It's all in the vibe

There is usually something in New Scientist that catches my eye. One of the articles in this week's edition  (1 Oct. 2011) was an article by Michael Brooks entitled 'The weirdness inside us'. In it Brooks explores research that postulates that quantum uncertainly operates within biological systems as well as in quantum mechanics. Jennifer Brookes at Harvard University studies smell. The established wisdom is that a chemical's scent is determined by its molecular shape. The problem with this is that we have around 400 differently shaped smell receptors but can recognise around 100,000 different smells. Some chemicals have the same shape but smell different, while others smell the same but have different shapes. Morphology cannot therefore be the answer, or the whole answer, to our sense of smell. Around 70 years ago a British chemist, Michael Dyson, proposed that 'just as the brain constructs colours from different vibrational frequencies of light radiation, it interprets the characteristic frequencies at which certain molecules vibrate as a catalogue of smells' (34). Now to me, as a non-scientitst, this sounds remarkably like the theory of homeopathy. One of the key criticisms of homeopathy seems to be not that it doesn't work, as in some circumstances it evidently does, but that the mechanism by which it might work is not within the remit of conventional science. Never mind that the mechanisms by which many of our conventional pharmacopeia works are not well understood. In 1996 Luca Turin, a biophysicist at UCL, came up with the notion of electron tunnelling as a mechanism that could make vibrational sensing work. The fuzziness of quantum mechanics determines that an electron has a spread of possible energies and that there is a probability that it will burrow through the energy barrier that would normally hold it within the atom. Turin proposed that when 'an odorous molecule lodges in the pocket of a receptor, an electron can burrow right through that molecule from one side to the other, unleashing a cascade of signals on the other side that the brain interprets as a smell. That can only happen if there is an exact match between the electron's quantised energy level and the odorant's natural vibrational frequency' (36). The article goes on to describe more recent experiments that would seem to support the notion of vibrational sensing. We seem to be moving away from an understanding of matter as made up of objects (atoms) to a view of matter as made up of energy and vibration. This holds true from the nano to cosmic level. It is the bits in between that have proved hardest to understand, but we seem to be getting there.

Death and God

Having watched Richard Dawkins on television last night one could not but help be struck by his insistence that religion was false and science true. By science he meant a reductive materialism and not an examination of the evidence for the existence of life beyond the physical world, or the continuation of consciousness. There was of course nothing scientific in his apparent lack of knowledge of the evidence in these areas. Today I came across the following quote from Albert Camus's Notebooks  which seems to speak to 'the Dawkins' dilemma' - the insistence by some, but certainly not all, scientists (sceptics) on the absolute rightness of their position without the need to produce evidence to support it:

There is but one freedom, to put oneself right with death. After that everything is possible. I cannot force you to believe in God. Believing in God amounts to coming to terms with death. When you have accepted death, the problem of God will be solved - and not the reverse. 


I do not worry about whether people believe in 'God' as the term means so many things to so many people, but I am concerned by the fear of death in our society, in our world, as it distorts the way we live. Fear of death and the freedom to embrace life cannot coincide as fear casts a shadow over life. In understanding the psychology of avoidance or denial I like the following passage from 'Scott' (T.E. Lawrence) channelled through the mediumship of Jane Sherwood (The Country Beyond, 1969: 48-9):

Perhaps psychology can help us to understand this tendency. it is surely a kind of masochism, a stoic resolve to punish the wishful thinking one suspects is behind the belief in immorality. It feels very stern, strong and noble to deny the thing one secretly longs for, and so to prove that one is quite able to do without it. It is easy to find arguments to support this denial and see how superior it makes one feel to say "I, at least, do not need to believe in such things".


'Scott' found, as it seems we all do in our time, that whatever made him who he was had 'escaped' from his body at the moment of death. What he would have denied a short time before became self-evident, that there is change, but no snuffing out of existence. The scientific law of the conservation of energy applies to life itself and not just to inert matter.


More on Jane Sherwood, 'Scott' and the relationship between vital and non-living matter to come in my Exploring the Afterlife blog.

