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As a kid, watching the synchronised swimming competition of the summer Olympic games, I was always struck by how silly the sport seemed. Not to mention how it looked! Later, as a wise adult, I came to understand and appreciate both the degree of difficulty of getting human bodies to move in perfect unison, and the beauty that results when they do.

Humans often operate in synch with others. I am reminded of groups of women who work or live together menstruating at the same times, as if their hormonal systems sought a certain resonance of unity and harmony, and adjusted the individual bodies accordingly.

But bodies are not the only things that resonate. Quantum physics has taught us that there is no such thing as empty space, and that the so-called vacuum of space often called the Zero Point Field (ZPF), is teeming with quantum fluctuations that display a resonance, a vibration. Nothing does not vibrate. There is no such thing as zero, dead, still. Everything that exists gives off some vibration of a certain frequency.

Every planet, every person, every particle.

Musicians know that when a guitar string is plucked on one instrument in a music store, all the other guitars in the same room will vibrate to that tone. Healers refer to this as “entrainment,” when two objects (or people!) in close proximity, vibrating on different frequencies, begin altering their vibrations until they are vibrating at the same, or nearly the same, frequency. The Zero Point Field could act as a field of “entrainment” or resonance, where the vibrations of particles tune to specific frequencies, creating different forms of matter, energy and interactions. Other scientists believe this field has different names.

In 1998, physicist Paul Steinhardt and his colleagues coined a term that would describe a mysterious field of what they believed to be dark energy, or a “fifth essence.” They called it “quintessence.” Based upon an earlier idea proposed by Fermilab physicist Chris Hill and colleague Josh Freeman, quintessence suggested that, like the cosmological constant of Einstein’s vision, this essence fills all of “empty” space with a form of matter-energy that is changeable in strength. Some parts of space might have a thicker quintessence, others a thin “layer,” creating a field of invisible essence that has no direction, like a vector field, only magnitude, like a scalar field.

Described as kinetic energy by Tom Siegfried in Strange Matters, the strength of this field would be measured by how quickly it approaches the zero point. Because quintessence is believed to exert negative pressure, it is said to be a slow rolling scalar field, one that does not change too quickly over a period of time. Whether or not quintessence is the dark energy so eagerly sought by physicists will decide the fate of the universe itself, because of its relationship to expansion. The presence of a negative energy in space would possibly stop the expansion.

Aside from the role quintessence plays in the outcome of our universe’s destiny, it may also play a role in the way matter and energy interacts, or resonates. Nature is filled with signs of the importance of resonance and the beauty of synchronicity. From the physical foundation of all musical composition to the intricate mathematical ratios of the natural world, there seems to be an element of “arrangement” that results in a visible pattern.

Physicist David Bohm believed that underlying the physical, tangible world, there was a far more mysterious, deeper order of “undivided wholeness.” He called the visible world the explicate order, and that deeper world the implicate order, and used the analogy of a flowing stream to describe his realisation of unbroken unity.

“On this stream, one may see an ever-changing pattern of vortices, ripples, waves, splashes, etc., which evidently have no independent existence as such. Rather, they are abstracted from the flowing movement, arising and vanishing in the total process of the flow. Such transitory subsistence as may be possessed by these abstracted forms implies only a relative independence or autonomy of behaviour, rather than absolutely independent existence as ultimate substances.”

Those rather philosophical words came from Bohm’s Wholeness and the Implicate Order, which he wrote in 1980, and suggested the world of the implicate order was similar to a hologram, where the complex interference patterns appear to be chaotic and disordered to the naked eye, yet on a deeper level possess a pattern that is hidden or “enfolded” into the whole object. Bohm even suggested the universe itself was like a flowing hologram, or “holomovement,” that contained order on an implicate level. The explicate order would be the projection from higher dimensions of reality, and any apparent stability of objects and entities are really a sustained process of enfoldment and unfoldment. Nothing solid is really solid at the implicate level.

Bohm also believed there was a superquantum potential, or a higher “superimplicate” order operating in the universe, and that life and consciousness were enfolded within, with matter appearing in varying degrees of “unfoldment.” He even stated that the separation of matter and spirit is nothing but an abstraction, that the “ground is always one.”

All is Vibration

The study of music (and the patterns of sacred geometry) suggests an invisible, “implicate” vibratory nature. Sympathetic Vibratory Physics is a term assigned to a “musical universe,” an interesting alternative theory of reality proposed by Walter Russell in A New Concept of the Universe. Russell believes that there exists nothing in nature other than vibration. He attempts to create a paradigm of reality using wave and vibration theory based upon the work of John W. Keely’s concepts of a sympathetic vibration that connects all things and energies, and that the harmony of these vibrations creates what we see.

Russell and Keely suggest that music can be thought of as a model of the order found in the universe, with organised vibration or sound following principles of structure and behaviour that make sound into harmonies. These principles mimic those governing other vibratory patterns in the universe.

Take the idea that everything is the result of a vibration, and even Zero Point Energy in the quantum vacuum has been shown to “jiggle” or vibrate. Everything has its “jiggle.” We can go on to say that different things have different “chords” or “vibration signatures,” and that is what makes one thing discernible from the next. Sounds a lot like superstring theory, with tiny, vibrating cosmic strings at the very heart of existence.

Vibrations are dynamic, interacting with one another and their environment, creating different tones and chords and harmonics. In a sense, vibrations are more fundamental to reality than the tiniest subatomic particle, because in a sense, that is what the tiniest particle is… a vibration.

The most exciting thing about this invisible vibratory field, no matter what form it might take, is the potentiality it contains. Potential as a source of all other sources. Potential as a pure energy field upon which all matter is created and thrown out into the explicate order. Potential even is a doorway to other dimensions or levels of reality, where things like ghosts, UFOs and psychic abilities are the norm.

“Subquantum Kinetics” & “Morphogenetic Fields”

Physicist Paul LaViolette writes extensively about “transmuting ether” in his book, Genesis of the Cosmos: The Ancient Science of Continuous Creation. This ether, which is the basis of LaViolette’s theory of “subquantum kinetics,” is described as an active substrate that differs from the mechanical ethers once considered in previous centuries. LaViolette states, “The concentrations of the substrate composing this ether are the energy potential fields that form the basis of all matter and energy in our universe.” The ether reactions cause wave-like field gradients that emerge and form the “observable quantum level structures and physical phenomena,” including the various particles, forces, fields and electromagnetic waves.

Subquantum kinetics, which LaViolette proposes as a unified field theory that fills in the gaps conventional physics cannot, rests on the existence of this “primordial” transmuting ether present throughout space. “The transmuting ether is the wellspring of Creation,” he states, adding that were its activity to diminish, everything physical would cease to exist, coming to a state of “multi-dimensional consciousness” from which the physical universe is generated. A ground state, or Source of all Sources.

Rupert Sheldrake, biologist and co-author of The Evolutionary Mind: Conversations on Science, Imagination and Spirit refers to this vibratory field as the “morphogenetic field.” This “M-field” (and there can be many M-fields) is an underlying energy field that acts as an organising principle to give form to various levels of reality. He also suggests there is “morphic resonance,” or the resonance of memories sort of like Edgar Cayce’s “Akashic field” or the “collective unconscious” of Carl Jung. These memories shape our minds today, but subconsciously. Sheldrake, who has experimented with psychic pets and animals, theorises that the existence of an invisible field of influence, although unproven, could be the link between humans and their pets. “Morphic fields also contain attractors, which draw organisms towards future states.” This could explain how a dog might pick up a change in the morphic field that lets it know its owner is only a half block away.”

The morphogenetic field itself could be made up of “morphic wavelets” of resonating, vibratory energy that differ in scale and frequency. The wave could have a resonance that synchs up with the resonance of a pet, or a human, who then displays some “psychic” ability to predict a coming earthquake or disaster. And if they are tapping into a field that contains memories of past, present and future, a time landscape so to speak, they could access any event throughout the space/time continuum.

Obviously, it’s not that simple, or we would all be seeing ghosts, aliens, strange creatures, having precognitive dreams, major déjà vu episodes, and reading each other’s minds. But if even one small percentage of the claims of the paranormal is true, someone somehow is figuring out just how to do it.

Terence McKenna, psychedelic visionary and co-author of The Evolutionary Mind, points out: “Once non-locality is accepted, some of the things we’re interested in are permitted – telepathy, information from other worlds arriving by the morphogenetic field, and so on.” We know that experiments have proven non-locality to be a reality on the quantum level. Two particles continue to affect one another at extreme distances. The same actually happens on a macrocosmic level all the time.

The Synchronised Universe

Advanced physics tells us that an event at Point A in the universe does not cause an event in Point B to occur a little later. Actually, both events occur at the same time. Carl Jung used the term “synchronicity” to describe this same phenomenon on a human level. In his amazing book Power Vs. Force, Dr. David R. Hawkins states that a “question can’t be asked unless there’s already the potentiality of the answer… there can be no ‘up’ without an already existent ‘down’.” Synchronicities are evidence of an all-inclusive field that goes against the normal cause-and-effect rationale for events that occur that challenge our illusion of the line between subjective and objective reality.

Perhaps, the universe itself is based upon principles of synchronisation. Physicist Claude Swanson, educated at M.I.T. and Princeton, believes it is. He even believes his “synchronised universe” theory leaves the door wide open for a variety of paranormal phenomena to exist in a reality where our own matter operates in synchronised fashion with everything else.

In his book, The Synchronized Universe, Swanson points out that parallel universes superimposed upon our own can differ in phase or frequency of their synchronisation. Basically, people can only access their own universal “sheet” of existence, and thus believe that is the only one that exists. Same goes for anything moving around on all the other parallel “sheet” universes.

But alter the phase or frequency just so, and an object can disappear from one reality, and appear in another. Like a ghost.

The synchronised universe theory could explain how UFOs can appear and vanish instantly, as reported in hundreds of sightings, and how teleportation might be achieved. It could also explain the existence of “subtle energy,” which, Swanson theorises, arises from the motions coupled across the layers of parallel universes. Subtle energies, Swanson states, are the “coherent structure which crosses several of these parallel realities, and therefore is ‘higher dimensional’.”

The interesting thing about synchronisation is that it allows every particle a fundamental frequency proportional to its mass, and also explains how particles can become synchronised, like those Olympic swimmers, at small scales. This “synchronising” of matter and energy would indeed allow for paranormal events to occur, and would no doubt explain why they might occur in transient, unpredictable ways. Ghosts, out-of-body experiences, remote viewing, psychokinesis and poltergeist activity all may be the result of the synching of particles and matter between various levels of existence, creating a literal means for moving between dimensions of reality.

Swanson states, “Paranormal effects and ‘subtle energy’ cause a synchronisation across adjacent parallel universes. When this occurs, these adjacent universes become to a degree synchronised with ours. The interaction becomes more coherent, more in phase.”

When there is no synchronisation, we experience the other universe or dimension as “random noise.”

Even teleportation fits into the synchronised universe theory. Swanson points out, “The behaviour and position of matter is dependent on its radiation field, which keeps it in place, gives it inertia and allows it to interact with other matter in the universe. If we shift the phases of radiation coming into the particle and coming out of it from the past and the future, we may be able to shift its position.” This may be the key to a form of “hyperdrive” that causes teleportation.

An Explanation for Ghosts?

Physicist F. David Peat suggests that synchronicities are “flaws” in the fabric of reality, momentary fissures that offer those sensitive to them a brief peek into the implicate, underlying order of nature.

We know from the Law of the Conservation of Energy that the total inflow of energy into a system must equal the total outflow of energy from the system, plus the change in the energy contained within the system. In other words, energy never dies. It is converted into another form. Ghosts, if they represent trapped energy, may move between parallel dimensions or universes by this process of synchronisation (possibly using the ZPF as a vehicle for moving between the dimensions) and become visible in our world because they are still energy. Many ghost sightings involve balls of plasma and changes in electromagnetic field measurements, as well as visible signs of energy manipulations. Lights flicker or pop, static appears on radios and televisions, and people report the feeling of their hair rising on their skin or the back of their head. These are also widely reported elements of UFO sightings (stalled car engines, black-outs, phone interference…). Obviously, energy is present, and affecting its environment.

