Recently I was at a dinner party where one of the guests, a medium and healer, offered to read Tarot cards. I'd never participated in this kind of thing before and found it very interesting. We were each advised to shuffle the cards and then cut the deck into four piles while thinking of a question. The question I framed in my thoughts was, “Should I finish the book I'm working on?”

The book in question is a thriller along the lines of the other ones I've written over the years. But even though I've already written a good deal of  the book, I'd been having a lot of trouble with it and was starting to think it just wasn't going to work out, I decided to let the mysterious Tarot cards tell me what to do–though I didn't necessarily intend to follow their advice. After all, as Alice would say, “Who cares for you? You're nothing but a pack of cards!”

Anyway, the medium drew the top four cards from the deck and told me I was going in the wrong direction and needed a change of perspective. When she was not entirely satisfied with what she was getting, I prompted her by asking my question out loud. At that point, she elaborated that the book I was writing needed to be rethought, and that I should step back, look at it from a new perspective, and try a different approach, or I would be unhappy with the results.

Of course, you could say that the initial answer was too vague to be meaningful, and that the second answer was tailored to the information I had provided. Nevertheless, I couldn't disagree with the answer I got, so I decided to take it as a legitimate message. Regardless of where it came from, it still felt right to me.

But that left me with a dilemma. It's easy enough to talk about taking a step back from the project and coming up with a new approach, but it's a lot harder to actually do it. I spent a good deal of time over the next couple of days trying to see the book in a new light, filling many pages of a notebook with ideas on how to rethink the story, and basically beating my head against the wall, without anything to show for it except a pounding skull. I reached the point where I just couldn't stand to think about it anymore. I was exhausted, discouraged, and thoroughly sick of the book.

So then I tried something new. I addressed any spiritual entities that might be responsible for the Tarot card message, and I did so in rather impolite terms. “Okay, you guys,” I said, “you're telling me I need to rethink the book, but you're not giving me any help. I need some new ideas here, or a new point of view, and obviously I can't do it on my own, so it's up to you. If you really want me to do this damn book, you're going to have to figure it out for me, because I am done. You got that? I've had it. I'm tired and I'm going to bed, so if you want this stupid book to ever get written, then you guys show me how to do it. Otherwise, just shut up about it.”

With that tirade out of the way, I did indeed go to bed. And as I lay there in the dark, it all came to me–a new structure for the story that would solve the plot problems that bothered me, make the characters more interesting, and provide a smoother narrative flow. I can't say exactly how it came to me–I don't really remember–but I think I saw the pieces of the story rearranging themselves into a new and more pleasing pattern. I do remember thinking that maybe I should get up and write it all down before I forgot it, but then I decided I probably wouldn't forget, so I just went to sleep.

The next morning, I remembered all of it quite clearly and wrote it down, filling four notebook pages . What I had was a drastically revised synopsis of the early and middle parts of the novel–the problematic areas. Of course,  the actual book still remains to be written, or rewritten, but the basic story seems to work now, and it didn't work before.

Did the Tarot cards really send me a message, or did I just hear what I wanted to hear? Did some higher spiritual entity–a guardian angel, or my higher self–provide me with the solution to my creative block, or was it the workings of my subconscious mind? And does it even matter, as long as I got the answer I needed?

I don't know, but to be on the safe side, I apologized to my spirit pals. “Sorry I was rude to you last night. I can get a little impatient about these things. Thanks for coming through for me!”

:-)

I'll do a full review later, but for now I wanted to say that I'm enjoying the book Consulting Spirit, by Dr. Ian Rubenstein, about a British medical doctor's gradual acceptance of his own mediumistic abilities. It's written in a wry, engaging style and captures the natural (and healthy) skepticism that most people bring to this subject. Sometimes I think that accounts like this, presenting the reactions of ordinary people to anomalistic phenomena, are ultimately more convincing than any amount of scientific evidence.

Here's the book's sales page on the publisher's site, which includes links to various online bookstores (left side of the page, below the cover photo):

http://www.anomalistbooks.com/book.cfm?id=60

Aaron Lazar, a writer with whom I correspond via email, has posted a heartfelt blog entry about his wife's brush with death on New Year's Eve - and her near-death experience. It's well worth a read.

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474981002147

Some of the comments are interesting, too.

A couple of weeks ago I had a fairly vivid dream, and as soon as I woke up, I wrote it down. In the dream, I was one of many students, or perhaps interns, at what seemed to be a kind of hospital with bright white corridors. We were all dressed in white outfits, and part of our daily schedule was a meeting in a large bright auditorium, where an instructor or supervisor would deliver a lecture or review the day's schedule.

On this particular day, there was a pop quiz. The tests were handed out, and I experienced the kind of anxiety that sometimes comes over us in dreams–the realization that I was totally unprepared for this test and could not answer a single question. While I sat staring helplessly at the test paper, the instructor interrupted to say that he'd been informed that one of us had told a patient, “I forgive you.” He wanted to know who'd said this. It turned out I had. At that point, the instructor declared that I no longer had to take the test because I had already learned what I needed to know.

What was most intriguing to me about this strange dream was the issue of forgiveness. It appeared that at some earlier point I'd said I forgive you to a patient at this hospital. And this was evidently a major breakthrough for me. But what did it mean? Why would anyone express forgiveness to a hospital patient anyway? After all, people who come to the hospital are either seriously ill or seriously injured. They don't have anything to be forgiven for. It seemed to make no sense.

As I thought about it (now wide awake), here's the interpretation I came up with.  Normally, when we think of forgiveness, it involves people who have done something morally or socially wrong–people who have behaved in a way that is cruel, insensitive, or thoughtless. These are the people who need to be forgiven, if we are going to forgive anybody. But what makes a person behave that way? Isn't it a kind of spiritual sickness or spiritual injury? Aren't acts of cruelty, insensitivity, and thoughtlessness merely expressions of the person's own pain, incompleteness, fear, or sense of inferiority?

If wrongful acts are the result of spiritual disease or damage, then it might make sense to offer forgiveness to someone who comes to the hospital–if it's a hospital focused not on healing the body but the soul. Patients in that hospital would be suffering from spiritual maladies–maladies that no doubt made them seem like bad people, or at least highly disagreeable people, while physically incarnated–maladies that caused them to do things that now stand as a guilty memory and a hindrance to progress. The ultimate cure for such people might indeed rest, not in memorized answers to a standardized test, but in compassion, empathy, and heartfelt forgiveness. In that sense, saying I forgive you might be the highest form of healing, and the ability to say it would be proof of having learned the most important lesson the institution could teach.

Of course,  it's possible the dream had no meaning at all. But I doubt it. 

A reader directed my attention to Roy Stemman's impressive takedown of British TV personality Brian Cox, who has used the term "nobbers" to characterize believers in the paranormal. "Nobbers" is British slang for "idiots," or so I gather.

http://www.paranormalreview.com/articles/20110709

It's fine if Cox knows next to nothing about the paranormal, as long as he doesn't posture as an authoritative voice on the subject. When he does, he comes across as a bit of a nobber, I'd say.

Because of a lot of personal and professional things that have cropped up, my blog posting will be pretty light for a while.

Feel free to discuss among yourselves. :-)

As readers of this blog know, I've been puzzled by the divergence between two sets of afterlife reports. One set essentially involves a trip to either a disturbing, hellish limbo or a beautiful paradise (known as Summerland to Spiritualists), while the other set involves an immediate awareness of a higher self that chooses various incarnations for the purpose of growth.

The trouble is that the first set of reports (often found in NDEs and mediumship) typically has little to say abut reincarnation and suggests that the earthly persona continues after death. But the second set (obtained through hypnotic regression and the channeling of allegedly advanced spirits) insists on reincarnation and regards the earthly persona as a temporary role that is quickly discarded. 

