In a recent Internet article, Philip Bender, an American teaching English to Chinese doctors, asked his students for their views on the afterlife.  He found that, like Westerners, they had euphemisms for death, including, "closed their eyes," "left the world," "gone to the Western sky," and, for important people, "hung up," or "gone to see Chairman Mao."   As to whether they actually believed in an afterlife, the responses were mixed.  None of them appeared to have a conviction in this regard, but some of them expressed the traditional belief in spirits.  Most were ambivalent or skeptical.

Surprisingly, a 2003 survey of  1,044 American doctors found that 76-percent believe in God, while 59-percent believe in some kind of afterlife.  It is a curiosity that there are quite a few who believe in God but do not believe in an afterlife.  

For doctors as well as for everyone, the question is whether brain and mind are one and the same thing.   As a long-time neurosurgeon, Dr John L Turner of Hawaii, is very familiar with brain matter.  However, in recent years he has come to the conclusion that brain and mind are not the same thing, as most professors in medical schools would have their students believe.

In his recently-published book, Medicine, Miracles, and Manifestations, (The Career Press, Inc.), Turner states that his search has basically been aimed at determining if we are merely "brief candles strutting and fretting on the stage of life, only to be extinguished when the play ends."  And he wonders if death is as simple to understand as changing trains.   Based on what he has learned so far, he is reasonably certain we live on in a never-ending universe.  Concomitantly, in line with the bigger picture, he is interested in ways in which complementary medicine, or energy medicine, might contribute to the quality of this lifetime.  "We need to better understand that we are one with that energy and one with all things," he offers.

 Turner has been interested in psychic matters since his days in graduate school some 40 years ago.  Beginning his practice of medicine and surgery on an island where he was the only neurosurgeon, the lack of peer pressure allowed his unhampered study of metaphysics, spiritual matters, and life after death. Now that he has limited his medical practice to consultations, he is finding time to learn more about subjects the general populace calls "paranormal."  He is actively involved with a group studying Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) and is learning about mediumship.

 His interest is such matters began while pursuing a Ph.D. in physics.  "Until then, my interest in the paranormal was limited to reading about astral projection in books by Oliver Fox and Sylvan Muldoon, and during my undergraduate days, I would spend time trying to ‘roll out' of my body," Turner explains.   "It never worked and eventually I abandoned the effort.  Later, during graduate school in the department of physics at Ohio State University, I was given the book, The Sleeping Prophet, about Edgar Cayce.  That completely changed the course of my life, pulled me into a search for other dimensions and the spiritual world."

After reading about Cayce, Turner made a sudden change from physics to medicine. However, the intense study and training in Western medicine left no time for him to think about more spiritual forms of healing.  After moving to the "Big Island" of Hawaii in 1982, Turner focused on mainstream medicine.  "Any search for the dimension from which Edgar Cayce culled his information had to be put on hold," he says.  "I had a full practice and family matters to tend to." 

 A case in which a malignant brain tumor disappeared after seven Buddhists monks intervened rekindled his interest in spiritual matters.   "I couldn't believe my eyes!" Turner writes in the book.  "There was no trace of the lesion that had glared menacingly from the screen before and after the surgery."  

In another case - brain surgery in which Turner seemed to have exhausted all options - he decided to try prayer.  It apparently worked as the surgery was successful.    But even when unsuccessful in saving a patient, Turner came to see spiritual implications.  He studied reports of near-death experiences and "began to realize that we have a spirit that does not extinguish at death, but lives on to begin a new journey."  He again experimented with out-of-body travel, or "astral projection," then remote viewing, and meditative chanting.   Through Buddhist chanting, he found that he could disassociate his mind from his body and become aware of remote events.  Then he discovered Jorei, a form of healing energy channeled from the spirit world, a procedure espoused by Mokichi Okada of  Tokyo, Japan.  Initially, Turner found Jorei "a difficult pill to swallow," but the more he studied and observed it, the more he began to realize that there was something to it.

As Turner thinks back on it, energy medicine started to become part of his practice around 1995.  "Before that, I didn't employ energy healing methods, even though I became increasingly aware of them," he recalls.  I didn't really begin to put it all together until I had read the books, Into the Light by Dr. William Campbell Douglass and The Secret Life of Plants, which set things up for the philosophy of Mokichi Okada and what he called the Medical Art of Japan.

