Apports and Other Strange Phenomena: Stanley Krippner and Amyr Amiden

The Case of Amyr Amiden:

Apports, Stigmata, and Geomagnetic Field Effects 

Scientific and Medical Network in conjunction with the Society for Psychical Research. 7 November 2013

Venue: Kensington Library, London, W8 7RX

During 1993 and 1994 Stanley Krippner witnessed anomalous phenomena that occurred in the presence of Amyr Amiden, a Brazilian psychic claimant.  Stan had designed non-invasive procedures that enabled a research team to collect data during occasions of ostensible psychokinesis.  Although further work with Amiden was not possible because of health issues, the procedures could be utilized with other psychic claimants.  Stanley Krippner will explore all this further in his presentation.

Stanley Krippner is internationally known for his pioneering work in the scientific investigation of human consciousness, especially such areas as creativity, parapsychological phenomena and altered states of consciousness. Prior to joining the Saybrook faculty in 1972, Dr. Krippner directed the Dream Laboratory at Maimonides Medical Center in New York and was Director of the Child Study Center at Kent State University. He has served as President of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, the Parapsychological Association and the Association for the Study of Dreams. He is also a Charter Member of the International Society for the Study of Dissociation and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex, the American Psychological Society, the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis and the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion.Dr. Krippner received a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from Northwestern University. He has written over 500 articles and several books, including: Human Possibilities, Song of the Siren, Dream Telepathy (co-author), The Realms of Healing (co-author), Spiritual Dimensions of Healing (co-author), Personal Mythology (co-author), Healing States (co-author), Dreamworking (co-author), A Psychiatrist in Paradise (co-editor), Dreamtime and Dreamwork (Ed.) and Advances in Parapsychological Research (Ed.)

Apports and Other Strange Phenomena:

A Discussion Arising From Stanley Krippner's Lecture

I was fortunate enough to attend Stanley Krippner's evening talk at Kensington Library in Central London on 7^th November 2013. Krippner is an excellent speaker with an engaging personality and perfect timing in his delivery. He also personifies that rare combination of a meticulous and balanced scientist and engaged first-hand explorer of the human condition. I don't want to discuss the presentation in detail as a report of the case and statistical findings have been published and are available online.¹ A recording of the talk will also be made available in the members section of the Scientific and Medical Network website. What I would like to focus on is the case of apports, which formed a central theme of the lecture.

What are apports?

A Shiva statuette apported for Donna James by Kai Mügge

In parapsychology the term 'apport' is used to describe a physical object that materialises (and sometimes dematerialises), usually during a séance in the presence of a physical or trance medium. There are other contexts in which materialisations occur. In India, for example, the appearance of objects or substances is closely associated with Hindu holy men or swamis. One of the best known instances of this type was the late Sathya Sai Baba who would apparently materialise vibhuti, a sacred ash widely used in ritual, and small objects.² Jenny's Sanctuary, a centre for physical mediumship in Oxfordshire, UK, has a display of objects apported during séances held there. Trance medium David Thompson regularly produces apports, or rather the spirits manifest objects through David Thompson's mediumship. These are well attested by regular sitters at his home circle in Australia and at his many appearances as a visiting medium at places such as Jenny's Sanctuary. Another leading contemporary physical medium is Kai Mügge (KM) of the Felix Experimental Group in Germany. Donna James describes the gift of a materialised Indian statuette during one of Kai M's séances in September 2013, during a five day conference on physical mediumship in Eastbourne, England, organised by the Gordon Higginson Fellowship. In May 2013 KM spent a week under observation being studied by Professor Stephen Braude and a team of scientists. In his book The Gold Leaf Leaf Lady,³ Braude describes the apportation of a piece of copper (the gold leaf of the title). Braude brought this item with him to KM's séances. During the course of one séance KM produced two objects resembling the original gold leaf, which according to the spirits had been created by taking material from the original, and substances from the natural and supernatural environment. An account of this séance and the rest of the tests on KM are documented on the FEG blog. Amyr Amiden seems a little different and unusual in that he is able to materialise objects outside a séance situation, sometimes at a distance from himself. He does on occasion offer spiritual counselling, but unlike David Thompson and Kai Mügge is not a professional or semi-professional medium; nor does he see himself as a guru or spiritual teacher.