Moreover, the two sets of reports differ in other aspects. The first set focuses on an earthlike environment of gardens, parks, homes, and even cities, inhabited by beings in human form, while the second set tells of a more abstract environment of pure geometry in which souls see each other primarily as glowing lights (with different colors of the spectrum relating to different degrees of spiritual evolution).

The easiest course of action would be to jettison one set pf reports and concentrate exclusively on the other. But I think there is pretty good evidence for both, although the first set has been more extensively investigated, and the second set is weakened by the inherent problems of hypnosis (e.g., hypnotized subjects may confabulate or may be influenced by the hypnotist). If I had to choose just one set, I'd go with the first, but I suspect that there is some truth in each set -- but not the whole truth in either.

Noodling on this, I sketched out the simple little diagram reproduced below. I admit this could look a lot better if done on a computer, but I'm busy right now and don't have time to put together a better chart. Still, this crude drawing at least gets the basic idea across.

The idea is that the Self, in the sense of the totality of the spiritual entity that we know as "I," may extend across various levels of existence. Spiritualists are always talking about different planes of reality, and the implication is that we travel from one plane to the next. But suppose that our Self actually cuts across all the planes simultaneously, and what "travels" is only our awareness (or at least our primary awareness, in the sense of of our principal focus). Moreover, suppose that time either has no meaning in this scheme or operates very differently from the way it does in our spacetime universe. The end result is that the Self could operate on various levels at once, and the story told by the Self when focusing on its experience in one plane would differ from the story it tells when focusing on a different level of experience. 

Though I did not mark it this way in the diagram (because I didn't think of it), we could label each sub-Self as Self 1, Self 2, Self 3, etc., with higher numbers representing higher levels of existence. Note that the Self is depicted as a circle on each plane, and that the radius of the circle varies consistently as you go from one plane to the next. Awareness on higher planes is represented by a bigger radius, while awareness on lower planes is represented by a smaller radius. This simple graphic tries to express the idea that consciousness expands as it moves deeper into the system.

Note also that various circles are slices of a cone, which represents the Self in its entirety. The cone expresses the idea that these circular slices or cross-sections are part of a larger, continuous whole which bridges the gaps between the planes. Because the Self is ultimately one entity, no matter how it may be sectioned into slices, no part of it is really cut off from the rest, which means that the relatively restricted awareness of the earth plane can come into contact with the higher awareness of higher planes (perhaps through prayer, meditation, or a burst of insight sometimes known as "cosmic consciousness"). This viewpoint also dovetails with the hypothesis popularized by Aldous Huxley that the brain serves as a "funnel" or "filter" restricting a wider range of consciousness. 

Perhaps this diagram, though obviously simplistic and metaphorical, can make some sense of the conflicting sets of reports. NDErs and ordinary mediumistic communicators are reporting from the level of awareness depicted here as "limbo" or "Summerland." Those who recall past lives under hypnosis, and especially those who recall a life between lives, may be reporting from a higher (or deeper) level of awareness. In this respect it is worth noting that between-lives therapists insist that only the deepest stage of hypnosis can access these memories. Naturally, the reports of purportedly high-level channeled beings would also reflect a higher plane of awareness. 

What is perhaps most noteworthy is the implication that all of this is going on at the same time, or perhaps "outside of" time. While it may seem as if we are engaged in a long and tedious struggle to attain spiritual enlightenment, this model suggests that we have already attained it -- in fact, that we never had to attain it because it was part of us from the beginning. The various lower levels of awareness with their more restricted range (represented by smaller radii) are part of a continuum with the highest level of awareness, so whatever we are seeking on this plane has already been found (actually did not have to be "found") on the higher plane. And the awareness on that plane is just as much "I" as the awareness on this plane; it is not a separate entity, though it may feel separate from the limited perspective of earthly life.

Finally, notice that the various cross-sections form a series of concentric circles, suggesting that each smaller circle is contained within the larger one. Nothing is lost; there is only expansion to a wider point of view. If this is correct, then it may be wrong to say (as, in the past, I have) that the ego is sloughed off after death. It may be more correct to say that the ego is subsumed within a wider consciousness that places it into a more appropriate perspective, thus robbing it of its power to mislead or confuse. This higher awareness, even on the limbo or Summerland planes, would be consistent with many reports of communicators who see their own mistakes more clearly than than they did on earth, and who (especially at the Summerland level) have risen above their earthbound limitations of perception. The field of induced after-death communication offers many examples of communications that seem to come from this level of awareness.

I'm not sure how clear this all is, and being busy, I can't revise and clarify my remarks as much as I ordinarily would. But it just may be the case that the apparent contradiction between the two sets of afterlife reports can be resolved by looking at the whole issue from a different perspective. 

My thanks to commenter Juan, whose remark about slicing off circular sections of a sphere probably got me thinking along these lines (although I realize I am not going in quite the direction he suggested). 

 

So last night I was working with a large-capacity USB thumb drive which seemed to be processing information very slowly. I had the bright idea that if I reformatted the drive in a new way, I could increase the speed. Of course, this meant that all contents of the drive would be erased, so I would have to fill up the drive again. I thought it would take 10 or 20 minutes. But it turned out that my plan didn't work. The reformatted drive was no faster than it had been before. And it ended up taking me about 3 hours to fill it up again. That's 3 wasted hours, not to mention a certain amount of frustration.

What's the point of all this? Only that a lot of the “pressure,” “stress,” and “burden of responsibility” that we feel in our lives is self-inflicted. I could've saved myself 3 hours simply by not reformatting the drive and leaving well enough alone. In an effort to save a little time (by making the drive work faster), I ended up wasting a lot of time, and the drive doesn't work any faster anyway.

Today I tried to tally up the amount of time, mental energy, anxiety, and guilt that I cost myself by creating unnecessary assignments, imposing arbitrary deadlines, or interpreting unimportant issues as matters of life and death. But I couldn't do it, because the list of the endless. The mind really does work overtime to make itself crazy.

When we hear people talk about how stressed out they are, a point they often make with an unmistakable note of pride, it's worth considering to what degree their stress translates into worthwhile results. You can make yourself nuts in all kinds of ways, but it doesn't mean you're necessarily going to be accomplishing anything. Sometimes the person daydreaming in an easy chair turns out to be more “productive” than the one who's running around like a headless chicken trying to accomplish a hundred things at once, and mainly creating confusion or pursuing dead ends.

A lot of people seem to feel they have to stay in constant motion. It's been said that sharks must swim ceaselessly, because if they stop swimming, they will die. A fair number of people in today's society seem to feel the same way. They are always running as fast as they can, even if they're running in place. They're taking on more and more jobs, even while complaining about their inability to handle the jobs they already have. Sometimes, of course, they have no choice; the demands of a tyrannical boss or a clamorous family may be impossible to ignore. But I think in many cases people take on more responsibilities, more activities, more burdens, more stress simply because they feel that part of them will die if they risk inactivity.

And they're probably right. Were they to choose inactivity on a regular basis, as a major part of their lifestyle, part of them would die or at least atrophy. You know where I'm going with this. The vulnerable parts, the part that insists we keep climbing that mountain even when we've forgotten why, is the ego.

The ego cannot abide inactivity. It feels threatened by silence and stillness. There's a reason why the Bible tells us to listen to the small, still voice inside ourselves if we want to hear the voice of God. The ego is not a small, still voice. It's a loud haranguing voice, a chattering and nagging voice, a desperate and pleading voice, an angry and complaining voice … but never small or still. It is always insisting on your attention and, if you let it, it will give you more and more projects to do, for the sole purpose of maintaining its control over your life and your thoughts.

I'm not much for New Year's resolutions, since I've found I never keep them, but if I were going to make one this year, I'd resolve to listen less to the ego and more to the still, small voice. That mission, should I choose to accept it, would probably do more to reduce stress and nurture true productivity than anything else I could try.

For a little more on this topic, see this old post, especially the quote from Barbara Sher at the end. 

