Psience Quest

(2020-08-14, 07:02 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]Colin Wilson and Guy Playfair also discussed poltergeists as generated by spirits, and I'll post about that next.

From Wilson's book Supernatural:

Quote:IT SEEMS wortwhile to explain how I came to be converted from the notion that poltergeists are simply a form of ‘spontaneous psychokinesis’, due to the hidden powers of the unconscious mind, to the conviction that they are independent ‘spirits’. It began in 1976, when I presented the Rosenheim case on BBC television.

Wilson, Colin. Supernatural . Watkins Media. Kindle Edition.

A description of the case from Occult World:

Quote:The phenomena themselves seemed to be associated with a human focal point, a 19-year-old employee, Anna S. Whenever she walked down the hall, light fixtures would begin to swing behind her and light bulbs that were turned off would explode. Phenomena decreased the farther away she was. The investigators recorded the swinging light fixtures and banging noises on a video recorder.

After the investigation began, a new phenomenon arose: the movement and rotation of pictures hanging on the walls. In some cases, the pictures rotated 360 degrees or fell off their hooks. One was videotaped rotating 320 degrees. A test apparatus attached to the telephone revealed that the time announcement number was dialed four or five times a minute by invisible means; on some days, the number was dialed 40 to 50 times in a row. Employees denied doing the dialing.

More interesting was that at the same time, four dialings of a nine-digit Munich number were registered simultaneously. According to Bender, the psychokinesis (PK) required to do this would involve a mechanical influence upon certain springs at millisecond time intervals, which would require sophisticated technical knowledge. The investigators concluded that

• the phenomena defi ed explanation in terms of theoretical physics;
• the phenomena seemed to be the result of non-periodic, short duration forces;
• the phenomena, especially the telephone incidents, did not seem to involve pure electrodynamic effects;
• the phenomena included both simple and complex events; and
• the movements, especially involving the telephone, seemed to be performed by “intelligently controlled forces that have a tendency to evade investigation.”

This does seem to be the usual PK-by-the-young case of living agent Psi [until you get to that last part]. Wilson then mentions he plans to investigate another case, in Pontefract, Yorkshire:

Quote:The story sounded almost too good to be true. But before deciding to write about it I asked a friend who lived in the area, Brian Marriner, to go and investigate. He wrote me a long letter in which he outlined the story of the haunting, and I was left in no doubt that this was a genuine case, not a hoax. The daughter of the family, Diane Pritchard, had been dragged upstairs by the throat by ‘Black Monk’ and thrown out of bed repeatedly. But the ghost also seemed to have a sense of humour. When Aunt Maude, a determined sceptic, came to see for herself, a jug of milk floated out of the refrigerator and poured itself over her head. Later what looked like two enormous hands appeared around the door: they proved to be Aunt Maude’s fur gloves. As the gloves floated into the bedroom Mrs Pritchard asked indignantly, ‘Do you still think it’s the kids doing it?’ Aunt Maude burst into ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ and the gloves proceeded to conduct her singing, beating in time.

Wilson, Colin. Supernatural . Watkins Media. Kindle Edition.

On his way there he meets Guy Layton Playfair, who gives his Spirit Hypothesis challenging the usual idea that poltergeists are cases of living-agent Psi:

Quote:Then, just as it was about time to leave, I told him I was writing a book on the poltergeist and asked his opinion. He frowned, hesitated, then said, ‘I think it’s a kind of football.’ ‘Football!’ I wondered if I’d misheard him: ‘A football of energy. When people get into conditions of tension, they exude a kind of energy – the kind of thing that happens to teenagers at puberty. Along come a couple of spirits, and they do what any group of schoolboys would so – they begin to kick it around, smashing windows and generally creating havoc. Then they get tired and leave it. In fact the football often explodes and turns into a puddle of water.

Wilson then goes on to investigate the case:

Quote:Even if I had not met Guy Playfair some of the features of the case would have puzzled me. This poltergeist behaved more like a ghost, and its connection with the former Cluniac monastery and the local gallows was fairly well established. In that case the theory that it was a really a kind of astral juvenile delinquent from Diane’s unconscious mind seemed absurd. Besides, as Diane described her feelings as she was pulled upstairs by Mr Nobody I experienced a sudden total conviction that this was an independent entity, not a split-off fragment of her own psyche. When I left the Pritchards’ house that afternoon I had no doubt whatever that Guy Playfair was right: poltergeists are spirits. It was an embarrassing admission to have to make. With the exception of Guy Playfair there is probably not a single respectable parapsychologist in the world who will publicly admit the existence of spirits. Many will concede in private that they are inclined to to accept the evidence for life after death, but in print even that admission would be regarded as a sign of weakness.

