Mediumship study published
Electrocortical activity associated with subjective communication with the deceased
Arnaud Delorme (1,2), Julie Beischel (3), Leena Michel (1), Mark Boccuzzi (3), Dean Radin (1) and Paul J. Mills (4)
During advanced meditative practices, unusual perceptions can arise
including the sense of receiving information about unknown people who
are deceased. As with meditation, this mental state of communication
with the deceased involves calming mental chatter and becoming receptive
to subtle feelings and sensations. Psychometric and brain
electrophysiology data were collected from six individuals who had
previously reported accurate information about deceased individuals
under double-blind conditions. Each experimental participant performed
two tasks with eyes closed.
In the first task, the participant was given
only the first name of a deceased person and asked 25 questions. After
each question, the participant was asked to silently perceive
information relevant to the question for 20 s and then respond verbally.
Responses were transcribed and then scored for accuracy by individuals
who knew the deceased persons. Of the four mediums whose accuracy could
be evaluated, three scored significantly above chance (p <
0.03). The correlation between accuracy and brain activity during the 20
s of silent mediumship communication was significant in frontal theta
for one participant (p < 0.01).
In the second task,
participants were asked to experience four mental states for 1 min each:
(1) thinking about a known living person, (2) listening to a biography,
(3) thinking about an imaginary person, and (4) interacting mentally
with a known deceased person. Each mental state was repeated three
times. Statistically significant differences at p < 0.01 after
correction for multiple comparisons in electrocortical activity among
the four conditions were obtained in all six participants, primarily in
the gamma band (which might be due to muscular activity).
These
differences suggest that the impression of communicating with the
deceased may be a distinct mental state distinct from ordinary thinking
or imagination.
Comments
COMMENTS: Communicating with the dead is possible only in the first 40 days after death since after this period the disembodied energies of the deceased person begin separating into individual aspects which then vibrate at frequencies other than those of the gross physical plane and so get scattered and remain out of reach.
Within the first 40 days, when the disembodied energies of the person are intact and within the terrestrial dimensions, contact can be established using certain invocations, oijua board or planchette but the results are dubious in most cases since subconscious memories of the medium play a major role in the process - the subconscient becomes active and sends into the surface consciousness images, words, sensations and impulses which the untutored mind of the medium mistakes as messages from the dead and besides there exist several mischievous entities in the disembodied state in the surrounding environment, who, on seeing an unprotected novice dabbling in the occult, impersonate the deceased who is sought to be contacted and deceive the medium and at times take possession of his energy-fields where more damage is executed in the medium's life. Most mediums, perhaps 99.99 % mediums, are of this inferior type.
Use of LSD, alcohol, ganja and other mind altering substances also open up the user's consciousness invariably in the lower dimensions where the subconscious meets the lower vital consciousness-force and here the spaced out person begins seeing weird forms and hears strange voices and is often manipulated in this state and comes back into the waking consciousness an unbalanced person on account of this unsettling experience and the continuing influence that it exercises on his consciousness. Medication simply desensitizes the neurons and nerve endings so that the affected person loses touch with these adverse influences that then sink into his subconscious and often trouble him from there by shaking up his surface faculties.
Mediums, substance abusers and the mentally ill are in most cases influenced by these disordered energy formations that they encounter in altered mind states.
Brain scans and EEG analyses reveal nothing about the actual play of the energies and their effects going on in the subject's conscious-energy fields.
Psychiatrists and psi researchers who're clueless about the supra-physical phenomena and the concomitant dangers usually get "possessed" or mentally ill themselves in varying degrees by dealing with affected persons who could be patients or mediums or participants in mind-matter experiments.
After death, the discarnate conscious-energy field of the deceased unfolds and scatters each of its planes - emotional, mental, psychic - into the various universal dimensions. At times, some portion of these discarnate energies get attracted to human beings, animals or trees in keeping with the law of affinity. The cumulative impressions of a person's earthly karma are recorded in the individual's core conscious-energy field and remain there in involved form until the causal mechanism of that state compels it to seek re-incarnation - most things in nature get recycled in lesser or greater degree.
The conscious-energy field that has attained to a state of stato-dynamic equilibrium does not get recycled and remains poised in its state of equanimity.
