Rules of Evidence – Survival

Updated 2022

Also see:

BICS 2021 Essay Contest – Proof of Survival

Rules of Evidence – Survival

Review of Jeffrey Mishlove’s BICS Essay

Review of Pim van Lommel’s BICS Essay

Review of Leo Ruickbie’s BICS Essay

Review of Runner up BICS Essays

My (unselected) BICS Entry: Case for the Survival Hypothesis

Alice in Wonderland modified from hpixabay.com/vectors/alice-in-wonderland-small-door-30327/

Why This Essay

As I began preparing my review the first BICS essay, (1) it became obvious that there is some confusion about which phenomenal experience may be proof of information from survived personalities (discarnate) and which may be better explained as psychic access of information from incarnate personalities. As a general statement, personal stories, compilation of case studies and interviews are informative but not necessarily evidence of survival unless they include an account of possible mechanism or processes that make them evidential. “I had a veridical dream,” “spirit told me” or “how could such a complex event be explained otherwise” are not, by themselves, evidential arguments.

The essay question for the BICS contest was “What is the best available evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death?” It seems from my reading of the essays that the included “proof” in most do not adequately account for the Psi Hypothesis.

I spend a lot of time explaining these phenomena in Quora. (2) Also, fifteen years or so working with ATransC members and people contacting the ATransC website have made me realize that people too easily misunderstand even the simplest of paranormal related concepts. Such misconceptions are the stuff of myth and baseless beliefs. One of my objectives in writing about things paranormal is to help promote “paranormal literacy.”

This essay is about concepts, points of view and their implications related to the study of things paranormal. My focus is on rules of evidence for the Survival Hypothesis. Remember that this is the world according to Tom. Qualified parapsychologists might have a rather different view. If so, readers need to remember to examine their qualifications. Mine are here. (3)

Points of View

Dualism – The point of view that there is a greater reality (nonphysical, etheric) and the physical universe which is an aspect of the greater reality. In Dualism, mind is native to the etheric and the human body is native to the physical.

Physicalism – There is only physical reality. If mainstream science does not specifically allow for something, that something cannot be. In this view, belief in the possibility of things paranormal is pseudoscience and any evidence to the contrary is delusion or fraud. Extinction of self at biological death.

Physical Dualism – The same as Physicalism except this holds that mind is a bioelectric expression of brain and may exist in a nonphysical field capable of propagating thought. This field is sometimes referred to as the “Psi Field” where the influence of thought is known as “Psi.” Everyone expresses and senses Psi influences. Extinction of self at biological death; however, the person may “survive” as residual memory.

Strict Dualism – The biological organism is an individual that is natural to the physical aspect of reality and mind is an individual that is native to the etheric aspect of reality. They are entangled for this lifetime in an avatar relationship. Continuation of self-aware, sentient self after bodily death.

Hypotheses

Psi Field Hypothesis – The nonphysical characteristic of reality that propagates the influence of the mind. The dominant assumption of this hypothesis is that the field is an emergent quality of the physical. Think of this as the Physical Dualism point of view. In the Strict Dualism view, the greater reality is modeled here as the etheric and the Psi Field is modeled as an aspect of the etheric. The existence of Psi and the Psi Field is reasonably well documented. (5)

Psychic Hypothesis — The Psychic Hypothesis is the argument that people are naturally able to mentally (psychically) access information that resides in the Psi Field. In most versions, this means psychic access of information from other people’s memory. See First Sight Theory (4)

Super-Psi Hypothesis — The extreme version the Psychic Hypothesis is known as the Super-Psi Hypothesis. In one version of Super-Psi, people’s every thought and expression are stored in a kind of residual memory life record in the Psi Field. In effect, if the information has ever existed, it remains accessible to people’s psychic functioning.

Super-Psi assumes psychic access to information is not limited by distance. It also assumes the psychic is able to access information from other minds without knowing which mind holds the information or where the source is physically located. That is, the difficulty (complexity) of information access is not a factor.

By itself, Super-Psi does not disprove survival. It is reasonable to argue that Super-Psi can be a correct model for extraordinary information access be it from incarnate or discarnate minds.

It might be helpful to think of accessed information as thoughtforms. When a person thinks about, Uncle John, thoughtforms related to Uncle John are, in effect, attracted to the person. The degree to which contact is made is a function of rapport, focus and intention. The etheric (Psi Field) is conceptual and has no distance (everywhere is here). We navigate the greater reality by changing our point of view.)

