Wednesday, March 16, 2022

Out-of-body experiances: Ruickbie excerpt #14

Psychologist Leo Ruickbie writes in “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies:

As well as self-projectionists, others had discovered that they could send their subjects out of their bodies. In the 1840s, the British physician Joseph Haddock (1800–1861) discovered what he called “distant clairvoyance” during investigations into hypnotism (then generally considered under the heading of Mesmerism). Working with a subject called Emma L., a domestic servant in her twenties, he asked her to describe one of Haddock’s female relatives in London whilst she was mesmerized in Bolton, 174 miles (279 km) away as the crow flies. She was apparently successful in this, but puzzled Haddock by going on to describe a lady in a grand building, which to him sounded like Buckingham Palace (he tested this by asking if she saw any soldiers, to which she replied that she did). He later discovered that his relative – the target of the experiment – had been thinking of the Queen at the time. Emma’s distant clairvoyance had seemingly followed the target’s line of thought. “It appeared,” wrote Haddock, “as if her mind partially left her body, to go to the place sought.” There are many more such accounts in the Mesmerist literature from this period.

I discovered a similar case in the British Library that had escaped being published or discussed in the hundred plus years since being documented in 1915. It involved Francis Gilbert Scott (1868–1933), a Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, and of the Society for Psychical Research, who had conducted a series of experiments in hypnotism on his maid in an effort to improve her work. He accidentally discovered that, whilst in trance, she could apparently leave her body and visit her sweetheart Edgar, who was serving on the Western Front, approximately 200 miles away. Further experiments included visiting the maid’s cousin Bruce, also at the front. Her observations, always involving incidents that could not have been realistically guessed beforehand, were later confirmed by post.

In both cases, reputable medical men conducted the experiments, which, although informal in character, showed no indication of being deceptive or mercenary. The level of unexpected detail makes sensory cueing or subjective validation unlikely explanations. That these details were independently confirmed also demonstrates that the experiences were not hallucinatory. Emma and Scott’s maid really did seem to be out of their bodies. 

 

Leo Ruickbie, “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies. Ruickbie teaches psychology at Kings College and the University of Northamptom in the United Kingdom. Footnotes have been deleted from these online excerpts from his essay. The entire essay may be downloaded at the Bigelow site https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

Tuesday, March 15, 2022

Projecting one's "self": Ruickbie excerpt #13

Psychologist Leo Ruickbie writes in “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies: 


A surprising finding of the Society for Psychical Research’s Census was that many ‘apparitions’ were not ‘spirits of the dead,’ but actually living people. This realization should open a whole avenue of research: if the living could accidentally be seen as ghosts, could anyone do it intentionally?

In 1890, Joseph Kirk of Plumstead, London, decided to become a ghost, or, as he put it, attempt a “telepathic experiment” upon Miss G., a young lady of his acquaintance. From June 10 to 20 that year, Kirk concentrated each evening on making himself visible to the unsuspecting Miss G. She later complained of disturbed sleep and feeling “uneasy” at night. Disappointed and a little guilty, Kirk decided to leave off, but had another go on June 23. This time Miss G. confessed to having had a very peculiar experience: “seeing Mr. Kirk standing near my chair, dressed in a dark brown coat, which I had frequently seen him wear.”

Mr. Kirk’s coat was a key piece of evidence. He was, he explained, in the habit of wearing a light coat in the office, but as this had been sent to the tailor to be repaired, he was wearing his dark jacket, matching his suit of distinctive “dark reddish-brown check stuff.” Kirk used this fact to test the veracity of Miss G.’s vision. “How was I dressed?” he later asked, noting that this was not a leading question. He was wearing a light suit at the time and Miss G. touched the sleeve of his jacket, saying “Not this coat, but that dark suit you wear sometimes. I even saw clearly the small check pattern of it.” And therein rests the case for the defense, except that Miss G. also added that “I saw your features as plainly as though you had been bodily present. I could not have seen you more distinctly.”

Frank Podmore  
Here is a deliberate attempt to visibly appear before another person, unbeknownst to them, subsequently confirmed with additional evidential details. SPR researcher Frank Podmore collected this and several more such examples, including the Rev. Clarence Godfrey, who projected himself into a lady’s bedroom in 1886, and Mr. H. Percy Sparks who projected his friend Mr. Arthur H.W. Cleave into the dining-room of a young lady in Wandsworth. Cleave’s abilities outshone those of Godfrey: not only did he make himself visible to the target but was conscious of what happened whilst he was there. 


