Near-death experiences: considerations on recent conventional explanations

In the ecstatic state, the obliteration of the physical body is almost complete. The body no longer possesses anything beyond organic life. The soul is held by a single thread, which would rupture forever with only a small effort. In such a state, all earthly thoughts disappear, replaced by perceptions that constitute the very essence of the immaterial being. Absorbed completely in this sublime contemplation, the soul views earthly life as only a temporary stay. The successes and misfortunes of the material world, its gross joys and afflictions, appear as so many trifling incidents on a journey, the end of which the soul feels lucky to glimpse. 

(A. Kardec, "The Spirit's Book, Chapter IX, "The liberation of the soul".)   

Translation from the original post in Portuguese: Experiências de quase-morte: considerações sobre explicações convencionais recentes.. Link (2024): https://eradoespirito.blogspot.com/2022/09/experiencias-de-quase-morte.html

We received a proposal to publicize more recent NDEs (or "near-death experiences"). What has changed since our first texts [1] on the subject? Many such experiences were reported throughout time. Readers can visit websites like the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS), its specialized Journal of Near-Death Studies, or the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF). These sites are dedicated to collecting and studying near-death experience stories systematically.

From 2012 to 2022, what did the academic community say about the subject? The term "academic community" might refer to people who do not agree with some of the pioneering researchers on the subject, such as R. Moody, S. Parnia [3], or Dr. Bruce Greyson [4]. These researchers contributed to the mainstream media's coverage of these events. They highlight the atypical nature of NDE reports, including the fact that they "suggest" the continuation of life after death.

A discussion has naturally developed between advocates of the "survivalist" hypothesis (suggesting the experiences reveal a deeper reality beyond life) and others who deny this. Examples of opinions in this last direction can be found in [2], [2b], [5], [6], and [7]. This is apparently reasonable because there is no comprehensive theory of consciousness, which is seen as a result of brain activity. According to the majority of academics, NDEs are simply normal brain reactions in times of life's perils, similar to the phenomenon of "thanatosis" in insects.

The lack of a theory of consciousness

Problems begin with the appropriate definitions of "brain death." This definition is fundamental to understanding the phenomenon since everyone who reported the experience survived. In other words, the brain was not actually "dead", despite the cardiac arrest.

To gain an understanding of the current uncertainty, we must evaluate considerable research mapping brain areas and their associations with core cognitive functions. Such functions are considered to be "generated" or "processed" in highly specific regions of the brain. This is equivalent to arguing that the brain tissue in these locations is responsible for cognitive operations. This idea, however, is undercut by the concept of "brain plasticity" in patients who have severe damage to specific sections of the brain yet have little effect on their cognitive behavior. Plasticity is described as the "capacity of the brain to alter its structure and function" [8]. Given this, what actually drives cognitive functions? Instead of focusing on specific regions and tissues, the explanation requires acknowledging that the brain as a whole is the source, rendering mapping somewhat unnecessary from a fundamental standpoint. In summary: the phenomenon itself is regarded as the cause.

The "complexity" of the connections between the billions and billions of neurons that make up the brain makes it even more difficult to identify the root cause. This complexity would be the source, according to the current explanation, with the variety, richness, and multiplicity of conscious experiences the result of an organization that is inaccessible on a tiny scale. Any explanation is possible, but such an idea may impose severe obstacles to the correct understanding of NDE.

These methodological challenges can be seen in one of the first studies to appear to fully record brain activity following a death. As detailed in [9], it was only completed in 2022. There are obvious practical and ethical challenges, such as securing family permission to do scientific research on a loved member who has been diagnosed with an irreversible clinical disease and is about to die.

Current conventional opinion

Reference [2b] summarizes the mood among defenders of conventional explanations. The author considers:

I accept the reality of these intensely felt experiences. They are as authentic as any other subjective feeling or perception. As a scientist, however, I operate under the hypothesis that all our thoughts, memories, percepts and experiences are an ineluctable consequence of the natural causal powers of our brain rather than of any supernatural ones. That premise has served science and its handmaiden, technology, extremely well over the past few centuries. Unless there is extraordinary, compelling, objective evidence to the contrary, I see no reason to abandon this assumption.

There is certainly a problem with the perception of causation here. Survival is described as a "supernatural experience" without clarifying what this entails: would a break from the natural order be required in the survival theory? Furthermore, it is obvious that the brain filters all NDE experiences, just as it does with normal cognitive experiences. Nonetheless, the latter are given the property of "reality" that exists independently of brain "recreation". However, standard brain explanations fail to explain how this is possible. It makes no difference, neurologically speaking, whether "the brain sees an external light bulb on" or "imagines seeing a light bulb" (the same brain regions are involved in perceiving and imagining something).

This passage in [2] summarizes the usual explanation, which lacks any reference information from external reality:

Not surprisingly, many have seized on NDEs as evidence of life after death, heaven and the existence of god. The descriptions of leaving the body and blissful unity with the universal seem almost scripted from religious beliefs about souls leaving the body at death and ascending toward heavenly bliss. But these experiences are shared across a broad range of cultures and religions so it’s not likely that they are all reflections of specific religious expectations. Instead, that commonality suggests that NDEs might arise from something more fundamental than religious or cultural expectations. Perhaps NDEs reflect changes in how the brain functions as we approach death.

In short, the consistency and uniformity of reports are linked to a "generalized religious belief" that is the result of common events in the brain. The universality of experience stems from the universal biology of what happens in the dying brain.

The objectivity, and convincingness of NDEs must be sought in the character of the independent "external reality" that some reports demonstrate and which defies conventional explanations.

The link between NDEs and external reality

It is quite clear that if NDEs continue to be "meaningful, lived experiences" for those who experience them, nevertheless, they will remain as indistinguishable as "normal" fantasy states as well. This significant and profound feature is irrelevant to the conventional view of the mind as a product of the brain. Whatever you imagine or experience will always be a private experience, and hence a fantasy created by brain neurons.

But is it exactly what NDEs report? The current interest of neuroscientists in NDE cases often goes far away from previous reports in the specialized literature on "true NDEs" [10]. This term refers to NDEs in which patients describe exterior world events that they would be unable to know in their current state and body position. There are other recorded examples, one of which has already been described here [10b].  However, it is often the case many academic opinions simply dismiss such examples as "pure fiction".

Stripp argues in a recent paper [11] that the academic community purposely ignores accounts of authentic NDEs in conformity with the mainstream "reductionist bias". Stripp accurately considers the "ontological and epistemological fallacies" linked with NDEs [12]:

Such a statement is based on ontological materialistic assumptions. These are assumptions that the authors fail to mention or discuss, leading to a circular reasoning fallacy: since everything is only biology, NDEs have a biological purpose. I am not arguing against a commonality among all humans but suggesting that commonality may not necessarily amass solely to the biological components constituting the human body. We simply do not know all that ties us together. Furthermore, pure objectivity is, in many views, impossible, as there will always be some subjectivity and human decision in all research. Also, this subjectivity introduces a bias that one should reflect critically upon. Even the most common axioms of science are human constructs and should be treated as such.