Survival Hypothesis – The argument that an aspect of a person continues to exist in a self-aware, sentient form after bodily death. The Strict Dualism point of view is necessary for this hypothesis to work. A person’s sense of self is thought to continue to interact with reality.

Two-Mind Hypothesis – If the Survival Hypothesis is largely true, that which continues after “permanent bodily death” is necessarily a sentient life form that is native to and inhabits the etheric aspect of reality. In this hypothesis, our sense of “I am this” is linked to the etheric personality. This is referred to as “Mind 1” in this paper.

The second mind in this hypothesis (Mind 2) is that of the human avatar. This is the idea that our human body is an independent life form that could exist without our symbiotic presence. Think of Mind 2 as the morphogenic mind (Body-Mind) which governs the biological organism’s formation in the sense suggested by The Hypothesis of Formative Causation (aka Morphic Resonance). See Morphic Resonance and Morphic Fields (6) and Morphic Fields (7)

In a practical sense, all minds are native to the etheric. Some are Body-Minds, some are etheric only life forms, some are entangled with an avatar and some are without an avatar. They are all essentially the same but fulfill different purposes under different circumstances.

When a person dies, the symbiont mind suddenly becomes free of the avatar’s influence. When this occurs, there appears to be a period of adjustment as the now-free primary mind adapts to life without the influence of survival instincts. This abrupt separation may be marked by the often reported tunnel experience. The more dominant avatar mind may sometimes withdraw before the symbiont’s mind, which may help explain terminal lucidity.

This symbiotic relationship can be expected to have a substantial influence on how a person thinks and behaves. Entanglement appears to occur in the mostly unconscious perception-expression forming functional areas of mind which is controlled by the culturally informed worldview.

Concepts

Rapport – Rapport is modeled as the Organizing Principle of Rapport (16) as: Personalities are interconnected by links of cooperation (influence) forming a matrix of relationships (cooperating community). In this concept, one personality’s awareness of another personality manifests as a link of attention and intention between the two fields. The nature of this link of rapport depends on the clarity (intensity) of awareness and the reason for the awareness. These links are dynamic and are thought to facilitate cooperation. See Society for Research on Rapport and Psychokinesis (SORRAT) (8)

Presentiment – It has been shown that people unconsciously detect environmental signals before becoming consciously aware of them. While there is a small delay between unconscious detection and conscious awareness, the body has been shown to respond before conscious awareness.

Nonlocality – An important characteristic of the Psi Field is that it appears to behave as a singularity. Parapsychologists note that it is holographic-like in that there is no apparent distance between a psychic and that which is being sensed. We see the same effect with EVP. For instance, in real time, a person in New York City can be on the telephone with a person in Chicago and record the voice of someone who transitioned in Dallas.

Dread Impulse – There appears to be a global, psychic response to approaching disaster. (9) The output of a global array of Random Event Generators (REG) maintained by the Global Consciousness Project (10) has been shown to change in randomness just prior to major catastrophes such as the 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center. The output of individual REGs has also been shown to change in randomness when associated with meditating people.

Intended Order – The transformation of relatively chaotic noise into images or speech in Instrumental TransCommunication (ITC) is described as psychokinetic impression of intended order on the noise.

The way expressions of intended order behave suggests that a physical person is required to provide a conduit for the etheric-to-physical influence. We think this is true because of the differences in practitioner ability and because our hypothetical nonphysical communicators are apparently unable to directly sense physical space. Considering the practitioner specific nature of ITC, discarnate personalities may only be able see the physical as incarnate people see it. That is, they sense the physical via the senses of incarnate personalities.

From our study of ITC, it is evident that the conduit supporting the expression of intended order can be the practitioner or interested observer located anywhere in the world. This is consistent with the implications of nonlocality.

It has been shown that REG randomness tends to change when associated with meditating people. This mind-machine interaction involving REGs, models the same as the mind-machine interaction thought to be involved in ITC.

Organizing Principles – In Strict Dualism, reality appears to be best modeled in much the same reductionist way as with Physicalism. In that, the greater reality appears to operate according to knowable principles but in the conceptual space of the etheric (Psi Field). (16) Every event implies an organizing principle. An event that appears to be magical is more likely the operation of unrecognized organizing principles. As with physical events, for an apparently paranormal event to be understood, involved etheric organizing principles need to be understood. As such physical principles and etheric organizing principles are on a continuum of influences that must be considered together.

