DOCTOR EXAMINES SPIRIT LARYNX

From the book Broadcasting From Beyond   A.E. PERRIMAN

DOCTOR EXAMINES SPIRIT LARYNX

At two experimental sittings, we introduced a special type of fluorescent screen to assist the spirit world to demonstrate “etheric television.” As it was an experiment, we did not know whether it would meet with success or not, but we were always ready to try anything new if it meant increasing our knowledge of the operation of psychic laws.
There was no demonstration at the first sitting, which was mainly given over to instructions and personal messages to the sitters.
At the next sitting, Belle was the first to speak. She had a cheery word for each sitter, and announced: “I am going to bring my little blue bird. I want you to see it, and hear it sing.” At first we were unable to see anything, although we could hear a faint whistle. After a while, we observed a light appear and take the form of a bird. When it was fully formed, it took to flying round the room and whistling a shrill note.
Flora spoke, and told us to move the big luminous screen, which was resting on a chair, to a position where it would not reflect its light on the medium. Soon the shadow of a cross was thrown on the screen. “I have brought the cross from the mantelpiece and put it back again,” said Belle. The cross referred to was an apport brought at a previous sitting. It is a solid piece of work in green marble, and weighs nearly half a pound.
Belle told us she was going to try to do something.
“Look!” she said. We saw lights appear behind and above the screen. The number of lights increased, and there was one extra large patch of luminosity. On the screen we observed a shadow, but we could not define any shape. Another large light appeared, and the mass of lights began moving about the room.
Belle said she was going to get something. We saw the trumpet, illumined by reflected light from the screen, sail up to the ceiling. “I’m going to do something else,” said Belle. She carried some roses from a vase on the mantel piece, held them in front of the screen, and touched one of the woman sitters on the head. “I can see your little hand holding the rose, Belle,” said this sitter.
A spirit voice told us that they were ready to experiment. The screen, which weighs over fourteen pounds, began slowly to rise. Higher and higher it went until we heard it knock against the ceiling. It remained there for some time, the luminous side being visible to us. Then it began to descend, revolving very quickly in space. It then went from one side of the room to the other at a quick rate. Following these gyrations it gradually descended and came to rest on the chair. Not a sound was heard.
Then we were told that an attempt would be made to materialise the spirit larynx used for speaking. Within a foot of Dr. Coulthard’s face, there appeared a materialised structure showing movement of different parts as the control spoke through it. “I am talking to you,” he said, “and I want you all to see how this works. Now I am up here.” We heard the voice coming from the ceiling. “Now I am coming right away, here, in front of you.” The voice descended from the ceiling and spoke to the doctor. “You saw the larynx manipulated, doctor?”
“Yes,” was the reply.
“Then I would like you to express your opinion,” he was asked. Here is Dr. H. Coulthard’s report on the materialised larynx:
“Striking proof of the modus operandi of the direct voice phenomenon was given me at a Mrs. Perriman séance a few days ago, when a complete ectoplasmic larynx was materialised less than two feet in front of me.
“I was able to see the whole of the working parts of the larynx, and have no hesitation in declaring, as a medical man, that the structure I saw was an exact replica of a human larynx.
“This remarkable experiment was made by one of Mrs. Perriman’s controls. I was sitting two chairs away from the medium, and the séance room was so arranged that it was impossible for Mrs. Perriman to move from her seat. Directly in front of her had been placed a new instrument with which we were experimenting.
“I heard the voice of the control talking in front of me. Then there appeared straight in front of me and about eighteen inches away, a phosphorescent replica of a typical anatomical larynx. It was shown in such a position that I could see clearly its construction.
“Inside the larynx there were the vocal cords or folds. These cords, when one is speaking, move from side to side. When the voice is not being used the cords are motionless. While I was looking at this spirit larynx, I heard the control talking. As he spoke, the vocal cords moved in exactly the way I would expect if I were able to watch a human larynx at work. The spirit varied the pitch of his voice, speaking sometimes high and sometimes low. These changes were all accompanied by the appropriate movements of the cords. The distance between the cords varied as the pitch varied.
“I am convinced that it would have been impossible for the medium to have produced such a model as I saw. Even if she were able to get out of her chair, and in front of me, she would still have to work the model without her hands being visible. She would require considerable technical knowledge, which I am sure she does not possess, to be able to move the cords exactly as they should be moved when the voice was speaking. Besides, the voice was distinctly that of a man.
“The larynx seemed to me to be floating. The phosphorescent nature of the substance naturally made it a trifle blurred, but it was sufficiently clear for me to certify that it was in all respects similar to a human larynx.”

http://www.survivalebooks.org/Articles/Spirit%20larynx.htm
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The chemical process of materialization

from "Eleven Days at Moravia" - 

Thomas Robinson Hazard

He told us in terse and definite language, remarkably free from the redundancy that frequently characterizes mediumistic communications, that the spirits who show their limbs and faces at the aperture, are actually within the cabinet (though invisible to material eyes) in their own proper persons, and that the limbs and faces that are shown undergo a chemical process, analogous to that adopted by mortals in coating or galvanizing specimens of wood or other substances and metals... the chemical process of materialization

A few days before I left, there came to Moravia a trance-medium from Rochester, by the name of Gilbert G. Eaton, one of whose controlling spirits professed to be the notorious Capt. Kidd, who did not seem inclined to say much about his earth career, but admitted that he had, when in earthlife, a hard, determined will.
He further stated that he always thought he was condemned to death on insufficient testimony, and that the piracies for which he suffered were committed on Spanish vessels, with the approval or connivance of the British Government, until complications became so serious that it was deemed expedient to sacrifice his life to appease the Spaniards.

In reply to a query concerning his entrance into spirit-life, he stated that when he came to consciousness he found himself wandering in a darksome, dreary desert, where no vegetation other than stinted, unsightly shrubs was to be found, and where the spirits he encountered were each and all so repulsive and loathsome to each other, that no two or more ever cared to meet or associate.

In this forlorn condition he passed what to him seemed centuries of earthlife, when his spirit became so broken and overpowered with suffering, that in an agony of despair he threw himself upon the ground and cried earnestly on God for deliverance. Then for the first time he saw in the far-off distance a bright spot in the shape of a small anchor, from which trailed within his reach a thread of light.

Guided by this he succeeded in reaching the anchor and from that point was enabled to see and communicate with his mother, through whose loving counsel and assistance he was started on the road of progress, and through the strength of the same strong will-power that had, when misdirected, sank him so low in hell, he was enabled—when this was rightly directed—the sooner to reach the place he now occupied in heaven.

