRESS

Thank you, Vikingsgal.  The question of whether the righteous dead can monitor the spiritusl progress of the living is addressed by a neglected affirmation of the ancient Apostles' Creed: "I believe in the communion of saints."  This doctrine extends the gaze and ministry of deceased saints beyond the boundaries of Heaven.  The doctrine finds eloquent biblical expression in Hebrews 12:1:

"Therefore, SINCE WE ARE SURROUNDED BY SUCH A GREAT CLOUD OF WITNESSES, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us."

The Greek 'martus" (= "witness") implies the sense of "spectator".  This nuance is clear from Hebrews' only other reference to witnesses (10:28).  As one Commentary on Hebrews puts it,

"`Witnesses' does not mean `spectators,' but those who have borne witness to the truth, or those enumerated in chapter 11.  Yet the idea of spectators is implied, and is really the principle idea.  The writer's picture is that of an arena in which the Christians...are contending in a race, while the vast host of the [deceased] heroes of faith...watches the contest from the encircling tiers of the arena, compassing and overhanging it like a cloud, filled with interest and sympathy, and lending heavenly aid."  

Jesus stresses the intense awareness and emotional involvement of the righteous dead in our spiritual progress: "I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in Heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous persons who don't need to repent (Luke 15:7)."  This saying leaves unclear whether it is angels or saints who are rejoicing.  But His ensuing comment makes it clear that He has deceased saints in mind: "I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of angels or God over one sinner who repents (15;10)."  Here it is apparently not the angels who rejoice, but deceased humans dwelling in the angels' presence.  

The righteous dead continue to promote our spiritual welfare.  They are aware of our suffering and intercede for us that God may establish His justice on earth (Revelation 6:9-10).  The intercessory work of the righteous is implied by the poetic visionary image of Revelation 5:8:  "...the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb [= Christ].  Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of saints."  In other words, the righteous dead are in some way involved in the success of our intercessory prayers.

Discarnate saints can intervene at crucial points in history.  A Jewish historical text in the Catholic Bible describes the role of a high priest and the prophet Jeremiah (both deceased) in assisting Jewish freedom fighters in their successful attempt to liberate Israel from the occupying Syrian Greek armies (2 Maccabees 15:11-16).  Belief in this type of discarnate human intervention prompts some at Christ's cross to muse: "Let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him (Matthew 27:9)."  Moses and Elijah materialize in the presence of Peter, James, and John to discuss Jesus' imminent fulfillment of His redemptive mission (Luke 9:30-31).  

In Matthew Jesus teaches that "the kingdom of God HAS COME NEAR (10:7) and the kingdom of God HAS COME UPON YOU (12:28)."  In Aramaic the word for "kingdom" means "reign" and "realm".  In other words, Jesus means that the heavenly dimensions cam become accessible to you.  So Moses and Elijah return from the kingdom of God to converse on a mountain with a transfigured Jesus in front of 3 of His disciples.  

Traditional Christan angelology has discouraged many believers from investigating the implications of the ongoing involvement of our loved ones in our lives.  True, the Bible generally treats angels as a nonhuman species.  But even the presumed role of guardian angels need not preclude an analogous role for discarnate human helpers and our dead loved ones.  Besides, in both Hebrew and Greek the word "angel" merely means "messenger" and there are several classes of angels.  Furthermore, Acts 12:15 probably implies that deceased saints can qualify as one class of angel.  

The setting is an urgent prayer meeting in the house of Mary, the mother of Mark, who wrote the second New Testament Gospel.  The apostle James has just been executed by Herod and Peter has also been arrested and scheduled for execution.   But Peter is more fortunate.  He is rescued by an angelically induced earthquake and races to Mary's  house.  When Rhoda answers the door, she freaks out, leaves him standing there, and rushes to tell the others.  They react incredulously:

"`You're out of your mind,' they told her.  When she kept insisting that is was so, they said,  `It must be his angel.'"

They intially seem to assume that the Peter lookalike must be an executed Peter's spirit.  If so, then they deem him to qualify now as an angel.  In other words, a discarnate Peter can now visit them as an angel and reassure them that he is alive and well beyond the grave.  Of course, they soon  learn that Peter is still very much physically alive.  

On this interpretation, the dead are quite capable of monitoring the living immdiately after their death.  The Bible does not address our issue of postmortem memory loss, but seems to assume that this problem poses no permanent barrier for ADC contact.

Don

Ottawa's recent post on a channleing experience has prompted me to track down this earlier thread, so that new posters can engage some of the critical issues in the debate about mental mediumship. 

Hey Don,

If you're going to resurrect a thread from 2006, could you at least also post the link to which the initial post in this thread refers?  There appears to be a Grandad thread Deanna shared back then and Bruce had responded to...correct?  Please share the link so that not only the newbies but also us oldies can see so we can know what prompted you to begin this conversation in the first place.

Thanks

Vicky, I have now reposted Deanna's amazing channeling experience ("Granddad)".   My current thread presents what are IMO the most impressive channeling cases for and against the legitimacy of channeling.  Those cases and the discussion they evoke hopefully provide helpful context for recent questions about mediums here.

Don

Great, thanks.   :)

Hi Don,

I remember that in the past you have suggested that David Fontana's ' Is there an Afterlife? ' is one of the best books looking at the evidence for survival. Having read that book I would say  Fontana consistently argues that the most likely explanation of some mediumship is genuine spirit contact while at the same time evaluating other alternative explanations such as ESP, mind reading etc. With this in mind would you say that your objections to genuine contact are scripture-based ( which I respect but don't share) or empirically-based ? If the latter I would say there are a great many empirically-based investigators who don't share your view.

Dave

I agree with Fontana that genuine contact seems the most natural explanation for the best of mental mediumship.  But even these cases cannot override the negative evidence--e. g. the exposure of Leonora Piper and Blanche Cooper's channeling.  Both mediums strike me as more gifted than any modern mediums.  Piper's confidence in the genuineness of her channeling was rightly shattered.  Also, the experiences of Gasson and and Michaelson are strong cautionary tales, especially when considered in the light of the long history of the identification of the medium's contact as a demon or a god.   Swedenborg is IMO the greatest astral adept ever, and he warns of how sinisterly skilllful malevolent discarnate humans are at spirit impersonation.   

I agree it is wise not just to assume that any communicator is who they profess to be - only that they might be ! When Jesus was accused of being in league with the devil according to Mathew 12:25 He replied ' Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand:' . By that I assume He meant that positive motivations beget positive outcomes and negative motivations beget negative outcomes.With reference to loving mediumship readings, they may be what they appear to be i.e. comforting messages from departed loved ones.

heisenberg,

Another crucial issue is postmortem memory.  Swedenborg discovers that the memory of the long deceased is generally dormant so that they can progress unfettered by ties to their earthly past.  Only by occasional divine discretion is their earth memory allowed to reactivate.  OBE adept Robert Bruce independently confirms this claim by discovering the inability of deceased spirits to recall spirit planes from which they have descended to greet arriving loved ones.  This creates problems for the medium's assumption that she can channel the deceased to communicate with chatty ease the details of their earth life.

Don (Berserk):

I figure you remember why I don't trust what Robert Bruce has to say about the below. Why you don't believe that he lost credibility after making up a story about Sai Baba, that's for you to answer.

I'm also not willing to take Swedenborg's word for it. I read a fair amount of what Swedenborg wrote, and eventhough much of it sounds okay, some of it seems questionable to me.  I definitely don't believe he is an infallible source of information.

That doesn't mean that there isn't any truth to the below at all. There might be some cases when a progressing soul has to forget about its life on Earth for while. But not completely, because incarnating in this World partly serves the purpose of educating a soul. Plus when a soul becomes integrated, past life memories shouldn't be a problem.

It is also important to remember that when souls rejoin their soul groups they share what they learned while here on Earth.  Such members will consider what a returning soul group member experienced with the same kind of depth and expansiveness that a NDE life review includes. 

I believe the below viewpoint really underestimates what a soul is capable of. Eventually a soul will become aware of so much information that the memories of "one" Earth based incarnation will seem miniscule.

This is why viewpoints such as the Disk viewpoint are helpful, even if somebody such as Swendenborg wouldn't consider such a viewpoint. Such viewpoints point towards what we are capable of, rather than limiting us.


Berserk2 wrote on Jun 2^nd, 2012 at 7:45pm:

heisenberg, Another crucial issue is postmortem memory.  Swedenborg discovers that the memory of the long deceased is generally dormant so that they can progress unfettered by ties to their earthly past.  Only by occasional divine discretion is their earth memory allowed to reactivate.  OBE adept Robert Bruce independently confirms this claim by discovering the inability of deceased spirits to recall spirit planes from which they have descended to greet arriving loved ones.  This creates problems for the medium's assumption that she can channel the deceased to communicate with chatty ease the details of their earth life.

recoverer,

As you know, I don't think any modern adept even comes close to the quality of Swedenborg's verifications.  Refresh my memory about your beef with Robert Bruce.  Why did he have to be lying about the astral encounter with Sai Baba?  Could he not have been deceived by wishful thinking or a spirit impersonator?  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall that your argument that RB was lying was partly based on Sai Baba's sexual misconduct.   If so, why do you assume that one's ability to project astral visions of oneself depends on our idea of commendable character?  I remind you that Gandhi slept naked with several teenage virgins (not his wife), but claimed he had no sex with them.  I don't approve of that behavior, but I admire Gandhi as in many ways a holy man. 

