Super-Psi & some notes from Braude's Immortal Remains

So gonna get into Trance Mediumship, but I do want to mention Braude's final conclusions for the Drop In section:

Although the best cases are by no means coercive, the evidence for drop-ins, overall, seems to strengthen the case for survival. Granted, we can’t conclusively rule out explanations in terms of motivated psi among the living. But as the challenges facing super-psi explanations mount, their antecedent plausibility decreases. Even if we grant that task complexity may be overrated as an obstacle to psi success, and even if we grant that what really motivates people may not be the concerns lying closest to the surface, drop-in cases make particularly good sense in terms of the ostensible communicator’s expressed motives for communicating. As a result, survivalist interpretations of those cases seem more parsimonious than their super-psi alternatives. As we observed earlier, anti-suryivalists need to explain why a séance participant used ESP to gather information about a person known to nobody present. They also need to explain why the communicator’s needs or interests are so much more clear-cut than those we could reasonably attribute to medium or sitter, even after reasonable probing. And of course, whereas communicators supply information they would be likely to know, living persons would have to derive that information from different and often (normally) obscure sources.

Braude, Stephen E.. Immortal Remains (pp. 51-52). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.

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Braude provides an introduction to Trance Mediumship which he defines as the medium's communicative bodily organs, if not their mind/brain/body entirely, being controlled what at least appears to be a discarnate entity. It's what we might usually refer to as possession.

He notes that beyond the factual knowledge provided by drop-ins, trance mediums give us the ability to also judge the degree to which the personality (mannerisms, dispositions, sometimes even vocal timbre, etc) of the seeming spirit matches the person who they claim to be in life.

An issue he notes is that there are times when seemingly weak cases have nuggets of really good evidence. Additionally some of the seemingly discarnate personalities are also able to provide anomalous information of living persons.

As Braude notes, there could be a mixture of causes going on here, from varieties of living agent Psi to the dead making use of their own Psi abilities. Regarding the question of subconscious Super-Psi, Braude quotes William James as to the implausibility of this issue:

The notion that so many men and women, in all other respects honest enough, should have this preposterous monkeying [subliminal] self annexed to their personality seems to me so weird that the spirit-theory immediately takes on a more probable appearance. The spirits, if spirits there be, must indeed work under incredible complications and falsifications, but at least if they are present, some honesty is left in a whole department of the universe which otherwise is run by pure deception. The more I realize the quantitative massiveness of the phenomenon and its complexity, the more incredible it seems to me that in a world all of whose vaster features we are in the habit of considering to be sincere at least, however brutal, this feature should be wholly constituted of insincerity.

That's it for the introduction, next will come the cases.

The Trance Medium stuff has proven to be a bit challenging, in that it is hard to find good lengthy discussions of the cases. (Keep in mind Immortal Remains is about Super-Psi vs Survival and so has very brief summaries.)

As such I've gone to Prescott's blog, Gauld's Mediumship & Survival, & Carter's Science & the Afterlife to try and give a clearer picture of what might be occurring. As such I want to do the cases in reverse from the way Braude presents them (So I'll do Gladys Osborne Leonard first, then Leonora Piper) and this will likely span several posts as we have to think about the question of controls - those spirits who serve as intermediaries.

My reasoning for starting with Leonard first is her control, Feda, provides us with some guidance on what might be going on here. While many controls claimed to be Native American, displaying personalities akin to expected caricatured stereotypes, Feda claimed to be Indian as in South Asian. And while the Native American personalities can be easily dismissed, Leonard does mention a potential relative from India who was a young girl that died in childbirth.

Beyond that Feda was open about difficulties she faced in trying to satisfy the needs of the sitting circles. To quote her (she refers to herself in the third person):

Feda: There is some one here with a little difficulty; not fully built up; youngish looking; form more like an outline; he has not completely learnt how to build up as yet … He is not easy to describe, because he is not holding himself up so solid as some do … He is not built up quite clearly, but it feels as if Feda knows him …

Feda gets it mostly by impression; it is not always what he says, but what she gets; but Feda says “he says,” because she gets it from him somehow … Now he’s trying to build up a letter of some one: M he shows me.