To celebrate another year of blogging, here's a cryptic crossword with themes drawn from this blog's contents. Click on the image to see a full-size pop-up.  

When the puzzle is done, the red squares, read from left to right, line by line, will spell out a message. 

If you haven't done a cryptic crossword, here are some hints on how to solve one. 

Print out the image and the clues, and sharpen your pencil. Answers will be provided in a later post. 

CLUES

ACROSS

1. “Cry, sis,” a parishioner said unerringly to a ghost 

6. Ghost hunters study things that go this in the night

8. I feel fart developing in postmortem existence 

9. Partic. sixth sense

10. Like a blog post or a legal case

13. Mystic river

14. Stock index dictated the way

15. Lore and complicated British clairvoyant 

17. Not the end? 

19. Control lapel flower in another life

20. Sounds like Santa’s vehicle will do Buffy’s job

21. Debunking project: no beta males need apply

22. Skeptic hides in lusher meringue

DOWN

1. K.C. announced sleeping prophet

2. Skeptic Asimov is a current designation

3. Boston medium and Irish exterminator 

4. Randi’s alter ego? 

5. His pony’s possibly a path to past lives

7. Mixed-up guerilla joins E.R. without a psychic showman

10. What 7D may do to dinnerware

11. My shrew upset by “F” from psychical researcher 

12. Charles’ pie

13. Starting with D-Day there’s no place like it, and there was no one like him

14. Russell’s goal omits E.T. 

16. Addled heart on physical plane

18. Declare a toast to psychic experiment 

Just learned that today only (Dec. 24, 2011), the ebook edition of Mark Anderson's "Shakespeare By Another Name" has been marked down 50%.

Sale ends at 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time.

http://tinyurl.com/864g3gj

Buy now! After all, isn't the purchase of bargain-priced merchandise what the holidays are really all about?

In some of my recent posts I've been looking at the question of a duality in our spiritual nature. The main reason for my interest in this recondite topic is that there are, broadly speaking, two kinds of scenarios spun about life after death. In one scenario, the individual with all his faculties intact (and even enhanced) relocates to a spiritual world and proceeds to learn and evolve in this new environment. In the other scenario, the person sheds his ego like a worn-out coat, remembers that he has lived many lives and that all the lives were essentially roles he played, and proceeds to plan a new incarnation. 

Reconciling these two storylines is not easy. In fact, it may be impossible, unless we concede that there are two parts to each of us, a soul and a spirit, and that while the soul may live in Summerland, the spirit is busy reincarnating on Earth. 

But how can this be? What sense does it make to talk about a person or a self, if it can be split apart, or if if it was never actually united in the first place? 

The best answer I've found to this question is in an essay by Michael Tymn called "The Enigma of Reincarnation." It's a short, well-written piece, so I'd suggest that anyone interested in this subject simply read the whole thing.

What stands out for me is a certain uniformity of opinion that emerges from various "channeled" sources over a long period of time. The viewpoint that takes shape is simple enough to grasp in principle, but probably impossible to understand in detail, because it would require us to think outside the limitations of our own (earthbound) minds. 

Essentially, the idea is that the individual self (call it the soul) is part of a larger group soul (call it the spirit). The spirit is akin to the higher self, the spirit guide, the guardian angel, etc. The soul, on the other hand, is basically the personality-centered ego-mind we know as "me" in ordinary life. Various souls, each a unique individual, contribute to the totality of the group soul or spirit. 

The channeled entity Silver Birch compared the whole system to a radiant diamond. The diamond as a whole is the group soul; the facets of the diamond are the individual souls. He also compared it to an iceberg, with the tip of the iceberg representing the individual soul and the greater submerged mass representing the group soul. 

Tymn also quotes from the purported communication of a long-dead Glastonbury monk, who was asked why he remained connected to the ruins of the abbey he had loved in life, instead of venturing into the higher planes of the spirit world. Via automatic writing the monk replied, “Why cling I to that which is not?  It is I, and it is not I, butt parte of me which dwelleth in the past is bound to that which my carnal soul loved and called home these many years. Yet, I, Johannes, amm of many partes, and ye better parte doeth other things – Laus, Laus Deo – only that part which remembreth clingeth like memory to what it seeth yet.”

It appears to me that if the two lines of evidence for the afterlife are both valid -- that is, if the Summerland scenario and the reincarnation scenario are both true -- then we have to concede that old Johannes was right. We are indeed "of many parts." We do possess uniqueness and personhood, but we are also part of a larger whole that has its own purpose and intentions. We are both bounded and unbounded; we are defined and limited by our individuality, yet we partake of something larger. And we cannot really grasp this paradox with minds conditioned by ordinary earthly reality. We can state it in words, but we can't make complete sense of it, because it is too far removed from our bodily, physical experiences. 

Some understanding of our multi-part spiritual nature seems to have found its way into many religious traditions -- even into Christianity, which distinguishes between soul and spirit in its founding texts (though not many modern Christians would acknowledge this distinction). We seem to simultaneously identify with the small self of the ego and personality, and with the big self of the witness or oversoul or "cosmic consciousness." I, for one, can't see how the apparently indivisible thing I call "my self" can actually be two very different things at the same time. But I gather that such is the case. 

And if so, then it may help to explain how these two scenarios can coexist. The soul speaks through mediums and remembers its earthly life; it may or may not have any glimmer of the bigger picture, which includes reincarnation, and thus mediumistic communications on this subject may be confused and conflicting. The spirit (oversoul, group soul) speaks through hypnotic regression sessions, identifying with each earthly life as it is lived, but shedding that identification between lives. Each one -- spirit and soul -- is truly "me," but in a different respect.

As a very loose and perhaps not very helpful analogy, we might think of a photon, which can be either a wave or a particle -- two very different modes of expression, yet neither is any less real. The oversoul might be likened to the wave, which is a probability distribution encompassing all possible locations of the photon, while the soul might be compared to the particle, a unique point in space and time. Without the particle, the photon would remain only a potential; without the wave, the photon would be incapable of movement and change. 

Or we might think of the duality of yin and yang -- two complementary principles that make up a single whole, yet remain distingiushable. 

But all these comparisons ultimately fail. As Michael Tymn reports: "Trying to explain reincarnation to humans, Silver Birch added, is like trying to explain the color of the sky to someone who has been blind from birth." And as he also tells us: 

When Frederick Bligh Bond asked another of the Glastonbury spirits, a more fluent speaking one, about reincarnation, the spirit replied:  “You understand not reincarnation, nor can we explain.  What in you reincarnates, do you think?  How can you find words?  Blind gropers after immutable facts, which are not of your sphere of experience.”

A couple of my recent posts have looked at the possibility  of a deep division in every human being between an immortal soul and a mortal ego-mind. Most recently I looked at traditions from around the world  stating that such a division, in some form, exists. But as some commenters have pointed out, it is arguable that the alleged divisions simply reflect different levels or aspects of the soul, rather than two or more separate entities.

I think, however, that this interpretation doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Many of the traditions I cited hold that these two aspects of the self separate at death–either at the moment of dying, or sometime afterward. Typically, though not always, these traditions go on to say that true personal immortality can be achieved only if the two distinct elements are reunited.

In what follows, I'm drawing exclusively on a book called The Lost Secret of Death, by Peter Novak, which goes into this subject in some detail. Although it is possible that Novak oversimplifies some of this information, his descriptions seem basically accurate as best I can tell from my own, admittedly cursory investigation.

The purpose of this post is simply to lay out a number of specific examples without much elaboration. All quotes are taken from Novak's book.

