NOTE: This article was published in Paranthropology Journal in 2015. To obtain the article from the Paranthopology website, contact Elliot Benjamin at ben496@prexar.com A shortened version of this article is available on the Integral World website: http://www.integralworld.net/benjamin74.html
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Vol. 6 No. 2 50
Experiential Skepticism and an Exploration of
Mediumship and Life After Death
Elliot Benjamin
Abstract
This article describes a “researcher-based experiential research” approach to an exploration
of mediumship and life after death. More specifically, the qualitative research methodology
of autoethnography, as used by the author in his Ph.D dissertation and previous postdissertation
research in the above topic, is described, followed by an illustrative description
of the author’s more recent related experiential research. The twofold nature of skepticism
involving “the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the
same time a great openness to new ideas,” a quote taken from a lecture on skepticism given
by Carl Sagan in 1987, is the core premise of this essay. Along these lines, another quote
from Sagan, this one involving his belief that certain aspects in the field of extrasensory
perception (ESP) “deserve serious study” is described, in a context that may shed some light
on possibly gaining more understanding of what may take place in communications from
some mediums some of the time. This essay advocates that skeptics thoroughly investigate
high quality parapsychological research, with the kind of openness that Sagan suggested.
above context of skepticism as described by
Sagan.
However, an essential ingredient in my
agnostic/skepticism investigative research is
to make use of my own experiences as part
of my research exploration. This can be
considered to be an extension of the qualitative
research methodology of participant
observation (Creswell, 2007). In particular, I
used this form of qualitative research in my
dissertation in the context of autoethnographic
research. Autoethnography was initially
developed in the 1970s largely
through the efforts of sociologist Carolyn
Elis (2004; 2009), and it involves “the interplay
of introspective, personally engaged
self-reflections with cultural descriptions
mediated through language, history, and
ethnographic explanation” (Chang, 2008, p.
46). The basic idea of autoethnography, and
the term I have coined as “researcher-based
experiential research” (Benjamin, 2012),
2 is
to complement more traditional quantitative
experimental research, as well as more
traditional qualitative research that focuses
on the experiences of others, with the researcher’s
own relevant experiences in regard
to what is being researched.
Autoethnographic research allows for
the researcher’s deep relevant experiences
to be expressed, formulated, analyzed, and
evaluated. Needless to say, this enters the
subjective territory of the researcher.
3
However, with the assumption that the researcher
has been thoroughly trained in
both research methodology and selfawareness,
along with a balancing of more
traditional quantitative and qualitative research
approaches to the same research
question, I believe that this inclusion adds
an extremely valuable dimension to an extensive
exploration of what is being
researched.
4
The basic theme of this research methodology
is an important part of what
philosopher/psychologist William James
(1912/1976) described in his theory of “radical
empiricism” over a hundred years ago.
The following quote from William Braud &
Rosemary Anderson (1998) gives a good illustration
of what James had in mind:
Any and all sources of evidence, ways
of knowing, and ways of working with
and expressing knowledge, findings,
and conclusions can be brought to
bear on the issues being researched—
There is an epistemological
stance of what William James (1912/
1976) called
radical empiricism—a
stance that excludes anything that is
not directly experienced but includes
everything
that is directly experienced,
by anyone involved in the research
effort. Thus, the research participants’
subjective experiences and selfperceptions
are treated as valid data,
as are the experiences and perceptions
of the investigator. There is an
important place for intuitive, tacit, and
direct knowing; for various arational
ways of processing information; and
for a variety of forms of creative ex-
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Vol. 6 No. 2 51
pression in conducting and communicating
research (p. 241)
MY PREVIOUS EXPERIENTIAL
MEDIUMSHIP RESEARCH
To give an illustration of my motivation in
utilizing my own research experiences in
the context of autoethnography in exploring
mediumship for my dissertation research,
I am including the following excerpt
form the Personal Background section of
my dissertation.
My personal background lends itself
well to my research question, as I have a
longtime intensive interest in understanding
the nature of life, whether there is a
God, and the question of what happens to
us when we die. This was undoubtedly precipitated
by the death of my father before I
was 2 years old. I refer to my agnostic perspective
on the veracity of the possibility of
life after death as that of a “spiritual agnostic.”
This means that although I do not have
beliefs
per se in the veracity of life after
death, I do have a spiritual/philosophical
inclination that there is more to life than
merely our physical/chemical material bodies,
formulated and developed primarily by
blind random evolutionary chance patterns
through natural selection mechanisms over
unfathomably long periods of time. I am
also extremely interested and intrigued
with the scientific research and findings of
parapsychology, and with the possibility of
utilizing parapsychological data and quantum
physics theory, as well as super-psi and
energy field explanations, to furnish scientific
models to explain the hypothetical
phenomenon of life after death
However, I am very aware of my own inclinations
in this regard, and I thoroughly
discuss my thoughts and feelings in Part 4,
as part of my autoethnographic, heuristic,
and intuitive inquiry self-reflections. And I
will add that I believe my mathematical and
scientific state of mind is an excellent balance
for my philosophical/spiritual inclinations;
a balance that has enabled me to acquire
a penetrating and effective agnostic
perspective to explore my research questions
(Benjamin, 2012, p. 13).
