Science and parapsychology: Sommer excerpt #2

Andreas Sommer writes: One of the first histories of parapsychological research I read was by John Beloff, a widely respected British psychologist and advocate of impartial research on the paranormal. Beloff was also instrumental in establishing the Koestler Chair of Parapsychology at the University of Edinburgh, following a bequest by author and social critic Arthur Koestler. I highly recommend Beloff’s sketch of the little-known history of parapsychology at universities other than Edinburgh throughout the twentieth century, which he wrote from the well-informed perspective of an insider.

But I doubt Beloff did his efforts of bringing parapsychology into the scientific mainstream any favors when he set the stage with a reference to the Scientific Revolution beginning in the sixteenth century. It was then, he wrote, that modern standard notions of “a sharp distinction between normal and paranormal, between science and pseudoscience, reality and magic” began to crystalize, and it was in the “aftermath of this revolution” that these supposedly fixed boundaries have “ever since divided parapsychology from conventional science”.

To be fair to Beloff, he did draw on writings by professional historians of science. However, most of his sources were already outdated by several decades at the time he wrote his book. Other works not considered, such as a now classical eight-volume survey by science historian Lynn Thorndike, had already documented the significance of the ‘occult’ in the early history of experimental science by the late 1950s.  Since about the 1970s, other mainstream historical works increasingly showed that supposedly fixed boundaries between science and the ‘paranormal’ simply did not exist during the Scientific Revolution. On the contrary, it is now common knowledge that practically all figureheads of the Scientific Revolution held rather strong occult beliefs. Isaac Newton’s alchemy is probably well known today – though not nearly as widely as his studies of apocalyptic prophecies. And next time you meet an astronomer, observe his reaction when you mention that Galileo, Kepler, and in fact all early heliocentrists, were practicing astrologers who didn’t just cast horoscopes for money, but because they seriously believed astrology worked.

The reason why I’m pointing this out is obviously not to imply that we all should believe in astrology because Kepler and Galileo did. It’s simply to illustrate the fact that once certain ingrained cultural myths are being questioned, public opinion can be as impervious to mainstream historical and sociological evidence as it is to heterodox but well-supported empirical findings. And here again it is no accident that modern historical standard narratives, which inform public opinion as well as the self-image of scientists as part of their very training, have relied upon popular myths rather than academic research.

The bible of modern popular science is probably Carl Sagan’s best-selling The Demon-Haunted World, first published in 1995. Sagan, an astronomer on a mission to improve public scientific literacy and critical thinking, was also a co-founder of the modern Skeptics movement. His works are not history books, but he occasionally invoked great scientific names of the past to get his core message across: Scientists are the incarnation of heroic anti-dogmatism and love of truth, and if there was an essential characteristic of science, it was the systematic elimination of personal biases and wishful thinking. From its early beginnings, science was thus defined by a single and universal method, which boiled down to a set of personal virtues vouching for the self-correcting nature of science.

As an illustration, Sagan paraphrased statements to this effect by Francis Bacon, a key figure of the Scientific Revolution in England, who has been called the very ‘father’ of modern science. In 1604, for example, Bacon cautioned that the “root of superstition” lay in the widespread mental habit of men who “observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other”. Sagan called this principle “observational selection”, but psychologists might say that Bacon gave a description of confirmation bias – roughly, the natural but unfortunate tendency of our minds to inflate the significance of perceptions if they confirm our beliefs. And while Sagan admitted that scientists have sometimes sinned against the ‘scientific method’ by being dogmatic and unethical, the take-home message of his writings was that such instances were only insignificant exceptions to the rule: The organizing principle of science has always been, still is, and will ever be, nothing but reason and devotion to truth.

We will see in a moment why his references to Bacon, which served the purpose of making Bacon appear like a modern ‘naturalistic’ scientist, may qualify as unintended evidence for Sagan’s own confirmation bias. In fact, other passages in Bacon’s writings, which clearly out him as a believer in things most scientists would dismiss as ‘superstition’, are pretty hard to miss. And as far as the ‘scientific method’ is concerned, Sagan also failed to address works by professional historians and historically informed philosophers of science who systematically studied the very practice of science, and in result dropped the term ‘the scientific method’ as an accurate description of what science separated from other fields of knowledge.

In 1974, Science journal in fact published an article with the peculiar title “Should the history of science be rated X?”, which seriously entertained the question if the growing consensus in the community of professional historians of science should be censored. After all, the upshot of this work, which the article stated could no longer be doubted, was that the popular image of the scientist did not stand up to scrutiny. History of science scholarship had thoroughly undermined the “professional ideal and public image of scientists as rational, open-minded investigators, proceeding methodically, grounded incontrovertibly in the outcome of controlled experiments, and seeking objectively for the truth, let the chips fall where they may”. The author, a physicist and historian, justified his implicit suggestion to censor the findings of colleagues in the mainstream history of science for pedagogic reasons, arguing that young scientists needed a moral compass and heroes to look up to – even if the heroism of these figures was largely mythical. As candidates for censorship, he further briefly mentioned historical studies revealing occult beliefs in icons of the Scientific Revolution, which, however, he downplayed as supposedly inconclusive.

