Experiences of mediums: Beischel excerpt #18

Julie Beischel writes in “Beyond Reasonable: Scientific Evidence for Survival,” her prize-winning essay in the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies competition:

WCRM Laura Lynne Jackson

 In a 2017 online survey study, one of the questions we asked the medium participants (14 WCRMs, 113 self-identified; n = 127) was, “What is your explanation for why you are a medium?” Love was mentioned in some of the responses. For example, one participant described their purpose as, “To help others. To bring Light and Love where there is darkness... We are all eternal beings of Light and Love, we can never be destroyed.”

A different survey question asked, “In your own words, describe your spirituality as it is related to your mediumship.” Qualitative analysis of the responses revealed a major theme that involved love. Participants’ statements included:

“I believe that life continues. Energy changes form but it never lessens or increases. I believe in a light/love in the universe, whatever we call it. People move on in a new form rather than dying and no longer existing.”

“...what I believe in is... levels of ascension and learning of dark to light based on soul growth, with love carrying over each lifetime, until you are purely good and at peace with the universe.”

Because of these types of statements, we specifically predicted that love would be experienced to a greater degree during the blinded readings for deceased targets when compared to blinded readings for living targets. Our prediction was confirmed when this specific analysis demonstrated a statistically significant difference in PCI love scores.

Let’s really take that in and metabolize it: Under controlled conditions, the mediums in this study felt more love when performing a blinded reading for a deceased target than they did when performing a blinded reading for a living target. All the mediums had was a first name. And dead people brought love to the party.

After collecting the UVO-III Study data, I also informally interviewed the WCRMs about their general experiences during psychic functioning and survival psi (mediumship readings). Referencing the overall differences between the two experiences, the WCRMs noted:

“It’s very different. It’s like listening to someone versus looking myself.”

“In a mediumship reading, it feels like someone is talking to me. With psychic readings, it’s information about someone.”

“With mediumship, I get to meet new people all the time. Psychic information is boring.”

The mediums’ comments also related to differences in how they actually perceive the information:

“With psychic information, I have to ‘squint’ from the inside out like to focus on something in the distance. When I do mediumship, it’s not squinting at all. It’s just receiving.”

“There’s a heaviness around the sensation of living people; like air compared to helium. The auditory aspect is much sharper when I’m perceiving someone who is deceased. Their energy is more like helium.”

These statements are similar to a finding from Roxburgh and Roe* who interviewed 10 Spiritualist mediums about their experiences and qualitatively analyzed the responses. The metaphor of energy was used by one participant “to make the distinction between a psychic link that is ‘static’ and ‘dense,’ and spirit communication that is ‘vibrant’ and ‘lighter’” (p. 33).

One WCRM discussed the spatial orientation of the information in response to my query:

“Somebody from the other side steps in to communicate on the right side of the ‘movie screen’ in my mind’s eye. Psychic information from the living comes to the left-hand side of the screen. The dad’s side comes on the bottom right-hand side and the mom’s side comes in the upper right-hand side of the screen.”

Several WCRMs discussed differences in their physical sensations:

“The physical feeling I get is a tingling or a pressure in my head when the medium stuff starts to happen or when they’re entering the room. I don’t get that at all during a psychic reading.”

“Physically, mediumship charges me up. It’s like having eight cups of cappuccino. It’s like a buzzing. I’ve learned I can’t do reading too late at night because I’ll just be up all night. It’s like a super-charge. Psychic information doesn’t do that.”

One WCRM spoke specifically about love:

[In mediumship readings,] “there’s more of a loving feeling. When I connect with somebody on the other side, everything’s happy and great. I feel like I don’t know who I am any more. I lose myself. My identity is gone. Who cares who I am? I’m just part of the universe; I’m part of love energy... It’s like I’m connecting with that sacred love, that universal love, on the other side even though it’s just in little tiny bits for a moment. Reading psychically is very different. I’m more aware of myself. It’s more grounded. It makes me feel alone.”

The UVO-III data collected under blinded conditions and these additional informal interview responses support the conclusions of the previous phenomenological research studies: mediums know what acquiring psychic information about the living feels like and communicating with the deceased feels different.

 

*Roxburgh, E. C., & Roe, C. A. (2013). “Say from whence you owe this strange intelligence”: Investigating explanatory systems of spiritualist mental mediumship using interpretative phenomenological analysis. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 32(1), 27– 42.

