Life Between Lives

I was recently reminded by a mention of Dr Michael Newton that I have not yet written about Life Between Lives (“LBL”). I have not read Journey of Souls, but I do have his third book, Life Between Lives, which is intended mainly as an instruction manual for hypnotherapists.

JOTT

JOTT – when things disappear … and come back or relocate … and why it really happens

by Mary Rose Barrington (Anomalist Books, 2018, 190pp paperback)

Mary Rose Barrington (1926-2020) was an English lawyer who served as vice-president of the Society for Psychical Research for many years after a life-long interest in the paranormal. You can read about her life and work at https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/mary-rose-barrington

‘Jott’ stands for “Just One of Those Things”, like things which fall on the floor and vanish, or are placed on a table and disappear, then reappear somewhere else a few weeks later. It seems that this is not always due to faulty memory or perception; some of the cases described in the book defy explanation. The blurb on the back cover of the book has the heading “Rifts in the Fabric of Causality”.

Thinking Outside the (Brain) Box

(A revised version of my 2011 blog.)

In one of my blogs I commented that, if past lives found during regression are exactly what they seem to be, science needs a rethink. It may be helpful to explain this point further.

According to orthodox scientific principles, the ‘mind’, ‘thought’ and ‘consciousness’ are simply electrochemical processes operating in the brain and cannot exist without it. The same, of course, goes for memories; they are stored in the brain’s cells (somehow, somewhere) and when the brain dies those memories cease to exist. Memories of past lives are therefore impossible unless they are stored outside the brain and can survive its death.

We therefore need to look at an alternative to the orthodox position, which is that consciousness and memories operate outside and through the brain rather than being generated by it: the ‘filter’ or transmission model. Taking this even further, various approaches to ‘panpsychism’ – “the view that the mind or a mindlike aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality” (Wikipedia) – have become popular in recent years. This ‘transpersonal’ approach accepts that the mind is not limited by time or space and opens up the possibility of paranormal (or psychic) phenomena rejected by conventional science – life after death, reincarnation, telepathy, precognition (seeing into the future) and so on.

None of these phenomena have been ‘proved’ for various reasons – one of which, as I have said before, is that sceptics can always come up with another explanation for any paranormal event, although these arguments can often be so far-fetched that the paranormal explanation would be by far the simplest. But there is certainly strong evidence for the paranormal – evidence that would be considered proof in any “orthodox” branch of science (with high levels of statistical significance).

A detailed commentary on this evidence would be enough to fill a fairly thick book. As a matter of fact, there are several, including the 800-page Irreducible Mind*, which I have mentioned before. This goes into some detail on the filter-transmission model. There is also an extensive discussion on near-death experiences and a chapter on memory.

I’ll end this article by giving you my own position on psychic phenomena. One of the few ideas that I remember from my psychology degree is the difference between an ‘attitude’ and a ‘belief’. An attitude has the following three components:

• Cognitive – what one knows about the subject
• Affective – what one feels about it; and
• Behavioural – how one behaves in relation to it.

A belief, on the other hand, lacks the cognitive component.

I try to avoid beliefs and hold only attitudes, based on knowledge. My extensive reading on parapsychology (the semi-respectable modern word for psychical research), dating back over fifty years, together with some limited personal experience, is enough to satisfy me personally that psychic phenomena exist in some form. But I am neither a ‘believer’ nor a ‘sceptic’ – I try to look at the evidence objectively. Unfortunately, most writers on the subject take one position or another, so when you’re reading about the paranormal you need to watch out for the writer’s prejudices and allow for them. I hope I don’t have too many of them.

*https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/edward-f-kelly#Irreducible_Mind

Spiritual Science by Steve Taylor

I was led to this book after reading an article by Steve Taylor, effectively a cut-down version of the book, in Paradigm Explorer, the Journal of the Scientific and Medical Network (https://scientificandmedical.net/ ). The book aims to show that ‘materialism’ doesn’t work, and that science and spirituality can co-exist in a new worldview proposed by the author – ‘panspiritism’.

Houdini among the Spirits

Harry Houdini died on 31 October 1926, and he is still a ‘household name’ almost one hundred years after his death. In the minds of today’s public, his name is synonymous with escapes, but Walter Gibson, in Houdini on Magic (1953, p.xiv) comments that “… in the final analysis, Houdini’s great claim to permanent fame lay in his crusade against fraudulent mediums and other charlatans who preyed on the public.”

Goats and Sheep

In a classic study, Dr Gertrude Schmeidler (Schmeidler & McConnell, 1958) found that, on average, subjects who believed in the possibility of ESP (the “sheep”) scored better in ESP tests than those who did not (the “goats”). Magicians who have investigated the paranormal fall into both categories, although, unsurprisingly, the goats tend to be more vociferous and therefore their conclusions more prominent. This is probably the reason for George P Hansen’s (1990) comment that many are under the impression that magicians are total sceptics; he demonstrates, however, that this is not the case.

How many bodies do we have?

I first became a practitioner of Emotional Freedom Techniques (“EFT”) in 2003. I later became a practitioner of a related energy therapy, EmoTrance (“ET”, but now renamed by its originator Silvia Hartmann as EMO). Both of these therapies, and several related ones, are based on the theory that each of us has an energy body, whose ‘circulatory system’ comprises the meridians also used in acupuncture. Energy therapies are designed to clear blockages in the energy body, or the body’s energy system, caused by a wide range of emotional (and physical) conditions.