In other words, when truly veridic evidence is supplied, the reports are not deemed sufficiently "objective" to warrant "academic credit" under the ostensible need for objectivity. However, this is irreconcilable with the very nature of the phenomenon being examined.

This lack of deference is carefully chosen so that only narratives that fit the dominant materialist viewpoint are reported to make sense. Many conventional methodologies, as a result, wind up focusing just on parts of the phenomenon that appear to be well explained by what researchers believe from the start. For example, reducing NDEs to "drug-induced hallucinations" is one strategy for deconstructing the reports' rich phenomenology [12]. Some researchers [13] have condemned this approach, which cannot be called scientific.

This situation, in our opinion, is regrettable from a "scientific" viewpoint, but completely understandable. It will be impossible to promote a change in academic thought without doing comprehensive studies on NDE experiences.  In fact, what will be most "extraordinary" to accomplish is a complete shift of thinking about the subject. Because these are data that must be "collected in passing" (as Kardec would say), it will be extremely difficult to establish any form of rigorous control over their frequency, occurrence, and assessment. It would be analogous to attempting to fully understand sporadic events that occur on a huge scale in nature in closed laboratories. Despite attempts to fit NDE events into preconceived notions and mental disorders, they present and will always supply very persuasive evidence of the truth of life's survival.

References

[1] Reflexões sobre o contexto de experiências de quase-morte: artigo de Michael Nahm (2011). https://eradoespirito.blogspot.com/2012/11/reflexoes-sobre-o-contexto-de.html

[2] R. Martone (2019). "New Clues Found in Understanding Near-Death Experiences".https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-clues-found-in-understanding-near-death-experiences/

[2b] C. Koch (2020). What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about the Brain. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-near-death-experiences-reveal-about-the-brain/

[3] What Happens When We Die (Dr. Sam Parnia): https://eradoespirito.blogspot.com/2011/11/livro-iii-o-que-acontece-quando.html

[4] Near-Death Experiences (NDEs). https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/our-research/near-death-experiences-ndes/

[5] Evrard, R., Pratte, E., & Rabeyron, T. (2022). Sawing the branch of near‐death experience research: A critical analysis of Parnia et al.’s paper. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

[6] Hannah Flynn (2022). When are we really dead? New study sheds light. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/when-are-we-really-dead-new-study-sheds-light

[7] Martial, C., Gosseries, O., Cassol, H., & Kondziella, D. (2022). Studying death and near-death experiences requires neuroscientific expertise. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. https://orbi.uliege.be/bitstream/2268/293819/1/comment%20on%20parnia%20et%20al_final.pdf

[8] Kolb, B., & Whishaw, I. Q. (1998). Brain plasticity and behavior. Annual review of psychology, 49(1), 43-64.

[9] Vicente, R., Rizzuto, M., Sarica, C., Yamamoto, K., Sadr, M., Khajuria, T., ... & Zemmar, A. (2022). Enhanced interplay of neuronal coherence and coupling in the dying human brain. Frontiers in aging neuroscience, 80.

[10] Ring, K., & Lawrence, M. (1993). Further evidence for veridical perception during near-death experiences. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 11(4), 223-229.

• https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Madelaine-Lawrence/publication/226754118_Further_evidence_for_veridical_perception_during_near-death_experiences/links/0fcfd513923c05c0e5000000/Further-evidence-for-veridical-perception-during-near-death-experiences.pdf

[10b] Experimentum crucis: EQMs em pessoas cegas.https://eradoespirito.blogspot.com/2013/04/experimentum-crucis-eqms-em-pessoas.html

[11] Stripp, T. K. (2022). Near-death experiences and the importance of transparency in subjectivity, ontology and epistemology. Brain Communications, 4(1), fcab304.

[12] Van Lommel, P. (2011). Near‐death experiences: the experience of the self as real and not as an illusion. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1234(1), 19-28.

[13] Moreira-Almeida, A., Costa, M. D. A., & Coelho, H. S. (2022). Cultural Barriers to a Fair Examination of the Available Evidence for Survival. In Science of Life After Death (pp. 73-77). Springer, Cham.

The mediumship of Orlando Noronha

  

“To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.” – Albus Dumbledore

Psychography is a phenomenon of extraordinary versatility. As Kardec [1] points out, this variety of mediumshp:

It is definitely the simplest, easiest, and most comfortable mode of communication because it requires no preparation and, like regular writing, lends itself to the most comprehensive advances...

This versatility has yet to be fully explored. The tremendous amount of information gleaned from mediumship writings of mediums like Chico Xavier and Divaldo Franco is proof of this statement. If other types of mediumship had nearly vanished (as in the case of physical effects, materializations, and so on), psychography would not face the same fate, fulfilling Kardec's prediction. Orlando Noronha Carneiro is an example of a modern medium that has been able to "channel" (as many would say) hundreds of psychographed letters containing private messages. "Private letters" differ from general-purpose psychographic essays. The latter provides general information that is of interest to the majority. In the former, however, the material is usually directed toward individuals and their private interests. The purpose of these letters channeled by mediums such as Divaldo, Chico, and Orlando is to alleviate family members' grieving by providing information that only close relatives can identify. These family members promptly identify the deceased in the letters, and their suffering is significantly alleviated.

Orlando Noronha.

Orlando is from Osasco (State of S. Paulo/Brazil) and started his voluntary work in the Spiritist Movement around 1980. During visits to the medium Chico Xavier, he informed Orlando that he would continue the work of writing family letters through mediumship. Most information about Orlando's psychographic letters can be obtained on various YouTube channels, the most important one is Mensagens de Luz (Messages of Light) [2], which posts videos of hundreds of messages read by the medium in front of the bereaved family. A recent interview with the medium can be found here [3].

The Portas do Amor (Gates of Love) website (https://www.portasdoamor.com.br/) provides information and Orlando's in-person agenda for the year. Videos from this site can also be watched on YouTube at [5].

Gabriel's case

The videos made available to this date (2024) are amazing in terms of quantity and quality, providing relatives with very relevant content. They also represent an important demonstration of how details are given, both in terms of variety and quantity.

The most important information transmitted in the letters is hidden in the pragmatic content (i.e., context-dependent information), which is only understandable to close relatives and is not publicly available. Drawings (particularly in letters of young diseased authors) and signatures are also present. There are numerous quotations of names, including of deceased relatives who are described as receiving the deceased in the hereafter and, in many cases, assisting him in writing the letter (as in the case of children).

