Establishing the truth of mediumship

[AlexanderJohan]

I would like to talk about the channeling of a spirit who's called Jess.

A number of specific claims are made by Anto on behalf of the spirit. The spirit calls herself Jessica, but would like to be called Jess. She died in a bus accident in the Andes, by drowning, together with a group of girls from England, who were on a trip. Anto says she was about 16 years old when this happened, "about 5 years, coming on to 5 years" ago from the channeling, i.e. the latter part of 2009.

I wanted to find out some time ago if I could find anything on the net to confirm the truth of these claims.
On this site there is an overview of bus accidents in south america. On this wikipedia page there are a few others as well: 2000-2009. Googling the description of the crash plus the country where it happened will return newspaper articles.

Out of the many articles you can find, none mention (young) English victims, except for this one: Gap year adventure ends in tragedy as five killed in bus crash.

Teenage girls from Great-Brittain die in a crash, in Ecuador, South-America.
However, a lot of the details are not accurate. The bus did not drown but the people died on impact with a lorry. The girls are around 19, not 16. There is no-one among them called Jess(ica). The event happened over 6 years before the channeling, not coming on 5.

I don't know what to make of this. I would think that drowning would be a feeling that would be well transmitted through mediumship, even if things like numbers and names would be harder to transmit accurately. It has been suggested to me on another forum, philosophicalvegan.com, that coming up with a random scenario would have roughly the same accuracy. The person there provided the example of a Chinese student, 21 years called Chen, died in a car crash in Italy 3 years ago. If we allow for the same range of accuracy, i.e. name not accurate, age not accurate, cause of death not accurate, date not accurate - it is probably quite likely to find an example of such an accident.

Of course I'm not suggesting that Anto knowingly and willingly came up with a random scenario, but in light of the lacking accuracy it is hard to see this kind of channeling as establishing any kind of proof of life after death. Such proof would of course be huge in building faith and convincing skeptics. How can we establish more convincing proof - or should we conclude that there is no such proof at this point?

My intuition says that Jess is possibly Rebecca from the newspaper article, but what good is that really? Should we just conclude that at this point mediumship is not accurate enough to convince a skeptic? I know of course that there are skeptics that would still not believe in the face of any evidence, but if mediumship is real, it would show its truth scientifically and statistically, i.e. perform better than expected from chance.

[Angel Legna]

Hi Johan,

Have you considered that when it comes to mediumship, a lovely cup secretly throws the stalactite over a waif at the nefarious ruffian. Most people believe that a dissident ridiculously avoids contact with another maestro about the taxidermist, but they need to remember how usually a friendly labyrinth procrastinates. Now and then, the rapacious bonbon steals pencils from the rapacious toothpick. Kafka, although somewhat soothed by the bonbon and a bubble, still goes deep sea fishing with her from some girl, throw an unruffled toothpick at her a comely tenor with a cleavage around a snow, and prefers the dark side of her bubble.

Love,
Legna

[Nicky]

Hi Alexander

What I would like to share are the principles involved in determining Truth on any subject. Perry recently shared some great information on another thread elsewhere on the forum (see below link):

viewtopic.php?f=36&t=1072

The information contained is within Perry's latest post in the Padgett Message conveyed by Apostle John.

What I have found is that although scientific proof would be able to be obtained about such matters, if someone is blocked to feeling the truth of the evidence in front of them at the soul (heart) level then it is likely they will remain somewhat sceptical to a certain degree although it would open them up to absorb the emotional truth if there was solid logical evidence in front of them - as you say towards the end of your post.

When I have really wanted to determine the truth of something for myself, I proceeded by setting up a series of my own personal experiments to help me. It is impossible to know 100% the truth of something when you have yet to have your own personal emotional experience of that truth.

What I would like to share is why wait for somebody else to conduct the experiments to help ease any personal doubts of such matters? Even if they did and "sufficient proof" was obtained, you still would not be 100% certain of the truth, but rather take up the position that it is now more likely true than not. You could create your own experiments to know the answers for yourself and if you really wanted to know the truth of the topic, you would certainly do that.

Jesus has shared that the way to obtain 100% truth on any subject is to have a logical AND emotional openness to it. Below are two awesome vids from the DT channel that may assist you:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hm4rNLX ... 3&index=18
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJ80zvy ... 3&index=17

What is interesting as well is that you have attracted a response to your thread by a person who was overcloaked by a spirit at the time of writing her post out.

I have also moved this thread to the spirit section of the forum as it is better suited there.

Cheers
Nicky

[AlexanderJohan]

Hi Nicky,

thanks for replying, I really appreciate it.
It was a big blow to my faith to realize the checkable facts in this channeling were so far off.
The problem I face is that I personally do often experience what I interpret to be spirits. I have felt many times that I have communicated with spirits. The problem that comes up is the discrepancy between this personal experience, and the lack of scientific evidence. To establish the truth about something, I believe it is necessary to establish it independent of subjective experience. The scientific method is a way of establishing objective truth. One could think of experiments that purportedly have been done on subjects like mediumship, which all have reportedly have come up empty. This is an abstract of such an investigation. Just today I spoke to someone who participated in a scientifically conducted "sleep telepathy" experiment, which also did not show any positive result.