This was the substance of what Kidd stated, but whether true or false, or whether it may have been some other spirit personating Kidd or not, he certainly did subsequently give us a most graphic relation of the mode pursued by spirits in showing themselves at Moravia.

He told us in terse and definite language, remarkably free from the redundancy that frequently characterizes mediumistic communications, that the spirits who show their limbs and faces at the aperture, are actually within the cabinet (though invisible to material eyes) in their own proper persons, and that the limbs and faces that are shown undergo a chemical process, analogous to that adopted by mortals in coating or galvanizing specimens of wood or other substances and metals, with the wash of another kind of metal. He stated that this material coating for the spirit-form is collected by the spirits and partially prepared during the dark circle, from the aura or effete particles that are constantly passing from the human body; the cold breeze that is so often felt by the persons present being a part of this aura, and that the consistency or efficiency of the material depends upon the degree of harmony that prevails in the circle.

He further stated that these effete particles cannot be used by the spirit chemists until they are vitalized so as to make them partake of the quality of living flesh; and, to do this, it is necessary to pass them through, or bring them in contact with, a human organism possessing certain qualities or properties such as appertain to Mrs. Andrews, who always sits opposite the aperture during the process of collecting, preparing and passing the material into the cabinet.

Mr. Eaton's controlling spirit also asserted that the manufacturing of this occult material requires that certain elements should be abstracted from every organ of the medium; and that, on some occasions, where the manifestations required high coloring, the spirit artists had drawn as many as four ounces of actual blood from her veins. It was said, further, that, should any material substance—especially, if in a fluid or semi-fluid state—be brought in contact with the spirit-faces or limbs that are exhibited, the coarser particles of such substance will necessarily appear on the person of the medium, the pores of whose skin operate similarly to a fine sieve, or strainer, and, on the return of the elements that had been subtracted from her system, exclude the coarser particles of the foreign substance.

This coating of the spirit, Eaton's controlling guardian stated, was of too delicate a quality to resist for any great length of time the chemical effects of light; though the spirits seemed confident that they should soon perfect and improve the processes so as to enable them to walk out of the doors of cabinets, and greet their earth-friends as naturally as when they were clothed with mortal flesh.

http://www.survivalebooks.org/Articles/ChemicalProcess.htm
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Victor's Response to skeptics' "there is no afterlife...."

http://www.victorzammit.com/articles/shermer.html

Victor's Response to skeptics' "there is no afterlife...."

The closed minded skeptic who stated: "There is no afterlife … if psychics were real why don't they predict race winners … Las Vegas results, terrorist attacks … " is into what psychologists call 'rationalization to avoid cognitive dissonance.'

He's got rigid untested ideas into his head - so that when he encounters information which is fundamentally inconsistent with his entrenched cherished beliefs, he panics. The inconsistent (albeit empirically validated) information creates dissonance -giving him too much anxiety. So that to offset the anxiety and other negative physical and psychological response -- such as acceleration of the heart beat, etc, to obtain homeostasis (internal equilibrium ) he becomes irrational and goes into extreme denial, negativity, sarcasm … rationalizing his cherished beliefs etc to save his ego. I notice how emotional he gets on TV when he tries to defend his closed minded skepticism.

One has to understand psychic phenomena holistically. Material gain is not usually part of the psychic deal. As to pre-cognition, there have been empirically validated cases where there was accuracy in the prediction - the Prof Gary Schwartz experiments with Chris Robinson - who British espionage service M15 chiefs employed him for his exceptional pre-cognition skills in catching terrorists in England relatively recently. Chris Robinson is on record for advising US Embassy in the UK about terrorist attacks in New York - before the 9-11 attack. The usual closed minded response to deny credit to the prediction is to claim it was a 'fluke' - even when the odds went into billions to one of the incident coming by chance each time.

The closed minded skeptic is a product of his environment and shows he is unable or unwilling or both to transcend the environmentally induced Eurocentric perception of the world. It takes patience, skill and intelligence to rise above the 'boggle threshold' and overcome the negative programming which was part of the conditioning process in the environment where we grew up.

Let's face it if a closed minded skeptic was born into a family of anti-U.S. Moslem extremists somewhere in the Middle East with daily intense conditioning of those beliefs, it would be very likely he would see the world from that rigid, singular biased perception.

That is why I keep on repeating that to validate beliefs one has to apply scientific method - empiricism. There is absolutely nothing objective about closed minded skepticism - in fact, technically, anti-psychic skepticism is a 'belief.' And any belief which cannot be independently substantiated is inevitably subject to complete invalidation.

Example: The closed minded skeptic says, "Nothing happens when we die …" There is no objective authority to validate that statement. Where's the 'independent' objective evidence for that? Absolutely none! The skeptic is making a most heinous and egregious intellectual blunder when he cites 'subjective authority' for making that statement! That statement would be inadmissible at law and inadmissible in any informed debate.

I usually find that skeptics have not done the reading, the research, the investigating. Why have they not rebutted the great works of the physicists and other most brilliant psychics who walked this planet earth - these the last 100 years or so? Some of these scientists are cited in my homepage and also I have in Chapter 2 in my book A LAWYER PRESENTS THE EVIDENCE FOR THE AFTERLIFE www.victorzammit.com

Would these most brilliant scientists and others from around the world who used their scientific skills to investigate and then conceded the existence for the afterlife get together in a conspiracy to fool the people of the world? The level headed response would be of course not!

In my fairly intense investigation I myself experienced direct contact with those who passed on. There is nothing in this world to explain that the phenomena were physical in origin. I do predict that before too long, non physical energy - the most important discovery in human history - will be accepted by the majority.
Of course, there will never be sufficient objective evidence for those negatively prejudiced against impartially who do not want to accept the evidence.

Finally let me quote Dr Dean Radin, "… skeptics who continue to repeat the same old assertions that parapsychology is a pseudo science, or that there are not repeatable experiments, are UNINFORMED not only the state of parapsychology, but also about the current state of skepticism!" (p 209 THE CONSCIOUS UNIVERSE - The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena.)

