The scientific case for psychic phenomena

Diane Hennacy Powell is a practicing psychiatrist and researcher. She is currently studying autistic savants, who have abilities similar to psychic phenomena. Both savants and psychics experience patterns of anomalous knowing that cannot be explained by the modern paradigm that consciousness is simply the result of brain activity.

She writes: “I find joy in integrating information across these scientific disciplines, both in search of solutions for patients, and to build evidence-based theories to explain conundrums that mystify us. While in San Diego I co-created and directed The McCandless Center for Women, a program treating survivors of sexual assault, and was the first psychiatrist for Survivors of Torture, International.”* 

Powell does not claim to have had an NDE, but in The ESP Enigma she does include the following observation and memory: “Time perception also is altered when we come close to death. I directly observed this when I almost drowned at the age of thirteen in a canoe accident. The passage of time seemed to slow down shortly after I stopped struggling against the river’s current and resigned myself to dying. At the same time my entire life passed rapidly through my mind.” Certainly, this experience shares some of the characteristics that NDE survivors report.

Powell begins her book, The ESP Enigma, with another memory at the age of thirteen: “From twenty feet across the room, the magician read, word for word, the contents of any book that I randomly chose from among hundreds on the bookshelves. There were no mirrors behind me, and I knew that these books belonged to my friend, not the magician. Even if he had memorized all of the books, he would also have needed exceptional luck to guess which pages I chose. There was no rational explanation at the time for what I observed, but it fostered a deep, abiding curiosity.”

“My interest,” she writes, “led me to study neuroscience in college and specialize in neuropsychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. While on the faculty at Harvard Medical School, I encountered a patient who claimed to be psychic. She then told me several accurate details about my life and made specific predictions about my future, all of which eventually came true. So, I decided to systematically investigate psychic phenomena. And over the past twenty years I have gained invaluable insight from patients who shared details of their psychic experiences.”

* “Meet Dr. Powell,” http://dianehennacypowell.com/meet-dr-powell/

Diane Hennacy Powell, The ESP Enigma: The Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena (Walker Publishing Company, 2009).

God is in the creative possibility of each moment

“The gospel of John," biologist Charles Birch writes, presents: “a picture of everything being alive with Life from the very beginning. Such is this particular biblical interpretation of the creative process. It was personal from the beginning, but that only becomes fully evident in the light of its manifestation in human persons. Always it was transcendent to the world. Always it was involved with the world, drawing the world to itself, brooding over the face of the earth.”

“This light flickered uncertainly within the church as it wavered from commitment to a view of the total involvement of God in the world to one restricted to humans alone. In the process both humanity and nature lost out, for neither nature, humanity nor God can be understood alone.”

“To love is to be the recipient of love and to return love. Is the God of love an exception to this principle? On the contrary, God’s love must be responsive, or it is not love at all. Indeed, a God whose influence is divorced form responsiveness and sensitivity is irresponsible. Without that aspect of God’s nature nothing is saved after the world comes to its end in a fiery furnace of the sun or in a frozen waste.”

“The divine passion is God’s feeling of the world as the world is created. As every entity ‘feels’ the lure of God and responds to that lure then God becomes concretely real in a way God was not concretely real before. And that new reality makes a difference to God. God is the one who cherishes all: ‘unto whom all hearts are open,’ says the collect. With each creative advance, be it in cosmic evolution or in an individual life, God becomes different. Every individual experience has its consequence in the life of God.”

As the cosmos evolves: “God as divine Eros, transcendent to the universe, becomes immanent within the new creation. This is God’s presence in the world. In addition, the world is present in God as the divine Passion responds to each new creation and each existing one. This is not the image of the world as a contrivance and God as the artificer working from a pre-planned blueprint of the future. It is an image of the world as organically related to God who provides the purposes and values of creation moment by moment yet leaves the creation with its degree of freedom and self-determination. In this sense the future is not determined. It is open-ended. The possibilities of creativity are immense, but not all possibilities are relevant at any particular stage of the evolving cosmos. We are caught in the web of history. Yet our future is still open-ended within the realm of possibilities relevant to that history.”

“In the worlds of the Jewish scholar Abraham J. Heschel, ‘God is waiting for us to redeem the world.’ For us to fail to respond to the forward call of life is not just a personal failure. It is a cosmic tragedy.”

“The whole organizes and even creates the parts. The lower levels of organization are to be interpreted in terms of the higher. This principle is recognized in recent developments in quantum physics. It has validity over the whole spectrum of individuals from protons to people. The basic principle is this: we understand what is not ourselves by analogy with what we know ourselves to be.”

"The heavenly city of the Enlightenment has not arrived. We still have with us ‘children of darkness’ who are evil because they know no law beyond self. Their wisdom is that they understand the power of self-interest. The ‘children of light’ are wise because they believe that self-interest should be brought under the discipline of a higher law."

