What I saw (and heard) at the trance mediumship demonstration

I recently attended a four-day conference of the Academy for Spiritual and Consciousness Studies (of which I am a member), held at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. There were so many presenters that some time slots had to be triple-booked, based on loosely defined subject categories. The common denominator was that all involved paranormal phenomena related to spiritual growth, healing, or a mixture of the two.

It would be futile to summarize the whole conference, and even capsule accounts of several presentations would make this post way too long. So I'll concentrate on a single event that made quite an impression, very likely, on just about everyone who witnessed it.

The session -- added to the schedule almost just before the conference and taking place late in the evening of the first full day -- was a demonstration of trance mediumship.

You know what that means, right? A medium is a person who acts as a link between spirits not physically present on earth and a group of observers, often called sitters in a small group or séance. This was not a small assembly, however, but nearly everyone present for the conference. Some mediums transmit messages from spirits while in an otherwise normal state of consciousness; some under hypnosis or self-induced trance; a few while unconscious and oblivious to the here-and-now world.

Since the medium at the ASCS demo is completely open about her ability and has written books about what she does and related topics, there is no reason to conceal her identity. Her name is Suzanne Giesemann.

For a medium, her background is as unlikely as you could make up. Her previous career was in the U.S. Navy, where she held the rank of commander, and was at one time an aide de camp to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She is married to the captain of a destroyer. It can safely be assumed that she did not go through a Flower Child or New Age unicorns-and-butterflies period. Suzanne acknowledges that if anyone had predicted, years ago, that she would be doing what she is doing these days, she would have thought the idea mad.

Before sitting down to begin the mediumistic segment, she spoke as her normal self about what those of us (including myself) who had never been at one of her inter-world transmissions might expect. The entity she would "bring through" is a guiding spirit known as Sanaya. Actually, Sanaya is said to be a collective consciousness rather than an individual spirit. Adopting a single name for a discarnate crew may be to keep embodied audiences from being distracted by seemingly different entities. Also, we are told, spirits don't attach much importance to names, since they know one another intimately by thought.

Suzanne's manner during her introduction was lively and vivacious, but content aside, no different from many practiced speakers on any subject. She seated herself; some recorded inspirational music (which I thought cloyingly awful, but chacun à son goût) was played; and she then sat quietly for about two minutes, almost motionless except for some deep breaths.

Then Suzanne was no longer there. Someone else had taken her place.

Now that sounds extravagant, maybe ridiculous. Of course I don't mean that her body disappeared and a completely different one inhabited the space. But a new personality took over. 

I can't honestly say how much the actual tone of her voice, its timbre, differed from that she'd been using before going into a trance; I was too focused on the transformation of her speech pattern and gestures.

First, in place of the animated manner Suzanne had displayed when "herself," she now spoke slowly and solemnly. Okay, no big deal. Anyone could do that, and I mention it only to fill out the account that follows.

She -- might as well call her Sanaya -- spoke English, but in an extraordinary accent. It was not hard to understand her words, but the accent was unlike anything I've ever heard. It comes as near as matters to being indescribable, but here's a very rough idea. Try to imagine a cross between the pronunciation of an Irish person and an East Indian, with a few additional odd twists.

I don't think there could be any such blend in our world. Even if a person grew up in India and moved to Ireland at a young age, I doubt that a similar pattern would emerge. For one thing, accents are strongly shaped by the first influence. People raised in the U.S. deep South still talk like southerners even if they've lived in Boston for 40 years, and if the original accent is modified it is only partly so -- you don't get a 50-50 balance.

Mark you, I'm not saying Sanaya spoke in a mixture of Irish and Indian, with some other flavoring rounding it out, just trying to suggest its utter strangeness. So strange that any person in the audience might give a different description.

Beyond the way Sanaya shaped her vowels and consonants, the syllables emphasized were often different from those of someone speaking any variety of English (and often, it seemed, the stress was on the final syllable). I didn't write down any particulars (or take notes at all, being too absorbed in what was happening). But, for a made-up example, the word undoubtedly might have sounded like "und-out-ed-ly."

She spoke with great dignity.

Suzanne's gestures while speaking were large, dramatic, extraverted. Sanaya moved her hands slowly and gracefully, like a ballerina. 

Why all this description? What about the content of Sanaya's "talk" and the answers to questions put to her by audience members?

As you can gather, I was too caught up in studying the style to fully pay attention to the content. The meaning I did take in was warm and elevated, but perhaps offered no particular evidence that it came from a disembodied source. In a printed transcript, it might not be unlike much you've already read.