It also strikes me as puzzling that channeled entities won't answer time-based questions like this: What were the last few activities you participated in before  channeling yourself to me?  I'm not satisfied by the reply that such a question cannot be answered because the deceased is outside of time.  Even if that were true, the deceased should be able to offer some sort of clarifying comments (analogous to Swedenborg's) about their life on the other side.

Don

Berserk2 wrote on Jun 2^nd, 2012 at 7:45pm:

heisenberg, Another crucial issue is postmortem memory.  Swedenborg discovers that the memory of the long deceased is generally dormant so that they can progress unfettered by ties to their earthly past.  Only by occasional divine discretion is their earth memory allowed to reactivate.  OBE adept Robert Bruce independently confirms this claim by discovering the inability of deceased spirits to recall spirit planes from which they have descended to greet arriving loved ones.  This creates problems for the medium's assumption that she can channel the deceased to communicate with chatty ease the details of their earth life.

I understand that Swedenborg was a brilliant man, in many ways ahead of his time, but personally speaking, like recoverer, I am against placing too much faith in one source. In other disciplines such as science or history towering figures such as Einstein and Newton did not get everything right and their peers would not accept something just because they said so ! (e.g Einstein's 'greatest mistake' the Cosmological Constant and Newton's alchemy). The fact is we all have preconceptions, prejudices, filters etc. which should  caution others against taking our word for it.

With regards to spirit contact, objections seem to come in two basic camps: mind reading and spirit impersonation. Where information comes in a highly personalised, intentioned way it seems to me that that mind reading is not the best explanation. Regarding impersonation it seems to me that when the message is loving, specific and with positive results (e.g someone contemplating suicide has a renewed vigour to live ) it seems to me that impersonation is not the best explanation ( see my Mathew 12:25 quote above). Although I am not  saying mind reading and impersonation don't happen I am saying I have read/watched many readings where they don't seem to be the best explanation (to me) ...

Don:

I don't dismiss the possibility that a deceptive being might've appeared to Robert Bruce with the image of Sai Baba, but there is more to it than that. Once Robert reached the point where he could no longer defend Sai Baba against accusations of being a child molestor, instead of saying that Sai Baba isn't an Avatar (incarnation of God), he defended Sai Baba's child molesting in more than one way.

He said things such as the actions of Avatars are mysterious.  That the boys Sai Baba had sex with consented to have sex with him.  He also defended Sai Baba's actions in other ways, I don't remember the details. It is very possible that Robert defended Sai Baba in this way because he didn't want to have explain how a non-Avatar materialized before him as a being of light.

Sai Baba isn't the only bogus Avatar Robert promoted on his site. He also promoted a Da Free John book, and Da Free John was one of the most scandolous American gurus there has been. He claimed that no other person before him has been a more significant manifestation of God, and none will ever surpass him. He claimed that a day will come when all of the slugs of this World follow him. He claimed that when he dies he will be resurected. This didn't happen. Here is a video of Da. Perhaps Robert should've done a little more research before promoting such a guy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ks6fXVeE-5g

I also don't buy Robert's story about how he received a demon destroying sword. Going by my experiences and the experiences of others, the way to deal with unfriendly entities is to send them love. I do not believe that light workers seek to destroy unfriendly entities. Rather, they try to help them evolve.

Regarding channeling, you know from past conversations that I'm not a big fan. When it comes to the medium form of channeling, some mediums are fake. Some might receive information from deceptive beings. However, this doesn't mean that there aren't any mediums who are genuine. I believe that many people have been helped by genuine mediums. In some cases they were helped with their grief. Therefore, I believe there are some mediums that provide a service.


Berserk2 wrote on Jun 2^nd, 2012 at 11:40pm:

recoverer, As you know, I don't think any modern adept even comes close to the quality of Swedenborg's verifications.  Refresh my memory about your beef with Robert Bruce.  Why did he have to be lying about the astral encounter with Sai Baba?  Could he not have been deceived by wishful thinking or a spirit impersonator?  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall that your argument that RB was lying was partly based on Sai Baba's sexual misconduct.   If so, why do you assume that one's ability to project astral visions of oneself depends on our idea of commendable character?  I remind you that Gandhi slept naked with several teenage virgins (not his wife), but claimed he had no sex with them.  I don't approve of that behavior, but I admire Gandhi as in many ways a holy man.  It also strikes me as puzzling that channeled entities won't answer time-based questions like this: What were the last few activities you participated in before  channeling yourself to me?  I'm not satisfied by the reply that such a question cannot be answered because the deceased is outside of time.  Even if that were true, the deceased should be able to offer some sort of clarifying comments (analogous to Swedenborg's) about their life on the other side. Don

I haven't been following this thread but saw the name of Sai Baba, the fraud:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yblhsr1O4IQ
Amazing how gullible some people can be, even when someone is exposed as a fraud (I am not referring to anyone on this site but to many out there who still believe that Baba has paranormal powers.

ottawa1, are you a troll?

Why do you ask if I am a troll? Are you a follower of Sai Baba and I hit a nerve?

http://www.indiadivine.org/audarya/hinduism-forum/214427-sai-baba-deluded-fraud-evidence.html
More evidence to prove Baba was nothing but a cheap charlatan. Hope such proof does not disrupt your paradigm too much Pauli.

Ottawa, thanks for that.  I agree that Sai Baba is immoral and dishonest.  But in the history of witchcraft psychics of dubious character have still been able to display paranormal gifts.  But the real  question is why Robert Bruce must be deemed a liar for claiming to see a vision of Sai Baba.  His vision of Sai Baba might be either the product of a spirit impersonator or a hallucination.  I'm not a big fan of Robert Bruce personally, but I do think he is a astral adept.  So when he independently confirms Swedenborg's discovery that discarnate souls soon find their earth memories dormant and rarely available, I take this seriously as problematic for the chatty ease with which mediums connect seekers with loved ones, who are remarkably adept at retrieving detailed memories. 

Don:

I won't say that Robert Bruce doesn't astral project at all, because I don't know. Perhaps he has projected alot. Nevertheless, for the reasons I stated plus others I don't completely trust him.

Plus, I'd rather be like Mother Terressa than like a person who can astral project a lot.

When it comes to receiving information from/about deceased loved ones, there might be occasions when  friendly beings pass on messages for the sake of deceased loved ones who aren't currently capable of communicating with the people who try to communicate with them.


Berserk2 wrote on Jun 3^rd, 2012 at 10:57pm:

Ottawa, thanks for that.  I agree that Sai Baba is immoral and dishonest.  But in the history of witchcraft psychics of dubious character have still been able to display paranormal gifts.  But the real  question is why Robert Bruce must be deemed a liar for claiming to see a vision of Sai Baba.  His vision of Sai Baba might be either the product of a spirit impersonator or a hallucination.  I'm not a big fan of Robert Bruce personally, but I do think he is a astral adept.  So when he independently confirms Swedenborg's discovery that discarnate souls soon find their earth memories dormant and rarely available, I take this seriously as problematic for the chatty ease with which mediums connect seekers with loved ones, who are remarkably adept at retrieving detailed memories.

Berserk, do you believe Sai Baba had any paranormal powers? If so, which ones. Thanks.

I have seen the slight of hand videos, and have no doubt that these were simple magician's tricks.  Now, does that mean that any other claims he made were fraudulent, and so were his teachings?  Pretty much.  If you are a habitual liar in one aspect of your life, it is unlikely that you will be truthful in other aspects.

Sai Baba used to supposedly materialize one brand of watch.  Then that brand became unavailable and he supposedly started to materialize another brand. Maybe it was a matter of trademark issues. :D


DocM wrote on Jun 4^th, 2012 at 4:07pm:

I have seen the slight of hand videos, and have no doubt that these were simple magician's tricks.  Now, does that mean that any other claims he made were fraudulent, and so were his teachings?  Pretty much.  If you are a habitual liar in one aspect of your life, it is unlikely that you will be truthful in other aspects.

Excellent article on Sai Baba

http://www.nhne.com/specialreports/srsaibaba.html#more

OK, enough on Sai Baba already!  What about the general principle that astral explorers (e. g. Robert Bruce, Swedenborg) encounter discarnates who don't seem to recall their earth lives?  Would you concede that that might be a problem for the chatty ease with mediums extract detailed information from discarnates about their earth lives?  Or is it better to see the medium as gleaning information from the lving or deceased minds without that person even being aware of this?  Thus, the proxy sitter at Blanche Cooper's reading received detailed information about Gordon Davis's past and future life without Davis's awareness.  Indeed, Cooper portrayed Davis as deceased and only concerned about his surviving wife and child.  But Davis was alive at the time and on a business trip.  Here's the key: the sitter had been wrongly informed that Davis was dead!

