Posted on 26 February 2024, 8:50

When an aging friend appeared to be suffering from “existential angst” as he recovered from serious health challenges, I gave him one of my books, No One Really Dies, in the hope that he might see a larger and brighter picture of what’s ahead if he didn’t survive much longer in this realm.  As my friend was a borderline “militant nihilist,” I doubted that he would read the book, and so I highlighted 30 quotes in the book and asked him to simply read the highlighted quotes before any attempt to read from cover to cover.  I suggested we then meet again and discuss what the various people quoted had to say. I suspected that he would have the usual debunker’s response for each one – an explanation based on fraud, religious bias, wishful thinking, wild imagination, unconscious coloring, whatever – but I figured it was worth a try.  Unfortunately, my friend didn’t make it to the point we could further discuss the matter and I don’t know if he read the quotes or the book.  If he had and had we met, we would have discussed the following:

Importance: “Only if we know that the thing which truly matters is the infinite can we avoid fixing our interest upon futilities, and upon all kinds of goals which are not of real importance…A man should be able to say he has done his best to form a conception of life after death, or to create some image of it – even if he must confess his failure. Not to have done so is a vital loss.”
– Carl Gustav Jung, M.D., pioneer in psychology and psychiatry.

Resistance: “My atheistic friends resist even the slightest whiff of an argument for an afterlife. I have not seen more closed minds. Why is this? Why would anyone resist such good news – the kind of news strongly supported by serious, in-depth research on the [near-death experience], for example? I think I know. It is not so much that my hard-bitten friends hate the thought of living beyond death: what they hate is religion. And they associate religion with the afterlife. It doesn’t matter how hard you try to convince them that the contemporary case for an afterlife is not based on sacred texts, but on empirical studies conducted by well-credentialed social scientists or doctors. It doesn’t matter. Their minds are set.”
– Stafford Betty, Ph.D., retired professor of religious studies and author of Heaven & Hell Unveiled

Humanism: “The moralist must hold his breath and keep his muscles tense; and so long as this athletic attitude is possible all goes well – morality suffices. But the athletic attitude tends ever to break down and it inevitably does break down even in the most stalwart when the organism begins to decay, or when morbid fears invade the mind.”
– William James, M.D., pioneer in psychology and psychiatry

Scientific Foundation: “The scientific evidence for the survival of consciousness (excluding any sectarian, theological interpretation of that evidence) continues to pile up…Meanwhile, quantum physics has opened up new lines of evidence supporting the theory that consciousness is fundamental, not matter.  Established science is facing its own Galileo Galilei moment of reckoning.”
– Michael Schmicker, from the book’s Foreword, author of Best Evidence

Beyond Science: “I was allowed to go up to the [floating] table and saw clearly no one was touching it, a clear space separating the sitters from the table. I tried to press the table down, and though I exerted all my strength could not do so; then I climbed up on the table and sat on it, my feet off the floor, when I was swayed to and fro and finally tipped off. The table of its own accord now turned upside down, no one touching it, and I tried to lift it off the ground, but it could not be stirred, it appeared screwed down to the floor…I could see that no one was touching the table [and] it righted itself on its own accord, no one helping it. Numerous sounds displaying an amused intelligence then came.”
– Sir William Barrett, British physicist and early psychical researcher, while investigating Irish medium Kathleen Goligher with Dr. William J. Crawford

Complex Communication: “We communicate an impression through the inner mind of the medium. It receives the impression in a curious way. It has to contribute to the body of the message; we furnish the spirit of it. In other words, we send the thoughts and the words usually in which they must be framed, but the actual letters or spelling of the words is drawn from the medium’s memory. Sometimes we only send the thoughts and the medium’s unconscious mind clothes them in words.”
– Frederic W. H. Myers, after-death communication to physicist Sir Oliver Lodge via medium Geraldine Cummins