Egypt: “But once the person died, the ba and ka, which had until then known only partnership, having functioned as virtually a single unit all during the person's life, now found themselves separated, alienated, ripped apart from each other. This abrupt and disorienting rupture seems to have been associated with the ba experiencing a loss of memory; multiple chapters in the Egyptian Book of the Dead pray for the deceased's memory to be returned to him after he has left the body. How was this memory to be restored? By reconnecting the ba to its ka, which contained the full pattern and record of the person's life, including his memories and his subjective sense of self. Virtually all of Egypt's famous Pyramid Texts, as well as virtually the entire Book of the Dead, had but a single purpose: to cause the ba and ka  to reunite again after they split off from each other at death.”

China: “The po, or yin soul, was thought to take shape over the course of an individual's lifetime; being very impressionable and sensitive, it was molded by the person's environment. The po provided one's personal sense of self-identity, and was held to be what makes a person feel fully alive and real and present in the moment.… After departing the dead body, the yang soul would return to heaven unchanged, sometimes returning to reincarnate later, while the yin soul became imprisoned in a dreary underground netherworld in a feebleminded state. Like the ancient Egyptians, these Chinese Taoists also realized that an afterdeath soul-division would spell the disintegration of the known self, and they were just as anxious to ensure its survival.… They designed techniques to construct a ‘spirit’ body by welding these two souls together while the person was alive, so they could no longer disconnect at death.”

Inca: “Like Egypt and China, the Incas subscribe to a dualistic philosophy that included the idea that people possess two souls which divide at death…. At death, one soul was thought to return to its place of origin in heaven, while the other soul remained with the corpse.”

Greece: “In Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Greece's oldest literary texts, two distinct types of souls are distinguished–the psuche and the thumos....  Death shattered the unity of psuche and thumos in two stages. First, the two souls detached in unison from the body when its functions ceased, and shortly thereafter, they separated from each other as well, an event called the ‘second death.’ One soul disappeared into the air while the other sole, transformed into a shadowy replica of the living person, descended into Hades.”

India: “Modern Hinduism still teaches there two different entities that coexist in the human body, the atman and the jiva.… During life these two are integrated deeply together, but after death they divide, after which the jiva, or astral-emotional body, is thought to deteriorate."

Hawaii: “Hawaiian thought called their two souls the uhane, which was thought to be masculine, intelligent, and processing free will, and the unihipili, which was thought to be feminine, emotional, and possessing the memory.… The ancient Polynesians believed that their two souls might split apart from each other at death. If this happens, they said, the uhane would lose its memory and sense of self-identity, ending up as a ghost wandering in great confusion. The unihipili, meanwhile, would still recall its memories very well, but would become a different sort of ghost–feebleminded and behaving in an automatic and suggestible fashion.” (This description seems to be drawn mainly from the work of Max Freedom Long, whose claims have been challenged by anthropologists, so it should be taken with a grain of salt.)

Persia: “Zoroastrianism, the indigenous religion of Persia prior to the introduction of Islam, is yet another echo of mankind's early dualistic perspective.…  The two parts of the soul were called the urvan and the daena, and … were thought of as twins. Thought to exist before birth, the urvan survived death unharmed. It was conscious, active, and verbal, and was free to make its own independent choices and decisions. Meanwhile, the daena was, like Egypt's ka, also conceived of as the person's own image or self.… After wandering alone for three days after death, the urvan would again encounter its daena… This encounter … was critical; the nature of the after death ‘conversation’ of these two halves of the soul … would determine the entire afterlife experience of the individual. Immortality required a successful reconciliation of the urvan and daena after death.”

Judaism: “At the time the Old Testament was being written, and there seem to have been two primary soul concepts in the Jewish language. Ancient Israel held that people are comprised of two spiritual elements–a ruah and a nefesh.… The ruah was active, strong, conscious, intelligent, and communicated with words. It was immortal, pre-existing the person's birth and surviving his death unharmed, always ‘returning to God who gave it.’ But the nefesh, which embodied one's emotions, memories, and sense of self identity, was vulnerable and could be greatly harmed by death, becoming trapped in a weak and feebleminded state in She'ol, a dark, underground, dreamlike netherworld.”

Christianity: “The Mandaean religion, a small but still-living relative of early Christianity, believes even today that living people possess both soul and spirit, and that these two elements of the self split apart after death…. Mandaean priests still celebrate a ritual called the masiqta three days after burial, the aim of which is to reunite the person's soul and spirit in the afterlife.”

“Manichaeism, a once vigorous but now dead offshoot of early Christianity, also believed there were two distinct components to the human soul.… The nous, according to Manichaeism, was the half of the self that was immortal and invulnerable, while the psuche was the personal part of the self, which was extremely vulnerable and in imminent danger of being destroyed during the death transition. It was thought that a special emotional catharsis during life would unite the psuche with the nous, thereby saving it from destruction at death.”

Islam: “Ancient Islam called these two souls the ruh and the nafs… The ruh is believed to be an immortal soul that never dies, but at least some nafs, the Scriptures declare, will taste death. Thus, it seems, these two elements may be able to divide from each other after death.”

Voodoo: “Voodoo pictures the soul was being comprised of two distinct parts, the gros bon ange, or ‘big good angel,’ and the ti bon ange, or ‘little good angel.’… When a person dies, both the gros bon ange and the ti bon ange continue to exist and function, but they divide from each other.”

Buddhism: “Traditional Buddhism recognizes five constituents,  or skandhas, which make up a person… None of those, by itself, is anything we can recognize as the self, which leads Buddhists to declare that there isn't any self at all, only these pieces. But these skandhas match up perfectly with the ancient world's three-part model of a human being; Buddhism's form, feelings, and perceptions are all functions of the unconscious soul, while volition and consciousness are functions of the conscious spirit. When they are all united, these five create the illusion of the existence of a self, but that's all it is, Buddhist thought insists, an illusion.… Buddhism teaches, just as the binary soul doctrine once did, that the multiple components of the self divide from each other at death. The major difference between the two views is that Buddhism insists that these components can never recombine again to reconstitute that self.”

Siberia: “The Khanty and Mansi [tribes] of Siberia also believed in a binary soul system. One soul, the lili, is associated with the breath, the head, and the handling of raw intellectual data, while the is, or shadow soul, is related to a person's emotions and is particularly active during sleep…. The lili  soul is thought to be reincarnated in one's own kin after death, while the is soul would either depart for a realm of the dead, or remain behind on earth as a shadowy ghost.”

Australia: “Many Australian aboriginal tribes still believe that people possess two souls which divide at death. The true self, which pre-exists the person's birth, comes from a timeless, primordial, heavenly realm called Alcheringa, or ‘The Dreaming,’ and returns there after death…. The other soul, meanwhile, separates from that self after death, remaining behind on earth to take up residence in another human body. Mirroring this belief in double souls, the practice of double funerals [is] very common in Australia, just as they once were all throughout the ancient Middle East.”

Africa: “Africa's present-day Mossi  tribe believes that human beings have one masculine and one feminine soul, and that death divides these two. The Samo Tribe calls their two souls the ri and the mere. The ri soul contains the person's thought and life force, reincarnating after death, while the mere soul, thought of as a perfect double of the person, becomes permanently trapped in a netherworld when it experiences a second death sometime after leaving the body. The Ba-Huana tribe credits human beings with two souls, the bun and doshi. The bun is the soul, or self, and survives death unharmed, while the doshi  is a shadowy second self, or double, that tends to linger around on earth after death, haunting its enemies and persecuting its own relations if a proper burial is not made.”

Inuit: “The Inuit (Eskimo) of Canada and Greenland believed in two souls; the inua held the life force and reincarnated into a new body after death, while the tarnneg, or double of the person, became a permanent occupant of the realm of the dead.”

American Indian: “North America's Dakota Tribe called their two souls the nagi and the niya. The nagi soul held the power of movement and independent free will, and after death, it could either join the world of the spirits, or be forced to wander aimlessly. The niya soul, thought to contain one's conscience and memory, helped the person to relate to and interact with others. After death, the niya was thought to testify against the other soul in a great judgment after death, much like Persia's daena and Egypt's ka.”

