Psience Quest

Chris Carter has an interesting notion about reincarnation:

Quote:How did reincarnation come to be such a widespread belief in the premodern world, shared by people separated by enormous distances over land and sea? The belief in reincarnation can be traced in India to at least 1000 BCE, and it does seem possible that the belief in Asia can be traced to a common source. It seems far less likely that an Eskimo in northern Canada and a villager of the Ganges Valley acquired their beliefs from a common source; and even less likely that the belief in reincarnation spread from south Asia to west Africa, the Celtic British Isles, and to central Australia. If the belief did not arise in a single location and then spread to other regions, it must have arisen independently in several locations. How could this have occurred?

A skeptic could argue that the belief in an afterlife is comforting to those left behind, and that this is sufficient to account for the widespread belief in an afterlife. But this does not seem sufficient to account for the specific belief that the deceased will be reborn into this world, as opposed to simply spending eternity in some otherworldly realm. Some additional factor seems to be required. One such possibility is that some individuals in different parts of the world have claimed to remember having lived before.

Carter, Chris. Science and the Afterlife Experience: Evidence for the Immortality of Consciousness (p. 20). Inner Traditions/Bear & Company. Kindle Edition.

Of course this isn't evidence in the way that the replacement reincarnation cases considered above IMO strike a major blow to Super-Psi, but it does offer us a window of insight. Perhaps the reason belief in reincarnation rose is because the ancients were confronted with evidence of it.

OTOH one could make an argument that reincarnation is a simple enough belief to arise from creative persons around the world, and that once this idea was in place one's Super Psi acts on it...but this still doesn't work well with replacement reincarnation...

Ian Stevenson on Super-Ps as a possibility in the Swarmalata case:

Quote:The Pathak brothers knew the facts about the changes in the Pathak house in Katni and nearly all the other facts apparently remembered by Swarnlata about events at Katni, although they did not remember the gold fillings in the teeth of their sister, Biya. But it is extremely unlikely that they knew anything about the latrine episode which Swarnlata told Srimati Agnihotri and it is equally unlikely that they knew anything about the money taken from Biya by her husband. He had told no one about this for obvious reasons. Now it is possible that Swarnlata derived different items of information from different persons each acting as the agent for one or a few items and no others … But what then becomes noteworthy is the pattern of the information Swarnlata thus derived. Nothing not known to Biya or that happened after Biya’s death was stated by Swarnlata during these declarations. We must account somehow not only for the transfer of information to Swarnlata, but for the organization of the information in her mind in a pattern quite similar to that of the mind of Biya. Extrasensory perception may account for the passage of the information, but I do not think that it alone can explain the selection and arrangement of the information in a pattern characteristic of Biya. For if Swarnlata gained her information by extrasensory perception, why did she not give the names of persons unknown to Biya when she met them for the first time? Extrasensory perception of the magnitude here proposed should not discriminate between targets unless guided by some organizing principle giving a special pattern to the persons or objects recognized. It seems to me that here we must suppose that Biya’s personality somehow conferred the pattern of its mind on the contents of Swarnlata’s mind.

An interesting case, as this is someone with Psi abilities but nevertheless her memory matches that of the past life. Of course one can say the subpersonality is working behind the scenes to craft what she knows by ESP regarding her past life...but then this would be in addition to the motivation of the deceased person's loved ones Super-ESP sticking the original past life memories in her head...

Gauld, in his public domain work Mediumship and Survival, has a chapter on Reincarnation (which also provides good, organized details of the Swarmalata case noted in the last post

Some interesting selections that will take us into possession/obsession which we've touched on already with "replacement reincarnation". First I'll note the definition of Obsession here from an earlier chapter:

Quote:Closely related to cases of ostensible possession, and in practice not easy to separate from them, are cases of ostensible obsession. In cases of possession the supposed intruding entity displaces or partly displaces the victim from his body, and obtains direct control of it—the same sort of control, presumably, as the victim himself had. (It will be understood here that I am talking about the ‘externals’ of the phenomena, not speculating as to their underlying cause.) In cases of obsession, the victim remains in immediate control of his body, but the supposed intruding entity influences his mind. It establishes a sort of parasitic relationship with his mind, whereby it can to an extent see |148| what he sees, feel what he feels, enjoy what he enjoys, etc., and can also change the course of his thoughts and actions to conform with its own desires. The process is commonly, but very vaguely, looked upon as one of reciprocal telepathy. The victim may have a feeling of being ‘overshadowed’ by another personality, and some writers have seen in obsession a possible explanation for various forms of mental disturbance, including phobias, morbid cravings, sexual perversions, sudden changes of character, paranoid delusions, aggressive outbursts and hallucinations.

Cases both of ostensible possession and of ostensible obsession crop up from time to time in the annals of both Spiritualism and psychical research. Particularly popular with Spiritualists have been the series of cases reported in detail by Dr Carl Wickland of Chicago in his well-known book Thirty Years among the Dead (1924). Wickland believed that many cases of mental illness were due to obsession by earth-bound spirits of deceased persons. His method of tackling these cases was to induce the obsessing spirits, if necessary by electric shocks, to leave the victim’s body, to enter the body of a medium (to wit Mrs Wickland), and thence finally dislodge them by persuasion, objurgation and the help of spirit guides. Dr Wickland possessed an assertive personality, a commanding voice, and an electric shock machine of terrifying dimensions. His treatment seems often to have been highly effective. Unfortunately he showed insufficient interest in the mundane business of checking out the communicator’s statements about themselves. In the great majority of cases he seems simply to have assumed that because the treatment worked, its rationale was fundamentally correct—the psychotherapist’s classic error. His copious records provide little solid evidence to support his theories.

