Monthly Book Review (December): The Afterlife Experiments by Gary E Schwartz

Every month - that is the plan, anyway - I will review a book selected randomly from my Paranormal Library. This month, I will review The Afterlife Experiments by Gary E Schwartz.

Having previously read his other book, The Sacred Promise, I knew what to expect when I began to turn the pages of The Afterlife Experiments. Like his last book, I found his style of writing very addictive - very quickly, I discovered that I was zooming through the chapters, hungry to learn more about his intriguing experiments involving mediums and their unknown sitters in his laboratory.
    Although reading this book has made me realise that a second read of The Sacred Promise would probably be a good idea, The Afterlife Experiments proved to be just as interesting (at least for me) as The Sacred Promise. 
    Scattered throughout the pages of the book are the details and results of the experiments that Schwartz conducted. These seemed extremely interesting, especially since the mediums' readings for the unknown and hidden sitters were not always flawless - for example, in his reading for a sitter named Pat, John Edward made a small error in the identity of one of the deceased family members of his sitter, which was partly due to his sitter accidentally saying more than she was supposed to and leading him to think that her husband was dead when, in actuality, he was alive and sitting in another room! However, this apparent error was later explained, as it related to the sitter's dream and subsequent events that made her wonder how long her husband had left to live on Earth. The readings didn't seem to be obvious cold-reading, although there were aspects of that at times with some of the readings for at least one of the sitters. Although the method and procedure of the experiment seemed to be good, I wasn't convinced that the medium being unable to see their sitter was sufficient against hot or warm reading, since they could still hear them and be able to deduce some aspects about the sitter which they could then put in the reading - for example, one sitter may have had a nasty cough, which may make the medium deduce that they have an illness or flu. I was, however, relieved to discover that in the following chapter, the author gave an in-depth account about the next series of sitter-medium experiments, which included a silent period - so that the sitter remained silent whilst they were given their reading. Whilst I read the details concerning this series of experiments, I still had doubts about the experimental design. The accuracy of the information as given by the mediums seemed, from the extracts, too good to be true and I suppose I was still looking for loop-holes somewhere - and somehow. Once again, when I approached the following chapter, my doubts were met once more: another series of sittings with the mediums, this time with the sitters remaining silent throughout.
    However, the readings proved to be interesting, as there were certain areas that overlapped with the readings performed by the different mediums for the same sitter, despite the experimenters ensuring that the mediums didn't mingle with each other after the separate readings. I was also glad that although the sitter did have a small hiccough one time,that they were instructed to only say 'Yes/No' answers to prevent them from giving away much information to the medium (this was during the non-silent periods when the sitter was allowed to reply 'Yes' or 'No' to the statements). 
   Although the mediums made some errors in their readings some of the time and despite frequently making statements that could have two possible interpretations - I found it extremely interesting. This interest was increased due to the fact that with each experiment (which had increasingly better controls put into place, such as the third experiment being double-blind) all of the mediums acquired a very high level of accuracy which was greater than the control group of students' guesswork and this trend also happened for when the sitters had to evaluate all of the readings including their own for accuracy. Their own readings were rated a greater level of accuracy than the readings that were done for the other sitters.
I was pleased that the author took the results of the studies as evidence supportive of his 'Living Soul Hypothesis', though I myself think that there might be alternative explanations for the research: for example, one of the possibilities that I've often thought about is the concept that psi is some kind of living energy that even if it doesn't have awareness or consciousness at least similar to our own, then it might have some kind of intelligence behind it. I feel that reality is a kind of "playground" for the mind, in which the mind affects the psi, moulding it like playdough into the features of the individual concerned's beliefs. For example, a person who believes in angels might see angels because psi manifests itself (at least sometimes) as angels. I believe that this theory might explain some of the phenomena that occurred in the experiment, since the mediums may not have been speaking to "dead people" literally, but perhaps aspects of the universal consciousness that Carl Jung talked about which was manifested by psi. 
   In conclusion, it was a great read, but I feel there are still alternative explanations for the findings - even if fraud or deception wasn't involved consciously by the mediums, is it possible that they are not talking to actual dead people, but some other spiritual energy such as the one my theory above concerns? Also, I wasn't convinced the data was not supportive of the existence of the Akashic Records, since the mediums may have consulted these unconsciously. This would have meant that they could obtain information concerning the past, the present and the future, even if the sitter was unaware of the validity of some information given by the medium. Lastly, another theory of psi in relation to the results of Schwartz's experiments is the Decision Augmentation Theory (DAT) which proposes that there is an aspect of goal-seeking and that the individual (e.g. medium) uses psi to find information in relation to their goal (e.g. information that would prove or support the notion that their sitter's loved one/s are still alive and well but in the world of spirit). The book, for me, raised more questions than answers, yet despite this I feel it was well worth reading. 

