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Wednesday, April 13, 2022

Sample "before cases": Nahm excerpt #9

From a scientific perspective, numerous CORT have a vulnerable point: They had already been solved by members of the involved families or other local people before the researchers who investigated and published the case reports appeared on the scene. Hence, when the two families had already met and talked to each other, it is possible that the information obtained in the later interviews had been retrofitted, embellished, or otherwise contorted to present a respectable case. Seeking to avoid these problems, CORT researchers are especially intrigued when they learn about cases in which a child’s statements about the remembered life were documented before the case was solved. Retrospective tampering is much more difficult and unlikely in these cases, thereby rendering their essential features much more authentic. These important cases are called before-cases.

To date, I am aware of 31 published reports of before-cases. On their travels through India, Stevenson, Shroder, and Pasricha followed up such a case, visiting 24-year-old Sunita Chandak and her family. The case was originally solved by Indian journalist Padmakar Joshi when Sunita was five years old, and Stevenson independently investigated it later.

Sunita was born in a town named Verni Kotha. At the age of four, she explained she came from a village called Belgaon and insisted on being taken there. Her father, however, had never heard of such a village. After she provided further information about it, her father contacted Joshi and asked him for help in finding a matching location. The latter identified 28 villages named Belgaon in the region, nine of which appeared to fit the rough description given by Sunita. Her parents took her to three of these Belgaons in the course of several months, but each time, Sunita claimed these weren’t the correct one. Thereafter, Joshi published a public note on Sunita’s case along with some of her statements. And indeed, a reader from one of the remaining Belgaons recognized several items that matched a fitting family: A girl named Shanta Kalmegh had died 24 years before Sunita’s birth at the age of six. When Sunita’s family took her to this Belgaon in 1979, a town 90 miles away and requiring multiple bus changes to be reached, she immediately identified it as the correct one. She recognized the Kalmegh house and family members. Moreover, because Shanta had died about 30 years previously, Sunita correctly described numerous details of this house and the neighborhood that had been present at the time but no longer existed. The Kalmegh family eventually became convinced that Sunita was Shanta reborn, and a lifelong friendship commenced. When Stevenson and his team visited Sunita in 1998, Joshi also joined them. Sunita was now married and lived with her husband, having children of her own. But she still maintained close relationships with both parents whom she called her “Verni Kotha parents” and her “Belgaon parents.”

Below, I briefly summarize two other CORT that are among the most compelling and best documented before-cases. One of them is the American case of Ryan Hammons of Oklahoma.

When Ryan began to speak in 2009, he talked about a previous life and a family he had in Hollywood. He explained that when he died he saw an awesome bright light that one should go to, a feature familiar from Western NDEs. Ryan would often cry and beg to be taken to Hollywood to see the people he loved and missed. When his mother Cyndi bought books about Hollywood, he stated he knew some of the people displayed in them. In a picture of a movie showing many people, he pointed to one of the actors, saying “Mama, that guy’s me.” At that stage, Cyndi contacted Jim Tucker, Stevenson’s successor at the University of Virginia, because she was looking for help in identifying the apparently quite unknown actor for whom no name was given. From then on, the case developed intriguingly. Cyndi Hammons and Tucker were in constant contact, documenting many more statements made by Ryan. They were furthermore in contact with film producers who hired an archival footage consultant who finally succeeded in identifying the actor in question. His name was Morris Kolinsky, but he later called himself Marty Martyn. This man tried his luck as a dancer and actor, but finally ended up running a successful talent agency in Hollywood. He died 40 years before Ryan was born. In photographs, the boy recognized several people known to Martyn, and the documented descriptions of the buildings that had been “his” home and office proved to be correct. Even before Marty Martyn was identified, Cyndi Hammons had recorded no less than 55 statements that perfectly matched his life.

The second case to be summarized concerns a young Sri Lankan girl named Gnanatilleka Baddewithana. It was investigated and solved by Dr. H.H.S. Nissanka, who always ensured that he was accompanied by academics and other esteemed personalities from the area. Nissanka vividly described the course of his investigations in a book. He tape-recorded his most important interviews and hired a photographer to take pictures of the most significant events, such as Gnanatilleka’s first meeting with members of the family she claimed to have been part of.

Gnanatilleka was born in 1956 in a remote settlement in the Central Sri Lankan highlands located about 15 miles from the town she remembered having lived in. She made dozens of statements about this past life that could be verified after the matching previous personality, a boy who died at the age of 13, was discovered by Nissanka in 1960. The two families hadn’t known each other before and were initially quite disinclined to participate in the investigation. When finally introduced to several members of her previous family one by one in a separate room of a guesthouse, Gnanatilleka identified all of them correctly without being asked leading questions. She also showed affectionate behavior towards them—with one exception: She became angry and fearful when the brother of the previous personality entered the room. This fitted: These brothers had a hostile relationship with each other. The photographs included in Nissanka’s book impressively document the behavior of four-year-old Gnanatilleka when she met all these people for the first time; the entire episode was also tape-recorded.

