[steansathtpos]

Tempest,

Your mixed reaction to channeling illustrates a neglected insight. From my experience, every mystical and paranormal phenomenon is obfuscated by a bewildering array of counterfeits. This is true of channeling, OBEs, and NDEs, but also of past life recall, demonic possession, and soeaking in tongues. The trick is how to develop the spiritual discernment that can detect what, if anything, is genuine.

This is dramatically evidenced by dabbling with Ouija boards. A few years ago, some very secular Education professors approached me and asked me what I thought of Ouija boards. I warned that almost everyone I knew who had played with one had eventually received messages from Hell, fallen angels, or demons. Perhaps, these communicators are mostly mischievous spirit impersonators. But the real demonic possession case that inspired the movie 'The Exorcist" bagan with a boy's attempt to contact his late Aunt Harriet through the board. Intially benigh messages soon led to ghastly possession. My professor friends suddenly seemed uncomfortable. They had concealed am important fact from me. They had just been terrorized by such allegedly demonic Ouija board messages at a party. They had imagined that secular types like them were immune to the power of negative suggestion, and so, they expected their messages to be sweetness and light. The neglected important question is this: why not assume that such spirit impersonators are also active during channeling, OBEs, etc.? Still, despite the dangers, Ouija boards, like channeling, can also occasionally be vehicles for genuine ACDs.

Two iminent professors, Willliam James of Harvard and James Hyslop of Columbia promised each other that whoever died first would try to give the survivor evidence of individual life after death. WJ died first and Hyslop waited for months, apparently in vain. But one day, he received a letter from Ireland, a country he had never visited. It was a married couple whose experiments with a Ouija board had bccome dominated by a certain Willian James, who insisted that they contact a Prof. James Hyslop and deliver the message, "Remember the red pyjamas!" At first the couple felt too embarrased to deliver so silly a message. But eventually their curiosity prompted them to track Hyslop down. They were disappointed by his reaction. Hyslop could recall no red pyjamas and dismissed this message as silly fluff. But as time passed, he suddenly recalled that on a trip to Paris he and WJ had arrived ahead of their luggage and had to shop for winter necessities. Looking for sleepware, Hyslop could only find some "really fancy red pyjamas," and WJ teased hiim for days about his loud tastes. Does the Irish couple read the mind of Hyslop, a man unknown to them whom they therefore find difficult to locate? No, to me this seems like a genuine ADC contact.

But why the trivial detail rather than a more spiritually profound message? Perhaps the discarnate WJ realized how easy it is for earthly "recievers" to distort metaphysical claims from the perseptive of their own belief systems. So the bizarre and concrete nature of WJ's message may have been selected because it seemed less vulnerable to distortion.

Tempest, perhaps the medium was able to tap your mother's memory bank without her conscious participation in the communication. I have started a new thread on "ADCs Vs. Moemory Loss" to explore the circumstances under which ADCs might be possible, and yet, severely limited abd rare. You may particularly identify with Phyliis's ADC. So please monitor that thread.

Don