Sanaya replied to audience questions. Suzanne in her warm-up talk had urged us to limit ourselves to inquiries of importance to everyone, not about personal issues, and everyone honored the request. So there was no possibility of "cold reading," or fishing for clues from the questioner. Following the question period, the transformation from Suzanne to Sonaya was reversed, and Suzanne was back with us, indistinguishable from herself earlier in the evening.

If I seem to have attached more importance to style than substance, it was because of looking for clues to establish Sanaya's reality as distinct from Suzanne's.

Skeptics of mediumship often ascribe the phenomenon to a secondary, unconscious part of the medium's own mind that is released in the trance state. That is probably true in some cases. As a general explanation of mediumship, the theory has a number of problems, which I won't go into here because of the lengthy discussion they would need.

With Sanaya, I could not take seriously the idea that Suzanne was putting on an act unconsciously, let alone consciously.

I give a lot of weight to Sanaya's speech mannerisms. Accents are hard even for some good actors to pull off, and as far as I know Suzanne had no theatrical training. A few actors (Meryl Streep for instance) are well known for their ability to put a different background on their tongue. With a couple of hours of practice, I'm sure Laurence Olivier could have convinced you he had spent his life in Brooklyn. John Gielgud, I don't think so.

But there we're talking about "normal" accents, which people actually speak, and that can be studied via recordings and with the aid of voice coaches. It's hard to conceive of anyone inventing an accent and using it consistently for even the 10 or 15 minutes Sanaya was "onstage." (There were no slips into conventional pronunciation, and I was listening carefully for them.)

Even given the highly unlikely possibility that someone could memorize an exotic speech with exotic gestures, the fact that Sanaya was responsive -- answering questions she could not have anticipated, and in the same mode -- puts paid to any suspicion of fakery, in my view.

So what to conclude from this demonstration? Well, it doesn't prove that dematerialized spirits can communicate with us on the earth plane through certain people with specialized abilities. But the history of science shows that nothing can be finally proven outside the realm of mathematics. For psychical research questions, only the preponderance of evidence as a whole offers tentative answers. For me, Sanaya counts strongly in aid of the spirit hypothesis.

Anyway, I'm glad to have "met" Sanaya. And thank you, Suzanne Giesemann, for generously lending your time to enable us to see a little beyond the veil.

Archives of Psychical Research: I

William Faulkner famously said, "The past is never dead. It’s not even past." It would be satisfying to believe so concerning the vast collection of research, accounts of personal experience, and theories about psychical phenomena. Unfortunately, most books and articles on psychical research have a brief shelf life. Some deserve to, but others have a claim on our attention.

This series offers brief reviews and discussions of a few explorations of paranormal mental phenomena that have been all but forgotten.

Apparitions and Survival of Death by Raymond Bayless. New Hyde Park: University Books, 1973.


If you don't believe studies of psychical research are writ in water, consider the case of Raymond Bayless, author of seven books about the subject from various angles. They were mainly published in the 1970s, are already out of print and rarely discussed. He lived till 2004.

Bayless called himself a researcher, legitimately I think. But he lacked a string of academic degrees after his name, which won't do these days. Nevertheless, his book reads well although it could stand better organization -- he tends to mention the same subject at scattered locations.

Apparitions and Survival of Death examines one of the key phenomena said to provide evidence that the deceased continue in spirit form after the body is dead and gone. Literally thousands of well-researched cases are on record, plus others that are anecdotal and not fully meeting criteria for acceptance -- but their sheer numbers add a further suggestion that post-mortem survival is real.

It's a complicated and puzzling subject, like everything paranormal. For one thing, apparitions (appearances of someone not physically present) often involve seeing the image of someone alive, and even in slapping good health, at the time. One of the earliest scientific surveys -- possibly the most thorough ever done -- is titled Phantasms of the Living. Another category is so-called "crisis apparitions" of people who are dying, but show up while the ill or injured person is still breathing.

As if that's not enough, apparitions have various degrees of physical solidity, from faint and wispy to others that look like ordinary people and can physically affect objects, such as by turning lights on and off, or making footstep-like sounds as they move around. Some apparitions are seen by several people at the same time, in the proper perspective for each viewer.

Ironically, those most determined to dismiss apparitions as spirits are as likely to be parapsychologists as scientific materialists. The academic instinct is to avoid metaphysical explanations or to be associated with séances and such questionable practices. From the very founding of the Society for Psychical Research in 1882, some of its most prominent researchers including Frederic Myers and Edmund Gurney shied away from the spirit hypothesis.

Most alternative theories up to the present involve some version of telepathy. Bayless says:

In 1888 F.W.H. Myers theorized that phantoms, representing both the living and the dead, were telepathic in origin. Simply put, this theory suggests that a person involved in some type of crisis (the agent) broadcasts a telepathic message to the receiver (the percipient) who in turn casts the impulse into tangible form. That is, his mind turns the original telepathic impulse into a visually perceived but hallucinatory phantasm; or into a sound such as a voice, footsteps, a touch of a hand; or into the form of a significant odor.

