Posted on 06 June 2014, 15:53

In 1991, when her daughter’s rare, hand-carved harp was stolen, Lisby Mayer’s familiar world of science and rational thinking turned upside down. After the police failed to turn up any leads, a friend suggested she call a dowser—a man who specialized in finding lost objects. With nothing to lose—and almost as a joke—Dr. Mayer, a teacher at Berkley, California, agreed.  The man she called, Harold McCoy, president of the national dowsing organisation, lived in Arkansas, 2500 kilometres away. He asked for a map of the city in which the harp was stolen, and quickly said that the harp was still in the city, and was at a particular house in a particular street. Unwilling to go directly to that house, Dr Mayer distributed leaflets in the neighbourhood, inviting the return of the harp, no questions asked. Within three days it was back in her hands. The experience turned her picture of reality upside-down. “This changes everything,” she said to herself. ... Hear her tell the story herself.

What does it imply that Harold McCoy could find the harp by suspending a dowsing pendulum over a map? It confirms the words of Lawrence LeShan in my previous blog, that “All objects and events are part of the fabric of being, and cannot meaningfully be separated from it.  The most important aspect of any object or event is that it is a part of the total ONE and it has to be primarily considered under this aspect.  Considering it under any other aspect is an error.”

“Valid information is not gained through the senses, but through a knowing of the oneness of observer and observed, the spectator and spectacle.  Once this complete oneness is fully accepted, there is nothing that can prevent the flow of information between a thing and itself.”

This fact, I believe, is what made the strange synchronistic events possible that I record in my forthcoming book, Into the Wider Dream.

There have been other famous dowsers, one of whom was the Abée Mermet.  In a book by D.J. Conway, we can read, “After World War I Abée Mermet used his map dowsing to locate German incendiary shells Although a few hundred years previously Abée Mermet would have been burned at the stake by the church, the Vatican recognised him for his work in 1935. He invented a special kind of pendulum consisting of several kinds of metals, the top of which could be unscrewed and tiny samples of sought metal placed inside.” He helped to discover deposits of metals in several countries.

Much better known is “Operation Stargate”:  Remote Viewing, which can involve forms of dowsing, has been used by Americans, Russians and Chinese for espionage over a period of several years. I understand that their experiments proved that dowsing maps by geographical coordinates alone can yield impressive results. There were no doubt many failures, so possible correct information inferred through dowsing would have needed to be confirmed by other means. Here is a good website.

Can we be 100% sure of the reality of dowsing phenomena? “Operation Stargate”, for instance, would suggest so, but those wishing to protect a materialist understanding of reality are vigorous in their efforts to debunk the phenomenon. For instance Skeptics recently have been sabotaging the Wikipedia articles that don’t countenance materialism.  The Wikipedia article on Dowsing, for instance, has a number of sections implying the reality of dowsing, but early on the words are inserted, “There is no scientific evidence that dowsing is effective.”  Many articles on the paranormal have been tampered with in this way.

With regard to Operation Stargate, prominent Skeptic activist, psychologist Richard Wiseman has stated that by ordinary scientific standards of verification, the reality of remote viewing could be regarded as established. But that, in view of the unlikelihood that remote viewing is a reality, much higher standards of verification must be employed.  “If I said that I had seen a car accident, my testimony could be accepted; but if I said that I saw a UFO in my back garden, you would require much more stringent proof.” (Words to that effect.) Thus Wiseman equates the results of fifteen years of military research with seeing a UFO in his back garden. In effect Wiseman is saying that if evidence would discredit his materialism, then so much the worse for the evidence.

Similarly on a Discovery programme compeered by Arthur C. Clarke, Skeptic James Randi tested dowsers by inviting them to find a series of buried metals, and then buried pots of water. The dowsers did quite well with the water, but not with the metals. As a positive result would not be acceptable to Randi, he averaged the two sets of results, and declared that no evidence for dowsing had been produced.

Debunking Skeptics, as a group, do not do science, but seek to discredit non-materialist scientists who threaten their materialism. Without conscience they misinform and deceive.

