Christope Barbe is a researcher/author who founded an association in the south of France called “Source de Vie Toulouse.” He and his volunteers travel all over the country to help other people set up new associations by giving various conferences on the hereafter. He is the author of “Le Langage de l’Invisible” (the Language of the Invisible World), which is both technical and practical. Mr. Barbe can be contacted via his website: www.sourcedevietoulouse.com. Although his book is not published in English, one can catch its essence via www.langagedelinvisible.com.

I would like to thank the Forever Family Foundation for giving me this opportunity to recount my testimony.

My Name is Christophe Barbe. I am 39 years old and live in the South of France, near Toulouse. I have been receiving messages from the hereafter and conducting afterlife research for 25 years. I am the director of an association called “Source de Vie Toulouse” which means “Source of Life”. Similar to the Forever Family Foundation, the Source de Vie Toulouse is dedicated to the bereaved through afterlife research.

I was first contacted at the age of 14. In the beginning, it was very difficult for me to comprehend what was really happening or to even think we could make contact with what we call the “other side”. I had never given a second thought about the dead, and I did not even know afterlife encounters were possible. In fact, what touched me is that it was those who we thought were dead who reached out to me. This brought me to realize and understand that they are not disturbed by our contacting them, but actually welcome it. Although physically we leave this life, we continue to exist in another form, and we have the same sentiments and feelings we had before. We, therefore, should not stop loving someone just because they are no longer physically present. They still love us in the same way.

I was made very aware of this without warning. I realized without doubt that those I thought dead were still alive. Let me tell you how it began:
I had been invited to spend a couple of days with two school friends. Their parents, both architects, were behind with their work project. To keep us occupied, they gave us a huge paper tablet, rulers, and pencils. While sketching, out of the blue, my hand started shaking. I was frightened and thought I had developed a nervous spasm or caught some sort of terrible disease. But then I became totally mesmerized when I saw that my hand had begun to write of its own accord. I intentionally let it move across the paper. First, one letter appeared, then two letters, next a word, and then a sentence. My friends were totally unaware that something unusual was happening to me as they were completely absorbed in their task. That is how I received my first automatic writing message from an entity named Elizabeth. It was the first in a long series of wonderful teachings. Since then, I have experienced other forms of communication.

For the remainder of this article, I will tell you about Instrumental TransCommunication (ITC) or Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP). Professeur Ernst Senkowski, a German physicist, defines ITC and EVP as a technical method of contacting spirits using any electronic means to record their voices. I have been teaching Instrumental TransCommunication throughout France for more than seven years. Unlike mediumship, ITC does not require a special gift. Because everyone can try the process, it is of high interest in our country. Recording voices of the dead is not a new phenomenon, however.

In Europe, it was discovered by chance. Pioneer, Konstantin Raudive, a psychologist, recorded all of his comments after his patients left. One day in 1964, he forgot to switch off his tape-recorder. When he noticed it playing, he rewound the tape listening for where he had stopped talking. Raudive was surprised to hear a feminine voice – no female had been in his office. He was puzzled, so he listened more carefully. Then he had the shock of his life – he distinctly heard two words, “Kosti, Kosti” (the name his mother always called him). She had died four years before.

At that time, he did not know those two words would change his life. Konstantin was 53 years old at that time, and during the next ten years he conducted many experiments. Receiving more than one thousand voices in different languages, he studied this means of communication and even developed technical methods. For him, the spirits seemed to change their choice of communication as technology changed. Konstantin Raudive died in 1974 and written on his tombstone is “Death: transition to a new being.” He now helps us from the other side. Many transcommunicators ask him for help when they intend to make a contact.

Throughout Europe, many groups are conducting experiments almost everywhere. ITC echoes are widespread in many countries and now the phenomenon is seriously being considered. Acoustics and sound specialists study and research recorded voices. The human voice is generally evaluated in hertz. The voice of a man oscillates between 80 to 150 Hertz, female voices between 130 to 296 hertz, and children between 248 to 400 hertz. That is the scale for human voices.

The results for studies with paranormal voices is amazing. The frequencies can be 3 or 4 times higher than those of normal living human voices. One received from Konstantin Raudive reached 1428 Hertz! I have recorded more than one hundred voices for, or with, the bereaved. It is difficult for disembodied spirits to reconstitute a voice sound as they no longer have throats. It is very rare to record the same exact voices they had when living on earth, but it sometimes happens and that is magical.