Myers's colleague, Edmund Gurney, was troubled by the problem of collectively perceived apparitions. Unwilling to allow any physical reality to an apparition, he tried to rescue the telepathic idea by claiming that "after the original 'broadcast' was received by the primary percipient, this receiver in turn emitted another telepathic transmission, which was then picked up by still another percipient. In the case of multiple percipients the telepathic 'infection,' as Gurney termed it, became quite complex, unwieldy, and very improbable!"

The telepathic-perception hypothesis was shaped into its modern and most famous form by G.N.M. Tyrrell in a lecture and later a book, Apparitions. Bayless:

Professor Hornell Hart briefly defines Tyrrell's supposition by stating that a ghost is the result of a mingling of the subconscious minds of both agent and percipient, and that the actual apparition is a kind of three-dimensional picture in motion. Tyrrell refers to "the stage carpenter" (meaning, I believe, [the percipient's] ability to create illusion) and other subtleties which have provided much bewilderment among parapsychologists. In essence, after trimming away certain verbal foliage, I fail to see that he said anything drastically different from what Edmund Gurney postulated.

Clearly, Bayless isn't having it that all apparitions are generated in one or more living minds. In my view, the different editions of the telepathy explanation are theoretically possible in paranormal appearances of the living. But as a general proposition they fall wide of the mark.

What about apparitions of people who are verifiably deceased? Who is then the "sender" of the impression that the receiver, or receivers collectively, see or hear or both? 

Bayless includes chapters on related phenomena, which he examines with his commonsense approach: poltergeists, out-of-the-body experiences, ectoplasmic figures, &c. Partial materialization of apparitions through ectoplasm is absurd, of course, but casts have been made from ectoplasmic hands pressed into wax. The casts have been photographed. Perhaps they were perceived by the camera's internal stage carpenter.

Considering all the different forms taken by apparitions and the circumstances under which they make themselves known, it's reasonable to suppose that they consist not just of one class of psychical phenomena, but several, or maybe many. Given the cloud under which apparitions remain in an increasingly material-minded world, it will be a long time before the mystery reveals its secrets.

Metaphysically challenged

The Guardian, the U.K.'s guardian of leftist ideology, ran a story headlined "Do ghosts exist? Four theories on our fascination with apparitions."

The interviewees -- a priest, an Oxford lecturer, a Guardian writer, and a university psychologist -- say no, no, no, and no. Perish the thought that a genuine psychical researcher or two might have been consulted to liven up the discussion. The Left is gung-ho on diversity in everything except opinion.

Samples from each person quoted:

 ... In all cultures and times there is something here that won't go away; some fear that is legitimately being expressed – the continual return of the repressed. And the simple point that ghosts don't exist (obviously they don't, by the way) doesn't cut it. 

While they may be linked to the past, ghosts endure in and are renovated by the cultural imagination of the present.

Who knows what accounts for these apparitions; are they an emanation of longing, love, hope, need?  ... Perhaps we see ghosts because they help us to adjust, a hand reaching out to administer to the sudden, appalling wrench.

Not surprisingly perhaps, fantasy-prone personalities are much more likely to report having encountered a ghost. Our fear of our own mortality plays an important role in belief in ghosts. Most of us desperately want to believe in life after death – and the idea of ghosts, however scary, seems to offer support for such a notion.

It is obvious that these deep thinkers are unfamiliar with the scientific -- scientific -- literature of more than a century of research on the subject. They may be distinguished in their respective fields (what is the field of a Guardian writer? Queer theory?), but this story is equivalent to asking football coaches their views on nuclear power generation.

None of them appears to have the faintest idea that "apparitions" represent more than one type of phenomenon.

Hauntings are not the same as spirit return. The former, which generally consist of continual appearances of a figure at the same place, seem as best we can determine non-physical evidence left in a certain environment, often as the result of a traumatic incident there. These "ghosts" are not conscious (in our normal sense) persons or spirits.

Actual spirits do represent conscious entities on the Other Side who can sometimes communicate, directly or via noncorporeal beings called "controls," with psychically sensitive living individuals (mediums). No medium I have ever heard of calls them or thinks or them as "ghosts."

The reader comments are even more revealing of the current state of life in neo-Marxist cultures like Britain. Item:

What you have to realise is that ghosts are actually feminists fundamentally opposed to the rigid patriarchical boundaries created by men. Only in death do they see the light, and only in women do they seek solace and an escape from their past.

