PATHWAYS OF THE MIND

Chapter 8. Subtle Body

The whole history of science shows us that whenever the educated and scientific men of any age have denied the facts of other investigators on a priori grounds of absurdity or impossibility, the deniers have always been wrong.

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)

The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)

We shall now briefly survey various phenomena that are elucidated by accepting subtle body into the picture of who we are—and who we think we are. The findings presented here, while too unsightly to be seen by fundamentalist materialists, are supported by copious evidence, of which I am only presenting a small sampling. I shall introduce them using the car-and-driver metaphor discussed in the last chapter, according to which the physical body is likened to the car while the driver of the car is the subtle body or the psyche. As I wrote in the preceding chapter I use the terms ‘subtle body’ and ‘psyche’ more or less interchangeably, for now, since I am not aware of definitive findings that might distinguish differences of degree that might be there.

CAR AND DRIVER

The most important instructive feature of the metaphor is the absence of agency of the car on its own. It functions only when it has a driver. Thus while “ordinary people” tend to identify themselves as their bodies, or as parts of their bodies such as their brains, there are some—like those who have had out-of-body experiences—who identify instead with their psyches; they see the psyche as what operates the body, as the driver operates the car. Among other insights provided by this metaphor are (1) the form of the driver is different from the form of the car; and (2) the car has built-in adaptations that make it easy to be controlled by the driver, such as the steering wheel, the accelerator pedal, brakes, gear shift.

On the other hand, no metaphor should be taken too seriously—it is after all only a metaphor. On the question of the form of the subtle body there is some evidence I can point to, but not enough to allow me to suggest a conclusive answer; in fact not any answer we can have confidence in.

Out of Body—The driver can leave the car

Out of body experiences (OBE) have been extensively described. Two good surveys are found in Emily Williams Kelly et al., Unusual experiences near death and related phenomena (in Kelly, Kelly, et al. 2007) and Charles Tart, The End of Materialism (2009).

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In the typical case, the experiencer reports rising upward out of the body towards or to the ceiling of the room (if inside) and looking down upon the body of the experiencer and other features of the scene. It has been estimated that up to ten percent of persons have had such experiences. I am not one of them, but a close friend of mind described to me an experience she had some years ago, which was very much like the typical ones described in the literature. I found the account convincing, but more important are the hundreds of cases that have been described by Tart and others. I quote here the account of an experiencer, 15 years old at the time, from Tart (2009:189-190):

I’d had an argument with my parents; so instead of prolonging it, I left until I had cooled off. I went outside, looked up, and saw the moon; it was a very clear and beautiful might. I went onto the porch and threw myself facedown on my cot. I had my fists clenched, my teeth gritted together, and all my muscles taut. I wished I were dead.

Suddenly, I felt completely relaxed. I opened my eyes and realized I was about twenty feet above the porch roof with my house below me. I saw the dark outlines of the trees, the pond, the lawn, the stars, everything. I heard the crickets too. I just stared around at everything, which was unbelievably clear and vivid. I saw my legs and, therefore, knew I had a body.

I wanted to look at the moon, which was behind and above me, so I twisted my body—ever so easily—and looked at it. With my “new” clear vision, it looked more beautiful than I had ever seen it. I felt so free and light. The world seemed to be at my command. I loved this new world and wanted to explore it.

I looked toward the west and had just decided to travel out in that direction, and then just happened to glance down. I saw right through the roof to my “lifeless” body just lying there, the same way I had left it. Then an intense fear gripped me. Was I really dead? What had I done? When I’d make that wish, I really hadn’t wanted it to come true.

Suddenly, I could see my parents finding me—dead. They were crying, and my mother was wringing her hands. I felt absolutely terrible and wanted to return more than anything else. I wanted to give life back to that lifeless form that belonged to me.

Then I had a very strange sensation. Like the steady, very strong, overpowering pull of a taut rubber band. I didn’t see anything, but I felt my “new” body being pulled downward. Then I found myself in my “old” body. They were now joined again. I told myself that’s where they’d stay, ‘cause I didn’t want to try it again.

Near Death—The driver leaves the car when it has to be taken in for repair

This phenomenon, termed the near-death experience (NDE), has been extensively studied over the past 50 years and is also reported in much older literature. Good treatments include Raymond Moody’s Life after Life (1975), Charles Tart’s The End of Materialism (2009), Pim Van Lommel’s Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience (2010), and Chris Carter’s Science and the Near-Death Experience (2010).

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Thousands of cases have been documented. Most but not all NDE’s include OBE’s. Current estimates are that, “due to modern medical resuscitation technology, millions of people may have had an NDE” (Tart 2009).