For instance, I recently contacted an 8-year-old boy who had died several months ago. His mother asked him the following question, “Can you tell me who was there to welcome you when you arrived on the other side?” “Anthony was there,” we could hear a voice answering. Anthony was the mother’s 10-year-old nephew who had died in an accident more than two years before.
Recording spirit voices puts a finger on the pulse of paranormal phenomenon, and it is likely to loom larger and larger in the years to come since we all can conduct our own experiments.

- Christophe Barbe
France, November, 2006

There are three basic categories of experiences or phenomena that have become grouped as “ghosts” in the past: apparitions, hauntings and poltergeists. The three are different conceptually, but events around each can appear similar and can even indicate unique combinations of phenomena.

THE STRESS VALVE
Poltergeist, while it literally means “noisy ghost,” is actually unrelated to ghosts in the vast majority of cases. The central theme is physical effects which can run from movements of objects to unusual behavior of technology, from unexplained knockings to temperature changes, with all combinations possible as well.

The poltergeist model is a situation caused by the subconscious mind of a living agent, generally someone in the household undergoing emotional and/or psychological stress. The agents are people who typically have no method of dealing with the stress on any normal level, so the subconscious takes advantage of the psychokinetic (mind over matter) ability we all have to blow off steam. In other words, you can think of the poltergeist scenario as a telekinetic temper tantrum.

Often the physical things affected in a poltergeist case can be used as clues to determine what’s bothering the poltergeist agent. The objects affected may belong to one particular individual in the household, or representative of a role of one of the family. For example, if a husband doesn’t want his wife to work, instead asking her to stay home with the new baby (and effectively “in the kitchen”), kitchen appliances may act strangely when the subject is brought up in discussion. Water bursts may be representative of pent-up guilt.

A HAUNTING REFRAIN
Unlike a poltergeist, where the phenomena is caused by the agent, a haunting is received by the witnesses. Hauntings actually show that we are all psychic receivers to some degree.

In haunting cases, people report seeing (or hearing or feeling or even smelling) a presence (or several) typically engaged in some sort of activity. It could be a man’s figure walking up and down the hallway, or footsteps heard from the attic, or a man and woman physically fighting until one is dead, or even the sounds of two people making love coming from an adjoining room.

The events and figures witnessed in hauntings tend to occur in repeating patterns. Speaking with the “ghosts” tends to do no good, because they just continue to go about their business, as though you’re not even there. Hauntings have occurred on many occasions where the “entities” are representative of living people, by the way.

Hauntings appear to be some kind of environmental recording of events and people. The building or land seemingly records its history, with the more emotion-laden events and experiences coming through “louder” and “stronger.” That people mostly report negative events and emotions (suicide, murder or emotional fights) is likely due to a reporting artifact rather than any unbalanced ratio of negative to positive events.

You might think of a haunting as a loop of video or audio tape playing itself over and over for you to watch. Trying to interact with it would be akin to trying to interact with a show on your TV (sure you can turn it off or change the channel, but I wouldn’t expect the actors to suddenly stop and talk to you directly).

In haunting cases, researchers have found that people oblivious of the phenomena when they first walk in will very likely pick up something in the same spots in the house as the primary witnesses. This indicates that something in the environment at those spots exists on some level, physical or psychic.

One important thing to consider in haunting cases is whether the content of the “replay” is related to what’s gone on in the house or on the land before the current building. It is often possible to track the “story” back to events in the current or past inhabitants’ lives.

In some haunting cases, after a time physical objects may begin to move. In these cases, it would appear that the PK of the witnesses’ subconscious minds starts acting in play. In other words, your subconscious mind, undoubtedly picking up even more than your conscious mind is, begins to help the story along because of your expectation of what occurs in ghost cases. By expecting more to happen, more happens.

HANGING AROUND AFTER DEATH
Finally, we come to actual spirits: Apparitions of the dead (though there are thousands of reported cases of apparitions of the living). An apparition is our personality (or spirit, soul, consciousness, mind, etc.) surviving the death of the body, and capable of interaction with the living (and presumably other apparitions).