Either that, or all ghosts are the spirits of male university students still trying to inappropriately grope unavailable women, before returning to their spectral frat-house to chug ghost beer and sing ghost songs.

Item:

Of course ghosts exist. The Easter Bunny told me so himself.

And that's not all. Many of the comments take their erasers not only to "ghosts," but to God.

The evidence for the existence of ghosts is slim, however, the evidence of the existence of god is even slimmer.

The psychological explanation for why people believe in ghosts is no different from religion: some people are not prepared to accept that this life is all there is. That warrants compassion but not congratulations on their "wisdom".

The exciting news is that wilfully embracing a life free from the oppressive shadow of God the Father is wonderfully liberating.

My impression is that the U.K., living under CultMarx, is only the most obvious example of European countries where the majority of people have no spiritual beliefs. Centuries-old churches are converted into dance clubs or mosques. I still find it a little shocking. There has been nothing like this before in all history that I know of.

Sure, you can point to batty "religions" among primitive tribes (although I'll concede that shamans and such have sometimes been in touch with higher realms). The first two great Western civilizations, Greece and Rome, had a cast of Gods that may seem to us today like a cross between creative fantasy and soap opera. (Individual skeptics like Lucretius, Seneca, and Cicero were outliers). Christianity has been perverted at times into persecution of dissenters and sickening religious wars.

But a whole culture based purely on materialism and things that can be measured in the physical world?

That cannot prevail, leaving out as it does the dimensions of Truth that lie behind our limited and relative truths. What it will do to people's minds in the meantime, though, sends a chill wind through this world.

Mind (the gap)

The mind has two fundamentally different functions. For the sake of simplicity, let's say we have two minds. (This is about mind; nothing to do with the "left brain-right brain" split.) Rarely do the two meet. Sometimes people never connect with one of their minds at all, at least, not consciously while awake.

The other mind we all know about. It is an ambassador to the brain. It deals with sense impressions captured by the organs of perception, thought, and memory. Today most world views are based on this mind, whether or not the individual thinks about it or just accepts the going cultural ontology.

All these sense perceptions can be dazzling to the mind, or at the least attention-grabbing. The almost incredible pull exerted by the senses, especially moving images, is shown by the absorption of so much of the population so much of the time in entertainment. The film critic Stanley Kauffmann once pointed out that if you put a TV screen showing a program in a store window, lots of people would stop to goggle at it -- half a century after TV made a commercial breakthrough, and when almost everyone had one set or more at home.

When you add thinking and memory (most of it based on senses raining on the mind), it's easy to see how the mind (one mind, in our metaphor) could be filled to the brim. What could be left over for anything else?

But the mind, in total, that we each possess is potentially capable of two entirely different processes. A crude analogy might be a garment designed to be turned inside out so it is in effect two items of clothing in one.

So what is this other mind, or other use of the mind?

With sufficient practice or training, and in a few people as a natural gift, it receives impressions from non-material, ordinarily imperceptible states of being. People with such capabilities have been known throughout history, described by many different terms: oracles, mystics, psychics, clairvoyants, and mediums are maybe the most common. That isn't to say that their abilities are the same or work the same way: the more you learn about them, the more you're tempted to say each is unique, like snowflakes. Their one thing in common is that they are in touch with non-material beings (spirits) or realms unavailable to those who are purely sense-driven.

Most people with psychic gifts maintain that we are all able to develop such talents, albeit not necessarily to the same degree, if we work at it. The best method of development varies by individual. Most, however, involve shutting down the sense-enamored mind and concentrating on one particular thing or idea to the exclusion of normal daily consciousness. It's kind of like switching channels.

The formula for, literally, changing one's mind generally goes by the name of concentration or meditation. (Some teachers of the psychic and spiritual arts insist they are not the same, but despite my best efforts to understand what they're on about, it seems to me a distinction without a difference.)

As a meditator for several decades, I can assure you it has not been easy-peasy, and I think the same will be so for many practitioners. There have been occasional moments (sometimes quite isolated in time, occasionally frequent for a short while) when I believe I experienced a state qualitatively different from any other, and with a touch of ecstasy about it. Mostly, though, it's frustrating, tedious, or seems impossible.

Probably the trouble is that we're trying to use the mind in a totally different way from what we're used to during every waking hour. (Sleep is a special state of mind, but I'll cop to being still confused about how it works.) The "other mind" keeps trying to step in and take over. You can't force it to back off. You have to learn not to pay attention to it.

Should you wish to explore the "other mind," be prepared for a bout of learning that's like becoming an expert in any skill. (If you happen to be one of those "naturally gifted" ones I mentioned earlier, it may develop more quickly and easily -- some say that's because there are people who made considerable progress in earlier lives -- or you are already doing some form of psychic activity.)

