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

And of course one case type of special importance is Terminal Lucidity, which I'll get into next.

There's actually a SciAm article on this by a self-styled "radical rationalist":

One Last Goodbye: The Strange Case of Terminal Lucidity

Jesse Bering

Käthe was among the most profoundly disabled of the patients at the asylum. Happich paints a vivid picture of her mental status. “From birth on,” he writes, “she was seriously retarded. She had never learned to speak a single word. She stared for hours on a particular spot, then fidgeted for hours without a break. She gorged her food, fouled herself day and night, uttered an animal-like sound, and slept … never [taking] notice of her environment even for a second.” As if that weren’t enough, Käthe suffered several severe meningitis infections over the years that had damaged her cortical brain tissue.

Yet, despite all this, as the woman lay dying (shortly after having her leg amputated from osseous tuberculosis—talk about bad luck), Wittneben, Happich, and other staff members at the facility gathered in astonishment at her bedside. “Käthe,” wrote Happich, “who had never spoken a single word, being entirely mentally disabled from birth on, sang dying songs to herself. Specifically, she sang over and over again, ‘Where does the soul find its home, its peace? Peace, peace, heavenly peace!’” For half an hour she sang. Her face, up to then so stultified, was transfigured and spiritualized. Then, she quietly passed away.”
The religious undertones make my eyebrows rise in spontaneous cynicism, but at face value, one has to admit that the story of Käthe Ehmer is something of a puzzle. And in their extensive literature review on the subject—not an easy task, given that “terminal lucidity” couldn’t be used as a search term prior to that first 2009 article—Nahm and Greyson found a total of 81 references to similar cases, reported by 51 different authors. Nineteenth century physicians and psychiatrists, they point out, wrote most of these accounts. By the 20th century, they speculate, doctors simply stopped reporting these incidents altogether because they failed to jive with contemporary scientific materialism.

Yet, even if terminal lucidity is a genuine phenomenon, who’s to say there isn’t a logical scientific explanation, one involving some unknown brain physiology? Nahm and Greyson don’t discount this possibility entirely, but for cases involving obvious brain damage (such as strokes, tumors, advanced Alzheimer’s disease) that should render the patient all but vegetative, not functioning normally, it’s a genuine medical mystery. According to the authors, terminal lucidity also isn’t all just in the perceiver’s head. Rather, they write, “it seems to be more common than usually assumed, and reflects more than just a collection of anecdotes that on closer scrutiny emerge as wishful thinking.” This then, to them, leaves open the possibility of something more spiritually significant, with the “transcendantal subject” (i.e., the soul) loosening itself from the physical substrate of the brain as death approaches and being able to enter “usually hidden realms.”

And more from the Psi-Encyclopedia:

Alzheimer’s disease

A 91-year old woman suffered from Alzheimer's disease for 15 years and was cared for by her daughter. The woman had long been unresponsive and showed no sign of recognizing her daughter or anybody else for five years. One evening, however, she started a normal conversation with her daughter. She talked about her fear of death, difficulties she had with the church, and her family members. She died a few hours later.6

Example involving strokes

A woman aged 91 suffered from two strokes. The first paralyzed her left side and deprived her of clear speech. After a few months, the second stroke rendered her entirely paralyzed and speechless. The daughter who cared for her was one day startled to hear an exclamation from her mother. The old woman was smiling brightly, although her facial expression had been frozen since her second stroke. She turned her head and sat up in bed with no apparent effort. Then she raised her arms and exclaimed in a clear, joyous tone the name of her husband. Her arms dropped again, she sank back and died.7

The relevance of terminal lucidity to psi research is twofold. First, cases involving patients with severely destroyed brains (such as in terminal stages of Alzheimer’s disease, tumors or strokes) who become fully lucid shortly before death might provide a pathway to further assess the possibility that the human mind including memory is not entirely generated by the brain, but that the brain functions as a kind of filter or transmitter organ.8