Again, one is reminded of music. When two or more notes are played together, they either create a beautiful harmony, or a noisy discord. The notes that work well together create a resonance. Those that don’t “make sweet music” together create a dissonance.

If paranormal events can only occur when the “right two notes are struck,” then something in the brain, or the body, is responding to those notes and “tuning in” to the phenomena that is otherwise beyond perception. All of these frequencies exist in the field, and… even our brains seem to have access to this field of all possibility.

The Brain Works Like a Hologram

Neurosurgeon Karl Pribram spent decades pondering the secrets of the human brain and memory, and eventually discovered that the brain worked somewhat like a hologram, and that when you first see something, specific frequencies resonate in the brain’s neurons, which then send information about the frequencies to other sets of neurons, and the process continues until your neurons construct an image of what you are looking at. That the brain seems to process information in wave-frequency patterns suggested that human memory could hold amazing amounts of information “in storage,” and, using the same holographic model, be able to access and recall a memory as a three-dimensional image.

The holographic model of the brain could allow for ESP and telepathy, then, by the same process, according to Swanson. “If the sender can cause energy or information to refocus at some other point in space-time using the 4-D holographic principle, then it can be received if a person is there to sense the thought-form.”

Pribram’s brain research didn’t stop with the holographic model and its implications for a variety of interesting abilities. He also showed that the brain acted like a frequency analyser that literally filters out unlimited wave information from the Zero Point Field, where all the information possible existed. This allows the mind to take and use only what it needs, and not be overwhelmed with a bombardment of unnecessary frequencies trying to compete for some “brain time.”

Think about the simple experience of déjà vu, which may be our ability to access, albeit in very small doses, glimpses of ourselves in a parallel universe or dimension, or even the ZPF. When you have déjà vu, you are remembering what is happening to you in the present moment. That doesn’t make sense. If it is happening in the present moment, how can you yet have a memory of it? But if there exist parallel universes that have “branched off” each time we made a different choice, then it makes sense that we would, in many of those universes, be doing the same exact things at the same exact time. Déjà vu may then be our successful attempts to find and synch up with another reality, even just for a minute or two. Or perhaps we are accessing the Zero Point Field, which, like Edgar Cayce’s Akashic Record, supposedly contains the memories of every thought, action or event that ever happened or will ever happen in the universe.

If déjà vu, dreams and out of body experiences, including near death experiences, allow us to wander for a while in other realities, it begs the question – why can’t we easily access these other realities all the time, any time we please? I might suggest that it is because if we could, we would go insane. Information overload. Our brains operate as information sorting machines, only bringing into our perceptive fields what we need to see, hear and know to survive, and hopefully thrive.

That does not prevent us from being able to, when we meditate or go into a trance or zone out at our computer, have a peek into other dimensions of existence.

People do this all the time when they dream, when they know who is on the phone after only one ring, when they get a “bad vibe” about a person they’ve just met. Remote viewers may be tuning into a frequency upon which the information they are either sending or receiving is naturally “broadcasting,” as a psychic might pick up on similar frequencies when doing a reading or having their own clairvoyant episode.

If paranormal elements operate on a different frequency, again we must think of the dog that hears a high-pitched whistle that is soundless to us. Many species of snake have organs that allow them to perceive the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum and “see” the heat of another living thing. Sharks and eels are ultra-sensitive to changes in electrical fields, and some insects can see ultraviolet light. These creatures are obviously observing things we humans simply aren’t built to observe.

Yet somewhere there are humans who can hear these whistles, and sense EMF alterations, just as there are humans that can see auras and other forms of light energy the rest of us cannot. It could just be a matter, then, of the level of one’s consciousness or perception.

Whether energy is synching up, or emerging in a coherent pattern from the ZPF, or moving along a morphogenetic field, or even floating in a sea of quintessence, there is definitely fertile, dynamic ground for the movement of that energy between our world and the world of the paranormal (which could in fact be our own world, or one parallel to ours).

We are limited to our five senses: sight, smell, sound, touch and taste. But what about this sixth sense? Perhaps that is the sense, underdeveloped in most, yet present in all, which allows us to turn on and tune in to the frequencies that reveal the other layers of existence.

I think of years ago, long before cell phones, when I owned a CB radio and loved to listen to motorists and truckers chatter. Occasionally, there would be some bandwidth cross talk from a nearby Ham radio operator. Ghosts, UFOs, and other paranormal events may be cross-talk cutting into our normal bandwidth; chatter from another dimension, or universe, or somewhere in between. We don’t normally hear it because it is usually operating on another frequency altogether, but sometimes signals get crossed. Consciousness may be the key to knowing exactly which frequency to tune into to perceive paranormal phenomena. Think about that the next time you listen to the radio.

Tune into the right frequency and you may find yourself face to face with a ghost.

Reprinted, with permission of the publisher, from Psience: How New Discoveries In Quantum Physics And New Science May Explain The Existence Of Paranormal Phenomena © 2007 Marie D. Jones. Published by New Page Books a division of Career Press, Pompton Plains, NJ, USA. 800-227-3371. All rights reserved.

MARIE D. JONES is a best-selling author, screenwriter, researcher, radio show host and public speaker. She is the author of 2013: End Of Days Or A New Beginning- Envisioning The World After The Events Of 2012, Psience – How New Discoveries In Quantum Physics And New Science May Explain The Existence Of Paranormal Phenomena, and Looking For God In All The Wrong Places. Marie’s next book, due in mid-2011, is Destiny Vs. Choice: The Scientific And Spiritual Evidence Behind Fate And Free Will. She co-authored a number of books with Larry Flaxman including The Déjà vu Enigma: A Journey Through the Anomalies of Mind, Memory and Time, The Resonance Key: Exploring the Links Between Vibration, Consciousness and the Zero Point Grid, and 11:11 – The Time Prompt Phenomenon: The Meaning Behind Mysterious Signs, Sequences and Synchronicities. Larry and Marie are partners in a venture called ParaExplorers and can be reached at www.paraexplorers.com. Marie’s website is www.mariedjones.com.

The above article appeared in New Dawn Special Issue 15.

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Do we survive the death of our physical bodies? Is there such a thing as a postmortem continuation of the individual? If there is survival, what survives? Does everyone survive? What does it even mean to survive?

Answers to these questions are central to the dogmas of many religions. These same issues are amongst the most refractory when addressed using the techniques of scientific inquiry: data gathering, hypothesis formulation and testing, logical analyses. Indeed, such topics are generally viewed as outside the scope of scientific inquiry, not worth serious thought. As Bertrand Russell commented, “most people would die sooner than think – in fact, they do so.”

Sphinx Geology

In my youth, I didn’t bother to give the afterlife much consideration. I never needed the threat of future hell and damnation to persuade me to be moral now. I identified with those ancient Hebrews who did not necessarily believe in an afterlife (de Vesme, 1931), yet still found it prudent to pursue an honourable life in this world. In college I pursued a very earthly field – the study of rocks – ultimately earning a Ph.D. in geology and geophysics from Yale University (1983).

My life changed in 1990. At the invitation of independent Egyptologist John Anthony West, I took my first trip to Egypt – specifically to study the Great Sphinx from a geologic point of view. After several more trips, undertaking various tests and analyses, I came to the conclusion that the oldest portions of the Great Sphinx date back to a much earlier period than previously believed by most Egyptologists and historians. Conventional wisdom places the Great Sphinx in the reign of the Pharaoh Khafre (Chephren), circa 2500 BCE. My studies indicated that the oldest portions of the Great Sphinx (the statue has been repaired many times, and the head re-carved) date back to at least the period of 7000 BCE to 5000 BCE, and perhaps 9000 BCE or earlier.

My Sphinx work immediately caused a firestorm and, though the controversy has abated somewhat two decades later, the implications have only deepened. Essentially, sophisticated culture and civilisation goes back much earlier than formally thought; “history must be rewritten.” Over the years I have been pleased to see confirmation of the crux of my work, as other very ancient sites have been uncovered. A good example is Gobekli Tepe in Turkey where a major monumental carved stone building phase dating to the period of 8000 BCE and earlier has been discovered.

Egypt And Its Obsession With Death

Working on the Great Sphinx, I could not help but become fascinated with the pyramids, temples, tombs, and other relics of ancient Egypt. According to the traditional view, what was the overriding preoccupation of ancient Egypt? Death and the afterlife. Say “Egypt” and pyramids (popularly interpreted as giant tombs), mummies, and the so-called Book of the Dead immediately come to mind.

Having studied them in depth, it is clear to me that the pyramids, and the Great Pyramid in particular, were not solely or even primarily overblown mausoleums. Indeed, the Great Pyramid may have served both astronomical/astrological functions, literally being an observatory at one stage of its development, as well as ritualistic purposes. Many modern visitors describe powerful and life changing experiences in the Great Pyramid. One of the most famous is Napoleon Bonaparte. While in Egypt, August 1799, Napoleon visited the Great Pyramid. He entered the King’s Chamber and asked to be left alone. Upon emerging, Napoleon was pale, faint and silent. Asked by an aide what happened, Napoleon refused to say anything of substance, intimating that he had experienced a preview of his own fate. Just before his death in 1821, Napoleon appeared to be on the verge of telling a close friend what had occurred in the King’s Chamber. Then he hesitated. “No. What is the use? You would never believe me.”

I have spent many hours, including several times almost the entire night (but not sleeping, mind you), in the Great Pyramid. And I have spent much time exploring other temples and tombs throughout Egypt, as well as pyramids, temples and sacred places elsewhere in the world. Initially I approached the ancient monuments as a geologist, focusing on the materials from which they were constructed. Soon, however, I became involved in studying not just the stones, but why past civilisations had erected the stones into magnificent edifices. The why behind the monuments, more often than not, apparently included religious beliefs and practices, initiation rites and rituals, which in many cases seemed to have an ostensible paranormal aspect, whether it was clairvoyance, divination or manifestations of higher levels of consciousness. Were, I asked myself, the ancient structures used to genuinely alter consciousness and possibly enhance paranormal phenomena? Or did superstition, perhaps combined with pious fraud on the part of a priest or priestess, account for the tales? Furthermore, I could not help but think about postmortem survival issues, particularly when studying ostensible tombs! Death, transformation, resurrection, union with the gods, attainment of immortality – was all this ritualistic hocus pocus and pure nonsense? Or were the ancients skilled psychic engineers, carefully manipulating the incorporeal with their megalithic stone monuments and occult practices?

My formal training as a physical scientist certainly did not encourage the notion that paranormal and psychic phenomena, much less life after death, were anything other than imagination gone wild or charlatans preying on the gullible. According to a conventional materialistic and secular “scientifically rational” worldview, the paranormal does not exist and death is the final end. It was all too easy, and indeed comforting, to put such issues out of mind. Stick to the hard evidence of the rocks, the domain of the geologist.

Exploring the Paranormal

Issues of the paranormal and questions about survival kept nagging at me. Ultimately, I realised, I must address these topics head-on, if only for the sake of satisfying my intellectual curiosity. For me the first issue was to research various reputed anomalous psychic abilities among the living, such as telepathy (direct mind-to-mind transfer of information without utilising any of the conventional senses) and psychokinesis (PK, essentially the concept of mind-over-matter). I wanted to establish what, if anything, in terms of the paranormal is possible among the living before addressing the issue of postmortem survival.

It took me over ten years from my first visit to Egypt to get to the point where I was prepared to take a serious look at the paranormal. I have taught fulltime at Boston University since 1984, and every year I have a new batch of students. Many simply want to take their courses and get a degree, but then there are those who really strive to go beyond their formal studies. One such student was Logan Yonavjak. She served as my field assistant on research expeditions to Egypt and Peru in 2003 and 2005, and she prodded me to take a serious look at the paranormal. She and I undertook a comprehensive survey of the serious scientific literature addressing psychical research and the paranormal (the field now generally referred to as parapsychology). We read literally thousands of papers, pro- and con-, and we both became involved with the field first-hand. The result of our collaboration was The Parapsychology Revolution: A Concise Anthology of Paranormal and Psychical Research.

