Walks on The Razor's Edge

DREAMS AND DEATH

2011-03-07T12:42:00.001-05:00

The fierce Sicilian sun beats down on the white marbles of the ancient necropolis, enveloped in a vast silence occasionally pierced by the mating songs of cicadas. Dotted by a lonely sail, the Mediterranean shimmers in the distance, unruffled by a cypress scented breeze. Now I hear a distant murmur of human voices. It originates from a vine enclosed bower, at the tip of a narrow tongue of land that affords the unobstructed view of the bay. A few persons can be seen seated at a long table covered by a white cloth; bread,fruit,and goblets of red wine enliven its immaculate expanse. A subdued conversation is in progress, which peters out as they become aware of my presence. Which does not appear to startle them: the astonishment is all mine, as I find myself among long lost friends of my youth. I am moved beyond words by this unexpected encounter. My friends eagerly inquire about my life, but gently deflect my own queries. They have changed but little over the years: their physical appearance barely altered, they seem to have become more thoughtful and considerate, but that is all. And then it dawns on me that all these friends but one (whom I shall call James) died years ago. This is a banquet of the dead, and I am invited to partake of their victuals. I am not alarmed, because the scene, and my presence in it, have nothing sinister about it; calm, serenity, and detachment prevail.
Slowly the air darkens, the sun a steadily diminishing crimson sliver beyond the watery horizon. One by one my friends leave the bower, bidding me a silent farewell. James seems uncertain as to whether he should join me or the departing friends. This worries me. I patiently wait for him to join me, but he seems unwilling or perhaps unable to do so. He finally waves his hand in a mournful salute, and begins walking toward the others, all soon fading away in the gathering gloom. I am overcome by an urge to leave the deserted enclosure, and hurriedly retrace my steps through the labyrinthine necropolis, now turned alien and forbidding.
This dream was recounted to me by an older man, intrigued by this unexpected descent to Hades. He added that the next day he got in touch with James, whom he had not heard of in a long while. He found him cheerful, and in good health. Evidently, the dream's intimation that James was departing the world of the living was not to be taken as ominous.
Less than a month later, the older man learned that James had died: in the night, of a heart attack, as he was about to begin a long awaited trip to Italy.

Intellectual Terror in the Land of Free Thought

2011-02-25T11:36:00.006-05:00

Luc Montagnier, age 78, is the 2008 Nobel-prize winner French virologist who discovered HIV; he is also the founder and president of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention. Dr. Montagnier is taking on the leadership of a new research institute in China, at Shanghai’s Jiaotong University. Recently interviewed by the journal ‘Science’ (24 December 2010, Vol. 330, p. 1732), Montagnier explained that the move will enable him to continue investigating the implications of his discovery that the presence even at high dilutions of some DNA in water induces structural changes in the liquid which in turn lead to the emission of measurable resonant electromagnetic signals. Importantly, these signals result primarily from bacterial and viral DNA, and can therefore be used to identify the viral or bacterial origins of some diseases. Montagnier also found that the plasma of many patients affected by autism, Alzheimer disease, Parkinson’s disease, and multiple sclerosis contains traces of bacterial DNA, possibly originating from the gut. The discovery thus points to the possible bacterial origin of these diseases, and has therefore potentially important implications for the early detection and treatment of these conditions.
The aspect of this story that I would like to emphasize pertains to the dismissive way with which this discovery was disposed of by the majority of the scientific community. It appears that much of the ‘discomfort’ felt by many of Montagnier’s colleagues concerning this finding is that it is reminiscent in some of its aspects of a scientific controversy that arose in France as a result of immunologist Jacques Benveniste’s studies. As ‘Science’ reminds us, Benveniste claimed in a 1998 paper that so called IgE antibodies can affect certain cell types even after being diluted by a factor of 10 to the power of 120. These dilution levels are comparable to those used in homeopathic medicine, in which the supposedly therapeutic substance is diluted to an extent that mainstream science deems incompatible with any possible biological effects. An investigation of Benveniste’s laboratory procedures resulted in a summary dismissal of his findings.
In the ‘Science’ interview, Montagnier argues that Benveniste was mostly right in his conclusions: yet they cost him his scientific credibility, his research lab , and funding for his research. Montagnier is far from uncritically endorsing homeopathy, yet is unhesitant in defending his findings, and the general claim that ‘high dilutions of something are not nothing. They are water structures which mimic the original molecules’. The dilution levels he works with in his studies, though lower than those used in homeopathic medicine, are such that there is not a single molecule of DNA left: yet its electromagnetic signature is clearly detectable.
Montagnier reports that his attempt to receive funding on the Continent have been unsuccessful. ‘There is a kind of fear around this topic in Europe – he says -. I am told that some people have reproduced Benveniste’s results, but they are afraid to publish it because of the intellectual terror from people who do not understand it’. Hence his decision to move to China, as the head of a new research institute that bears his name.
There is a bitter irony in this saga. A great Western scientist wishing to freely pursue rigorous scientific research is forced to relocate to the forbidding, authoritarian shores of Communist China because of a state of ‘intellectual terror’ prevailing in the land of free thought...
Some wit once noted that Western academics celebrate every kind of diversity, except diversity of opinion. This is all too often the case. Dissent is tolerated mostly within the narrow confines of the established worldview. Whenever possible, the bearers of disturbingly heretical views, following an expeditious and often brutal trial, are unceremoniously expelled from the sacred precincts of the Citadel of Science to the barren lands surrounding it. One of the greatest physicists of the century just past, Max Planck, once ruefully remarked that (Karl Popper’s homilies notwithstanding) "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it". We can only hope that this is an excessively dark view of the way scientific change unfolds.