A mind is a terrible thing to waste, they say. Two minds, perhaps an even greater waste.

Afterlifelines

Towards the end of the nineteenth century there were many intellectuals in England who felt the futility of the prevailing world-view very keenly. Among them was a small group of scholars and scientists who ... sought to 'put the final question to the Universe'.

Dissatisfied and depressed by the view of man as a mere machine, they set to work to investigate all sorts of phenomena which had been neglected by orthodox science, and which promised to throw more light on the true nature of man. The problem which occupied them more than any other, the 'final question', was: does any part of the human personality survive after the death of the body?

John L. Randall

Parapsychology and the Nature of Life

Sigh.

In my Father's house are many mansions, in my philosophy many levels of Being, and our normal existence trivial compared with spiritual truth. Even so, frightening events unfold worldwide seemingly at gathering speed; a star-struck, golfing Lenin occupies the highest office in U.S. politics; and various brands of dictators and terrorists use their window of opportunity to raise hell. It seems a little escapist to write a post about a conference on communication with spirits who have passed out of this life.

But despite our daily crises, we need -- perhaps more than ever before in our  time -- to consider the larger picture, one not limited to a materialistic, immediate understanding of reality.

I recently attended the conference sponsored by the Academy for Spiritual and Consciousness Studies (ASCS), "New Developments in Afterlife Communications." The setting was an Embassy Suites in Paradise Valley, part of the attractive northeast area of Phoenix.

Methods presented by speakers for contacting spirits (former inmates of this world) on the Other Side included the old tried-and-sometimes-true standby, mediumship; pendulum communication in which a spirit affects the path of a swinging pendulum when questions are put to it; meditation; dreams; mirror gazing (a form of scrying, in which images appear in a featureless surface like a polished crystal ball or water contained in a bowl); automatic writing; hypnotic recall of spirits encountered between incarnations; and various forms of electronic speech and images from the afterlife, today known as instrumental transcommunication (ITC).

As you might expect, ITC is the most recently developed in a society becoming ever-more dependent on electronic connections such as video, computers, smartphones, etc. Several speakers focused on ITC, and I was surprised how much progress seems to have been made since I attended another conference, sponsored by Association TransCommunication, a few years ago. That, if my memory serves, largely centered around recorded voices of the "dead," but while I found a few convincing, others were faint or distorted enough to leave too much room for interpretation -- auditory Rorschach blots.

A lot of the voices this time seemed quite a bit clearer and unambiguous. That isn't to say they sound like ordinary speech: spirits do not have physical vocal cords, so they must create sounds analogous to talking. How they do it nobody knows for sure, and it is apparently tough to learn, but some master it -- usually after a few tentative tries.

The sentences they speak, such as those we heard on the recordings, are almost always brief. The average duration is about a second and a half. But they are grammatically correct and seem to convey some meaning.

And the anomalous photographs of people who had passed on -- often children of grieving parents, some of whom were present to vouch for the resemblance -- generally looked more real than the ridiculous "ghost photographs" of a hundred years ago.

Rosemary Ellen Guiley had the unenviable task of explaining both dream and black-mirror gazing communication with afterlife inhabitants (plus leading a brief guided meditation) in a single hour. I had a chance to chat with her at the ITC conference and also heard her speak at the IANDS meeting last year. She rose to the occasion once again at ASCS with a clear and focused presentation. Author of dozens of books on all sorts of paranormal phenomena, she is a dedicated researcher and I believe one of the most intelligent people I've met.

Victor Zammit, whose A Lawyer Presents the Case for the Afterlife has attracted a great deal of attention and respect in paranormal circles, described his experiences with David Thompson -- one of the rare physical mediums around today. A physical medium is said to release a mysterious substance called ectoplasm that builds up into a sort of living replica of a spirit. While the idea almost passes my own "boggle threshold," Zammit (and many others) have seen it done, with all kinds of precautions against the phony exhibitions once performed and which did so much to discredit mediumship in the past century.

In some ways I was as impressed by the group of attendees as by the speakers. I'm not good at striking up conversations with strangers, but those I talked to and overheard showed no evidence of naiveté or New Age shallowness. Actually, the only bit of New Age twaddle (in my view) came from one of the presenters. A question-and-answer session got onto the subject of how to get acquainted with one's spirit guides. The gentleman of whom I speak said, "Just listen to your body." Oh, climb off it, mate. Maybe he connects with his guides through headaches and indigestion, but if it were that simple for the rest of us we wouldn't need speakers like him or conferences like the ASCS's.

There was much more of interest to learn about, but I'll stop here because I know you have other things to do. But congratulations to ASCS for a successful event.