But the concrete historical evidence for the occult underpinnings of the Scientific Revolution was already too strong to be dismissed, with the paranormal beliefs of Francis Bacon being a point in question. Bacon in fact suggested a wide range of squarely ‘parapsychological’ experiments, to test the effects of ‘fascination’ and ‘imagination’ – contemporary terms for modern concepts including ‘telepathy’ and ‘psychokinesis’. In a statement particularly interesting for survival researchers, Bacon was further open to the belief that

the mind, when it is withdrawn and collected into itself [...] hath some extent and latitude of prenotion, which therefore appeareth most in sleep, in extasies, and near death, and more rarely in waking apprehensions; and is induced and furthered by those abstinences and observances which make the mind most to consist in itself.

Bacon here refers to prophetic glimpses into the future, reported to occur during what we may call ‘altered states of consciousness’ – sleep, trance or ecstasy, meditation, and the process of dying. Elsewhere, Bacon admitted that questions about the nature of the ‘soul’ – including its survival after death – had previously not been investigated in a systematic manner. Possible solutions, Bacon observed, “have been not more laboriously inquired than variously reported; so as the travel therein taken, seemeth to have been rather in a maze than in a way”.

However, instead of conducting such experiments, let alone suggesting concrete areas of research especially concerning survival, Bacon nipped such scientific aspirations firmly in the bud:

But although I am of opinion, that this knowledge may be more really and soundly inquired even in nature than it hath been; yet I hold, that in the end it must be bounded by religion, or else it will be subject to deceit and delusion [...] the true knowledge of the nature and state of the soul, must come by the same inspiration that gave the substance.

In other words: Bacon here explicitly disavows ‘survival research’ – not for scientific, but for squarely theological reasons. In the spirit of his time, he demanded that knowledge about the hereafter must come not by natural but by properly supernatural means: by divine inspiration.

Bacon has been widely portrayed as the first thinker to systematically propose a modern scientific approach to nature, one supposedly unrestricted by religious dogma.

Yet, especially in regard to the question of empirical research concerning survival, we see that this is simply false. Here it’s also important to note that Bacon’s daytime job was not ‘man of science’, but Lord Chancellor and Solicitor General of England. And in his role of a high-ranking politician, Bacon again expressed his religious worries over magic – by formulating bills for the prosecution of witchcraft such as these:

Where a man conjures, or invocates wicked spirits, it is felony.
Where a man doth use or practise any manner of witchcraft, whereby any person shall be killed, wasted, or lamed in his body, it is felony.

Perhaps you are puzzled by Bacon’s prohibition to invocate wicked spirits only. But far from encouraging intercourse with good or divine spirits, early modern intellectuals considered any attempt to contact the spirit world with profound concerns. To be sure, in Bacon’s day you would have been in serious trouble if you denied the existence of immaterial souls. But that may have been nothing compared to the problems you’d gotten yourself into by telling someone you were trying to converse with them. Bacon and fellow intellectuals still subscribed to biblical authority, and scriptural prohibitions of contacting spirits – the story of the witch of Endor in the Old Testament and warnings of evil spirits camouflaging as angels in the New Testament being important examples – still determined the way mainstream scholars like Bacon thought about these things.

Hence, Bacon’s contemporary, the famous Cambridge mathematician John Dee, had every reason not to publicize his ostensible communications with angels, which he claimed to have received through crystal-gazing. When Oxford scholar Méric Casaubon published the records after Dee’s death, he in fact presented them as a case study in illicit magic or necromancy. Issuing a stern warning in the preface, Casaubon asserted that Dee’s accounts of spirits were authentic but “A Work of Darknesse”.

We will see that fears of devils and other theological concerns would often continue to motivate intellectual opposition to the study of ‘occult’ phenomena until at least the nineteenth century. In fact, it would be a grave mistake to assume that attacks on all things smacking of magic by certain prominent modern scientists were necessarily driven by sympathies with ‘scientific materialism’, let alone atheism.

And here it’s worth remembering that the very word ‘scientist’ was only coined in the 1830s, about two decades after Bacon’s death. (Before then, men of science were called ‘natural philosophers’). Many eminent scientific figures – such as physicist Michael Faraday and Darwin’s ‘bulldog’, Thomas H. Huxley – rather disliked the term and refused to call themselves so. And while we are accustomed to assume that modern experimental science has always been the domain of universities, by the time of the coinage of ‘scientist’ there were almost no university laboratories for experimental sciences like physics anywhere in the world.

In fact, modern scientific experimentalism as a collective and transparent endeavor – with findings published in professional periodicals for anyone to scrutinize – emerged as an expression of protest against the perceived dogmatism and stagnation of knowledge in the early modern universities. Pathbreaking in this respect was the establishment of private associations like the Royal Society in England in 1660, which was co-founded by a ‘father’ of modern chemistry and physics, Robert Boyle. There was probably no other natural philosopher at the time who did more to put Francis Bacon’s visions for an experimental approach to nature into common intellectual practice than Boyle, a wealthy man with important political connections. And Boyle and the early Royal Society once again show the extent to which the close entanglements between early modern science and the ‘paranormal’ were virtually written out of history.

Like Newton, Boyle was an avid practitioner of alchemy, but in contrast to Newton, he was also a strong advocate of what we now may call psychical research. For example, he supported investigations by other Fellows of the Royal Society – most notably Joseph Glanvill and Henry More – of reported apparitions, poltergeist disturbances, spirit possession and hexing. Boyle also wrote the preface to the English translation of the ‘Devil of Mascon’, a French report about a poltergeist case which had thoroughly impressed him. Not least, Boyle himself investigated the faith healer Valentine Greatrakes and initiated field research on clairvoyance or Second Sight in the Scottish Highlands. And while modern science popularizers in the ‘Skeptical’ tradition of Sagan typically cast the figure of the stereotypical scientist as a timeless debunker of ‘paranormal’ phenomena, the case of Boyle and others shows the opposite at a crucial moment in the history of modern science: Boyle and colleagues at the Royal Society tried not to debunk, but to establish the reality of the ‘paranormal’.

