Psychopathology: Mishlove excerpt #8

Psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove writes in “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” that many types and degrees of possession have yet to be cataloged. This is particularly true regarding possession within mental mediumship and channeling. However, there is also a psychopathological dimension associated with possession, obsession, and spirit attachment.

This section includes testimony from multiple professional psychotherapists. Sometimes it includes the identification of discarnate entities. This material highlights the price to be paid – in terms of human well-being – for ignoring the data supporting postmortem survival.

Wilson Van Dusen was Chief Psychologist at Mendocino State Mental Hospital in California. Van Dusen felt negative discarnate entities often hounded the psychotic patients with whom he worked. He maintained that Emanuel Swedenborg’s visionary descriptions of heaven and hell were actually an accurate depiction of the human unconscious.

Mental health professionals influenced by the spiritist tradition in Brazil often incorporate a similar diagnostic approach.

Clinical psychologist Edith Fiore describes how some discarnate spirits become earthbound because of their addictions to alcohol, cocaine, nicotine, and even chocolate. Many discarnates are confused and don’t realize they are no longer in their own body.

The situation Fiore describes may be more common than we realize. Adam Crabtree, a Freudian psychotherapy trainer based in Toronto, acknowledges, that he has also encountered cases of discarnate possession in his therapy practice.

Psychotherapists rarely function as psychical researchers, trying to verify the identities of the possessing entities. They aim to help their patients, not to cultivate evidence about postmortem survival. Because of these diverging interests, the psychical research literature pays little attention to the therapeutic interest in possession.

Nevertheless, there are instances where therapists working with depossession have been able to identify the discarnate possessing entities that manifest under hypnosis. In his 1934 book, The Gateway of Understanding, Carl Wickland, a physician who practiced depossession therapy for several decades, supplies specific, verified details naming four such discarnate persons unknown to him at the time of the treatment

Jeffrey Mishlove’s essay, “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” received first prize in the 2021 Bigelow Institute’s challenge to provide proof for the survival of human consciousness after death. Footnotes in Mishlove’s essay and videos he refers have been removed in this presentation but are available in his essay, which may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Mishlove is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and host on YouTube of “New Thinking Allowed.

Replacement reincarnation: Mishlove excerpt #7

Psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove writes in “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” that - Possession, in its most extreme form, is also known as replacement reincarnation. A deceased person’s spirit enters someone else’s body, replacing – permanently or temporarily – the original personality. One interesting distinction between these cases and reincarnation is, in possession cases, the possessing personality’s memories don’t seem to fade over time. The replaced person’s memories, however, seem to vanish.

Replacement reincarnation is a rare phenomenon. I doubt there are more than a few dozen cases on record – compared to thousands of reincarnation cases starting at birth. However, in trance mediumship, short- term possession by controlling discarnate persons is common. To my knowledge, we haven’t fully cataloged nor understood the types and degrees of possession – as well as its relationship to obsession and spirit attachment.

The Shiva/Sumitra case shows the difference between possession and reincarnation cases.

Sumitra Singh was a woman living in India. She could barely read and write and had no formal schooling. In 1985, Sumitra, a married woman with children, began experiencing fits, going into altered states of consciousness, and illness. She feared she would die. At one point, after she had stopped breathing and her body was cold, the family was told by a doctor she was dead. As the family was preparing for cremation, she revived.

Upon reviving, she claimed her name was Shiva Tripati. She claimed Shiva’s sister-in-law had murdered her a few months earlier. She seemed to be an educated woman – and she wanted to reconnect with her original birth family, the Tripati family.

The Singh family, naturally, didn’t know what to make of this. This new personality, Shiva, didn’t even recognize the Singh family members.

Shiva was an individual who had apparently been murdered, died accidentally, or took her own life. They found her body on the railroad tracks, after a quarrel with her in-laws. She was cremated quickly thereafter. Three months elapsed before word of this strange occurrence reached the Shiva’s birth family.

The Tripati family sued Shiva’s in-laws – because they felt she had been murdered. Then the rumor reached them that, in another village about 100 kilometers away, a possession was taking place involving their deceased daughter. So, they arranged a visit.

As soon as they arrived, Shiva hugged and kissed them, treated them warmly, and called them by their nicknames. She wanted to see her children and make sure they were being taken care of.

