Do you believe there's another realm and medium's can tap into it?

[Julia2016]

I do. I believe the energy of the dead never dies, it is with us but in another realm. Sometimes it comes through to our realm. AIBU?

I am a bit sceptical about medium's though. Interested to hear other people's view on this.

I am a Christian so I do believe in another realm and that our souls goes on after death.

I do think some phenomena are difficult to explain rationally.

I think mediums use guesswork and a good knowledge of body language/invisible clues to provide their readings. If they can read an 'energy', I think it is emanating from the living person getting the reading, not a dead soul who fancied a little trip back to earth.

I'm always dubious when money is involved. Phillipa Langley, whatever her intentions, has sold a book and had a film made on the strength of her intuition! If I thought it would grab some headlines and funding for something I'd been researching for years, then I might be persuaded to have an intuitive sense about something too.

She photographed the spot where she had a massive hunch (lol) a year before the excavation took place and many years before books and films came along.

How do sceptics explain that one?

I completely believe in intuition but maybe it doesn't have to mean tapping into a strange dimension. Maybe it's something we can't explain.

I would need to see all the photos she's taken over the years before I would even entertain the possibility this was anything other than coincidence.
How do we know she's not got 5000 pictures of 'hunches' that were nothing?

No.

Lol, no.

@SueSuddio the University of Leicester who funded all the work that Phillipa Langley did before she started crowdfunding say that the whereabouts of Richard III's body was public knowledge prior to her interventions. I guess recollections differ!

Another classic example of confirmation bias perhaps? As in Philippa Langley gets mentioned in the same sentence as the archaeological dig and the story gets embroidered from "She had an interest in this" to "Ooooo she found him!!"

The University of Leicester who funded all the work that Phillipa Langley did before she started crowdfunding say that the whereabouts of Richard III's body was public knowledge prior to her interventions

Edited to add how inconvenient ... not that it'll make any difference to folk who want to believe

Sometimes hunches turn out to be correct. More often than not they turn out to be nothing though. There isn't anything to "explain", because you can't cherry-pick one success and then claim that verifies or proves anything, because it could just as easily be nothing more than an educated guess.

How do you "explain" the police being dragged all over the moors by people with "gifts" claiming to have visions of the locations of missing children, yet turning up absolutely nothing?

@XDownwiththissortofthingX

The standard position is that other people do have this inherent ability, it’s just stronger in some than others. Sort of like how everyone has the ability to run, but not everyone can become an Olympic sprinter.

The base requirement for connecting to spirits, in my experience and understanding, is to enter an altered state of consciousness. This is also often necessary from the practice of spells and rituals in witchcraft. This is why the the practice of meditation is the very first technique that occultists and witches are taught to practice; the meditation is necessary to shift their conscious focus either away from this world/their current environment, or, if not shifted entirely away, at least to have our focus partially away from our immediate physical environment.

So the basics of teaching spirit communication would be to teach the skills of meditation and then go from there to guided meditations, which use the symbolism of imagery to aid in focusing the mind/drawing it into an altered state of consciousness.

Derren Brown debunked them.

They research and cold read.

Indeed, you could. I’d also argue that the same could be true of people to set up organisations specifically to attack or try to disprove such abilities; they have their own biases.

Ultimately, all one can do is try to be as neutral as possible with any individual medium and try as hard as possible to avoid or work against potential confirmation bias.

I’m on the fence about the other realm but I think mediums are good at getting information from people and making guesses based on that.

@SorcererGaheris except I don't believe in anything not of this physical universe, so I'm not going to believe a 'medium', whatever that may even be. I don't feel the need to be neutral because I personally believe that anyone purporting to speak on behalf of the dead, or a god or any other form of spiritual sort of thing is either deluded or making it up. That doesn't necessarily mean I think they are of bad intent, but I personally don't believe that their words have any factual basis at all.

Right, so if it is indeed something that takes place entirely in the human mind, then I think it's perfectly reasonable to dismiss it as wishful thinking and nothing more than people using their imagination. People are capable of imagining all sorts of things, and I don't see why there should be any reason why that couldn't extend to imagining they were connecting to some alternate realm, and even communing with the dead, but what it basically boils down to is I'd still argue it's far more likely to be a simple case of wishful thinking and active imagination than the alternative, which posits alternative dimensions, alternate realms, the ability to communicate across them using nothing but the Mk.I human brain, the dead continuing to exist in a "spiritual" form, being able to communicate, actually having an interest in communicating, choosing to do so with only specific individuals, some deceased evidently choosing not to, some perfectly ordinary people being able to do this of their own volition and some other equally ordinary people not, some people choosing to fake ability to do this and claiming legitimacy only to be proven to be fakes, and the dead seemingly being wholly uninterested in anything aside from missing trinkets and passing on platitudes to the bereaved. Supposing for a moment it's legitimate, that not only involves an enormous stretching of credulity, but it also contradicts some empirical knowledge we do possess, and demands that we accept a whole boatload of premise and hypothesis that, conveniently for those making the claims, can not be rigorously tested or verified.

