Theodor Flournoy, a world-renowned University of Geneva psychology professor, once opined that the name Frederic W. H. Myers should be joined to those of Copernicus and Darwin, completing "the triad of geniuses" who most profoundly revolutionized scientific thought.

       Pioneering psychiatrist William James, wrote that Frederic Myers "will always be remembered in psychology as the pioneer who staked out a vast tract of mental wilderness and planted the flag of genuine science upon it."

      "Frederic Who?" you ask.   Put Frederic William Henry Myers into a Google search and the first thing that pops up is a Wikipedia entry identifying him as an English poet and essayist, hardly a reason to justify the glorious comments by Professors Flournoy and James.

       Everyone knows the name of Sigmund Freud, but very few know that of Frederic  Myers, a man who seems to have been ahead of Freud in developing a systematic conception of the subconscious mind. 

        Although not educated as a psychologist, Myers, a Cambridge classical scholar was a de facto psychologist who referred to the subconscious as the "subliminal."  When, in 1911, Freud joined the Society for Psychical Research, which was co-founded by Myers in 1882, he wrote an article making it clear that Myers' "subliminal" was not the same as his "unconscious."  Essentially, the difference was that Myers saw a soul enveloped in the subconscious, while Freud accepted atomic materialism, which denied the existence of a soul.   

        Why isn't Myers remembered today?  Perhaps, because, as Aldous Huxley saw it, Freud was focused on the "rats and beetles in the cellarage," while Myers was more interested in the treasures and birds in the attic, something Freud, who was a mere teenager when Myers began developing his ideas of the subconscious, ignored.        

      In a newly-released biography of Myers, Immortal Longings, author Trevor Hamilton explains that Myers is not remembered today because the prevailing paradigm in those early years of psychology, as it remains today, was the Wundtian approach, which holds that the only things that make sense are those which can be scientifically measured and quantified.  The soul was not subject to scientific measurement, so was rejected.  

       Huxley saw Myers as a classical scholar, a minor poet, a conscientious observer, and a platonic philosopher, someone who "was free to pay more attention to the positive aspects of the subliminal self than to its negative and destructive aspects," as with psychologists and psychiatrists of then and now.  Hamilton quotes Huxley as saying that  Myers' "unconscious" was superior to Freud's in that it was more comprehensive and truer to the data of experience.  How much Myers influenced Freud is not clear, but there is little doubt that Myers' ideas significantly influenced William James and Carl Jung.

      Sir Oliver Lodge, the esteemed physicist and electricity pioneer, stated that Myers had, before his death in 1901, been "laying the foundation for a cosmic philosophy, a scheme of existence as large and comprehensive and well founded as any that have appeared."

      In his autobiography Lodge wrote that Myers had a remarkable interest in science and a portentous memory.  He knew the Ǣneid by heart and could recite many of the Bab Ballads without difficulty.  Lodge remembered attending one of  Myers' lectures on the poet Crabbe, calling it a remarkable tour de force. "He had no notes," Lodge recalled, "but after speaking of Crabbe and his poetry in unexpectedly eulogistic terms, he recited from memory whole reams of Crabbe's poetry, which I had never heard before, and was ignorant of."

      It was Myers, Lodge explained, who broke down his skepticism and showed him the reasonableness of the survival hypothesis.  "He it was who put evidence in my way such as gradually convinced me of the truth of the doctrine."

         Dr. Charles Richet, the 1913 Nobel Prize winner in medicine, said:  "If Myers was not a mystic, he had all the faith of a mystic and the ardour of an apostle, in conjunction with the sagacity and precision of a savant."

       The latter part of the 19^th Century was a time of despair and hopelessness for many.   "We were all in the first flush of triumphant Darwinism, when terrene evolution had explained so much that men hardly cared to look beyond," Myers is quoted by Hamilton in explaining why he set out in search of the soul.

       As with so many other educated people, Myers, the son of a minister, had lost his faith, and life had become a march toward an abyss into nothingness. He recognized that there were many who were "willing to let earthly activities and pleasures gradually dissipate and obscure the larger hope" during life's death march, but, perhaps because he was a deep thinker, Myers was unable to effectively use the defense mechanism called repression to overcome his death anxiety and his concomitant fear of extinction.      

       Subtitled "FWH Myers and the Victorian Search for Life after Death," Hamilton's  book details the efforts of Myers and several of his colleagues to make sense out of various paranormal phenomena which seemed to suggest that the world is not totally mechanistic and that consciousness does survive physical death.

        Although Professor William Barrett, a physicist, is recognized as the prime mover in setting up the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in 1882, he relinquished the leadership roles to Myers and his two Cambridge friends, Edmund Gurney, and Professor Henry Sidgwick.  Their objective was to scientifically study the phenomena, including hypnotism, telepathy, multiple personalities, and mediumship, to see if they offered any evidence that mind was not totally dependent on brain and that there is something beyond the five sense.  But they had to do it discreetly, cautiously, and indirectly.  "To admit the literal reality of the ghost was to move back to the dark ages," Hamilton explains their dilemma.   There were simply too many "newly enlightened" people in the upper echelons of society who could not make a distinction between matters of the spirit and the superstitions of the church they had left behind and now scoffed at.

        "It is too simple to represent Victorian England as a pious, fundamentalist land shaken by the advances of a materialistic and iconoclastic science," Hamilton states, pointing out that the census of 1851 revealed that well over five million people did not attend church on Sunday, March 30, 1851.  However, it was clear, Hamilton adds, that the educated middle classes and upper-middle classes were emancipating themselves from their evangelical roots as a result of the scientific and scholarly advances.   Darwinism might have been the crowning blow, but this emancipation had begun well before Darwin, during the "Age of Reason."

       Drawing from Myers' diary, a short autobiography written only for his friends, and other references, Hamilton explores Myers' early life and the influences which shaped his beliefs and disbeliefs. He acquaints us with his days at Cambridge, when he was called, "Myers the superb," and then discusses his conflicting love interests as well as other trials and tribulations.  He tells how Myers hooked up with Gurney and Sidgwick and how the three intellectuals complemented each other in various ways - Myers often brash and assertive, Sidgwick reserved and cautious, Gurney meticulous and somewhere in between Myers and Sidgwick in his enthusiasm for their mission.

        The SPR exposed many fraudulent mediums, although there is controversy over some of the exposures, including that of Madame Blavatsky.  The mediumship of Eusapia Palladino was also very controversial, some members of the SPR convinced that she was a charlatan and other that she was a genuine medium, whereas the truth seems to be that she was a "mixed" medium - producing genuine phenomena at times and faking some at those times when her powers failed her.   Theosophists, in the case of Blavatsky, and Spiritualists, in the case of various other mediums, argued that the researchers simply didn't understand the phenomena and were applying terrestrial science to celestial matters which they didn't understand.    

        As Hamilton sees it, Myers was caught in a Victorian dilemma.  "One set of desires, the yearning for the immortal, spiritual universe, was opposed by another set, which was the wish for privacy and the hiding of any evidence that breached the unimpeachable façade of familial and moral behaviour," he writes.  "His need to prove and even preach survival was counterbalanced by his reticence over intimate evidence."

         That "intimate evidence" involved a number of evidential messages coming to him through different mediums from Annie Marshall, his great love of the early 1870s (although apparently a platonic affair because of her marriage to Myers' cousin).   When Annie killed herself because of her many frustrations, Myers grieved deeply.  When he later married the beautiful and wealthy Eveleen Tennant, their marriage was troubled somewhat because of Annie's communications with Myers from beyond the veil - communications which Myers kept private and which were destroyed by his wife after his death. 

           Myers died at age 57 of  Bright's disease, a kidney disorder.  William James, who was present in Rome when Myers, his friend, died, wrote that "his serenity, in fact, his eagerness to go, and his extraordinary intellectual vitality up to the very time the death agony began, and even in the midst of it, were a superb spectacle and deeply impressed the doctors, as well as ourselves."

        After Myers death, various mediums began receiving messages purportedly coming from Myers.  Some of these messages were very fragmented and made no sense until they were collected and pieced together to make complete ideas.  "The whole process seemed at times like a giant Victorian word game (anagrams, cryptic puzzles, strange puns and rhymes), of which, in fact, Myers and his colleagues...were inordinately fond," Hamilton explains.  These so-called "cross-correspondences" were interpreted by other researchers as attempts by Myers, as well as by Gurney and Sidgwick, both of whom preceded him in death, to overcome some of the objections to mediumship, including fraud and telepathy.  "[They suggested] a high level of collective design and purpose, implying character, intention and personality," Hamilton states.

   One of the more simple cross-correspondences came through on  January 17, 1904, when Alice MacDonald Fleming, the sister of author Rudyard Kipling, received the biblical reference I Cor. xvi, 12 from Myers by means of automatic writing.  Living in India at the time, Fleming was instructed by Myers to send the message to SPR headquarters in London.  He further told the SPR that he tried to get the entire wording through in Greek but could not get Fleming's hand to form Greek characters, and so he gave only the reference. On the very same day, thousands of miles away in England, Mrs. Margaret Verrall, an automatic writing medium who was a member of the SPR, also received the same biblical reference from Myers by means of automatic writing.  This biblical passage, "Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong," was the wording inscribed in Greek over the gateway of Selwyn College, Cambridge, under which Myers frequently passed. 

       One message for Sidgwick's widow, Eleanor, who had been very active in the SPR, read, "Now, dear Mrs. Sidgwick, in future have no doubt or fear of so called death, as there is none."

      In another communication, Myers gave this message about the afterlife:  "The reality is infinitely more wonderful than our most daring conjectures.  Indeed, no conjecture is sufficiently daring."

       Myers was apparently ahead of the times in the area of physical fitness as well.  His diary indicates that he ran two miles most days, one day finishing his run in 13 ½ minutes.   "Beside the record of his time he added ‘Inextricable sadness,'" Hamilton writes. "Through his life, while he was fit enough, one hazards that these runs, at times virtually every day, coincided with periods of intense spiritual and emotional disturbance."

       On a trip to the United States in 1865, Myers  decided to test himself by swimming across the Niagara River, from the Canadian side to immediately below the falls.  "I plunged in; the cliffs, the cataract, the moon herself, were hidden in a tower of whirling spray; in the foamy rush I struck at air; waves from all sides beat me to and fro; I seemed immersed in thundering chaos, alone amid the roar of doom." Myers wrote in his diary.

      Hamilton concludes the book by asking if Myers' quest had been successful.  "In personal terms it was," he opines.  ""He became convinced, on the basis of the intimate sittings he had with both Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Thompson, that he had communicated with human beings (however different their nature and post-mortem existence) who had survived bodily death.  This belief was underpinned by his wide ranging reading and research in paranormal and abnormal activity across Europe and in the United States.  It led to him bearing the onset of death with a kind of joyous resilience, almost even insouciance..."

      On the other hand, Myers obviously failed in his wider hope of establishing immortality for the spiritually-challenged masses.  While the search for immortality continues today, more than a hundred years later, the foundation established by Myers and his colleagues seems to be slowly but increasingly appreciated. 