I agree Don. Sai Baba is off topic. Whoever brought him into the conversation should be flogged. ;)


Berserk2 wrote on Jun 4^th, 2012 at 8:29pm:

OK, enough on Sai Baba already!  What about the general principle that astral explorers (e. g. Robert Bruce, Swedenborg) encounter discarnates who don't seem to recall their earth lives?  Would you concede that that might be a problem for the chatty ease with mediums extract detailed information from discarnates about their earth lives?  Or is it better to see the medium as gleaning information from the lving or deceased minds without that person even being aware of this?  Thus, the proxy sitter at Blanche Cooper's reading received detailed information about Gordon Davis's past and future life without Davis's awareness.  Indeed, Cooper portrayed Davis as deceased and only concerned about his surviving wife and child.  But Davis was alive at the time and on a business trip.  Here's the key: the sitter had been wrongly informed that Davis was dead!

Ah! Come off it Don! As usual you need a springboard to launch your boring Christian based argumentative spiel such as using the recent posts from the 'Depresso Sisters' Judith and Deanna...      

Berserk2 wrote on Jun 4^th, 2012 at 8:29pm:

What about the general principle that astral explorers (e. g. Robert Bruce, Swedenborg) encounter discarnates who don't seem to recall their earth lives?

I'm not sure if I'm on topic, but I think I recall that Moen or Buhlman have mentioned that discarnates may forget their previous lives and get absorbed into some kind of world (not necessarily BST) which fits their state of mind. They end up like they were in a dream and don't question much what they are doing.

Like Max in the "Max Hell" chapter. Max is an emotional sadist, he is so absorbed by his own state of being that he completely has forgotten about his Earthly life. He may not be in a true BST world, meaning it's not based on a religious belief, but still it's one of the BST Focuses, probably a F 24 or F 25 Hell.

His world is real to him, and as long as he can't free himself from the way he is, he will probably not remember anything from physical life.

Sometimes people just refuses to accept that they are dead, they deny it or don't realize it. Instead they create their own realities like the White Collar Businessman.

Other beings may never have been born as humans, so they can't remember any human life.

I tend to agree with Swedenborg, who noted that when you leave the earth plane, as you are distanced from common earthly sensory experiences, you push some of them back in your memory.  Spiritual senses may be heightened but are, by their very nature different than earthly senses.  There is no earthly "biology" that we know of in heaven, and hence, common day-to-day physical experiences begin to fade, and we may forget certain earth-plane related things.  This is why, it confuses me that mediums often bring up the opposite information, such as the exact date of a birth or death 30 years before. I very much doubt that many elderly people are aware of the dates of their death, yet a medium may come out with June 27, 1976.  Now come on...it makes much more sense that the medium is pulling a number from a source (like what has been described as an akashic record) in those instances.  However, the information is always intriguing.

Communication with those in the mental plane is always a two-way street, and this may, in part explain the fuzziness of some information that is received.  We are assuming that when Robert Bruce or E.S. reported spirits with memory trouble, that they were certain of it.  But what were the connections between these incarnate human beings and the discarnate ones?  Was the communication free and chatty, or were they filtering their "impressions" of the conversation through the interpreter in their physical brains?   Of course this question can not be answered.

However we can take, as an example remote viewing  (RV) as a corollary situation.  In RV, a person opens their mind and tries to examine an object in a distant part of the world based solely on what they are told of its longitude and latitude (and similar information).  The worst remote viewers get caught up in interpreting or misinterpreting the fleeting images they get.  Thus, steel girders from a destroyed building may come across as a bridge crossing over water, because the RViewer's mind interprets the image, even if the interpretation is incorrect.  Our minds tend to try to make order out of things - to see patterns where none may exist. 

The same may be true for communications by mediums and astral explorers.  The mind of the person still living may color the interpretation of factual information. 

Matthew

' What about the general principle that astral explorers (e. g. Robert Bruce, Swedenborg) encounter discarnates who don't seem to recall their earth lives?  Would you concede that that might be a problem for the chatty ease with mediums extract detailed information from discarnates about their earth lives?  Or is it better to see the medium as gleaning information from the lving or deceased minds without that person even being aware of this?  Thus, the proxy sitter at Blanche Cooper's reading received detailed information about Gordon Davis's past and future life without Davis's awareness.  Indeed, Cooper portrayed Davis as deceased and only concerned about his surviving wife and child.  But Davis was alive at the time and on a business trip.  Here's the key: the sitter had been wrongly informed that Davis was dead! '

The Gordon Davis is interesting, because if true, it supports evidence of paranormality as Blanche Cooper did not know Gordon Davis. But there is more than one interpretation of it. For example did a (unconscious) sub-aspect of Davis's personailty manifest itself in the stress of warfare with an obvious regard for his family's welfare (wartime 'crisis' apparitions to loved ones are a well-known phenomenon). That our normal, consious everyday self is only the tip of the psychic iceberg is a staple idea of everyone from Freudian psychoanalysis to Moen's 'state specific consciousness' and aspect retrieval. Such a sub-personality may be unconscious to us normally but still exist. In different circumstances we may be aware of it e.g under hypnosis. Surely this may be just evidence that we are much more than we think we are. Further to that I'm not sure we can legitimately extrapolate this case to account for other apparent cases of mediumship because in nearly all other cases the 'communicator' is demonstrably deceased !

For me, the greatest single problem for the genuiness of channeling is the deafening silence, the breakthrough insights that we would naturally expect, but never receive.  Must we assume that our deceased loved ones learn nothing new about the purpose of life, the nature of human consiciousness, unknown principles that govern effective prayer and paranormal abilities?  Many astral explorers lead us to believe that there is a Hall of Knowledge in Focus 27 that contains all knowlege, including secrets of the universe.  If channeling is genuine, should we not expect all kinds of unexpected insights about the differences between life here and life there?  Al kinds of unexpected insights about the stages and methods of spiritual progress on the other side?  As it is, what gets channeled (e. g. the Seth books of Jane Roberts) is disconcertingly mundane and deficient in imagination--just the sort of disclosures that one would expect if this is nothing but a projection of our unconsious minds, supplemented by some amazing access to group mind or the collective unconscious to provide that paranormal information under discussion.  Communication with afterlife territories might naturally be expected to provide scientific and other nonoccult breakthroughs for human life on earth.  The deafening silences render the most impressive parnormal "verifications" unconvincing, at least to me.

Don

"For me, the greatest single problem for the genuiness of channeling is the deafening silence, the breakthrough insights that we would naturally expect, but never receive.  Must we assume that our deceased loved ones learn nothing new about the purpose of life, the nature of human consiciousness, unknown principles that govern effective prayer and paranormal abilities?  Many astral explorers lead us to believe that there is a Hall of Knowledge in Focus 27 that contains all knowlege, including secrets of the universe.  If channeling is genuine, should we not expect all kinds of unexpected insights about the differences between life here and life there?  Al kinds of unexpected insights about the stages and methods of spiritual progress on the other side?  As it is, what gets channeled (e. g. the Seth books of Jane Roberts) is disconcertingly mundane and deficient in imagination--just the sort of disclosures that one would expect if this is nothing but a projection of our unconsious minds, supplemented by some amazing access to group mind or the collective unconscious to provide that paranormal information under discussion.  Communication with afterlife territories might naturally be expected to provide scientific and other nonoccult breakthroughs for human life on earth.  The deafening silences render the most impressive parnormal "verifications" unconvincing, at least to me.

Don"

Don,

Your argument only could apply for mediums who claim to hear a deceased person talking "word for word."  Many mediums say that get visual symbols, letters, dates - as the information is transmitted.  Scientific breakthroughs would be nigh on impossible with these indirect bursts of communication. 

A channeling, as personified by Seth is a different story.  It would stand to reason that a channeled entity should be able to "bring over" more useful information. 

There does seem to be a deliberate game going on here in earth-life.  We willingly (or not) enter into an incarnate organism, and separate ourselves out from everything else.  There is a sense that if communication with the otherside were a free exchange, that we might "spoil the purpose" (ruin the punchline) of incarnating in the first place.  If there are divine rules about this sort of things, we should know about it. 

Matthew

Matthew,

Channeling was in its heyday in the first half of the 20th century; and then the most renowned mediums produced far more impressive word for word communications and needed no letter or symbol gimmicks to assist them (e.g.  Leonora Piper, Blanche Cooper, Gladys Leonard).  Then and (to a lesser extent) even now, whole books were composed on the basis of channeled material. 

I see the need for new types of research with "word for word" mediums that would focus on questions like these 8:   

(1) What have you been doing since I last communicated with you?
(2) What were the last 5 experiences you had in your new world?
(3) Are there schools over there to help new arrivals to adjust to their new world?  If so, what insights have they taught you that we on earth would never guess?
(4) Are there Halls of Knowledge or special libraries there that contain the answer to scientific and spiritual questions that now elude us?  Can we use mediums to contact those who have made such important discoveries there? 