“Deep in the rain forests of the northwest Amazon, the Maku tribe still subscribes to the binary soul doctrine.… We all possess one hot soul, or baktup, the Maku declare, and one cold soul, or bowugn. When we die, these two divide; the baktup soul becomes something akin to a ghost, hanging around and frightening people, while the bowugn souls shrivels up into a little ball and flies away to heaven.”

All quotes are from Peter Novak's The Lost Secret of Death, Chapter 1. 

Vitor Moura, who comments on this blog, suggested that I let people know about a new book, "Exploring Frontiers of the Mind-Brain Relationship," which includes a chapter on reincarnation by noted afterlife researcher Erlendur Haraldsson, as well as material by Peter Fenwick, Stuart Hameroff, and Mario Beauregard, among others.

The Amazon sales page is here:

http://tinyurl.com/6nr9x25

The book description states in part:

"The conscious mind defines human existence. Many consider the brain as a computer, and they attempt to explain consciousness as emerging at a critical, but unspecified, threshold level of complex computation among neurons. The brain-as-computer model, however, fails to account for phenomenal experience and portrays consciousness as an impotent, after-the-fact epiphenomenon lacking causal power. And the brain-as-computer concept precludes even the remotest possibility of spirituality. As described throughout the history of humankind, seemingly spiritual mental phenomena including transcendent states, near-death and out-of-body experiences, and past-life memories have in recent years been well documented and treated scientifically. In addition, the brain-as-computer approach has been challenged by advocates of quantum brain biology, who are possibly able to explain, scientifically, nonlocal, seemingly spiritual mental states. Exploring Frontiers of the Mind-Brain Relationship argues against the purely physical analysis of consciousness and for a balanced psychobiological approach. This thought-provoking volume bridges philosophy of mind with science of mind to look empirically at transcendent phenomena, such as mystic states, near-death experiences and past-life memories, that have confounded scientists for decades.... Key coverage includes: Objections to reductionistic materialism from the philosophical and the scientific tradition.Phenomena and the mind-brain problem.The neurobiological correlates of meditation and mindfulness.The quantum soul, a view from physics. Clinical implications of end-of-life experiences. Mediumistic experience and the mind-brain relationship."

Certainly sounds interesting, but at a price of more than $100, I'm not tempted to rush out and buy it. Still, it's good to see a serious book of this type aimed at an academic audience. Maybe a lower-priced softcover or digital edition will be forthcoming.

While I was thinking more about the notion of a dual self suggested in my last post, it occurred to me that the idea is by no means new. In fact, it has proven curiously persistent, as this summary from Peter Novak's The Lost Secret of Death makes clear:

The binary soul doctrine is probably as close as the human race has ever come to having a single world religion. Thousands of years ago, people all across the globe believed much the same thing about what happens after death–that human beings possess not one, but two souls, which were in danger of dividing apart from each other when the person died.…

Simultaneously present in numerous cultures at the door of recorded history, the binary soul doctrine may predate all currently known civilizations. This peculiar afterlife tradition not only seems to have saturated the entire Old World at a very early date, appearing in some of the earliest writings of Egypt, Greece, Persia, India, and China, it somehow managed to jump the oceans as well, leaving yet more of its footprints in the cultural traditions of Australia, Hawaii, Alaska, the plains of North America, Mexico, Peru, and even Haiti.

Greece called these two souls the psuche and the thumos; Egypt called them ba and ka; Israel called them ruwach and nephesh; Christianity called them soul and spirit; Persia called them urvan and daena; Islam called them ruh and nafs; India the atman and jiva; China the hun and po; Haiti the gros bon ange and ti bon ange; Hawaii the uhane and unihipili, and the Dakota Indians called them the nagi and niya. The list goes on. [pp.1, 2]

Some of the entries in this list can be disputed. For instance, the ancient Egyptians divided the soul into more than two parts, so it is not strictly correct to say they subscribed to a binary soul doctrine. Still, it is true that they did distinguish between the ba, which seems to correspond roughly to the modern idea of personality, and the ka, the source of intellectual, spiritual, and creative power.

Many cultures had a tripartite, rather than binary, conception of the human being. The Lakota Indians thought there were three elements intertwined in each person: the spirit (nagi), the soul (nagapi), and the totem animal (the source of power). Traditional Hawaiian religion, according to some accounts, divides each person into the unihipili (corresponding roughly to the autonomic nervous system and the unconscious), the uhane (the capacity for rational thought), and the Aumakua (the higher self, the connection to the divine, serving the same function as a guardian angel or spirit guide). Aristotle divided the human being into the vegetative, animal, and rational elements, with only the rational element achieving immortality. Gnostic Christians saw the individual person as consisting of psyche, pneuma, and hyle (the physical body). According to one source,

The psyche (soul) was identified by [Gnostic Christians] with [the] cognitive/emotional aspect of the personality (the ego consciousness). The pneuma (spirit) was identified by them with the intuitive/unconscious level.

The mystical tradition of Kabbalah divides the soul into not three but five parts: nephesh (instinct), ruach (emotion), shamah (intellect), chaya, and yechida. The latter two are aspects of God that are entwined in the human being.

In his fascinating and controversial book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Princeton psychologist Julian Jaynes argues that duality was part of the human condition from the start. The Wikipedia entry on Jaynes aptly summarizes his view:

Jaynes defines "consciousness" more narrowly than most philosophers. Jaynes' definition of consciousness is synonymous with what philosophers call "meta-consciousness" or "meta-awareness" i.e. awareness of awareness, thoughts about thinking, desires about desires, beliefs about beliefs. This form of reflection is also distinct from the kinds of "deliberations" seen in other higher animals such as crows insofar as Jaynesian consciousness is dependent on linguistic cognition.

Jaynes wrote that ancient humans before roughly 1200 BC were not reflectively meta-conscious and operated by means of automatic, nonconscious habit-schemas. Instead of having meta-consciousness, these humans were constituted by what Jaynes calls the "bicameral mind". For bicameral humans, when habit did not suffice to handle novel stimuli and stress rose at the moment of decision, neural activity in the "dominant" (left) hemisphere was modulated by auditory verbal hallucinations originating in the so-called "silent" (right) hemisphere (particularly the right temporal cortex), which were heard as the voice of a chieftain or god and immediately obeyed.

Jaynes cites many ancient texts in support of his thesis. One of them, the Egyptian text “The Dispute between a Man and his Ba," narrates an argument between a man's intellect and his lower self. Here are some excerpts from an online summary

The man wants to end his life. His Ba tries to dissuade him. The Ba threatens to leave the man and probably cries out the man will have to answer for the offense of taking his own life....

Apparently, the man does not wish to end his life without the approval of his Ba. He realizes that without his Ba he will be lost in the afterlife (total annihilation) and so he tries to persuade his Ba to participate in his auto-destructive sacrificial act, for he does envisage immortal bliss & resurrection ! So this is a man who knows about the afterlife and the deities and who nevertheless wants to end his life himself but not without the help of his own Ba ! Because his Ba does not want to cooperate, he reminds it that it is obliged to assist him....

The Ba succinctly replies that the man should be ashamed of himself and stop complaining. Who is he to utter these words and think these thoughts ? Is he not of modest origins ?
This admonition was of no help at all. But the man is reluctant to die if his Ba is left behind. For if left on earth, his Ba would die too and this would imply total annihilation (physical as well as spiritual). This the man does not seek. He needs his Ba to rise so as to become a god in the afterlife. He wants his Ba to assist him and pleads to it by saying he will make a splendid mortuary temple and his children will present offerings. He turns the argument around, and tries to reason his Ba by saying it will not find peace if it accepts the man should die without it being around ... He is very aware all his efforts are in vain, for his Ba will never help him with anything else than the just course of events. To die before death comes is rejected by the Ba.

