Dude-

Same here. I at one time eagerly soaked up channeled material. Ruth Montgomery, ACIM, Seth, etc.  I'll repeat what I pointed out before.. entities that are able to communicate with us are by definition those whose vibrations are closest to us in the physical. The reason we can accomplish retrievals in the first place is because it's easier for us to get their attention and try to help them. Our vibrations are closer than those who have moved on in the spiritual plane.

It stands to reason that spiritually advanced folks would not be engaged in deceptive practices. That leaves the afterlife population who have not moved on. And no doubt there is a reason why they remain.

When we play around with a ouija board we are inviting them in. We wouldn't let any stranger into our house and yet we leave ourselves wide open when we seek to make contact with the afterlife.

Bottom line... there is no "One Afterlife" anymore than there's just one neighborhood in a big city. We exercise caution before we venture into a dicey part of town. Just common sense.

R

Matthew: "What if the information tapped into by mediums is the equivalent of the "Akashic records" or quantum mind or library of all events and thought.  In other words, we are used to thinking of ourselves as separate individuals, yet in a deeper level, we know that we are all part of a greater unity.  Many forms of Eastern and Western thought believe that it is only our false "ego" which causes us to separate ourselves into perceived isolated entities - which in turn often accounts for much of the suffering we encounter on the earthly plane.  Don, you may say that this discussion brings up my "monist" tendencies (and you would be correct)."

So what if the medium tapped into the mind or circumstance of a still living person in the future (Don's example of Gordon Davis)?  Well we do know that means it was not a communication with a deceased loved one.  So in that sense, it is fraudulent.  But the accuracy of the communication leads one to believe that there was a direct communication of factual data through a connection with a larger consciousness or mind.  To me, this is no less of an amazing or transcendent experience than an after death communication.  It tells us that there is a realm of thought that can be accessed that contains information about our earthly experiences, past present and future. 

The point against putting faith in mediums is well taken.  Very often, people receive comforting information that they want to hear; their loved one is safe, happy or that they should move on."   

Matthew, 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 sessions?  I agree that research on channeling might yield important insights apart from the survival question and is worthy of study in its own right.

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. 

Let me now present a rare case of channeling that strikes me as genuine contact before I repost my original OP to the mothballed thread.  A few years ago, I was listening to Coast to Coast.  The guest was medium Hans King.  He traced his channeling ability to general psychic abilities 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 communicating 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 ever encountered.

With these caveats, I now repost my original OP:
Several years ago, Bruce Moen made this claim in response to my thread:  "We could each cite historical examples to support real contact or false contact by mediums in the past to support our own hypothesis."  This thread reposts my reply.  I'm resurrecting this thread as a counterpart to my thread on issue of spiritual self-deception vs. an honest quest for spiritual truth.
______________

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 propaganda 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 reply 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?

Don




 






Don
   

Quote:


Perhaps we shouldn't overlook the possibility that this spirit wasn't actually his mother?

Don, I know when Jesus said "let the dead bury the dead" he meant forget earthly concerns and follow him instead.

I can't help but think he also would not want us to devote so much time and energy trying to explore the afterlife. Wouldn't he say, in effect, put down your computer and follow me?

How does any of this effort correspond to Jesus' teachings? That thought keeps gnawing away at me.

R

rondele wrote on Jun 4^th, 2017 at 5:34pm:


As a Christian, one must consider if what we are doing is in an effort to better know God and be more like Christ, after considering, of course, if it is in alignment with God's word in the first place.

Justin: "I'm asking you Rondele, Lights of Love, and I Am Dude to not make backhanded personal comments about two posters who are not even posting on this thread." 

 Duh, on the contrary, Albert is one of the most frequent posters on this thread! 

I want to see if you are capable of following through on any agreement.  You claimed you would leave this site, and then returned shortly thereafter.  We didn't ask you to leave.  But dammit, if you must announce you were leaving, then leave!  Let's make a deal: you refrain from posting on my threads and I will resist posting on yours. 

In light of accounts such as the one I have linked below, it is irresponsible to downplay the potential dangers of channeling.

https://youtu.be/Ag4Ox4qVSbc?t=6m6s

I wouldn't confuse the fact that many individuals involved in the spirit world don't show indications of possession with the idea that they are not being deceived. Look at it from the point of the deceptive spirit. If these deceptive spirits were involved in a mass agenda to, say, distort and degenerate the beliefs and values of humanity and to encourage occult practices, which would logically open up more individuals to their influence and give them more "food" if we consider that they feed off us in certain ways, it would be counterproductive to discredit valuable sources of propaganda by tainting their image. I believe most demonic entities are smarter and more deceptive than that. They're playing the long game.