Paranormal

Research

 

Edited by

Maurice L. Albertson

Department of Civil Engineering

Colorado State University

 

Dan S. Ward

Rocky Mountain Research lnstitute

 

Kenneth R. Freeman

Department of Philosophy

Colorado State University

 

Proceedings of the First lnternational Conference on Paranormal Research,

July 7-10, 1988.

Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, USA.

 

Co-Sponsored by: Rocky Mountain Research Institute

Association for Past Life Research and Therapy

Religious Research Foundation of America

 

COPYRIGHT ©1988 by Rocky Mountain Research Institute

All Rights Reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

 

The text of this publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

or transmitted in any form or by any means without a written permission from the copyright holder.

 

Quotations that are property acknowledged are welcome, please contact:

 

Rocky Mountain Research Institute

c/o Dr. Maurice L. Albertson

Room 203, Weber Building

Colorado State University

Fort Collins, Colorado 80523

(303)491-5753

 

 

(This article was originally from pp. 893-928.)

 

 

Jonathan Klimo

Rosebridge-Graduate School, Walnut Creek, California

 

INTRODUCTION

 

In the past two decades, channeling has become the dominant term used to refer to a phenomenon that has occurred in virtually all cultures and in all eras. Those capable of this process have gone under a variety of names: prophets, visionaries, mystics, oracles, seers, soothsayers, fortune ­tellers, savants, shaman, witch doctors, medicine men and women, sensitives, psychics, intuitives, mediums, and now, channels. What they all hold in common is that information, guidance, or energy seems to come to or through them that had its origin neither in ordinary physical reality nor in the ordinary self of the channel or of any other embodied person. I will return shortly to further elaborate on this brief definition of channeling.

 

I have elsewhere (Klimo, 1987) tried to provide some terms, definitions, concepts, and a tentative classification system for channeling so that future researchers might have a more common language and shared conceptual framework within which to work. I have derived these (still developing) definitions, concepts, and classifications from over ten years of studying and interviewing dozens of contemporary channels and, primarily, through the systematic analysis of thousands of channeled documents representing many hundreds of different channels and channeled sources, ranging from earliest recorded history, across many cultures, and up to the present. I have also drawn over the years on a research literature that is extremely multi-disciplinary in nature. Indeed, I see the future of this kind of research requiring the involvement of interdisciplinarians such as myself.

 

An Outline of How This Presentation Will Proceed

 

The outline of my presentation will go as follows: 1.) First I will briefly share with you the basic definitions, concepts, and classifications I have earlier developed (1987). 2.) Then I will deepen my definition of channeling, and, in so doing, break out from that definition a set of presuppositions and possibilities inherent in it. 3.) Then I will reframe this material in the form a series of researchable perspectives on channeling, which will include testable hypotheses together with less-rigorous speculative statements and investigative questions that may still serve to guide further research in this field. 4.) Then I will share with you my own preferred point of view on the phenomenon of channeling, with its research implications. 5.) Then I will provide and critique what I believe are the particular research methodologies of best use for research on channeling, together with-- where space allows-- a brief mention of some of the most significant research that has been done, is currently being done, and could or should be done, in each area.

 

Working Definitions and Classifications

 

Spontaneous or Intentional

 

First, I make a distinction between spontaneous and intentional channeling; the former is uncontrolled, unbidden, and often distressing and unwanted (such as in extreme cases of possession and obsession), while the latter is able to be opened to, and turned on and off, pretty much at will. Controlled, it can become familiar, rather than bizarre or threatening, and can be put to use for the benefit of the channel and others. Virtually all channels in the public eye today are of the intentional kind, though their channeling experiences usually started spontaneously.

 

Mental/Informational or Physical

 

Next, I distinguish between mental or informational and physical channeling. In the former case, only information and guidance is channeled, although unknown energies may well be involved; in the latter case, the channel, usually in a deeply altered, or trance, state is able to mediate energy transmissions and transmutations between supposed other levels of reality and our physical one in such a way that physical, or otherwise perceivable and measurable, manifestations occur that can be consensually sensately validated or instrumentally measured. This is the realm of coded knockings, levitations, materializations, “ectoplasm,” and apparitions of deceased human spirit communicators that were so dominant from the mid­-1850’s into the 1920’s during what was called the Spiritualist era of mediumship in the United States and England and was called Spiritism in Europe. In curious contrast, of the thousands of channels who have gone public in the past decade’s resurgence of channeling, almost all appear to be of the mental or informational kind-- and this at a time when western scientific technology could do so much with the potentially more evidential material of physical channeling. I will return to this point later.

 

Psychic Healing as a Form of Physical Channeling-- I choose to include psychic healing as a form of physical channeling because it appears to satisfy my definition of channeling, with healing energy, rather than information and guidance, being the channeled material. Of course, a case could be made that the energy being channeled in psychic healing must necessarily be informational, perhaps even knowledgeable (such as an extra-­personal kind of PK, or a living mind-stuff) and guidance-like, since it appears to be able to inform or otherwise re-organize and revitalize energy and matter structure and function within the system of the one being healed. Or it communicates, through the channel, with that system being healed in such a way that the system re-organizes and heals itself.

 

Channeling or Open Channeling

 

Next, I distinguish between simply channeling-- which I also call “classic” or entity channeling-- and what I call “open channeling.” To the extent to which the source from which the information, guidance, or energy is coming can be identified, or identifies itself, as some individualized being, then we have a case of channeling. In open channeling, on the other hand, the individual receives material from a source appears to both transcend him or her self (including the personal unconscious) as well as the selves of any other embodied persons, and that transcends physical reality as we currently understand it, but the identity of this source remains unknown. I place within open channeling the intuition, inspiration, insight, mystic experience, and the creativity and imagination of artists, writers, composers, and inventors, when it is reported that the experience possesses a definite, yet anonymous, quality of transcending the ordinary self and real-world environment.

 

Four Additional Categories

 

I provide classification: channel, kinds and the kinds of four additional categories in my system of kinds of channeling, kinds of individuals who of sources (or entities) said to be channeled, subject matter of what is channeled.

 

Kinds of Channeling-- The kinds of channeling range from unconscious full-trance possession-type channeling, wherein the brain and body of the channel is said to be temporarily taken over by a source acting as an autonomous self that claims to be not from the self of the channel or from any other self currently embodied on earth. In the case of sleep and dream channeling, such sources provide information to the unconscious channel. In conscious channeling these sources provide information or guidance in a variety of intuitive, telepathic, clairaudient, clairvoyant, or clairsentient ways. The channel is conscious, and experiences the source’s presence and its impinging communicated material as other than self-generated. Conscious channels either repeat in spoken or written form what they receive; or, while in a mildly altered state of consciousness, they blend in with the stream of consciousness or sub-vocal language flow from their source in a kind of confluence of incarnate and discarnate mind, leading to a kind of channel-and-source superimposed speech or writing.