Our studies convinced me that, once the fraud, bunk, and self-delusion are eliminated, there is something to the paranormal. The best-documented class of paranormal phenomena is telepathy. There is strong laboratory evidence for telepathy, such as classic card-calling experiments as well as many more sophisticated tests. There is also a large and compelling body of evidence from spontaneous cases (non-laboratory experiments) supporting the reality of telepathy. For instance, crisis apparitions, veridical hallucinations, or “ghosts” are well known. The evidence for PK is also strong, including micro-PK studies at an atomic level using random event generators and similar devices, such as the evidence developed by the PEAR (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research) labs over more than a quarter of a century, and the carefully studied incidents of macro-PK (affecting larger objects) associated with genuine spontaneous poltergeist cases. Another line of evidence for the reality of paranormal phenomena is research on presentiments or “pre-sponses,” essentially a form of short-term precognition as measured by physiological parameters (heart rate, electrodermal activity and so forth). Numerous replicated experiments have demonstrated the physiological responses of individuals to disturbing photographs, for instance, a second or two before they are actually viewed by the person. According to conventional science, this should not be possible.

My research on parapsychological phenomena among the living continues, but at this point I agree with the following statement made by David Fontana, Professor of Transpersonal Psychology at Liverpool John Moores University and a well-known psychical researcher: “Psychic abilities are a matter of fact not of belief. What they are and what they mean for our view of reality is another matter, but one cannot dismiss them as fiction and yet retain credibility as an unbiased observer.” (Fontana, 2005, pp. 468-469)

But how do we interpret paranormal phenomena? This brings us to the issue of postmortem survival.

Survivalist Interpretations

Serious study of psychical and paranormal phenomena dates back to at least 1882, the year when the Society for Psychical Research was founded. At that time, and right up to the present day, some psychical researchers have interpreted some of the phenomena they study as being communications from deceased persons or discarnate (non-bodily) entities. Indeed, among many people the prime interest in psychical studies is to establish the possibility of an afterlife. To give a classic example, let us suppose you attend a séance. The medium goes into trance and begins to speak in a different voice. The voice claims to have a message from the beyond, a message from your departed grandmother. Through the medium, you are told that your deceased grandmother still cherishes those moments you had with her, and a very private story is related, a story that you are certain you never shared with another person and only you and your grandmother knew about.

So, is this proof that you received a communication from your beloved grandmother? Does she live on in the afterlife? Many people would say yes, absolutely (of course, we are assuming there is no fraud on the part of any involved in the séance). No one other than your grandmother knew the private story, and so it must be her who now relates it (indirectly through the medium). What other explanation can there be?

Indeed, there is another explanation, and it gets to the crux of the arguments for and against postmortem survival. Instead of your grandmother contacting you from beyond the grave, perhaps the medium is telepathically picking up information from your brain, perhaps information that is stored away deep in the unconscious, and then relaying it in a form that is ostensibly a communication from your grandmother? (Granted, the medium is doing this unconsciously, and in no way intends to deceive. The medium truly feels that she or he is communicating with the dead on your behalf.)

Let’s make the situation a little more complicated. What if the supposed communication from grandmother relays information unknown to you, perhaps concerning your aunt when she was young? After the séance you consult your aunt, and indeed the communication is true, and what is more, your aunt is shocked and flabbergasted because the information is something that only she and your grandmother shared, and absolutely no one else had ever known it. So, is this proof of the continued existence of your grandmother in the “ethers”? Some parapsychologists would counter that possibly the medium telepathically raided, if you will, your aunt’s mind to find interesting information that was then relayed to you at the séance, information that appeared to come from your grandmother.

There are well-documented cases that become incredibly complex. For instance, at some séances entities, referred to as “drop-in communicators,” make themselves known (Gauld, 1971). Some such drop-ins are ostensibly deceased souls unknown to any of the séance sitters. The drop-in is simply taking advantage of the séance setting, attempting communication with the still living, perhaps asking that a relative or loved one (a living person unknown to any of the séance sitters) be contacted. Drop-ins can conveniently be dismissed by critics as simply figments of the imagination of the medium and/or séance sitters (the medium may pick up on the imagination of the sitters telepathically, expressing this imagination in the form of a supposed drop-in), except in the cases where the information given by a drop-in is verified later. For instance, a drop-in requests that a message be relayed to so-and-so at such-and-such address, and when a sitter at the séance goes to the indicated address it is found that the address exists, the person named lives there, and the message has significant private meaning for the indicated person. Could, just possibly, the medium have assessed all of the information paranormally and then created, unconsciously, the purported drop-in to “communicate” the information? (We assume that no fraud is involved, and in the best cases it seems clear that fraud is not an issue.) Yes, but to many this would seem a much more elaborate, concocted, and complex explanation than simply accepting that the drop-in was indeed a discarnate entity from the other side.

Super ESP

Basically, much of the evidence that ostensibly supports postmortem survival can conceivably be interpreted, with varying degrees of finesse, as due to the psychical and paranormal functioning (even if masked and at an unconscious level) of living persons. This is sometimes known as the Super-ESP hypothesis (ESP refers to extrasensory perception), but actually can include paranormal phenomena besides ESP, such as the movement of objects. Take poltergeist activity, unexplained movements of objects, such as items falling off shelves or being “thrown” through the air without any physical cause that can be observed, various unexplained noises and disturbances. Having observed a minor, but I believe absolutely genuine, poltergeist incident, I am convinced that such activities can be real.

But is poltergeist activity due to literal ghosts (presumably mischievous departed spirits), or can the Super-ESP hypothesis adequately explain poltergeists? One theory is that many poltergeist manifestations are unconsciously caused by, or emanate from, the person who superficially appears to be the focus of the poltergeist activity. Poltergeist activity may be a method (at the unconscious level) of “working out” unresolved emotional and psychological tensions and conflicts.

There are many other classes of evidence that some claim as support for the reality of survival beyond the grave. Classic séances sometimes include movements and levitations of tables and other items, strange sounds and voices, and even the supposed materialisation of objects and beings (deceased persons?). If, and it is a big if in many researcher’s minds given the amount of fraud documented in such settings, any of these types of phenomena are genuine, are they due to spirits from the “other side,” as is generally claimed by the medium? Or might a Super-ESP explanation be applicable?

Near-Death experiences and Out-of-Body experiences are sometimes cited as supporting evidence for the survival hypothesis, but the counter argument is that many such experiences are subject to conventional (non-paranormal psychological and physiological factors) or Super-ESP explanations.

Some researchers have attempted to utilise modern electronic apparatus as a means of communicating with those beyond the grave, a concept sometimes referred to as instrumental transcommunication. One form, known as electronic voice phenomena (EVP), consists of recording the static of a radio that is tuned to a frequency carrying no transmissions. When the recording is played back, perhaps at a different speed than originally recorded, voices or communications from the other side may be heard, or so it is claimed (Raudive, 1971). Even if such “voices” are independently verifiable, critics of the survivalist hypothesis can claim that the voices were encoded paranormally (and unconsciously) via a form of PK by those involved or associated with the experiments rather than by entities from the spirit world – Super-ESP strikes again!

Reincarnation

What about reincarnation? Isn’t reincarnation a type of afterlife, or the continuation of life after the dissolution of a particular physical body? While many supposed cases of reincarnation and past lives remain unsubstantiated by solid data, there are also a number of cases where something paranormal apparently is involved. The late Dr. Ian Stevenson (1918-2007), a psychiatrist associated with the University of Virginia (Charlottesville) for nearly half a century, collected, scrutinised, verified, and analysed literally thousands of cases of individuals who apparently demonstrated memories of former lives.

Just because a living person claims memories of a past life, does that mean it is the same person inhabiting a new body? Or, is a person who appears to remember a past life (and in most cases it is simply bits and pieces of a presumed past life that are “remembered”) in reality paranormally accessing information about a former person and/or time, perhaps even from still living people? Many cases of supposed reincarnation, some would argue, are nothing more than the latter. That is, Super-ESP is the true explanation. Weakening the Super-ESP hypothesis in some presumed reincarnation cases, however, is the finding by Stevenson that in a few instances marks made on the body of a person after the person died apparently appear on the presumed incarnation of the deceased person. Here is a real example given by Stevenson. A young woman in Burma with congenital heart disease died during open-heart surgery. While preparing her body for burial, a mark was placed on the back of her neck with red lipstick. The woman’s presumed incarnation, born thirteen months later, had a prominent red birthmark at the back of her neck, a line of diminished pigment corresponding to the incision in her abdomen and chest made during the surgery, and when the baby began to speak she seemed to have knowledge of the previous life that she could not have acquired by normal means.

If Stevenson’s data on birthmarks in subsequent presumed incarnations caused by marking or mutilation of a cadaver after death of the previous person stands up to scrutiny, it could have far-reaching implications. It is one thing to hypothesise that fragments or portions, or even the totality, of a personality might be transmitted from a dying person telepathically, including aspects of that person’s death, but to suggest that somehow a lingering discarnate personality is aware of what happens to its former physical body and incorporates marks or mutilations to the body in the next incarnation raises many theoretical and philosophical issues. Is this evidence for the existence of “ethereal beings,” “spiritual entities,” or “soul components”?

Super ESP or Something Else?

To quote Professor Fontana, “Given that the evidence supports the existence of psychic abilities, these abilities are either explicable as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis from the living (i.e. as Super-ESP), or as communications in one form or another from those who have survived death and live on in another dimension. There is no way around these two possibilities. The evidence either supports Super-ESP or supports survival.” (Fontana, 2005, p. 469)

In his book Is There an Afterlife?, Fontana is adamant that he believes much of the evidence cannot be adequately explained by Super-ESP. The Super-ESP hypothesis becomes too complex and convoluted, and ultimately so complicated that many prefer, or even find it necessary, to discuss alternative explanations, such as postmortem survival.

Fontana asserts there are two, and only two, ways to interpret the evidence: Super-ESP or survival (to be clear, Fontana leaves open the possibility that Super-ESP may explain some of the evidence while other evidence supports survival). But is it really an either/or situation? Are the only two viable alternatives Super-ESP and survival of humans (and possibly other organisms?) that once inhabited Earth in bodily form? It seems clear to me that there are additional possibilities (even if not actualities). What about the time-honoured notion of discarnate entities that perhaps never inhabited physical bodies: gods, angels, demons, spirits and so forth?

Soul Components

At another level, the concepts of Super-ESP and survival may not be totally distinct from one another. Another time-honoured concept is that of a World Soul, conscious of and remembering its past, that is all the past, and that individual souls may merge with and draw from this World Soul. Related to this is the concept of a spiritual record (sometimes known as the Akashic Records) of all that has transpired, a record that might be accessed from time to time by certain individuals or other beings.

Rather than viewing the issue of postmortem survival as a simple dichotomy, you survive or you do not, I believe the issue is much more subtle, complex and nuanced. It is not simply is their life after death, yes or no? Rather is it a matter of which psychic components of a person may survive, in what states, for how long, and how such components may influence the living (for instance, via communication through a medium, haunting, reincarnation or possession).

The ancient Egyptians took a much more sophisticated approach to afterlife issues than many modern people do. They had a number of terms for various psychic components of a person, not fully understood to this day, but we can list some as follows: ka (life force, vital force, spirit, double), ba (individual personality, soul), akh or khu (spirit form, transfigured spirit, ghost), ib or ab (heart, emotion, thought), sheut (shadow, hidden self), and ren (name, embodiment of power and personality). Upon death and dissolution of the body, the ancient Egyptians believed these components could separate and go their separate ways; part of Egyptian ritual involved reuniting the psychic components. When it comes to attempting to understand the subtleties of the psyche and the possibility of postmortem survival, I believe we can benefit by studying ancient wisdom.

At this point I am not sure what exactly survives, what form or forms it takes, or how long it might survive (for a limited duration? forever?), but I believe the evidence supports the conclusion of the early psychical researcher F. W. H. Myers – something survives:

I hold that certain manifestations of central individualities, associated now or formerly with certain definite organisms, have been observed in operation apart from those organisms, both while the organisms were still living, and after they had decayed. (Myers, 1907, p. 27)

We have the foundation for serious studies of the survival issue, a topic that I will continue to pursue in this life – and perhaps the next.

