Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.
—Daniel Patrick Moynihan
If Spirits are real, can they play a fundamental role in your life?
There is growing scientific evidence that this is occurring, but just as crucial is the testimony of people from all walks of life who claim it to be true for them. Over the past ten years, I have come to know, investigate, and ultimately befriend a group of people who are convinced that not only are Spirits real but also that they are in daily contact with these invisible entities or energies. These people insist that they do not just believe but know that Spirits play a fundamental role in their lives. They experience these Spirits as helpers or guides in their lives. For Clarissa Siebern, whom you will meet in chapter 15, her alleged Spirit guides instruct her to say or do novel things that turn out to be timely and meaningful, and are evidential of her emerging intuitive abilities. For example, she was prompted to give me a Salvador Dali painting, Meditative Rose, which led to a series of rose synchronicities ending five days later when I met my future wife, Rhonda, the Greek origin of whose name means rose.
These people are convinced that their respective personal Spirit guides—be they deceased people, higher entities including angels, or the Great Spirit itself—are their friends, companions, extended family, and partners. Some hold ongoing two-way conversations with them in their minds, asking for advice and guidance as they would of a trusted friend or wise counselor, while others just put out their requests and look to their lives for the results. For instance, they may do one thing prompted by Spirit, which turns out to be a charitable contribution, but receive the equivalent compensation from another source within days. You may have experienced something similar in your own life but didn’t make the connection.
I call this the sacred partnership hypothesis because these people experience the collaboration of Spirit as reflecting a relationship whose intent is global as well as personal. They are convinced that this emerging sacred partnership exists for their personal benefit and for the well-being of humanity and the planet as a whole. They experience the sacredness of this partnership as feelings of love, trust, gratitude, wholeness, reverence, and transcendence.
These people come from all walks of life, and they are highly successful in their respective lives. They include:
♦ a senior vice president of a major investment company
♦ an administrative staff person at a major university
♦ a number of psychiatrists (MDs) and clinical psychologists (PhDs)
♦ a computer engineer and senior programmer at a Fortune 100 software company
♦ a biophysicist researcher turned a spiritual healer
♦ a former mathematics teacher
You will meet some of these people in this book in the context of their contributions to scientific evidence addressing the sacred partnership hypothesis.
My mainstream academic colleagues, as a rule, would presume that such people must be naive, ignorant, foolish, self-deceptive, fraudulent, or even crazy. And since history reminds us that some of the most insane and destructive individuals have believed that they were doing the work of Spirit, if not God, it is easy to understand and sympathize with those who hold such skeptical opinions. For example, the serial killer David Berkowitz, known as the Son of Sam, claimed that he was following instructions from “father Sam,” and that he was a victim of demonic possession. We will return to this issue at the end of the book.
However, the spirit-guided people I am including here do not show the classic signs of schizophrenia or other forms of mental illness. They do not fit the stereotype of New Age flakes. They are not loose thinkers, though they often think outside the box. They are not frauds, and they are not actively engaged in self-deceptive or destructive acts.
These people hold responsible jobs and are typically excellent communicators. Some have published books, and others are currently writing them. They show advanced proficiency as well as a preference for integrating reason with intuition in their daily lives. They all show demonstrable evidence of paranormal-like abilities in their daily lives, like the investment banker who repeatedly followed his hunches in recommending emerging technologies that have created windfalls for clients, or the psychiatrist who sees dreamlike images in sessions with clients that often lead to breakthroughs in their therapy.
They are typically kind, caring, creative, ethical, and compassionate people. And they all enjoy a great degree of playfulness and senses of humor—which makes them a great fun to be with.
However, is there any scientific evidence that what these people know to be true is in fact actually real? Do Spirits actually exist, and if they do, can they play a close and useful collaborative role in our lives?
As Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the late New York senator, said, “People are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts.” How much of what they allegedly know are their opinions, and what actually are the facts? Where’s the evidence? Where’s Waldo?