What separates an apparition from a haunting is that idea of interaction. If a haunting is a replay of videotape, an apparition is a video conference call. While speaking to the videotape brings no response, the conference call allows for two-way communication.

Apparitions would appear to have no particular form other than what they themselves conjure up as their own self-image. In other words, how the entity thinks of/visualizes him/herself is how the rest of us “see” the ghost.

Try this: close your eyes and get a picture of yourself in your mind’s eye. That’s probably how the living would see you if you were a ghost (and by the way, did you visualize yourself with clothing? Of course you did… That’s why ghosts don’t appear in the nude: their self-images include clothing).

The apparition communicates on a telepathic basis, our psi processes picking up this self-image and adding it to the information received by our “normal” senses. Some of us can process this telepathic input better on a visual basis, others auditory, through feeling or even on a more olfactory basis (smell). Many can experience a ghost on more than one sensory level (seeing and hearing the apparition).

The number of good apparition cases is far surpassed by the number of haunting cases, and it would appear that several things are true about apparitions.

The sheer majority of apparitions are seen once by a relative or friend or loved one within 48 hours of that person’s death, as if the person is coming to say goodbye. Longer-term apparitions tend to have a psychological/emotional need or strong desire to stay here. Such needs or desires include a denial of death, fear of “what’s next”, a strong desire to stay with one’s loved ones, or even anger at a life cut short.

Not everyone with such strong desires or needs sticks around as an apparition.

There are likely some environmental factors that allow people with such strong desires or needs to stick around when the conditions and the psychology coincide.

Ghosts hang around with people in homes, offices, and restaurants and bars (gee, that’s where most living people hang around). There reports of ghosts in cemeteries are extremely rare (if you were dead, would you hang out in a graveyard?).

Most apparitions are seen without any associated unusual object movement, at least for a time. It would appear that some of the long-term apparitional inhabitants of our world, over time, learn to move objects. In other words, learning that they are but consciousness without body, they learn to use their minds to move/affect the physical world (PK), much the way Patrick Swayze’s character in the film GHOST had to learn to move objects.

In any event, interaction with apparitions is the key to knowing they are conscious beings. Ghosts are people, too, you know!

by Loyd Auerbach, M.S.

Rethinking Ordinary

Robert Hansen is an ordinary man. Sort of.

It depends on what you consider ordinary. He's a father, husband, and businessman who works hard and cares deeply for his family. He has goals and dreams and challenges just like the rest of us. With one exception.

Robert Hansen communicates with dead people.

Read the literature and you'll see that most people are psychic. They have the ability, but either don't realize it or are afraid to do anything with it. That's where Hansen is different. This is the story of a regular guy with an extraordinary gift. A man who lives inside a "psychic opening," acting as a channel from one side to the other. Someone who was pressed into action one day by forces that scared the hell out of him.

Skeptics do whatever they can to debunk psychics. And, as with any other field, there are certainly some mediums who are more genuine than others. But no one who personally knows a gifted psychic ever questions their abilities. It's like a good friend who tells you about something that happened to them. From experience, you know their integrity and honesty. You know they're not lying. So it's doubtful that any skeptic was ever good friends with a real psychic.

Most mediums know from a fairly early age that they have certain paranormal abilities, or "sensitivities." The twist in Hansen's case is how his gift came later in life, at age 41. After a year of giving money to an indigent woman near his business, Hansen got into his car one day and heard a voice, clearly and loudly, coming from his chest: "Thank you for taking care of one of my children." The voice continued for several days, surprising and confusing him. Although aware that he was always sensitive to other people's emotions, Hansen did not actively consider himself psychic until after a conversation a few days later with a psychiatrist friend, who encouraged him to explore what was happening. Soon he began to see the "voice"-belonging to his spirit guide, Daniel-as a gift.

Hansen soon realized that he had been "selected," and that nothing about his life had been random. He spent a lifetime developing personal discipline through martial arts (as a 7th-degree black belt, owner of The Silent Flute Self Defense Center, and a national champion), cultivating compassion for children (through four of his own, and hundreds of students), helping others through charitable work, and being "sensitive" since childhood. Simply put, Hansen was better prepared than most people to accept this gift, and do something useful with it. But what, exactly? How would he actually reach the people who could most benefit from his gift?