Sensed Information – According to First Sight Theory, (4) all minds sense psychically and express psychokinetically. In Strict Dualism, the human avatar functions as a roving smell-see-feel-hear-touch sensor. The biological brain functions as a bioelectric-to-Psi transmitter for sensed signals and a Psi-to-bioelectric receiver for movement commands.

In every situation, these Psi and bioelectric environmental signals are “preprocessed” in the mostly unconscious perception and expression functional areas of mind. The results, possibly modified to better agree with Worldview, are then made available to conscious awareness. Because of this “preprocessing,” the awareness of environmental information tends to be modified to better agree with the experiencer’s expectation. As such, we tend to experience what we think is true.

Mind as Storyteller – Our mind is predisposed to explain sensed information. Sensed information may be from our body. For instance, we may hear a sound which our mind attempts to identify and formulate a story about its probable cause which is to be delivered to conscious awareness.

In the Strict Dualism model, it does not matter if a psychic signal is from a physically living or a discarnate Uncle John. The deciding factor will be if the experiencer thinks Uncle John is alive or not. If the experiencer accepts the idea of survival, the signal may be more readily attributed to long “dead” Uncle John. If the experiencer does not accept the idea of survival, the signal will more likely be attributed to a random thought about Uncle John.

Following the Strict Dualism model, dreams and the mental chatter meditators try to suppress are examples of the mind trying to explain environmental signals. In effect, these stories are sent to conscious awareness as a stream of consciousness thread that is often nonsensical.

Psi – As the expression of mind, thought can be modeled as an influence. That influence is referred to as “Psi.”

Suspended Judgement – Not enough is known with any certainty about these phenomena 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 seldom 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.

Proofs

Complexity Argument – A common proof of God is the complexity argument: “How can we doubt there is a God when we witness the wonders of nature?” Reductionists respond that natural organizing principles and time is all it takes to create such wonders. They argue that no “higher consciousness” intervention is necessary. Of course, the belief-based response is to ask from whence came the singularity that began the physical universe by producing those natural principles? In the end, it always comes down to initial assumptions.

Local Ghost – Following the implications of nonlocality and mind-to-mind psychic functioning, it is arguable that reported ghosts are not actually “stuck” in a “haunted” location. Arguably, an experiencer has a haunt encounter because one is expected. When considered from the Physicalist point of view, a ghostly noise is only the building settling or wind. From the Physical Dualist point of view, such noises may be settling or the wind, but they might also be psychokinetically induced by the experiencer’s heightened expectations.

From experience with ITC, especially the audio form of ITC known as Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP), (17) a personality still entangled with an avatar is necessary to provide the etheric-to-physical influence (Intended Order). It appears that an incarnate person can psychokinetically express intended order on relatively chaotic energy to produce expected haunt effects.

Vivid Dreams – In the Strict Dualism view, information accessed via dreams or trance about the death of a person or an event may be from a person with direct experience of the event. The circuit for such information is thought to be via the mind of a direct witness. If correct, the rapport between the dreamer and direct witnesses should be considered when considering the evidentiality of a vivid dream experience.

This is the complexity “proof” for survival. As it goes, “Such a ‘real’ experience containing verifiable evidence that the experiencer was unaware of at the time, must mean that the discarnate personality was actually present.”

While such a dream might possibly be caused by a discarnate personality, there are a number of important factors that suggest such experiences are better explained with Super-Psi. (First Sight Theory is used here to help explain reasons the points are applicable. (4) Note that the First Sight descriptions may be paraphrased from Carpenter’s original work.):

- Nonlocality suggests that other people may be aware of the event and are in the same psychic “space” as the experiencer. (First Sight Theory – Ubiquity Corollary Part 1: Psi sensing is not limited by time or distance.)
- The Global Consciousness Project has shown that people seem to express an intense psychic “dread” of impending events. (First Sight Theory – Summation Corollary: The content of conscious experience, emotional states and behavioral choices are constituted in a summative way by unconscious thought.)
- A link of Rapport between the experiencer and other witnesses may enable the experiencer to at least unconsciously experience their dread. (First Sight Theory – Personalness Corollary: The unconscious processes that constitute consciousness are personal and deliberate. (The more important it is to us, the more we unconsciously pay attention. And Weighting and Signing Corollary: The importance of sensory and extrasensory information is weighted as being more or less important before it is acted upon.)
- Mind as storyteller can produce unconscious perception that emerges as very real-seeming conscious experiences. (First Sight Theory – Integration Corollary: Other preconscious processes are processed together with psi in a rapid, holistic, efficient, unconscious manner to format experience and action.)
- The Super-Psi Hypothesis is a relatively well-establish model. It suggests that it is reasonable to argue an experiencer might psychically sense other people’s dread and then unconsciously composed a likely story about having personally witnessed the event. (First Sight Theory – Inadvertency and Frustration Corollary: Information gathered via psi is not available to conscious experience but does contribute to the formation of conscious experience by the arousal of anticipatory networks of ideas and feelings (assuming that they are heavily weighted, afforded slow switching and approached with the intention of assimilation). Because of this arousal, their action can be glimpsed consciously only by observing thoughts, feelings and behaviors that are inadvertent; that is, not intentional and not obviously caused by any current experiences. Someone who has become skillful in interpreting them is thought of as relatively psychic.)

