There was an interesting column in the New York Times this week by Sarah Wildman (Go ahead and laugh at mediums. They may be on to something.). The piece looks at the experiences of people who have lost a loved one and found some consolation after connecting to the spirit of their loved one (often through a medium or psychic). In looking at the comfort that people have found in these experiences, she invites us to be more open to the benefits of mediums who seem to be able to give voice to those who we have lost.
Wildman takes a mostly neutral (leaning towards supportive) stance towards the abilities of mediums, often skating a line between agnosticism (noting that regardless of the veracity of the experiences, research suggests that these experiences can have deep benefits for those who are suffering severe grief) and endorsing them as being literally true (the piece ends with in a familiar way, with an seemingly inexplicable coincidence connecting back to a prediction that a medium told her in the course of her reporting).
In describing her own experience, Wildman mentions how many people, herself included, are hesitant to talk about their experiences of connection to ones they have lost. They fear the judgment or ridicule of people who reject the idea that these experiences are literally true. I found that part of the argument resonating with something inside of me, as I’ve recently been grappling with my own habits around these kinds of stories.
In case of mediums, or any claims that we can be contacted by the dead, I have been openly, actively dismissive – even hostile – to the idea for much of my life. Based on what I know about the world, I find that I personally cannot believe (I am not capable of believing) that some part of our psychology or consciousness could survive past death, and so it seems that the abilities of mediums cannot be literally true.
While this is a true description of my own position (the way the world looks from where I stand), for a long time I didn’t see the difference between believing this to be true, and an impulse to confront people who see the world differently. I did not see a middle path, either I needed to challenge what I took to be errors, or I would have to endorse something that I personally did not believe was possible.
Now, I will say that I feel that I have good reasons for my instincts in this area. From what we know about the reality of our life, any event that happens in the world can be explained through natural causes. That is an assumption, what I have seen described as an article of faith that is a foundation of the scientific approach. And, it could be wrong, but so far it seems to be working pretty well.
From that starting point, what we have learned about psychology and the nervous system is that all of our experience seems to depend on our nervous system, in a complex interaction with the body and the rest of the world.
Damage or dysfunction can take away our senses (sight, hearing, etc.) or could leave us paralyzed. We can be robbed of our memory, lose our ability to make sense of the world (even to recognize the faces of the people we hold dear), or be lost in hallucinations or delusions that no one else around us experiences. Changes to the brain can shift our personality, and deeply impact our emotional experience. When we really immerse ourself in the careful study of humans who have suffered brain injuries or disease, it is likely we will come away with confidence that there is nothing in our experience that could not be impacted by just the right change in the function of some system in the brain. For that reason, I personally feel comfortable in the belief that that all of my specific, concrete experiences will continue to depend on the functioning of my brain and body.
This has been one of the most important parts of science, for me – we find ourselves born into this reality, this something, without any explanation or instruction manual. Careful study of reality, and of the complex structure of reality, has given us a deep insight into how this world works. And, it can be an important part of our sense of wonder at the fact that we can exist at all, and awe for the complexity of the natural world.
There are, of course, limits to the usefulness of a scientific approach. I worry about times when people fall into a trap of thinking that science is the true or only way of understanding the world. It is a very useful way of looking a the world, of understanding why things happen in the way that they do. But there are many important questions, true mysteries, that are not easily solved by science, or are perhaps fundamentally unsolvable.
We find ourselves here, thrown into this reality, but why does something exist, rather than nothing?
If the physical world can be described by natural laws, and doesn’t need to include the mind or consciousness in that description, then how is it possible that consciousness can come into existence out of the material world?
In my personal life, the one that I actually live, these are questions that feel important. And, the ones that we likely won’t get satisfactory answers for from science. Or really, from any system of belief about the world. In many ways these are core puzzles that cannot be addressed from the position of a living being.
While I do see these kinds of questions as important to keep in mind, to remind ourselves that there are limits to our knowledge, in explaining events in our daily lives, I feel that there is no need to appeal to supernatural causes.