There is also, as you might expect, literature challenging the validity of the reports. A common objection is that there are “just a few anecdotal reports”. Actually, thousands of cases have been reported. But I am not undertaking in this book to argue against the materialists looking for excuses to reject evidence. Arguments have already been presented copiously in earlier literature, including the works cited above.

From studies of numerous cases, Moody (1975) and others have observed a number of common features typically present in NDE’s. The commonality is especially noteworthy since most of the experiencers were not aware of previously occurring NDE’s of others, and they represent a number of different cultures. The following list is based on that presented by Charles Tart (2009: 228ff), who in turn used the observations of Moody (1975). Not all of the features are present in all cases. Usually the experiencer is a patient in a hospital, and he (or she) . .

(1) hears himself (or herself) pronounced dead, (2) hears an uncomfortable noise,

(3) feels himself moving through a tunnel, (4) observes that he is outside his body, (5) sees his physical body from a distance, (6) watches the resuscitation attempt (usually from above), (7) experiences emotional upheaval, (8) observes that he has a body but it’s not his physical body, (9) sees people coming to greet and help him,(10) sees relatives and friends who have previously died,(11) feels “a loving, warm spirit of a kind he has never encountered before” (Tart),(12) sees a being of “light” appearing before him,(13) is asked by this being to evaluate his life,(14) is shown a panoramic instantaneous playback of major features of his life,(15) approaches a boundary “between earthly life and the next life” (Tart),(16) is overwhelmed by intense feelings of love, joy, and peace,(17) is told that he must go back to earth—his time for death has not yet come,(18) does not want to return,(19) reunites with the physical body.

Later, he (or she) tries to tell others about the experience but has trouble doing so, and can find no earthly words to describe what has happened. Other people usually don’t believe him anyway, so he stops trying. Finally, it is commonly the case that his life is profoundly affected after the experience, and that he no longer fears death.

As Tart observes (2009: 229), “If NDE’s were nothing but hallucinatory experiences…, then we would expect great variation from person to person, and the qualities of the experience would be largely determined by the culture and beliefs of each person experiencing the NDE.”

Number (8) of the list above calls for a comment: “observes that he has a body but it’s not his physical body”. This wording seems to imply that the subtle body resembles

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the physical body, but we recall from Chapter 2 that perception is very unreliable and that it relies heavily on projection: We see what we expect to see. There is also another problem to consider, a very serious one: How does any perception take place, as suggested by (5) and (6), without the body’s sense organs and without the perceptual structures of the brain? Clearly there are some important issues for the new psychology to investigate.

I conclude this account with one case that is particularly striking since the presence of any brain activity is ruled out. This is known as the Pam Reynolds case—not her real name—described, for example by Charles Tart (2009:230ff, after Sabom 1998). As mentioned, this is a case, like that described by Eben Alexander in his best-selling personal account (2012), in which the brain was completely shut down; this condition rules out hallucination as an alternative explanation, since there is no functioning brain to be hallucinating. Pam Reynolds underwent surgery for an aneurism in a large artery at the base of her brain. Because of the location, normal neurosurgical techniques were too risky, so a new surgical technique called hypothermic cardiac arrest, developed by Dr. Robert Spetzler, was employed. In this technique, the body temperature was “lowered to sixty degrees, the blood was drained from her head, her heartbeat and breathing stopped, and her brain waves flattened. In everyday terms, she [was] dead (Michael Sabom, Light and Death 1998, p. 37). Blood was drained from her body to keep the aneurism from bursting, and intravenous potassium chloride was injected to stop her heart. Core body temperature was lowered to 60°. EEG electrodes on her scalp measured cortical activity, while other electrodes measured brain stem activity. The surgical procedure was performed after there was zero brain activity. By all usual medical criteria, she was dead.

When she left her body, she felt as if she was exiting through the top of her head. When she regained consciousness, she described features of the operation, the doctors, and the setting that were unknowable by anyone not present in the room to observe, including the way her scalp was shaved and the medical observers present in the operating room. In her NDE, she met her “loving grandmother” on “the other side” and experienced several more of the typical NDE phenomena.

People who have had NDE’s are convinced by them that what has happened is an indication of what will happen when their body actually dies. In our terms, the subtle body evidently continues its existence after the physical body perishes. And what they experience is that they, their selves, have continued their existence during the period in which the physical body was dead or near death. That is to say, they identify themselves as their subtle bodies, at least from that point on; this is in contrast to the common identification of oneself with one’s physical body.