Making A Connection

Friday Evening, October 6th, 2000: seventy-five people sit expectantly in a karate dojo. A small, low wooden table up front sits next to an empty chair, holding a vase filled with fresh-cut flowers. A candle burns nearby.

An energized anticipation fills the large room. Hansen has asked everyone to close their eyes and mediate for a moment, to clear the energy and make it easier for spirits to get through. He soon becomes animated, casting a flurry of words and descriptions out to the audience. Within seconds, a "connection" is made, and someone in the audience recognizes the spirit Hansen is communicating with.

Tonight is a very special evening. One of Hansen's best friends had died recently, and his family sits in the front row. Jack was the first spirit to appear, using a scar on his leg to identify himself-a scar from an elevator accident that Hansen was unfamiliar with, which Jack's family confirms.

Compassion, sensitivity, and genuine concern characterize Hansen's readings. He is completely focused on the person or persons involved in a connection, as if they are the only ones in the room. To witness this is to be involved in something deeply personal and profoundly moving. There are incredibly accurate facts: names, places, specific events, and complex information such as medical conditions and family history. And plenty of tears. Hansen brings completion to people, to know that the cycle of life continues forever. That the other side, in a more subtle sense, is just as real-yet as unseen-as the wind.

At the end of the evening, people shuffled in their seats, coats in hand, with thoughts of getting back to their lives. But Hansen wasn't through-he had one more startling message to convey. Glowing like the candle beside him, Hansen urged the crowd to profoundly rethink their ideas about death:

"When someone dies, they do not leave you. Talk about them as if they are still alive in the physical sense. They appreciate acts of prayerfulness. People who have passed on keep their personality and love. Like a wave, they move around you, and don't want to feel as if they've disappeared."

Choices & Children

Eighteen months ago, Hansen realized that his gift allowed a special affinity for connecting with children with special needs ("special ed" kids, as they're commonly referred to). A roomful of children who couldn't normally sit still for two minutes are held in awe as Robert captivates their attention. Hansen "links" with them on a deeper level of understanding-emotionally, physically and especially energetically-than conventional approaches. By doing so, he is able to draw them out, energizing their belief systems, and rebuilding perceived limitations into new foundations for self-confidence.

Watching one of his special education classes, a visitor gets to see miracles firsthand. Hansen relates to the children, getting them to do things that twelve years with all sorts of therapists haven't. Parents are crying. They don't know how he gets them to walk when, for years, they couldn't. Talk when they couldn't. Express joy when they never even smiled before.

The parents who watch these groups are also transformed; they see the incredible potential of belief. They see their children become more self-confident and courageous. And many times their own parenting becomes more spiritual and compassionate as a result.

Ironically, his work with children has forced Hansen into a quandary about where to devote most of his time. The choices are difficult: his beloved Karate school; working with special ed kids in groups and individually; working with clients doing readings; and his "Love Never Ends" groups. Eventually, Hansen will most likely work himself out of working the mainstream karate classes. He says that his spirit guides are getting "louder and louder" about working as a medium.

Embracing Destiny

There are many aspects to Robert Hansen's work. And the "silver thread" running through all of them is the compassionate responsibility shown to the people he reads for-allowing them closure with departed loved ones-and the special ed kids he helps to lead more confident and fulfilling lives.

What separates an ordinary person from an extraordinary one? It is wealth or fame? Or simply the ability and commitment to use their talents to bring happiness and peace of mind to both themselves and others?

In the book Way of the Peaceful Warrior, the mystical Socrates tells Dan Millman: "For you, Dan, a conscious process of transformation has begun. It cannot be reversed; there's no going back. To try and do so would end in madness. You can only go forward now; you're committed."

The great psychic and medical intuitive Edgar Cayce once said, "Destiny or Karma is what the Soul has done about what it has become aware of." Robert Hansen, a normal person struggling to come to terms with his destiny. Robert Hansen, who bravely accepted his gift from the Divine, and uses it to enrich the lives of countless others.

Robert Hansen has indeed gone forward. And his example of sharing is inspiring.

A Few Minutes with Robert Hansen:
The Interview

Robert, my first question has to do with genetics. Is it possible that psychic ability is hereditary? What are the chances your children will have it, or some other related ability?