 

In cases of channeling involving what is called automatism, the channel remains conscious, but isolated parts of his or her neurophysiology and muscle system operate independent of any conscious volition. This is accomplished by a source that claims to be using that part of the channel somewhat like a robotic servomechanism. The best-known of these automatisms are automatic writing, the Ouija board, the pendulum, and the earlier planchette. As just one example of how woefully inadequate our current research and knowledge is in the area of channeling, we have precious little way of knowing for example, whether the unconscious nudgings through the fingertips that move the pointer around the Ouija board spelling out messages derive solely from the unconscious of the channel in every case, or come also or only from transpersonal sources by way of the channel’s unconscious. And, finally, rounding out kinds of channeling, I have already mentioned physical channeling; while, at the far end of the spectrum from full-trance channeling of entities, lies fully conscious, entity-less, open channeling.

 

Kinds of Channels-- With regard to the kinds of persons who become channels, it is rather hard as yet to generalize concerning any particular pattern of common background or personality typology. They seem to include all types of people coming from all walks of life and levels of education. Some have tried to show, as a commonality among channels, unhappy childhoods or other traumas suffered that dispose them to turn away from ordinary consensus reality more than the average person. Even if this correlation were able to be shown, given the status of current research, what remains debatable is whether what they turn to from ordinary reality is a non­-reality of personal fantasy and unconscious acting out from the personal unconscious only, or is a realm of reality different than the one we are ordinarily used to, and yet is every bit as real and inhabited to boot with fellow beings with whom we can communicate. Other non-pathological, more optimal performance type correlations involve the degree to which those who channel satisfy. Gertrude Schmeidler’s personality criteria for people with psychic ability (Schmeidler, 1974), or Abraham Maslow’s criteria for self-actualizing persons capable of peak experiences, or fit the personality criteria that have been advanced for non-ordinary human consciousness, experience, and behavior by researchers ranging from Richard Bucke, William James and Aldous Huxley, to Lawrence LeShan, Stan Grof, Charles Tart, and Jean Houston.

 

Kinds of Sources-- Among the kinds of sources reported to be channeled and which identify themselves to us, I include discarnate spirits of “deceased” humans (the largest single category; and presupposing human survival of physical death), as well as the here-and-now channeling of one’s own “past-life” personality (presupposing reincarnation and some kind of non­ordinary temporal process at work). Advanced human-type beings are also reported as channeled sources, such as “Ascended Masters” and the “The White Brotherhood,” including Christ and other great spiritual teachers said to no longer require physical incarnation for their learning and soul growth. Among the non-human beings reported channeled are those claiming to dwell on other levels of reality than ours, including UFO-type “space brothers,” angels, spirit beings, gods, and the spirits or beings that underlie and are responsible for the physical­ level manifestation of the plant kingdom, Nature spirits in general, and the beings that are the planets-- including Earth, suns and galaxies-- Solar and Galactic Logoi. There are also assorted kinds of “group beings.”

 

Although some of the sources are reported to be negative or unhealthy for the channel or others-- as in cases of ignorant, misguided or malevolent human and inhuman beings of other dimensions, so-called “demons,” “Lower astral” or “earth-bound” beings involved in the phenomena of possession and obsession-- the majority are reported to be benevolent and helpful. In the case of deceased human spirits, particularly, we are ‘told by the supposedly wiser channeled sources that, just because we may leave the physical body, this does not make us suddenly omniscient or omnibenevolent.’ The channeling literature shows us that the supposed discarnate humans being channeled run the same motley gamut of kinds of intellects, morals, motives, and levels of soul growth as displayed by us currently incarnate fellow spirits. We are also counseled that “like attracts like.”

 

Turning to more diffuse de-personalized sources, we find the collective unconscious (with its Jungian-type archetypes) and the collective conscious (both comprised of human mental content from Earth’s lineage), the Universal Mind, the akashic records, and God. Open channeling, as I have defined it, may draw from among this latter group.

 

And finally, the “higher self” of the individual is yet another channeled source that has become increasingly prevalent in recent years. This higher self goes by many names in many cultures and teachings, including the personal (positive) demon or genius within (like the genie within the body’s lamp), something like the Jungian archetypal wise old sage, or the Self or soul beyond one’s ego, the inner advisor, the super- or supra-conscious, the oversoul, the Christ, Buddha, Atman, or God consciousness.

 

Kinds of Content Channeled-- Finally, the content of channeled material ranges from general intuitive feelings of loving presence and support, to personal messages and guidance from deceased human spirits and from other human and non-human “spirit guides,” to often highly detailed descriptions of the human spirit “afterlife” and other non-earthly realms, to information about the past and future. There is material that is of an artistic nature (creative literature, painting, musical composition, et al), of a healing or medical nature (such as much of Edgar Cayce’s material), or of a scientific or

technological nature that usually differs from (some would say transcends) currently accepted theory and practice. There are descriptions and explanations of the truer, deeper nature of reality and the universe, including wisdom and spiritual teaching that falls within the category of what Aldous Huxley termed “the perennial philosophy” (Huxley, 1945).

 

Deepening the Definition

 

I would like to now deepen my initial definition: Channeling is a process whereby someone appears to serve as a conduit for information, messages, and guidance, or for energy of a healing capacity or a spiritual quality, which appears to come from a non-ordinary source. Such information or energy seems to come to or through the individual channel from a source other than physical reality as currently understood by Western science; that is, other than physical reality as what can be intersubjectively sensately validatable as objectively real in ordinary waking consciousness or can be verified as

objectively real and autonomously existent by recognized laboratory instruments of detection and measurement. In addition, such channeled information or energy appears to come from other than the being or self of the individual channel, and from other than the self of any other embodied person. Here the concept of self-- according to the current consensus within psychology and psychiatry-- means the relatively delimited or closed psychodynamic psychoenergetic model of the self, or of a person. This generally includes only those kinds of possible personality, behavioral, physiological, physical, and energy traits known already to be associated with human beings, and fulfills the usual psychosomatic sense of a bounded being-- ­“the skin encapsulated ego”-- together with its personal unconscious aspects.

 

Presuppositions and Possibilities Accompanying the Definition

 

An Extra-dimensional Universe Inhabited by Entities-- By my definition, then, this process of channeling presupposes a model of the universe that includes more dimensions of reality than the three of space and one of time that we are used to, and transcends the limited behaviors of their intrinsic known forces and fields, particles and waves, mass and energy, frequencies and velocities, experienced through ordinary waking consciousness and scientific instrumentation. The process also suggests that these currently unknown realms are inhabited by beings who are the channeled agents capable of communicating to, or sending energy to, us (at least to those of us who can operate as channels for them). This implies the existence of different sorts of disembodied conscious beings, or beings the containment vehicles for which/whom are comprised of energies in states currently unknown to us. Also implied is our own survival of physical death in some functional, yet extra dimensional , higher-frequency, or subtler energy, form that retains at least some of our currently embodied identity and consciousness, since a major category of channeled beings claim to be “deceased” human beings. I will call this overall perspective the “entity view”-- the view that there are individualized conscious, intentional entities (including discarnate “deceased” and “past-life” humans) who are capable of communicating with us through the process of channeling, entities that exist on levels of reality other than the one we call real within our current materially oriented consensus reality.