Whatever we may think of the neurological and psychological details of Jaynes' theory, material like this suggests that duality (or multiplicity) of the self was taken for granted in ancient Egypt and, it appears, in many other cultures as well. The persistence of this notion may simply reflect the inner conflicts that afflict all human beings - reason vs. emotion, self-interest vs. duty, conscious intentions vs. unconscious motives, etc. On the other hand, it's possible that the division of the soul into two or more parts was a popular idea because it reflected a metaphysical truth.

Who can say for sure? Certainly not me, myself, or I. 

Usually I have a pretty good idea of what I want to say when I start writing one of these posts. But this time I'm winging it. I have a vague notion of my topic, but no idea if I can explain it clearly or if my perspective even makes sense.

What I'm thinking about is the relationship between the soul and the body. For purposes of discussion, I'm going to assume that there is such a thing as the soul and that it incarnates in order to have certain experiences or to learn certain lessons (or both).

It would be easy to say that the soul simply animates the body, and that without the soul, the body would be a lifeless lump. But I think the relationship between the two is considerably more complex. In fact, I think you could say that each person is, in a sense, two people–the human person and the soul.

I remember reading a transcript of a hypnotic regression of a patient who recalled a life between earthly lives. The patient described how she was able to choose her next human incarnation from among several options, and that she ultimately chose to be a particular woman. Having lived that life to its conclusion, she commented that she thought things had worked out well for herself and for the woman. "Both for me and for her" was the way she phrased it, I believe.

Unfortunately I don't recall where I read this, though I'm pretty sure it was in one of Michael Newton's books. And yes, I'm familiar with the usual caveats about material produced under hypnosis. Nevertheless, if we accept this account as accurate, it provokes some interesting questions. How is it that this soul was able to get an overview of various human lives as if those humans were totally separate beings from itself? More important, what did the soul mean when it said that things had worked out well both for itself and for the human being involved?

These words suggest something a bit startling–that the human being is separate from the soul, and that if a particular soul chooses not to inhabit a particular human body, then some other soul will choose that body; and the human being will go ahead and live his or her life along more or less the same lines either way.

In other words, the soul is not some sort of vital principle necessary for life. Organic, biological life goes on about its business regardless of which soul is inhabiting it, and perhaps even if there is no soul inhabiting it. After all, we don't necessarily assume that every living being has a soul. An amoeba is a living being, but it may not have a soul. And we can work our way up the chain of life, even as high as horses, dogs, cats, monkeys, and at least make a case that they don't have souls, either. A human being, viewed purely as a biological organism, may not need a soul any more than an amoeba does.

That's not to say a human being cannot benefit from having a soul, only that the soul may not be necessary, and that the particular soul that happens to inhabit a particular human body may do so as the result of a somewhat arbitrary choice.

But wait a minute. Does this mean we don't need a soul in order to think, to feel, to have ambitions and desires and disappointments and grief? Actually, I think it does. I think those aspects of human life would probably continue even in the absence of souls, just as comparable thoughts, feelings, strivings, etc. are found throughout the animal kingdom.

So then, don't we need a soul at all? Yes, I think we do. But we don't need it to carry out the functions we have in common with the animal world, or even functions that are slightly more advanced but still rooted in biological drives. We need a soul in order to obtain something animals don't possess–self-awareness. In fact, I'd suggest that self-awareness is nothing more or less than the soul acting as a witness to our thoughts and actions. The soul may simply be the difference between a thinking and feeling organism that is not self-aware and a thinking and feeling organism that is self-aware.

Of course this implies that much, probably most, of the thinking we do is not a function of the soul and would go on even if we had no soul. I don't find this a particularly startling idea. A great deal of our thinking consists of stereotyped repetitive patterns, reflexive associations, and ideas picked up from others and thoughtlessly parroted. The voice in our heads talks, talks, talks nearly all the time, but probably 90% or more of what it has to say is worthless.

Original thought, creative insight, deep self-reflection and self-examination are rare, and are qualitatively as well as quantitatively different from our run-of-the-mill stream of consciousness. There is no evidence that animals are capable of this kind of mentation. Perhaps the function of the soul in human life is to provide us with these sparks of insight and understanding.

The transmission theory of consciousness, first proposed by William James, holds that consciousness is a kind of signal received by the brain, which then decodes the signal into electrical and chemical patterns that serve to operate the body. I have always found this a very useful idea. But the actual relationship between consciousness and the brain is probably much more complex and subtle.

Let's suppose that the brain produces a great deal of our thought, and that the soul mainly witnesses these thoughts. Suppose further that as the soul witnesses all this thinking and behavior, it finds itself changed in various ways–affected, for better or worse, by the thought patterns and behavior of its host body. Now suppose that at times the soul intervenes in these thought patterns, offering a new perspective, a chance to see things from outside the narrow viewpoint of the ego (which is the organism's built-in imperative for survival). These interventions feel as if they are coming from an outside source, because from the point of view of the brain, the ego, and the human organism itself, they are coming from an outside source.

The complex interplay between the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of the human organism and the creative, reflective awareness of the soul brings about many changes in both the human organism and the soul. The human organism can learn, albeit imperfectly, to rise above the limitations of its ego. The soul can learn lessons about the challenges, moral quandaries, and drama of earthly life. Each is affected by the other. Neither exists in isolation, at least for the duration of the soul's incarnation in that lifetime.

And what happens when that lifetime is over? The soul separates from the body, evaluates its experiences, digests what it has learned, and eventually proceeds to choose its next incarnation.

And the human ego-mind with which the soul shared that body? Does it persist in some form, or does it simply blink out of existence?

Some would say the ego-mind must persist, because it is capable of communicating through mediums or reappearing in reincarnation memories. But it is at least possible that what persists is the imprint of the ego-mind on the soul. Remember that, in this scenario, the ego-mind influences the soul at least as much as the soul influences the ego-mind. The soul might very well retain a strong impression of the ego-mind with which it was recently linked. And in “lowering its vibrations” to communicate to a medium or to reincarnate, the soul might identify itself absolutely with the ego-mind in question. It might lose the sense of a larger self which can be retained only in a state of “higher vibrations.”

This might explain why many communications through mediums, and many reincarnation memories of young children, are strongly egoic in nature. The deceased sometimes seem fixated on the same trivial issues that bothered them in life. And yet, when “higher” beings are channeled or when between-life memories are accessed, these trivial, egocentric obsessions melt away.

So it's at least arguable that the human mind as such does not survive death, though its imprint on the soul survives. And since the soul is the self-aware, self-reflective part of us, it's the part we access when we think deeply on matters of life and death–the part that is most truly “us.” The nonreflective, comparatively unaware part of us simply goes away, because it is no longer needed. I'm reminded of a scene in the movie 2010 (the sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey) in which a deceased astronaut, Dave Bowman, appears to his widow. When she asks if it is really him, he replies in words to this effect: “Everything about David Bowman that mattered is still part of me.”

Notice that mystics throughout the ages have made strenuous efforts to lose their self-identification with the ego and to identify instead with the "witness." Perhaps this practice can be understood as seeking to minimize the mortal, animal aspect of the self and to maximize the immortal, spiritual aspect. Perhaps it's also what the ancient Greeks meant when they enshrined the phrase “Know Thyself” over the oracle's chamber at Delphi. It may also relate to Socrates' famous aphorism that an unexamined life is not worth living. And while I won't go into it here, I suspect that many statements attributed to Jesus in the Gospels could be interpreted in similar terms. 

Some time ago there was a lot of discussion on this blog about the writings of a near-death experiencer named Nanci Danison who says something rather similar to what I've been writing here. Most of the commenters were pretty negative in their evaluation of Ms. Danison's opinions. But what she was saying struck a nerve with me. This admittedly improvised and loosely structured post is my attempt to further develop what she was saying in terms that make some sense to me.

As always, I could be completely wrong. That's especially true in this case, since I'm feeling my way along a dimly lit path that may be only a blind alley.