Ian Stevenson later investigated her case as well, but completely independently of Nissanka. Nevertheless, Stevenson’s report matches Nissanka’s report, and he added further pieces of information. The case can therefore be regarded as quite authentic.

Michael Nahm is a German biologist and parapsychologist whose psi research has focused on terminal lucidity, near-death experiences, cases of the reincarnation type, physical mediumship, hauntings, the history of parapsychology, and various other riddles of the mind and the evolution of life. In 2018 he accepted an appointment at the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene (IGPP) (Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health) in Freiburg, Germany. His publications are available at http://www.michaelnahm.com/publications-and-downloads and his Bigelow essay may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Footnotes have been deleted in these excerpts but are available in his text posted on the Bigelow website.

Tuesday, April 12, 2022

Emotions and identification: Nahm excerpt #8

Following Stevenson’s footsteps through the mountains surrounding Beirut, you’ll meet Suzanne Ghanem. Here is a short summary of her case:

Suzanne Ghanem

As soon as she could speak at the age of 16 months, she’d pull the phone off the hook as if trying to talk into it. Again and again, she said “Hello, Leila?” Later, Suzanne told her parents she was actually called Hanan and provided ample further information about her supposed previous life. She even scribbled a six-digit telephone number of her family before she had learned to read or write. But the number didn’t work. Nevertheless, when an acquaintance of Suzanne’s family made inquiries in the town she claimed to belong to, a Hanan matching Suzanne’s numerous statements was identified. Even the phone number was almost right: Suzanne had only transposed the last two digits. However, the two families were entirely unknown to each other. The day before Hanan died after a critical operation, she tried to reach her daughter Leila on the phone—in vain. When little Suzanne met Hanan’s former husband for the first time at the age of five, he being a complete stranger to her in conventional terms, she immediately recognized him as “her” husband and forged a strong relationship with him. When she visited him, the little girl sat on his lap and rested her head against his chest. From her home, she’d call him three times a day. Obviously, this caused a bit of a strain in this man’s new family life because his second wife wasn’t too pleased with the constant phone calls from a five-year-old who insisted on being her husband’s first wife. Twenty years later, Suzanne was still unmarried and called Hanan’s former husband “maybe more than once a week”.

But this is only one example. Tom Shroder, author of Old Souls, was particularly impressed by the abundance of CORT in Lebanon, where new cases worthy of investigation seemed to pop up at every turn. They were just normal. Visiting India, you’ll meet seven-year-old Preeti in a difficult to reach end-of-the-road village.

As soon as she could speak, Preeti explained to her siblings that “this is your house, not my house. These are your parents, not mine.” She provided further information about the life of a girl named Sheila who died in a car accident. Ultimately, when Preeti was four, a matching family was identified in the village she claimed to belong to. When Sheila’s father paid Preeti his first visit to her home—unannounced and again, as a complete stranger to this girl in conventional terms—she recognized him, clung to him, and insisted so stubbornly on going with this stranger to their alleged former home that her parents eventually agreed.

Strong emotions and a stubborn identification with the previous personality are not unusual in CORT. In one particularly moving case, the CORT subject married the widow of the man whose life he remembered as soon as he was grown up; he even had children with his previous wife again. But also when the children talk about the death of the person whose life they claim to remember, they may exhibit strong emotions and identifications. Indian psychologist Satwant Pasricha, who

Satwant Pasricha

studied dozens of CORT and joined Stevenson and Shroder on their travels through India, arranging most of their trips, commented about a little girl who remembered the life of another girl who fell into a well and drowned:

“When she talked about her memories of dying [...] I could see she was really reliving the terror of it. You can’t quantify that, but that was the sort of thing that persuaded me these stories might be real.”

Pasricha was not the only scientist who accompanied Stevenson during his decades of research, or who performed similar research without his help. In India, for example, Professor P. Pal investigated the case of a girl named Sukla Gupta before Stevenson was able to investigate the case himself.

Sukla remembered the life of a mother who died leaving a small baby behind her, Minu. Her last thoughts were concerned with who would be taking care of Minu. Even before Sukla spoke about her previous life, she would cradle a pillow or a piece of wood in her arms, calling it “Minu”. When Sukla later provided sufficient information to allow identification of Minu’s family and was eventually reunited with all of them including Minu, she was overwhelmed with emotion.