None the less one here and there comes across cases of ostensible obsession that are of some parapsychological interest. For instance, some curious examples were reported to the First International Congress of Psychical Research, held at Copenhagen in 1921, by Dr E. Magnin of Geneva (96). Magnin gives, among others, the case of Madame M., aged 52, who suffered from a tendency to undergo spasmodic and violent falls. Her malady had resisted the efforts of four doctors. It chanced that one afternoon, in Magnin’s waiting room, this lady encountered a clairvoyant medium whom she had never met before. The clairvoyant afterwards told Magnin that she had seen near Madame M. an authoritarian, brutal and wicked man. Magnin brought the ladies together, and the medium, in trance, was controlled |149| by the purported spirit of the man she had just seen. He claimed to be Madame M.’s father, called her ‘Louise’, spoke of a quarrel immediately prior to his death (a quarrel brought about by his refusal to put on an overcoat before going out). The father mentioned ‘Maurice’ (his son-in-law), and ‘Rene’ (his grandson). Finally he was brought to a penitent frame of mind, and agreed to leave his daughter. The names and facts given, though unknown to Magnin, were correct. When the medium awoke she gave an accurate description of the old gentleman and of the overcoat which had precipitated the quarrel (and hence the old man’s death), and she gave the date of his death as 17 December 1913. The actual date was 19 December 1913. Madame M.’s symptoms disappeared.

He then goes deeper into the Thompson-Gifford case which is worth a read, as it takes us back to the idea that controls can be spirits unto themselves that take on subpersonalities of mediums and certain reincarnation cases where someone older has past-life memories.

But I want to focus on the differences here between Obsession and reincarnation:

Quote:It is immediately obvious that Thompson’s experiences differed from those of a typical reincarnation subject in at least the following respects:

(a) He had a frequent sense of an external presence ‘overshadowing’ him.
(b) His paintings (exhibition of a characteristic skill characteristic of Gifford) were often done in a state of dissociation, with some degree of subsequent amnesia.
(c) Scenes for his paintings were presented to him, as if from an external source, in visions.
(d) The overshadowing presence seemed to communicate with him as if from the outside through auditory hallucinations.
(e) The scenes which came to him did not come as scenes from his own past.
(f) Mediums into whose presence Thompson was brought picked up the presence of the obsessing ‘Gifford’ entity (so far as I know comparable experiments have not been tried with Stevenson’s subjects).
(g) Thompson did not identify with Gifford in the sense of coming to regard Gifford’s family and possessions as his own, etc.

More generally one might remark that the children in Stevenson’s reincarnation cases do not, on the whole, present the signs of elaborating and maintaining a subconscious romance which led Mrs Sidgwick towards the theory of overshadowing in regard to the controls and communicators of Mrs Piper.

There seem therefore to be grounds for saying that in at least one case the experiences of a supposedly obsessed person were very different from those of the subjects of Stevenson’s cases of ostensible reincarnation. This appears to me a sufficient reason for consigning the obsession theory not to oblivion, but indefinitely to the shelf. For since obsession is a state in which mind and behaviour are ostensibly influenced from the outside, the fundamental evidence for it could only be psychological evidence.

Now Obsession itself is based on the Survival Hypothesis, though it is more amenable to a Super (or just regular) Psi explanation. As such I wanted to post Gauld's reasoning for why Obsession wouldn't suffice to serve as an explanation for reincarnation.

Ah I said we'd be moving on from reincarnation to appartions, but had to edit that as found something very interesting in Eric Weiss' The Long Trajectory: The Metaphysics of Reincarnation & Life After Death (public domain version here):

Quote:Personality Survival Leading Directly to Reincarnation. This mode of reincarnation is suggested by the stories of a conscious interval, or intermission, between death and a subsequent birth, reported in approximately 10 percent of Stevenson’s cases of the reincarnation type.

These experiences, which are remembered by the subjects in cases of the reincarnation type, can be roughly sorted into three stages:

• First, a “transition stage” that includes phenomena such as “preparation of the previous personality’s body for the funeral or trying to contact grieving relatives, only to find they are unable to communicate with the living.”

• After the transition, a more stable stage is reached in which the personality is recalled as living in some locale (e.g., in a tree, in a pagoda, near the scene of the death). Sometimes the disincarnate personality also has “a schedule of duties to which they must attend.” Reports of “seeing or interacting with other disincarnate personalities are common” in this stage.

• The third stage involves “choosing parents for the next life.” Common themes in these stories include: ˏ Seeing a living person performing everyday tasks, such as bathing or returning home, identifying him or her as a future parent, and choosing to follow that person home. ˏ Being directed to the new parents “often by elders or the ‘old man,’” (a common disincarnate personality referred to earlier in the book). Just under one-fifth of the cases analyzed in Stevenson’s study “commented on how they gained entrance to the mother’s body. This was most often by transforming into a grain of rice or speck of dust in the water and being ingested by the mother. A few went to considerable lengths, having to try repeatedly when either they were rebuffed by guardian spirits or the water was thrown out as dirty.”

Weiss, Dr. Eric M.. The Long Trajectory: The Metaphysics of Reincarnation and Life After Death . iUniverse. Kindle Edition.

All of the above is important in terms of lending some weight to Survival given the following:

Quote:In an analysis of 1,200 cases of the reincarnation type (CORT), researchers evaluated how many statements were verified and how strong was the argument for reincarnation. Compared to all cases of the reincarnation type, the 276 cases that included intermission memories (CORT-I) had twice the number of verified statements and double the score for strength-of-case. One implication of these findings is that those cases with intermission memories are also cases in which the continuity of conscious memory is particularly strong.

Weiss, Dr. Eric M.. The Long Trajectory: The Metaphysics of Reincarnation and Life After Death . iUniverse. Kindle Edition.

Of course one could say the intermission memories are also added in via Super-Psi, but I think the association with these sorts of memories with stronger cases does suggest the continuity of a personality capable of remembering both the past-life and the intermission stage. OTOH some could say the bizarreness of the stories (turning into rice or dust) is more suggestive of Super-Psi but would adults injecting memories into a child really suggest something like that? It seems more like a child's perspective of a complex process to me but I realize opinions can differ on that point.

I will say that I was never personally taught about this idea that reincarnation happens because your mother ingests your soul-turned-into-rice (or dust), though it does occur in the Upanishads. I don't know if Stevenson or anyone else tried to see which family - the deceased person's or the parents of the newly (seemingly) reincarnated person - held those beliefs, which would definitely be interesting.

More on Intermission Memories from the Psi-Encyclopedia.

Okay, *now* we can move on to apparitions.