 

Anomalous Beings and Messages are Co-Created by the Channel-- ­In a related view, and still within my definition of channeling, there might not be autonomous other-dimensional beings that communicate to us through channels. Instead, there may be extra-dimensional Being itself with which we can variably interact to give ourselves different kinds of personally experienced reality. That is, such non-ordinary realms could themselves be seen as the agentless locus of information or energy that is tapped by the agentry of the channel in interaction with them. I will call this the co­-creative view of channeling, as opposed to the entity view. According to this view, by the interaction of the consciousness and energy system of each of us with the larger extra-dimensional, all-containing Being (Its consciousness and energy system)-- whether that Being is construed as Creation or Creator, or both-- we each co-create with It all of our ordinary as well as all of our anomalous experiences. With the ground of Being within which we and all else are embedded, we co-create all of our “inner” and “outer” information in the form of the stimuli, object fields, events, beings and presences that we experience as real for ourselves at any given time and state of consciousness. Some of us, those who channel for example, interact with the larger Being somewhat differently than the norm, at least on occasion. Non-ordinary information, presences and beings are experienced by channels (and by us, in turn, through experiencing the channels) as a result of the degree to which the state of consciousness and energy configurations of which they-- the channels-- are comprised, differs from the norm. The non-ordinary is also a function of the degree to which the co-creative process by which they interact with the embedding in-kind field differs from the norm. How one’s system is configured and constituted, and how one interacts with the larger system, are deeply interconnected, as I will later try to point out.

 

One example of this entity-less “co-creative” view of interaction is the quantum physics model of a “universal wave function” that represents the probabilistic state of the universe in all its possibilities for the conscious observer/experiencer prior to his or her interaction with it. The wave function is said to be “collapsed” to a local experiencable objectivity by the interaction with it of the state of consciousness and energy system of the person experiencing it, and by the scientific instrumentation that may be used as an interactive, experiential extension of that person. Channels-- as well as those capable of psi phenomena, siddhis, and other non-ordinary experience-- would collapse or localize and objectify what is represented by the wave function in a way that is different enough from the rest of us to lead to anomalous information and energy access, manipulation, or creation. Perhaps still the most rigorous picture of how we are all constantly and simultaneously interacting with the one universal wave function’s realm of probabilities-- pictured as a vast set of equally valid, parallel but as-yet-unclose-from realities-- was presented by Hugh Everett, III in his 1957 Princeton University dissertation, and built upon in the Princeton Series in Physics volume The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (Dewitt & Graham, 1973).

 

Another example of this co-creative view is what the late Itzhak Bentov called a “Universal Mind Hologram” (Bentov, 1977, page 112). He, as have many others, postulated that everything that exists is comprised of vibrating waves of something like a universal ether. Each of us are wave systems of energy made out of and interacting back with the one oceanic wave system of universal vibratory energy. Whatever we experience occurs by means of some sort of tuning or wave frequency “Fourier transform,” involving either the selection of subset informational wave systems from the embedding more complex superimposed wave system, or the creating of complex wave systems of” information by the creative superimposition of simpler componential wave forms drawn from a frequency domain repository of all such wave systems taken to be the universe, or all that is the case. Channels would receive, and appear to indirectly relay or directly transmit, the presence of all sorts of anomalous beings and their messages, as well as all of the “rest of the other ordinary material constituting their

experience, as a function of the particular interactive ratio of their idiosyncratic vibratory wave systems as receptive tuning or “collapsing” (objectifying) mechanisms within the surrounding vibratory wave domain from which they tune, or “collapse” and objectify, what is experienced.

 

In a variation on this, British mathematical physicist David Bohm uses the concept of a universal “enfolded implicate order” or “Holomovement” (Bohm, 1980; Bohm and Peat, 1987) as the ground for all that is, and from which all locally objectifiable realities of energy, matter, space, time, information, and consciousness can be unfolded or “explicated.” Those possessing paranormal ability would explicate from the implicate universal order somewhat different possibilities to experience than the rest of us. In the case of channeling, this would generate a host of unseen trans-human sources seeming to communicate from realms and with perspectives different from ours on Earth; yet the sources would have been co-created by the channels in interaction with the implicate-order Source of all that is, all that can be explicated.

 

Still another version of the entity-less view of channeling is the traditional Indian “akashic records,” said to be the “akasha” stratum of the universe which acts as a kind of memory bank for all that has transpired to date. Each event, deed, and thought modulates the standing carrier wave of this stratum of the cosmos, permanently informing its impressionable material with the signature of its being. Much like the phonograph needle is set down variously in the record’s grooves, so the narrow laser light beam can scan through a random access holographic data storage disc in present-day technology. And, similarly, the channel’s altered ­state focal consciousness and energy may serve as the scanning and accessing beam searching the extradimensional akashic records of everything that has been and is the case until the present moment. This would appear to function as something like the memory aspect of what is often termed the Universal Mind.

 

A More Expandable, Porous, Translucent, Model of a Human Being-- Besides extra-dimensional information and energy access by, or impingement on, certain individuals, channeling also presupposes a picture of the individual human being that is different than the usual one. Current Western psychological science sees the individual human being or person as an enduring, bounded being possessing certain properties and characteristics that identify it in contradistinction to other beings, human or otherwise. According to this accepted view, we are each continuous in our basic identity and limitations through time and are relatively invariant, autonomous, and insular in our nature. With regard to this relatively closed ­system model of a person, there are only certain permitted avenues of ingress and egress of information and energy of only certain already detected and catalogued kinds. Energies, forces, fields, frequencies, velocities, and dimensions that lie beyond what is acceptable to the currently reigning paradigms of Western science are precluded from the picture of what constitutes a human being and the environment capable of effecting and informing it.

 

Scientists today, however, from physicists to psychologists, would do well to review once more the history of science, with its ever changing perspectives on what is considered acceptable and possible, real and true. They might remind themselves of what Thomas Kuhn pointed out as being the inevitable paradigm shifts that occur within scientific revolutions and systems of understanding that have been the constant stepping stones throughout our human journey (Kuhn, 1962). By doing so, scientists might gain more humility, flexibility of perspective, and open-mindedness concerning what may be possible than they tend to display at present in response to anomalous phenomena such as channeling.