A brief account of Amyr Amiden

Stanley Krippner first met Amyr Amiden, a Brazilian of Syrian/Arabian descent, in 1993. Amiden had been invited to dinner by a mutual friend, Pierre Weil. During the course of the dinner Amiden materialised an emerald and a gold bracelet for two of the female guests. The emerald, which was authenticated subsequently by a jeweller, just appeared apparently out of nowhere. The bracelet was constructed from foil butter wrappers, which Amiden wound around the wrist of the woman concerned. Over the course of ten minutes or so the guests watched as the butter-wrapping bracelet turned into a gold band. This too was later authenticated by a jeweller. Amiden agreed to undergo tests and the following year, with a grant from the Society for Psychical Research, Krippner and and a small interdisciplinary team spent eight afternoons conducting tests and observations of Amiden once he had finished work. During this time he produced nearly a hundred objects. Amiden comes from a family of psychics or 'sensitives'. He had his first experience of visiting the spirit world at the age of eight, and continues to visit it regularly (the mechanism of these visits, whether in dreams, trance, out of body experience or telepathically was not discussed). Amiden referred to having two personalities, who he perceived as slightly different in appearance and character from one another. The first was the older Amyr, who at the time of the tests suffered from heart problems and had a more abrasive character. The younger Amyr came into being when he was eight with the onset of his psychic abilities. When Krippner returned to Brazil and met Amiden after a gap of over twenty years, he claimed that he was now permanently the younger Amyr, and that his heart problems had disappeared.

Amiden could tell when he was about to apport an object as it was prefigured by a metalic taste in his mouth and the sensation of increased heart rate (the result of physiological tests on Amiden are recorded in the published account). As Amiden had such experiences from childhood he took them in his stride, and did not seek notoriety or publicity. He was, however, happy for his abilities to be studied scientifically. In addition to materialisations, Amiden produced stigmata (impressions of the wounds suffered by Jesus during his crucifixion). Although stigmata are not uncommon, and can be produced by hypnosis, autosuggestion or trance, Krippner had not come across other instances in which a Muslim manifested them. Amiden claimed that his visits to the spirit world had brought him very close to Jesus, and that just the mention of Jesus was enough to produce a sympathetic stigmatic response, which was neither sought nor painful. Another ability was psychokinesis, the moving or bending of objects without physical intervention. Amyr had to take particular care when removing his glasses, and asked the spirits not to bend them. The team of researchers also established a system of spirit communication in Amyr Amiden's presence, using white noise static from a radio tuned between stations. This technique has proved effective in the production of electronic voice communications from the spirit world. When the team addressed direct questions to the spirits they utilised a system of discernible 'beeps', one for 'yes', two for 'no' and three for a 'don't know' or inapplicable.

The materialisation of objects (apports)

By far the commonest of Amyr Amiden's psychic abilities observed by Stanley Krippner's team was the materialisation of small objects. The researchers agreed that whoever was closest to the materialised object could keep it, and they noted that the apports were usually appropriate in some way to the person nearest to them. Pierre Weil, for instance, was a naturalised Brazilian but of French Catholic origin and many of the apports that dropped near him were religious medallions. Some of those they traced were apparently common in Nineteenth Century France. The two women at the dinner when Stanley Krippner first met Amiden had respectively asked for an emerald and gold bracelet, so these objects were specific and personal to the recipients. Some of the objects were attractive, but not particularly valuable, such as polished stones. On one occasion the daughter of someone present had asked for a gift for her sixteenth birthday. Amyr immediately produced a ring with sixteen small precious stones set in it, one for each year of her age (which fitted the girl, who was not present, perfectly). Krippner had asked Amiden for two rings encircling one another, as from a parapsychologist's perspective these are hard to fake, and again he quickly received them. The objects generally appeared to fall out of the air. On some occasions Amiden would say that he could feel an object coming, but that it was going to be in the nearby Meditation Room not in the office where they met. This room was checked before their meetings, and the objects were found there afterwards as described.