As Gauld's book is in the public domain, it presents our first class of apparitions - those projected by living persons:

Quote:There are some cases—by no means a negligible number—in which a person who is undergoing an OBE, and finds himself at or ‘projects’ himself to a particular spot distant from his physical body, has been seen at that very spot by some person present there. Such cases are generally known as ‘reciprocal’ cases, and I proceed next to give an example. The following is an extract (26, p. 29) from a statement sent to the ASPR in May 1957 by Miss ‘Martha Johnson’, a woman of 26 from Plains, Illinois. She describes a dream which she had early in the morning of 27 January 1957. She dreamed that she had travelled, by walking or floating, to the home of her mother in northern Minnesota, 926 miles away.

After a little while I seemed to be alone going through a great blackness. Then all at once way down below me, as though I were at a great height, I could see a small bright oasis of light in the vast sea of darkness. I started on an incline towards it as I knew it was the teacherage (a small house by the school) where my mother lives … After I entered, I leaned up against the dish cupboard with folded arms, a pose I often assume. I looked at my Mother who was bending over something white and doing something with her hands. She did not appear to see me at first, but she finally looked up. I had a sort of pleased feeling and then after standing a second more, I turned and walked about four steps.

She awoke from her dream at 2.10 A.M. (1.10 A.M. Minnesota time). The mother gives her account of her own experiences in two letters to her daughter, dated 29 January 1957 and 7 February 1957, from which I extract the following:

I believe it was Saturday night, 1.10, 26 January, or maybe the 27th. It |223| would have been 10 after two, your time. I was pressing a blouse here in the kitchen … I looked up and there you were by the cupboard just standing smiling at me. I started to speak and you were gone. I forgot for a minute where I was. I think the dogs saw you too. They got so excited and wanted out—just like they thought you were by the door—sniffed and were so tickled.

Your hair was combed nice—just back in a pony tail with the pretty roll in front. Your blouse was neat and light—seemed almost white. [Miss Johnson confirmed in correspondence that she had ‘travelled’ got up in this way.]

In this case, the ‘traveller’ perceived correct details of the scene which she visited, so her experience can hardly have been just an hallucination; and the body in which she believed herself to be corresponded in hair style and clothing with details of the form which her mother saw standing by the cupboard. Surely we cannot avoid supposing that something (a duplicate body?) went forth from Miss Johnson which acted as a vehicle for her consciousness, or was perhaps in part a product of it, and at the end of its voyage was actually seen by her mother and would also have been seen by any other person with the right kind of sensitivity who happened to be on the spot. And is it not equally obvious that had Miss Johnson’s ordinary physical body been destroyed during her ‘absence’ from it she would have been left, so to speak, stranded, but still conscious, still a whole person, and still the occupant of some kind of subtle or rarefied body?

Later he breaks down other classes of apparitions further:

Quote:1.Crisis Apparitions. These constitute by far the largest class of veridical hallucinations. The percipient sees (or hears the voice of—but for simplicity I shall for the most part confine myself to visual cases) a person known to him, who then suddenly vanishes in an inexplicable manner. Subsequently it turns out that the person who was seen died, or underwent some other unpleasant crisis, at or about the time of the apparition. (By convention, a ‘crisis’ apparition must occur within twelve hours either way of the crisis involved.)

2. Collectively Perceived Apparitions. Two or more persons simultaneously see the same phantasmal figure in the same place (hallucinations of all the other classes may in addition be collectively perceived).

3.  Apparitions of Deceased Persons (‘Post-Mortem Apparitions’). (By convention, an apparition is classified as post-mortem only if the person it represents has been dead for at least twelve hours.) Such hallucinations may be classed as ‘veridical’ if either:

(a) the percipient did not know that the person he saw had died;

(b) the apparition, though not known to the percipient, was subsequently identified by him (e.g. from a photograph) as that of a deceased person formerly connected with the spot in question;

(c) the figure conveyed some information once known to the deceased person concerned, but previously unknown to the percipient; or

(d) the figure manifested some purpose characteristic of or appropriate to the deceased person, but unknown to, and not characteristic of, the percipient.

4.  Haunting Apparitions. The same figure is seen in the same locality on a series of different occasions by the same (or better still) different percipients. Such apparitions are usually assumed to be those of deceased persons, but evidence of identity is often lacking.

|226| 5. Apparitions of Living Persons. Such apparitions may be termed veridical if, for instance, the figure seen is that of a living person who formerly frequented that spot, or that of a living person who is about to arrive there (for preference unexpectedly).

As the worth of either Survival or Super-Psi rests on cases, let me end this particular post with an important ghost sighting from Psi Encyclopedia:

Cheltenham Ghost

Quote:Between 1882 and 1886, the figure of a tall woman dressed in black, habitually holding a handkerchief to her face was seen on a number of occasions by several people, who sometimes also claimed to hear her footsteps as she passed. The principal witness was Rosina Despard, then a nineteen-year old girl, resident in the house. At the request of the SPR’s Frederic Myers, Rosina subsequently provided a written report describing the frequent sightings of the figure by herself and other members of the household, whose own statements are also given.

Quote:In her account, Rosina Despard mentions having seen the apparition for the first time in June 1882, some three months after the family moved in, and a total of some six times over the following two years. She describes the first encounter as follows:

    I had gone up to my room, but was not yet in bed, when I heard someone at the door, and went to it, thinking it might be my mother. On opening the door, I saw no one; but on going a few steps along the passage, I saw the figure of a tall lady, dressed in black, standing at the head of the stairs. After a few moments she descended the stairs, and I followed for a short distance, feeling curious what it could be. I had only a small piece of candle, and it suddenly burnt itself out; and being unable to see more, I went back to my room. The figure was that of a tall lady, dressed in black of a soft woollen material, judging from the slight sound in moving. The face was hidden in a handkerchief held in the right hand. This is all I noticed then; but on further occasions, when I was able to observe her more closely, I saw the upper part of the left side of the forehead, and a little of the hair above. Her left hand was nearly hidden by her sleeve and a fold of her dress. As she held it down a portion of a widow's cuff was visible on both wrists, so that the whole impression was that of a lady in widow's weeds. There was no cap on the head but a general effect of blackness suggests a bonnet, with long veil or a hood.’ 1