       Hamilton offers a very interesting, intriguing, informative, in-depth, and even inspirational look at one of history's most overlooked and unappreciated contributors.   One wonders if or when modern psychology will ever escape from the muck and mire of scientific fundamentalism and catch up with Myers. 
        Immortal Longings is available at Amazon.com and Amazon.com.UK                                                                                         

     In her 1917 book, How I Know that the Dead Are Alive, Fanny Ruthven Paget offers one of the most vivid and detailed near-death experiences ever recorded. While not clearly stating her illness, one might infer that Paget, a resident of Houston, Texas, suffered from severe pneumonia for several days during 1911.

      "All about and above me I could see nothing, but fancy my astonishment if you can, when looking down, I saw my body resting peacefully on the bed, representing what is commonly called a ‘dead person',"  Paget recalled. "I could not move my eyes from it; it fascinated me as it lay in the cold whiteness, robed in a gown of lavender silk, with dainty laces and ruffles...The deep blue ‘windows of the soul,' the eyes, were at half mast; the soul being absent the light was gone; the lips slightly parted wore just a suggestion of a smile; the left hand rested lightly on the breast - the engagement ring scintillating as brightly as ever; the right, which no doubt had been lifted unconsciously at the shock of impact, had fallen a little apart from the body and lay, palm upturned.  How peaceful it looked!

       "Thus every detail of the clay image fastened itself upon my consideration as I viewed it dispassionately, realizing that it was a cast-off garment for which I had no further use.  However, I felt a protective kindliness toward it; it had been a faithful servant, executing my every wish and whim and now that I had passed beyond the range of its services, it pleased my fancy to robe it in the white, pearl-be-decked dress, the wearing of which had meant so much to me in quite a different way."

        Paget then concerned herself with her fiancé in another town and found herself being propelled by a vibratory sensation to his sleeping body. "As I looked upon him I saw the shadow body more distinctly than the physical.  Viewed from the other side of life, the ‘shadow' body seemed the original and the physical the duplicate, the soul the real, the body the unreal.  Within and interpenetrating all was a light, which I had not before perceived as being a part of the spiritual anatomy.  This light penetrated from within, both the shadow and physical bodies, maintaining through and about the body an aura or illumination which enveloped it; clothing it, as it were, in a magnetized illumination.  How wonderful this three-in-one life-manifestation seemed, especially when we generally recognize only the one - the physical!"

        Talking to the Living

        Moving closer to her fiancé, Paget attempted to converse with him, but he slept on, even though his soul, which was not sleeping, responded joyously and tried to help her penetrate his physical consciousness as he moaned and turned restlessly in his sleep. After a few moments, he cried out, "Fanny, Fanny," and sat up in bed, wide awake. As he turned on a light and reached for his glasses and a magazine, she tried to communicate, but he did not react to her words.  "I am dead, that is why he cannot hear and see me," she thought, further recalling that she felt more alive than she had ever felt.  "There was something pitiably painful about being so near one beloved, seeing him plainly and hearing him distinctly, even knowing that he was thinking of me, and yet having him utterly ignore my presence, and above all knowing that he would never recognize me again - never hear my voice no matter how ardently I called, while I was the same in every way minus the physical body."

         Then she perceived that her vibratory environment did not harmonize with his.   "Mine was the vibration of perpetual motion - his more like a ‘dead sea' into which these vibratory currents ebbed and flowed, and it seemed such an easy matter to move out of the ‘deadness' into the ‘ebb and flow' that I waited and watched a long time before I realized that he would make no effort to do so."

       Realizing that she would not be able to penetrate his physical consciousness, she bade him farewell and attempted to move on; however, the vibratory force seemed to restrain her.  "Persistently the force held me, as though inviting me to further considerations of earth interests, but I had none.  My material possessions were disposed of as I desired; there was no life-work I was leaving incomplete; I had no children, no one depending on me; nothing held me to the earth.  My desire had been to go beyond it and now that I had done so, I was well pleased and wanted to go on to the joys I felt awaited me beyond the influence of earth.  Yet the force held me, try as I would to pass beyond it, until, instead of struggling against it I tried to understand it - to wrest from it its reason for thus detaining me, feeling that there must be some reason for such marked persistence.  Almost instantly the lesson sank into my consciousness and I realized that the long arm of mundane interests can reach into the Beyond and hold its victims within the shadow of earth - pitting its magnetism against the promise of higher things."

      She then felt herself moving in an undulating way within the propelling vibration and was suddenly enveloped in oppressive heavy darkness, feeling alone in eternity and waiting in awesome uncertainty.  She perceived that the darkness was really within her and could be eliminated only from within.  "There were loved ones and many others welcoming me and rejoicing that I was with them."   Her spirit guide, who identified himself as Meon, was also there.  She now felt light and carefree.

       Visiting "Hell"

       Meon then told her to follow him, "and with a soft, bluish light playing about and enveloping us, we floated out on the undulating waves of space."   As they were propelled by vibratory waves, they encountered a "red darkness" where she found herself among many others.  "I was listening, trying to hear what they were saying but the vibrations were evidently not in harmony, so I could not hear distinctly, and after a long time of vain effort I turned to Meon, and asked ‘What place is this?'"    Meon explained that they were in a place still very much within earth's magnetism, or spiritual gravitation.   Paget asked why the souls were detained there and Meon informed her that some desire it while others were not yet strong enough to progress beyond that point. "Earth interests hold them," he explained.

       "There was no bar to their going on but they did not want to; some did not know they could not give up the earth life," Paget related.  "In this dark earth-magnetized region disembodied spirits lived the mundane existence much as the psychic lives the spiritual while yet in the mundane - one in progression, the other retrogression.   Disembodied spirits living the mundane life do so at the expense of human beings in the earth life, while the mundane person living the spiritual life is obeying the law of evolution and progression."

        Paget observed spirits of love and mercy attempting to help those souls stuck in this "hellish" realm, but most of them had not yet acquired "spiritual hearing" and did not respond to the offers of assistance.  There were some, however, who heard and struggled up from the vortex.   Meon informed her that no soul was irretrievably lost, no matter how many aeons it may remain in the darkness.

        Paget began to wonder if this was to be her new abode, but Meon assured her that it was not.  "Did not the Christ descend into this place before his ascension?" he addressed her concern. 

        "Far out beyond the red-fringed darkness I could see light, in which rainbows seemed to play, pale as the dawn, of a gray-weird loveliness, coming and going as though flirting with the darkness, for to embrace it would be to destroy," she continue on.  "For delicate beauty it seemed I had never seen anything more fascinating or alluring than this kiss of the dawn and the darkness in the Soul world - it was like kissing death goodbye."

        The Dawn World

       They passed into what seemed to be another world.  Paget called it the "Dawn World," since it seemed that the light began to neutralize the darkness. "There were houses, flowers, trees, everything was so life-like it amazed me. I almost fancied I had returned to earth."  The inhabitants conversed with her, but they did not seem to realize that they were in the "after life," as they were not entirely free of earth's magnetism.  Paget witnessed some of them going earthward, as though drawn by something of paramount importance.  "While there seemed  no doubt that these people once inhabited the earth, I saw no one I had ever known in this life.  They had possibly progressed there out of the darkness and would go back to help those less fortunate into the higher condition which they had attained."

      Meon and Paget vibrated onward in ever increasing light.  "So enchanting was this riding on vibratory waves of space in a gentle undulatory way, that I felt like going on forever, and forever, never tiring, never stopping, but after abandoning myself to the witchery of it for some time, I perceived the vibrations changing, merging into a quivering sensation, even more exquisite, and then, as if part of it, my feet came upon something different, something firm and reliable."

       She now found herself in a city of light, one of whiteness, boundless in expanse. "It seemed I had reached the limit of my ability to float in space.  It seemed that I was heavier than my surroundings in some way.  Everywhere were the most exalted souls I had yet seen.  Some came forward and greeted us, addressing Meon as though he were one of them, and then, together, we entered into a building immeasurable in space and height, the veritable soul of architectural magnificence.  The material had the transparency of glass of a variegated whiteness, into which colors, harmonizing in the most delicate way, were coming and going, ever changing. Electricity seemed to be the power which held it all together, as the electric blue would merge into violet and play incessantly, in a serpentine way, into which almost imperceptible yellowish streams seemed to flow. It was self-illuminated...It seemed that all the wisdom of all the ages was mine as I stood there. Life and death gave up their mysteries, and I no longer wondered but observed as one who understood.   The machinery of earth existence was operated and regulated by and through the power of this plane.  It was actually in contact with the earth.  No happening on earth escaped the observation of the great spirits who seemed to have nothing else to do but watch over the beings of earth, to teach them, to lift them up through darkness, watch over reincarnations, create teachers and place them where they were most needed.   With these teachers they were in direct communication at all times and knew exactly what was going on through some form of wireless telegraphy or telephony, perhaps, but they communicated as though there were no distance.

      "They seemed to draw the highly evolved souls of earth up to them mentally, and these cooperated consciously, responding unerringly.  It was marvelous to watch the process or rather processes, as there were many phases of this supervision.  There were coming and going all the time.  I saw many go out and disappear into the depths, all rejoicing in their work, the uplifting of humanity.  The souls were countless, the space immeasurable, yet there was no confusion - it was system idealized, each recognizing his mission and doing it.   Truly, it was the Christ principle manifested, for they were laboring for others, not themselves."

       Meon took Paget even higher, where the influence of earth was not felt.  A great soul came forward and asked her if she would like to return to earth.  She said she would like to return only if she could do good by telling others what she had experienced.   The being warned her that many would not believe her and that she might suffer from her efforts, but Paget said she was up for the challenge.

      A Life Review

      Paget then felt alone with bowed head. She then saw a little light vibrating directly before her. It began shaping itself into something.  "It was not unlike a moving picture."  She began to see figures and a small girl emerged.  She soon realized that the young girl was herself and she was reliving her life on earth.  She saw herself reveling in her grand passion, music, which held her in bondage as she grew in the joy and mastery of it.  "How the little, white fingers, too small to span an octave, subconsciously caught fragments from the ‘choir invisible' and imprisoned them on the piano! 

     She saw herself grow through college and into a proud, self-centered woman.  There appeared before her three roads, one labeled "Good," one "Evil," and the other, the center, was unlabeled.  She found herself on the center road, which had many more people than either of the side roads.   "These roads were guarded by invisible creatures, according to the indicated propensities of each, who were always calling to those who traveled in the center, in an endeavor to influence them to more determined tendencies.  Ever and anon there were paths leading from the center to the outer roads and from one outer road to the other, showing how easily one can change ones course at will."

      Paget then saw the young woman dreaming of becoming a great singer, the compensation being the homage of the world.  "I saw her holding to heart in enchanted fancy, as the only thing worth while, the emptiest of all life's coveted cups - Fame."  There was no one to remind her that ‘by ambition fell the angels."   

       The "movie" of her life continued on to the time she came down with a severe case of laryngitis and lost her singing voice.  She saw herself cursing God and being enveloped by a shadow-stained covering of materialism.  She saw both her parents pass into the spirit world, leaving her alone, fighting the bitter fight.  She saw even the most trivial matters in her life review.  "Its faithfulness to detail was perfectly marvelous. Nothing was hidden, nothing slurred over.  It was all there. I was standing face to face with my earth life just as I had lived it, awaiting its condemnation or justification."

       When the life review ended, Meon stood waiting.  He told her that the purpose of the review was to build an edifice on the ashes as she returned to earth life.