 

Dr. Julie Beischel is the Director of Research at the Windbridge Research Center. She received her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology with a minor in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Arizona and uses her interdisciplinary training to apply the scientific method to controversial topics. For over 15 years, Dr. Beischel has worked full-time studying mediums: individuals who report experiencing communication with the deceased and who regularly, reliably, and on-demand report the specific resulting messages to the living. References cited in her paper are deleted from these excerpts but a full paper with references is available at the Bigelow website (https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php).

Results of 10 WCRMs*: Beischel excerpt #17

Julie Beischel writes in “Beyond Reasonable: Scientific Evidence for Survival,” her prize-winning essay in the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies competition:

 

UVO**-III Study: Quantitative Analysis 

 

For the UVO-III Study, our aim was to see if mediums’ reports of differentiating between the two psi experiences would hold up under blinded and controlled laboratory conditions. The goal was to see if empirical research findings would mirror what was found during the previous qualitative and quantitative phenomenological studies. (Are you on the edge of your seat?!) Again, because somatic psi is a theoretical construct and is not an experience that mediums report having, it cannot be requested of participants during an experiment. Therefore, psychic readings for the living serve here again as the best surrogate experience to include during research. The UVO-III Study examined—under randomized, counter-balanced, and blinded conditions with prescreened participants—the phenomenology of mediumship readings for deceased targets in which survival psi is used and of psychic readings for living targets in which ‘regular’ psi (i.e., telepathy, clairvoyance, and/or precognition) is used. 

 

The UVO-III Study examined the experiences of 10 WCRMs who had previously demonstrated AIR (anomalous information reception; reporting accurate information about the deceased under blinded conditions with no feedback or any shenanigans). The 10 WCRMs participated in two counter-balanced experimental conditions: a blinded reading for a living target and a blinded reading for a deceased target. After each condition they completed a questionnaire about their experiences. The reading conditions were recorded phone sessions in which only the blinded medium and a blinded experimenter were on the phone.

 

At the start of each reading, the WCRM was given the first name of a target person by an experimenter. Targets could be living or could be deceased. WCRMs had been given these instructions at the beginning of the study: “You will be randomly assigned two readings. Each of the readings may be a psychic reading for a living target or a mediumship reading for a deceased target. That is, you may read for two living people, two deceased people, or one of each.” When directly asked by my scientifically-minded research participants how we would see any differences in conditions when they might read for two living or two deceased targets, they were told that combining the results from all the participants would allow us to see differences when averages were compared. In reality, they each read for one living target and one deceased target. The experimenter on the phone with them was also blinded to which names were living targets and which were deceased. 

 

After being given the first name of a target, the WCRMs were asked questions about the target’s physical appearance, personality, and hobbies and asked to provide any other relevant information. The questions were identical regardless of whether a target was living or deceased. This ensured that the medium and the experimenter stayed blinded to whether a given target was living or deceased. 

 

During 19 of the 20 readings in the UVO-III Study, the WCRM mentioned their impressions regarding whether the named target was living or deceased. In a statistically significant portion (14 of 19, 74%), those impressions were accurate (50% is what could be expected from guessing). Six of the 10 WCRMs were able to accurately determine the status of the targets in both of their readings.

 

After each reading condition, the WCRMs completed a questionnaire called the Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory about their experiences. The WCRMs were told, “It is essential that you simply attempt to answer each question during the reading and then fill out the PCI about that experience.” The PCI is a widely used valid and reliable 53-item questionnaire that quantifies 26 different aspects of consciousness grouped into 12 major and 14 minor dimensions. WCRMs also completed PCIs after an initial baseline condition and after a control condition.

 

When all four conditions (baseline, control, living target reading, deceased target reading) were compared statistically, differences were seen in the PCI scores reflecting the experiences of the reading conditions as compared to the scores reflecting the experiences of the baseline and control conditions. That is, the psi readings induced experiential situations that were quantitatively different from the WCRMs’ normal, usual waking consciousness (represented by baseline and control conditions). Similar to previous research, the reading conditions created changes in the mediums’ level of mental imagery, in the focus of their mental attention, and in their subjective sense of the passage of time. 