In fact there were instances of voice phenomena, where other spirits would get annoyed by Feda's inability to properly communicate what they wanted to say:

    Feda: He says you must have good – What? Hippopotamuses?

    Direct voice: Hypotheses.

    Feda (more loudly): Hippopotamuses.

    Direct voice: Hypotheses – and don't shout!

    Feda: I'm not shouting. I'm only speaking plainly.

I'll have more to say about Feda, but perhaps one of the most incredible things is her offering a suggestion to help with our decision between two "hippopotamuses". Feda's suggestion was the "book test", where she sends a communication from the spirit world to someone to get a book and open it to a specific page. One of the best "hits" is described by Gauld as follows (note the quote is produced by Braude in Immortal Remains, where I first saw it):

An anonymous sitter (Mrs. Talbot) received through Feda a message from her late husband advising her to look for a relevant message on page twelve or thirteen of a book on her bookcase at home. Feda said the book was not printed, but had writing in it; was dark in colour; and contained a table of Indo-European, Aryan, Semitic and Arabian languages, whose relationships were shown by a diagram of radiating lines. Mrs. Talbot knew of no such book, and ridiculed the message. However, when she eventually looked, she found at the back of a top shelf a shabby black leather notebook of her husband’s. Pasted into this book was a folded table of all the languages mentioned; whilst on p. 13 was an extract from a book entitled Post Mortem. In this case the message related to a book unknown to medium and sitter (indeed, so far as could be told, to any living person), but undoubtedly known to the communicator. (Gauld, 1982, p. 48)

So we have a control that seems to give us some sense of an afterlife, has spirits apparently deciding to speak into the physical world rather after getting fed up, and finally offer a useful task she herself can complete to assist in the decision between Super-Psi and Survival.

In the next post I'll get into some more details of this case.

Gladys Osborne Leonard's description of the etheric body:

Under our present condition of ignorance as to the nature and possibilities of the etheric body, its functions and activities, it is probable that we are not giving it the opportunities for helping the physical, which it is capable of using to the highest degree. We must remember that this etheric body is the body of the Soul, and within the Soul is the Divine Spark, usually called the Spirit.

The Soul should be (it certainly can be) in touch with higher vibrations of life-giving forces than are our physical bodies. Given an understanding of this fact, by voluntary co-operation with the higher functionings of the Soul, we should find that the conditions of the physical body could be acted upon, and considerably helped by, the forces of healing that would be directed upon and through it by the etheric counterpart.

I am convinced that we are losing great opportunities of obtaining help in this way, simply because of our ignorance regarding the existence of this Other Body and its importance in relation to our well-being.

...sometimes the spirits who are not ordinarily in touch with the earth conditions would find themselves overcome by a sleepy, dreamy condition when actually entering physical vibrations....

...All your mind is not in your brain at one in the same time: you have your conscious and your sub-conscious mind. He [the communicator] also develops a conscious and a sub-conscious section when he comes here... The part left outside the medium's mind forms, for the moment, his sub-conscious mind. When you wish to recall what your conscious mind has lost, you try to obtain it from the sub-conscious... It is more difficult for him than for you, because a smaller portion of his mind is operating in the medium... You see, therefore, why he cannot, while controlling, think so clearly or remember so much as you can...

Prescott also has discussed Feda's testing, in this case the Newspaper Tests

Thomas reports on a long series of experiments he conducted with the British medium Gladys Osborne Leonard. The tests he highlights fall into two categories: book tests and newspaper tests. In each case, the medium reported the content of printed material that she could not have read by any normal means.
Both sets of experiments are impressive, but the newspaper tests are, I think, the most impressive of all. The reason is that the medium gave specific information about words and phrases that would appear in particular locations in tomorrow's newspaper -- at a time when, in many cases, the typesetters at the newspaper office had not even finished composing the relevant page.