Four Orientations Toward the Paranormal

2011-01-19T15:46:00.002-05:00

There probably are as many ways of relating to the paranormal as there are people interested in it. Chances are, though, that this seemingly endless variety of opinions may result from the elaboration of a few basic attitudes toward the paranormal*.
Dogmatic skepticism is one such attitude. Those subscribing to this view are certain that, the world being a strictly closed physical system that obeys laws currently outlined by the physical sciences, there is no room for the ‘exotic’. Hence, ‘explaining’ the paranormal becomes an exercise in ‘explaining it away’: so-called psychical events are but the by-product of mental illness, hallucinations, misinterpretations, self-deception, or fraud.
Other people might be willing to admit that ‘weird things’ do in fact take place every now and then on this peculiar planet of ours: but such bizarre anomalies are best understood as rare, random violations of an otherwise lawful physical order. Because of their status, they are essentially meaningless; the study of these phenomena will teach us nothing of consequence, and should be abandoned. Were we to train a group of baboons to hit randomly at typewriters’ keys, we may expect that, over a long period of time, a meaningful sentence, or even a beautiful sonnet might result from this activity: but what would that tell us about the world? Nothing.
A few people are prepared to accept that, the evidence in favor of phenomena such as telepathy being at least suggestive of their existence, the latter should be regarded as possible evidence of physical forces, energies, or processes, as yet to be uncovered, that a more comprehensive future physical science will be able to incorporate in its conceptual framework. Throughout its short history, modern physical science has undergone a series of dramatic conceptual revolutions that have radically redefined the concepts of time, space, mass, energy, and so on, and this process is most likely to continue.
Some other people would argue that, if the phenomena studied by parapsychology are indeed real, as they suspect them to be, they point to the existence of an order of reality altogether different from the one investigated by the physical sciences: a universe of ‘mind’, or ‘psyche’, or ‘soul’, whether individual and/or transpersonal. Such a domain cannot be reduced to the physical order. As such, it has to be understood on its own terms, even though all the kinds of rigorous controls that characterize the scientific method ought to be employed in its study.
I doubt that this list exhausts all the possible basic attitudes toward the paranormal... but it is a beginning

*See also John Beloff (e.g., ‘The Relentless Question, 1990, Mcfarland & Co.) for a thorough analysis of various approaches to the paranormal

RESCUED BY AN OUT-OF-BODY-TRAVELER

2011-01-02T11:36:00.000-05:00

Kari Mullis, 1993 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, was appropriately characterized by a London newspaper as ‘a deep and genuine eccentric’. Examples of Dr. Mullis’s propensity for thinking and behaving unusually abound in his memoir ‘Dancing Naked in the Mind Field’ (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998). We learn there that in 1964, in his Kansas home, before doing his laundry, Mullis decided to inhale some nitrous oxide (or ‘laughing gas'), since he had found that by so doing his mind ‘would sail off briefly into something primeval and human-less'(Ibid., p. 88). It should be mentioned in passing that the potential of nitrous oxide as a catalyst for ‘mind trips’ has long be known, witness the writings of William James on the topic. It so happened that, the night before, Mullis had taken some powerful antihistamines; thus, when he started inhaling the gas through a small tube placed in his mouth he immediately fainted. When he regained consciousness the gas was still running, and the tube, now frozen solid, was placed on the floor in front of him. His lips and tongue felt numb and were frostbitten as a result of holding the frozen tube in his mouth. He somehow made it to the hospital, and within a matter of months his ravaged mouth healed. The hospital doctor pointed out a mysterious aspect of the accident. If Mullis was unconscious long enough to have suffered frostbite, how had the tube come out of his mouth? He could not have done it, for the gas induces complete immobility (a major reason for its use for anesthetic purposes in dental surgery). The solution to the mystery transpired 14 years later, in California, where Mullis met in a bakery an attractive stranger, who briskly initiated a conversation. At one point, this woman asked him whether he had found out who had pulled the tube out of his mouth. Mullis was astonished, since he had not revealed to anyone the embarrassing accident. How did she know about it? ‘I was there and pulled it out of your mouth’, she replied, ‘I waited until I was sure you were okay and then I left’ (Ibid., p. 93). But she was not in his Kansas house with her physical body, she added. An experienced traveler on the ‘astral plane’, she had been ‘in transit’ when she noted his predicament, and decided to intervene. She knew they would meet again.