What is this higher law? It is not the authority of any individual, group or institution. It is not any created good at all. These all tend to become idols. It is the source of all good, the source of all creativity. The moral and spiritual resources for a just, peaceful and sustainable global society are pressing daily upon us, seeking entry into life and blocked only by self-interest. There is a way through. Repentance is still possible.”

 

Charles Birch, The Purpose in Everything: Religion in a Postmodern Worldview (Twenty-Third Publications, 1990).

Evolving: a cosmic life, a divine life, life on earth

Biologist Charles Birch (1918-2009) in A Purpose for Everything writes: “Either we and the rest of the creation have no permanent value or else we may say that there is a cosmic life, a divine life, able to appropriate and retain as experiences in its life our lesser lives and that of other individuals of creation. Either we and the rest live for what transcends ourselves or we live without ultimate meaning and ultimate purpose."

"To have self-determination is to exhibit mind. It is to have some degree of freedom, no doubt minute at the molecular level. I am not saying that having investigated the life of the cell and its molecules biologist have found mind. What they have found is more consistent with the proposition that the cell as an entity and the DNA molecule as an entity have internal relations."

"There is but one theory, known to me, that casts any positive light on the ability of brain cells to furnish us with feelings. It is that brain cells can feel! What gives brain cells feelings? It is by the same logic that we may say—their molecules. And so on down the line to those individuals we call electrons, protons and the like. The theory is that things that feel are made of things that feel."

"Because of the unity of life, human love is something that can be extended to the whole creation. The humanist loves his fellow humans and appreciates nature. The ecological model of life implies that human love is to be extended to the rest of nature in the sense of sympathetic identification with the life of other sentient organisms."

"The old notion of a divine being controlling the universe from outside is no longer credible. The relevant question now is, in what sense, if any, is there divine activity in the universe."

"The power of the Christian gospel is the experience of divine love that transforms life. We experience God first and then spend the rest of our lives trying to understand that experience and its relevance to the whole world. The God of the universe touches us as we experience life in its fullness. But God is vaster than our experience. When I go down to the ocean and swim on its shore, I get to know one part of the ocean—its near end. But there is a vast extent of ocean way beyond my ken that is nevertheless continuous with that bit of the ocean I know. So it is with God. We touch God at the near end, yet that same God extends into the farthest reaches of the universe and there too is pervasive love. This is the full meaning of incarnation. The universe exists by its incarnation of God in itself. It is the sort of universe in which God can be incarnate. God could not be incarnate in a machine! The divine Eros works in the universe through influence (literally meaning inflowing) as its universal mode of causation."

"To see the universe as a whole in this way, with the same God working in the universe at large, and in the life of Jesus, and in the lives of all of us, was put in highly symbolic language by the apostle Paul in his letter about the ‘Cosmic Christ’ in Colossians 1. In verse 4 is the phrase ‘In him all things hang together.’ This affirmation is repeated no less than five times in this chapter. It was Paul’s conviction that the same spirit which was in Jesus animated the whole universe. The universal principle of reality is the free act of experiencing. For many people in his time the world was a dualism. Not so for Paul. God is the God of ‘all things.’ Nature as well as human history is the theater of grace."

 

Charles Birch, A Purpose for Everything: Religion in a Postmodern Worldview (Twenty-Third Publications, 1990).

Spiritual: "A City Called Heaven"

I am a pilgrim, a pilgrim of sorrow,  

I’m left in this wide world, this wide world a-lone.

I have no hope, have no hope for to-morrow.  

But I'm tryin’ to make heaven my home.

Sometimes I’m tossed, Lord, and sometimes I’m driven.

Sometimes I just don’t know, just where I’m to go.

But I’ve heard of a city, the city of heaven.

And I’m tryin’ to make heaven my home.

 

Renaissance, Bethel University’s Performing Arts Experience

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjA3mesoAVU

Adrianne G's NDE (translated from Spanish)

In 2005, I went to the hospital because I tried to drink a cup of coffee and where I thought it was, I couldn’t grab it. It was 6 inches from the place where I saw it. I got scared and ran to the hospital without worrying about a cough that didn’t even allow me to speak. There, they diagnosed me with atypical pneumonia but I didn’t have phlegm or expectorations, only a lot of coughing. It was all caused by a generalized lupus erythematosus.

After 15 days, I left the hospital with the recommended doses of cortisone and medications for joint pain that were sufficiently strong to control the lupus, but which wouldn’t affect other parts of my body.

That’s how the years passed until December 5, 2015. I entered the hospital because I couldn’t breathe. I was kept in the hospital for tests and they didn’t find anything abnormal. I left on the 12th to return on the 18th with a new crisis in my lungs that was keeping me from breathing. I had pulmonary edema. This time they took a liter of blood from my lungs. I was there until December 26, and they told me that the danger had passed and that I was well.