I'm not wild about Phoenix in general, but the rich habitats of Paradise Valley and next-door Scottsdale haven't overwhelmed the magic of the Sonoran Desert; in some cases the houses and even commercial buildings reflect it. Contrary to what many people who've never been there imagine, it isn't bone-dry. It's even called the Green Desert because the summer afternoon rains of the "monsoon season," much looked-forward-to around this time of the year, give plants plenty to drink and people some relief from the intense heat.

The monsoons hadn't quite started yet, but clouds cast white and gray backdrops to the scenery as the days drew toward sunset. There is more variety to plant life in the Sonoran desert than in Virginia or Oregon. Some is native desert flora like the Saguaro cacti, found nowhere else on earth; palo verde trees (yes, they have green trunks); ocotillo. Others are exotic imports from the Middle East or tropics -- date palms, royal palms, bougainvillea. The total effect is enchanting.

On our last evening before returning home, we made our latest visit to T. Cook's, the restaurant at the Royal Palms resort. We've never stayed at the Royal Palms -- I think it's jolly expensive -- but I love the old-fashioned Spanish/Mediterranean atmosphere, with a courtyard and fountain, painted tiles and that. T. Cook's is not only the best restaurant I know in Phoenix, but among the best I've experienced anywhere.

My wife, Christy, is an adventurous eater. Antelope was on the menu. (You think that's something? In an authentic art nouveau styled Paris restaurant called Le Vagenande, she tried ox cheeks, which I don't even want to think of.) She asked our waiter about the antelope. He explained that they came from a 50,000 acre range in Texas. They are killed by expert riflemen who are like the army's sniper team ("one shot ... one kill!"). Yes, we were out West right enough. I don't like picturing such things. But I eat fish, and killing a beast with a single well-placed round is probably more humane than pulling a living fish out of the water. Anyway, Christy enjoyed the antelope, prepared with artistic ingredients. My sea bass was outstanding.

The Sonoran Desert is insanely hot in summer. You step outside or even walk onto the hotel balcony and it's like opening an oven door. It seems impossible even a swimming pool would be refreshing. Only mad dogs and Americans go out in the noonday sun -- actually, even mad dogs were nowhere seen. The lizards must have dozed in a (relatively) cool spot. One crazy jackrabbit did a 50-yard dash.

 

Some birds seem to tolerate the solar blast. White-winged doves, for instance. I remembered them from Tucson, where they filled our back yard, giving the cats who could see them through the glass sliding doors a fit. They look like the doves you see anywhere else, but when they lift their wings, the wings' undersides are angelic white. Then there are what Christy identified as boat-tailed grackles (she knows her birds much better than I do). Why boat-tailed? I guess because when they spread their tail feathers, they extend in a fan shape, like the wake of a boat.

I'd been looking forward to seeing hummingbirds resting in mid-air, their wings a blur, but none were hanging about. Christy saw a hummingbird from the balcony while I was at a conference session. I resigned myself to missing their company on this visit.

Just as we were leaving the Embassy Suites to head for Sky Harbor Airport (perhaps the only poetically named airport in the world), I was standing next to a palo verde waiting for Christy to drive the car around to the loop in front of the hotel, when I clapped eyes on a hummer standing on a branch. Its tiny body with a curved needle beak seemed like a wonderful omen.

ASCS conference this July

When I learned of the Academy for Spiritual and Consciousness Studies (ASCS) only a few months ago, it was a welcome discovery. The Academy seems to be carrying on in our age of scientific materialism the original impulse that led researchers to form the Society for Psychical Research in England in 1882. The SPR founders primarily wanted to invest the resources of scientific methodology in studying the age-old mysteries of human consciousness. Those included, prominently, evidence for survival of at least some part of our identity beyond that wall we are all heading toward: death of the physical body.

It's often said that the goals of the original SPR and other psychical researchers have not been realized. A hundred and thirty years later, the field remains stifled by skepticism and lack of interest among both scientists and the public. Under its new, supposedly more respectable name, parapsychology, studies are conducted at a handful of universities. In keeping with the Zeitgeist and the academic setting, though, emphasis has shifted to experimental laboratory work whose results can be measured and analyzed. Those experiments apply mostly to phenomena such as telepathy and psychokinesis (moving or affecting objects by purely mental power).

That sort of stuff is interesting, although it consists of refinements to knowledge of phenomena whose existence has been demonstrated over and over. But what is left out is spontaneous events that can't be produced and reproduced in a lab -- and most of the evidence for survival is unexpected, unplanned, or generated by unusual people working in conditions that many find bizarre and dubious.