"Although there may have been some unseen - to me - raised eyebrows, I was never criticized or subjected to ridicule," Turner says of his blending of Western and Eastern medicine.  "The entire hospital staff was able to see the results, as Mokichi Okada had predicted, saying that it would begin in Hawaii.  This was significant because he never visited Hawaii."

Turner doubts that he would have had such freedom on the Mainland USA.  "I spoke with a Mainland surgeon today," he offered.  "She said that at one hospital, after talking about her experience with remote viewing in surgery, the conversation was reported and her staff privileges were removed.  I remember a doctor in Ashville, North Carolina saying that some lawyers, at the behest of drug companies, were threatening to pull physicians' medical licenses if they practiced non-traditional medicine, as it was not in keeping with ‘the standard of care' in the area.  So here, on this island, where no neurosurgeon ventured before, due to lack of equipment and income limitations,  I had no opposition at all, but rather, encouragement to do what I felt best for the patient."

 Dr. Turner's interest in EVP and Instrumental Transcommunication (ITC) is fairly recent and was encouraged by Martin Simmonds, a resident England, who helped Turner construct his website (http://johnlturner.com/index.php).  Not long after they talked about EVP and ITC, Simmonds complained of abdominal pain and died from cancer shortly thereafter.  In some recent experiments, Turner seems to have made EVP contact with his old friend.

Does Turner see any hope for energy medicine being accepted by Western physicians?  "Unfortunately," he shrugs, "many physicians stand fast to their allopathic (conventional) training and refuse to budge even in the face of verifiable evidence of the efficacy of incorporating universal energy techniques into bag of tools."  However, he believes that in time, when selfishness takes a back seat to love, they will "see the light."

      If my evangelical and fundamentalist friends are right, I face a pretty harsh judgment after I die.  My interest in the "demonic" things discussed in this blog as well as my failure to accept the "faith" and atonement doctrines means I am headed straight into the fire and brimstone.  

      Here's how it should go, if they are correct.  I will stand before God for my judgment. St. Peter will hand Him a scroll that covers my life history.  God will review it and say:

     "Ah, Michael, my boy, I see here you had some problems with pride, lust, envy, greed, sloth, wrath, and gluttony along your journey, but you seem to have overcome  them quite well, except perhaps for the last one. You could have presented yourself at least 20 pounds lighter.  Overall, though, it appears that you led a reasonably disciplined and decent life, selfish at times, but giving more than taking.  I commend you for your efforts in confronting the challenges I put before you."

      "Thanks, God.  I know I could have done better, but I hope it was good enough to let me through those pearly gates."

      "I'm sorry, son, I can't let you in."

      "Oh, My God, why is that?  Are You saying the Bible thumpers were right?"

       "Exactly."

       "But I accepted most of the Bible in a symbolic way.  And Jesus has always been my role model, and I considered him the greatest prophet who ever lived and thought of him pretty much as chairman of the board in Your kingdom. I simply refused to believe that he was on a power trip like some dictator or ancient king, wanting us to sing Hosanna 24/7. Don't I get any points for shouldering the burden rather than placing it all on him?" 

        "Sorry to say that you don't.  You should have listened to your ‘born again'

friends.

         "Do you mean to say, God, that I could have really pigged out and presented myself at a perfect weight or 100 pounds overweight, instead of just 20, and it would not have made any difference?"

         "What can I say?  Yes."

          "God, I gather I am going to have a lot of time to think about my mistakes, but just so I better understand, are you saying that I could have murdered, raped, pillaged, and done all kinds of nasty things but would have been allowed entry to Your kingdom if I had repented and been ‘born again' just before I died?"  

          "You've got it right there, son."

          "And I could have been perfect in loving and serving my fellow man, but still not allowed entry simply because I didn't worship properly?  That doesn't seem fair."

          "Who are you to question my fairness, you disrespectful, arrogant, self-righteous, good-for-nothing, wicked, gluttonous devil worshipper?  I've got a few million more people here to judge today. Move on! Begone!"

           Gavel slams down and I am cast into hell to spend eternity as my ‘born again' friends look on and lament that I did not listen to them.  