So which is the more likely? It's fact, or it's a load of nonsense and nothing more than a combination of imagination and deliberate charlatanism?

All this talk of "altered state of consciousness" and "symbolism" is all very well, but it's utterly meaningless and could simply be "made up" as to lend some apparent credence to the claims. You could contend "ah, well, you see, the reason you can't commune with the dead is because you can't enter the necessary state of consciousness and you don't focus on the necessary imagery", which is convenient, because then that provides a "reason" as to why someone can not do something that is patently an absurdity to begin with.

So if it can indeed be "taught" and then practiced, why isn't it taught in typical places of study and learning, because it seems it might be of use to most of us, and I'm sure if it was legitimate then quite a lot of people might relish the prospect of being able to a have a chat with a deceased acquaintance or loved one.

@MargoLivebetter I’m not saying that every individual has to take a neutral perspective, I’m saying that people who choose to investigate mediumship ideally need to aim for a neutral approach with whoever they are studying, regardless of whatever their personal leanings on the subject may be.

It may be impossible for investigators to be completely neutral, but they can strive for it to an extent. If confirmation bias is something that investigators need to try to mitigate, then it’s something they need to to do to ensure that the investigation/research isn’t overly clouded by their personal ideological preference.

@SorcererGaheris well for sure, that goes for any investigation or research!

@XDownwiththissortofthingX

I would say that the reason it’s not taught in typical places of study and learning (such as mainstream schools/universities) etc is because it’s not something that is widely agreed upon to be a reality by an overwhelming majority of people. While there are a few people who don’t believe in, say, certain kinds of scientific fact knowledge (such as evolution on the world being round) that’s a tiny number in this country, at least, and I doubt you’d find anyone who denied that Science as a field wasn’t reality, or any other subject.

While I do think that there is some credible (scientific) evidence for a spirit world/mediumship, I am also aware that it has not been scientifically proven to be true beyond all reasonable doubt. Which is why, even though I believe that there is a spirit world and that people can connect to it if they learn and practice, I also contend that it is reasonable for other people not to believe that it is possible. So that’s another reason that it’s not taught in regular schools/universities.

I would say that spirit contact doesn’t necessarily entirely take place in a non-physical sense, because there are some physical movements that are associated with spirit contact. Those physical movements could also perhaps be attributed to something mundane/non-spiritual, though - what I’m saying is that in the philosophical milieu of communicating with spirits, where it’s accepted as a reality, there are physical manifestations included.

Yes, you’re right, it’s a possibility that these experiences could purely be our imaginations and nothing else. That’s why it does come down to being a belief, rather than complete 100% certainty. However, I think it is a belief that is supported by some level of credible scientific evidence (such as the research from parapsychology), a well as non-scientific forms of evidence (personal experiences, personal testimonies, etc.) I weigh up that and come to the conclusion that a spiritual reality is what I believe is the more likely. But another person can come to the opposite conclusion, and that is no less valid than mine.

No one is saying to people “you can’t commune with the dead.” It’s not presented as some special practice that only a tiny few can do. In the philosophy of Spiritualism, literally everyone can do it if they put in the effort.

No. It's all woo.

@ShushImTalking "She photographed the spot where she had a massive hunch (lol) a year before the excavation took place and many years before books and films came along.

How do sceptics explain that one? "
Experts had suspected he might be buried in that place for many years. As early as-possibly earlier but I'd have to look it up-the1960s

Agree @CurlewKate . There had been a lot of earlier research on whereabouts of Richard III's body was. In the 1920s someone called Charles Billson believed that he was probably under Grey Friars Street. Later in the 1960s and 70s the keeper of Archeology at Leicestershire museum had articles published in local papers about him being under the car park. And another researcher in the 980s, David Baldwin had also suggested that he was at the north end of Grey Friars.

As far as I can tell the dig took place after huge amounts of research and investigation. It was hardly on the basis of a hunch!

@SorcererGaheris

I appreciate the point you make about Flat Earthers and suchlike (and your interesting post more generally), but the thing about Flat Earth is it's a theory which is fundamentally simple to disprove, so it's not just that people disagree that means it is not widely studied, it's because it has no merit.