Pal concluded the article about his investigation with these thoughts about Sukla’s behavior, sympathizing with the reincarnation model:

“How else one can explain [her] emotions in the presence of Minu, who is eight years her senior, or wifely feelings for a man of 42 years in a girl under six [...] A girl of five cannot be tutored to simulate these feelings and that too not for an hour or two but for days and months.”

Monday, April 11, 2022

Old Souls: Nahm excerpt #7

Of all survival phenomena, CORT attained the highest survival score. Hence, they constitute the best available evidence for survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. Furthermore, they offer better research prospects than ADCs, NDEs, mental mediumship or other survival phenomena.

Therefore, I will discuss the fascinating phenomenology of CORT in more detail, highlighting numerous important facets. In doing so, I will treat reports of CORT as authentic in Ian Stevenson’s sense.* Accepting CORT reports as authentic in the present context is useful because the eyewitness reports might simply be authentic and correspond to what really happened—and explanatory models for a given phenomenon must be able to provide a theoretical explanation covering the full phenomenology described, or to provide good reasons for rejecting the assumed notion of authenticity.

As mentioned earlier, studies of CORT have chiefly been conducted by Stevenson. His books are packed with technical details about how the interviews with the children and their families were performed, but also with tables and considerations about the strengths and the weaknesses of each studied case, and hundreds of exotic names of people, towns, and villages that are difficult to memorize for readers who are used to Western names. As a result, most of his books share the reputation of being a rather dry read.

For readers not yet familiar with the literature on CORT, I consider the book Old Souls written by award-winning journalist Tom Shroder to be the most captivating introduction to Stevenson’s work. In 1997 and 1998, Shroder accompanied Stevenson on research trips to Lebanon and India—and then skillfully composed a lively account of these travels. Another advantage of his account is that the reader learns about Stevenson’s work from an impartial observer’s perspective, provided by somebody with no specific agenda to promote parapsychology and/or reincarnation.

Nevertheless, Shroder fleshed out the names of the children and their kin with substance and emotion, and evoked visual imagery of settlements so remote that it is impossible to imagine how difficult it was to reach them when just reading Stevenson’s matter-of-fact texts. As it would hardly have been possible to arrange appointments with potential interviewees in these locations, Stevenson simply drove to his points of interest, hoping for the best. In Lebanon, he passed bombed villages and ruins inhabited by his informants, and climbed narrow, vertiginous mountain roads leading to hamlets rarely visited by strangers of whatever kind.

In India, he spent hours and hours amidst the packed bedlam of Indian roads, traffic jams, dirt, and poverty, crouching patiently in the car’s backseat. Travelling 75 miles to a village by car might take six hours. The reception from the families they visited was sometimes undisguisedly hostile and aggressive. Threatening eyes would stare at Stevenson, Shroder, and their companions: Why would rich Westerners visit such poor places, asking uncomfortable questions that evoke unwanted emotions without even offering adequate presents or money? Have they come to take our child away?

In contrast to what is sometimes purported by critics of Stevenson’s work—more on that later—the interviewers frequently encountered reluctance, downplaying of children’s memories, sad emotions about bygone times, sobbing children and parents, already-strained family ties under pressure, and all this intertwined with one prominent topic: death.

One might also wonder: Was Stevenson, a trained psychiatrist who had even published a book on psychiatric examination in 1969, really so naïve that he exposed himself to all this stress and danger for four decades without ever realizing that every case he investigated rested on misinterpretation and fraud, as some of his critics presume?

Finally, Shroder’s book serves as a brilliant introduction to CORT for one more reason: In the course of his travels with Stevenson, he encountered practically all aspects of CORT that are important for identifying the best explanatory model for them, the crucial issue to be discussed in Chapter 4 of this essay. Therefore, let me now take you on a short trip through Lebanon and India with Stevenson and Shroder, stopping every once in a while to introduce important aspects of CORT.

*Stevenson writes: “By authentic, I mean that the reports given to investigators by informants and then set out by myself describe events with satisfactory closeness to the events as they really happened. [...] It is, in principle, no different from the striving of lawyers to reconstruct the events of a crime [...] to understand what really happened in the past.”

Saturday, April 9, 2022

Cases of the reincarnation type: Nahm excerpt #6

Although Westerners may be more familiar with NDEs than with cases of the reincarnation type (CORT), people who claim to remember previous lives are not at all uncommon even in the West. In general, cases involving young children who speak spontaneously about past lives are most compelling because they are less prone to being created artificially than cases involving adults, be it purposefully or involuntarily.