Quote:Over the years, the case has attracted considerable comment from investigators of haunting phenomena.4   GNM Tyrrell, author of a much-quoted analysis of such phenomena (Apparitions, 1943), viewed the Cheltenham apparition as a ‘brooding reminiscence’ playing out actions from the time when she was alive.5 The sounds of footsteps, he suggested, might involve poltergeist activity originated by living persons. Psychologist Alan Gauld called it the ‘most famous ghost of all’ and ‘without doubt the most curious case of its kind ever printed’.6 Andrew Mackenzie described evidence that the haunting, far from fading after a few years, continued for another century. In a thorough review in 2011 Bryan Williams of the Psychical Research Foundation, emphasised the multi-faceted nature of the case, combining collective apparitional experience; possible place memory; ESP on the part of the observers; and immateriality combined with a solid appearance.7

Some more relevant apparition cases:

Here are the basics of the Nelly Butler case, America's First Ghost:

Curt Norris

Quote:By February of 1800 Nelly was becoming famous around Machiasport and the surrounding towns. People crowded into the Blaisdel house to see and hear her. A female witness described her appearance: “At first the apparition was a mere mass of light. Then it grew into a personal form, about as tall as myself…and the glow from the apparition had a constant tremulous motion. At last, the personal form became shapeless, expanded every way, and then vanished in a moment.”

Apparently frightened by the throng, she disappeared for four months, then returned in May in front of 20 witnesses in the Blaisdels’ cellar. When asked by Abner why she chose the cellar for her appearances, instead of upstairs where more people could see her, Nelly said she didn’t want to scare any more children.

Before the end of that year, more than 100 people had seen or heard the ghost of Nelly Butler, and most had given sworn testimony to the local pastor, a Reverend Cummings. The Reverend didn’t believe in ghosts and didn’t think his flock should, either. In a foul temper, Cummings strode through the fields to Abner’s house. Suddenly, before him was a woman. “Surrounded by a bright light, at first her form was no bigger than that of a toad…” As he watched, Nelly Butler grew to normal height before his eyes. He was convinced.

Some additional details from Chris Carter:

Quote:Between 1800 and 1806, the apparition was seen on at least twenty-seven occasions by groups of people from two to nearly two hundred. It identified itself as the spirit of Nelly Butler, the deceased first wife of Captain George Butler. In its discourses, the apparition seemed very concerned with matters of marriage and family, urging Captain Butler to remarry, and accurately predicting the birth of a child. The apparition also seemed very concerned with establishing its identity as the deceased Mrs. Butler, and to this end repeated snatches of conversations between Nelly and her sister, husband, and mother when she was alive, and which were known only by them. Information was also conveyed to the group—such as the recent death of a man’s father two hundred miles away—that they could have no normal way of knowing.

Quote:She appeared in several apartments of Mr. Blaisdel’s house, and several times in the open field . . . There, white as the light, she moved like a cloud above the ground in personal form and magnitude, and in the presence of more than forty people. She tarried with them till after daylight, and vanished.”14 The apparition also invited those present to try to touch her. On one occasion, Captain Butler “put his hand upon it and it passed down through the apparition as through a body of light, in the view of six or seven witnesses.”

Carter, Chris. Science and the Afterlife Experience: Evidence for the Immortality of Consciousness (p. 102). Inner Traditions/Bear & Company. Kindle Edition.

Paul Marshall discusses a similar shifting between largely undifferentiated light - though in the form of a sphere - and then an actual form in Shape of the Soul:

Quote:An interesting example of a deceased person seen in the form of a luminous ball is the case of Louisa “Weesy” Coppin, at the time of writing the only individual in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography whose occupation is stated as “ghost”—or rather, “supposed ghost.”11 In 1849, four-year-old Louisa died from gastric fever, but the remaining children of the Coppin family, aged between two and nine and a half, soon became aware of her presence, describing her as a “ball of bluish light.”12 The children’s father, William Coppin, a surveyor of ships, was away at the time, but on his return he was informed of the remarkable sightings. At this point, a lady visitor arrived at the family home, and both she and Mr. Coppin, who was rather susceptible to mysterious happenings,13 witnessed the luminous ball in the drawing room, in a corner near the ceiling. The ball was “distinctly visible” for the full quarter of an hour of the meeting. Afterward, Mr. Coppin went upstairs to the parlor, where he found Mrs. Coppin reclining on a sofa in a state of weakness, with the ball of bluish light just above her head, again near the ceiling.14

The children had identified the luminous ball as Louisa, but in the narrative the deceased girl is attributed a more conventional form too, for she is seen standing by walls and sitting at the dining table,15 and even sitting on her aunt’s knee, “dressed in robes of indescribable beauty and radiantly bright.”16 The case was made public forty years later, in 1889, when it was revealed that the deceased girl, questioned through the intermediary of her seven-year-old sister, had provided information on the whereabouts of Sir John Franklin’s naval expedition, which in 1845 had set out to find the Northwest passage but had gone missing. The information was discovered to be surprisingly accurate when traces of the expedition were eventually found.17 The case is made additionally interesting by this last aspect, which if true might indicate that something paranormal was afoot, whether or not it involved the ghost of Little Weesy.

Marshall, Paul. The Shape of the Soul . Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.

We've discussed that there exist apparitions of the deceased (ghosts/spirits) and apparitions of the living (OOBEs). Chris Carter makes note of their similarity:

Quote:Hornell Hart has provided a detailed analysis of the characteristics of apparitions. He arranged his cases of apparitions in chronological order, beginning with those occurring long before the projector’s death and ending with those occurring long after the person’s death. Hart argued that if consciousness is dependent on the function of a physical brain, then apparitions should show an abrupt change in character and behavior when the point of death is passed. But the observed facts do not indicate such a change except, as Hart writes, “such as might be expected from the alterations of purpose which death would produce in the appearer.”

Hart concluded that apparitions of the living are indistinguishable from those of the dead. He was also able to show that in 82 percent of cases of apparitions of the living that he analyzed, these living people cited as apparitions either remembered leaving their body, or had been directing their attention to the percipient, often with the idea of “going” to him or her. If we are justified in concluding that at least some apparitions of the living are vehicles for the minds of those they represent, then it would seem that we are equally justified in concluding that at least some apparitions of the deceased are also vehicles for the minds of those they represent. The fact that apparitions of the living are indistinguishable from apparitions of the dead means that apparitions of the dead provide evidence in favor of survival.