I summarized the conclusions to my
dissertation research in regard to my second
research question pertaining to the
possibility of life after death being a
bona
fide
phenomenon, as follows: Fraud per se is
not in general a viable explanation of the
alleged afterlife communications of the participant
mediums who were involved in this
research. Thus, in conclusion, the results of
my dissertation research regarding my second
research question lend themselves
most strongly to an interpretation of sensory
cues, subjective evaluation, generic
statements, and coincidence, while sociocognitive
and fantasy proneness factors appear
to have been commonly used by the
participant mediums.
A secondary possible interpretation in
some instances is that of some form of psychic
communications. However, further research
in this researcher-based experiential
research context in a variety of settings—
both with mediums involved in
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Vol. 6 No. 2 52
Spiritualism and with independent mediums—
is needed in order to establish a
strong “extended science” experiential basis
of knowledge in this elusive realm of inquiry.
My conclusion doesn’t mean that
there is no afterlife, nor that there are no
Spiritualist mediums who are capable of
authentic communications via a “spirit
world” from people who have died. But it
does mean that I have not experienced this
for myself as part of my dissertation research
(Benjamin, 2012a, pp. 211-212;
2014a, pp. 217, 219).
The following illustrative account from
my 2011 individual medium session with
Reverend Steve Hermann, which concluded
my experiences with mediums for
my dissertation, conveys how I experienced
a high level of personal involvement in relation
to my autoethnographic study of
mediumship and the ostensible phenomenon
of life after death. In this excerpt, I refer
to Steve Hermann as ”Medium W”
where the “W” stands for “White Crow”
and refers to William James’ dictum that to
prove that not all crows are black, it is sufficient
to find “one” white crow (James,
1896). My personal motivation in engaging
in my dissertation research was very much
based on wanting to know if my deceased
brother Fred could possibly still be “out
there,” and this becomes apparent in the
course of my session.
Medium W had held my hands to begin
with, to help him feel a connection to me,
and when half-way through the session I
forced myself to convey to him that nothing
he was saying had much personal impact
on me and that I needed to feel a connection
with a deceased person to feel open to
the “spirit world,” Medium W took my
hands again and said he would try to make
this connection for me.
When he went off on a tangent that was
far removed from anything “real” for me, I
tried once more to convey to him what I
needed and wanted, even offering to tell
him about the “coincidental” meaningful
example he had happened to use in his
morning workshop that had such strong
impact on me. There were actually three or
four times that I interrupted Medium W
and conveyed to him how lacking his communications
had been for me…and in
which I requested “more personal” information
that I could relate to. To his credit,
Medium W didn’t want to hear this more
personal information, and I knew that I was
going way past the boundaries of not feeding
the medium “information” by offering
this.
But I wanted so much to believe that
Medium W could be my White Crow Medium,
and I truly wanted to attend his
follow-up psychic workshop. However, I
also knew that what was really happening
was that Medium W was “failing” for me—
in spite of all his eloquence and worldwide
fame as a medium.
Then suddenly, after my last interruption,
Medium W blurted out something
about “Uncle Fred,” and I perked up and
immediately asked him to say more about
what came to him about this. Medium W
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Vol. 6 No. 2 53
proceeded to say something about “Havana
cigars” and how this person was very fussy
about his cigars and liked his cigars to be of
the best quality (yes my brother was quite
fussy about his “cigars” and went through
much pains to obtain his Robert Burns Tiparillos).
But then Medium W got back to
his more generic and removed communications
that quickly lost meaning and interest
for me. Medium W returned to the same
kind of philosophical communications, now
focusing on how my wanting specific information
from the spirit world as a researcher
was not helpful to me—which reminded
me of his “trance” communications
in his “other voice” from one of the previous
nights. I had no choice but to decide to
conclude my dissertation research and not
attend Medium W’s follow-up psychic
workshop. The fact that Medium W finally
came out once again with saying “Uncle
Fred” and followed it up with “Havana cigars”
could be explained as mere coincidence
or by the triggering of his memory
(perhaps unconscious), of what he might
have overheard from his morning workshop,
mixed with associations of “cigars”
with “uncles,” stimulated by my repeated
intensive requests for more personal information
from him. Stretching things a
bit, perhaps one could utilize some kind of
telepathy or even access to universal energy
fields to explain this, but I do not believe
that a personalized afterlife communication
interpretation from my brother is warranted
here. No, Medium W is not my
White Crow. I have found no White Crows
in my dissertation research with mediums.
This is not what I wanted to end up
f e e l ing and conc luding f rom the
researcher-based experiential component of
my dissertation research. But this is my
truth. How do I, as an agnostic researcher,
experience the exploration of life after
death from the communications of mediums?
The crux of what I have discovered
from my research is that I have not experienced
much of anything. That is, I have not
experienced much of anything in regard to
the alleged phenomenon of life after death
becoming more real to me.