To Cause a Death

Frances Zammit kindly sent me a copy of Kelly Connor's book, To Cause a Death: The Aftermath of an Accidental Killing (Clairview, Forest Row, 2004). It was a gripping read - as a  17 year old Kelly Connor accidentally knocked down and killed an elderly pedestrian. Finding no comfort or understanding from her family, religion, the medical and psychiatric profession, she coped alone, or at times failed to cope, with the question 'Do I deserve to go on living, having taken another life?' For a while after the accident she was subject to nightly visions in which angels and demons argued over her soul. She understood that they were interested in her everyday intentions, how much she loved. Having no religious context in which she could discuss these visions she kept them to herself. The next couple of decades included endless travel around Australia (where her family had emigrated from Manchester, UK), time in psychiatric hospitals, failed suicide attempts (she felt the need to talk to the woman she had killed and see if she was forgiven), a change of name and a brief marriage and birth of her daughter Meegan.
There was a glimmer of understanding when staff at the women's refuge she was living in at the time recommended a therapist to Kelly (originally known as Brenda). While previous attempts to come to terms with her 'crime' had been met with an attitude of denial and failure to engage, this therapist launched into a story in which a young man on a horse knocked over and killed his younger sister. He was banished by his grieving mother, who had witnessed the accident but had been unable to prevent it. She was the mother, the therapist explained, and her mother the young man who had been forced to experience the pain of banishment. She had to forgive her mother for her inability to comfort her in the present life. Kelly was not able to connect with this story at the time, but when through sending her daughter to a Waldorf school she came to read and study the works of Rudolf Steiner, the notion of karma and the need to make amends in this life for injuries caused in past lives fell into place. Everything about the accident seemed contrived to ensure that Brenda Connor and Margaret Healy met when they did so fatefully on a zebra crossing in 1971. Neither were on their usual path and had taken diversions to be at that spot at that time. Kelly came to believe that the 'accident' that had so shaped her life and that of those around her was pre-planned, and that there was a working out of grace and purpose through it all.

The final chapter digresses from the autobiographical to an explanation of Steiner's teachings on kamaloca, the astral plane on which the dead work out their karma and review their lives. According to Steiner's anthroposophical teachings the dead spend roughly three days in a kind of half sleep before awakening in kamaloca. The time spent there is roughly one third of their earth life, with the review process taking place at the ratio of one year in kamaloca for every three spent on earth, working backwards from death to birth, so that someone who died aged 90 would spend thirty years in kamaloca. During this time of review the deceased relive not only their own part in events but the effects of their actions on others. Those who participated in these events are often consciously or subconsciously aware of what is happening and may think or dream about the deceased person at that time. If the dead are not to carry the unresolved karma into another life they can be forgiven or helped to shed any burdens by the actions of the living.
Anthroposophy is broadly in line with other sources in terms of recognising a period of rest for most following death, and one or more past-life reviews, as well as the possibility of continued interaction between the living and the dead. He is unusual in being prescriptive about the timing of these events. Other sources tend to stress the variability in the time a soul spends in kamaloca or on some similar plane, depending on the speed of their spiritual advancement. Bruce Moen in Voyage to Curiosity's Father (Hampton Roads, Charlottesville, 2001), for instance, describes an out of body visit to the mother of a friend he had been asked to check up on after her death. Sylvia had died in a confused state and he had helped her move on. She had not by all accounts been a particularly holy or spiritual person during her last lifetime, so Bruce was surprised to learn a short while later that she had already 'graduated' and become a 'Being of Light' (in Steiner's terms, had completed her time of review in kamaloca). Moen was shown that once Sylvia knew she was dead her religious upbringing told her that Jesus would come and take her. When Sylvia was asked by a guide if she wanted the love of Jesus to fill her heart she replied that she did, and the negative energies she carried from her former life was successively washed away until she reached a stage at which there was simply nothing to hold her there any longer, as she had become filled with pure unconditional love - no punishment, no divine retribution, just a rebalancing of her energies. I guess this is what Christian teaching means by grace and the undeserved nature of our reception of it.
Whether or not one wishes to engage with the spiritual journey and anthroposophical conclusion, To Cause a Death makes an excellent read.             