Carter, Chris. Science and the Afterlife Experience: Evidence for the Immortality of Consciousness (pp. 112-113). Inner Traditions/Bear & Company. Kindle Edition.

OTOH Gauld makes this comment against the idea of a subtle-body:

Quote:Consider the following reciprocal case, collected by Nils Jacobson, a Swedish psychiatrist much interested in unusual experiences. The two persons concerned had agreed to experiment. I extract from their statements (73, p. 112):

JAKOB: … The day after our decision I drove my daughter to her job, the time was 6 P.M. I was suddenly reminded of this agreement with Eva. Then I transported myself astrally to her home and found her sitting on the sofa, reading something. I made her notice my presence by calling her name and showing her that I was driving my car. She looked up and saw me. After that I left her and was back in the car which I had been driving all the while without any special awareness of the driving …

EVA: I was sitting alone in the room in an easy chair … Suddenly I saw Jakob sitting in front of me in the car, saw about half the car as if I were in it with him. He sat at the wheel: I only saw the upper part of his body. I also saw the clock in the car, I think it was a couple of minutes before six. The car was not headed towards our house but in another direction …

Even if (which I doubt) one could tinker with the animistic theory in such a way as to give a plausible account of how ‘duplicate’ bodies form their outer parts into the semblance of clothes, one could hardly extend the supposition to cover their transforming themselves into the semblance of half a car, complete with clock showing the correct time.

But this is a rather odd case. The person Jakob is awake and claiming to astral project while driving, and even says he is showing Eva the location of the car. We can note that Jakob first says he is in Eva's home and only then he projects the image of himself in the car.

So there are a variety of ways to explain this - a veridical hallucination via telepathy, the subtle body of Jakob entering Eva's home and then telepathically projecting, or Jakob using a kind of PK to manifest the scene (crafting some etherial/subtle substance or arranging the photons as if they were emitted from a projector to give two examples).

This case, while odd, does touch on a problem mentioned in the Psi Encyclopedia as "Why do Ghosts Wear Clothes?" (The Martha case is explained in the article, and was also mentioned above in the initial post on apparitions.)

Quote:It should be clear why this case poses a problem for both an externalist account of OBEs and an objectivist explanation of the reciprocal apparition. The clothing and hairstyle of the apparitional figure were not those of the sleeping Martha. They corresponded, instead, to the way Martha experienced herself during her OBE. Assuming that telepathic explanations are at least sometimes appropriate, one such explanation comes immediately to mind. Presumably, Martha’s hairstyle and clothing during her OBE are mental constructs, just as they would be if her experience were merely a dream. But then it certainly looks as if Martha telepathically communicated those features of the OBE to her mother, as well as influencing Mrs Johnson to experience her with arms folded, near the cupboard, and so on.

Of course, an apparitional experience could be a mixture of genuine perception (of an apparitional figure) with a telepathically induced quasi-perception (for instance of the figure’s attire), just as genuine and quasi-perceptions would combine if I were to hallucinate a hippo in the real corner of the room. But if we must appeal to ESP (telepathic influence) to explain parts of the apparitional experience, then it may simply be gratuitous to suppose that a detachable part of consciousness or astral body was actually present at the remote location.

Furthermore, in some reciprocal cases, it’s the percipient, rather than the OBEr, who seems to supply features such as apparitional clothing. In one such case,7 the Rev Clarence Godfrey tried to appear to a friend at the foot of her bed. He made the mental effort in the late evening after retiring to bed, and he fell asleep after about eight minutes. He then dreamed that he met his friend the next morning, and she confirmed that he had appeared to her. This dream woke him, and he noticed that his clock showed 3:40 am.

When his friend confirmed the experiment’s success the following day, she noted that it occurred at about the time the servant put out all the lamps, which usually took place around 3:45. In her written account, she says that Godfrey ‘was dressed in his usual style’.

I would object to the second case, which seems to me more like dream telepathy than a genuine OOBE. After all Godfrey himself claims to have dreamed about the meeting, rather than appearing as a body.

In the Martha case, one has to ask why she herself seems to fly down in embodied form to appear to her mother? Why do OOBErs claim to have a subtle/astral body? We also have seen that ghosts can be perceived as different forms, even starting off as a mass of light that resolves into the formation of a figure. Thus it is possible for the apparition to be made of some "stuff" that more easily takes on form based on intention.

Chris Carter also comments on the Ghosts with Clothes Problem:

Quote:In its favor, the theory that apparitions are telepathic hallucinations does solve the problem that apparitions are almost always seen wearing clothes. This has long been seen as a stumbling block for the idea that apparitions are physically real: as one wit put it, “If ghosts have clothes, then clothes have ghosts.” However, if apparitions are, in fact, physically real, then it seems unclear to me why the materialization of clothing should pose any greater problem than, say, the materialization of hair.

Carter, Chris. Science and the Afterlife Experience: Evidence for the Immortality of Consciousness (p. 89). Inner Traditions/Bear & Company. Kindle Edition.

Additionally, Carter notes those cases - of which we will touch on next post - where a ghost has the same "drop in" characteristic as mediumship cases like Runki and those cases of "replacement reincarnation" we've discussed. If the apparition is just a telepathic hallucination, why is the figure localized?

Consider also those cases where the apparition is not perceived by a single person, but by multiple people in the correct perspective. Carter mentions an OOBE where a wife and husband have a reciprocal experience wherein she visits him while he is aboard a ship and gives him a kiss and a hug. That could be a telepathic communication with hallucinatory "virtual reality" aspects, but the apparition however was seen by a third person sharing the husband's quarters on the ship.