Thomas gives numerous specific examples, including not only dramatic hits but also inconclusive results and definite misses. The full details can be appreciated only by reading his book. In what follows, I will summarize his report of one particular test, which took place on March 16, 1920 at 2:48 in the afternoon. Thomas checked the newspaper (the Times of London) when it came out the next day.  (This material is found on pp. 155-159.)

It seems safe to say that no non-paranormal explanation can account for the remarkable success of the book tests and, even more so, the newspaper tests. Perhaps the only alternative to actual communication with Thomas' deceased father is some version of super-psi, practiced unconsciously by Mrs. Leonard. But the forcefulness with which Thomas' father came through at the séances seems to belie this possibility. Mrs. Leonard would have had to be gifted with something close to omniscience, at least subconsciously, in order to not only gather information from the future but relate it to details of the father's life which were unknown even to his son. I very much doubt that any form of ESP, no matter how robust, can produce such results. Certainly it has never been demonstrated in the laboratory.

The more natural explanation is that Thomas' father really was in communication with his son through the agency of Mrs. Leonard and her spirit control.

Just to note, Gauld says Feda coming up with the book tests is likely, Braude suggested it as a definite fact. I do think it is a bit odd that, given how much was apparently recorded of what mediums would say, that this is a grey area of history. Of course it doesn't change the reports of accurate knowledge regarding items of the deceased.



There is a mix of successes in these book and newspaper tests, with some definitive failures but I don't think this would help the Super-Psi Hypothesis so much as cast doubt on the whole affair. But then we would be throwing out really good successes when there are no cases of fraud, even though as noted above we have reports that communication is through a "noisy" channel. It is admittedly something that will cause natural doubts to arise, but in this thread I wanted to focus on Super Psi vs Survival.



All that said it should be noted that numerous tests were done based on no communications at all but rather some form of randomization, with successes being rather poor in comparison to the successes provided by mediums. I'll try to see if any of these randomized tests had such incredible success as some of the aforementioned cases mentioned above as so far I am only seeing some percentages mentioned here & there.



Now, regarding Super Psi Gauld makes the following notes (the last being of special interest):

Unfortunately the results of many other book tests serve only to confuse the issue; not because they were unsuccessful, but because they were too successful. For the communicators proved equally able to transmit information relating to the contents of books deliberately placed on shelves in houses unknown to them, books, furthermore, having for them no special significance. On the face of it this would imply that the communicators got their knowledge of the contents of these books by clairvoyance (the books, of course, being all closed).

Feda certainly talks as though the communicators were independent entities who homed in on the test bookshelves, scanned the books for appropriate passages, and then returned to relay the results through her. But if these communicators can exercise clairvoyance of such remarkable degree, why should not Feda? Why should not Mrs Leonard herself? The information given is no longer such as the alleged communicators are specially qualified to supply. In some cases (145c, pp. 300–313), indeed, correct information was apparently given about the contents of books in classical Greek; yet neither Mrs Leonard, nor the sitter, nor the alleged communicator knew classical Greek, while the person who lent the books (Mrs Salter), though she knew Greek, had not properly studied several of the volumes. Neither telepathy with the living, nor communication with the dead, nor yet clairvoyance, would seem to supply us with an adequate explanation here.


Gauld, Alan. Mediumship and Survival (The Paranormal) . David and Charles. Kindle Edition.

This seems to be another Hungry [or Helpful] Ghost possibility - I think part of the issue is that the past writers even including Braude never had exposure to the internet where plenty of people will pretend to be one thing while actually being another. There are celebrity "role play" accounts among other attention seekers now on the internet to say nothing of trolls.



IMO if we are choosing between Super Psi and spirits of some sort then it makes more sense to say there are spirits who are pretending to be the deceased that sitters want to communicate with. I will say that these successes gained where the deceased wasn't likely to have ever read the book do seem like the best cases of potential Psi we've seen so far. Though one has to wonder why the dead cannot take advantage of their special spatio-temporal status to find out new information regarding these books.