Negative attachments

In my current reading I repeatedly come across sources that talk about the ways in which immoral behaviours and 'low' vibrations open us to negative influences. Valerie Mason John, for instance, in her semi-autobiographical book Borrowed Body, republished by BAAF as The Banana Kid spoke of people with depression and a destructive life style, including herself, as having a creature like a furry cat sitting on their shoulders. The cat could urge someone to yet more destructive behaviours such as suicide. Galen Stoller was motivated to write his posthumous memoir, My Life After Life, partly to warn others about the realm of 'misanthropes', creatures parasitic on humans who allow them to feed off their energies. Bruce Moen in his Exploring the Afterlife series speaks of ghosts of those who were attracted to a certain life style, who had failed to move away from the earth vibrations, being drawn to a house where people were taking drugs. When one lot were exorcised, another lot moved in - echoing the Gospel narrative of sweeping a room of spirits, only to leave room for more to arrive (Matt. 12, 43-5). Moen also visits the "hells" for people who are attracted to such places by their vibrational frequency when they die. There is a thiefs' hell, an emotional sadists' hell, a liars' hell, and so on. An individual isn't condemned to such places after death but is attracted there, and can leave as soon as they learn or desire to change their dominant vibration. These were the thoughts running through my mind in response to the scenes of violence on the streets of some of England's cities in the last week. The opposite of all these vibrations, or their cure, is pure unconditional love. Those of us fortunate enough to have experienced unconditional love have a responsibility to extend it to those we meet. Who knows how many 'hells' it can help dispel. 

The Shiva-Sumitra Possession Case – Notes on the frustrations of a quick return

On 12^th May 2011 I attended the Gwen Tate Memorial Lecture organized by the Society for Psychical Research in London. The introductory blurb for the lecture with a summary of the study and background to it is reproduced below. The case basically involved a young Indian woman who was probably murdered, who apparently took over the body of a similarly aged woman from a different caste and village who had been very ill in a coma. While Dr Mills gave a very reasoned and factual account of who said or wrote what to whom, it was in the subsequent question and answer session that questions of motivation and speculation as to what might have happened at a non-material level arose. Possession cases of this type, in which one personality seems to have been completely and permanently replaced by another are rare, although there are parallels with cases of (apparent) rapid reincarnation. In this case of possession the woman who was killed was both angry at her sister-in-law and husband’s family for murdering her and covering up the murder, and concerned about her two young children who were left with her husband, who cut them off from her family. The motivation, sudden violent death and extreme concern for others, especially for surviving children, that often seems to generate rapid reincarnation, was similar in this case. Taking over the body of a woman whose spirit had left, could plausibly have been an opportunistic decision, agreed or not between the two women (in spirit) or even, less plausibly, part of some pre-birth plan (see Robert Schwartz on Pre-Birth Planning). The frustrations and futility of attempting to return in another’s body became apparent through the lecture and subsequent discussion. If an adult returns (reincarnates) as an infant they may be able to remember and identity their former family and this may even be accepted and details verified, but a baby or child cannot look after others, and the original desire to continue with the previous life is not possible. The search for and identification with the previous life can pose limitations on living the current life in the new body (see, for instance, Jenny Cockell’s account of her search for ‘her’ children in a previous life; Yesterday’s Children, Platkus 2004).

            In the possession case described here the husband and family of the woman who had been in a coma, Sumitra Singh, were understandably upset to have their wife/daughter/mother claim to be someone else, and to say that she didn’t belong with them. While both she and they came eventually to accept the situation, and the new Sumitra re-learnt to live her life as a rural Khastiya woman, it was not a happy solution. For the murdered and reborn Shiva Tripatri the situation was arguably even worse. As her former husband’s family had seen to it that her body had been rapidly cremated to remove any evidence there was no way the police, although suspicious, could actually press charges for Shiva Tripatri’s murder. Not surprisingly they refused to recognize the revived Sumitra Singh as Shiva Tripatri, maintaining that she was a fraud. She was never able to see ‘her’ children again, who remained with her husband’s family, although she never stopped trying. Sumitra’s own natal family did accept her as their daughter/sister/relative in a different body, but that gave little comfort to any of the parties involved and did not change the situation for the better. The lesson one might draw from this and other similar cases in which a strong sense of unfinished business leads to a quick return to earth, is that whatever the circumstances of death one needs to detach and move on. Any help that can be given will need to be from the ‘other side’, and that little is to be gained by trying to relive or regain a life that has passed.