Second, it is not uncommon for terminal lucidity to be accompanied by deep spiritual experiences or so-called ‘deathbed-visions’, as exemplified by the case of the stroke patient above. Such features link terminal lucidity to a number of other end-of-life experiences and also near-death-experiences.9 Given that these types of experiences in near-death states regularly contain psychical aspects, they have long played an important role in psychical research, with the potential to facilitate further study into subliminal layers of the human psyche and provide evidence for post-mortem survival.10

There's actually a SciAm article on this by a self-styled "radical rationalist":

One Last Goodbye: The Strange Case of Terminal Lucidity

And more from the Psi-Encyclopedia:

I think of the major things that stands out in Terminal Lucidity cases is how difficult it is to make a credible argument for Super-Psi. If Psi is something that allows one's mind to overcome the limitations of the dying brain, then it suggests consciousness is not dependent on that brain. Given this is happening at death, that death would be the trigger for this feat of living agent Psi also suggests it is the failure of the limiting function of the filter/transmitter that allow consciousness the clarity to control the body.

One can remark that we don't know enough about Psi to understand its relation to the brain, even the dying brain, but to me this itself rings hollow and would reveal Super Psi to be a hypothesis without a country solely made to discount Survival.

After all terminal lucidity runs counter to the processes we see in biology but somehow - for the [Super or at least Living Agent Psi] hypothesis to hold - the mind producing Living Agent Psi depends on these very processes. The very fact Psi would be something so out-of-step with our understanding of "material" reality from physics to biology is itself a reason to think of it as pointing to Consciousness as something that is not dependent on the body.

The only other escape hatch I can see is to posit Psi not of the dying person but of someone living enabling the terminally ill this last bit of clarity. But this also runs into torturous questions - is this a form of PK? Telepathy? Both? And if one's consciousness can slip into someone else's skull and use *their* brain as an interface wouldn't this also point to the relationship between their own consciousness and their own brain?

Next we'll get into how Terminal Lucidity fits into the puzzle of case types.

There's actually a SciAm article on this by a self-styled "radical rationalist":

One Last Goodbye: The Strange Case of Terminal Lucidity

Jesse Bering


And more from the Psi-Encyclopedia:

Yet, even if terminal lucidity is a genuine phenomenon, who’s to say there isn’t a logical scientific explanation, one involving some unknown brain physiology? Nahm and Greyson don’t discount this possibility entirely, but for cases involving obvious brain damage (such as strokes, tumors, advanced Alzheimer’s disease) that should render the patient all but vegetative, not functioning normally, it’s a genuine medical mystery.

Gotta love that premissory materialism there, disguised as 'logical scientific explanation', to appeal to skeptics. What is 'logical' about presuming it's just the brain conveniently bouncing back in a select few lucky people when it shouldn't be possible? For cases involving Alzheimer's, dementia and other diseases that horrifically ravage the brain, it's quite the stretch to say the brain can still somehow regain lucidity, even if momentarily. I mean, aren't there many cases where total recovery of lucidity and consciousness was observed? 

I recall from my darker days that I'd noticed a few 'skeptics' had been shown that article about the topic (they denied it at first naturally) and immediately rejected it, not bothering to look into it at all, because SciAm 'will write about pretty much anything these days and isn't credible anymore'. Ironic, since it also featured articles trying to push materialist explanations for things like NDEs that they'd not hesitate to quote. 

There was a great analysis of the topic by Psychology Today though. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but terminal lucidity isn't just the recovery of memories, it's the recovery of your very identity, your very consciousness/soul. 

Next we'll get into how Terminal Lucidity fits into the puzzle of case types.

What seems to be happening with these cases is the two-way causal relationship between consciousness and brain becomes one sided. So mind can use the brain interface without being limited by the damages to that organ.

Replacement Reincarnation points to the same relationship. A brain is an interface that can be used by different users, just like a VR helmet can be used by multiple people to interact with a game.

Overshadowing by mediums also points to something similar in the relationship between mind & brain. The spirits who use the medium as their channel back to the world of the living are temporarily taking over an interface while the medium's mind is submerged and possibly Elsewhere - recall Piper said she was in some kind of afterlife at times and even identified photos of the deceased she met on the other side while her trance state was being used by other souls to communicate to the living attendees of a sitting.

