I have had an experience where a medium gave me two words that she could not possibly have guessed which means that information DID come from somewhere. The odds of this being just a lucky guess are really astronomical, at least to me.

That leaves a few possibilities. Not all of them pleasant.

1. Spiritual Mediums are special people that can SUCK thoughts and past memories out of the person they are talking to.

2. Spiritual Mediums are able to connect with the thoughts of the dead person. This does not mean the thoughts are "active" The thoughts that a person had through life may be always be available in existence and the right person can connect with those thoughts. The thoughts exist but are like a computer hard drive with no power. You can access them but they in fact are not capable of anything anymore.

3. Spiritual Mediums can connect with the consciousness of a dead person that has passed into another state of existence. (Hoping for this one of course.)

Consider 2 ways skeptics discredit psychically gifted mediums.  (1) Channeling is discredited by cases in which the medium channels a loved one with accurate details that she would have no way of knowing when in fact this loved one is not dead at all and the channeling session is a charade. For example,
Dr. Sam Soal's brother died.  So Sam visited a famous medium, Blanche Cooper, in the hope of making contact. The seance was interrupted by "Gordon Davis," a former classmate of Sam's.  Sam had been told that Gordon was killed during World War I.  Gordon "proved" his identity with all sorts of accurate details about their life together in school.  Gordon even used jargon unique to his speaking style (e. g. "old chap," "confab)."  He lamented, "All I care about now is my wife and kiddie."  Sam later discovered that Gordon was alive after all and had been on a real estate business trip in London at the time of the seance.  The real Gordon knew nothing about this channeled communications!  You might ask, "Why isn't channeling discredited in this way more often?"  Answer: "How often are you told that a loved one is dead when in fact he [she] is alive?  Apparently, Blanche Cooper or her spirit control was able to exploit Sam's false belief in Gordon's death and then reconstruct his personality through clairvoyance! 

(2) Psychologists can invent a fictitious personality, meditate on it, and then go to a medium to contact it.  In two famous cases, the medium channeled the fictitious personality as if it were real and recently deceased!  The mediums even provided accurate details of this "personality's" life, but were humiliated when the bogus nature of their channeling was brutally exposed.  Cases like (1) and (2) place the burden of proof on the believer in channeling to show cause why alleged verifiable channeling should be construed as genuine contact with their deceased loved one.  Of course, one can claim that such cases are exceptions that do not apply to all cases.  But in my view, there is no credible reason to rationalize counter-cases in this way. 

Don

Bruce,

Thanks for the case histories.  Let's consider the possibility that the medium contacted some level of Gordon's mind and did not gather information about Gordon via ESP from Sam's mind.  This possibility must be considered because occasionally the medium gains psychic information about a drop-in communicator unknown to both sittler and medium alike.  For example, an Icelandic medium channeled an unknown drop-in communicator who drowned in a drunken stupor and his bones later washed ashore.  A builder found these bones and hid them in the walls of a house he was building.  The dead man then came through the medium and demanded that his bones be retrieved from the walls and given a respectful burial. 

I can think of 3 alternative explanations here: (1) The medium actually was unexpectedly contacted by the deceased drowning victim.  (2) The medium psychically drew the information from the still living absent builder's mind.  (3) The medium psychically gleaned the information from the Akashic records or collective unconscious.  In cases (2) and (3), the medium would not be contacting the still living mind of the deceased.  But then how do we explain why information about this drowning victim intruded into the seance when no one present was thinking of him?  In this case, claims of spirit impersonation, though possible, seem like special pleading. 

In the Gordon Davis case, the medium might have made contact with Gordon's mind without the latter's awareness.  If so, then channeled contacts with the dead might glean information from the mind of the dead without their awareness, so that there is no genuine conversation back and forth.  But this interpretation strikes me as implausible for 3 reasons:  (1) No one present at the session was even thinking about Gordon at the time; rather, he was an unexpected drop-in communicator.  (2) I doubt this drop-in communication would have occurred unless Sam believed Davis was dead.  If so, then the medium surely derived her information psychically from Sam's mind, not Gordon's.  (3) Particularly problematic for the channeling theory is the fact that the accurate details channeled were presented with the clear implication that Gordon knew himself to be dead.  For these reasons, I think the medium was deriving her information from Sam's mind, not Gordon's.  The psychodynamics operating here should serve as a warning to those who construe verifiable details as evidence of genuine contact with a deceased loved one who is a knowing participant in that contact.

