Transcommunication

Abstract

Communication between a physical person and a discarnate person has been reported throughout history. It is referred to here as transcommunication (“trans-” for across the veil.)

Historical reports were typically in a religious context such as God talking to Moses as reported in the Bible. Today, transcommunication is more often reported as contact between a discarnate loved one and a person still in the physical as facilitated by a mental medium. Many forms of spontaneous after death communication are also reported.

The 1959 introduction of Electronic Voice Phenomena, which is more broadly known as Instrumental TransCommunication, has expanded the already extensive understanding brought by the study of psi phenomena to produce the foundation for a more comprehensive definition of the Survival Hypothesis.

This essay explores current understanding about transcommunication and especially ITC.

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Introduction

In the Implicit Cosmology, the prefix “trans-“represents “from the etheric aspect of reality to the physical aspect. This can be considered in the same sense as “across the veil of forgetfulness.” Transcommunication then, is two-way communication between the etheric and physical. This might also be phrased as a “trans-etheric influence.”

Technically, all trans-etheric influences are considered intentional expressions of a personality; however, “transcommunication” is term generally reserved for influences that result in some form of objective information. This includes mediumship, after death communication and Instrumental TransCommunication (ITC). Out of body experiences, near-death experiences and dreams are not usually included, however, there might be circumstances in which such experiences result in objective information, and as such, those instances would be considered transcommunication.

In the upcoming book with the working title of Implicit Cosmology, the Mediumship essay is a chapter in the Transcommunication section, along with chapters for ITC, apports, precipitation and best practices. Here, I invite you to explore articles concerning those subjects on ATransC.org. The search tool at the right searches both websites.

As a historical note, Ernst Senkowski coined the term, Instrumental TransCommunication (ITC) to describe “ … meaningful anomalies including extraordinary voices, computer text, recorded images and images found on video displays suggestive of a continuance of life after death.”¹ Note that After Death Communication (ADC) and mediumship should be considered subsets of transcommunication but are not necessarily ITC. (Because of common use in this field, terms with a “trans-“ prefix can be used without the hyphen.)

In the Beginning

The Association TransCommunication (ATransC) was founded in 1982 as the American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena (AA-EVP) by Sarah Estep to “Provide objective evidence that we survive death in an Individual Conscious state.”

As a historical note, by convention, Electronic Voice Phenomena is written as a plural. Sarah began with the term as plural and we have continued using it in that way. In fact, there are a number of different forms of EVP and different ways in which they are encountered, and as such, it is a plural concept.

My wife, Lisa and I assumed leadership of the AA-EVP in 2000 and continued to publish the quarterly newsletter until its last issue, Spring 2014, 33-1. That made a total of 129 issues, 57 of which were published by us. In 2014, the ATransC was changed from a publicly supported membership organization to just publically supported, meaning that we now depend entirely on donations, income from affiliate programs when website visitors use the Amazon and eBay links to make their purchases, and from the book we wrote, No Death and There Are No Dead. As of 2014, the book has earned $37,000 for the Association.

Many of the Association members were active EVP experimenters and participated in a number of important studies sponsored by the ATransC. During that time, we had access to a very large amount of information about how ITC phenomena were collected, what worked and what did not and the problems associated with working with the phenomena.

Prior to becoming involved with the Association, we had been deeply immersed in many forms of paranormal phenomena which included training in several healing modalities and various forms of mediumship. This also included emersion into the National Spiritualist Association of Churches system of thought leading to ordination and certification as healer, medium and teacher.

Lisa writes a “Media Watch” column for the National Spiritualist Summit magazine and as of the end of 2014, she has produced 119 columns. I help as I am able, and together, we have examined thousands of news articles about things paranormal. This has given me a sense of the various points of view in our community, and an idea of how the understanding of paranormal phenomena is developing in the larger community.

Since 2006, I have been a Wikipedia editor and have been present for some of the more contentious edit wars between moderate and the radical skeptic editors who now control the paranormal-oriented articles in that online encyclopedia. This has given me a sense of how the skeptical community thinks, their talking points and the dynamics of the mainstream-paranormalist interface.²

Prior to assuming leadership of the ATransC, Lisa and I attended numerous “deep-immersion” weeklong classes in metaphysics which included considerable training in mediumship, healing and metaphysics.

In 1994, I also wrote the Handbook of Metaphysics in an effort to give sufficient background information about metaphysical concepts to provide a context in which people could understand new concepts. The book was published, put poorly produced, and of course now it is outdated.

The Cosmology Series of Essay

It is this background that led me to begin writing an essay intended to redefine the Survival Hypothesis with new emphasis on transcommunication. This resulted in the Trans-survival Hypothesis essay. By the time I had finished the literature study, it had become clear that the usual paranormalist explanation of the Survival Hypothesis was little more than simple acknowledgement that there was such a belief. Virtually all of the parapsychological literature I had available to me focused more on the Super-psi Hypothesis with considerable emphasis on how belief in survival indicated a mental problem.

I named the resulting version of the hypothesis “Trans-survival” to help distinguish it from the better known Survival Hypothesis. This was also to indicate it includes transcommunication. Here is an important point: to my knowledge, no one has included serious reference to transcommunication in a discussion of the Survival Hypothesis. Understanding that I have limited access to the literature, and that I am not a parapsychologist, it is my belief that the essay is at least one of the most complete of its kind. Naturally, it will be evolved with new understanding, so your input is always welcome.