Here we must of course stress that Boyle and colleagues promoted these investigations explicitly as a weapon against ‘atheism’, and that their parapsychological research never became official part of Royal Society business. In fact, some Fellows like Robert Hooke, the astronomer and pioneer of modern microscopy, vocally opposed it. But neither should the Christian apologetic agenda of Boyle and fellow parapsychological researchers in the Royal Society make us assume that early modern skepticism regarding occult phenomena was informed or motivated by science, let alone that atheism or materialism were even remotely popular positions within early modern scientific communities. And if you look for dispassionate methodological dissections of these investigations by critics like Hooke, you will find nothing of the sort. Hooke’s ‘critiques’ were essentially polemical and sarcastic, and therefore hardly more ‘scientific’ than Isaac Newton’s later reported howl of despair over those taking news of a contemporary poltergeist outbreak seriously: “Oh! yee fools ... will you never have any witt, know yee not that all such things are meer cheats and impostures? Fy, fy!”.34

Newton’s own rather strong occult beliefs and practices – the study of alchemy and biblical prophecies – are well known today, and in the case of Hooke it’s also important to note that his skepticism regarding the ‘paranormal’ was rather selective as well. While he rejected the heretical investigations of Boyle and other Fellows offhand, Hooke was still a believer in ‘fascination’ and ‘imagination’ – capacities of embodied minds to act and perceive at a distance. In his ‘Lectures of Light’, for example, Hooke provided a mechanical account of such parapsychological effects.

In the case of Newton’s skepticism regarding poltergeist phenomena, it would be fair to say that he simply had no theological use for reported manifestations of supposedly evil spirits. Newton’s theology belonged to a tradition called ‘mortalism’ – a term for then heretical Christian conceptions of the mind as being essentially dependent on the body. But far from maintaining sympathies for atheism, mortalists like Newton held that the only legitimate notion of immortality was the bodily resurrection of the dead on Judgment Day. According to mortalist theologies in their strict form, mind and body were inseparable and indeed perished together at death, only to be recreated for eternal bliss or damnation in a physical hell or heaven by a supernatural act of God. Newton kept his strong but heretical mortalist faith a secret to avoid trouble, but again, we shouldn’t simply assume his religion was informed by the state of science at the time.

In Boyle’s day and indeed throughout the next two centuries to come, it was still primarily fundamental religious and associated political convictions and worries, which discouraged and practically outlawed parapsychological research perhaps more than anything else. Religion is almost certainly also the reason why Boyle and colleagues never held seances or tried other properly experimental approaches to the spirit world. In fact, for a while Boyle seriously considered taking up John Dee’s technique of crystal-gazing to communicate with spirits, but in the end his scientific curiosity was outweighed by demonological scruples.

 

Andreas Sommer, “What is the Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death?' A winning essay in the 2021 Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies contest. The paper with notes and bibliography is available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/Winning_Essays/12_Andreas_Sommer.pdf.

Confronting the obstacles: Sommer excerpt #1

Historian of science Andreas Sommer responds to the question posed in 2021 by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies: “What is the Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death?”

Summary: This essay makes the case for survival in two parts. Part 1, which draws on my work in the academic history of science, intends to clear the path for an unbiased appreciation of the empirical evidence discussed in Part 2, as well as for other essays in this contest which I presume will confront the empirical data head-on: It identifies and eliminates common obstacles in the way of recognizing the very existence of a serious survival research tradition, which began in the late 1800s and continues in the present time. In line with the consensus of perfectly mainstream history of science, I will show that the marginalization of survival research had practically nothing to do with the growth of scientific knowledge. I reconstruct striking continuities of serious scientific interest in survival from the Scientific Revolution to the present time, beginning with founders of modern science like Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle in England. I then discuss later eminent scientific figures interested in survival research, including William James, the ‘father’ of American psychology. Closely working with psychical researchers in England, James in fact conducted ground-breaking empirical investigations of spirit apparitions and mediumship, and formulated important methodological maxims of survival research.

The empirical Part 2 begins by discussing evidence from conventional biomedical sciences showing that, contrary to popular assumptions, survival-related subjective experiences – of encounters with the departed, end-of-life and near-death experiences (NDEs) – are widespread and can have strong therapeutic effects. I will then look at recent developments in neuroscience, which increasingly show that traditional ‘production’ models of mind-brain connections, which predict that consciousness is annihilated at death, are inadequate to account for recognized psychophysical anomalies such as ‘terminal lucidity’ and paradox findings of neuroimaging studies during induced mystical and NDE-type experiences. I will then discuss evidence showing that not all experiences suggestive of survival are subjective, by drawing on rigorously investigated cases of mediumship and children claiming memories of past lives. Finally, I will argue that the only rational alternatives to the assumption of personal survival are not fraud or chance coincidence, but squarely parapsychological explanations. I will conclude by arguing that there is strong evidence for personal motivation in certain categories of mediumship, which, together with certain features of well-documented cases of the reincarnation type, more than just tip the scale towards survival.