Whatever I have experienced can be
easily explained by the arguments of skeptics
as I have frequently alluded to, and I
won’t repeat the details of the skeptics’ arguments
here (Benjamin, 2012, pp. 303-305;
2014a, pp. 151-153)
Nearly 3 years after my dissertation research
was completed, I engaged in a
Mediumship Mastery workshop facilitated
by Steve Hermann, who ended up writing
the foreword to my
Life after Death book
(Benjamin, 2014a), which is essentially a
condensed and updated version of my dissertation.
I concluded a description of my
experiences in this Mediumship Mastery
workshop with the following statement:
Perhaps I need to “raise my vibrations”
in Steve’s language, in order to
connect to the “spirit world” if a spirit
world truly exists. And then again
perhaps the skeptics’ interpretation of
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Vol. 6 No. 2 54
coincidence, sensory cues, suggestibility,
and subjective validation is all
that is going on here. My inclination is
that the skeptics are right, but at this
point I will open myself to Steve’s interpretation
that there is an actual
spirit world that survives death—but
that I need to meditate and engage in
healing energy work to connect to it.
Why? Because it feels “right” to my
inner deeper self to engage in this
kind of activity. (Benjamin, 2014b, p. 4)
My dissertation experiential research with
mediums included my having engaged in a
number of individual sessions (known as
“readings”), with them, as well as having
attended many Spiritualist camp séances,
workshops, group sessions, and church
services, supplemented by my experiential
research with psychics, shamans, stage mediums,
and at afterlife conferences (Benjamin,
2012, 2014a). However, based upon
what I experienced in my autoethnographic
dissertation and post-dissertation research,
as described above, the prospect of life after
death in the form of some kind of personal
consciousness did not appear likely to me.
At the same time, I believed that there was
justification to consider what has been referred
to as “Anomalous Information Reception”
and “Living Agent Psi” (better
known as “Super-ESP”), as a “possible”
partial explanation for what may be transpiring
in some communications by mediums
some of the time (Braude, 2014; Sudduth,
2014; Beischel, 2014). Consequently I
will next examine the case for considering
psychic phenomena to be a legitimate area
of inquiry for a reflexive open-minded
skeptical investigator.
PSYCHIC PHENOMENA AS
LEGITIMATE SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY
In 2009 I attended a Soul Survival workshop
at Omega Institute for Holistic Studies,
as a preliminary part of my informal
Ph.D dissertation investigations. One of the
speakers was Raymond Moody, who initiated
the currently popular study of neardeath
experience through his worldchanging
book
Life after Life (Moody, 1975)
nearly 40 years ago. Moody talked about the
true meaning of the word “skeptic,” dating
back to ancient Greece; he explained that it
meant having an open mind to alternative
conclusions through a heightened and
more developed sense of logic. This sounds
to me now like it is quite consistent with
Sagan’s above quote about skepticism.
However, as Moody went on to describe his
expectation that it may eventually be possible
to scientifically “prove” the veracity of
life after death and that his research into
near-death experience was in this context, I
knew I had “skeptical” reservations.
One may “believe” that there is something
“anomalous” happening in the communications
of some mediums some of the
time, as described in a number of essays in
Adam Rock’s (2014) edited book
The Survival
Hypothesis
. However, it appears that it
is in all likelihood not possible to “prove”
that these communications are coming
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Vol. 6 No. 2 55
from a “spirit world” involving an “afterlife”
as opposed to some form of Living Agent
Psi (Braude, 2014; Sudduth, 2014). As it
turned out, I was given the microphone to
ask the last question of the evening, and I
asked Raymond Moody why he did not discuss
the possible theory of Super-ESP as
an alternative to his Life after Death formulation,
that related to his near-death experience
research. Moody replied that he did
not place any stock in parapsychology and
that he furthermore considered it to be
“bogus” science, explaining that he did not
think its laboratory methods were able to
give us any real knowledge.
It struck me as hypocritical for Moody to
view parapsychology in such a closedminded
and narrow-minded perspective, in
comparison with how he had described a
true skeptic as being open to alternative
conclusions by means of a heightened
sense of logic. However, I realize that although
most skeptics would certainly disagree
with Moody’s belief that near-death
experience is related to a
bona fide phenomenon
of life after death (see for example
Shermer, 2002, pp. 77-82), most skeptics
would agree with Moody in his discounting
of psychic phenomena and his belief that
parapsychology is “bogus” science (Shermer,
2002, pp. 68-72). However, if we go
back to Sagan’s above quote, it is apparent
that Sagan is true to his quote when it
comes to keeping an open-minded perspective
in regard to parapsychology, at least in
some areas, that I consider to be a hallmark
of being a “true skeptic.” In Sagan’s (1996)
book
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a
Candle in the Dark
he says the following:
At the time of writing there are three
claims in the ESP field which, in my
opinion, deserve serious study: (1) that
by thought alone humans can (barely)
affect random number generators in
computers; (2) that people under mild
sensory deprivation can receive
thoughts or images “projected” at
them; and (3) that young children
sometimes report the details of a previous
life, which upon checking turn
out to be accurate, and which they
could not have known about in any
other way than reincarnation. I pick
these claims not because I think
they’re likely to be valid (I don’t), but
as examples of contentions that
might
be true. The last three have at least
some, although still dubious, experimental
support. Of course I could be
wrong. (Sagan, 1996, p. 302)
Carl Sagan was practicing what he was
preaching in regard to what he believed it
means to truly be a skeptic, and I very
much respect him for this. There is a great
deal of research in parapsychology out
there, with of course different perspectives
regarding its legitimacy and accuracy (see
Cardeña, Lynn, & Krippner, 2000; Irwin &
Watt, 2007; Krippner & Hoffman, 2010;
Radin, 1997, 2006; Targ, 2012).
