Posted on 23 September 2024, 7:08

Thirty-five or more years ago, when I was doing a lot of sports writing, I began noting many paradoxes in various sports and started keeping a file on them.  I collected several dozen paradoxes, but more or less lost interest in the subject after a few years.  In more recent times, I’ve been noting many paradoxes in spiritual and related matters.  The one that really jumped out at me comes from a recent White Crow Books release, A Doorway to the Light, by Carmen De Sayve and Jocelyn Arellano (below).  The authors set forth much that they say has come to De Sayve from the spirit world by automatic writing, some from supposedly advanced spirits, others from earthbound spirits. One of the more advanced spirit explained why he (or she), while in the spirit world, decided to incarnate in the physical world.  “We decided to experience our ‘what is’ by living within ‘what is not’ and so understand the fullness of our beauty, harmony and happiness,” the spirit explained. “We needed painful experiences to be able to appreciate happiness; disharmony in order to know harmony; and the limitations of the physical world to appreciate our limitlessness.  The problem is that, once we are in the illusory world, we become so attached to it that we have difficulty leaving and returning to infinity where we belong.”

About the same day I read that in the book, I read a column titled “’Junkification of U.S. life,” by New York Times columnist David Brooks. He discusses the decline of cultural values in the United States, especially in the entertainment and art fields. “We’re now in a culture in which we want worse things [than what we had] – the cheap hit over the long flourishing.” He quotes psychiatrist Anna Lembke from her book, “Dopamine Nation”: “The paradox is that hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, leads to anhedonia, which is the inability to enjoy.” More succinctly, the more pleasure we experience, the less happy we are. That sure sounds like the dilemma in today’s world. Isn’t that what Emperor Nero experienced when Rome burned?

It's sometimes difficult to distinguish a paradox from a conundrum, a Catch 22, an irony, or a simple enigma, but the key point seems to be that the result is the opposite of what you would expect. Drawing from the file I started 35 years ago, I pulled a clipping quoting the late George Carlin, a comedian, although another site gives credit to Dr. Bob Moorehead, a Christian pastor: “We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less, We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness. … We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often…We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life. We’ve added years to life not life to years. We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul.”

One of the more common paradoxes is that “the more we study and seek knowledge, the more we realize how little we know.” Another is that the desire for fame leads to the desire for privacy. One of my favorite sports paradoxes is that Rocky Marciano, the undefeated heavyweight champion of the 1950s, couldn’t make it as a baseball catcher because he had a weak arm; however, his feared knockout punch with that same arm brought him great success and fame. That brings to mind a personal paradox going back to my high school days when the team doctor said that my slow heart rate (40 beats per minute) indicated a “weak” heart, i.e., slow is weak, and barred me from running on the track team. But a few years later, a military physician diagnosed my slow pulse as a strong heart, referred to as an “athletic heart,” and approved me for military service.

Real Combatants

A very puzzling paradox for me is seeing men in military uniforms lined up to get the autographs of football players – real combatants praising or idolizing pretend or play combatants.  Along the same line, there was a baseball player, whose name escapes me, that refused to give autographs.  Fans called him unfriendly and sportswriters labeled him arrogant. However, the fact is that he was a very friendly and humble person who did not feel himself worthy of giving autographs.  He was too humble for his own good. 

Another favorite sports paradox comes from John Madden, a Hall of Fame football coach, who said, “As a coach, I learned that the better the player, the less he knows why he does and what he does.”  And there’s the one about “trying too hard.”  If a ballplayer “swings for the fences,” he’ll more likely strike out, but if he just swings without the extra effort while focusing on just making contact, his chances of hitting a home run are much better. 

Safe driving on the road is paradoxical in that if a driver allows proper distance between his car and the car in front, he leaves enough space for another car to merge between them, thereby causing more hazardous conditions.

There was a time when people “dressed up” in fancy attire to demonstrate their affluence, but now they “dress down” with ripped and ragged Jeans with holes in the knees to express their individuality and stand out in the crowd. 

