Mediums discern afterlife: Beischel excerpt #16

Julie Beischel writes in “Beyond Reasonable: Scientific Evidence for Survival,” her prize-winning essay in the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies competition: 

UVO-II* Study: Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis 

 

We also wanted to know if the experiences of the WCRMs on our team were representative of those from a broader group of mediums. What did other mediums have to say? To gather this data, we designed an online survey that was completed by 14 WCRMs and 113 self-identified secular mediums (individuals who do not practice mediumship or spirit communication as part of an organized religion). The 127 participants were first asked “Can you tell the difference between communication from the deceased and psychic information about the living?” Roughly 97% of the participants responded “Yes” to this question (n = 123). This data point confirmed what we had learned from the pre-screened WCRMs: most mediums can tell the difference between survival psi and ‘regular’ psychic functioning. 

 

It is important to note here that being able to discern this difference seems to come with practice and training. It is not necessarily something that novice mediums can do. Indeed, the four participants who answered “No” or “I don’t know” when asked if they could tell the difference between communication from the deceased and psychic information about the living reported, in a different part of the survey, that they had been performing mediumship readings for other people for an average of less than  10 years.

 

When I asked about believing in an afterlife, WCRM Joanne Gerber told me that:

   Joanne Gerber       

Initially, it wasn’t that I assumed that I was communicating with a loved one passed, I thought I was relaying ‘psychic information’ during a beginner’s spiritual development class. It took many readings and experiences for me to understand that the dead are not really dead in the way that we think they are. Learning from my experiences and educating myself, I began to find the clarity I needed. Now, as a medium with over two decades of experience communicating with discarnates, there is no doubt in my mind that our loved ones live on as ‘spirit energy’ which is very much real and palpable to the trained mind of a medium. 

 

The participants in the UVO-II Study who reported that they were able to tell the difference between the two experiences then completed two counter-balanced items: “In your own words, describe your experiences when receiving communication from the deceased” and “In your own words, describe your experiences when getting psychic information about the living.” Complete responses were provided by 122 participants (14 WCRMs, 108 self-identified) and the resulting 244 retrospective narratives (122 mediumship, 122 psychic) were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed.

 

Quantitative analysis. For the UVO-II Study quantitative analysis, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC, pronounced ‘Luke,’ http://liwc.wpengine.com/) software was used. LIWC is a validated text analysis software program that calculates the degree to which different psychologically meaningful categories of words are used in a given text. The output of the software is the percentage of a participant’s text that falls into each category. For the UVO-II Study, we averaged the 122 participants’ data during analysis. We found that the descriptions of their experiences of communicating with the deceased contained statistically significantly higher percentages—compared to their descriptions of getting psychic information from the living—in the LIWC-defined categories of social processes. That is, when describing communication with the deceased, mediums talked more about family, sensory experiences, food, the past, and spirituality than when describing psychic readings for the living. These quantitative, statistically significant results support the concept that what mediums experience as survival psi is different than what is proposed by the somatic psi theory. 

 

Qualitative analysis. For the UVO-II Study qualitative method, content analysis was performed on the 244 participant descriptions. This methodology involves a systematic classification process that results in the identification of consistent patterns or themes within the text. Within the descriptions of mediumistic communication with the deceased, my colleague discovered three main themes containing nine categories and 18 subcategories. The parts relevant here were the themes of triangulated communication and how the mediums described the actual communication. 

 

The common theme of a triangulated model of communication represents information from the deceased being received by the medium and communicated to the sitter. Participants also described the discarnate as controlling what information the medium receives and when the information is sent. For example, one participant noted, “The Spirit is in control of the information given to me. I don’t seek it out”. The mediums described communication as involving spontaneous events in which the discarnate guides the communication. One participant reported that the discarnates “give the information they wish to convey. And then we go wherever spirit wants to go”. This finding is in line with the results from a previous quantitative study that found the mediumistic mental state involved a significantly lower level of volitional control than did a control condition (65). That is, in their experience, mediums are not driving mediumship readings; discarnates are. 

 

Both. A common difference seen through both the quantitative and qualitative analyses involved concepts related to the sense of taste and/or to food. This was seen in the significantly higher percentage of words in the mediumship descriptions that fell in the LIWC category of ingestion and a content analysis theme of gustatory imagery which was only present in descriptions of mediumistic experiences. It is unclear if this reflects that the discarnates actually miss physically enjoying the foods the medium can taste during the reading or if the discarnates are just trying to convey how much they liked those meals and snacks in order to identify themselves. Either way, it seems that dead people talk about food, but living people getting psychic readings are not receiving input about what to order for lunch.

 

Descriptions of cognitive processes were also different between experiences and were seen through both the quantitative and qualitative analyses. Psychic experiences were qualitatively described as involving a download of new information, whereas mediums “just know” the information during mediumistic communication. Compared to descriptions of psychic readings, the descriptions of mediumistic communication contained a quantitatively lower content of LIWC-categorized words related to the cognitive process of insight (e.g., discern, categorize, evidence).

 

This suggests that mediumistic communication may be a process that is more intuitive than analytical (metaphorically, more ‘right-brained’ than ‘left-brained’) when compared to psychic readings for the living. This finding was also supported by a subsequent study that found that the cognitive learning styles of mediums were not correlated at all to their accuracy scores. Learning styles are the cognitive and behavioral preferences people have for acquiring new information; some people are hands-on learners, for example, some prefer verbal vs. visual information, etc. Because mediumship is an intuitive and passive perception and not an analytical and active cognitive process, it seems logical that mediums’ learning styles would not be relevant to their accuracy scores. It shouldn’t matter if a medium prefers watching videos over reading articles or hearing concerts over seeing plays when the way they receive the information during readings seems to be guided by the discarnates. And this is what the data demonstrated. 

 

The quantitative and qualitative UVO-II Study data support the hypothesis that the experience of mediumistic communication with the deceased is phenomenologically distinct from that proposed by the somatic psi theory. 

 

*UVO refers to sUrvival psi Vs sOmatic psi examinations

Dr. Julie Beischel is the Director of Research at the Windbridge Research Center. She received her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology with a minor in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Arizona and uses her interdisciplinary training to apply the scientific method to controversial topics. For over 15 years, Dr. Beischel has worked full-time studying mediums: individuals who report experiencing communication with the deceased and who regularly, reliably, and on-demand report the specific resulting messages to the living. References cited in her paper are deleted from these excerpts but a full paper with references is available at the Bigelow website (https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php).