5 I very
strongly believe that this research needs to
be extensively studied and taken seriously
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Vol. 6 No. 2 56
by skeptics, rather than simplistically dismissing
parapsychology completely as “bogus
science” without bothering to discuss
some of the most impressive research results
in the field, some of which Carl Sagan
alluded to as examples.
Furthermore, I believe that our current
quantum physics mainstream scienceframework
is at least consistent with the
basic theme of psychic phenomena, i.e. it is
“possible” for thoughts to have effects irrespective
of distance, as described in the
first two claims stated above by Sagan
(Bockris, 2004; Hawking & Mlidinow, 2010;
Krauss, 2012; Stapp, 2010; Tart, 2009). Related
to this, there is a particular scientific
speculation that I believe one should also
keep an open mind to, about a possible biological
human brain mechanism involving
“microtubules” that could have the potential
to have effects irrespective of distance.
6
And I will add that an alternative explanation
to that of reincarnation per se for Sagan’s
third claim that he describes, may
very well be in this context of mind to mind
influence, although admittedly we would
now need to enter even more controversial
parapsychology realms, such as for example
Rupert Sheldrake’s (1981, 1995) theories
about morphic resonance. Of course these
are nothing more than speculations at this
time, but my main point is that one should
at least keep an open mind and seriously
study the research in parapsychology that is
out there if one is a true skeptic.
GARDNER’S FIDEISM AND
BEISCHEL’S AFTERLIFE RESEARCH
PROTOCOL
In regard to my openness to continue to
explore the possibility of a
bona fide phenomenon
of life after death, as I described
above at the conclusion of my Mediumship
Mastery workshop, I will say that much of
my openness is not entirely unlike the
openness to a belief in God that prolific
and well-respected skeptic Martin Gardner
surprisingly maintained, as described by
Michael Shermer:
Fideism refers to believing something
on the basis of faith, or emotional reasons
rather than intellectual reasons.
As a fideist I don’t think there are any
arguments that prove the existence of
God or the immortality of the soul.
More than that I think the better arguments
are on the side of the atheists.
So it is a case of quixotic emotional
belief that really is against the
evidence. If you have strong emotional
reasons for metaphysical belief and
it’s not sharply contradicted by science
or logical reasoning, you have a
right to make a leap of faith if it provides
sufficient satisfaction (Shermer,
2002, p. 276).
Now I would not go as far as Gardner in
“believing” in something that is “against the
evidence,” but the emotional needs that
Gardner refers to is something I completely
understand. This is very much why I was
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Vol. 6 No. 2 57
open to Steve Hermann’s above advice that
“I need to meditate and engage in healing
energy work,” because it “feels right” to my
inner deeper self to engage in this kind of
activity. But in regard to evidence that there
is “something” going on in some communications
by some mediums that cannot be
described by our current state of knowledge
in science or psychology, I find the research
protocol of afterlife researcher Julie
Beischel to warrant serious investigation.
Beischel described the “blinding” of
various constituents in her mediumship research:
sitters, mediums, sitter-raters, and
research investigators, meaning not having
access to feedback that could lend itself to
skeptical interpretations of mediumship
communications (Beischel, 2014). This involved
Beischel acting as a “proxy sitter” for
all the phone readings, not interacting with
the sitters prior to their scoring of the readings,
and the mediums only being given the
first names of the deceased persons at the
start of the readings (Beischel, 2014). Although
Beischel may not be unbiased in
her research, as she is frequently featured
on a prominent internet site as a scientist
promoting the belief in life after death
7, I
believe that her research, in the words of
Carl Sagan, “deserves serious study,” as
some of her results indicated the following:
Scores given by blinded sitters to target
readings were significantly higher
than those given to decoy readings in
terms of item accuracy…and overall
score…In addition, sitters have chosen
the target reading as their own 76 percent
of the time. (Beischel, 2014, pp.
185-186)
MY RECENT EXPERIENTIAL
MEDIUMSHIP AND AFTERLIFE
RESEARCH
I would like to now illustratively describe
my recent experiences at a series of workshops
and at a Spiritualist church service,
all of which were conducted by Reverend
Steve Hermann (see above) at Temple
Heights Spiritualist Camp.