      ‘Meon and other spirits were hovering about me.  I could feel the electrified essence, which had manifested its presence everywhere during my voyage, drawing itself away - letting me go, as it were.  Then the burden of physical life was full upon me and what a misfit I was!"  

     In my years as a competitive long-distance runner, I regularly experienced the phenomenon referred to as the "second wind."   Even for the well-conditioned runner, the first 150 to 200 yards of a race involves some stress and struggle as the heart and lungs are asked to suddenly quicken.  However, after around 30 seconds, the second wind kicks in and the body settles down into a relatively effortless rhythm.   It is like a car going through first and second gears before finally shifting into high gear.

     As I have come to understand it, the "second death" is something akin to the second wind.  That is, immediately after the silver cord breaks and the physical body releases the spirit body, i.e., "gives up the ghost," there is some stress, some confusion, some struggling in the spirit person's attempt to adjust to his or her new condition.    When the adjustment is made, the second death is experienced. 

      The term "second death" is found in the New Testament Book of Revelations four times:

      2:11:  He that hath an ear, let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.

     20:6:    Blessed is he that hath part in the first resurrection; on such the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.

    20:14:  And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.  This is the second death.

    21:8:  But the fearful and unbelieving, and abominable, and murders, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.

      Bible scholars don't seem to agree on the meaning of those verses.  They do agree that physical death is the "first" death, but beyond that interpretations become very convoluted. One popular fundamentalist interpretation puts it that he who has accepted Christ has already died the second death - death to sin.  Therefore, it cannot hurt him.  Those who actually experience the second death end up in a "lake of fire."

      While we might infer from the Biblical interpretations that the second death means some kind of condemnation, the more metaphysical interpretations suggest just the opposite - a graduation of some kind from a lower state to a higher state. 

      The predominant theory is that the second death takes place within hours or a few days for the spiritually advanced, but may take months of years in earth time for the spiritually challenged, those who remain "earthbound."   In effect, the second death is an "awakening" to one's condition based on one's spiritual consciousness in the earth life.  The second death might be equated to the now popular expression, "going into the light" at the end of the tunnel as well as to the "Ground Luminosity" of the Buddhist.             

    "We might with justice speak of a first and second death because not only the physical body has to be shed but the next body also," a spirit entity calling himself "Scott" communicated to Jane Sherwood.  "Think of the whole man as being composed of four interpenetrating forms.  The second of these is very near to the physical in substance and is very closely knit to it.  It is the etheric or life-body and gives the power of sensory experience.  It never leaves the physical body, even in sleep, but at death it parts from the physical along with the astral and ego bodies.  It is too closely related to the physical to allow the higher bodies to pass clearly into their proper sphere, so it also has to be shed and this is the second death."

     This transition stage - between the first and second deaths - has been referred to as Hades, which is not synonymous with Hell, as some religions would have us believe.   There may be great confusion, a "fire of the mind," so to speak, by materialistic or spiritually-challenged souls; hence the belief that Hades is the Hell of religion.  In effect, Hades seems to be an intermediate or staging area of sorts where the soul must adjust its vibrations to the spirit world.   It is said that even Jesus needed a period of adjustment, or at least wanted to experience it so that he knew what others were going through.  Thus, he initially spent a day or more in Hades and then on the third day "rose into Heaven."  That is, he apparently experienced the second death on the third day.  Of course, there are many who would argue with such an interpretation.

      The spiritually-challenged souls are frequently referred to as "earthbound" spirits, because they cling to earthly ways.  Referring back to the long-distance runner comparison, it seems appropriate to liken these earthbound spirits to the overweight couch potato who attempts to run a marathon.  He might run for 200 yards, but instead of getting a second wind, he is forced to slow to a trot or just walk, and even surrender in frustration.        

     "The duration of the state of confusion that follows death varies greatly," explained Alan Kardec, the pioneering French psychical researcher of the 19^th Century. "It may be only of a few hours, and it may be of several months, or even years," Kardec wrote.  "Those with whom it lasts the least are they who, during the earthly life, have identified themselves most closely with their future state, because they are soonest able to understand their new situation."

      Kardec went on to say that there is nothing painful in this mental confusion for those who have lived an upright life. "He is calm, and his perceptions are those of a peaceful awakening out of sleep.  But for him whose conscience is not clean, it is full of anxiety and anguish that become more and more poignant in proportion as he recovers consciousness."

      One spirit communicated to Kardec that his state was a very happy one and that he no longer felt the pains he experienced during his final days in the earth life.  "The transition from the terrestrial life to the spirit life was, at first, something that I could not understand, and everything seemed incomprehensible to me; for we sometimes remain for several days without recovering our clearness of thought; but, before I died, I prayed that God would give me the power of speaking to those I love, and my prayer was granted."   He estimated that it took him about eight hours in earth time to regain clearness of thought.

       Silver Birch, the spirit entity who spoke through the entranced Maurice Barbanell, said the same thing.  "This [awakening] depends on the degree of awareness that the newcomer possesses," he explained.  "If completely ignorant of the fact that life continues after earthly death, or if so indoctrinated with false ideas that understanding will take a long time, then there is a process of rest equivalent to sleep."

      Silver Birch went on to say that the time for realization is self-determined.  It can be short or long, as measured by our duration of time.  For the enlightened, at least those whose actions in the physical world were in accordance with their enlightenment, it is a speedy process.

       A very similar message comes from the writings of medium Alice A. Bailey and her teacher, the Tibetan master, Djwhal Khul.   They point out that most people, being focused on the physical plane, experience a semi-consciousness in the period after death, usually one of emotional and mental bewilderment.  The etheric body of the spiritually-undeveloped person can linger for a long time near its discarded physical shell because the pull of the soul is not as potent as the material aspect is. 

      The Tibetan Book of the Dead refers to this period of awakening as the "Ground Luminosity" or "Clear Light," and says that the vast majority of peopledo not immediately recognize the Ground Luminosity and are therefore plunged into a state of unconsciousness.   As explained by Sogyal Rinpoche, the spiritual director of Rigpa, an international network of Buddhist groups and centers, consciousness continues without the body and goes through a series of states called "bardos."   The problem is that in the bardos "most people go on grasping at a false sense of self, with its ghostly grasping at physical solidity, and this continuation of that illusion, which has been at the root of all suffering in life, exposes them in death to more suffering, especially in the ‘bardo of becoming'."

         Communicating through Geraldine Cummins, Frederic W. H. Myers said that he could not generalize as to the conditions in Hades, which he also referred to as the "place of shadows," because conditions varied so much.  However, he stated that the "average man who has led a well-ordered life" may very well experience communion with deceased loved ones and see fragmentary happening of his earthly life, judging himself, before resting, seemingly in a veil while in a state of semi-suspended consciousness.   He added that three or four days of earth time may suffice for the Hades experience, but also pointed out that many souls "linger a long while in Hades and wander to and fro in its grim ways, encountering certain strange beings who hover near the borders of the physical world, who wake old sorrows and troubles in the minds of men, and who play upon the understandings of certain individuals they would possess while still in the flesh, dethroning the reason, stealing from man his birthright."

       Myers had died, at age 57, on January 17, 1901 while in Rome.  The first communication from his came through Rosalie Thompson, a medium, to Professor Oliver Lodge and his wife on February 19, 1901.  However, it was clear that Myers was struggling to communicate.  He told the Lodges that he was confused when he first arrived on the other side, before he realized he was dead.  "I thought I had lost my way in a strange town, and I groped my way along the passage," he said.  "And even when I saw people that I knew were dead, I thought they were only visions.  I have not seen Tennyson yet by the way."   

       Many other spirit communicators have said that awareness or consciousness on that side of the veil is in proportion to the spiritual awareness or consciousness while on earth.  Thus, there are some who immediately recognize that they have departed the earth life, while others are slow to understand their condition.  "I awoke standing by my dead body, thinking I was still alive and in my ordinary physical frame," Julia Ames communicated to William T. Stead.  "It was only when I saw the corpse in the bed that I knew that something had happened."

      Stead, a world renowned author and journalist who was very much involved with Spiritualism, was a victim of the Titanic disaster in 1912.  One survivor recalled Stead sitting calmly in the smoking room while apparently reading a Bible as chaos gripped nearly everyone else on the ship.  Not long after his death, Stead began communicating through a number of mediums in both Great Britain and the United States.    Communicating to his daughter, Estelle, Stead recalled that his first awareness that he had passed over when he found a number of deceased friends with him. "I knew it suddenly and was a trifle alarmed," he communicated. "Practically instantaneously I found myself looking for myself.  Just a moment of agitation, momentarily only, and then the full and glorious realization that all I had learnt was true." 

       All of the victims seemed to gather in one place as their bodies floated in the ocean below.  Some of them were mental wrecks, wondering if they would be taken to meet their Maker and what their sentences would be, while others were more concerned with loved ones left behind.  There were a number, however, who seemed more concerned about their valuables that went down with the ship.

      After all of the victims gathered together, they seemed to rise vertically into the air at a terrific speed, as if they were all standing on a platform.  "I cannot tell how long our journey lasted, nor how far from the earth we were when we arrived, but it was a gloriously beautiful arrival. It was like walking from your own English winter gloom into the radiance of an Indian sky.  There was all brightness and beauty."

      After their arrival, they were greeted by many old friends and relatives and then all parted company.  Stead's father then accompanied him to a temporary rest home, which he was told was for newly-arrived spirit people. "It was nearest to earth conditions and was used because it resembled an earth place in appearance," Stead explained his arrival in what seems to have been the Hades condition, going on to say that the main objective was to get rid of unhappiness at parting from earth ties. 

      "On arriving here there is often much grief," Stead continued.  "Grief that is sometimes incapacitating, and no movement forward can be made until the individual wishes it himself.  Progress cannot be forced upon him."

      A number of spirit communicators suggest a period of conscious confusion, followed by a "sleep" and then an awakening.  A spirit identifying himself as Thomas Dowding, a schoolmaster who joined the British army and was then killed on the battlefield, communicated to Wellesley Tudor Pole that one moment he was alive and the next moment he was helping two of his friends carry his body down the trench labyrinth.  "I did not know whether I had jumped out of my body through shell shock, temporarily or for ever," he told Pole.  "You see what a small thing is death, even the violent death of war!  I seemed in a dream...Death for me was a simple experience - no horror, no long-drawn suffering, no conflict.  It comes to many in the same way."

     Dowding said he experienced no pain when struck by a shell splinter.  After his body was taken to the field mortuary, he remained near it the entire night, expecting to wake up in the body again.  He then lost consciousness.  When he awoke the next morning, his body was gone and he began hunting for it.  He then realized that he must be dead.   Once he recovered from the shock of that realization, he felt as if he were floating in a mist that muffled sound and blurred the vision.  "It was like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.  Everything was distant, minute, misty, unreal.  Guns were being fired.  It might all have been millions of miles away...I think I fell asleep for the second time, and long remained unconscious and in a dreamless condition."

       When he "awoke" the second time, he felt cramped, but this feeling gradually left him.  "I think my new faculties are now in working order," he continued his story.  "I can reason and think and feel and move."

