Dead People or Dead Information?
Posted by Julie Beischel at 06:40, 26 May 2010Some say, rather than communicating with dead people, mediums are either accessing "dead" data stored in the universe or using psi to obtain information from the living or the physical environment. Discarnates seemingly acting with volition and intention may provide evidence to the contrary.
When we screen new prospective Windbridge Certified Research Mediums (WCRMs) as well as in most of our mediumship studies, each medium reads two deceased people (called discarnates), the readings take place over the phone, and I act as a proxy in place of the actual sitter (the living person wanting to hear from the discarnate), so only the medium and I are on the phone. The only information the medium and I have is the first name of a discarnate. Which medium reads which discarnate pair and the order in which the discarnates in a pair are read are randomized. Phone readings are scheduled at times convenient for me and the medium. Thus, in any given week, a number of readings are taking place. On rare occasions, I do two readings with two different mediums and two different discarnates in one day.
Recently, that situation occurred and because of all the randomization, two discarnates each named Sally* were scheduled to be read on the same day. Since I didn't have any other information about the two discarnates or sitters, the day before the reading, I simply held out to the universe the page in my planner where the two readings were listed, shrugged my shoulders apologetically, and said, "You two will need to figure out who goes where."
The morning of the scheduled Sally readings, I got a message from the medium assigned to read Sally-1 saying that she woke up sick and couldn't do the reading, so we pushed the reading back one week. Problem solved: no more two Sally readings in one day. (We later joked that since I had left it up to the discarnates to deal with the situation, they had "struck the medium down with illness!") The reading later that day with Sally-2 and the other medium went just fine.
When I called the Sally-1 medium back a week later for the rescheduled reading, her phone just rang and rang and eventually went to voicemail. I assumed that she had forgotten about the reading, left her a voicemail, sent her an email to reschedule, and went back to work. When I checked my phone and email later, there were frantic messages from her saying that she was sitting next to the phone waiting for the session and when I didn't call, she tried to call me and noticed that she had voicemail. Apparently, her phone just didn't ring when I called. (Phone, computer, and electronic troubles are common for mediums. One of the WCRMs jokes that there should be some kind of special mediumship insurance to cover such disasters.) So we pushed the reading back one more week. I guess Sally-2 wasn't satisfied with only one week of separation. Maybe she thought she should be highlighted. And she had every right.
When I called that third week, the medium answered right away but there was a lot of static on the line. When I recommended that I call her back, it cleared right up and the rest of the reading was fine.
Just Sally-2 letting us know she was still running things.
*Names have been changed to protect the privacy of the deceased.
Julie Beischel, PhD
Director of Research
The Windbridge Institute
www.windbridge.org
A version of this post originally appeared on May 22nd, 2010, at http://drjuliebeischel.blogspot.com/
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Comments
6 April 2010
14 hours 39 min
If you have to pay more than $20 for a reading, your probably not getting a good reading. And for that matter, you'd probably be better off with some Pottery Barn candles and a ouija board.
...I forgot how I got here but everyone seems to be heading off in that direction. I hope someone brought food. I have a feeling this is going to be a long journey................
2 May 2004
2 hours 53 min
I just finished reading The Afterlife Experiments by Dr Gary Schwartz recently, and I thought to myself -- what if the mediums aren't communicating with the deceased at all, but they are actually displaying psychic abilities, accessing the sitter's memories, even as far as remote viewing? Dr Schwartz suggests this scenario himself in the book. I'm not convinced there's an Afterlife, but Dr Schwartz's experiments, and my own personal experience, makes me very open to the psi/remote viewing angle.
~ * ~
@levitatingcat
22 November 2004
4 days 20 hours
Is this something like the knowledge of the deceased is till around, but the deceased isn't?
Or more simply, remote viewing misinterpreted by the medium as viewing through the soul of the deceased?
----
We are the cat.
6 April 2010
14 hours 39 min
I always believed that they were reading the energies of the deceased left behind. the same reason would explain why chairs go flying across the room; as a sort of "reenactment" of a high energy event which occurred when the person was living.
...I forgot how I got here but everyone seems to be heading off in that direction. I hope someone brought food. I have a feeling this is going to be a long journey................
30 April 2004
5 hours 57 min
Is this something like the knowledge of the deceased is till around, but the deceased isn't?
Or more simply, remote viewing misinterpreted by the medium as viewing through the soul of the deceased?
There are a few theories. Some sitters feel that the medium is getting the information from their [the sitter's] subconscious - sometimes the sitting goes off on a tangent from the desired question/answer as if to get the topic out of normal consciousness, then the answer turns up all of a sudden out of nowhere. However, the fact that some sittings turn up information that the sitter didn't know is indicative of either actual mediumship, or the 'remote viewing' idea. The cross correspondence tests of the early 20th century (where multiple mediums were allegedly given parts of the answer each in different sittings) is said to be suggestive of the afterlife theory, as it seems less likely that each would remote view a separate piece of the puzzle which didn't make sense on its own. But then you could still argue on that point that it may not be the 'afterlife', but instead more like William James' "cosmic reservoir" of information.
As Stephen Braude points out regularly, it is nigh on impossible to actually prove the afterlife above the other theories like super-psi. Though all have pretty much startling implications for human consciousness.
Kind regards,
Greg
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You monkeys only think you're running things
@DailyGrail
26 June 2005
1 week 22 hours
As Stephen Braude points out regularly, it is nigh on impossible to actually prove the afterlife above the other theories like super-psi. Though all have pretty much startling implications for human consciousness.
Alex at Skeptiko had an interesting interview with Dr. Garret Moddel who mentions the reliance of science upon replicabilty:
You know, this whole argument about psi needing replicability, I think is to some extent, a red herring and there are two clear reasons. One is, as this and other experiments show, psi is intention-based and it’s based upon not only the intention of the subject, but the intention of the experimenter.
Most Psi phenomena don't behave according to the scientific model. That model serves us very well when exploring physical phenomena and it has brought us a very high degree of understanding of our physical world. Who can blame a scientist for trusting such a proven method? But with Psi, we are dealing with something nobody really understands. Is it physical at all?
I think that, despite our reliance upon scientific instruments and recording equipment, we really access all that we know through our senses and, ultimately, by way of our consciousness. How does consciousness affect our data? We have known for a long time that results often need double blind controls to filter out these effects. But how efficient are these controls? There seems to be evidence to suggest an experimenter effect - or call it a bias if you will - especially when we come to controversial subjects such as Psi. A sceptic and a believer might apply equally rigorous controls and still come up with conflicting results. This may even be happening at the quantum level - an observer effect.
It's fine with me if Julie wishes to study this area, but I'd much prefer that those who wish to understand mediumship drop the usual artificial scientific pretenses (the detached observer, "objective reality," etc., etc.) and learn some form of mediumship directly; that is, become their own subject.
Yes, I would be more convinced by a first-hand account of a Near Death Experience or an Out of Body experience from a former sceptic and qualified scientist, than I would by any number of experiments. Someone, indeed, like Thomas Campbell - a nuclear physicist who decided to see for himself what OOBE's are all about.
Dave.
Wanted: More White Crows ... http://whitecrows.davidsmuse.co.uk
21 February 2009
15 weeks 2 days
I guess there is a subtle possibility here. Double blind trials are designed to remove the biases inherent in our consciousness becoming overlain over external reality and hence blinding us to it (by distorting our interpretation of it). It is exactly that type of subjectivity that psi might be about though. I wonder how you would let the subjectivity in, in the way subjective consciousness proponents might avow, but still reduce the normal noise generated by false perception. After all, without double blinding science would have steam rolled ahead 'proving' a great number of incorrect things, often to our detriment.
Most Psi phenomena don't behave according to the scientific model
Perhaps. I am reminded that there are a great number of subtle, rare, and complicated natural phenomena that have ultimately given up their secrets though.
Naturally we are at risk of behaving like ancient theologians arguing over which God made the volcano erupt and why? who cast the evil eye this time? Or how many angels fit on a pin head? Perhaps (probably?) in the future they may understand this and look back on us in much the same way I do reading how geology was mythologised in an attempt to tame it.
22 November 2004
4 days 20 hours
I suspect that there are aspects of most psi phenomena that are in principle quite amenable to scientific treatment, but are beyond the current scientific tools.
One possibility I have in mind is that a lot of psi phenomena are because of higher complexity interactions between living people. Certainly some every day group phenomena happen that way, and are very hard to describe scientifically.
At the simple end of interactions we have particle stuff. Physical particles have attractive and repulsive forces, they collide, bounce off each other or merge. At the level of a few particles this is easy to describe as N-body problems. At the level of vast numbers, with simple interactions, it becomes thermodynamics, or statistics.
Even with simple interactions, at a level between "a few" particles and statistical levels, we currently do not have any tools for this. People use particle simulations, and fluid dynamics simulations, with a degree of success - but this is at the level of an art form. Simulation methods are dear to my heart, their contribution is phantastic - but it is a brute force method, based on an absence of understanding. We should use these methods for many more areas where they contribute, but not fool ourselves into the belief that we understand what is going on. Really, we have no clue. If someone can fill in this gap, they would remain famous for millenia.
What does that have to do with human interactions and psi?
Humans (like animals) show particle behaviour in crowds. Traffic flow (with and without vehicles) is a good example. Of course humans also show behaviour that is quite different from particle stuff, even in crowds.
Humans also have behaviour patterns that are quite persistent. A very interesting part is that these patterns persist long after the reason for the pattern has gone away.
Some of this persistence is simple Pavlov stuff. The person remembers the behaviour pattern, and associates it with a positive memory. But it gets more interesting - these patterns are persistent over many generations. We have behaviour patterns now that are hundreds of years old, and nobody even dimly remembers the reasons. And after hundreds of years, there are no reasons today.
Social science and behavioural sciences know that these thing exist, and try to explain them. But they are very far away from achieving any sort of predictability.
I propose that these things come from interactions between humans, not from individual characteristics, in a way analogous to how fluid flow comes from interactions between particles, and not the individual particles.
I also propose that some psi phenomena are related to this. In many ways the influence of a person persists long after the person is dead, this is pretty common. I suspect that many effects of the interactions of a person persist without the person.
At this point, we have two serious problems with testing conjectures like the one I just made.
First, we don't know how to measure the interactions. Given even just 2 humans in a large group, we cannot tell if there was any interaction - they don't need to talk or see each other. Smell is enough. Sometimes even the absence of someone in a group has an effect on the entire group. So we lack the basic measurement capability.
Second, the numbers we are looking at are smack in the middle of the really hard problems. Way more than we can describe by individual considerations (even if we knew all the single interactions), and way too small for statistics. That is, even assuming that plain linear statistics (like thermodynamics) work in this case. And they probably don't.
----
We are the cat.
21 February 2009
15 weeks 2 days
A very interesting possibility.
I know you like 'group' possibilities like this. I'm not exactly sure that your 'middle zone' exists through non-understanding given chaos and indeterminacy, but i certainly take your point that there is a zone where determining natural activity becomes much more difficult/impossible.
I agree with you that to some degree it is a technical and scientific limitation issue, but I still find it amazing that we do not live in that mathematical clarity that they had in the past with a Newtonian Universe. The modern view makes it clear that we can never predict perfectly, but that this is not because we do not understand, it is because it is fundamentally unpredictable.
Sometimes I see people either purposefully or negligently using the argument that unpredictability implies lack of understanding, as if somewhere down there the universe really is Newtonian and we just haven't gotten there yet with out understanding. Apparently it isn't, and if it is not then this argument needs to be applied more cautiously than it often is.
I am sure I will think about this more in the future as you progress your own ideas and offer more possibilities.
Thanks for the thoughts.
22 November 2004
4 days 20 hours
Well, the middle zone problem is basically that we lack the mathematics. There are no known closed solutions for some of this stuff. For other cases, the closed solutions are chaotic, so they are not useful for doing approximations. In both cases that leaves use with simulation-type approaches, and the computational complexity is terrible.
So in other words, these problems are not very tractable for our state of the art. Some of the approaches we use are proven intractable, but we use them anyway because we have nothing else. And we do get half way descent results for some cases of some problems.
The group interaction stuff I like because there are so many examples of it. And I admit, also because in computing that is all we do. We arrange interactions between electrons and simple switches. The results are amazing, yet there is absolutely nothing in the electrons and switches individually that makes this happen.
I had a thought a little while ago about quantum stuff being deterministic in each universe (or the many miultiverses), but ourselves being too spread out over many universes to nail it down. In other words, a particular photon actually is at a particular place at a particular time, going in a particular direction with a particular velocity. But only in one universe, and the universe splits after a really short time. I don't have the mathematics for this. But it sounds like it could be just another equivalent formulation of the same thing.
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We are the cat.
2 May 2004
2 hours 53 min
Is this something like the knowledge of the deceased is till around, but the deceased isn't?
More that the medium is reading the sitter's mind/memories/subconscious. One could go so far as suggesting an Akashic Field, Jung's 'global consciousness', but I'm inclined to go with the "simpler" route on this one, mind/memory reading.
For example, the Dr Schwartz experiments have convinced me that some mediums have psychic abilities -- however, the little jury in my brain is doubtful if they can communicate with the dead. Who knows, maybe where our consciousness goes after death is like the finale of Lost -- there's no concept of time, it's yesterday, today and tomorrow (and a whole bunch of other dimensions) all at once. Quantum physics may be the key to unlocking this mystery. Most mediums themselves don't know exactly what's going on, so many fall back on traditional Heaven/Afterlife concepts (hence the Sylvia Brownes and her ilk, /shudder).
I think the truth will fall somewhere between skepticism and faith. ;-)
~ * ~
@levitatingcat
21 February 2009
15 weeks 2 days
I'm with you on the quantum possibility, though tempered by the fact that i'm probably just going for the most mysterious thing my brain can identify and being stranded in the apparent space created by confusion. It might be many layers behind the quantum.
One thing jumped out at me. If Mediums and psychics are often only tested against the memories and perceptions of the 'sitter' then any test relies on poor communication. Whereby the subconscious mind of the sitter is not being affected by the medium in such a way that it creates feelings and perceptions as part of the 'experience' as the experience with the medium is occurring.
Here I am thinking about how anthropologists have to be very careful asking questions about subjects with newly discovered tribes as the questions provoke answers that did not exist in the culture prior to the asking of the question. Plus a few false memories of my own, things which I remember from my childhood that never happened for example, or the common experience of finding that people remember events very differently to yourself.
I am not saying that this is what happens though, but if memories were being adjusted or created in the presence of the medium then their odds would obviously go up compared to assumptions of zero communication. If I go and see a medium and we are somehow involved in creating a false memory or adjusting a previous one then at the end of it I would obviously rate the medium higher as being more accurate, the memory of a loved one would feel just as real to me, even if what we have really done is adjusted the memory together. This is perhaps more of a risk for me since I remember events quite poorly, so any attempt to recall an event is likely to create new memories as I wrap what I can remember with memories of other things or fabrications based on what I would have expected a person to have done or believe they would have.
2 May 2004
2 hours 53 min
Really enjoying the guest blogs. Nice move, Greg.
~ * ~
@levitatingcat
16 August 2006
3 weeks 3 days
It's fine with me if Julie wishes to study this area, but I'd much prefer that those who wish to understand mediumship drop the usual artificial scientific pretenses (the detached observer, "objective reality," etc., etc.) and learn some form of mediumship directly; that is, become their own subject.
Of course neither William James nor Julie could do this without greatly harming their respective careers, ruining their credibility with colleagues, etc., etc., likely precipitating a loss of income. That wouldn't be fun and creating such an outcome would defeat the purpose.
As a result, they would have to be sly about this and engage in such activities privately and secretly which, unfortunately, wouldn't enable them to provide any information to others like us.
On the general topic of the dead and communicating with them, I could quote Seth's "You are as dead now as you'll ever be" but lack the energy to put that remark in its proper context or fully explain it to the best of my ability. Instead, I'll just let it stand by itself.
Still, this leaves me with one particular thought on this topic, namely that there are more dead techies now than in most previous time periods, with more dying all of the time -- this includes software and hardware engineers of all types and many skilled at successfully dealing with arcane communication challenges. Dead physicists abound, too, if they need additional help. If you can hook up a SCADA/VSAT network while alive, what would be so difficult about establishing an Internet connection when dead?
Therefore, I predict new meaning for the phrase "broadband anywhere" even though once a dead techie or group of dead techies succeed, many will refuse to believe it and will dismiss all results.
Bill I.
10 August 2004
18 weeks 2 days
Re the 'broadband everywhere' hypothesis - if that were to be the case, would 'mediums' then be classed as hackers?
Regards, Kathrinn
22 November 2004
4 days 20 hours
Mediums are hackers. They enter the minds of deceased people without permission, or so they claim. Does it make any difference whether they use electronic means or something else?
----
We are the cat.
30 April 2004
5 hours 57 min
Mediums are hackers. They enter the minds of deceased people without permission, or so they claim. Does it make any difference whether they use electronic means or something else?
Actually, the description of mediumship (especially trance mediumship) is more along the lines of the medium's brain being hacked by the deceased personality. The 'communicators' talking through Leonora Piper said they saw a light, then went into it and were able to transmit messages to this world.
I liked the summation of the (alleged) deceased Fred Myers, discussing communications with 'this' side through a medium - he likened it to dictating a letter to a an obtuse and partialy deaf secretary through a thick pane of glass.
Kind regards,
Greg
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You monkeys only think you're running things
@DailyGrail