During the process of writing the Trans-survival Hypothesis essay, I used a number of terms and references that are not commonly understood, so my next effort was to write a few essays that explained those concepts. One thing led to another, as they say, and there are now twenty some essays addressing important concepts related to survival. Along the way, the Implicit Cosmology essay was written and became the cover essay for the series.

It is important to note that the Implicit Cosmology could not exist in it present form without the understanding that has come from the paranormalist community, and especially ATransC members. It has been through the process of ordering my thoughts to write articles for the ATransC NewsJournal, and thinking hard to answer questions from members and the public, that I have evolved my present point of view. Also, sometimes contentious discussions in the idea Exchange have repeatedly forced me to rethink this point of view.

This essay is being written after I more or less finalized the cosmology series, and now prepare to discuss the phenomena of transcommunication. As such, this essay is written in the context of the Implicit Cosmology. The cosmology is an integrated whole, and each part is supposed to be in agreement with every other part. There are numerous links to further reading, so please make the effort to seek more information by following them. Also use the Glossary of Terms. You will find the search tool at the upper-left of each page very helpful for your continued study.

Parapsychology and ITC

If you have followed parapsychological research, you will have likely learned a point of view that leans toward acceptance of psi-related phenomena with little or no acceptance of concepts involving survival of consciousness. This point of view is embodies in the Super-psi Hypothesis, as opposed to the Survival Hypothesis. See the Trans-survival Hypothesis essay.

There are a few more references in literature to Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) than in the past. For instance the 2015 Parapsychological Association’s Handbook of Parapsychology includes a section on EVP for the first time. Still, a search of the pre-2015 literature will turn up hardly a reference to anything like EVP.³

The objective fact of Instrumental TransCommunication (ITC), of which the audio form is EVP, is well established. The problem is that, with a few important exceptions, the work supporting its validity as a “real” phenomenon has been mostly conducted by nonacademic citizen scientists with no access to peer reviewed journals and no standing in the academic world. This means that publication of their research in online forums such as the ATransC Online Journal do not show up in surveys of the literature and certainly are not cited.

A few parapsychologists have studied ITC and published reports in peer-reviewed journals, but again, because of the academic-layperson partition, these researchers have mostly not collaborated with experienced practitioners and their “failure to replicate” reports have been based on poorly designed protocols and misinformed assumptions.

At this time, the hypothesis designed to explain EVP that seems to answer the evidence is that they are initiated by etheric personality. Whether or not these personalities are associated with a discarnate person is a little less sure, but virtually all of the evidence appears to point toward survived personality as their source.

The fact that EVP sometimes includes communication with discarnate loved ones has been established to the satisfaction of hundreds of grieving parents and family members. On a personal level, I have no doubt that some of the EVP I have recorded are from etheric personalities. However, it is important to remember that a person’s intelligent core is modeled in the Implicit Cosmology as etheric personality. With this in mind, whether or not EVP are the voices of deceased loved ones is less certain. As will be discussed below, it is also possible that they are the voices of still living people or voices reconstructed from memory.

As an engineer, I have a need to know if transcommunication is at work or if it is just psi functioning. That is, am I sensing the information, voice and mannerisms from someone else and psychokinetically inserting that information into the recording as EVP?

Whether or not EVP is evidence of survival, for completeness, there is sufficient evidence to require inclusion of transcommunication in analysis of related research. For instance, EVP are known to occur in the electronic circuit and not in the air. This is such a widely experience characteristic that it is necessary to consider the possibility that any electronic device is subject to external psychokinetic influences. An electronic device designed to detect changes in magnetism, and which reports such changes during an experiment, might actually be just reporting a psi influence. All the device is able to report is what it is designed for–in this case, a change in magnetism.

A scientist who is not familiar with transcommunication might be inclined to think a new form of distant influence has been detected  as a magnetic signal when in reality, the only thing detected was the influence of intentionality on the device. Magnetometers can only signal a detected change as a deviation in magnetic field.

Intellectually, I find it intolerable to knowingly accept personal belief as “truth.” From the academic point of view (the paranormalist culture), our belief in ITC as communication across the veil is seen as a matter of faith. When we wrap that faith in scientific sounding terms or claim to be using good logic, what we call fact is seen as pseudoscience. As I argue these points with Wikipedia editors, I find myself without even the smallest citable proof to the contrary.² The problem is not the lack of proof so much as it is the lack of better trained investigators coming to the same conclusion while following academically accepted methodologies.

Academically trained investigators are trained to document their work and submit it to peer review. My comments about the poorly documented work I usually see from the nonacademic paranormalist community have usually only irritated the authors and driven them away. These are two very different cultures which we must find a way to merge.

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Foundation Principles and Concepts

Transcommunication is explained here as it relates to the Implicit Cosmology. To understand the nature of transcommunication then, it is necessary to be familiar with a few important concepts. These are explained in detail in the body of this work, and are briefly covered here. Please refer to the referenced articles and please do use the Glossary of Terms.

