Читать книгу The Case for an Afterlife - J. J. Jennings - Страница 9

How do “medium sessions” differ from other forms of afterlife evidence?

Unlike apparitions, or past-life regressions, or bodily possessions, or audible communications from the dead, “medium sessions” assume we can communicate mentally with the deceased. “Medium sessions” require us to believe that we can establish some kind of telepathy with a deceased person. So how many of us actually believe we can mentally communicate with someone who has died?

According to a poll conducted by the Gallup Organization in Princeton, New Jersey, 21% of us believe that – at least that was true of the 1,002 adults over 18 years old who were interviewed by phone in Gallup’s June 2005 poll. (18)In that same poll, 55% of us said we do not believe that, while the rest of us said we weren’t sure what to believe.

Another way in which “medium sessions” differ from other forms of afterlife evidence is that an intermediary is assumed. A deceased person mentally communicates with an intermediary – a “medium” – who then tells a living person what the deceased person’s communication was. A lot more of us have trouble believing that – especially under certain circumstances.

What are the “circumstances” we’re concerned about?

Ever since the 1800’s, there have been special “medium sessions” known as “séances”. Many “Spiritualist Mediums” routinely held séances for people who were hoping to hear from their departed loved ones – people such as Mary Todd Lincoln, who was hoping to hear from her two dead sons, Edward and William.

Unfortunately, not all of those mediums conducting séances were genuine, and not all of them were ethical. For that reason, in the mid-1880’s, a group of University of Pennsylvania faculty members were commissioned to investigate many of the “Spiritual Mediums” operating at that time – and they found “fraud or suspected fraud in every case they examined”. (19)

Today, there are still mediums conducting séances, and there are still questions of fraud or trickery with some of them – so we are excluding all séances from the “medium sessions” we’re considering – even though some of them may in fact be legitimate sources of afterlife evidence.

We are also excluding those “medium sessions” that are held privately – sessions where the only living people in the room are the one person hoping to hear from the deceased, and the one medium acting as an intermediary, through whom the deceased (presumably) communicates. We are excluding such sessions since there is no third person present who can witness the medium’s process, and score the accuracy of the medium’s reading in some fashion.

So what kind of “medium sessions” are we including?

We’re only considering those “medium sessions” that have these minimum characteristics:

1.The session is not a séance.

2.The session involves at least one individual – one “witness” – who is not related to the medium, nor to the person hoping to hear from the deceased (the “client”), nor to the deceased.

3.Neither the medium nor the witness has obtained information about the client or the deceased prior to the reading (Obtaining the deceased’s first name as a “focal point” is the only permissible exception).

4.The medium’s message from the deceased includes some details that are very specific to the deceased – not generic.

5.The “witness” is reputable, and able to provide usable information about the medium’s process and his or her accuracy.

In Chapter 7, we discuss the skeptical comments about “medium sessions” as well as the criteria we’re using to determine if a given session might be viewed as “credible afterlife evidence”.

*****