 

The two different types of psi readings, however, were similar to each other in their PCI profiles. And this is what we expected. Psi is an anomalous situation and its variants can only be so different. Also, the PCI was not designed to capture differences between mediumistic and psychic experiences. It may not be able to measure the “phenomenological variables that are fundamental constituents of mediumistic states”. We may need to specifically develop an instrument or method that can capture the nuanced differences between mediumistic and psychic experiences in order to accurately capture the holistic nature of psi. However, one of the dimensions the PCI does quantify is love and that is important here. 

 

Kim Russo

Mediums anecdotally talk about feelings of love related to mediumship readings. When, years ago, I informally asked the mediums on my team about their experiences, their responses often focused on love. For example, Joanne Gerber reported that, “The energy of love is the bond between the physical and spiritual worlds”. Kim Russo described mediumship readings as including “many emotions running through my body... especially love. The emotion of love comes to me in the strongest way".

When all four conditions (baseline, control, living target reading, deceased target reading) were compared statistically, differences were seen in the PCI scores reflecting the experiences of the reading conditions as compared to the scores reflecting the experiences of the baseline and control conditions. That is, the psi readings induced experiential situations that were quantitatively different from the WCRMs’ normal, usual waking consciousness (represented by baseline and control conditions). Similar to previous research, the reading conditions created changes in the mediums’ level of mental imagery, in the focus of their mental attention, and in their subjective sense of the passage of time. 

 

The two different types of psi readings, however, were similar to each other in their PCI profiles. And this is what we expected. Psi is an anomalous situation and its variants can only be so different. Also, the PCI was not designed to capture differences between mediumistic and psychic experiences. It may not be able to measure the “phenomenological variables that are fundamental constituents of mediumistic states”. We may need to specifically develop an instrument or method that can capture the nuanced differences between mediumistic and psychic experiences in order to accurately capture the holistic nature of psi. However, one of the dimensions the PCI does quantify is love and that is important here. 

 

* WCRMs stands for Windbridge Certified Research Mediums

 

** UVO stands for sUrvival psi Vs sOmatic psi examinations

Dr. Julie Beischel is the Director of Research at the Windbridge Research Center. She received her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology with a minor in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Arizona and uses her interdisciplinary training to apply the scientific method to controversial topics. For over 15 years, Dr. Beischel has worked full-time studying mediums: individuals who report experiencing communication with the deceased and who regularly, reliably, and on-demand report the specific resulting messages to the living. References cited in her paper are deleted from these excerpts but a full paper with references is available at the Bigelow website (https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php).

Mediums discern afterlife: Beischel excerpt #16

Julie Beischel writes in “Beyond Reasonable: Scientific Evidence for Survival,” her prize-winning essay in the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies competition: 

UVO-II* Study: Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis 

 

We also wanted to know if the experiences of the WCRMs on our team were representative of those from a broader group of mediums. What did other mediums have to say? To gather this data, we designed an online survey that was completed by 14 WCRMs and 113 self-identified secular mediums (individuals who do not practice mediumship or spirit communication as part of an organized religion). The 127 participants were first asked “Can you tell the difference between communication from the deceased and psychic information about the living?” Roughly 97% of the participants responded “Yes” to this question (n = 123). This data point confirmed what we had learned from the pre-screened WCRMs: most mediums can tell the difference between survival psi and ‘regular’ psychic functioning. 

 

It is important to note here that being able to discern this difference seems to come with practice and training. It is not necessarily something that novice mediums can do. Indeed, the four participants who answered “No” or “I don’t know” when asked if they could tell the difference between communication from the deceased and psychic information about the living reported, in a different part of the survey, that they had been performing mediumship readings for other people for an average of less than  10 years.

 

When I asked about believing in an afterlife, WCRM Joanne Gerber told me that:

   Joanne Gerber       

Initially, it wasn’t that I assumed that I was communicating with a loved one passed, I thought I was relaying ‘psychic information’ during a beginner’s spiritual development class. It took many readings and experiences for me to understand that the dead are not really dead in the way that we think they are. Learning from my experiences and educating myself, I began to find the clarity I needed. Now, as a medium with over two decades of experience communicating with discarnates, there is no doubt in my mind that our loved ones live on as ‘spirit energy’ which is very much real and palpable to the trained mind of a medium. 