The advanced meditative state stands high above cheap sensational phenomena like contacting the dead and in deep meditative states the experiences include the one-in-all and the all-in-one state, the cosmic vastness, the cosmic peace, glimpses of the higher transcendental states, the feeling of immortality, perception of the root mechanism of the causal plane above mind, vital and matter and insights into the planes that exceed the mind plane and so on.
Joel
Arno was the primary mover on the Frontiers article, with significant help from our friends at the Windbridge Institute.
The accuracy ratings were performed for each medium separately. Adjusting p values across mediums to look at a group effect reduces the significance accordingly. But for accuracy we were interested in assessing each individual, and not the group.
PART 1
I'm sorry if certain statements in my post have upset you. I thought you were open to being questioned. A seeker of truth welcomes all kinds of comments. Why didn't you protest when I pointed out the major error that most people make in considering consciousness an agency of dynamism when it cannot be so since consciousness or awareness lacks matter/energy and so it can neither exist by itself nor can it function independently since to function it would need energy to do work? This implies that consciousness is simply the intelligent/perceptive principle in energy/matter thus making energy/matter conscious.
When you use terms like "advanced meditative states" and link that up with contacting the dead with all its dangers and the manner in which most mediums get fooled as stated in my original post and then try to highlight brain scanning/EEG techniques that superficially indicate which part of the brain is activated or which waves are set up during the meditative state then obviously the inferences are either dubious or questionable.
If the subtle experience takes place within the brain energy field then a brain scan/EEG can superficially pinpoint which part of the brain gets activated or which form of brain wave is generated. However, when the conscious- energy field lifts outside the brain and stations itself above the head from where it establishes causal contact with the higher frequencies with minimal connection with the brain-body system then what can these brain scans and EEG recordings tell us? Nothing, except perhaps a small perturbation would be recorded which corresponds more to the energy trapped in the brain so that neurons don't die while the center of perceptive action has shifted above the head. BTW, meditation is not about feeling relaxed or losing one's self in an expanding mental fog as most "advanced meditators" claim - that is not meditation but a kind of self-hypnosis. One can feel relaxed even when one is content in a relationship or after having great sex or when one eats one's favorite food.
Meditation ceases once trance commences....(there exist 200 odd trance states) leading to samadhi or stasis of varying intensities.
continued....
If the Higher Consciousness-Force is activated by deep aspiration or by meditation on the root meaning of the mantra with the concentration fixed at a certain point of the nervous system that corresponds to a specific state of vibration of the energy field then the field reverses and begins ascending until it attains to the frequency of vibration generated by the mantra and besides at a later stage once the higher plane of the field of energy attained to dynamically descends into the lower planes then the actual process of transformation occurs with all its concomitant objective manifestations of intense heat radiated from the body, light emanating from the body, opening up of the optic and olfactory nerves, genetic corrections, forging superior synaptic connections, cleaning out the subconscious of perversions and fears, atrophy of certain body parts that're cumbersome and stand in the way of the new changes sought to be introduced in the brain-body, anti-ageing, dilation of pupils, unbearable pain in the body as the higher frequencies of the energy field begin vibrating in the cells and nerves that're not accustomed to such great intensities, horripilation and so on. However, there take place many "attacks" from the hostile agencies prior to or in the aftermath of the experience especially in the descending form of the yoga and so great dangers exist that can maim, mentally unbalance or kill the yogi.....
Those yogis (like say Moshe, Jesus, Buddha) who experience the ascent of the consciousness into any of the higher frequencies depending on the capacity of the activated mantra at their disposal do not manifest these typical symptoms associated with the dynamic descent into the body of the higher frequencies of the energy field and so with them everything is seen or experienced in a trance or from a height and besides there takes place no radical transformation of their lower faculties including the body that remain largely unregenerate as before but at the same time I must add that the ascending form of yoga confers certain feeble experiences like visions, opens up powers of a range of conscious-energy known in yogic parlance as the prana (the vital) and induces a certain degree of prescience that after a time usually goes wrong with the intervention of other forces into the causation which is why the vast majority of prophecies fail.
The complete yoga includes both ascent and descent.
I have to agree with Dean about the disparaging nature of your comments. Your posts on this blog contain several bold, elitist assertions that are entirely baseless and unjustified. For example, in one instance you state:
"Your face, talk, movements and if I may add your energy field shows such 'contamination' coming from these 'possessed' subjects." This is quite a deprecating thing to say.
What justification do you have for asserting that these subjects - with whom you've never had any contact, and know absolutely nothing about at neither a personal nor general level - are "contaminated" and/or "possessed"? What's discernible from these behaviors that enables you to peg someone as "contaminated", and how would you distinguish an individual who is from one who isn't on that basis? What do these terms even mean the sense you are using them? Please present any shred of evidence or line of reasoning to support these statements (or for that matter any one of the other myriad ontological claims you've made), lest they remain as they are: pseudoscientific dogma.
My focus is what is scientifically verifiable. I'm interested in hearing about personal experiences, but ultimately I only trust assertions that can be rigorously tested.
JOEL: Are you Dr Radin Radin's pet spokesman that you're rushing to his defense? Had I been in Dr Radin's place and had my work been in mind-matter studies and had I been into meditation (as he claims), I would have welcomed any kind of statement - polite or impolite.
A certain level of maturity and equanimity is called for.
Every experience - good, bad, mixed or neutral - should serve as a learning experience without egoism or megalomania coming into the picture.
And, as for you, John, based on a superficial understanding of any issue, don't rush to take sides.
It's callow and biased.
JOHN FLYNNE: "Your posts on this blog contain several bold, elitist assertions that are entirely baseless and unjustified."
JOEL: Yes, the very nature of the supraphysical ranges/subtle phenomena put the subject beyond the scope of crass materialistic methods of scientific investigation though of course at times there occur physical manifestations of the same....
JOHN FLYNNE: For instance, "Your face, talk, movements and if I may add your energy field shows such 'contamination' coming from these 'possessed' subjects. This is quite a deprecating thing to say."
JOEL: I have spoken the truth based on my yogic perceptions of Dr Radin's persona and force fields.
Is Dr Radin a yogi?
Obviously, not.
Reading books on spirituality, knowing mathematical equations, learning to operate lab equipment, measuring electrical outputs of brainwaves and getting patted on the back by peers does not make one a yogi.
How many supersenuous experiences has Dr Radin had till date?
Obviously, none.
As for the culture of "pop meditation" that billions resort to, well, all I can say is that it is not yoga and cannot open one's force fields to the supraphysical ranges of consciousness.
Yoga in its experiential form is very different when compared to its popular understanding.
The fact that Dr Radin's working in such a sensitive field of research like mind-matter (albeit employing superficial material methods of evaluation that reveal almost nothing expect vague results that're open to interpretation) brings him on a regular basis into direct contact with very many "psychic" persons, who, in a vast majority of cases, have disordered energies vibrating in them.
Most psychiatrists and most psi researchers who deal with such "possessed" persons get "affected" themselves by transfer of the disordered energies and as such nearly all of the professionals affected in this interactive manner, being non-yogis and highly desensitized to the finer sensations, are not even aware of the "adverse influence" until the symptoms begin overtly manifesting and then too they tend to equate the depression, failed relationships, blocks in work, ill-health, mental or emotional uneasiness, obsessions, excess exhaustion, premature deaths, suicidal thoughts, substance abuse, excess sensuality (sexual promiscuity), tremors of nerves, exaggeration of personality flaws and other such negative symptoms as being due to germs, lack of emotional control, weather changes, natural ups and downs as part of life or the like, while the yogi simply sits back and "sees" the disordered energies at work in the person's force fields and knows the root cause...
I like Dr Radin and so I gave out the warning with the best of intentions but well it's been badly received and this is the reason why I usually never warn a person in these matters even when I perceive what is going on in his/her circumconscient (aura), subliminal, surface consciousness and subconscient. I just keep silent knowing my warnings or hints will be badly received and expectedly sooner or later misfortune strikes the affected person.
Shalom-Namaste,
Joel
You cannot be sure.
On a related but slightly-off topic-note, did you see this article on the Scientific American site about the NDE of Eben Alexander? It's written by Michael Shermer, so you can guess the line of argument before reading. http://ow.ly/rqAAA What fascinates me is the circularity of the reasoning, and the examined presuppositions which underpin the arguments. e.g. Shermer asked Alexander the following question: "I asked him how, if his brain was really nonfunctional, he could have any memory of these experiences, given that memories are a product of neural activity?"
Right.
I submit that the ethics have been considered at length by the ancients.