Victor January 2004

Titus Rivas : Why it Makes Sense to Explain Near-Death Experiences by the Survival of Consciousness

http://www.victorzammit.com/articles/ndestitus.html

Why it Makes Sense to Explain Near-Death Experiences by the Survival of Consciousness

by Titus Rivas 

This paper is based on a somewhat more technical article in the Journal of Religion and Psychical Research (January 2003).
Reprint requests to:
Titus Rivas
"Athanasia"
Darrenhof 9
6533 RT Nijmegen
The Netherlands
titusrivas@hotmail.com
Introduction
Recently, several medical doctors such as Dr. Pim van Lommel (The Netherlands), Dr. Sam Parnia (UK) and Dr. Michael B. Sabom (USA) have carried out studies to determine if patients who have officially been declared clinically dead really can get Near-Death Experiences (NDEs). All of them conclude that NDEs do indeed take place among at least some of these patients.
The researchers accept that consciousness is not destroyed when our brain stops functioning. They also accept that consciousness will probably continue exist after death, as in this sense, there isn’t any relevant difference between a flat EEG and brain death.
Mainstream materialist scientists generally see consciousness as a byproduct of the activity of the brain. For the question of survival, it is therefore sufficient to show that the mind does not need the brain for its very existence.
Near-death experiences and materialist theories of the mind
If we can prove that consciousness is present after the brain has stopped functioning, we have shown that materialism must be wrong.
There are three strategies of people who want to avoid the ‘survivalist’ conclusion of recent NDE-studies.
1. Scepticism about the methods used in the studies: This is the usual response by skeptics whenever they are confronted by results that go against their world view. However, the scientific reputation of the researchers involved in the recent studies certainly seems spotless and their work has been accepted as worthy of publication in prestigious journals such as The Lancet. So it may be safely assumed that the standard skeptic objection is simply baseless in this case. Research into NDEs cannot be dismissed anymore as being unscientific.
2. Flaws in the specific interpretation of the results: Some critics think that the findings of these studies should not be interpreted by the survival of consciousness. Memories of an NDE during clinical death would just be false memories. At a subconscious level of their mind, patients are simply fooling themselves. They never experienced anything like it, but they just believe they did. Without being aware of it, they have simply constructed a rich fantasy and they falsely assume that they had a real NDE.
Another version of this counter-theory wants us to believe that NDEs do exist, but that they don’t occur during clinical death. In other words, the experiences happen during the seconds or minutes before patients lose consciousness or a few moments before they awake. Patients are simply confused about the exact moment they experienced their NDE.
However, researchers point to the fact patients have accurate (’veridical’) impressions of events that took place while their brains showed a flat EEG. Therefore, any hypothesis that claims that these people simply deceive themselves must account for these experiences. It is very convenient for skeptics that such experiences, which seem clearly related to Extra-Sensory Perception (ESP), are still quite controversial for many mainstream scientists. However, the evidence for such accurate impressions during clinical death is growing and its quality is also increasing (Ring, 1998; Sabom, 1998; Rivas, 2000; Abdalla, 2002). So unless we wish to remain hard line skeptics at any cost, it seems wise to take them very seriously.
What kind of ESP might in principle accout for events that happened during a flat EEG? In parapsychology,we know two categories of ESP that are related to a time factor. First, there is precognition which in this context would boil down to an experience of an event which took place during the stage of flat EEG before that experience occurred. According to the false-memory theory the patient will not eventually experience the event while it is taking place. During the stage of flat EEG there wouldn’t be any awareness whatsoever. More importantly, the visions of events to come should take place before the patient loses consciousness or at least before he enters the stage of flat EEG. And he should lose all memory of having had such a precognitive vision after he has come to. Therefore, I personally cannot take this very far-fetched possibility seriously and I really think we should dismiss the precognition-version of the false memory theory.
The other time-related form of ESP is called retrocognition, which means: knowledge acquired through ESP of past events. The retrocognition-version of the false memory hypothesis interprets memories of veridical experiences during the stage of flat EEG as follows. At a subconscious level of their minds, patients with an NDE may use ESP to get knowledge of past events which happened during their coma. They project that knowledge into their false memories during the last moments before they regain consciousness. The theory needs to hold that all patients with veridical experiences during their flat EEG were somehow motivated to create a fantasy. In that fantasy they would include false memories of real events by retrocognition. Some patients would be subconsciously motivated to use retrocognition to deceive themselves about their lack of consciousness during their flat EEG.
Retrocognition is a very strange hypothesis for NDEs, because it suggests that a patient would not use ESP to perceive events that happen between the stage of flat EEG and complete awakening. Instead, he would focus on events that have already taken place. The theory cannot explain cases of NDEs in which there are paranormal (accurate) impressions also of events which occurred during the awakening process itself. Retrocognition would not be able to explain cases in which patient experience such impressions as part of a coherent and continuous stream of consciousness.
An even more fatal weakness of this theory is that it uses a very unmaterialistic concept -retrocognition- to uphold a materialistic theory. Even if it were true, it simply could not be defended by a materialist, at least not by a conventional materialist. By its very nature, the retrocognitive false memory theory needs to be part of a broader radical dualistic theory about the mind-brain relation. It might be defended by the so called "animistic" school of thought within the parapsychological tradition. This is a current which promotes the explanation of possible evidence for survival after death in terms of ESP (or psychokinesis). However, it is very ironic that even a hard line animist like Hans Bender (1983, page 148) concluded that the ESP needed to explain accurate ‘veridical’ experiences during NDEs is in itself suggestive of survival after death.
In any case, if veridical memories of events during flat EEG are taken seriously, we must leave the plane of (conventional) materialist theorizing about mind-brain relations. After that, we have to ask ourselves which theory is simpler: a dualist theory which holds that the memories of events during flat EEG are false memories, constructed via retrocognition. Or rather a dualist theory which holds that such memories simply are real memories based on real experiences. After we have accepted a dualistic framework, we can no longer consider the real memory theory as more complicated just because it would imply survival. Even animistic champion Hans Bender acknowledges that at least some form of survival is implied by any serious ‘radical’ dualist theory. Therefore, I conclude that the false memory-theory is more complicated than necessary. In order to avoid the conclusion that consciousness survives death, it needs to postulate a process which is only plausible within a theory which ultimately implies at least some form of survival of the mind after death. So it really is a theory which is more complicated than a straightforward survivalist theory. It implies both survival and a strange, unknown kind of retrospective distortion of memory through retrocognition.
Therefore, in my opinion, we should only adopt the ‘false memory through retrocognition’ory after it would be shown that memories of NDEs must generally be false. It's the animists who have to show the (radical) survivalists wrong in this case. Certainly not the other way round. The radical survivalist theory is the simplest interpretation of NDEs that can explain every aspect of them. The theory can be refuted by evidence for a more complex theory such as the “false memory through retrocognition”-theory.
3. Adaptation of mainstream materialistic neuropsychological theory
The last materialist response is defended for example by Karl Jansen, a psychiatrist known for his attempts of artificially producing experiences which resemble NDEs. It states that memories of NDEs are indeed real memories, but that there would still be some unmeasurable level of brain activity which can still account for them (Abdalla, 2002). Accurate impressions of events during flat EEG are usually ignored by this theory.
The problem with this theory is that there is (by definition) absolutely no evidence for it. Theorists seem to be quite content with pointing at unsuitable parallels such as certain types of sleep EEG. But no acceptable close empirical analogues have been presented so far. For instance, during most vivid dreams there is rapid eye movement (REM).
As Pim van Lommel points out, if we accept NDEs as real experiences during flat EEG, we also have to accept that patients experience normal, full-blown and even heightened conscious mental activity in them. If critics want to explain this away by a still unknown type of unmeasurable neural activity, they have to present parallels which involve normal (lucid) or heightened conscious mental activity. And which can at the same time be satisfactorily explained by known neural activity. Otherwise, we must conclude that the theory is based on nothing more than unfounded speculation! It is not forbidden to defend a cherished, well-founded theory against new evidence, but such a defence should of course be plausible and based on acceptable data. As far as I know, there is no serious evidence for this theory as a counter theory for survival. That is precisely the reason that Pim van Lommel simply rejects it as having no scientific basis.
Bibliography
- Abdalla, M. (2002). Cardioloog Pim van Lommel haalt bijna-dood ervaringen uit het donker. Paravisie, 17, 13-27.
- Bender, H. (1983). Zukunftsvisionen, Kriegsprophezeiungen, Sterbeerlebnisse. Munich: R. Piper Verlag.
- French, C.C. (2001). Dying to know the truth: visions of a dying brain, or false memories? The Lancet, 358, 9298, 2010.
- Lommel, P. van, Wees, R. van, Meyers, V., & Elfferich, I. (2001). Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands. The Lancet, 358, 9298, 2039-2044.
- Parnia, S., Waller, D.G., Yeates, R., & Fenwick, P. (2001). A qualitative and quantitative study of the incidence, features and aetiology of near death experiences in cardiac arrest survivors. Resuscitation, 48, 149-156.
- Ring, K. (1998). Lessons from the Light: what we can learn from the Near-Death Experience. New York: Insight Books.
- Rivas, T. (2000). Herinneringen aan een periode tussen twee levens. Prana, 120, 33-38.
- Sabom, M. (1998). Light and Death. Zondervan Publishers.