Athropologist Dr Antonia Mills gives the Gwen Tate Memorial Lecture. Dr Mills will report on her recent follow up investigation of the Shiva-Sumitra possession case originally studied by Ian Stevenson. The talk will include photographs, letters and new assessments made by various members of Sumitra and Shiva's families. The speaker will argue that the case presents strong evidence of the survival of Shiva's consciousness after her bodily death.

Antonia Mills received her PhD in Anthropology & Child Development from Harvard University and has been engaged in studies of Cases of the Reincarnation Type since 1984, both among North American Indian peoples and in India. She was a Research Assistant Professor in Ian Stevenson's Division of Personality Studies at the University of Virginia from 1988-1994 and since has been teaching First Nations Studies at the University of Northern British Columbia, Canada. Ian Stevenson and Satwant Pasricha, researched and reported on the case of Sumitra Singh, a young woman of the Khastiya caste, who apparently died and then returned to consciousness but experienced herself as Shiva Tripatri, a young college-educated Brahmin housewife and the mother of two who had died under suspicious circumstances. The two families were unknown to each other. Sumitra had never gone to school although she had learned how to write somewhat from her cousin. Stevenson and others documented that Sumitra and her family had no knowledge of Shiva and her family, and yet Sumitra recognized Shiva's father when he came to see her, and other family members when Sumitra and her husband went the 75 kilometers to the Tripathi home. Last year, Dr Mills and Dr. Kuldip Dhiman conducted a follow up study to translate and assess letters written by Sumitra/Shiva and to compare them with a letter written by the original Shiva.  Dr Mills will argue that the case presents strong evidence of the survival of Shiva's consciousness after her bodily death.

Ian Stevenson compares cases of reincarnation and possession at the end of his book 20 Suggestive Cases of Reincarnation, University of Virginia Press 1974.

Psychometry and Psi

It is always disappointing and disturbing when one’s own evaluation of a book is completely at odds with those of the plaudits. When I read the following reviews on Amazon for Mary Roach’s Six Feet Over: Adventures in the Afterlife  (Canongate, 2007) (great title in an overcrowded market) I ordered a copy and eagerly anticipated a good read. 

Mary Roach spent a year investigating the outer fringes of psychic phenomena and has written up her findings in Six Feet Over - a book full of healthy scepticism but also honest investigation. She seems to be a generous and open-minded investigator who does not belittle the enthusiasts she meets and writes entertainingly of what she finds.
"Dependably witty and populated by vividly evoked oddballs... thoroughly entertaining" New York Times "Mary Roach is warm, deliciously witty and has the happy knack of unearthing humour under the oddest tombstones... the ideal guide for a field trip into the otherworld." Chicago Sun-Times"

The book arrived promptly and I turned to a chapter entitled ‘Soul in a Dunce Cap. The author enrolls in medium school’, which described a weekend course on the ‘Fundamentals of Mediumship’ at the Arthur Findlay College at Stanstead in Surrey. The exercises described by Roach seemed to involve basic psychometry (trying to ‘read’ an object’s energies or vibrations) and generally enhancing one’s ability to sense of energetic fields.

The` word ‘psychometry’ (measuring the soul), was coined by Joseph Rodes Buchanan in 1842), and explined    in detail in his Manual of Psychometry: the Dawn of a New Civilization (1885). 

Roach spent a fairly fruitless weekend trying to imagine or make up what she was supposed to see or feel, based on cues from people’s appearance, background, the rather unsubtle hints from the course leader, and reactions of other participants. She felt isolated, sure that she was the only one who thought the whole thing was bunkum, delusion, a mix of cold-reading, wishful thinking and auto-suggestion – not deliberate but nonetheless clearly wrong. She concluded that this is all there is to be said on the subject – not exactly what I could call an open-minded investigation. The chapter struck me as crass, poorly researched and superficial, aiming at quick laughs, often at the expense of others. It depressed me and left a bad taste in the mouth – I tried to work out why.

