Michael Cremo - Human Devolution - A Vedic Alternative To Darwin's Theory

In this chapter’s review of various categories of observational and experimental evidence demonstrating the existence of extradimensional, conscious, humanlike personalities, we will begin with examples of communications from departed humans now apparently existing in some other part of the multilevel cosmos. We shall then consider apparitions of departed human personalities and possessions of terrestrial humans by departed human personalities. Reports like these reinforce the evidence presented in chapter 6 for the existence of an embodied conscious self that is distinct from mind and ordinary matter. But the cases in this chapter particularly focus on the continued existence of this conscious self long after the death of its body composed of gross matter. We shall go on to consider another category of apparition and possession cases, involving beings of apparently superhuman type. We shall then consider the modern scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence, which will lead us into the realm of extraterrestrial and extradimensional beings revealed in the modern UFO and alien abduction reports, particularly those with a paranormal element. In this manner, I plan to show that the idea of extraterrestrial and extradimensional conscious beings is not something entirely alien to modern scientific thought.

Communications from Departed Humans

Several prominent scientists have investigated communications from departed humans. If their reports are accepted, we find ourselves in possession of evidence for some part of the multilevel cosmos and cosmic hierarchy of beings described in the last chapter.

Evidence of departed human intelligences continuing to have contact with terrestrial humans comes from a variety of sources, including mediums. William James, a prominent American scientist of the early twentieth century, and one of the founders of modern psychology, was especially impressed by the mediumship of Mrs. Piper.

During her trances, Mrs. Piper’s normal personality was apparently replaced by that of her “control,” a long departed spirit called Phinuit, who spoke through her, revealing paranormal knowledge of living persons. However, not everyone was convinced that Phinuit either existed or was the source of Mrs. Piper’s revelations about the living. For example, Richard Hodgson, of the American Society for Psychical Research, at first favored the hypothesis that Mrs. Piper was obtaining her knowledge telepathically from living persons. But in March 1892, Mrs. Piper’s communicator Phinuit was replaced by George Pellew, a young man who had died in a riding accident a short time before. One hundred fifty living subjects were introduced to Mrs. Piper when, in trance, she was under the control of Pellew. Out of these subjects, Pellew, speaking through Mrs. Piper, recognized thirty, and these thirty happened to be only those who had known Pellew when he was alive. Pellew conversed with them in a familiar fashion, demonstrating extraordinary knowledge about them. This convinced Hodgson that Mrs.Piper was indeed in communication with a departed spirit, George Pellew (Gauld 1968, pp. 254–261).

Hodgson himself died on December 20, 1905. By December 28, messages from him were supposedly coming to Mrs. Piper. William James believed that the evidence suggested Hodgson, or perhaps some remnant of him (in what we might call a cosmic memory bank), was communicating with Piper. The messages communicated by Piper from Hodgson, and others, were sometimes garbled, observed James. He nevertheless said that “there would still appear a balance of probability

. . . that certain parts of the Piper communications really emanate from personal centers of memory and will, connected with lives that have passed away” (Murphy and Ballou 1960, p. 140). More specifically, he said, “Most of us felt during the sittings that we were in some way, more or less remote, conversing with . . . a real Hodgson” (Murphy and Ballou1960, p. 143).

James said about the Piper communications: “When I connect the Piper case with all the other cases I know of automatic writing and mediumship, and with the whole record of spirit-possession in human history, the notion that such an immense current of experience, complex in so many ways, should spell out nothing but the word ‘humbug’ acquires a character of unlikeliness. The notion that so many men and women, in all other respects honest enough, should have this preposterous monkeying self annexed to their personality seems to me so weird that the spirit theory immediately takes on a more probable appearance” (Murphy and Ballou 1960, p. 147).

Frederick Myers, a leading member of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), died in 1901. In that same year, Mrs. Margaret Verrall, the wife of the English classical scholar A. W. Verrall, took up automatic writing to let Myers communicate through her. In automatic writing, a medium allows her hand to form letters and words spontaneously. After some months Mrs. Verrall began getting cryptic messages signed by Myers, some with quotations from obscure Latin and Greek works. In

1902, Mrs. Piper, in Boston, also began producing similar writings signed “Myers.” These contained allusions to Mrs. Verrall’s writings. Mrs. Verrall’s daughter, Helen Verrall, also began receiving writings, without seeing her mother’s.Helen’s writings contained allusions to the same topics. Piper and the Verralls began sending their writings to Alice Johnson, secretary of the SPR. In 1903, Mrs. Alice Kipling Fleming, a sister of Rudyard Kipling, also began receiving messages from Myers through automatic writing. She began sending them to Johnson, under the name “Mrs. Holland.” Johnson filed them away, but in 1905 she began comparing the messages from all the writers and noticed some interesting correlations among them. Johnson and other investigators concluded that these “cross correspondences” were deliberate attempts by Myers to demonstrate his survival (Griffin 1997, pp. 162–163).

Purported communications from dead persons through mediums are sometimes explained away by appealing to telepathy. A medium engaging in automatic writing may consciously or unconsciously tap into memories of various living persons who knew the dead person and thus obtain the confidential information that appears in the messages. In other words, although the information in the message may have been acquired by paranormal means, the information might not be coming from a surviving spirit. One might therefore ask, “How could a dead person attempting to communicate with the living overcome this objection?” H. F. Saltmarsh, in his book on the Myers communications, explained (1938, pp. 33–34): “Suppose a message in cryptic terms be transmitted through one automatist [receiver of automatic writing], and another message, equally incomprehensible, through a second at about the same time, and suppose that each automatist was ignorant of what the other was writing, we have then two meaningless messages entirely disconnected with each other. Now, if a third automatist were to produce a script which, while meaningless taken by itself, acts as a clue to the other two, so that the whole set could be brought together into one whole, and then show a single purpose and meaning, we should have good evidence that they all originated from a single source. . . . Telepathy between the automatists . . . would not explain these facts, for none of them is able to understand the meaning of their own particular fragment, and so could not possibly convey to the other automatists the knowledge required to supply the missing portions. In most cases [involving the Myers communications] the puzzle . . . has been solved by an independent investigator, in fact, frequently the automatists themselves have remained in ignorance of any scripts but their own.” In other words, the cross correspondences among the independent communications, each apparently meaningless on its own, reveals the action of a departed intelligence.