References:

Caesar de Vesme, A History of Experimental Spiritualism. Vol. 2, Peoples of Antiquity (Translated from the French by Fred Rothwell), Rider, UK, 1931David Fontana, Is There An Afterlife?, O Books, UK, 2005

Alan Gauld, “A Series of ‘Drop In’ Communicators”, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. 55, part 204, pp. 273-340 (1971)

F. W. H. Myers, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death (edited and abridged by his son Leopold Hamilton Myers), Longmans, Green, USA, 1907

Konstantin Raudive, Breakthrough: An Amazing Experiment in Electronic Communication with the Dead, Colin Smythe, UK, 1971

Bertrand Russell, Mortals and Others: American Essays, 1931-1935, Routledge, USA, 1996 (quote cited originally published in Russell’s The ABC of Relativity, 1925.)

Ian Stevenson, Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect, Praeger, USA, 1997

The Parapsychology Revolution: A Concise Anthology of Paranormal and Psychical Research is available from New Dawn Books. To order, see pages 71-72.

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ROBERT M. SCHOCH, Ph.D., is renowned for his work on re-dating the Great Sphinx. Based on his geological studies, he determined that the Sphinx’s origins date prior to dynastic times. He has also focused his attention on the Great Pyramid and various other temples and tombs in Egypt, as well as studying similar structures around the world. Dr. Schoch is an author and coauthor of both technical and popular books, including the trilogy with R. A. McNally: Voices of the Rocks: A Scientist looks at Catastrophes and Ancient Civilizations (1999), Voyages of the Pyramid Builders: The True Origins of the Pyramids from Lost Egypt to Ancient America (2003), and Pyramid Quest: Secrets of the Great Pyramid and the Dawn of Civilization (2005). Dr. Schoch’s most recent book is The Parapsychology Revolution: A Concise Anthology of Paranormal and Psychical Research (2008, compilation and commentary by Robert M. Schoch and Logan Yonavjak). Website: www.robertschoch.com.

The above article appeared in New Dawn Special Issue 7.

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During the Second World War the Americans had an airbase in Bari, about seventy-five miles from San Giovanni Rotondo, a village in Southern Italy that houses Capuchin friary. According to US intelligence, the Germans had a munitions facility in the hills nearby; an officer was assigned the job of bombing it. As the planes neared San Giovanni, the officer saw in the sky before him the figure of a monk waving him back.

Dumbfounded by this spectacle, the officer ordered the planes to turn back. When the war ended, he went to the friary and met the monk who had appeared in the sky. His name was Padre Pio (1887 – 1968).On a trip to San Giovanni Rotondo in 1979, I was unable to learn the officer’s name or any details confirming this fantastic story. According to Father Joseph Pius Martin, an American friar in San Giovanni, the pilot lives in Florida – the only additional lead I obtained.

Stories like the flyer’s are legion. The work of sorting out fact from fiction is still underway. Many incredible claims about Padre Pio are well-documented; but many are based on hearsay, part of the folklore growing around the monk. One extraordinary thing about Padre Pio was his ability to induce belief in the extraordinary. He had a gift for catapulting people into a fairyland of living mythic powers. In Padre Pio’s world, ideas of fantasy and creatures of mythology come to life: Madonnas, guardian angels, shapeshifting demons, bilocation, magical cures, time-travel, and a good deal more. However you rate the literal truth of particular claims, his story is bound to disturb our routine picture of what is possible. Around the Padre, the incredible became credible, the impossible became actual.

And yet, no matter how extraordinary the feats of Padre Pio, he was a human being. I assume therefore that his “miraculous” powers are latent powers of all human beings. I underscore this with reason. Some people will resist the claims about Pio because they might see them as meant to ratify church dogma. (The truth is that miracles have been used for propaganda.) However, while I grant that you cannot fully understand Padre Pio’s miracles apart from the symbols and archetypes of his Christian world, I also think they transcend that world and point to a universal human potential. Moreover, comparable phenomena from other traditions bear this out, the best contemporary example being the case of Sai Baba.1

These phenomena point to possibilities rejected by the custodians of the intellectual and moral establishment: by scientific materialists, who make up the rank and file of academia, and by liberal and fundamentalist Christians, who wear their own conceptual blinkers. Since, however, a critical review of evidence is impossible here, I will restrict myself to trying to give a rough idea of the man, the range of his unusual powers, and to noting their possible implications for human evolution.

EXTRAORDINARY ACCESS TO THE INTERNAL ENVIRONMENT

From early childhood Francesco Forgione lived in a world of visionary hyper realities. At five he cried so much, especially at night, that his father once lost his temper and hurled him to the ground. Recalling these early years, Padre Pio said: “My mother would turn off the light, and a lot of monsters would come up close to me, and I would cry.”2 Padre Pio said of these early experiences: “It was the devil who was tormenting me.” Terrifying visions continued throughout his life, inseparable from his higher visions. Raptures, ecstasies, often lasting hours, in which his senses were suspended, occurred frequently. We know of these from his letters3 and from observations of his spiritual directors such as Father Agostino4 who eavesdropped on the Padre’s conversations with invisible beings. These included Jesus, Mary, Francis of Assisi, and his guardian angel. One has to read Agostino’s Diary to get a sense of the intense reality of Padre Pio’s visionary encounters.

Padre Pio’s internal environment was also infested with dark hostile forces. The higher visions were preceded by shapeshifting diabolic apparitions: huge black cats, naked women who danced lasciviously before him, an invisible entity that spat in his face and tortured him with deafening noises, an executioner who whipped him. According to one of his confreres: “Padre Pio was very alert to unexpected movements and sounds. He said that the devil appeared to him in all shapes. He had fear even of a mouse, because the devil would start out as a mouse and turn into a claw and go for his eyes.”5

These encounters were physical. In Pietrelcina, you can still see claw marks and splattered inkspots made by the alleged demons. Once, the iron bars of the monk’s cell were found twisted out of shape after a night of grappling with invisible forces. Although no one beside the Padre ever saw the demons, the din they made was often heard by eavesdropping monks. Even more striking, Padre Pio was often found unconscious, sometimes on the floor beside his bed, covered with bruises from the uncanny assaults.

A well-witnessed event occurred in July 1964. A possessed woman was dragged to San Giovanni. When she saw Pio, she cried out in an unnaturally deep voice: “Pio, we will see you tonight.” That night the friars thought the house was struck by an earthquake. The Superior rushed to Pio’s room and found him on the floor, bleeding from the head. Oddly, there was a pillow under his head. Pio explained that the Madonna put it there. In the morning, the possessed woman (undergoing exorcism from another priest) shrieked: “Last night I was up to see the old man. I hate him so much because he is a fountain of faith. I would have done more, except the Lady in white stopped me.” This taxes my boggle-threshold as much as it must the reader’s; nevertheless, Schug based his account on eyewitnesses not disposed to sensationalism. Pio’s face was so disfigured he was unable to appear in public for five days. On another occasion he was found with broken bones in his arms and legs.

The attacks lasted throughout his long life. In 1918 he wrote: “I cannot describe to you how those wretched creatures were beating me! Several times I thought I was near death. Saturday it seemed as if they really wanted to finish me….” (Epistolario, III, p.311.) Sometimes his afflictors came to him under the disguise of his spiritual director, Father Agostino, or as an apparition of a saint or guardian angel. Padre Pio had a technique for exposing these sinister masquerades, but not without having to endure a good deal of anguish and uncertainty.

The psychologically sophisticated reader is bound to be skeptical about these reports of demonic assault. One might turn to Wilhelm Reich for an explanation. Reich believed such experiences were the result of repressed orgone energy turning against oneself. Or we could invoke the pathology of poltergeist phenomena to explain Padre Pio’s demons. I am not certain how smoothly these explanations would fit.

The point I want to make about “demons” and evolution is this: It does appear, as a matter of psychological fact, that the more one advances in higher states of consciousness, the greater the likelihood of attracting combative, destructive forces that try to drag you back down to ordinary reality. The story of the Buddha struggling to meditate on the Immovable Spot under the Bo Tree is a classic Eastern illustration. In Pio’s case, the combat occurred at two levels: Throughout his life he was molested by invisible “diabolic” forces; but throughout his life he was also persecuted by jealous, envious, and malicious human beings, often individuals within the church hierarchy. It has, in fact, been argued by Ennemond Boniface6 that certain individuals in the church were responsible for the priest’s death.

If Padre Pio had to battle sinister forces, he also received supernormal favours. In Padre Pio’s world, for instance, higher help took the form of his “guardian angel.” The notion of guardian angels may amuse modern rationalists; still, new age enthusiasts show a keen interest in the functional equivalent of such helping entities. Carlos Castaneda, you may recall, fascinated us with his talk of “allies,” those unspecified forces out there ready to help us. The phenomenon of “channelling,” its invocation of inner guides and otherworldly helpers, echoes the ancient doctrine of guardian angels. Similar parallels are notable in the UFO contactee literature.

Padre Pio’s guardian angel was no slouch. One of his most striking achievements was to serve as translator of French and Greek, languages Pio was unacquainted with. Paranormal comprehension of Greek is more impressive than French, the latter being in many ways similar to Latin and Italian. In 1912, Agostino, by way of experiment, wrote letters to Pio in French and Greek. When Pio received them he was at Pietrelcina for medical reasons, under care of a parish priest, don Salvatore Pannullo. Pannullo wrote on August 25, 1919: “I, the undersigned, testify under oath, that when Padre Pio received this letter (a letter in Greek and in the Greek alphabet), he explained its contents to me literally. When I asked him how he could read and explain it, as he did not know even the Greek alphabet, he replied: ‘My Guardian Angel explained it all to me’.”

The virtue of this report (unfortunately scant in detail) is that we must assume either that both Pio and Pannullo conspired in an act of pure deception or that the story is true. I personally doubt a conspiracy; the records point to Pio’s lifelong scrupulous adherence to truth.

Guardian angel aside, we can assume the translation occurred by telepathy. But this would be telepathy of a rare order; for the telepathic transmission of skills (such as understanding a language) between living persons is unknown in experimental parapsychology. I might add that Agostino confirmed Pio’s ability to comprehend the letters written in French and Greek. There are also stories of Pio hearing confessions in languages he did not know.

Apparently, guardian angels are well-rounded in their education; the following story shows they know something about automobile mechanics. In 1959, a woman was driving with her husband from Rome to San Severo. (The couple prefer to remain anonymous.) En route their car broke down; for two hours cars sped by without stopping. Toward nightfall, the woman grew anxious and began to pray to Padre Pio. Within ten minutes a black car pulled up and an elegant young man dressed in blue stepped out. He lifted the hood and said: “Look, you lost all the water from the radiator, and it’s burnt out. Take your can and fill it up with water. Near here, there is a farmhouse, which has a well; take the water from there.”

The husband took the can from the car trunk and did as the young man said. The man then took a black box from his car, produced a roll of adhesive tape, and sealed the radiator. He had beautiful hands with agile rapered fingers. The dog, who normally barked at strangers, sat in the car’s back seat, strangely calm. The husband returned with the water and filled the radiator.

“You can return home safely; anyhow, you are quite near,” said the mysterious helper, who then got in his car and drove off.

The couple watched the car pull away and looked for the license plate. There was none! Instead they saw a white strip marked with hieroglyphics. The car moved away slowly on Via Aurelia; suddenly it vanished.

Arriving home in a “dreamy state,” they reflected on further oddities: The young man somehow knew there was an empty can in the trunk; also, that they lived “quite near.” Later they tried to relocate the well and farmhouse but despite diligent efforts were unable to. There was no farmhouse in the area where their car broke down.7

Padre Pio’s extraordinary access to his internal worlds included access to other people’s internal worlds. Two well-attested examples were his ability to read minds, especially in the confessional, and his ability to change or convert minds.

Like Saint John Vianney, the famous Curè of Ars, Padre Pio displayed supernormal powers of mind reading in the confessional. Hearing confessions was paramount in Pio’s long ministry. Hour after hour, day after day for over fifty years, he sat in a wooden booth and listened to people pour out their most intimate secrets.

John Schug, who wrote one of the more critical books in English on Pio,8 tells of a confessor who had the intention to murder his wife. “Murderer!” Padre Pio roared in the church. The man skulked away and returned the next day, penitent and purged of his intention.