 

For example, as I have defined it, channeling presupposes that the relatively closed model of the individual human being appears to be capable of expanding or making more permeable and porous the variable boundaries of its energy, consciousness, knowledge, and identity, to include or access energy, consciousness, knowledge, and identity that would otherwise not be thought of as being of-- co-extensive with in energy and information coupling an exchange, or in identity condition with-- that individual self or being. In channeling, the station or locus of the individual human being can appear to become “overshadowed” by, or expand into, a different or larger being that can inform or energize it. For example, British researcher Alan Gauld writes of “‘overshadowing’ agencies imposing characteristic, recognizable and appropriate patterns upon the fantasies and personations dreamed up by the medium and fed by her powers of ESP. The patterns are over, above, and beyond anything which can be plausibly accounted for by the medium’s own ESP.” (Gauld, 1983, p. 140). Researcher William Roll coins the term “incorporeal personal agency” (Roll, 1960) operating with respect to some kind of an extended “consciousness field.” Aldous Huxley spoke of “Mind at Large,” and our relationship to it by means of the variable “reducing valve” that is comprised of the psychophysical mechanisms we each are. Lyall Watson, in his Beyond Supernature, coins the term “sama” as “something which thinks together or is of like mind,” rather like “group souls” or a “hive mentality” (Watson, 1988. page 137). All of this can lead us into an apparent ever-changing translucent labyrinthine inter-infusion, superimposition, and confounding of the usually considered autonomous identities and integrities of boundary conditions demarcating entities and regions physical, energetic, psychological, and ontological. The realm and identity of such other or larger being or information interacted with by the channeling process belongs to agentry, dimensions, and energy fields deemed non-existent by current mainstream scientific thinking. But “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt in your philosophy,” Shakespeare reminds us, as we follow the reference of Jesus into a cosmological “house of many mansions,” only one room of which is the human and physical world as we currently understand and experience it in consensus reality.

 

RESEARCHABLE PERSPECTIVES ON CHANNELING

 

In a systematic investigation of any anomalous phenomenon, in this case channeling, the goal is to understand what is actually occurring: what is the nature of what is going on. My approach for the present is to take the definition of channeling that I have provided-- together with the presuppositions and possible corollaries implied by it that I have also provided-- and break such down into a set of hypotheses that can possibly be tested or otherwise researched by methodologies that satisfy (or, in some cases, push into new territory) current scientific and scholarly criteria. What can be unpacked from my definition and its corollaries will, at times, have to remain as more loosely framed speculations and guiding investigative questions.

 

Hypotheses, Researchable Speculations, and Guiding Questions

 

Most of these could be broken down further into constituent sub-hypotheses or questions. The first three are those most ­espoused by researchers and lay people who regard channeling in a negative or skeptical manner.

 

1. Channeling is self-generated, consciously and willfully so. In other words, channeling is only conscious fraud: making up and acting out imaginary characters, personae, roles, improvised scripts, etc. This is done to gain attention, for self-aggrandizement, compensation, financial gain, to exercise one’s otherwise bottled-up natural creative self-expressive dispositions, et al.

 

2. Channeling is self-generated, but unconsciously so. All channeling comes from the process known as dissociation, with most of it apparently admittedly of a functional, rather than a dysfunctional or pathological, nature. That is, channeling is only the unconscious creation and splitting off and acting out of some aspect of the channel’s own being-- his or her own consciousness, unconscious, personality traits, motivations, conditionings, self-evoked neurophysiological patterns of bioelectric potential, (Freudianly) repressed and re-fashioned material, unnaturally silenced creative self-expressive impulses, et al-- any and all of which is generated with apparent autonomy and without the conscious awareness of the person channeling that it is self-generated and usually without his or her conscious volition or control.

 

3. Channeling occurs as a result of the admittedly altered state of consciousness of the channel, together with what will probably turn out to be a correlated altered state of his or her complex physico-energy system (brain waves, etc.). All that occurs during the process of channeling is that, within this altered state-- which can range from mild reverie and relaxation to the extremes of deeply unconscious cataleptic trance-- the consciousness and energy system of the channel, unbeknownst to his or her own local conscious awareness, utilizes something like “super-ESP.” This term was first coined and defined by H. Hart (Hart, 1959). Since then, it has come to be known as the process of either telepathically accessing information or information-bearing energies that reside on some level of reality directly correlated with the brain/minds of currently living, embodied human beings, or, by clairvoyance or remote viewing, accessing material from at-a-distance physical­ level repositories of information. There are certain rare cases in which the information provided by channeled beings seems to have come not from the channel’s own being (including the personal unconscious), not from any other living, embodied human beings (or their unconsciousnesses), and not from any physical-level information repository. In such cases, the channel’s unconscious super-ESP is accessing some kind of electromagnetic holographic data bank that is a feasible extension of currently understood fields, yet is not unlike the traditional akashic records. This view still allows us to not have to subscribe to the thesis that there is anything like autonomous, disembodied beings-- deceased humans or other non­human-- who are communicating to or though the human channel.

 

4. There are beings communicating with us (through those of us who are channels) who exist separate from us on other levels or dimensions of reality than our current consensus reality and the physically real as science currently understands it. That is, such channeled beings or entities exist as who (or what)-- and from where-- they say they are.

 

5. Such levels, dimensions, and energies of reality within which these entities exist, and which lie beyond current consensus reality, and beyond the detection and measurement of scientific instrumentation, are objectively real and autonomous with respect to us and our level or kind of reality.

 

6. There is some kind (or kinds) of information processing and energy coupling relation that operates between these channeled beings and their states of consciousness, indigenous levels of reality, and energy systems, on one hand, and level of consensus reality, states of consciousness, physico-energy systems, on the other hand, as mediated by consciousness and psychophysical being of those of us who capable of functioning as channels.

 

7. The beings or entities that communicate to our level of reality through the process of channeling are not separate, autonomous conscious beings with an identity of their own irrespective of human beings. They are actually created by the state of consciousness and psychophysical energy system configuration of the human being as channel in idiosyncratic interaction with the larger complex field within which all individuated beings animate and inanimate are embedded and from which they derive their being. That is, from the parent ground of being from which the human channel derives his or her own individuated consciousness and psychophysical being, he or she also creatively derives anomalous so-called “channeled beings” and their messages. A corollary of this would be something like: We are makers made in the image of our Maker; or, as we have been created by our Creator out of Itself, so we create out of the same basic universal material as creators in turn.