I returned to the hospital on February 23 with a great deal of fatigue and unable to breathe again. On this occasion I put myself in God’s hands, because I felt it that it was already the end and in fact it I already wanted to die because I was very tired. I had already endured ten years of continual joint pain, constant fatigue, and being overweight by 110 pounds caused by so many steroids and so much cortisone that I was given to control the inflammation in my joints So I was really exhausted.

So I said goodbye to everyone and on just the second day in the hospital, they transferred me to intensive care, first with nasal ports for oxygen, then a mask, and later they intubated me with a feeding tube and fed me this way for eight days. After that, they removed the tube and gave me a tracheotomy. Because I was in this condition, my doctors gave my husband a very discouraging prognosis. They told him that I had no possibility of recovering, and that if I recovered at all, I would have to be in a wheelchair and connected to an oxygen machine because my lungs were not able to regenerate enough because the damage had been so great.

In the process of the tracheotomy, which they did only to keep administering Mab Thera, a medicine recommended by my rheumatologist after the pneumologist said there was nothing else to be done, they let me go. The medicine was supposed to take effect in no later than two days, but five days passed and I only became more critical. The doctors had already given up, when suddenly the pneumologist jumped up and told my husband he didn’t know whose opinion we were respecting, but that we should listen to him because something unexpected was happening. My body began to show very slight signs of improvement, but to him the improvements were enormous.

At that moment, I had left my body and began to return home. I suddenly saw myself as a light, floating in a universe full of colors and forms that opened and closed, and I entered them and went through them full of joy, of happiness, of peace—a joy which there are no words to explain--until I came to another portal, so to speak, in which there was a female figure. She was only a light, but when she spoke, she identified herself as an aunt who had died four months before. And she told me, “Adriana, if you pass through here, you will not be able to return.” I understood that she was giving me a choice. I was still me, Adriana. I was not my body, but I was my essence, and I began to ask myself what there was to return to? Why leave that place where I was so happy, so full, and with such great joy and love in my heart, when I heard my daughter’s voice, telling me, “Mom, I need you for my wedding.” She didn’t have a boyfriend and during the 45 days that I had been in intensive care, she always told me that if I was exhausted, to leave, not to stay for them. But this day was different. She asked me to come back. I understood that we are in this world for love, because only a love of that magnitude could make us leave that peace and the unimaginable joy of that plane.

 

When I made the decision to return, I heard a male voice, telling me, “It is not going to be easy, but the best years of your life were still to come.” And so it was, from that point on, my recovery was wonderful. My alveolus began to function, my tracheotomy tube was removed. They told me I would not be able to talk without covering the hole for three to five days while it healed, and that evening I was talking and taking medication as if I had never had the tracheotomy. And it’s been that way since. Today, I breathe without oxygen, I walk, I travel. Only at altitudes of over 1600 feet above sea level do I need a little extra oxygen. My life is completely normal. I weigh 180 pounds, nothing hurts, and I feel better than ever.

 

From NDERF.org

Annalise E's NDE altered her life in many ways

I was 16 years old. I had been admitted for general surgery to remove four teeth that had grown through the roof of my mouth.

I was taken down to the operating room. There were two nurses in attendance and an anesthesiologist. All were fully gowned so I could not see their faces. I was sedated.

At some point during the surgery, my heart stopped and I stopped breathing. Then I became conscious.

I was floating. There was no ceiling or walls. But, there was an arched structure that was possibly a tunnel. I was aware of the light energy being bent around me, although this was not a conscious thought at the time.

The light was excessively bright. If I had seen this on earth, it would have burnt my retinas. But it was the most beautiful light and it did not hurt at all. In fact, I would say it was as soft as it was bright.

I did not exist as a body, but was energy. I was an energy that was joined to all other energies; those that had been before and those that will be after. I became aware that we are all just energy and we are all intrinsically linked.

I recall no sound. Communication was or would have been via telepathy or just knowing; just knowing feels more appropriate.

There is no human word for how amazing and peaceful this state of being feels. I felt like this earth does not exist, nor does anyone in it. If they did exist, I'd be linked to them via energy because we are all one.

This place was familiar, like I had been here before. I may have even come from here.

I did not want to come back, but was made to come back. I felt myself being pulled back to the operating room. I did not want to come back. I did not want to leave that perfect feeling.

I was then on the ceiling of the operating theatre, looking down on the proceedings. There were more people in the room. I could see a girl fighting with them as they tried to bring her back to life. The machines would bring her back with a shock and then she'd kick and punch at them. Then the machines would show her still and lifeless form again. I recall thinking she was a rude and bad girl. I saw her punch a nurse in the face and sprain another nurse's wrist.