Beyond Human Comprehension: “Lodge, it’s a puzzle. It’s a puzzle to us here in a way, though we understand it better than you. I work at it hard, I do. I’d give anything I possess to find out. I don’t care for material things now, our interest is much greater. I am studying hard how to communicate. It’s not easy.”
– Edmund Gurney, after-death communication to physicist Sir Oliver Lodge

Obstacles to Reception: “[Well-meaning spirits] are often frustrated in their attempts to communicate because they are choked on all sides by gross skepticism, boorish tests, Sadducean sneers, superstitious panic, sanctimonious anathemas, and all kinds of unreasonable opposition.”
– Adin Ballou, Unitarian minister and early psychical researcher

Multi-Faceted Afterlife: “[The communicating spirits] emphatically declare that the fact of death does not in the least degree alter a man’s character.  He is exactly the same five minutes after the passing as five minutes before it. So that the next state of existence contains all kinds and conditions of humanity, just as the earth does. They say that malevolence, envy, hate, and all the lower attributes inherent in earth humanity exist also in their world. There are not two classes only – good and bad – as theology would have us believe.”
—William J. Crawford, D.Sc., mechanical engineer who carried out 87 separate experiments with Irish medium Kathleen Goligher

Awakening After Death:  “I live, think, see, hear, know, and feel just as clearly as when I was in the material life, but it is not easy to explain it to you as you would naturally suppose, especially when the thoughts have to be expressed through substance materially…Nevertheless, I am bound to do just all I can for you to prove to you that I do absolutely exist independent of the material body which I inhabited.”                                                                                                          – George Pellew (lower left photo), after-death communication through the mediumship of Leonora Piper as recorded by Dr. Richard Hodgson, who studied Piper for 18 years.

Voices in Many Languages: “Altogether, fourteen foreign languages were used in the course of twelve sittings I attended. They included Chinese, Hindi, Persian, Basque, Sanskrit, Arabic, Portuguese, Italian, Yiddish, German and modern Greek.”
– Neville Whymant, Ph.D., Litt.D. (upper right photo), professor of linguistics at Oxford, London, Peking, and Tokyo Universities, on his sittings with American direct-voice medium George Valiantine.

Most Wonderful Experience: “Then, to my own and my Croatian friend’s astonishment, a loud voice began to talk to him in the Croatian language.  It was an old friend, a physician by profession, who died suddenly from heart disease. They continued for some time the conversation in their native tongue, of which I heard and understood every word.  Mrs. Wriedt, for the first time in her life, heard how the Croatian language sounds. I and my Croatian friend were deeply impressed by what we witnessed that day, May 16th. I spoke of it to my friends as the most wonderful experience of my life.”
– Count Chedo Miyatovich, Serbian diplomat on his sitting with American direct-voice medium Etta Wriedt, who spoke only “Yankee,” but through whom spirits spoke French, German, Italian, Spanish, Norwegian, Dutch, Arabic, Serbian, and other languages.

Speaking Greek: “Even supposing that our minds could have transmitted to him the idea that his son was dead, how could our thoughts have made Laura understand and speak Greek, a language which she had never heard?”
– Judge John Edmonds, Chief Justice of the New York State Supreme Court, on observing his teenaged daughter, Laura, a medium, speak Greek and tell a Greek-speaking man that his son in Greece had recently died, something he was unaware of but which was later confirmed at fact

English Unknown:  “For myself, I do not speak [English] and I never have. I activate these words that are in Thomas’s memory and are known to him. Occasionally there is a little ‘magic,’ when I join together sounds and symbols that are in Thomas’s mind so that words may be spoken that are not known to Thomas.”
– Stephen, a spirit entity speaking through New Zealand medium Thomas Ashman, as explained to Michael Cocks, an Anglican minister who questioned him on how he learned English

Veridical Evidence: “During the course of this wonderful experience a voice announced itself as Frank Woodward and enquired for my wife, and spoke to her. This astounded her, for Frank Woodward was her former music master, of whom she had not heard for seventeen years, and who lived in the extreme north of England. Enquiry afterwards revealed the fact that he had died a year previously.”
– Charles Tweedale, Vicar of Weston for the Church of England, about his sitting with American direct-voice medium Etta Wriedt

