Living Mountains: Gunzburg and Brady Book Launch 30 Oct 2020

 Gunzburg and Brady Book Launch 30 Oct 2020 Space, Place and Religious Landscapes: Living Mountains. I have a chapter on ‘Mountains as sources of power in seen and unseen worlds’ and give a short presentation of it on the video. I focus on the contribution of the channeled mediumship of Lady Cynthia Sandys and the communications from her brother Joe and daughter Pat on the power of mountains as see from the Afterlife, focusing on the mountain Joe refers to by its English name, Everest, and Mount Fuji in Japan.

Darrelyn Gunzburg wrote: For those who could not be with us and would like to hear short introductions to the works contained within this volume, here is the recording from last night's launch with Bernadette Brady, Frank Prendergast, Anna Estaroth, Jon Cannon, Fiona Bowie and Alan Ereira.

The Awakening Letters

I was looking through old data sticks and came across this presentation from 2010 on the mediumship of Lady Cynthia Sandys, a remarkable non-professional English medium. Her published work is still available second hand, and I hope will one day be republished.
Click on the link to access the file on Scribd.

The Awakening Letters: The Mediumship of Cynthia Sandys

The Mechanics of Spirit Communication

Video of a presentation I gave on the Mechanics of Spirit Communication at the Exploring the Extraordinary Conference at Gettysburg University, USA in March 2014.

One of the criticisms levelled at purported communications with spirits is that we don't know how the process works. The mechanics of spirit communication are outside currently understood scientific paradigms and the content of the messages is often suspect or inaccurate. In this talk I examine the process of spirit communication as seen both from the perspective of the person, or in the case of electronic transcommunication, the machine, that receives the message and fromthe perspective of the spirit communicator. The reported difficulties from the spirit side of working through a physical or clairvoyant medium, or of trying to impress their message through dreams and seeming coincidences, for instance, can help us appreciate why spirit communication might not always be accurate or complete. This fact in itself should not be seen as casting sufficient doubt to dismiss the entire process. What emerges is a picture of experimentation on 'both sides', a dynamic process which has and will continue to grow and develop over time.

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PAPER PRESENTED AT EXPLORING THE EXTRAORDINARY'S 6TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE IN GETTYSBURG, 2014. For more information about Exploring the Extraordinary's annual conferences, please go to etenetwork.weebly.com

For more information about the Afterlife Research Centre, please go to afterliferesearch.co.uk/
Read Fiona's 'Exploring the Afterlife' blog at exploringtheafterlife.blogspot.co.uk/
For more information about Dr Fiona Bowie and her work, please go to kcl.academia.edu/FionaBowie

Explorations in Life, Death and the Afterlife

In May and June 2015 I was invited to give a series of three talks on the afterlife in my Anglican parish. The invitation that was printed in the church magazine is reproduced below. I have reproduced the slides as pdfs including my speaking notes and the handouts, followed by my reflections on the process, which can be accessed via the link at the end.

Explorations in life, death and the afterlife

A series of three talks on the theme of life, death and the afterlife, with Dr Fiona Bowie

The topics covered will be:

(1)   Journeying Through Death:  Looking at how different religions and cultures have approached death and its role in life and a look at so-called ‘near-death’ experiences.

(2)   The Life Beyond This Life:  Looking at accounts of life beyond physical death and beyond this physical world.

(3)   Finding our life’s purpose and plan: Exploring the ideas of whether life is random and meaningless.  Does life have purpose and a plan and continuity beyond our physical existence?

The approach is experience-based and exploratory, and does not promote any particular religious or secular viewpoint.  The aim is to provide information and material for personal reflection and growth rather than to look for definitive proof. There will be time for discussion.

·       When: Tuesday 28 April, 5 May & 19 May 2015, 7.30pm-9pm

·       Where: Church Hall

·       Refreshments will be available

All are welcome.  In order to have some idea of numbers it would be useful if you could let either the vicar or Fiona (Bowie) know if you are hoping to attend. For further information or to register your interest, please contact Fiona Bowie:  fiona.bowie@kcl.ac.uk

Fiona Bowie is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at King’s College, London. She is trained in social anthropology and has taught at the Universities of Wales and Bristol in the UK, at the University of Linköping in Sweden, and at the University of Virginia in the USA. She is founder of the Afterlife Research Centre: http://www.afterliferesearch.co.uk. Fiona currently supervises PhD students, gives talks and conference presentations, writes books and articles, and runs workshops on afterlife themes.