Before that trip to Pontefract I had been in basic agreement with them: it seemed totally unnecessary to assume the existence of spirits. Tom Lethbridge’s ‘tape-recording’ theory explained hauntings; the unconsciousness’ and the ‘information universe’ combined to explain mysteries like telepathy, psychometry, even precognition. Spirits were totally irrelevant. Yet the Pontefract case left me in no probability of some local monk who died in a sudden and violent death, perhaps on the gallows, and who might or might not be aware that he was dead. And I must admit that it still causes me a kind of flash of protest to write such a sentence: the rationalist in me wants to say, ‘Oh come off it. . .’ Yet the evidence points clearly in that direction and it would be simple dishonesty not to admit it.


Wilson, Colin. Supernatural . Watkins Media. Kindle Edition.

Gauld, while (it seems to me) leaning more toward living agent Psi to explain poltergeist activity, did make some critiques of that idea:

Quote:Still, a discarnate entity theorist might find grounds for suggesting that the role of the agent’s emotional problems in the production of poltergeist phenomena has been commonly exaggerated. It is no doubt true that poltergeist agents who have subsequently come under the scrutiny of psychologists and psychiatrists have been full of suppressed aggression and of tensions in their family relationships. But we really need to know what the agents were like before the poltergeist outbreak began. Poltergeist phenomena may change the people afflicted by them. We have seen not just a family but a whole terrace of houses torn by aggressive tensions because of the activities of a poltergeist. Psychological tests given during and after the outbreak will not help us here. Furthermore in several cases it appears that the psychologist who administered and scored the tests knew that he had a poltergeist agent to deal with. This is particularly undesirable when, as has often been the case, free response tests, whose interpretation is in some ways up to the tester, were included. It is worth noting that in the survey reported in chapter 12, the agents in only thirty out of nearly two hundred person-centred cases were rated as clearly ‘disturbed’ prior to the onset of the phenomena. And there was no obvious common denominator among the disturbances concerned. This figure of about 15 per cent is undoubtedly too low. Still, it is large enough to require explanation, and an underestimate is preferable to wholesale indulgence in the enjoyable but misleading game of retrospective diagnosis.

Gauld, Alan. Poltergeists . White Crow Books. Kindle Edition.

Quote:We propose as a preliminary move that where poltergeists exhibit some degree of intelligence and ostensible purposiveness, it would be inappropriate to regard the intelligence as that of a living agent under the following circumstances: 1 If the phenomena appear either wholly, or failing that partially, independent of the comings and goings of any particular individual; best of all if they occur in the absence of anyone whatsoever.

Gauld, Alan. Poltergeists . White Crow Books. Kindle Edition.

Quote:The phenomena, though fairly constant in form, pass as it were from agent to agent, as though something transferred itself from one to the other. The best example of what we have in mind is perhaps the case at Lading (1916). Here poltergeist phenomena of quite a complex kind, including communicative rappings ostensibly from deceased persons, and incipient assault, developed around a girl of eleven; after a year or so the spook transferred itself to a boy of the same age who had come with his family to visit the girl’s house. A member of his family was foolish enough to invite it to do so!

Gauld, Alan. Poltergeists . White Crow Books. Kindle Edition.

He then mentions another case:

Quote:In this case the phenomena were independent of the presence of any particular person. The happenings, which had a hint of purposiveness about them, severely upset the occupants of the house and certainly did not reflect any goals which they may reasonably be supposed to have entertained, whether consciously or unconsciously. Some of the phenomena – the misty figure and the child’s voice – were also somewhat unusual...

...The case concerned is reported in the Journal of the American SPR, vol. 67, 1973, by Mr H. W. Pierce, a science writer on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. It was investigated by Pierce himself and by Dr R. A. McConnell, a well-known parapsychologist who is Professor of Biophysics at the University of Pittsburgh. They interviewed the witnesses, but did not themselves observe any of the phenomena.

Gauld, Alan. Poltergeists . White Crow Books. Kindle Edition.

Of course this question is dealt with in even greater depth within the book itself, and I recommend giving it [a] look.