GUSTAV FECHNER ON LIFE AFTER DEATH

2009-01-21T12:12:00.002-05:00

Gustav Fechner (1801-1887) is a fascinating, paradoxical figure in the history of science. His 'Principles of Psychophysics’(1860), which sought to establish experimentally rigorous quantitative relationships between the various forms of physical energy that define our environment (light, acoustic energy, etc.), and the psychological effects they produce (e.g., the sensations of brightness, loudness, etc.), played a crucial role in establishing psychology as an independent empirical science. The discipline of psychophysics remains one of the core concerns of current experimental psychology, and every year scientists from all over the world celebrate a ‘Fechner Day’. Somewhat ironically, Fechner's aim was not to beget a new science, but to demonstrate by means of his empirical findings the correctness of a quasi-mystical metaphysical view, in terms of which mind and matter are but two sides of the same coin, and coexist not only in humans, but everywhere throughout the universe. This view also included a firm belief in the immortality of the soul, which he articulated in his 'Little Book on Life after Death' (Boston: Little & Brown. 1836/1905).
According to Fechner, Just as the about to be born infant, unaware of the wondrous reality that it will soon enter into, may experience as a dying the traumatic end of its intrauterine existence, so in our earthly life, our perceptions constrained by the physical body, we remain unaware of “the light, the music, the freedom, and the glory of the life to come” and do not realize that dreaded physical death is but a second birth into an happier existence. As we enter it, “All those things which we, with our present senses, can only know from the outside, or, as it were, from a distance, will be penetrated into, and thoroughly known, by us. Then, instead of passing by hills and meadows, instead of seeing around us all the beauties of spring, and grieving that we cannot really take them in, as they are merely external: our spirits shall enter into those hills and meadows, to feel and enjoy with them their strength and their pleasure in growing; instead of exerting ourselves to produce, by means of words or gestures, certain ideas in the minds of our fellow men, we shall be enabled to elevate and influence their thoughts, by an immediate intercourse of spirits, which are no longer separated, but rather brought together, by their bodies; instead of being visible in our bodily shape to the eyes of the friends we left behind, we shall dwell in their innermost souls, a part of them, thinking and acting in them and through them." (Ibid., p. 33).

CARL ROGERS ON LIFE AFTER DEATH

2008-12-24T13:04:00.002-05:00

Most readers acquainted with contemporary psychology would agree that Carl Rogers (1902-1987) was one of the most influential psychologist of the century just past. In an autobiographical note written when he was 75 years old, Rogers observed that death was not looming large in his thoughts. The meaningfulness of his life, he felt, was not threatened by the prospect of death. Though inclining towards the view that death constitutes the terminus of personal existence, he refused to construe this as a tragic or awful prospect: ‘I have been able to live my life not to the full, cer¬tainly, but with a satisfying degree of fullness and it seems natural that my life should come to an end. I already have a degree of immortality in other persons. I have sometimes said that, psychologically, I have strong sons and daughters all over the world. Also, I believe that the ideas and the ways of being that I and others have helped to develop will continue, for some time at least. So if I, as an individual, come to a complete and final end, aspects of me will still live on in a variety of growing ways, and that is a pleasant thought. (Rogers, 1989, p. 49).’*
This serenely secular view was tempered somewhat by the serious consideration he felt compelled to give to Elisabeth Kubler Ross’s affirmative conclusions about life after death, and to Moody’s research on the near-death experience. In sum, Rogers concluded, “I consider death with, I believe, an openness to the expe¬rience. It will be what it will be, and I trust I can accept it as either an end to, or a continuation of, life” (Rogers, p. 50).
About two years later, however, Rogers wrote: In the eighteen months prior to my wife’s death in March 1979, there were a series of experiences in which Helen and I and a number of friends were all involved, which decidedly changed my thoughts and feelings about dying and the contin¬uation of the human spirit. (Ibid., 1989, p. 51). These experiences, barely hinted at, were of a paranormal character, and impressive enough to induce Rogers to “consider it possible that each of us is a continuing spiritual essence lasting over time, and occasionally incarnated in a human body” (Rogers, 1989, p. 53). A decidedly interesting statement from a man of considerable intellectual stature and profound personal integrity.
* Rogers, C. R. (1989). Growing old: Or older and growing. In H. Kirschenbaum and V. Henderson (Eds.), The Carl Rogers Reader. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

JUST A THOUGHT ON DREAMS... BY PHILIP SLATER

2008-11-17T16:50:00.002-05:00

"No one agrees what dreams mean, but everyone agrees that they don't mean what they say. But what if they do mean what they say? What if the statements 'I dwelt in marble halls', or 'I talked to my dead grandmother' required no more interpretation than 'I walked to the drugstore and bought toohpaste'?... Freud lacked any respect for the dream as a reality in and of itself, without translation... For to interpret a dream is to say it is unreal - a mask for something else, not an actual event of its own."
From: The Wayward Gate', by Philip Slater. Boston: Bacon Press, 1977, pp. 23-24).