 

The participants in the UVO-II Study who reported that they were able to tell the difference between the two experiences then completed two counter-balanced items: “In your own words, describe your experiences when receiving communication from the deceased” and “In your own words, describe your experiences when getting psychic information about the living.” Complete responses were provided by 122 participants (14 WCRMs, 108 self-identified) and the resulting 244 retrospective narratives (122 mediumship, 122 psychic) were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed.

 

Quantitative analysis. For the UVO-II Study quantitative analysis, Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC, pronounced ‘Luke,’ http://liwc.wpengine.com/) software was used. LIWC is a validated text analysis software program that calculates the degree to which different psychologically meaningful categories of words are used in a given text. The output of the software is the percentage of a participant’s text that falls into each category. For the UVO-II Study, we averaged the 122 participants’ data during analysis. We found that the descriptions of their experiences of communicating with the deceased contained statistically significantly higher percentages—compared to their descriptions of getting psychic information from the living—in the LIWC-defined categories of social processes. That is, when describing communication with the deceased, mediums talked more about family, sensory experiences, food, the past, and spirituality than when describing psychic readings for the living. These quantitative, statistically significant results support the concept that what mediums experience as survival psi is different than what is proposed by the somatic psi theory. 

 

Qualitative analysis. For the UVO-II Study qualitative method, content analysis was performed on the 244 participant descriptions. This methodology involves a systematic classification process that results in the identification of consistent patterns or themes within the text. Within the descriptions of mediumistic communication with the deceased, my colleague discovered three main themes containing nine categories and 18 subcategories. The parts relevant here were the themes of triangulated communication and how the mediums described the actual communication. 

 

The common theme of a triangulated model of communication represents information from the deceased being received by the medium and communicated to the sitter. Participants also described the discarnate as controlling what information the medium receives and when the information is sent. For example, one participant noted, “The Spirit is in control of the information given to me. I don’t seek it out”. The mediums described communication as involving spontaneous events in which the discarnate guides the communication. One participant reported that the discarnates “give the information they wish to convey. And then we go wherever spirit wants to go”. This finding is in line with the results from a previous quantitative study that found the mediumistic mental state involved a significantly lower level of volitional control than did a control condition (65). That is, in their experience, mediums are not driving mediumship readings; discarnates are. 

 

Both. A common difference seen through both the quantitative and qualitative analyses involved concepts related to the sense of taste and/or to food. This was seen in the significantly higher percentage of words in the mediumship descriptions that fell in the LIWC category of ingestion and a content analysis theme of gustatory imagery which was only present in descriptions of mediumistic experiences. It is unclear if this reflects that the discarnates actually miss physically enjoying the foods the medium can taste during the reading or if the discarnates are just trying to convey how much they liked those meals and snacks in order to identify themselves. Either way, it seems that dead people talk about food, but living people getting psychic readings are not receiving input about what to order for lunch.

 

Descriptions of cognitive processes were also different between experiences and were seen through both the quantitative and qualitative analyses. Psychic experiences were qualitatively described as involving a download of new information, whereas mediums “just know” the information during mediumistic communication. Compared to descriptions of psychic readings, the descriptions of mediumistic communication contained a quantitatively lower content of LIWC-categorized words related to the cognitive process of insight (e.g., discern, categorize, evidence).

 

This suggests that mediumistic communication may be a process that is more intuitive than analytical (metaphorically, more ‘right-brained’ than ‘left-brained’) when compared to psychic readings for the living. This finding was also supported by a subsequent study that found that the cognitive learning styles of mediums were not correlated at all to their accuracy scores. Learning styles are the cognitive and behavioral preferences people have for acquiring new information; some people are hands-on learners, for example, some prefer verbal vs. visual information, etc. Because mediumship is an intuitive and passive perception and not an analytical and active cognitive process, it seems logical that mediums’ learning styles would not be relevant to their accuracy scores. It shouldn’t matter if a medium prefers watching videos over reading articles or hearing concerts over seeing plays when the way they receive the information during readings seems to be guided by the discarnates. And this is what the data demonstrated. 

 

The quantitative and qualitative UVO-II Study data support the hypothesis that the experience of mediumistic communication with the deceased is phenomenologically distinct from that proposed by the somatic psi theory. 