Back to anhedonia, experiencing too much pleasure. Perhaps the best example of this can be found in baseball. Efforts are regularly made to shorten the games, but if people are paying rising admission prices for the pleasure of watching a game, wouldn’t they get more pleasure out of a longer game? 

Catalysts, Not Hindrances 

Another recently released book, supported by the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies, An Urgent Message for Humanity, by Melvin Morse, M.D. and several other contributors, stresses the need to understand that adversity is, in effect, in our best interest.  Bad or negative experiences “are crucial for spiritual growth and that the challenges, difficulties, and even adversities are not merely obstacles but essential elements in our spiritual growth. These challenges are seen not as hindrances but as catalysts for growth and opportunities for learning, and they are necessary for the evolution of the human spirit.” 

Surprisingly, Morse, known for his research with near-death experiencers, and the other authors draw from a research project with a number of mediums, while often quoting Allan Kardec, the famous French psychical researcher of the 1850s and ‘60s.  “Everything happens for us to learn from it,” one medium (or the spirit entity communicating through the medium) is quoted. “There is no death, so why do you say that war and death are a horror? You will see that it is all gain; no one really dies or loses anything.”  It was further expressed through another medium that even “9-11 was given to us to help us spiritually.”  This message is said to have caused the medium extreme distress as she disagreed and didn’t understand it. 

The key message seems to be that in order to comprehend the greater reality, we must first recognize that we are incapable of understanding a timeless and spaceless world. However, if we admit that we can’t comprehend it, the question becomes what is the point of continuing with research to study it.  As I understand it, the gain comes from recognizing that the Nothingness of mainstream science and materialism, is really Everything and that in applying similes, analogies, metaphors and symbolisms to that Everything we can then experience a certain hope and peace of mind rather than suffer from the melancholy that accompanies despair, including anhedonia. 

A Thick Mist

The nihilists say that even if they are wrong, it is “one life at a time” for them.  Why concern oneself with what might or might not come after physical death? As philosopher William James said, such bravado often turns to “anxious trembling” as the nihilist approaches “extinction” and what he or she sees as the abyss of nothingness. But there is another reason to be concerned during this lifetime.  “If you believe there is nothing after death, then nothingness is what you will find: a thick mist of sorts that isolates you from both the spiritual and physical worlds,” De Sayve offers based on her spirit contacts. “It’s important to open our minds now to the idea of the soul’s survival in order to be better prepared to enter the astral plane.”  That message has come through many other mediums.

When Kardec asked whether knowledge of spirit life has any influence on one’s awakening on the other side and the fact that so many souls seem confused and don’t realize they have left the physical realm, the response from spirit was: “It exercises a very considerable influence on that duration, because it enables the spirit to understand beforehand the new situation in which it is about to find itself; but the practice of rectitude during the earthly life, and a clear conscience, are the conditions which conduce most powerfully to shorten [the initial confusion].”

While lack of time and space are deterrents to human understanding, the idea of eventually “merging into Oneness” with the Creator adds to the abstractness and the indifference to it all. It seems no more elating than spending eternity in a dentist’s chair under the influence of nitrous oxide.  However, more than a few advanced spirits have said that we retain our individuality in the merger.  “At the conclusion of our grand journey, we will again experience perfect unity, yet our individuality will continue, as well, and will live forever,” De Sayve recorded from a seemingly advanced spirit. And the advanced spirits constantly assure us that it is “lively” beyond what we can understand.

It all seems so absurd, but to quote Professor Charles Richet, a Nobel Prize winner, relative to his research into mediumship and related psychic matters:  “Yes, it is absurd, but no matter – it is true.” Sir William Crookes, a renowned British chemist and one of the pioneers of psychical research, put it this way: “I never said it was possible, I only said it was true.”

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.