Continuing this connection between PK & Apparitions/Subtle-Bodies, Braude mentions an experiment that seems to confirm a subtle body - research done on Alex Tanous. I'll quote the Psi-Encyclopedia:

Quote:Accordingly, Osis and Donna McMormick8 carried out an experiment to try to detect activity by Tanous at times when he claimed to be ‘out of the body’ and at a distance from it. The experiment took place in a perception laboratory, where Tanous lay on cushions in a darkened room and begin to relax. Four rooms away was situated an optical illusion device, a box that contained a spinning disc divided into four quadrants, four colours and five line drawings.  The device randomly selected a quadrant, colour and symbol at which to stop spinning, which however could only be seen by an observer standing by the device and looking through a spy hole.  Tanous’s task, having ‘left the body’, was to look through the hole and state, from his physical body in the other room via an intercom to Osis, what was being displayed. At the end of the trial the device’s selections would be decoded to see whether Tanous’s observations were correct above the level of chance. In addition, a strain-gauge was placed next to the optical device to see if it activated during the experiment, and whether the periods of activation coincided with significant hits.

Both elements of the experiment were successful. The number of hits was found to be statistically significant and there was strain-gauge activation during periods when Tanous produced a sequence of correct hits.

Quote:Parapsychologists pointed out that if a paranormal explanation is accepted, it is still impossible to determine whether the experiment provided evidence for an ‘astral body’, the individual being genuinely ‘out of the body’ at a distant location – which could be construed as supporting the idea of survival of death – or whether the effects were merely caused by psi activity. In the latter formulation, correct perception of the optical information might have been achieved by Tanous by ESP at a distance, while the strain-gauge activation might have been a psychokinetic effect created by Tanous or even by the researchers.13 14

Braude goes on to defend the above Super Psi explanation by noting that other experiments have produce unconscious/unintentional PK. Additionally he notes that ESP has come through varied means and projections, where the psychic gains the information within particular contexts such as within a dream or by interpreting a "rabbi" as a Catholic priest. Of course it is hard to say whether the latter should count as a "hit" in an experiment, but more importantly it would be stretching the interpretation of such experimental data IMO.

After all what Braude is talking about is the differentiation of how ESP is in some sense accomplished but OBEs are consistent [as the "hallucination" is always of a subtle body], are taught in certain shamanic/occult/Eastern traditions, and match - as the Carter quote notes in an above post - the nature of apparitions of the deceased.

Beyond that if one has a body that is a sort of PK "field" and at least seems to perceive via this subtle body, that at least suggest something very much like the animist's soul.

Braude also argues that at the least OOBEs cannot account for every kind of clairvoyance/ESP, especially when one cannot see at item like a card stuck in the middle of a deck. As such, Braude argues that it seems more likely that OOBEs are hallucinations of a subtle body with veridical ESP hits. But while it may be gratuitous to offer an OOBE explanation for every kind of Psi I am not sure this is the best example. After all the sensory capacity of the subtle body need not align with the physical body - if reality is divided into layers (say physical / phenomenal / mental) or even just ultimately our reality is "Information" perhaps it is the proximity of the subtle body that allows for the card to be read. Also, the fact ESP exists at all suggests some part of our being has sensory capacities beyond those expected by the brain, that consciousness has non-local capacities. It's not clear why these capacities would be dependent on the physical brain, and the more "Super" the capacities are the more it suggests consciousness is non-local. This is reinforced by the evolution question that plagues Super Psi explanations.

Braude then mentions the possibility that the subtle body is akin to the shadow, and just as the shadow's form will cease to exist so to the subtle body when the physical flesh & blo[o]d body dies. But shadows are not perceived as real in the same sense, as shadows are just an effect of light being blocked. So I'd say that analogy fails.

Next up is NDEs, which of course intersect with OOBEs.

Some of this makes me feel really bad about how much I doubted my friends existences. A lot of what showed up in things like the cross correspondences and whatnot pretty closely resemble things they told me about limitation and many other things. Also it's both nice and annoying to learn that other people also figured out poltergeisting. But it leaves me wondering why none of them tried developing it into magic like I planned to. And the answer is probably because they were chasing enlightenment and didn't want to get distracted.

One of the questions relating to both NDEs and OOBEs is the variation of the experience. Braude notes the discrepancies in experience of a subtle body:

Quote:We’ve already considered some of the ways near-death OBEs are culturally influenced. But OBEs generally differ with regard to many apparently crucial features. OBErs disagree, for example, whether or not a cord connects the traveling self to the physical body; whether or not there is a perceived traveling body, or a perceptual-like awareness of the remote location; whether or not the second body is felt to be the locus of consciousness, or whether it resembles the physical body; whether or not one travels to another realm (e.g., Hélène Smith’s travels to Mars) or to heavenly paradise; and whether OBE experiences seem to be at one or multiple locations (see Alvarado, 1997). If similarities remain, they can presumably be explained in any or some combination of familiar ways—for example, universality of needs and physiology, cross-cultural similarity of symbols, and perhaps even Jungian archetypes.

Braude, Stephen E.. Immortal Remains (p. 279). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.