 

*UVO refers to sUrvival psi Vs sOmatic psi examinations

Dr. Julie Beischel is the Director of Research at the Windbridge Research Center. She received her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology with a minor in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Arizona and uses her interdisciplinary training to apply the scientific method to controversial topics. For over 15 years, Dr. Beischel has worked full-time studying mediums: individuals who report experiencing communication with the deceased and who regularly, reliably, and on-demand report the specific resulting messages to the living. References cited in her paper are deleted from these excerpts but a full paper with references is available at the Bigelow website (https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php).

Testing mediums: Beischel excerpt #15

Julie Beischel writes in “Beyond Reasonable: Scientific Evidence for Survival,” her prize-winning essay in the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies competition: 

 

Formulate a Hypothesis 

 

In order to fulfill the mission of science and gain new knowledge, my colleagues and I hypothesized that what mediums experience as survival psi is different than the phenomenon proposed by the somatic psi theory. 

 

Design and Perform Experiments and Analyze the Data 

 

This hypothesis falls within the field of phenomenology, the study of experiences as they are experienced by the experiencer. The word phenomenology is also used to refer to the experiences themselves. For examinations of experiences like mediumship, phenomenological research methods usually employ collecting introspective verbal reports from participants. For many phenomena, researchers only have the reports of the person having the experience. To assess pain, for example, different sections of the standard McGill Pain Questionnaire ask respondents to choose specific descriptors to qualify their pain as, for example, throbbing, shooting, stabbing, crushing, searing, and/or vicious and also rate its strength from mild to excruciating. 

 

Similarly, depression has no biological marker and is often assessed on the basis of self-report or, since 1960, by using a version of the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, or Ham-D. We cannot objectively measure fatigue, anger, or psychiatric disorders like sociopathy. We regularly rely on phenomenological reports. Indeed, a lot of psi research is contingent on participant reports of their experiences. We can only ask participants to choose which image from several that they dreamed of, remote viewed, or intuited; we can’t directly observe which image appeared in their minds. Obviously, there are limitations to using the reports of humans about their experiences, but “it is still the best method we have”. 

 

In the next set of experiments, we wanted to examine mediums’ phenomenology related to survival psi (communication with the deceased) and somatic psi. However, somatic psi cannot be specifically requested; we can’t instruct a research medium to, “Get information about a discarnate, but don’t actually communicate with the discarnate.” That is not how it works for them. Additionally, we couldn’t prove they’d done that anyway: somatic psi cannot be experimentally demonstrated. Source, remember, cannot be determined from content. Thus, the phenomenon closest to somatic psi that we can use experimentally is psychic readings for living people. 

 

So, we designed and performed a series of experiments to assess mediums’ phenomenology during mediumship readings for the deceased using survival psi and during psychic readings for the living to represent the theoretical concept of somatic psi. Here, I will nickname these studies UVO-I, UVO-II, and UVO-III as shorthand for these sUrvival psi Vs sOmatic psi examinations. 

 

Because both are psi experiences and involve anomalous information transfer, we expected to see similarities but were on the look-out for differences. I will highlight the differences we noted here. Some are simply related to the different functions of psychic and mediumship readings, but some speak to different sources for the types of information mediums report. 

 

UVO-I Study: Qualitative Analysis 

 

We wanted to first formally collect retrospective reports from the pre-screened WCRMs on the team. My colleagues and I asked six WCRMs (all the mediums on the team at the time) two counter-balanced questions. We asked them to describe their subjective experience when communicating with discarnates during mediumship readings and also during psychic readings in which they use telepathy, precognition, or clairvoyance to provide information about the living but in which they do not communicate with discarnates. 

 

My colleagues used a qualitative thematic analysis methodology to find common themes in the WCRMs’ descriptions that I had collected. One difference that emerged is that survival psi experiences were described as including “signs” confirming the presence of the discarnate; these included visual (e.g., light flashes), auditory (e.g., ringing), and physical (e.g., heat, vibration) signs. The WCRMs also reported experiencing discarnates as separate, independent entities capable of, for example, arguing with or startling them. One participant said, “Now you would think being a medium I would want to look and connect with them sitting on the edge of my bed. What really happens is they startle me which makes me freak out!”. 