I am not quite sure if my gift is hereditary. To my knowledge, no one else in my parents' background has the gift. However, my 18-year-old daughter Jessica does have it-she demonstrated remarkable psychic talent at 12 years old. And although she doesn't formally use her gift, whenever I do a reading and Jessica is there, she receives the same energy.

How would a parent know if their child has it? What are some of the signs to look for? I'm thinking of things like "invisible friends" and so on.

Most children claim visions, visitations, sounds, or "knowings" if they have the gift. For example, my daughter has the ability to "automatic write." Simply put, she can channel the energy of dead people or spirit people through her guided hands.

These experiences, what I call "psychic openings," must be carefully assessed in children. When children maintain the visions, sounds, etc., they must be closely watched to be sure that it's [either] psychic ability, some form of playful imagination, or possibly "mental misfirings" associated with emotional or psychological disorders.

That sounds like a much more reasonable approach, versus simply dismissing these experiences as the result of an overactive imagination. So what would be the protocol for teaching a child to develop such a gift if they have it?

Above all else, there must be an absolute respect and maturity of the "facilitator." It's quite easy for a parent to over-encourage a child to do tricks with their gift.

True development usually ripens as adulthood approaches. Generally speaking there should be a solid sense of faith in a higher power. Acts of psychic gifts are often closely associated with the "divine," and a child in particular should feel safe and relaxed with [that concept]. Once this is in place, a qualified guide is very important. Ultimately the gift is directed by spirits themselves.

Let's move on to your mediumship work. From your experience over the past nine years, does a psychic's ability grow in strength as they get older?

Yes, as in all things practice makes for progress...perfection is not our goal. Maturity and experience always make for great teachers.

I've always wanted to know if all mediums receive the same signals, and if they're different for male and female mediums.

I can only speak for myself. All the mediums I've come to know, seen, or read about seem to receive their energy through feelings, inner sounds and inner visions. The symbols seem to be vastly different depending on the medium's personal experiences and points of reference. As for the signals that female and male mediums receive, as far as I can tell it's all very similar.

Maybe we can get more specific here. Do you feel anything on a physical level when you're working? For example, do you feel anything on your skin, smell anything, hear voices or sounds, have hot or cold sensations, or anything physical?

You hit the nail on the head with this question. All five of my bodily senses are fully awakened when I am psychically opened. I personally respond on a very high level of "emotional energy" when I read as well. Hot and cold, sweating, the smell of flowers, gasoline, smoke...you name it. All interact like one giant "psychic concert." It's all happening at once and yet separately!

Do you ever feel pain or joy from the spirits, as part of a reading?

Yes, I experience not only joy and pain, but the full range of human emotions. The gift of clairsentience, as it's called, provides me an inner doorway to the feelings and emotions connected not only to the departed souls, but also to their families.

The energies connected have always been felt for the purpose of healing. They do linger from time to time, and have kept me up at night, but generally speaking they are rather beautiful and stay only as long as necessary to complete the reading.

With everything going on during a reading, do you feel more comfortable with certain topics?

No, not really. Actually, the topics are selected by the energy in the reading, not be me. Certainly readings pertaining to a child's passing, suicides, and murder are always very sensitive and at times unpleasant.

I'm curious about your spirit guides. Do they "tell" or "suggest" things to you?

My guides are very similar to people in that regard. They are both forceful and gentle. [Hansen laughs] Insistent? Yes, absolutely! When a healing is at work, they become very animated in their intentions.

Robert, your gift came later in life. Did you feel more or less prepared? In other words, since you weren't consciously psychic from an early age, do you feel that you didn't have as much time to "get used to it?" Or did your many years with the martial arts-especially the aspects of discipline and personal responsibility-give you the maturity to use this gift in more constructive ways?

Absolutely. My gift, which "came forward" so to speak in my early 40's, I believe was a combination of many factors. My natural sensitivities to people in trouble, my deep desire to help to heal, and years of discipline through the martial arts all combine to create the energy of my readings. And maturity is certainly a factor...whenever you're dealing with the loss of someone's life, you can't be any more serious than that. To somehow act or interpret this as a frivolous experience would be terrible.

Can you give a brief example of how you've used this gift to help a child? For instance, your own son Bobby?

In my work with disabled and challenged children, I have the frequent opportunity to "read them psychically" as I work with them. Autistic children, including my eight-year-old son Bobby, are quickly connected to my vibrations. Almost daily I hear how much so-and-so's child was touched by my "energy," almost as though they'd been given an invisible booster shot of calmness.

Where do you see all this going? Any plans for the future?

I've laid all of my directions at the doorstep of spirit and God's direction. As we say, I have turned life and will over to my God as I understand him...

Okay, but what are your spirit guides actually telling you? Anything specific down the road?

Well, it would be great to have a healing and bereavement center created so that people from anywhere could find some comfort-perhaps like a "psychic retreat center," where readings and hands-on healing would be provided.

My last question may seem a bit odd to you, but I'm sure it's one that many people still wonder about. Robert, do you have any doubts at all about an afterlife?

None whatsoever. The constant energy of the readings, combined with my own personal faith, solidifies my positive approach and knowing in an afterlife.

Seems like a great way to conclude an interview...on such a hopeful note. Robert, thanks so much for all you've shared today.

You're quite welcome. Hope is something that needs to be shared. Thank you.

William Roll has received a BA from the University of Berkeley, a B.Litt. and M.Litt. from Oxford University and a Ph.D. from Lund University. Roll worked with J. B. Rhine at the Parapsychology Laboratory, Duke University, for seven years. During this period he made his first poltergeist investigation and became project director of the Psychical Research Foundation, which had been set up to explore the question of survival after death. After the dissolution of the Duke Laboratory in 1964, the PRF became a sponsored program at the Duke Department of Electrical Engineering and its staff was expanded. PRF research included out-of-body experiments and studies of the relationship between ESP and the alpha brain wave.
In 1986 Roll was appointed Professor of Psychology and Psychical Research at West Georgia College (now University). Aside from teaching parapsychology, he has investigated haunted houses in the US and Europe and has detected anomalous magnetic fields at the sites. Roll has written more than 200 research articles, many book chapters, and four books, including Theory and Experiment in Psychical Research, his M.Litt thesis; The Poltergeist; and Unleashed: Of Poltergeists and Murder. Many of his poltergeist and haunt investigations have been shown on Unsolved Mysteries, The Discovery Channel and other TV documentaries. He has received the Outstanding Career Award from the Parapsychological Association and the Tim Dinsdale Memorial Award from the Society for Scientific Exploration. Currently, two of Dr. Roll’s books are in print: “The Poltergeist” (Paraview, New York, 2004, a reprint of the 1972 edition) and “Unleashed: Of Poltergeists and Murder - The Curious Story of Tina Resch” (with Valerie Storey, Paraview Pocket Books, New York, 2004).

When I was 14 years old, I got out of bed one night. Wondering what got me up, I looked around the room and saw my body still asleep under the covers. I had never heard about anything like this. It continued to occur. While out of body, I was clearheaded but never ventured far - only in the house and yard.

I lived in the town of Birkerød, Denmark, and had been confirmed by our Lutheran minister. Like most Danes, I was not religious. Lutheran was our state religion, so being baptized and confirmed was what we did. It never crossed my mind to ask the reverend about my experiences. Instead, I asked a neighbor, Jacob Paludan, an author who also reviewed books for the newspapers. His special interests were eastern religion and parapsychology, so he lent me books he had reviewed. Through this literature, I learned about out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and other parapsychological topics. My own OBEs were more subdued than those I read about, however.

I recall, for example, trying to poke my hand through a wall. I got it partway in, but then pulled it back because the feeling was too strange. Another time, I found myself in the yard, wondering how I got through the closed window. I thought this must be what my after-death life would be like, but the prospect of forever roaming around the house and yard did not appeal to me.

One of the books, The Bhagavad-Gita, spoke about a different kind of self. The text was ancient Indian, but the message was fresh and promising. According to the Gita, the real self is not the everyday self, of which my OBE self was a copy, but a self that included everybody and everything that exists.

The book came with instructions for how to know the limitless self. It said that you are to sit on the floor, place your right foot on your left thigh, your left foot on your right thigh, empty your mind of extraneous thoughts, and concentrate on the universal self. Then the universal self, supposedly, fills your mind. Simple instructions although difficult to accomplish. I succeeded to sit in the prescribed position - however, it came not with enlightenment but with awful pain in my knees. The pain disappeared with practice, but the universal self still eluded me.