From the Vicar

The sessions provide people of Christian faith, non-Christian faith and no faith opportunity to come together as fellow sojourners in this life to speak honestly and listen attentively to each other on matters of life and death and what may lie beyond.  It is a chance to share experiences and ask questions people may have, some of which may not easily fit into my/our own belief system.

These sessions could potentially be found in any University or College in the UK.  As such the material is usually addressed in an academic context.  However, by offering these sessions in a church building my hope is that we recognise the wide variety of experiences people may have encountered and pastoral concerns that may arise from them.

Finally, a disclaimer to say that the content of these sessions is not designed to propagate the Christian faith or any other faith but an open point of meeting, reflection and discussion.

Click here for a link to the slides and notes, handouts, and my reflections on the process.

Life after Death? Experiential Themes in Afterlife Narratives

A talk, with slides by Fiona Bowie, given at the Emmanuel Centre, University of Leeds, on 20th March 2015. The event was a public symposium organised by Dr Mikel Burley as part of the Immortality and Human Finitude project, funded by the John Templeton Foundation. The title of the day was Life after Death? Perspectives from Philosophy, Theology, Anthropology and Literature. The other speakers were Revd Dr Michael Armstrong, Dr Mikel Burley, Jack Hunter and Dr Matthew Treherne. The sessions were chaired by Dr Mikel Burley, Dr Tasia Scrutton, Professor Robin Le Poidevin, and Dr Fiona Bowie. 

Abstract: In this talk I discuss a methodology for studying the afterlife that bridges both scepticism based on a positive materialism and methodological agnosticism on the one hand, and complete relativism and uncritical acceptance on the other. It is based on cognitive, empathetic engagement, and can be seen as a kind of thought experiment in which the ethnographer acts 'as if' what she or she learns is true. I then sketch out some of the areas in which universal experiences of the supernatural or non-ordinary reality (from the perspective of Western science)  seem to underly religious and popular belief systems. This includes near-death experiences, shamanism and mediumship, reincarnation and after-death contacts.

Audio recording of talk

Slides

Immortality and Human Finitude

The Role of Experience in the Origin and Development of Religion

On 1st November 2014 the Scientific and Medical Network are holding a conference in London on the theme, Frontiers of Science and Spirituality: The SCM Approach to Holistic Education. Around 24 speakers have been invited to give short (10 minute) presentations which will be filmed and distributed for educational purposes. I was invited to speak on the theme of 'The Role of Experience in the Origin and Development of Religion'. I chose to focus on Near-death Experiences and Afterlife narratives as examples of human experience that have almost certainly impacted on the origin and development of religion. One could have added dreams, out-of-body experience, mediumship and shamanic activity, possession, reincarnation narratives, forms of ESP, after-death contact, and ghost sightings, among other areas in which universal themes seem to emerge irrespective of time or culture. The slides and text of my presentation are available on Scribd as a PDF file here.

The Search For Survival. A Review of Trevor Hamilton, 'Tell My Mother I’m Not Dead'

Tell My Mother I’m Not Dead: A Case Study in Mediumship Research

by Trevor Hamilton,

Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2012.

£8.95, $17.90, 191pp, Appendices, Glossary, Resources and References.

Tell My Mother I’m Not Dead is a personal and intellectual journey for Trevor Hamilton. As a retired academic with intellectual energy and curiosity, as well as a heavy dose of scepticism concerning the paranormal, Hamilton makes a refreshing guide into the world of mediumship and Spiritualism. His search was a response to the death of his son, Ralph, and of his natural desire to reconnect with him. It also sets out to resolve what Hamilton describes as ‘the most important single issue that there was’, i.e. ‘Did we survive bodily death, and if so what did this tell us about the nature of reality, and, fundamentally important, how should we live?’ (p.37). Hamilton found few people open to discussing such fundamental questions, and this book represents an attempt to address these issues through his own research and by reflecting on his personal experiences.