Posted on 09 September 2024, 7:21

More than a few “spirits” communicating with “earthlings” have said that their world is beyond human language and comprehension.  And yet, efforts have been made to give some indication as to what that world is like.  One such effort was said to have been made by the famous American clergyman Henry Ward Beecher (1813 – 1887) through the mediumship of Marcella De Cou Hicks (1888 – 1942) and is set forth in the January 10, 1940 issue of “The Psychic Observer.”  I know nothing about Hicks other than that she authored a 1937 book titled “Eternal Verities,” and without more information supporting her ability and credibility, I have some reservations about summarizing in this blog what she was supposedly told by Beecher.  In a short preface to the front-page article, Hicks states that she heard from Beecher (below) frequently through the direct-voice mediumship of Henrietta Schnelker of Detroit, but that Beecher told her he would dictate a more complete discourse to her in her study.  For whatever it is worth, here is an abridgement of what Beecher later dictated.

"And just as spirit-souls are born into various and diametrically opposite conditions and environments, different races and nations; different social educational and governmental systems – just in like manner do spirit spirit-souls, at the time of transition, go into various conditions of Spirit; differing phases of advancement hereafter; varying and divergent places or points from which to start spiritual progress. All is according to the soul culture, development, and spiritual knowledge each has attained in the flesh, all of which have created for the ego a certain vibration rate which is in harmony with the rate of synchronizing groups here in spirit. And each spirit-soul naturally gravitates, according to LAW, to those of his own rate or kind.

Sound Logic

“Now you ask me, ‘Exactly WHERE is this spirit world to which disembodied earth folk take their flight? Now, how shall I answer you that? Can you tell me WHERE in eternal space your own earth plane or world is located? Indeed, you cannot, and except to locate it relatively, or in respect to its distance from other planets in the solar system which astronomers have discovered and named.  It is not possible to tell WHERE in space the earth world is.  Would you attempt to give the location of one specific drop of water in the Atlantic Ocean? In the infinite void of eternal space, there is neither up nor down; neither north, south, east, nor west. And as regards those other planets by means of which we assign earth its relative position in the solar system – where exactly are they? In a condition of boundless limitlessness, there is no such thing as locating any specific point – all is relative.

“And so, I say, neither is it possible to locate definitely the spiritual realms with respect to space, since the realms of spirit life are infinite in extent. Each planet with its attendant satellites, and the system to which it belongs, is afloat in a universe of spirit and inter-penetrated by spirit.

“Just as each drop of water, continuing its own individual microscopic universe, is only a part of the ocean composed of similar drops, each with its own individual life types – so the earth upon which human beings live is contained by, and exists in, an ocean of spirit – together with the similar worlds similarly contained.

“So far as I personally have been able to glean any definite knowledge, it would seem that spirit life penetrates to the farthermost points in space – although I have been given to understand that here and there exist voids or vacuum pockets that contain nothing.

“Most people think of spirit realms only in connection with the earth plane.  How foolish!  There are hundreds of thousands – probably millions – of planets inhabited by flesh and blood people in all stages of physical and mental and spiritual evolution. There are planets going through the primordial conditions that earth knew millions of years ago and planets inhabited by beings so much further developed in every aspect than earth people that in comparison they ae gods and goddesses.

“No, my dear, I am not digressing.  My point is this: All these people, upon death to their physical bodies, pass into spirit life. When you get the full force of this truth, you will realize how foolish it is to think of spirit life only in terms of the departed of earth.

Erroneous Ideas

“It seems to me, as I listen to people on earth discussing the spirit worlds, that most folks conceive of them as a series of disks, or flatlands, rising one above the other in graduated or ever increasing importance and inhabited by souls at certain definite levels of development. The general idea seems to be that after one has finished his lessons on one disk, he soars, climbs, flies, jumps, or takes the escalator to the next higher disk. There are even folks who can tell you exactly how many miles the spirit world is above the earth. They forget that what is above the earth in daytime, is below it at night. Tis whole idea is so cut and dried as to be actually mechanical in concept and, my child, nothing could be farther from the actual conditions.

“The fact is that the spirit world is practically analogous to your earth plane – not a series of planes, or flatlands but an expanse, infinite in extent, composed of innumerable phases, most of them merging rather than definitely separated.  You don’t go from floor to floor to floor, nor room to room, as in a great building or school but you progress or merge from phase to phase.