Schug provides a detailed first-person account of Federico Abresch’s confessional encounter with Pio. According to Abresch, a Lutheran convert, Pio recalled actions and thoughts he had long forgotten. “He enumerated with precision and clarity all of my faults, even mentioning the number of times I had missed Mass.” Pio reminded Abresch of something he had forgotten years ago when he got married. In fact, it was only through Pio’s remarks that Abresch was able to reconstruct his past. Pio apparently had a more exact knowledge of Abresch’s unconscious mental history than Abresch.

Abresch, by the way, regarded this as proof that something more than merely human “thought-transference” was involved. The fact that Pio could “read” the unconscious of another person seemed evidence of God’s action, something totally beyond human potential. But Abresch is mistaken. Evidence from mediumship and experimental parapsychology show that telepathic leakage from another person’ s unconscious does in fact occur. Once again I believe we are dealing with a general potential of the human mind, brilliantly manifest in exceptional beings such as Pio.

Padre Pio’s access to internal environments enabled him not just to read but to change or convert minds. The Gospels portray Jesus as a man who took immediate psychic possession of his disciples. Pio too apparently had this ability; consider the following example from Schug.

Unemployed Laurino Costa sent Padre Pio a telegram asking for prayer to help him find a job. The Padre telegrammed back: “Come to San Giovanni Rotondo at once.” The young man arrived penniless and was standing with a crowd of men in the sacristy. Padre Pio, who had never met Laurino, shouted at him: “Laurino, come here. I see you have arrived.” Bewildered, the youth approached. “Laurino, you will feed my sick.” (A cook was needed in the new hospital.) “But Padre,” Laurino protested, “I’ve never cooked an egg in my life.” The Padre insisted: “Go and feed my sick. I’Il always be near you.” Laurino went to the hospital and rang the doorbell. The Mother Superior answered: “You must be the experienced cook we’ve been waiting for.” Within three hours he was at work. Laurino admitted to Schug: “To this day (14 years later) I still don’t know what happened. All day long I found myself calmly working and telling others what to do, as though I was carrying out a routine I had been used to.”

MASTERY OF TIME AND SPACE

Reports abound of Pio’s double appearing everywhere, from the American midwest to China and Africa. The idea of bilocation blatantly contradicts the belief that a human being is a physical object occupying one space. The idea that Jack could be at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue in New York and simultaneously at Main and Third in Shebogan, Wisconsin, is obviously absurd. Nevertheless, the annals of saints, yogis, and psychics are full of bilocation stories, sometimes well attested.

Padre Pio bilocated by means of his voice, his presence, his aroma; he appeared in people’s dreams and sometimes he appeared fully materialised.

Mary Pyle, one-time secretary to Maria Montessori, spent the last 45 years of her life in San Giovanni Rotondo. In her diary she wrote: “One day I went into the sacristy and said to Padre Pio: ‘Father, I believe my mother is in Florence today.’ His immediate answer, given with certainty was: ‘No, she is in Umbria.’ Surprised I said, ‘No Father, I do not believe she was supposed to go to Umbria.’ But he insisted, looking far into space. ‘She’s been in Umbria.’ A few days later I received a letter from my mother who told me: ‘Thank Padre Pio for the visit he paid me while I was sick in bed in Perugia (which is in Umbria). I did not see him with my eyes, nor did I hear him with my ears, but I felt his presence near my bed’.”9

Padre Pio knew in advance he would be able to bilocate at a particular place. The Vicar General of Uruguay, Monsignor Damiani, a frequent visitor at San Giovanni, once told him he wanted to die in San Giovanni; he wanted Pio to assist at his death. Pio said the Vicar would die in Uruguay, but promised assistance anyway when the day of reckoning came. In 1941, the Vicar died in Uruguay. Cardinal Barbieri was in the house where Damiani resided the night he died. Someone knocked on his half-open door. He noticed a Capuchin pass, got up and went to Damiani’s room. The Vicar had just died of a heart attack, but left a note on his dresser: “Padre Pio was here.”10

Many bilocation stories revolve around healings. A typical example: June 12, 1952. Lucia Bellodi, stricken with pernicious diabetes was on her death bed when she sat up and began to wave her hands. She cried out that Padre Pio had appeared to her, told her she was cured and that she should come to his monastery. By June 16 she regained her speech and stopped having to consume twenty-five quarts of water a day. When she visited the Padre he smiled and said: “I’ve been waiting for you.”

A tantalising case is that of Cardinal Mindszenty. According to a reliable Vatican source he once received a “visit” from Pio while imprisoned in Communist Hungary. The monk of course was in San Giovanni, but his double turned up with water, wine, and altar breads, served Mass and vanished. When Schug wrote to confirm this from Mindszenty, he received back a one-sentence letter: “I cannot say anything about that.” If the story were false, it’s not clear why the Cardinal didn’t say so, unless he meant to perpetuate a pious myth.

This form of bilocation, if it actually occurred, implies materialisation of the double and teleportation of objects. There are, in fact, many reports, some of them reasonably compelling, of other saints bilocating at great distances and teleporting physical objects. Two outstanding examples are Saint Martin of Porres and Sister Maria Agreda of Spain. Scott Rogo’s book, Miracles,11 documents the prodigies of these two saints.

I want to note in passing another phenomenon related to Pio’s bilocatability. He was, on many occasions, said to disappear from the confessional, a structure in full view and always surrounded by crowds of devotees. He would reappear in the rectory or sacristy. Asked about these disappearances, which occurred when he had a hard time breathing, the Padre would casually remark, “I flew over your heads.”

Perhaps the best authenticated type of Pio’s bilocation was via his characteristic odour. The odour of sanctity is linked with the phenomenon of bodily incorruption.12 The incorrupt bodies of saints are known to give off inexplicable fragrances, but with Pio the paranormal fragrance made his presence known to people at a distance. The scent emanated from his person and also, contrary to nature, from the blood that came from his stigmata. The first doctors who examined him actually complained that the monk was using perfume. Padre Pio’s brand of “perfume” however, was noticed by people far away from him, sometimes thousands of miles.

Bernard Ruffin, whose book on Pio is the best in English,13 gives a detailed account of the fragrance occurring to a Lutheran seminarian, Robert Hopcke, in Plainfield, New Jersey in 1978, ten years after Pio’s death. William Carrigan, normally skeptical of miracle stories, reported to Ruffin his perception of the aroma at his desk at Foggia (about twenty miles from the monastery): “I had no trouble in identifying the aroma as that of Padre Pio. It wasn’t something you could confuse with any other odour.” Padre Alberto D’Apolito, Pio’s confrere for many years, wrote in 1978: “The reality is that hundreds of thousands of individuals, even unbelievers, have testified and continue to testify that they have suddenly and inexplicably perceived the perfume of Padre Pio.” Emilio Servadio, a Jew and leading Roman psychoanalyst, had a powerful experience of Pio’s scent during a visit to San Giovanni in 1937.

If the Padre had a knack for “prolonging his personality”14 in space, he could also prolong it in time. Precognition, if a fact of nature, wrenches our normal view of time, cause and effect. (It seems impossible for something that hasn’t occurred to influence us in any way). Even so, there are countless claims of Pio’s paranormal forays into the future. These were usually done offhandedly, never as public pronouncements. Pio was unusually prescient about what Italian cities would be bombed during the war and what soldiers would return.

Like spiritual masters in other traditions, Pio foretold the year of his death. He often had prevision of others’ deaths. A young priest, Father Dionisio, on his way to Venice for studies, said goodbye to Pio. “Studies! Studies!” Pio muttered, “think of death, instead, so that when it comes…. “ His voice trailed off. A confrere who overheard commented on Pio’s strange way of saying goodbye. Pio shrugged wistfully. Twenty days later the young priest was dead. In 1983 Pope John Paul was almost assassinated; I watched a Vatican official on TV say that Pio had told the Polish Cardinal years ago he would one day be Pope; he also said the Polish Pope would be brought down in blood early in his tenure. I hope Pio’s prophetic gift is flawed, for he once said a war was coming which would destroy two thirds of humanity.

SYMBOLIC TRANSFORMATION OF PHYSICAL REALITY

In my view, supernormal psychic phenomena reflect an evolutionary trend toward increasing porousness of matter to the goals of consciousness. It is as if some restless shapeshifting creative spirit were struggling to make matter plastic and permeable to human dreams and desires – especially the matter of the human body.

Eastern, occult, and Christian traditions speak of the subtle, astral, pneumatic, or light bodies. The physical phenomena of mysticism reflect this trend toward the symbolic transformation of the body of flesh into a more expressive body of light. Incorruption, luminosity, inedia, the odour of sanctity, levitation, and other phenomena may be looked at from this perspective.

The stigmata illustrate the malleability of the human body to the power of the spiritual imagination. Francis of Assisi was the first to reproduce the wounds of Christ in his own body, and since Francis hundreds of cases have been reported. The Church by and large takes a dim view of these often bizarre lesions, recognising they may be symptoms of hysteria as much as signs of heroic sanctity.

But Padre Pio’s stigmata were unique. Visible for over fifty years, the apertures in his palms were perfectly circular, and were never inflamed, infected, or suppurated; the blood, which gushed from all five wounds, was copious and bright red. It effused an unnatural fragrance. At his death the wounds healed without a trace of scar tissue, a fact that is dermatologically inexplicable. While some cases of stigmata can reasonably be ascribed to hysteria, let me at least note that nobody adequately informed would dare to characterise this down-to-earth, often uncouth, ironical, and fanatic-despising man as hysterical.

With Francis and Pio, the wounds arose from a passionate identification with the crucified Christ. Whether we think of the stigmata as miraculous or pathological, at the very least they say something about the physical power of the imagination; if imagination can produce such extraordinary lesions, it could be mobilised for healing purposes. The stigmata show the power of the imagination to mold the human body. Here life imitates art; both men, be it noted, were first stigmatised while contemplating artworks showing the crucifixion. The stigmatised body is a living sculpture.

Padre Pio’s fame is also due to his reputation as a healer. Reports of extraordinary healings continue even after his death. Many, if not most, of the healings ascribed to Padre Pio were probably psychosomatic. Intense faith, expectation, contact with an authoritative figure like Padre Pio might well lead to improvement in many functional, psychogenic disorders.

But many stories, if true, imply a radically higher type of healing. For example, there is the account of Vera Calandra’s dying child materialising a new bladder; of Gemma di Giorgio’s pupilless blind eyes being made to see; and of Giovanni Savino’s blown out eye (due to a dynamite accident) being rematerialised. So far, however, the medical documentation I’ve seen for these claims is less than compelling.

Claims for medical clairvoyance also exist. In the early 1950s Padre Costantino Capobianco had a sinus problem. X-rays were taken; three doctors recommended surgery. “What are these things?” asked Pio about the X-rays. “They’re all wrong.” A fourth specialist was consulted; the X-rays were misinterpreted, the surgery unnecessary.15

Padre Pio once said his real work would begin after his death. Moreover, the Church requires of her duly canonised saints evidence of postmortem miracles. This seems like a tough requirement, but a possible example may be the following: Teacher Alice Jones of Liverpool, England, suffered from neurofibroma, which paralysed her from the left hip to the toe. Alice, 50, a Protestant, was visited by a Catholic priest, Eric Fisher, who prayed over her. “As he knelt there,” said Alice, “there appeared another figure rising from his body. I was so frightened I couldn’t move. The figure had the face of an old man with a white beard. He spread his hands in front of me and I could see the holes in his palms. I seemed to hear the words, ‘Stand up and walk.’ So I did. And I suddenly felt whole again. Suddenly I was no longer crippled and the man was gone.” Later she recognised the face of the man who cured her in a photo of Padre Pio. Dr. Francis Mooney, a Liverpool physician, testified: “I have very often come across neurofibroma and have never heard of a single case where it has cleared up spontaneously…. I had her X-rayed. There is no medical explanation for the fact that she is completely cured.”16

The healed body is a foretaste of the resurrected body. Supernormal healings are symbolic of the transformation of the corporeal body into a spiritual body. The odour of sanctity is another example of the symbolic transformation of natural bodily existence. The symbolism is clearest in bodily incorruption. Once the Christian imagination projected the vision of a new man – a new spiritual body – the dead bodies of Christian saints begin to behave oddly. They don’t decay like other corpses. Perversely, they stay intact, moist, flexible, for months, for decades, sometimes for hundreds of years. They exude mysterious oils, occasionally bleed, and often give off remarkable fragrances. It is as though an energy has been released that opposes bodily decay, something that holds entropy in contempt and wants to revise the symbolism of death.