PART 1: IDENTIFYING AND REMOVING THE OBSTACLES

120 years ago, the only substantial scientific body dedicated to questions touching upon the subject at the time was the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in England. Founded in 1882 by eminent Victorian intellectuals, the SPR’s mission was to investigate various contested phenomena associated with spiritualism and other controversial beliefs and practices, “in the same spirit of exact and unimpassioned inquiry which has enabled science to solve so many problems, once not less obscure nor less hotly debated”. Members of the SPR included the leading scientists of the day, such as physics Nobel Laureates J. J. Thomson (the discoverer of the electron), and later Marie Curie. Serving as a the SPR’s president in the years 1894 to 1895 was the great Harvard psychologist and philosopher, William James, who was also a co-founder of the smaller (and initially rather passive) American SPR in 1884. Certain influential accounts have portrayed the SPR as little more than a club of self-deluded spiritualists. But as we will see shortly, SPR membership often did not even indicate interest in the question of survival in the first place.

Fast forward to the present day: The SPR still exists, and although it continues to publish research on the ‘paranormal’ in its peer-reviewed Journal and Proceedings, it is now a mere shadow of its glorious Victorian self. Today, still not all of the research published by the SPR is concerned with survival, and the society is still lacking means to train let alone employ investigators. In the USA, on the other hand, there exists a research unit, which – housed by one of the country’s most prestigious medical schools – has specialised in survival research for over half a century. Founded in 1967 at the University of Virginia by the Canadian psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, the Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) is a team of psychiatrists, neuroscientists and psychologists, who investigate a wide range of reported phenomena suggestive of survival – e.g., near-death experiences, apparitions, spirit mediumship, terminal lucidity, and children’s memories of previous lives. Applying open-minded yet critical and rigorous methodological approaches, members of DOPS have produced an astounding wealth of sophisticated research, much of which has been published in scientific and medical mainstream journals.

As I will argue in Part 2 of this essay, anybody who has carefully studied this and the vast psychical research literature produced since the 1880s (and the critical responses to it) should agree it can no longer be doubted the data suggests that something strange is going on. Obviously, the ‘paranormal’ has always attracted dubious characters, and it would be ludicrous to deny that bias, wishful thinking, fraud and errors of human perception are problems which serious researchers constantly have to grapple with. But good science should and can separate the wheat from the chaff. And as I’ll try to indicate later, a perspective which integrates these data with more conventional scientific and medical knowledge can demonstrate that they point to a coherent picture of mind-body interaction that far outstrips mainstream reductionist accounts. In short, we are dealing with pretty revolutionary stuff, clearly demonstrating that the still prevailing worldview of nineteenth century physics is in urgent need of a facelift, to put it mildly.

But ask a random scientist if he or she has ever heard of DOPS or the SPR, let alone studied any of the psychical research data published over the past 150 years. Chances are that your question will either be met with a shrug or a reference to Wikipedia entries debunking all these studies as obvious pseudoscience. In fact, sociological evidence suggests that the average scientist rarely studies original, peer- reviewed research publications on ‘paranormal’ phenomena. Like the opinions of most non-scientists, judgements by members of the ‘scientific community’ on these controversial topics seem overwhelmingly informed by secondary, popular portrayals of this research.

Accounts informing public and mainstream scientific opinion are often produced or inspired by professional ‘Skeptics’, who usually make no secret of their outright hostility to the ‘paranormal’ in all its guises. The reason I write ‘Skeptics’ in American spelling and with a capital S is to specifically refer to self-appointed gatekeepers of scientific orthodoxy, who are typically associated with the ‘Committee for Skeptical Inquiry’ (CSI, formerly CSICOP) in the US. Well organized internationally in associations for the supposed promotion of ‘science’ and ‘reason’, these self-styled experts on ‘pseudoscience’ actively maintain and cultivate links to journalists, but have often no scientific or relevant academic training. To publicly bolster their supposedly scientific mission, Skeptics organizations have recruited celebrity scientists and science popularizers as ‘Fellows’ – astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson, Harvard psychologists Steven Pinker, and the ‘Science Guy’, engineer Bill Nye, are just some of the most prominent names in the US. And while Skeptics portray their widely publicized debunking exercises as ‘investigations’ and ‘inquiry’, their targets have documented grave misrepresentations of the targeted research, along with other serious acts of intellectual dishonesty.  

Sociologists of science studying marginalized disciplines have independently confirmed these serious accusations: Regardless of the quality of scientific methods employed by unorthodox scientists, professional Skeptics have misrepresented even rigorous research as dangerous quackery, as soon as it produces findings suggesting the existence of ‘paranormal’ phenomena. Skeptical activists and their followers typically don’t err on the side of responsible caution, but are out to eradicate belief in the ‘paranormal’ whatever it takes – consciously destroying reputations and careers of serious, qualified scientists in due course.  In the face of well-documented instances of unethical conduct, scholars who studied the strategies by which ‘Skeptics’ and their supporters powerfully shape public opinion for decades have expressed concern. Sociologists of science Harry Collins and Robert Evans, for example, felt it was their duty to speak up and say:

this is wrong – it is a dereliction of scientific duty. After all, among other things, scientists are there to help us know whether there are paranormal effects [...], but their input should be based on their best scientific efforts; ex-cathedra statements, or dirty tricks, are of no special value, nor should scientists pass their responsibility to outside groups.  