      He was welcomed by his brother, William, who had died three years earlier, and accompanied to a rest hall.  William explained to him that it took some time for him to help him because the atmosphere was so thick.  "He hoped to reach me in time to avert the ‘shock' to which I have referred, but found it impossible."

     It was after reaching the rest hall that things became clearer and he was no longer confused.

       According to those who see more than a single spirit body, there can be a third death and even a fourth death as the spirit sheds the additional bodies or goes to a higher vibration.   I can relate the running experience to this as well.  Although it was a very rare experience, there were several times during my many years of long-distance running when, after acquiring the second wind, I achieved a state of what might be called effortless euphoria.  There was no stress at all, no matter how fast I seemed to be running.  It was if I had no limitations and could go on and on forever.  Unfortunately, however, those few experiences all came during training runs, not during races.   Perhaps the ego was too much involved in the race experience.

      Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.  - Ecclesiastes 12:6-7

       One Bible reference suggests that the above Old Testament passage be interpreted by taking the "silver cord" to mean the marrow of the backbone, the "golden bowl" to mean the membrane that covers the brain, the "pitcher" to mean the veins of the body, the "fountain" to mean the liver, the "wheel" to mean the head, and the "cistern" to mean the heart out of which the head draws the power of life.

      I infer from Ecclesiastes that the loosening of the "silver cord" is one of several ways by which the physical body and spirit body separate at the time of death, perhaps referring to old age.   Clairvoyants and out-of-body travelers, however, see the severance of the silver cord involved in every kind of death.

       Frederic W. H. Myers, the Cambridge scholar who became a pioneering psychical researcher, communicated extensively through the mediumship of Geraldine Cummins of Ireland, considered perhaps the most famous and credible automatic writing medium ever, after his death in 1901.  Myers referred to the spirit body as the double, explaining that it is an exact counterpart of the physical shape.  "The two are bound together by many little threads, by two silver cords," Myers explained.  "One of these makes contact with the solar plexus, the other with the brain.  They all may lengthen or extend during sleep or during half-sleep, for they have considerable elasticity.  When a man slowly dies these threads and two cords are gradually broken.  Death occurs when these two principal communicating livens with brain and solar plexus are severed."

       Myers went on to explain that life occasionally lingers in certain cells of the body after the soul has departed.   "The double still adheres to the shell by means of certain of the threads which have not yet been broken," he continued.  "The soul does not suffer in the physical sense if thus delayed in his journey.  He may suffer in the sense that he has, thereby, a greater awareness of the immediate surroundings of his physical body.  It gives him the power to perceive his friends and relations wherever this worn-out garment lies.  As a rule, however, he obtains complete freedom from earth's detaining grasp within an hour - or a few hours - of death."

       The soul slowly rises into the double and for a brief time hovers above the physical shell, Myers further explained, adding that a "little white cloud" or "pale essence" can be discerned by some. 

      Estelle Roberts, one of England's most famous mediums, recalled being at the bedside of her husband, Hugh, as he died.  "I looked again at dear Hugh, recalling the happiness we had enjoyed together, and while I sat there I saw his spirit leave the body.  It emerged from the back of his head and gradually molded itself into an exact replica of his earthly body.  It remained suspended about a foot above the body, lying in the same position, and attached to it by a cord to the head.  Then the cord broke and the spirit form floated away, passing through the wall."

        Roberts also reported hearing strange, terrifying noises as if someone was "rending linen" and occasionally sounding like the cracking of a whip.  This apparently the spirit body breaking loose from the physical body. 

        In his 1929 book, A Curious Life, George Wehner, a trance medium and clairvoyant from Detroit, Michigan, tells of his many mediumistic experiences and other paranormal observations, including the passing of his mother.  "A misty blue-white form, the counterpart of my mother's, but radiant, like a blue-white diamond's flame, was slowly rising from her body on the bed," he wrote.  "This form lifted at an angle, the feet rising higher than the head, which remained attached to the physical head.  The form now seemed to try to free itself, and after several tugs, the misty head separated from the body's head, and the freed form righted itself in the air exactly as a log rights itself after it has been dropped into deep water.  For a second, I saw several arms and hands materialize in the air and reach downward to welcome the new-born soul.  Then, like a shadow, the spirit-form of my beloved mother glided rapidly upward through a corner of the ceiling."

        In his 1916 book, Raymond or Life and Death, Sir Oliver Lodge, the esteemed British physicist and radio pioneer, in a séance with medium Gladys Osborne Leonard, discussed the subject with Raymond, his deceased son who had been killed on the battlefield in France.  Raymond told him that the body doesn't start mortifying until the spirit has left it.  He went on to tell his father that he had witnessed a scene several days earlier in which a man was going to be cremated two days after the doctor pronounced him dead.  "When his relatives on this side heard about it, they brought a certain doctor on our side, and when they saw that the spirit hadn't got really out of the body, they magnetized it, and helped it out," Raymond explained through Feda, Leonard's control.  "But there was still a cord, and it had to be severed rather quickly, and it gave a little shock to the spirit, like as if you had something amputated.  But it had to be done." 

       Raymond suggested that there should be a seven-day waiting period before cremation.  "People are so careless," he said.  "The idea seems to be ‘hurry up and get them out of the way now that they are dead."

       There have been other reports of difficulties in "giving up the ghost."  In Zeitschrift fuer Parapsychologie, a clairvoyant man who preferred to remain anonymous reported  sitting at his dying wife's bedside and seeing an "odic body" take form over his wife's physical body.  It was connected to the physical body by a "cord of od."  The arms and legs of this odic body were flailing and kicking as if struggling to get free and escape.  Finally, after about five hours, the fatal moment came at last.  "There was a sound of gasping," the man reported.  "The odic body writhed to and fro, and my wife's breathing ceased.  To all appearances she was dead, but a few moments later she began to breathe again.  After she had drawn her breath twice, everything became quiet.  At the instant of her last breath, the connecting cord broke and the odic body vanished."

         Communicating through the direct-voice mediumship of Lillian Bailey, Bill Wootton, a World War I victim, described the life cord this way:  "It is a silver cord which is thick.  It glows and glistens. From it we can tell the health of  persons.  When we see their cord getting very thin until it's right down to a hair's breadth, we know that the physical body is not going to be held very long by that spiritual cord."

       Wootton said the cord emerges from the pineal gland in the head and extends to the solar plexus.  "It is the life force that belongs to the spirit YOU,  which pours in through the glands and makes the body work."   When death takes place, the cord is severed as if a rope were snapping at a worn-out point, Wootton added.  

        Wellesley Tudor Pole, another British medium, reported on his experiences as he sat with a dying friend, whom he refers to as "Major P."  Death seemed close at hand as Major P. remained unconscious.  Pole noticed a shadowy form hovering in a horizontal position about two feet above the bed.  "This form is attached to the physical body on the bed by two transparent elastic cords," Pole recorded at 3 p.m.  "One of them appears to be attached to the solar plexus and the other to the brain.  As I watch this form it grows more distinct in outline, until I can see that it is an exact counterpart, so far as the form is concerned, of the body on the bed.  I can see what looks like spiral currents passing up through these two cords, and as the physical body grows more lifeless, the form hovering above seems to become more vital." 

      At 3:40 p.m., Pole noted that the "double" had become more distinct  and that he could see the currents passing through the cords gathering greater momentum.  "The life-force is steadily ebbing out of the body, and is apparently passing into the form above."

       At 3:55 p.m. Pole observed two figures stoop down over the bed and break the cords at points close to the physical body.  "Immediately I see that the form or double rises about two feet from its original position, but remains horizontal, and at this same moment Major P.'s heart stop beating."

         Similar reports come from those who have had a near-death experience (NDE).  Long before Dr. Raymond Moody published his findings on NDEs, Dr. A. S. Wiltse, a Skiddy, Kansas physician, reported a personal experience that was no doubt a NDE, as he suffered from typhoid fever.  He was informed by his attending physician, Dr. S. H. Raynes, that he was without pulse or perceptible heartbeat for about four hours. "Dr. Raynes informs me, however, that by bringing his eyes close to my face, he could perceive an occasional short gasp, so very light as to be barely perceptible, and that he was upon the point, several times of saying, ‘He is dead,' when a gasp would occur in time to check him."

      During the time that he appeared to be dead, Wiltse curiously observed what was going on.  "With all the interest of a physician, I beheld the wonders of my bodily anatomy, intimately interwoven with which, even tissue for tissue, was I, the living soul of that dead body.  I learned that the epidermis was the outside boundary of the ultimate tissues, so to speak, of the soul.  I realized my condition and reasoned calmly thus.  I have died, as men term death, and yet I am as much a man as ever.   I am about to get out of the body.  I watched the interesting process of the separation of soul and body.  By some power, apparently not my own, the Ego was rocked to and fro, laterally, as a cradle is rocked, by which process its connection with the tissues of the body was broken up.  After a little time the lateral motion ceased, and long the soles of the feet beginning at the toes, passing rapidly to the heels, I felt and heard, as it seemed, the snapping of innumerable small cords. When this was accomplished, I began slowly to retreat from the feet, toward the head, as a rubber cord shortens.  I remember reaching the hips and saying to myself, ‘Now, there is no life below the hips.'"  

     Dr. Wiltse could not recall passing through the abdomen or chest, but he recollected that his "whole self" was collected into his head.  He appeared to himself something like a jelly-fish in color and form and remembered thinking that he would soon be free. 

     "As I emerged from the head, I floated up and down and laterally like a soap bubble attached to the bowl of a pipe until I at last broke loose from the body and fell lightly to the floor, where I slowly arose and expanded into the full stature of a man. I seemed to be translucent, of a bluish cast and perfectly naked.  With a painful sense of embarrassment, I fled toward the partially opened door to escape the eyes of the two ladies whom I was facing, as well as others who I knew were about me, but upon reaching the door I found myself clothed, and satisfied upon that point, I turned and faced the company."

       Wiltse recalled being surprised at how pale the body looked but congratulated himself on the way he had composed his body, his hands clasped at his chest. He marveled at how well he was feeling, when only minutes before he was in extreme distress.  He then looked back through the open door, where he could see his body.  "I discovered then a small cord, like a spider's web, running from my shoulders (of the spirit body) back to my body and attaching to it at the base of my neck in front."

       Since Wiltse returned to life, the cord apparently was not severed.

       Much more recently, Dr. Peter Fenwick of England and his wife, Elizabeth Fenwick, quote one NDEr as feeling "like a kite on an endless string."  This "cord" seemed to be attached to the back and the person could feel it pulling her back into her body.

       Another NDEr told the Fenwicks that although he could not see his body, he could see that he was attached by a light grey rope.

       Dr. Sam Parnia, another NDE researcher, was told by an experiencer that she found herself standing beside herself looking at a cord that connected her to her body and thinking how thin and wispy it was. 

      In effect, the silver cord appears to be the counterpart of the umbilical cord.   While the umbilical cord must be severed when we come into the material world, the silver cord must be severed when we return to the real world.  

Notice:  Dark Lore III is now available from Amazon.com  I have contributed one of the 14 stories to this anthology concerning the paranormal. My contribution is on the Glastonbury Scripts, which involved the excavation of the Glastonbury Abbey ruins in England.   Frederick Bligh Bond, the architect and archaeologist hired in 1907 to excavate the ruins, decided to employ a medium and contact long-dead monks who had lived at the abbey for information as to where to dig.  Over a period of some 12 years, interrupted by World War I, Bond received more than 60 messages from the monks directing his excavations.  Many of them were exact to the inch.  Some, however, were a little off due to overlapping construction over the centuries.