Orlando reads Gabriel's message before his parents. 

In a 2018 video [4], the parents of Gabriel, who passed away in May 2018, talk about the letter they received. We summarize their opinion about this as follows: "Everything matched...Everything that was described belongs to Gabriel". According to the parents, the letter revealed facts about their son, including simple family occurrences that were only known to them. Already during their first visit to the medium, the parents were surprised when the medium asked a singer in the psychographic room to sing a song that Gabriel loved.

The letter translated into English [7] is reproduced below along with some of the relevant information, which are numbered:

Daddy friend Ivan, mommy Rose:

With much celebration, I came to tell you that the rainbow (1) is more than just beautiful; it is a bridge that connects heaven and Earth.

The person who greeted me here identified herself as my great-grandmother Joana (2); she is a very nice lady and a grandma from the heart. When I opened my eyes here, I saw the light (3) of this little grandma and followed her into her arms.

I will be eternally grateful to the community who fought alongside me while I was in the ICU. I hadn't come before (4). You are aware that I completed my stage alongside you and my brother Eduardo. Every prayer I received from the community brought me a breeze of peace that calmed me.

Dad and mom, you are the best; you battled beside me. But I had to bring a backpack (5), not for a journey with you, but to climb another mountain, on the side I live on today. I've already chased birds that fly happily around here.

Mom, you are so beatiful (6), you are everything to me, to dad and Eduardo... Follow in faith, no sadness, and jumping and jumping (7) on the rope of life. I'll come back later, but that is all for today. I am fine. Grandma Joana helps me, okay? Kisses for my grandparents. No jealousy, grandpa Luis (8) is my hand extended to all of my grandparents.

Okay? Thank you! From the happy and much better son,

Gabriel Lima Silva. 

As can be seen, to an outsider, the initial reading of the letter does not appear to reveal anything relevant (the narrated facts are quite ordinary, aren't they?), but this drastically changes in the eyes of the deceased's parents:

1. Before Gabriel became ill, the family saw a rainbow in the sky at home, and Gabriel even painted a picture of a rainbow, which his parents kept in the boy's room.
2. Joana, the name of Gabriel's father's grandmother (deceased a long time ago).
3. Shortly before Gabriel passed away, Gabriel's father suggested to the boy, on his deathbed, that he should "follow the light".
4. In her prayers, the mother asked God if her son had gone before his time.
5. Gabriel's father bought him a backpack the week he got sick. Gabriel commented that the backpack actually looked like a suitcase for a trip.
6. Gabriel repeated this phrase to his mother at home all the time before his death.
7. Gabriel loved the trampoline and wanted to practice parkour.
8. This is the name of Rose's father, Gabriel's grandfather.

Thus, we can say that the message is encoded in the letter and can only be decoded by those who share pragmatic or contextual knowledge as family members. There appear to be hundreds of such letters, each with an equal degree of detail, addressed to mourning parents and other relatives. At the end of the sittings, the letters are delivered to these relatives, however, their content may be heard in the referenced videos which help to keep the interest in these "anomalous" letters alive.

The final picture, along with the impression on the faces and sayings of these relatives, attests to the truth of the messages' origins and, as a result, to the survival of life after death.

Kardec on the importance of private messages

It is always relevant to review what Kardec says about the "utility of private evocations", which is in Chapter 25 of "The Book of Mediums" [6]:

Now, the superior spirits are the luminaries of the spirit world; their very elevation places them so far above us that we are frightened by the distance that separates us from them. More bourgeois spirits (allow us this expression) make the circumstances of the new existence in which they find themselves more palpable. In them, the connection between corporeal life and spiritual life is more intimate, we understand it better, because it touches us more closely. By learning with them what they have become, what they think, what men of all conditions and of all characters feel, the good men and the vicious as well, the great and the small, the happy and the unhappy of the century, in a word the men who lived among us, whom we have seen and known, whose real life, virtues and failings we know, we understand their joys and their sufferings, we connect  with them and we draw from them a moral teaching all the more profitable as the relationships between them and us are more intimate. We can more easily put ourselves in the shoes of those who have been our equals than of those we only view through the haze of celestial glory.

A strong scenario emerges as the letters accumulate. We may apply an analogy here. In the first episode of "Harry Potter" (Philosopher's Stone, 1997) written by British writer J.K. Rowling, Harry, the main character, is invited to initiate himself as a wizard at Hogwarts School via a letter sent by special mail employing owls. It turns out that his jealous relatives intercepted the messages. Many missives were intercepted in an attempt to prevent Harry from fulfilling his destiny. But the retaliation that followed from the wizarding world was devastating: thousands of letters piled up at Harry's nasty family's home before he could read at least one. 

This is how private psychographed letters work: if a few messages aren't enough to persuade us of the great truth of life beyond death, what can we say about thousands? Nothing can prevent them from continuing to arrive and pilling up through the hands of dedicated mediums to comfort people mourning their loved ones temporarily moved to the hereafter.

References

All references as available in 2024.

1 -  A. Kardec. Practical Instructions on Spiritist Manifestations, Chapter IV – Different modes of communication, Psychography. Translated from the Portuguese version available at www.ipeak.net. Original in French:

De tous les moyens de communication, c'est, sans contredit, le plus simple, le plus facile et le plus commode, parce qu'il n'exige aucune préparation et qu'il se prête, comme l'écriture courante, aux développements les plus étendus. Nous y reviendrons en parlant des médiums.

2 - https://www.youtube.com/@MensagensdeLuz-Oficial/videos 

3 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2cynPgcbUM 

4 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooFoPSfAEuw&t=41s 

5 - https://www.youtube.com/@PortasdoAmorOrlandoNC  

6 - A. Kardec. The Medium's Book. Second part - Spiritist manifestations, Chapter XXV - Evocations. The usefulness of particular evocations. Translated from the original in French available at www.ipeak.net:

Or, les Esprits supérieurs sont les sommités du monde spirite; leur élévation même les place tellement au-dessus de nous que nous sommes effrayés de la distance qui nous en sépare.  Des Esprits plus bourgeois (qu'on nous passe cette expression), nous rendent plus palpables les circonstances de leur nouvelle existence. Chez eux, la liaison entre la vie corporelle et la vie spirite est plus intime, nous la comprenons mieux, parce qu'elle nous touche de plus près.  En apprenant par eux-mêmes ce que sont devenus, ce que pensent, ce qu'éprouvent les hommes de toutes conditions et de tous les caractères, les hommes de bien comme les vicieux, les grands et les petits, les heureux et les malheureux du siècle, en un mot les hommes qui ont vécu parmi nous, que nous avons vus et connus, dont nous connaissons la vie réelle, les vertus et les travers, nous comprenons leurs joies et leurs souffrances, nous nous y associons et nous y puisons un enseignement moral d'autant plus profitable que les rapports entre eux et nous sont plus intimes. Nous nous mettons plus facilement à la place de celui qui a été notre égal que de celui que nous ne voyons qu'à travers le mirage d'une gloire céleste. 