Acknowledgements
I’m grateful to Dr. Pim van Lommel, Anny Stevens-Dirven,Pieter van Wezel, MA, and Dr. Donald R. Morse for their useful comments. I also thank Victor Zammit for his help in making the original article more accessible for a general public.

Victor Zammit : The Seven Laws of Psychic Energy

Victor Zammit  http://www.victorzammit.com

The Seven Laws of Psychic Energy

"These laws of energy are not alterable. These laws have always been and will always be in existence."

Traditional secular scientists are now in agreement with the 'new' scientists and have conceded that all visible matter and invisible waves in the world can be reduced to 'vibrating energy'. 

But traditional materialist reductionist scientists try to dismiss 'non physical energy' - because they say it cannot be measured in the laboratory- therefore it does not exist. But there are many non physical phenomena (energies) which do exist in this world and cannot be produced on demand to be measured in the laboratory. A simple example: love cannot be measured in the laboratory, does it mean it does not exist? 

Non-physical energy explains all paranormal activity. Prof Fred Hoyle - the British astonomer - and other contemporary 'new' scientists, including Noble Laureates, physicists and others - see chapter 2 of A LAWYER PRESENTS THE CASE FOR THE AFTERLIFE www.victorzammit.com state that when scientists are able to harness, manipulate and control 'non-physical energy', traditional materialist reductionist science will be seen as being like the science of the steam engine. 

No materialist reductionist scientist, no professor or associate professor or other loud mouthed materialist debunker in the world has been able to rebut the objective evidence for existence of non-physical energy - see book mentioned above.

Below you will find laws of energy taken from information accumulated over the last few hundred years of documented human experience.

When I first started doing research into psychic phenomena I was looking for psychic laws. I found that although the laws existed by imputation, no one had hitherto formulated specific universal psychic, non-physical energy laws.

We have laws for everything - civil and criminal laws to conduct human behavior, laws of physics describing the forces which regulate the universe, laws of biology and other laws.

Whilst materialist reductionist scientsts claim everything can be explained by 'chance' the 'new scientists' and others around the world disagree. The fact is that the 'chance explanation' of the order and laws of the universe would have a mathematical probability of trillion trillions to one - something we know to be absolutely absurd.

There is universal acceptance that there are 'laws of energy' that mostly we do not yet understand. So that we have to look closely at what these laws are that are beyond the reductionist thinking.

Accordingly, now for the very first time it is proposed that specific laws be codified about psychic energies - not just those which operate in the physical world but those which affect non-physical energies that transcend the physical world.

Whilst more than half of the people of the world to-day will readily attest to the validity of these laws of energy it may take some decades for these laws to be universally accepted. 

First Law of psychic energy:

All 'solid' objects are vibrating energy.

Unseen waves are also vibrating energy- sound, radio, electricity, light, television waves, microwaves, x-rays, gamma rays and psychic energy waves.

Second law of psychic energy:

The mind is an 'energy station' which creates transmits and receives energy.

1. The will (of the mind) can change the form of energy.
2. Thoughts and images, which are waves of energy, can be transmitted to and from human minds within the earthplane and to human and other entities in the afterlife in a process called telepathy.

Third law of psychic energy:
All living humans have a body made up of vibrationary energy which is a duplicate of the physical body and will survive physical death.

1. This vibrationary energy body invisible to physical eyes can change form but can never be destroyed and retains consciousness.
2. At the time of physical death, the duplicate body will have reached a certain vibrational level and will go to an energy sphere that can accommodate those vibrations.
3. Selfless spiritual service increases the vibrational energy of the duplicate body.

Fourth law of psychic energy:
The afterlife has different levels of energy which form different spheres according to the speed of vibration.

