do with the occult, (+) for the phenomenal apparitions were visible, tangible and could be photographed. What happened and was checked in the case described is certainly not a unique case. I do not doubt the documentary reports of Dr. von Schrenck-Notzing and his fellow-scientists. Instead I ask a question which was not yet topical at that time: what form of energy was involved?
----
[*] Spiritualism says that reported phenomena ate traceable to the intervention of the spirit world in this world.
[+] Latin, occultum, the hidden. The doctrine that there are natural and psychic facts which cannot be incorporated into the existing scheme of science. Today attempts are made to investigate occult apparitions by scientific methods.
---- Eva C was in a hypnotic trance during the séances, i.e. in a state of consciousness that precludes the use of free will. The subconscious as a form of energy (for the production of materializations) is conceivable, even though not yet proved. But could converted forms of the energy of dead people perhaps be involved? That supposition is not so absurd as it may seem; if anything it is a logical continuation of the 'energy principle' into virtually virgin territory. If all forms of energy are convertible into one another - one of the few completely accepted and indisputable laws of nature! - the conscious energies of dead people must also be convertible.
For thousands of years we knew nothing about what happened to consciousness after death, apart from vague philosophical and religious speculations. (The 'soul' goes up to heaven. Thus immortality was already ascribed to the consciousness = soul!) Modern research is on the point of carefully removing the dark cloths which were spread over a supposedly inexplicable mystery, and what it has already brought to light appears to show that the consciousness (ergo, conscious energy) of the dead is by no means 'dead'! Might the conscious energies of dead people have been active during the 'host miracle' at Carabandal on the night of 18th July, 1962, when a host- like object materialized on the tongue of the girl Conchita? What stage has the exploitation of these phenomena reached today?
Suspended animation occurs when the breath stops owing to paralysis of the breathing centre
(asphyxia), in myocardial infarctions, in injuries resulting from accidents (traumas), in poisoning and after convulsions, etc. As Jean-Baptiste Dala-court[7] says, everyone who recovers from suspended animation testifies that during their temporary stay in 'the other world' they retained consciousness of a quite different kind from their 'living' consciousness. The other world is perceived as timeless, as a world of oscillations, harmonies and colours, as a world in which countless consciousnesses communicate with each other, carry on conversations with each other and, although incorporeal and without sensory organs, can see other people and swap memories with them. Everyone who has come back from the 'other side' has found their abrupt return to the harsh cold facts of mortal life burdensome and repugnant. Everything was so infinitely more beautiful 'over there'.
Doctors say that such descriptions by resuscitated persons are irrelevant and worthless as statements about 'another world', because levels of consciousness continue to function in the brains of those in suspended animation and dredge up into their consciousness illusory pictures of a fairy-tale world from the deeper brain levels.
If the doctors are right, I find it a terrifying idea. There am I down below in my wooden box; insects and worms are thriving on my flesh and my deeper brain levels are still active. How unpleasant! Who knows how long they stay active? Until the moment when conscious energies have been converted?
Thank heaven that would happen more quickly with a genuine death than in cases of suspended animation.
But what about the conscious energies of people who have been dead for many long years?
In 1964 the Swede Friedrich Jurgenson [8] claimed that he had succeeded in capturing the voices of people long dead with the help of microphones and tapes.
This phenomenon fascinated the critical parapsychologist Dr. Constantin Raudive, born in Latvia in
1909, who left his home as a young man and studied in Paris and Madrid, where his meeting with Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) became a decisive experience in his life. (Ortega advocated the anthropological theory that the 'spirit' forms the core of personality.)
Raudive spent four years checking Jurgenson's claims. He had an absolutely sound-proof recording studio built and worked with magnetized records which even cut out the minimal background noise of microphones and cartridges. In 1968 Raudive [9] published the results of his experiments, which had all taken place under scientifically controlled conditions. Hundreds of observers confirmed the accuracy of his methods, among them figures such as Professor Hans Bender, Director of the Institut fur Grenzwissenchaften, Freiburg, the physicist Dr. G. Ronicke, Julian Blieber, PhD, Dr. Arnold Reincke, Dr. Hans Naegeli, President of the Swiss Parapsychological Society, Professor Atis Teichmanis, Professor Werner Brunner, a surgeon from Zurich, Professor Alex Schneider, St. Gall, Professor Walter H. Uphoff, Boulder, U.S.A., Dr. Jule Eisenbund, Denver, U.S.A., Dr. Wilhelmine C.
Hennequin, specialist in an-aesthesia, Dr. R. Fatzer, Wadenswill, Switzerland, etc., etc.
Constantin Raudive recorded 72,000 voices! Alex Schneider, Professor of Physics at the Eidgenossischen Technischen Hochschule, Switzerland, said on the subject: Provisionally physics has no objections to make to the voice phenomena. At all events we shall be waiting tensely for the result of further investigations, as they will enlarge our knowledge of electromagnetic radiation.
Anyone can hunt down voices in his own home without great expense. This is the rough recipe. You choose a time and a room with as little external noise as possible. Alone or with others you pick up the microphone and call on dead persons (or 'spirits') to announce themselves. The tape should be running.
You wait and repeat your appeal to those on the other side in half a minute. You wait again. You should not keep this up for more than half an hour.
You rewind the tape and if you have made contact, you hear hastily spoken words in different languages. The scraps of language received are babbled so fast that at first you have to take a good deal of trouble to pick words and sentences out of the confused mixture of your own voice, room noises and interference. Sounds, words and fragments of sentences are often hissed and sometimes only whispered. They are spoken by different voices.
You should write down what you pick up, because only then can you recognize languages, dialects and logograms. You get the best results if you play identified voices on to a second tape and cut out waiting periods, background noise, etc. in the process. I should like to destroy the hope that you can under-stand communications from the voices en clair, as it were. There is a lot of turbulence in the ether! Aunt Emma's great-great-grandfather follows close on the heels of Nietzsche, and soon after that comes the voice of Caruso or a dead friend. A characteristic feature is that no one voice lets another finish what it is saying. They must be a garrulous lot in the other world, too.
The following is a practical method of receiving voices. You connect the microphone cable of the tape recorder to the radio and choose a setting between two transmitters. The procedure has the disadvantage that voices are overlaid by atmospheric disturbances, but also the advantage that any conceivable influencing of the microphone by those present is excluded. It has been proved that voices from the ether can be captured above all atmospheric noise [10].
There were no noises during Dr. Raudive's studio experiments. The academic participants did not say a word. The voices of dead friends and relations were recognized. If a supra-or subconscious form of energy released the phenomena it would have happened unconsciously, but it makes no difference, for that, too, would be a proof of the conversion of conscious energy into the energy form of the technical medium's tape!
It is estimated that some 100,000 tape recordings of voices from the other world have been stored away in different parts of the globe. So there is plenty of evidence. The open question is how to interpret it. The crux is that so far it cannot be said with scientific certainty that the transcendental voices really belong to the dead. It is conceivable that the conscious energy of living persons
(including sub-and supra-consciousness) may directly affect electronic apparatus. It may even be enough for someone somewhere who is taking absolutely no part in the experiment to release unconscious energy which is converted into electromagnetic oscillations which get recorded on the tape. From my point of view it makes little difference whether the voices of the dead or conscious scraps of conversation by contemporaries are taken down magnetically. In either case there is proof of conscious energies which produce effects without having caused them consciously.
The hunt for voices from the spirit world continues. In May 1974 Dr. Constantin Raudive [11] wrote: For the