My descriptions of these activities are
once again given in the context of
researcher-based experiential research and
autoethnographic research (see above). I
attended the following six events conducted
by Steve Hermann during the last
day of August and first week of September,
2014:
–Sunday afternoon workshop entitled
“Reiki, Jesus and Beyond: Healing
Mastery and the Aura”
–Sunday afternoon church service
–Tuesday late night workshop entitled
“Psychic Surgery and Spirit Operations”
–Thursday late night workshop entitled
“Let’s Have a Séance: Experimental
Trance and Physical Phenomena”
–Saturday morning workshop entitled
“Mechanics of Mediumship: Receiving
Spirit Communications
–Saturday afternoon Medium/
Agnostic Lunchtime Dialogue
10
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Vol. 6 No. 2 58
However, the individual reflections I wrote
soon after the Sunday church service and
Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday workshops
have been misplaced, and therefore I will
be describing what I experienced in these
events from my recollections from my present
frame of reference. This way of describing
my experiences is what Carolyn
Ellis (2009) has referred to as “metaautoethnography,”
which she has described
as follows:
To connect the past to my life now, I
add current reflections, narrative vignettes,
and analyses, which I call
meta-autoethnographies, that fastforward
these stories to the present.
There are occasions in which I revisit
my original representation, consider
responses, and write an autoethnographic
account about autoethnography.
My meta-autoethnographic
treatments provide opportunities to
alter the frame in which I wrote the
original story, ask questions I didn’t
ask then, consider others’ responses
to the original story, and include vignettes
of related experiences that
have happened since I experienced
and wrote the story and now affect the
way I look back at the story. (pp. 12-
13).
The following accounts are my metaautoethnographic
reflections for the first
four of the six events I attended.
REIKI, JESUS AND BEYOND:
HEALING MASTERY AND THE AURA
WORKSHOP
I attended this workshop with my “significant
other” Dorothy, and it was good to see
Steve again and have Dorothy meet Steve.
Steve was very friendly to me, and Dorothy
and I both appreciated the opportunity to
meditate and unwind from how busy and
fast-paced we each had been living the past
few weeks. Yes we both agreed that the
workshop had beneficial healing effects for
us, but not anything different from what
one could experience at a typical meditation
or Reiki
8 or mindfulness9 workshop
that has nothing to with mediums or Spiritualism.
Steve did his thing and talked rapidly
and enthusiastically about connecting
with our “spirit helpers” for healing, but
once again I interpreted this as getting in
touch with my own deep self resources, and
I believe that Dorothy experienced this
similarly.
CHURCH SERVICE
Steve had urged me to come to one of his
church services at Temple Heights after he
read about my disappointing experiences at
Temple Heights church services in my dissertation
(Benjamin, 2012; 2014a). I did not
have high expectations of having much of a
different experience with Steve leading the
service, but I wanted to at least give it a
chance, and therefore Dorothy and I stayed
for the Sunday afternoon church service
that was scheduled to begin soon after our
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Vol. 6 No. 2 59
“Reiki, Jesus and Beyond” workshop
ended. We moved to the more formal
church building for the service, and we sat
in rows, everyone singing church hymns,
followed by most people (including myself
and Dorothy) going up to designated healers
for what was essentially Reiki healing.
Then Steve gave his church sermon in his
typical fast-talking charismatic style, and
followed up with giving a number of “readings”
to selected individuals in the audience.
Steve’s readings appeared very hit or
miss to me, full of all what I have previously
described in my dissertation and book
(Benjamin, 2012; 2014a) and summarized
above: sensitivity cues, reading body language,
subjective validation, generic statements,
and coincidence (Carroll, 2005; Hyman,
2003; Jinks, 2014; Roe & Roxburgh,
2014; Sagan, 1996; Shermer, 2002).
But then Steve chose Dorothy for his
last reading, and I must admit that Steve
came out with some interesting bits of information.
Steve focused on an elderly
woman in the spirit world who he said had
been very persistent and industrious, had
written some books, and that Dorothy was
something like her, but not to the same extent.
I knew that Dorothy’s aunt would
come to her from Steve’s description, and
this was certainly the case, as we discussed
afterwards. Steve also said a number of
things that had no meaning to Dorothy at
all, and we ended up giving Steve a 50% hit
mark for his performance with Dorothy.
Actually, compared to how Steve’s other
readings at this church service looked to
me, a 50% hit mark was pretty good—and
all things considered, both Dorothy and I
were impressed with what Steve came up
with—and I must admit that a part of me
was rooting for Steve.
But did this give me any substantial reason
to increase my openness to a
bona fide
afterlife interpretation? Even if Steve did
accurately pick up something meaningful
about Dorothy’s aunt (which is certainly
quite debatable, as I think the combined
factors of subjective validation and coincidence
have at least equal merit here), it is
virtually impossible to distinguish between
the explanations of super-psi and a
bona
fide
afterlife (see above). Yes, it was interesting,
and I was glad Steve had some beneficial
impact on Dorothy, though it was also
apparent to me that Steve very much
“wanted” to have this kind of impact on
Dorothy, to continue his efforts of persuading
me that mediumship and the spirit
world was “real.” Nevertheless, Steve’s reading
of Dorothy helped me keep an open
mind to what I was investigating. But it certainly
stopped short for me of anything approaching
“evidence” of afterlife communications
from a deceased spirit.