        Within Christianity, there are varying views relative to when the judgment takes place.  With some, it is immediately after dying, the soul moving on to heaven's staging area until a greater judgment at the time of the rapture, at which time there is admission to an even more glorious environment.  With other denominations, there is no judgment of any kind until the moldering body is restored and raised from the dead with all others on that final day.  In the mean time, we sleep in the grave.  If your body has been been cremated, or vaporized in an atomic blast, tough luck. 

         Simon Tugwell, a Dominican priest and Oxford theologian, explains that Justin Martyr, an early Christian apologist and saint, taught that at death people go to "nice or nasty waiting-rooms, depending on their moral qualities," and there they await Judgment Day.   

     Referring to this double judgment - a particular judgment following death and a more universal one at end of time, Tugwell points out that church authorities are faced with a fundamental ambiguity in that it is not clear what is left to be judged at the time of the resurrection.  Popes and scholars wrestled with the ambiguity and a popular compromise was that the soul is judged right after death and can experience heaven with only limited bliss. It is only when the soul and the resurrected body are combined at the final judgment that full bliss - an intensity of beatitude - can be realized.  We can then see God in full light.  

      Tugwell suggests that the "embarrassment" of the time-lag between death and resurrection may be a time lag only as viewed by humans, who are unable to comprehend the timelessness of the afterlife.  He seems to conclude that we do not know what happens to the dead immediately after death and until the resurrection, but "they are in God, so all is well."

      According to Michael J. Taylor, S.J., professor emeritus of religious studies at Seattle University in Washington, a new theology of death has emerged.  Instead of God passing judgment on how we lived as the person stands passively before Him, the dying person is allowed to make a final choice for or against God.  "In this ‘moment' all the dying will have full consciousness and complete freedom," Taylor explains.  "Their powers of decision-making will be totally clear and will be made with full awareness of all their important life choices up to that point.  What may have been vague and uncertain choices in life will now be firmly made: the best of former options will be ratified in a final way."

       In effect, the person chooses an eternity with or without God.  Apparently, the person does not see the latter state as the horrific hell of orthodoxy, but rather as one of self-love.  His decision is based upon what he has learned during his lifetime.  If he does not opt for an eternity with God, then he probably is in for a rude awakening.

       Modern revelation, coming to us primarily through mediumship and near-death experiences, offers us a much more sensible, rational, and fair judgment, if it can be called a "judgment," one consistent with a loving and just God.  Many near-death experiencers have reported a "life review" in which they see definitive moments in their life flash before them during the experience.  P. M. H. Atwater, whose NDE took place during 1977, reported that she saw every thought she had ever had, every word she had ever spoken, and every deed she had ever done during her life review.  Moreover, she saw the effects of every thought, word, and deed on everyone who might have been affected by them.   As she interpreted it, she was judging herself.

     Tom Sawyer, who had an NDE in 1978 when his car fell on him while he was working under it, recalled reliving every thought and attitude connected with decisive moments in his life and seeing them through the eyes of those who were affected by his actions.  He particularly recalled an incident that took place when he was driving his hot-rod pickup at age 19 and nearly hit a jaywalking pedestrian, who darted in front of him from behind another vehicle.  When Sawyer engaged in a verbal exchange with the pedestrian, the man yelled some four-letter words at him, reached through the window, and hit him with his open hand.  Sawyer responded by jumping out of his car and beating the man relentlessly. During his life review, Sawyer came to know everything about the man, including his age, the fact that his wife had recently died, and that he was in a drunken state because of his bereavement.   

       Sawyer came to see the attack from his victim's standpoint. "[I experienced] seeing Tom Sawyer's fist come directly into my face," he recalled. "And I felt the indignation, the rage, the embarrassment, the frustration, the physical pain...I felt my teeth going through my lower lip - in other words, I was in that man's eyes.  I was in that man's body.  I experienced everything of that inter-relationship between Tom Sawyer and that man that day.  I experienced unbelievable things about that man that are of a very personal, confidential, and private nature." 

       Although he does not refer to it as a life review, Carl Gustav Jung, the eminent Swiss psychiatrist, writes of something very similar in describing a near-death experience he had in 1944 after breaking his foot and then having a heart attack. "It was as if I now carried along with me everything I had ever experienced or done, everything that had happened around me. I might also say: it was with me, and I was it. I consisted of all that, so to speak.  I consisted of my own history, and I felt with great certainty: this is what I am.  ‘I am this bundle of what has been, and what has been accomplished.'"