But I don't think that it's as simple as noting commonalities in the human mind with regard to its needs, symbols, etc. And invoking Jungian Archetypes brings in an incredible number of questions IMO given the [issue] of how such archetypes might be related to reality.

I actually think the fact NDErs have a sense of a body at the very least should make one consider that there is in fact a subtle body. After all these are people from varied walks of life across the world who feel they maintain embodiment while outside their physical form. OTOH the Living Agent / Super Psi argument would be that these are all instances of a hallucination of a physical form akin to what we might perceive as a body in a dream, and that this dreamed up form merely comes along as a part of what is actually just an ESP experience that would be dependent on the biological body. This might be due to the expectation within numerous cultures that the soul is a body of some sort.

However there is more to the NDE than just the OOBE, and thus more the advocate of Super Psi would have to explain.

(2020-08-19, 12:01 AM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]However there is more to the NDE than just the OOBE, and thus more the advocate of Super Psi would have to explain.

I should rephrase this, as some NDEs are experiences of disembodied or omni-spatial consciousness. So the OOBE doesn't have to involve a ghostly/subtle body. This goes back to something I mentioned in a previous post, the idea of the apparition - whether living or dead - as the projection or "avatar" (to use modern gaming terminology). In fact some NDErs have claimed to have their consciousness cross vast distances of time and space simply by the power of their - or a spirit guide's - will. That would suggest bodies are vehicles for consciousness in particular frames of reality, much like your "body" in different video games played on the same console vary.

There are also common characteristics of NDEs, regardless of how the near death situation was brought about. For example while not every NDEr experiences the stages classified by Kenneth Ring - sense of peace, OBE, tunnel/darkness, encountering light, meeting the deceased and/or spirit being, entering/touring a spirit realm - there is a commonality of certain elements in experience not just in the Western World (where a good deal of NDE research has taken place) but also more globally. As noted by Chris Carter:

Quote:Journeys to other worlds, OBEs, and encounters with the deceased and otherworldly figures seem to be the most universal features of the NDE. Borders of some sort—doors, ridges, curtains, and so forth—are also found in accounts from different cultures.

Carter, Chris. Science and the Near-Death Experience: How Consciousness Survives Death (Kindle Locations 2574-2575). Inner Traditions/Bear & Company. Kindle Edition.

Braude instead emphasizes the differences in NDEs and how these differences seem to be affected by culture regions. He also notes that headaches and stomach aches also are common experiences with varied origins, but this to me is comparing a general embodied sensation to events that suggest spirits, life-review, traveling from darkness to a point of light, etc. That level of experience, to me, suggests the involvement of some designers which could be "gods" or just our own Higher Selves.

However some experiences draw upon still living persons as Braude notes:

Quote:The subject is a woman, S. J., whom Alan Gauld has known for many years and whom he considers to be very reliable. Her NDE occurred following childbirth, but (as in many other cases) she was in no danger of dying. She writes,

I remember…feeling as if I were completely weightless, and floating in space. I was surrounded by brilliant, pulsating light, the whole of space was coloured azure fading away to paler and paler shades of blue, and wonderful music was playing. I was being asked questions by someone I couldn’t see. The questions were of life-and-death importance, and I knew that whether I lived or died depended on what answers I gave, even though I cannot now remember what the questions were. When I answered correctly my body would soar even higher, but if I got a question wrong my body fell down and down through space. I answered more and more questions, and suddenly I felt I had infinite knowledge and could answer all those questions about where we came from and why we are here. I knew all the secrets of the universe. I soared higher and higher in space, and the music became triumphant because I had unlocked the secret of everlasting life!

So far, this experience enjoys a kind of generic similarity to many other mystical or transcendental NDEs. However, another feature of the case is more unusual. When the face behind the disembodied voice was revealed to S. J., it turned out to be Bamber Gascoigne, the still-living host of a popular TV quiz program, “University Challenge.” S. J.’s NDE had transformed Gascoigne into a kind of “celestial quiz-master.”9 Now S. J. regarded her experience as a dream rather than an NDE, because she recognized that she wasn’t near death. But as I mentioned, many NDEs occur in non-life-threatening situations. S. J.’s experience reveals clearly how the subject (and the subject’s culture) can influence the content of an NDE, and it helps make a literal (externalist) interpretation of NDEs seem excessive.