There seemed to be a clear link between environmental electrical activity and the materialisation of objects. During a thunder storm Krippner observed s shower of small stones fall from the air onto a car roof, although Amiden was not in the immediate vicinity at the time. Another more unusual materialisation observed by the team involved the office fax machine. During their sessions on a couple of occasions it started by itself and produced a print out with a bright magenta strip down it, and nothing else. As they watched the strip gradually seemed to liquify and then drip and finally produce a small diamond. These were tested and confirmed as diamonds, though not particularly high grade ones.

Most of the objects seemed to be stable, that is once materialised they remained in the same condition. There was a difference between the objects produced by the 'old Amyr', which were generally of more weathered or worn appearance, and those of the 'young Amyr', which looked more freshly minted (some photographs of the apports are reproduced in the published article – see Note 1). An exception to this was one of the diamonds from the fax machine that Krippner wanted to take back the USA. He concealed it in a sealed film canister, not telling anyone else where he had put it. When he checked the canister before leaving Brazil he found it was empty. (The dematerialisation of objects from within a séance room is well attested, and there are even occasional reports of the medium being transported from a locked séance room). Amiden could also produce liquid perfume, as sometime described with Hindu holy men. Twenty years after the first research trip, when Krippner again observed such a manifestation he dipped a handkerchief into the perfume so as to preserve some of the scent. The musky smell is apparently still perceptible on the tissue.

The largest object to materialise was a book belonging to Pierre Weil, taken from his library. The book had been missing for a couple of weeks, and then suddenly materialised at his feet. The cover was the same colour as a blue-green stone that had just materialised for Krippner. He was told that this was his healing colour and that he should keep the stone. As the apports from the original experiments with Amiden had subsequently been stolen from Krippner's flat in San Francisco, he keeps the apported healing stone in a safety deposit box. Like most of the objects produced, its value is less its monetary worth - the jewellery and precious stones were not of particularly high grade materials - but in the extraordinary manner of its appearing and its appositeness for the recipient.

Observations

There will undoubtedly be people who assume that the whole process of materialisation must be fraudulent as it defies rational scientific explanation. To ignore the facticity of such events is not, however, a rational or scientific move. The controlled conditions under which Amyr Amiden was studied for eight days and the presence of a group of scientifically trained observers rules out deliberate fraud or slight of hand as the most rational explanation. In Minnie Harrison's mediumship flowers were commonly apported gifts from the spirits to the sitters at her séances. Fresh flowers would be particularly difficult to conceal without damage to their foliage.⁴ Amiden had very little motive to fake these materialisations, which produced no material gain and put a strain on his health. The speed at which Amiden was able to respond to specific requests, such as Krippner's linked rings or the girl's sixteenth birthday present, ruled out preplanning and concealment. The items were generally seen to drop out of the air and did not come directly from Amiden's body (Kai Mügge's apports generally come from his hands or mouth, but in controlled tests these were repeatedly searched and checked for signs of concealed objects). If we accept for the sake of argument that not all mediums are frauds or conjurors, and that those who observe the appearance, and sometimes disappearance, of these objects are not all hallucinating, gullible or complicit, what can we say about the phenomenon?

The origin of apported objects

There does not appear to be a single origin for the objects produced by Amiden or other mediums. (1) In some cases the apport is an object with known provenance that has been moved, concealed and then materialised at a later date in a different place. This was the case with Pierre Weil's missing book. If the spirits wanted to make a point in this case (matching the colour of the book's cover to the healing stone for Krippner so as to stress the veracity of the phenomenon) this implies a foreknowledge of events and degree of planning that points to spirit rather than human activity. This case is reminiscent of poltergeist activity. I have a sister who in the past shared a house with a friend. In that house, but not in others in which they lived, metal objects would regularly disappear for a few days or weeks, only to reappear in an unexpected place. The commonest objects were things like scissors that would vanish from a sewing box, only to reappear sometime later on the front door mat, or car keys that would vanish from a bag to materialise sometime later in the kitchen sink. They learned to live with this rather tiresome manifestation of psychokinetic activity with relatively good humour for a period of several years. As they knew they had not moved, hidden, and then replaced the objects, they could only assume that some kind of spirit activity was involved.