       Jung went on to say that he had the certainty that he was about to enter an illuminated room and then understand the historical nexus of his life and what would come after. However, his vision ceased before he had such an experience.

       After his death, pioneering psychical researcher Frederic W. H. Myers communicated extensively through the mediumship of Geraldine Cummins of Ireland.  Myers referred to the period immediately after death as Hades and "The Play of the Shadow Show."  He said that this period varies considerably from individual to individual, but generally after the soul is greeted by deceased loved ones it experiences a semi-suspended consciousness and sees fragmentary happenings the life just lived. "He watches this changing show as a man drowsily watches a shimmering sunny landscape on a midsummer day," Myers explained.  "He is detached and apart, judging the individual who participates in these experiences, judging his own self with aid of the Light from Above.

       Myers further explained that while this is taking place, the etheric body is loosening itself from the "husk" and when the judgment is completed, generally after three to four days, the soul takes flight, passes into the world of illusion, and resumes full consciousness.

         he Rev. William Stainton Moses, an Anglican priest, developed into a medium and put many questions to an apparently advanced spirit called Imperator.  One of the questions he asked was whether there is a general judgment.  "No," was the response.  "The judgment is complete when the spirit gravitates to the home which it has made for itself.  There can be no error.  It is placed by the eternal law of fitness.  That judgment is complete, until the spirit is fitted to pass to a higher sphere, when the same process is repeated, and so on and on until the purgatorial spheres of work are done with, and the soul passes within the inner heaven of contemplation."

       Imperator explained to Moses that the soul is the arbiter of its own destiny and that the "sentence" it imposes upon itself is based on the character it has built up by its earthly acts.

     In 1853, Dr. Robert Hare, an emeritus professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania medical school, commenced an investigation of mediums with the intent of debunking them..  However, he was soon converted to Spiritualism and received many messages from the spirit world explaining how things operated on that side.  As he came to see it, one's immediate place in the afterlife "is determined by a sort of moral specific gravity, in which merit is inversely as weight."

     This moral specific gravity is apparently built up during a person's lifetime based on his or her good or works or lack thereof and manifests itself in the person's energy field, or aura.  Hare called it a circumambient halo and was told that it passes from darkness to effulgence based on the degree of spirit advancement.  Moreover, one cannot be dishonest with himself as the moral specific gravity allows him to tolerate only so much light. If he were to try to cheat and go to a higher sphere, he would not be able to tolerate the light there.

      Seemingly consistent with this moral specific gravity idea is the explanation given to Frederick C. Schulthorp during his early 20^th Century astral projections.  Schulthorp was told that every thought generates an electrical impulse that is impressed upon the individual's energy field and is stored there.  Every thought, he was informed by communicating spirits, has a specific rate of vibration.  The combined vibrations over a lifetime determine the person's initial station in the afterlife environment.   "Upon entry into spirit life, a person will naturally and automatically gravitate to his state in spirit which corresponds to his acts and thoughts throughout life as reproduced by his ‘personal tape record,'" Schulthorp explained his understanding at a time before computers made this comprehensible to the average person.

        A moral specific gravity is an idea that appeals to reason and one that can be reconciled with a just and loving God.  It is a plan of attainment and attunement, of gradual spiritual growth, of reaping what we sow.  

     Few people still living in this realm of existence have been involved in the study of Psi, or ESP, however we label it, longer than Dr. Berthold E. Schwarz, now a resident of Vero Beach, Florida.  In his 1968 book, A Psychiatrist Looks at ESP, Schwarz  offers psychiatric case reports on the lives of three individuals, each with psychic ability.  In the Introduction to the book, he states that "the facts of  psychical research are more urgently in need of serious study today than ever before."

       Among his other books are The Jacques Romano Story; Psychic Nexus: Psychic Phenomena in Psychiatry and Everyday Life; Parent-Child Telepathy; Miracles of Peter Sugleris; Psychiatric and Paranormal Aspects of Ufology; and UFO-Dynamics.  He is the co-author of several other books and of 185 scholarly or scientific articles, including many in the Journal of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies.    