Leo Ruickbie, “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies. Ruickbie teaches psychology at Kings College and the University of Northamptom in the United Kingdom. Footnotes have been deleted from these online excerpts from his essay. The entire essay may be downloaded at the Bigelow site https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

 

Monday, March 14, 2022

After-Death Communication: Ruickbie excerpt #12

Psychologist Leo Ruickbie writes in “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies:

The range reported of apparently intentional contact between living and deceased, covering sound, smell and touch, as well as full-blown apparitions, has led to a new term “after-death communication.” The element of communication is key, but this can be interpreted as any sort of sign that is taken as communication, typically between the deceased and someone who was known to them in life, and is taken as a sign of continued existence after death.

High levels of ADCs have been reported in the research. Before publishing their 1995 book, Hello from Heaven, Bill and Judy Guggenheims had received 3,300 firsthand accounts of ADCs through their website. One meta-analysis of thirty-five studies published from 1894 to 2005 involved 50,682 participants from twenty-four countries, to give an estimate of 30–35% spontaneous incidence of ADCs in the general population, with 70-80% of the bereaved having an ADC within a year of bereavement, concluding that “ADCs are both common and normal.” A study published in 2020 estimated an incidence of 40–50% in the general population. Additionally, a therapeutic approach found that about 75% of people can have an induced ADC.

While many of these experiences are personally convincing, they do not always offer objective evidence of the survival of consciousness beyond death. The SPR’s Census produced eighty first-hand accounts of “death-coincidences” – recognized apparitions occurring within twelve hours of death, typically in such cases the witness is unaware that the person seen has died. The authors of the report concluded that apparitions of the deceased occurring at the time of death could not be due to chance alone, noting that this confirmed Gurney et al.’s earlier conclusion that “apparitions at death, &c., are a result of something beyond chance.”

Ken R. Vincent’s re-analysis of the Guggenheims’ published cases identified 65 out of 353 as “evidential cases” (18.4%). Vincent’s own analysis of 1,667 cases from the After-Death Communication Research Foundation database, identified 336 (20.1%) as evidential: 180 (10.8%) where the apparition was seen before the witness knew that person was dead; 99 (5.9%) in which apparitions conveyed information unknown to the witness that was later verified; and 57 (3.4%) involving multiple witnesses.

A study by Elsaesser et al., [Investigations] identified 20.9% of cases as involving a shared ADC, with the receipt of information previously unknown being a factor in 24.3% of cases. This study also found that 20.7% had had a “crisis ADC” within twenty-four hours of death (before or after), noting that “they are particularly significant, and even evidential, since experiencers claim that they have been informed of the death of a family member or friend by the deceased themselves.” Most of the ADCs in this study occurred to people during the day and whilst they were awake.

Evidentiality was relatively consistent, ranging from 18.4% to 24.3%. These were not laboratory experiments designed to give evidence of the afterlife, but personal experiences probably intended to provide reassurance to loved ones; nevertheless, it is striking how many of them are evidential and are so in a number of different ways. As Prof. Erlendur Haraldsson concluded after his own ADC survey [The Departed Among the Living], “When all the accounts we have collected are considered, it seems impossible to reject all of them as deceptions and mistaken perceptions. Something real is there.” 

 

Leo Ruickbie, “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies. Ruickbie teaches psychology at Kings College and the University of Northamptom in the United Kingdom. Footnotes have been deleted from these online excerpts from his essay. The entire essay may be downloaded at the Bigelow site https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

 



Saturday, March 12, 2022

Mere chance cannot explain: Ruickbie excerpt #11

Psychologist Leo Ruickbie writes in “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies:

Æta Highett had lost her fiancé, Eldred Wolferstan Bowyer-Bower, killed in action on the Western Front in March 1917. In December 1917 she had this experience:

I heard a number of raps when I was in bed and I began to talk to Eldred and asked him to rap twice if he was ever going to show himself to me. Almost immediately two raps came; I waited a long time but saw nothing. Then I went to sleep. Afterwards I woke up and looked round and saw Eldred on the bed beside me, he was wearing his blue suit. I sat up and started talking to him, [Miss Highett records what she said, and that “his lips started to move” and made a reply “just above a whisper”]. I then tried to touch him, but my hand went through him, and like a fool I started to cry, and he disappeared.