Carter provides some other examples:

Quote:Finally, it is important to stress that collectively perceived apparitions are almost invariably seen in proper perspective by the witnesses, given their position and distance from the apparition. In one reported case, a recently deceased man was seen standing on the altar steps of his church by three people in three different parts of the church, looking completely normal.23 In another case, a woman and her daughter sleeping in the same room suddenly awoke and saw a female figure in a white garment with dark curly hair, standing in front of the fireplace, over which there was a mirror. The mother saw the face in quarter-profile; her daughter could only directly see the back of the figure, but could see the figure’s face clearly reflected in the mirror.24 In an English case from the 1930s, nine members of a family reported that together they saw the apparition of their recently deceased grandfather, which even the smallest girl, aged five, recognized.25 These and many other similar cases can leave no doubt that collective apparitions are perceived as though they were actual living persons, obeying all the normal rules of perspective and distance for each observer. Unless we hold on to the untestable theory that the subconscious minds of the witnesses in these cases collaborated together to telepathically create a collective hallucination that was not merely identical, but correct for the perspective of each observer, it seems as though we are driven to the conclusion that collectively perceived apparitions are something objectively present.

Carter, Chris. Science and the Afterlife Experience: Evidence for the Immortality of Consciousness (pp. 108-109). Inner Traditions/Bear & Company. Kindle Edition.

In fact Braude says it would be better to assume these are cases of PK, perhaps generated in the same way ectoplasm is generated in physical mediumship. Of course that level of PK again invokes the evolutionary question - if there is only a single reality that has no room for the deceased to exist, and evolution is true, why do we - or at least some animals - not display this kind of mastery of mind over matter? And what exactly is the ectoplasm of physical mediumship, and why wouldn't it be suggestive of some kind of substance that could also be the stuff of ghosts if not souls?

Finally, I do think it is important to note that the "animist" theory of a soul, where the apparition is the ghost body of the deceased as well as the astral body of the living OOBEr, is not equivalent to the Survival Hypothesis. It is admittedly a type of Survivalist explanation but we don't necessarily have to be souls in that sense. Consider the words of the writer A.A. Attanasio: "...his immortal soul dwelled not inside him: He lived inside the cosmic immensity of his soul."

After all even the current body is within our phenomenal experience - as the neuroscientist JR Smythies puts it, "How can the brain be in the head when the head is in the brain?" And even the material reality of the experienced physical body may not match the ultimate reality of space/time, as some physicists suggest our classical space & time are emergent from some deeper quantum level of reality. And in Idealism we could all just be conscious POVs where the body is secondary since all of space & time is contained within an Ur-Mind of some sort. 

Myers had an idea akin to what I am talking about, where he posited the deceased did not have to actually be the apparition. In modern gaming terms he suggested it could simply be the "avatar" of the person in our "lower" frame of reality while the actual consciousness of the deceased exists in a higher frame. (For more on this dualism of frames see the P2P Simulation Hypothesis.)

Next up we will continue to look at some apparition cases and see how they challenge the Super-Psi Hypothesis.

(2020-08-07, 08:23 AM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Additionally, Carter notes those cases - of which we will touch on next post - where a ghost has the same "drop in" characteristic as mediumship cases like Runki and those cases of "replacement reincarnation" we've discussed. If the apparition is just a telepathic hallucination, why is the figure localized?

Carter mentions a case from Myer's public domain Human Personality and Survival after Death:

Quote:On Saturday, October 18, 1868, Mr. and Mrs. Bacchus left some friends with whom they had been staying and went to Cheltenham to visit a sick friend. First they found rooms in a local lodging house, and left to visit their ailing friend. On their way out of the lodging house, they noticed some medicine bottles, and inquired if anyone in the house was ill. They were told that a Mrs. R., who kept a room downstairs, had been ill for some time, but that her illness was not a serious one. In the course of the evening they mentioned this woman’s name to their friend, and he told them that she was the widow of a physician who formerly practiced in Cheltenham. On Sunday morning Mr. Bacchus informed Mrs. Bacchus that Mrs. R. had suddenly died in the night, and that her body was being kept in the bedroom downstairs, directly below their own rooms. Not wishing to move on a Sunday, and being of kind disposition, the couple decided to remain at the lodging house.

Carter, Chris. Science and the Afterlife Experience: Evidence for the Immortality of Consciousness (p. 115). Inner Traditions/Bear & Company. Kindle Edition.

The account of the apparition is as follows, from the public domain work of Myer's:

Quote:I came into the drawing-room for breakfast, I thought my husband looked a  little uncomfortable ; however, he said nothing till I had finished breakfast,  then asked, " Did you hear a noise of a chair in the hall a little while ago?  The old lady downstairs died in her chair last night, and they were wheeling her into the bedroom at the back."

I was very uncomfortable and frightened ; I had never been in a house with any one dead before, and wanted to go, and several friends who heard of it asked me to stay with them, but my husband did not wish to move. He said it was a great deal of trouble, was really foolish
of me to wish it, that he did not like moving on Sunday, also that he did not think it right or kind to go away because some one had died, that we should think it unkind if the case had been our own, and other people had rushed off in a hurry ; so we decided to stay. I spent the day with my brother-in-law and nieces, and only returned to the lodgings in time to go to bed.

I went to  sleep quickly as usual, but woke, I suppose, in the middle of the night, not frightened by any noise, and for no reason, and saw distinctly at the foot of the bed an old gentleman with a round rosy face, smiling, his hat in his hand, dressed in an old-fashioned coat (blue) with brass buttons, light waistcoat, and trousers. The longer I looked at him the more distinctly I saw every feature and particular of his dress, &c. I did not feel much frightened, and after a time shut my eyes for a minute or two, and when I looked again the old gentle-
man was gone. After a time I went to sleep, and in the morning, while dressing, made up my mind that I would say nothing of what I had seen till I saw one of my nieces, and would then describe the old gentleman, and ask if Dr. R. could be like him, although the idea seemed absurd. I met my niece, Mary Copeland (now Mrs. Brandling), coming out of church, and said, "Was Dr. R. like an old gentleman with a round rosy face," &c., &c., describing what I had seen. She stopped at once on the pavement, looking astonished. " Who could have told you, aunt? We always said he looked more like a country farmer than a doctor, and how odd it was that such a common-looking man
should have had such pretty daughters."