But to give another concrete example, here is another case of mediumship by Leonard:

Feda. ‘Bim now wants to send a message to his Father. This book is particularly for his Father, underline that, he says. It is the ninth book on the third shelf counting from left to right in the bookcase on the right of the door in the drawing-room as you enter; take the title, and look at page 37.’

We found the ninth book in the shelf indicated was: Trees [by J. Harvey Kelman]. And on page 36, quite at the bottom and leading on to page 37, we read: Sometimes you will see curious marks in the wood; these are caused by a tunnelling beetle, very injurious to the trees …’ (Signatures of two testificators to the finding and verifying of this Book-Message).

GLENCONNER DAVID TENNANT

Bim’s father was intensely interested in Forestry; and his obsession with ‘the beetle’ was a family joke. Thus the message was particularly appropriate, and the bookshelf from which it had been culled was one known to the alleged communicator.

Gauld, Alan. Mediumship and Survival (The Paranormal) . David and Charles. Kindle Edition.

For which Gauld comments the following:

Still, if we grant for the sake of argument that the books were in some sense open to clairvoyant inspection by an agency other than that of the communicator, there remains the problem of how, from this mass of potentially available material, just those passages were so often selected which were particularly appropriate as messages from the communicator to the particular living recipient. Who selected for Bim’s father the passage about the beetle damaging trees? To select a passage as appropriate as this, the medium would have had e.g. to tap Bim’s father’s mind, and then in the light of information telepathically gained from it, select that one of the very numerous book passages clairvoyantly accessible to her which would be most likely to impress Bim’s family as a message of a kind he might plausibly address to his father. This problem of selection will arise again; as will that of the apparent synthesis of information extrasensorially acquired from more than one source.

Gauld, Alan. Mediumship and Survival (The Paranormal) . David and Charles. Kindle Edition.

Of course the investigators realized third party sittings would help as a potential decider between the two hypotheses, which I'll get into more on the next post about Leonard's mediumship.

Just to note, Gauld says Feda coming up with the book tests is likely, Braude suggested it as a definite fact. I do think it is a bit odd that, given how much was apparently recorded of what mediums would say, that this is a grey area of history. Of course it doesn't change the reports of accurate knowledge regarding items of the deceased.
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Quoting Gauld:

Feda certainly talks as though the communicators were independent entities who homed in on the test bookshelves, scanned the books for appropriate passages, and then returned to relay the results through her. But if these communicators can exercise clairvoyance of such remarkable degree, why should not Feda? Why should not Mrs Leonard herself? The information given is no longer such as the alleged communicators are specially qualified to supply. In some cases (145c, pp. 300–313), indeed, correct information was apparently given about the contents of books in classical Greek; yet neither Mrs Leonard, nor the sitter, nor the alleged communicator knew classical Greek, while the person who lent the books (Mrs Salter), though she knew Greek, had not properly studied several of the volumes. Neither telepathy with the living, nor communication with the dead, nor yet clairvoyance, would seem to supply us with an adequate explanation here.

I think this could be resolved within the spirit theory by considering two I think reasonable possibilities. 
(1) Some communicators may be spirits more advanced than others, with greater powers of what we call ESP and PSI. 
(2) And most importantly, being discarnate rather than severely limited by being clothed and trapped in a physical body the psi powers of these spirits may be extremely powerful at least as human beings would judge. What we call psi and esp are their native manner of existence rather than a generally weak and hard to cultivate set of talents as exhibited by some unusual human beings (mediums). If Feda was a sub-personality of the human medium, she would also display the same diminished psi powers due to being in the flesh.