      A graduate of Dartmouth College, Dartmouth Medical School, and Bellevue Medical Center, New York University, Dr. Schwarz practiced in New Jersey before moving to Florida in 1982.  In addition to being a long-time member of the Academy of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies, he is a Fellow of the American Society for Psychical Research, a Fellow of the American Association for The Advancement of Science, and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.   I recently put some questions to him by e-mail:      

When and how did you become interested in ESP and paranormal phenomena?

     "Hearing the Dunninger radio broadcasts when I was a child fascinated me, as did my father's occasional accounts of a railroad worker's telepathic demonstrations before the Kiwanis Club, and more so my mother's ‘private conversations' with her best friend who frequently wondered about various mediums, fortune tellers, etc.  My mother was down-to-earth, open minded, and frequently advised Edith in so many words that she, Edith, had as much ability as those she consulted and should ‘be herself.'  I also read about psi and was later jolted by my mother's telepathic apprehension of my brother, Eric, being killed in action in WWII when I was on leave from the Navy while in medical school.  

      "During internship, I heard more about Henry Gross, the Maine dowser, from friends and books, and wanted to meet him.  Then, during my fellowship in psychiatry, I had contact with some psi gifted patients which made me more curious and led to further readings on the subject. Later, in private practice, I expanded the practical aspects of telepathy in psychotherapy and embarked on the in-depth studies of gifted paragnosts. On a field trip to Kentucky with dowser Henry Gross, I also studied the ordeals by serpents, fire and strychnine in the Holiness people.  Other super paragnosts that I got to know well were Jacques Romano, Joseph Dunninger, Arthur Ford, Gerard Croiset, and Professor Tenhaeff's extraordinary paragnost from the Netherlands when he visited the United States.

      "Also, Kreskin, my New Jersey neighbor, and I became friends.  In those years I also reported on a series of parent-child telepathic experiences from my own family. In addition to these varied projects and in some instances concomitant electrographic researches (EEG), UFO's and its psychiatric paranormal aspects captured my attention. The latter centered largely on Stella Lansing and her UFO motion pictures and the renowned abductee Betty Hill, whom I first met at a UFO conference."

In what area of ESP was your initial focus?

                  "My initial focus was on the nonagenarian-telepath-genius Jacques Romano who could demonstrate a variety of telepathic skills and who beyond that had a most creative mind.  It was uplifting to be with him for what happened, was happening or would happen around him. This led to an enhanced awareness of psi with my patients and also with my  wife and two children, plus frequent telepathy with my parents.  By making near ab initio records of the telepathic exchanges between patients and myself largely in face-to-face psychotherapy plus other circumstances, and becoming familiar with the extensive psychiatric literature on psi, and meeting some of the leading figures in those areas, I found my situation similar to the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale of the Emperor's New Suit of Clothes, i.e., how could anyone in this field who cared to examine (and experience) the wealth of psi data possibly miss the boat? ... the surprises, challenges, intrigues, and above all potentials for understanding."

     How did your friends and colleagues react to your interest in ESP?

                   "Fortunately, my family and friends shared my interests in psi and also participated in many experiences with me and in their own lives. My neighbor, Bartholomew A. Ruggieri, a distinguished pediatrician who co-authored a book on child-parent relationships with me, got to know many of the gifted people/paragnosts who visited my office; and Bart also shared and wrote about some of his newly acquired psi awareness with his patients and with myself.  My psychiatric colleagues were always respectful and treated me kindly. My practice was active and even though many of my referring physicians knew of my psi research, they continued to send me patients, some with remarkable psi aspects. At no time was I ridiculed, and to the contrary, when I had ‘Romano parties' or Dunninger visits to my home/office my physician-colleagues-attendees were most appreciative and to this day some who are still living ask about events of long ago and what subsequently happened. Indeed, the experiences at the ‘parties' might have changed their lives."
        Among the various cases you have personally studied, which do you consider the most interesting?