Organizing Principles

A number of organizing principles influence the nature of transcommunication. They include:

Intended Order: Expression is the output of the Creative Process and intended order is the effect expression has on the environment. In transcommunication, order in the form of recognizable images, objects or sounds “emerge” out of chaotic signals. In Instrumental TransCommunication, the physical process that enables this emergence of intended order appears to be stochastic resonance acting on chaotic, broad-spectrum energy.

Perceptual Agreement: Personality must be in perceptual agreement with the aspect of reality with which it will associate. This principle provides a mechanism by which order can be imposed on a system without many complex rules limiting the behavior of individual life fields (personalities). It results in the existence of the Veil of Forgetfulness, which is the practical consequence of the etheric-physical interface. When a personality creates an aspect of itself to gain experience, the new aspect remains entangled with its source personality but is unable to directly associate with it as long as worldview is contaminated with local beliefs which causes a difference in perception.

The practical consequence of this principle is that the etheric personality is not able to directly influence the physical, but must rely on its avatar.

Avatar: In Hinduism, an avatar (from Sanskrit for “descent”) is a deliberate descent of a deity to Earth. The term can be translated into English as “incarnation.” A person is an etheric personality entangled with a human body in an avatar relationship. See the Life Field Complex diagram below. The logic for the avatar model is discussed in the essay: Comparing Personality-Body Models.

Entanglement: Personality remains associated with its aspects via attention. In generic terms, entanglement is seen as a property inherent in the process of expression. It is hypothesized that the resulting expression of the creative process, an aspect (Life field as an Imagined “Little Me”) or an ideoplastic structure, remains associated with its source by way of attention and the extent to which the source intends that the expressions continue to exist.

Personal Reality: Personality creates the perception of reality which is based on its worldview. (Note the worldview functional areas in the diagrams below.) Think of worldview as a computer database. At birth, it is populated with instincts from the human body, with some level of understanding about reality and an urge to gain further understanding inherited from personality’s source. The body’s instincts are dominant in the person’s early years, but personality is expected to eventually gain control of worldview as the person matures. Even so, the instincts and beliefs taught the person by family, school and media tend to dominate the person’s sense of reality, right and wrong (cultural norms).

Creative Process: Reality is expressed via personality’s attention on an imagined outcome with the intention to make it so. Fundamental characteristics of a life field include curiosity, inherited urge to have experiences to gain understanding and a sense of relationship with a collective. As described in the Implicit Cosmology, these characteristics are expressed in the creative process. See: Creative Process (below)

Concepts

The relationship between etheric personality, (our intelligent core and who we really are) and our human body, is modeled as an avatar relationship. There are four primary concepts that help explain this relationship.

Life Field: Reality is modeled in the Implicit Cosmology as hierarchical nested fields, of which the top field is Source or the reality field and subfields are aspects of Source in a one-to-many relationship with many rounds of aspectation. The field concept dominates this cosmology. Fields are generally referred to as etheric fields and there are many forms of etheric fields.

The Life Field diagram illustrates the basic functional areas. Every form of life, be it a human or a cell, is modeled as a life field with the same set of functional areas and processes (more or less expressed). As such, a life field can be thought of as a fractal and Source as the top fractal. See the Cosmology of Imaginary Space essay for a discussion of the fractal concept.

Note in the diagram that personality is the intelligent core of the life field, but that it is separated from external sensing and expression by the Attention Complex. Also notice that worldview dominates intention, visualization and perception–the three elements necessary for expression. The perceptual Loop is a process that acts as a negotiator to align perception with worldview.

The Attention Complex represents the thought process related to perception, expression and the creative process. All of the life field is etheric (a nested set of etheric fields) and considered the unconscious mind. Expression may be presented to the conscious self (become aware of it) but this is not necessarily so.

Life Field Complex: The Life Field Complex diagram (above) shows the relationship between personality, body mind and physical body. All of the functional areas are in the etheric except for the physical body, itself. This includes mind, memory, intention, instincts and body image.

The Life Field Complex diagram is the same as the Life Field diagrams but also shows the entanglement of personality with the human organism in an avatar relationship. Practical consequences of this avatar relationship include:

• Worldview represents the person’s personal reality. As a database, it begins relatively empty at birth, containing some inherited understanding from personality and a full set of instincts from the human animal. During the lifetime, the database is “filled” with information taught by the person’s culture.

• As described in the Creative Process essay, expression is the output of the Attention Complex. It is informed by worldview, so that expressions are colored by cultural beliefs and human instincts.

• Since how a person consciously experiences the world is based on worldview, and since in childhood, human instincts tend to dominate worldview, a young person must be taught to be a citizen. Maturing is the process of learning how to manage instincts with understanding gained through experience. As a general rule, a person must be taught what is right or wrong.

• The body is governed by body image which is managed by body mind. Gradual changes in the body are capable of modifying the body image. Aging is a gradual change. Also, there are culturally developed expectations that age equals old. In fact, this gradual decline may not be necessary, but is driven by that culturally developed expectation.

• All of the functional areas are in etheric space except the physical structure of the human body and the ideoplastic structures that result in physical objects as the person’s expression. This is a natural consequence of mind-body duality.

Perception: The Functional Areas for Perception diagram above provides the information flow indicating how we think, as based on the most current science I can find. (See the Perception essay for more details.) All of the functional areas are in the etheric and are better thought of as nonphysical fields which are bound by attention into a system. As such the Attention Complex (large pink area) represents our unconscious mind. Important features to note in the diagram include:

• Personality interfaces with other personalities (collective) and worldview.

