2003 DPE Reports

October 2003 DPE Report

By The Revs. Tom and Lisa Butler, NST

Does Spiritual Prayer Heal? Many religions believe that prayer has the power to heal. That belief is now being put to tough scientific testing in Tucson. University of Arizona open-heart surgery patients are receiving special prayers to see if prayer can ease pain and speed up the recovery process. Patients will not know whether they are being prayed for or not. Chief of Surgery, Dr. Allan Hamilton, a Harvard-trained neurosurgeon said, “…I’m interested in the scientific outcome of surgical therapies and the use of advanced technologies, but we can’t forget that these are human beings in our care … I have seen that patients who are spiritually and emotionally connected do very well in their recovery. What we want to find out is if there is scientific validity to this – yes or no.”

The University of Arizona study is funded through the National Institutes of Health. The project follows several smaller studies in the past two decades that indicate distant prayer benefits patients with serious illness and injuries.   From: www.dailystar.com

Present Thought May Influence Past Actions. In his report, Time-reversed human experience: Experimental evidence and implications, Dean Radin discusses research suggesting that it is possible to affect past events with current circumstances. For instance, the “Experimenter effect,” in which the negative attitude of the experimenter may cause a negative result, may not be felt during the experiment. Instead, it may be possible that the experimenter’s attitude is actually changing the data to show a negative result after it has been collected.

The implications that present thought can influence past actions poses a number of challenging possibilities. For instance, we might be “caused” to do something today, because in the future, we will feel the need for that something. Yes, there are some interesting paradoxes, but we are very good at creating reality. Just as our mind will seamlessly weave an outside event into our dreams, so might our mind easily “fit” the sudden appearance of an answer to our current needs into the normal flow of our experiences. This is all the more reason to “manage” our thoughts.

From: www.boundaryinstitute.org/articles/timereversed.pdf. Dr. Radin is currently on the staff  of the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

Everyone is Psychic. In his June 2001 Fate Magazine column, “Psychic Frontiers,” Parapsychologist, Loyd Auerbach points out that, “Everyone is psychic.” He observes that our ability to screen out psychic impressions may be a survival trait, because otherwise, we would be inundated with psi information.

Auerbach writes that the late psychic, Alex Tanous, offered the following technique as a way to awaken latent psi ability: “He suggests spending a few minutes using one’s conscious focus of attention, directed first at the normal senses, consciously noting everything you see. Don’t just scan the environment around you, really see and take notice. Then do the same with your hearing, especially noticing the background noises … [Editor: and your other senses] … there may be some extra bits of information that can’t be connected to the normal sense perception…. Focus your attention on the extras.”

Attitude is important in developing psi ability. Auerbach said that someone who believes in psi tends to score higher than those who do not, and that we often limit what we will allow ourselves to experience and believe. Perhaps this is why some psi teachers suggest that people behave “as if” they are psychic.

Beneficial Book. A book that is getting high marks for being informative as well as educational is, How to Get a Good Reading from A Psychic Medium, by Carole Lynne. Carol Lynne provides useful suggestions on how to evaluate a reading and what to expect. She offers candid and frank advice regarding what mediums can and can’t do and how to prepare to get the most out of contact with those in the Spirit World. The book is being recommended by Spiritualists, not only for students, but also for those who have been receiving readings from mediums for many years.

Immortal Remains. A new book by Stephen Braude titled, Immortal Remains, delves into an assortment of phenomena, including drop-in communicators and the case of Patience Worth. From the back cover, “Some underestimate the evidence for life after death, not realizing how impressive the most convincing cases are … Immortal Remains takes a fresh look at some of the most puzzling cases suggesting life after death, and considers how to tell evidence for an afterlife from evidence for exotic things (including psychic things) done by the living. Author Stephen E. Braude, who has done extensive research in parapsychology and dissociation, explores previously ignored issues about dissociation, creativity, linguistic skills, and the nature and limits of human abilities. He concludes that we have some reason, finally, for believing in life after death.”

In Honor of Halloween

Happy Halloween! October is the time of year people involved in things paranormal are the most popular. A friend, who has written a book on Ghosts, remarked that everyone wants to interview or have her give a talk in October, but they seem to forget about her the rest of the year. We have also noticed that we receive much more media attention regarding Electronic Voice Phenomena in October. More people stop by to look at the aaevp.com web site as well.

Perhaps October is a good time for Spiritualist to have special activities that might attract younger members. When we are invited to give a presentation to a paranormal or ghost hunter group we find that eighty percent of attendees are less than thirty years of age. Ghosts, hauntings and other paranormal occurrences are often a younger person’s first introduction to the idea of survival.

Ghost Directs Family to Old Letter. The South African newspaper, The Natal Witness, published an article in January about a family being directed by a woman’s ghost to the location of a letter written 40 years earlier. The letter, written on December 23, 1961, is addressed to the woman’s children. The family has appealed to whoever lived in the house at that time to come and get the letter.

The family’s 15-year-old daughter was the first to see the apparition of a young woman clad in white, with blue eyes and long blonde hair. The lady’s feet did not touch the ground, her face looked like a bright light and her mouth was moving. The mother’s boyfriend later saw the same apparition, reflected in a mirror.

In early January, the mother had a dream about where the woman had placed a letter. In the dream she saw the woman put the letter in a groove in the oven where bread was baked in the old days, and that is exactly where it was found. The outside of the letter read, “You will find when the time is right.” In the letter, the woman expressed guilt over the way that she had treated her children. She wrote that she did not have long to live. She asked her children never to forget her and said that she would always love them. It ended, “Goodbye my angels, your loving Mother.”

From http://www.witness.co.za/

The Ghost of Private Rex. In the June issue of the of the ARPR Bulletin, editor Michael Tymn, wrote a very interesting article on Hereward Carrington’s book Psychical Phenomena and The War. Tymn listed various stories that Carrington had documented regarding prophecies, premonitions, apparitions, dreams, clairvoyant description of death, and communications from “dead” solders during World War I. One of them was the story of Private Rex.

Private Rex’s unit was being marched to another area by a Lieutenant Smith. Smith noticed that Private Rex was falling behind and asked him if he was hungry. The Private responded, “A little,” and so Smith gave him a malted milk tablet taking note that the private looked pale and that his hand was icy cold.

The officer went off to take care of other matters and when he returned once more to check on Private Rex he could not find him. Lieutenant Smith was then reminded by another officer that Private Rex had been killed three days earlier in battle.

Smith told Carrington that he had temporarily forgotten due to the stress of battle and the deaths of so many others, but he was adamant that he had not only seen and talked to Private Rex but had also touched him. Smith is quoted as saying, “It takes away all the fear of death for I know that Private Rex lives, though dead.”  From War and Psychical Phenomena, ARPR Bulletin Volume 12 No. 2, by Michael E. Tymn, editor.

Hereward Carrington was an anti-spiritualist whose pessimism was shaken after reading Essays in Psychical Resarch by Miss X.

On behalf of the English S.P.R. he was one of the individuals who investigated the phenomena of Eusapia Palladino. A quote from his book, "Eusapia Paladino and her Phenomena" tells much about how he changed, "My own sittings convinced me finally and conclusively that genuine phenomena do occur, and, that being the case, the question of their interpretation naturally looms before me. I think that not only is the Spiritualistic hypothesis justified as a working theory, but it is, in fact, the only one capable of rationally explaining the facts."

Picture and above from The International Survivalist Society http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/scientists/1.htm

Please send information about phenomena in your church, life or community to Tom and Lisa Butler, PO Box 13111

     Hereward Carrington