Similarly, in the case of duped mediums channeling a fictional personality, what is troubling is that this personality is likewise channeled as if it knows itself to be dead.  I don't agree with skeptics that this PROVES all channeling is bogus.  I just object to the glib assumption that verifiable details are most rationally contrued as genuine contact with a deceased spirit.

Don

Greetings,

If the collective consciousness is accessible and well organized, then it certainly answers all the situations that Don, Bruce, and Terethian have described. I believe it does so at some higher level, but that we can also contact individuals who are still in the astral.

In addition we may be personalizing (or anthropomorphizing?) the collective consciousness when we say that we are contacting a specific person, but perhaps that is just a needed interim step of understanding while we're in the mortal coil.  Don seems to think that disproves entire efforts, but to me it's just polite manners to speak of individuals to the family and friends who seek retrievals /visits with their loved ones.

Bets

rondele wrote on Sep 23^rd, 2009 at 2:57pm:


That is completely irrelevant to me. If the medium is connecting with a spirit, any spirit, this proves in life after death. I don't care if it's some butt-hole spirit playing a joke, I care about the big picture. However I question even that a spirit is involved which is harder to prove.

I think a key point to ponder in this discussion is the concept of "mind" itself.  For western science can not really account for the causation of a coherent mind or thought.  Yes, electrochemical impulses can be mapped out in the brain.  Neurotransmitters can be followed, and levels assessed, but we can not, at this point in time explain the concept of "mind" and say it is just a reproducible physical phenomenon.

For years, many in neuroscience dismissed consciousness as some sort of feedback circuit seen in human beings but not in any other animals.  One prominent theory proposed that there really was no such thing as consciousness, it was simply an evolutionary oddity.  Rubbish.

Yet, in this thread, people talk about mediums reading minds, and seem to be saying that if this happens, it is not proof of the afterlife.  Huh?  Did I miss something?  What is actually being read in "mind reading?"  Since science does not support a coherent separate "mind" explained by physiological means, (other than psychiatry and psychology which do so not in explanatory form but for functional purposes), then if one person can read another's mind, we have a major breakthrough here. 

We have (dare I say it?), proof that we are more than our physical bodies.  If there is a realm of mind and thought, then that gives some of the strongest evidence to the notion of a realm independent of physical reality, including, yes, the afterlife.   

I have long rejected the "mind reading" argument as proof against an afterlife existence for these reasons.  Yes, one can argue that the metaphysical mind and thought in general, is somehow operant only in physical reality, but there is more and more proof that this premise is false.  So many verifications come through in one way or another that would need to be dismissed from NDEs to dream contacts, to visitations, visions, and miracles of all kind.

If we are more than our physical bodies, then what my friend Dave-MBS, on this board referred to as "the primacy of thought" must be considered - i.e. - that mind and thought are primary, and physical reality is secondary.

Once the primacy of thought is established, then Don's warnings still apply, namely that we may be contacting a still living person, or that mind reading may occur by a medium - yet we've just entered a realm where thought now exists on a separate plane from the physical world - which is, in my opinion more reason to believe in an afterlife then to doubt its existence.

Matthew

I know what I am, I just don't understand it completely.

While high on drugs, I had the epiphany that:

"I am a thought."

This does not mean I cannot be based on psychical cells combined which create thought. I do not know what the thought that is me comes from.... I cannot prove how it exists and where it comes from.

Then I thought, most likely, I am a thought. A passing thought, thinking for a short time, and then gone. Destroyed. Thoughtless.

Sure, it's also possible I am something more than a thought kept alive because of a body... but you cannot prove this to me.

My thoughts will live in agony and constant panic attacks due to the uncertainty. I so love life.

Actually I wish this was over. If I am this entity, this thing, possessing a psychical body, it stands to reason that I may choose to leave it at any time.

I choose to leave and never come back. This is horrible. I want to be what I am, not pretend to be something else. This entire existence is just a useless experience. My thought has traveled beyond this. What I feel, what others feel, the useless things I think I have to do. It's all pointless you know. And when I return to being a metaphysical being I will see it all as well. Even fun little fantasies and things I can concoct which may seem so real and fun are all nothing. Nothing and everything at the same time. No single word to describe it. Ultimately though I see the point is nothing. Don't you see? It only matters because we think it does. Nothing matters. If I would destroy the entire world, the entire existence, would it really make a difference? Things would be different or perhaps exactly the same since you cannot base anything on anything when nothing matters.

(The is no difference between a living body and a dead body, they are both made up of the same number of cells. - Dr Manhattan.)