 

My Preferred Point of View at Present

 

My research has led me to believe that, depending on the particular case, everyone of the seven views just expressed can be shown to be the case with respect to the nature of what is really going on in the name of channeling, with the first, fraud, being actually the least prevalent. It is hardly the case, however, that only one or even a few of these views can account for all of what is going on as channeling. Recently, in my own research, I have been trying to integrate the seventh point of view above with the fourth, fifth, and sixth. My goal is to be able to construct a cosmology that allows for both the existence of extradimensional channeled entities and entities that can be co-created by the channels. Elsewhere (Klimo, 1987) I have offered an earlier version of this attempted integration in the form of a heuristic metaphor: that the one universe of all that is the case is an all-subsuming Being in the form of a single, universal Personality (actually the personality-less ground for all personalities). This all-­containing Being is treated as a kind of working “post­-Cartesian grand unified field” that marries and subsumes the old dualism of non-physical, subjectively real mind, consciousness, and spirit, on one hand, and the physicality of objectively real energy, matter, space and time, on the other. From our current human frame of reference only, this universal identity appears to have undergone some sort of a “big bang” cosmological dissociation of Its Being into seemingly vast numbers of individuated beings, both animate and inanimate, conscious and unconscious. Some of these offspring beings that have become dissociated from this source identity, such as we human beings-- by reason of possessing conscious self-awareness, sentience, volition, et al-- function as something like sub-, alter-, or secondary-, personalities with respect to the parent Personality as the energetic unified field from which they have taken, or been given, their separate beings.

 

Five points follow for me from this extended metaphor I am suggesting. Each is able to be translated into hypothesis, statements or more general research questions that I believe are crucial to all future research:

 

First, in this “big bang” of differentiation and localizing manifestation (called, among other things, “symmetry breaking” by physicists)-- which could also be construed as an infinitely complex self-interference wave pattern generated by a coherent Being going-out-of-phase with respect to Itself-­there is a dissociation of the underlying universal Personality into Its constituent, relatively autonomous sub­personality offspring, at least from the limited perspective of such offspring. These offspring-- at least those that are capable of individual consciousness, such as we humans-- will exist in a dissociated state in the sense that they will not necessarily have an awareness, memory, or current local energetic or informational processing connection and interaction with many of each other, nor with the underlying universal psychophysical Personality from which they arose and took their nature and within which they maintain their being.

 

Second, all that exists has been derived, like endlessly multiple sub-personalities from the one Personality as common ground of all being: and some of these offspring beings appear, from our frame of reference, to possess consciousness and the capacity to communicate. If this is so, is it not possible, in the way in which the parent Being “big-banged”, dissociated, differentiated, or went out of phase with Itself, that there could also exist other relatively dissociated subpersonalities with consciousness and capable of communicating, who or which lie elsewhere within the universal “house of many mansions” in precincts beyond what we are limited to within our current (dissociated) consensus reality and scientific instrumentation?

 

Third, we have the clinical example, in the case of human beings, of the therapeutic healing of dissociated states through an integration of the subpersonalities back into a cohesive intra­-cooperating superimposition with the parent psyche from which they arose. The parent psyche, in most cases of human Multiple Personality and other kinds of dissociation, is-- just as its sub-personality or other dissociated material is -- also in a dissociated state of not knowing, or being unconscious of, its true relation to what it has created or what has broken off from it. I do not wish to imply here that the universal Personality that I have posited in my metaphor is in such a dissociated state with regard to Itself or Its relationship with Its offspring. I picture this as a one-way affair: the one parent Personality is omniscient, omnipresent in consciousness and identity, and omnipotent in energy potential, throughout the superimposed nature of Its being both the One and the Many out of the One. The subpersonalities, to varying degrees,however, do suffer the limits on cognition (degree of ignorance and unconsciousness) and the constraints on energy and information coupling with the larger embedding system and other dissociated components within it that follow from the condition of out-of-phase dissociation from the coherent common Source.

 

Evidence from domains as seemingly varied as psychotherapeutic cases, mystical and meditational traditions, and the development of psychic or paranormal abilities, all seem to attest to the possibility that the current limits to information and energy exchange experienced by human beings can be extended. The etymology of the word religion itself stems from re and ligio: a tying back in to that from which, for whatever reason, one has become untied, dissociated, unconscious, and unable to access. In this regard the role and goal of religion is virtually identical to that of science. As a species, we have had a rather bittersweet history of being relatively disconnected from aspects of our own respective selves, from other human and non-human beings, and from what we have variously called Nature, the universe, or God. And, throughout our human story, we seem to have always found, or created, ways to re-establish various kinds and degrees of connection to our selves, to each other, to our common source, to the underlying universal ground of all being. Indeed, it would seem to be the prime theme and motive to our being. Should we not, therefore, treat channeling and its related anomalies as part of that time-honored repertoire by which we subpersonalities throughout the Universe are attempting re­connection in the service of healing the presenting problem, which is how to overcome the degree of out-of-phase disconnection and dissociation being experienced by our present systems of consciousness, information, and energy?

 

Fourth, each of us human beings, according to my metaphor, appears to be a relatively bounded and autonomous being, the mental, physical, and even spiritual, superimposed complex variable of which has its origins in, and takes its nature as a kind of dissociated sub personality from, the one common ground we variously call the universe, Nature, the Universal Mind, or God. If this is so, then as we were created from, and maintain our being within, the one parent psychophysical ground of Being, then we are able to create subpersonality offspring (and their respective messages and guidance) in turn and in kind, even as we have been created. This is so, since we are-- beneath our currently experienced dissociated limitations-­- actually co-extensive and at one in cognition, information, energy, and identity with that which is capable of creating beings such as ourselves. In the case of channeling, at least some of us human beings so far may be realizing our common in-­kind potential to create beings such as ourselves, deriving them from the common ground even as we are derived. As a function of the degree of our experienced dissociation from our one underlying universal Personality, we will less­dissociatedly know channeled beings and their realms as part of ourself-- even as we are from, and always of, the one Self of all selves and realms. Or, more-dissociatedly, we will experience and construe such beings as completely autonomous from us, existing on other levels of reality than our physical one, and being not of our self-making, not of our consensus reality.

 

Fifth, there is an unavoidable relativistic and pluralistic state of affairs with regard to trying to assign ultimate origin and ontological rank-- or degree, amount, or relational placement, of objective reality-- to both ourselves and the other selves and existents that. we experience. This is so, whether what we are dealing with patterns of “objective” sensory stimuli appearing to normal waking consciousness, or through altered states of consciousness, or as supposedly extradimensional, or “subjective,” channeled presences, personalities, information, and energies. One’s own particular nature-- the differentiation and configuration of one’s own respective immensely complex variable superimposed consciousness and energy system-- is, from another perspective, the degree to which, and the nature of how, one is dissociated from and out-of-phase with regard to the underlying coherent unified field of the parent Personality that is one’s basal identity and continuing origin. But we are not resigned to being only the particular relatively invariant inertial frames of reference that we are at present. We seem, rather, able to self-modulate, or to allow ingress of consciousness and energy from the larger system to modulate our systems to it in something like a process of resonant entrainment. In this sense, as universal evolution and integration continues, our species will develop ever-more channeling interconnection and co-extensiveness with other kinds and levels of energy and consciousness within the one Being. Our species-specific behavior today is relatively dissociated, isolated, and ignorant; but it need not, and will not, remain this way. I believe that channeling-- ultimately open channeling with respect to the one Being-- is our ultimate destiny.

