Open Letter to Survival Researchers

Preamble

As a person who works with Psi-related phenomena, especially mediumship and Instrumental TransCommunication (ITC) which includes Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP), I look to the academic community of Parapsychologists for learned guidance. While there are a few important exceptions, such guidance has not really developed.

The Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (BICS) has given us hope that Bigelow would coax researchers into authoring a coherent view of reality based on their research, but the first round of essays turned out to be simply more of the same. Most were compilations that better proved the Super-Psi Hypothesis than the Survival Hypothesis.

Now, BICS is sponsoring grants for research intended to further understanding of survival of consciousness after bodily death. Once again, it is my hope that the resulting research will help the lay community understand their apparently paranormal experiences.

Below is an effort to provide “preemptive” feedback to BICS administrators concerning what I think we can expect from parapsychologists. Consider it a companion piece for the paper “Rules of Evidence – Survival.” It originated as an informal email to BICS. That was to be the last of my effort on the subject, but since there has been no acknowledgment from BICS that they received it, it seems reasonable to post it as an open letter on my website. While it was intended for BICS, it applies to all research and theory building related to the Survival Hypothesis and Psi phenomena.

A “friends of BICS” brief

(Email to BICS, October 2, 2022)

Introduction

This letter concerns possible results of the BICS grant program that might benefit the lay community. I am not submitting a proposal. Consider this a “friends of BICS” brief.

Since assuming co-leadership of the Association TransCommunication (ATransC) in 2000, my focus has evolved from trying to figure out the nature of Instrumental TransCommunication (ITC) to how best to collect examples and develop educational material about survival metaphysics. Many ATransC members have expressed a strong desire to base understanding of their spiritual nature on good science. We supported that interest with a promise to provide guidance based on how we understand current science.

We encouraged people to apply science and recommended techniques for personal transcommunication rather than seeking out a medium. The result has been a few able practitioners who were supportive as research practitioners for our studies. The Journal Section of the ATransC website details some of the studies we and friends of the association have conducted.

Our study of survival metaphysics necessarily included analysis of psychic functioning and mental mediumship research, but it focused on the study of Instrumental TransCommunication (ITC). Such concepts as Psi, the Psi Field and a cosmological model that accounts for these apparent characteristics of our etheric nature became part of our study.

In “The Magazine of the Society for Psychical Research,” 5 (2022), Robert Bigelow noted that he wants to “move on and go to the next level up.” This letter is to describe our view of how “going to the next level” might look.

Who is the intended audience?

When I write about things paranormal, my intended audience is the lay community. They generally accept the reality of the phenomena, and rather than seeking proof, they are more focused on understanding their etheric (spiritual) nature. Ghost hunting clubs fill the need for a local group of likeminded people and a safe place to begin the seeker’s journey. But most past ATransC members understand that the personality they seek to contact is nonlocal.

Most of our members have considered OBE, NDE and reincarnation symptoms of their Duality but not the best approach to the study of survival.

I suggest that the BICS audience is not parapsychology or the mainstream academic community. While we need science to help us understand our experiences, science is in service to the general community. I make this point because those who have claimed the intellectual authority to study things paranormal have generally made parapsychology a closed club with little public facing service. BICS (Bigelow) has expressed the intention to “go to the next level up.” I am suggesting here that part of the next level must be a change in culture.

A good beginning would be BICS guidance for grantees to output a public-facing explanation of their work with a plain-English conclusion. Research reports should not be considered complete if they do not include a sensible and understandable theoretical model based on the research and a consensus cosmology.

Arcane terminology peppered with statistical analysis and novel applications of terms is seldom useful to the people who experience and seek to understand paranormal phenomena. In the study of ITC, it has become apparent that the practitioner’s understanding of the phenomena and the hypothetical models has a lot to do with their ability to produce phenomena and distinguish between imagined and actual. We have learned to follow the philosophy of Decisive Determinism: the phenomena are decisively evident or are of little value.

Candid disclosure

As a person who has published 57 NewsJournals and several books concerning survival metaphysics, it is my opinion that the publisher shares with the authors some of the responsibility for technical reasonableness and for promoting the greater good. As an example, the parapsychological community has supported a “research” team (a philosophy professor, a biologist and a psychologist) that publicly attacked a research subject based on supposed behavior outside of the protocol. Some of the more respected members of the parapsychological community facilitated further distribution of the supposed research report.

While the supposed researchers pretty much missed the demonstrated phenomena, they did succeed in defaming the research subject. Conversely, the other parapsychologists who funded their study, and repeatedly gave them public-facing forums to continue their assault, bear some of the guilt of that defamation. The result has been to further the Academic-Layperson Partition and to alienate many practitioners from the parapsychological community.