To answer such challenging questions, society often turns to science. Contemporary science has provided us with many opinions or judgments about the reality of Spirit that are often critical if not dismissive. However, these negative opinions are based almost entirely on prevailing materialistic theories, in the virtual absence of factual research about Spirit.
This is about to change and the world as we know it will never be the same. As The Sacred Promise reveals, cutting-edge science is ready to rediscover Spirit in inventive, inspiring, and enlightening ways.
An Ancient and Contemporary Hypothesis about the Invisible
Since the beginning of recorded history, people have believed in the existence of some sort of a spirit world that played a fundamental collaborative role in the creation, manifestation, and transformation of the physical world. The spirit world was presumed to be nonphysical because it could not be readily perceived by our conventional physical senses of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching.
The Spirit world was invisible to most of us most of the time. However, certain individuals—sometimes called shamans, medicine men and women, and seers—under certain circumstances could experience the unseen world and consciously communicate, if not collaborate, with this supposedly higher or greater reality.
The Mayan shamans, for example, discovered the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, and their astronomers ascertained the precession of the equinoxes long before modern science did. And the Dogon tribe in Mali knew about the existence of Sirius B before twentieth-century astronomy verified the claim. (Without telescopes the Dogon people could have only known this fact by some sort of firsthand experience, such as spirit travel, which historical records describe.)
Going back to the 1960s, there has been a resurgence of public interest in shamanism, spiritual healing, and psychic abilities, including the possibility of foreseeing the future and speaking with the deceased. The media has capitalized on this public interest, and there are presently more television and radio shows devoted to these possibilities than ever.
One reason the public is open to the invisible world is because we now live in an age of the practical invisible. Prior to the twentieth century, these worlds were solely the province of shamans, psychics, healers, and mystics. However, with the discovery of radio waves and the evolution of television and satellite communication, this invisible science has had a great impact on our daily lives.
Today we watch high-definition television provided by electromagnetic waves transmitted from satellites in space. We communicate globally with smart digital cell phones that contain powerful microcomputers for text messaging, surfing the internet, receiving online video broadcasts from the media or our friends, and even playing sophisticated games.
We have a large collection of remote controls for our television receivers, DVD players, gaming stations, and surround-sound entertainment systems using invisible microwaves. And some of us even cook our TV dinners with the same technology—unless we’re yogis living on pure prana.
We live within a pervasive web of wireless communications. And all of this amazing technology is based upon the informational capacity of the invisible world of electromagnetic frequencies. In fact, most of this science is based on the abstract theories of quantum physics, which revealed the microcosmic world hiding within the seemingly solid, observed world of classical science.
It takes relatively little imagination to move from the practical invisible of today’s technology to the possibility of the shaman’s invisible world as envisioned by ancient peoples. Maybe our cell phones can even be adapted for that use, like the Peruvian Whistling Vessels. These clay pots were thought to be water jugs for centuries, until someone blew into their long spout, which gave off a tonal frequency that alters one’s consciousness. Some speculate this was the frequency technology the shamans used for journeying to other worlds.
Why Mainstream Science Assumes that the Spirit World Must Be Nonexistent
When I was pursuing my PhD in psychology at Harvard University in the late 1960s, there was a revolution in psychology taking place. Distinguished experimental psychologists who followed the Skinnerian behavioral framework—after Professor B. F. Skinner from Harvard—claimed that our thoughts and feelings were either illusions or immaterial to how humans functioned.
Subjective experience, especially spiritual, was presumed at that time to be an epiphenomenon—a secondary phenomenon of little importance. In medicine, according to Webster’s dictionary, an epiphenomenon is “an accidental or accessory event in the course of a disease but not necessarily related to that disease.” The M and C words (mind and consciousness) were considered to be taboo in the medical world’s lexicon.
We now know that this then-popular scientific view was nearsighted, to put it mildly. However, today the S words (for spirit, soul, sacred) are still considered to be taboo in much of science. Belief in Spirit is akin to superstition or stupidity. Spirituality is often presumed to be an epiphenomenon or side effect of the brain and our need for hope, even if the hope is delusional.