Spiritual Network: “She renders the most abstruse points perfectly understandable to the most common auditor. In close analysis of words she is not surpassed, and her knowledge of natural law seems to be an intuition amounting to almost certainty. Her high-toned moral character has at all times defied the tongue of calumny. In metaphysics she shows a degree of erudition hitherto among the greatest scholars of the world.”
– James Mapes, Ph.D., analytical chemist and renowned inventor, after testing 14-year-old Cora Scott (lower right photo), who was said to be a medium for a group soul of 12 advanced spirits. With one man, she relayed a message in Indian sign language

Conviction: “I tell you with all my strength of the conviction which I can muster that we do persist….I say it because I know that certain friends of mine still exist, because I have talked with them.”
– Sir Oliver Lodge, physicist and president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science

Marvelous: “As you know, I have been a Laodicean toward her heretofore. But that she is no fraud, and that she is the greatest marvel I have ever met, I am now convinced.”
– Herbert Nichols, Ph.D., Harvard psychology professor in a letter to Professor William James of Harvard about his testing of medium Leonora Piper.

Overwhelming Evidence: “In this case, the evidence for extended survival after bodily death is cogent and extraordinarily overwhelming, to the extent that I regard extended survival as proven.”
– Vernon Neppe, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Pacific Neuropsychiatric Institute in Seattle, referring to a chess game between a living chess champion and a deceased chess champion communicating his moves through a medium

Materialism Defeated: “The evidence for an afterlife is sufficiently strong and compelling that an unbiased person ought to conclude that materialism is a false theory.”
– Neal Grossman, Ph.D., professor of philosophy University of Chicago

Dumbfounded: “For two mortal hours this invisible kept us wondering at his power and laughing at his ‘wise-cracking.’ He was philosophic as well as humorous. At intervals, he played jokes upon us. At my request he touched my face on the side away from the psychic and six feet from her. As a still stronger test I asked that the small end of the cone touch me on my right nostril. This was done with such gentle precision that it seemed a caress.’
– Hamlin Garland, a Pulitzer Prize winning author on his sitting with direct-voice medium Mary Curryer Smith, along with Professor Amos Dolbear, renowned physicist, who Garland observed sitting “dumbfounded and bewildered” as a spirit named Wilbur conversed with them

Ectoplasm is Real: “It is a whitish substance that creeps as if alive, with damp, cold, protoplasmic extensions that are transformed under the eyes of the experimenters into a hand, fingers, a head, or even into entire figures.”
– Charles Richet, M.D., Ph.D., 1912 Nobel laureate in medicine, on observing materializations

Materializations:  “The most remarkable materializations which I have observed are those produced by Eva in my laboratory during three consecutive months of the winter of 1917-18…I do not say merely, ‘There was no trickery.’ I say, ‘there was no possibility of trickery.’ Nearly all the materializations took place under my own eyes, and I have observed the whole of their genesis and development.”
– Gustave Geley, M.D., French physician and psychical researcher, who carried out hundreds of experiment with mediums in his laboratory, many with Professor Charles Richet

Creation of Consciousness: “The more we learn about the structure and biology of the brain, the clearer it becomes that the brain does not create consciousness, nor serve as the repository for memory.  The brain doesn’t produce consciousness any more than it produces sound waves when you hear music. In fact, the situation is just the opposite: We are conscious in spite of our brain.’
– Eben Alexander, M.D., academic neurosurgeon, author of Proof of Heaven; A Neurosurgeon’s Journey in the Afterlife

Scientism Overcome:  “Before [my near-death experience] on Everest, I was a rationalist, reductive materialist and skeptic. I believed matter was the basis of life and by reducing matter to its smallest components we could understand the universe according to predetermined laws of physics.”
–Roger Hart, Oregon State University research professor before his NDE convinced him that there is life after death, author of The Phaselock Code