Spirit Told Me – Our perception of reality is moderated by our mostly unconscious worldview. (11) (12) (13) This moderated information comes to our conscious awareness as a streaming narrative. Think of it as our mind telling us a story. For instance, a mental medium may psychically sense a discarnate personality’s expression, but that sensed information is “preprocessed” to better agree with expectations held in the medium’s worldview prior to becoming part of conscious awareness.

There currently appears to be no way to tell with any certainty if psychically sensed information is from another discarnate or incarnate mind. In the end, information content seems the best indicator. That is why it is so important that the Super-Psi Hypothesis is considered in evaluating the results of research.

As a certified NSAC (14) medium, an important part of my mediumship is distinguishing between what I expect and what I am actually sensing. Such discernment is linked to the concept of lucidity, meaning how clearly a person is able to sense unfiltered reality. The development of such ability is thought of as the conscious alignment of worldview with the actual nature of reality.

The bottom line is that information gathered psychically is probably best explained with the Super-Psi Hypothesis. Some psychically gathered information may come from discarnate personalities; however, the experiencer should be mindful that all such information is probably colored by the experiencer’s worldview. Some people are more able to “see past” mind’s “preprocessing” to understand the raw message stream. Skill alone is not enough to know the lucidity of the experiencer.

Inherited Credibility – While a seemingly paranormal experience may not be credible on its own, it might gain credibility if it shares characteristics of more credible phenomena. For instance, transform EVP gains credibility because it appears to depend on the same trans-etheric principles found in visual ITC and in the study of how the output of REGs become less random in the presence of meditating people.

Compilations of experiencer stories and meta-analysis of research generally do not provide credible proof of survival because of the influence of cultural contamination on Worldview. However, the credibility of many experiences appearing to involve the same or similar principles tends to support the individual example. Practicing Suspended Judgement until more information becomes available is an important way to remain open to as yet unknown characteristics of reported experiences.

Reader Expectations

The layperson perspective of academic authority is reminiscent of the Wizard of Oz Syndrome in which the lay community has been taught to look to academics, specifically Ph.Ds., for learned guidance. That trust translates as laypeople more or less believing everything academics tell them not matter the academic’s qualifications. The assumption is that laypeople do not have the wherewithal to develop a credible opinion.

Of course, the inverse of the Wizard of Oz Syndrome is the Wizard Complex in which academics begin to think they are in full command of the subject. This assumption of superior knowledge may be the primary driver of the Academic-Layperson Partition. In that, the academic community spontaneously develops a culture in which the lay community is treated as intellectually inferior. The result has been that parapsychologists generally fail to communicate with the public. It is in this atmosphere that lessons learned by practitioners are rarely considered by researchers.

Lay practitioners expect to find learned guidance that might help them better understand their experiences. The “Developing a Model of Reality” Diagram below represents an approach to develop such guidance that has proven useful in the study of ITC. Of course, it requires the academic community to seek a consensus cosmology via which individual researchers are able to explain their science using shared terms.

A few points for the reader to consider when reviewing any authoritative paper:

Academic authority: Unless the degree is in a survival metaphysics-related aspect of consciousness studies, the author’s education may only indicate that the person has been trained in critical thinking. For instance, a degree in psychology or physics may be useful in the study of Psi functioning but a degree in philosophy or history seems irrelevant to the study. Since our etheric nature and nature of possible survival are so poorly understood, reader’s emphasis should be on the author’s reputation for critical thinking and familiarity with the phenomena.
Point of view and perspective: It is important that authors preparing public-facing reports under cloak of academic authority identify their underlying assumption about the nature of reality. This disclosure should be at the front of the paper.