7- Translated from the original in Portuguese:

Papai amigo Ivan, mamãe Rose:

Com muita festa, chego aqui para lhes dizer que o arco-íris não é só belo, é uma ponte que liga o céu e a Terra. 

Quem me recebeu aqui é aquela que se identificou como sendo a minha bisavó Joana, ela é uma senhora boa demais, e uma avozinha do coração.  Quando eu abri os olhos aqui, vi a luz dessa avozinha e a segui nos seus braços.

Sou eternamente grato pela comunidade que lutou comigo, enquanto eu lutava lá na UTI. Não vim antes não. Vocês sabem que cumpri a minha etapa ao lado de vocês e de meu irmão Eduardo. Cada oração que recebi da comunidade foi uma brisa de paz que me acalmava.

Pai e mãe, voces são o máximo, lutaram comigo. Mas eu tinha que pegar uma mochila, não para uma viagem com vocês, mas para subir uma outra montanha, que é o lado em que vivo hoje aqui. Eu já corri atrás de pássaros aqui que voam felizes.

Mão você é linda, meu tudo, do pai e do Eduardo. Sigam na fé, nada de tristeza, pular e pular, com a corda da vida. Volto depois, mas hoje é isso. Está tudo bem comigo. Bisa Joana me ajuda, tá? Beijão para os meus avós. Sem ciumera que o vô Luis seja a minha mão enviada para todos os meus avós. 

Tá certo? Valeu. O Filho feliz e bem melhor,

Gabriel Lima Silva. 

Why are environmental education and ecology relevant to the Spiritist movement?

Andre Luiz and Aniceto. Scene of the movie "The Messengers".  

For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in the hope that[a] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. (Romans 8, 19:21)

Translation from the original post in Portuguese: Por que educação ambiental e ecologia são relevantes para o movimento espírita? (Parte II). Link (2024): https://eradoespirito.blogspot.com/2024/04/por-que-educacao-ambiental-e-ecologia.html

Aniceto's environmental class

Environmental education and ecology are practical duties of the Spiritist (and Spiritualist) movement and not merely a fact of intellectual interest. It is the product of Spiritist ethics applied not just to our fellow humans and our relationship with the Higher Power, but also to creatures that appear lesser than us. To this day, we believe we can dispose of and destroy these beings because they are "our property."  Given that the law of love cannot yet be imposed on the hearts of most men, we must educate ourselves about it. We should start by learning about how we view all of the creatures and natural resources around us. Repeated thousands of times by reason and comprehended by the intellect, this law may find refuge in our hearts one day.

But, are there explicit references in Spiritist literature about the need to preserve the environment? The subject was too new for Kardec in the 19th century. There are, however, some indirect references in it, like Kardec's work Genesis according to Spiritism [1]:

Everything in the Universe is connected, everything is linked, and everything is subject to the great and harmonious law of unity.

Question 750 of The Spirits' Book (read online here: https://www.febnet.org.br/portal/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/the-spiritis-book.pdf) is another example of this requirement, but it is still formulated as a lesson that challenges the reader to determine whose side he should take in the debate over environmental preservation. We are aware of the argument that Spiritism's goal is not to interfere with any material part of existence, but rather to provide teachings that aid the soul's moral evolution.

Other more recent works have already treated the importance of ecology. André Trigueiro, for example, has recently written Spiritism and Ecology [4], which is an important resource for this consciousness awakening. Other researchers emphasized the importance of the theme to the Spiritist Movement [5]. In Emmanuel's O Consolador [6], an entire section "Biology" (First Part) is dedicated to Nature, with special emphasis on questions 27, 28, and 29.

The Spirit Aniceto's 1944 lecture on "The Gospel in the Rural Environment" in Chapter 42 of Os Mensageiros ("The Messengers") [3] is sometimes overlooked, yet it is a more direct approach. The Messagers is the second book written by the medium Francisco C. Xavier by automatic writing. I'm not sure if the passage was explored in this new movie release The Messengers based on the same book, because I didn't see the movie. Here, I study a piece directly from this book that provides numerous topics for reflection. 

After quoting a passage of the Epistle to the Romans (8:19-21, at the beginning of this post), Anicetus begins his comments:

For millennia, nature has waited for human understanding. She has not only eaten on hope, but he also lives in ardent expectation, waiting for the insight and assistance of the Spirits incarnated on Earth, who are more correctly referred to as children of God. However, natural forces continue to be oppressed by all human vanity. This, my friends, happens because the Lord also hopes for the liberation of the beings enslaved in the Earth crust, so that freedom can be seen in the splendor of man. (My emphasis)

This demonstrates that there is a bond of fraternity that connects Humanity to all beings of Nature and that this collective of beings (and non-biotic resources) awaits our consideration as childrens of God. For now, she is still subjected to the "oppression of all human vanities."

I know your sacrifices firsthand, devoted spiritual workers of the earthy soil! Many of you remain here, and in other parts of the world as well, assisting other incarnates who are trapped by the illusions of material greed. How many times has your aid resulted in low-level exploitation in the realm of worldly affairs? (My emphasis)

It is a reference to the assistance of Spirits in human actions (question 459 of The Spirits' Book), which has been distorted by "low exploitation" in Earth's affairs. The lecture proceeds even more vigorously:

The majority of land cultivators wants everything without offering anything back. While you carefully watch over the maintenance of the foundations of life, you have seen civilization function as a vigorous grinding machine, converting men, our brothers, into little Moloches of bread, meat, and wine, completely immersed in the addiction of feelings and excesses of food, unconcerned about the enormous debt to loving and generous Nature. (My emphasis)

This is an explicit reference to exploitative farming methods and the nearly unquenchable human desires that fuel this unsustainable exploitation. Despite technical improvement, civilization continues to dispose of natural resources as a "grinding machine." "Moloches of bread, meat, and wine" is an image and reference to the god Moloch from the Old Testament, a well-known terrible entity who demanded child sacrifice. Aniceto therefore accuses modern society of "addiction to feelings and excesses of food," as well as a disregard for "the loving and generous Nature."