First of all, my own readings and investigations do not point to a world in which dopy New Agers believe everything they see and hear. Many of those who spend a lot of their time around mediums and psychics are the most skeptical and critical of such phenomena – they are well aware that there is ample room for self-deception, fraud, poor practice and inflated claims. Gordon Smith describing his own development circles gives many examples of supposed mediumship which he regarded as nothing of the sort, and advocates a good sense of humour as essential. Raymond Brown similarly has tales of mediums who did not seem to be communicating anything more than their own egos, and others who were clearly exploitative. For a newcomer to the field this level of skepticism can be unsettling as one is warned that genuine, high quality mediumship and clairvoyance are rather rare, and that even the best have their off days. 

Secondly, the extent to which we want to please, pick up cues and ‘learn the language’ of the environment we are in should be a factor in assessing the experience, not a reason for rejecting it. Thomas Csordas, using the work of Merleau Ponty, has written most interestingly of his experience of fieldwork among Roman Catholic charismatics, describing the ways in which they unconsciously learn the appropriate body language when responding to the workings of the Holy Spirit. Accomplished mediums and their discarnate interlocutors stress that they work with and through the thought processes of the medium. Where the line lies between unconscious conformity to expectations and any exterior spirit presence may be hard to determine, but evidential information can sometimes give us a hint, or may indeed be overwhelming. Brian Weiss was convinced that his patient ‘Catherine’ was channeling a genuine source of external knowledge when, under hypnosis, she revealed details of his son’s illness and his father that was specific, detailed and unknown to anyone outside the immediate family.

The third factor in my disappointment at Roach’s quick and easy dismissal of psi/mediumship was that her experience was contrary to my own encounter with the world of psychometry and energetic communication. This took the form of two one day workshops at the College of Psychic Studies in London and a one-day seminar with Brian Weiss. On all three occasions there were some simple exercises in which we tried to pick up information from a fellow participant using some sort of ESP and/or from an object. I consider myself to be sensitive to places – long before these recent excursions, in fact for as long as I remember, I have used the term ‘spirit of place’ when referring to my feelings about a physical location. I have never, however, seen a ghost, or wanted to. The many examples I can think of telepathy, déjà vu, lucid dreaming or dream encounters with loved ones – dead and alive, I do not necessarily class as psychic, so commonplace and open to varied interpretation are they. The first of the College of Psychic Studies workshops I attended on ‘Contacting your Spirit Guide’ was preceded by an evening of clairvoyance with one of the College’s top psychics. I was offered a reading which left me extremely unimpressed, in fact his hit rate that evening at least seemed little better than 50/50, if that, in terms of people being able to ‘own’ the information offered. Most of it was very general and no proper names were given. I was, if anything, in a more skeptical mood than I might otherwise have been when approaching the first workshop. Nevertheless, my experience of all three workshops has convinced me that we have and can use abilities beyond ordinary sensory perception, even if we don’t develop them consciously, or even block them out much of the time. I was taught to douse for water by a RC priest in Cameroon, and the experience at these workshops was comparable. If one stops trying to make something happen, and just relaxes and ‘tunes in’ with an open mind (and heart), the impressions begin to flow. For those who reply, as Roach did, that they have no idea what this tuning in might entail, I would liken it to those visual exercises in which you have to train your brain to see a flat picture in 3D and previously hidden objects appear. All you can do is follow the instructions and at a certain point you step into that previously invisible world, which for a while at least becomes quite solid and robust. Almost everyone can achieve the required result with persistence, although some of us are much better at it than others.