Because of my scientific background I had some difficulty in accepting the existence of an energy body, but nevertheless I proved many times – with clients and on myself (to the astonishment of a certain medical consultant) – that EFT and ET are very effective indeed. On the whole, I don’t trouble myself too much with how they work, only that they do.

The concept of an energy body has other applications besides therapeutic ones. As I’m also interested in out-of-body experiences (“OBEs”), I recently read Demystifying the Out-of-Body Experience by Luis Minero. Mr Minero is the Education Director of the Brazil-based “International Academy of Consciousness” (“IAC”), which runs training courses for controlled OBEs.

Leslie Kean’s ‘Surviving Death’

I was introduced to this 2017 book through a WizIQ talk by Ms Kean which was hosted by Dr Nancy Zingrone, organiser of PARAMOOC. I was struck by the strength of the unfamiliar cases she was describing – not just the standard classic ones – and decided it was worth a read. I am not disappointed.

How a Ouija Board Really Works

I’m sorry to disappoint you, but spirits don’t move the pointer on a Ouija board – well, not directly, anyway. We’ll get to that shortly.

Ouija boards come in a wide variety of styles, classic and modern. They all have letters, probably numbers, and maybe words and symbols too. Here’s mine, based on the familiar William Fuld design:

You’ll see that this one was marketed by the games manufacturers Waddingtons. It was sold in high street shops as a toy, in the late Sixties, and got them into a great deal of trouble, mainly from religious groups. It was quickly withdrawn from sale. I’ve blanked out the central window of the pointer (it originally had a nail in the hole in the middle) because the design is otherwise ambiguous; do you look through the window or at the tip of the pointer?

The pointer is referred to in the instructions as a “mysterious message indicator”. Sometimes the term planchette is used, but strictly that refers to an earlier device of a similar shape, with a pencil at the tip and castors at the rear corners.

Spiritualism began with the Fox sisters, whose spirits communicated by raps. This was a slow process, so later Spiritualists used automatic writing, either by directly holding a pencil or with a planchette. Unless a medium is particularly gifted, automatic writing is likely to produce illegible gibberish, so mediums moved on to using an upturned wine glass with paper letters on a smooth table and eventually marketed Ouija boards especially designed for the purpose.

As I said at the beginning, spirits do not directly move the pointer, wine glass or planchette. All the above techniques are automatisms; they work through what is now known as ideomotor responses – automatic, involuntary muscular movements which are controlled by the unconscious mind (“UCM”). Dowsing instruments such as pendulums are also automatisms and work in a similar way.

This is not, however, a full explanation. Automatisms certainly reveal information from the UCM, but this leaves open the question of how that information entered the UCM. There are several possibilities, which I’ll discuss with specific reference to the Ouija board.

Metaphor

This is the conventional explanation – the UCM is communicating symbolically, either by making up a story from its contents, or by regurgitating or modifying one previously read or heard but forgotten – cryptomnesia. Jung’s idea of the Collective Unconscious could be brought in too. This type of explanation certainly accounts for many cases – but not all of them.

Telepathy

A more promising explanation is that information enters the UCM through telepathy – direct mind-to-mind communication without the use of the known senses. This could be from other sitters at the table working the pointer, from onlookers – or it could be from spirits.

Past Life

The board could conceivably be communicating details of the past life of one of the sitters, or one of the onlookers through telepathy. I don’t want to go into past life theories in any depth here, but the main explanations for a genuine past life would have to be either reincarnation or genetic memory.

Super-ESP

This is the sceptic’s get-out-of-jail-free card. When faced with communications giving information which can’t be explained away by cryptomnesia or through other “normal” (i.e. non-paranormal) channels, a sceptic who rejects the idea that human consciousness can survive bodily death will resort to the “Super-ESP” hypothesis. He will argue that the information has entered the UCM through Extrasensory Perception – not just telepathy from someone in the room, but from a living person anywhere in the world, or from a book or other object (clairvoyance) – also anywhere in the world. He could also argue that this information could come from the future (precognition), the past (retrocognition) or from some universal memory bank. Many modern psychical researchers feel that this sort of explanation is more far-fetched than the simpler one of belief in spirit communication, and in any case there is no evidence that ESP is this powerful.

Safety First

Whether or not a Ouija board is communicating with spirits – evil or otherwise – or simply with the contents with our unconscious minds, great care should be taken when using one. Our UCMs contain some pretty unpleasant material. Sessions should always begin with a prayer to an appropriate deity or by setting up another form of psychic protection, and any entities summoned need to be properly dismissed at the end – treat them as “real” even if they may not be. Also take any information or advice received with a very large pinch of salt – you don’t know where it’s coming from.

Conclusion

So, how does a Ouija board work? Well, the pointer is certainly moved by ideomotor responses from the sitters – but does it spell out messages from spirits? The answer is clearly “no” in some cases – but in others it may be “perhaps”. I don’t think we’ll ever be able to “prove” that spirit communication exists, because the sceptic can always fall back on the Super-ESP hypothesis (however unlikely) – but there’s strong evidence in some published cases of automatic writing. In the end it’s going to be subjective – is the evidence strong enough to satisfy you?

The ABC of ESP (video)