      "When I moved to Florida in 1982, I thought that my psi researches were at an end but synchronicity intervened and I became immersed for the past twenty-five years in studying two spectacularly psi gifted people. My formal studies of Joe A. Nuzum of Pennsylvania have included his mental psi, i.e., telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and his physical psi,  i.e., virtuoso metal bending and its derivatives, such as transposition of markings/inscriptions of metallic surfaces, genuine escapes from various restraints, psi induced combustion, telekinesis, levitation, variegated matter through matter feats and teleportation. Through synchronicity I met Katie, a Florida housewife who had many diverse psi abilities, and in the course of our sessions developed apportations and the presumed materialization of ‘gold foil'... actually, on analysis, copper and zinc... upon her body and sometimes on the bodies of others including myself, and when entranced illiterate Katie would also write the quatrains of Nostradamus in its English translations with Greek, Latin, and French phrases. Recently, her son, James, who had been observed through the years, discovered a carving of a mammoth on a fossilized mammoth bone that he found during his paleontology diggings. Sandwiched in between these years I also studied Peter Sugleris and his super psi abilities, including a well documented, videographed and recorded episode of a Peter's levitation in his mother's backyard."

     What about UFO cases?

       "Stella Lansing, a Massachusetts housewife, had taken hundreds of movies of UFO's.  I was with her many times when she was filming, and also saw many of her films. The UFO pictures sometimes overlapped...in dividing frames...an optical impossibility. She also, beginner's luck, separately filmed a UFO-like craft and its four occupants; and once when with Stella, I filmed and apparently out of nowhere came a nocturnal mystery auto with strange alternating signaling headlights.  In addition, Stella had many paranormal experiences, films and audiotapes. Her friend Fran, when with Stella and alone, obtained similar UFO psi filmic percepts as once did my son, Eric. Stella provided many clues to the UFO mystery and offered insights about the phenomena. I am indebted for the expert assistance of Fortean photographer, August C. Roberts, Joseph Dunninger, ufologists Brent Raynes, and Shirley Fickett, my son Eric and others. Everything is relative and it is difficult to rank something "second"... some of the best examples can not be reported, as they are too personal, or must be consigned to footnotes or the "time capsule."

            Do you see your colleagues in psychiatry today as being any more open minded than they were 50-60 years ago? What about the rest of the world? Are they  any more accepting today than back then?

                   "My psychiatric colleagues always have their hands full with their patients, and although friendly towards me, most were not interested in paranormal research.  Had they bothered to look into it further like my neighbor, Dr. Ruggieri, I think that they too would have had their eyes opened, and found the subject to have practical value in behavioral states, telesomatic reactions and ‘healing.'  In Florida a colleague attended a Joe Nuzum demonstration and also once came to a Katie session.  I regret how I failed to interest my county medical society to have Joe Nuzum perform at one of their meetings, or to have Katie appear at a state psychiatric conference. I miss my colleagues-friends and famous researchers Jule Eisenbud, Jan Ehrenwald, Nandor Fodor, Joost Meerloo, Ian Stevenson and Montague Ullman, who in their magnificent works opened whole new vistas  for psi exploration and medicine, and whose seminal thoughts are still waiting wider acknowledgement and exploration.  Although these luminaries have all passed on, I am sure that new psychiatric researchers will enter the field, for psi is as inviting today as in the past, and there is no reason why, for example, many of the spectacular, but so sadly missing for so many years, phenomena like materialization of whole body forms with speech, movement, thought and levitations, should not reappear, be investigated and understood with new techniques and instruments. Is medicine, and psychiatry in particular, ready for such a potential explosion of knowledge? As in the past, there are deep psychological resistances. The road is bumpy yet it can be traversed."

        What are your thoughts on Super Psi? Do you think it can explain messages   coming through mediums and otherwise defeat the survival hypothesis?

          "Before considering Super Psi, it might behoove the experimenters to become thoroughly familiar with the telepathy of everyday life.  A psychiatrist, if so interested and trained, is in an exceptional position to undertake this task.  He/she will have the challenges of having an assortment of telepathic transactions between his patients and himself, as well as spilling over into the sessions with other patients and into their lives outside formal sessions.  Many of these episodes, by experts already mentioned, have been written up but I particularly recommend the classic, Encyclopedia of Psychic Science by the psychoanalyst, Nandor Fodor.  In my opinion this is still the most comprehensive, best book ever written on psi.  Psi research can become engrossing in its demanding attention and memory attributes but it can also be rewarding in understanding the complexity of thought, how it originates, is shared, and influences behavior, decisions, creative invention, and bodily functions.  For example, my own early volley of telepathic drawing experiments graphically show how psi might operate in surprising, unintended, sometimes proscopic ways.  Indeed, how it might and does happen in everyday communications.  Life and much of its complexity can be dissected. Although Super PSI can be an explanation and be involved, for example, with experimental book tests as done by Dunninger, Joe Nuzum and others, it does not denigrate nor rule out other possibilities.  There are many examples of Super Psi versus discarnate-other dimensional communications in the literature, and I applaud your excellent, recently published, The Articulate Dead.  Although not in the league of some of your exquisite examples, I have had some personal experiences which might make Super Psi less likely, if not inexplicable, compared to alternative hypotheses, including survival.  Such psychiatric examples might include my articles connected with the deaths of Gertrude Ogden Tubby and Nandor Fodor.  Some of the best examples are so personal that they are saved for the ‘time capsule.'  They might be spectacular and meaningful to the experient but not interesting to the reader who would have to connect all the dots...not as easy or scientifically appealing as studying and documenting measured physical psi, e.g., levitation or telekinesis, matter through matter."         