Shiva gave sixteen facts about her life, not mentioned in any press reports. She named 22 relatives of Shiva from photographs. A video also has an interview with Shiva’s father and mother who explain how Shiva convinced them she was their daughter. The video shows Shiva five years after the original transformation, still adamantly insisting she has all of Shiva’s memories and none of Sumitra’s.

In 2010, Canadian anthropologist Antonia Mills went to India and conducted more research on this case, assisted by Kildip Dhiman. By interviewing witnesses, Mills learned that Shiva Tripati’s personality remained in Sumitra Singh’s body consistently for thirteen years.

Shiva had a college education and wrote letters. She expressed herself using much more sophisticated language than the uneducated Sumitra.

Shiva found herself married to a stranger. However, she kept Sumitra’s social status as the wife of Sumitra husband, Jagdish Singh. She was uncomfortable about this. Shiva would look at Sumitra’s body in the mirror and say, “This isn’t me. These people are not my family.” But she realized she had to accommodate herself to these new circumstances. She even had two more children before she died.

The case is strong evidence for survival. You have an intact personality surviving for a sustained period, with the deceased person’s full emotional expression and memories. For example, she insisted on being referred to as Shiva for the entire thirteen years. That’s who she felt she was.

Interestingly, in replacement reincarnation cases, the replaced person’s memories don’t appear to remain with the physical body.

Jeffrey Mishlove’s essay, “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” received first prize in the 2021 Bigelow Institute’s challenge to provide proof for the survival of human consciousness after death. Footnotes in Mishlove’s essay and videos he refers have been removed in this presentation but are available in his essay, which may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Mishlove is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and host on YouTube of “New Thinking Allowed.”

Reincarnation: Mishlove's excerpt #6

Psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove writes in “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” that: The University of Virginia, Department of Perceptual Studies, now has a database of over 2,500 individual cases in which young children report former life memories. In roughly 1,700 cases, the information led to the deceased previous person’s identification. We know these as solved cases. This work was initiated by former Psychiatry Department chair Ian Stevenson.

The most solid reincarnation evidence comes from the totality of the 2,500 cases in the database, instead of from the strength of particular cases.

Stevenson worked in the field, meeting the children, talking with their families, and with the previous person’s families. He collected firsthand observations – as well as autopsy and police reports. In many cases, children named the previous person or the village where they had lived. The children’s behaviors are an essential feature. They are often in line with the previous person’s habits. Stevenson would often re-interview the children and other witnesses after a period of time had elapsed, to see how consistent their stories were.

Essentially, Stevenson followed the case study procedures established in the 19th century by the researchers with the Society for Psychical Research to corroborate spontaneous events such as apparitions. Stevenson depended upon legal and forensic methods. He researched reincarnation cases as if he were preparing to present them in a court of law.

Some patterns found in the reincarnation database are culturally specific. Others are universal and apply across cultures. Birthmarks, physical features, and even deformities often conform to the previous person’s death wounds. Sometimes, the children begin to speak about their past life as soon as they start to talk. The main window at which these cases begin is two to five years of age. After a few years, the memories fade. This process is generally completed by late childhood, i.e., five to eight years old. Only about a third of the children retain past-life memories into adulthood.

Reincarnations usually seem to occur in the same area, with the same religious or ethnic group or the same race – essentially within psychological comfort zones.

Recollection is first person, not as if children were watching someone else in a movie. They feel as if their consciousness is continuous with the earlier lifetime they recall. It is personal and can be emotional, with fears and phobias carrying over from the former lifetime.

There is an extremely high incidence, 50% of solved cases in the reincarnation database, where the previous person met with a violent death. We may relate this to the fact that about two-thirds of cases, cross-culturally, involve male children.

An afterlife existence between incarnations is reported in about 20% of reincarnation cases. These intermission memories are often like reports from near-death experiences, including communication with spirit guides and other deceased entities.

Anthropologist James Matlock studied the length of the intermission time between lives. It varies by culture. Globally, the median time is 16-18 months from the death of the earlier, identified life to the birth of the present life.

The median time for western cases is 35 years. 80-90% of reported cases come from Asia.

These are dramatic findings. They strongly suggest the interpenetration of the living world with that of the deceased. If the afterlife operated independently, according to its own laws and principles, one would expect the intermission length reported by children with past-life memories – as well as gender change between lives – to be unaffected by cultural expectations. This is clearly not so. However, since we are referring to solved reincarnation cases, neither can the results be purely a fantasy- based, cultural artifact.