Major Transformation: “Before the accident I was an atheist and a materialist. I had no belief or interest in anything to do with life after death, the paranormal, or religion. During the next couple of years I felt very different about life. I can’t say prior to the accident I had a fear of death; like most people at that age I never really thought about it in depth. But now I had no fear of death. I’ll go further; I embraced it, not in any morbid way but because I now understood, or at least came to believe that death is nothing more than a transition from one state to another.”
– Jon Beecher, publisher, owner of White Crow Books

Expanding Consciousness  “Besides the obvious purpose of informing us that life does not finish with physical death, one of the main goals of the most comprehensive ITC communication appears to be an attempt to contribute to the expansion of human consciousness by conveying to us information of high ethical content which breaks with conventional human values.”
– Anabela Cardoso, Ph.D., retired diplomat on her research in Instrumental Transcommunication, author of Electronic Voices: Contact with Another Dimension?

Threats to Materialism: “When new ideas do not fit the generally accepted (materialist) paradigm, many scientists perceive them as a threat. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that when empirical studies reveal new phenomena or facts that are inconsistent with the prevailing scientific paradigm, they are usually denied, suppressed, or even ridiculed.”
– Pim van Lommel, M.D.,, Dutch cardiologist and author of Consciousness Beyond life

Decline of Materialism:  “Despite all the achievement of science and technology, materialism is now facing a credibility crunch that was unimaginable in the twentieth century.”
– Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D., British biochemist and author of Science Set Free

Wake Up, Skeptic! “To suggest that these trained observers were all deceived by fraudulent operations, those stupid and very tiresome performances which mislead no one but the uninformed and gullible, is to offer an explanation which offends reason and shows willful indifference to truth.”
– T. Glen Hamilton, M.D., Canadian physician and researcher, referring to Lodge, Hodgson, Barrett, Richet, Geley, Crawford, and others

Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, and Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I.
His latest book, No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife is published by White Crow books.

Oh, another apposite piece from Haldane :

https://jbshaldane.org/books/1927-Possible-Worlds/haldane-1927-possible-worlds.html#Page_204

Bruce:

I may get back to “Jackson” and his writings.

He is like a “psychic cousin” and I gained access to both his “worldview” and a being for whom “Andrew Jackson Davis” was or is a life experience, after “hearing”: “You have an inner connection with Andrew Jackson Davis” as I awakened one morning.

As I described here, all I knew of him at the time was that he’d been known as “The Poughkeepsie Seer” and I began to search on-line as I drank my first coffee, before getting to work.

The connection opened as I concentrated in this way; at this first contact he was no less surprised than I was, “saying”:  “There’s nothing left of me!”

He had a bit more to say a few days later, involving an Elizabethan connection.

I ordered various books, including a skimpy biography, his first autobiography, the 1915 slimmed down edition of The Harmonial Philosophy published after his death, etc. (but not The Penetralia).

I found his first autobiography (a facsimile edition; he wrote another later in his life) <b><i>The Magic Staff<i><b> difficult to read but did read it up to a point.

Then all of this concentrating led to a brief connection with what I’ll call his “worldview” (I don’t have a precise definition of that term, used by Seth and Jane Roberts; it’s one place where Seth’s teachings don’t align very well with Spiritualism).

The experience was like being briefly immersed in the energy of his life, including a very strong whiff of 19th Century Americana.

It was all too familiar.

When I was younger, I enjoyed immersing myself in the times and places of other selves by a combination of reading history books and “tuning in” but I’d never done this for the 19th Century U.S., not having been drawn to it.

Here it was, but I still did not feel drawn to it,  while I’m now much closer to the exit and somewhat preoccupied with a Seth-inspired practice or process that is finally starting to bear fruit, but one for which communication with the dead is only a peripheral component.

I’m also leery of trance, lacking someone to keep an eye on me in that state, and trance was one key to who Davis was. It’s also true that like anyone who acquires an interesting reputation early in life, Davis had to live up to his own mystique.