                                                                   

                                                               Magic Eye 3D

Don't blink.
Look at a point in the center.
Just enough to prevent you from focusing.
Try to look 'through' the image without focusing.
Do not blink as you stare, let your vision blur.
The image will then become three dimensional and jump off your screen.
Persist and it will work for you!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomitheos/3235983766/


First experiences with reading energies

One of the first and most memorable attempts to read another’s energy was at this first workshop. There were 16 participants, male and female, from their 20s to 70s I would guess, with half a dozen or more nationalities, manual labourers and a bankers, and a whole lot inbetween, and varied experience of things psychic. There was no perceptible typical type of person, so varied were we in every way. Most were beginners or relative beginners, this was after all an introductory workshop. We didn’t get much chance to chat to one another before the exercise, and most people were rather quiet and shy to start with. I didn’t know anyone present, although I recognized a couple of people from the audience at the previous evening’s demonstration of clairvoyance. We were divided into two groups of eight. One group stood facing the wall, and the other eight circulated for a moment then came to stand directly behind someone but not touching them. The idea was to be within their auric or energetic field. The person facing the wall had no way of knowing who it was. Those facing the wall were given a couple of minutes to see what impressions if any they picked up concerning the person behind them. We were not given much direction, simply asked to see if we could detect any colours, guess at their sex or age, height or anything else. The idea, we were told, was to be open to the person’s energy field. After a couple of minutes the instructor went down the line asking each one to say what they picked up, without turning round to see who they were describing. When each one had had their say, they turned round to swap notes with whoever it was and see how they reacted to what had been said. We then swapped roles and repeated the exercise with new partners. Everyone present seemed to pick up some impressions and could identify with at least some of the information that was offered concerning them. This was not a cold reading (guess work based on logical deductions from appearance and probability) as we did know who we were referring to. I was nervous that ‘nothing would come’ but tried just to stay quiet and open myself to whatever might come. After a few seconds did have quite vivid feelings and impressions.            

I started off standing behind a young woman, who turned out to be Spanish. Her assessment of me (without knowing who was there or anything about me) was of someone who was intelligent and curious (well I am an academic and had set out to learn first-hand about psychic phenomena), compassionate and caring (we all like to think well of ourselves, so I like to own this too). She saw the color yellow round my head, and I know from reading Theosophical literature that this is associated with thought and intelligence. She then said something about seeing me with a squirrel, or being like a squirrel, not something I could own. I think of squirrels as rather annoying animals chattering outside my study window as they perform their acrobatics to get at the bird food hangers. I ‘owned’ the character information as pretty accurate but said that I could not relate to a squirrel. The woman then admitted that what she had actually ‘seen’ was not a squirrel but a ferret. Now that is significant. I keep ferrets, I love ferrets, and I had one (‘Ferris’) who was a particular favourite. Holding him always calmed me down whatever my mood. He was very affectionate, and there was something special about the way our vibrations seemed to sync. I have never had quite that relationship with another animal or being of any kind. I referred to Ferris as ‘my special little friend’. Sadly he died not so long ago – I forget whether this was before or after the workshop. When I told the woman about my special relationship with a ferret she gave a little gasp and scream. She had been afraid that I would be offended if she mentioned a ferret, so the stigma surrounding ferrets must extend to Spain. We were both quite struck by this unlikely coincidence, if that is what it was. It taught me that one should just try to be honest in these situations and not worry too much if the information seems way off or ridiculous.

Ferris

This was just as well as when my turn came to stand in line facing the wall and extend my senses to whoever was behind me, I soon started feeling rather sick, heavy and ill, and saw the colours orange and red. I felt a great deal of distress and then thought of an abortion or miscarriage as the closest analogy when explaining it to myself. Again, from my reading on chakras and colours I gathered that the dark red/earth colours are associated with the sexual organs and lower or more earth-bound emotions and energies. I felt very hesitant about sharing this impression in public when the teacher went down the line, and missed out the bit about the miscarriage or abortion. When I turned round to see who was behind me there was a middle-aged Indian woman dressed in white. I had seen her at the evening of clairvoyance and she looked very calm and meditative. I would never have associated the image I had of her visually with the emotions I was picking up. I tried as simply and honestly as I could to repeat what I had felt and added tentatively the bit about the distress feeling rather like a miscarriage or abortion. She was clearly very moved and told me that she had been suffering considerable distress and depression for the past year following the death of an infant. Although the details were not quite right, we were both impressed that I had picked up this deep distress following the loss of a child. (In my own case similar feelings had related to miscarriage – I have not experienced the loss of a child).