Another phenomenon expressing this symbolic modulation of matter is levitation. Levitation is not well-attested in Pio’s life (whose speciality seems to have been bilocation). However, the phenomenon has been well-documented among the saints, notably Teresa of Avila and that all-time great, mystical acrobat, Joseph Copertino. Numerous creditable witnesses observed Joseph’s aerial antics for decades.17 Levitation strikes against one of the fundamental forces of nature – the forces of gravity. Among the saints, it is a dramatic physical expression of the soul’s ecstatic flight. Levitation, as displayed by Joseph and Teresa, symbolises the ascent toward the Most High.

It shows humanly formed matter shedding fundamental limitations; I think in the case of Joseph we are witnessing one of the creative prodigies of the symbolic imagination, a phenomenon that throws open the doors to new worlds of speculative possibilities. A careful study of Joseph’s aerial flights will show that they were occasioned by specific types of imagery of a) heavenly elevation and b) the Madonna or archetype of the feminine. The levitations were physical expressions of imaginal worlds, and I would put them on a continuum with the stigmata or other types of expressive imaginally-guided human products such as works of art.

As for Paranormal Man, perhaps the ecstasy of the saints holds the secret to our escape from planet Earth, our entree to navigating the galaxies. Anyone acquainted with the literature of flying saucers knows how frequently levitation phenomena are reported. The phenomena take many forms. Gravity-suspending beams of light, for instance, seem to lift individuals into apparent spacecraft. The alien spaceships themselves make light of the rules of terrestrial flight dynamics. In the case of Joseph of Copertino, the greatest levitator in recorded history, passionate sublimated love, aimed toward the archetypal figure of Mary in Heaven was the fuel enabling him to suspend the geometry of the universe. In Joseph’s future space technology, ecstatic love is the power that suspends the law of gravity.

The funny sky epiphanies we call UFOs might, for all we know, be dislocated dreams or ecstatic projections of alien visionaries from other worlds. The phenomena of bilocation and levitation may be clues to the secrets of hyperspace travel and the answer to the great UFO mystery. Other beings on other worlds are likely to have had millions, if not billions, of years to evolve these crudely and fleetingly manifested capacities of our terrestrial saints and shamans.

Another item in Pio’s supernormal physiology was hyperthermia. Padre Pio produced abnormal amounts of bodily heat. Doctors had to use huge bathroom thermometers to take his temperature, which often shot up to 125 degrees; the mercury in ordinary thermometers broke the glass. Extreme irregularities in bodily function are well known among shamans18 and other ascetic types. Teresa Neumann19 who had the stigmata and who evidently neither ate nor drank for years, is a modern case of an ecstatic plagued by bizarre bodily symptoms. In the case of Padre Pio, supernormal heat production is definitely related to what’s going on inside the man. It seems clear to me that we are dealing with a case of symbolic transformation.

From his letters and statements, we know one thing for sure: The Capuchin was literally burning with love for Jesus. Young Pio wrote a letter to Padre Benedetto on October 22, 1919, describing what happened to him just before acquiring his fully visible stigmata: “I cannot tell you what happened in that moment,” he wrote, “which was a moment of sheer martyrdom. On the evening of the 5th, I was hearing a boy’s confession (a seminarian at San Giovanni Rotondo) when all of a sudden I saw a most exalted heavenly person. I was plunged into extreme terror. He stood before the eye of my mind, holding some kind of special instrument in his hand, like a very long iron spear with a well-sharpened point. It seemed that fire shot out of its point.

“Seeing this person and watching him plunge the instrument violently into my soul happened in an instant. I groaned with pain and felt as if I were dying. I told the boy to go away because I felt ill.

“This agony lasted without interruption until the morning of August 7…. It seemed that even my viscera were being pulled out by that spear. Every fibre of my being was consumed by fire.” The heat effects, observed in saints known for their holy ardours, proceed from internal causes; they do not seem to be produced by normal physical forces.

When I spoke with reliable informants at San Giovanni I was told of even stranger powers the Padre had over physical nature. For instance, Pio had the apparent ability to direct the behaviour of animals; in one story, a woman with problems getting up on time for Mass was sent a bird to awaken her and a troop of local stray dogs to escort her to the church on time. Francis of Assisi tamed the Wolf of Gubbio with soultalk and (in a practical vein) with the help of a decent meal. Linnets and lambs, hares and songbirds were said to obey the commands of Joseph of Copertino.

The Gospels tell us that Jesus calmed a storm at sea. There are contemporary reports of shamans commanding the elements. For instance, John Neihardt witnessed Black Elk conjure rain from a cloudless afternoon sky “during a season of drought, one of the worst in the memory of the old men.”20 David Barker, an anthropologist, was in Dharamsala, India, on March 10, 1973, when he observed a Tibetan priest-shaman, Gunsang Rinzing, stop a rainstorm to permit a festival of mourning. The shaman had built a large fire and recited with intense concentration mantras for 20 hours. Barker writes: “ …the rain had diminished to a drizzle, and by 10 o’clock it had become only a cold fog over a circle with a radius of about 150 meters. Everywhere else in the area it continued to pour, but the crowd of six thousand refugees was never rained on…” Barker observed that the atmosphere had an “airless” quality and reports feeling disoriented for weeks after the experience.21

In light of these observations it is easier to entertain accounts such as those of a Roman engineer Pasquale Todini who said Padre Pio sent him away from the monastery during a torrential rainstorm but arrived in town dry. In the course of the engineer’s walk, the rain around him was reduced to a sprinkle. (See Carty’s account of this, pp.57-58.)

Enough has been said to indicate the range of Padre Pio’s curious capacities: special access to internal environments, mastery of time and space, symbolic transformation of physical reality. I offer no attempt to explain any of this, or for that matter to prove it rigorously. Padre Pio, though a unique spiritual personality, is only one example of extraordinary types from the world of Western and Eastern mysticism, mediumship and shamanism. The interesting thing is what all this might be saying about the possible future of humanity.

Alfred Russell Wallace, it may not be too well known, was the co-founder along with Charles Darwin of the modern theory of evolution. What is even less well known is the fact that Wallace, a scientist of unquestioned genius, was a close student of psychic phenomena. Most mainstream scientists prefer to shove this embarrassing fact under the rug. In my opinion, however, Wallace’s openness to psychic phenomena prove him to be an even greater scientist than is supposed; for Wallace took a second giant step in trying to build a bridge between psychical research and the theory of evolution.

Wallace did firsthand investigations into the physical phenomena of mediumship and, as he said, found himself “beaten by the facts.” Wallace took spiritualism quite seriously. “It would appear then,” he wrote in 1878, “that if my argument has any weight, that there is nothing self-contradictory… in the idea of intelligences unrecognisable directly by our senses, and yet capable of acting more or less powerfully on matter.”22 Wallace suggested that some principle of psychic intelligence was needed to round out the approach to the problem of evolution. He stated emphatically that Natural Selection “is not the all-powerful, all-sufficient, and only cause of the development of organic forms.”

Modern biology has followed Darwin, who was not interested in the strange phenomena Wallace had taken the trouble to investigate. But in my opinion, Alfred Wallace laid the groundwork for the better evolutionary paradigm. Open to all the crucial data, it was a paradigm based on the hypothesis of a general intelligence at work in evolution, capable of transcending space and time, and geared toward the transformation of organic nature in accord with the creative imagination of the human spirit. Wallace opened new horizons in our thinking on human evolution; he would have found an ally in Padre Pio.

REFERENCES

1. E. Haraldsson, Miracles Are My Calling Cards: An Investigative Report on the Psychic Phenomena Associated With Sathya Baba, Rider: London, 1987.
2. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina: Acts of the First Congress of Studies Padre Pio’s Spirituality, Ed. Gerado Di Flumeri, San Giovan: Rotondo, 1972.
3. Epistolario of Padre Pio, Vol. 1, San Giovanni Rotondo: 1973.
4. Diario, Agostino da S. Marco in Lamis, San Giovanni Rotondo: 1975.
5. J. Schug, Padre Pio: He Bore the Stigmata, Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor, p.55, 1975.
6. E. Boniface, Padre Pio Le Crucifie, Nouvelles Editions Latines: Paris, 1971.
7. A. Parente, Send Me Your Guardian Angel, Our Lady of Grace Friary: San Giovanni Rotondo, 1983.
8. Ibid.
9. The Voice of Padre Pio, Vol. 5, No.3, 1975, pp.14-15.
10. C.M. Carty, Padre Pio the Stigmatist, Rockford, Illinois: Tan, 1973.
11. D.S. Rogo, Miracles, The Dial Press, New York, 1982.
12. C. Cruz, The Incorruptibles, Rockford, Illinois: Tan, 1977.
13. B. Ruffin, Padre Pio: The True Story, Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor, 1982.
14. This was the expression Padre Pio used to explain how he bilocated when someone asked. Other times he just said God sent him places. The interesting point is he himself continually affirmed the reality of his excursions through hyperspace. For another angle on the evidence, his confreres often heard him giving absolution or otherwise conversing with invisible or far-off beings.
15. See Ruffin, p.266.
16. The Friends of Padre Pio (newsletter), Vo1. 2, 3, pp.14-16.
17. A. Pastrovicchi, Saint Joseph of Copertino, Rockford, Illinois: Tan, 1980.
18. M. Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970.
19. C.M. Carty, Who is Teresa Neumann?, Rockford, Illinois: Tan, 1974.
20. J. Neihardt, Black Elk Speaks, New York: Pocket Book, 1972. See the postscript.
21. D. Barker, Psi phenomena in Tibetan culture, Research in Parapsychology, 1978, Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow, 1979, pp.52-55.
22. A.R. Wallace, Miracles and Modern Spiritualism, London: Spiritualist Press, 1878.

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MICHAEL GROSSO, Ph.D in philosophy from Columbia University, is presently affiliated with the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia and is on the Board of Directors of the American Philosophical Practitioner’s Association. His most recent books are Experiencing the Next World Now (Simon & Schuster) and Irreducible Mind, co-authored with Edward Kelly et alia. Michael is especially interested in paranormal phenomena and the origins of religious belief. His website is www.parapsi.com.

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In the first chapter of his fascinating book The Origins of Psychic Phenomena (1984), the British psychologist Stan Gooch explains that he used to smile when he heard, “for instance, stories of invisible ‘thought forms’ allegedly produced by Tibetan mystics and others.” He then adds: “I no longer smile at such stories. My own feeling, now, is that there may literally be no limit to what can be achieved by the human subjective mind manipulating and actualising itself in the external, objective universe around it.”

According to Gooch, the workings of the unconscious mind – or subjective mind – can shed light on a whole host of paranormal phenomena, including poltergeist disturbances, mediumship, automatic writing, multiple-personality-disorder, succubi and incubi attacks, and even UFO sightings. The list goes on.

Stan Gooch the Medium

Gooch’s involvement with the paranormal began at age 26, when he was working as a school teacher in Coventry, England. Because he was new to the area and had few acquaintances, Gooch decided to enrol in three sets of evening classes, one of which was gymnastics. One evening at gymnastics class, while he was in the changing room, a member of the advanced class, named Peter, struck up a conversation with him. “He eventually told me that his ‘spirit guide’ had instructed him to do so,” explains Gooch. Peter, a spiritualist and medium, invited Gooch to a séance at his parent’s house.

The séance comprised eight to ten people, seated on hardback chairs, facing the medium. Soon after it commenced, Gooch had an experience that was to change the direction of his life. At first he felt light-headed. “And then,” he explains in his book The Paranormal, “it seemed to me that a great wind was rushing through the room. In my ears was the deafening sound of roaring waters. Together these elements seized me and carried me irresistibly forward. As I felt myself swept away I became unconscious.”