(2) Some objects, the majority, appeared to have been moved in time and space, but probably existed somewhere physically before materialising through the mediumship of Amyr Amiden. The French holy medallions and linked metal rings probably fall into this category. There are examples from spiritualist seances in which the spirits claim to have taken preexisting objects that wouldn't be missed by their owners, or which had been discarded, as appropriate gifts for sitters.

(3) There are examples of materialisations in which the objects appear to be self-generated, such as the diamonds from the magenta strip on the fax paper, and the butter-wrapping bracelet that turned to gold. The piece of copper apparently fashioned from constituent materials in the 'gold leaf', observed by Stephen Braude and his team, falls into this category. Here we have something more akin to an alchemical process than the dematerialisation of objects in one location in order to re-materialise them in another. The jewellery produced by the 'younger Amyr' that looked so newly minted might have been self-generated rather than pre-owned. In one of Minnie Harrison's séances a bell was used by the spirits to announce their presence. At a certain point a second bell was heard in the room, and at the end of the séance when the lights were turned on it was visible to those present. It matched the first one in style (bought at Woolworths in the 1940s) but was slightly bigger and much newer-looking. After more than 50 years it still maintained its shiny appearance without evidence of tarnishing. Tom Harrison speculated that the de-materialisation had affected the materials in such a way as to maintain their colour. He clearly assumed that the spirits had found an existing object in this case rather than creating it from scratch, although it is possible that it was generated from the same material as the original, as with the copper used by the spirits in Kai Mügge's séance.

The purpose of materialisation

The motivation for producing various objects might depend in part on who the prime mover is in any particular instance. The presence of a sensitive or medium seems essential, but he or she will claim that the spirits working from the other side are equally important. In Amyr Amiden's case he was on occasion the main protagonist – as when he produced the emerald and gold bracelet to please the women he sat next to at dinner. The creation of the butter-wrapping gold bracelet seems more in the nature of a party-trick than anything else, in the sense that it was done to please those present rather than prove a point about survival. When the spirits are asked about their motivation, providing evidence of the existence of the spirit world is generally their answer. When particular force and speed are used in the production of objects, it is to make a strong statement concerning their anomalous spirit origin. Electro-magnetic forces also seem to facilitate the production of apports, particularly electrical storms. In both Alec Harris and David Thompson's séances, the spirits would reverse the pullover or cardigan worn by the medium, who remained bound in a chair during this process, a physical impossibility without rapid de-materialisation and re-materialisation.⁵ It is clearly of some importance to the spirits to prove their existence. They want people to know that there is a world beyond death and that it interpenetrates the material world in which we live. The materialisation of objects does not in itself prove the continuation of individual life beyond physical death, but does point to communication with other entities who, with a medium as conduit, have the ability to manipulate the physical world. Amiden spoke of frequently visiting the spirit world, and for him this transpersonal communication was a fact of daily life. In the religious context of Brazil, where spiritism and spiritualist teachings find wide acceptance, this is not regarded as particularly noteworthy.

The mechanism of apportation

As to the physical mechanisms used we must be purely speculative, but spiritualist and theosophical literature speaks of all matter existing at different vibrational frequencies. This is scientifically uncontroversial, and we are used to the idea that radio waves, or X-Rays, for instance, can pass through objects that we consider solid. We are also aware that from the perspective of an electron even the densest physical objects appear largely as space. Although we have no current scientific understanding of the mechanisms that are used to de-materialise and re-materialise objects, or to transform one substance into another, it is likely to be connected to a change in the frequency at which the constituent particles of a solid object vibrate, rendering them capable of rapid movement in time and space. If occasional reports of entranced mediums being moved through solid walls or doors are true, this process happens without harming the human body. No distortion of the reconstituted object seems to occur, and while some apports subsequently de-materialise again after a period of time (like a leprachaun's pot of gold), others maintain a bright, shiny appearance, or hold a scent, for much longer than would normally be expected (a mark of sanctity in the Christian Roman Catholic tradition is the incorruptibility and often pleasantly scented aroma of the saint's dead body).