As Steve concluded the service, he
ended up describing “me” and my book-
Benjamin (2014a) in the context of my “excellent
research” and open-minded agnostic
explorations of Spiritualism, and promoted
our medium/agnostic lunchtime dialogue
that we were planning on doing the
following Saturday (see below). I certainly
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Vol. 6 No. 2 60
appreciated Steve keeping his word about
promoting my book, and this actually resulted
in me selling one of my books a few
minutes later. I would have even made a
second book sale if I had not been detained
by someone Steve sent over to me to convey
to me how meaningful the church service
reading he gave to her a little while ago
had been to her. At any rate, Steve suggested
that I bring my books to all the
workshops I would be attending over the
week, and I agreed to do so.
PSYCHIC SURGERY AND SPIRIT
OPERATIONS WORKSHOP
I began my Fall semester teaching with a
long evening math class on Tuesday, and
then got home and ate a quick dinner and
drove to Temple Heights for Steve’s late
night Psychic Surgery and Spirit Operations
workshop, carrying with me my books
to sell. I was particularly interested in the
“psychic surgery” part of this late night
workshop, as I had a great deal of skeptical
reservation about this and it was not something
I had heard Steve talk much about
before—and certainly not attempt to perform.
However, it turned out that basically
Steve did more of what he had done at his
Sunday Reiki/Jesus/Healing workshop—except
that this time a few people chose to lie
down on Steve’s Reiki/massage table and
receive what appeared to me to be a
straightforward Reiki treatment
8 from
Steve. This did not look any different to me
than what I experienced as Reiki treatments
in Steve’s Mediumship Mastery
workshop that I had attended in April, 2014
(Benjamin, 2014b).
I find these Reiki/healing sessions to be
relaxing and meditative in a good way, but I
certainly do not feel any inclination to
think they are performed by “spirit doctors”
doing “psychic surgery” on me. However,
this is what Steve apparently believes, and
his charismatic convincing way of explaining
things appeared to be influencing most
of the people at this workshop to believe
this as well.
One rather humorous component of the
workshop is that during my meditation I
fell asleep. Not just quiet non-intrusive
sleep, but I was actually snoring. I could
somehow hear myself snore and quickly
woke myself up, but when I shared about
my meditation experience and mentioned I
dozed off, both women on either side of me
laughed and said I was snoring. Steve made
a joke of it and it was rather funny, but I
also realized how tired I was and not able
to be fully there. Steve made a pitch for my
book and our Saturday medium/agnostic
lunchtime discussion at the end of the
workshop, but I felt rather embarrassed and
people did not seem particularly interested.
I began to feel concerned that this whole
idea of promoting my book and our
medium/agnostic lunchtime discussion at
Temple Heights did not look very promising.
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Vol. 6 No. 2 61
EXPERIMENTAL TRANCE AND
PHYSICAL PHENOMENA WORKSHOP
This late night Thursday workshop was the
workshop I was most anticipating, as
Steve’s description in the Temple Heights
brochure included the following:
“…see, hear, and feel the reality of
spirit materializations and physical
manifestations. Topics to be explored
include: Materializations, Levitation,
Ectoplasm, Trumpet and Independent
Voice, Transfiguration and Spirit
Chemists.”
10
Once again my skeptical reservations were
in full force, especially from the disappointing
experiences I had previously encountered
with table-tipping and transfiguration
sessions at Temple Heights (Benjamin,
2012; 2014a). Supposedly mediums are able
to incorporate spirits of the deceased to
take over their facial features so that they
look like these former deceased people,
which is what is called Transfiguration. I
knew that Steve shared some of my own
reservations about famous historical figures
like Abraham Lincoln and George Washington
appearing in a transfiguration, but
apparently Steve also believed that all the
different manifestations of physical
mediumship described in his workshop
had the potential to actually take place.
And I figured that this time either I would
see Steve conducting outright fraud, which
I truly did not want to either observe or believe,
or that I would witness something
stupendous happen and transform myself
into a “believer.”
Well neither of the above happened.
What happened is that we first sang a
bunch of children’s songs, commonly done
in physical mediumship workshops and
something I had previously experienced in
one of Steve’s workshops (Benjamin, 2012;
2014a), and then Steve talked and talked
and talked. Yes that was pretty much it—Steve
talked all about how physical manifestations
could happen, how he had previously
emitted the mysterious physical/
mental substance of ectoplasm, how the
atmosphere in the room needed to be very
open and receptive to the spirit world in
order for the physical manifestation effects
to take place, etc. Then Steve turned out the
lights and sat in the chair and we all
watched him, looking for spirit manifestations
to take over his facial features. Steve
had encouraged us to be light and merry
and call out whatever came to us, but people
were not saying very much. However,
this was actually a relief to me, as at least I
could not say that Steve was committing
fraud or pretending to manifest spirits. In
actuality Steve said that this was a very
good group and we had a welcoming spirit
atmosphere, but that it takes time for spirits
to emerge and that groups often sit in circles
every week for long periods of time before
they experience physical spirit manifestations.