Where did dowser Harold McCoy get his information about the harp from? I have quoted Lawrence LeShan: “Valid information is not gained through the senses, but through a knowing of the oneness of observer and observed, the spectator and spectacle.  Once this complete oneness is fully accepted, there is nothing that can prevent the flow of information between a thing and itself.” St Stephen said as much himself: What is, must be simple because we are it. We cannot be separate [p.22 Afterlife Teachings] “together, we are what is”[p.82]  “God is everything that you see, and more. It is all that you cannot imagine, all that you cannot conceive.”(Knowledge resides in this All-that-is God)

And…” The knowledge is there, and I am directed, as you are directed, to this knowledge, because this knowledge is there. The physical plane, or the physical manifestation of this knowledge which you feel is hidden, is even less hidden to you than your thoughts and the thoughts of others. It is there in a physical form and there are written words. To feel and know these words and the availability of these words, surely this is as simple a matter as knowing the hairs and their number on each one’s head. The knowledge is there and it is used.

All knowledge comes from one place, and what has been said has been given, and has been received.

Therefore do not read difficulties into a task that would be, if you were not in a physical state, a matter of simplicity.

How can I therefore give you an example of this simplicity for yourself?

The keys to your door. Do you know where they are?

The brush for your hair, the blades for your face?

Think then now of at least four hundred things that you know where their place of rest is.

Do you find the concept so difficult to think that you yourself in the confines of your own physical mind should be able to know these things?

Is it difficult to imagine that if you did not have the confinement of this physical body, that you should know the place of many more?

It is very difficult I know for you to understand this concept of the openness and availability of these things.

These are the only comparisons that I can give you, namely the things that are available, and the knowledge that is available in your own minds of other things. [pp.162-3]

In short, what the story of The Harp that Came Back tells us, is that LeShan’s Clairvoyant mode of viewing reality, is no mere mystical talk, but is an accurate description of All-that-is, just as accurate as a description of the “commonsense” cause and effect world.

For Libby Mayer the harp experience changed everything. And we others, once we truly experience an event which breaks the rules of the see and touch world, we too have “something like scales fall from [our] eyes”, like St Paul, and have a new vision of the reality of things.

Michael Cocks edits the journal, The Ground of Faith.
Afterlife Teaching From Stephen the Martyr by Michael Cocks is published by White Crow Books and available from Amazon and other bookstores.
His forthcoming book, Into the Wider Dream will be published summer 2014 by White Crow Books.

Paperback               Kindle

Even if Harold McCoy had been aware of publicity surrounding that harp, Oakland CA, where it was stolen,had at that time a population of nearly 400,000 people. The letter-drop was around two specific streets. McCoy was right, by chance?
Was Skeptic Richard Wiseman right in comparing 15 years of research by the military in three countries with “seeing a UFO in my backyard?”
Was James Randi right in averaging the results of a successful dowsing experiment, and an unsuccessful?
It is quite true that one cannot 100% rely on paranormal phenomena, and also that they dont occur when we want them to.
I have a horror of superstitious stories, and in the 1980s joined the Skeptics myself.
But I was rewarded for joining the Skeptics at that time. One of my experiences with “St Stephen” was that he twice spoke in his native dialect of Greek. Prof Robin Bond, Classics, University of Canterbury, and Dr Paul McKechnie of Auckland Uni. Classics, independently examined my research, and agreed that the Greek was genuine, and could not have been fraudulently constructed by myself or by the medium, who had no knowledge of Greek of any kind. My reward was, that a leading Auckland Skeptic published my book. That man was a true sceptic..not making decisions for or against, until he had thoroughly examined the evidence.

First point is that it was most likely that the harp was in the city and a possibility that a letter-box drop might see its return. the fact that it did so does not prove the dowser’s case.
In Wanaka NZ there is a substantial reward for the finder of a hidden container and although a few have paid the ‘entry fee’ no-one has yet succeeded.
Various people have sought Madeleine McCahan - again without success. In reality there are riches in gold and jewels all over the world lost on beaches, on ancient sites and, heartbreakingly, kidnapped people. No credible system or people have proved reliable beyond established existing processes. The communicable inter-connection of all matter is a belief not a fact of science.

John Marcon