One might even class terminal lucidity as the consciousness overshadowing the brain it was bound to in order to make some final communications. However, there doesn't seem to be a wilful intent in these cases, at least not all of or even most of them. Rather it seems a failure of the limiting function of the filter/transmitter allows the dying person to use their body to communicate with clarity. 

One does wonder, however, why there are cases of people dying while raving in madness, with no last clarity. But that question of why only some people have paranormal experiences is an issue for every case type, from reincarnation to NDEs to things like Ganzfield tests that don't have to do with death & dying. There does seem to be some limiting factor that in general prevents us from having more common interaction with the spirits of the deceased.

It would be interesting to find a case where someone has, for example, Alzheimer's and dies in confusion but their ghost later comes back to communicate with clarity. Will try to see if there's one like that.

Next we'll look at a few filter/transmission theories and see how they might fit in with our varied case types, but to round out our main case types I want to briefly mention Patience Worth and Seth. These are cases where you have a large amount of information communicated through mediums [but nothing directly evidential AFAIK]. In the Patience Worth case you have a vast amount of fiction and poetry, and in the Seth case you have a great deal of metaphysics and spiritual advice.

The Patience Worth case has a big problem in that we seem to have something of a confession regarding the reality of Patience Worth:

“It seems similar to photographic memory surrounded by a context of spiritualism,” says Howard Eichenbaum, director of the Center for Memory and Brain at Boston University. But such a medical abnormality would not explain her stunning narrative skills or the moments of true art in her writing.

“We don’t really have an explanation” for cases like Pearl Curran’s, says McGaugh. “It’s a frontier of neuroscience that’s never really been explored. We just haven’t had the conceptual tools to think about it.”

The answer, however, may lie in a short story Pearl wrote under her own byline in 1919 for the Saturday Evening Post (and was ignored by Prince, Marion Reedy and other critics at the time). In that story, “Rosa Alvaro, Entrante,” Mayme, a lonely salesgirl in a Chicago department store, is told by an obviously fraudulent fortuneteller that Mayme has a spirit guide, a fiery young Spanish woman named Rosa Alvaro. Mayme begins slipping in and out of Rosa’s persona and eventually confesses to a friend that she purposefully adopted it to enliven her drab life: “Oh Gwen, I love her! She’s everything I want to be. Didn’t I find her? It ain’t me. It’s what used to be me before the world buried it.”

Pearl was thrilled that she, and not Patience, was the acknowledged author.

As for Seth, ask around and some people will tell you Seth has great spiritual wisdom, maybe even insights into a future physics... and others will tell you it's nothing but twaddle...

So both these cases have problems. The Patience Worth case, if Pearl was conscious the entire time, probably hurts Super Psi more because Braude leans on Patience Worth's creativity to point out the possibility of how a medium's subpersonality can demonstrate incredible skills and off-the-cuff improvisation. And Seth, AFAIK, never presented anything evidential [to a body like the SPR] and arguably nothing of incredible literary talent...and whether anything he said corresponds to physics seems questionable...

Jeffrey Mishlove continues to engage himself in a dialogical interview. Here he discusses the question of what would constitute good evidence for the survival of human consciousness after the permanent death of the body. He notes that the alternative hypothesis of Living Agent Psi (LAP) will probably confound every possible interpretation of even the best evidence – if we view the problem strictly logically. He discusses a crucial experience of afterlife communication that changed his life in 1972. He also discusses the nineteenth century case of the "Watseka Wonder".

"He (Mishlove) notes that the alternative hypothesis of Living Agent Psi (LAP) will probably confound every possible interpretation of even the best evidence – if we view the problem strictly logically."

That's a good insight. A "strictly logical" approach is wrong reasoning. This is because "strict logic" dictates that no matter how small it's probability the LAP hypothesis is at least possible, and since an afterlife is even more extremely improbable (an arbitrary view probably motivated by desire to, in order to minimize criticism, get as close to materialism as possible), the LAP hypothesis is still more likely. 