They oppress inferior creatures, harm the benevolent forces of life, are ungrateful to the sources of good, serve rural industries more out of vanity and ambition to earn than out of love and usefulness, and are nothing more than unhappy servants of wild passions. They create false wealth programs that lead to their demise; they write economic policy treaties that lead to destructive war; they develop the trade in undue gain, reaping the international complications that cause misery; and they dominate and exploit the weakest, only to awaken later among the monsters of hatred! (My emphasis)

Even though it was written in 1944, this appears to be a pretty accurate assessment of the current situation. Since then, environmental conditions have only deteriorated, and our globe is now facing potential unforeseen climate disruptions. The corruption that causes pollution and environmental imbalance is the product of these lesser forces seeking "undue gain". In this paragraph, Aniceto also discusses the repercussions of the "compulsory harvest" to which unrestrained exploiters of natural forces are vulnerable to exploitation without due regard for Nature's resources.

Finally, Aniceto describes the spiritual destiny of the "sacrificed beings":

The Lord reserves sublime evolutionary values for sacrificed beings. He will never forget the useful tree, the killed animal, or the humble being that was eaten for the sake of another creature!

I believe these are the most direct remarks ever made in Spiritist literature about environmental preservation and reverence for natural resources.

Final remarks

The formal property relationship as a right, even if transitory, carries with it the duty of preservation. Preserving the environment and living sustainably are thus manifestations of the law of love applied to the "weakest".

In the same way that the current generation suffers the result of previous faulty environmental acts as seen in climate change, the Spirit incarnated or not, will be unable to live up to a better home in the future if these new principles are ignored. Just as there is a "law of cause and effect" in human interactions and affairs, the same law applies to the environment.

If we may attribute some of our past ignorance to a lack of understanding of environmental responsibility, this is no longer possible today. And this is achieved by both accessing the scientific proofs of the consequences of unrestrained material exploitation and denying materialism, which overlooks the affinity relationship that links all beings.

If Spiritism's aim is to eradicate materialism, it is also its mission to explain why it is critical to respect all creatures and natural resources by reducing addiction to unrestrained feelings and excessive food consumption. For the materialist, preservation is important for present survival; for the spiritualist, it is a chance for fresh opportunities on Earth beyond death that demonstrate the brotherhood and links among all things and living creatures.

References

[1] Kardec A. La Genese selon le spiritisme (Genesis according to Spiritism). See version in English here: https://www.oconsolador.com.br/linkfixo/bibliotecavirtual/ingles/Genesis.pdf 

[2] FEB (2023). O Espiritismo e a consciência ecológica (Spiritism and ecology consciousness). Acessado conforme disponível em março de 2024:  https://www.febnet.org.br/portal/2023/04/22/o-espiritismo-e-a-consciencia-ecologica/

[3] Xavier F. C. (2023). Os Mensageiros (The Messengers), Ed. FEB. 47a Edição.

[4] Trigueiro A. (2022). Espiritismo e Ecologia (Spiritism and ecology). FEB Editora; 5ª edição.ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-6555704372

[5] Miguel S. H. (2023). Espiritismo e desenvolvimento sustentável: caminhos para a sustentabilidade (Spiritism and sustainable development: sustainability paths). Revista Brasileira de História das Religiões. ANPUH, Ano XV, n. 45

[6] Xavier F. C (1940). O Consolador. 4a Edition, FEB (Brazilian Spiritist Federation).

EVP III (Electronic mediumship)

Broadly speaking, mediumship can be defined as a person's ability to get in touch with the spirits. This concept follows very closely a famous definition made by A. Kardec in his treatise on mediumship, published in the heyday of Spiritualism. At the time, it was clear that mediumship manifestations could make use of external objects (as in the case of the celebrated "table-turning" or more generally in the haunting phenomena) or simply transmit elaborate information through the so-called "intellectual mediums".

It is understandable that the invention of electronic communication systems (as new manifestation media) prompted the emergence of new effects under the action of corresponding electronic mediums. As in every mediumship, the new ability can be understood as a more or less developed human skill to communicate with spirits through electronic equipment. "Development'' refers to the observed level of elaboration in the communicated message, or how complex or well-presented the transmitted information appears to the external world. 

Kardec proposed a 4-dimensional characterization of the mediumship faculty based on traits of:

• Passivity: characterizing the extent to which the medium can influence the content of a communication. The extremes of this dimension are complete passivity (e. g., clairvoyance) and active mediums (who have an active role in conveying information as in certain non-mechanical psychography mediums).
• Awareness: or how aware the person is of his or her role as a medium. Awareness is split into two classes: unconscious versus conscious mediums. In the first case, also known as involuntary or natural mediums by Kardec, the person is completely unaware of the ability. This variety is highly frequent among children and teenagers. In the second case (facultative mediums) there is complete awareness of the ability to produce or suppress phenomena through the will.
• Tangibility: referring to the intellectual versus "material'' effect produced by the mediumship. Physical effect mediums produce tangible phenomena (movement of objects, sounds such as raps and noises, healing etc). On the other hand, intellectual mediums produce intelligent, informative, or artistic communications (for example, painting mediums etc).
• Spontaneity: involuntary mediums cannot control the onset, end, duration, and content of the manifestation. The majority of recorded psychic effects throughout history are of this type.  On the other hand, some mediums are able to control (or at least suppress) the manifestation. 

According to such a scheme, one can conceive electronic mediumship as a kind of psychic faculty capable of producing tangible effects (signals in the form of noise or voices) through electronic media almost exclusively. We say "almost exclusively" because it is uncertain if electronic mediums are able to manifest other mediumship types (for example, intellectual effects). EVP are tangible and mostly spontaneous, but the medium is seldom aware he/she is responsible for them. The manifestations are apparently spontaneous mainly in the early stages and remain uncontrollable throughout the medium's life.

No mediumship ability can be dissociated from “animism” which is the manifestation of the spirit of the medium through its own body. In other words, electronic mediums can subtly modify the content of EVP messages. This is true even for purely "mechanical mediums" as pointed out in on the medium's influence in the content of spirit communications:

Do these explanations imply that the spirit of the medium is never completely passive?

“It is passive when it does not mix its own ideas with those of the communicating spirit, but it is never completely nullified. Its cooperation is indispensable as an intermediary, even in so-called mechanical mediums''. (Question 10 of Paragraph  223 of "The Mediums' book").

Thus, the content of many EVP recorded by K. Raudive, a mixture of words many times uttered in different languages Raudive knew very well, might be explained as the result of this influence, despite the unintentional (and unconscious) character. This does not mean that the message content is familiar to the medium, or cannot be attributed to the spirits. 

The most distinguished dimension of electronic mediumship is its unconscious character. It does not seem to require mental concentration, no "trance" is necessary. This principle was put forward by the spirits themselves to Kardec:

Can a spirit act without resorting to a medium?

"It can act without the medium being aware of it; in other words, many persons help spirits to produce certain phenomena without even suspecting it(*). These persons are like fountains from which spirits draw the animal fluid they need. Consequently, the conscious participation of a medium, as you know, is not always necessary, especially with spontaneous phenomena.'' (my emphasis, Part II, ``The action of spirits upon matter'', Paragraph 74, Question 15 of "The Mediums' book.)