This single case contains almost everything we need by way of evidence for the afterlife: two apparitions at the approximate time of death before the fact is known, or even guessed at; two apparitions after death has been established; a premonition; and two evidential mediumistic communications. Each experience on its own is vulnerable to being casually dismissed – coincidence, indigestion, etc.but together, experienced by people separated by continents, but all bearing on the same person, they are nigh unassailable. What reason could anyone have to doubt any of the principal witnesses?

The Bowyer-Bowers were an upper-class family in England at a time when honour and reputation were still important, with a tradition of military service: Eldred, his brother, father and grandfather were, or had been, soldiers. Both Dorothy and Cecily had already decided not to mention what had happened to them: the full details only came to light after Æta talked about her visit to Mrs. Brittain, otherwise they would have remained silent. Æta herself was reticent in mentioning her own apparitional experience. Both Dorothy and Margaret initially sought non-paranormal explanations. There was no attempt to gain publicity or any secondary gain out of their experiences.

It was only the work of Hubert Wales (1870–1943) in gathering the letters and statements together that brought the case to wider notice in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, which was only circulated among members and not on general sale, so the publication of the case was anything but sensationalistic. In the report, Wales is described as having been a member of the SPR “for several years.” His interest seems only to have been to gather and make available to the SPR the facts of the case: he was not credited as the author of the report.

This type of phenomenon has come to be called a “crisis apparition” after the work of the early SPR researchers. In the introduction to the SPR’s monumental two-volume work on the subject of Phantasms of the Living by Edmund Gurney, Frederic Myers and Frank Podmore, Myers wrote:

Testimony proves that phantasms (impressions, voices, or figures) of persons undergoing some crisis—especially death—are perceived by their friends and relatives with a frequency which mere chance cannot explain.

The testimony referred to involved “over two thousand depositions” of which more than half described crisis-type apparitions. According to a study by Hornell Hart, almost everyone who experiences this class of phenomenonapparitions of people who were dead or close to death at the time of the appearancerecognizes them (85%). Sometimes the apparition was seen more than once (26%), or by two or more people at the same time. Other than signaling their own death, some cases also revealed additional information that was also later found to be true (8%). The crisis apparition occurs close to the time of crisis, but, as in the Bowyer-Bower case, related experiences can occur quite some time after it, and, as we shall see, involve a number of different elements. 

 

Leo Ruickbie, “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies. Ruickbie teaches psychology at Kings College and the University of Northamptom in the United Kingdom. Footnotes have been deleted from these online excerpts from his essay. The entire essay may be downloaded at the Bigelow site https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

Crisis Apparitions: Ruickbie excerpt #10

Psychologist Leo Ruickbie writes in “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies: 

“I had this weird dream last night,” said my wife on the morning of April 27, 2017. “You were talking to me, saying that someone had died, three times. I couldn’t make out the name.” She had woken up, convinced that I was trying to tell her something, only to find me fast asleep. She checked the clock – 05:00 – and went back to sleep. She thought that the dream might have been caused by her worrying about an elderly colleague and friend who had recently had a heart attack. Later that morning, the telephone rang. It was my father. He was in tears. My mother had died. Although she had been suffering from a long and debilitating illness, we had been planning to visit my parents in two weeks and had every expectation of seeing her again. My wife had never had a dream like this before and we were not especially anxious about her condition at the time. We later found out that my mother must have died at around 05:00 that morning.


Whereas we had received a message in a dream, other experiences can involve actual apparitions. The famous medium Gladys Osborne Leonard (1882–1968) had a powerful experience just as she was beginning to explore her interest in Spiritualism in her early twenties. Her mother’s health had deteriorated, but Leonard did not think it was serious. She was away from home on the night of December 18, 1906, when she awoke “with a feeling that something unusual was happening.”

Leonard had an unmistakable vision of her mother, looking younger and healthier, with radiant eyes and a happy smile. When the vision faded, Leonard looked at the clock: just after 2 a.m. She went back to sleep. She slept late and awoke to find a telegram from her brother: “Mother passed away two o'clock this morning.”

Born in 1882, the same year as the Society for Psychical Research was founded, Leonard’s fate would be interwoven with that of the SPR, becoming the subject of indepth research into her mediumship. She helped Sir Oliver Lodge apparently communicate with his son Raymond, killed in the First World War, and was retained by the SPR in 1918 for three months of extensive testing involving 73 sittings, of which 70 involved anonymous sitters. In her report, the largely skeptical Helen Salter conceded that the sitters were satisfied that the medium was wholly trustworthy and had provided evidence that the human personality survived death. She also convinced the even more skeptical Eleanor Sidgwick, wife of the SPR’s first president Henry Sidgwick.  