 

My favorite quote about the differences between the two experiences collected during this study was this: “a psychic reading is like reading a book... a mediumship reading is like seeing a play.” The UVO-I Study data demonstrate that these WCRMs were able to effectively describe—so that researchers were able to find common themes in their descriptions—the specific differences in how they experience communication with the deceased and while performing psychic readings for the living.

 

 

 

Dr. Julie Beischel is the Director of Research at the Windbridge Research Center. She received her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology with a minor in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Arizona and uses her interdisciplinary training to apply the scientific method to controversial topics. For over 15 years, Dr. Beischel has worked full-time studying mediums: individuals who report experiencing communication with the deceased and who regularly, reliably, and on-demand report the specific resulting messages to the living. References cited in her paper are deleted from these excerpts but a full paper with references is available at the Bigelow website (https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php).

Source of information? Beischel excerpt #14

Julie Beischel writes in “Beyond Reasonable: Scientific Evidence for Survival,” her prize-winning essay in the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies competition: 

 

How might we identify where mediums get their information? We asked the mediums about their experiences of psi.

 

Historically, the mediums performing the séances observed by the researchers of the British and American Societies for Psychical Research (established in 1882 and 1884, respectively) often entered into a trance state of consciousness. Discarnate entities took control of the mediums’ bodies and spoke using their throats and mouths. The mediums were essentially unconscious during the séance, and after they took (or were given) back control of their bodies, they had no recollection of what had happened. Researchers could not ask them about their experiences during the readings because when the readings happened, the mediums weren’t really there.

 

By the 21st century, the majority of American mediums were not regularly achieving full trance and using spirit controls, though some still do and others do sometimes. Most remain conscious, alert, and aware when they offer in-person, gallery, phone, and Internet readings. During research readings on the phone, modern mediums exhibit—compared to their typical, everyday state—a slightly altered state of consciousness including changes in their awareness of self and body, in the focus of their mental attention, and in their subjective sense of the passage of time. Because they remain conscious and aware, however, they can share with researchers their experiences of survival psi, which was not previously possible. 

 

In addition, this isn’t something that can be done with non-medium discarnate communication channels. That is, we can’t ask spirit boards, knocks on tables, card decks, or electronic equipment (no matter how sophisticated) if the information they share comes from a discarnate or originates from the psi effects of the living. Because, in our current understanding, psi is limitless through space and across time, we can’t blind, control for, sham, placebo, or in other ways remove the effects of the living on alleged communication methods. This is especially true for electronic methods which have been repeatedly demonstrated to be easily affected by the general intention or even the subconscious effects of the living. And it is true even if a process seems intricate enough to outsmart psi. 

 

A phenomenon like psi that can function across distance, through time, around complexity, and regardless of the type of random source being examined surely cannot be fooled by the likes of lowly humans. So, there’s no way to determine the source of the discarnate-related content from these physical or electronic processes: is it the effects of a discarnate or is it the psi of the living? There’s no way to know. 

 

Thus, asking contemporary mediums—whose abilities have been demonstrated in the lab—about the source of the information they report about the dead seems to be the best way to gather evidence about the survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. 

 

In the last round of the scientific method, we established that certain modern mediums can report accurate information about the deceased under controlled conditions. Here we will observe, from the lists of services various contemporary mediums offer on their websites, that they participate in both mediumship readings for the deceased and psychic readings for the living. 

 

At the start of real-world readings, the medium may ask the client which type of reading they are interested in: mediumistic or psychic. They are then presumably able to shift their mental focus to perform the type of reading requested. As I said above, the rule of thumb is that all mediums are psychic but not all psychics are mediums. Recent research supports this idea. 

 

The Windbridge Psi and Related Phenomena Awareness Questionnaire (WPRPAQ) is an online survey which describes experiential phenomena without mentioning the terms previously used to identify them that might trigger survey respondents because of the cultural baggage they carry (like ‘psychic’ or ‘ESP’). 

 

In a recent study, the WPRPAQ was completed by 316 self- identified mediums and 1,030 self-identified non-mediums. Results included 77% of mediums reporting “knowing—without using any sensory cues—accurate information about another person’s thoughts or feelings,” 82% reporting “knowing—without using any sensory cues— accurate information about an object or event that is at a distance or otherwise concealed,” and 80% reporting “knowing accurate information about an event that will happen in the future and that could not be logically predicted from current information”. Thus, the large majority of these self-identified mediums reported experiencing psychic functioning (i.e., telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition, respectively). 