Braude, Stephen E.. Immortal Remains (pp. 272-273). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Of course the issue for Braude is he accepts the veridical capacity of the NDE, just not necessarily the part about leaving the body and almost certainly not necessarily the part about visiting other realms of reality. And regardless of idiosyncrasies like the above, as Chris Carter notes with actual NDEs the Super-Psi explanation has to have all of the supposed hallucinations wrapped around veridical Psi experiences while the body and brain are under diminished capacity. And I would add this level of Psi ability suddenly occurring near death also has to have been somehow outside the evolutionary chain even though the very argument for Super-Psi hinges on the lack of a spirit/mental realm wherein the deceased continue to exist. After all, if the brain (which under Super-Psi is the foundation of the mind & responsible for the mind's temporary existence) can produce these kind of Psi abilities close to death why didn't we evolve to have these abilities to - as Chris Carter notes -save us from dangers that lead to our death?

There is also the profound impact the NDE can have on a person's life, though this is not veridical information so not sure how many people would count it as validating the Survival Hypothesis. Braude mentions the profound experiences people have with certain psychedelics, but by my own reading of these accounts these also seem to be within a spiritual context and arguable then are akin to NDEs in that respect.

Additionally, one of the aspects of NDEs that leads to this profound impact is the meeting of the deceased, including people the NDEr did not know about. One case from The Self Does Not Die involves a young girl meeting her deceased grandparent [who she later identifies in a photograph]. Why does the Super-Psi hallucination, at the moment of near death, telepathically scan the minds of her parents (or other relatives) to produce a convincing hallucination of a grandparent she's never met?

There are other aspects to the NDE that I think provide difficulties for Super Psi, and one of those I'll get into [in] the next post are the miraculous healing effects that can follow an NDE.

(2020-08-20, 06:43 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]There are other aspects to the NDE that I think provide difficulties for Super Psi, and one of those I'll get into [in] the next post are the miraculous healing effects that can follow an NDE.

One of the most famous cases of healing post NDE is that of Anita Moorjani:

Quote:In this near-death state, I was more acutely aware of all that was going on around me than I’d ever been in a normal physical state. I wasn’t using my five biological senses, yet I was keenly taking everything in. It was as though another, completely different type of perception kicked in, and I seemed to encompass everything that was happening, as though I was slowly merging with it all.
Although the medical team moved with great speed, and there was a sense of urgency in their actions, I also sensed an air of acceptance, as though they’d come to terms with that fact that it was too late to change my fate.

“There’s nothing we can do for your wife, Mr. Moorjani. Her organs have already shut down. Her tumors have grown to the size of lemons throughout her lymphatic system, from the base of her skull to below her abdomen. Her brain is filled with fluid, as are her lungs. And as you can see, her skin has developed lesions that are weeping with toxins. She won’t even make it through the night,” the doctor told my husband, Danny.

I watched as Danny’s face changed to anguish, and wanted to cry out to him, It’s ok, darling—I’m okay! Please don’t worry. Don’t listen to the doctor. I actually feel great! But I couldn’t. Nothing came out. He couldn’t hear me.

I felt no emotional attachment to my seemingly lifeless body as it lay there on the hospital bed. It didn’t feel as though it were mine. It looked far too small and insignificant to have housed what I was experiencing. I felt free, liberated, and magnificent. Every pain, ache, sadness, and sorrow was gone! I felt completely unencumbered. I couldn’t recall feeling this way before—not ever.

Quote:What subsequently happened is incredibly hard to describe. First, it felt as though whatever I directed my awareness toward appeared before me. Second, time was completely irrelevant. It wasn’t even a factor to consider, as though it didn’t exist.

Prior to this point, doctors has conducted tests on the functionality of my organs, and their report had already been written. But in that realm, it seemed as though the outcome of those tests and the report depended on the decision I had yet to make—whether to live or to continue onward into death. If I chose death, the test results would indicate organ failure. If I chose to come back to physical life, they’d show my organs beginning to function again.

At that moment, I decided that I didn’t want to return. I then became conscious of my physical body dying, and I saw the doctors speaking with my family, explaining that it was death due to organ failure.

At the same time, my father communicated with me. This is as far as you can go, sweetheart. If you go any further, you cannot turn back.

I became aware of a boundary before me, although the demarcation wasn’t physical. It was more like an invisible threshold marked by a variation of energy levels. I knew that if I crossed it there was no turning back. All my ties to the physical world would be permanently severed.

But before I stepped towards this realm for good, I became aware of a new level of truth.
I discovered that since I’d realized who I really was and understood the magnificence of my true self, if I chose to go back to life, my body would heal rapidly—not in months or weeks, but in days! I knew that the doctors wouldn’t be able to find a trace of cancer if I chose to go back to my body!

