No Short Cuts

Thinking a bit more about people who believe there is no evidence of psi or survival, and nothing to argue about. If someone said to me, 'OK, so I'm an ignorant disbeliever, educate me', what would I say? I suppose the first thing would be to direct him/her to some useful books. But which ones?

Kevin (comments, That Glass Screen, March 7), suggests Kelly et al's Irreducible Mind, an in-depth argument for a revised view of consciousness that embraces the empirical research.  It's a magnificent book and would certainly be on my list, although it might be a bit weighty for someone with limited time to spare. Perhaps also, as he says, Jenny Wade's Changes of Mind and Chris Carter's Parapsychology and the Skeptics, which I hope to review shortly. Dean Radin's The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds, Rupert Sheldrake's The Sense of Being Stared At and Stephen Braude's The Limits of Influence  would all be indispensable, to name only a few.

If we are talking about survival, I might recommend Richard Almeder's Death and Personal Survival. That sets out the logic in a rigorous way, and has the virtue of being quite succinct. David Lorimer's excellent Survival? might also be good, as it pulls together a lot of the historical background about afterlife belief together with theories of consciousness and paranormal evidence.

So there's plenty of good stuff out there. Perhaps reading one or more of these books might at least encourage people to hesitate before making sweeping declarations about the lack of evidence.   

But I'm not convinced that on their own they would do much more than this. When I recall my own journey there wasn't any one book that did it for me. I read voraciously and indiscriminately, and it just got me into the most fantastic muddle.  I remember getting Brian Inglis's Natural and Supernatural from the library and, since it was sitting right next to it, Ruth Brandon's The Spiritualists, one a factual chronicle of nineteenth century psychical research, and the other a determined and highly speculative debunking. They wrote about the same mediums, investigations and controversies, but from entirely opposite viewpoints, which left me wondering what the hell was going on.

Eventually I realised that I would have to figure things out for myself by getting to grips with the primary sources. That's when it started to get interesting. Having just lost my job, and with no immediate prospect of getting another, I had the luxury of loads of time, and spent weeks and months in libraries. I ploughed through the anecdotal material and analysis of spontaneous phenomena in the various journals, also books like Phantasms of the Living and Myers' Human Personality, the work with Piper and Leonard, the cross correspondences, 'Patience Worth', investigations of poltergeists, the experimental work from Richet to Rhine, Jahn and Dunne, Honorton and others.  Then I read much of the literature on near-death experiences Ring, Sabom, Morse, Greyson, etc) and the equally extraordinary work on possession and children's memories of a previous life by Ian Stevenson and others.

I also thought a lot about the claims and tested the logic. Here I found the sceptics hugely useful: Kurtz's Transcendental Temptation and Skeptic's Handbook, Randi's Flim-Flam!, Hyman's The Elusive Quarry and many others. At first what they said seemed to make a lot of sense - it took quite a while to realise how limited their knowledge and understanding is. I think that's when light started to dawn.

My point is that you don't arrive at conviction on something as significant as this by reading one or two books. Perhaps some people do, but then I wonder how firm and lasting it is. Better to immerse yourself in the claims and experiences, weigh them up against your own experience, read the analyses of both investigators and sceptics, and see who you think is doing the best job. It's then that the gradual conviction comes over you that there's a huge area of human experience that has just been filtered out of your awareness, not through any fault of your own, just as an effect of being alive in the world at this particular time.

I suspect too that on some level it would have to jibe with personal experience, and surely even sceptics have at least once been confronted with an incident that forced them to ask questions, in their own lives or the lives of someone close to them.

So no short cuts. This isn't just information in libraries, it changes lives. It can't be a purely intellectual process. You'd have to bring a certain commitment to the subject, otherwise it would just be dabbling. You would actually have to respond, and who knows where that might lead. You might find yourself starting to sympathise with people you once despised, and find yourself despised in turn by people whose good opinion you once took for granted. Your friends would change. And I don't think there's a book that prepares you for that.

Comments

[John]

I don't know so much about what you say at the end. I went from a skeptic to a believer in these phenomena, and I didn't change. My friends don't even know. I'm still the same person with the same aspirations and outlooks. I'm still friends with my more skeptical buddies. It doesn't HAVE to change your life at all, just your outlook and future. I'm still planning on doing the same things, and I still enjoy the same thing. It's more of, "okay, this is probably how it is" and then you get back to your video games and playing with your pets.

[John]

Uh, when I said "aspirations and outlooks," I meant, in my immediate future and perspective on what I want to do. The second outlook is about the "big picture." Sorry for not distinguishing that.

[Kevin]

Robert: I would recommend all of those other books as well,most all of which I've read. But your initial question here brings us to the point that there is most likely no single book or series of books which will, in the digesting, CONVINCE anyone to a reasonable degree of certainty. What they may do is open the mind to the possibilities OF Mind, and allow experiences to do the "heavy lifting", should they present themselves. As I stated in my previous posting, I had my experiences FIRST, which lead me to these various readings to gain some measure of understanding. It would be nice if all people could have similar events occur to them, and I have no idea why some do and some don't. Another of the many mysteries, I suppose.

[Robert McLuhan]

John: fair enough, one shouldn't generalise. But I think what I had in mind was someone like the philosopher I was talking about, or for that matter any scientist or academic, for whom ideas are a matter of professional concern. In their work environment someone who takes parapsychology seriously really does raise eyebrows, more than the rest of us imagine.

Kevin: right, but I think many people who do have paranormal experiences actually supress them, rather than try to explore or validate them.

[Peter Welsford]

No one book will do it. Frederick Myers I think you mentioned, ~ came through Geraldine Cummins. A remarkable book, he talks seriously about the different planes of experience. I would also recommend: The Return of Arthur Conan Doyle. His "messages" came through the medium, Grace Cook. Later, she founded the now flourishing White Eagle Lodge.
Once one gets seriously hooked, there is always: The College of Psychic Studies and their extensive library. Its a wonderfully fascinating subject once you get into it!
Dont overlook the latest: The Montague Keen Foundation website!
Peter.

[Bill I.]

Reading is fine and can be helpful, but it's insufficient by itself.

What's required is experience. The question then becomes how best to obtain it.

If there is survival, then a part of you has survived already or will survive and exists now, at this very moment.

This part of you is clearly not that which is usually considered the conscious mind, otherwise everyone would already know of this and there would be no questions.

What does that leave and how do you access it?

You might succeed in accessing deeper and larger regions of self and still decide there's no survival, but I sincerely doubt this to be at all likely, based on my own experience and that relayed to me by others.

Regards

Bill I.
http://www.realitytest.com/doors.htm

[John]

Also, hmm, Richard Almeder? His name is Robert. ;)

I agree, though, with that particular book recommendation. It really does lay it down simply that the other explanations hold very little water.