Published literature should not be described as peer reviewed if authors or “peer” reviewers do not understand such concepts as mostly unconscious preprocessing, cultural contamination and nonlocality of the Psi Field. As an example, a retired philosophy professor has no intellectual authority to judge the reasonableness of a research report about ITC. Since parapsychologists have not established a consensus view on what such concepts imply, the alternative is to assure the qualifications of those who produce literature are disclosed to the reader. Further, without an opportunity for experiencers and practitioners to add their lay review (Academic-Layperson Partition again), academics lack the necessary feedback from experiencers to understand the reasonableness of their conclusions.

The bottom line is that, while scientists produce the understanding, it is the public that consumes that understanding. The public has no way to know if academic guidance is sufficiently reasonable guidance for them to make an effort to apply the research. As a funder of research, BICS is assuming a degree of responsibility to assure that academic guidance resulting from that research is both reasonably correct and disclosed in a manner that is accessible to the lay community.

Building blocks of understanding

A hypothetical model can be likened to a jigsaw puzzle that can only be complete when all of the pieces are in place. As part of my review of the BICS essays, I posted a Rules of Evidence – Survival paper on my website. As described below, the points I addressed in it represent some of those pieces of the puzzle.

Preprocessing of sensed information

As I have experienced, very few ITC-EVP, psychic and mediumship practitioners understand the nature of mental preprocessing of sensed information. In fact, based on my review of BICS essays, it appears that few people working as parapsychologists understand the implications of preprocessing.

This preprocessing appears to include the mostly unconscious transformation of sensed information to conform with the experiencer’s worldview. For instance, our studies in the ATransC seem to indicate that this transformation is at least part of the reason EVP are typically in a language the practitioner or an interested observer understands, even though the presumed speaker may not have spoken that language.

This preprocessing also appears to be the explanation for why EVP tend to be expressed in ways that are sympathetic with the practitioner or interested observer’s point of view. For instance, a fearful person tends to record fearful EVP. We see indications of this same sort of influence with mental mediumship.

NDEs and OBEs are human reported. If preprocessing is a real characteristic of the mind, then personal reports may be valid as a proof of Psi functioning. However, their validity of proof of survival should be augmented with other “proofs.”

Our current guidance for practitioners is not to use prerecorded speech (live voice) and to always use a listening panel. The reason for these cautions is practitioner or witness coloring due to preprocessing. We continue to look for more authoritative guidance about unconscious preprocessing and how to moderate its effect.

Nonlocality

Parapsychologists have proposed referring to thought as Psi and a aspect of reality that propagates Psi as the Psi Field. The Psi Field is generally defined as a nonphysical, nonlocal field. We have found that it is useful to model reality as fields.

Our study of EVP indicates that the initial source of an apparently paranormal utterance can be anywhere in reality. That is, there probably is no such thing as a local ghost, only the expectation of a local ghost. Once again, that suggests that preprocessing is specific to the practitioner or an interested observer, but the initial source of the communication can be anywhere.

The nonlocality problem suggests that simply separating the medium from a proxy sitter provides no assurance of separation … it is not a “blind.” An interested observer need not be physically present to provide the etheric-to-physical preprocessing circuit for phenomena formation. Most importantly, nonlocality favors Super-Psi as an alternative model for survival.

Psi and the Psi Field

The Psi Field Hypothesis is one of the more important cosmological concepts in the study of ITC. It is credited to the late Michael Roll, but his work appears to be lost to the lay community behind an academic paywall. While the concept is often referred to by parapsychologists, there is little in the way of concept definition in the public-facing literature.

“Psi” is one of the more commonly used terms in parapsychology. The term is typically used without explanation as if using it is definition enough. Is the author using “Psi” to mean mentation or the influence of mentation?

Any discussion of Psi that does not address the Psi Field is probably incomplete. First, is the idea of a Psi Field in agreement with the researcher’s operating assumptions? The parapsychologists who adhere to Anomalistic Psychology can be expected to argue against its existence. That would be Physicalism.

Exceptional Experiences Psychologists tend to support the Super Psi Hypothesis as a way to explain anomalous access of information. Super Psi depends on some form of field in which information is retained for later access by psychics. For discussion, I have begun referring to this point of view as Physical Dualism.

If the researcher supports the Psi Field Hypothesis, does the researcher model the Psi Field as an emergent physical quality or as a precursor to physical space? If emergent, then the reader should assume the researcher is guided by the Super-Psi Hypothesis to explain the existence of Psi. If the Psi Field is modeled as a precursor to the physical, it would seem reasonable for the reader to assume the author is at least open to the possibility of post mortem survival. I refer to that as Strict Dualism.