Such findings show us we the living can influence the afterlife. People who enter the immediate afterlife will see what they need to see or what they’re prepared or conditioned to see. They are still encountering something very real on the other side. To the degree that these stories enter our culture, we are setting ourselves up to have different afterlife experiences.

 

Jeffrey Mishlove’s essay, “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” received first prize in the 2021 Bigelow Institute’s challenge to provide proof for the survival of human consciousness after death. Footnotes in Mishlove’s essay and videos he refers have been removed in this presentation but are available in his essay, which may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Mishlove is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and host on YouTube of “New Thinking Allowed.”

After death communications: Mishlove excerpt #5

Psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove writes in “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” that: According to Gallup surveys, approximately 25-33% of the population believe mental communication with the dead occurs.72 These spontaneous experiences include sensing the deceased; visual, olfactory, tactile, and auditory phenomena; powerful dreams; hearing meaningfully timed music associated with the deceased; lost-things-found; communication through electronic devices; symbolic messages; synchronicities; and other phenomena unexplainable through the prevailing Western materialist worldview.

Paying a debt. Rev. Charles McKay, a Catholic priest, reported an evidential case in 1842. When he moved to a new assignment in Perth, Scotland, a Presbyterian woman named Anne Simpson approached him. She described a repeating dream where a deceased woman she had known, named Malloy, insisted she must contact a priest. Malloy owed a small sum, three-and-tenpence, at the time of her death. She apparently expected a priest would go to the trouble of settling her debt.

Simpson, however, didn’t know to whom Malloy owed the debt. But McKay began asking around. Eventually, he contacted a local grocer who checked his books and found Malloy had a debt in his records of exactly that amount. McKay paid the required sum.

This case is instructive as it shows the deceased acting with a sense of purpose we can’t attribute to any living person.

Kübler-Ross’ transformative after-death communication. As reported in the Introduction, a brief dream visitation from my deceased Uncle Harry catalyzed my life transformation. Another life-changing example is Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, whom Time magazine named in 1999 as one of the “100 Most Important Thinkers” of the previous century. A powerful, evidential after-death communication stimulated her pioneering work on the stages of confronting death.

At the time this after-death communication occurred, Kübler-Ross was experiencing burnout. Her seminars on death and dying had deteriorated. She had decided, even though she hadn’t told anyone, to quit her work at the University of Chicago. She was about to announce her decision to a new minister with whom she was working, when suddenly a woman appeared and asked to walk with Kübler-Ross to her office.

As they walked, Kübler-Ross recognized this woman as the memorable Mrs. Schwartz, a former patient who had been the first person to report a near-death experience to Kübler- Ross and had died ten months previously. The woman was insistent Kübler-Ross mustn’t abandon her work on death and dying. She even insisted Kübler-Ross promise her right then and there that she would continue.

Kübler-Ross, recognizing the situation’s astonishing gravity, asked Mrs. Schwartz to write a note. Kübler-Ross describes the event’s emotional intensity:

And this woman, with the most human, no, not human, most loving smile, knowing every thought I had – and I knew it, it was thought transference if I’ve ever experienced it – took the paper and wrote a note.

Kübler-Ross kept Mrs. Schwartz’ note with her signature – as physical evidence of the remarkable event, which she continued to describe in public appearances. Then she agreed to her demand and promised she wouldn’t abandon the work that eventually made her famous worldwide.

This case is significant because it combines evidence of identity, spirit materialization, and evidence of intentionality with a life-transforming event.

At the time of death. Peter Fenwick, a British neuroscientist, has been investigating after-death communications. He found many occurred close to the moment of death (as was my powerful Uncle Harry dream visitation).

Fenwick describes such an incident when a drowned sailor in England appeared to his mother in Australia. He appeared dripping wet at the end of her bed in the middle of the night. Moving toward her, he became surrounded by light. He told her he was fine, and then left. When she checked with the Navy, she learned he had fallen overboard and drowned at the time he had appeared to her.

 

Jeffrey Mishlove’s essay, “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” received first prize in the 2021 Bigelow Institute’s challenge to provide proof for the survival of human consciousness after death. Footnotes in Mishlove’s essay and videos he refers have been removed in this presentation but are available in his essay, which may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Mishlove is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and host on YouTube of “New Thinking Allowed.”

Near-death experiences: Mishlove excerpt #4

Psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove writes in “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” that researchers have collected thousands of near-death experience reports. Undoubtedly, millions of individuals have had such experiences involving characteristics varying only slightly from culture to culture.