“In earth life there are many and varied regions, some ugly, some beautiful; some peopled by the low and degraded, some by the fine and the cultured – so the spirit world has its regions of varying vibration rates and those who synchronize with the rates of a certain phase inhabit that phase.  On the earth plane you have the dens of thieves and the abodes of honest people; the slums and the aristocratic neighborhoods; the segregated districts of the lewd and vulgar and the colonies of the refined and educated. You have the open fields, the woods, the mountains, the hot regions and the frigid zones. You have the city, the town and the country – all manner of phases and all degrees of degradation and culture and all separated as to vibration rates but existing together on the face of the earth.

What are Spheres?

“In spirit life groups of harmonious vibration and similar ideals associate together and it is never compulsory to affiliate with those whose vibrations are distressing or disturbing. Spirit life is one grand whole, containing all degrees of vibration even as the earth life so contains them. You on earth refer to our regions of various vibration rates as planes and spheres, etc. – those terms are all right but they often mislead in the concept they bring to the mortal mind.

“In a school, children of all grades mingle together in the same building, but for class work each group is by itself. The twelfth grader has nothing in common with the primary pupil and so they do not affiliate. As the student progresses he goes on to college, then to the university, and possibly post-graduate work in some great foreign university, taking one degree after another. He progresses into a higher and more advanced group of educators and intellectuals as he grows and develops mentally, yet he still lives in the same world and all those whom he has passed in his upward climb still live with him in the same world.  But their world has ceased to be his world and to all intents and purposes they live in different realms. As he continues to make more and greater progress, his associations keep pace with that progress and he removes himself more and more remotely from the ignorant and unlearned.  But if and when he reaches the peak of all earthly knowledge – he still lives on the earth plane, the same earth plane that harbors the human family in all its variations.

Strive for Perfection

“A human of earth may begin life as a slum dweller, in poverty and ignorance, but it is entirely possible for that person by dint of effort and application – the will to do and the determination to accomplish – to pull himself out of his environment and eventually make a dignified place for himself among the elect of earth.

“In spirit life exists an exact analogy to these matters. Just as one progresses from class to class in the school rooms of earth, then on to college and university, so the advancing spirit-soul progresses from phase to phase toward ultimate perfection. A spirit-soul may come here imbued with naught but malice – or merely frivolous.  He will then affiliate only with those of his own manner of malice or frivolity.  But once imbued with the desire to change his condition, all things ae possible to him and he may climb as high as his desire and perseverance will carry him…

“As I understand it, surrounding such individual inhabited planet are seven main zones of which the planet itself might be called the core…From the accepted fact of these seven zones, which seem to have been known to most ancient peoples, comes, I believe, all the references to ‘seventh heaven’ bound in the literature of mysticism, occultism, and the like. Each zone is composed of an infinite number of spheres or units, which in turn are composed of an infinite number of planes or divisions. Each plane or division in its turn, is made up of less phases, each phase containing countless groups of varying vibration rates. So that there is no gradation of spirituality or progress that is not provided for with exactitude…’

Spirits Progress

“In every cycle, the lowest plane of the first sphere is the three dimensional world created as substance matter and inhabited by spirit-souls in some manner of physical expression. Thus this earth is the lowest plane of the cycle of spiritual evolvement which its human inhabitants must encompass in their progression toward God-hood.

“Understand that there are realms of progress out in infinitude that one enters when he has completed his own cycle, or, in other words, completed all the development that can accrue to him up to and through the seventh zone.  Our information on what lies beyond the seventh zone is very vague. It takes millions or billions of years, measured in earth time, to achieve entrance into the seventh zone and one must have achieved a perfection of spirit that has made of him an angel. And still beyond this are infinite possibilities of progress…

“I do not care to go more deeply into this with you because it is too vague to me and besides there is no necessity. What people of earth want to know is what will be their immediate environment upon making their transition.”

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.