Of course I could picture all the
social influence, wishful thinking, subjective
evaluation mechanisms at work here,
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Vol. 6 No. 2 62
but I was still very glad that I did not have
to conclude that my friend Steve was a
fraud.
Yes I consider Steve to be “my friend”
and I know the feeling is mutual for Steve.
I like Steve, and I choose to believe that
Steve believes what he conveys to people
even though I think it is not true, as I have
frequently conveyed to him. Once again
Steve tried his best to promote by book and
our upcoming planned Saturday medium/
agnostic lunchtime discussion at the end of
his workshop. However, I felt increasingly
uncomfortable; I had the feeling that something
was not quite right: with Steve promoting
me and my book to this Temple
Heights audience of mostly aspiring mediums.
But I was less tired at this workshop
than I was at the previous late night workshop.
When he began the workshop Steve
looked at me and in good humor said “no
sleeping”; I was glad that I at least stayed
awake for the whole workshop.
“MECHANICS OF MEDIUMSHIP”
WORKSHOP, MEDIUM/AGNOSTIC
LUNCHTIME DISCUSSION, AND CONCLUSION
OF MY SERIES OF TEMPLE
HEIGHTS EVENTS WITH STEVE
The following is the description of my Saturday
morning Mechanics of Mediumship
workshop, Saturday afternoon medium/
agnostic lunchtime discussion, and conclusion
of my series of Temple Heights events
with Steve that I wrote soon after these
events took place.
And the skeptic in me once again takes
the lead as my mediumship exploration
week with Steve comes to its close. My experience
of Steve’s Saturday morning Mechanics
of Mediumship workshop was basically
similar to my description of my
Mediumship Mastery weekend workshop
with Steve in Massachusetts a few months
ago (Benjamin, 2014b; see above). Steve
teaches prospective mediums to develop
their imagination and visualizing images,
and to have the confidence to convey whatever
creative images they are visualizing, as
veritable messages from the “spirit world.”
He says not to worry if people don’t “understand”
these images—that people will
likely eventually discover that they are accurate.
I perceived that what people came
up with in our mediumship exercises with
one another, a good portion of which could
not be subsequently established by the recipients,
was not at all impressive as an illustration
of either psychic abilities or tapping
into the “spirit world.” But once again
I will give Steve the benefit of the doubt
and conclude that he truly believes what he
preaches to people about this being the way
to tap into communications from the “spirit
world.”
And then we had our lunchtime
medium/agnostic discussion. Steve tried his
best to promote me, and the atmosphere
was initially light and social, in the open
dining room of the Spiritualist camp. Steve
managed to get four people from our morning
group of nine to sit at the dining room
table with us, with a fifth person standing
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Vol. 6 No. 2 63
up and suspiciously (as it appeared to me)
watching me. Some of the Temple Heights
workers were curiously observing our interactions
and occasionally chiming in, and
it looked to me like some of them had concerns
about how appropriate it was for this
to be taking place at a Spiritualist camp.
This was not what I had in mind, but I did
the best that I could to present my agnostic
perceptions of my week with Steve, and I
took out all of my
Life after Death books.
The upshot was that we had a discussion
that lasted over an hour and a half,
which was primarily a dialogue involving
me, Steve, and a woman from the morning
group who was a very responsive, curious,
talkative, friendly, and mystical neophyte
medium-in-training. At the very end of the
discussion, one of the men from our morning
group who was sitting at the table the
whole time without saying a word, asked
me not to leave yet, and then shared with
me his own agnostic perspective to mediumship—
both his openness to his experiences
as well as his doubts and conflicts. I
appreciated this, and it was a good ending
to my mediumship exploration week.
I believe my experiential exploration of
mediumship—at least in the context of the
mediumship of Reverend Steven Hermann—
has finally come to its natural end.
As I always thought, mediums and prospective
mediums are not a good audience to
listen to my agnostic approach to studying
mediumship, in spite of Steve Hermann’s
noteworthy perspective of openness to include
alternate perspectives of mediumship—
for educational reasons. But I believe
that my approach of exper iencing
mediumship through an open-minded agnostic
perspective is an important illustration
of an authentic skeptical approach to
studying mediumship.
My conclusions from my past week of
experiential mediumship exploration have
reinforced my conclusions from both my
dissertation research as well as from my
post-dissertation mediumship workshop
(Benjamin, 2014a; 2014b). I lean toward the
skeptic perspective of explaining mediumship—
creative imagination, subjective validation,
environmental influence, and placebo
effect (see the references listed above).
However, some things still whet my appetite
to leave a bit of room open for other possible
explanations—such as Steve’s 50% accurate
reading of my “significant other”
Dorothy at the Sunday church service. Do I
know for sure that Steve did not somehow
“psychicly” sense from Dorothy the accurate
information he conveyed to her? And
stretching myself even more, do I know for
sure that Steve did not somehow convey a
message from Dorothy’s deceased aunt? No
I do now know anything “for sure.”
My best guess is that Steve used his
psychophysical sensitivity to Dorothy,
whom I am quite sure he had no biographical
knowledge of, to come up with
his creative images, and interpreted this as
a message from the afterlife.