I think this could be resolved within the spirit theory by considering two I think reasonable possibilities. 
(1) Some communicators may be spirits more advanced than others, with greater powers of what we call ESP and PSI. 
(2) And most importantly, being discarnate rather than severely limited by being clothed and trapped in a physical body the psi powers of these spirits may be extremely powerful at least as human beings would judge. What we call psi and esp are their native manner of existence rather than a generally weak and hard to cultivate set of talents as exhibited by some unusual human beings (mediums). If Feda was a sub-personality of the human medium, she would also display the same diminished psi powers due to being in the flesh.

Do you mean that Feda is using Psi to understand Greek? I agree this is possible, and is at least as plausible as the "magic wand" idea of Super Psi.

It's also not clear why Feda can't just ask for some help from someone in the afterlife who would understand classic Greek. After all if we're going to give Super Psi to disassociated personalities within or at least anchored by a brain, we should also consider what we'd reasonably assumed if a young Indian girl who knew nothing of classical Greek texts found the right book -- that she got help...

Do you mean that Feda is using Psi to understand Greek? I agree this is possible, and is at least as plausible as the "magic wand" idea of Super Psi.

It's also not clear why Feda can't just ask for some help from someone in the afterlife who would understand classic Greek. After all if we're going to give Super Psi to disassociated personalities within or at least anchored by a brain, we should also consider what we'd reasonably assumed if a young Indian girl who knew nothing of classical Greek texts found the right book -- that she got help...

I think it is more likely that Feda was a sub-personality with great limitations to psi and esp due to being in the flesh, but even if she was a spirit entity, my point still stands, about the probable limitations of some or many discarnate spirit communicators.  

And, at the risk of using a little ad hoc argumentation, it seems to me quite possible that the Feda sub-personality (if that is what she was) had esp and psi abilities so diminished due to being in the flesh that she didn't even have the ability get help by identifying and contacting higher spirit communicators with knowledge of ancient Greek.

And with regard to the issue of whether these paranormal mediumistic phenomena are really spirits in communication or super-psi on the part of the living mediums, it doesn't logically have to be all of one or the other. The reality of it is more likely to be that clever impersonation was occasionally resorted to by the mediums, with the majority of the communications being as they clearly seemed, to be the departed spirit entities the communicators claimed to be. Reality is usually complicated and inelegant. 

It should also be kept in mind that modern psychic mediums when in apparent contact with departed spirit communicators have unanimously to my knowledge claimed to have the very clear inner sense that they are communicating with the individual known to the sitter, rather than a sense that somehow this was a construct of their own subconscious mind. I think this personal experience on the part of the modern psychic mediums should be taken seriously.

I think it is more likely that Feda was a sub-personality with great limitations to psi and esp due to being in the flesh, but even if she was a spirit entity, my point still stands, about the probable limitations of some or many discarnate spirit communicators.  

And, at the risk of using a little ad hoc argumentation, it seems to me quite possible that the Feda sub-personality (if that is what she was) had esp and psi abilities so diminished due to being in the flesh that she didn't even have the ability get help by identifying and contacting higher spirit communicators with knowledge of ancient Greek.

And with regard to the issue of whether these paranormal mediumistic phenomena are really spirits in communication or super-psi on the part of the living mediums, it doesn't logically have to be all of one or the other. The reality of it is more likely to be that clever impersonation was occasionally resorted to by the mediums, with the majority of the communications being as they clearly seemed, to be the departed spirit entities the communicators claimed to be. Reality is usually complicated and inelegant.

Good take - for my part I've found Eric Weiss' thoughts on sub-personalities as spirits onto themselves to be rather interesting. It doesn't always have to be that way, there can be genuine disassociation, but it would help explain why no one ever hears from Feda or any other control (including the very dubious and obviously fake ones) when the medium is going on about their normal lives.

In fact the lack of the disassociated personality - who would have to undertake a considerable amount of planning while sharing a brain with the medium - showing up outside the sitting circle is IMO a major strike against Super Psi.