A famous CORT unfolded in the early 1930s when a little Indian girl named Shanti Devi claimed to remember the life of a Lugdi Devi who had lived in Mathura, 90 miles from Shanti’s present home in Delhi. Shanti provided numerous details about the life of Lugdi. After some of her statements had been verified, the case stirred such attention that Mahatma Gandhi established an official government committee to probe her claims. Shanti had never been to Mathura at that time, so the committee took her there and observed her reactions closely. In Mathura, Shanti recognized several people known to Lugdi, knew the way to Lugdi’s home, and showed impressive knowledge about the interior of the building, especially of its state several years ago. Shanti even disclosed where Lugdi had hidden money—something only known by Lugdi and Lugdi’s widowed husband who accompanied the committee. He was just as surprised as the others by Shanti’s behavior and knowledge.

Systematic field investigations of CORT were begun in the 1960s by Ian Stevenson. He traveled the entire planet for four decades looking for children who claimed to remember a past life. As a result, he published dozens of scientific articles as well as eight comprehensive books in which he reported his most remarkable findings from India, Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Lebanon, Turkey, Africa, the Americas, and Europe. Researchers have now documented more than 2,500 CORT. In typical cases, young children begin to talk about a past life between the age of two and five. In CORT studies, the child is usually referred to as the “subject”, and the person whose life they claim to remember is the “previous personality”. If a deceased person who matches the child’s statements can be identified, a case is considered “solved”. If a satisfactory identification is not possible, the case remains “unsolved”. In later years, often between the ages of five and eight, the subject’s memories of a past life start to fade. Still, numerous CORT subjects have retained some memories into early adulthood and even well into later adulthood. These basic patterns apply to CORT all around the globe in different cultures, whether they have a belief in reincarnation or not.

One of the most intriguing traits of CORT is their richness in survival-related phenomena. In fact, they contain numerous incidences of the other survival phenomena already introduced. For example, many CORT begin with an “announcing dream”, often dreamed by a future parent, in which the deceased person announces that they will be born into a specific family. Sometimes, the deceased also appear in a “departure dream” in which they tell a member of their previous family that they will be reborn in another family. There are even a few cases on record in which the deceased spirit was seen as an apparition that indicated its interest in becoming reborn to the percipient. Obviously, all these experiences represent varieties of typical after-death contacts (ADCs). CORT share another commonality with ADCs: In both cases, a disproportionate number of the personalities manifesting again had died a sudden and violent death, indicating they had been torn away from “unfinished business”.

Moreover, about 20% of CORT subjects report having memories of events that occurred during the intermission between their death in the previous life and their birth into the current life. In many of these cases, the children claim that they continued to observe what happened to the dead body of the previous personality from an OBE-perspective, just as is reported from NDEs. The subjects may even provide verifiable information about these occurrences. But while reports of veridical perceptions reported from OBEs during NDEs are often accepted as being authentic by physicalists and are attributed to residual brain functions, this cannot work for CORT subjects who give veridical accounts of events that occurred in this intermission. Here, the only option left for physicalists is postulating that these cases are not authentic.

There are also accounts in which CORT subjects have described how they found and entered their new bodies, sometimes providing verified details regarding specific circumstances. Similarly, some NDErs have described trying to enter the body of a newborn baby or a child but giving up on it and returning to their own body. Reports like these indicate that the line separating NDEs on the one hand (returning to one’s own body) and CORT on the other hand (returning to another body) might be very thin. In addition, CORT are not only associated with ADCs and NDEs, but sometimes also with mental mediumship. This is the case when deceased communicators at mediumistic sittings announce that they will be born into a specific family, and a child being born later in this family reports memories that pertain to the past life of this communicator.

Additionally, CORT can include an objective dimension in that they may include physical features such as birthmarks or birth defects that can contribute to the identification of a matching previous personality or to the confirmation of an identification. About one third of CORT subjects have such somatic features.

The complexity of CORT is reflected in the assessment of their survival score. Their investigability is “high” (4) because cases can be documented “in the making” and then followed-up for years, even by different researchers. Many CORT involve numerous eyewitnesses who can be interviewed repeatedly under optimal conditions of observation. In some cases, Stevenson and his colleagues interviewed more than 30 informants, in one particularly important case. Generally, they agreed on the crucial details of a case. Modern CORT, in particular, also allow the verification of claims about previous lives through written documents and other objective sources. Stevenson knew that this approach would essentially equal the approach pursued in courts, as exemplified in his explanation of the term “authentic” in the context of his studies:

“By authentic, I mean that the reports given to investigators by informants and then set out by myself describe events with satisfactory closeness to the events as they really happened. [...] It is, in principle, no different from the striving of lawyers to reconstruct the events of a crime [...] to understand what really happened in the past.”