(5) How often are you allowed to visit loved ones back on earth?  Are you even capable of making your presence known to them? 

(6) What methods have you been taught to make contact with them?  Most importantly, what are the best methods for us to use to contact our deceased loved ones?

(7) In his NDE, George Ritchie visited a world "below" heaven, in which complex machines were being used and studied in what looked like research universities.  What kind of research is being done in such worlds and what are some of the most important new discoveries that have been made there?

(8) Emmanuel Swedenborg made several fascinating discoveries about the nature of the afterlie and the principles that govern them. Is it possible for modern astral explorers to achieve even more astral inisghts than ES?  If so, how?

I have no hope that such questions would lead to any breakthroughs.  Hence, my skepticism.  But even the chnnneled rationalizations for not answering such questions might be instructive. 

Concrete quotations from George Ritchie's NDE and Swedenborg's astral research might make our discussion of postmotem memory issues clearer.

Psychiatrist George Ritchie experienced the most influential and one of the most in depth NDEs ever recorded.   It is his NDE experienced as a young solider during World War II that inspired Raymond Moody to research NDEs for his influential book “Life After Life.”  Together with Howard Storm’s “My Descent into Death,” 

Ritchie’s book “Return from Tomorrow” ranks as my favorite NDE book and certainly the best written.  This post picks up his story after Christ has appeared to him as a blazing Being of Light and taken him on a tour of the locales of various earthbound spirits. Christ then takes hiim to a higher, more peaceful educational plane.  Let me quote a few snippets from Ritchie’s enthralling description of that plane:

“We entered a studio where music of a complexity I couldn’t begin to follow was being composed and performed.  There were complicated rhythms, tones not on any scale I knew. . .Now we walked through a library the size of the whole University of Richmond.  I gazed into rooms lined floor to floor with documents on parchment, clay, leather, metal, paper.  `Here,’ the thought occurred to me, `are assembled all the important books of the universe.’...Then abruptly, at the door of one of the smaller rooms, almost an annex: `Here is the central  thought of this earth [70-71].’”

“I could not tell if they were men or women, old or young, for all were covered from head to toe in loose-flowing hooded cloaks which made me think vaguely of monks.  But the atmosphere was not at all as I imagined a monastery.  It was more like some tremendous study center, humming with the excitement of great discovery.  Everyone we passed in the wide halls and on  the curving stair cases seemed caught up in some all-engrossing activity; not many words were exchanged among them.  And yet I sensed no unfriendliness between these beings, rather an aloofness of total concentration.”

“WHATEVER ELSE THESE PEOPLE MIGHT BE, THEY APPEARED UTTERLY AND
SUPREMELY SELF-FORGETFUL--ABSORBED IN SOME VAST PURPOSE BEYOND
THEMSELVES.  Through open doors I glimpsed enormous rooms filled with complex equipment.  In several of the rooms hooded figures bent over intricate charts and diagrams, or sat at the controls of elaborate consoles flickering with lights....I felt that some vast experiment was being pursued, perhaps dozens and dozens of such experiments [69-70] .”

The educational realm witnessed by Ritchie seems reminiscent of some descriptions of Focus 27 in the Monroe-Moen scheme of “astral geography.”  But Ritchie detects that its inhabitants are still incapable of perceiving Christ’s exalted presence and that even this peaceful realm does not yet qualify as Heaven.

The astral insights of Ritchie and R. Bruce might have profound implications for deceased souls from higher planes who might otherwise want to retrieve their loved ones who are "stuck" in lower or hellish planes. To what extent do they even remember these “trapped” loved ones, let alone their loved ones who are still alive on the earth?

Swedenborg explores astral memory problems in greater depth than either Ritchie or R. Bruce.   Here is a sampling of some ES quotes about the status of memory in “the World of Spirits,” a realm “below” the Heavens:

“We have two memories, an inner and an outer, or a natural one and a spiritual one. We are not aware that we have this inner memory.  How much better the inner memory is than the outer one! The contents of our outer memory are in the world’s light, while the contents of our inner memory are in heaven’s light.  It is because of our inner memory that we can think and talk intelligently and rationally.  Absolutely everything we have thought, said, done, seen, and heard is inscribed on our inner memory....Things that have become second nature to us and part of our life and therefore have been erased from our outer memory are in our inner memory (463, note b)."

After death, adult memory “stays fixed and then goes dormant; but it still serves their thinking after death as an outmost plane because their thought flows into it.  This is why the nature of this plane and the way their rational activity answers to its contents determines the nature of the individual after death (#345)."

".All that remain are the rational abilities that now serve as a basis for thinking and talking.   We actually take with us our entire natural memory, but its contents are not open to our inspection and do not enter into our thought as when we were living in this world...To the extent that our spirit has become rational by means of our insights and learning in this world, we are rational after
our departure from the body (#355).”
   
“The reason our outer memory goes dormant as far as material things are concerned is that they cannot be recreated.  Spirits and angels [= discarnate people] actually talk from the affections and consequent thoughts of their minds, so they cannot utter anything that does not square with these...I have talked with any number of people who were regarded as learned in the world because of their knowledge of such ancient languages as Hebrew and Greek and Latin, but had not developed their rational functioning by means of the things that were written in thos  languages. Some of them seemed as simple as people who did not know anything about those languages; some of them seemed dense, though there still remained a pride as though they were wiser than other people (#464).”

“I have also talked with some people who had believed in the world that wisdom depends on how much we have in our memory and who have therefore filled their memories to bursting.  They talked almost exclusively from those items, which meant that they were not talking for themselves, but for others; and they had not developed any rational functioning by means of these matters of memory.   Some of them were dense, some silly, with no grasp of truth whatever (#464).”

“Our rational faculty is like a garden or flower bed, like newly tilled land.  Our memory is the soil, information and experiential learning are the seeds, while heaven’s light and warmth make them productive...There is no germination unless heaven’s light, which is divine truth, and heaven’s warmth, which is divine love, are let in.  They are the only source of rationality (#464).”   

“One particular spirit lamented the fact that he could not remember much of what he had known during his physical life.  He was grieving over the pleasure he had lost because it had been his chief delight.  He was told, though, that he had not lost anything at all and that he knew absolutely everything.  In the world where he was now living, he was not allowed to retrieve things like that.  It should satisfy him that he could now think and talk much better and more perfectly without immersing his rational functioning in dense clouds, in material and physical concerns, the way he had before, in concerns that were useless in the kingdom he had now reached (#465).”

“Since the natural objects that reside in our memory cannot be reproduced in a spiritual world, they become dormant the way they do when we are not thinking about them.  Even so, they can be reproduced when it so pleases the Lord (#461).”

Don

My take on it is slightly different and I try to put myself in the shoes of the deceased attempting to communicate. First of all I would be trying to take advantage of the small 'window of opportunity' I had been given and establishing it was really me by giving information such as identifying pet nick names etc. Secondly, I would send my love to those left behind. When skeptics point out the mundanity of messages I would respond - only mundane to the onlooker far from mundane to the individuals involved ! If love really is the most important thing in the world then we should not be surprised that that is a dominant theme of the message. Just like the hurried messages of the passengers on the doomed 9/11 flights to relatives at home was one of love.

We must also remember that most of the deceased are ordinary men and women and not astral adepts like Swedenberg with his focus. I sense that there may be an idea that since everyone is going that way there is plenty of time to find out what it is like there ! I agree with Mathew's point that the main thing may be to concentrate on the 'here and now' and not 'spoil the punchline'. There is also the sense that that world may also be in some sense ineffable to us embedded as we are in space and time.

Having said that there are course exceptions that mediums don't talk about the nature of the afterlife, such as Arthur Findlay's 'On the Edge of the Etheric' amongst others discussed on Victor Zammit's 'What Happens when we Die' page at : http://www.victorzammit.com/book/4thedition/chapter29.html

Quote:

There is a sense that if communication with the otherside were a free exchange, that we might "spoil the purpose" (ruin the punchline) of incarnating in the first place.

Yes I always come to this thought, when I can't put it all together, that there seems to be some missing part. Some who report NDE's say that the thinking process works differently "over there" because the cultural constraints and the directionality of time no longer rule. Maybe the punchline is only clear when these constraints are not in play.

Berserk2 wrote on Jun 5^th, 2012 at 6:13pm:

Many astral explorers lead us to believe that there is a Hall of Knowledge in Focus 27 that contains all knowlege, including secrets of the universe.

Monroe, in his third and last book writes on page 143, Monroe writes
about The Memory Layer, which seems to be part of his I-There.
Perhaps The Memory Layer is related to F 15?

I'm not sure that The Memory Layer is the same as the thing some
call the Akashica, because The Memory Layer seems more related to
Monroe's own I-There. But still, it's an interesting observation.

Further, notice that Monroe called the most of his astral travels and
our universe for "local traffic", and he called ELS (and F 27) for local-local traffic.
So my guess is that whatever Knowledge resides in F 27, it is not _all_ the secrets.

I have been posting on the Shroud of Turin thread not because I believe in its authenticity but because (1) the creation of the shroud is still scientificially inexplicable and (2) its autnenticity is in principle falsifiable, given better dating techniques, one of which will soon be applied to the shroud.  Similarly, channeling is a mystery, in which many have personal and ego investment as a matter of faith.  So any attempt to coerce belief or rejection is likely to provoke resistance, even resentment.  Therefore, the most constructive approach is to explore all the barriers to its credibility to place paranormal claims in a more comprehensive theoretical context.  But IMO the argument that there are just some things we are not meant to know is a cop-out designed to undermine the falsifiability of channeling claims. 

Don-

you seem to accept the paranormality of some mediumship ( more than many materialist scientists !) but  indicate that it is better explained as mind reading or tapping the collective unconscious i.e 'super-ESP' than genuine discarnate contact. But are you sure that the super-ESP hyothesis itself is falsifiable ?

David Fontana writes in ' Is There an Afterlife' p.107-108: ' the possible existence of Super-Psi cannot be refuted, and in theory it remains conceiveable that any evidence for survival could be explained away as originating in the psychic abilities of the living. However, my experience of mediumship began over 35 years ago, and during these years I have sat with and interviewed any number of mediums and sitters and those reporting spontaneous cases. To date, I have not met anyone (including myself) who has thought it appropriate to attribute highly significant veridical information received through mediums to super-ESP rather than to survival.'.

Fontana devotes a sizeable section to super-ESP but rather than copying out a large chunk I quote a small piece, but it represents his unequivocal view, based on much of his life studying mediumship, that Super-ESP is not the best explanation. I believe that he came to this view, not through any credulity or investment in mediumship but because that was where the evidence took him. Unless one rejects mediumship as evidence for survival a priori, maybe based on some kind of dogma, then the evidence as a whole is impressive.

Quote:

...the most constructive approach is to explore all the barriers to its credibility to place paranormal claims in a more comprehensive theoretical context. But IMO the argument that there are just some things we are not meant to know is a cop-out designed to undermine the falsifiability of channeling claims.

Don, I agree.  Exploring all possibilities is the best way to develop our theories.  As far as I can tell it is rare for a medium to be in contact with an actual deceased loved one.  It is possible of course, just unlikely in my opinion.  More likely is being in contact with another spiritual being that has the ability to access memory in a "database" if the medium doesn't have the ability to access it themselves.   

As far as things we are not meant to know being cop-out I feel, based on my experience, that is an accurate statement.  It isn't that we are not meant to know, but that we do not always have the capability to access the information because of the limitations of ELS as well as our own limitations.  And of course one's own interpretation comes into play many times distorting the information accessed.

Post mortem memory loss seems natural, especially if we consider the only moment we truly appear to exist in is the present moment.  We may be able to recall past events, yet many times even the way in which we remember them is clouded by the passing of time.  Sometimes we think that after death we will know more than what we are able to know while alive.  I'm not so sure about that.  I think we can only know what we have experienced and how we interpreted the meaning of those experiences. Is this the case after death?  I don't know, but I do think it is something to consider.

Kathy

Hi Kathy,

Great to have you back posting here again!
I want to draw a parallel to my own spiriitual limitations.  Many years ago, a very insightful Anglican bishop, William Temple, succinctly expressed his own barrier to effective ministry: "When I pray, coincidences happen, when I don't, they don't."  What he meant was this: when he was too busy to spend significant regular time in prayer and meditation, faith-inspiring coincidences and unexpected chances to bless others became dramatically less frequent.

Temple's simple observation applies to my experience as well.  When God seems to put me on the shelf for a while, it is tempting for me to rationalize and tell myself, "Well, you are not needed to help people around you right now!  Or God wants you to take a break from ministry; so ignore the temporary `drought.'" That rationalization may be true, butit  is suspiciously unfalsifiable.  It is more helpful for me to wonder if the coincidences have vanished because I have allowed myself to become too busy to meditate and pray or because my motivation has been contaminated by an unpleasant confrontation, conversation, or frustration.  Reflecting on such possibilities allows me to do some soul-searching and test my true attitudes.  Then when I correct myself, I can observe whether benign coincidences begin to return.  In other words, my approach to life becomes more falsifiable (testable) and puts me in a position to grow and learn. 

Similarly, with respect to the authenticity of channeling, we must provisionally resist the temptation to take positions that make our research immune to falsification even in principle.  But I also believe it is useful to ask why the true answers to certain types of questions might be spiritually harmful or might interfere with spiritual growth.

Don

Quote:

But IMO the argument that there are just some things we are not meant to know is a cop-out designed to undermine the falsifiability of channeling claims.

No
not some things you are not meant to know

but
some things you have to learn by your self that cannot be fit into words. Something inexpressable in words.

'As far as I can tell it is rare for a medium to be in contact with an actual deceased loved one.  It is possible of course, just unlikely in my opinion.  More likely is being in contact with another spiritual being that has the ability to access memory in a "database" if the medium doesn't have the ability to access it themselves.'

Hi Kathy,

I'd be interested to know how you came to this point of view.

D

The presence of a shared consciousness, universal consciousness or Super Psi, is, by our current definition, proof of the existence of a process outside of our knowledge of physical reality or the physical plane.  Because of this, I am always amused when I see arguments that no afterlife contact was made since a medium was simply tapping into a universal mind. 

Western science doesn't quite have a place for thought or mind.  It is more considered a curiousity of neurochemical origin.  But as far as modern science goes, the idea of a true "mind" be it single or group, is not a tangible physical reality (or one reproducible or reliably manipulated by surgery or predictable). 

If one postulates a universal mind that one connects to outside of the physical world, then one is mostly at a destination in the afterlife or mental plane of consciousness.  It seems straight forward to me, but the distinction isn't as clear as people assume. 

So we have to do better than to write off real contact with a deceased person as mining information from some ghostly Dewey Decimal system, since there is no evidence of the existence of this mental plane in the physical world. 

Once we prove that we are more than our physical bodies, then we have crossed a line to a realm of consciousness independent of biological processes, and more suited to the concept of survival/afterlife in a mental plane.

M

Matthew

Hi Don,

Temple's and your observation most likely applies to each of us in various ways.  We all live in this world.  It is all we know in the sense of our languages, cultures, beliefs, etc.  In everything we meet we project our "physicality" on to it.  There is a great deal of uncertainty and ambiguity not only in the things we perceive as external, but in what we perceive as internal as well.  I think what you're saying is that there are times when we lose touch with what we call God within because we do have a tendency to become focused on the external.

I think this is an intended, natural process just as our desire for seeking God within is also an intended, natural process.  A time... a season...  It all leads to the progression of our spiritual growth as you say.  We need that duality to manifest in our lives in order to have the ability to choose that which is for the betterment of not only our own growth, but for the benefit of the growth of others as well. 

To me life itself is to be lived as a prayer, as being in a meditative, contemplative state.  Sure we could consider the "coincidences" coming and going as a way to test our true attitudes, even our abilities and it may be somewhat reliable as well, but to me the whole point of our earthly existence is to become more loving, more caring, patient, kind, courageous, tolerant, etc.  This is our purpose, the reason we are experiencing physicality. 

When we are those things the sweetness of our essence, or God within up wells and radiates from us and our loving intent flows naturally from us.  To me, this is the true measure of how well we are doing.  Within us there is something mystical, mesmerizing and whole.  We all know this intuitively and we all seek to identify it, the unidentifiable.  Yet the unidentifiable has substance, has tangibility, yet is ineffably indescribable.

Kathy

DocM wrote on Jun 7^th, 2012 at 6:48am:

The presence of a shared consciousness, universal consciousness or Super Psi, is, by our current definition, proof of the existence of a process outside of our knowledge of physical reality or the physical plane.  Because of this, I am always amused when I see arguments that no afterlife contact was made since a medium was simply tapping into a universal mind.  Western science doesn't quite have a place for thought or mind.  It is more considered a curiousity of neurochemical origin.  But as far as modern science goes, the idea of a true "mind" be it single or group, is not a tangible physical reality (or one reproducible or reliably manipulated by surgery or predictable).  If one postulates a universal mind that one connects to outside of the physical world, then one is mostly at a destination in the afterlife or mental plane of consciousness.  It seems straight forward to me, but the distinction isn't as clear as people assume.  So we have to do better than to write off real contact with a deceased person as mining information from some ghostly Dewey Decimal system, since there is no evidence of the existence of this mental plane in the physical world.  Once we prove that we are more than our physical bodies, then we have crossed a line to a realm of consciousness independent of biological processes, and more suited to the concept of survival/afterlife in a mental plane. M Matthew

I agree Mathew. It seems strange to me to offer up a mutually exclusive medium real contact or super-ESP duality when there is no rationale to differentiate or test between them ! You hit the nail on the head; when the causal link between consciousness and biological process is broken, the Rubicon has been crossed.

heisenberg69 wrote on Jun 7^th, 2012 at 4:03am:

'As far as I can tell it is rare for a medium to be in contact with an actual deceased loved one.  It is possible of course, just unlikely in my opinion.  More likely is being in contact with another spiritual being that has the ability to access memory in a "database" if the medium doesn't have the ability to access it themselves.' Hi Kathy, I'd be interested to know how you came to this point of view. D

Hi Dave,

LOL :-) You may be asking for my life's story here...
My viewpoints as with anyone else is based on my life long understanding of what I've learned through experience and my attempt to make sense out of it.

Briefly, I believe studies show ADC with a loved one takes place about 50% of the time during the first year after death.  The communication in most of the cases I know about was instigated by the deceased loved one directly to a loved one still alive as a reassurance, without the need for a medium.  The purpose seems to be to not only provide comfort, but also to open the person still living to larger possibilities as well as giving them encouragement to live life fully.

After the initial reacclimation to the spirit realm, the person known in our memory no longer exists as that same person.  They have moved on and communication with them would likely be extremely difficult.  Believe it or not but our "guides" can and do a lot of impersonations if it is deemed helpful to one's spiritual growth.  In addition, what we may or may not "see" in non-physical reality is based on our own consciousness, beliefs, expectations and what we are able to understand as well as what might promote our spiritual growth.

It certainly is possible a medium is in contact with an actual person, but I see it as unlikely.

I don't know if this answers your question, but I hope it helps.

Kathy

Hi Kathy-

I totally agree with you.  My own experiences corroborate what you posted.

Re guides impersonating loved ones, ES also warned about the credibility (or lack of same) of information gained from those in the spirit plane.  He pointed out that those disincarnate entities that contact living persons are likely to be entities of a lower level and thus of dubious character.  Deception seems to be the name of their game.

Another reason, btw, to avoid ouija boards!

R

Dr. Soal visited Blanche Cooper to contact his deceased brother, not Gordon Davis.   Gordon Davis interrupted the session to express his concern for his "wife and kiddie" who survived him.  GD "verifed" his identity to Soal with characteristic diction and expressions  and details that Soal could confirm from the school days together.   GD portrayed himself as dead when in fact the real GD was alive and knew nothing about this channeling.  So telltale characteristic speech and impressive details of which the medium was ignorant are not argument for genuine contact.  So at most Cooper was tapping the reail GD's mind for paranormal details.  Right?  Wrong for 2 reasons: (1) GD clairvoyantly disclosed the real GD's future; e. g. details about furniture arrangement and structure of GD's new home, a home he hadn't even purchased yet!  So it's unlikely thet the medium discerned these detail from the real GD's mind.  (2) Why isn't channeling refuted in this way more often?  Well, Dr. Soal had been wrongly informed that GD had been killed in action during World War I.  How often are we wrongly informed about a friend's death?  So Dr. Soal's false belief in GD's death seems to have been a factor used by Cooper to reconstruct GD's personality and ife detals by ESP.  Cases like this shift the burden of proof to the person who wants to claim genuine contact with the deceased on the other side.  So should the Gordon Davis case be explained thrrugh super-ESP or spirit impersonation?  I don't know and don't need to know to detect a serious flaw in claims of genuine contact through channeling.

Add to this the exposures of channeling through the invention of loved ones and their personality profiles that are paranormally discerned by the medium and channeled as if these ficticious characters are alive and communicating from beyond the grave.  Such cases do not prove that no channeling is genuine, but IMO they make channeling the least likely explanation.         

Don-

Re channeling, I do think there are some things that do represent actual contact with the other side although the claimed source of the material is no doubt false.

Take ACIM for example.  No way did Helen Schucman sit down and write that book.  In fact at the end of her life she hated the damn thing.

IMO it was channeled via Schucman by a disincarnate entity but certainly not Jesus Christ as claimed.

So yes, channeled material does exist but as you point out, the source of the material is not who it is claimed to be, whether the source says he's Jesus or whether he says he is your dear departed Uncle Bart.

R

Hi R,

Have you ever wondered why channeled entities never begin to speak the way we would?  e. g.
"I was performing activity X (detailed description), when I felt a buzz (signal--the astral equivalent of a cell phone call) indicating that you wanted to communicate with me.  I'd love to hear your questions and I have so much about life over here that I'd love to share with you to encourage you in your journey." 

Don

Yes, that question has bothered me for a long time.  For instance, John Edward tells someone that their departed spouse is doing just fine, along with all sorts of trivial stuff designed to make the person think that he really has contacted her husband.  Other mediums do the same thing.

But never do they provide substantive information that everyone would love to know.  What's it like where you are?  What are your activities?  What have you learned about the purpose of life?

Instead we get meaningless stuff like "your husband always liked that blue dress......"

Do you recall years ago when Bruce was in contact with his departed engineering friend Ed Carter?  Ed was providing technical assistance to Bruce regarding the development of Bruce's afterlife communication device.

Now, the very nature of technical assistance is that by definition it has to be detailed.  Given that fact, I always wondered why Ed didn't provide specific information about the kind of universal questions we all want to know.  What a golden opportunity!

In all fairness, maybe Ed did and Bruce might be compiling it for a future book.  If so, it will make for a fascinating read!

R

Rondele-

'Instead we get meaningless stuff like "your husband always liked that blue dress......"' yes meaningless to the unconcerned onlooker but maybe not to the bereaved !


' So yes, channeled material does exist but as you point out, the source of the material is not who it is claimed to be, whether the source says he's Jesus or whether he says he is your dear departed Uncle Bart. '

But if channelling imposters exist ( and it probably happens ), why not discarnate loved ones who have, I would argue, the greater motivation to connect ?!

Lights of Love wrote on Jun 7^th, 2012 at 5:29pm:

heisenberg69 wrote on Jun 7th, 2012 at 4:03am: 'As far as I can tell it is rare for a medium to be in contact with an actual deceased loved one.  It is possible of course, just unlikely in my opinion.  More likely is being in contact with another spiritual being that has the ability to access memory in a "database" if the medium doesn't have the ability to access it themselves.' Hi Kathy, I'd be interested to know how you came to this point of view. D Hi Dave, LOL :-) You may be asking for my life's story here... My viewpoints as with anyone else is based on my life long understanding of what I've learned through experience and my attempt to make sense out of it. Briefly, I believe studies show ADC with a loved one takes place about 50% of the time during the first year after death.  The communication in most of the cases I know about was instigated by the deceased loved one directly to a loved one still alive as a reassurance, without the need for a medium.  The purpose seems to be to not only provide comfort, but also to open the person still living to larger possibilities as well as giving them encouragement to live life fully. After the initial reacclimation to the spirit realm, the person known in our memory no longer exists as that same person.  They have moved on and communication with them would likely be extremely difficult.  Believe it or not but our "guides" can and do a lot of impersonations if it is deemed helpful to one's spiritual growth.  In addition, what we may or may not "see" in non-physical reality is based on our own consciousness, beliefs, expectations and what we are able to understand as well as what might promote our spiritual growth. It certainly is possible a medium is in contact with an actual person, but I see it as unlikely. I don't know if this answers your question, but I hope it helps. Kathy

Hi Kathy,

yes ADCs are powerful and they seem to demonstrate that direct experience may be more compellingly evidential to the experiencer than contact through a medium. What I may see slightly differently is that I think we project into the afterlfe looking with physical reality eyes, basing what we think of as possible with that. For example, maybe it is possible that spiritual evolution and connection are not mutually exclusive. If my memory serves me correct I remember Bruce talking of a non-physical meeting with Monroe in which Monroe claimed to be communicating with many other people at the same time. Impossible in the physical, maybe not in the non-physical !

For my own part I try to be as open to as many possibilities as possible and stay clear from dogmatism (not accusing you of that !). When it comes to mediumship it may be that sometimes super-ESP is the best explanation, at other times impersonating spirits and still others genuine contact.  It may even be a combination of all three ! The truth is from our ELS perspective we simply don't know what the rules and limitations (if any) which apply to NPR.

D

I just had the oddest thought.  Imagine if some in the spirit world have an easier time contacting those in the physical world than others.  That might then give you the equivalent of a "spirit medium," - one who could make contact with an incarnated loved one more easily than other spirits. 

However, I've heard it said that those in spirit can see those in the physical world clearly when it suits them.  But, making contact in the physical seems difficult for most and as we know, it doesn't happen often

Spirit mediums? 

Johanna Michaelson is one of the cases I cite on this thread of someone who worked enthusistically for a Mexican medium, who, among other things, was used to do psychic surgery with a rusty hunting knife with no concession to anesthetic.  Her siprit control, Hermanito, gushed with love in this work.  But when Johanna diecided to become a Christian, Hermanito turned viscious and sent spirits to attack her.  She writes out this in her book, "The Beautiful Side of Evi.l" I mention this because the major mediums in the first ." half of the 19the century claimed to have spirit controls or, in effect, telephone operators on the other side. 

One such spirit guide (a former French doctor named Jean Scliville de Phinuit) produced wonderful paramormal information. But as for his own identity, he gave enough concrete details about his earth life that he was exposed as a fraud and hence presumably as a spirit impersonator.  Phinuit knew almost no French or medicine and never studied or praticed medicine at the med schools he claimed.  Richard Hodgson was the investigator. 

If mediums in the early and mid=20th centuries needed spirit controls, why not now?  If mediums prior to the 19th centuries generally attributed their channeling to a god or demon, why not now?  Who is to say whose intrepretion of their source is merely the product of cultural conditioning?

Berserk2 wrote on Jun 8^th, 2012 at 10:57pm:

Johanna Michaelson is one of the cases I cite on this thread of someone who worked enthusistically for a Mexican medium, who, among other things, was used to do psychic surgery with a rusty hunting knife with no concession to anesthetic.  Her siprit control, Hermanito, gushed with love in this work.  But when Johanna diecided to become a Christian, Hermanito turned viscious and sent spirits to attack her.  She writes out this in her book, "The Beautiful Side of Evi.l" I mention this because the major mediums in the first ." half of the 19the century claimed to have spirit controls or, in effect, telephone operators on the other side.  One such spirit guide (a former French doctor named Jean Scliville de Phinuit) produced wonderful paramormal information. But as for his own identity, he gave enough concrete details about his earth life that he was exposed as a fraud and hence presumably as a spirit impersonator.  Phinuit knew almost no French or medicine and never studied or praticed medicine at the med schools he claimed.  Richard Hodgson was the investigator.  If mediums in the early and mid=20th centuries needed spirit controls, why not now?  If mediums prior to the 19th centuries generally attributed their channeling to a god or demon, why not now?  Who is to say whose intrepretion of their source is merely the product of cultural conditioning?

It is my understanding that modern mental mediums have guides (acting as mentors) and modern physical mediums have controls acting as a kind of 'gatekeeper' during the seance; David Thompson's is called William Caldwell. Whether such guide/control's intent is positive or negative we would judge by their words and actions, just as with anyone else.

DocM wrote on Jun 8^th, 2012 at 8:51pm:

I just had the oddest thought.  Imagine if some in the spirit world have an easier time contacting those in the physical world than others.  That might then give you the equivalent of a "spirit medium," - one who could make contact with an incarnated loved one more easily than other spirits.  However, I've heard it said that those in spirit can see those in the physical world clearly when it suits them.  But, making contact in the physical seems difficult for most and as we know, it doesn't happen often Spirit mediums?

I would say that was a reasonable proposition. People in the physical vary greatly, assuming they don't change much on the transition, they will vary greatly in the non-physical in their desire and ability to make contact. Mediums say that communication is very much discarnate-led and that that they have their own agenda/motivation. It seems to me that if super-ESP were the dominant cause mediums should be able to access 'dead' information more on sitter demand. However, they say, quite often people expected/desired to show up don't and people not expected do !

heisenberg,

From my reading, only some modern mediuns imagine they use an identifiable spirit control. But let me poat my favorite simple example of a compelling ADC involving a Ouija Board, which can otherwise open the door to negative spirits.  I have shared this incident here a long time ago. 

Harvard professor, William James, has been called the father of modern psychology. He and a friend, Colunbia University professor, James Hyslop) made a pact that whoever died first would try to contact the other from the other side.  Well, WJ died first, and after a year, JH gave up on his hop that WJ would be able to keep his promise.  Then he was contacted by a couple in Ireland.  They had been playing with a Ouija board one day, when insistent message from a William James cama through, telling them to contact James Hyslop.  For a year, they ignored this demand because they had never heard of either man and because the message was too bizarre: "Remember the red pyjamas."  At first, JH dismissed this mesage as nonsense.  But then he recalled a winter trip to Paris he and WJ had taken for an academic conference.  JH's luggage had been misplaced and he needed pyjamas to stay warm; so the 2 men went shopping.  The only pyjamas JH could find were a gaudy red color and JH's friend WJ t eased him mercilessly for his bad taste!  To me, this tidbit illustrates the discarnate WJ's conviction that, after failing to communicate with JH in other ways, this concrete detail was the best way to avoid distortion by the belief system of the receiver.   It illustrate the difficulty of communicating with loved ones back on earth. 

Don

Nice example Don, but it also illustrates that its the little details which are most persuasive to the contacted ( and maybe most mundane to the bystander !). I also agree with you that it is probably no simple matter for contact to come through a medium which is why some are better (maybe more experienced  in interpretation of symbols ? ) than others and some may have no more ability than chance and guess work !

As for guides/controls, I have never heard of any working mediums who don't have them but then of course I don't know all working mediums ! I imagine to have mediumistic ability without any control/guidance could be quite a dangerous thing (like dabbling with ouija boards) and I have speculated how many people labelled as schizophrenic may simply be uncontrolled natural mediums.

For anyone interested, just found a good interview with Prof. Archie Roy, who at 88 years old, is one of the leading, still living, investigators of mediumship (especially the cross-correspondences) :

http://www.aspsi.org/feat/life_after/a073mt-a-Prof_Archie_E_Roy_interview.php

I believe it is important to not equate channeling in a Jane Roberts kind of way as being equivalent to mediumship.

If one doesn't make this connection, then it might become possible to see that it might not be easy for a medium to receive answers for the list of questions Berserk listed (as seen below). Having a spirit use your body to communicate and receiving messages isn't the same thing.

I have received a lot of spirit messages and there is somewhat of a communication gap. The messages I received most clearly are symbolic visual images.  Interpretive skill is key when communication is received in this way. If you receive a number of messages in this way one after the other, it is hard to remember all of the details when you write down what you were shown.

Sometimes I'll receive words either by hearing them or seeing them in written form. When this method of communication is used not more than a sentence at a time can be received. Therefore, I can't receive sentence after sentence as happens with channeling.

There have been occasions when I've had an extended conversation with a spirit being, but for whatever reason (s), afterwards, I can hardly remember what was communicated during such a conversation.

One thing extensive communication with spirits has shown me is that there are beings who are well aware of what is going on in this World. They have evolved to a point where they don't need to be completely isolated from this World in order to maintain their advanced state of being.

This being the case, it is possible that deceased loved ones can communicate with people who are still on this Earth as long as such a deceased loved has a state of consciousness that makes this possible.

Imagination this situation. A person is really grieving after having lost a loved one. This person visits a medium who is capable of communicating with spirits. The deceased loved one isn't able to communicate at the time. So what happens? A friendly spirit being communicates in place of the deceased loved one so the grieving person can be helped.

Such as occurence isn't a matter of a friendly spirit being dishonest. It is a matter of a love-based being doing what is needed, rather than being limited by the viewpoints advocated by people such as Robert Bruce and Emanuel Swedenborg.

Before a person becomes opposed to what mediums do with a zeal that is equivalent to religious fanaticism, perhaps a person should consider the possibility that there are some occasions when a grieving person is aided by a genuine medium who is able to communicate with love-based spirits.

When it comes to number 8 below, communicating with a spirit and out of body exploration aren't the same thing and different parameters exist.


Beserk's list:
(1) What have you been doing since I last communicated with you?
(2) What were the last 5 experiences you had in your new world?
(3) Are there schools over there to help new arrivals to adjust to their new world?  If so, what insights have they taught you that we on earth would never guess?
(4) Are there Halls of Knowledge or special libraries there that contain the answer to scientific and spiritual questions that now elude us?  Can we use mediums to contact those who have made such important discoveries there? 

(5) How often are you allowed to visit loved ones back on earth?  Are you even capable of making your presence known to them? 

(6) What methods have you been taught to make contact with them?  Most importantly, what are the best methods for us to use to contact our deceased loved ones?

(7) In his NDE, George Ritchie visited a world "below" heaven, in which complex machines were being used and studied in what looked like research universities.  What kind of research is being done in such worlds and what are some of the most important new discoveries that have been made there?

(8) Emmanuel Swedenborg made several fascinating discoveries about the nature of the afterlie and the principles that govern them. Is it possible for modern astral explorers to achieve even more astral inisghts than ES?  If so, how?

Nice points Recoverer. I think the problem with using the word 'channelling' to describe all mediumship is that in some ways it is misleading. Mediumship can range from a full trance where the medium has to be told later what occurred to fully consciously receiving subtle symbols (as Recoverer reports) - channelling seems to suggest that the medium is somehow always 'taken' over by the spirit.

I don't think dogmatic-based responses such as ' mediums cannot connect with loved ones' or 'all medium messages come from discarnates' are appropriate in that each case is unique and different and should be seen as such.

Heisenberg69:

Thank you for saying "Nice points."


heisenberg69 wrote on Jun 11^th, 2012 at 6:07pm:

Nice points Recoverer. I think the problem with using the word 'channelling' to describe all mediumship is that in some ways it is misleading. Mediumship can range from a full trance where the medium has to be told later what occurred to fully consciously receiving subtle symbols (as Recoverer reports) - channelling seems to suggest that the medium is somehow always 'taken' over by the spirit. I don't think dogmatic-based responses such as ' mediums cannot connect with loved ones' or 'all medium messages come from discarnates' are appropriate in that each case is unique and different and should be seen as such.

This site's channeling devotees duck the essential issue: where the genuineness of channeling contacts with the discarnate can be tested, the evidence shows that the alleged discarnate soul has not in fact been contacted.  The burden of proof thus rests with the channeling defender to develop criteria, showing that channeling is a respectable form of communication with the dead.  In rare cases (e. g. the deceased William James's "red  pyjamas" message to James Hyslop through the Irish Ouija Board players), channeling can produce genuine contact.  But the evidence suggests  that it is  generally fraudulent or self-delusory.

Don

I've watched videos and read the accounts of mediums doing their thing, and they clearly receive information from spirits.  Information that gets verified by the person they do a reading for. In circumstances where it  wasn't possible for them to receive the information beforehand.

Regarding it being nothing more than a matter of mind reading, even though in some cases this might be the case, I don't believe this is alway so, because some mediums receive information in a way that shows that spirit communication takes place. They do so in ways that reminds me of how I receive information from spirits. It is quite clear to me that when I receive information it isn't a matter of my experiencing hallucinations or reading a person's mind.

To me it is very reasonable to conclude that there are mediums who have become certain that they receive information from spirits. If I can become certain, then why can't other people do the same?

When trying to determine whether something is true, it is important to not overly focus on the perspective one is attached to.

As I said on an earlier post, there might be occasions when a medium receives information from an able spirit on the behalf of a deceased person that isn't currently available. The key factor is for a grieving person to be helped.


Berserk2 wrote on Jan 18^th, 2013 at 3:57pm:

This site's channeling devotees duck the essential issue: where the genuineness of channeling contacts with the discarnate can be tested, the evidence shows that the alleged discarnate soul has not in fact been contacted.  The burden of proof thus rests with the channeling defender to develop criteria, showing that channeling is a respectable form of communication with the dead.  In rare cases (e. g. the deceased William James's "red  pyjamas" message to James Hyslop through the Irish Ouija Board players), channeling can produce genuine contact.  But the evidence suggests  that it is  generally fraudulent or self-delusory. Don

Why can't a medium channel information to an astral adept, who then visits the astral contact to confirm that and other paranormal information? 

Berserk2 wrote on Jan 18^th, 2013 at 4:45pm:

Why can't a medium channel information to an astral adept, who then visits the astral contact to confirm that and other paranormal information?

What if a medium isn't in contact with a discarnate human or other being at all?  But instead is accessing stored memory within the consciousness system and the entity they think they're receiving information from is actually a metaphor either they or the consciousness system created?  I'm not saying other beings don't communicate with us.  Just that this scenario also exists and I wonder how this may play a part?

For one thing, some mediums speak of how spirits act when they interact with the medium. I've experienced the same, and it is more than a matter of receiving information from a data bank. When a spirit interacts with you in a playful or other animated way, it seems clear that an interaction is taking place.

They have ways of interacting with you that is beyond how people interact with you.


Lights of Love wrote on Jan 18^th, 2013 at 5:04pm:

Berserk2 wrote on Jan 18th, 2013 at 4:45pm: Why can't a medium channel information to an astral adept, who then visits the astral contact to confirm that and other paranormal information?  What if a medium isn't in contact with a discarnate human or other being at all?  But instead is accessing stored memory within the consciousness system and the entity they think they're receiving information from is actually a metaphor either they or the consciousness system created?  I'm not saying other beings don't communicate with us.  Just that this scenario also exists and I wonder how this may play a part?

I doubt that a genuine medium is interested in such verification. Regarding doing so for others, I figure that if a person is genuinely interested in finding out what's true, he'll find a way. Chances are that answers will come to him in unexpected ways.

Here's an analogy. Say there is a person who makes up war stories and a person who shares actuall war stories. A person who has experienced war would be able to tell the difference.

The same is true when trying to determine what a medium is about. If one has experience with spirit communication, one has a good idea of what to look for. Factors that a skeptic wouldn't consider. A skeptic also wouldn't understand the value of such factors.


Berserk2 wrote on Jan 18^th, 2013 at 4:45pm:

Why can't a medium channel information to an astral adept, who then visits the astral contact to confirm that and other paranormal information?

recoverer wrote on Jan 18^th, 2013 at 5:11pm:

For one thing, some mediums speak of how spirits act when they interact with the medium. I've experienced the same, and it is more than a matter of receiving information from a data bank. When a spirit interacts with you in a playful or other animated way, it seems clear that an interaction is taking place. They have ways of interacting with you that is beyond how people interact with you. Lights of Love wrote on Jan 18th, 2013 at 5:04pm: Berserk2 wrote on Jan 18th, 2013 at 4:45pm: Why can't a medium channel information to an astral adept, who then visits the astral contact to confirm that and other paranormal information?  What if a medium isn't in contact with a discarnate human or other being at all?  But instead is accessing stored memory within the consciousness system and the entity they think they're receiving information from is actually a metaphor either they or the consciousness system created?  I'm not saying other beings don't communicate with us.  Just that this scenario also exists and I wonder how this may play a part?

lol :) I wasn't asking the difference between receiving information from a database vs an entity.  I'm asking how information received from a database would/could affect the validity of the information itself?

Berserk2 wrote on Jun 7^th, 2012 at 6:42pm:

Dr. Soal visited Blanche Cooper to contact his deceased brother, not Gordon Davis.   Gordon Davis interrupted the session to express his concern for his "wife and kiddie" who survived him.  GD "verifed" his identity to Soal with characteristic diction and expressions  and details that Soal could confirm from the school days together.   GD portrayed himself as dead when in fact the real GD was alive and knew nothing about this channeling.  So telltale characteristic speech and impressive details of which the medium was ignorant are not argument for genuine contact.  So at most Cooper was tapping the reail GD's mind for paranormal details.  Right?  Wrong for 2 reasons: (1) GD clairvoyantly disclosed the real GD's future; e. g. details about furniture arrangement and structure of GD's new home, a home he hadn't even purchased yet!  So it's unlikely thet the medium discerned these detail from the real GD's mind.  (2) Why isn't channeling refuted in this way more often?  Well, Dr. Soal had been wrongly informed that GD had been killed in action during World War I.  How often are we wrongly informed about a friend's death?  So Dr. Soal's false belief in GD's death seems to have been a factor used by Cooper to reconstruct GD's personality and ife detals by ESP.  Cases like this shift the burden of proof to the person who wants to claim genuine contact with the deceased on the other side.  So should the Gordon Davis case be explained thrrugh super-ESP or spirit impersonation?  I don't know and don't need to know to detect a serious flaw in claims of genuine contact through channeling. Add to this the exposures of channeling through the invention of loved ones and their personality profiles that are paranormally discerned by the medium and channeled as if these ficticious characters are alive and communicating from beyond the grave.  Such cases do not prove that no channeling is genuine, but IMO they make channeling the least likely explanation.

I have just finished reading Chris Carter's book called ' Science and the Afterlife Experience' and it has direct bearing on the Gordon Davis case. This case is a central plank in the argument that apparent examples of mediumship are in fact better explained as ' super-ESP'. However, Carter devotes pages 156-161 of his book in explaining, that at best, this case is highly dubious. Rather than copy out the whole text I will just add some of the relevent points.

In 1978 statistician Betty Markwick demonstrated that Soal had fraudulently manipulated results of his famous card-guessing experiments and thereby discredited his research into ESP. She said ' It is clear from the literature, and from the comments of those who knew Soal personally, that his was indeed a strange personality: obsessive, absorbed, and subject to bouts of dissociation'.
In 1982 Alan Gauld reviewed the case and noted that ' certain features of it raise doubts- for example, Soal's claim that he was able to record the medium's statements in detail in the dark using only his left hand, and the fact that his brother signed a statement that he had read the communications, which allegedly took place in January 1922, in the Christmas vacation of 1921'.
In 1986 BBC writer Melvin Harris found suspicious behaviour in that even though that Soal knew Davis was alive in Feb 1925 Soal made sure that no one saw his records until after he had had a chance to visit Davis six  weeks later ( even though he had previously challenged another researcher for doing a similar thing previously ! ) Harris concluded that living only one mile away from Davis, Soal had plenty of opportunity to fake the house forecasts in that time. In fact fraud was found.
Soal claimed that a brief message about 'black dickie-think it's on the piano' had been communicated on behalf of Gordon Davis in the middle of the sitting on January 30 1922.In his article, Soal even included a sample of the transcript that contains the message. However, Harris writes ' This is pure fiction. His knowledge of the bird came from his observation of Davis's kingfisher ornament-not from any séance. When he spontaneously invented this morsel, he'd forgotten one vital factor.He'd forgotten that a complete record of the essential sitting had been in private hands for the past three years'.

Chris Carter concludes ' the six-week delay in contacting Davis, combined with Soal's untruthful remarks about the difficulty in contacting Davis; the ease with which all the major details of the case could have been gathered by fraudulent means during the six-week period; the ease by which the records could have been doctored; Soal's history of fraud; the evidence of fraud in this case; and Saul's strange personality - all these factors combine to render the Gordon David completely worthless as evidence.'