       The other 13 stories touch upon a wide variety of paranormal subjects.  Nick Redfern gives a different spin to the Roswell E.T. theory.  Greg Taylor, the editor of the anthology,  discusses some of the pre-Raymond Moody near-death experiences, including that of Dr. George Ritchie, whose NDE inspired Moody's 1975 best-seller.  Greg Bishop presents the very intriguing story of Dr. Mario Tazzaglini, who is said to have channeled aliens. Neil Arnold investigates the monsters of Dutch folklore, while Theo Paijmans gets to the occult roots of Nazi Technology and Robert Bauval searches for the secrets of Menkaure, builder of the third pyramid of Giza.  Other contributors include Mike Jay, Philip Coppens, Blair MacKenzie Blake, Robert Schoch, Geoff Falla, Adam Gorightly, and "The Emperor," with the subjects ranging from the "Philadelphia Experiment" to ancient biblical sites.  Check it out at

        Hodgson's views changed after the death of George Pellew, a 32-year-old member of the ASPR, as a result of a fall from a horse during February 1892.  Sometime before his accident, Pellew, the author of at least six books, including biographies of statesmen John Jay and Henry Addington, had told Hodgson that he could not conceive of an afterlife but that if he died before Hodgson and found himself "still existing" he would attempt to let Hodgson know.

       On March 22, 1892, a little over a month after Pellew's death, Hodgson brought John Hart, a friend of Pellew's, for a sitting with Leonora Piper, a Boston, Mass. trance medium whom Hodgson was studying.  Mrs. Piper would go into a trance and Phinuit, her spirit control, would speak through her, relaying messages from other spirits.  Apparently, it was too difficult and risky for other spirits to occupy her body; thus Phinuit acted as an intermediary.

         Early in the sitting, Phinuit announced that "George" was there. He then gave his full name and the names of several close friends, including the sitter.  To give assurance that it was actually him communicating through Phinuit, Pellew told Hart that the pair of studs he was wearing were once his and were given to Hart by his (Pellew's) parents, which Hart confirmed as true.  Pellew then mentioned some mutual friends, Jim and Mary Howard, and asked Hart if he could get them to attend a sitting.  He also brought up a discussion he had had with Katharine, the Howard's 15-year-old daughter, about God, space, and eternity.  As neither Hart nor Hodgson, who was also in attendance and taking notes, was aware of any such discussion with Katharine, this information, later verified as fact, clearly fell outside the scope of telepathy.      

       Hodgson recorded that many personal references were made by Pellew and that Hart was very impressed, mentioning that various words of greetings and speech mannerisms were very characteristic of Pellew, even though relayed through Phinuit.

       Some three weeks later, Jim and Mary Howard had a sitting with Mrs. Piper. As was the procedure, Hodgson did not tell Mrs. Piper their names or give her any clue as to their connection with Pellew. Yet, Pellew communicated.  However, rather than Phinuit speaking through Mrs. Piper and relaying messages from Pellew, Pellew took over Mrs. Piper's body and spoke directly to his friends.  "Jim is that you?" Hodgson recorded Pellew's initial greeting.  "Speak to me quick.  I am not dead.  Don't think me dead.  I'm awfully glad to see you. Can't you see me?  Don't you hear me? Give my love to my father and tell him I want to see him.  I am happy here, and more so since I can communicate with you..."

        Pellew went on to tell his friends that he was very limited in what he could do as he had just "awakened to the reality of life after death."  He told them it was all darkness at first and that he was puzzled and confused.  He said that he could see Jim, but that his voice sounded like a big bass drum.  Jim Howard asked Pellew if he was surprised to find himself still living.  "Perfectly so," Pellew responded.  "Greatly surprised.  I did not believe in a future life. It was beyond my reasoning powers.  Now it is as clear to me as daylight.  We have an astral facsimile of the material body."  

      At a later sitting, the Howards brought their daughter, Katharine. Pellew came through and asked Katharine about her violin lessons, commenting (apparently jesting) that her playing was "horrible."   Not realizing the humor in it, Mary Howard spoke up to defend her daughter's music, but Pellew then explained that he mentioned it because that is what he used to do when in the flesh. It was intended as verification of his identity. 

      However, there was some confusion on Pellew's part in responding to various questions put to him by the Howards.  Pellew explained that he was somewhat "dull" in his new sphere and that his memory was not much different than when he was on the earth plane, i.e., that he couldn't always recall everything in a moment.  He went on to say that he had lost all sense of time in his new environment, but he was determined to make his identity clear.   "Hodgson, I mean, and Jim, I want you both to feel I am no secondary personality of the medium's," he told them, adding that he lives, thinks, sees, hears, knows, and feels just as clearly as when he was in the material life.  "...but it is not so easy to explain it to you as you would naturally suppose, especially when the thoughts have to be expressed through substance materially." 

       Phinuit broke in and took back control from Pellew, commenting that Pellew had bypassed him by mistake and that he would act as the go-between the remainder of the session.  Phinuit began speaking fluent French to Katharine, who had lived in France and knew the language.  Someone known to Mary Howard as Madame Elisa then interrupted, speaking in Italian.  Mary Howard responded in Italian.  (Piper did not know French or Italian.)

        As a further test of telepathy, Mrs. Howard brought three pictures to a sitting and asked Pellew to identify them.  Pellew correctly identified the first picture as the Howard's summer home.  He correctly identified a second picture as a country place where they had stayed, recalling a little brick henhouse which was not in the picture.   Mrs. Howard confirmed the accuracy of this report and then showed a third picture, which Pellew could not identify.  In fact, Pellew had never seen it.  Had Mrs. Piper been reading Howard's mind, she should have been able to identify it, unless, of course, she could also read Howard's mind relative to the test, and her subconscious was aware and devious enough to know that it was more important to show ignorance than it was to identify the location in the picture.

      The communication with Pellew caused Hodgson to abandon all other theories in favor of the spirit one.   While the earthly existence of Phinuit could not be verified, there was no doubt that Pellew had lived in the flesh.  Moreover, there was too much individuality, too much purpose and persistence, expressed by Pellew to attribute it to telepathy of a limited or expanded nature.   It was one thing for a medium to tap into another mind or cosmic reservoir for information, quite another for that other mind or reservoir to come back with the fullness of a personality rather than just fragmentary bits of information.

       "I had but one object, to discover fraud and trickery," Hodgson wrote. "Frankly, I went to Mrs. Piper with Professor James of Harvard University about twelve years ago with the object of unmasking her...I entered the house profoundly materialistic, not believing in the continuance of life after death; today I say I believe.  The truth has been given to me in such a way as to remove from me the possibility of a doubt."           
        Pellew then began sharing "control" duties with Phinuit and eventually took over for him. Hodgson noted that when someone Pellew had known when alive happened to be sitting, he (Pellew) would greet him or her by name.  When someone unknown to him was sitting, he didn't address the person by name.  The non-recognition went against any telepathy theory.  "There are thirty cases of true recognition out of at least one hundred and fifty persons who have had sittings with Mrs. Piper since the first appearance of G.P. (George Pellew), and no case of false recognition," Hodgson reported.  "The continual manifestation of this personality - so different from Phinuit or other communicators - with its own reservoir of memories, with its swift appreciation of any reference to friends of G.P., with its ‘give and take' in little incidental conversations with myself, has helped largely in producing a conviction of the actual presence of the G.P. personality, which it would be quite impossible to impart by any mere enumeration of the verifiable statements."   

         At a sitting on June 17, 1895, Hodgson asked Pellew what Phinuit was doing when he (Pellew) was the only one using Piper's body.  Pellew replied that Phinuit was holding back "a million others" from interrupting him.

         Having heard that Dr. Richard Hodgson, an Australian teaching in England and serving as an investigator for the Society for Psychical Resarch (SPR), had supposedly exposed Madame Blavatsky as a charlatan, Mr. R. Pearsall Smith of Philadelphia instigated the offer to Hodgson to come to America and head up the American branch of the SPR.  Smith's intent was to debunk all mediums, as his grieving brother had been led astray by a charlatan.

       Soon after his arrival in the U.S. in April of 1887, Hodgson had his first sitting with medium Leonora Piper, who had greatly impressed Professor William James of Harvard University.  James had arranged the sitting for Hodgson, careful not to reveal Hodgson's name or purpose for being in the country.

       After Mrs. Piper went into the trance state, "Phinuit,' her spirit control at the time, took over her body and mentioned the name "Fred" to Hodgson.   "You went to school together, and Fred was very fond of playing leap-frog," Phinuit relayed the message from Fred.  "He was swinging on a trapeze when he fell and injured his spine, finally dying in a convulsion.  You were not present at the time of his accident or death."

        Phinuit continued: "Fred states his father was your mother's brother.  He also wants to remind you of Harris at school.  He was a very able man.  Fred says you come from Australia.   After your father's death you went to Germany.  Fred was with you then in spirit.  While there you got provoked with a lady.  You said she was deceitful, a story teller. He also says one of your chief reasons for choosing St. John's College (at Cambridge) was that Wordsworth was a Johnian."

         Hodgson was stunned by the accuracy of the communication, as he recalled his cousin Fred, whose father was his mother's brother, excelling at the game of leap-frog by taking long flying jumps that attracted crowds of schoolmates.  Fred injured his spine in a gymnasium in Melbourne in 1871 and died within a matter of days.   Hodgson was not present at either the accident or the death.  

         Harris was the name of their schoolmaster in 1868 or 1869.    While in Germany, Hodgson charged a lady with falsehood under somewhat peculiar circumstances, although Hodgson recalled going to Germany before his father's death in 1885, not after it.   And it was true that Hodgson chose St. John's College because Wordsworth had been educated there.   

        At a second sitting, Phinuit described a lady with dark hair, dark eyes and a slim figure, but he could not get her name. He could get only that her Christian named ended with an "sie."  "She was much closer to you than any other person," Phinuit communicated.  "Too bad, you were not with her at the time.  She died in England when you were across country.  The lady had two rings, one went with her body to the grave, the other ought to have gone to you...She had a brother and a sister.  She had a black lace collar, with a pin with a head, and a ring with a stone which she wanted given to you.  This lady had beautiful teeth. She wants you always to keep a book of poems which you had given her and had been sent back to you.  You had written her name in it in connection with her birthday." 

         Phinuit went on to tell Hodgson that the woman was a great friend of his sister's and that he (Hodgson) heard about her death from his sister.   Still struggling with the name, Phinuit suggested it might be "Ellerton,"  He then said that her left eye is brown and on the right eye there is a spot of a light color in the iris, the spot being straggly and of a bluish cast.  He said it was a birthmark.

        Hodgson was further impressed, although there were several bits of information that he was unsure of.  He did not recall a brother or sister, although he remembered that at least one sibling had been stillborn.  Not wanting to name his friend in his report, Hodgson referred to her only as "Q."  He confirmed that she was his sister's good friend and that his sister informer him of  Q's death.  Moreover, her name ended with a "sie."  (Hodgson's biographer Alex Baird later revealed that her name was "Jessie D----.")   Strangely, Ellerton was the surname of one of Q's other cousins. 