In court, a striking agreement of more than 30 eyewitnesses would carry enormous weight. The repeatability of CORT is likewise “high” (4) because they are not at all uncommon, especially among cultures holding a belief in reincarnation. But new CORT are continually found and investigated even in the West. Given that they are numerous, frequently rich in detail and possess a multifaceted phenomenology, which may even include a tangible physical dimension involving birthmarks and birth defects, the quantitative and qualitative strength of CORT are also both “high” (4). Obviously, the relevance of (solved) CORT for human survival is also “high” (4), especially if they contain verifiable elements from the intermission.

Friday, April 8, 2022

Near-death experiences: Nahm excerpt #5

Near-death experiences (NDEs) are extremely powerful experiences that people may live through during a severe health crisis, frequently at the brink of death. Although they are marked by cultural influence, NDEs share a common core structure featuring several elements. For instance, many NDEs begin with an out-of-body experience (OBE) during which individuals perceive themselves or the scenery surrounding them from an elevated vantage point a few meters above their body. Sometimes, they even describe verifiable details in other rooms or outside the hospital building. In numerous cases, experiencers reported OBEs after cardiac arrests or other severe traumas that rendered the brain essentially deprived of oxygen. Obviously, NDEs and OBEs occurring in such critical near-death states are most relevant for the survival question. A very striking case was published by a Dutch team of physicians:

A man who had suffered a heart attack was found in a meadow and taken to hospital. He was “ice-cold” and already showed characteristic discolorations of his skin that occur at the earliest 20–30 minutes after circulatory arrest. He wasn’t breathing, and his pupils showed no reaction to light stimuli. He was considered dead. Nevertheless, resuscitation measures were performed, and after about 15 minutes, to the surprise of everyone involved, first signs of life appeared. Eventually, the patient’s condition stabilized. He later claimed having followed the entire treatment from outside his body, relating knowledge about details he could hardly have seen or guessed. For instance, in the course of the preparatory measures for the resuscitation, a nurse removed the man’s dentures from his mouth and put them onto a crash cart. But they somehow got lost afterwards. After more than a week, the nurse entered the room to administer medicine to the patient. The nurse had not seen him since the resuscitation measures during which he was deeply unconscious. Nevertheless, this patient now recognized the nurse as the one who had removed his dentures and put them onto the crash cart and inquired about their whereabouts.

Clearly, such reports challenge standard models of brain functioning. Even conceding that a residual oxygen supply might exist in the brain during such near-death states, it wouldn’t be sufficient to enable the accurate perception of events occurring in the surroundings, or to ensure the proper and indelible storage of experiential details in the brain’s long-term memory. But this is exactly what is reported again and again. Hence, such OBEs provide considerable evidence for the notion that in these situations, human consciousness operates independently of brain states. Therefore, NDEs indicate that at least during the initial stage of bodily breakdown, human consciousness might be able to continue.

But the typical NDEs of Western people contain a number of other interesting features. During an OBE, the scene may shift eventually towards more transcendental elements. Similar to a person experiencing an NDV, an NDEr might be drawn towards a bright and loving light, see otherworldly landscapes, hear ineffable music, and meet deceased loved ones, which suggests that they have survived physical death for prolonged periods of time. Upon awakening, the life of many experiencers is transformed forever.

A particularly astonishing facet of NDEs consists of inexplicable physical healings that take place during or immediately after the experience. A very remarkable case was recorded in a prospective study on NDEs performed by Penny Sartori in Ireland.

After a 60-year-old patient who experienced a profound NDE regained consciousness, he was able to move his right hand that had been paralyzed since his birth. It remains a mystery how the muscles and tendons in his hand, but also the neuronal wirings in his brain, were reorganized during his NDE to render this hand permanently mobile thereafter.

Further evidence favoring the notion that brain chemistry cannot fully account for OBEs and NDEs comes from their occurrence in indistinguishable manners under conditions ranging from optimal oxygen supply in the brain to virtually no oxygen supply. From the neurophysiological perspective, one must assume that such drastic differences in brain chemistry will result in correspondingly drastic differences in experience. But obviously, just as in NDVs, this is not the case. Moreover, it is intriguing that blind people, even those blind from birth, report having NDEs that include visual imagery comparable to that in NDEs of those who can see. Such “mindsight” in the blind provides additional evidence suggesting these percepts were not obtained via physical senses. A comparably recent field of study that holds potential to advance our understanding of NDEs lends even more weight to this notion: It concerns shared death experiences in which healthy bystanders at sickbeds seemingly share the NDE content of the patient, thus resulting in a collective or intersubjective experience.