Neither the general public nor scientists normally read sociological studies, any more than psychical research periodicals. It’s therefore pretty uncontroversial to say that your average scientist is usually unaware of the actually relevant research on the ‘paranormal’ – and the not exactly scientific ways by which the supposed consensus of the ‘scientific community’ regarding the non-existence of ‘psychic’ phenomena has been formed. This has certainly been my personal experience as well, in countless discussions I had with scientist friends and acquaintances over the last decades.

Most instructive in this regard were almost daily encounters with elite academics from a wide range of scientific backgrounds during my three years as a Research Fellow at Churchill College at the University of Cambridge. The Fellowship was awarded in recognition of my doctoral studies, which reconstructed the simultaneous emergence of experimental psychology and psychical research in nineteenth century Europe and US.  Being a Fellow at a typical Oxbridge college is a little like being part of a monastery, as you live on college grounds and take your meals with other Fellows. Modeled on the MIT in the US, Churchill is one of the youngest and most secular Cambridge colleges, and its research and teaching staff are predominantly natural and applied scientists. Overwhelmingly, when I told scientists – including Fellows from other Oxbridge colleges and visitors from universities abroad – about my historical research, I had the impression of a general open-mindedness regarding my historical work.

Usually, however, there was considerable surprise when I mentioned that serious research on psychic phenomena was still going on. But as far as I can tell, even the few whose interest appeared sufficiently strong to request some of this literature never actually read it.

I was particularly stumped by several Fellows who told me in private of their own strange experiences. For example, one stressed he didn’t believe in spirits or any other ‘paranormal nonsense’. But then he shared what he said was the most striking experience of his life: he claimed that he knew his son had just died, at the very moment he had in fact perished in a car accident in London. Another senior scientist at Cambridge claimed that his wife saw apparitions of the dead on a regular basis. But even in these and other instances, there was not the slightest interest to study the literature, let alone to conduct research first-hand – or at least help bring critical but open-minded scientific attention to such experiences into the academic mainstream.

Another group of academic experts whose very job it is to help us separate the wheat from the chaff are professional philosophers of science, notably those trying to work out formal criteria distinguishing legitimate science from pseudo-science. But this literature hardly inspires confidence either. Seven years ago, I guest-edited a special section in a leading journal for the history and philosophy of science, with articles by fellow scholars working on psychical research in the history of science. In my introduction, I surveyed the professional literature and found that philosophers quite often literally didn’t know what they were writing about when it came to psychical research: primary sources such as original studies published by trained scientists in peer- reviewed organs were bypassed, and instead there was an unquestioning reliance on highly problematic secondary accounts popularized by media-savvy Skeptical activists and their supporters.

To illustrate ambiguous attitudes by philosophers of science to the topic, I also quoted from a private letter by Karl Popper, one of the most prominent philosophers of science of all time. Turns out that Popper himself was convinced of the existence of ‘paranormal’ phenomena, but absolutely rejected the idea of studying them scientifically – without bothering to offer a rational explanation why.

Knowing my audience, I deliberately didn’t make any claims about the reality of psychic phenomena in my review, but simply focused on the philosophical reception of parapsychological research. Still, when I submitted the proofs for print, I felt a little nervous and started bracing myself for the expected onslaught.

But what happened? Practically nothing. No barrage of emails hurling abuse, no constructive critiques, no expressions of agreement.

It seems, then, that you can’t just throw the data at scientists and other professional thinkers, expecting them to engage with this controversial material the way they engage with their own, conventional research specialities. Of course, serious research requires time and funding. So the situation may change if we could provide scientists with real career opportunities and some projection from the machinations of Skeptical activists and their journalistic supporters.

And I’m convinced that outright hostility to this research is not nearly as widespread as indifference. Not much has changed in this regard since 1869, when William James began complaining about responses by most of his fellow scientists to the reported marvels of spiritualism: James (who never came to fully believe in personal survival and was critical of the excesses of spiritualist beliefs) found that it was almost impossible to move scientists to actually investigate these empirical indications for survival.

 

Andreas Sommer, “What is the Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death? Submitted to the Bigelow Institute 2021 contest on this topic. The paper with all notes and bibliography is available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/Winning_Essays/12_Andreas_Sommer.pdf.

Jane Goodall's abiding experience of God

Jane Goodall writes in her autobiography Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey: “Years of war, when those who are loved are dying every day, are filled with powerful psychic experiences, and Vanne [Jane’s mother], who has always been psychic (though she never talks about it), certainly had her share. I have already told of her premonition of danger that saved our lives when the German plan dropped its bombs on our holiday village. The other incident occurred earlier in the war. She was taking a bath. Suddenly she called out, loudly and urgently: ‘Rex!’ Rex was my father’s younger brother. She began to sob bitterly, tears pouring down her face. My father, on leave, rushed in to see that on earth was going on. ‘Whatever is the matter?’ he asked her. ‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ she sobbed. ‘I only know it’s Rex.’ Later she learned that she had cried out at the time Rex was shot down and killed in combat over Rhodesia. Hugo’s mother [Hugo was Jane’s first husband] had a similar experience when her husband’s boat was torpedoed in the war. She was in England, and the ship sank thousands of miles away. It was at night and she woke up terrified, hearing the engines of a German plane overhead, and the sounds of heavy gunfire. She began to cry, knowing her husband was in danger.” [165-166]

 