MYTHOLOGY AND DEPTH PSYCHOLOGY

2008-11-05T11:11:00.006-05:00

It has been noted that mythology could be regarded as the depth psychology of antiquity. Greek-Roman, Norse, Indo-European mythologies, to name but a few, can thus be seen as the vessels through which these ancient people expressed symbolically their insights into the nature of psyche and its place in the world.
Within this perspective, the Underworld, the land of the dead, or Hades, as the Greeks called it, is a symbolic representation of the deeper layers of our psyche. And, just as the Greek heroes had to descend into the Underworld to gain wisdom not otherwise available, we similarly descend each night into the dreamscape, where our dead live on (I do not mean this literally, of course) and where insights into the nature of life and death may be gained, though clothed in alien and bewildering garb.

PERCEPTION AND PRECOGNITION

2008-10-27T16:18:00.001-04:00

Here’s an (hopefully!) interesting experiment that may have some bearing on the existence of precognition (the gaining of information about future events); it took place in 1983 in the Psychology Department of Lund University (Sweden)*. Each subject was shown on a TV screen a patch of color (red, blue, etc.), and was asked to name the color as quickly as possible. NEXT, the printed name of a color appeared, and the subject had to speak aloud that name as quickly as possible. The results shows that when the patch’s color matched the later presented color name (say, a red patch was first shown, and then the name ‘red’; appeared), subject quickly and accurately read the printed color word. When the patch’s color did not match the subsequent color name (say, a red patch was first shown, and then the word ‘blue’ appeared) subjects had more difficulty saying the name of the printed word quickly and accurately. The effect is robust, and unsurprising: when a color patch is presented, it activates a number of associations in memory (including the color’s name). So, if the word presented next matches the color, all is well since that name has already been ‘primed’. If the color-word does not match the color of the patch, things get hard, because the cognitive apparatus has to overcome the mental processes previously activated. This is an example of ‘cognitive interference’, and there is nothing mysterious about it. However, Dr. Kligman, who performed many of these experiments, was surprised to find that subjects took longer to name the color of the patch when the LATER presented printed word mismatched the color of the patch, than when it matched it (it took them longer to say ‘red’ when a red patch was first presented, and then followed by the name ‘blue’, than to say ‘red’ when the red patch was followed by the name ‘green’, for instance). This is unexpected, since the subjects had no way of knowing what the name of the printed word was going to be, and had to name the color of the patch before the printed word was presented. After ruling out a number of explanations, Kligman suggested that the subjects had somehow sensed the future stimulus (printed word), and the sensing of this future stimulus had traveled back in time, causing interference (hence longer reaction times) when there was a mismatch. In a word: precognition. Interestingly, Kligman did not set out to study the occurrence of precognition in perceptual events: he just seems to have stumbled upon it!

*See also Radin, D. I. The Conscious Universe (1997, San Francisco: Harper) for a detailed discussion of this and related experiments.

DUALISM AND THE BIBLE

2008-10-17T16:59:00.001-04:00

In a previous posting, I briefly considered ‘Dualism’, which views the psyche (or ‘soul’) as distinct from the brain, not reducible to it, and therefore possibly capable of discarnate existence. Here’s an ‘obliquely’ related question: does the Bible support a dualistic view of human nature? Should believers in the Good Book endorse the concept of an immortal soul?
A brief foray into this territory disclosed some perplexing vistas: perplexing to me, since I do not possess substantive knowledge in matters theological (see Boyd, Journal of Psychology and Theology, v. 26(1), 1998 for a detailed discussion). Reinhold Niebuhr, a leading American theologian of the past century, wrote in ‘The Nature and Destiny of Man (1949): ‘In Hebrew thought the soul of man resides in his blood and the concept of an immortal mind in a mortal body remains unknown to the end’. Oscar Cullman, who strongly influenced the so-called Biblical Theology Movement, argued that the concept of an independent immortal soul is Platonic and more generally ‘Greek’ (Hellenistic) in origin, whereas the Biblical view emphasizes the essential psychophysical unity of the human person. Since we are by nature embodied beings, our hopes for the afterlife rest solely upon the resurrection of the ‘glorified’ body. Many recent New Testament textbooks, according to Boyd, describe the immortality of the soul as incompatible with the doctrine of Resurrection.
The above does not imply that Hellenistic views of the soul played no part in the Christian tradition. They did; indeed, historically they profoundly influenced the doctrines of Augustine, the Church Fathers, and countless others. What is at issue here, as I understand it, is whether the confluence of Hebrew and Greek elements in this tradition, rather than enriching, ultimately hindered our understanding of the pristine meaning of the New Testament, which, according to some Protestant theologians, is best recovered by means of ‘scientific’ scholarship and independently of doctrinary tradition.
The current Catholic Catechism maintains that ‘the unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the "form" of the body… spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature. At the same time, ‘The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not "produced" by the parents - and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.’ Both ‘Hebrew’ and ‘Greek’ perspectives thus seem to be blended – obscurely, to me - in this more tradition bound doctrinal view.
I suspect that a variety of other views would be uncovered by a thorough analysis of this literature; if so, talking about the Christian view on the human soul may be misleading.