Of which Carter writes:

Quote:This case is difficult to explain as a hallucination generated by the mind of Mrs. Bacchus. She knew neither the recently deceased woman nor her deceased husband. What possible reason could she have for telepathically acquiring details of the appearance of a man she had never met, and then incorporating them into a realistic hallucination? On the other hand, the deceased doctor—if he still existed—could reasonably be credited with a strong motive for visiting his recently deceased wife, namely, to help her through the transition of death.

Carter, Chris. Science and the Afterlife Experience: Evidence for the Immortality of Consciousness (p. 116). Inner Traditions/Bear & Company. Kindle Edition.

Gauld also has a set of cases he believes genuinely stretches the Super-ESP Hypothesis:

Quote:a. A young man owns a tow boat which he runs to help support his family. The engine keeps breaking down. One night the young man is lying awake worrying about it. His lately deceased father comes through the closed bedroom door. They have a conversation about the engine, and the father correctly advises him how to set it right (129, pp. 155–156).

One might simply suppose here that ‘deep down’ the young man already knew the answer; for obscure psychological reasons it found its way into consciousness in the form of an hallucination.

(b) A man (who had had other visions) sees an exalted or angelic spirit (identity unknown) who tells him that his sister is in need, and that he is to send her a certain sum of money. He complies, and afterwards finds that at that time she had been in great difficulties, and had been praying for help (100).

Here one might propose that the percipient learned by ESP of his sister’s distress, which he would naturally wish to relieve. His psychological quirks were such that the ESP, instead of taking a direct route (an intuition, a ‘call’ in his sister’s voice), was dressed up in the form of a visit from a spiritual being.

(c) Mr J. P. Chaffin, whose father had died nearly four years previously, dreams on a number of occasions that his father appears at his bedside. On the last occasion his father is wearing his old black overcoat, and shows him the pocket, saying, ‘You will find my will in my overcoat pocket.’ (The percipient was not clear whether this experience was a dream or a waking apparition—there are in fact a number of cases in which the former has passed into the latter.) Mr Chaffin searches the pocket of this coat, and finds therein a roll of paper which reveals the location of a hitherto unsuspected second will (139a).

With this case the ESP hypothesis must move towards the super-ESP hypothesis. We have to say that Mr J. P. Chaffin learned by ESP not just where a clue to the will was, but that there was a will at all. This involves his ‘reading’ what was written on the rolled up paper in the overcoat pocket, a task requiring ESP of a degree hardly paralleled |234| in any experimental investigation. For obscure psychological reasons, his unconscious mind dressed up the information as though it were coming from his late father.

(d) A naval officer, Lieutenant H., and his wife are assigned new quarters in a house which they share with another family, the Gs. On four occasions he clearly sees, for up to fifteen minutes, the figure of a man (previously unknown to him), which seems as though about to speak, but vanishes into thin air when approached. On one occasion the figure blocks light from electric light bulbs; on another, two dogs are alarmed prior to its appearance. It transpires that the ghost closely resembles Mrs G.’s late father, who had never been to the house. Lieutenant H. picks out his photograph from among about twenty others (56).

The ESP hypothesis has now to become the super-ESP hypothesis. One might suppose that Mrs G.’s thoughts were dwelling much upon her late father. Lieutenant H. telepathically ‘read’ those thoughts, and externalized the information in the form of an hallucinatory figure of the old gentleman. But there are numerous problems. Can we make sense of the idea that one might telepathically ‘read’ or ‘perceive’ events in someone else’s mind, when it makes no sense to talk of reading or perceiving them by any form of sense perception? Furthermore the ESP that is here being postulated is of a very remarkable degree, and was exercised by a person who had had no other such experience to weaken his scepticism. What, next, of the behaviour of the dogs? They become excited immediately before Lieutenant H. first saw the figure, and could not therefore have picked up his astonishment. Can we really suppose that they too both happened to read Mrs G.’s mind at that moment? Lastly, there is the question of motive. In most, though not all, cases of spontaneous ESP, the experient might be supposed to desire to have the information that is conveyed to him; and sometimes the presumed telepathic agent might be supposed to wish to convey it. In this case, however, Lieutenant H. had no motive to wish for information about Mrs G.’s father, nor had Mrs G. any motive for wishing him to receive it.

(e) Mrs P., a lady who has once before had an hallucination—a non-veridical one however—is lying in bed waiting to feed her baby. A lamp is burning. Suddenly she sees a tall man, dressed in naval officer’s uniform, come to the end of the bed. She rouses her husband, who also sees the figure. It speaks reproachfully to her husband. He then leaps out of bed. The figure moves away, transiently blocking the light from |235| the lamp, and vanishes into the wall. Mr P. tells her the apparition was that of his father, who had been dead fourteen years. Later she learned that her husband was prevented by this vision from taking financial advice which would have proved ruinous (110a, II, pp. 326–329).

On the super-ESP hypothesis we would have to tackle this case as follows. Mr P. was or had been brooding or dreaming about his long-dead father, wondering what he would have thought about his great financial difficulties, etc. There is no evidence of this, but we might suppose that he was brooding unconsciously. Mrs P. read her husband’s mind, and constructed therefrom an hallucination of his father standing in a certain spot. When she roused Mr P., he telepathically picked up her vision and externalized a corresponding one himself. The purpose apparently manifested by the phantom—to reprove Mr P.—was really Mr P.’s own. In his heart of hearts he wanted to stop himself from the course of action he was about to embark on, but his psychological quirks were such that he could best do so by manufacturing the monitory hallucination of his deceased father. That Mr and Mrs P. should on this one occasion alone have exhibited reciprocal ESP of so extraordinary an extent may be explained on the grounds that worry facilitates ESP—or upon any other grounds one can dream up.