Therefore, the presence of a nearby but unknown electronic medium might explain many eventual recordings. 

By relying on special mediums the phenomenon is thus more prevalent in the presence of certain people than among the majority. This explains the futility of trying to "replicate" EVP when an electronic medium is missing. On the other hand, granted their presence, EVP can be replicated although no control over the message length, frequency, and content seems possible. 

Notes

(*) Original in French: "beaucoup de personnes servent d'auxiliaires aux Esprits pour certains phénomènes, sans s'en douter".

Next post:  EVP IV (Intention and physical interface)

EVP II (Electronic Voice Phenomena)

Fig. 1 One of the earliest EVP reports published in the XX century: "Voices from the beyond on the telephone. New and admirable system of communication. Spirits talk on the telephone''.

As in XK's karaoke recordings, the Electronic Voice Phenomena or EVP (*) gained notoriety when F. Jürgenson (1903-1987), a Swedish artist and singer, was recording birdsongs in 1959. At first, he believed voices were interference sources coming from radio stations operating nearby. Since the voices replied unmistakably to “callings”, and other anomalous answers were obtained even when the equipment was shielded in Faraday cages (to block external electromagnetic radiation), Jürgenson was convinced of their paranormal origin. Since then, names like Konstantin Raudive (1909-1974) and Hans O. König are linked to the history of EVP as relevant researchers who recorded many clear voices which cannot be explained away easily. In what appeared to be an acceptance of something already known, some Vatican authorities supported EVP experiments and claimed the voices came from Purgatory.

In fact, the interest in contacting spirits with electronic equipment is as old as the invention of wireless communication. It soon became clear to technical celebrities such as Thomas Edison (1847-1931), Oliver Lodge (1851-1940), and Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) that it might be possible to use the recently invented radio or some sort of electric circuit to communicate with the dead. Edison exchanged correspondence with William Crookes (1832-1919) about the possibility of obtaining images of spirits. In an interview for Scientific American in 1920, (an unthinkable interview given the publication standards of this journal today), Edison trustfully stated:

I have been thinking for some time of a machine or apparatus which could be operated by personalities that have passed on to another existence or sphere.

After declaring he knew nothing about the subject of “our personality passing on to another existence or sphere”, Edison continued: 

But I do claim that it is possible to construct an apparatus that will be so delicate that if there are personalities in another existence or sphere who wish to get in touch with us in this existence or sphere, this apparatus will at least give them a better opportunity to express themselves than the tilting tables and raps and ouija boards and mediums and the other crude methods now purported to be the only means of communication.

He proposed to build a highly sensitive instrument in which electric currents could be manipulated by the dead provided they existed in “another sphere”. It did not occur to Edison that the human ear is such a sensitive machine. As it is known, at the threshold of human audition (~1 pW/m2), the ear can detect oscillations in air molecules as small as 1/10 the size of an atom! 

Zarrelli stated properly that the “spirit phone” was Edison’s most fruitless invention. This failure should be attributed to Edison's disregard for the conditions under which the phenomenon occurs. Just having any apparatus, no matter how sensitive, is not enough. But Edison’s reasoning is very much alive these days. In a recent article, the same conclusions were drawn for the super-ultra-sensitive LHC collider in the context of detecting “other dimensions” including “ghosts”. 

Communication by electronic media was possible since the widespread use of wired telephony. Predating Raymond Bayless experiments in 195, Oscar D’Argonnel published in 1925 Vozes do Além pelo Telephone (“Voices from the beyond on the telephone”, see Figure 1). This book reports D’Argonnel’s experiences with spirit communication a decade before its publication in Brazil. Recent research unveiled a curious Brazilian patent filled by the Portuguese Augusto de Oliveira Cambraia in 1909. Named Telegrapho Vocativo, its purpose was to transmit information through the air by using “souls and spirits floating in the atmosphere”. However, today it is hard to know what Cambraia meant by “souls and spirits” (it seems an improper reference to radio waves). Such scattered accounts of anomalous communication by wired phones at the beginning of the XX century can be linked to EVP reports using tape recorders much later. 

Because no theory was ever available to explain how the voices could be picked up anomalously (or more generally speaking “signals” in the case of ITC – instrumental transcommunication), the EVP research took a purely empirical path since Jürgenson’s first recordings. Several technical arrangements for obtaining EVP were invented: using a simple tape recorder, with a recorder and a shortwave radio, with a recorder and a noise generator, using computers converted into digital recorders and noise generators, using a single or several radios as a noise source and a digital recorder and many others. 

Since Edison's time, enthusiasts have supported the thesis of EVP as a non-mediumistic phenomenon par excellence. Provided a refined method existed in the future, they believe EVP could become the most trustworthy way of communicating with the beyond. After all, the information would come directly from the source (the spirits) to the equipment with no human influence. Perhaps many officials of the Catholic Church supported EVP in this non-mediumistic sense because the idea undermined any non-Catholic explanation implied by the medium’s presence.

But such non-mediumistic nature attributed to EVP is a naïve oversimplification of what may really happen during the voice recordings.  In 1925, D'Argonnel emphasized the need for special mediums in his telephonic experiences. Clear phrases were obtained by a few researchers in the past and today.  Others have recorded utterances as noise modulations which could be interpreted as acceptable answers to proposed questions. In fact, many EVP messages are barely lengthier than a couple of words forming short phrases. The majority of EVP enthusiasts have recorded barely understandable words feeding pareidolia-based explanations by skeptics. The frequency and quality of EVP messages are definitely correlated to the presence of certain people. 

Notes

(*) EVP acronym is used for both phenomenon (sing.)  or phenomena (plural).

Next post:  EVP III (Electronic Mediumship)

EVP I (A haunted Karaoke)

Fig. 1 Spectrogram of the first recording showing the audio feedback at about 1KHz and the anomalous voice (AV1) after 11 seconds. The number of audio samples for each FFT segment is 256.

But, soft: behold! lo where it comes again!

I'll cross it, though it blast me. - Stay, illusion!

If thou hast any sound, or use a voice.

Speak to me!

W. Shakespeare, Hamlet, 1.1

My nephew XK lives in the US and is a young American who speaks both Portuguese and English. Driven by his love for singing, he was alone at home recording songs with a Karaoke system. Careless about one of his recordings, he left the recorder on a little longer. To his surprise, he noticed an unexpected voice at the end of one of the files. After inquiring the unseen to give him and his mother a reply, the unusual voice appeared a second time. Fearing the invisible, he abandoned his karaoke sessions since then.

Fig.2 Filtered waveforms of AV1 in the indicated interval showing the anomalous voice.