ASCS doesn't shy away from what is today the fringe of psychical research, although formerly at the center of it. It appears most ASCS members are concerned with (not necessarily believers in) life after death.

In one sense, progress -- while sporadic -- has been made even in that area of study. Anyone with an open mind who wants to take the time and trouble to read up on mediumship, apparitions, and similar phenomena is bound to be impressed; not so much by individual cases as by the total weight.

The problem today has changed since 1882. (Incidentally, many individuals were studying psychic phenomena and writing about them even earlier -- for instance Allan Kardec, The Spirits' Book [1857] and The Book on Mediums [1861]; and Catherine Crowe, The Night Side of Nature [1848]. The SPR was only the first formal scientific organization to take up the study). We have plenty of recorded instances that strongly imply survival, although additional findings are naturally welcome. 

The biggest challenge now is to understand the phenomena: what they mean, how they work. That requires not just raw information but a theory to account for the massive, and sometimes seemingly contradictory, variety of paranormal events. As Henry Sidgwick, one of the SPR founders, said, "Facts alone form a mob."

Theories about survival form a mob as well, while consensus is notably absent.

But another promising development in psychical research has been the growth of techniques for after-death communication (ADC) -- in plan language, talking with the spirits of the dead. The ASCS conference theme is "New Developments in Afterlife Communications." Some of them you can try at home.

If you have a serious interest in the "big picture" of life in this world and beyond, or are even just curious, you might consider attending the conference.

Material witnesses

Here's another post you may consider the height of lunacy. Still, our ordinary life (especially in the political realm) these days is the height of lunacy, and that doesn't stop it being the stuff of media. At least this post will not further mention Buraq Obama, Hillary Clinton, or climate change.

Embedded below is a video titled Visitors from the Other Side. Much of it concerns a spiritualist named Tom Harrison recalling the life and séances of his mother, Minnie Harrison. Mrs. Harrison seems to have been exceptionally gifted in her unusual calling. Over time she developed the abilities of mental mediumship, direct voice mediumship, and -- wait for it -- physical mediumship.

That last includes moving objects by mind power, summoning objects (known as apports) that appear mysteriously, and the hugely controversial practice of creating simulacra of spirits from "the Other Side" (after death) using a semi-material substance called ectoplasm -- produced or transferred by the medium herself.

Of all psychical phenomena, the appearance of spirits (often parts of them, such as heads or hands) is met with the greatest skepticism. Even today's psychical researchers (who call themselves parapsychologists to sound more academically respectable) tend to be embarrassed by the subject and avoid it. But physical mediumship was practiced fairly widely, roughly in the last half of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th. Minnie Harrison was late to the game, after its vogue was past. But some forms of physical mediumship continue to arise occasionally, such as during the Scole sessions.

Understandably the production of semi-physical forms of spirits built of ectoplasm is much derided. During the heyday of séances plenty of fake materializations were revealed. Photographs are not convincing. Many are rather ugly pictures of a medium extruding through her mouth a stream of something resembling cotton or curdled milk. Still, we don't know what ectoplasm, if it exists, actually looks like. So even if we're dubious, we shouldn't be too dogmatic.

The reason I think this video worth watching is that it is eyewitnesses speaking, not recounting hearsay; and Tom Harrison certainly had many occasions to observe the phenomena produced by his mother. This can be considered a historical documentation of something that supposedly occurred in psychic circles in earlier times and has now apparently vanished -- perhaps because no one attempts it. The video is dated 1995, and describes sessions from 1946 to 1954.

I also like the fact that the interviews, by a woman named Pat Hamblin, do not seem to have been made for a TV production. No director working today would have followed such a simple, straightforward format: the now-unacceptable long sessions of "talking heads." Missing were quick cutting, actors "re-creating" scenes, or cheesy background music. It all comes across as natural. Hamblin apologizes for obtrusive sounds in the public places where Harrison lectures, although I didn't find them bothersome.

Incidentally, some Yanks (and Brits, for that matter) may think the accents of the speakers suggest a lack of sophistication. No. The country is remarkable for the persistence of micro-accents; what you hear is the dialect of Middlesborough, Yorkshire. I was once with a woman in Yorkshire (she was a native of the county) who fell into conversation with a bloke. The woman remarked, "You don't sound like you're from around here." "Aye, you're right," he said. "I'm from Middlesborough." That was about 40 miles to the north.

Here is the video. You can click the icon at the lower right of the frame to enlarge the picture to full screen.

Why not invite clairvoyants to visualize what has happened to Malaysia 370?

The "experts" and well-trained search and rescue teams from 26 countries are confounded. For examples of the astonishing range of theories and speculations among the public, see here and here from Richard Fernandez's Belmont Club site. (Be sure to scroll down after the main posts past the advertising junk to the comment sections.)