----

By the way, I believe I got the useful term "ego-mind" from The Risen, by August Goforth and Timothy Gray. I don't know how much, if any, of the rest of my argument derives from that book; it's been a while since I read it. 

Back in 2005, I ran a post on Mark Anderson's book "Shakespeare" By Another Name, which impressed me greatly. Now the book has been released in a new, updated edition, in both print and ebook form.

The book's homepage is here. Also check out Mark's excellent blog. 

Since I'm too lazy to write anything new, I'm reposting my '05 piece below. Think of it as recycling. It's good for the environment, you know.

The only thing I would change about the post if I were writing it today is that I'm no longer so sure the case for Oxford will carry the day. I think I underestimated the enormous resistance from academe and from the general public, who are much enamored of the Stratford lad's "poor boy makes good" story. The strangely hostile response to the recent movie Anonymous (which I admit I haven't seen yet) seems to bear this out. People react as if questioning the plays' authorship is tantamount to an assault on democracy itself. The Stratford man is such an iconic figure that he is almost sacred in people's minds -- a symbol of the hidden genius of Everyman. I'm not sure any scholarly analysis can defeat such a deeply held and passionately felt conviction. 

Still, whether or not the Oxfordian thesis is ever generally accepted, I've found that it's increased my appreciation of Shakespeare's works and gives me a sense of personal connection with the author that I never had before. And that's good enough for me. 

========

For a couple of years now, I've doubted the official story of William Shakespeare - the not-very-well-educated farmboy, William of Stratford (hereafter simply William), who migrated from the provinces to the big city and promptly established himself as the most eloquent writer of his age, and indeed of any age. Over the past century or more, a number of arguments have been advanced to suggest that this story, however endearing it may be, is simply not very probable. In particular, it is argued:

- that Shakespeare has a detailed personal knowledge of locations throughout the continent of Europe, but there is no evidence that William ever left England.

- that Shakespeare derived some of his material from sources that were available only in Italian, French, Spanish, or Greek, but there is no evidence that William knew how to read any of these languages.

- that Shakespeare is intimately acquainted with aristocratic pursuits, such as falconry, which were off-limits to commoners like William.

- that Shakespeare sympathizes with the aristocracy, makes in-joke references to the Elizabethan court, and seems to have personally experienced the life of a courtier, all of which is inexplicable if William wrote the plays.

- that Shakespeare had access to a considerable (and vastly expensive) library, which William probably did not.

- that Shakespeare has firsthand knowledge of traveling by sea, but there is no evidence that William ever set foot on a sailing vessel.

- that Shakespeare has firsthand knowledge of combat, but there is no evidence that William ever served in the military.

- that Shakespeare knows the ins and outs of the law and sprinkles legal terms throughout his writings, but there is no evidence that William was ever trained in the law.

- that Shakespeare views commoners, individually, as clowns and oafs, and, collectively, as dangerous mobs, a view that would come naturally to an aristocrat but not to a provincial farmboy like William.

- that Shakespeare weaves subtle political overtones into this plays and poetry that would probably have gotten William thrown in jail, as the commoner Ben Jonson was jailed for his "seditious" play The Isle of Dogs.

- that Shakespeare identifies himself in his sonnets as old, lame, and publicly disgraced, a description that does not fit William, a prosperous young man on the rise.

- that Shakespeare offers advice and, sometimes, warnings to the aristocratic recipient of the sonnets, something that a commoner like William would not have dared to do.

There are other arguments, but these give you the flavor of the case. But if William was not the "real" Shakespeare, then who was?

The favorite candidate today is Edward de Vere, the seventeenth earl of Oxford. I've read several books arguing the "Oxfordian" position. Online I found the complete text of "Shakespeare" Identified, by the first person to nominate de Vere for the role, J. Thomas Looney. (I pause for the inevitable chuckle at his funny name.) From there I proceeded to the more recent and more comprehensive book The Mysterious William Shakespeare by Charlton Ogburn, and Ogburn's much briefer introductory book on the subject, The Man Who Was Shakespeare. Along the way I encountered Joseph Sobran's Alias Shakespeare and several other interesting books, not to mention a wide variety of Web sites. (For a bibliography, see my online essay "Shakespeare vs. Shakespeare.")

Over time I became more and more persuaded that the "Stratfordian" case was weak and that William was probably a front man for some aristocrat reluctant to publish his works under his real name because of the considerable social stigma attached to writing for the common stage - and perhaps for other reasons. Still, I was not sure de Vere was the man.

I am now.

What changed my mind? A new biography of de Vere by Mark Anderson, titled "Shakespeare" By Another Name. Anderson, relying on a huge number of sources, fleshes out the earl of Oxford's life in more detail than I have previously seen - and draws explicit parallels between Oxford's life and times and the characters and plot lines of Shakespeare's works. The resulting portrait is so clear and compelling that I can only say that if Edward de Vere was not Shakespeare, he surely should have been.

Again and again Anderson shows how otherwise obscure passages from Shakespeare's plays can be understood as topical allusions to palace intrigues and matters of state that took place long before William of Stratford had ever appeared in London.

A single example must suffice. It involves Anderson's hypothesis that an early draft of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night was the same play described by an antiquarian (who once had the manuscript in his possession) as "a pleasant conceit of Vere, earl of Oxford ... circa 1580." In 1580 William of Stratford was only 16 years old. Could Twelfth Night have been written so early - not by William, but by Edward de Vere? Here, much abbreviated, is Anderson's argument:

De Vere and [the courtier Christopher] Hatton were notorious rivals circa 1580, and Twelfth Night mocks Hatton relentlessly: Twelfth Night's self-infatuated clod Malvolio is a barely concealed caricature of [Hatton] ... Malvolio happens upon a prank letter designed to make him look like an ass in front of the entire household. The letter is signed "The Fortunate Unhappy" - an English reversal of the Latin pen name (Felix Infortunatus; "the happy unfortunate") that Hatton used ...

The Jesuit priest Edmund Campion ... had spent much of the 1570s preaching his message abroad, primarily in Prague ... He was arrested in 1581 and tortured. His treason trial was a farce ... Campion was given all of two hours to work on his courtroom defense. He was even denied use of pen, ink, or paper to compose his thoughts ...

In perhaps the most enigmatic scene in Twelfth Night (Act 4, Scene 2), Malvolio is thrown into a mock prison and denied pen, ink, and paper. The fool Feste cross-examines Malvolio with his characteristically witty doublespeak, tossing off an aside about a "hermit of Prague who never saw pen and ink."...

[Finally] Twelfth Night captures the mood of a brief moment on the international stage between 1578 and '80 ... when King Sebastian of Portugal turned up missing in action [and presumed drowned] ...

King Sebastian of Portugal had left no heir or clear line of succession, and to make matters worse, no one was even certain that Sebastian had died in 1578. On January 31, 1580, King Philip of Spain prevailed [in the struggle for control of Portugal]. The Portuguese kingdom and military were now to be under Spain's command ...

Yet, if Sebastian washed ashore someday, he could rightfully seize the crown back from Spain and cripple the Spanish menace. Rumors persisted ... that Sebastian was still alive and preparing to make his triumphant return. Many in Elizabeth's courts had also championed the cause of Antonio, a pretender to the Portuguese throne ...

The story of Twelfth Night is in part the story of two friends, Antonio and Sebastian, who are reunited when the latter washes ashore and into the action of drama. Sebastian is widely believed to have perished at sea ...

These clear parallels illuminate the action of the play and set it in a recognizable historical context. They clarify what is otherwise obscure - such as Malvolio's bizarre imprisonment.

One set of parallels is hardly conclusive, but Anderson offers similar treatments of most of Shakespeare's works, showing again and again how the political battles, social controversies, and marital discord of de Vere's own life are reflected in the plots and characters of Hamlet, As You Like It, All's Well that Ends Well, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, Othello, King Lear, and the rest.