The book is divided into two main parts. In the first, Experiences, we have a chronological account of Hamilton’s emotional journey, together with that of his wife Anne, and of his visits to various mediums. Ten accounts of particular sittings that took place in England between 2002 and 2010 are given, with an assessment of the content and accuracy of the sessions. The anonymity of the individual mediums is preserved in most cases but the context of the sittings is described. The second part, Reflections, addresses what Hamilton sees as eight salient questions arising from his research into mediumship. He draws on both contemporary and older literature in parapsychology in order address issues such as ‘Can a sitter replicate phenomena across a number of mediums and does this support or weaken the survival hypothesis?’ (p.106), and  ‘Is it possible to identify those conditions which make for  successful sittings, and what are the implications of this for the guidance and training of sitters, mediums, and researchers?’ (pp.139-140). As author of the highly acclaimed biography of one of parapsychology’s pioneer researchers, F W H Myers[i], Hamilton is very well placed to review this material. He is familiar with the SPR (Society for Psychical Research) archives, for instance, and well aware of the long history of investigation and weight of evidence pointing to the validity of many parapsychological phenomena.

            This does not make Hamilton ‘a believer’. He is rather a hopeful seeker, but honest and exacting when looking at and analysing his personal encounters with mediums. Most, it must be said, produce a substantial amount of accurate information. When it is laid out in the cold light of day, away from the emotion and expectations engendered by a ‘sitting’, however, much of it is fairly general, rather vague and insubstantial. Hamilton is aware of these issues and evaluates his responses to the sittings with a refreshing degree of reflexivity.

            In the third, briefer section of the book, the Conclusion and Postscript, Hamilton states that he did not feel the need to prove the validity of mediumship per se, which in his opinion had been done with the historical studies of mediums such as Mrs Piper, Mrs Leonard, and Mrs Garrett, all of whom had been extensively investigated by members of the SPR and other researchers adopting the most stringent criteria. Hamilton did note, however, the paucity of information regarding the conditions of any afterlife state from his sittings. This has also been my own experience, and one must turn to channelled writings or accounts of OBEs (out of body experiences) for such accounts. He does mention one such narrative, Paul K. Stoller’s book of communications with his deceased son Galen, in My Life after Life, but finds it not to his taste, more in the realm of science fantasy (p.158).[ii] It is possible that a wider exposure to this genre would have changed Hamilton’s mind, as although it has some unique features, Galen’s account accords well with many other postmortem descriptions published over the last fifty years or more. By way of correction (in what is a generally well edited typescript) the journal Paranthropology appears in the bibliography on a couple of occasions as Paranthology. No doubt less of a mouthful, but inaccurate.

            I found Hamilton’s approach congenial as, apart from anything else, his open minded but analytical stance reflects my own (cf. my  account of a visit to a clairvoyant medium: http://exploringtheafterlife.blogspot.co.uk). For those who wish to know what a sitting with a contemporary medium in the UK is like, and what one might expect from it, Tell My Mother I’m Not Dead is a useful guide. The book makes a valuable contribution to contemporary research on UK mediumship, a subject that is still treated as the object of ridicule by many journalists and intellectuals, often with little or no firsthand experience of the phenomenon. The personal narrative carries the reader through the Hamilton’s search for answers to the tragedy and mystery of death and survival in a way that is both compelling and at times moving. There are no easy or clear answers to many of the questions asked, and Hamilton avoids the temptation to provide them. We do, at least, have a road map and guide through some of the territory, inviting the reader to continue the exploration.

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[i] Immortal Longings: FWH Myers and the Victorian Search for Life After Death. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2009.

[ii] My review of this book can be found at: http://www.afterliferesearch.co.uk under Research/Reviews. See also an account of T.E. Lawrence’s postmortem experience as channeled through Jane Sherwood: http://exploringtheafterlife.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/no-escape-from-immortality.html  

Thought Forms and Creativity

Many disputes concerning originality, such as that between Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace as to who first came up with the idea of Natural Selection, would become redundant if we looked at them from an Afterlife perspective. The following quotation from Lutheran theologian and pastor, A.D. Mattson (transmitted post-mortem through the medium Margaret Flavell) is typical of many accounts of creativity on earth. Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance looks at the phenomenon of ideas spreading horizontally, without direct diffusion through imitative learning (such as the bluetits in Britain in the 1950s, who appeared to learn to peck the aluminium tops off milk bottles more quickly in one area of the country once their cousins elsewhere had mastered the trick). Accounts such as Mattson's from the astral plane describe how and why this happens. This may well involve the same physical 'grid' or 'field' of conscious energy implied in morphic resonance, or could be a slightly different mechanism of direct vertical communication between the material and astral or mental planes. These theories may not be amenable to scientific testing, but they certainly chime with direct observation and provide a possible explanation for a phenomenon that is common and well attested.