Point of view – Do the authors characterize themselves as Physicalist, Physical Dualists or Strict Dualist as those terms are defined above. This is especially important if the intention of the paper is to promote one view over others.

Perspective – Is the paper written from the perspective of a mortal human or from the perspective of a relatively immortal personality. Consider the difference between the view of reality from the perspective of mind emergent from brain and ceasing to exist when the brain dies and the mind existing before the biological organism and continuing to exist in a self-aware, sentient form after the body dies. See Two-Mind Hypothesis above.

Implications: A factual statement implies the validity of related concepts. For instance, saying that thought is an electromagnetic phenomenon implies that thought is attenuated in the same manner as other electromagnetic processes. However, the apparently prevailing theory for thought propagation is that it is propagated in the Psi Field. The Psi Field is nonlocal (effects are ubiquitous), and from the study of ITC, there appears to be no way to shield from the influence of thought. Thought as an electromagnetic phenomenon and thought being propagated in a nonlocal field appear to be contradicting concepts. If authors are paying attention to the implications of stated “facts,” they will explain such contradictions.
Contemporary thinkers versus pioneers: Three important ideas about our etheric nature have only recently begun to influence the greater academic community:

- Unconscious development of conscious perception: The idea is that we do not directly experience the world. Instead, environmental signals, possibly from our physical body (sight, touch, etc.) or other life fields (mind-to-mind) are “preprocessed” in our mostly unconscious mind.
- Morphogenic mind: One implication of Strict Dualism is that the human body is a complete biological organism. (Two-Mind Hypothesis above) However, as proposed in Sheldrake’s Hypothesis of Formative Causation, (7) as an avatar for the symbiotic mind (Mind 1), the human body is also organized by a nonphysical mind (Mind 2). The implications of this include:

1. 1. Worldview: In Strict Dualism, any discussion of survival must include a discussion about how the morphogenic mind as host (Mind 2) and symbiont mind (Mind 1) are entangle. One important consequence of this two-mind model is that our decision making is influenced by both minds. Following First Sight Theory, (4) this merger of influences occurs in the person’s mostly unconscious worldview functional area (Mind 1 + Mind 2) which is responsible for the formation of perception and expression.
  2. Conflicting purpose: A biological organism is organized both structurally and behaviorally by its morphogenic mind. Our human avatar’s prime directive is to do anything necessary to assure the continuity and dominance of its gene pool. Conversely, our primary personality (symbiont) appears to have a prime directive related to gaining understanding. There is a sort of struggle between our biological nature and our “spiritual” nature during development of choices. A proper discussion of survival should address this question.
  3. Fear: Considering our human’s survival instincts, it seems natural for it to have a fear of failure and death. Considering the apparent relative immortality of our symbiotic personality, fear is probably not a natural response for our etheric nature. If this is true, arguments about the nature of Psi that depend on the perceived need of the practitioner may not be credible.
  4. Practitioner lucidity: It appears that the avatar instincts dominate worldview at birth and continues to dominate unless the symbiont becomes sufficiently aware to exert an influence on decision making. The degree to which this occurs is sometimes referred to as lucidity. The relationship between the symbiont life form and the avatar life form should be addressed in any theory of survival.

- Spontaneous versus induced: Explanations for the why and degree of psychic functioning have previously been explained in parapsychology as need-based extraordinary events. Mediumship has been explained as induced, but the ability has traditionally been thought of as restricted to a few gifted people. We now know that Psi functioning is a normal ability. If survival is real, the difference between psychic access to information held by another mind needs to be specified as incarnate mind-to-incarnate mind or incarnate mind-to-discarnate mind.

ITC is considered an induced phenomenon, meaning that practitioners can ask for contact and expect some form of acknowledgment from a nonlocal mind. Based on studies of ITC, there is reason to think that the communicating mind may be either incarnate or discarnate. If this is correct, researchers claiming mediumistic communication must explain why the communication is not with a still incarnate personality. See Recording Thoughts of the Living? Essay (15)

Put another way, if survival is a fact, mind is etheric and thought produces a trans-etheric influence. Induced effects do not appear to be need-based.

Understanding the characteristics of our etheric nature has considerable influence on how people experience and integrate their (possibly) paranormal experiences. The parapsychological community has claimed the responsibility to study things paranormal. Scientist’s customer is the larger community of citizens. Citizens directly or collectively fund that research. For this relationship to work, it is necessary that parapsychologists assume responsibility to manage the feedback link in the “Developing a Model of Reality” Diagram above.

References

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