Theories of Psi: Part One

In this article, the subject of Psi will be discussed. In separate articles, the possible ways in which Psi might work will be explored. In this first part, the Psi-Mediated Instrumental Response (PMIR) explanation of Psi will be investigated.

What is Psi?

Without the knowledge of what exactly psi is, no specific explanation regarding how it works can be agreed on within the parapsychological community. Indeed, there are a plethora of possibilities regarding how psi can be explained. In this article, psi will be taken to mean the force - regardless of how it actually works - that is behind psychical phenomena such as ESP and PK. 

The Psi-Mediated Instrumental Response (PMIR) Explanation

This explanation of psi was developed by Rex Stanford. This model proposes that an organism uses psi, alongside its normal senses (such as sight, for example) to scan its environment for information related to its needs. The PMIR model of psi has evident advantages from an evolutionary perspective, because it would mean that the organism could use psi to:

•  find food
• find shelter  
• find its mother (if the animal concerned has lost its mother who it needs for survival)
• find its young (if the animal concerned is the mother animal)

, The use of psi may be useful for the animal if its normal senses are not as functional as they should be or the subject of its needs is difficult to come by and using psi as an additional "sense" may be the only way in which it can obtain what it needs.

The PMIR theory of psi might function consciously or unconsciously. For evolutionary purposes, it might work best if it is a mixture of both, depending on the organism's needs. If the example of a wild animal is used again, like above, then it is clear how it might work: it may not be the case that sometimes PMIR works (consciously or unconsciously) as part of the animal's everyday life, and other times it is not at work. If this is so, however, then it would be difficult to ascertain the extent to which the animal consciously or unconsciously relies on it. It may be that the animal simply uses PMIR to supplement its normal senses (i.e. sometimes they use PMIR and sometimes not), rather than the animal relying on it more than the other senses (so the animal is using it constantly). Indeed, if PMIR is used unconsciously, how would it be possible to know when it is being used and when it is not being used?
    If PMIR is a conscious process, when would it be used? In the list of possible uses above, it may be used at a conscious level to find its mother, or used by the mother to find its lost young, but exactly how this can be differentiated from pure instinct is not clear. Perhaps it is used unconsciously to find food and shelter, and maybe it is PMIR that is involved when the animal senses danger.
 
In the model of PMIR, it is almost like 'cybernetic PK' in that the organism concerned is scanning its environment for what it needs and the psychokinesis that occurs is like an instrumental response to that. For example, if a young chick fell out of its nest and it cannot find its mother (and nor can it immediately sense her with his senses), he may use scanning to try and find her and in doing so, may "switch on" its PK powers which attract her to him, or him to her. This use of psi, however, is determined by how much of a scan the organism needs to do first - in the case of the chick, it may do a full scan because it cannot detect where his mother is. Its vulnerability calls for a full scan of its environment, since if it did more of a quick scan, it may miss some vitally important clues as to where its mother is. A full scan may trigger PK to come on, due to being in immediate danger of being found by a predator.