A few years ago, I had a dream that I was visiting my grandparents, chatting while having coffee in their kitchen. It was a comfortable, familiar experience – they lived only a short distance from our home, and I’d spent many a morning around their table with aunts, uncles, and cousins. But in the dream, I suddenly realized that something was wrong – they both had died recently. My grandfather developed complications that started with a fall at home, and my grandmother to a slower decline into dementia.
In the dream, I became so confused as I realized that they both were gone, but were also right in front of me. The place and the people seemed so real and present. And, I was truly surprised, shocked to a degree, when I reached out to touch my grandmother’s shoulder, and it was solid under my grip. I remember her looking confused in that dream, and asking, with a note of concern for me, “Are you alright?” I just smiled, and assured them that I was fine. While I didn’t understand what was happening, there was a deep feeling of joy as I was able to be with them for a few more moments.
I woke up shortly after that, and my confusion lingered for a moment, before I fully realized that I had been dreaming. Another person might have seen that experience as a true connection to the loved ones who I had lost – that in that alternate reality of dreaming, that I had been able to speak with them directly. For me, I did not see any need. Dreaming is its own kind of state, with its own unique rules, and in that space the brain can build elaborate experiences based on what we know about the world. And I knew a lot about that place, and those people.
To really know someone is to have a deep understanding of their way of being in the world. For the people we know well, an action which is out of character can catch our attention, and behavior that is in character feels natural, almost inevitable. In knowing someone, they become a part of us in a deep way, such that we know how they will respond in a given situation, perhaps better than we know ourselves at times. In a very real way, the people we know are a part of us, and that is what I saw in my dream. So there was nothing about it, nothing about the richness or authenticity of the experience, that truly surprised me.
While science helped me understand this dream, I appreciate that this is just one way of making sense of reality. And while science is fallible (the specific things that we believe to be true today may need to be revised as we continue to learn about the world), I personally put my trust into this empirical way of building knowledge through making hypotheses and testing them against the world through observations.
That faith, in science and in empiricism, has been the foundation of how I see the world for as long as I can remember. What I’ve been thinking about more recently, and what has changed for me, is in noticing how I react to nonscientific claims about reality, and a softening in my own judgements.
For much of my life, I’ve been the kind of person who, when exposed to a story about something inexplicable or fantastical, has jumped to debating and debunking the claim. And this instinct is triggered by a range of topics: ghosts, energy healing, telepathy or psychic abilities, UFOs and such. That reflex, a habit of mind to actively reject these claims, comes in part from my own personality. I fundamentally dislike, or am uncomfortable, around ambiguity, and I also believe in the empirical approach, and have found it unpleasant to tolerate conflicting views of reality.
Take UFOs, for example. When I hear a claim that that our planet is regularly visited by UFOs, as some believe, that is felt as a threat to my view of the world. To be clear, I have no problem believing that life exists (or has existed, or will exist) on other planets. Simply based just on the staggering size of our universe and of the depths of time, it would honestly be more strange if it turns out that we are entirely alone than to find that we are just one of many places life develops.
However, the likelihood that life exists on other planets is a very different matter from saying that intelligent life somewhere else in the universe has not only noticed us, but found its way here, and arrived in so quiet a way that it is easily missed or covered up.
I may be wrong, of course, but given the quality of the evidence, and our human weakness for stories of conspiracy, I do not have any faith in reports of UFO sightings. And, I often find myself taking the next step, to push back on claims of UFO sightings, and dismissing them.
To be honest, this is the course of action that I would recommend to anyone: we should be open to evidence of intelligent life on other planets, but skeptical (in a kind, tolerant way) of claims that our planet has been visited by aliens. The odds are stacked against these claims, and what has been presented as evidence of UFO sightings is very thin. I also see that there are risks in embracing these claims – a person can end up drawn into a web of fantastical stories about aliens and their supposed influence on our society.
It reminds me of a quote from Dogen’s Genjokoan, about “those who are deluded within delusion.” To avoid delusion, don’t waste your time on UFOs, but learn something true about the world you actually find yourself in.
I feel the same way about mediums, and the idea that we can connect to a loved one who has passed away. I’ve debated and tried to debunk these stories with people who find them compelling, as I don’t see a plausible way that they could be literally true, to a scientist. Part of me also worries that people can lost in stories about their loved ones, or exploited by the people who offer access the dead, so I’ve felt that they are also not necessarily harmless.
The reason that I have doubts about claims that we can communicate with the dead is that I don’t see a way that our consciousness, or our psychological self, can continue without our brain. Even during life, if we suffer damage to parts of the cortex (the wrinkly, outer covering of the brain), we can lose our memories, and experience deep changes to our personality.
Watching my grandmother suffer through dementia, some of the earliest changes were in memory, but specifically a loss of the ability to make new memories. As it advanced, she would lose her ability to find her way to places she had known for years, or decades. And also seemed to lose memories of events from her life, or to be able recognize members of her own family. Eventually, we saw changes in thinking, reasoning, and emotions.
This was a difficult experience, and one that I wish we had some way to prevent, but it fits well with what we have learned about the brain from studies of disease and injury. If we point to any part of our experience (memory, feelings, beliefs, character), then we find that this capacity can be impacted or impaired by dysfunction of the brain. Even in the depths of anesthesia, the brain is still very active, but that activity has shifted into a mode that prevents our normal consciousness from functioning. So, without my brain’s activity, I don’t see any way for my individual consciousness to continue.
Of course, there are many ways that I could be wrong about this belief. I can accept that, but at this moment, to believe in mediums would require me to throw out so much (about my understanding of the world) before I could embrace that possibility. So, just like UFOs, the evidence that would be needed for me to take this step would have to be very large, and what we have been given from stories of mediums is, to my eye, too thin.
This is my personal view, and I’ve held it so long that it is just part of how I see the world: it’s like the ground under my feet. What I have noticed recently, however, is that I feel less and less likely to jump in and debate the veracity of stories like Wildman’s personal experience, or those of others who have consulted a medium.
I find that I can’t encourage a person to try to connect to the dead – because I don’t feel that these experiences are literally true – but I also see the value these experiences have for those who are grieving. And even if I can’t see those experiences as literally true, I do feel that they capture an important truth: we may lose a loved one to death, but they are not truly gone.
When I woke up from my dream of seeing my grandparents again, I did not come away believing that I had truly been talking with them. All the same, that moment was deeply moving to me, and I was so happy to have the chance to be back around the kitchen table with them. They had died, certainly, but in that dream I saw that were not erased from the world.
I do believe that to know a person well, to really know their hearts, requires that we take them into our own being. For them to show up in my dream in such a vivid, authentic way is a sign to me that I carry them in my own being. It feels hard to express, but in a sense that is real to me, they are still present in the world because of how well I know them, and that they are carried by all of us who knew them well and cared for them.
The whole experience reminded me of a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh, some words of consolation he gave to those who grieving. In offering a consolation to people hurting in the middle of loss, he compared our lives to that of a cloud: a cloud seems to disappear at some point, perhaps turning into rain. Even so, nothing is truly lost, and we can see the cloud in the water we are drinking, and we can see our loved one in their impacts on the world:
So the person that you believe is already lost is not lost; he is still there in other forms. Look for him inside yourself, look for him in your children. That person is still available in the here and now.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Through that dream, I found my grandparents inside of myself. The experience was built by my brain, as part of my regular sleep. But the life that it had, the truth that it held about them came out of what I still carry in my body and mind from all of the years that we spent together.
I personally cannot recommend that people reach out to a medium to connect with someone that they have lost, because I cannot believe that those who have passed are still present in the world in that way. I could certainly be wrong, but it is important to me to live truthfully, and so I cannot lie about how I see the world.
At the same time, it is also important to say that I will always feel the absence of people I have lost, and wish that we had had more time together. And also, they are not truly gone, they are still here, through all of their connections to the world, and to the people they cared about and who cared for them.
If someone has an experience of an unexplained coincidence, or a sense that messages from those we have lost are turning up in their life, I also would not recommend dismissing those moments as hallucinations, nor building them up into a belief that we are surrounded by ghosts.
I personally would encourage us to appreciate these moments of connection, and turn our attention to all of the ways that our loved ones live on, and are still truly present, in the world. Whatever we can do to see those traces of their lives, to acknowledge any good that they did and to keep it alive here and now, is enough for me.