A.D. Mattson

How Thought Forms Influence Creative Work on Earth

Sometimes when you on earth are concentrating intensly on something- profound problems or difficult mathematical equations, for example – suddenly you are not conscious of you anymore. You seem to be just the thought. If you can, try to recognize at that moment that you are then on the beltway of all thought and all thinking. Even in a physical body, one can be on the mental plane, in the world of thought. It is from that level that the great inspired ideas come down to earth.

    Many ideas and inspirations never reach anybody on earth, because they are beyond the scope of the human brain. However, when there is a need to take humanity one step forward, or to educate people in a certain way, then there is a concentrated effort for thought forms to be showered down. You may notice that suddenly there are many books on a new subject. That is because people have picked up on the new ideas coming down. It is from this world of idea as that one particular kind of architecture appears in many different areas at the same time, or new space vehicles are developed simultaneously. When people all around the world have the same idea, it is because each has received creative thought help from the world of ideas. Nothing, not a single thing, can be created unless it has already been created in the world of ideas. This is the creative aspect of God.

References and biographies

Evidence from Beyond: An Insider’s Guide to the Wonders of Heaven – and Life in the New Millennium, p.67.

More After Death Communications Received from Theologian A.D. Mattson. Through Clairvoyant Margaret Flavell. Edited by Ruth Mattson Taylor. Brett Books, Brooklyn, New York, 1999.

The Rev. A. D. Mattson (1895-1970). Lutheran theologian and pastor. Augustana Theological Seminary (Lutheran School of Theology), Chicago.

Margaret Flavell, clairvoyant, and graduate of the London School of Paranormal Psychology and Sanctuary of Healing. During World War II she was commissioned by Lord Hugh Dowding, Marshal of the Royal Air Force, to use her abilities to trace missing RAF pilots. Methodist by background.

Descriptions of morphic resonance and possible explanations for the phenomenon are given in Rupert Sheldrake,  The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature  (Icon Books: London, 2011) as well as elsewhere in Sheldrake's work.

Labels: A.D. Mattson, Afterlife, creativity, Margaret Flavell, mediumship, morphic resonance, Rupert Sheldrake, thought forms

The Earth's Future, Reincarnation and Population Reductions

I've been reading with great interest Bruce Moen's Voyages into the Afterlife series, based on his experiences of non-physical states of consciousness using a bi-aural sound technique known as 'hemi-sync' developed by The Monroe Institute in Virginia, USA. There are many parallels between Moen's accounts of what Monroe calls 'Focus Levels' and Theosophist and other descriptions of the various planes of existence, their inhabitants, characteristics and general appearance. There are also many parallels with the accounts given in Cynthia Sandys' Awakening Letters and other writings, and not infrequently links to various items in New Scientist. So, here are some of the passages and themes that caught my attention.

In Volume 3, Charting Unknown Territory (p.97ff), Moen is on an'Exploration 27 Program' at TMI. The object of the programme is for participants to visit different parts of this focus level or non-physical plane and bring back information that remains in their consciousness. Such data usually requires mediumship, a NDE or OBE if it is to reach the consciousness of those still in a physical body. One of the exercises of the Exploration 27 program involves a visit to the Coordinating Intelligences Centre. One of the tasks of those working there is to coordinate collisions in time - but not necessarily space - and to understand their consequence for Earth life systems in terms of probable outcomes. Objects in space appear to Moen as points of light with spiral lines coming out of them at cross-over points. One of the examples Moen is shown is a comet of frozen gasses and water that passes very close to the Earth without actually colliding with it. Apparently its existence is already known but information has not yet been released to the general public. The spiral lines indicate that it will not signal the end of the Earth but there is a bend or deflection in the Earth's line, and they are studying and trying to influence possible outcomes.When prompted to ask about the next steps in Earth's evolution, Moen is told that there is: 'In general, an accelerated pace of individuals graduating in preparation for great reductions in physical life experience opportunities. Many individuals are accelerating toward graduation by moving through, or experiencing, collapse of the ecosystem because of greed". At the Planning Center Moen is again prompted by the tape to ask a question about the Big Plan for the Earth. The answer chimes with some of the future life scenarios recorded by clients of Brian Weiss during hypnotic regression sessions. The Earth's near future involves preparation for large population reductions which will reduce human impact on the ecosystem. "There's been a steady buildup of too many time/event line crossings, which is driving toward ecosystem collapse". The primary cause is, apparently, "indulgence in the emotional energy of greed" - consumption of the Earth's resources not for direct use but for the accumulation of wealth, coupled with a growing human population. This is of course a theme well within human consciousness, from deep ecologists who see the Earth throwing off its profligate humans, to anti-capitalism and anti-globalisation protesters and religious teachers preaching moderation and cooperation rather than individualism and greed. One of the tasks of the Planning Center, Moen is told, is to prepare support for the huge volume of people "trying to finish out their ELS (Earth Life System) degrees". The Earth-school analogy is one that also recurs in many sources - the Earth as a training centre, life as a series of lessons to learn and exams to pass. Not necessarily a comfortable analogy for those who do not wish to relive their school-days, but perhaps close enough, if life really is intended as a series of challenges and opportunities for human/spiritual growth.