My sister sent me two of the raw MP4 files sampled at 48KHz. The first recording was obtained on June 18 2019 at 4:03 pm and the second one about one hour later. The total recording time length of samples 1 and 2 is 13.76s and 17.62 s, respectively. In the first sample, the Karaoke speaker was on and the characteristic audio feedback is clearly heard. In the second file, registered with the speaker off, no feedback is present, but the output volume is much lower.  

Fig. 3 Spectrogram of the second recording showing the presence of the anomalous voice (AV2) after 14 seconds following an initial ``invocation''. The number of audio samples for each FFT segment is 256. 

It is possible to visually analyze sounds by calculating and displaying their spectrograms. These are frequency-time diagrams showing the time distribution of intensity amplitudes of each tone that compose the original sound. Spectrograms are the result of applying the famous “Fast Fourier Transformation” method (FFT in short) to the sampled audio signal. The first recording spectrogram is seen in Fig. 1.  The “anomalous voice” (AV1) is present after about 11 seconds with a spectrum distribution between 1-8 KHz above the characteristic audio feedback (in the range 0.75-1.3KHz and 2.8-3.1KHz). By applying a 76dB flat filter in these ranges, the audio noise is reduced significantly. The filtered anomalous signal waveform in the time interval [11.6,12.75] is seen in Fig. 2.  AV1 sounds like a whispering male voice pronouncing “I see”.

Fig. 4 Audio waveforms of AV2 ("yes") in the indicated interval showing the anomalous voice modulation.

Fig. 3 is the corresponding spectrogram of the second sample where other features are indicated. In particular, there is an initial "invocation'' in Portuguese that can be translated as "tell something to mom'' in the interval 1-2 s. Cracking sounds can be heard between 10-14 s. After 14.5 s, the silence is broken by an unmistakable but very low “yes” distributed mostly in the frequency range 1-2KHz, and whispered by the same male voice of the first recording. A zoomed view of the AV2 audio signal  is seen in Fig. 4 in the time interval [14.75, 15.6] s. 

The original single-channel versions were converted to WAV format, and can be listened here (1) and here (2).  The complete filtered file can be accessed here.

Next post: EVP II (Electronic Voice Phenomena).

The spiritist interpretation of dreams

"The dream" by Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes, 1883. Source: Wikipedia.

"Poor human beings! how little do you know of the commonest phenomena of your life! You

fancy yourselves to be very learned, and you are puzzled by the most ordinary things. To

questions that any child might ask, 'What do we do when we are asleep?' 'What are dreams?'

you are incapable of replying." (1)

“One day it will have to be officially admitted 

that what we have christened reality is 

an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.” ― Salvador Dali

We sleep a considerable portion of our lives, more precisely, about one-third of our incarnate lives. What happens in this state? It is easy to understand the need for sleep - so natural that we hardly question its importance - however, how do we justify dreams? What does the understanding of the dual nature of the human being, allowed by the Spiritist knowledge, help us to understand the mechanism of dreaming? 

The dream experience is quite different from the ordinary experiences of the waking state. The latter admits "witnesses", who share these experiences publicly. If I travel with my family to a tourist destination, the experiences I had there are the same my relatives had. In dreams, however, this does not apply. Thus, if I dream about going to a distant place with my relatives, they will not confirm the same experience if I question them about their dreams. In principle, the whole experience of dreaming is private, that is, lived only in the "first person", by myself exclusively. Such a striking difference makes dreams to be considered mental experiences par excellence, that is, experiences created solely by the dreamer's mind. 

Another distinguishing feature of dreams (I have already experienced this myself) is the apparent lack of causal connection among events within a dream. What happens at a particular moment - even though the apparent cause is declared in the dream - is not related causally to the following dream action. I remember a dream when I parked a car in a certain place. After other facts in the dream, when I return to get the car, it was no longer there or, at least, I could not remember where I had left the car in the dream... But I also remember dreams in which I was aware I was dreaming and could also keep the details of previous dreams connected to the last one I was having. In these cases, I was just finishing an adventure of a few nights before (someone told me in the dream): a situation best described as a "lucid dream".

The dream as a mnemonic synthesis of past experiences of the soul during sleep.

Dreams are the remembrance of what your spirit has seen during sleep, but you must remark that you do not always dream, because you do not always remember what you have seen, or all that you have seen. Your dreams do not always reflect the action of your soul in its full development; for they are often only the reflex of the confusion that accompanies your departure or your return, mingled with the vague remembrance of what you have done, or of what has occupied your thoughts, in your waking state. (1)

As already described in Question #402 in The Spirit's Book (1), dreams do not reduce themselves simply to the state of the soul freed from the body. If this were so, the experience, although private, should be consistent, in other words, dreams would be indistinguishable from "out-of-the-body" experiences. Dreams may be described rather as a kind of mnemonic synthesis of what occurs during sleep which is meaningful to the spirit; a re-construction or assembly, greatly affected by memories of past experiences, of what is important to the mind during sleep. Although the mechanism is fully unknown, this synthesis or composite is constructed from almost everything relevant to the individual at the moment of awakening: desires, fears, the reinterpreted experience of the previous day, memories of the present and past lives, and even past experiences the spirit has had recently, that is, the very memories of other dreams.

For me, the immense majority of people (including myself) cannot perfectly retain, through the "prism of the brain", the memories acquired by the senses of the soul during the dreaming state. The events of the dream are therefore recreated from a "bank of memories", almost entirely based on previous experiences of the waking state. It is like creating a new movie using a sequence of edited scenes from old films. In this "editing" process, the memory bank is accessed and its symbols, scenes or poses are used to "synthesize" a memory of the actual experience. Thus, after waking up, most recollected sequences are often erratic or does not fit into a rational or logic arrangement.

For example, imagine that I, in spirit state, was in contact with other people during sleep. When I awake, the remembrance process will most likely substitute the personality whom I have been in contact with by other people I recognize in the vigil state: sometimes a friend I know later was indeed awakened, or another person whom I have long forgotten and so on. It is even possible that the dream is filled out with an image of a discarnate relative. And so we usually wake up with the impression of having been in contact with that dead relative, but in fact, that was not true. It was rather a recreation because in no way my physical brain is able to sustain faithfully the images of my actual experience as a spirit in the dream. Only the script is more or less similar. The mnemonic assembly is necessary to give a meaning of those experiences lived in the dream to my consciousness in the awakened state. We should remember that the experiences of the dream do not reach the soul through the common pathways of the material senses (the nervous system). Therefore, they are reinterpreted when they finally reach the brain when we awake.