“During the first six months or so after [my husband] Derek’s death, I often felt his presence. I had a strong conviction that in his spirit state he could not see or hear—or perhaps it was that he could not feel the things he had loved in earthly life—the sea, the pounding waves, ballet, the graceful hand-over-hand swinging of the young chimpanzees playing in the trees. And I felt very strongly that if I looked and listened with great concentration, and paid attention to every detail, he would be able to enjoy, for a little longer, the things he had loved—through my eyes, through my ears. Perhaps it was fancy, but it comforted me, the thought that he was there, that I could do something for him. And then, after a while, as though he knew that I was all right, that my days had, indeed, brought sufficient strength, I felt his presence less and less often. I knew it was time for him to move on, and I did not try to call him back.” [167]

 

Goodall writes of holocaust survivor Henri Landwirth who in his autobiography, Gift of Life, says that in the death camps “he lost touch with his spiritual side, ‘abandoning God, as I had felt abandoned.’ How did he recover his faith in in God? How has he reconciled the unspeakable cruelties of the death camps and the suffering of innocent children, stricken with some terrible disease, with the existence of a just God, a caring God of love? Henri writes: ‘Where does a heart truly broken, a spirit hopelessly abandoned, find hope? What exists within a human being that allows for survival amidst such devastation? It must be God. . . . Who else could it be?’” [260]

 

At the end of her autobiography, published in 1999, Jane Goodall concludes: “It is hard now, after twenty-five years, to recapture that moment of ecstasy in the Notre Dame cathedral—although the experience has never left me . . .. The impact was so powerful, I suppose, because it came at a time when so much was changing in my life, when I was vulnerable. When I was, without knowing it, needing to be reconnected with the Spirit Power I call God—or perhaps I should say being reminded of my connection. The experience, whatever else it did, put me back on track; it forced me to rethink the meaning of my life on earth.

 

“Only quite recently did I begin to wonder whether there had been some specific message for me, wordlessly conveyed by the powerful music, a message that I absorbed, but was not yet ready or able to interpret. And now, through experience and reflection, I believe that there was indeed, a message. A very simple one: Each one of us matters, has a role to play, and makes a difference. Each one of us must take responsibility for our own lives, and above all, show respect and love for living things around us, especially each other. Together we must reestablish our connections with the natural world and with the Spiritual Power that is around us. And then we can move, triumphantly, joyously, into the final stage of human evolution—spiritual evolution.

 

“Is it arrogant, presumptuous, to think that I might have heard the Voice of God? Not at all. We all do—that ‘still, small voice’ that we speak of, telling us what we ought to do. That, I think, is the Voice of God. Of course, it is usually called the voice of conscience, and if we feel more comfortable with that definition, that’s fine. Whatever we call it, the important thing, I think, is to try to do what the voice tells us. My experience in the cathedral of Notre Dame was dramatic, awakening. It is the still, small voice that I hear now—and it bids me to share. And that is what I try to do. [266-267]

 

Jane Goodall, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey (1999, Warner Books). Excerpts selected by Robert Traer. 

Experiences of Jane Goodall's deceased husband

Jane Goodall writes in her autobiography, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey, of the death of her second husband, Derek Bryceson: “A week later I went to Gombe. It was months since I had been there, and the field staff were really upset at the news about Derek, and understandably concerned for their own future. [Derek raised funds for Jane’s research and handled the necessary government permissions.] I was hoping to find healing and strength in the ancient forest. Hoping that contact with the chimpanzees, so accepting of what life brings them, would ease my grief.

 

The first two days were desperately sad, especially in the evening when I was all alone in the house where Derek and Grub [her son by a previous marriage] and I had known so much happiness. Which was peopled, now, by ghosts. And then on the third morning something happened. After my lonely cup of coffee, during which I sat in melancholy sadness and watched the changing colors of the lake, I set off to find the chimps. And as I climbed the steep slope to the feeding station, suddenly I found I was smiling. I was on the part of the trail that Derek, with his paralyzed legs, had found so difficult and tiring. [Derek’s airplane was shot down during WWII injuring his legs.] But now it was I, the earthbound one, who was struggling in the heat—he was light and free. He was teasing me so that I laughed out loud.

 

“That night something even more extraordinary happened. I was lying in the bed we had shared, listening to the sound of the waves on the shore, the crickets, all the familiar night sounds. I did not expect to sleep, yet sleep came quickly. And then, sometime during the night, I woke. Did I wake? Anyway, Derek was there. He was smiling and very, very much alive. He spoke to me. It seemed then that he spoke for a long time. He told me important things, things I should know, things I should do. And even as he spoke, my body, all at once, went rigid and the blood rushed and pounded in my ears. Roaring, roaring. Roaring through my rigid body. Slowly I relaxed. ‘Well anyway,’ I said, when I could, perhaps aloud, ‘at least I know you’re really here.’ And almost at once it all came back. My body went rigid again and was filled again with roaring. I remember thinking ‘I must be dying’ but I was not at all frightened. And when it stopped, I remembered nothing all—only that Derek had been there, that he had a message for me, that it was joyful. Nothing more. None of the wisdom. And almost immediately I fell into a deep sleep. [161-162]

 

“I had always believed that there is a state of being-ness that does not end with physical death; I had always known that mind could communicate with mind across distance; what happened after Derek’s death made me suspect that mind can communicate with mind across time. I do not feel the need to prove this to anyone: there are many who feel the same but we are ill-equipped by Western education for the task of convincing unbelievers of the reality of the spirit. Science demands objective factual evidence—proof; spiritual experience is subjective and leads to faith. It is enough, for me, that my faith gives me an inner peace and brings meaning to my own life. Yet I do want to share my experiences with those who want to hear. So let me relate two more incidents, both of which occurred on the night of Derek’s death. Both involve children, my own son, Grub [nickname for Hugo Eric Louis van Lawick], who was in England at the time, and Lulu, a little girl who lived in Dar es Salaam.