To conclude this inventory of remarkable NDE features, I’d like to add an astonishing but related episode reported from the mainstream setting.

In a book introducing his work with developing modes of communication with nonresponsive patients in vegetative states, neuropsychologist Adrian Owen described what happened to one of his patients, Juan. In order to gain detailed insights into the activity of the brain in nonresponsive patients, including its deeper layers, Owen used fMRI scanners. These highly sophisticated apparatuses enable physicians to evaluate whether there might be a conscious individual inside a nonresponsive body. In Juan’s case, repeated scans showed practically no sign of conscious awareness. The characteristic patterns of activity in brain regions signaling awareness in response to applied stimuli were almost completely absent although his eyes were open. Consequently, he was regarded entirely unconscious. Weeks later, however, Juan awoke from his coma. To the amazement of Owen, Juan had a full recall of his two visits to Owen’s laboratory. He was able to describe everything that happened correctly and remembered the physicians involved.

Juan’s case is exceptional in that it is the only case of which I am aware in which a person’s brain was monitored deep down into its depths and showed no sign of awareness—but the patient nonetheless remembered everything. Owen had no explanation for these occurrences. Such cases highlight that, at present, neurophysiological models cannot account for conscious awareness during apparent states of unconsciousness such as in critical NDEs or Juan’s evident coma.

The investigability of NDEs is “relatively high” (3) because they often occur in a well-controlled hospital setting accessible to different members of the medical staff. The repeatability of studies of NDEs is “relatively high” (3) as well, because these experiences occur on a regular basis all around the globe in quite comparable manners. The quantitative strength of NDEs with regard to the survival question is “relatively low” (2), however. Although NDEs comprise a whole set of features that pose severe challenges to the physicalist model of consciousness, even veridical OBEs are not directly related to survival after permanent bodily death. Similarly, the qualitative strength of NDEs is “relatively low” (2) because most are subjective experiences that take place during times of unconsciousness, and they are clearly culturally influenced. Even in the comparably few cases that combine veridical OBEs and critical brain conditions, there are usually only a few eyewitnesses who can support the statements of the experiencer in an unambiguous manner. Finally, because only a few features of NDEs are directly related to prolonged survival (e.g., the optional element of meeting deceased loved ones) and the experiencers always return to life after their experience, the relevance of NDEs for survival after permanent bodily death is only “relatively high” (3).

Thursday, April 7, 2022

Mental mediumship: Nahm excerpt #4

Michael Nahm, in his Bigelow award-winning essay, "Climbing Mount Evidence: A Strategic Assessment of the Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death," writes: All cultures had or still have their seers, healers, or shamans who communicate with the deceased. In Western cultures, mental mediums typically provide written or spoken information that is supposedly conveyed by deceased communicators. Frequently, such mediums sit around a table together with other sitters, and these communicators speak or write using the body of the mediums. Many mediums fall into trance, thus uncoupling the usual control over their body from their conscious awareness. The crucial question in mental mediumship is: Do the supposed communicators reveal veridical knowledge about the deceased, and can it be excluded that the medium learned such information via normal information channels? In this regard, the following three facets of mental mediumship are often regarded most compelling:

· Astonishing quality and quantity of accurate information conveyed by seemingly purposeful communicators via extraordinarily gifted mediums

· Drop-in-communicators

· Cross-correspondences

In the psychical research literature, several mental mediums have been regarded as extraordinarily gifted, especially Leonora Piper (1857–1950). She was investigated by numerous different researchers of high academic standing and was even observed secretly by private detectives to ascertain that she didn’t acquire her knowledge via mundane information channels. Nevertheless, the information she provided about deceased individuals who communicated through her still proved to be accurate, and she was never caught cheating.

In cases of drop-in communicators, a purportedly deceased individual who is a complete stranger to everyone present at a mediumistic sitting begins to communicate through a medium. The communicator “drops in” unexpectedly. A renowned and apparently well-documented case of this sort took place in Iceland.

The case concerned a personality called Runki. He provided sufficient information at the sittings to be identified as a person who had really lived. Runki described several details of his life and occurrences concerning his death that proved to be correct. The most bizarre detail concerned a thighbone of his: He stated it hadn’t been buried along with the rest of his corpse after his death sixty years ago. Now, he wanted it back and gave indications where it was to be found. Indeed, the laborious attempts of the sitters to find a bone matching Runki’s descriptions were finally successful, and he was satisfied.

Cross-correspondences concern a specific experimental design that involves more than one medium. They are supposed to demonstrate that the transmissions are carefully planned by self- aware entities in the afterlife realm, coordinating these experiments in a manner that would be hardly possible for the subconscious minds of the mediums and/or the sitters to achieve on their own. They are like a puzzle, as the following example shows. It involves three mediums who lived in Boston, New York, and Niagara Falls.