       "The description of "Q," her relationship to me, the manner of her death, and my absence from her side are true," Hodgson recorded. "She died in Australia while I was in England."    But Hodgson knew nothing about the rings.   He recalled the black lace collar distinctly and the pin vaguely, but not the stone in the ring.  He did not recall that she had beautiful teeth. Rather, he recalled that a year or two before her death she had some teeth extracted (which may have been replaced with "beautiful" teeth).

       As for the book of  poems, Hodgson remembered lending her Tennyson's The Princess and her having returned it. He remembered writing her name on one of the fly leaves.

       Hodgson further recalled the eye blemish, but thought it was grey rather than blue.  He asked Phinuit how he knew about the eye.  Phinuit replied that "Q" was standing close to him and showing him her right eye, so that he could see it plainly. 

        Phinuit went on to tell Hodgson that his mother was living but his father and little brother had died.  "There are two Toms in your family, both brothers, one alive and one in spirit," he continued.   Hodgson confirmed the facts as given by Phinuit.

       "Here is a schoolmate, with a lot of freckles, little fellow with red hair," Phinuit continued.  "Name like Wingford, he lived with his grandmother."   Hodgson knew to whom Phinuit was referring, although he recalled the boy's name as Grimwood, not Wingford.

       Another old schoolmate then presented himself to Phinuit.  Phinuit said he was lame when he was a boy and that his name sounded like Brookford.  Hodgson recalled the lame boy but remembered his name as Brooks.

      Phinuit informed Hodgson that his young married sister would soon have another child, a boy.  This prophecy turned out to be true, as his sister gave birth before the end of the year.

       As biographer Baird saw it, Hodgson's whole attitude about mediums began to change with those first few sittings.

       After Hodgson's death in 1905, fellow psychical researcher Hereward Carrington wrote that Jessie  ("Q") continued to communicate with affectionate and evidential messages for Hodgson, a life-long bachelor, in his many additional sittings with Mrs. Piper over the next 18 years.    

      My book, The Articulate Dead, was released during December by Galde Press.  I have had numerous questions concerning the book from friends, correspondents, and from a half-dozen Internet radio stations.  Thus, I decided to put these questions together in something of a self-interview in an attempt to explain what the book is about and why I wrote it.   

      So, Mike, what's the book about?

      It's about psychical research that took place between 1850 and 1940 - research aimed primarily at proving that humans survive physical death and continue on in other realms of existence.

      Yuck, sounds like a pretty dull read.

       It probably is for those who prefer to escape reality by reading fiction, or for those who find spiritual enlightenment in reading Harry Potter.

       Who is your audience?

       Anyone who expects to die, but primarily people suffering from "GR-10 Syndrome."

       GR-10 Syndrome?  What's that?

        I'm glad you asked.  It's something I identified after I retired and started coming in contact with other retired people.  I call them the 10 G's of Retirement:  Graying, Grunting, Grumbling, Grimacing, Groaning, Growling, Griping, Grieving, Groveling, and Groping.

        Far out!  But how does your book deal with those things?

        As I see it, most older people are suffering from a number of those GR's  because they sense their lives winding down and they have nothing to look forward to.  They see death as the grim reaper, nothing else.   The material in my book suggests that there is something beyond death and that death is to be embraced.         

      ‘One life at a time' is my motto.  Shouldn't we be living in the present rather than looking ahead to some future life, if there is one?

      Definitely.  But this life can be so much sweeter, especially in our final years, if we are assured that there is meaning to it and that we are not all just marching toward an abyss of nothingness or total extinction.  Once we begin to see the bigger picture, we don't live in the past, nor do we live in the future.  The best way to live in the present is to "live in eternity."  To do that, you must accept this life as a small part of a much larger life.

      But various polls say that 80-85 percent of the U.S. population believes in an afterlife. 

       I know quite a few of those people.  They say they believe, but they really just hope.  Some of them go to church on Sunday, but the rest of the week they strive to be "one with their toys," living the hedonistic lifestyle and envying people like Hugh Heffner and Britney Spears.   Celebrities have become our gods.  Blind faith based on religious dogma just doesn't do it for most people these days. A recently report study in the Journal of American Medical Association suggested that dying cancer patients who relied strongly on their religious faith to cope with their illnesses were three times more likely than others to receive intensive, invasive medical procedures, even during their final days.  While there might be other explanations for that, one might infer that they are more afraid of dying than others.

      I don't believe in an afterlife and I'm content.   

      William James, the renowned psychiatrist, said he had tried to adopt that frame of mind but called it all humbug - so much bravado that melts away as the person approaches death's door.  I know some people who do a very good job of repressing the idea of death by escaping into mostly meaningless activities.  Kierkegaard called it "Philistinism" - man fully concerned with the trivial, so focused on meaningless things that he has lost sight of the big picture. There may be some people who have no fear of extinction, of obliteration - of their march toward nothingness - but few people are able to adopt such a "courageous" outlook on death. I don't think there is any question that the vast majority of people fear death and do everything possible to repress the idea of it. .  

     
       And how does your book play into all this?

       It offers quite a bit of evidence that man survives death and lives in a spirit world.  Seeing the evidence offered by the various researchers helps one move from disbelief or from blind faith to true faith or conviction. 

     
      Who are the researchers?

       A number of distinguished scientists and scholars, including two British physicists, both  knighted for their discoveries in mainstream science, a British chemist also knighted for his work in science,  a world-renowned American chemist and inventor, a professor of logic and ethics at Columbia, a Cambridge classics scholar and poet, a New York Supreme Court chief justice, a biologist who was Darwin's collaborator in the theory of natural selection, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, two Christian clergymen, and a French educator, to name the primary researchers I discuss in the book.

     
     What did their research turn up?

     They concluded that humans can communicate with the spirit world, and, concomitantly, that consciousness survives physical death.

      
     How did they come to that conclusion?

     By investigating mediums - intermediaries between other dimensions of reality and the material world.   And I'm not talking about one or two observations.  Consider that Dr. Richard Hodgson spent 18 years observing Leonora Piper of Boston, Mass. or that the Rev. William Drayton Thomas had well over 500 sittings with Gladys Osborne Leonard of England.

     
      But isn't that all outdated science?  

      That's what the pseudo-skeptics and debunkers want you to believe. They say it was all pseudo-science and that those distinguished researchers were all victims of charlatans.  The fact is that the methods used by those early researchers are the same methods used today when mediums of that quality are found.  Unfortunately, though, we don't seem to have the quality of mediumship today that we did 75-150 years ago.

     
      Why is that?

      Those same pseudo-skeptics and debunkers will tell you that it is because the mediums on whom the research was based were all frauds and were exposed as such. No doubt there were a number of frauds, but there were clearly genuine mediums.  There are two primary explanations for the lack of such mediumship today.  For one, it involves a lot of quiet time, experimentation, and small harmonious groups.  In those days before radio and television, people had the time to experiment and had the patience to wait for results.  They gathered together in harmonious mediumship circles, sang and listened to music while waiting for the proper conditions.  Sometimes they waited an hour or so before the spirits could draw enough power from the medium and the sitters to come through. In today's fast-paced world, people don't have the patience for that type of thing.  They'd rather watch television.      

      
      That's one explanation.  What's the other?        
      Some of the early spirit communicators said that they had just learned to communicate with us on this side of the veil.  It was reported that Benjamin Franklin and Emanuel Swedenborg, two of the world's greatest scientists when alive, figured out how to manipulate matter after many experiments on their side.  However, they and all the other spirit communicators who joined in didn't anticipate the resistance they were to receive.  They gave us all the evidence they could possibly give and saw no point in continuing, especially when seeing how innocent people were being hurt by being called fakes.   Why should they have to go on reinventing the wheel?   As they say in the engineering profession, efforts to keep reinventing the wheel eventually lead to a square wheel.

         What resistance are you referring to?

         On the one hand, there were the scientific fundamentalists - those scientists stuck in the muck and mire of scientism, unwilling and unable to accept things which could not be explained by strict scientific methods or mechanistic causes.   One Columbia University professor tried to have Professor James Hyslop fired when he found out about Hyslop's interest in psychical research.   In his defense, Hyslop, noting scientific efforts to find a species of useless fish to support Darwin's theory, asked "why is it so noble and respectable to find whence man came, and so suspicious and dishonorable to ask and ascertain whither he goes?"

       Sir Oliver Lodge, one of the physicists involved in the research, put it this way:  "It is not easy to unsettle minds thus fortified against the intrusion of unwelcome facts; and their strong faith is probably a salutary safeguard against that unbalanced and comparatively dangerous condition called ‘open-mindedness,' which is ready to learn and investigate anything not manifestly self-contradictory and absurd."

       
        And on the other hand?

        On the other hand, there were the religious fundamentalists who saw that some of the things coming out of mediumship were in conflict with established dogma and doctrine.  To protect themselves, the religious hierarchy brainwashed their flocks with the idea that it was all the work of the devil.   And the press also played a big part in the resistance.  They sided with either the scientific fundamentalists or the religious fundamentalists in attacking both the mediums and the researchers.   They turned serious research into tongue-in-cheek spook stories, and that's how the media continues to treat it to this day. 

     
       But you mentioned two Christian clergymen among the researchers?

       Yes, one Anglican and one Methodist minister.  They were mavericks, just like the scientists and scholars were.   There are always courageous people more interested in getting at the truth than in protecting their reputations among ignorant people.

        Why isn't the research of those distinguished scientist better known today?  

        Because of the scientific and religious fundamentalism I just mentioned, as well as the ignorant media.  The scientific fundamentalists are unable to accept anything that falls outside of the mechanistic paradigm, while the religious fundamentalists are unable to accept anything they see as conflicting with the Bible.  And the media is more interested in sensationalism than it is in truth.

      
        Why did it end in 1940?

        It didn't really end then.  It began to tail off around 1925, but there was still some good research going on during the 1930s.  All of the distinguished researchers mentioned in the book had pretty much died off, Sir Oliver Lodge being the last, in 1940.  Seeing all the flak they received from mainstream science, others weren't willing to subject themselves to the same criticism.  A new field called parapsychology developed and most of its practitioners are more interested in examining extra-sensory perception while just beating around the bush on the subject of survival.  It was as if they had to go back and work on the spokes of the wheel rather than the wheel itself.

     
       Is the book like reading a bunch of scientific reports?

       No, that's one of the reasons I wrote the book. The original reports are written in the usual academic manner.  Academicians are very poor writers by journalistic standards.  I've tried to convert the academic language to language that people can understand.  A number of very interesting stories unfold, including spirits directing an archaeologist to the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, spirits leading a researcher to crosses buried by American Indians, a deceased author completing his book through a medium, a Titanic victim coming back to tell about his new environment, a lost hunter contacting his family to explain what happened to him, soldiers killed in the war telling what it was like to die and then cross over to the other side, and three of the researchers involved in the original research dying and then continuing their research on the other side, communicating with their fellow researchers left behind, to name just some of the stories.

     
      But aren't there other books on the subject?