 

“At the time of Derek’s illness, Grub, thirteen years old, was a boarder (his choice) at a little preparatory school near Bournemouth. He did not know that Derek was close to death. Well, the night that Derek was dying, Grub was awakened from his sleep by a vivid dream. In his dream Olly [Jane’s aunt living with her mother, Vanne, at their house in Bournemouth] arrived at the school and spoke to him. ‘Grub, I have something very sad to tell you. Derek died last night.’ He went to sleep again, but once more was awakened by the dream, and Olly again repeated her message. When it happened a third time, he became distressed, and could not sleep. He actually went to the school matron to tell her he was having terrible nightmares, though he did not tell her what they were.

 

“In the morning Olly arrived at the school. Vanne was in Germany with me, having arrived the day before after an urgent feeling that she needed to see Derek [receiving treatment for cancer in a German hospital]. Olly took Grub outside into the garden and told him she had some sad news. ’I know,’ he said. ‘Derek is dead, isn’t he.’ Olly was stunned—until he told his dream.

 

“Lulu, the same age as Grub at the time, suffered from Down’s syndrome. Derek and I had been great friends with her parents and visited their house frequently. Indeed, when first I went back to Dar es Salaam after Derek’ death I stayed with them, unable to bear my own empty house. Derek was good with children, and Lulu loved him. The night he died, sometime in the small hours, she woke up and she ran along to where Mary, her nanny, was sleeping.

 

‘Mary,’ she said, urgently. ‘Please wake up. That man has come, and he likes me. He is smiling.’ Mary, have roused, told Lulu she had been dreaming, and to go back to bed. But lulu persisted. ‘Please come, Mary. I want to show you he is smiling.’ In the end Mary sat up, resigned.

 

‘Lulu, tell me who you mean. Who is this man who is smiling at you?’

 

‘I don’t remember his name,’ said Lulu. ‘But he comes with Jane, and he walks with a stick. And he likes me. He really likes me.’” [163-165]

 

 

Jane Goodall, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey (1999, Warner Books). Excerpts selected by Robert Traer. 

Jane Goodall's spiritual confirmation

In her autobiography Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey, Jane Goodall writes:

 

“Many years ago, in the spring of 1974, I visited the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. There were not many people around, and it was quiet and still inside. I gazed in silent awe at the great Rose Window, glowing in the morning sun. All at once the cathedral was filled with a huge volume of sound: an organ playing magnificently for a wedding taking place in a distant corner. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. I had always loved the opening theme; but in the cathedral, filling the entire vastness, it seemed to enter and possess my whole self. It was as though the music itself was alive.

 

“That moment, a suddenly captured moment of eternity, was perhaps the closest I have ever come to experiencing ecstasy, the ecstasy of the mystic. How could I believe it was the chance gyrations of bits of primeval dust that led up to that moment in time—the cathedral soaring to the sky; the collective inspiration and faith of those who caused it to be built; the advent of Bach himself; the brain, his brain, that translated truth into music; and the mind that could, as mine did then, comprehend the whole inexorable progression of evolution? Since I cannot believe that this was the result of chance, I have to admit anti-chance. And so, I must believe in a guiding power in the universe—in other worlds, I must believe in God.” [pages xiii-xiv]

 

Through the years I have encountered people and been involved in events that have had huge impact, knocked off rough corners, lifted me to the heights of joy, plunged me into the depth of sorrow and anguish, taught me to laugh, especially at myself—in other words, my life experiences and the people with whom I shared them have been my teachers. At time I have felt like a helpless bit of flotsam, at one moment stranded in a placed backwater that knew not, cared not, that I was there, then swept out to be hurled about in an unfeeling sea. At other times I felt I was being sucked under by strong, unknowing currents toward annihilation. Yet somehow, looking back through my life, with its downs and its ups, its despairs and its joys, I believe that I was following some overall plan. To be sure there were many times when I strayed from the course, but I was never truly lost. It seems to me now that the flotsam speck was being gently nudged or fiercely blown along a very specific route by an unseen, intangible Wind. The flotsam speck that was—that is—me.” [2-3]

 

After World War II Jane began to attend courses on the teachings of Theosophy. She writes: “I was especially drawn to the concepts of karma and reincarnation, because I was still trying very hard to make sense of the horrors of the war. If karma was operating, Hitler and the Nazis would pay for their crimes in some future life, while those who were killed in battle or tortured in the death camps may have been paying for former transgressions. They would then either be reborn to a better life or to some kind of heaven or paradise. I had never been able to believe that God would give us poor frail humans only one chance at making it—that we would be assigned to some kind of hell because we failed during one experience of mortal life.” [32]

 

Jane’s ecstatic experience in Notre Dame occurred in 1974, after she had divorced her first husband and the father of her only child. Later in her autobiography she asks: “Was there a guiding force in the universe, a creator of matter and thus of life itself? Was there a purpose to life on planet earth? And if so, what role were we human supposed to play in the overall picture? In particular, what was my role to be.”

 

She responds to these questions in her next paragraph. “There are really only two ways, it seems to me, in which we can think about our existence here on earth. We either agree with Macbeth that life is nothing more than a ‘tale told by an idiot,’ a purposeless emergence of life-forms including the clever, greedy, selfish, and unfortunately destructive species that we call Homo sapiens—the ‘evolutionary goof.’ Or we believe that, as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put it, ‘There is something afoot in the universe, something that looks like gestation and birth.’ In other words, a plan a purpose to it all.