Quote:Within two days of coming out of the coma, the doctors informed me that because my organs had miraculously started functioning again,
the swelling caused by toxic buildup had subsided considerably. When the oncologist performed a routine checkup, he couldn’t hide his surprise: “Your tumors have visibly shrunk—considerably—in just these three days!”

About six days after coming out of the ICU, I began to feel a little bit stronger and was starting to walk up and down the hospital corridor for short periods of time before needing to rest.

Everyday the doctors reported on my latest test results.

“I don’t understand. I have scans that show this patient’s lymphatic system was ridden with cancer just two weeks ago, but now I can’t find a lymph node on her body large enough to even suggest cancer,” I heard him say.

To the amazement of the medical team, the arrangements they’d made with the reconstructive surgeon to close the lesions on my neck were unnecessary because the wounds had healed by themselves.

On March 9, 2006, five weeks after entering the hospital, I was released to go home. And I couldn’t wait to live my life with joy and abandon!

While the account is an example of healing far more incredible than anything I've seen in replacement reincarnation, there is a commonality here though in this case - as in other NDE healings - you don't have the incredible identity switch. But also note that NDEs have similarities to intermission memories in cases that are not replacement reincarnation. And recall that reincarnation cases with intermission memories also statistically have greater recollection of the past life.

This does show continuities in these varied situations, threads in a cord so to speak. Another case of a medical miracle associated with NDEs:

Quote:Ruby had just undergone a caesarian section to give birth to her baby daughter. Then she began exhibiting symptoms of a rare complication called amniotic fluid embolism, whereby amniotic fluid from the uterus ended up in her bloodstream, subsequently causing a dangerous clot in her heart. She had a cardiac arrest and lost consciousness. When the resuscitation efforts appeared to be unproductive, the doctors asked her family to come in to say good-bye to Ruby.

After some time, her family left the room so they could fervently pray for her. The doctors were at the point of pronouncing her dead, when suddenly they were again able to see a signal on her heart monitor. The attending nurse, Claire Hansen, made the connection to the prayers of Ruby’s family members and encouraged them to continue. A day later, the patient had recovered to such an extent that she could be disconnected from the equipment that had artificially kept her alive. Remarkably enough, she had suffered no brain damage or any injuries from the resuscitation, and soon she was once again the picture of health. This outcome was also true of her newborn daughter, Taily. Many of the doctors and nurses involved considered this case to be one of the few true medical miracles that they had witnessed, and they attributed the patient’s recovery to some kind of divine intervention.

A couple of hours after the resuscitation, Ruby spoke of having had a dream or vision in which she talked with a spiritual being whom she experienced as her deceased father. He let her know that her time had not yet come. She recalled a light behind her father and the presence of many other spiritual beings. She moved through this spiritual world not by walking but by “flowing.” She said, “It was peaceful. There is nothing to be afraid of.” At a certain point, she had the feeling that she was being held back by a kind of force; she could move up to a certain point but no further. “That’s when I understood I was not going to stay there. (I’m) going to go back. It’s not (my) time. I was chosen to be here.”

Rivas, Titus. The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from Near-Death Experiences (pp. 185-186). International Association for Near-Death Studies. Kindle Edition.

A Super-Psi explanation would have to reverse causation, saying the recovery/remission began or just coincided with the ESP *or* claim the healing is an incredible kind of PK. But in the latter case Super-Psi's issues with evolution are brought once again to the fore.

And there are also cases that are not healing, but are a sort of "medical miracle" - NDEs and non-NDE OOBEs in which the out of body experience includes sight by the blind:

Quote:For decades there had been rumors of NDEs occurring to people who are blind, in which they could clearly see their surroundings while seemingly outside of their bodies. These stories remained little more than unsubstantiated anecdotes until researchers Kenneth Ring and Sharon Cooper launched an in-depth investigation of NDEs in people who are blind, and published their results in a book they titled Mindsight.

These researchers found twenty-one cases in which people who were blind had an NDE, which was defined as “any type of conscious experience associated with a condition that was unquestionably life-threatening, regardless of whether it conformed to the familiar classic pattern of the Moody-type NDE.”1 Out of these twenty-one cases, fifteen individuals claimed to have some sort of sight during their NDE, three were not sure whether they saw or not, and the remaining three did not appear to see at all. Ring and Cooper also collected ten cases of OBEs not associated with a medical crisis, and here the figures are even more impressive: nine out of ten people who were blind claimed to have had sight while they remembered being out of their bodies (the other person was not sure).

Their total sample included fourteen individuals who were blind from birth, and from among this group, nine individuals, or 64 percent, reported sight during an NDE or OBE.

Carter, Chris. Science and the Near-Death Experience: How Consciousness Survives Death (Kindle Locations 3891-3902). Inner Traditions/Bear & Company. Kindle Edition.