• Only pertinent external signals (psi and psychical) are passed by the Attention Limiter.

• In effect, the Perceptual Loop asks the question, “Is this real?” of the information passed by the Attention Limiter.

• Worldview represents habit, and as such, the effort to experience what is familiar is much less than that required to experience something new.

• We are connected by way of the collective of personalities so that we all more or less agree on the nature of local reality. In this way, perception of reality is strongly influenced by the collective so that changing our mind is necessarily counter to the collective norm.

• Contents of worldview determine what is considered “real,” and how “real things” are consciously sensed.

• Worldview can be evolved by ambiguous information. So that very new ideas are probably rejected while different but familiar ideas may cause change in worldview.

• Expression is in the form of what becomes conscious, what the body does and what the world looks like as the information emerges from Perceptual Loop (Perception). It is believed that conscious perception is always preceded by the unconscious expression of a psi influence.

• The Perceptual loop is a streaming process so that environmental information is continuously samples. The effect is an evolving perception as more information becomes available. This may explain stream of thought dreams in which one moment suggests the next but not always to produce a logical experience.

 

Creative Process: The Creative Process represents the mechanism by which a life field expresses itself. As is shown in the Creative Process diagram, the Perceptual Loop is situated between personality and physical sensing and expression. As such, it is important to note in this diagram that the outcome of the creative process is modified by worldview. As such, worldview is the filter through which influence from personality must pass to become conscious expression.

The Attention Limiter acts as a filter to allow only information that is of interest to the life field. The combination of this limiter, and the perceptual limitations brought by worldview, narrows the scope of what the life field can express. In the avatar relationship, the urge to act is always informed by the body mind.

You may notice that these concepts are different ways of looking at the same functional areas in the Life Field diagram. The same can be said for the many essays in the Implicit Cosmology Series of Essays: All are an elaboration on the Trans-survival Hypothesis with emphases on particular implications. You can expect to be able to provide detailed explains of other implications as you become more familiar with this cosmology

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The Nature of Transcommunication

Because there are so many pertinent concepts, the following comments are offered in a shorthand version. Please take advantage of the links, other essays and Glossary for supporting material. As always, I am happy to answer your questions if you will please post them in the Idea Exchange.

Mechanics of Transcommunication

From the physical perspective and with the exception of our human organism, everything about us is nonphysical, made “real” by way of the Attention Complex. Even mainstream scientists are beginning to think the physical world we live in might be a product of our imagination; not in a sense that it is not objective, but in the sense that all things objective must first be visualized in our unconscious mind before some version of that is expressed to our conscious self. Again, that is the function of the Attention Complex.

Quantum theory is pretty much beyond the scope of this cosmology, but you can find ample support for this statement via an Internet search for “Collapse of the quantum wave function” and “Wave function represents reality”

You may also benefit from reading the How We Think essay on the ATransC website.

Avatar as Trans-Channel

In this model, a personality in the etheric is only able to express intended order in the physical by way of an entangled avatar. In simpler terms, this means that long dead Uncle John must speak through a physical person; someone who is an etheric personality entangled with a human body (avatar).

In practical terms, this means that the message in EVP, mediumistic messages, automatic writing, the images of visual ITC, apported objects and precipitated images must be formed by an entangled avatar. That is, by way of a physical person.

It apparently does not matter who is providing the channel. For instance, in EVP, the channel could be an interested observer. The observer could be in New York City talking to the practitioner in San Francisco. In the same way, a mental medium could be accessing information via any etheric personality, entangled with an avatar or not.

The important thing to remember for this concept is that distance is not a factor. In effect, all of our minds are in one place and able to communicate instantaneously no matter where our body is in the world. In mediumship and ITC, information is instantaneously available from anyone.

Also in practical terms, this means that if the channel (person providing the entangled avatar) believes all flowers are red, then the message from of discarnate loved one that said “These blue flowers are for you” will likely be expressed as “These red flowers are for you.” In other words, for the channel, communication from a discarnate loved one is just another environmental input. It must pass through the Perceptual Loop, and therefore is subject to interpretation by the channel’s worldview.

If the person providing the channel understands a second language, the message could be in that language or a mix of first and second languages. This is one of the reasons EVP are thought to be mostly in a language the practitioner or an interested observer understands.

What We Sense

That which enters into our Attention Complex is first limited by the extent to which we are paying attention: are we interested, does it matter to us, does it involve survival, is it a threat. It is the Attention Limiter, shown in the above diagrams, to filter “uninteresting” information from the environment. Human instincts have a lot to do with what is deemed important and anything seeming to threaten or help survival (procreation, food, protection of offspring) will readily pass the limiter. Personal interests such as considering the purchase  of a new car will tend to alert the senses every  time that model is near.

The two assumptions of First Sight Theory proposed by James Carpenter⁴ are (paraphrasing): Everything and everyone produces a psi signal that perturbs the psi field which connects all of us; and, people psychically sense these changes in psi space just as they physically sense changes in physical space.

Carpenter proposes thirteen corollaries describing the implications of these assumptions on how people process information. It is a good idea to read the Perception essay because it describes these and how they apply to the Perceptual Loop. Factors such as how well a person focuses on information, what a person is interested in and how well a person is able to sense “into” the unconscious activity of the Attention Complex determine how and how well a person is able to experience the world.

If the practitioner or an interested observer is the conduit for trans-etheric influences, a fundamental consideration in transcommunication is how well the practitioner is able to manage the Attention Complex. I usually some this up with the question: “Are you paying attention?” and “How is your worldview affecting the message?”

What We Express

What is expressed is based on our personal reality and that is also managed by our worldview. This is an important point because as you think, so do you experience and so do you express.

An example is how we react to a stranger. First will come an alert of something unfamiliar, then comes an unconscious attempt to find something familiar about the person in worldview. If we are culturally taught to be suspicious of strangers, and if we tend to be fearful of the unknown, then it is more likely that we will describe the person in a prejudicial way. We will find terms like “outsider” or “intruder” in our memory to describe the person. If we are open to new experiences, the description might be more like “someone new.”

Message coloring is easy to detect if actions and speech is considered in the context of the situation. Transcommunication begins as a concept, and it is “clothed” in familiar meaning as it is made physical. While it is natural for the communicated concept to be expressed in a way that is characteristic of the practitioner or witness, there is need for witnesses to us a great deal of discernment.

For instance, if the message is one of doom and gloom, it may have started out as a simple recognition of political pressures, but the channel might be afraid such pressures might lead to war. Consider message coloring imposed by the channel.

Expectation Colors Perception

At the risk of overstating this point, it is especially evident in EVP that the practitioner’s beliefs tend to change how a message is worded to more agree with what is expected. For example, a person who thinks the world is more than a little fearful will more often record confirming messages such as “Help,” and “I hate you.” Conversely, a person who thinks discarnate people are earthbound and hang around cemeteries will often record “Help me” messages.

This point is one of the foundation concepts for the Implicit Cosmology because it clearly demonstrates that the messages in EVP are colored by beliefs. The remedy for the coloring of messages with belief is mindful living. This is more specifically discussed in the Being a Good Witness essay.

Coloring is also a problem for the witness (sitter). If the witness is not open to new concepts and attempts instead to explain everything in familiar terms, what the witness consciously experiences  will often be different from the actual nature of the event. There are a number of terms for different aspects of this idiosyncrasy of human nature such as incredulity blindness  and agnosia. This inability to make sense of sensory information, or to misattribute it, is very common amongst sitters in physical séances.

Hyperlucidity: This is a good place to bring up a human behavior that is just the opposite of incredulity blindness. Paranormal phenomena are poorly understood and explanations for them are usually not well considered. Add to that the tendency for people to reject the authority of more experienced people in favor of their own beliefs and the result is sometimes a tendency to see phenomena where there is none.

Misattribution of mundane phenomena as paranormal is usually just a matter of a witness not understanding the situation or what to expect; however, in some instances, this behavior becomes more complex. The person might genuinely believe phenomena are present despite explanations to the contrary. This is not just a matter of persistence. In Hyperlucidity, a person is described as being obsessively to the point of irrational insistence.

Hyperlucidity is my term and should not be mistaken as a mainstream psychology term. It is a complex of witness behavior that is very reminiscent of behavior sometimes reported in psychology as a temporary, pathological syndrome related to place. The state may be triggered by overwhelming stimuli such as when a person is deeply moved by history, art or religious meaning.

Be careful not to think the possibility of hyperlucidity support accusations of fraud. The existence of paranormal phenomena is well established. It is just that poor discernment can lead a person to wrong conclusions. Objective phenomena can be witnessed by many people. In EVP, for instance, hyperlucidity shows up when a person reports hearing specific messages while no one else agrees. As one person complained, “She hears the entire Gettysburg Address in a ten second sound file.”

Dealing with Human Nature

As we became more familiar with the characteristics of ITC, how people experience these phenomena and how they report that experience has become recognized as a dominant factor. We too easily fool ourselves. We talk ourselves into seeing or hearing what is not present. We are too happy to ignore irrational elements of our logical thinking.

Without help from others, we should be careful not to trust our judgment very much. For instance, the Best Practice for Listening Panels was proposed as an attempt to counter our unreliability as witnesses.

Messages in mediumship are necessarily colored by the medium; however, some people have learned to minimize the influence of their worldview by developing the ability to suspend judgment. See: On Being a Good Witness

The same problem exists with what are referred to as channeled messages. Too often, the person acting as a channel is more likely expressing hyperlucidity. Here again, it is necessary to use discernment because studies do indicate that some channel mediums are as they seem. For instance, a study of Jane Robert’s Seth material supports the probability that a second personality was involved in the formation of that material.⁵

In a similar way, a phase-change seems to occur with some physical and deep-trance mediums in which their personality is able to “step aside” so that a second personality is able to become more directly entangled with the avatar. The evidence also seems to indicate that the influence of the medium’s worldview is at least partially reduced. However, I know of no dependable way to know if or when a new personality has actually assumed control.

For me, it is important to suspend judgment by not concluding one way or another without additional input. In this way, there are a number of experiences in my life  which I still have not accepted or rejected as real. It is better to wait and see and foolish to say “no” unless there is considerable support for such a decision; else one might deny oneself the opportunity for an important lesson.

Evidence of Transcommunication

If the dominant proofs of survival are considered (reincarnation, near-death experience and mediumship), mediumship is considered the least convincing by mainstream academia and (many) parapsychologists. The main concern is that psychic access to information as an explanation for the many verifiable messages in mediumship cannot be completely ruled out. Of the three, mediumship is the one counted as a form of transcommunication.

Information from the Environment

All forms of trans-etheric influence are modeled as expressions from personality into the physical via an avatar relationship. The entangled personality is referred to as a person, but as is shown in the Life Field Complex drawing above, the person’s personality is held separate from the person’s conscious self by the Attention Complex and worldview. (In that diagram, the little stars near the personality represent other personalities, some of which would be in an avatar relationship and some which are not.)

Information exchange amongst personalities is also moderated by perceptual agreement. In that, the exchange of information is  limited by how well one personality can perceive information from another as it passes through the Perceptual Loop (part of the Attention Complex).

If this model is reasonably correct, then information or communication to a physical person (the sitter) from a discarnate loved one would necessarily be by way of an exchange between the loved one’s personality (in the etheric) and a personality (in the etheric) that is entangled in a physical avatar relationship (the medium). This means that a mental medium psychically brings a message from a loved one via the same processes used for all of its trans-etheric expressions.

In parapsychological terms, this communication looks like a psi influence. That is, the medium senses  the psi field for information about the sitter in the same way that it is sensed for every other unconscious function. Presumably, psi signatures from other people’s thoughts and actions are always presented to us. The difference between an average person and a medium is that a medium has learned to pay attention.

Of course, a medium senses information from potential fields and various other thoughtforms and life fields. But the personality is always part of a collective, and as such has access to information from other personalities. Because of the filter effect of the Attention Complex,  personalities are influenced by the avatar’s personal reality and do not necessarily have a “higher” view.

Sensed Information as Evidence of Survival

Evidence is not always evidential. That little gem of a saying represents the dividing line between the academically trained researcher and the layperson practitioner. To be evidential, an example must have a very well controlled and documented “chain of  custody,” and the protocol by which it was collected must be known, repeatable and observable. For instance, from an online listening study, the words in the EVP example, “Its Frank,” recorded by Karen Mossey were correctly reported an average of 48.6% of the time.⁶

This establishes that the voice is objective in the sense that people can hear the words and that 48% of them correctly understand the words. However, the objectivity of the example only proves that it exists. Who spoke the words and when is an entirely different question. Ignoring the usual explanations offered by the skeptic community that the example is a fake or that people are delusional to think there are words in the recoding, reasonable arguments are that there were unnoticed speakers or that records were confused as to when and where the recording was made.

Here, the experienced practitioner has cross-corresponding evidence because “Frank” was a cat own by the family for which Mossey’s group was conducting an investigation about a “ghost child” in the house. A mental medium had just stated that there was a child in the closet about the time that Frank wandered into the closet and the recording was made. A mental medium can say anything. Even a well-meaning medium can mistakenly think there is an entity nearby. Who would know?

Having eyewitnesses hear the medium’s statement, see the cat named Frank walk into a closet, by itself, is not very good evidence. The fact that the group was looking for a “ghost child” may have simply predisposed the medium’s interpretation of what she sensed. The EVP was heard later during the analysis of the data. With that, a child’s voice commenting on the cat as it walked into the closet the medium said the child was in, collaborates to provide corresponding evidence that is, indeed, evidential.

Nonlocal

Research into the psi field and psi functioning is showing that there appears to be no separation or distance between, say a healer and sitter or remote viewer and target location. This “everywhere is here” characteristic of the psi field is referred to as nonlocality.

A similar effect is seen in holographic photography. Using a laser, a holographic photograph can be made of an object, and by reversing the process, a three-dimensional image of the object can be produced on a screen. An image of the original object cannot be seen on the holographic photograph, and instead, one can only see numerous spots. A small section of the photograph can be cut away and used to reproduce the image just as it was reproduced by the entire photograph. The imager reproduced from the small section is degraded in quality, but all of the information is present.

This ability to reproduce the original image from a part of a holographic photograph is referred to as nonlocality. A similar effect is seen in quantum mechanics and in psi function research. And so the current model for psi is that it is nonlocal, meaning that one can think of someone in another city, and in principle, that someone should be aware of this attention as it occurs.

Characteristics of ITC also support this nonlocal characteristic, however, the physical space concept translates as an etheric-space change in perception. As such, movement in etheric space is accomplished by changing one’s mind, and with physical reality seen as an expression of mind, moving from one expression to another is just a change of mind.

Nontemporal

A concept often included in the Super-psi Hypothesis is the nontemporal problem. Like nonlocality, quantum principles seem to indicate that time is not relevant. This nontemporal characteristic is also seen in the many reported instances of precognition.

Thus, it is argued that current information in ITC could have come from a person’s future knowledge of an event. When Martha returned home and saw the mess, she could have thought “Cathy would never have let this happen if she was still here.” And based on the theoretical nontemporal nature of reality, psychokinetically injected the EVP onto the recorder as the recording was being made before she got home.

Researchers have shown that a person will unconsciously respond to a stimulus before it is delivered. The terms they us for this is presentiment for sensing near-term events. Also, the Global Consciousness Project, which is an array of Random Event Generators (REG) has detected changes in randomness moments before major events such as the 911 attack. These seem to indicate a global sense of dread before disasters occur. This is an indication of nonlocality and  short-interval  nontemporal characteristics of reality.

There are reports of astoundingly accurate precognition about events that came to pass far in the future. Let us call those reports “extraordinarily precognitive,” and ignore them for the moment. Remembering that research is showing that events produce psi signals and that people normally senses psi signals. Current research also seems to indicate that events are accompanied by a probability signature, let us call those “potential fields.” Speculation is that any single event is likely preceded by many potential futures, one of which eventually becomes the event, and that these many potential futures are sensed as a potential for the event to occur. See the Perception and Mediumship essays.

Potential fields would be sensed as more or less probable, depending on how eminent the related event is and character of the influences shaping the event. An event may not occur, even though there were many potential fields. A person would sense a potential field just as any other field, even if the event itself is aborted. Sensing and reporting the potential for an event to occur would be seen as precognizance. Also, a person would be drawn to the potential that most agreed with his or her worldview.

To emphasize this point, people are now thought to normally, unconsciously sense psi signals from the environment. Events are sensed as growing probabilities. A very substantial event is probably preceded much earlier in time with the emergence of potential fields. Many of the extraordinarily precognitive reports did concern momentous moments in our history such as the 911 attack and commercial airline crashes. It is worth speculating that these extraordinary demonstrations of precognition are actually normal sensing of potential fields. If so, then the concept of a nontemporal nature of reality would not be supported. All time is not now; process requires time.

As such, Martha would not have had the capability to retroactively insert Cathy’s words into the recording.

Apports

EVP are sometimes formed by more than one voice, as if one person begins a phrase and a second finishes it. Especially in telephone recorder EVP, there is the occasional sound of what a telephone technician might describe as a “break-in.” For instance, the recording might begin with a little noise abruptly interrupted by a burst of louder noise which trails off as the voice of the EVP begins. This is demonstrated in the Transcommunication Via Telephone Calls article on ATransC.org.

There are also reports of EVP in which the voice seem to come from already existing sound files. In these extreme examples, the reported EVP might be an exact replica of the existing recording. Such exact replication is obviously considered with reservation, especially amongst experiences practitioners; however, there is growing evidence that some trans-phenomena is better described as an apport, rather than as new expressions.

This apparent spiritual plagiarism is seen in visual forms of ITC as well. For instance, the precipitation art of Hoyt Robinette shown in the picture below has the likeness of a man dressed in civil war era military clothing. The feature looks as it was taken from existing media. The features produced by Robinette on squares of cloth (left) are pretty clearly from existing media, yet after much examination before, during and after the process, there is no evidence indicating anything other than paranormally produced art.

“Apport” is a term used to describe the movement of a physical object from one location to another. Usually, it is experienced as an object suddenly appearing, perhaps in the air and then falling to the floor. Flower petals, stones, even figurines have been reported. Apported objects are described as “apports.”

The apport process is thought to be the dissolution of an object in one location, movement of the object’s formative information through the etheric, and precipitation of the object back into its original form in the new location. Remembering the nonlocality of the etheric, “through the etheric” is conceptual. Yes, this sounds a lot like teleportation, and that is a god mental model.

Physical objects are described in the Implicit Cosmology as ideoplastic structures. This means that they are formed as expressions of the Creative Process. In this model, our sense of the physical world is expressed in our mind as being objectively real, when in fact, reality is a mental construct based on a collective intention to make an imagined object of reality “real.” See the Reality essay.

In physical terms, transcommunication is an energy-intensive process. The etheric equivalence of physical energy is intention, and so in etheric terms, the Creative Process is likely demanding and its expression is seen to be limited by a personality’s ability to maintain the necessary attention, clarity of imagination and intention to express a desired outcome. So in physical terms, trans-etheric influences in general are probably very energy intensive.

Using available ideoplastic structures already existing in the physical that satisfy an intended expression may well be more efficient than producing a new ideoplastic structure. While some EVP are clearly in the voice of the known speaker, some can be more sensibly explained as existent bits of speech opportunistically apported to the sound file.

A planed study is the analysis of a collection of synchronized sound file pairs: one containing an EVP and one recorded at the same time but without the EVP. The objective is to determine if there is a net increase in energy in the file containing EVP. The study is planned because it does appear that this is the case in some forms of EVP. If so, such EVP may be examples of apported sound files. See: Examples of Transform EVP

In fact, apportation may well be one of the most common forms of transcommunication. With this in mind, researchers and practitioners alike should be cautious about too quickly deciding the authenticity of examples just because they are based on existing material.

Precipitation

Another form of trans-etheric influence is known as precipitation. In that, physical material in a chaotic form is deposited into the physical under the influence of intended order. Probably the most common form of this is precipitated art. Precipitation is also seen as the end-phase of apportation.

Precipitation Medium Hoyt Robinette produces very impressive examples of precipitated art. In the one shown here, Robinett placed crayons, felt-tip pins and pencils in a basket with a package of newly opened three-by-five white paper cards. The basket was covered while he conducted billet readings (reading and commenting on questions written on folded and sealed paper.)  for about an hour, and then the basket was opened and the cards removed. For each of the twenty some sitters, there was a card with their name on it and one or more drawings. Robinett performed a similar feat using squares of cloth and many opened colored ink bottles as raw material.