 

“As I thought about these ultimate questions during the trying time of my divorce, I realized that my experience in the forest, my understanding of the chimpanzees, had given me a new perspective. I personally was utterly convinced that there was a great spiritual power that we call God, Allah, or Brahma, although I knew, equally certainly, that my finite mind could never comprehend its form or nature.” [92-95]

Excerpts from Jane Goodall, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey, (1999, Warner Books), selected by Robert Traer.

Entering the void: Fenwick excerpt #20

Honorable Judges, before you close this case, we would like to call again Dr Peter Fenwick to share evidence from one final witness:

Dr. Fenwick: Alain Forget is a philosopher who lives in Monaco where he teaches a small group of students. He began meditating from the age of 20. He was 21 when he met his first Teacher. During this phase, he would meditate in many of France's cathedrals. His medication method was to observe his mind and to let go of thoughts as they arose.

Alain Forget

His second Teacher is a remarkable man who spent a number of years in his early teens with a Tibetan monk in Tibet. He did not return to France until his late adolescence. Forget talks to him regularly.

Forget has experienced what he calls entering the void. He has also written a book titled How to Get Out of this World Alive (Forget, 2008), in which he describes his philosophy. He has developed, he says, a number of methods, which can clear his students’ past mental traumas and allow them to reach what he believes is a higher level of consciousness, an area of no space, no time.

Those who have entered this void, he says, have a continuous core of joy at their center. They have lost their overwhelming sense of ‘I’ and their consciousness is no longer identified with their ego. They seem to be at a different level.

Forget is able to "transmit light" to his students. When he does this, he says he enters a different mental state of no space, no time in which others see him as radiating light, love, and energy. His students perceive light of various colors surrounding him and feel energy running within them (Fenwick, 2019). He describes this state as ‘dying to his ego’. When Forget ‘dies’, which he does on a daily basis, he explores the 'no space no time' dimension of the post-death world, sometimes with his teacher.

Forget has allowed himself to be examined by scientists when he was in this state. They looked at changes in his brain function, via EEG and fMRI, as he gave light. They also researched how his student’s brains were responding as he transmitted it (Fenwick et al., 2018).

The results of these examinations show that Forget’s brain activity changes dramatically when he gives light. Faster brain rhythms, high gamma activity, were seen at a high amplitude, spreading widely across his brain. This is a
distinctive and very unusual picture. Analysis of his brain and of a student’s brain together suggested that during the transfer of light, their brains’ activity became entangled. It was apparent that Forget was driving certain areas of the student’s brain, and that the student was responding with an alteration to Forget’s brain areas. (Fenwick et al 2018).

Since 'entering the void', Forget says that he is no longer afraid of death. When he stands back and enters the void, he becomes multi-dimensional. At times, he explores 'no space no time' with his teacher.

These levels correlate with another state of being which he enters and which he says has a special quality to it. He also states that at his physical death he will permanently enter this 'no space no time' area which he defines as the area into which all humans who have entered the void will go. But, he insists, this area has nothing to do with time and space.

So here is a man, Your Honor, who says he has experienced “death” on many occasions, and who is able to describe no-time-no-space (the afterlife) in detail on his return through the limitations of his current filter [his physical body and mind].

Judge: I see that the Counsel for the skeptics wishes to raise a question.

Counsel for the skeptics: Your Honor, this is all hokum-pokum, woo-woo, all disturbed brain function

Dr. Fenwick: It has all been recorded on EEGs and fMRIs (Fenwick et al., 2018). Forget, like certain other individuals (Martin, 2019), has developed special aptitudes: the light he gives and the experience of a refined mental state which correlates with very unusual brain functioning, the alteration of his filter. This has been shown and verified scientifically. He has the capacity to transfer this light to many people near him and at a distance. That is not hokum.

Judge: What say you to this?

Counsel for the skeptics: These phenomena are not recognized by science.

Dr. Fenwick: Many scientists accept that our present reductionist science is not wrong but incomplete, and that it cannot answer all the anomalies ("Galileo Commission Report", 2019), especially unknown energy level anomalies, which are found and experienced.

Judge: I find the case proved, on the grounds of being beyond reasonable doubt. Actually, it adds momentum to my previous call, for a new science of consciousness, which remains open and valid.

 

Fenwick, P. (2019). Shining Light on Transcendence: The unconventional journey of a Neuroscientist. White Crow Books.

Fenwick, P., Di Bernardi Luft, C., Ioannides, A., & Bhattacharya, J. (2018). Neural Correlates of Induced Light Experience during Meditation: A Pilot Hyperscanning Study. Neuroquantology, 16(12), 76-86. https://doi.org/10.14704/nq.2018.16.12.1318.

Forget, A. (2008). How to get out of this world alive (1st ed.) Lulu.

Galileo Commission Report. “Galileo Commission: Expanding the Scope of Science”. (2019). Retrieved 1 July 2021, from https://galileocommission.org/report/. 

Martin, J. (2019). The Finders. Integration Press.

 

“To Be And Not To Be. This is The Answer: Consciousness Survives,” essay for the 2021 Bigelow essay contest submitted by Dr Peter Fenwick & Dr Pier-Francesco Moretti, Dr Vasileios Basios, and Martin Redfern. The complete essay with footnotes is available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.