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


Hi Dave,

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

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

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

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

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

Kathy

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

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

Hi R,

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

Don

Rondele-

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


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

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

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

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

Spirit mediums? 

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


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

heisenberg,

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

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

Don

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

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