"mediumship" is not as simply or readily disproven, and it's also highly contentious, and as you rightly point out, not generally agreed upon to actually even be a "thing" to begin with, but I would have thought that the fact it is contentious would mean that people would be eager to scrutinise and study it in great detail, especially given what it claims to do, but aside the inherently "take with a pinch of salt" claims made about shady organisations like the CIA investigating "remote viewing" and so on, I'm not aware of many, if any of the major academic institutions paying it much heed, which I'm struggling to reconcile given that the implications of mediumship being a reality are hugely significant.

When I said "taught", I was thinking in terms of teaching as you would a teacher to student, but in truth, I would think that if there was actually any merit to it, it would be subject to enormous resource investment given the implications.

To go off on a tangent slightly, similar points are often made about the existence or otherwise of the Divine, but the curious thing about that is mankind has spent thousands of years wholly consumed with the notion of Gods, religion, creation and so on, but in spite of all that and all the time and resources dedicated to study, there is still not a single shred of anything tangible which suggests any of it is reality.

I suppose what I'm getting at, is the fact that something so seemingly significant and with potentially enormous implications is largely ignored is a bit incongruent, given that humanity has been obsessed with something similarly esoteric for eons, so evidently "not in agreement on the question of existence" is no bar to enormous resource and time investment, so why is "mediumship" such an anomaly?

I used to wonder why mediums or spiritualists could get the first name but never the surname as well. Surely if you sense or hear one name, you should be able to sense or hear the other?

There may or may not be something after death (will find out one day I'm sure). I am 100% confident that mediums are all frauds. As Derren Brown once said, if our loved ones who have died wanted to speak to us they wouldn't choose to do it via strangers charging us money. At least mine certainly wouldn't 😁

@XDownwiththissortofthingX

See, I do understand why you feel that way, and I want to try to respond in a way that doesn’t seem like a cop-out.

https://www.windbridge.org/factsheets/WRCwellactually.pdf

I do think that Julie Beischel (herself a mediumship researcher) makes a good point on Page 2 of this PDF, where she addresses the question of why more people aren’t studying it. To quote her:

”There are a lot of factors preventing more research. While mediumship has become relevant in the popular culture, it remains a taboo subject in scientific, government, social and clinical circles. And effective and relevant research studies require funding, but parapsychological research worldwide, of which mediumship is only a small portion, receives less than 5% of the support that grants for medical research or research in science and engineering provide. And because funding is limited and humans require pay for the jobs they do in order to secure food and shelter, very few individuals are currently performing mediumship research.”

I’m not sure your comparison to the existence of Gods is the best fit, because while it’s true that the subject of religion/deities has had resources given for its study, it is academically studied in a philosophical, sociological and cultural sense, rather than through the lens of scientific verification. There are no academic institutions trying to scientifically prove (or indeed disprove) whether deities exist or not, likely because it’s an impossible thing to prove or disprove.

Now something like mediumship is potentially provable, at least to a greater degree than it is currently, and you could say - “Well, if there was really something to all this, they’d invest more resources into studying it” - but I think that fails to take into account that there is a very significant stigma against the paranormal and occultism in academia, and the fact that it’s a contentious/taboo topic affects how people view it and whether they’re prepared to put significant resources into it. This is not to say that scientists/academics are all non-believers in a spiritual side to reality, numerous ones do believe in it, but the overall culture of academic has, for some decades had a rather condescending and hostile attitude to the realm of the paranormal. The perception is very much encouraged that the only “rational” view is to completely dismiss/disbelieve in the subject.

To give an example - you may or may not have heard of Professor Ronald Hutton, a historian who has written on pre-Christian, pagan Britain. He has always been very circumspect about what spiritual beliefs he has, if any, but it is well-known in occult and pagan circles that Hutton is a believer and practitioner. He sits in Druid circles, and is the keynote speaker at this weekend’s Occult Conference in Glastonbury, as he was the first time I attended one in 2022. I bring this up because I asked if I was allowed to take photos of any of the talks/workshops, and I was told that I could, but that Ronald Hutton had requested that no photos be taken of him, as he didn’t want any danger of it becoming public knowledge (to a wider audience than occultists and pagans) that he was there. The reason was that if knowledge of his presence there was brought to the attention of people in his academic circles, it could potentially lead to problems for him - his work would be unjustly questioned, people would automatically assume (without good reason) that his beliefs influenced/impacted his historical research, with the implication that it led to him getting things wrong. So that’s an example of one (non-science) academic feeling they have to hide this part of themselves. Personally, I think it’s a shame that in an environment that’s at least ostensibly supposed to be built around free thinking and freedom of inquiry, that people should feel they need to hide certain spiritual beliefs due to the possibility of prejudice.