This is obviously flawed primarily because it depends on the arbitrary judgement that an afterlife is extremely improbable regardless of a boatload of empirical evidence - very many cases of well investigated veridical psychical phenomena where the obviously superior least complicated interpretation is separation of human spirit from the body. LAP ignores the obvious reasonableness of using the abductive reasoning approach (going to the hypothesis with the preponderance of evidence). This arbitrary judgement that an afterlife is extremely improbable also derives from a flawed interpretation that interactive dualism as a philosophy of mind is untenable.

"He notes that the alternative hypothesis of Living Agent Psi (LAP) will probably confound every possible interpretation of even the best evidence – if we view the problem strictly logically."

I strongly disagree. I think not only is he mistaken, but to say this is to mislead and misrepresent the nature of the problem. To take the view that Jeffrey and others before him have expressed, means to discard a great deal of evidence, and to disregard the very nature of what it means to be human. I'm deeply saddened by this misrepresentation and the pessimistic outlook on the feasibility of distinguishing survival from other alternatives.

I've not said that before so strongly, but there are other things which I have expressed, that we are beings. When we talk of survival, we are talking about the continuation of that thing which does that act of be-ing, the is-ness, the I am.

Imagine that one is feeling nauseous, sick, about to vomit. Sorry, that's not pleasant, I just meant something with a strong physical sensation, something which we feel. Now usually there is some direct physical cause, sometimes we already know, perhaps it was something we ate, or some associated illness. But perhaps other times there is just this feeling, nausea, and no definite explanation. It is not the cause I'm looking for, but just the experience of feeling that sensation.

Now in a parallel way, there may be many other things we feel, more of an emotional category, but no less real than the example of feeling nauseous. These things we feel are not all bad, just a whole range of different experiences of feeling something. Sometimes we can make some sort of connection, we feel a particular way because of such-and-such. There is cause and effect. But what if there is a feeling with no discernible cause, and that feeling is overwhelming, not just background, but something which is more powerful than the comings and goings of day-to-day life? Does Jeffrey really expect us to believe that the cause is Psi among the living?

What I'm talking about here is something more concrete than for example picking up a name or some other factual data, things which may indeed have some external cause. But the things we feel, the things we are, those don't fall prey to such external agent explanation. We just are what we are.

Jeffrey Mishlove continues the discussion of evidence for postmortem survival of consciousness. Once again, he interviews himself. He delves more deeply into the nineteenth century case of the "Watseka Wonder" and points out that the great psychical researcher, Frederick Myers, interpreted it as a case of pseudo-possession. He describes a stronger case of possession that occurred more recently in India, known as the "Shiva-Sumitra" case.

edit: Psi Encyclopedia file on this case ->

https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/artic...va-sumitra

Jeffrey interviews himself about the story of U Ba Kyar, a Burmese village head man who was kidnapped and murdered by insurgents in 1956. His reincarnation was foretold in a series of announcing dreams. The young child, Aung Than, who then claimed to be the reincarnation of U Ba Kyar was born with birth defects related to his memories (unverified) concerning the death of U Ba Kyar. There are many interesting and significant features to this ostensible reincarnation – as well as an important lesson about the nature of suffering.

Reincarnation as a Scientific Concept:In search of the most parsimonious sufficient hypothesis

Titus Rivas

In this article, an attempt is made to explain the so-called Cases of the Reincarnation Type (CORTs), studied by researchers all over the world. The author stresses in general that a good scholarly interpretation is both parsimonious and exhaustive. Thus, although many cases can be explained by normal processes such as self-deception and fantasy, some of them definitely need a parapsychological explanation. Similarly, although ESP appears to be a more parsimonious hypothesis, it doesn't satisfactorily explain those cases that defy normal hypotheses. In contrast, reincarnation does fulfill both conditions. Finally, the author mentions some topics for further research, which go beyond a mere demonstration of reincarnation.