IN ORDER to understand the complexities of the survival issue, you must first
understand a little about the history of psychical research. Parapsychology
today is an experimental science; and most professional researchers devote
themselves to testing people in the laboratory for telepathy, clairvoyance,
precognition, and mind over matter. This is actually only the newest face
parapsychology has adopted during its short history, in its search for
scientific respectability. The science of parapsychology actually dates back to
the 1880s, which was an era before the advent of complicated statistics,
psychophysiology, and the other tools used by parapsychologists today. Psychical
research in those early years was a more philosophical and existential pursuit,
since it emerged from a society very different from that of today.
Several factors contributed to the way culture was forced to change during the
Victorian age, and these factors naturally influenced the way in which psychical
research first developed. This was an age where science and scientific
achievements were challenging the religious authority that had guided European
thought for the previous five hundred years. The nineteenth century was an age
of industry and invention, and many people believed that science, and not
religion, would salvage mankind and prove him master of the universe. It didn't
help matters either when Charles Darwin, the brilliant British scientist and
thinker; came forth with The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
and (later) The Descent of Man. Darwinian thinking implied that man was
merely a part of the existing world order and not set apart from it. Darwin's
discoveries demonstrated that man did not suffer a spiritual 'fall' from Divine
grace when he came to inhabit the earth, but merely evolved from lower life
forms. This represented a challenge to Christian authority, which taught that
man must fight to regain the spiritual status he lost at the beginning of time.
During these years, scholars in Germany were also showing that even the Bible
itself was not an infallible document, but could be critically analysed like any
other piece of literature and what they were uncovering was disturbing to the
religious establishment.
What resulted was a society which, for the first time in years, would not adopt
a spiritual world-view simply on the basis of religious dogma. Science was
raising mankind above the gods, and it looked as though religion would have to
adopt the methods of science in order to prove such doctrines as the soul and
its immortality.
It was also during these critical years that a small sect came surging out of
the United States. Spiritualism was a small religious movement whose roots dug
deeply into the American culture of the 1840s and '50s. The development of the
movement dated back to 1848, when several eyewitnesses were able to observe some
poltergeistic antics in a cottage located in Hydesville, New York. The outbreak
consisted chiefly of intelligent rappings, and focused on two teenaged girls
living in the house
Margaret and Kate Fox, whose father was a local farmer; were soon travelling
throughout the East demonstrating their power to bring through the raps from the
spirit world. These demonstrations piqued the interest of the scientific
community as well as the general public, who saw in the paranormal the basis for
a new religion ... a religion which taught that communication with the dead was
a common reality. Whether or not these first two 'mediums' were genuine or fake
is really inconsequential, for spiritualism was now on the rise.
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The Fox sisters cause a table to levitate at Rochester in the 1850s; such
physical feats were supposed to be caused by the spirits, thus giving evidence
of survival. (Mary Evans Picture Library)
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What so appealed to the American public was that spiritualism appeared to be
'scientific' religion. It didn't base its theology on dogma or authority, but
taught that each seeker could prove its main tenets for him or herself. The
sceptic merely had to procure the services of a good psychic or trance medium.
The rise and spread of the spiritualist movement not only influenced popular
culture, but came to the attention of the British intellectual establishment as
well. The advancement of spiritualism in England occurred at about the same time
that a number of British philosophers, loosely connected by their association
with Cambridge University, were grappling with religious doubts of their own.
Chief among these thinkers was Professor
Henry Sidgwick, who was an influential philosopher and a professor at the
university. His fellow intellectuals included his former pupil
F. W. H. Myers, and
Edmund Gurney, a Cambridge graduate and a musicologist of no mean merit.
These intellectuals were acutely distressed by the changes they were seeing in
British culture and thinking. They were the sons of ministers and had been
brought up to cherish Christian values and beliefs. It troubled them to see
society turning from the old doctrines, but at the same time, they realized that
these changes were logical in the radically changing world. They were aware that
society was about to be deluged in a wave of atheism and materialism, which they
felt would mark the decline of society. So they soon became committed to finding
a way of re-establishing the Christian order. Since they could no longer rely on
polemics or philosophical reasoning, they found themselves in quite a quandary.
And it was at this time that they began casting a still-suspicious eye at the
spiritualist movement which had emigrated to England in 1852. The Cambridge
group finally decided that it was in this arena that they could make their most
important gains. For if the supernatural could be scientifically demonstrated,
they believed, their findings could be used to reject Victorian materialism.
It should be pointed out, though, that the Cambridge group was not out to
'prove' spiritualism. The members merely reasoned that if the phenomena of
spiritualism were genuine, these strange events would reconfirm the spiritual
nature of man. Some critics of the groups work also charged that these thinkers
were emotionally committed to finding proof of life after death. This, however,
was hardly the case. Professor Sidgwick and his colleagues were eager to find
scientific evidence with which they could rebut the tide of materialism popular
in their day. But they also realized that this evidence would have to be strong
enough to influence any objective critic, as well as satisfy their own
challenging doubts.
This, in fact, is one of the reasons why the survival controversy has never been
resolved within parapsychology. The founders of the science soon learned that
finding proof of life after death, an issue that indeed became central to them,
was not as easy as solving a problem in logic or the solution to an algebraic
equation.
The most important outcome from these years of search and questioning came in
1882, when the Cambridge group joined forces with several of the more critical
members of the spiritualist movement. Together they founded the Society for
Psychical Research, which became the first scientific body devoted to the study
of the paranormal. The goal of the SPR was to investigate reports of psychic
phenomena, establish criteria for what constituted evidence, and then determine
the nature of these events. The Society undertook these studies in a critical
frame of mind, and many notable figures in British history joined forces with
it. These included several eminent scientists as well as a few political
leaders.
The science of modem parapsychology was born through the endeavours of the SPR.
In time even the spiritualist elements fell away from the Society as the
original Cambridge group began applying more and more critical standards to
their studies. For better or for worse, the SPR eventually freed itself from its
early religious associations. It became essentially a society devoted to
separating fact from fiction and fraud in the study of psychic phenomena.
The founders of the SPR set about to study a rich variety of paranormal
phenomena, not all of which directly related to the survival problem. They
investigated cases of telepathy occurring m everyday life spearheaded
experimental research on thought-transference looked into poltergeist cases, and
were fascinated by the study of hypnosis. But the central concern of the SPR was
with the survival issue.
Next part (3): Apparitions and the Case for Survival
More parts to this article:
Part 1: The Case of James Kidd
Part 2: The Foundations of Survival Research (current page)
Part 3: Apparitions and the Case for Survival
Part 4: Mediumship and the Case for Survival
Part 5: Cross-correspondences
Part 6: New Developments in Research on Mediumship
Source:
D. Scott Rogo's "Life After Death. The Case
for Survival of Bodily Death" (London: Guild Publishing, 1986).
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