I want to leave. I want to become the alpha and the omega. The beginning and the end.
Something and nothing.

Oh yeah and before people hate on me I am not seriously addicted to drugs. I drink 1 to 3 glasses of wine a week or a few beers. I smoke sometimes yet I don't even enjoy it... Smoking the ganja is always followed by a return of my floating thoughts to death. My death, rotting, twitching, blood drained from the corpse death. Blackness. Nothingness. The End. These thoughts are guaranteed to come in fact. I am really really most likely not gonna smoke in the future. Drinking doesn't effect my mind.... I just wish it was safer to drink.

I need an absolute truth. I need an absolute complete PROVABLE fact that there is an afterlife, this is what happens. Here is the scientific test you can perform to prove it. This is it. The one thing that will put my mind to rest. Well, If I could see dead and or hear dead people that would work.

Satan devil, Jehova God, whatever powers that may be, I call forth upon you. Send me the powers to contact the dead. Do you not understand? I don't care if I have trouble sleeping from constant speaking. I don't care if "demons" come and tell me bad things and I go crazy from it.

At least I can go crazy AND have proof of an afterlife.
In the end this proof is everything to me. If I fail to obtain it..... then that means what happens is not guaranteed.

I have firmly established my fear of death, my phobia of death. It is rooted firmly in my soul. My fear is constant, continuous, it negatively effects my life. I am not living my life, I am slogging through it, only thinking of my death.

Come on. Dead spirits, come to me. I call you. I call all of you. Come all at once. Come into my dreams. Haunt me. Show me you are real. Scare the crap out of me. I call you with text, I call you verbally, I call you with my mind. ALL of you. Come to me. Prove yourself. Mess with me. Make me freak out from strange things. I challenge you. I seek you. I need you. Do your worst.

After all of this you know what happens? All of this begging for contact? What in the world is the end result?

....... nothing.


Then you reply to me, well of course, you expect nothing so you get nothing.

Ahh my friend, this is not completely true.
1. It's true that I do not expect a result whatsoever.
2. I do hope for a result, I want one.

If you ask me the wanting should be enough to make it through, especially when I want it this badly.

I am selfish. I tell you now I would do anything for the truth. I would pay anything. I would kill anyone. I would destroy the world. If I had a nuclear bomb and a button in front of me, I would hit it if that was what it took to prove an afterlife exists. I would suck the life and soul from every being in this world if it meant the continuation of my existence. My selfishness is complete, utter, terrible. I feel no remorse. I feel only what I consider a natural reaction.

Actually that would be pretty cool. I love sci-fi. I would be the bad guy. I accept this as a fact. I am at terms with it. I don't feel bad. I am inherently selfish, evil. Of course, since none of this is possible I am pretty nice on the outside.

Isn't there someone that can help me? I am begging for help. Please. What do you want? all of my money? Want me to be your slave? Whatever, I just need absolute scientific proof. The kind that is so complete that everyone can publish it in a text book and sell it and teach it in schools. Nothing short of this will suffice.

I am in torment.
Yes. torment. turmoil. I am lost. I am without hope.
I have no faith since faith is not logical.

I want to stupidly believe in an afterlife. I want to be content and smile when I look at grave stones, knowing they are safe and happy. Why can't I be stupid. Why must I question so. Why do I think like this. It is not okay. I am not okay. I am very very not okay.

HAHA!!! You could argue I am stupid. You could say I am ruining what I have by this panic and obsession. Yes I see that point as well. Funny when you think about it.

Before anyone says It's just me not being busy enough.... no... I work 12-16 hour days sometimes. I have many youtube videos I am working on, I have a zombie story I am working on. I keep myself pretty busy. It doesn't matter. Death is always there. Always follows me.

How about this, I call the metaphysical oneness or whatever, hear my call... let me live forever. Come on, think about it, maybe I will learn more. Let me be the forever man. No longer mortal. Come on, it could be fun. The world needs more excitement anyway. Oh yeah, I am the metaphysical oneness. I am the alpha omega. I can simply do anything because I am everything and nothing, connected with all things.

Yep, I choose a non mortal human body. I will live forever.

Problem solved.

Terethian, some lines of your thoughts are familiar to me. I ended up with the conclusion that finally, I will know- at the latest when my physical existence ends. That's a fact, isn't it? Until that, I have to find a way to live on as comfortable as possible. Maybe we'll get all the answers within our physical life, maybe not, we don't know. So we just move on, until we move on.

Spooky