Of course, Robinette is often accused of fraud, but consider the processes thought to be involved in the artwork. First, he provided raw material: paper and colored sources. He distracted himself and the sitters for about an hour while the material was left alone (but not out of sight). The material was carefully inspected beforehand by the sitters. Precipitation is a process thought to be involved in other phenomena such as apports and possibly some EVP formation. Others have performed similar feats, even producing more astounding art.

Intended Order

The Global Consciousness Project involves the apparent influence of some form of collective consciousness on REGs. The influence is seen  as increasing order in a process very carefully designed to be random.

Virtually all forms of EVP involve the impression of intended order on noise. The ideal noise is currently understood to be broad-spectrum chaotic noise, heavily weighted in voice frequencies and frequently perturbed by noise spikes.

Most if not all visual forms of ITC are formed in optical noise. Video-loop ITC, for instance, involves the production of very chaotic optical noise by pointing a video camera at a television screen on which the output of the camera is being displayed. This camera recording what it has just recorded produces wide-spectrum, chaotic optical noise in which recognizable features such as human faces and animals, are sometimes found.

Some specialty devices and computer programs involve white noise or other chaotic sources as the core process. In these, memory addresses which contain bits of speech are selected, based on changes in this chaotic input. The streaming output of that process is expected to produces meaningful messages.

The common factor in all of these is the impression of intended order on a chaotic process. As a common factor in many forms of transcommunication, the evidence of intended order is both a way to evaluate techniques for producing the phenomena of transcommunication and to model the nature of those phenomena.

EVP as a “Lab Rat” for Psi Research

It appears possible for an EVP to be produced by a physical person if the information is currently known by someone or if it exists in the etheric. Nonlocality does seem to be a factor.

It does not appear reasonable to say that, if it is known in the future, then it is currently accessible for EVP formation. The potential field for something to occur might produce an EVP as it is sensed by a person, but it is very difficult to argue that a specific EVP such as “Doja no” might be the product of presentiment.

Given that this is a sound argument, then Martha Copeland’s example is excellent proof of a sentient, still living Cathy … and of ITC as evidence of survival. The validity of this argument is for wiser people to decide, but I do suggest that they do so by way of collaboration with people informed by experience. Thus far, academics just talking amongst themselves about transcommunication have not proven useful.

There is currently no known way to shield from psi. This means that any psi experiment has the potential of contamination by the experimenter and interested observers. This is certainly true of EVP sessions. However, if a protocol for EVP can be designed in which no physical person is aware of an event, its form or when it will occur, then it may be possible to enlist discarnate helpers to observe and report via EVP. Such a protocol would be useful for studying psi shielding techniques and validation of survival evidence.

Implications of the Implicit Cosmology

The phenomena of transcommunication are usually considered from the perspective of known physics, human nature and psi research. The Survival Hypothesis is typically dismissively considered as a preamble to the efforts to explain proposed evidence of survival as better explained by human nature. If that fails, then the Super-psi Hypothesis is turned to as the last word.

While the evidence offered by mediumship is usually dismissed as insufficiently convincing or easily explained with Super-psi, there is virtually no consideration of evidence offered by ITC within academic circles. However, when  ITC is considered, it is seen to be consistent with the evidence of mediumship. (It is usually considered a form of physical mediumship.) From my perspective, it is easy to develop a consistent model that makes sense of both psi  and transcommunication phenomena.

 So, my argument is that, if the Implicit Cosmology is correct, then all forms of transcommunication should depend on essentially the same concepts and their behavior should be reasonably well predicted by applying those concepts. In the same way, examples of phenomena that seem to contradict the cosmology should be considered with some hesitation. They are either not what they seem or they present new concepts that should be, but may not have been considered.

It is important that phenomena that agree with predictions of the Implicit Cosmology inherit credibility from one another. As proof of survival, mental mediumship should be seen as more plausible if EVP is seen as evidence of survival. EVP should be seen as more plausible if precipitation can be established as “real” phenomena. In the same way, apportation as a means of producing some EVP should make sense if there is seen to be a net increase inn audio energy in a signal containing an EVP. It all depends on understanding the model and understanding the phenomena. Thus far, few researchers understand both.

References

1. Senkowski, Earnst (1995), Instrumental Transcommunication, Frankfurt/Main: R. G. Fischer, Verlag. (English translation by Heidemarie Hallmann: worlditc.org – link to Books).

2. Butler, Tom, “Concerns with Wikipedia,” Etheric Studies, 2009 ethericstudies.org/concerns-with-wikipedia/.

3. Parapsychological Association, parapsych.org

4. Carpenter, James, C. First Sight: ESP and Parapsychology in Everyday Life. s.l. : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012. ISBN 978-1-4422-1392-0 (ebook).

5. Cunningham, Paul F. , “The Content-Source Problem in Modern Mediumship Research,” River University, 2012, rivier.edu/faculty/pcunningham/Publications/CunninghamJP_Fall-2012-Vol-76-(2)-295-319.pdf.

6. Butler, Tom,”EVP Online Listening Trials,” Association TransCommunication, 2008,   atransc.org/journal/online_listening_trials.htm