An exercise in psychometry

There were several other significant exercises during my first workshop, all of which convinced me that we pick up far more from others than we realize. What we put down to ‘gut feeling’ may be literally that. Becky Sharpe, who ran the first workshop, described how we put out ‘feelers’ from our solar plexus when we meet someone and check out whether they are safe or hostile. She had the nice expression, ‘it is rude to frisk strangers’, in other words we should exercise some control as to how far our ‘frisking’ extends and under what circumstances. The second exercise I want to describe involves psychometry using an object rather than just extending our energy-sensing faculties towards others. It was during a workshop with the author and hypnotherapist Brian Weiss in a packed Westminster Central Library in London. After a morning of listening we needed some more active participation, and were asked to pair with the person sitting next to us and to exchange a small object. We sat in semi-darkness for a few minutes and cleared our minds to see whether we could pick up any information from this object. My partner was an Italian woman. I knew from exchanging pleasantries that she was married with a son and living in London. She gave me a gold ring and after a little hesitation I gave her a cornelian bracelet my sister had made me. I had only worn it once or twice so realized that it was unlikely to contain much of my energy.             

When we came to exchange information this had proved to be the case. The woman said that she couldn’t pick up much from the bracelet, but had a sense of constriction in her throat and difficulty speaking. My sister has MS, which affects her speech, among other things, so it is just possible that she was picking up something of my sister. In my case I assumed that the woman had given me her wedding ring. As I sat holding it a scene had rapidly unfolded like a film in my mind. It started in an Italian hill town, something, like Orvieto, looking down toward the West Italian coast. There was a woman in black, widowed, in her 70s, who I took to be the woman’s grandmother – or maybe she somehow announced herself to me as her grandmother. The woman gave me a message, which was that she knew her grand-daughter missed her and her home, and that she thought of her often, and that she had seen her great-grandson and was very proud of him. They were always welcome there, or present there, and it would always be home. There was a lot more but this was the first part of the conversation and seemed the most emotionally charged.            

When I shared this scene with my partner she was clearly impressed. I thought I was holding her wedding ring, but she said that it was her grandmother’s ring which she had carried with her since her grandmother’s death. She did indeed miss her grandmother and her home very much, and it was a hill-town with views of the sea. She was sorry that her grandmother had never seen her little boy, born after her death. She didn’t relate much to the rest of my mental movie-script, but we were left wondering whether this could indeed have been a message from her grandmother, precipitated by the energy present in her ring? 

I would not elevate any of my brief first-hand experiences to the status of definitive proof of an afterlife, mediumship, clairvoyance or anything else in particular, but these experiences appear to be typical of those of my fellow participants. While some of the information was very general or wide of the mark it was also far more impressive than the cold reading or guesswork that Roach felt it necessary to indulge in. I think it is important to be totally honest with oneself and others, and my assessment so far is that we all probably all have more psychic abilities than we might suppose, and that the context in which we practice them and our expectations might well help or hinder their flow. I would not dream of automatically accepting all such experiences of my own or others at face-value without a degree of questioning and healthy skepticism, but I have seen, heard, read and experienced enough to tilt me firmly towards the view that there is probably something in it. By ‘it’, I refer to a view of the world in which we are interconnected energetically (vibrationally). By ‘we’ I would include all things ‘seen and unseen’, living, apparently inanimate and invisible but energetically present (discarnate beings of various types among other things).

References

Brown, Ray & Gillian, with Paul Dickson (2004) A Mere Grain of Sand, Tagman Press.
Csordas, Thomas (1995) Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self (Cambridge Studies in Medical Anthropology), CUP.
Smith, Gordon (2000) Inner Visions: A Medium’s Life. Pembridge Publishing.
Weiss, Brian  (1988) Many Lives, Many Masters.  Simon & Schuster.

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Locating consciousness

A contribution to the mind/brain/consciousness debate. Ramond Tallis reviews some recent works on neuroscience.


http://transcurve.net/profiles/blog/show?id=2480909%3ABlogPost%3A10202

Andy Murray Gets Outnumbered - Red Nose Day 2011 - BBC Comic Relief Night