1. The faster the vibrations of a sphere the higher and more spiritually evolved are the entities which reside there.

Fifth law of psychic energy:
The more spiritually evolved a being is the brighter the energy of the aura.

Sixth law of psychic energy:
Slowing down the speed of the atomic vortices of the energy will result in materialisation. Speeding up the vortices will result in de-materialisation

Seventh law of psychic energy:
The Law of Cause and Effect: for every (energy) action there is a (an energy) reaction ie, energy is a 'boomerang' - the 'energy' you give out will inevitably return to you.

-- Victor Zammit (May 2001)

Ian Stevenson : Thoughts on the Decline of Major Paranormal Phenomena

Thoughts on the Decline of Major Paranormal Phenomena[1]
(Presidential Address to the Society for Psychical Research, 1989)

- Ian Stevenson -

Abstract: Major paranormal phenomena, defined as phenomena detectable by the senses alone without a need for statistics, have diminished in the contemporary publications of the Society compared with the publications of its first several decades. The lack of reports of such major phenomena may reflect diminished interest in them on the part of investigators, most of whom have turned their attention to laboratory experiments that elicit marginal results requiring statistical analysis. However, it seems likely that the major phenomena occur less frequently in the West today than they did formerly. Skepticism derived from philosophical materialism may inhibit normally the occurrence of major paranormal phenomena. It may also inhibit them through paranormal processes. The most promising sources of major paranormal phenomena today may be in industrially undeveloped countries, among a few specially gifted individuals, and in certain unusual experiences, such as those of persons who come close to death and recover.

[1] Presidential Address, April 1989. I thank T. N. E. Greville, Emily Williams Cook and Rhea White for helpful comments on an earlier draft on this Address.
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          THE DAUNTING prospect of trying to deliver a Presidential Address in any way worthy of being placed on the same shelf as previous Addresses impelled me to read, in recent months, many of the Addresses that I had not previously studied. In doing this I paid particular attention to the speakers' appraisals of the Society's accomplishments. Although I made no attempt to rank the speakers on a scale of optimism versus pessimism in their judgments of the Society's work, I noted that several emphatically expressed optimism about the outcome of our labors. I am not referring to confidence in the worthiness of the enterprise, but to assertions of success in it. In the decades between 1910 and 1980 at least six Presidents asserted that telepathy had been proved or nearly so (Flammarion, 1923-24; McDougall, 1920; Prince, 1930-31; L. E. Rhine, 1982; Salter, 1946-49; and Smith, 1910).[2]

[2] This list may not be exhaustive of all those who confidently claimed the proof, or near-proof, of extrasensory perception. I have not read all the Presidential Addresses.

One might ask why, if telepathy had been proved by 1910, later Presidents thought it necessary to reiterate the claim so often in subsequent years. I can think of two reasons why they might have felt a need for such renewed affirmation. First, each generation of investigators, perhaps each decade of them, has believed its methods superior to those of its predecessors. This has entailed the temptation to hint at, or even to say openly, something like: "Our forerunners thought they had solid evidence of paranormal phenomena, but their methods were crude compared with ours. We have finally proven the reality of these phenomena." Second, they knew that what they and the audiences listening to their Addresses — largely the members and friends of the Society — regarded as proof did not seem that to the majority of scientists. The rest of the world had not heard, or had not listened if it did hear. They needed to be told again. Unfortunately, the need still exists.

Our inability to persuade larger numbers of educated persons, especially scientists, to take seriously our endeavors and accomplishments seems more than a disappointment; it may now be a fatal weakness. Until the present generation new recruits in psychical research always seemed available to fill the places of investigators who died; and for a time it looked as if the study of paranormal phenomena was taking root in universities. However, we must admit that today psychical research has almost gone from the universities, at least on the continent of Europe and in North America. Even in the United Kingdom, psychical research is almost extinct in universities south of the Tweed. We are not gaining the interest of well-qualified younger investigators with new ideas in sufficient numbers to succeed those of us whose ideas need to be replaced by other insights and better methods.

The decline during recent decades in the acceptance of our achievements — even of the legitimacy of our endeavors — on the part of other scientists must have several causes. I have written elsewhere about what I believe to be one of the less important of these causes, namely the misguided effort to identify a separate discipline of science called parapsychology (Stevenson, 1988). However, that is not my theme in this Address. Instead, I wish to suggest other causes of the decline effect in psychical research. I think by far the most important of these causes is our inability to observe and report major paranormal phenomena. Here I emphasize the word major, by which I mean phenomena so gross that we require no statistics for their demonstration. In specifying further what I am thinking about, I shall say little about physical phenomena and consider mainly spontaneous (mental) cases, mental mediumship, and the feats of unusually gifted sensitives or clairvoyants. The volumes of the early and middle years of our Society's publications contain numerous reports of carefully investigated major phenomena subsumed under these categories, and I wish to address the question of why we publish little or nothing of this sort today.

Some of my listeners and readers may ask whether a return of such major phenomena would improve the fortunes of psychical research. After all, if these phenomena failed to carry conviction outside a fairly narrow circle[3] before, why should they do so today? The point is a good one, and to it I can only reply that the minor phenomena requiring statistics for their demonstration are certainly not exciting interest among modern scientists, and perhaps the major phenomena would. A survey by McClenon (1984) of "elite scientists" offers some support for this view. He found that 29 percent of the respondents said that they believed in extrasensory perception. However, as the basis for their belief, twice as many of the believers cited personal experience as cited reports in scientific journals. Moreover, among 351 scientists responding to McClenon's questionnaire only nine cited a journal in our field as a source of information on the subject. We are not justified in believing from the information available that the elite scientists surveyed by McClenon experienced what I think of as major phenomena, although some of them may have done so. We may, however, believe that they would be more impressed by such major phenomena, if we could report them, than they now are by the marginal results of most laboratory experiments that require statistics for their demonstration.

[3] The circle of persons interested in psychical research and praising the work of the Society (even though not active in it) may have been larger between 1880 and 1920 than this phrase implies. I think the willingness of so many eminent men to stand in the glaring publicity of the Presidency reflects a broader acceptance of the Society's work by intellectual leaders than we can find among their successors today.

Next we come to the distinction between the reporting of phenomena and the occurrence of them. The paucity of reports of such major phenomena may reflect nothing more than lack of interest or lack of resources for investigations on the part of psychical researchers. Or there may have been a real decline in the occurrence of the phenomena. Or both these factors may be present.