Around the same time in the evening of March 3, 1928, one medium wrote the letters “El.”, the second medium “C.A.”, and the third medium received the impression of “M”. When all notes were put together along with the additional information provided, it became clear that the ostensible communicator from beyond intended to communicate the word “camel” via these three mediums.

The most famous cross-correspondences were recorded on thousands of pages by members of the Society for Psychical Research from 1901 to 1932. They involved five primary mediums, among them Mrs. Piper, plus a few other mediums who played a minor role.

The investigability of mental mediumship is theoretically “high”. The mediums usually work in light and can in theory be observed and documented by investigators at will. But for many decades, extraordinarily gifted mediums, drop-in communicators, and cross-correspondences haven’t been investigated, presumably because suitable mediums and researchers were simply not available. Hence, from a contemporary perspective, the investigability of the most compelling aspects of mental mediumship is only “relatively low” (2). The same goes for its current practical repeatability, which is also “relatively low” (2). Consequently, even recent treatises about the survival question routinely discuss the same paradigmatic historical cases such as those listed above (Mrs. Piper, Runki’s leg, cross-correspondences). Nevertheless, the quantitative strength of this historical material alone is already “high” (4).

Psychical researchers of the past have provided sufficient documentation to show that, in some cases, substantial amounts of precise information can be conveyed via mediums for considerable time periods by a given communicator, and emotional and other behavioral idiosyncrasies of the supposedly deceased individual can contribute to generating a quite vivid and realistic impression of them. The qualitative strength of mental mediumship is, however, only “relatively high” (3).

On the positive side, the possibilities of fraud and misinterpretation by eyewitnesses can be reduced to a reasonable minimum under appropriate investigative conditions. The documented transmissions may thus be difficult to explain in mundane terms. Moreover, the high-quality facets of mental mediumship such as drop- in-communicators and cross-correspondences also pose more challenges to models relying on living-agent psi than, for example, the brief perception of an apparition.

However, because all communication with ostensible interlocutors from the beyond must be conducted via a medium serving as intermediary, and because these mediums are often in trance, even veridical information provided by these ostensibly deceased individuals is still prone to being attributed alternatively to 1) the retrieval of latent forgotten knowledge, or 2) a psi-conducive dissociated state of the medium that enables the retrieval of information clairvoyantly or telepathically, but without entailing a factual deceased communicator. Therefore, the qualitative strength of mental mediumship cannot be regarded as “high”. But its relevance for the question of survival after bodily death is self-evidently “high” (4).

Wednesday, April 6, 2022

After death contacts: Nahm excerpt #3

Michael Nahm, in his Bigelow award-winning essay, "Climbing Mount Evidence: A Strategic Assessment of the Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death," writes: "Typical cases of after-death contacts (ADCs) comprise the unexpected perception of an apparition of a deceased individual who appears briefly and then vanishes again. It may be perceived collectively by several percipients, including animals, thus displaying a degree of objectivity or at least of intersubjectivity. Frequently, the apparition may convey a message to the percipients, for instance providing comfort. Other examples concern crisis apparitions, in which people perceive apparitions of people who indicate that they have just died or are on the verge of dying—but without the experiencer knowing this through any normal means. Here is an impressive example:

A dog, two adults, and five children were together in a room at 6 pm in May. Suddenly the dog began to bark loudly and jumped towards the corner with the stove. The seven people followed the dog’s movements with their eyes. In the corner, they saw an apparition of a child in a shirt that looked like a boy who was a friend of the family and often came to play. The apparition started to float above them, leaving the room through an open window. The dog followed the moving apparition through the room, continuously barking fervently. The episode lasted for about 15 seconds. Later in the evening, the family learned that this boy had died at about the time they saw his apparition.

"There is a huge body of literature on ADCs, but the best documented cases can still be found in monumental treatises published by founding members of the Society of Psychical Research. They comprise different subcategories of ADCs including collectively perceived apparitions. A later classical analysis of the phenomenology of apparitions has established that there are virtually no detectable differences between apparitions of the living and apparitions of the dead, which leads to the logical inference that the dead might be living as well. Many ADCs also occur in dreams, and in modern times, even malfunctions of electronic devices that appear meaningful are sometimes interpreted as ADCs. A recent study has confirmed that ADCs are widespread and cannot easily be regarded as hallucinations.