I may have much more to say on the topic of “Jackson” in the future.

Dors,
Thanks for the reference to Haldane.  I know nothing about him so any of my thoughts about him are irrelevant.  I found a page with some of his quotes at:

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._B._S._Haldane

Haldane’s quotes could prompt hours and hours of discussions, I think. I am not so sure that his ideas would be well received today but of course he was not privy to the current ideas about evolution, cell biology, genetics, eugenics, socialism, Marxism, parapsychology, spiritualism and spiritism, etc. Upon a superficial read, I think he seems to be also somewhat superficial in his approach to evolution and human life, materialism and “God” in general and maybe some of his ideas might seem self-evident today.  He probably was a man of his time but caught-up in self-importance and correctness of his own ideas.  - AOD

Michael
I would like to expand the quote from Edmund Gurney.
It’s a puzzle to us here in a way, though we understand it better than you. I work at it hard. I do. I’d give anything I possess to find out. I don’t care for material things now, our interest is much greater. I’m studying hard how to communicate; it’s not easy. But it’s only a matter of a short time before I shall be able to tell the world all sorts of things through one medium or another. [And so on for some time.] Lodge, keep up your courage, there’s a quantity to hope for yet. Hold it up for a time. Don’t be in a hurry. Get facts; no matter what they call you, go on investigating. Test to fullest. Assure yourself, then publish. It will be all right in the end—no question about it. It’s true.

I liked Edmund’s intention of future communication. I also was prompted to alert Bill to The Andrew Jackson Davies book The penetralia; being harmonial answers to important questions. https://www.loc.gov/item/11003606/.  I had not any knowledge of this but I am sure Bill might have run across it. The reward for pointing out the date.
Thanks
Bruce

Speaking of quotes from notable intellects, a valuable potential addition would be the essay On Being Finite (1965) by the famous polymath JBS Haldane. You can find it in his collection of essays Science and Life (1968).

I’m reading “Sunflowers at my Table: War Diaries of a Ukrainian Community,” authored by Amber Poole, a recent White Crow release. An interesting Jung quote from his “Answer to Job”:

“The only thing that really matters now is whether man can climb up to a higher moral level, to a higher plane of consciousness.”

I have changed it.

Thanks, Bill.

Bill,

Thanks for pointing out the error on the next post.  It should have been changed to March 11. And thanks to Bruce, Mark, Don, Amos and Yvonne for the comments and links. They are much appreciated.

Michael:

I assume that you simply forgot to update “Next Blog Post: February 26”.

Many would be quite unhappy, I’m sure, if we have to wait until February 26, 2025.

Bill

Love your lists, Mike!!

They are always thought-provoking and informative.

Michael,
I think the following oft-quoted statement by James Hyslop might have been a good addition to your 30 witnesses.  I think it might also suggest something about Hyslop’s personality. - AOD

“I regard the existence of discarnate spirits as scientifically proved, and I no longer refer to the skeptic as having any right to speak on the subject. Any man who does not accept the existence of discarnate spirits and the proof of it is either ignorant or a moral coward.  I give him short shrift, and do not propose any longer to argue with him on the supposition that he knows anything about the subject.”

Mike I apologise as I meant my last comment to be on your post on William James so must have been a slight mix up between Jon and myself. Regardless another great piece here and some wonderful quotes from your book. I hope your friend did manage to read it before his time came.

Thanks Don for the info on the Laurentin and Lejeune book and seems a really good price. I haven’t read your book as I keep threatening to look more into the subject but have been reading so much stuff on afterlife research and books on spiritualism over the last year and a half that I haven’t been able to fit much else in. Yes indeed you couldn’t make it up.