A WELL DOCUMENTED CASE OF NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE

2008-10-14T17:23:00.003-04:00

Dr. Sabom (Light and Death, 1998; see also Dr. Bruce Greyson in Varieties of Anomalous experience, 2000) describes the near death experience (NDE) of a woman who was referred for a procedure called hypothermic cardiac arrest to remove a large basilar artery aneurysm. For a duration of about 45 minutes, her body temperature was reduced to 60 deg F, her heartbeat and breathing stopped, and the blood was completely drained from her head: as a result of which the brain was inert: totally flat EEG, which reflects the absence of electrical activity; and no brain-stem function. The patient’s eye were taped shut and any external auditory input was prevented by the insertion of molded speakers emitting 100 db clicks (to test the responsiveness of the brain stem). The patient reported, shortly after the operation, that she had become conscious as the pneumatic saw opened her scalp. She felt that she was being pulled out of her head, and found herself hovering above the neurosurgeon’s shoulders. She described with considerable precision several of the 20 people who were in the room, most of whom she had not met either before or after the operation; the music that was being played during surgery; and a number of specific details concering equipment and surgical procedures used, including surprised comments from the surgeons about the small size of her femoral artery. Eventually she found herself moving trough a tunnel, at the end of which she entered a brilliant light where she was warned to return to her body.
What makes this case of NDE special is not the nature of the experiences reported by this woman; it is the extent to which her body was rendered inactive during the surgery, and the availability of detailed information about her physical state during the time she underwent the experience, which make it possible to rule out a number of standard physiological explanations of NDEs. Philosopher Neal Grossman (‘Who’s Afraid of Life after Death?’, in Journal of Near-Death Studies, 2002, v.21/1) argues that this sort of findings offers very compelling evidence in support of the ‘afterlife’ hypothesis. I am personally not so sanguine in this respect. However, short of denying the veridicality of the account, it is hard indeed not to be profoundly challenged by evidence that conscious mental activity was reported by a person when she was not breathing, her heart was not beating, her brain was not functioning.

DUALISM AND THE PARANORMAL

2008-10-02T23:40:00.003-04:00

Here’s a challenging – if hardly new – thought: from the viewpoint of a dominant, materialistic view of the mind/brain/body relationship, the notion that I can, by an act of pure will. induce my little finger to wag is just as preposterous – in a sense - as the notion that I can displace an object at a distance by mental power alone (PK, or ‘psychokinesis’). In terms of a materialistic view to which many, possibly most, brain scientists subscribe, the brain alone, responding to external stimulation, determines our cognitive as well as muscular activity. Electrochemical events as they unfold in individual nerve cells, the spatio-temporal patterns of activity triggered by billions of such cells, etc.: these are the true causes of our behaviour. The so called ‘mind’ is simply a byproduct, a reflection of these brain states. It has neither autonomy nor causative power (just as an image in a mirror). Our actions are not determined by what we feel, think, desire etc. ; rather, what we think, ‘will’, etc. is a reflection of these neural events triggered by environmental occurrences.
‘Dualism’ is an alternative view that maintains that the ‘mind’, whatever its ultimate nature, is distinct from the brain, not reducible to it, and possesses genuine causative powers of its own. This view, which is beset by formidable conceptual difficulties, is closer to the everyday view of ourselves.
My suggestion is that, if one finds it easier to accept a ‘dualistic’ view of the mind-brain nexus, as opposed to the ‘monistic’ (‘mind is brain) view, then one is a baby-step closer to accepting the possibility of paranormal events.
John Beloff (1920-2006), one of the most interesting thinkers in the area of parapsychology, wrote in this regard:’what happens in cases of paranormal cognition [ESP] or paranormal action [ PK]… is essentially of the same nature as that which happens in our normal cognitive processes or in our normal voluntary behavior [such as ‘willing’ a finger to move]. The distinction is that, in the former case, something I am calling ‘mind’ reacts directly with the external environment whereas in the latter, normal situation, this mental influence interacts directly with the brain alone and only indirectly with the outside world’. (‘The Relentless Question’, 1988, McFarland, p.61). Not a negligible distinction, mind you!