More recently a number of additional phenomena related to NDE’s have been described, including group experiences shared by a dying person and loved ones in the hospital or hospice room or elsewhere (Dossey 2013: 100-108).

Beyond Death—When the car finally breaks down for good, the driver leaves it behind

To those who have experienced them, NDE’s constitute evidence of survival after bodily death. There are several additional kinds of evidence, including after death communications (ADC’s), deathbed visions, remembrance of previous bodily lives,

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apparitions, and communications through mediums. Chris Carter, in his Science and the Afterlife Experience: Evidence for the Immortality of Consciousness (2012), provides detailed discussion of the evidence that is out there, which is far more copious than you would suppose based on the attention it gets from mainstream scholars too timid to pay attention.

Reincarnation—having left behind his old, broken car, the driver gets a new one

Systematic scientific investigation of reincarnation began in the 1950’s with the work of Dr. Ian Stevenson (1918-2007),a professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia. His important book, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation (1966) was followed by numerous other publications, including Reincarnation and Biology (2 volumes, 1997). Stevenson and his colleagues intensively investigated over 250 cases. Typically it is children who remember previous lives. There is a window for investigation, from about age 3, before which they have insufficient language skills, to about age 5-7, when the memory of the earlier life fades away.

I describe here just one of Stevenson’s cases, that of Bishen Chand. This account is based on that presented by Chris Carter (2012: 25-28). Bishen Chand was born in 1921 in Bareilly, India. As young child, he spoke of a previous life in Pilibhit, a town 50 kilometers away. No one in his family knew anyone in Pilibhit. His father told a friend about the child’s claim, and this friend told an attorney, K.K. Sahay, who decided to investigate. Mr. Sahay visited the family in 1926. He began his investigation by writing down 20 claims made by the boy.

Among the claims of Bishen Chand—at about age 5—were these:

His name had been Laxmi Narain Had an uncle named Har Narain His father had been a wealthy landowner He had had a mistress

Mr. Sahay, the lawyer, went with the boy and his father to Pilibhit. There, a resident showed them a photo of Laxmi Narain and Har Narain. There had indeed been a man there named Laxmi Narain, who had died a few years earlier a the age of 32, and who had had a father named Har Narain. The boy put his finger on the photo and said, “Here is Har Narain and here am I”. The boy recognized houses in Pilibhit, including the house of one Sander Lal, which he had described as having a green gate. That gate was at that time painted with a faded varnish, non-green, but when the varnish was peeled away the gate was found to be green underneath. The house of Har Narain was then in ruins, but features of the house that could still be identified corresponded with his claimed memories.

People in the town asked him for the name of his mistress; he answered “Padma”, and they said that was correct. They also presented him with a set of tabla (drums), as Laxmi Narain had played the tabla. The boy played them skillfully, although in his present life he had never even seen tabla before, according to his father.

Laxmi Harain’s mother was still alive. She asked him a series of test questions, which he answered correctly. One of the questions was, where had Har Narain hidden the

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treasure he was thought to have had? The boy led the way to a room in the old house, and there they found a cache of gold coins.

The boy claimed that in his former life he could speak Urdu. He unexpectedly used Urdu words instead of the Hindi words for two objects.

Of the 20 claims originally recorded by the attorney, only one was found to be incorrect: He identified Har Narain as his uncle rather than as his father.

Possession—A driver who has lost his car hijacks another one

The refusal of modern ‘enlightenment’ to treat ‘possession’ as a hypothesis to be spoken of as even possible, in spite of the massive human tradition based on concrete experience in its favor, has always seemed to me a curious example of the power of fashion in things scientific.

William James

Evidently there are many psyches out there who have lost their physical bodies and are yearning to have one. A physical body seems to confer advantages to a self that are highly desired, just as a driver accustomed to driving a car likes being able to move faster and to more places. The metaphor shouldn’t be taken too seriously, lest one suppose that such a carless driver could just find another car without a driver. That is what happens in reincarnation, in which the psyche enters a newborn or a fetus (which of these two possibilities is an important issue on which more evidence is needed). But some psyches are apparently confused, as if supposing that the only available cars are those already being driven. If a car’s driver is not in full control of his car he is susceptible to allowing another driver to come in and take over.