Obviously the cases of sight by those blind-from-birth is a particular challenge to the hallicination+ESP explanations for Super-Ps. After all, how does one produce a hallucination of visual phenomena one has never had? There are of course hypothetical processes - say telepathic scanning of those with sight - but this then means we are proposing more and more different Super-Psi explanations. After all in such cases you would have to have a scene reconstructed using telepathy but then adjusted to the perspective in the OBE.

On the opposite side, we have Survival linking together disparate kinds of phenomena such as NDEs and Reincarnation by providing a singular reason for the aforementioned commonalities.

There are so many elements and characteristics of NDEs that make it preposterous to suggest that these experiences are due to super-psi, that it is hard to see how this hypothesis can be seriously considered (as opposed of course to the exploration of the super-psi concept out of intellectual interest). This is so much the case that I think it would be more interesting to examine what sort of twisted mindset could generate such a belief. This would apparently start with an immovable conviction or compulsion that the mind must be the brain and that a soul and an afterlife are fantasy. How else could such a ridiculous hypothesis be entertained? It's hard to imagine how this could apply to Braude, but there you have it.

It would also be more interesting to consider the implications of there now being no viable alternative explanation for the NDE phenomenon; that is, any viable plausible alternative to the soul/spirit and afterlife hypothesis. If that is the case then there is no point in continuing to try to stretch super-psi to somehow explain all the mediumistic communication evidence, for instance.

(2020-08-20, 09:55 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]On the opposite side, we have Survival linking together disparate kinds of phenomena such as NDEs and Reincarnation by providing a singular reason for the aforementioned commonalities.

Some more on the connection between Intermission Memories and NDEs:

Quote:There is an obvious difference between near-death experiences (NDEs) and intermission experiences: NDErs return to the same body in the end, whereas those who remember the intermission claim to have left their old bodies and adopted new ones. Nevertheless, in structure and content, NDEs have much in common with intermission experiences. Intermission experiences seemingly pick up where NDEs leave off.78

Many NDEs begin with an out-of-body experience or OBE stage, during which the experiencer views his or her body, as if from outside it. NDEs then transition into a ‘transcendental stage’ that passes (in Western cases, at least) in an unearthly, nonmaterial realm typically described as heaven. During this transcendental stage, the experiencer may meet both human and nonhuman entities. Some of these entities act as escorts or guides, and often they tell the NDEr he or she can go no further, but must return to the body.79 During all stages, experiencers may perceive and interact with the material world and people in it, and these activities may be veridical.80

The OBE stage of the NDE greatly resembles Stage 1 of the intermission experience, and the transcendental stage is like Stage 2. The return to the body in NDEs, and the selection of parents and move into the womb in intermission experiences, are complementary, and in fact, the same types of entities which tell NDErs it is time to return to their bodies, in intermission experiences draw experiences on and may show them to their new bodies (Katusgoro is an example). Perceptions of the material world and interactions with the living are reported during NDEs, just as during intermission and prebirth experiences.81

Features like passing through a tunnel, seeing a light, and reviewing one’s life—which have become widely associated with NDEs—are also reported in Stage 1 of intermission memories, albeit rarely.82 Interestingly, these features have turned out to be characteristics mainly of Western NDEs and are not part of what is now recognized to be the cross-culturally universal NDE, which in addition to the basic structure, includes no more than apprehending spirit beings and non-material realms on the brink of death.83 In their essential qualities, intermission memories are thus closer to the universal NDE pattern than they are to the Western NDE pattern.

And just as some mediums while in trance claim to meet deceased persons, the same thing happens in NDEs. And as there are drop-in communications with mediums, there are also drop-in type cases with NDEs:

Quote:...In a recent systematic review of research published on ADC, Jenny Streit-Horn (2011a) found a total of 35 studies published between 1894 and 2006 that had collectively involved a total of more than 50,000 people who had reportedly experienced ADC—ADCrs—from 24 countries. Thus ADC is a phenomenon well established to have occurred widely across cultures for more than 100 years—actually since early in recorded history. Readers interested in a summary of findings from her review can access it online (Streit-Horn, 2011b)...

...Thanks to the NDE, the patient had paranormal information regarding characteristics of the deceased, such as the dead person’s appearance, personality, and specific experiences during earthly life.

Rivas, Titus. The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from Near-Death Experiences (p. 135). International Association for Near-Death Studies. Kindle Edition.