The relatively inconsequential objects materialised by Amyr Amiden, as observed by Stanley Krippner and reported from other contemporary mediums, can nevertheless raise questions concerning the veracity of various religious phenomena. As previously noted, Sai Baba is one of the best known exemplars of materialisation in a modern religious setting. He did not permit scientific tests of his abilities, but was frequently observed and many of those who saw his manifestations believed them to be genuine. The biblical story of Jesus feeding the crowds by multiplying loaves and fishes (John 6 1-15, Luke 9 10-17) could plausibly seen as a case of duplication, like Minnie Harrison's bell and Kai Mügge's gold leaf. The New Testament accounts of the resurrection appearances of Jesus in the forty days between his death and ascension, describe Jesus in a body that appears completely solid, can eat and drink, walk and talk, but also pass through walls and walk on water. He was sometimes visible to many people simultaneously, but could also disappear at will. Jesus's resurrection body appears to share some characteristics with apported objects in apparently passing through solid objects without loss of form or function.

Conclusion

Stanley Krippner began his talk by stating that he didn't like to use the term 'proof' in relation to parapsychology. It is a technical term in mathematics and philosophy (and can be used of whisky) but not in science. This is not so much a refusal to reach conclusions based on research data and observed facts, but a recognition that there is always more to learn, and that our knowledge is always partial. By the same token one might add that to claim to have disproved a phenomenon is equally suspect. The white crow might always appear, and one fraudulent medium does not disprove the existence of the spirit world. What was abundantly clear from listening to Stanley Krippner's presentation of Amyr Amiden was that the world in which we live is one full of mystery, about which we still know very little.

The original gold foil from Stephen Braude's 'Gold Leaf Lady' and the apported copper from it.

http://felixcircle.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/physical-mediumship-under-strict.html

Notes

1Stanley Krippner, Michael Winkler et.al. 'Physiological and Geomagnetic Correlates of Apparent Anomalous Phenomena Observed in the Presence of a Brazilian “Sensitive”'. Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol.10, No.2, pp.281-298, 1966. Online version available as pdf www.scientificexploration.org/journal/jse_10_2_krippner.pdf

2Krippner had visited Sai Baba and heard him give and inspirational talk, but not personally observed any of his materialisations. While there seem to be sufficient observational accounts to give credence to at least some of Sai Baba's claims, the same cannot be said of all Indian holy men (and women). Erlendur Haraldsson and Joop M. Houtkooper were less than impressed with Gyatri Swami when he agreed to be observed. See 'Haraldsson and Houtkooper, 'Report on an Indian Swami Claiming to Materialize Objects: The Value and Limitations of Field Observations'. Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 8, No. 13, pp.381-397, 1994. Richard Wiseman, a psychologist and magician accompanied Haraldsson and concluded that Gyatri Swami was probably using sleight of hand.

3Stephen E. Braude (2007) The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations, Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.

4Tom Harrison, Life After Death: Living Proof: A Lifetime's Experiences of Physical Phenomena and Materialisations through the Mediumship of Minnie Harrison. Revised edition, 2008. Saturday Night Press, York.

5Louie Harris claimed that she felt a sudden drop in Alec's body temperature as the pullover was withdrawn from his body, indicating that a large amount of power was necessary for the demonstration (Alec Harris: The full story of his remarkable physical mediumship by Louie Harris, 2009, Saturday Night Press, York, p.85). I have witnessed this reversal of clothing in a séance with David Thompson. (A written account appears on my Academia.edu website).