This is the situation described In earlier times by the term ‘possession’, and in modern times as MPD or DID. Or, at least some cases of MPD/DID appear to be of this type; while less dramatic cases are probably accounted for as alternative states of the same psyche, such as a repressed childhood personality. The older term—‘possession’—was often associated with demons as the hijackers, but many cases have been reported of possession by more benign entities. A comprehensive survey of the older literature on possession is that of T. D. Oesterreich (1880-1949), who taught philosophy at the at the University of Tübingen from 1910 until 1933, when he was driven out by the Nazis because of his anti-militaristic views. His lengthy classic on possession was first published in German in 1921. The English translation by D. Ibberson, Possession, Demoniacal and Other, among Primitive Races, in Antiquity, the Middle Age, and Modern Times, was published in 1966.

I offer here as an illustrative example the case of Iris/Lucía, described by Larry Dossey (2013: 120-122), based on an exhaustive report by a team of investigators (Barrington, Mulacs & Rivas 2005). Iris Farczády was a well-educated Hungarian girl who took pleasure in intellectual pursuits, including literature and mathematics. She also “had dabbled in séances”. According to Dossey’s summary of the case (2013: 120),

At age 15 she underwent a drastic personality change. She claimed to be Lucía Alvarez de Salvio, a 41-year-old Spanish working woman who Iris claimed had died earlier that year in Madrid… Lucía was the antithesis of Iris—a working-class, poverty-stricken slum dweller who scrubbed floors, cleaned, washed,

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cooked, sang popular songs, danced Flamenco, married as a teenager, and hated the upper classes. After being transformed into Lucía, Iris ever afterward spoke fluent Spanish and no longer understood her native Hungarian. Iris had apparently never learned Spanish nor had the opportunity to acquire it, having never associated with any Spanish-speaking people.

In addition to her fluency in Spanish she was a master of the choreography and performance of Flamenco and other Spanish dances.

As to the important question of why this intelligent and well-off Hungarian girl would allow her body to be taken over by the subtle body of an impoverished slum dweller, the most important factor to keep in mind was that she had “dabbled in séances”. It appears from similar cases that a driver will only get displaced from the driver’s seat if he/she becomes susceptible by engaging in such “dabbling” or otherwise making one’s body open to such commandeering. An acquaintance of mine in California once reported to me that she could, mentally, invite “psychic communication” to come to her through automatic writing, but that when she did so it felt as if her hand was being taken over by another “entity”; she stopped issuing such mental invitations in order to protect her psychic integrity.

In one early published report of an NDE, the experiencer was taken by his guide to the inside of a bar, where he saw subtle bodies of confused deceased alcoholics hanging around near the ceiling, waiting for someone sitting at the bar to become drunk enough to lose control of his physical body, whereupon one of these subtle bodies would temporarily take possession of that physical body and order another drink, in order to once again experience that seeming pleasure.

DUPLICATION OF FUNCTION

As the driver operates the car, the psyche operates upon the body. The car has apparatus to make it controllable by the driver, such as the steering wheel and the accelerator. Similarly the psyche operates on the body as a means of being efficacious in the physical world. Since the brain is what operates body, through the frontal and prefrontal cortex—with the aid of somatosensory areas of the parietal cortex—along with adjacent subcortical structures, it is what corresponds to the devices in the car that allow the driver to control it. The psyche evidently also has access to posterior regions of the brain, those which control perceptual processes.

From phenomena like those described in the preceding section we may conclude that such access to the cortex can also come from alien psyches, not the primary psyche associated with a physical body.

It appears that there are many mental functions performed by both physical and subtle bodies, in apparent duplication. These include memory and perception, functions that in their ordinary operation can be largely explained in terms of brain structures and processes (cf. Chapter 4). NDE reports indicate that some kind of perception occurs in the subtle body (as in the case of Pam Reynolds, described above); the issue of how it operates is an important research opportunity.

As for memory, the apparent sharing or duplication —in both physical and subtle body—may be better accounted for by supposing that the brain is only reflecting in some

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way what is going on at the subtler level. This despite all the elaborate neural structures that the brain has to devote to the task (cf. Chapter 4).

In any case, the data also suggest that memory in the subtle body extends farther than that that of the (physical) brain, as it can include memories of one or more previous lives. Here it is helpful to recall that memory of a previous life is generally lost by about age six or seven; it may be that the memory function of the subtle body fades away from accessibility by consciousness while the brain takes over that function during the ordinary life of the body. Being suppressed, such extended memory functions are still present but are temporarily inoperative, somehow trapped in unconsciousness while the brain is in charge. It has been observed many times that memory of a previous life can still be brought forth even in adults under hypnosis (cf. Weiss 1996).

In Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, memory and other cognitive functions are impaired as a result of physical damage to the brain, and whatever intact memories are still available in the subtle body are not accessible. But if the body ceases to operate, as has been observed in the state of terminal lucidity or in a near death experience (NDE), the mental power of the subtle body is liberated. From such phenomena we may be able to surmise that the psyche is largely unconscious while mind relies on brain during the ordinary life of the body.

We also have evidence that similar expanded awareness is occasionally given to some persons without death or near death or hypnosis, through what are called mystical experiences. Such awareness can evidently be promoted and enhanced by the practice of meditation; possibly to some extant also by the ingestion of certain psychoactive substances that operate on the brain to weaken its hold on consciousness. (This is not a recommendation!)

COMMUNICATION FROM PEDESTRIANS

Every metaphor breaks down if pushed too far. A real driver in a real car can see pedestrians. But if we ask this metaphor to operate without misleading us, we have to ignore that fact; we might think of cars travelling on a freeway, where there are usually no pedestrians to be seen; but that situation does not correspond to that of bodies and psyches, since we have evidence that psyches without physical bodies are often present in the vicinity of bodies but are unseen by them, and unheard. It is more like the cars on city streets, where pedestrians are often present. But for the metaphor to work, we have to imagine that the drivers of the cars are unable to see those pedestrians.

Auditory perception as we ordinarily understand it at the physical level is triggered by inputs received by the ears. The vibrations of air molecules (transmitted from the eardrum via the ossicles of the inner ear) are converted by the cochlea to neural pulses, which are transmitted through the brain stem to the auditory cortex. What we hear consciously is the end result of an enormous amount of neural processing (virtually all of it unconscious) that occurs in the brain stem and in the auditory cortex. But ordinary people can also activate their auditory cortex from higher cortical levels, as we do when “hearing in our heads” a song that we are thinking about, or the voice of a loved one. On the other hand, auditory hallucinations (“hearing voices”) seem to involve some kind of similar activation of portions of auditory cortex without input from the ears, but without

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such conscious control. While such occurrences are usually considered hallucinations, surely an accurate appraisal for many of them, for some cases there is evidence that activation of auditory cortex is coming from another psyche. These cases are nowadays commonly called “channeling”. It is similar to possession, but it is temporary and it may or may not involve loss of consciousness of the host.

Similar access to the visual cortex allows an “apparition” to appear to a person, such as the appearance of a recently deceased husband to his grieving widow (cf. Dossey 2013: 123); just as access to the auditory cortex allows a person to hear the voice of someone whose physical body (perhaps deceased) is not there.

There are some unusual people who can “see” subtle bodies existing apart from physical bodies, or “hear” the voices coming from such subtle bodies. Such people have to be distinguished from schizophrenics, whose similar perceptions are deemed delusional. Auditory hallucinations (“hearing voices”) seem to involve some kind of similar activation of portions of auditory cortex without input from the ears. The originating factors are evidently not known.

Channeling

Activation of auditory cortex may come from another psyche in some instances; this is commonly known as “channeling”. The difference between schizophrenia and actual channeling is not understood, but this possibility is one of several suggesting that psyche can provide direct stimulation to the cortex. Such stimulation can affect visual, somatosensory, and olfactory cortex on the side of perception, and can also affect the front brain, that is, motor activity. The latter is involved, for example, in what is called automatic writing and channeled speaking, as in the case of Edgar Cayce, Jane Roberts (Seth), and the usual type of medium. As such phenomena arise from the operation of psyche—one’s own or that of another person, we have to conclude that psyche is able to operate directly on the cortex or some portion of it.

While such occurrences are usually considered hallucinations, surely an accurate appraisal for many of them, for some cases there is evidence that activation of auditory cortex is coming from another psyche. These are the ones commonly called “channeling” nowadays. It is similar to possession, but it is temporary and it may or may not involve loss of consciousness of the host.

What I am suggesting (as above, in the section “Duplication of Function”) is that a psyche can provide direct stimulation to the cortex of another person. Such stimulation can include not only auditory but also visual, somatosensory, and olfactory activation; that is, activation of a perceptual area of the cortex (rear brain). In some cases of channeling we find motor activation (front brain activity) stimulated from an outside source. The latter is involved, for example, in automatic writing (as in the case of F. C. H. Schiller’s brother, Chapter 7) and channeled speaking, as in the case of Edgar Cayce, Jane Roberts (Seth), and the usual type of medium.

The phenomenon called channeling has been reported in cultures all over the world, including those of native America, Africa, China, and Nepal. It is recorded from both modern and ancient times. Older cases include the Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece and the prophet Mohammed. Somewhat more recently we have the cases In Europe of Emmanuel Swedenborg and others. American reports are plentiful from the beginning of

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the spiritualist movement in 1848 up to the present. Careful scientific studies began in 1880’s in England and the U.S., where Important investigators included Henry Sidgwick, Frederic Myers, Sir Oliver Lodge, and Sir William Crookes.

Widely known modern cases include Edgar Cayce and Jane Roberts, who served as channel for an agent who called himself ‘Seth’. These two channels, like many others, would “go into a trance”—that is, lose their own consciousness—while the portions of the brain controlling consciousness and the speech apparatus were taken over by the exterior source. This is called ‘trance channeling’—the channel gets out of the way and lets the other entity take over. I once witnessed a session with Jane Roberts, whom I visited along with William Kautz, a well-known investigator of ‘intuitives’ (as he calls them). After she sank into her trance, It was quite clear that her speaking changed markedly, to a voice that was rather bombastic and was that of a person who, in my assessment, and quite unlike that of Jane Roberts herself, had a fair amount of pride and felt entitled to speak with authority.

An important feature of trance channeling is the channel’s relinquishment of his/her own consciousness during the period of the communication. Other cases are reported in which the channel retains his own consciousness while speaking for the external agent. In still other cases, the channel just “hears” the voice of the external communicator—that is, there is no activation of motor cortex from the outside agent—the activation is coming just to the auditory cortex. And in still others, the outside communicator just seems to activate higher-level linguistic portions of cortex, so that content is received but without the impression of sound. In the terms used in the relational network theory of language (Lamb 1998, 2016), the cortical activation can occur at any of the different strata of linguistic structure.

Some people have a tendency to suppose that channeled information deserves to be treated as coming from some elevated source just because it is channeled, and that it is therefore reliable and to be taken quite seriously. Mohammed, for example, is believed by millions of people to have received the Quran from a divine source. And some people suppose that the Book of Mormon was conveyed to Joseph Smith from a divine source. Be such cases as they may, most channeling is more like that from Seth to Jane Roberts. It is coming from Seth, reputed to have been a wise man of ancient times—wise, that is, but a person (existing as a subtle body with no physical body) and not divine. Ordinary people when they die must leave their bodies, and so they exist as (what I am calling) subtle bodies, or psyches, until such time as they enter into a newly born infant to live again in a body. So they are like ordinary people and not necessarily purveyors of great wisdom from “on high”, despite their unusual, perhaps extraordinary, ability to communicate to people with bodies.

The Case of Andy

I can relate to you a case from my own experience to illustrate the point that communication from a bodiless psyche is not necessarily of great significance or even of great interest. It is the case of ‘Andy’. My encounters with Andy occurred while I was teaching in the Linguistics Department at Yale. I was also running a weekly “Consciousness Table”, a weekly lunch group, on the model of the Spanish Table and the French table, with interested students including those from an interdisciplinary course on

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information sciences. And so I had acquired the reputation of a faculty member with an interest in “far-out” things.

One day a man whom I am calling Andy came to the office of the President of Yale with what he said was very important information: He had been receiving messages from God, to be conveyed to the world. They were written, by Andy’s hand but not under his own conscious control, in an unknown language that Andy and only he was able to translate into English. What better way to get these messages out to the world, he thought, than through Yale University. So he went to the president’s office and produced one of his written communications “from God” for a staff member there. That staff member referred Andy to me because he knew of my interests, and also because the communications, being in some obscure language with an obscure writing system, were of possible linguistic interest.

So began a series of meetings with Andy over a period of several weeks. He told me, along with many other interesting accounts of his experiences, the whole story of how the communications from God had started coming to him. There was first a period of preparation, consisting of a series of brief audible (to him) communications from his source to get him ready for the mission. On one occasion as he was driving down the street, he was told to stop the car and park it and get out onto the sidewalk and kneel down and pray. He did as he was told. Once he was told that he had been given the power to stare at the sun without damaging his eyes. He did so, and his eyes were not damaged. DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME!!

After these and other preparatory incidents, he began receiving the messages “from God”. He received them through his hand, writing them on paper; that is, by automatic writing. As mentioned, they were in some unknown language, and he alone was given the ability to decipher. (This feature of the story resembles the case of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.) Even the script was of an unknown type—it was not in the Roman alphabet nor any other known writing system. When he came to see me he was still receiving these messages, all in the same unknown language and script, and he could receive them at will, as he demonstrated to me on several occasions. When I asked him to translate for me, he obliged. The translation was a bit hesitant and not very fluent; but most important, the content was not very interesting, in my estimation, certainly not worth presenting to the world.

On one occasion he produced a message addressed to me in English, with rather flowery longhand script, stating that he was also able to communicate in my language. He also produced a number of diagrams, claimed by Andy to be of great significance; but Andy was unable to make them comprehensible to me or to convey just why they were of interest. He also claimed once when I was with a friend that he could see a bodiless psyche accompanying the friend, a deceased family member who was hovering over the friend’s shoulder. Andy said approvingly that it was clear that she came from a good family.

Some years later when I was teaching at Rice University I had a few meetings with a similar person, this one a woman. She was also receiving messages from what she believed to be a divine source, and also in an unknown language and an unknown writing system. In this writing system, meaning was conveyed even by the varying angles of the short line segments making up a “character”; the “characters” ran together in a

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continuous succession without breaks. The translations, which only she could produce, were likewise of little interest in my estimation.

These cases demonstrated to my satisfaction that channeled information is not necessarily to be taken seriously. In the case of the lady in Houston we don’t even know that it was channeled at all. It could have been delusional. She might have been schizophrenic.

We may conclude that any case of claimed channeling needs to be assessed carefully. There are three factors that might render the information non-significant: (1) It might be delusional; (2) it might be fraudulent, consciously or unconsciously; or (3) it might be really coming from an external psyche but one that is not very wise, perhaps from a psyche that is itself delusional. Psyches are, after all, just ordinary people who have lost their bodies. Recall that it used to be said, back in the days of insane asylums, that in any asylum you could find at least one person who claimed to be God or Jesus. So it is with some psyches who communicate through channels.

How, then, does one know whether to trust the information that comes from a claimed channel? The answer is the same as that to be given for any piece of spoken or written communication: We have to assess it by its content, not by its claimed source. It is because of the absence of interesting content that I rejected the claims of Andy and those of the lady from Houston.

Communication through Mediums

Similar to channeling is communication through mediums; this is a topic with an enormous body of literature, commonly dismissed by materialists and mentioned with ridicule if mentioned at all. Many accounts have been provided in Chris Carter’s Science and the Afterlife Experience (2012). A medium is like a channel, except that the latter ordinarily receives communication from just one source. A medium usually has one main source, but that source has access to other psyches and so can provide messages from them.

I present here just one case of communication with a bodiless psyche, based on the account provided by Chris Carter (2012: 204-212). This was a chess game in which one player was a former grandmaster named Geza Maroczy, whose physical body had died years earlier. Back in 1900, Maroczy was ranked third in the world. In this game of chess, the opponent was the famous living grandmaster Viktor Korchnoi, who at the time of the start of the match was also ranked third in the world. Later he was ranked second. He has been called “unquestionably one of the great chess players of all time” (Chessbase April 4, 2002). The medium was Robbert Rollins (1914-1993). He did not know how to play chess and had no knowledge of chess history. He was not paid for his services as medium.

The chess game was arranged by a chess player named Wolfgang Eisenbeiss, who was acquainted with the medium. Eisenbeiss was able to obtain the willingness of Korchnoi to participate, and he asked Mr. Rollins (the medium) to try to find a deceased grandmaster, from a list he provided, who was willing to participate. Eventually he secured the willingness of (the psyche of the deceased) Maroczy.

The game began in 1985. Maroczy opened with the first move “e4”, communicated to the medium and written down by him; he had no knowledge of what it meant. It was conveyed to Korchnoi by an intermediary; Korchnoi had no direct communication with

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the medium. Korchnoi then gave his move to the intermediary, who conveyed in to the medium. And so it went, move by move. Maroczy resigned at move 48. Further details, along a list of every move of the complete game, are given by Chris Carter (2012: 204-212). After the game, Korchnoi remarked that Maroczy’s opening was rather weak and old-fashioned, but that he “has compensated for the faults of the opening by a strong end-game. In the end-game the ability of a player shows up and my opponent plays very well”.

There is an analysis of the game written in 2007 by Vernon Neppe, a neuopsychiatrist and former chess champion of South Africa (carter 2012: 207-210). Neppe’s conclusions are:

The game was played at least at the Master level; The opening was old-fashioned; Chess theory has made great strides in the way games should be opened since

1900, and Maroczy’s loss can be attributed to his weak opening; “The key move in the game, the tenth, making Maroczy’s game difficult, was

legitimate at the time of Maroczy’s death though very much out of fashion later.”

INFLUENCE OF SUBTLE BODY ON PHYSICAL BODY

What I am calling the subtle body or the psyche can have profound influence over the physical body. Phenomena in this category are similar to those described in Chapter 7.