 

But back to our current dissociated, pluralistic, relativistic state of affairs: Einstein’s Theory of Relativity showed that, if different inertial frames of reference are moving with different velocities with respect to one another, the clocks and measuring rods associated with them will be unable to agree upon a single common objective reality in terms of the usual spatiotemporal scales. Einstein used the velocity differential. I would suggest that we look to a kind of complimentarity within which velocity and frequency are different versions of the same underlying process. Therefore, if each of us is something like a complex variable superimposed interference pattern standing wave system of the universal ground that is out of phase with itself in a particular and unique ratio; then that ratio of dissociation, or of universal self-dissociation, will, in turn, stand in a certain phase relation to other surrounding dissociated out-of-phase systems and to the one underlying ground. This will occur in just such a way that, state-dependently, only certain realities will be able to be experienced and only certain meanings construed thereby.

 

To the extent to which the properties and qualities, the kind and degree of differentiation and dissociation, comprising a particular individualized being, such as a human being, can be shared, to that extent will realities and meanings be commonly experiencable, even simultaneously so. This would involve the harmonious, mutually entrained, coherent phase-­matching of neurophysiological and spatial and temporal wave frequency domains, and many other comparable ways of talking about this process that cannot be entered into at present. The result is a set of inertial frames of reference--individual beings-- that are sufficiently phase-matched to comprise coherent, superimposed, communal frame of reference. The result of this, in turn, is a consensus reality experienced that is in a reciprocal state-dependent relationship with the shared inertial frames of reference through which the experiencing takes place. Inertial frames of reference sufficiently out of phase with regard to one another will yield a pluralistic lack of consensus with regard to what is existent, real, or true at the time. And finally, we need to remember that we seem able, within certain constraints at present, to alter the consciousness and personal physico-energy systems that are our respective inertial frames of reference, to the point of creating assorted superimpositions, marryings, and communing within and across such frames of reference, as well as create isolatings, alienatings, and further dissociatings that lead us into ever darker regions of unconsciousness, disconnection, and adversarial loggerheads with regard to ourselves, our fellow beings, and the common parental Being. The constraints on such self-modulation, and our free will, both seem the givens with which we work.

 

THE RESEARCH METHODOLOGIES TO BE USED

 

In no particular order, here are the various research methodologies that I suggest we consider for channeling research, and that can, with some modification, be adapted for research on most other related anomalous phenomena. Following each, I provide a very brief sampling of some of the most interesting research of its kind, past, present, and

recommended.

 

1. Idiographic, or Single-Subject, Studies. This involves the in-depth investigation of individuals who satisfy the criteria of being exemplary channels. They are studied by means of extended, detailed observations, interviews, psychometric and other testing, composition of unique biographical profile, and additional case-study- and phenomenological-type procedures. Friends and family would also be interviewed to build a comprehensive picture of background, personality development, and current state. If possible, physiological correlates found to accompany episodes of the individual’s channeling (such as changing patterns of EEG brain waves) could be found. Guiding questions would include: Who is this person? What kind of person is he or she? How and why did this person develop into a channel-- come to be involved in this phenomenon? Can causal connections or correlations be found among variables in the person’s environment, lived experience, physical and personality characteristics? What is his or her experience before, going into, during, coming out of, and after, the channeling experience (in as much descriptive detail as possible)? What is the channel’s attitude toward him or her self, and toward the source(s) and the bulk of the material being channeled? Toward the paranormal in general? In analyzing the material channeled by the person, what is its nature; does it obviously transcend the normal resources of the channel? Is it evidential on behalf of proving the channeling experience is authentic as defined; that the sources are who they say they are, and not just the unconscious dissociated creative projections of the channel him or her self, or even fraud? In general, what kind of gestalt emerges as the researcher allows the data to “bottom-up” inductively suggest certain patterns and correlations?

 

On behalf of such an approach, we can say that too little of this kind of research has been done to date and we won’t really understand enough about the nature of channeling until we study in more depth the nature of channels as people, and

people as channels. Against the approach is that the data and generalizations about individual persons from such case studies, in isolation, can’t tell us that much about human nature, or about natural (or super-natural) processes in general, and they won’t tell us enough about the authenticity of the phenomenon unless we integrate such findings with data gotten from other methodologies.

 

Some of the most exemplary of past in-depth case-study research of this kind includes: Theodore Flournoy’s study, From India to the Planet Mars (Flournoy, 1963, reprint); WaIter Franklin Prince’s study of Pearl Curran and her source “Patience Worth” (Prince, 1964, reprint); the extended studies done by members of the British Society for Psychical Research on Mrs. L.E. Piper, W.E. Cleveland, R. Thompson, M.M. Soule, E. (Eileen) Garrett, and Mrs. George Leonard. More recent studies have been done on Edwin Babbitt, by Charles Hapgood (Hapgood, 1975), and Eileen Garrett, by Jungian psychologist Ira Progoff (Progoff, 1964). Other studies have been more scholarly than in-person observations and interviews. They include Suzy Smith’s study of Mrs. Leonard (Smith, 1964); Tietze’s study of “Margery,” Mrs. M.S. Crandon (Tietze, 1973). Autobiographies of channels are useful as well. Among 20 or 30 really good ones are: D.D. Home (1972, reprint); Eileen Garrett (1968); Mrs. Gladys Osborne Leonard (1931); and, most recently, the autobiography of J. Z. Knight, the channel for “Ramtha.”

 

2. Cross-Subject Descriptive, Correlational, and Nomothetic Research. Ideally, this involves inter-relating data and data ­patterns and derivable correlations and generalizations from such data, that are drawn from as many channels (as subjects) as possible. In addition, the goal would be to have data from each subject in as much depth and detail as possible, using the prior idiographic, or “N of one,” situation as the ideal. Obviously as the number of subjects increases, the kind and amount of data regarding each tends to grow less, and the understanding become more abstract and distanced in comparison to the concrete observables and individual differences involved. Whatever the ratio of number of subjects to number and depth of individual data parameters in each case, I would strongly recommend the computerization of all such material. As part of this, much of the data in single-subject and cross-­subject channeling research that is now highly qualitative-­comprised of informal, impressionistic, anecdotal descriptive self reports from the channels and from the observational and interview notes of the researchers-- would need to be parsed and encoded into some more analytical or digital form.