Why is mainstream science typically so dismissive of the possibility of Spirit and why should we care?
As mentioned briefly above, this reflects the sordid history of fraud and pathology associated with a subset of self-proclaimed spiritual people, including highly visible religious and political leaders, as well as self-proclaimed psychics and healers. However, there other reasons why mainstream science dismisses the existence of Spirit, and they include the following:
♦ Historically genuine scientific findings were sometimes dismissed or suppressed by powerful religious institutions. In the Middle Ages, scientists were threatened and even jailed for challenging prevailing Church doctrine.
♦ A corollary of this suppression was that science as a discipline needed to divorce itself from anything religious or spiritual in order to freely seek empirical truth and develop methods to discern fact from faith, fancy, and fiction.
♦ In the process, scientists began to shift their focus from pure science and truth-seeking to “scientism” that creates its own dogma. Thus, science became equated with a material, nonspiritual theory of the universe. When the foundation of science shifted from the process of discovery to theory/philosophy, the possibility of discovering nonphysical aspects of nature was minimized, if not suppressed.
However, when mainstream science as an institution focuses on opinions at the expense of facts, it can dismiss or ignore some of the profound challenges facing society and the planet at this moment in history, and this can greatly impact our lives. For example, for eight years the Bush administration sought out those scientists who disputed the clear evidence of global warming and used this “science” to ignore the problem. Science should be about evidence, not opinion.
Consider this: If you were Spirit, and you were invited to participate in research with scientists on the earth, would you prefer to work with people who are kind and playful and who genuinely care about discovering the truth, or would you choose to work with people who are hostile and care more about proving or disproving specific theories than discovering something that might be different from what they believed? Whose experiments would attract your participation? I sometimes wonder if one of the reasons why my colleagues and I are fortunate in often obtaining positive results is because Spirit knows that we really care about finding the truth of the matter, and that we will follow the data where it leads.
This book focuses on the emerging reality of Spirit—rediscovered using the scientific method as expanded by self-science—and the promise of Spirit’s increasing helpful role in our lives. However, its subtext addresses the nature of science versus scientism in the larger context of our evolving understanding of a greater spiritual reality and living in harmony with both the physical and the spiritual.
What Do You Believe about the Existence of Spirit?
How would you answer the following questions, using a −3 to +3 rating system:
| +3 Definitely YES | -1 Possibly NO |
| +2 Probably YES | -2 Probably NO |
| + 1 Possibly YES | -3 Definitely NO |
| 0 Do not know one way or the other |
Does Spirit exist and play a fundamental role in our lives?
Could the synchronicities of daily life be Spirit directed?
Can we rely on our Spirit connection for guidance?
People’s opinions can range from superskeptical disbelief (a firm −3 NO) to fully formed faith (a +3 YES), with representation at every level in between on such questions. Your response here and elsewhere—whether directly asked or not—is an important barometer to test your openness or resistance to any area of inquiry. Ultimately, it is up to you as an individual to make your own leap of faith or feeling. But first, you must know precisely where you stand.
When I began this research over a decade ago, I was somewhere between a 0 and a +1—maybe around a +0.3 or +0.4. In other words, I was somewhat open to the possibility that Spirit might be real and could potentially play some sort of role in our lives. Notice my use of the terms “somewhat open” coupled with the words “might be,” “could potentially play,” and “some sort of role.” I was firmly somewhere between a 0 and a 1. This was partly due to my questioning mind and partly to my understanding of quantum physics, which leaves the door slightly ajar for such a possibility.
I happened to have been raised in a strict reform Jewish home, which presumed “ashes to ashes, dust to dust, case closed.” And my scientific education in psychology and physiology professed that the mind was entirely a byproduct of the brain. Therefore, because of my background, any experience of Spirit would be classified as superstition or stupidity—if not a sign of self-deception or psychosis. Based upon my upbringing and education, I had good reason to disbelieve in the possibility of Spirit, and I knew how to adopt a −3 position. FYI, I still do. It’s like riding a bike; once you learn how, you never forget.
