In an earlier thread of mine, Bruce Moen makes this claim:  "We could each cite historical examples to support real contact or false contact by mediums in the past to support our own hypothesis."
______________

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 4 questions cast a pall of suspicion over ALL channeling. It is not impossible that mediums like Gordon Smith channel deceased souls.  For that matter, it is not impossible that the Apollo moon landing was faked in a New Mexico hangar to gain a propganda advantage over the Soviet Union.   But mere ESP or clairvoyance seems a more plausible explanation of the best of channeling in view of the evidence cited in my replies to (1)-(4):

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

(2) Bruce seems to imagine that channeled materials unknown to anyone living provide convincing evidence of contact with the dead.  But what if a drop-in communicator could provide amazing verifications even involving precognition of the future, and yet, be later proven a fraud?

(3) 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?            

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

Channeling can be significantly called into question on all 4 grounds.

(1) Leonore Piper is one of the most impressive mediums ever.   She seemed to have 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 by John from beyond death!  

(2) 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).  

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?

If you ask what sort of test might favor spirit contact over ESP and clairvoyance as an explanation of channeled material, the answer is the demonstration of a skill lacked by the medium (e. g. xenoglossy).  That is, if a channeled entity can respond to questions posed to the medium in a language unknown to that medium, then mere ESP cannot adequately explain this.  Research has shown that ESP does not extend to a full-blown new skill.  But it must be remembered that xenoglossy is a prime criterion for demonic possession.   So the possibility of an impersonating spirit must be taken into account in such cases.  My repy to question (3) and (4) are important here.

(3) 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.

(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?

This post is an edited version of an earlier thread.  I'm reissuing this material because it has not been satisfactorily addressed in replies and I'd appreciate a thoughtful critique.  Believe it or not, I'd really like to believe that mediums like Gordon Smith really can channel the dead.

Don

Greetings Don,
The big question IMO is whether the information is valid/true, or whether it is fraudulent or even meant to deceive.  With that established, what difference does it make whose person-hood is credited with bringing it? We've heard many times that the forms taken are to emphasize meaning and make the information more acceptable to us. We have heard many times that having a relative-- or a cartoon figure--- bring the information is a widely used attempt to help us understand and accept the information.  Why fight it--it's ust the way it is.

If facts are true but in error as to our linear time I would take that scrambling to have happened as the information entered our realm of being where we are so reliant on linear time.  We have heard that other realms are not---hard to accept, but maybe better to just give up linear time tests as immaterial.  ;D  (Pun)  

Information coming in requires energy from the other side, just as we use energy to ask our questions of them. Glitches in that transfer of energy could cause slight glitches in the information it carries.

Are you perhaps seeking a worthy adversary upon whom to focus your arguments, and thus a genuine contact channelled entity is more to your liking than the amorphous ESP?  If the channelling is verified, as per your title for this thread, what difference does it make if it comes thru the catch-all phrase 'ESP'? Everything we experience in exploring the afterlife is extra-sensory. Maybe that phrase has become outmoded.

Hi Don,

This is an important thread and issue.  It gets at larger points such as can we be sure about anything, and is there truth or falsity.  I won't blur this thread with those issues, but I bet things will come down to that in the end.

I'm not sure why ESP is used as a way to invalidate communication of the spirit.  Modern science sees the mind as an evolutionary accident, and reading another's mind from a distance would imply that separate from the neurochemical interactions in the brain that there is a discreet entity called "mind," and that one mind could interpret another's.  To my thinking, the successful use of ESP would lend credibility to the existence of mind and soul.

Your point about spirits claiming to be one person when they are not is vital for people to understand.  Imposters may be able to make appearances, and many current sources speak of entities "hanging around," each individual for either good intentions or ill.  I don't think any channeling should be taken for granted.

There are clearly frauds in the channeling field as well.  I had to bite my tongue here, as I almost mentioned a controversial name whose followers would have trampled on me without mercy had I done so.  They either have a philosophy to spout with one way lectures or seemingly real evidence to show about a contact with your loved one.  They may research a person, their schooling, etc. and put on a show.  Houdini debunked many of these.

Don, there is so much we don't know that this area will not be solved by debate.  Can discarnate entities (if they exist), have access to our thoughts, or our past events?  

I think the end answer is that the person receiving the information will believe that it is a real communication if they "feel it in their bones."  This came up in another thread, Kyo's angel card readings.  I posited the question.  What if a flim flam woman gave everyone, say 30 people the same reading that day.  Completely the same.  Woud that make the reading less valuable if a person thought there was a real message in it for them?  Kyo, I believe stated that more subtle guidance might still have made the message valuable both for the flim flam woman and the person getting read.  There was really nothing I could say about that.  When I give a hypothetical of a fraud, and yet the guidance is thought to be real, then to my way of thinking, Houston, we have a problem.

I think genuine contact is felt by the receiver - but one must realize fraud and imposters exist.  I am reminded of one of the early EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) people out there, Friedrich Jurgenson, who used to record outside and began to pick up voices on tape.  At one point, he clearly documented his mother's voice calling him in a familiar way (her nickname for him) in his native tongue.  For him at least, that was verification.  Other EVP phenomenon have passed voice analysis for the voice print of the previously deceased person.  Clearly, since spirits do not have vocal chords, one still could imagine fraud.  I'm not sure there will ever be proof here.

Good thread though


Matthew

It is hard to respond to this post since Don lumps channelling and mediumship together. Nevertheless, I'll say something.

I believe it is a mistake to "rely" on channelled sources of information because it is hard to be certain of what entity is being channelled, if at all.

I don't believe that you can find certainty by reading books, etc. But if I'm going to read anything I prefer to read NDEs or what somebody has found out through his or own experience, rather than what some unknown, uncertain source has to say.

Do we really need to know all of the particulars while we're here? It isn't like the spirit World needs us to figure everything out.  The most important thing is to grow spiritually.  Not to find out the cosmology of a channelled source.

I believe that mediumship is a different thing than channelling, because they serve a different purpose. Say for example a person in the physical is tying down the energy of a spirit who crossed over. Wouldn't it be good if a medium could help clear things up? And some people gain faith about the existence of the afterlife, because of what mediums have to say.

Sure there are some fake mediums. But there are also fake gurus, preachers, and other kinds of spiritual teachers. What are you going to do?

Betson, Matt, and Recoverer,

All 3 of your replies are thoughtful and interesting.  I'm only addressing this issue from the perspective of the survival of the individual, not from the perspective of whether channeling might tap a "universal mind" which may have nothing to do with individual survival.   Another question is this: might the best mediums retrieve information from the deceased without the deceased even knowing that they are being contacted, even in Q and A sesssions?  I agree that research on channeling might yield important insights apart from the survival question and is worthy of study in its own right.  Recoverer's distinction between mediumship and channeling is new to me, but might be worthwhile.  

My main concern is the tendency of many on this site to get excited if a medium channels verifiable information about their loved ones.  I understand the need for a comforting leap of faith, whether in religion or New Age philosophy.   What I object to is the need of many to  suppress contrary evidence as if it does not exist.  

Most of you know that I'm a committed Christian with a deep interest in synthesizing New Age inisghts with Christian spirituality.  But when I was a college Theology professor,  I made my students learn the best arguments AGAINST cherished doctrines like Jesus' resurrection and virgin birth.   Only later would I explain why I nevertheless believe in both doctrines.  In our successful sex discrimination lawsuit, the university lawyers tried to depict me as an anti-Catholic skeptic.   Despite their distortion of my views, in a sense I was flattered by this charge because it indicated my reputation for giving opposing viewpoints a fair hearing.   My blunt rhetoric on this site is motivated only by the desire to force the close-minded to raise the level of their research by being fair to opposing sides of each survival issue.  That achievement provides the best chance of developing dependable spiritual discernment.  Ulitmately, it is not the quality of our arguments, but the quality of an open-minded intuition that offers the best chance of "knowing" the  truth.  Even direct experience can be deceptive.

Don

Thank you Don,
for your kind reply. It helps me focus better on the question. Then that leads to more questions--
What is an individual once they move to the other side?  Are they just like us, only invisible? Or do they lose some of the characteristics of personality, ego, etc that help them to manuever through the physical world?  Does our self have to stay as one big blob to qualify as self? In other words when you say "individual" or 'the deceased", to what/whom are you referring? ( If I were happiest and most fulfilled as a 10 yr old, would my surviving essence have my characteristics from that age ? I don't want my dissillusioned world-weary old self to define my soul !)

You ask
"...whether channeling might tap a "universal mind" which may have nothing to do with individual survival.   Another question is this: might the best mediums retrieve information from the  deceased  without the deceased even knowing that they are being contacted, even in Q and A sesssions?"

In the former I assume you mean that 'universal mind' is fed experiences from the individual's C1 earth-life, and then after earthlife, that individual is no longer necessary and so 'disperses'?
If I understand, I'd still have to wonder what part of ourselves feeds the universal mind, where it gets its information. And once we're deceased, could the best mediums be pulling information back from discarded husks/layers of ourselves while our spark of essence is being carried on to new experience? ---
The Jewish Kaballah deals with the spiritual and mystical. Perhaps it explains what 'self' becomes once it gets to the other side. Have you read it?  Does it retain any authority for the Judea-Christian tradition?
Respectfully,
betson

Don:

The type of distinction I make is for example, doing as Jane Roberts did when she channelled Seth on an ongoing basis, and a medium who helps a person communicate with deceased loved ones on a non-ongoing basis without giving up control of his or her body.

As I understand it, a channeling is an open invitation for the entity to speak directly through the person in C1.  A medium may relate to you what he/she sees and hears of the other realm.  I medium may also claim to channel.  

Hi Don-
I wonder if we can actually set up an experiment in this area without having some kind of underlying theory of what's happening.  That, in turn, brings up a question about what is the "proper" way to view things. I use a model that works for me personally, but I know that it's only one of a really vast number of equally valid ways to explain metaphysical phenomena. And, as a general rule I expect my limited ideas to be less useful than the collected efforts of an entir civilization, like the Egyptians, Hindus etc.  Still, given any kind of objective theory, I should be able to come up with a way to demonstrate it.

To attempt to test the presence of something without a descriptive theory seems to me to be likely to wander off into a "convenient" definition that defines whatever you want proven  in a way that is tautologically true.  Example: "I hear voices from others. How do I know? I hear them, and I am not the one making the noise. "  That doesn't really say anything except that I have an opinion.

Let's say that I claim that when the body falls off a spirit unites with the furnture of the immediate situation, and thus become one with the universe. Then, I can invent a way to tap into the surrounding world, and given that way I should be able to create an effect that anyone can observe.  That's not a proof, but it does demonstrate that there's something here that we can study. However, to make it an objective fact requires that I have more than a subjective claim. I could make subjective claims about the spirit world forever, but they'd have no meaning to others.

I like the idea of looking intently at counter arguments.  I think you have an excellent approach, Don. Unfortunately, I can come up with more anti- than pro- arguments, and I still have no proof.

dave

Extending the prior post, it seems appropriate to mention the types of things that I'm referring to with respect to models. Rather than defend my position, there is nearly an an infinite number of models equally as good as mine, or even better, and these are available to us if we want to use them.

There are two things that need to be clarified. First, while we usually look at statements as being unconditionally true or unconditionally false, the logic we use in metaphysical models must be contingent. For example, we cannot extend a new reality into a space that has neither the potentiality for sequential process, nor a space that is additive so that history can accumulate.  These are contingent requirements. Second, the models we design are no more valuable than our ability to work within the limitations of our contingencies. That doesn't mean that other reality is denied, but simply that our model has overlooked it, in the same way that a model in Special Relativity has nothing to do with my taking the trash out Wednesday morning.

Theree seem to be three important levels that a model must address. These are classical philosophical problems. (I have no interest in getting into the history of philosophy. That would miss the point.)

First, we need to express at least one way that we can begin with emptiness, no space, no time,  and wind up with time, space and some kind of stuff in it.  Second, we need to take the space, time and abstract stuff and build that into a here and now kind of structure that resembles everyday reality. Third, we need to explain how sentiency can arise within this structure as an interactive element in which there is learned behavior.

Any such collection of statements will be valid, so long as we stay within the bounds of the contingencies that we erect. (This may or may not be obvious. When I talk about Aunt Gussie's ghost, the existence of ghosts, and of Aunt Gussie, and that she is a ghost, are three implicit contingencies.)

We do not need universally valid statements about everything. What we need is statements that have at least one way of being valid. That one valid interpretation is all we can work with, but it often is enough to draw conclusions.

We need to be able to relate our model of what's happening to actual experiences in some manner.

These are actually very simple requirements, providing that we are happy to stay within the limits of our definitions and contingent requirements.  The language of metaphysical philosophy is all too often poetic, an effort to express essentially numinous experiences in a concrete manner by suggesting metaphors.  This makes it difficult to make clearcut statements, and many of us turn to symbols because of their precision and unambiguous meaning, but clear language is equally useful.

I suggest that we can all build models of our own subjective realities. Further, I suggest that we will find that these models all tend to coalesce into a single body of information. This is very much what we see in the discussions about OBE and NDE and soul retrieval etc. The underlying models used in these discussions are hidden in th context of the statements. However, it only takes a moment to notice that all these models begin with the contingent belief that all these events are already somehow presenting to us.  I'm suggesting that we can go farther and discover where they come from, why they occur and so on.

Then, we can start to look for experimental verifications.

dave

On Nov. 28, I was listening to Coast to Coast.  The guest was medium Hans King.  He traced his channeling ability to general psychic ablities demonstrated at a young age.  I was reminded of how often mediums are psychically gifted in ways that suggest their channeling is more likely derived from ESP than from genuine contact with the deceased.  I'm more impressed by mediums who otherwise lack any psychic talent.  But Hans shared one experience that amazed me, and so, I thought I'd share it as best I can recall the details.

Hans was getting annoyed by constant contacts from his deceased mother.  Finally, he mentioned another gifted medium he knew and urged his mother to channel through her instead.    Then while attending a convention for mediums, he was approached by a female medium he did not know.   She asked him, "Are you Hans?"  He replied, "Yes."  "Well, your mother has been communicating with me.  Really, Hans, you must never order your own mother to stop communicatiing with you!"  A chastened Hans reflected on the significance of his mother selecting a stranger to "come through" instead of the medium he suggested.   He theorized that his mother might have used  this ploy to make the genuineness of her manifestation more convincing to him.  But I wonder if this stranger was simply a better fit for his Mom than the medium he suggested.  Or was his Mom simply doing this as a signal not to order her around?  This episode might still be due to ESP rather than genuine contact.  But I consider it one of the more impressive stories of channeling I have encountered in the past year.

Don

Interesting and important chat.  The way I see it;

There is a difference between Mediumship and Channeling & ESP and Clairvoyancy.

Mediumship & Channeling can never be 100% trusted because in 8 cases out of 10 the medium is in a trance state and in this hallucinatory state tapping into the lower astral realm of deception and trickey.  The same for anyone claiming to be channeling an entity.  This entity might be having a gas of a time deceiving the medium although the medium might think the words said sound true.

This is why most spiritualist dismiss most of Edgar Cayce's works (some of the information he brought forward has been found to be false) Cayce was in trance state and this information is not to be trusted - the only work of his which had truth to it was when he prayed for the power of protection of Christ.  

And this is the point;  unless a Medium has a clear and deep relationship with Christ as a guide there is a chance to break through the knot-hole (as Dave calls it) and speak truth.

Discernment in Medium talking and writings is crucial.

ESP - extra sensory perception and Clairvoyancy (perceiving things beyond the natural range of senses with intuitive understanding) is different from the above.

This is a direct tuning into the Cosmic Mind : God's Wisdom.  This intuitive understanding is 'reading' the Quintessence;  it is in the Quintessence where the Askahic records are and permeated with the Etheric (Light) Body of Christ.

And here we can see instead of relying on channeling another entity we ALL have the capability to access the Cosmic Mind of God.  It is here one will communicate (personally) to loved ones who have passed over and attain an understanding of Creation.

The training and attainment in order to achieve this is the Commune of ones Ego in Christ Consciousness.  It relies on no other person but oneself and one's relationship with God / Christ.

Don; the below seems to be trickey to me, unless the protection of Christ was asked for. Also it is said True channelers may clairvoyantly contact other people through the Cosmic Mind - but they are not privy to information pertaining to themselves.

Well my understanding to-date.
Regards
Caryn

What strikes me as a decisive argument against mediumship is this: many channeled cases of verified paranormal information from the allegedly deceased are provably not that at all.  Therefore, the burden of proof rests with the New Ager who wants  to claim direct channeled contact with a deceased loved one.  The channeling theory remains theoretically possible, but it is simply not the most logical interpretation.  But of course, no proof seems possible either way.

Don

Not everyone shares that view. Prof Gary Schwartz of Arizona University who tested purported mediums said in his book 'The Afterlife Experiments' (page 265) that '...careful analysis of the language used by the mediums, plus examples like S's deceased grandmother seemingly continuing to communicate during the reading for the subsequent sitter, suggests that the 'information is not static or 'dead' like information stored on a hard drive or CD'. He admits that a 'super psi' explanation cannot be ruled out but sides with the hypothesis that mediums are really relaying information from the deceased on an 'Occam's Razor' basis.

I am inclined to agree with other posters who have pointed out that such a 'super psi' hypothesis would demonstrate that we are more than our physical bodies anyway and as such imputes post-mortal survival may be possible.

The other issue whether the relayed messages are really from the specified deceased I would leave in the hands of the sitter; I for one would'nt tell someone who felt that they had had an accurate message from their loved one which had meaning/comfort for them that it was'nt really them. How do I know (they knew the person not me) ?
D

I would guess that it's far more likely that ESP plays a much larger role than we think in terms of "messages" from the afterlife.

R

This Psi or ESP argument against the afterlife drives me bonkers, as ESP assumes one mind communicating with another.  But "mind" in a discreet sense is not an accepted part of human physiology.  In pure scientific terms, the concept of consciousness has been seen as a redundancy in the brain - a fallacy in fact.  Thus the idea that one person could read the mind of another is not at all a scientific one; certainly not explained by common physiology or knowns in anatomy.

So if one uses ESP to glean information, it proves contact outside of the physical plane (as we know it).  If a medium reads my mind, true it is not genuine contact.  But if my mind exists on a different plane than my body to be "read," then we are halfway to agreeing that we are more than our physical bodies, and the afterlife or mental planes are therefore within our reach.

Matthew

When you communicate with spirits it is possible to tell that you're receiving more than telepathy from some person.

After one has received numerous messages from spirits it becomes quite obvious that this is the case.

This is especially so when you receive responses through visual imagery (including short waking dreams) and feel the presence of the spirit you communicate with.

In fact, there are times when the spirit you communicate will show you an image of a person looking at you, and you can feel the presence behind this image.


The best way to know what communication with spirits is about is to do so. Otherwise one engages in intellectual speculation that isn't based upon experience.

What if I tried to tell a lady who has had a baby that based upon my research it isn't painful to have one? Due to my lack of experience and her plentitude of experience she wouldn't be likely to agree with what I say no matter how many sources I refer to.

Sure there are people who pretend to be mediums, but there are also mediums that actually do communicate to spirits. It is possible to know if you are actually doing so.

TO MATTHEW AND ALBERT:

The research repeatedly shows that when the medium believes and speaks as if she communicates with a discarnate spirit and gains paranormal information, she is in fact at times merely tapping the minds of living people.  That fact is a known, and so, it automatcally becomes the preferred explanation to genuine contact with a discarnate spirit, no matter what warm "fuzzies" or psychological certitude someone like Albert "feels."  The defender of channeling must establish cases in which no incarnate minds are available that have the paranormal information in question. 

Even if Matthew could track down such a case, postmortem survival is not the most plausible interpretation.  In the Gordon Davis case, "Gordon" not only portrays himself as dead through the medium, Blanche Cooper and verifies this with accurate paranormal information about himself; Gordon also describes in detail the layout of his future home before he has a chance to see it or know about it! Yet Davis is alive and present in London the whole time, contrary to Blanche's belief, and knows nothing about the channeling session!  Super-ESP, probably from Universal Mind, is the natural explanation of this rather than the view that Blanche tapped informatiom from Gordon's mind that Gordon lacked now, but would possess in the future.  Thus there is no reason to believe that information, paranormal or otherwise, preserved in Universal Mind indicates postmortem survival of an individual soul, particularly in cases in which that individual is still alive.

Don

Don,

If you postulate a universal mind which mediums sift through, and which you will concede we all have a connection to, then you are already beyond the physical world, and admitting we are more than our bodies.  I do understand your point that we may perish as an individual personality, but mediums may be accessing this "database" of limitless information of the mind.  However, in some ways, I think you've made the case against using our physical bodies as proof of perishability. 

Where is the individual mind?  If it does not exist only in the physical plane, then why should it perish with the body?  How do we answer this question?  By going over NDEs, in which the patient returns from being in a verified deceased state.  If a person has no pulse, no respiration, and no activity on an EEG of the brain, he/she is clinically dead.  One can not argue that mental activity during this time is made by the chemical reactions in the brain, because an EEG can confirm that there is no meaningful electrochemical activity.  If the person then "returns," and can confirm that consciousness exists in the absence of physical life, then we already will have proof that there is post-mortem survival. 

Even one documented case of a NDE in the absence of vital signs and physical brain activity is proof that the mind exists separate from the physical world, and merely interpenetrates with the physical body.  There are literally hundreds of these NDEs documented at nderf.org and other locations.  Some are more compelling than others. 

The most compelling NDE with verification is that of George Rodonaia.  Here was a man clinically dead and in the morgue for three days.  In my next post, I will exerpt his NDE.

Matthew

This NDE deserves special attention:

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence10.html

After reading it, keep several things in mind.  The most impressive verification came after Dr. Rodonaia's return (see the bottom of the webpage).  I will quote:

George Rodonaia's Account of His Episode With an Infant During His NDE

More information concerning George's NDE account is described in Dr. Melvin Morse and Paul Perry's book entitled Transformed by the Light. Dr. Morse refers to George by his Russian name "Yuri". The following is an excerpt of Transformed by the Light which describes George's observation of an infant while George is out of his body.

"[During Yuri's NDE, he] could go visit his family. He saw his grieving wife and their two sons, both too small to understand that their father had been killed.

"Then he visited his next-door neighbor. They had a new child, born a couple of days before Yuri's "death." Yuri could tell that they were upset by what happened to him. But they were especially distressed by the fact that their child would not stop crying.

"No matter what they did he continued to cry. When he slept it was short and fitful and then he would awaken, crying again. They had taken him back to the doctors but they were stumped. All the usual things such as colic were ruled out and they sent them home hoping the baby would eventually settle down.

"While there in this disembodied state, Yuri discovered something:

"l could talk to the baby. It was amazing. I could not talk to the parents - my friends - but I could talk to the little boy who had just been born. I asked him what was wrong. No words were exchanged, but I asked him maybe through telepathy what was wrong. He told me that his arm hurt. And when he told me that, I was able to see that the bone was twisted and broken."

"The baby had a greenstick fracture, a break in the bone in his arm probably cause by having been twisted during childbirth. Now Yuri and the baby knew what was wrong, but neither had the ability to communicate the problem to the parents.

"Eventually the doctor from Moscow came to perform the autopsy on Yuri. When they moved his body from the cabinet to a gurney, his eyes flickered. The doctor became suspicious and examined his eyes. When they responded to light, he was immediately wheeled to emergency surgery and saved.

"Yuri told his family about being "dead." No one believed him until he began to provide details about what he saw during his travels out of body. Then they became less skeptical. His diagnosis on the baby next door did the trick. He told of visiting them that night and of their concern over their new child. He told them that he had talked to the baby and discovered that he had a greenstick fracture of his arm. The parents took the child to a doctor and he x-rayed the arm only to discover that Yuri's very long-distance diagnosis was right."


Matthew

Matthew,

First of all, thanks for another first-class verification from an NDE.  I consider the best NDEs to be the best evidence for an afterlife.  This NDE confirms my speculation that some discarnate people are more receptive to spirit contact than others, but it does not answer my question about the inevitability of astral schools to teach the art (science?) of ADC contact to the less gifted newly discarnate.  If such schools exist, why aren't ADCs more common?  If they don't exist, why not?  Nor can I discern the relevance of your NDE case to our discussion of mediumship.  I know of no NDEs with paranormal contacts with discarnaes in which it was later proven that the discarnates were still alive and knew nothing about the NDE contact--as is the case in the channeling under discussion. 

Don

Maybe we are asking the 'wrong' people about the afterlife. What else can be learned from those who are supposedly 'sleeping' babies? Just curious.


DocM wrote on Mar 18^th, 2010 at 10:51pm:

This NDE deserves special attention: http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence10.html ..."l could talk to the baby. It was amazing. I could not talk to the parents - my friends - but I could talk to the little boy who had just been born. I asked him what was wrong. No words were exchanged, but I asked him maybe through telepathy what was wrong. He told me that his arm hurt. And when he told me that, I was able to see that the bone was twisted and broken." (cont...) Matthew

Don,

My main point was to take on the question of ESP, not to verify channeling or mediums in general.  Perhaps I should have put these comments in another thread, but I posted them on this one, because as you know, it has always irritated me that some bandy the term "ESP" around as if it were a physiologic accepted form of communication grounded in the physical world.  It is not. 

I do agree with you that a medium or channel may either make contact with another mind who is a discarnate soul, or simply ask the universal mind a question and get an accurate answer back, without making actual contact with the deceased personality. 

For me the question remains, where is the mind located, and what are its relationships with the physical body?  If we do agree that there is a mental plane, separate from the physical world, and that minds may be "read" (telepathy) on this plane, then we are that much closer to proving the survival hypothesis (i.e. that we persist as individual minds after our physical bodies fall off).

I don't think anyone will get a way to prove mediumship to you, even if it does exist, as accessing a universal database (shared universal mind with all the "facts") would be hard to distinguish from a genuine ADC.

Matthew

Hi

I also wonder why ADC is not more common. So I just went over to google it and there are over  2 million  citings for 'after death communication,' 708,000 for ADC message boards.

Since this is still a topic people think of as personal, I find it amazing that so many people are willing to share their interest and experience.  Also that so little formalized (academic? by professionals) study is being publicized.

Overall though, these search results seem to indicate alot of involvement with the topic. I haven't read the results so I accept that some is wishful thinking, but as we've seen from examples brought to this site, not all of them can be refuted.

Bets

Hi b2,

Recoverer and Alysia once posted about some ESP/PUL experiences they were having that lightly relates  :)  to the situation Doc M and you are commenting on.  I've also done a variation of it with babies...

Their ESP experiment is this:  In a public place filled with people you can emit a positive energy and see if the tired, discouraged look that some people carry with them can be lifted. More often than chance you can see a relaxation, perhaps a smile, etc.

With the babies, at a grocery store, for example, I stand where the mother can't see me but i can see the baby's face.  Then I mentally send it happy messages  :) such as compliments for it or its mother, asking about what it thinks of this adventure of life, etc.
I watch for a change in the baby's attitude or eye movement of it looking in my direction, etc.
Sorry, the cuteness of the babies has distracted me from keeping statistics on how often they respond positively to this unseen attention but they do respond a significant portion of the time :)

We have no infants in my neighborhood or family right now so I'll probably keep this experiment going, maybe with better records. Matthew's story is certainly an inspiration to try!

Bets

Matthew,

The NDE communication from "the baby" about the physical reason for his crying tantrum is of course well beyond a baby's level of cognitive development.  So who or what is the source of this helpful communication?  The baby's guardian angel?  Universal mind?  The Bible echoes the ancient Jewish belief in the soul's preexistence, but not reincarnation.  Does this communication derive from the baby's oversoul?  Does a certain level of mental development have to occur before the oversoul is fully downloaded in the baby?  We can't answer these questions, but we should recognize the astounding breakthrough that would be acheived for many afterlife mysteries if we could answer them. 

The word "proof" pre-programs any afterlife quest for skepticism and should not be used.  Instead, we should focus on 2 goals: (1) the interpretation that makes the best sense of all the data; (2) the interpretation that is most "psychologically persuasive" to those who truly engage in honest and open inquiry with a passion to consider all the evidence pro and con.  In my view, NDEs as a whole pass these two tests and channeling fails them.

I never expected the questions I've raised in this thread to be definitively answered.  My real point is this: if they could be answered, afterlife research would be elevated to a level that would change the world and its outlook on human destiny.  When we can't answer the most important questions definitively, it is at least helpful to identify more subtle underlying questions that we might be able to answer or to identify more accurately the precisely reasons why our questions cannot currently be answered.

Don

An equally daunting effort would be this: suppose we had absolute, conclusive evidence that the afterlife does not exist.

Does anyone suppose that one day we would have explanations for all the things that currently make us believe that the afterlife does exist?

Take ESP for example.  Maybe there's a scientific/medical explanation that today's technology cannot reveal.  The brain is fired by electrical activity.  We know that certain emotions can be detected by probes.

Just as we sometimes sense the presence of someone even though we don't hear or see them, perhaps thoughts generate their own unique identifiers and other brains can pick up on them.

Maybe it's not a "universal" mind, maybe it's just an ability that we've always had.  After all, there was a time before language was developed.  How do we know that our ancient ancestors didn't communicate via what we call ESP? 

And then, with the development of language, that particular ability was no longer needed but still lingers in far recesses of our brains.

R

First of all, I'm not a medium.

This being the case, when I make contact with spirits I don't do so with the purpose of passing on messages from a deceased person to a living person.

There was one occasion when a person I knew who had died made contact with me while I was meditating. He showed me what his astral home looked like, and what the home of one of his relatives looked like (another deceased person), and then gave me some information I was able to verify by doing an internet search.

Otherwise, when I communicate with spirits, one of the things that lets me know that more than telepathy with a human person is involved, is because the spirit I communicate will take me on some sort of non-physical adventure. For example, one time I wondered what it is like to be aware of multiple incarnations at the same time as is the case with--shall I say it--oversouls, and the being I was in contact with enabled me to experience myself as this large being who was aware of about twelve lives at the same time. It wasn't problematic to be aware of these multiple perspectives because I was a large being, yet still me. :)

I figure that if a person has a legitimate ability to communicate to deceased people for the sake of people who are still alive, it would be done according to what the divine powers that be consider appropriate.

Even if a deceased person has evolved and is more like an oversoul with multiple perspectives rather than the person he or she used to be, this wouldn't mean that this person (soul) would lose the ability to communicate with others.

After all, if beings with large perspectives can communicate to me (sometimes in really interesting ways that are beyond receiving a few thoughts), then why can't they communicate to other people, such as a person who decides to be a medium with sincere and honest intentions?

Hi Rondele-

Maybe it's not a "universal" mind, maybe it's just an ability that we've always had.  After all, there was a time before language was developed.  How do we know that our ancient ancestors didn't communicate via what we call ESP?

What you seem to be referring are ideas which Richard Dawkin refers to as the perinormal i.e. currently considered as paranormal but will one day be within the domain of scientific understanding. This is taken further by athiests such as Michael Roll (campaign for philosophical freedom) who believe the afterlife exists but is simply a branch of physics to be studied as such leaving a notion of God out the equation. The problem that I see with this thinking is that like the catch-all 'super-psi" it can be used to explain away phenomena without due acknowledgement that a real change of worldview is taking place which cannot simply be subsumed in the old one.

Dave

Doc-

Here's an actual example of something that happened to me that I consider ESP (and not access to the universal mind).  I'd like your comments.

A few years ago I signed up for a computer reading by Linn whom some of you know or know of.

She mentioned that I've been quite upset because of a breakup of a long time friendship with a friend.  She even correctly named him!

Of all the names she could have chosen, she picked the right one.  And it's not a common one like Bob or John or Bill.  She got it right the first time.

She urged me to reestablish the friendship because it was causing both of us to be upset.

Now, I don't remember if I was thinking of the relationship when she and I were online, but I might have.  I know for sure, however, that once she mentioned the problem, his name came to mind.

And then she named him.

Did she access the universal mind, or did my thinking of him enable her to pick it up?  Or was it an incredibly lucky, once in a million, guess?

I personally think somehow she locked into me rather than plucked it out of an immense universe of other minds and thoughts.

But then it's just my opinion.  In any case it was something I'll never forget.

R

This video, of a scientifically controlled single blind study, depicts a medium accurately reading facts about a man's son's death.  However, the facts seem to come by intuition, much like remote viewing.  In my opinion, this is an example of what Don describes as a medium or a channeler getting information from thier connection to the universal mind, but not necessarily having any contact from the deceased person:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TQcedvxPxY&NR=1


Matthew

Roger,

It is an impressive experience you had with Linn.  But what made her feel you should mend fences with that friend? 

If there is a repository of limitless information to tap into, is it a database with no intelligence, or is it more than a database?

M

Matthew-

Linn just said I need to repair a relationship with a good friend.  Nothing was said beforehand as a predicate to her comment, it was pretty much out of the blue.

What made it impressive was (1) this was the first time I had a reading from her, and (2) it was online via IM.

On the other hand, she also did one for my wife, and nothing in particular stood out, just generic things that could have applied to any number of people.

So maybe I was a better channeler or maybe her energy was more compatible with mine to begin with.

Who knows.

I plan sometime to drive over to Ohio and have a personal session.  I really think she has quite a gift.  In fact if I'm not mistaken, Don also had some contact with her but I don't know the details.

R

Roger,

The fact that Linn admonished you to seek reconciliation with an alienated friend might just be a coincidence.  But the fact that she identified him by name--and an uncommon name at that--is clearly paranormal.  Did she merely read your mind and/or your friend's mind?  I doubt it because of somewhat parallel examples from my own experience.

For example, in my first year as a college professor, I visited my brother in Colorado Springs, bought a Toyota Corolla there, and drove it back to Olean, NY.  Shortly thereafter, I drove to Boston to serve as the Best Man in Russ's wedding.  Russ was renting his house to a woman who read auras.  He told me that it was often a problem to collect rent from her; so this cast her in a somewhat negative light for me.  She read Russ's aura and uttered some vague positive cliches about his future.  Then it was my turn.  She stared intently at a spot just over my head and I almost felt naked.  She said something like this: "You have the aura of a healer, but I'd like to see just a little more green to fully develop your gift."  What she said next disturbed me.  She said, "Something bad is going to happen, but you will take it too seriously.  You have a tendency to do that." 

In Olean, I was living in a garage apartment at the  time.  When I drove home, I felt an impulse to ask my landlord if I could park my Toyota in his driveway.  He refused.  I was surprised at how urgently I wanted him to say yes.  That Saturday around midnight, I was watching TV when I heard al loud crunch.  A totally drunk young female driver had totalled my Toyota parked in the street.   And yes, I probably was more upset by this than I should have been.  How did gazing at my supposed aura tip the woman off to my imminent accident? Surely she could not glean my upcoming accident from my mind.  My sense of foreboding had no specific tragedy in mind.   So did she glean this warning from Universal Mind or God?  Other more reasonable alternatives elude me!

Don 

Don, I'm curious how you would define Universal Mind? 

Thanks.
K

Ah Kathy, the inevitable question from a Tom Campbell fan!  Actually, the definition of "Universal Mind" is problematic.  I equate it with the so-called "Akashic records" and with Carl Jung's Collective Unconsious, but that equation just passes the definition buck to another intriguing but murky concept.  Jung invokes a Collective Unconscious to explain the phenomenon of ESP and the universality of archetypes.  Archetypes are not innte ideas; they reflect our tendency to organize our experience around certain symbols or imagery in a way that is cross-culturally valid, even though one culture has not shared these archetypes with another culture.  Archetypes seem embedded in a Collective Unconscious.  The Collective Unconscious also assumes that, at a deeper level, all human minds are open to each other and that this openness makes ESP possible.  I am also influenced by biologist Rupert Sheldrake's research that seems to demonstrate some sort of group mind or gruop mental energy field for each animal species.  Thus, a new skill learned by a group of birds or rats in one locale is quickly picked up by distant members of the same species without any physical contact or proximity.  On this theory, every species has its own group mind or Universal Consciousness.   Perhaps each species consciousness is contained like concentric circles within one divine consciusness emanating from God, the ground of all being. 

Don   

Mathew:

This video, of a scientifically controlled single blind study, depicts a medium accurately reading facts about a man's son's death.  However, the facts seem to come by intuition, much like remote viewing.  In my opinion, this is an example of what Don describes as a medium or a channeler getting information from thier connection to the universal mind, but not necessarily having any contact from the deceased person:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TQcedvxPxY&NR=1

This video comes from some of Schwartz's early work which I believe has been improved upon (in the scientific tradition). The baton has now been passed on to Dr Julie Beischel (who has a doctorate in pharmacology) at the Windbridge Institute. If you have time check out http://www.windbridge.org/publications.htm which has a number of papers which have appeared in peer reviewed journals. Some of the protocols used are very sophisticated with quintuple blinding. This shows that research on the edge of current understanding can still be scientifically rigorous.

An interview with Dr. Bleischel and Alex Tsakiris is available at: http://www.skeptiko.com/blog/?p=39

D

Well... if I'm a TC fan, then I must be a DS fan, too.  :-)  Actually TC's model of consciousness isn't much different than what you've described.  Just different metaphors, but I like a wide variety to help me see the truth threaded throughout. If I remember correctly, TC uses a model of what he calls the Reality Wide Web [of consciousness] in which we all are connected. This would be true for group consciousness as well. Similar to what I think you're saying regarding archetypes and Sheldrake's work that you also mention.

I've followed Sheldrake's findings for several years now and have been impressed by his work that in my mind clearly shows that biological forms continually evolve through an underlying intelligent unified life field. In my understanding it is also evident as a life field that automatically maintains health in our bodies as an automatic system that seeks to return to health when illness or injury occurs. A morphogenetic resonance associated with successful evolution of all other life as a field that is alive and continually unfolding and building more complex, higher evolved forms of life with more intelligence and capability to produce order within a complex system.  To me it seems reasonable to think of this intelligence as a field of consciousness / information that has a predilection for balance.


I love this... it reminds me of David Bohm's work, and expresses my thoughts exactly:
"Perhaps each species consciousness is contained like concentric circles within one divine consciousness emanating from God, the ground of all being."

Kathy

"Perhaps each species consciousness is contained like concentric circles within one divine consciousness emanating from God, the ground of all being"

..... like the metaphor.

:)

Prior to the revival of channeling in the 19th century through the Fox sisters, the dominant cross-cultural view was that mediums contact demons of gods, not discarnate people.  It simply begs the question to simply assume that the modern attitude is correct.  Consider this historical fact in your assessment of all the other arguments against channeling on this thread.  But I think I have made a good case for ESP rather than spirit contact, impersonator or otherwise) for paranormal information gleaned from mediums. 

Don

Oh yeah, ask any Jehova's Witness what spiritual mediums are doing and they all have an automatic programmed response which they are all taught....

"Spiritual mediums are all fooled by demons / Satan to bring us farther away from God."

I reject this theory as ludicrous and idiotic. It is very unlikely that demons would do this and have all of this crazy accurate information. It would seem silly for them to be what we are connecting with every time and plenty of people who have contacted loved ones through mediums still very much worship God.

Starcraft, you miss the point.  Prir to the Fox sisters, the mediums THEMSELVES thought they were contacting gods or demons!  So perhaps the current desperate belief that they are contacting discarnate humans is wishful thinking!  In any case, I have made an effective case for super-ESP as the best explanation of paranormal information gleaned from mediums and you New Agers have merely frozen like Bambi in the headlights and ducked my arguments. 

Don

Don-

I agree, but when it comes to material like ACIM, I don't think ESP was involved.

I don't believe Helen S. wrote any of that herself.  In that case, I'm reasonably convinced she was channeling an entity of some sort.  Certainly not Jesus, but most probably an entity with a pretty obvious agenda.

The book is so involved, so intricate and frankly so full of amazing prose, that a person like Helen doing the work she was doing, would not have had the time nor the resources to write something like ACIM.

Further, she herself came to hate the work in her later years.  Unless she had a lot of self-loathing, which I doubt, she was an unwitting accomplice to an insidious piece of work.

R

I use Occam's razor which means the simplest theory/hypothesis is most likely the correct one. To me this means that they are contacting people in the afterlife.

Starcraft, try reading and responding to the early points of this thread implying that Occam's razor suggests that discarnate spirits are NOT being contacted.

Don, just for clarification are you saying that in your opinion, all purported examples of mediumship (mental and physical) are in reality examples of psi/esp or that some  may be better thought of in that way? There's a big difference....

heisenberg,

Almost all of us desperately want to believe in a positive afterlife.  When skeptics discover that one approach to afterlife contact can often be refuted, they tend to throw out all the evidence.  I think it is very important to consider the possibility that some methods of astrall exploration are far more compelling than others.  Many NDEs and ADCs provide high-quality evidence that is far superior to any channeled materials and is not vulnerable to discrediting exposure through trickery like channeling is. 

In my view, every report of channeled paranormal information I have read in this site is best viewed in terms of ESP derived from incarnate minds or from the collective unconscious (universal mind) and not from discarnate minds. But I want to be honest here.  I know of a couple of channeled cases that DO seem to derive from discarnate spirits.  I  hope to describe these in a future post.  So my criticism applies to standard channeling, but not necessarily to all channeling.

Don

Here are 2 channeling exceptions that just might be genuine contact with the dead.  (1) Runolfor Runolfsson [RR] made his abrupt and uninvited appearance at medium Hafsteinn Bjornsson’s sitting and surprised those present by his rudeness and his rough and uncouth demands.  He refused to give his name.  He demanded coffee and snuff which he hoped to enjoy vicariously through the medium and threw a tantrum when this request was denied.  When asked what he wanted, he gave the shocking reply that he was “looking for his leg,” which he claimed was “in the sea.”  Then when Ludvik Gudmendsson joined the circle, RR greeted him as if he knew him and insisted that his leg was in LG’s house.  LG knew nothing about this and promised to help him if he would offer his mane.  Oddly, RR again declined and left the séance in a huff.

Had RR forgotten his name?  He originally insisted his leg was “in the sea.”   So why did LG’s arrival allow RR to learn that his leg was in fact in his house?  After all, LG had found 2 skulls in his house, but knew nothing of the leg. 

Months later RR interrupted a séance and seemed to shove the other spirit communicators aside!  This time he gave his name, the date of his death, and his age (52) at the time of his death.  He added that proof of this could be found in the records at Utskalar Church where his remains lay buried.  In the intervening months, had RR somehow recovered his earthly identity?  Why don’t ADCs and channeling provide such striking verifications more often? 

RR then told this strange story.  One evening in October, 1879, he had passed out drunk on the beach during a raging storm.  His body had been washed out to sea and his remains washed up on shore the following January.  Dogs and ravens had torn it to bits and the remains were buried at Utskalar Churchyard 4 miles away.  A thigh bone had been washed out to sea, only to wash up on shore again.  LG had found 2 skulls in the house he bought, but no thigh bone.  He questioned 2 of the oldest men in the town about whether they had heard anything about a missing thigh bone.  One of the men recalled that the carpenter had put a thigh bone between the inner and outer wall.  The bone could not be buried in the cemetery because the identity of its owner was unknown.  LG tracked down the carpenter who opened the wall and found the unusually long thigh bone.  In this case, it is hard for me to believe that the medium derived his information about the thigh bone by reading the carpenter’s mind.  The unusual bone length is important because R had identified himself as a very tall  man.  LG had a casket made for it and buried it with the rest of RR’s remains at Utskalar Church. 

Haraldsson and Stevenson interviewed more than 20 people connected with the case, including the medium and all the sitters.  They also examined the public records to see if the medium could have gained this knowledge through ordinary means.  The Utskalar Church records mentioned the date of RR’s death and his age (52) at the time of death.  Beyond that, the record mentioned that RR’s body had been carried out to sea, but only added that his dismembered bones later washed up on shore.  Neither this record nor the 2 Icelandic newspapers of the time mentioned that any bones were missing.

(2) Houdini failed to keep his promise to his wife to confirm his survival beyond the grave.  But two distinguished professors may well have succeeded.  William James (Harvard) and James Hyslop (Columbia) promised each other that whoever died first would contact the survivor and confirm the reality of the afterlife. William died first, but nothing happened; so Hyslop forgot about their pledge.  Then a year later, Hyslop was contacted by a couple in Ireland.  They had been playing with a Ouija board and were continually receiving an insistent message from a William James, who kept on saying, "Track down my friend, James Hyslop, and give him this message, `Remember the red pyjamas.'"   For quite some time the Irish couple did nothing.  They had never heard of WJ or JH and the message seemed silly to them.  But then curiosity prompted them to try and track Hyslop down.  When they gave him the message, he was initially dismissive.  But then he remembered a conference he and WJ had attended in Paris during the winter.  Their luggage had not arrived and both men had to shop for winter essentials.   Hyslop was forced to buy some gaudy red pyjames and WJ had relentlessly teased him about his taste.  WJ apparently sent this message because its vivid and concrete nature made it less susceptible to interpretive distortion.   

Don

I just wanted to reply because these two reports are very interesting. They technically go against the "norm." Usually mediums say that the dead can see everything and know everything that is going on, and here we have someone passed that obviously doesn't because he didn't know where his leg actually was.

Interesting.

Don-

I'd first like to make a distinction between proving something beyond  reasonable doubt and beyond absolute doubt. I don't know many things which can be proved absolute doubt, as you remarked with your moon landing example, so I'll confine my discussion to reasonable doubt or on the balance of probabilities.

Your scepticism to mediumship is different from  many people's in that you accept that something 'paranormal' may be occurring but you are doubting its source. When I first started looking at mediumship my objections were different. I had no prior ideas of whether it was 'wrong' or 'right' (in a moral sense) only that they were obviously faking it. This came from 'cold reading' (reading subtle clues), 'hot reading' (fraud), confirmation bias (gullibility) or using generalised statements (Barnum effect). I believe now, that by surveying the available literature, that beyond reasonable doubt that these can be ruled out of some sittings.

This then leaves the possibility that (a) the 'hits' are psychic but not mediumistic (b) entities other than the purported ones are coming through (c) the desired deceased are coming through with information.

I would question that (a) is happening in all cases because as Schwartz says about LC (one of his research mediums ' close examination of the language used indicates that she is not simply reporting memories and images... also reporting intentions and interpretations reflecting the information processing of 'entities' (her words), or dynamically changing info-energy systems (Schwartz's words). Also mediums also tend to distinguish themselves between 'dead' information which comes psychically e.g.picking up emotions from an object i.e. psychometry and that from a 'living' discarnate who may interrupt, correct or answer questions.

You give two good examples of information gleaned unknown to both medium and sitter, I would suggest that is not uncommon. There are enough anecdotal accounts of readings passing on information to the sitter such as where the bank book is kept, information unknown about another relative which later checked out true to suggest simple mind reading is not taking place in many instances.

Possibility (b) is even harder to categorically rule out i.e. that an impersonator is coming through. But to this I would respond that providing that the tone of the message is one of love and the character of the entitity matches that of the deceased then that it actually is the deceased is a distinct likelihood. I would draw a parallel with the notion that such entities are 'demonic' with the allegation by some of his contemporaries that Jesus was in league with the Devil i.e. essentially not making any sense when such love is  involved.

At the start of the thread you used an example of alleged mediumship when the 'deceased' was actually alive. Although this offers a caution against taking things at face value you must admit that in the vast majority of cases the deceased is definitely known to be dead !

Because of the points above I believe, in line with the 'Occam's razor' principle that in some cases mediums are actually in contact with individual identified discarnates. Which cases ?.....that's where the discernment comes in !
D

<<I use Occam's razor which means the simplest theory/hypothesis is most likely the correct one. To me this means that they are contacting people in the afterlife.>>

So the simplest theory says that there IS an afterlife?  Actually that is far from being simple, when you consider the complexities and infinite number of unanswerable questions and problems that arise if you presuppose the existence of the afterlife.

If it's so simple, why is it that no one in recorded history (ES notwithstanding) has ever given a clear, concise-and most importantly replicable-description of what the afterlife is like?

R

I am ready to respond to this now.


Mediums have been tested to know facts that they could not have known because even the sitter did not know about the information until they verified it later. This if proven scientifically...

(Technically Gary in theory did very specific tests involving no contact at all with the sitters in The Afterlife Experiments book.)

So let's say that the medium is able to tell you about a jack of hearts they are seeing for some strange reason. It turns out, the sitter placed a random card that they did not even see on the top of a book shelf, and asked the deceased to name the card in the session.

You couldn't explain that as simple mind reading. It would be way too complicated.

Lucky guess?

Impossible, too complicated.

Demons, evil spirits playing with you?

Ok, maybe....

A collective consciousness / higher power?

Maybe.

Connecting to a raw data of a person, like a memory or hard drive?

Too complicated, how could this hard drive see and respond to active questions.

So let us say that this situation is true. Occams Razor would dictate the only answer being only ONE simple answer:

Some higher power was connected with be it demon, God, or spirit.



Now, to go into further details, which of these is the simplest possibility of the three????

I do NOT Know if God exists....

I do NOT know if Demons exist...

I DO KNOW that people exist...

Therefore, scientifically, the simplest answer would be contact with a spirit or essence / consciousness of the dead loved one.

This hypothesis is directly based off of the facts that mediums give that are unknown to anyone, yet are verifiable after the fact.

Heisenberg and Starcaft,

I think you both might have misunderstand the implications of my case histories.  So let me summarize the results and why genuine contact is not the most plausible interpretation.

(1) We know that mediums who wrongly believe that a speciific person is dead sometimes conjure that person's presence and make it seem like that person is communicating as if he is dead and is therefore concerned about the loved ones left hehind.  Such mediums have communicated accurate paranormal information assuming the identity of the deceased.  Later it is proven that the allegedly deceased was alive the whole time and knew mthing of this channeling!  Such cases are known.  What is not known is whether any cases involved a discarnate person consciously communicating with surviving loved ones.  Ocacam's razor therefore requires us to assume the correctness of some interpretation that does not involve contact with the intended dead. 

Which is the best alternate interpretation?  That is uncerttain.  Perhaps spirit impersonation, ESP from still incarnate minds that retain the facts channeled, or the collective unconscious.  Occam's razor excludes only one of these possibllities--that genuine contact has occurred with someone who knows they have been contacted. 

(2) In the Gordon Davis case, the medium channeled accurate paranormal information about Gordon's future as if Gordon already knew about it, but about which the real Gordon knew nothing.  In fact, the medium had been wrongly told that Gordon was dead!  This is a known.  So the simplest explanation of channeled material that no incarnate person knows is that some theory that does not involve postmortem survival is most likely the correct one. 

(3) When a fictional character is mentioned to mediums, research shows that mediums tend to accurately and paranormally channel details about these characters as if they were in fact dead and eager to contact the sitter who is playing the medium for a sucker.  In such cases, do mediums read the sitter's mind?  Or do they gain their information from the collective unconscious?  We can only speculate, but such ruses make genuine contact  with the deceased the least liikely interpretation of paranormal information allegedly channeled from a deceased person. 

Don       

If Occam's Razor were applied in ancient times:

* Attributing lightening and thunder to an angry god would be the simpler explanation than the mechanics of meteorology.

* Concluding that the world is flat would be the simpler explanation than its true configuration as a round planet circling the sun since no one could attain the altitude necessary to see the earth as it really is.

I'm sure there are many other examples.

So perhaps our brains communicate in ways we have yet to discover.  Perhaps there is some sort of collective unconscious that certain folks can tap into.

Perhaps the reasons we conclude there is an afterlife will some day be attributable to other reasons.

And then again, perhaps not.

Fact is, no one really knows.

R

Don-

in an example of accurate information coming from a person who is still alive (but who others think is dead) I would say this provides yet further evidence that a human being is more than their conscious physical self. This seems similar to so-called 'crisis apparitions' where a person in distress is seen as a physical presence by a loved one who is miles away at the time. That people have different states of consciousness which may be unavailable to their normal conscious 'physical' self is, I believe, beyond doubt.

To reiterate, I am not saying that all apparent examples of mediumship are just that only that some may be best thought of that way. You give two such examples I would say that there are others. Julie Beischel in her interview with Alex Tsakiris (which I mentioned previously) said that she had heard her research mediums say “a reading doesn’t happen without the discarnate providing information that the sitter didn’t know because it’s the most evidential for the sitter.”

I think part of the problem may be looking at things in an either/or kind of way. I can't see how proof of ESP precludes genuine contact when the mechanism of discarnate  information transfer itself may be though psychic means. Sometimes psychic exchange may involve people still in their bodies and sometimes with those who have left them...

D

Exactly, the energy that is our thoughts is very similar or the exact same as the energy as a dead person. This would easily confuse a medium and make it possible for a person to invent a dead person in they're minds.

Regardless, mediums have been able to report facts that were unknown to ANYONE. These facts can later be verified and the only answer is that the medium is fraud and had major detective work done. (way unlikely.) or the medium was able to hear the information from the spirit. IE. a playing card no one has seen, not even the sitter. Oh and the sitter did not mention that there was a card to the medium, the medium simply saw it in they're head suddenly and of course had no idea why. I can't seem to find any way to explain this other than the simplest answer which is that the medium was shown the card... someone showed the image (in they're head) to the medium as proof that the dead person was really coming through. Of course it could be a demon or some other power, but that adds MORE complication since like I said, I have no proof that any demons or Gods exist. But I DO KNOW people exist.

Edit:

I just wanted to add that I DO UNDERSTAND where the skepticism comes from.

Also I DO UNDERSTAND the points against mediums that you are making.

I STILL question it myself, but, I have had a reading from a spiritual medium and I cannot explain it. To me, to say that a medium is simply reading the mind of the sitter just seems incorrect. Sure, I can pretend I have an uncle named Billy Bob and all kinds of facts and yes, the medium will get that information, but this does not mean that the medium is simply reading my mind. It could in fact be a major point that shows that my thoughts, the true me, is the same thing the medium is reading. I am a thought. My dead friends are a thought. We are all thoughts and when we die we are just thoughts again.

::clicks the submit button sending invisible thoughts through wireless internet so you can see::

Don-

In the case of RR and LG, the most likely explanation is collusion between LG and the medium.

I know the story said LG knew nothing about RR and the missing leg, but we have to take that on faith.  If LG knew the medium, it would also explain why LG was not present at the first sitting- that way, it would appear that LG had nothing to do with the fabrication.

LG conveniently shows up at the second sitting and that's where the missing leg aspect comes into play.

At least this explanation is simpler than assuming the medium really did contact the spirit of RR.  After all, when you think about it, why would a spirit give a rat's behind about his thigh bone in the first place? 

Supposedly the body is just a shell anyway, to be cast aside once the earth life is over.

Yes, I agree with you, Occam's razor would say that collusion is the more likely explanation as opposed to the genuine contact of a spirit upset at his missing thigh bone.

But it makes for an entertaining story. :)

.... surely if Occam's razor meant we simply chose the option of what we already knew ( or thought we knew) as the 'simplest' then human growth/exploration would come to a shuddering halt as we would always be reconfirming what we already knew !

I'll be videotaping my next session with a medium (a new one of course that does not know me or anyone I know.) I'll post the results as well. I have a deep void in myself that can only be filled with confirmation from a medium. I hope to do it asap.  :)