A WELL DOCUMENTED CASE OF POLTERGEIST ACTIVITY

2008-09-29T12:28:00.004-04:00

As reported in ‘Parapsychology, the Controversial Science’ by Dr. Richard Broughton (Ballantine Books, New York: 1991), the Fall of 1967 found Herr Sigmund Adam, a respected lawyer in the German town of Rosenheim, deeply distressed: his office was seemingly self-destructing. The lights were in the habit of going out time and again; the building electrician established on one occasion that the each of the fluorescent tubes in the ceiling had been twisted in its sockets; lights bulbs frequently exploded even when the light was off; electrical fuses would blow seemingly without cause; hanging lamps would frequently swing wildly. Engineers from the local power station brought in an emergency power unit to supply energy unaffected by fluctuations in the external power lines; but the effects continued. Telephone lines also behaved inexplicably: recording equipment installed on the telephone lines by municipal technicians registered many calls originating from the office when no one was using the phones. The case came to the attention of the media, and two documentaries were produced by TV stations. The technicians of both telephone and power companies admitted on camera of being unable to find any explanation for the phenomena. The police was also involved, since the lawyer had filed formal charges against the unknown perpetrators of these events. Professor Hans Bender, a parapsychologist at the University of Freiburg, joined the investigative team, along with two physicists from the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics. They brought in more sophisticated equipment, which enabled them to rule out that the events could be due to causes such as ‘supply current, demodulated high frequency voltages, electrostatic charges, external static magnetic fields, ultrasonic or infrasonic effects, loose contacts or faulty recording equipment and finally manual intervention.’ (p. 218).
The disturbances increased; many of the experts at work on the case witnessed plates jump off the wall, paintings oscillate on their hooks, swinging lamps and banging sounds, drawers opening by themselves, etc. Dr. Bender established that these events only occurred when Annemarie Schneider, a recently hired eighteen-year old secretary, was present at the scene. The young lady became increasingly distressed by the phenomena, eventually developing hysterical contractions of her limbs. She was sent away on leave, and the disturbances immediately, and permanently ceased. The young lady found employment in another office, which also suffered from similar disturbances: but on a much milder scale, and for a brief period of time.
Hardly anyone in the parapsychological community seeks to understand these phenomena in terms of the activities of ill tempered ghosts. Poltergeist (German for ‘noisy spirit’) phenomena appear to be consistently associated with, and possibly originate from, a living person, most frequently a severely stressed adolescent. Which makes well documented instances of these occurrences no less enigmatic, and in need of explanation.

ON DEBORAH BLUM'S ' "GHOST HUNTERS"

2008-09-22T18:24:00.002-04:00

Deborah Blum is a professor of science journalism at the University of Wisconsin, and a Pulitzer Prize winner for her writings on primate research. She is also the author of ‘Ghost Hunters’ (Penguin Books, 2006), a superbly researched and entertaining book on the search for scientific proof of life after death conducted by William James and the small enclave of engaging personalities who played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Society for Psychical Research (in 1882 in Britain, and in 1885 in the US). Blum, a science writer ‘anchored in place with the sturdy shoes of common sense’ as she describes herself (p. 323), found that the frequentation of the findings of these investigators forced her to reevaluate many of her basic assumptions about the nature of reality. ‘There were days’, she writes, ‘when I could feel the hinges of my brain, almost literally, creaking apart to make room for new ideas’ (p. 324).
Anyone with a modicum of interest in this area would probably greatly enjoy this book. I was impressed by the exceptional level of intellectual honesty, personal integrity, and unbounded commitment that most of these individuals – humanists, philosophers, scientists – brought to this baffling and frustrating field of enquiry over a period of about four decades. Scientists of the highest caliber put their reputation on the line by endorsing this research; but the attitude of the scientific community at large, unsurprisingly, oscillated for the most part between hostile neglect and dogmatic condemnation of the whole research enterprise. Regrettably, some of the assorted humanity that coalesced around the Spiritualist movement of those years – rabid believers, eccentrics, tricksters, pseudo-psychics, neurotics, etc. – provided ample ammunition to the denigrators of this whole field. Whose distinguishing, paradoxical aspect is the inextricable conjunction of the sublime and the grotesque: for the quest for a spiritual reality is sublime indeed; and it is grotesque that it had to be undertaken amidst dancing tables, often hilarious ‘materializations’, inane messages from the Beyond, unbalanced mediums, outrageous trickery. The fact that James and his colleagues willingly submitted to the ordeal narrated by Bloom, and emerged from it far from empty handed, though hardly triumphant, strikes me as a quasi heroic feat.

SCIENCE AS THOUGHT POLICE?

2008-09-21T13:12:00.005-04:00

Globeandmail.com, the online version of a leading Canadian newspaper, reports (20 September 2008) that Professor Michel Reiss was summarily dismissed as director of education of Britain’s Royal Society for his approach to the debate on creationism. Reiss, also a Church of England priest, was not suggesting that creationism had any claim to scientific status; he fully supports evolutionism (just like yours truly, by the way). He was merely suggesting that, within the educational context, children who bring creationistic views to the classroom should not have their views outright rejected or ridiculed; rather, Reiss writes, ‘there is much to be said for allowing students to raise any doubts they have and doing one’s best to have a genuine discussion’. Apparently, Reiss was simply arguing that a respectful and intellectually rigorous discussion of these views would be the best way to help these children gain an appropriate perspective on this debate. This view was met with outrage by several members of the prestigious Society, the world’s first scientific body. The final position adopted by this organization was that Reiss had done considerable damage to the Society’s reputation. The author of the article notes that this disquieting episode makes it clear that ‘when opinions diverge even slightly from accepted scientific wisdom, they will be met with ruthless suppression. This says something sorry about the state of scientific enquiry as practised by that august body’. Just imagine how any attempt to propose a serious analysis of ‘anomalous phenomena’ within the psychical domain would be received by this Society!