      Quite a few have been written over the years, but most of them are out of circulation.  There are a few fairly recent books dealing with the same subject.  Deborah Blum, Victor Zammit, Michael Schmicker, Craig Hogan, Ray Stemman, and Archie Roy all have good books dealing with the basic subject. While there is some overlap in the books, we all approach it a little differently and hit upon different aspects of the research. Look at how many books there have been during the past two years on atheism.  I can think of at least six, which all seem to say the same thing.  

       
       Is there any similar survival research going on today?

       Dr. Gary Schwartz of the University of Arizona did some interesting research with clairvoyants and clairaudients a few years back and reported on it in a couple of books, but the pseudo-skeptics attacked him just as they did those distinguished scientists of yesteryear.

     
      So why did you write the book?

      Because I believe all the turmoil we are experiencing in the world today is a result of extreme materialism.  Materialism in the extreme is really hedonism or Epicureanism.   "Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die."   As I see it, this attitude is a result of people not really believing in an afterlife, a larger life.  I felt that in resurrecting some of the best evidence for the survival of consciousness I might prompt a few hedonists or Epicureans to rethink their philosophy of life.

     
       And you expect your book to change all that?

       Of course not.  I'll be happy if a few thousand people read it.  This type of book doesn't sell well.  Most people would rather escape into some work of fiction.   As they say, though, small streams eventually create large rivers.  I just felt a need to add a drop of rain that might contribute to one small stream.

     "The Articulate Dead" is available from Galde Press http://www.galdepress.com/ or at Amazon.com

      As she sees herself, Dr. Pamela Rae Heath is a bridge between psychics and parapsychologists. "I try to help parapsychologist understand how to design better studies, which control situations without making their research participants feel like objects instead of people," she explains.  "And I try to help psychics understand their own gifts better, and how to control their abilities."

      Co-author of "Suicide: What Really Happens in the Afterlife?" with Jon Klimo, Ph.D., Heath, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, is a semi-retired anesthesiologist who is more focused these days on  parapsychology and the paranormal than medicine.    

       After obtaining a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Missouri in Columbia in 1976, Heath received an M.D. from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston in 1980.  She then practiced medicine at different locations, including Abilene, Orlando, and Miami.   After experiencing abilities of her own during the early 1990s, she returned to graduate school and received a Psy.D. from Rosebridge Graduate School of Integrative Psychology (now the American School of Professional Psychology, Argosy University, San Francisco Bay Area Campus) in 1999.

       Her dissertation was a phenomenological study of the experience of performing psychokinesis.  She has since published "The PK Zone: A Cross-Cultural Review of Psychokinesis," and other articles on this subject in parapsychology journals.  She is a certified Master Hypnotherapist and a member of several paranormal research organizations.  

       I recently put some questions by e-mail to Dr. Heath:

      Would you mind explaining the nature of those spontaneous psychic experiences you had during the early 1990s?

       "Looking back on it, I realize I started meditating (without knowing what I was doing) and having visions in third grade. But I didn't think of myself as psychic until many years later. I was a doctor in my 30s when several things started happening at the same time. I began knowing what kind of cases I was going to do as emergencies on call that night. I freaked people out by answering (in specific terms) their questions before they had been said out loud. And I began to wake up just before the telephone rang on call, never waking up when it didn't ring except for one time when I later learned they'd been dialing my number when the patient had died in the ER.  It got where I couldn't deny any more that something odd was happening. So, I went to a psychic who had a reputation for being the real deal. He told me I was psychic. It really freaked me out. It was a month before I could even say the word psychic. After that, I started to experiment to see what I could do."

       Generally, what was your attitude about such psychic experiences and paranormal phenomena before you had those experiences?

      "I was a big science fiction fan from third grade on. So, before I had my psychic experiences as an adult, I believed that psychic abilities were possible, but it never occurred to me that I might have them."

      What prompted you to collaborate with Dr. Klimo on a book about suicide?

      "I met Dr. Klimo in graduate school. He often spoke about an experience that he had of gathering information for a woman who was interested in committing suicide. The thought was that if she knew what she was getting into, that she wouldn't do it. I felt that it was the kind of information that could save lives, and told him he should write a book about it. I kept saying it, but he had not kept his original pages and didn't want to start over from scratch. I finally realized that it wasn't going to get written unless I did it. But I had gotten the idea from Jon, and have great respect for him as the world's expert of channeling, so I dragged him in on the project with me."

      What are your conclusions relative to suicide?  Can suicide ever be justified?

     "I think that there can be many causes of suicide - it can be an accident, a desperate cry for help, feeling like you don't belong or have no other options to name just a few. The spirit realm sees taking the life of a healthy body as selfish and shortsighted. In the case of assisted suicide, they do not see it as murder, but still encourage people to think it through and make sure those around them are comfortable with this choice before proceeding. They tell us that, hard as it may be to accept, there are sometimes purposes served by suffering. However, relatively few assisted suicides that were channeled had regrets."

         Has your experience as an anesthesiologist given you any insight into the nature of consciousness?

     "I actually probably have gotten more insight into levels of consciousness from my hypnosis training than I ever did as an anesthesiologist. None of my patients ever came back to tell me of out-of-body experiences during the time they were under."

       Do you have any particular focus or project in the area of psychic phenomena going on at this time?

     "My areas of expertise are mind-matter interaction (formerly known as psychokinesis) and experiential research. I've also done quite a few ghost investigations over the years with Loyd Auerbach and the Office of Paranormal Investigations. I just finished rewriting and updating The PK Zone, and even gave it a new title: Mind-Matter Interaction: The Stories, Research, and Theory. I'm also finishing up a new manuscript, which will again be with Jon Klimo, which will be about the stages in the afterlife. It is looking like it will be available from North Atlantic Books in Spring 2010. The book might have been finished earlier, but I got sidetracked by the death of both of my parents earlier this year. I made sure both of them moved on to the Light, but it made the subject too painful to work on for several months."

       How do your peers in the medical community react to your interest in psychic phenomena?

     "I've actually been surprised at how well many of my medical colleagues have accepted my other work as a psychic and a parapsychologist. Several asked for tarot reads, and were really interested in ghost investigations. Of course, it helps a lot that I'm in California! This wouldn't go over as well in many other parts of the country. However, a lot of being accepted has to do with the terminology you use. Doctors are very body-oriented, so if you talk about "gut instinct" they tend to accept it, where they wouldn't accept things like "intuition" or "psychic."

         Do you see the medical community as being any more open or accepting relative to psychic phenomena now than when you were in medical school or an intern? 

      "It's been a very long time since I was a medical student in Texas, so things have changed in a lot more ways than simply more openness to alternative healing! However, I would say that how well psychic phenomena are accepted by the medical community really depends on where you live. In California or Oregon, I suspect you'd see a lot of openness. If you're in the South, you can probably safely talk about the prayer healing studies. In the Midwest and much of the East Coast, I'd doubt you'd see much acceptance. But I could be wrong."

       What are some of the misconceptions out there concerning psychics?

     "One is that some people are psychic while others aren't. Everyone is psychic, even skeptics. They may use their abilities to block other people from succeeding at psychic tasks or to overly fail psychic tests by scoring worse than is possible through random chance, but this is a normal ability that everyone has. Another misconception is that psychic abilities always start in childhood. Untrue.  Psychic talent often starts in a person's 30s and can continue to grow in power at least until his or her 50s. However, the most important thing I try to get across to folks is that psychic abilities are need based. What you can or cannot do depends on what is important to your unconscious mind. So, if you can do one thing and not another, it doesn't tell you anything about your own limits. All it tells you is what's important to your unconscious mind. Should what's important to you unconscious mind change, then so can your abilities." 

       Have you had any experience with séances? 

      "About a month or so after I got told that wasn't going crazy, that I really was psychic, I started taking anomalous healing classes from the Reverend Mary Smiley at Casadaga, Florida, one a few Spiritualist camps in the United States. Mary charged me only $4 a lesson, as she really wasn't in it for the money.  However, as one of her students, I got invited to some of the private séances they held for their own entertainment. I was the only non-professional medium there, and never got charged a cent. Generally about 6-8 of us would meet, all bringing covered dishes so we could eat when we finished. I had a great time! The most dramatic experiences I had were of chasing a heavy wood table from the center of the room all the way to the edge of it and back again (all hands on top of it, with everyone in short sleeves for a Florida summer). It took six of us to carry that wood table into the living room, and I knew from the circumstances that it hadn't been faked! That table was really booking, too! It was moving fast. The other dramatic thing I remember was watching the profile of the person next to me literally change shape when she channeled.  I think back on those experiences as one of the highlights of my life. I love physical phenomena!"

          It often seems to me that parapsychology is going backward, sort of reinventing the wheel discovered by psychical researchers a hundred years ago and turning out a square wheel.  Moreover, they have moved away from survival research and into more mundane fields of ESP.  It is as if they are trying to rebuild the spokes on the wheel and ruining the wheel itself.  How do you see this?  

       "As a full member of the Parapsychological Association, I know a lot of the folks working in the field today, at least in the US and Europe. You have to understand that from the time parapsychology was first formed as a scientific form of endeavor, survival research has been one of the cornerstones of the field (the other two are ESP and Mind-Matter Interaction research). I would say most of those in the field are cautious believers, though they disagree about what form in which survival takes place. Most would agree that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. If the soul represents a form of energy (which is suspected but unproven), then it would make sense that some kind of survival of that energy would occur. Where you get into arguments, is whether there is any survival of personality or sense of individuality. Some people think the soul re-merges with a kind of collective consciousness. Perhaps the strongest evidence, and one that has swayed many parapsychologists to become believers in survival, is that of Ian Stevenson's reincarnation research. It's very persuasive stuff. Add to that instrumental transcommunication research, Gary Schwartz's work testing mediums, forensic past life regression, near-death experiences, and you start to see a consistent pattern suggestive of not just survival of the soul, but some kind of survival of personality."

         But hasn't parapsychology reached a point of diminishing returns?  What is the point of doing further work in telepathy when the ganzfeld  experiments are about as good as one could hope for?

       "I think there is ALWAYS reason to gather evidence of ANY phenomenon - whether ESP or otherwise. When I'm gathering information, I don't worry about what that information is going to say. I want the evidence to reveal its own truth to me. I let it tell me what's going on, rather than worry about proving a point. That's actually what makes me a good experiential researcher. I never worry about proof. Proof simply doesn't matter to me. I want to see what is. And that's also my philosophy for writing books. I start by gathering as much data as possible, and then let it show me the natural pattern that falls into place. I think of it as being like putting together an extremely complex jigsaw puzzle, where I don't know the frame shape or what the final image will be. There's a lot of uncertainty. But there's also the excitement of knowing that if I can discover enough pieces, I'll be able to see how they fit together, and a pattern will emerge. To be honest, that's why I enjoy writing so much. I figure things out as I organize the material for a book and see how it all falls into place."

      Since you are working on a book about the stages of the afterlife, I assume that you believe that consciousness survives physical death.

      "You have to understand that I was psychic before I trained as a parapsychologist. I'd seen physical phenomena, spontaneously remembered past lives, and talked to spirits. Although I don't advertise my talent, I have mediumship abilities. So, I have never doubted that there is (at least temporarily) some survival of personality." 

      What are the stages of the afterlife as you see them?