Talking about Psi can be complicated. For instance, I have learned to describe Psi as the influence of thought in the sense that First Sight Theory describes expression as a psychokinetic influence. If there is Psi and a Psi Field that propagates Psi, then should mind be described as a Psi Field phenomenon?

Shielding from Psi

An important characteristic of the Psi Field is that we have found no way to shield from Psi. For instance, it is possible to place an audio recorder in an EMF, light and acoustically shielded chamber and still collect EVP. This characteristic is a strong indicator that these paranormal phenomena are not electromagnetic phenomena. It does suggest that the “here is everywhere” characteristic of nonlocality makes the Psi Field a form of conceptual space. Research determining whether it is emergent from physical space or if physical space is emergent from the Psi Field needs to be addressed. Likewise, is the Psi Field a special case of a greater reality (the etheric)?

Conceptual-physical interface

We are seeing strong evidence that the Psi Field is conceptual space. For instance, speech in transform EVP is thought to be formed by impressing intended order on available audio-frequency sound. The ideal sound for this appears to be broad-spectrum chaotic sound with occasional noise spikes. Steady-state sound like white noise is almost useless for EVP. As in a darkroom séance or a psychomanteum, the common factor appears to be degree of uncertainty.

We hypothesize that the trans-etheric influence of intended order becomes more effective as the physical process becomes less determinant. For instance, a white noise signal is engineered to be as random as possible, yet each next sample of the sound stream is conceptually the same; each sample is very determinant and not so useful for transform EVP. However, each next sample of a chaotic noise sound stream is highly indeterminate, and that form of noise is seen as more receptive to the influence of intended order.

Intended Order

Intended order is Psychokinesis with a purpose. We think it acts on concepts about things and not the things. We see essentially the same kind of influence of intended order in precipitated art, apports and both visual and audio ITC. Healing intention should probably be included in this. To research any of these phenomena, the researcher needs to understand how they relate. Research reports concerning such phenomena probably should be considered incomplete if they do not at least attempt to account for a possible nonlocal psychokinetic influence from observer, practitioner and researcher.

Poor quality examples

We have seen countless examples of researchers basing the present on the past, rather than integrating more contemporary understanding. We consider those old accounts just interesting anecdotes if such characteristics of mind as nonlocal Psi, mental preprocessing and mental storytelling are not expressly accounted for. NDE and OBE accounts would seem to be equally suspect.

It is common for professors to use college students to conduct experimental sessions for such phenomena as EVP, but college students are probably not practitioners. Parapsychologists too often assume that anyone can produce phenomena on demand. Not working with a competent practitioner for research almost assures a “failure to replicate” result. (ethericstudies.org/failure-to-replicate-fallacy/), (ethericstudies.org/failure-to-replicate-itc/)

Mental storytelling

I have found that James Carpenter’s First Sight Theory helps explain how coloring due to mental storytelling can be mistaken by the practitioner as mediumship or psychic functioning. The Integration Corollary (#3), for instance, reinforces the idea that our mind is predisposed to more or less explain … everything. The effect is that inexperienced mental mediums sometimes “lock onto” their own mental story thinking it is a message from spirit. We feel this is a factor in personal accounts of NDE and OBE experiences. Research reports that do not account for this effect would seem to be incomplete.

Assumption of good faith

We are aware that not enough is known with any certainty to say that a reported experience is paranormal or if it is delusion or fraud. For instance, a potential problem in darkroom séances is the possibility of the medium being used as something of a trance puppet by the supposed communicating etheric personality.

In another example, practitioners do not produce useful phenomena with every session. Both practitioner and observer expectations are known to influence results. Of course, research reports might produce a “failure to replicate” result, but it is for researchers to include consideration of failure due to such factors as performance anxiety or possible practitioner inexperience.

Comment

Here are a few of the points I consider when reviewing research reports:

Does the research team include a person who is well informed about a representative range of reported paranormal experiences?
Is there a point of view bias that might cause the researchers to ignore alternative models?
Is the report accessible to the lay community?
Is the source material contemporary?
Have the researchers accounted for nonlocality and a possible ubiquitous Psi Field?
Have the researchers proposed or cited a theoretical model?
Does the research further our understanding?
Do the researchers provide a means by which the reader can ask questions and make suggestions?

My ideal BICS would be one that works to shape the future of paranormal research. As a support for the lay community, parapsychology seems increasingly irrelevant. BICS would serve best by cultivating a more coherent study of consciousness with possible emphases on survival and the nature of survival. It seems clear that the existing parapsychological community will need to be changed for that to happen.

Please consider this brief a note of encouragement.