On September 29, 1917, a young lady sat with the professional medium Mrs. Annie Brittain. Æta Highett had lost her fiancé, Eldred Wolferstan Bowyer-Bower, killed in action on the Western Front, and like many in her situation sought solace in Spiritualism. She had not been to see Mrs. Brittain before, but the medium was able to tell her many things about her fiancé, including the following:

She said, “He has a sister.” I said, “yes, Cicely.” She said, “No, that’s not the name.” She waited a few seconds and then said: “Joan. She has a little girl called Joan, now I get Dorothy.” I said, “yes.” He says, “Tell Dorothy she has the power to communicate.” He also said, “She is not in this country.”

It was all true, but that was not the end of it. Bowyer-Bower’s half-sister, Dorothy Spearman, lived in India at the time, and when she heard about Mrs. Brittain’s message she wrote back with a strange story to tell:

On March 19 [1917], in the late part of the morning, I was sewing and talking to baby, Joan was in the sitting-room and did not see anything. I had a great feeling I must turn round and did, to see Eldred; he looked so happy and that dear mischievous look. I was so glad to see him and told him I would just put baby in a safer place, then we could talk. “Fancy coming out here,” I said, turning round again, and was just putting my hands out to give him a hug and a kiss, but Eldred had gone. I called and looked for him. I never saw him again. At first [I] thought it was simply my brain. Then I did think for a second something must have happened to him and a terrible fear came over me.

That same morning in Bournemouth, Bowyer-Bower’s sister Cecily Chater was still in bed, when her two-year-old daughter Betty came into the room, saying that “Uncle Alley Boy is downstairs” (Alley Boy was his pet-name since childhood). Cecily explained that he was in France, but the girl was insistent.

In the afternoon later that day, Mrs. Watson, an elderly friend of Mrs. Bowyer-Bower wrote to her about Eldred, saying “about tea time, a certain and awful feeling came over her that he was killed.” Mrs. Bowyer-Bower wrote back that he was “fit and happy.”

At dawn on March 19, 1917, Captain Bowyer-Bower, 59 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, took out a lumbering RE8 two-seater biplane on a reconnaissance mission over German lines, with 2nd Lt Eric Elgey as observer. A second RE8 flew as an escort. About an hour into their flight, German fighter planes of Jagdstaffel 2 found them, and began firing at Bowyer-Bower’s aircraft, shooting it down near Croisilles, Pas-de-Calais, behind enemy lines.

Cecily received a telegram from the War Office on March 23, with the news that he was missing in action. About two weeks later, Dorothy read the news in the Indian newspapers. At this point he was still listed missing.

His father, a captain with the Corps of Royal Engineers, was also fighting on the Western Front. On May 10, 1917, as the British advanced during the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line, he came across a makeshift cross made from aeroplane wreckage on which someone had written “Two unknown captains of the Royal Flying Corps.” It was the grave of his son and Elgey – Eldred Bowyer-Bower was only now confirmed killed in action.

In late November or early December, 1917, Eldred’s mother, Margaret Bowyer-Bower, was woken in the night, first feeling too hot, then “extraordinarily cold with a most unnatural coldness.” As she tried to return to sleep, “a yellow-blue ray came right across the room.” She thought that the maid had not drawn the air-raid curtains properly, but as it continued to move, “I watched, not at all nervously, and something like a crumpled filmy piece of chiffon unfolded and the beautiful wavy top of Eldred’s head appeared.” The apparition continued to develop, apparently in full and realistic colour, as she noted “his lovely blue eyes.” He turned and looked at her. The development of the form stopped at the chin and “quivered and shook so much.” Worried that it would disappear, Mrs. Bowyer-Bower reached out her hands, saying “Eldred, I see you.” At once, “it all flickered quite out, light and all.” She considered that it “might have been a dream,” but “in my own mind I am satisfied it was not.” She also mentioned that “Eldred referred to it through Mrs. Leonard in Jan. 1918.”