But when I put on my philosopher hat,
if all there is to life and the universe are
psychophysical perceptions, and we can
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Vol. 6 No. 2 64
trace the origin of the universe to some
kind of physical matter in the form of subatomic
particles, then where did these first
subatomic particles come from? My logical
philosophical mind tells me that either
these subatomic particles were “always”
there, or they came from some kind of “energy,”
or they came from “nothing.” Now
something coming from nothing implies
there was already a “potential” for something
to occur (Krauss, 2012); so where did
this “potential” come from? Coming from
some kind of “energy” leaves the same puzzling
questions—where did this “energy”
come from? Being “always there” contradicts
our whole mainstream science framework
of the universe beginning some 14
billion years ago with the Big Bang. Thus
the philosopher in me is not at all satisfied
with the materialist explanation of the universe—
as I conveyed to the mediums and
prospective mediums during my medium/
agnostic lunchtime discussion.
And this is essentially why I cannot
completely rule out the possibility of some
kind of “spiritual intelligence” to explain
the formation of the universe; and perhaps
if there is some kind of “spiritual intelligence”
then it is not impossible that there
is some kind of “spirit world.” But this is
precisely what the foundat ions of
mediumship are based upon, of course
along with the belief in the possibility of
receiving communications from this hypothetical
spirit world for people who have
“left their physical bodies behind.” But
where are the lines drawn between my own
logical philosophical interpretation of all
this, and my very human need to find
meaning both in life and in death? No I do
not know anything for certain, including
the validity of my own philosophical speculations—
in consideration of my human
subjective needs. But in conclusion, in all I
have learned from my experiential study of
mediumship, I now consider myself to be
an agnostic skeptic, at least at this point in
time.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, I am advocating for skeptics
to retain an open mind in regard to research
in parapsychology in general, and in
particular in mediumship research that involves
the kind of controls as described in
the research of Julie Beischel (2014). I believe
it is important for skeptics to thoroughly
study and evaluate this research before
concluding uniformly that parapsychology
is “bogus science.” Furthermore, I
believe that a variety of research app
r o a ch e s i n p a r a p s y ch o l o g y a n d
mediumship research is optimal, inclusive
of a trained researcher’s experiential research
in the natural field setting. It is in
this context, specifically as I have described
for authoethnographic research, that I am
advocating for “experiential skepticism,”
where a skeptic may be experiencing (or
not experiencing) in his/her observations
what he/she is researching, but with the
heights of rational and logical thought that
follow Carl Sagan’s advice, where skeptics
Paranthropology: Journal of Anthropological Approaches to the Paranormal
Vol. 6 No. 2 65
exercise “the most skeptical scrutiny of all
hypotheses that are served up to us” while
simultaneously maintaining “at the same
time a great openness to new ideas.”
1
NOTES
1) See Shermer, 2002, inscription, for this
quote, which was taken from Sagan’s
1987 Pasadena lecture:
The Burden of
Skepticism
.
2) McLeod (2010) has used the term “personal
experiential methods” to describe
similar research methods to what I am
describing.
3) See Lawton (1932), Meintel (2007), Emmons
& Emmons (2002), and Hunter
(2009) for previous researcher-based
experiential accounts of mediumship.
4) See Benjamin, in press, for a more extended
description of how I used
autoethnography as a research methodology
in my experiential dissertation
research on mediumship and
the ostensible phenomenon of life
after death.
5) For more information about peerreviewed
articles on psychic phenomena
see :
http://deanradin.com/evidence/evide
nce.htm).
6) For information about microtubules see
(http://www.quantumconsciousness.o
rg/penrose-hameroff/quantumcompu
tation.html
7) See Victor and Wendy Zammitt’s life after
death website at:
http://victgorzammit.com
8) For information about Reiki see Doi
(2000), Rand (1991), and the Reiki
sections in my
Modern Religions book
(Benjamin, 2013).
9) For information about mindfulness see
Kabat-Zinn (1990).
10) See http://www.templeheightscamp.org
for a description of all of Steve Hermann’s
2014 Temple Heights workshops.
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Elliot Benjamin has a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University
of Maine, and a Ph.D. in psychology from Saybrook
University with a concentration in Consciousness and
Spirituality. He teaches psychology and
mathematics at Husson University and CALCampus. Elliot
was a mathematics professor for 21 years, and has
published four books and over 120 articles in the fields of
humanistic and transpersonal psychology, spirituality and
awareness of cult dangers, parapsychology, the creative
artist and mental disturbance, progressive politics, pure
mathematics, and mathematics enrichment. His books include Life after
Death: An Experiential Exploration with Mediums by an
Agnostic Investigator, Modern Religions: An Experiential
Analysis and Exposé, and The Creative Artist, Mental Disturbance,
and Mental Health, and are currently avalable at
www.lulu.com and www.amazon.com Elliot lives in Maine
and enjoys playing the piano, tennis, and ballroom dancing,
and has an author’s website that can be viewed at
www.benjamin-philosopher.com