Quote:Horton then went through a tunnel at the end of which was a colorful meadow, and she was aware of being guided by beings of light as she moved through the experience. One being came forward as a baby, claiming that he was Horton’s brother, when as far as she knew she only had two sisters. He told her to remember how he looked, wearing a tiny cap and dress, socks and booties, and to provide this description to her father, who would recognize the infant immediately. After she regained consciousness, Horton discussed these incidents with her family and found out that they were all true. Her father acknowledged that his first child had been a boy and that the baby had died a couple of days after birth. This boy was never talked about among the family. As embarrassing as it was for him and as amusing as it was for her, her brother-in-law confirmed that he had in fact said what she had heard him say to the neighbor during her OBE. Her observation of her daughter wearing mismatched clothing was also correct.

Rivas, Titus. The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from Near-Death Experiences (pp. 140-141). International Association for Near-Death Studies. Kindle Edition.

Quote:Later that evening, Sherry and her son went home again. They were watching television when the boy suddenly broke down and began to sob so intensely that he could hardly breathe. Sherry thought he would have to go back to the hospital. She told him to calm down so that he could tell her what was wrong. He sobbed, “I just want to go back to heaven with Pop-pop.” Sherry asked him what he meant. Her son told her that when he fell into the pool, he had tried to grab on to the inflatable raft. He had attempted to get back to the side but was unable to swim well enough. At first it had hurt a lot when he drowned, but then it became peaceful. There was white light everywhere around him and also around a man he somehow knew to be his great-grandfather, who had died when the boy had been only 10 months old. The man said the boy had to go back because it was not his time yet. Sherry stressed that among the family they never really talked about this great-grandfather. When she asked her son to describe the man, he did so perfectly. He said that the man was a little bit bald but that he still had some hair on the sides of his head; that he was short; and that although he was not fat, he was kind of stocky. At his great-grandmother’s house, he would pick up all kinds of things and ask her, “This was Pop-pop’s, wasn’t it?”

Sherry’s mother lived close to a cemetery, and her grandson kept going there. At a certain point, he told his mother that he had talked with the Virgin Mary. Mary told him that he would receive a book from his great-grandfather when he was a lot older. Years later, his great-grandmother, who was in a care facility by this time, told both the boy and his mother that his great-grandfather had had a book that he had intended his great-grandson to have, thereby confirming what the boy had said Mary had told him so many years earlier.

Rivas, Titus. The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from Near-Death Experiences (p. 139). International Association for Near-Death Studies. Kindle Edition.

(2020-08-21, 02:18 AM)nbtruthman Wrote: [ -> ]There are so many elements and characteristics of NDEs that make it preposterous to suggest that these experiences are due to super-psi, that it is hard to see how this hypothesis can be seriously considered (as opposed of course to the exploration of the super-psi concept out of intellectual interest). This is so much the case that I think it would be more interesting to examine what sort of twisted mindset could generate such a belief. This would apparently start with an immovable conviction or compulsion that the mind must be the brain and that a soul and an afterlife are fantasy. How else could such a ridiculous hypothesis be entertained? It's hard to imagine how this could apply to Braude, but there you have it.

It would also be more interesting to consider the implications of there now being no viable alternative explanation for the NDE phenomenon; that is, any viable plausible alternative to the soul/spirit and afterlife hypothesis. If that is the case then there is no point in continuing to try to stretch super-psi to somehow explain all the mediumistic communication evidence, for instance.

I do tend to lean in this direction, especially regarding my last above post about NDEs and "drop-in" communicators.

I agree that some of the explanations Braude offers feel tortuous, but keep in mind that Braude ultimately leans toward Survival over Super-Psi. He might simply be trying to cover his bases in proposing an idea - that we survive our bodily deaths - that apparently many (especially in academia) find hard to accept. Colin Wilson and Alan Gauld also seem to have had trouble accepting Survival, Wilson initially preferring some kind of Information Realism.

Regarding NDEs and the weight they lend to the Survival Hypothesis, I actually think the strongest case for Survival is Replacement Reincarnation, then other cases across the board of a "drop-in" type, and the rest follows from this as a logical singular causal source [Survival of the Personal Self in some kind of Spirit World] providing a causal nexus that aligns not just between accounts of survival but what we've been told about the spirits and spirit world from other sources such as esoteric and shamanic traditions.

That singularity of an explanatory source - along with some issues relating to philosophy of Mind, Causation, & Maths - is what makes me seriously consider what I semi-jokingly refer to as the "Super Spirit Hypothesis" that all Psi [well really all causal relations] is [are] communication between conscious agents. This would include psychometry, PK, and even "retrocognition". (I don't believe that information comes from the future back to the present, but that's a subject for another thread...I'll probably resurrect the Time Loops by Eric Wargo thread I started...)