PMIR in this model seems to be goal-orientated - since the chick in the example had the goal for finding its mother (since not doing so would result in its death either due starvation, pneumonia or being eaten). According to p.131 of Introduction to Parapsychology (Chapter 8 - Theories of Psi):

In its most recent form (Stanford 1990) the PMIR model proposes that psi experiences arise because, under circumstances prevailing in the environment, the individual has some disposition or need for the experience to occur. That is, the psi experience or "psi-mediated response" is fundamentally goal-oriented or adaptive. Stanford further proposes that psi operates below the level of consciousness through the facilitation of responses that are already encoded in memory ... The range of responses thought by Stanford to be facilitated by psi nevertheless is reasonably broad. Under the PMIR model psi may trigger behaviors, feelings, images, associations, desires or memories. These, either singly or in combination, may constitute the psi-mediated response.

Application to Real Life

Applying PMIR to real life may be quite tricky, since there are many other factors involved for seemingly lucky or miraculous events that happen to individuals. These will be examined, since one application of PMIR is that of coincidences or miracle, as these often are very much welcomed by those to whom they occur. If a person has a goal or ambition for gaining more money, for example, and they buy a lottery ticket, they may unconsciously use psi to obtain that goal. This then may materialise as winning a large amount of money on the lottery.
Another application of the PMIR model of psi is the phenomenon of luck, although luck may simply just be a term used by people to explain happy coincidences or much-needed windfalls and may not actually exist like we know the sun does. If these happy coincidences happen for the majority of people occasionally, it may simply be due to chance. Although it may seem incredible to the person who finally wins the lottery when they get the jackpot, and despite the chances of winning the lottery being very small, there is always going to be someone out there who is going to win it unexpectedly.  Yet for some certain individuals, it appears that 'lucky' coincidences happen almost all of the time. Is this due to psi, or is it because of something on a more psychological basis? In one study that Richard Wiseman conducted, he found that participants who considered themselves lucky were more inclined to jump at opportunities than individuals who did not consider themselves to be lucky. When presented with a newspaper with the task to count how many pictures were in it, it was the 'lucky' individuals who spotted the experimenter's large text box in it that read, "Win £100 by telling the experimenter that you have seen this."
    In the case of luck, it may simply be due to something psychological concerning the person, and may not involve psi being at work at all. In the same way, determining whether something was due to psi or not in real life is a subjective business: even if psi had been responsible for a miracle that occurred (for example, someone recovers from a serious illness after receiving faith healing), how can it be certain that it was due to psi and not something else? A person may become well after a serious illness after having faith healing and this may have been because of psi. But they may have become well which happened to occur after the faith healing and this may not have happened as a result of psi. The person's recovery could have been due to spontaneous recovery which had nothing to do with psi. Perhaps the person was goal-seeking (in that the person was wanting to get better), but even so, this does not prove that psi - (PMIR) - was the factor responsible for the person's recovery. Furthermore, even if PMIR was a proven phenomenon in the laboratory, exactly how it would be possible to prove that it was PMIR at work and not something else in real life is another matter altogether. In the laboratory, it is possible to do a controlled experiment. In real life, there is an abundance of factors that need to be considered when a very fortunate and unexpected event has occurred.

Conclusion

There are some explanations of psi that are difficult to test in the laboratory, whilst for others, it is fairly straightforward. Stanford has formulated his PMIR model in order for the different aspects of his model to be more readily verifiable in the laboratory. Because the psi-mediated instrumental response model can also be applied to people's parapsychological experiences, this provides further ground for future experiments concerning the PMIR model. As was stated previously, it does not seem to be a small matter to decide whether an experience was due to psi or some mundane cause when it comes to real life, yet perhaps future experiments can provide more enlightenment about this issue should they be undertaken. Certainly, further research is necessary with regard to this model of psi.

References

Irwin, H.J. and Watt, C.  (2007) Introduction to Parapsychology. (5th ed). North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc.