Communications with the Beyond

Although the title will immediately suggest contacting the departed by the mediation of a medium, I would suggest at least two other modes whereby communications from the soul-order beyond reach people. One mode is fairly routinely experienced and not viewed as unusual, transcendental, or weird in any way. The other one depends upon the extraordinary powers some few people develop or carry from early years. But let me first address the obvious, talking to the dead.

Spiritualistic Phenomena. Let me start here by explicitly expressing my own opinion on such communications so that those seeking positive reinforcement can avoid irritation and just click away to somewhere else. True: the rather extensive literature persuades me that such communications do indeed take place, but I’ve come to think of them as almost useless means of learning anything useful beyond knowledge much more easily obtained by other means—namely that another world (or worlds) beyond exist. The analogy I would suggests is learning something about China by means of interviewing derelicts and unfortunates on the margins of Chinese society in great cities like Shanghai, Beijing, or Hong Kong. Real mediums exist, I think, but the field is ripe with temptations to exploit gullible people. In the paranormal domain, spiritualism is almost impossible, therefore, to study in structured and rational ways.

I come to these conclusions for a number of reasons. What reports of near-death experiences (NDEs) suggest is that disembodied souls have a devil of a time communicating with the living—and the reason for this that I’ve suggested is that they lack access to the instruments by which to reach people in bodies. Those people are equally “blind,” as it were, to the other reality because the functioning of their bodies interferes with seeing the soul dimension. This suggests that unusual circumstances are required for any kind of communication. The central figure here becomes the medium. Virtually all mediums go into trances while they “channel” the other world. That word is suggestive. It suggests that the medium is a tool rather than an agency. The medium absents herself (most mediums are women). She gets out of the way. The spirit on the other side appears to take over the medium’s “instruments,” principally her vocal chords and, presumably, certain functions of her brain. Hence mediums often speak in strange voices. And there are rare cases where the other party in fact comments on the difficulties of using the medium’s body. Many mediums also make use (or are made use of by) a guide or a “control,” thus another spirit on the other side, who is well matched to the medium and in turns transmits information from a third party—the departed.

This suggests to me that some minimal form of at least partial possession is a necessary aspect of the spiritualistic phenomenon. A spirit must gain access to a living person; that person has to get out of the way, accomplished by the trance; then communications of a sort commence. The maintenance of this strange duality—two agencies using the same body—is difficult, chancy, and tiring to the medium. I for one see the medium’s gifts as ill-used in such communications for reasons that have to do with the other aspect of this phenomenon: its fundamentally banal content.

In years of looking at this phenomenon from time to time, I have yet to discover anywhere any information regarding the “beyond” which cannot be found with much less hocus-pocus in the writings of speculators, moralists, and other authors on values or cosmologies. There is nothing much there. What a person can discover is proof that life continues after this stint on earth, but for that we do not need to talk to some departed grandpa who still remembers the pet dog’s name. If the reader is interested in confirming this, I would suggest the excellent web site of SurvivalAfterDeath.org.uk accessible here. This site reproduces many original papers and extracts from the psychical literature reaching well into the nineteenth century; there is much else there as well on psychical research beyond spiritualism.

I will defer discussion of the other two categories of communications to future posts because this entry, as I observe, has already reached its appointed length.