Brick by brick, over the course of 380 pages, not to mention 30 pages of appendices and 145 pages of endnotes, Anderson builds an overwhelming circumstantial case for the Oxfordian position. As he admits, there is no smoking gun, no single piece of evidence that provides absolute proof - but the sum total of the evidence he submits ought to be dispositive to any open-minded reader.

I don't expect the walls of academe to come tumbling down just because Mark Anderson has blown his trumpet. The Stratfordians, stubborn defenders of orthodoxy, will resist the inescapable conclusions prompted by this book, just as they have resisted, dismissed, and laughed off the arguments of Looney, Ogburn, and others. But I now think that theirs is a rearguard action and a losing cause. The case has been made, and eventually it will carry the day.

Edward de Vere was Shakespeare. And sooner or later, everyone will know it.

 

An eighth grader doing a report on life after death emailed me for my thoughts on the subject. I kept my response fairly straightforward, without getting into all the complexities of super-psi, psychological issues, and the strong and weak points of the evidence. There's nothing here I haven't said before, but since I have to fill up the blog with something, here it is ...

 

Hi ___,

Thanks very much for writing. I have read a great deal about evidence for (and against) an afterlife. My personal opinion is that life after death is probable, though I would not say that it is certain. I base this opinion on my study of various lines of evidence, including near-death experiences, deathbed visions, the verifiable statements made by some mediums, verifiable past-life memories (especially when reported by young children), and some well-documented cases of ghosts and hauntings.

Those who disagree with me would point to the large quantity of evidence indicating a very close relationship between the brain and the mind. They would say that the mind cannot possibly continue once the brain has stopped functioning. My viewpoint is that the brain serves mainly as a kind of "receiver," with thoughts as the "signal." If the receiver is damaged, then the signal will not be picked up as clearly anymore. If the receiver is destroyed, then it will never pick up the signal again. But the signal itself is never damaged or destroyed. It continues, even if there is no working receiver that tunes in to it.

I admit that this is only a rough analogy, but it helps to show how the mind and brain can be very closely connected, as they undoubtedly are, and yet the mind could continue to exist even without the brain.

Of course the arguments about all of this can get very complicated, and no one can say for sure what the truth really is.

As for what I personally think happens after death, I think it's probably something like this. First you become aware of separating from your physical body, and perhaps hovering over it and looking down on it. The experience seems oddly familiar and not at all frightening or sad. You are drawn away from your body, through a dark space that may seem like a tunnel, until you reach a bright light. Entering the light, you find yourself reunited with deceased friends, relatives, even pets. You now exist on a plane of pure consciousness, where the collective thoughts of a community of like-minded souls create a realistic world, similar to Earth, but without Earth's imperfections. You undergo a life review in which you remember the key decisions in your life and how they affected other people. You even experience what those other people were feeling -- if you intentionally hurt someone, you feel the hurt they felt. In this way you learn where you made the right choices and where you made mistakes. The purpose is not judgment but learning. It's understood that life is hard and everyone makes the wrong choice sometimes.

What happens after that is less clear, but it appears that you continue to grow and learn, perhaps with other incarnations on Earth, or by progressing to higher spiritual planes.

One very important point is that suicide is not the right choice. Everything I've read tells me that people who commit suicide deeply regret it in the afterlife. They are not able to escape their problems that way. They bring their problems with them, and actually have more trouble working through their problems on the spiritual plane than they would have if they'd resolved their problems on the physical plane. And usually they learn that their problems would have been overcome on Earth if they had just held on a little longer.

Of course, people have argued about whether or not there is life after death, and what it might be like, for thousands of years. I don't think the debate will end anytime soon. My opinions could be all wrong. I think it is best to keep an open mind on the subject and to consider all points of view. 

By the way, if you're interested in a fairly dramatic case that seems to provide evidence for an afterlife, you might look at my essay on the R-101 disaster:

http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/R-101.htm

A website that offers many good cases can be found here:

http://www.aeces.info/Top40/top40-main.shtml

I hope this is helpful. Good luck with your project!

Having just watched "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" on TCM, I was interested to read this brief article about a spiritualist's attempt to finish the novel (left incomplete at the time of Charles Dickens' death):

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/1448-ghostwriting-dickens.html

Opinions differ on whether or not the channeled material is up to the Dickens standard, but it does seem as if the medium sincerely believed he was in communication with the late author; he turned down all offers to produce more books by this method, despite the prospect of large payments.

It's sometimes said that the question of whether or not there is life after death is separate from the question of whether or not there is a God. And this is true. It's certainly possible to imagine life after death even in the absence of any supreme Creator or cosmic Mind running the show. It's also possible to imagine a God that doesn't deign to bestow immortality on his–or its–creations.

In fact, I recall one case of a confirmed atheist who nevertheless believed in life after death. The editor of an atheist journal, he became convinced of an afterlife upon studying the R-101 case, which I've written about elsewhere. He startled his readers by declaring that the R-101 communications established the reality of personal immortality, at least to his satisfaction, but he went on to say that he still didn't believe in God. There is nothing intellectually incoherent about this position.

Nevertheless, I find that, for me personally, the idea of an afterlife is closely linked to the idea of God. Here's why.

Let's say that there is life after death but no God–meaning there is no ultimate power in the universe responsible for designing and overseeing a cosmic plan. In that case, there seems to be no reason to expect justice, morality, or even simple decency and fairness in the cosmic scheme of things–because there is no cosmic scheme. There is only the ad hoc chaos of an unregulated, unsupervised, ultimately meaningless existence.

Now, if this is true, then the afterlife becomes problematic at best. Who would want to live forever, or even for a short time after physical death, if such a life consisted of a whirl of nightmarish confusion? Would we derive any comfort from the idea of life after death if we believed we were being cast into an unending bout of insanity, a horror movie from which we could never escape?

Some say that the absence of a God doesn't necessarily imply chaos and horror, since there might be self-regulating or self-organizing principles at work–something like karma, for instance. Still, it is hard to entrust one's fate to the blind workings of a purely impersonal, amoral cosmic mechanism that might prove to be as pitiless as the Darwinian survival of the fittest or as arbitrary as the metamorphoses of a fever dream.

I think the comfort offered by the idea of an afterlife depends, at least implicitly, on the assumption that there is a logic, a justice, and a meaningful, overarching plan put in place by an Intellect infinitely superior to our own–an Intellect that knows what is best for us even when we don't, and is looking out for our best interests and protecting us from the vicissitudes of existence. Without that assumption, the afterlife starts to look more like a chamber of horrors, at least potentially, than like Summerland.

Moreover, I think we implicitly derive the inner strength necessary to contemplate eternal life–and the inconceivable challenges and opportunities it presents–from the idea that each of us is an extension of God, and therefore shares, even if only to a very limited degree, in God's power and significance. Stripped of this confidence, we are really just trivial scraps of spiritual flotsam and jetsam tossed about on a turbulent cosmic sea.

Thanks to the Judeo-Christian tradition, the idea of a wise, just, and caring God is so deeply ingrained in the Western mind that most of us probably accept it in some form even if we consciously reject it. I'm not talking about confirmed atheists, of course, but about people who have an interest in spiritual seeking. We probably tend to assume that the world is set up in such a way as to make sense and to bring about an ultimately fair resolution for each of us, and that the afterlife, along with possibly a succession of physical incarnations, is part of this divine plan.

Your mileage may vary, but for me, an afterlife unplanned and unsupervised by any higher power is an afterlife I'd prefer to avoid. And since such evidence as we possess suggests there is a moral purpose and a higher plan to postmortem survival–evidence like the life review in near-death experiences, for instance–I think it is reasonable to posit a Mind and an intention underlying it all.

And if there isn't? Then fasten your seat belts, people ... because we're in for a bumpy ride. 

Not proof of anything, but pretty neat.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2011/11/not-photoshopped-beam-of-light-shines-on-fallen-soldiers-miracle-dog/