 

I would include as good examples of past research of this kind William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience (1961); W.W. Carington’s extended series “The Quantitative Study of Trance Personalities” (1934- 1937); T. K. Oesterreich’s study of possession (1966); and physician Carl Wickland’s research with apparently channeling and possessed patients, using his wife as a channel to also communicate with their entities (Wickland, 1974). More recent examples would be Margo Chandley’s 1986 doctoral dissertation “A Psychological Investigation of the Development of the Mediumistic Process in Personality Function.” In keeping with the high (96%) correlation with early sexual or physical trauma found in Multiple Personality Disorder subjects in prior research, Dr. Chandley, for example, has found a high correlation between early trauma and abuse in the channels she studied, although her criteria of such abuse might be considered more mild than that used for Multiple Personality. Chandley also found both a co-creative component at work on the part of her subjects-­- wherein they create entities in interaction with a larger embedding field-- and, due to the nature of some of their material, she found evidence of autonomous entities being channeled by her subjects. Psychologist Edith Fiore has studied patterns across cases of apparent possession in her own clients (Fiore, 1987). Hal Stone has done extensive work with both healthy and dysfunctional clients with degrees of dissociation, many of whom display channeling behavior. He has learned to generalize about the nature of the innate subpersonalities that he has found in all people (Stone, 1985). And noted sociological researcher Earl Babbie’s book-in-progress, based on hundreds of interviews with channels and their followers, sees a strong pattern of functional, adaptive, problem-solving, and “higher-self” type behavior on the part of channels, irrespective of verifying the ultimate nature of the source of the material (which for him is still unknown).

 

Finally, recent publications by channels who have turned to teaching others how to become channels may hold certain patterns and generalizations within and across them about the nature of channeling and of the kind of people who become involved in the experience (Roman and Packer, 1987; Ridall, 1988; Vande Kieft, 1988).

 

3. Cross-Cultural and Anthropological Studies. This involves conducting single-subject and multi-subject studies of channels in different cultures and countries, in order to ascertain if there are patterns of data and generalizations that can be made among channels within a country or culture, as well as across countries and cultures. The question is, are there correlations to be found that involve sociological and anthropological, as well as personality, biographical, and physiological, variables? The usual ethnographic and field ­study research procedures would be used And, again, wherever possible, the findings would be fashioned so that they could be computerized for efficient access and sharing among researchers.

 

There has already been considerable recent research of this kind (Ellis, 1955; Belo, 1960; Lawrence, 1965: Wavell, et aI, 1967: Prince, 1968; Beattie and Middleton, 1969: Feinhelder, S.J.; Eliade, 1972: Angoff and Barth, 1974: Hitchcock and Jones, 1977: Long, 1977; and Chapanzano and Garrison, 1977; Lewis, 1978) to name just a few of the many dozen studies of this kind. Most recently, Ruth-Inge Heinze has completed her Trance and Healing in Southeast Asia (Heinze, 1988): and, for each of the past four years, she has published the annual Proceedings of the International Conference on the Study of Shamanism and Alternative Modes of Healing, which is rich with cross-cultural channeling and closely-related research. From such research it would appear that different culturally acceptable and conditioned manifestations of the same basic underlying processes are at work. Most of this anthropological research is descriptive only and usually makes little attempt to get at the authenticatabIe reality of origins or the precise mechanisms of causation and transmission of information and energy.

 

4. Scholarly Research: Content, or Text, Analysis of Channeled Material; and Bibliographic Work. The purpose of this research is to analyze, compare, contrast, and catalogue, the ever-growing body of published material said to be channeled, in order to have, for the first time, a true, systematically organized “channeling literature” that could be readily available and accessible. Combining the research methodology of Content, or text, analysis of written documents (and of transcribed tapes) with the inductive research methodology called “Grounded Theory” by Glasser and Strauss, properties of various channeled subject matter would be analyzed. Categories of different kinds of subject matter within and across different channels’ work would emerge. Some form of encoded representation could be used to access which channeled sources through which channels are providing information about what kinds of things and where in which documents. One could feed in key descriptor words, just as in current computer searches of data bases appropriately organized. One could enter the name of a single channeled entity, or a single channel, a kind of entity, such as “angels,” a domain of subject matter channeled, such as descriptions of alternative systems of science and technology, or a chronological period or cultural type, and so on. One would obtain addresses, citations, and references from within the pooled channeled literature.

 

A version of this could, of course, be accomplished with annotated bibliographies and other “hard-copy” publication of abstracted data that would be organized for a variety of kinds of cross-referencing according to a number of parameters. These parameters, as with the computerized version, would include: specific channeled sources, channels, kinds of channeling, kinds of subject matter channeled, and temporal, and even geographic, biographic, and cultural aspects of who channeled what and when. In the way of comprehensive bibliographic work being done thus far that includes channeling, I am aware only of Rhea White’s Parapsychology Abstracts International (White, semiannual) and The Guide to Sources of Information on Parapsychology, put out by the Parapsychology Foundation in New York.

 

One final observation with regard to the scholarly approach to doing research with channeled texts: I have not thus far said anything about the quality or meaning of all this catalogued material. This is the realm of critical analysis of textual material, wherein the merits and value of particular material is judged in comparison to others of its kind and against other agreed-upon benchmarks of quality and usefulness. It is also the realm of hermeneutics, or the discipline of explicating the meaning from symbolic, especially textual, material. Goodness knows that a common response to much of the material being channeled during the Spiritual era, and now being published pell mell during the massive resurgence of channeling today, is that it is “junk”: questionable, boring, pompous, useless, repetitive, stupid, inaccurate, and so on. So, clearly, some form of labeling or coding of the relative value or quality of the material would be needed, as well as some criteria for selection of what enters this data base. Some kind of advisory editorial board or jury of expert evaluators would probably be needed for this task. Short critiques of documents being entered could be included with them. With regard to hermeneutics, a good deal of “study group” or “book discussion group” work has been done already with regard to interpreting the multi-volumed “Seth Books” (Jane Roberts, channel), and the channeled A Course In Miracles, to cite just two examples. On the other hand, isolated researchers are still getting headaches trying to decipher difficult channeled texts such as The Urantia Book, OAHSPE, and The Book of Knowledge: The Keys of Enoch (Hurtak: 1977).

 

5. Trying to Verify the Authenticity of Certain Channeled Sources by Analyzing Potentially Evidential Communications. This involves trying to prove, by verification of their communications, that certain of the entities being channeled are actually who or what they claim to be and from where they claim to be (i.e., as being not self-generated by the channel, and as being other than from embodied fellow human beings, and

as being other than on this physical, and consensus reality, level of existence). By analyzing the material said to be channeled from them, it may be possible to find certain of the material that would prove evidential, that is, information that only the reputed source could be providing.