When he regained consciousness, Gooch was told that several entities had spoken through him while he was in a trance state. One of the entities identified himself as a cousin of Gooch’s who had been killed in the Second World War. Told by the presiding medium that he was a “strong natural medium” and that he ought to develop his “gift,” Gooch began attending her weekly circle, which consisted entirely of mediumistic individuals.

Sometimes Gooch and the other mediums would channel “higher guides.” Other times they would hold what’s called a “rescue circle,” whereby they would channel the spirits of those who did not realise they were dead, their aim being to help them “move on.” In The Paranormal, Gooch explains what it’s like to be “possessed by one of these lost souls.” It feels, he says, “as if another being ‘materialises’ or arises within one’s body and pervades it… There is a very clear and definite sense of another person within you.”

During one particularly memorable séance, a cave-man materialised in the corner of the room. “It stood half in shadow, watching us, breathing heavily as if nervous,” says Gooch. He later came to suspect that this figure “which so very much impressed and haunted me both then and afterwards” was a Neanderthal. Years later, in 1971, Gooch formulated the hybrid-origin theory, which basically posits that we – Homo sapiens – are a hybrid cross between the two early species of man, Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon. His Total Man trilogy is an exploration of this hypothesis.

On another occasion, soon after the presiding medium said they would experience “a wondrous radiance,” Gooch and the others were illuminated by what appeared to be a bright light shining down from above. Gooch eventually reached the conclusion that this occurrence was a type of collective hallucination, in addition to all the other paranormal manifestation that took place in the séance room. They were, in other words, psychological in nature, not physical. “That is, I do not think that any of the happenings would have registered on a photograph of the scene,” he explains.

In due course, Peter allowed Gooch to have a session with his spirit guide, an alleged American Indian named Grey Hawk. While Peter was channelling Grey Hawk, says Gooch, his face and profile took on the features of a “story-book Indian.” Grey Hawk gave Gooch a long lecture on “the nature of spirit,” which Gooch found moving and poetic, though also empty and unsatisfying. Gooch says he finds many talks by spirit guides, as well as books that have been dictated by them, “a kind of intellectual candy-floss… When you try to chew on these utterances, there is nothing there. The mouth is empty.”

It is because of this reason, as well as numerous others, says Gooch, that “personalities” like Grey Hawk are nothing more than a product of the unconscious minds of the mediums who claim to channel them. “One is that the alleged spirits never tell us anything that is not already known to living persons on this planet – and, almost invariably, known to the bereaved person ‘sitting’ with the medium,” he explains.

More on Mediumship

In The Origins of Psychic Phenomena, Gooch mentions how the author and former Air Force officer Sir Victor Goddard once asked the British medium Ena Twigg to contact one of his friends who had died. Remarkably, Twigg managed to give an accurate description of this individual – his appearance and personality, etc – even though she hadn’t been told anything about him. In a later session, she went into a trance, apparently channelling Goddard’s friend. In a description of this event, Goddard mentions that Twigg adopted his friend’s mannerisms and personal figures of speech, and that he was thoroughly taken aback by what he had witnessed. “It wasn’t so much the information which was conveyed as the manner of its conveying in speech, in action, and in gesture that carried conviction…,” writes Goddard.

Gooch uses this case to support his theory that mediumship has nothing to do with spirits. What is occurring instead, he says, is that the medium is unconsciously “tapping into” the mind of the sitter. “…There is nothing in what the ‘spirits’ narrate that persuades us that anything but a memory of that person is operating…,” he explains.

In his book Afterlife (1985), the British author and paranormal expert Colin Wilson explores, among other things, the subject of mediumship, eventually reaching the conclusion that there are indeed such things as spirits. The “unconscious mind theory,” he says, falls short of explaining a great many number of mediumistic communications, as well as a large number of poltergeist disturbances. Most paranormal investigators, he says, “are finally driven to the conclusion that spirits almost certainly exist. They do this with the utmost reluctance. It would be far more convenient, and far more logically satisfying, if we could explain all the phenomena in terms of the unrecognised powers of the human mind.”

Not surprisingly, Gooch gives the “spirit hypothesis” very little consideration. He does state, however, that it would be arrogant to rule out the possibility that some “spirits” have an independent existence, and are therefore not a product of one’s own mind.

The unconscious mind, says Gooch, for which a better name would be “alternative consciousness,” is far more dynamic and powerful than we assume. It is, in a sense, an entity of its own, possessing its own logic and autonomy, and, when repressed, is capable of expressing itself in very odd and alien ways – mediumship being a perfect example.

In Gooch’s opinion, as mentioned previously, ‘channelled’ information, as a general rule, leaves much to be desired. As an example – and a good one at that – Gooch mentions the numerous ‘Seth’ books that have been written through Jane Roberts. All of these books, says Gooch, “mean absolutely nothing.” Jane Roberts, by the way, who died in 1984, was a successful and prolific author before she became a ‘mouthpiece’ for Seth.

In late-1963, as part of her research for a book on ESP, Roberts, who was then thirty-five, started experimenting with an Ouija board. Her husband, Robert Butts, took part in these activities. Before long, they began to receive coherent messages from a male personality who later identified himself as Seth. Before long, Roberts began to hear Seth’s voice inside her head. She then developed into a medium, regularly going into a trance state in which Seth would allegedly speak through her. Over the years, with Butts acting as stenographer, Seth’s deranged philosophical and spiritual ramblings were written down and compiled in book, after book, after book…

However, some of this material was written automatically, whereby Roberts would enter a trance state and let her hand “take over.” Seth described himself as an “energy personality essence no longer in physical form.” He claimed, moreover, that he existed independently of Robert’s subconscious (or ‘unconscious’, as the two words basically have the same definition).

Hypnosis and the Theories of Thomas Jay Hudson

In the early-1880s, the subject of hypnosis attained a certain degree of scientific acceptance, and was being employed by leading psychologists to investigate the realm of the unconscious. After witnessing a remarkable display of hypnosis, conducted by the famous Professor Carpenter, a Detroit newspaper editor named Thomas Jay Hudson decided to formulate his own theories about such matters, later writing an influential book on the subject called The Law of Psychic Phenomena (1893). (By ‘psychic’ he means psychological.)

The hypnosis presentation conducted by Carpenter, which so impressed Hudson, took place in Washington DC. One of the participants, a college graduate identified only as ‘C’, was placed under hypnosis and made to believe that he was in the presence of Socrate’s spirit, which he, but nobody else, was able to see. He was also told that Socrates would answer any question he desired. C and the imaginary Socrates then began to have a conversation, with C repeating everything ‘Socrates’ said, so that Carpenter and the audience could hear it. Apparently their conversation went on for two hours, and the answers ‘Socrates’ gave were so plausible and impressive that some members of the audience were firmly convinced of his being there in spirit form.

C was then introduced to the ‘spirits’ of far more modern philosophers, and again, the conversations that took place left the audience spellbound. Each ‘philosopher’ he talked to had their own distinct style of speaking. The language they used, moreover, was also distinct, as were the comments they made. It should also be mentioned that the ideas and opinions they expressed were far different to those which C possessed. Had the entire discourse been printed word for word, says Hudson, it would have “former one of the grandest and most coherent systems of spiritual philosophy ever conceived by the brain of man.”

There were, it turns out, a small number of spiritualists in the audience, some of whom believed that the presence of spirits could explain what they had witnessed. It’s fair to assume, however, that some of them began to question this notion when Carpenter managed to invoke the ‘spirit’ of a talking philosophical pig, which proved to be something of an expert on the Hindu doctrine of reincarnation.

In an attempt to explain hypnosis and other phenomena of this nature – including genius, insanity and even the miracles of Jesus – Hudson formulated the theory that man has two minds, the subjective and the objective. The objective mind, which is practical in nature, allows us to function effectively in the real world. It operates, moreover, through the medium of the five senses.

The subjective mind, on the other hand, is non-practical in nature, and allows us to deal with our inner problems. It prefers to use intuition, and is highly suggestible. “It is the seat of the emotions, and the storehouse of memory,” explains Hudson. “It preforms its highest functions when the objective senses are in abeyance. In a word, it is that intelligence which makes itself manifest in a hypnotic subject when he is in a state of somnambulism.”

During hypnosis, says Hudson, the objective mind – the ‘you’ – is put to rest, allowing the subjective mind, which is a “separate and distinct entity,” to take charge of the brain and body. According to Hudson, when in control, the highly intuitive – in fact, psychic – subjective mind is able to perform all sorts of remarkable, almost supernatural, feats. Hudson knew of cases where hypnotised subjects, who had their eyes closed, were able to read a newspaper held by someone on the opposite side of the room. He had also heard stories of people, who, under hypnosis, were able to speak foreign languages they had never consciously learnt, later discovering that they had been exposed to the languages in early childhood, and had therefore managed to ‘absorb’ them unconsciously.

If one were to compare Gooch’s theories with Hudson’s, they would obviously say that the objective mind is the same as the conscious, and the subjective mind is the same as the unconscious.

Automatic Writing

As explained in his book The Paranormal, Gooch not only developed mediumistic powers, he also developed the ability to write automatically. “After only one or two attempts my hand began to write vigorously and fluently,” he explains. To be successful in this endeavour, he says, one must be totally relaxed and in an environment free of distractions, paying as little attention to one’s “writing hand” as possible. “After a few sessions, perhaps even in the first, the hand will begin to twitch occasionally of itself. Marks and scribbles may be made. In time many people can progress to a hand that writes coherently by itself.”

After much experimentation with automatic writing, Gooch reached the conclusion that his unconscious mind was producing the results. The types of ‘personalities’ that expressed themselves on paper, he says, were many and varied. He describes some of their comments as solemn and soulful. Others, he says, were “naughty remarks of the ‘impish spirit’. And occasionally the cursing and filth of the true demon or devil.”

Gooch soon discovered that, simply by using mental commands, he was able to alter the tone and style of the material he wrote automatically. This process, he insists, was purely mental, in that no amount of deliberate, physical force was used. “I could also lead the conversation in any direction I chose,” he explains. “I could easily catch out the communicant by causing him or her to contradict something said earlier.”

In The Origins of Psychic Phenomena, Gooch provides further evidence to suggest that one’s own unconscious mind is able to produce automatic writing. He mentions the work of a physician named Dr. Anita Mühl of the St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, who used automatic writing as a tool to treat hospitalised neurotics and psychotics. Mühl discovered that the material her patients wrote automatically – which consisted mainly of short poems, short stories, drawings and musical compositions – often contained elements that illuminated the problems they suffered from. She found, moreover, that discussing and exploring this material with her patients was of considerable therapeutic value.

Mühl’s patients wrote in a variety of different ways, some of which were very odd indeed; as she explains in her own words: “The subject may display a sudden facility for using the opposite hand or for using both together and may even produce two personalities at once, each making use of a different hand and each representing a different sex. He may write mirrorwise with either or both hands and he may write backwards correctly and speedily…”

One of Mühl’s patients, a woman “of such refinement and charming manner,” who suffered from various sexual difficulties, produced automatic writing that contained “the most obscene and filthy language.” Analysis of this material revealed that the patient had been repeatedly sexually assaulted as a child, and that this was the cause of her problems. Although she had only the vaguest recollections of these humiliating and distressing incidents, her unconscious mind had recorded it all in great detail.

A Brief Note on the Poltergeist

No article on the paranormal abilities of the unconscious mind would be complete without mentioning the poltergeist. Most experts on the poltergeist agree that these dramatic, frightening and often violent manifestations are created by the unconscious mind of a particular person around whom the disturbances take place. This individual – sometimes called the agent or focus – is often psychologically disturbed in some way. Many well-documented cases exist where the focus was a pubescent child.

According to the parapsychologist Scott Rogo in his book The Poltergeist Experience, poltergeist disturbances occur when an individual creates a “PK-being from his inner guilt, hate and repression, which takes on a life of its own…” This “PK-being,” he says, “grows in force until it completely severs itself from the will or personality that gave it birth.” The disturbances cease, he says, once the PK-being has expended all its energy.