 

Leo Ruickbie, “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies. Ruickbie teaches psychology at Kings College and the University of Northamptom in the United Kingdom. Footnotes have been deleted from these online excerpts from his essay. The entire essay may be downloaded at the Bigelow site https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

 


Friday, March 11, 2022

Evidence for reincarnation: Ruickbie excerpt #9

Psychologist Leo Ruickbie writes in “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies:

Scientific research into the phenomenon was pioneered by Dr. Ian Stevenson, beginning in 1960. He wrote some 300 papers and fourteen books on reincarnation, collecting and investigating some 3,000 cases over forty years.As well as confirming memories of past lives by matching them with facts known about those past lives, he also found evidence of birth marks and defects in supposedly reincarnated people matching injuries received in the previous life (35%).Despite being skeptical in 1972, as noted above, he later said that “I think a rational person, if he wants, can believe in reincarnation on the basis of evidence.”

The two most compelling cases are those of James Leininger and Ryan Hammons. James Leininger (1998– ) started remembering his life as a WWII fighter pilot between ages two and five, firstly by demonstrating an unusual interest in aircraft and level of knowledge beyond his age, and later by mentioning names from his former life that were confirmed. He had been called James, flown a Corsair from a ship called Natoma, had had a friend called Jack Larsen, and was shot down near Iwo Jima – all these details and more were later confirmed. When Ryan Hammons (2005– ) was four, he started remembering details of a life that were finally matched with actor and Hollywood agent Marty Martin (born Morris Kolinsky, 1903–1964). Ryan’s mother contacted researcher Dr. Jim Tucker, who confirmed fifty-five statements concerning Ryan’s former life as Martin, including correcting a mistake on Martin’s death certificate.

As well as statements from people claiming to be reincarnated, there is confirmation from other areas of research. After an NDE about 70% report a belief in reincarnation, against 23% of the general population. It is also more than just belief, people also report NDEs directly relating to reincarnation. In some accounts, people described being told about reincarnation or seeing others waiting to be reincarnated. One NDEr reported a life review that extended into past lives:

My whole life went before me of things I have done and haven’t done, but not just of this one lifetime, but of all the lifetimes. I know for a fact there is reincarnation. This is an absolute. I was shown all those lives and how I had overcome some of the things I had done in other lives.

Even taking into account all of the criticisms of Stevenson’s work, his research and that of others, is overwhelmingly convincing. The implications are clear: reincarnation must mean that consciousness persists after physical death. Having died, a person's consciousness should be a thing of the past. What, then, does that mean about the past? 

 

Leo Ruickbie, “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies. Ruickbie teaches psychology at Kings College and the University of Northamptom in the United Kingdom. Footnotes have been deleted from these online excerpts from his essay. The entire essay may be downloaded at the Bigelow site, https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php

 

Thursday, March 10, 2022

Dr. Long's NDE surveys: Ruickbie excerpt #8

Psychologist Leo Ruickbie writes in “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies: 

For his 2011 book Evidence of the Afterlife, radiation oncologist Jeffrey Long worked with a sub-set of 613 cases submitted between 2004 and 2008 – the “NDERF survey.” He found twelve common points of agreement in near-death experiences, although other studies have used more extensive scales – Bruce Greyson’s “near-death experience scale” is sixteen items long. Four of Long’s questions related to aspects of direct interest in this present study, concerning the location of consciousness, and the experience of space and time.

Long’s survey found that three-fifths (60.5%) said that they had had a sense of altered space and time, with a third (33.9%) saying specifically of time that “everything seemed to be happening at once.” About one in five people (22.2%) also said that they had experienced a review of past events in their lives. Long concluded that: “The NDERF study makes it clear that the events seen in the NDEr’s life review are real” and “further strong evidence for the reality of near-death experiences.”

In most cases, the NDE will involve some change in the perception of time, showing that our normal perception of time is not the only one. The life review challenges normal time to an even greater extent because the experience is not like ordinary memory recall, where you remain in your own viewpoint, but a transcendent view of the totality of past events, often with sound, emotion and even actual thoughts, from an external perspective. 

 

Leo Ruickbie, “The Ghost in the Time Machine,” his 2021 prize winning essay in a competition sponsored by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies. Ruickbie teaches psychology at Kings College and the University of Northamptom in the United Kingdom. Footnotes have been deleted from these online excerpts from his essay. The entire essay may be downloaded at the Bigelow site, https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php


Gödel's reasons for an afterlife

Alexander T. Englert, “We'll meet again,” Aeon , Jan 2, 2024, https://aeon.co/essays/kurt-godel-his-mother-and-the-a...