DOPPLEGANGERS

2008-09-07T15:19:00.001-04:00

Concerning ‘apparitions’, one wonders what would be more unsettling: to encounter a ‘ghost’, or to meet one’s own ‘ghost’: one’s ‘double’, or ‘doppleganger’ (from the German ‘dopple’: double, and ‘ganger’: walker), or even that of a living person close to us? Having thankfully been spared any such encounter, I can only guess that the doppelganger experience would be the most alarming. Fedor Dostoevskij’s masterful tale, ‘The Double’ (1846), though a work of imagination, artfully conveys some of the nightmarish aspects of an encounter with our ‘shadow self’. Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893), arguably the greatest French writer of short stories, reported in ‘Lui’ (1883) his disturbing encounter with his double; Maupassant, who contracted syphilis in his youth, ended his days in a mental institution. John Donne (1572-1631), the great English Metaphysical poet, was met in Paris by his wife’s double. The lady, who conveyed a feeling of tremendous sadness, silently held a baby in her arms. It later transpired that at the time of the apparition the woman had given birth in England to a stillborn child. A great English poet of the Romantic era, Percy Bisshe Shelley (1792-1882), met his double while in Italy: in a dream, according to some reports; in ‘reality’ according to others. His other self silently pointed to the Mediterranean, where Shelley was to drown shortly thereafter in a boating accident; tradition holds that encounters with dopplegangers often portend death. Johan Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), one of the greatest literary figures in Western history, met his ‘other self’ while on his way to Drusenheim, in Germany. His double was riding towards him, though wearing a different set of clothes. Goethe found himself on the same road, though traveling in the opposite direction, eight years later. To his astonishment, he suddenly recalled that he was now wearing the clothes he had seen on his double several years earlier. August Strindberg (1849-1912), the Swedish playwright, reports in his autobiography that while ill in Paris he felt a tremendous longing to be in Germany with his wife’s family (this too is an unusual occurrence!). Suddenly, he felt himself transported to their home, where he ‘saw’ his mother-in-law at the piano. A few days later he received a letter from that lady, anxiously enquiring about his health, and reporting that, while playing the piano, she saw him clearing standing in her immediate vicinity.
Artists are endowed with imaginative powers that vastly transcend those available to most of us. It is therefore tempting to relegate these unusual experiences (especially those who involve only one person) to the imaginary realm (a move which in any event is of little help, since we do not quite understand the ultimate nature of imagination). In actuality, the doppelganger experience is quite widespread across various ‘sorts’ of people, times, and locales. Political giants, from Queen Elizabeth I to Abraham Lincoln encountered their double: as in Shelley’s case, shortly before their death. More modestly, Sir Gilbert Parker, a member of the British Parliament in 1905, noticed that a colleague and friend of his, quite ill, was unexpectedly seated at his usual place during a debate. Parker later verified that his friend at the time of the debate was at home, and in bed. Don’t we wish that our MP’s exhibited the same sense of civic duty by sending their doubles when unable to attend! Or perhaps it is better that they do not?
Bilocation, or the ability to appear in different places at the same time, has been frequently documented in the religious literature, from St. Anthony of Padua (1195-1231), to Padre Pio of Montalcino (1887- 1968).
Reports of doppelganger encounters involving ordinary persons are countless. One of the better documented cases is narrated by the American writer Robert Dale Owen, and concerns Emile Sagee, a 32-year old French woman who in 1845 served as a teacher in a prestigious school in current Latvia. Numerous reports by her students and other observers attest that this young lady’s exact double was in the habit of suddenly materializing at her side, mimicking her actions in full view of the class, before disappearing from view. At other times, the double was found seated in the classroom while the ‘real’ Ms Sagee could be seen gathering flowers in the school garden. Unlike cases in which the doppelganger is only seen by the person of which it is the double, in this instance it was visible to all, but not to Ms Sagee herself, who only indirectly sensed its presence by feeling drained of energy.
This posting could go on almost interminably, so rich and diverse is the literature on the topic. Even a casual reader of this material cannot avoid the impression that, after the proper critical caution is exerted and much of the material is rejected as unsubstantiated story telling, or the byproduct of pathological states of mind, there remains a large residue of cases that cannot be easily dismissed, and leave one seriously perplexed. The problem with this sort of ‘facts’ is that, if accepted, our current scientific account of reality, and most notably our understanding of the nature of the psyche would have to be declared in principle incomplete. And it is a lot easier to ignore ‘disreputable’ facts than to take a hard look at our basic convictions about the ultimate nature of reality.