           Many of the early researchers held that the medium's spirit control was a "secondary personality" capable of telepathically feeding back information. How do you feel about that?

          "When I first met Nandor Fodor he told me how he had solved the origin of Eileen Garrett's spirit control (Uvani), but before Dr. Fodor could elaborate he died. Although the personality of the medium is often the main feature of the communication in many cases this is clearly not always the case. It is almost too far fetched to try and fit it into that notch, i.e., multiple personality...forms of dissociation, than to utilize the spirit control hypothesis.   Joe Nuzum and Katie when entranced frequently alluded to the source of their communicators, as ‘spirits,' or with names of deceased people known to them,, or in general terms as Katie's ‘the watchers,' or for Nostradamus, the ‘old guy.'  In many cases it is more plausible to accept on face value the identification claims of the communicator, as you have done recently in your article on Mrs. Piper's Phinuit, than to go to abstruse-alternative meandering.  Some of Joe Nuzum's most spectacular experiences, which I have transcribed, involved communications with deceased, and for which the ‘secondary personality feeding-back telepathic' explanation would take unusual gyrations as a suitable explanation.  For example, at a Joe Nuzum performance, a woman wrote the name of her deceased husband on a piece of paper, placed it on a table which then levitated. After gliding back to the floor the woman examined the paper.  In her deceased husband's handwriting it said, ‘Please Honey, don't go.' The woman was slated to go to Iraq for a job.  Later, Joe learned that the husband, while working in a steel mill, fell into the furnace and was consumed (JNT XVI: 248-250)."

          What do you see as the future of parapsychology and psychical research?

          "The data of psychical research are as challenging and momentous as ever. They demand attention and revived investigations using new techniques from many scientific disciplines. Paradoxically, it seems it might be that the physicists...‘objectivist-materialists'...will be the ones to pry open psi's secrets with the exciting developments of quantum theory.  Yet this does not leave out the still pressing need for concomitant psychiatric-paranormal research, since these studies involve people, emotions, rapport, behavior, the unconscious with the trance and forms of dissociation, neurosciences and biology.  Reexamined data from the past as well as more recent discoveries such as those by Eisenbud on thoughtography, Stevenson on reincarnation, and precognition in the neglected ‘chair tests' with Croiset by the late professor Tenhaeff all merit renewed attention.  Similarly future parapsychological considerations should include the spectacular filmic recorded ‘Psi Physics' obtained by Wm. Edward Cox in his SORRAT researches, and the equally compelling, companion, spiritistic, motivation factors reported by leading SORRAT protagonists, Alice Neihardt Thompson in her The Great Adventure Handbook for Living.  All these explorations in addition to electronic voice phenomena (EVP) and related instrumental trance communications (ITC) although written up largely in popular forms have not received the attention they merit in parapsychogical and other scientific journals.

           "The future might have been delayed but it cannot be denied. The medical-practical applications of psi in the study of immune mechanisms and its role in causation (telesomatic), defense, ‘cure' - healing and or amelioration of diseases can be further explored. The medical sciences are equipped to investigate and analyze these cases. The influence of psi discoveries on philosophy is no less provocative than its implications for psychopathology, behavior, ethics, conscience development and pointing to new ways of studying mankind.  Perhaps an overlooked key to the understanding of psi might be synchronicity, a psychic nexus aspect including and extending beyond telepathy and which might loom large for the future. The theme is developed in several books by English professor, SORRAT protagonist-paragnost, John Thomas Richards."