The search to understand my two different selves, the everyday little self of my OBEs and the limitless self I had read about, led me to study parapsychology. When it was time for college, I chose Berkeley University, in California, because it was close to my father’s home. Neither my psychology nor philosophy classes covered anything that was relevant to my interests, but then I came across a paper by H. H. Price of Oxford University. I liked Price’s theory about ESP and how it connects to the big self. I therefore went to Oxford and studied under him. I became deeply immersed in ESP and OBE tests. After writing my thesis, for which I received the M.Litt., Dr. J. B. Rhine invited me to the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University and my career in parapsychology was launched.

While working at Duke, I discovered that OBEs sometimes occur because of mental or physical stress. Personally, it made sense because I had been profoundly shaken by the death of my mother, which occurred before my first OBE. I also learned that an OBE might represent the first stage of a near-death experience (NDE). Raymond Moody, a close friend who had written Life After Life, told me that most near-death experiences occurred in three stages. The first and third stages represented two entirely different selves - the first stage was the OBE self, a reflection of the little personal self of everyday life, and the third was the large universal self that included all individuals.

During stage one, the beginning of the NDE journey, the person seems to travel through a tunnel, and arrive at a place for reuniting with deceased loved ones.

Stage three involves the experience of uniting with a universal being or place of light and love. The unification is not consummated - if it were, bodily death would result. The NDEer returns to the body, at which time the event ends.

How to get from the first stage to the third had been my major interest since my teen years. I now realized that parapsychology, my chosen field, represented the second self.

The feeling of intimately knowing and accepting family members is a main feature of the second stage of the NDE. But it often has a less joyful ingredient: the life review. During the life review, the NDEer recalls causing pain to others, but now the pain is felt from the other person’s perspective. There is no self-accusation or feeling of guilt - only painful awareness of what happened to the other and now you. The review process seems to cleanse the mind, allowing eternal bonds to emerge.

Parapsychology is actually a study of the second self, which is described by so many NDEers. The telepathic and clairvoyant self connects people with their close family and friends.

Natural cases of ESP are often reported by people who are emotionally close, especially when one of them is undergoing sudden death or injury. In tests of telepathy, members of the same family are often used as sender and percipient because they get better results than unrelated pairs. In some instances, experimenters try to forge a bond between two unrelated people before testing. Psychokinesis tests seem to work best when the subject experiences an emotional affinity for the object or machine that is to be affected.

I began using the term “the long body” for this living web of psychic connections. The long body spans distance in space and time, and includes the deceased. It can be a bridge between the little self and the universal self.

My research took a different turn after Rhine sent Gaither Pratt, the assistant director, and me to a home in Seaford, New York. We were to determine what caused the family’s belongings to fly across the house and break. It was often believed that the source of such destruction was a demon or poltergeist. However, we discovered that the center of the turmoil was the 12-year-old son who had strong feelings of anger against his father. The man, an ex-Marine, ran the family “like an army camp,” as Russell Targ said after his visit. No evidence of any demon was found. The events seemed to be volatile and unconscious psychokinesis, created by the son in response to his father’s abuse. We named the phenomenon RSPK (recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis). Other cases followed, where the source remained the same - intense anger toward a parent or caregiver because of perceived mistreatment. When family bonds snap, the result can be explosive psychokinesis.

The foundation of a family is love. If love is replaced by antagonism, the repercussion can be devastating in the normal sense, as well as parapsychological. With love in place, however, families prosper and persist, even after death.

the window
by Jeff Kane, Ph.D.

the window
once open
where i could
see and breathe
and feel the touch
of the breeze
is now shut

a mirror only
i press my nose
to the cracks sealed
searching for scent
signs of life
guided by memory

wondering
if you
outside looking in
press your fingers
to the glass
or simply
have left
for foreign lands

Poetry Corner

in the failing light
by jeffrey kane

in this season
of perpetual dusk
i walk across
the vacant fields
where memory reflects
what light
no longer beholds

images
of you
charging through the human thicket
as if with battle flag
the boundless
declaring itself
yourself
in pure intent
behold you called
i am

empty shadows cross the fields
i see you still
in all your glory
my eyes alone beheld
my eyes alone behold