TRAUMATIC DEATH AND ITS RESIDUE

2008-07-22T19:21:00.005-04:00

Competent, experienced emergency service workers, whether police officers, firefighters, or medical technicians, are, for the most part, a sound minded lot. They are expected to operate with cool efficiency under demanding circumstances, which not infrequently bring them into close contact with the dead and the dying. Thus, it is of some interest that, as reported (Journal of Near-Death Studies, 21(1), 2002) by Richard Kelly, a former Detective Lieutenant at the Psychological Services Unit of the Massachusetts State Police, nearly thirty per cent of a sample of psychologically healthy emergency service workers reported experiencing in various forms a sense or feeling of ‘communication, presence, or attachment’ from victims of injury whom they had attended at death. No visual or auditory experiences were reported; just a strong sense of being watched by, and somehow connected to, the victim, hovering above them. In some cases, such experiences were independently disclosed to the researcher by working partners, unaware of having shared them at the time of their occurrence.

Kelly’s research addressed real-death situations. We have no data, as far as I know, as to whether emergency service workers may experience similar connections with victims of traumatic events undergoing a near-death experience. Indeed, individuals who underwent such an experience report that their attempts to communicate with people at the scene of their near death were met with seeming failure, an occurrence which increased their sense of bewilderment as they felt their conscious self hovering about their body. However, it is conceivable that, to the extent that real death and near-death may share some common features, the attempts of near-death experiencers to communicate with helpers may be however dimly and indirectly perceived by some of the latter. An hypothesis probably worthy of investigation.

METEORITES AND OTHER APPARITIONS

2007-10-23T18:04:00.002-04:00

It has been noted* that Western museums are nearly devoid of specimens of meteorites dating earlier than the last decade of the eighteenth century. This is so because European museums in particular hastened to get rid of their hitherto cherished collection of meteorites after the most august scientific institution on the Continent, the Academie Française des Sciences, declared these specimens to be nothing but superstitious debris. Stones cannot possibly fall from the sky because there are no stones in the sky. So said Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794). The father of modern chemistry, Lavoiser identified oxygen and hydrogen, formulated the first version of the law of conservation of mass, and introduced the metric system, to mention but a few of his contributions (the French Revolutionists must have been unimpressed by his achievements, since they chose to behead him nonetheless). It was hard indeed to object to the verdict of such an eminent scientist; nor did it help that Isaac Newton’s (1642-1727) universe did not contemplate the possibility of such objects.

One cannot help but wonder whether the other ‘superstitious debris’ that has been fruitlessly brought to the attention of academicians over the past several decades from many serious psychical researchers may not turn out in the end to possess, if not the solidity, at least the stubborn reality of meteorites. Regrettably, psychical researchers, have been unable to find anything as remotely compelling, to help them change the mind of the guardians of scientific orthodoxy, as the events which transpired the night of 26th of April 1803. The good people of L’Aigle, a tiny village in lower Normandy, were awoken by the thunderous sound of more than 2000 meteorites crashing on their dwellings .On that occasion, not even the Academicians could deny that, after all, perhaps stones do fall from the sky.
*see: 'Science debunked meteorites', in 'mysteriousnewzealand.com

CHARLES FORT ON SCIENCE

2007-10-21T20:01:00.002-04:00

A lovely quotation from the writings of a quirky genius:
'Every science is a mutilated octopus. If its tentacles were not clipped to stumps, it would feel its way into disturbing contacts'.

WIILLIAM JAMES ON PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

2007-10-21T12:56:00.002-04:00

'THE GREAT field for new discoveries," said a scientific friend to me the other day, "is always the unclassified residuum." Round about the accredited and orderly facts of every science there ever floats a sort of dust-cloud of exceptional observations, of occurrences minute and irregular and seldom met with, which it always proves more easy to ignore than to attend to

...No part of the unclassified residuum has usually been treated with a more contemptuous scientific disregard than the mass of phenomena generally called mystical. Physiology will have nothing to do with them. Orthodox psychology turns its back upon them. Medicine sweeps them out; or, at most, when in an anecdotal vein, records a few of them as "effects of the imagination" - a phrase of mere dismissal, whose meaning, in this connection, it is impossible to make precise. All the while, however, the phenomena are there, lying broadcast over the surface of history. No matter where you open its pages, you find things recorded under the name of divinations, inspirations, demoniacal possessions, apparitions, trances, ecstasies, miraculous healings and productions of disease, and occult powers possessed by peculiar individuals over persons and things in their neighbourhood.

…Facts are there only for those who have a mental affinity with them. When once they are indisputably ascertained and admitted, the academic and critical minds are by far the best fitted ones to interpret and discuss them… but if there is anything which human history demonstrates, it is the extreme slowness with which the ordinary academic and critical mind acknowledges facts to exist which present themselves as wild facts, with no stall or pigeonhole, or as facts which threaten to break up the accepted system.’

Thus wrote William James in 1891. One of the fathers of American scientific psychology, perhaps this country’s leading philosopher, James (1842-1910) was one of the founders of the American branch of the Society for Psychical Research, which he served as a vice president from 1890 to 1910. His description of the attitude of his time’s intellectual elites toward the ‘unclassified residuum’ of all matters psychical may seem to apply for the most part to the current state of affairs, well after a century since he wrote these lines. To ascertain whether this is indeed the case, or whether some genuine progress both in attitude and in factual knowledge has been made since James’s times is one of the objectives of this blog. Would anyone care to comment?