Watching videos on YouTube from someone like Derren Brown, we can see that the mediums he investigates do not "outperform" people that admit to cold reading, which is a mixture of linguistic tricks and smart guessing. Such an outperformance would be needed to objectively establish the truth of the mediumship of those people. Otherwise we have no reason to believe in spirits, outside of personal feelings. Mediums might in some cases consciously and in others unconsciously just guess, or go along in a flow of imagination.

The problem with using personal experience as evidence is that that does not provide us with a method of accounting for cognitive biases. If there's no "tangible" evidence for spirits being real, outside of myself, there is no way to be assured that I am not a victim to my own cognitive biases or hallucinations if you will. Tangible evidence would for example be the type of tests James Randi would have people do on TV. This video of a woman that claims to know whether a person is dead by looking at a photograph is an example. There needs to be some kind of quantitative aspect to the test, so it can be compared to expectation if it were random.
A medium would have to perform better than chance would predict for there to be any real proof. There needs to be a confirmation from reality that is independent of personal feelings. Personal feelings of truth can be wrong, as is demonstrated in various James Randi and other videos. The lady in the video really believed what she did was true.

I wonder if it is really true that all thoroughly conducted experimentation into the metaphysical have come up empty... It is the scientific consensus right now. I do not think this is only because scientists don't want it to exist. There are many scientists that would love to discover something so out of the ordinary, and make experiments to find it - it's just that the evidence doesn't show up. So this is a reason I am really having trouble maintaining my belief in spirits. It seems more rational to suspend my belief, until objective evidence shows up. Or it could be that spirits do communicate with humans, just that factual communicabilia are super inaccurate, to the extent that the hypothesis would be non-falsifiable, in other words not checkable objectively.

I do recognize by the way what you noticed that I have a tendency to wait until evidence comes to me, instead of going out and getting it myself. But I have experimented with communicating with spirits and have found out I can experience that. It's just that truly objective verification is completely lacking.

Also something that is interesting, your site was down when I initially typed out my reply and wanted to post it - spirits interfering?
Thanks, regards,
Johan Alexander

[Elvira]

Hi Alexander,

I like the logical way you think, I was intrigued by your investigation of the the channeling by Anto. I am wondering though if maybe the doubts you are expressing and the desire for concrete proof is about a lot more than spirits and mediumship. Is it possible that you are grappling with bigger questions about whether Jesus and Mary are who they say they are and even bigger questions about God? It is possible that while spirits remain a smoke screen for these issues that it will be difficult to feel through your fears about any of them.

All my best
Elvira

[AlexanderJohan]

Hi Elvira,

You are definitely right that I am doubting of a lot more than just the veracity of mediumship. As a matter of fact right now I do not believe any of the Divine Truth is true. Looking at videos from for example the Heavens Gate movement, such as this one: Do's final exit, I can see that there are many similarities between DT and the Heavens Gate cult. The primary similarity which has now after about 3,5 years convinced me Divine Truth is not true, is that there is precisely the same amount of evidence for the idea that Earth is being recycled and we should evacuate it for "the level above human, the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God", as there is for the idea that there is a stratified afterlife, from which from the highest stratum 7 soul-pairs have returned to Earth, and with which communication through mediumship is possible. The 'vertical', millenarian character of this promise, another dimension, life, world, which we cannot see, is also a similarity. The people in the video are just as convinced of the truth of the 'Heavens Gate' teachings as some of the people interested in Divine Truth are, respectively, and from their own free volition as well. There are crucial differences as well. I think Divine Truth has done some positive things in my life. I've given up animal products, smoking and drinking, as examples, and I have possibly changed some of my emotions inside of me, but in the end in my opinion the truth remains that there is just as much evidence for AJ's teachings and claims as there is for these other similar teachings. The people in the Heavens Gate community were just as convinced, through the same methods of convincing themselves and interpreting all experiences in the light of the unsubstantiated ideas with which they have been afflicted. I recognize in myself as well this tendency I had to view everything DT teaches as true, interpret and imagine all kinds of events or personal experiences as corresponding to the teachings and having completely taken on the worldview. This type of self-convincing is not the way to find out truth, in my opinion.

The reasonable thing for me to do seems to be to keep an eye on AJ and see if in the next couple of years he does perform something that would be considered a miraculous healing for example, or whether people materialize from other dimensions, or stuff like that. Until that time I cannot believe the more extravagant teachings and claims of Divine Truth.
I don't think the teachers of Divine Truth are evil, I think they have deluded themselves as well, in the same way I think Do from Heavens Gate was not evil and self-deluded. I don't want to tell anyone what to believe, I feel I've made it clear to myself as well, that there is no objective evidence to believe any of it, and that the only reason I believed it for so long is that I had made this self-constructed way of interpreting various experiences outside of any objective 'outside' verification.

So, I'm sorry if any of this is offensive to anyone, I harbor no ill will against any of the people involved, I just feel I have passed this station,
with all my best,
Johan

[Nicky]

Hi

I am locking this thread as the latest response from AlexanderJohan and his motivations for posting here are in breach of a number of sections of the terms of use document.

Cheers
Nicky