 

We can also observe that most mediums report that during a mediumship reading they are communicating with the deceased and not using ‘regular’ psychic functioning. That is, in fact, what makes a medium a medium. 

 

 

Dr. Julie Beischel is the Director of Research at the Windbridge Research Center. She received her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology with a minor in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Arizona and uses her interdisciplinary training to apply the scientific method to controversial topics. For over 15 years, Dr. Beischel has worked full-time studying mediums: individuals who report experiencing communication with the deceased and who regularly, reliably, and on-demand report the specific resulting messages to the living. References cited in her paper are deleted from these excerpts but a full paper with references is available at the Bigelow website (https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php).

Survival Psi & Somatic Psi: Beischel excerpt #13

Whatever the mediums in this study were doing, psi was involved. There are, however, two competing psi-based explanations for the source of the accurate information mediums report: survival psi and somatic psi. Together, these terms more accurately reflect the proposed theoretical framework attempting to explain mediumship and have replaced more imprecise terms like ‘super psi’ and ‘living agent psi’. 

 

If survival psi is the correct explanation, the medium is using psi to communicate mind-to-mind with the survived consciousness of the discarnate. In the somatic psi theory, the medium is not communicating with any discarnates. Instead, the somatic psi theory posits, the medium is using any combination of psi-based cognitive tasks to acquire information about the discarnate: accessing the minds of living persons associated with the discarnate; obtaining information about the discarnate from distant locations, documents, objects, or other sources; retrieving information from the future when the reading is scored by the sitter; or examining a psychic reservoir of information to learn about the discarnate. The root of the word somatic (soma) means body; the term is used to refer to the physical body of the living sitter and/or the body of information stored in the universe as examples of what sources the medium allegedly accesses in this explanation. 

 

At this time, somatic psi and survival psi are simply theoretical constructs; just names for ideas not backed by empirical evidence. We can’t prove either one in and of itself. Thus, using them as explanations for the source of the information mediums report about the deceased would commit either (a) the logical error of reification (mistaking the abstract for the concrete) or (b) the error of nominal fallacy (thinking that something is understood simply because it has a name; or ‘naming is not explaining’). Still, the two concepts are useful for thinking about and discussing mediumship, and I’ll continue to use them here as placeholders to represent the two sides of this established battle.

 

Since the initial scientific examination of mediums in the late 19th century, being able to break this tie between the ideas of survival psi and somatic psi has seemed quite impossible. It appeared that both were equally likely to be true, which has strongly dissuaded many researchers from studying mediums.

 

This is because the source of the information reported by mediums cannot be determined from its content and, for a long time, content was all researchers had. All they could do was assess the accuracy of what mediums said. And nothing a medium can say during a reading will break the tie between somatic psi and survival psi. Any content can be the result of anomalous transfer of information from a psychic reservoir, from the future, from distant places, or from the sitter or other people through somatic psi. If a medium reports something the sitter didn’t know but needed to verify through someone else, that can be explained as the medium using somatic psi to get the information from that other person. If a medium accurately reports an event that hasn’t happened yet, that can be explained as somatic psi from the future. The general phenomena attributed to somatic psi are well established and make logical sense.

 

However, the cases above could just as logically be explained as the result of survival psi and communication with a discarnate. The discarnate could provide information the sitter didn’t know and needed to verify with others. The discarnate could report information to the medium about a future event. Again, both somatic psi and survival psi could be true.

 

We could collect accuracy data until the end of time and it would continue to support the existence of anomalous information reception by mediums, but it could not help us get any closer to figuring out where a medium gets [their] information. The content of the reading is irrelevant in this debate because it can never break the tie or shift the balance.

 

So, we are at an impasse. What’s a scientist to do?

 

 

Dr. Julie Beischel is the Director of Research at the Windbridge Research Center. She received her PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology with a minor in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Arizona and uses her interdisciplinary training to apply the scientific method to controversial topics. For over 15 years, Dr. Beischel has worked full-time studying mediums: individuals who report experiencing communication with the deceased and who regularly, reliably, and on-demand report the specific resulting messages to the living. References cited in her paper are deleted from these excerpts but a full paper with references is available at the Bigelow website (https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php).