It cannot, I think, be denied that the super-ESP theory’s account of these cases, especially (c), (d) and (e), is ad hoc and convoluted to the last degree. In fact a flat-earther in full cry could hardly support his hypothesis with more tortuous argumentation, or with proposals less open to direct test. It is, of course, correspondingly difficult to prove the super-ESP theory wrong. We don’t know the limits (if any) of ESP, or of the dramatic inventiveness of the unconscious mind. But still, isn’t it obviously simpler to suppose that in each of these cases there was at work some further agency, to be identified with a still surviving portion of a formerly incarnate human being, which somehow shaped the experience of the percipient or percipients in accordance with its own persisting knowledge and persisting purposes? That way we can avoid such bizarre notions as that persons hitherto not known to be psychically gifted can suddenly develop powers of ESP comparable to, if not exceeding, the most remarkable that have ever been experimentally demonstrated; that two people without any conscious thought of doing any such thing can at an unconscious level telepathically link up with each other and hammer out the details of an |236| hallucinatory figure which both shall see; that animals may to some extent share in this process; that the information thus acquired will be dressed up by processes unknown and presumably unconscious and presented to the conscious mind quite indirectly in the form of dramatic but really irrelevant interventions by deceased persons; and that the purposes promoted by the hallucinatory episodes, even when ostensibly more appropriate to the supposed deceased person, are really those of the living percipient or of some other living person whose mind telepathically influences his. All these proposals, and many others that seem likely to emerge from the super-ESP theory, appear in the present state of our knowledge to be quite untestable against any actual or conceivable findings; and we ought therefore in accordance with the pragmatic principle laid down in Chapter One that one should, when one can, avoid a likely dead end, refrain if possible from adopting them.

While Gauld (as quoted in the last post) mentions an impressive array of cases stretching [the Super-Psi hypothesis] here's a more incredible case Braude brings up in Immortal Remains:

Quote:The swami Dadaji practiced OBEs as an integral part of the guru-devotee relationship. Early in 1970, he was touring in Allahabad, approximately 400 miles northwest of Calcutta. While his devotees were singing religious songs in one room of a house, Dadaji was alone in the prayer room. After emerging from the prayer room, Dadaji asked one of the ladies present to contact her sister-in-law in Calcutta to see if he had been seen at a certain address there....

....Osis and Haraldsson interviewed Dadaji’s hosts in Allahabad, the sister-in-law in Calcutta, and also the Mukherjee family.

The Mukherjees reported that their daughter Roma had been lying on her bed studying for an English examination when she heard a noise. She looked up and through an open door saw Dadaji in the study. Initially, he seemed semitransparent, but eventually the figure became opaque. Roma then screamed, which alerted her brother (a physician) and mother. Instead of speaking, the apparition used sign language to tell Roma to be silent and to bring him a cup of tea. Roma then went to the kitchen and left the door to the study ajar. When she returned to the study with the tea, her brother and mother followed. Reaching through the partially open door, Roma handed the figure the tea and a biscuit. Roma’s mother was able to see the apparition through the crack in the door, but the brother’s vantage point wasn’t as good. He saw only Roma’s hand reach in through the opening and come back without the tea. But there was no place for Roma to set the cup without entering the room. At that point, Roma’s father (a bank director) returned home from shopping. He was incredulous when his family told him about the apparition. But when he peeked through the opening in the door, he saw a man’s figure sitting on a chair. The Mukherjees remained in the living room, within full view of the study door, until they heard a noise. They then entered the study and found that the apparition was gone, as was half of the tea and part of the biscuit. A cigarette was still burning on the table, and it was Dadaji’s favorite brand. All four Mukherjees observed that the other study door was locked from the inside, by an iron bar across it and also by a bolt from above. (Osis & Haraldsson, 1976)

Braude, Stephen E.. Immortal Remains (pp. 263-264). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Braude suggests this is a form of PK...but surely if we accept the testimony (which we have for all cases in this thread to see if Super-Psi can hold up) that is just a new level of PK? Not just appearance but some kind of disintegration of tea & biscuit to coincide with seeming consumption.

Of course this is the only case I've read where a subtle body ate food, and it's hard to know what to make of that. Perhaps matter & consciousness/spirit are not so divorced...

Want to get into a phenomenon usually associated with PK - Poltergeists. Arguably not apparitions in the strict sense, they seem to fit here when considering the Survival Hypothesis as the underlying source.

From the Psi Encyclopedia:

Poltergeists (Overview)

Quote:‘Poltergeist’, a German term meaning ‘noisy ghost’, is traditionally used to describe the rare but extensively documented phenomenon of anomalous disturbances arising in connection with a particular place or person. The disturbances are characterized by ‘rapping’ or ‘knocking’ noises of unknown provenance, along with the anomalous and often violent movement of furniture and other objects, outbreaks of fires, inundations, and the like. The commotion often appears to have a mischievous intent, hence the traditional tendency to associate it with ghosts or other supernatural beings. However, in many cases it may equally be attributed to a force emanating from a living person, typically a child who exhibits symptoms of repressed emotion. An alternative view, not endorsed by most serious investigators, is that the phenomenon should be accounted for entirely in terms of trickery and natural events such as seismic activity.

Quote:However there are well-documented cases where no specific living agent was present during the manifestations, or where veridical information unknown to anyone present was given. Furthermore, communication with an apparent discarnate entity features in some cases, suggesting that the origin of the force emanates from such an entity. The Lagny,24 Kuala Kangsar25 and Enfield cases involved communication with a vocal being, while rapping communications featured in the cases from Lyons, Bristol,26 Hydesville27 and Andover. 

Some cases, including the famous 1920 Poona episode,28 involved the appearance of a phantasm. An example involved Raymond Bayless, a life-long investigator of paranormal behaviour, who told his wife that, following his death, he would make himself known to her. Shortly after he died in 2004, his wife saw the back door of their home opening and closing on a regular basis. The effects seemed regular and purposeful, and not at all as if they were being caused by gusts of wind. On one occasion, she saw Raymond’s form from the waist up, in her hallway: it was somewhat fuzzy but distinctly recognizable as her husband.29

Cases of this type lead some scholars to argue that poltergeist phenomena derive from discarnate agencies. Professor Ian Stevenson, in a study to determine whether poltergeist activity stems from living agents or discarnate agencies, concluded: ‘Neither always. Some poltergeists are living and others are dead.’30 Gauld & Cornell considered the discarnate entity theory in some detail [5] and concluded,  ‘We can see no grounds for dismissing the evidence in such cases en bloc, and are therefore constrained to admit that in such cases it is appropriate to explore the discarnate entity hypothesis further and more fully’.

Colin Wilson and Guy Playfair also discussed poltergeists as generated by spirits, and I'll post about that next.