One of the implications of a relatively rapid (or perhaps sudden and seemingly catastrophic) reduction in the human population is that after the population reductions "there will be far fewer people living on Earth, so the total number of births worldwide will drop to an extremely low number. It will take Earth's population a very long-time to build back up, causing a long-term shortage of available incarnations. " The reductions are described as coming from a great many forces coming together, and many intelligent beings are said to be working to mitigate the ecosystem situation. When Moen comments that it sounds remarkably like mass murder, he is reminded that everybody dies and it is just a matter of timing, and that "everyone who decided to enter physical world lifetimes during this time frame made an informed decision. No one who decided to live on the Earth during these population reductions entered without full knowledge of this situation." [cf. Robert Schwartz on pre-birth planning].

Moen is then concerned at the number of people likely to come over unprepared who could get stuck in 'Focus 23' (those who don't realise they have died who try to continue with their physical life - ghosts - people who do not believe in life-after-death who are unable to move on without help, and so on). With fewer people on Earth there would be fewer people who know how to help those who get stuck by 'retrieving' them (cf. the rescue circles that became popular during the First and Second World Wars and religions dedicated to retrievals, such as the Vale do Amancecer).

Much of the work of the Planning Center, Moen is told, "involves bringing awareness of the Afterlife into physical world reality". Those participating in TMI programme and others are spreading the knowledge that "what comes after death isn't an unknowable secret". I have to admit a strong resonance when reading this. After all, this is precisely my own push to explore these areas, individually and through collaboration with others in ARC (the Afterlife Research Centre). I'm sure it is no coincidence that there is such an upsurge of interest in and serious exploration of the Afterlife from many different angles and disciplines, popular and academic, at present.

At another point Moen is told that the near future of Earth will involve the alignment of the Earth Core Crystal - a giant crystal formed from the heavy metals that coalesced in the centre of the earth when it was still in its molten state of formation - with a distant planet. Power points on Earth are, apparently, often linked to the remains of crystalline structures that once pointed to magnetic north, but were left out of alignment when the Earth's axis shifted. This new alignment will signal an opportunity or window for those on Earth for new forms of consciousness, although Moen could not determine whether this was going to be a process that lasted minutes or hours, weeks, months, or years. He was also told that one of the signals or time-line crossovers (I don't have the passage in front of me) involved the birth of a human baby. Moen was brought up as a Christian, as I am myself, and it is hard at this point, assuming one has followed the story so far, not to see this as a relatively long process, perhaps nearing its culmination, starting with the Incarnation - a new fusion of love into the world. Unconditional love is the reason, the motive, the start and end point of all existence, we are told, and in Cynthia Sandy's writings many of her discarnate communicators talk about the power of Christ energy. I think it was Welesley Tudor Pole who wrote about the birth of Christ as a way of giving humanity a kick start - a boost of energy to accelerate the lessons of unconditional love. Cynthia Sandys was also told that she and most of her family and friends would not reincarnate, they have finished their Earth lessons and graduated, as it were. I am a recent convert to the concept of reincarnation - the weight of evidence points, in my view - to its likelihood, but having accepted that I have probably had many past lives I also had a strong sense that I wouldn't come back - or didn't want to come back - to Earth (a feeling Oliver says he shares). Weiss's  clients who describe a future life in the not too distant future invariably talk of a much more peaceful earth with a very much smaller population. It is not the Lord of the Flies scenario or complete social disintegration sometime imagined by novelists and film-makers - although who knows that might also be a phase - but something gentler and wiser. We might have been here before of course, whether at the time of populations reductions remembered as the Biblical flood, Lemuria or Atlantis. I'd love to know from those who apparently remember future lives just what is recalled of this last human population reduction and how it is recorded in myths, archaeology and religious texts, and what if anything they managed to learn from and change in our wonderful but seemingly suicidal human nature.