Chris Carter on Proxy [Third Party] Sittings:

We have also seen examples in both Mrs. Piper’s and Mrs. Leonard’s mediumship in which the medium displays knowledge not known to her or to the sitters. But in order to conclusively eliminate telepathy between medium and sitters as an explanation (as well as the technique of “fishing” for information), the technique of proxy sittings was developed.

As the name suggests, a proxy sitting is one in which a sitter will visit the medium on behalf of a third person who is not present. The best known of all proxy sittings are the numerous sittings with Mrs. Leonard at which the Reverend Drayton Thomas acted as proxy, usually on behalf of bereaved parents and spouses who had contacted Thomas by mail. If the proxy sitter does not even know the person he is representing, then telepathy with the sitter is obviously ruled out as the source of information.

Carter, Chris. Science and the Afterlife Experience: Evidence for the Immortality of Consciousness (p. 166). Inner Traditions/Bear & Company. Kindle Edition.

Carter then gives one of the best cases:

One of the best known proxy sittings was arranged by Professor E. R. Dodds, a well-known critic of the evidence for survival. Dodds asked Thomas to do a proxy sitting with Mrs. Leonard, but not on his behalf. It was for a Mrs. Lewis, who wanted to contact her deceased father, a Mr. Macaulay. Thus, the sitting was not even secondhand, on behalf of Dodds, but thirdhand. Both Mrs. Lewis and Mr. Macaulay, who in life had been a hydraulic engineer, were completely unknown to both Thomas and Mrs. Leonard. The only facts that Thomas was told about Mr. Macaulay were his name, his hometown, and his date of death. Yet Feda seemed to get in touch with him right away. She described instruments he worked with, mathematical formulas he used, and more personal matters, such as his pet name for his daughter. She also gave the names of three people who had shared with him an especially happy period of his life. However, one name puzzled her, and she said, “It might be Reece but sounds like Riss.” None of this meant anything to Thomas. He sent the information to Dodds, who in turn passed it on to Mrs. Lewis. She was impressed by the information, and stated that the names and nickname given were correct, but found the reference to “Reece” particularly interesting. During the happy period referred to, her elder brother had hero-worshipped an older schoolboy whose name was Rees. Her brother had stated that his name was spelled “Rees” and not “Reece” so many times that his younger sisters would tease him by singing “Not Reece but Riss” until their father stopped them.

Carter, Chris. Science and the Afterlife Experience: Evidence for the Immortality of Consciousness (pp. 166-167). Inner Traditions/Bear & Company. Kindle Edition.

Regarding proxy sitters like the cases mentioned just above Braude says the following (also note the Thomas below is not the Reverend Thomas who served as a proxy that is mentioned in the above Carter quotes):

But to complicate matters, some of Mrs. Leonard’s proxy tests served only to fuel speculation about telepathy with persons other than the sitter, and clairvoyance as well. For example, in a sitting taking place in England on June 3, 1929, with Lydia Allison as sitter/recorder and proxy for J. F. Thomas, Mrs. Leonard accurately described the area around Thomas’s cottage on Orchard Lake in Michigan, some of his recent activities there, and his feelings and thoughts at the time (J. F. Thomas, 1937, pp. 87ff). Thomas previously had sat only twice (anonymously) with Mrs. Leonard (two years earlier), and the matters Feda described were certainly unknown to Mrs. Allison.

Braude, Stephen E.. Immortal Remains (p. 79). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.

I understand Braude's point, technically, but it seems odd to not consider what I was calling the "Hungry Ghost" Hypothesis but want to amend to just the Spirit Hypothesis as I don't think all spirits need be malevolent.

As there is no mention of Feda mistakenly thinking Thomas is dead this isn't an error of that sort on her part. However Braude doesn't provide much detail so I'll try to track down the case. Just not sure why Braude rules out the information coming from a spirit that took a particular interest in Thomas' affairs.

That said, I would agree this does provide a better argument for the possibility of Super Psi than we've seen before. However Gauld also references some more cases re: Leonard's mediumship that challenge Super Psi. Will get into those next.