We could argue that the preponderant attention given in our journals to experimental studies compared with reports of the major phenomena reflects a lack of interest in the latter on the part of investigators. A decline of interest in the major phenomena appears to have set in during the 1930s, when they were still more plentiful than they appear to be today. It is worth asking why this occurred.

Several causes may have contributed to investigators having less interest in the major phenomena than they earlier had. Changing economic conditions may have drawn them away from spontaneous cases, the study of which was more costly than experiments were, at least in the early days of the fashion for experiments.

Perhaps researchers became afraid of the phenomena. Eisenbud (1983), Tart (1984) and White (1985) have suggested that psychical researchers are afraid to acknowledge (and hence afraid to observe) the vast paranormal powers of which they assume at least some persons are capable. Who would want to believe that by thinking alone he could move mountains, kill a neighbor, or sink the Titanic? This argument seems based on assumptions instead of evidence. Moreover, it must include a discrediting judgment of ourselves compared with our predecessors, because certainly nineteenth-century investigators and some of those in the early years of this century did not hesitate to encounter tables and persons that levitated as well as the appearance or the reality of full-form materializations of the dead.

It seems to me that the psychical researchers of the last two generations have been less afraid of the major phenomena than they have been of the disapproval of colleagues in other branches of science. This led many of them to imitate psychologists, who, in their laboratories, were trying to imitate physicists and chemists in theirs. The unbalanced emphasis on laboratory experiments that has now prevailed among two generations of psychical researchers needs correction, as I have argued elsewhere (Stevenson, 1987). We are bound to have fewer reports of major paranormal phenomena if we have fewer investigators interested in studying and reporting them. Moreover, the paucity of scientists known to take an interest in these phenomena means that persons having paranormal experiences have little information about qualified professional persons to whom they might describe whatever experiences they have. Also, persons who have or think they may have special sensitivities or mediumistic abilities have almost no one qualified in psychical research to whom they can turn for encouragement and guidance.

Nevertheless, I do not believe that we can attribute the decline in the reporting of major phenomena entirely to lack of interest on the part of investigators, whatever factors may have contributed to that lack. Also, some of the decline in the interest of investigators may now result from a falling off in the amount and quality of the phenomena available for study. For judging the truth of this conjecture we have little reliable data. I can assure you that claims of the major phenomena that warrant investigation have not ceased altogether, because our unit at the University of Virginia continues to be notified of them from time to time. However, our informants are not a random sample, both because they have the initiative to telephone or write to us and because they know of our existence in the first place. Surveys conducted during recent decades (Haraldsson, 1985,1988-89; Kalish and Reynolds, 1973; Palmer, 1979) tell us that the proportion of the general population who believe that they have experienced some paranormal phenomenon has not declined from that found in earlier surveys (Sidgwick, H. and Committee, 1894; West, 1948). Unfortunately, the modern surveys have elicited reports of beliefs about paranormal experiences, not evidence that the reported experiences are paranormal. Haraldsson (1988-89) is the only modern surveyor of psychical experiences who has also investigated some of the claims his respondents have made. In Iceland, at least, veridical and death-coinciding apparitions seem to be reported with a frequency not appreciably less than that observed in nineteenth-century England (Sidgwick, H. and Committee, 1894). However, I believe that Iceland may not be typical of Western countries, and I think — admittedly on insufficient evidence — that a real decline in major paranormal phenomena has occurred in the West during this century. In the remainder of this Address, I propose to accept this assumption and consider some of the possible reasons for this decline.

Physical theories about the nature of extrasensory perception have been proposed since the late nineteenth century (Barrett, Gurney and Myers, 1882); they achieved some prominence from Berger's (1940) conjectures and in recent years have become fashionable. They have gained many adherents without winning universal acceptance among persons whose opinions we should respect. If we were to decide that some physical feature, such as extremely low frequency electromagnetic waves (Persinger, 1987), correlated reliably with manifestations of extrasensory perception, we might decide that the increase during recent decades of "electronic smog" (Fox, 1988) (at least in regions having much electronic equipment) has been an important cause of the decline in major paranormal phenomena. This would lead us to expect that manifestations of extrasensory perception would vary from region to region with differences in the amount of electronic smog. Unfortunately, with our present meager resources we cannot undertake a project of the magnitude required for adequately testing this hypothesis.

I recognize in myself a bias against physical theories of extrasensory perception, because I believe that we can understand it better by a dualist concept of brain and mind that permits minds, under certain circumstances, to communicate directly with each other (outside known physical means of communication). Accordingly, my search for causes in the decline of the major paranormal phenomena has concentrated on possible psychological explanations. I have tried to think of features in which life in the West now differs from what it was one hundred years ago and from what it is in other parts of the world today. I shall consider the changes that seem to me important under the two headings of normal processes and paranormal ones.

The normal processes I further divide into changes in our conditions and manner of living and changes in our attitudes. To take the former first, I think that we have learned from the study of spontaneous cases the importance for their occurrence of both love and death. The participants are nearly always persons having bonds of affection, and the event communicated is most often some peril endangering the agent. We can say that the percipient has a need to know what is happening to the agent and the agent a need to let the percipient know (Murphy, 1943).

When normal communication is infeasible, the need for paranormal communication increases. The authors of Phantasms of the Living (Gurney, Myers and Podmore, 1886) may not have realized that violent death occurred frequently among the events communicated in the cases reported in their great work. At least they did not draw attention to the fact. Nevertheless, among 314 Phantasms cases involving death, it had occurred violently in 28 percent. Furthermore, among the approximately two-thirds of the cases in which death had occurred naturally we found that in one-third the death had occurred suddenly (Stevenson, 1982). (We defined a death as "sudden" if it occurred within 24 hours of the deceased person's being thought well or at least, if ill, in no danger of dying.) A violent death in the nineteenth century was nearly always also a sudden one, and, if this be agreed, then almost 53 percent of the deaths involved in the Phantasms cases occurred suddenly. Furthermore, the persons concerned were often physically separated by long distances and normal communications were, .by modern standards, extremely crude. (The telegraph was not adequately developed until the second half of the nineteenth century, and die telephone not until its last quarter.) The slowness and sometimes the impossibility of a normal communication would, I believe, increase the need to have a paranormal one. In the hundred years since the founding of our Society normal long-distance communications have greatly improved. Advances in medical care and their better deployment have also resulted in delayed deaths from violence, so that although violent deaths still occur they are not so apt to be sudden as they once were. These changes, I suggest, have reduced the need for a person who dies violently, or is accidentally injured, to communicate paranormally with those who love him or her.