I begin with some dream-induced phenomena described by Emily Kelly (2007: 158), based on her review of the literature. In one case, described earlier by D. H. Tuke (1884), a man dreamed he had been hit in the chest with a stone. “The vivid shock awoke him, and then he found that there was on his chest…a round mark, having the appearance of a bruise”. The next day it was swollen and he went to doctor for treatment.

In another case, described by Ian Stevenson (1997), an Indian man with typhoid fever thought that he had died (an apparent NDE) and that while in the “other realm” he was struggling to return to life and persons there had subdued him by cutting off his legs at the knees. He recovered and “was found to have some unusual horizontal scars in the skin across the front of both knees”. The “scars” persisted and were photographed by Stevenson several years later.

Such examples lend support to esoteric lore claiming that in dreams the subtle body can leave the sleeping physical body for perhaps adventurous activities, including flying. In these two examples, the subtle body sustained injury while it was off in the other milieu, which upon its return imparted effects to the physical body.

Other cases include birthmarks and birth defects apparently resulting from injury in a previous life. Ian Stevenson and colleagues, including J. B. Tucker, have conducted extensive research on such phenomena since about 1970. They are described in detail in Stevenson’s two-volume monograph (1997), and Emily Kelly has provided a brief review (2007: 232f). One interesting example is that of a boy with cluster of hypopigmented birthmarks on chest corresponding to wounds inflicted in a prior life. Stevenson describes33 cases of this kind (1997, vol. 2, 1132-1134). In 18 of them, birthmarks correspond to entry and exit gunshot wounds, in which the mark corresponding to the exit wound is larger and more irregularly shaped. An example is a person with a birthmark on the

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throat. If it was from an entry wound, one would expect to also find marks from an exit wound. According to Emily Kelly’s account (Emily Kelly 2007: 234, after Stevenson 1997),

After hearing a description from the deceased man’s sister of how he had shot himself in the throat, Stevenson conjectured that the subject might also have a birthmark on the top of his head. Returning to the subject, he found another, slightly larger birthmark there, covered by hair, about which he had not previously been told.

Cases like these suggest a very close association of subtle body to physical body, and tend to justify the use of the term ‘subtle body’.

SUBTLE ENERGY

The topic of subtle body brings up that of subtle energy, something that is recognized especially in Eastern traditions, in India as ‘prana’, in China on ‘chi’ or ‘qi’ (In Pinyin), and in Japanese as ‘ki’, as in ‘aikido’ (‘ki’ was borrowed from Chinese before the consonant became palatalized). In traditional Chinese medicine, qi flows through the “meridians” of the body, and some disease conditions are the result of blockages in specific meridians, that can be cleared by acupuncture. It is not clear whether these meridians are in the physical body or the subtle body or both; but the acupuncture needles are inserted in the physical body. Acupuncture is also used for anesthesia. Qi gong masters also administer anesthesia for surgery in some Chinese hospitals, just by means of the flow of qi, without touching the patient.

In Indian lore the subtle body contains a series of chakras (from the Sanskrit word for “wheel”, which is cognate to Greek ‘kyklo-‘ and English ‘wheel’), said to be whirling energy centers. They are vertically aligned, the lower ones located in the area of the spinal cord at different levels from the tail bone on up, the top one above the skull of the physical body. One of them, located just below the navel, called the ‘dan tien’ in Chinese, corresponds to a center that is considered particularly important for qi.

A person can develop his own qi by exercises of the discipline known as Tai Ji Chuan (often called “Tai Chi”) or by Qi Gong. I have felt qi for myself, generated on one occasion by a Qi Gong master giving a demonstration in Houston, and on others from a master of Tai Qi Chuan in San Francisco. From my experience I am convinced that it is real, and different from anything in ordinary Western experience, but I don’t ask you to take my word for it, nor do I expect you to. If you want to dismiss my report as anecdotal, I care not. Things like this require personal experience.

TRAILGUIDE 8

This chapter may appear not to belong in Part Three of this book—Mind and Body—since the subtle body is not physical. But subtle body is not the whole story of what is nonmaterial about us. People who have had an OBE or NDE usually stop thinking of themselves as their bodies, but they have not necessarily gone all the way yet to full awareness of what they really are. What we really are is spirit, and that is quite different from subtle body, as will I hope become clear as we continue this exploration. So I have

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placed this chapter here, as the last one in the section on Mind and Body, since subtle body, while non-physical, is nevertheless closer to physical body than to spirit. References

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Last update 2018-09-24

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