As you read this book, you will come to discover how it is that I slowly but surely came to change my rating from +0.3/+0.4 to +2.8/+2.9, and it is my hope that the same happens to you. When you carefully examine the totality of the evidence reported in this book, and you consider the possibility that these findings are just the tip of the iceberg, you may come to agree with me that it is only die-hard obstinacy that motivates dedicated disbelievers.
Again what is fascinating about the evidence reported in this book is that it combines exploratory investigations (Type II) and systematic experiments (Type III) conducted in scientific laboratories with data collected in the natural laboratory of our daily lives (Type I). This is self-science, and this type of data should be considered objectively. Carefully documented evidence from people’s personal lives compliments what the laboratory research is uncovering—whether the laboratory research is physically conducted within a formal academic setting or in one’s home. I think that the combination of both kinds of evidence (informal/personal and formal/laboratory) proves to be more compelling and convincing than either one alone; together they establish convincing proof of concept.
It is one thing to observe a phenomenon in a basic science laboratory; it is another to observe it in our daily lives. It is one thing to have a medium confirm facts about the deceased in a double-blind experiment; it’s another to hear a voice saying or to get an intuition to pull off the freeway and ride out a thunderstorm that creates a pileup two miles down the road. When the types of evidence converge, and do so repeatedly, we not only have more reason to believe in the reality of the phenomenon, but we also have reason to incorporate this knowledge into our personal lives and act upon it.
Three Categories of Evidence and the Journey of Discovery
In addition to employing the three types of investigations, we will be examining three categories of evidence in this book. You will be better able to take the journey of discovery with me if you can appreciate how I reached my conclusions—and in the process, you can come to your own conclusions—and you can share in the excitement, wonder, frustration, confusion, and fun of actually doing the work with me.
Again, as Carole King reminds us, this is a journey from the head to the heart at every stage, and while we may occasionally make quantum leaps, rigorous examination is a good starting point. As we delve into each category, I ask that you think about your own history and how this exploration may explain events that until now were unexplainable or even those that were ignored at the time but now come to mind.
The first category of evidence addresses the possibility that people’s consciousness survives physical death and that their consciousness is as alive—and is as willful/intentional—as yours and mine. You will see how I came to conclude that information provided in investigations and experiments with research mediums indicates that the spirits appear to not only be alive and well, but as intelligent, willful, and playful as we are, if not more so. These spirits range from relatively unknown mothers and fathers to Princess Diana and Harry Houdini.
A quick but essential clarification: It is important to note that I use the term alleged in regard to Spirit and that it is always implied whether stated or not. When I speak of Spirit, I am really saying alleged Spirit. This also applies to spirit guides, angels, or even the Sacred; each is implicitly preceded by the silent and invisible alleged. When I mention the continued presence of Professor Einstein or Princess Diana, the silent and invisible alleged is there as well.
The second category of evidence involves the possibility of spirit-assisted healing. The examples range from carefully examined case studies where Spirit appears to have played a role in healings (Type I), to proof-of-concept laboratory investigations (Type II) and experiments (Type III) demonstrating how the spirit-assisted healing can be scientifically investigated in the laboratory.
The third category of evidence is by far the most challenging and controversial. It involves the possible existence of a greater spiritual reality including angels and spirit guides. I include personal examples of addressing the Spirit guides hypothesis with an open yet critical mind, as well as the use of supersensitive biophysical instruments to potentially detect the spirits’ presence.
Let’s begin by raising the question, if Spirit exists, how can it prove its existence to us? As you will see in the next chapter, a formal criterion has been developed to pose such questions about thinking computers, for instance, none of which have passed the tests at this point. My proof of concept is that if spirits are proven to be as mindful and willful as we are, then they at least pass the test of the survival of personality . . . and possibly more.