The need to communicate paranormally has therefore diminished. Can we say that the desire to communicate has declined also? I said above that percipients and agents in spontaneous cases are nearly always linked in a loving relationship. No one has found a way to measure love, but certain social indicators, such as the increased rate of divorce, of crime, and perhaps of child abuse, suggest to me that our society has become, on the whole, more selfish, that is, less loving than at least some societies of other times and places. If so, this may be another factor in the decline in paranormal communications.

A third normal feature of Western society that has changed markedly during the past one hundred years is the growth of philosophical materialism. Most scientists, for example, believe in materialism as unquestioningly as they believe in Copernican astronomy. A survey of the belief in life after death conducted in 1981 showed that in the United States 67 percent of the general population believe in life after death, whereas only 32 percent of leading physicians and only 16 percent of leading (nonmedical) scientists do (Gallup, 1982). Most of us are probably familiar with the prevalence of materialism among scientists. What is not sufficiently recognized is that, although about two-thirds of respondents among the general public believe in life after death, almost one-third do not. It is to that substantial minority that I wish to draw your attention. I am not familiar with any surveys of belief in life after death in the nineteenth century, and I think there were none. However, a question posed about the belief in life after death would have shocked nearly all respondents of that time. Gallon's study of the efficacy of prayer assumed that most persons attended church, prayed when they were in church, and believed — some perhaps only perfunctorily — in the power of their prayers to preserve the life of the British sovereign (Galton, 1883). I think we may assume also that everyone who engaged in prayers for the sovereign believed that the sovereign had a soul that would survive physical death; and they believed the same of themselves.

Some persons can segregate beliefs about different aspects of non-material existences and events. This would be particularly likely to be true of persons who have made a special study of psychical phenomena. We know that at least two (and probably more) former Presidents of our Society have believed in paranormal cognition but not in the survival of human personality after death (Dodds, 1934; Richet, 1922). However, I think that members of the general public do not usually make such a distinction. For most of them, a belief in life after death almost entails a belief in miracles, such as the phenomena described in the Bible, and also a belief in what we call paranormal cognition. Conversely, members of the general public who do not believe in life after death are also likely to be skeptical about all kinds of paranormal phenomena, the recognition of which would imply for them a soul that would survive bodily death. If these assumptions are justified, we can conclude that the belief in paranormal phenomena has declined during the past century. (I realize that this is contrary to what the surveys that I cited earlier suggest.) Beliefs influence expectations, and numerous experiments in psychology have shown that expectations influence perceptions (Allport and Kramer, 1946; Dixon, 1981). This must also be true of extrasensory perceptions. A disbeliever in apparitions is less likely to see one than is a believer. Some disbelievers may see apparitions despite their skepticism, but the overall effect of an increased skepticism would be to reduce the number of persons sensitive to apparitions and other paranormal experiences also. In addition, disbelief may cause dismissal of a paranormal experience that does occur through quick interpretation of it as "just a hallucination" or "only a coincidence". From the consequent reduction, both of the perception of paranormal experiences and of their recognition as being paranormal when they do occur, fewer of them would be reported.

Indications of interference with paranormal phenomena may be exceedingly difficult to detect. To illustrate this point, I shall mention an observation from our study of the features of persons who claimed to remember experiences when they were recovering from being near death. Greyson and I (1980) found that such persons were much more likely to say that they had had what I call the advanced phenomena of these experiences, such as meeting deceased persons or "beings of light", when their near-fatal crisis occurred at home or outdoors than when it occurred in a hospital or other public place. I want to emphasize that I completely overlooked the importance of this finding for several years, until I happened to have occasion to review our data and suddenly realized the possible significance of this correlation. I have long thought that the attempt of some experimenters to simulate in their laboratories a home-like atmosphere by putting in deeply upholstered chairs and some well-known prints of Picasso's paintings was downright silly. To reach this mock living room, the subjects of such experimenters would usually have had to traverse half a mile of hospital or other institutional corridors which would effectively tell them that they were far from home. The results of our comparison between the experiences of persons having near-fatal crises in their homes and in their hospitals confirmed me in my bias against the use of laboratories to study paranormal phenomena, except for a few restricted purposes.

I shall next consider the possibility that spreading materialism has had an inhibiting effect on paranormal phenomena through paranormal causes. Critics tell us that allegations of their having an adverse effect on the phenomena are mere evasions of the painful truth that they have imp roved vigilance and tightened controls, so that the alleged phenomena do not occur in the presence of the controls they recommend. This may be true in some instances, and I am far from saying that we can learn nothing from critics. However, we for our part have obtained abundant evidence of the effect of the participants' beliefs on the delicate balance for or against paranormal effects in experimental situations (White, 1976). An atmosphere of completely unqualified belief appears to facilitate and may indeed be essential for the occurrence of paranormal physical phenomena (Batcheldor, 1966; Owen and Sparrow, 1976), and I think this may be equally true of paranormal mental phenomena. If belief facilitates them, disbelief can block them, as Schmeidler's (1943a, 1943b) experiments showed many years ago.

A person adversely affecting an experiment in extrasensory perception does not need to be physically present with the percipient. Schmeidler (1961a, 1961b) showed that the scores of percipients at card-guessing tended to be high or low according to whether an agent was wishing the percipient to succeed or to fail. Some experiments even suggest that unfavorable influences may not reach the level of an overt wish that a percipient would fail; much more subtle negative qualities may come into play (West and Fisk, 1953). Several experiments, principally of the late nineteenth century, have demonstrated a capacity for certain subjects to be put to sleep by suggestion directed at them from a long distance (Adams, 1849-50; Janet, 1886a, 1886b; Richet, 1886; Vasiliev, 1976). There are even cases on record whose authenticity we have no reason to doubt of persons having died suddenly after they were wished to death at a distance, the victims being unaware of the fatal wishing aimed at them (David-Neel, 1961; Rose, 1956). These observations warrant us in thinking that disbelief can inhibit the occurrence of the phenomena whose authentic existence it denies.

I have made a diagnosis and, as a medical man should, I have also indicated what physicians call etiology, that is, causes. However, I am reminded now of Hilaire Belloc's slighting reference to physicians who

... answered, as they took their Fees,
There is no cure for this disease.