Almost all these people report being convinced to a certainty that consciousness survives death. The obvious criticism of these experiences as evidence for postmortem survival is, since experiencers inevitably return to their body, they were never dead. So, their experience can’t be about actual death. A more realistic interpretation is their experiences reflect the postmortem state’s early stages.

The consciousness realms described in near- death reports are detailed. They typically claim the afterlife is more real than waking physical reality.

Neuro-surgeon Eben Alexander, author of several books about his own near-death experience, offers his personal recollection of the supersensible reality where he believes our physical four- dimensional spacetime is embedded. It included “colors beyond the rainbow,” and swooping golden orbs of light, sparkling golden trails. Chants, anthems and hymns would thunder through his awareness. As a pure awareness speck “on a butterfly,” he didn’t merely witness this reality. He became one with it, therefore “you can essentially see through everything.”

One fascinating feature included in many near-death reports is the life review. These events suggest a realm where time is compressed compared to physical time and where the boundaries between individual minds are permeable. Alexander explains, we become one with the scenes and objects of the experience in the near-death state. He calls that “knowledge through identification.” One can, therefore, realize many things simultaneously. Earth time isn’t fundamental. There is a deeper time structure taking “soul growth” into account. He adds that language limits our ability to understand these experiences.

One singularly important piece of evidence associated with the near-death state is Alexander’s complete cerebral cortex regeneration. Bruce Greyson, a physician who has been researching near-death experiences for nearly a half-century, examined Alexander’s medical records, over 600 pages, with two other physicians. Puss from a rare infection filled Alexander’s cranium. His Glasgow Coma Scale result indicated minimal brain function. The three physicians all agreed there was less than a one percent chance of survival and no possibility of a normal recovery. In Greyson words, “This guy was as dead as you can be without having his heart stop.”

When Mishlove asked Alexander how he accounted for his miraculous recovery, Alexander suggested he had accessed a part of himself, beyond the ego, having enormous healing power. He referred to it as the “light body” or the “higher self.”  Other unexpected recoveries from conditions thought to be irreversible have occurred in connection with near-death experiences. These have been well-documented and monitored by medical doctors.

Pim van Lommel, a Dutch cardiologist and author of Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of Near-Death Experience, describes controlled studies involving patients who experienced cardiac arrest in hospitals. Five independent studies have been published involving 562 patients who survived cardiac arrest. Between 10% and 20% reported having a near-death experience. Van Lommel reports that neither physiological nor psychological factors can account for their experience.

We know, during cardiac arrest, there is no brain function left. So, we would expect no conscious experience at all during cardiac arrest.

Also, van Lommel explains how foreknowledge is a feature found in near-death reports. He describes the experience as akin to déjà vu – as, perhaps ten years later, individuals will recognize an experience as one they foresaw during their near-death experience.

An essential feature of many near-death states, to which van Lommel alluded above, is feeling overwhelmingly powerful love. Van Lommel also interviewed patients reporting a life review as part of their near-death experiences. He says people claim to relive every thought they have ever had combined with an intimate knowledge how one’s behavior affects others. Ultimately, the lessons people derive from their life reviews are about becoming more open and loving. The experience inspires people to change their lives.

 

Jeffrey Mishlove’s essay, “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” received first prize in the 2021 Bigelow Institute’s challenge to provide proof for the survival of human consciousness after death. Footnotes in Mishlove’s essay and videos he refers have been removed in this presentation but are available in his essay, which may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Mishlove is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and host on YouTube of “New Thinking Allowed.”

Hyperspace theory: Mishlove excerpt #3

Psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove writes in “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death” that: Philosopher Martin Gardner also drew upon the work of two nineteenth-century Scottish physicists, Balfour Stewart and Peter Guthrie Tait. Based on their thinking, he argued the brain itself could be a three-dimensional “surface” of a much greater, higher-dimensional self. What we think of as death is the “shuffling off of our three-space mortal coil” ... while the higher-dimensional self continues.*

Gardner’s instinct about hyperspace was correct. Work on hyperspace mathematics and physics has made strides in recent decades. Physicist Bernard Carr, emeritus astronomy and mathematics professor at Queen Mary University of London, explains how linking the mathematics of higher dimensional space could account for other mental spaces: dream space, out-of-body space, near-death space, apparition space, and mystical space. They all seem to need a space outside of ordinary physical space. And a higher-dimensional self would supply ample space.