      "Let me add my caveats. I'm still fine tuning my understanding of things, and it needs to be recognized that the stages to the afterlife vary in length from one soul to the next and can sometimes occur out of order or even simultaneously. However, the main elements appear to be: 1) recognizing they are dead;  2) separating from the body; 3) being greeted by spirit helpers; 4) moving through levels; 5) reunion; 6) rest and recovery;  7) life-review and self-judgment; 8) spiritual work; and 9) reincarnation. There also appear to be an optional stage in there of visits to the living (which can include going to your own funeral). The upcoming book will also talk about afterlife adjustment problems and how these souls can be helped both by others in spirit and those in the physical plane."
      Visit Dr. Heath's web site at http://www.pamelaheath.com/

      Every now and then I'll hear a story about how either a bird or butterfly, or a group of butterflies, is accepted as a sign that a deceased loved one is around.  The bird may suddenly appear on one's window sill at a regular time every day and exhibit unusual behavior or the butterflies may swarm on a regular basis.  

     If such stories are supposed to suggest that the deceased loved one has returned in a lower life form, I am highly skeptical and I don't know why such stories would offer comfort to the bereaved.   If, however, the stories suggest that animal life can be influenced and directed by discarnate humans, I am much less skeptical. 

      Consider the case of the Elberfeld horses, which I wrote about for the current (March/April) issue of Atlantis Rising magazine.  The closed-minded person will immediately dismiss the whole story as laughable, but the open-minded person will consider the testimony of a number of distinguished scientists and scholars and recognize that there may very well be something to it.

      In 1900, Wilhelm von Osten of Elberfeld (then Central Prussia) is said to have taught his Russian stallion, Hans, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.   The horse would strike out an answer to a problem by striking his hoof so many times.  For example, for 35, Hans would strike his left front hoof three times and his right front hoof five times.

      Professor Edoward Claparede of the University of Geneva studied the horse and called the phenomenon "the most sensational event that has happened in the psychological world."   Of course, mainstream science could not accept such a verdict and sent Oskar Pfungst of the Berlin psychological laboratory to rescue science. Pfungst reported that the horse merely obeyed visual clues, whether conscious or unconscious, given by von Osten.  This became known as the "Clever Hans effect," a term still used by animal trainers today. 

       Von Osten was humiliated and apparently refused to give further demonstrations.  However, when he died, he left Han to a friend, Karl Krall, a wealthy merchant, who had seen enough of the horse's ability to discount the Clever Hans effect.   Krall also bought two Arabian stallions, Muhamed and Zarif and began training them in the same manner von Osten had taught Hans.  Within three weeks, Muhamad was doing multiplication and division and within four months he knew how to extract square roots, cubic roots, and even fourth-power roots.   Zarif was a little slower, but eventually could do most of what Muhamad could do, while Hans went to the back of the class.    Krall also taught the horses how to read and write.  They would communicate by tapping a hoof one time for each letter of the alphabet, e.g., five strikes for E.   

       Hearing of these horses, Maurice Maeterlinck, a world-renowned Belgian author and Nobel Prize-winner in literature, decided to investigate.  At the first demonstration, he was astounded and commented that he was rather disturbed, as such abilities were in total opposition to his worldview. 

      When Krall took a trip to town, Maeterlinck was permitted to test the horses on his own.  Maeterlinck gave them some problems of which he did not know the answer - a way of ruling out the Clever Hans effect as well as mental telepathy, another theory that had been advanced, as fantastic as a mind-horse might seem.   It was only after he received the answer from one or the other horse that he did his calculations to determine if the answer was correct.

      In one test, Maeterlinck asked for the square root of a number, not realizing it was a surd - a number which had no square root.  Muhamed lifted his foot, paused, and then shook his head.

      Maeterlinck reported on tests run by Dr. H. Hamel while Krall was on a trip.  Hamel asked Muhamed for the fourth power root of 7,890,481, which Hamel himself did not know until checking Muhamed's correct answer of 53.  It took the horse about six seconds to begin striking out the answer.

       But the horses were sometimes wrong.  Professor Claparede asked Muhamed for the fourth power root of 614,656 and received the correct answer of 28, but when he wrote the number 4,879,681 on the blackboard in front of the horse, Muhamed tapped out 117.  When told he was wrong, he tapped out 144, also wrong.  The horse then gave up.

      A New York Times article dated March 3, 1912, told how Zarif was asked for the date by the reporter and tapped out 25 for February 25.  When asked how many days left in the month, Zarif tapped out 29.  It was a leap year.  When asked how often leap years occur, the horse tapped out "every four years."

       Maeterlinck, Claparede, and Hamel were not the only researchers to study the horses.  At least eight other respected academicians observed the horses and apparently were satisfied that it was not fraud or the Clever Hans effect.  Yet, modern references all seem to accept the Clever Hans effect as the only explanation. 

       Maeterlinck theorized that the horses had mediumistic ability and were able to tap into some kind of cosmic soul.   Even though Maeterlinck believed in mediumship, he did not believe that spirits could communicate through mediums. The cosmic soul theory, first advanced by Harvard's William James seemed more fantastic than the possibility that a mischievous spirit or spirits were having some fun by influencing or controlling the horses.  

       In effect, seven possibilities were recognized:

• 1. Outright fraud: Considering the fact that the horses performed regularly in the absence of the trainers, this appears to have been ruled out.
• 2. Fabricated Story: It seems highly unlikely that a man of Maerterlinck's reputation would make up such a story, especially when so many other respected scientists, scholars, and journalists all observed the horses and also reported on it.
• 3. Clever Hans effect: Here again, the horses performed when no trainer was around and when the researchers themselves did not know the answers.
• 4. Telepathy: Since the horses gave correct answers when the researchers themselves did not know the answers, this theory seems to have been ruled out.
• 5. Cosmic Soul: This theory can't be disproved, but it seems to be the most far-fetched of all.
• 6. Spirit Control: As one historian on spirit phenomena suggested, if spirits can levitate tables and humans, then there was no reason to believe they couldn't control the horses.
• 7. True Intelligence: Horses and perhaps other animals are really much smarter than we realize. If they can figure fourth-power roots in a matter of seconds, they may even be more intelligent than humans.

            Based on all the facts available, number 6 is the only one that begins to make sense to me, even though I struggle with it.   But if dicarnates can actually control horses, then why not birds and butteflies?

For a more detailed report on the Elberfeld horses, see my article in the current issue of Atlantis Rising. See http://www.atlantisrising.com/index.shtml

      It is difficult to comprehend how a person, or soul, cannot know he or she is dead, but we need only ponder on how we  escape into movies and even print fiction to begin to understand it.

      Although I find very little on television that interests me these days, I admit to being hooked on the "24" action series.  I get so into the excitement at times that I find myself on the edge of my seat and "living" the action. When a segment of the series ends on its usual cliffhanger and a commercial comes on, I am to some extent reminded that it is just a TV program, not real life.  But my consciousness will not fully accept the fiction or unreality of it.  Some part of my consciousness still holds onto the emotion and action of it while anxiously awaiting the next segment to see what happens to Jack Bauer. 

       On the other hand, I don't lose myself in the movie as much as some people.  My wife refuses to watch bloody scenes and if one catches her by surprise she will let out a scream.  I have no difficulty watching such scenes, although I'm sure that if I were witnessing them in real life my reaction would be much different.  Thus, even though I am somewhat absorbed in the movie and not completely distinguishing between reality and unreality, my consciousness is straddling the "threshold of awareness" enough so that I do not react too emotionally to violent scenes.   

        When a trip prevented me from seeing a weekly segment of "24" last year, I felt conflicted.  I had to know what was going to happen.  My mind tried to reason with my consciousness by re-"minding" it that it isn't real and that I shouldn't care what happens, but my consciousness struggled to accept what the mind was telling it and I was determined to see the next segment.

          Having recently read "To Die For" by James E. Beichler, Ph.D., I now have a framework by which to better understand the struggles between mind and consciousness, including why some spirits don't realize they are dead.

      "Mind interprets our sensed world and environment using reason, the cumulative result of real experiences of the material four-dimensional world placed within a specific mental framework or worldview," Beichler, a semi-retired physics professor, explains, "while consciousness deals more with intuition, our innate feelings and subconscious understanding of the larger five-dimensional framework of physical reality."

       As Beichler sees it, when mind is much more evolved than consciousness those making the transition from this life to the larger life may be faced with a very big gap, thus not recognizing that they are dead.  If the person had achieved a higher level of consciousness while occupying the physical body, "then the mind would already have memories of five-dimensional experience and would then merge with less difficulty into its new state of being," he explains, adding that this mind remains stuck in its four-dimensional reality.    

         In other words, the mind (the soul) separates itself from the physical organ (the brain) and then attempts to orientate itself based upon the spiritual consciousness that it has achieved during the time it occupied a physical shell.   If the spiritual consciousness is well developed, the mind quickly awakens to its new and true reality.   But if that consciousness is not well developed - if it is still grounded in the material world - this  "handicapped" mind  does not quickly "awaken" and may not even realize that the physical body has been shed, i.e., the soul doesn't realize that it is "dead."

      "The mind/consciousness complex retains its identity (the person still remains) after a manner in the fifth dimension, in so far as self-identity is not a material but still a physical quantity or quality," Beichler further explains.  "However, the extent to which the complex is ‘conscious' or mindful of its own existence, its being, would depend upon the extent to which it was ;conscious' or aware of its five-dimensional connections before the death of the four-dimensional body and what is perceived by the mind as ‘self' while the body still lived and functioned."

         It is difficult to grasp, but it makes sense.  After all, do you know that you are "alive" when you are dreaming while asleep?  And while watching a movie, are we constantly reminding ourselves that it is not real?  There would be no pleasure or entertainment in watching movies if our level of awareness were so high that we were so reminding ourselves.   

       Indications are that there are many degrees of awakening and consciousness on the Other Side and that many souls go back and forth over the threshold of awareness, just as most of us do in watching a good movie.  That is, the conflict between mind and consciousness continues so that some souls realize at times that they have passed from the physical world but at other times they cling to the physical world and temporarily forget that they are "dead."   They are in a struggle with earth's magnetism.   I suspect that the majority of souls are in this in-between state, fluctuating back and forth over that threshold of awareness, "earthbound" at times and free from the "earthbound" condition at other times, however time is measured in that realm.   Only those who are totally self-centered and materialistic in earth life don't realize their new state at all, at least initially.   

      Another perspective on this is to view the earth life like a movie, an illusory life, being viewed by the real self - the soul.  When the earth life ends, the soul that is totally absorbed in it is still experiencing it, just as many of us are still affected by the movie after it ends.  

       Beichler's model explains many of the characteristics and properties of the near-death experience. For example, noting that not all experiencers undergo a past-life review, he concludes that those who have a highly-developed consciousness - one that has kept pace with the development of the mind - may not need a life review as they probably reviewed their lives when alive in the flesh.  At the other extreme, there are those not advanced enough in their conscious evolution to appreciate a life review, and still others who may not accept a life review because they deny their death and sense nothing at all.  "In other words, people's minds seize upon the most familiar surroundings when they enter the new environment of the five-dimensional universe," Beichler offers, "but can still reject the experience completely depending upon their mind set and mental priorities at the time of death."    

Dr. Beichler's book is available from Trafford Publishing (888-232-4444) or at Amazon.com