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."
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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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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