Michael,
As you know, I have been the ‘devil’s advocate’ at times over the years on this blog.  It has been difficult for me to get beyond 50% belief in survival, mainly I think, because I don’t trust most people to tell the truth or that most people may believe they are truthful but in reality, they manufacture the “truth” to fit their own belief systems. (Not always, but it is a possibility.)  But, I have to say the after researching and studying the overwhelming evidence—-yes, evidence—-for many years on many fronts, I am moving closer to your 99% belief in some kind of survival of consciousness.

I think my understanding of survival of consciousness is more complicated than some others, with a lot of loose ends that include an oversoul, intelligent design and creative design and maybe Karma and I am often plagued with doubt.  But I have been mostly convinced by the research into reincarnation, especially, as studied in children under five years old.  For those who are still finding their way understanding reincarnation, I recommend a series of interviews that Jeffrey Mishlove did with Dr. Jim Matlock.  I think that Dr. Matlock is seriously overlooked as a major researcher in reincarnation being over-powered by Ian Stevenson and Jim Tucker.  But for those who have the time, the 12-part series on “New Thinking Allowed” with Dr. Matlock is very enlightening. The following is the link: - AOD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds10X_vVEpI&list=PLryaqGJkYzRaED-zAExDIYfQMl0o7-BTm&index=1

Thanks Bruce,
It has been 14 years since I first read the article by Gioia Diliberto in the Smithsonian Magazine about Patience Worth (2010).  At the time, I contributed many pertinent comments to the article which I see have not been carried forward with the updated article.  The updates unfortunately make reference to a book (2012) by the late Daniel Shea which contains some unkind unsubstantiated gossip about Pearl Curran and the bulk of Shea’s book is far too conjectural and academic to be of much value to the Pearl Curran/Patience Worth case.  Other than that, Diliberto’s article is very good.  Thanks again!  - AOD

Mark…

As you might imagine (if you’ve read my book), I have quite a few books on Marian apparitions in my library. Far and away the most useful is “Messages and Teachings of Mary at Medjugorje,” compiled by the most authoritative of the Marian researchers, Fr. Rene Laurentin and his colleague, Rene Lejeune. If you can find a copy (actually, I just checked—it’s available at BookFinder.com for about five bucks) it would be well worth your time.

In my own life, I “might” have had a “Mary experience” one day while just dozing off for an afternoon nap while working on the Mary portion of my book some years ago—when I suddenly “heard” a voice asking me what was the one single question I wanted answered for my book. I put “heard” in quotes because it was strictly an interior locution type of thing—nothing audible to the ear or visible to the eye—but it was as realistic sounding as if the person were standing right next to me. In any event, caught unawares, I mumbled (mentally)some response related to “ecumenism” and drifted off to sleep. Upon waking, I felt a compulsion to look something up in a set of books I have on St. Teresa of Avila. Going to the relevant page, I was quite surprised to find that the material there basically provided a direct answer to my “ecumenism” question. You can’t make this stuff up…

Don
That is interesting about the children disappearing. I keep threatening to get a copy of ‘The great apparitions of Mary’ by Ingo Swann (who was involved in the the first research on remote viewing in the 1970’s) if I can get one at an affordable price. The book takes in 22 supranormal appearances of Mary dating from 1531 onwards. Having experienced something similar about 14 years ago myself while gazing dreamily out of my bedroom window one clear winters late afternoon. I don’t really talk about if I’m honest as it would lose it’s value to me if I shared the experience with all and sundry although I have told some close relatives. But just to say that these things can and do happen and the experience is very real and there is all I can offer. But why I saw it and what it meant I can’t explain.  If there are two or more people who witness it then it has more punch but I know what I saw and that’s enough for me. You have to pinch yourself at times like that and then sit up sharp and look again just to make sure you’re wide awake and not dreaming or hallucinating etc of which I was certainly not.

Michael,
I appreciate the quote from Edmund Gurney. I have read his after death discussions with much interest. I appreciate many, if not all of the commentators and while I feel Amos would have spotted this reference to Patience, by way of saying thanks for the many links I will include it.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/patience-worth-author-from-the-great-beyond-54333749/

Bruce