The Cerebellum as the Unconscious

So where in our brains is the unconscious located? After all, the cerebral cortex, the outer layers of the two hemispheres of the cerebrum, is widely considered to be the general, physical location of the conscious mind, as many of the functions it performs are those which take place in a fully awake state of consciousness.

Gooch proposes that the cerebellum – or “little brain” – is the physical seat of the unconscious mind. He points out, for instance, that strong evidence exists to suggest that the cerebellum is directly responsible for the function of dreaming. He also points out that it is the headquarters of the autonomic nervous system, while the cerebrum – the conscious mind – is the headquarters of the central nervous system (CNS). Women, he says, who are generally more psychic than men, have larger cerebella than men, as confirmed by brain imaging techniques.

Exploring the Realm of the Unconscious

The fact that we dream, says Gooch, proves that we inhabit not one universe, but two – the world of the conscious, and the world of the unconscious. The latter of which – the “inner alternative world of the mind” – is open to extensive exploration, he says. Some people, including Gooch, reach it by sustaining a hypnopompic state, remaining in a semi-conscious condition – the one that precedes complete wakefulness (as opposed to the one that precedes sleep, knows as a hypnagogic state).

Gooch says the “inner universe” can take on a variety of different forms, such as that of a town – with streets shops, cafes and people – or that of a beautiful countryside. In this universe, he says, one is able to talk to people, and even have sex. “The sex is not just as good as, but better than that obtained in the real world, because one’s own personal archetypal wishes and fantasies may be, and often are, lived out,” he explains.

Gooch believes that the unconscious mind manifests paranormal phenomena in response to being repressed. In a “balanced” individual, he says, the two minds exist in harmony. But when an imbalance occurs, when the unconscious mind is not given its due, there is an externalisation of latent energies. It is then that we are haunted by creatures and forces from the mysterious universe of our other mind.

Bibliography

Richard S. Broughton, Parapsychology – The Controversial Science (Ballantine Books, US, 1991)

Stan Gooch, The Paranormal (Wildwood House Ltd., UK, London, 1978)

Stan Gooch, The Origins of Psychic Phenomena (Rider & Co, UK, 1984)

Brian Inglis, Trance – A Natural History of Altered States of Mind (Grafton Books, UK, 1989)

D. Scott Rogo, The Poltergeist Experience – Investigations Into Ghostly Phenomena (Penguin Books Ltd., Middlesex, England, 1979)

Colin Wilson, Afterlife (The Leisure Circle Ltd., UK, 1985)

Colin Wilson, Beyond the Occult (Caxton Editions, London, UK, 1988)

.

LOUIS PROUD, an aspiring writer, whose interests include Western occultism, parapsychology and ufology, has written numerous articles on these and other unconventional topics. He can be contacted at louisproud2000@yahoo.com.au. His website is http://paranormal-sleep-paralysis.tripod.com.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 105 (Nov-Dec 2007).

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Madame Alexandra David-Neel

BY HERBIE BRENNAN

—

Authors note that fictional characters have a tendency to take on a life of their own. But few readers realise just how literally they mean it. A friend of mine, engaged in writing a romantic novel, called me in a panic just a year ago to complain that two of her characters had just run off and got married… thus ruining her carefully-crafted plot.

In theory this should not have been a problem. From her god-like perspective, the writer could surely have deleted the relevant passage and written a new one that put her creation back on track. In practice, any attempt to rein in characters like that will produce an almost unreadable novel, full of wooden dialogue and contrived situations. The only viable answer is to let them go their own way, abandon any preconceived plot notions, and see what ‘really’ happens.

The popular American science-fiction writer, Ray Bradbury, was so intrigued by the phenomenon that he wrote it into one of his own books. The Martian Chronicles describes how visitors to the red planet are confronted by characters from classical fiction who had somehow taken on corporeal existence in the alien environment.

Curiously, Bradbury’s idea – that fictional characters might, in certain circumstances, take on solid form – had widespread currency in Tibet. Such creatures were known as tulpas and at least one European traveller claimed to have seen them.

Madame Alexandra David-Neel, a distinguished French academic and explorer who died in 1969, reported that while camped in the Tibetan highlands, she was visited by a young painter she knew vaguely from a previous stay in Lhasa. The man had a particular obsession with one of the many Tibetan gods. For years he had meditated daily on the deity and painted its image many times. As he entered the camp, Madame David-Neel claimed she saw a misty representation of the god hovering behind him.

She was so intrigued by this phenomenon that she studied Tibetan teachings about tulpas and eventually decided to create one for herself. To this end, she visualised a cheerful brown-robed monk, based loosely on Friar Tuck in the Robin Hood legends. After weeks of effort, the imaginary monk became so vivid that he appeared to her as if he were physically present – an induced hallucination.

But then, says Madame David-Neel, the monk began to turn up when she was not trying to visualise him. Furthermore, his appearance was changing: he grew thinner and developed a sly expression. When other members of her camp asked about the ‘strange little lama’ she decided the time had come to destroy her creation… and battled for weeks before finally managing to do so.

Could such a thing really be possible?

During the early 1970s, a group from the Toronto Society for Psychical Research set out to see if they could make a ghost. First they dreamed up a fictional character, then invented a background to go with him. The character was named Philip and lived at the time of Cromwell, in a house called Diddington Manor. He fell in love with a beautiful Gypsy woman named Margo and subsequently had an affair with her. When his wife found out, she took her revenge by accusing Margo of witchcraft. Margo was tried, convicted and burned at the stake. Philip, mad with grief, committed suicide.

There actually was a Diddington Manor and pictures of it were obtained by the group. The rest of the story was fiction. Philip never really existed. But that didn’t stop him haunting.
The group held a series of séances with photographs of the manor placed around the room while they concentrated on the fictional Philip. For several months nothing happened. Then a rap was heard. The group set up a code and communication was established. Sure enough, the communicating ‘spirit’ turned out to be Philip, claiming the life history they had invented for him.

As the séances continued, the fictional Philip continued to behave exactly as séance room spirits have always behaved. He caused raps and brought through such a richly detailed description of the Cromwellian period that the group actually double checked to make sure they’d not somehow based Philip on a real life character. (They hadn’t.) Later, the Toronto experiment was duplicated by other groups. One of them dispelled any lingering doubts about the fictional nature of the spirit by communicating with a talking dolphin.

Although Philip was a step removed from the sort of visible ‘spirit’ appearance reported by Alexandra David-Neel, he did manage to produce physical phenomena like raps and table turning, which suggests the psychological mechanics of the two experiments may not have been all that different. But if certain persistent accounts are to be believed, the techniques used for creating ghosts went far further in Tibet than they ever did in Canada – and generated a valuable spiritual lesson in the process.

One of the most fascinating stories involves a mythic creature called a Yidam, a tutelary deity in the Tibetan pantheon.

In Tibet, many young men (and some young women) suffering from a spiritual itch, apprenticed themselves to a single guru rather than follow the traditional monastic route. A few of them who showed real spiritual promise would eventually reach the point where their guru would admit he had nothing more to teach them. If they wanted to go further, they would need a far more advanced guide. To that end, the guru would advise them to meditate on the Yidam and study pictures of it in the sacred scriptures. These showed the creature to have a fearful, almost demonic aspect.

When the student was saturated in Yidam lore, he would typically be advised to find a remote cave and there create a magic circle (known as a kylkhor) using powdered chalk. The purpose of the circle was to encourage the visible appearance of the Yidam.

In order to achieve this, the pupil was instructed to visualise the Yidam within the circle. Over a period of weeks, or months, the pupil had to continue the exercise until a full-scale hallucination resulted and the Yidam appeared. At this point, the pupil would be told he was obviously favoured by the god.

But for his next step, he would have to persuade it to leave the circle.

The process might take several more months, but eventually the pupil would report that the god had stepped out of the kylkhor. He would be congratulated, then told to see if he could manage to get the Yidam to speak to him.

Once this was achieved, the goal-posts were moved again. The pupil was required to receive the Yidam’s blessing, a process that, in Tibet, involved the laying of hands on the pupil’s head.

Once the pupil reported positively on this latest task, the guru would typically tell him he had only one more step to take. He had achieved conversation with and blessing from the Yidam, but it was still confined to the cave. In order to establish the deity as his personal guru, the pupil had to persuade the Yidam to leave its circle and accompany him wherever he went. Off went the pupil to his Himalayan cave again.

With the benefit of our tulpa studies, we might suspect that the pupil was creating a fictional character, albeit one based on scriptural authority. While the appearance of the Yidam is a matter of visualisation, any conversations must require essentially the same creative input as an author writing dialogue.

The gurus who developed the exercise clearly recognised its tulpa aspect as well, for the whole experience was actually a test. If the pupil succeeded in creating a Yidam that would walk and talk with him, his teacher would tell him his studies were ended since he now had the wisest and most powerful teacher possible. But the pupil who accepted this evaluation was deemed to be a failure – and sent off to spend the rest of his life locked into a comforting hallucination.

There were, however, a few pupils who expressed doubts. They might begin to wonder if the Yidam was the god they believed it to be, or an aberration of their own perceptions. Often the guru would feign anger and send them back to the cave to redouble their efforts. But if the doubts persisted, then came the crunch.

“Do you not see the god? Do you not hear the god? Do you not feel the god when he lays his hands upon your head to impart his blessing? Is not the Yidam as real as the mighty Himalayas?” asks the guru.

The pupil agrees that he sees, hears and feels. He agrees that the Yidam seems as real and solid as the Himalayas. And yet he doubts.

At which point the guru springs his trap. The experience of the Yidam is not simply a lesson in tulpa creation. According to the insights of Tibetan spirituality, human perception of the ‘real’ world is fundamentally flawed. Not just its politics and values, not just its preconceptions and ideas, but its very structure is something other than what it appears. The world as we know it – from our friends to ourselves to the mountains above and the valleys below – ismaya, a word imported from India that translates as ‘illusion.’ What happens in the creation of a Yidam proves that absolutely.

An eerily similar theme underlay a popular Hollywood movie called The Matrix. The premise of The Matrix was that at some point in the distant future, humanity fought an apocalyptic battle against intelligent machines… and lost. With commendable efficiency, the machines decided to use captive humans as a power source. (The human body generates a measurable amount of electricity.)

To avoid any possibility of a resistance, the machines wired their captives’ brains into a central computer running a complex program that created the illusion of day-to-day reality. Although actually stored neatly in nourishment tanks, the population of our defeated planet slept on, convinced that the world of offices and jet planes functioned exactly as it always had.

The idea is not a new one, even in our materialistic West:

“And then…?” the Emperor Claudius asks of the Sibyl in Robert Graves’ I Claudius, on discovering he is dead.

“Then you shall dream a very different dream,” the Oracle replies, referring to Claudius’s next life.

Among spiritually-enlightened Tibetans, the notion that we all live in aMatrix-style illusion is widespread. But the illusion is not maintained by rogue machines – it is generated by our own minds. When I first came across the doctrine, I was forcibly reminded of a saying you hear every day in Haiti: What you see… it’s not what you think.

At least one (American) Buddhist attempted to convince me the Tibetan doctrine was purely philosophical. She believed it to be essentially a question of emphasis, in the way that a handful of American deaths might seem more real (to Americans) than a million famine victims in distant China.

Her stance was sophisticated, her arguments psychologically enlightened, but even our own Western physicists know better. Investigations of the quantum world of sub-atomic particles reveals a universe founded on no more than statistical probabilities and built with little bits of something that appear out of nowhere, exist momentarily before vanishing again… and are profoundly influenced by human observation.

Physicists have now become accustomed to thinking mathematically about an 11-dimensional space-time continuum that looks nothing like the world we live in.

The only difference is Tibetan mystics seem to experience it directly.

HERBIE BRENNAN is the author of more than sixty works of fact and fiction. As a writer he has never been shy of dealing with controversial subject matter, and his subjects have included out-of-body experiences and time travel. He works as a full-time author with an interest in transpersonal psychology, spirituality, comparative religion, reincarnation, esotericism, quantum physics and psychical research. He has broadcast and lectured widely throughout the US, UK and Ireland. He lives in Ireland and his web site is www.herbiebrennan.com.

The above article appeared in New Dawn No. 96 (May-June 2006).

© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.

For our reproduction notice, click here.