So, those were not the ones I have been in contact with when I dreamed about my deceased mother, father or any other relative? Not necessarily. A somewhat different situation occurs in the already mentioned lucid dreams, which are a category of rare and peculiar dreams. In them, the dreamer knows he/she is dreaming or is having the experience. In the dreams I had with my deceased mother, I had a distinct impression that she came to visit me. Amazingly, the dream environment was the bed I was lying - somehow I know it - and the dream finished when I woke up in tears. These particular dreams differ greatly from the immense majority of banal, meaningless dreams we have often because they are full of meaning to us.

The idea of dreams as a process of re-creation of experience of the soul during sleep by assembling preexisting memories allows us to explain the so-called "premonitory dreams". In fact, these can also be recreated from previous images, but they deal with future events based on the experience of the soul in the Beyond regarding these facts. Trying to interpret them may be a frustrating practice because they only make sense to the dreamer who preserves their real meaning unconsciously. Moreover, premonition dreamers might not be competent in conveying or communicating the true meaning in time, which is a source of countless confusions.

In summary, we can divide the impressions caused by the dreams in three levels of meanings:

1. The deep meaning, ultimately existing only for the soul, that is, as an unconscious "memory" impressed to the incarnate being, an "unfelt awareness". The sense can be recapitulated in other dreams or invoked in lucid dreams. It certainly survives physical death as the heritage of the soul experience,
2. The fragmented vigil meaning, recreated on the base of preexisting images or memories of the vigil state, the materialized meaning for the waking being, perhaps to be forgotten with physical death,
3. The sense conveyed to others, depending on our ability to communicate the dream experience to others in the incarnate world. This meaning can cause a very different impression, making their "interpretation" difficult, although in some anomalous case, the meaning is very clear. 

"Joseph interpreting Pharaoh’s dream" (Genesis cap 41, 14-36),
The Phillip Medhurst Picture Torah 199. Source: Wikipedia.

The importance of anomalous dreams

Presently, most of the theoretical impasse regarding the most popular conceptions of the mind is due to their exclusive reference to the events taking place with the immense majority of people. I understand the reason from a practical point of view. Statistically, it makes sense to devote research effort to what happens most of the time. By doing this, however, we sacrifice the understanding of the deeper causes in detriment of what is more frequent. Thus the anomalies that occur with only a few are swept under the rug by explanations seemingly applicable to what is general. It is reasonable to ask if the truest theory is the one fitting the majority of the facts or the one leaving no fact aside. In medicine, one does not learn anything about diseases by studying only healthy people. Therefore, anomalies should be regarded since they are a way to establish correlations and to explain the exceptions beyond the rule.

The so-called "anomalous dreams" represent precisely this situation. Unlike ordinary dreams, they resemble lucid dreams by bringing meaningful messages containing "anomalous content". An elucidating work about anomalous dreams is due to S. Krippner and L. Faith entitled "Exotic dreams: A cross-cultural study" (2). In this work, the authors identified (from a set of about 1700 dream reports), nearly 185 (or 8%) considered "exotic". Such reports were then classified according to several types: healing dreams, lucid dreams, creative dreams, dreams with out-of-body experiences, shared dreams, dreams within dreams (as I had), dreams of past lives, visitation dreams, etc.

The so-called "shared dreams" are particularly interesting. These are reports of people who experience mutual dreams or dreams whose content is partially shared among individuals. Thus, the "first person" character of dreams may be weakened (3).

In creative dreams, Krippner and Faith reported dream narratives in which people were aided in dreams to solve problems of everyday life.

In a visitation dream, a painter from Japan reported having been advised by her father, who died in World War II, to choose her paintings and even on how to use the brush. The experience was highly significative and helped to improve the painter professional performance.

According to the authors in (2), dreams about tragedies (precognitive dreams) do not always end in a fatal way. They usually manifest themselves as the announcement of diseases or vulnerable situations of people at a distance.

Finally, the authors in (2) suggest a correlation between the incidence of anomalous dreams and the cultural environment in which they occur. In fact, this correlation is expected, considering that dreams are interpreted in terms of previous mental baggage. Therefore, the greater the individual' awareness about spiritual realities, the clearer will be their representation in exotic or peculiar dreams.

As for lucid dreams, it is possible that most people have already experienced - at least once in life - this kind of dream which would be more expected in cultures which value spirituality.

Conclusions

In this note, I have listed some relevant aspects to our understanding of the genesis and unfolding of dreams. A suitable explanation of the mechanism of dreams must both explain the dynamics with the vast majority of people, and the peculiar cases occurring with specific groups as well. Such anomalous experiences may also manifest at least once in people's life.

It is not possible to understand dreams without appealing to the dual nature of the human being, a simple reality that is able to explain both the reported exceptions and everyday life dreams. What we call dreams are, in fact, memories of events taking place during sleep, memories that are reconstructed out of other perceptions of facts lived by the person in the awaken state. This explanation agrees with the idea that, in the dream state, the spirit cannot excite the body directly (that is, the brain), because it is partially detached from it. In the process of "reassembling" the experience as a meaningful narrative to the vigil state, experiences of the present life (everyday facts, known people etc) are used, just as "extraordinary" memories (e. g., of previous lives, or other dreams etc).

The random, erratic or senseless impression of most dreams is a consequence of such reassembly of memories from a bank of internal fragments. In general, the meaning of dreams only exists unconsciously for the person who experiences it. It is very difficult to interpret dreams correctly, although this might be possible exceptionally.

The understanding that dreams are memories of the spiritual life allows us to explain a great variety of accounts considered "anomalous", which are then important sources confirming the proposed mechanism behind dreams. Without proper attention to such anomalous accounts, dreams are often considered merely as "hallucinations" or "fantasies" of the brain, showing no correlation with the true and hidden reality.

In addition to dividing dreams between "ordinary" and "peculiar" types, for most people, dreams may be further subdivided into "ordinary/common" and "lucid" dreams. In the last case, the dreamer knows he/she is dreaming and, therefore, can "control" the dream in principle. Apparently, such control is subjected to training (4).

It seems evident that dreaming is an important stage in the progress of the incarnate soul. By countless repetitions, the spirit liberates itself from the physical world and recalls its disembodied life. In a certain sense, dreaming is a training process for the ultimate physical deliverance that we call death.

References

(1) Question 402, "The Spirit's Book" (A. Kardec). Translated from French by Anne Blackwell. Online version here: http://geeaknorge.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Spiritsbook.pdf (March 2019).

(2) Krippner, S., & Faith, L. (2001). "Exotic dreams: A cross-cultural study". Dreaming, 11(2), 73-82.

(3) Another work related to shared dreams is Davis, W. J., & Frank, M. (1994). "Dream sharing: A case study". The Journal of Psychology, 128 (2), 133-147.

(4) See, e. g., May E. C & LaBerge S. (1991) "Anomalous Cognition in Lucid Dreams". Science Applications International Corporation. In March 2019, this work can be downloaded here:

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00789r003100140001-2