Therefore, I should propose some remedies. We cannot — I say with some regret — return to all conditions as they were in the West a century ago. However, our studies may benefit from a new cycle of belief in paranormal phenomena. Perhaps the current wave of gullibility toward alleged paranormal phenomena that we see among many members of the general public, and which most of us deplore, may, by the processes I have conjectured, once again facilitate the occurrence of the major paranormal phenomena.

Let me, however, suggest three other means of finding major paranormal phenomena today. First, we can go to the countries now called undeveloped. I mean most of Asia and Africa, where social conditions are in many respects similar to those of the West in the nineteenth century or perhaps the eighteenth century. In these regions normal communications still depend largely on conveyance by word of mouth. One's own feet and perhaps the bullock-cart are the main means of movement from one place to another in rural parts. Family ties remain close,[4] everyone believes in the reality of telepathy, and the dead are conceived as having survived and being still sometimes able to intervene in terrestrial affairs. Thus impaired normal communications exist along with both a still strong desire to communicate with other persons one loves and a widespread belief that paranormal communication is possible. In these regions the major paranormal phenomena are said still to occur abundantly.

[4] This is not just one more datum for dissertations by graduate students in anthropology. There are grounds for believing that the more rapid and more durable recovery from severe mental illnesses in undeveloped countries (compared with Western countries) may be due to the stronger family ties that exist in these countries (Waxier, 1974).

I have myself no personal experience with any form of paranormal phenomena in Asia and Africa other than that of the children who claim to remember previous lives, but I do have much experience of these cases. I have often asked myself why we find such children so much more easily in those parts of the world than elsewhere. An obvious first answer to this question is that the people of these regions nearly all believe in reincarnation, and this belief somehow facilitates and even promotes the children's narrations about previous lives. This is certainly true, but I think it is insufficient as an explanation of what we are trying to understand. There must be other factors contributing to the occurrence of these and other cases of apparent paranormal phenomena in Asia and Africa. I suggest that one cause is that the peoples of these regions still take as normal what we in the West have come to call paranormal. If I were advising a young scientist entering psychical research today, I would reverse Horace Greeley's[5] advice to young Americans of the mid-nineteenth century and say "Go East, young man."[6]

[5] This well-known phrase is correctly attributed to John B. L. Soule. Horace Greeley borrowed it and used it, but with due acknowledgment to Soule.

[6] During a rehearsal of this Address my colleagues quickly told me that the direction to go East was too narrow. They reminded me that the northwest area of North America is not East, while Africa and South America are South. All these are regions where we may still find major paranormal phenomena.

My second recommendation is a careful search for special subjects who have unusual paranormal capacities and are also willing to cooperate in scientific investigations. In the last few decades several persons with alleged or self-proclaimed gifts have appeared in our arena. Unfortunately, nearly all have tended either to become figures in the world of entertainment and mass media or to welcome and attract a circle (or crowd) of adulating and uncritical followers. The former outcome occurs most often in the West, the latter most often in Asia. With both of them conditions for quiet scientific inquiry become ruined. But we should not despair. Our predecessors had the good fortune to work with Eileen Garrett, Olga Kahl, Gladys Osborne Leonard, Stefan Ossowiecki, Eusapia Palladino, Leonora Piper, and a few others of their quality. Their like will surely be seen again; some may even be among us now, if we would just look for them. There will be no quick results in this endeavor. It may take years of sifting before an investigator finds an outstanding subject and perhaps some further years before investigations with the subject can warrant a publication. Still, the rewards from this effort in gains of knowledge might be immense.

My last suggestion might seem like a rebuke to present members of the Society, but I certainly do not intend it as such. I cannot, however, forbear from telling you that in some respects the domain of the Society for Psychical Research has broken up rather in the manner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I. If we were to pursue this analogy we might say that regions formerly held under one sovereignty have asserted their independence and gone their own ways. The departure of hypnotism after it received at least a modicum of official recognition from medicine was not regretted in the Society; some members even welcomed it as a sign of progress, because the studies of some of our early members, such as Gurney, had signally contributed to the legitimation of hypnosis. So far so good. Consider, however, the following categories: unusual healings, lucid dreams, multiple personality, mystical or religious experiences, and experiences during near-fatal injuries and illnesses. Each of these topics had the attention of our pioneers, and reports of them appear in the early volumes of our Society or in related publications by early members of the Society. And yet today each of these five categories of research has a separate society devoted to the special study of a particular type of experience.[7] I cannot explain why this happened, but I deplore it. I do not think the secession, as I see it, of these territories that we first colonized is beneficial, either to the small newly-created states or to the mother country. Some of those who have founded these smaller societies seem misguided to me, and they may find themselves more isolated from other scientists than we are.

[7] Perhaps I should add to this list of secessions that of the skeptics, who have now formed their own group. The Society for Psychical Research has always had — from Frank Podmore on — one or more members who could be described as "skeptics in residence ". However, so far as I know, these members, although they often doubted individual instances, never adopted the stance that paranormal phenomena could not be possible; and none ever advocated stopping the search for more and better evidence of the phenomena.

However, our Society may have been as much at fault as those who have failed to find it an appropriate forum for their interests. The Society for Psychical Research may insidiously have come to identify the field of its endeavors as narrower than it once was or should now again become. Some may even say that the Society has begun to resemble a particular chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous in the United States, which gradually became so exclusive that it eventually denied membership to certain applicants on the grounds that they were drunkards. Some of the recently founded groups with more specialized interests than ours may have taken with them, so to speak, some of the major phenomena of which I lament the decline in our reports.

We must ask ourselves what should be the task of the Society in the remaining decade of this century and in all the decades of the next. It is certainly that of continuing to act as a third force between persons who are too credulous and those who are too skeptical. If we maintain the high standards for which we have been known and esteemed, we may once more attract first-rate scientists and scholars. So long as our Society exists, fanatical skeptics cannot say there are no paranormal phenomena to study. Also, so long as it exists, intelligent persons will have some resources against the claims of the self-deceived and the deceivers who abound around the edges of psychical research.

Our survival cannot, however, rest on an assumed position of magisterial authority. We may not be the best judges — we are almost certainly not — of the place from which the next advances in our field will come. Therefore, in maintaining our standards we must avoid any hardened dogmas that allow only familiar ideas to find expression. An open mind is not necessarily an empty one. Let us try to seek out again the major paranormal phenomena — wherever they may be. Careful investigations of these phenomena brought this Society its early fame; and such investigations can bring it a new fame as well.

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Source: 

Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Volume 57, Part 215, April 1990.