"An intriguing subcategory of ADCs consists of near-death visions (NDVs). These ADCs are reported by the dying. Just as with ADCs perceived by healthy individuals, the dying may perceive a bright light that appears somehow related to a deceased spirit, hear inexplicably beautiful music of unearthly quality, and most importantly, see apparitions of deceased loved ones. But the dying typically perceive apparitions who come to prepare them for their death, often with the apparent purpose of guiding them into the afterlife realm. The experiencers are usually still conscious and may tell the bystanders of their visions in real time or later. Sometimes, the dying even report having met individuals in NDVs whose death was unknown to them at the time.

"From the perspective of studying survival, NDVs are of specific significance because they don’t only comprise apparitions of the deceased, but also concern the dying themselves. NDVs even occur in patients who have been nonresponsive for months or years because of neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease that appeared to have destroyed their brains. Still, such patients can sometimes display a sudden and unexpected reemergence of lucid mental clarity, recognize family members again, talk with them, report an NDV, and then die. These drastic experiences indicate that NDVs, which occur in an identical manner in patients dying with healthy brains, might be occurring in relative independence of the precise status of the prevailing brain chemistry.

"This assumption is supported by large-scale studies performed on NDVs. In these investigations, Karlis Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson in At the Hour of Death (1977) assessed the hypothesis that NDVs are hallucinations caused by disturbed brain functions and psychological needs shortly before dying. In three surveys, they mailed a total of 15,000 questionnaires to physicians and nurses in the USA and addressed hundreds of Indian medical staff members in person. Hundreds of reports about NDVs were returned. Among visions concerning apparitional figures alone (excluding visions of otherworldly landscapes, etc.), Osis and Haraldsson followed up more than 600 cases with additional questionnaires and telephone interviews. They tested the following postulates:

· Patients taking medication prone to inducing hallucinations and/or suffering from high fever shortly before dying should report more NDVs than others.

· Patients dying in a state of stress and anxiety should report more NDVs than those dying calmly.

· Patients dying rather unexpectedly and in the expectation of recovery should report more visions related to this world whereas patients dying in the expectation of death should report more otherworldly elements including deceased individuals.

· NDVs should vary greatly from individual to individual, being shaped by personal memories, hopes, religious afterworld beliefs, etc.

"Interestingly, none of these postulates was confirmed. Osis and Haraldsson concluded that the hallucination model is therefore not as likely as it might appear at first sight. Rather, NDVs display an autonomy of their own that seems largely independent from the mental dispositions of dying individuals and their brain chemistry. From the survival perspective, this is exactly what one would expect. This is also confirmed by the many collective and reciprocal NDVs on record in which concordant observations were reported by two or more witnesses.

"Now to the survival score of ADCs including NDVs: The investigability of a single case of a typical ADC is “relatively low”, thus giving a score of (2). This is because most ADCs occur spontaneously and privately, and only occur for a very short time, perhaps for a few seconds, and all this perhaps only once in a lifetime for some people. Hence, it is extremely difficult to study and document ADCs in real time. They can usually be assessed only in retrospect. But as the above-mentioned classical treatises on ADCs and studies of NDVs demonstrate, retrospective assessments still allow substantial evidence for survival to be gathered, and therefore, one cannot consider the possibility of investigating a given ADC entirely “low”. It is “relatively low”.

The repeatability of ADCs including NDVs in the sense of their multiple occurrences over time and space that allow their investigation is, however, “relatively high” (3). These experiences occur on a regular basis all over the globe, and because many people live and die on it, they occur frequently. However, because of their unpredictability and ephemeral nature, the repeatability of ADCs cannot be considered “very high”.

The quantitative strength, or complexity and detailedness, of ADCs including NDVs is “relatively low” (2). The observed details often suffice to identify a deceased individual and to understand the conveyed message; but on the whole, this is obviously not much.

The qualitative strength of ADCs including NDVs is likewise “relatively low” (2). Obviously, the conditions of observation as well as the witness testimonies of ADCs are often not satisfactory. ADCs frequently come as a complete surprise, even on the sickbed. Also, most are only reported by a sole witness, or at best by a few individuals. And even in these collective cases, the witnesses may report divergent observations: Tom may report having seen a bright light, but Jerry may in addition report having seen a human shape in this light. Hence, ADCs imply a degree of subjectivity even in collectively perceived cases, which impedes the formation of an objective judgment about the witness testimonies. These aspects of ADCs are also relevant for their interpretation in terms of survival. On theoretical grounds, it is often not easy to determine whether an apparition perceived only fleetingly was created by the deceased individual him- or herself or was a hallucination of the living percipient. All this contributes to rendering the qualitative strength of ADCs “relatively low”.

Nevertheless, the overall relevance of ADCs including NDVs for survival after permanent bodily death is obviously “high” (4).