I realized the girl was me when I was no longer separate from her. I recalled nothing until I woke up the next day. I asked if I had died and was told someone would come to talk to me. Nobody came to talk with me.

Then there was a nurse who came onto the ward and I asked, 'How is your wrist?' She said, 'Still sore. How did you know about that?' I said, 'Well, I did it. I saw myself.' She replied, 'You're right, you did.' We talked some more and she confirmed that I had to be resuscitated midway through the surgery.

Since that time, no watches would work on me. My heart rate has been erratic.

This experience caused me to become exceedingly empathic, picking up on others' feelings and fears. I have had three of four clear premonitions, but on the whole, I know stuff about people, their motivations and intent. I know what is missing from files and information. So much so, that others question how I can know this stuff on a regular basis.

Either shortly before or shortly after this experience I attempted to kill myself. I can't quite remember the timing. I was told not to talk about it, so I tried to bury the experience for many years.

My mother asked me, while heavily sedated and on her deathbed, if heaven existed because I told her I had been there. I found this odd, as it was not something we talked about and she frowned upon it as she was a devout Christian. I told her it would be whatever she believed it to be and it would also be better than anything she could imagine.

My father asked me on his deathbed, if it was his choice when to die. I told him it was his choice and he died within 10 minutes after that. At the time of his death, he was clearly having 'silent' conversations with entities I could not see in the room. I had gone to check on him. I thought I heard him and my partner having a conversation. My father was the only one in the room. My partner was asleep in another room. The second person was nowhere to be seen. Yet my father was awake. We had been told he probably had a few months to live. However, I knew I had to stay awake that night.

I was aware of my grandmother's death prior to it being called. My grandmother subsequently visited me after her death in 1979 when I was 10 years old.

After my NDE incident, I had a vision of my grandfather who died when I was 2 years old. I was able to fully describe the house that he lived in and other family members who were by then deceased. I was aware of my grandfather's death prior to us being contacted about it.

 

From NDERF.org

Tony G reports seeing several deceased persons

Firstly, I am a retired police officer from Queensland in Australia. I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology/sociology. I am non-religious, nor am I superstitious. I have two highly-educated young adults and one of them is a clinical neuro-psychologist; the other has a PhD in IT.

I don’t see religious figures, get lotto numbers or believe in tarot cards or play with Ouija boards.

My experiences are very human-related, mostly of seeing people who have passed on. My first experience was when I was young. My uncle, who had passed on, came to me and said goodbye. Since this experience, I have seen quite a few deceased people who were usually visiting to say goodbye. They were wearing recognizable clothes and appeared like they were in another dimension. I also saw three dead women overseeing a fatal crash where they were killed. They were hugging each other and overlooking the scene. These are rare experiences for me, but I will outline the most significant visit which happened in the mid-1980’s in Victoria, Australia.

My wife and I had visited my wife and her family in Tasmania for a quick visit. This was many years before this happened. My sister and I rarely spoke on the phone and email was not available. Essentially, we had little contact.

I was visiting my parents as they had rented a holiday house. My sister also came up from Tasmania with her three boys. My sister’s husband was killed in a motorcycle crash in Tasmania about a year before this experience. I did not attend the funeral due to work, and never spoke to her as my mother conveyed the news. I was never told the details of his death except that he ran into the back of a truck and was killed.

Later in the day, I was relaxing reading a magazine in the lounge room; I had to go to work that evening. My sister was doing dishes in the kitchen. I noticed a figure standing, with his arms folded, and looking out of the window. He wore a white shirt with horizontal green stripes, fawn-colored pants and black shoes. He did not seem happy. I yelled jokingly to my sister that someone was here. She entered the room and I described what I saw. She stated that it was her husband, wearing what she had buried him in. She brought the clothes especially for his burial. He came toward us and I could hear him clearly. He was not happy about a boyfriend she was seeing, what she was doing on their small farm, and other issues. She answered when I relayed his questions to her. She appeared to know what he was talking about. I had no knowledge of her activities or relationships. This went on for about 10 minutes. He then moved away, kept a distance for a short time, and then left.

When we told my mother, she was shocked. She is a practicing Catholic. When talking to my sister's husband, I noticed that his shirt collar was done up to the top of his neck and that one side of the collar was lifted up at an angle. I never mentioned the collar to my sister, but did mentioned it to my mother who did attend the funeral. She said they had to raise the collar due to injuries he had received. I had presumed he would have received chest injuries.

I have many science books, books on NDEs, and have been looking for a scientific answer to this occurrence for many years; but, to date, cannot find it. If any light can be shown on an explanation, scientifically I would be very pleased. Just for your information, I am glad science is tackling the issues of NDEs. I can also see auras and do not take drugs, drink or have psychological issues.

Reported to NDERF.org