 

Of all the sources and beings that have been reported channeled over the centuries, supposed physically deceased, but still-surviving, human beings, provide the best source for such potentially evidential communication. How could we know for

certain, for example, if a UFO “space brother,” an “Ascended master,” a Nature spirit, or an angel, is who it says it is, and is not simply a dissociated creative projection of the channel’s own unconscious material? Although, where the prophetic or other verifiable factual-type messages of such entities can be found veridical, it at least proves the channel’s paranormal accuracy, if not that of his or her autonomous entity as a real, autonomous being. But in the case of a discarnate human being, perhaps he or she could provide precise information, or demonstrate other personality-specific behavior, through the channel, of such a kind that we could find embodied humans familiar with the deceased who could verify authenticity.

 

The problem, with this kind of research-- as J.B. Rhine pointed out 50 years ago-- is that you usually cannot know for certain whether you have the authentic discarnate source as claimed, or, instead, that you have the extended “super-ESP” of the channel which is accessing the necessary evidential information from the brain/mind of still-embodied living persons, or, by some form of unconscious clairvoyant “remote viewing,” is scanning documents containing the necessary information that exist elsewhere on our physical level of reality. In my estimation, some of the channeling research of this kind that has already been carried out, although it may not yet have irrefutably proven survival of physical death or the existence of other extra-dimensional channeled entities, does prove the existence of this kind of super-ESP, which should put to rest skeptics’ claims that there has never been irrefutable evidence provided for demonstrated psi ability such as telepathy or clairvoyance.

 

An immense amount of work has been done in almost all of it between the 1870’s and the 1930’s, during the wide-spread psychic activity associated with the heyday of Spiritualism. Some of the leading psychologists and other scientists in the United States, Britain, and Europe focused on psychical research, especially the study of channeling, then called mediumship. There is no way I can reflect the breadth of this work in a single paragraph. I have tried to treat this period elsewhere (Klimo, 1987). But I would like to touch on just a few representative samples. Almost all of this research was carried out by members of the British Society for Psychical Research, founded in London in 1882, and the American Society for Psychical Research, founded in 1884, and re­organized in 1907, and published in their two ongoing Proceedings. F.W.H. Meyers, part of the “Cambridge group” of researchers that included Henry Sidgwick and Edmund Gurney, compiled his monumental two-volume Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death (Meyers, 1903). “Cross-correspondence” proved especially evidential. This is a process where the same discarnate human presents different parts of a message through different unconnected channels so that only the overall integrated pattern implies the same autonomous source at work throughout. Research with the automatic writing channelings of Geraldine Cummins (Toksvig, 1965) and the research by H. F. Satmash (Satmarsh, 1938) found strong evidence for the channeling of surviving human entities. Yet E.R. Dodd still mounted what many think is the best case against autonomous entities (Dodd, 1934), and G.J. Ducasse echoed this continued skepticism (Ducasse, 1961). Three of the leading researchers of the period-- Myers, Oliver Lodge, and William James-- ­collaborated on “A Record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of Trance” (Myers, et al, 1889-90), and James studied Boston channel Leonore Piper (James, 1910). C. Drayton Thomas studied “proxy sittings” (Drayton, 1932, 1938, 1939), and Mrs. E.M. Sidgwick focused on “Book Tests” (Sidgwick, 1921). W.H. Salter reported the late F.W.H. Myers as a source with especially evidential messages (1958-60). More recently, R.H. Thouless (Thouless, 1946) and Ian Stevenson, in his studies of re­incarnation, xenoglossy, and his earlier “Lock Tests” (Stevenson (1968), have devised ever more rigorous informational tests and research regarding the autonomy of anomalous sources and the veridicality of their material.

 

The consensus among researchers today would probably be [estimated] that somewhere in the neighborhood of 5% to 10% of the research findings hold up as being apparent evidence that the channeled sources are who they claim to be, with maybe 25% or more of it strongly suggesting, perhaps even proving, that something non­ordinary, such as super-ESP or co-creation, is going on, while the remaining 50% on up most researchers would believe to be a combination of fraud, unconscious dissociation, projection, and imaginative acting out.

 

An example of current research of this kind is a project that I am involved with that has been undertaken by The Foundation for Mind/Being Research in Los Altos, California (see ref.) We are doing text analysis, and verification using corroborating surviving informants, of the communications channeled from seven beings that claim to be the seven astronauts that were killed in the last Challenger space shuttle mission. Through two cooperating channels, we have amassed thousands of pages of transcribed material from tapes of channeling sessions. We have categorized, coded, and computerized the potentially most verifiable material and will begin verification procedures as funding becomes available. Meanwhile, the channeling sessions are continuing and our team continues to interrogate the supposed astronauts in order to strengthen the pool of most verifiable data. I think this project epitomizes the best of current research of this kind. (In truth, I know of no other such research systematically being done.)

 

Another project I would like to see done is the design of a channeling version of the “Turing Test” that is currently used as a protocol for ascertaining if an artificial intelligence machine (computer) is demonstrating intelligence indistinguishable from that of a human being. I believe that channeling researchers should borrow from the rigors of cognitive science in order to establish criteria and procedures for dealing with the information processing and analysis research required to study channeling and the ultimate nature of its sources. In addition, I would also recommend using handwriting analysis experts to analyze the automatic handwriting purported to be coming through channels from discarnate humans in cases where samples of the sources’ handwriting prior to death are available to the researchers, but not to the channel, for purposes of matching.

 

6. Studying the Physiological Correlates Accompanying Channeling Episodes. These kinds of correlates include: EEG brain-wave measurements-- baseline, going into, being within, and coming out of, channeling episodes, especially of the full trance unconscious possession-type; other biofeedback-type measurements, such as galvanic skin response, muscle tensions, respiration, heart-rate, and blood-pressure. Getting more ambitious, I would include monitoring cerebrospinal fluid composition and resonance patterns, neurotransmitter and hormonal configurations; and using NMR, PET, CAT, SQUID, and other imaging devices to map correlated neurophysiological states with reported channeling states. Somewhat more on the fringe, I would also include those recent devices reported able to detect and measure the presence of, and changes in, acupuncture meridian flow lines and endpoints (with regard to the activity of fabled “chi” or “prana”), and chakra and aura activity.

 

Because of the lack of scientific instrumentation until fairly recently, little research has been done in this area until the last few years. In his 1985 doctoral dissertation, “Relationships Between Phenomena of Consciousness and Interhemispheric Brain Wave Patterns,” James Brown discovered alpha-wave synchrony between the hemispheres of trance channels, with their baseline EEG readings also being different from controls. Jean Millay, Tim Scully, James Johnston, Robert Monroe, Robert Becker, and Bob Beck, also have done work with studying the EEG readings during channeling or related non­ordinary states. Jack Schwarz has studied channel Jach Pursel and his source “Lazarus,” finding a correlation with slow, very high amplitude brain waves, often in the Theta and even Delta (!) region, accompanying full trance channeli