So why not give anyone who claims clairvoyant extrasensory perception (also known as remote viewing) a chance to test their ability? ESP, it has been widely noted, seems to work best when there is an emotional connection with the target. A missing airliner with 239 occupants meets that criterion far better than a pack of Zener cards with uninteresting symbols.

When (if) the mystery is solved, the clairvoyant perceptions could be graded on an accuracy scale from "completely wrong" to "correct in every detail." With a large enough sample, a statistically significant data analysis could be calculated.

Almost surely most responses from clairvoyants would fall somewhere outside the two extremes. But it would be fascinating to see exactly where on the scale. Responses could also be broken down by the alleged percipients' demographics, if such information were sought at the time of the experiment -- according, for instance, to sex, location, age, nationality, &c.

If all responses were solicited via email, the time and date stamp would add another variable.

This is not meant to treat lightly what will very likely turn out to be a tragic event. Nor am I suggesting that the results of the experiment (which would take a while to analyze) determine anything about the search strategy, which presumably is being carried out according to standard operating procedures based on experience. But it couldn't hurt to try, if a group of scientists would open their minds enough to conduct the procedure.

Wind of the western sea

Recently, in a posting on past-life regression, I somewhat rashly concluded: "I will save for another occasion ... a description of what might be a fragmentary past-life memory firmly lodged in my mind." I am here keeping my word, and I think it's an interesting story.

As far back as childhood, I periodically recalled this phrase:

Low, low, breathe and blow,

 Wind of the western sea!

It didn't have the quality of just another old but ordinary memory, like something a grade-school teacher had once said. The words had a haunting quality. Although clear, they seemed to come from very far away in time, wrapped in an aura of strange significance.

Adding yet another coat of oddity, the words ringing in my mind were set to music. I could have, still can, hum the tune (no doubt off-pitch).

After I began studying psychical research, it occurred to me at some point that the phrase might be a legacy of a previous incarnation. Something about it suggested 19th century England, which has always exerted a special fascination for me.

A mystery that would never be solved in this life -- that was the state of play until not long ago. And then magical information technology arose. Not expecting any meaningful result, I Googled the phrase. And was properly astonished at what I learned.

The words are from a poem titled "The Princess: Sweet and Low" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. You can read it here.

I am keen on Tennyson. It says a lot about the good taste of the Victorians, who are much abused in our day, that they recognized and honored his brilliance. But I have read only a fraction of his prolific output, and didn't remember "The Princess: Sweet and Low" at all.

Of course, when I learned the source of my wispy memory, I considered possible non-paranormal explanations. I might have read it in school or college, although I never took a class specific to Tennyson or his era. I doubt that my largely wasted education introduced me to any but his really famous poems, like "In Memorium" and "Ulysses."

I grew up in a house with lots of books, but I remembered no Tennyson anthology. Besides, from an early age I was hooked on science fiction (favorite authors: Robert A. Heinlein and Fredric Brown), which left little time for soaking up poetry -- which, like most kids, I didn't care for.

I asked my mother recently if we had had some volume when I was growing up that might have included the poem. She thought not, although there was a collection of English literature. But it seems unlikely it would have contained a relatively obscure piece like "The Princess: Sweet and Low," or that I would have run across it, or been taken by its mother-and-child theme.

So, locked on target: a probable past-life memory! I have had almost no paranormal experiences in my life, but this one seemed to be a cracker.

Until, that is, the next time I phoned my mother. She had looked up the poem, and remembered often singing it to me as a lullaby to soothe me into sleep. This began when I was perhaps six months old, she said.

My long-cherished theory suddenly fell apart. It was a case of cryptomnesia, wherein something once known is forgotten by the conscious mind, but much later emerges, usually under hypnosis. Skeptics maintain that all so-called past life regressions are based on the phenomenon -- a few facts or a story plot long hidden in the depths of the psyche, woven into a dramatic "earlier incarnation" when encouraged by the hypnotist.

But as I said, the fragment from Tennyson popped up many times throughout the years, and not while I was hypnotized. I now accept the cryptomnesia explanation, but it remains puzzling. Why did these particular words linger and recur when I have no conscious memories of other, and probably more significant, events of that period in my remote past? If my mother is right about the timing, I would not even have understood the words.

Many researchers say that children remember bits of past incarnations up to about the age of seven, the memories then fading out as they are replaced by new experiences in the present life. Did Tennyson's lines make such an impression because they reminded my then-little self of something remembered at the time from another life? 

Maybe that's another fantasy, ginned up to compensate for the loss of my previous paranormal explanation. Or a scrap of another time and place, carried in my soul through time, on the wind of an unknown western sea.