[quote]
The very mechanics are desirous of fame after
death. Why did Phidias include a likeness of himself in the shield of
Minerva, when he was not allowed to inscribe his name on it? What do
our philosophers think on the subject? Do not they put their names to
those very books which they write on the contempt of glory? If, then,
universal consent is the voice of nature, and if it is the general
opinion everywhere that those who have quitted this life are still
interested in something, we also must subscribe to that opinion. And if
we think that men of the greatest abilities and virtues see most
clearly into the power of nature, because they themselves are her most
perfect work, it is very probable that, as every great man is
especially anxious to benefit posterity, there is something of which he
himself will be sensible after death.
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/14988/pg14988.txt
Best,
Michael.
Mediums invite communications. They don't (and as far as I can tell they can't) force it.
BTW the study this year was sponsored by NHK, the Japanese Public Broadcasting network. They will include the experiment in a special TV program focusing on psi research around the world. I'm told it will be shown in the form of two 90-minute program segments. I'm hoping that the programs will be picked up by other distributors, so an English version may become available.
I haven't seen any of the iclif presentations posted yet. In fact I'm not sure they will be posted. But if they are I'll repost on this blog.
Mediums invite communications. They don't (and as far as I can tell they can't) force it.
I believe there is some documented evidence that mediums can compel spirits who have chosen to enter them.
I believe there was at least one spiritualist group - a husband-and-wife-team - who were capable of compelling spirits to experience unpleasant sensations, after the spirits had made the decision to enter the medium.
They made the habit of "rescuing" deceased persons of low moral character. First the deceased miscreant - e.g. a heroin-addicted murderer - would enter the medium. Then the husband would read it some kind of Riot Act, giving the medium electric shocks if necessary, which the spirits perceived as pain. In most cases, the spirit agreed to mend its ways in the future.
I'm sorry I don't have their names to hand - I can research this - they are well-documented.
But I suppose very few mediums have reproduced those effects.
As for other ethical concerns - seances have been going on in the modern world since the Fox sisters. If there were ethical problems, I think Crookes and Kardec and Myers would have written something about the grave ethical challenges.
There are some trivial ethical concerns that barely warrant mention - for example, the experimenter must observe some code of ethics to avoid improper relationships with assistants. But that's standard operating procedure - and that's a concern with living-to-living relationships, not living-to-discarnate relationships. Now, I believe that one Trevor H. Hall has unjustly slandered Crookes by claiming that Crookes had some kind of improper relationship with his medium, but I think Crookes is reliable and those who slander Crookes are not reliable.
Maybe I'm not well-acquainted with the literature, but I really can't think of any serious ethical objections.
Yes.
If you ask me to prove that, I can't, it is a belief just as any talk about "disembodied energies" "vibrating at frequencies".
I've had exactly two experiences in six decades in which I sensed what I could only call "ghosts" which I had a feeling were human and conscious, in places where I am absolutely no people may have died in the past century (on my family farm). I don't know what that was but they weren't like anything I've ever experienced before or after. Other than one time when one of my sisters and I had the same dream during the same night, distant from each other, on a theme that neither of us could account for during the previous month, they are the sum total of my experience with of these kinds of things.
It sometimes subsequently communicated through Mrs Wickland.
http://www.new-birth.net/booklet/30_years_among_the_dead.PDF
For example, Page 16 reads :
The transference of the mental aberration or psychosis from a patient to the psychic
intermediary, Mrs. Wickland, is facilitated by the use of static electricity, which is
applied to the patient, frequently in the presence of the psychic. Although this electricity
is harmless to the patient it is exceedingly effective, for the obsessing spirit cannot long
resist such electrical treatment and is dislodged.
Induced by our invisible helpers the spirit may then entrance the psychic, when it
becomes possible to come into direct contact with the entity, and an endeavor is made to
bring him to a realization of his true condition and of his higher possibilities. He is then
removed and cared for by the advanced spirits and Mrs. Wickland again returns to her
normal self.
In many cases remarkable evidence that discarnate entities were the offending cause of
aberration has been obtained by a system of experimental concentration in a psychic
circle. Obsessing spirits have been dislodged from victims frequently residing at a
distance, conveyed to the circle by the co-operating intelligences and allowed to control
the psychic. Such spirits often complain of having been driven away, yet are ignorant of
being spirits, or of having controlled or influenced anyone.
Thank you in advance!
That said, I think it's likely that today's theoretical understanding of EM is incomplete, so perhaps in the future a more comprehensive understanding will be relevant. But given today's models, it is insufficient to explain psi.