Carr suggests hyperspace hierarchies form a universal structure that will help us better understand paranormality and mystical experiences. It will also help solve conventional problems such as normal mental experience and the relationship between quantum and classical versions of physics. The idea of hyperspace occurs in esoteric traditions. What is new is linking mental space descriptions to the higher dimensions described in physics.

Philosophical schools related to the mind- body problem generally divide into three categories: (1) materialists and physicalists who claim consciousness is a product of the brain; (2) dualists who believe mind and matter are separate and distinct aspects of reality; and (3) idealists who see the entire physical universe existing within mind-at- large (i.e., the universe’s living consciousness that is the ground of all being).

A hyperspace approach to consciousness could explain postmortem survival evidence within all these metaphysical approaches. However, as I elaborate near this essay’s Conclusion, metaphysical idealism is the most economical and logical approach. It resolves the paradoxes associated with materialism and dualism, with no unnecessary assumptions. Metaphysical idealism is also consistent with the primordial tradition.

One finds related hyperspace approaches to consciousness in Nobel laureate physicist Wolfgang Pauli’s Jungian dreamwork – where an archetypal figure presented a theoretical model to him. Wilson Van Dusen, whose work in psychology is mentioned later in the section on possession, wrote a doctoral dissertation on a hyperspace theory that was seriously reviewed in correspondence between the great Swiss psychiatrist Carl G. Jung and Wolfgang Pauli.

*The three-dimensional "space" we know in everyday life is the only "physical" space in this theory of consciousness as hyperspace. The word "levels" or "dimensions" or "planes" might be more helpful metaphors than "spaces."

Jeffrey Mishlove’s essay, “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” received first prize in the 2021 Bigelow Institute’s challenge to provide proof for the survival of human consciousness after death. Footnotes in Mishlove’s essay and videos he refers have been removed in this presentation but are available in his essay, which may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Mishlove is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and host on YouTube of “New Thinking Allowed.”

Belief in postmortem survival is common

Psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove writes in “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death” that: The argument for postmortem survival is far from trying to prove a miracle. To a large extent, it is based on phenomenology – “the study of the structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view.”

William James, also one of America’s greatest philosophers, linked phenomenology to final argument on Radical Empiricism. It was an important step in challenging David Hume’s rejection of human testimony. James was adamant:

... empiricism must neither admit... any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude... any element that is directly experienced.

Besides accepting human testimony as important evidence, my essay is based on a metaphysical worldview where postmortem survival can best be thought of as natural. I argue that consciousness, of any kind, occurs because the universe is alive and mindlike.

A belief in postmortem survival of consciousness is common to every culture, nationality, religion, and linguistic group in every region and historical period on Earth. Every single one! Americans’ belief in life after death, for example, has been stable for 75 years at over 70%.

 We have had excellent evidence for postmortem survival for over 160 years. This evidence has always been widely accepted, especially by those who have taken the time and trouble to study it carefully. However, with very few exceptions, academic and scientific institutions treat this evidence as if it never existed.

Bertrand Russell’s belief that consciousness is a product of neurological activity remains today an unconfirmed hypothesis. Nobel laureate Francis Crick, DNA pioneer and author of The Astonishing Hypothesis, expresses a refreshingly truthful scientific attitude. In this video from 1995, Crick acknowledges the religious view favoring an afterlife might well be correct.

Even Martin Gardner, an arch-scoffer of everything paranormal, has acknowledged postmortem survival! In a fascinating book chapter from 1983 titled “Immortality: Why I Do Not Think It Impossible,” Gardner’s opinion went even further than Francis Crick.

Gardner built upon William James’ 1897 filtration theory of brain function. This hypothesis likens the brain to a filter or reducing valve, not the source of consciousness. The brain accesses mind-at-large, or universal consciousness, in all its magnificent potency. Then the brain places into the spotlight of awareness a reduced level most useful for biological survival. James presented this theory as a way of accounting for life after death.

William James had an unusual ability to take the complex and make it simple. His theory – the brain is the filter, rather than the source of consciousness – is one of his powerful and easy to grasp ideas. At the same time there is substantial empirical research to reinforce this hypothesis. We will see this later in studies of psychedelics, terminal lucidity, extrasensory perception, and psychokinesis.

 

Jeffrey Mishlove’s essay, “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” received first prize in the 2021 Bigelow Institute’s challenge to provide proof for the survival of human consciousness after death. Footnotes in Mishlove’s essay and videos he refers have been removed in this presentation but are available in his essay, which may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Mishlove is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and YouTube host of “New Thinking Allowed.”