We may smile at Alexander the Oracle-Monger. Of course we all would like to foretell the future and make contact with the gods. But we would not nowadays be taken in by such a fraud. Or would we? M. Lamar Keene spent thirteen years as a spiritualist medium. He was pastor of the New Age Assembly Church in Tampa, a trustee of the Universal Spiritualist Association, and for many years a leading figure in the mainstream of the American spiritualist movement. He is also a self-confessed fraud who believes, from first-hand knowledge, that virtually all spirit readings, séances and mediumistic messages from the dead are conscious deceptions, contrived to exploit the grief and longing we feel for deceased friends and relatives. Keene, like Alexander, would answer questions given to him in sealed envelopes-in this case not in private, but on the pulpit. He viewed the contents with a concealed bright lamp or by smearing lighter fluid, either of which can render the envelope momentarily transparent. He would find lost objects, present people with astounding revelations about their private lives which “no one could know,” commune with the spirits and materialize ectoplasm in the darkness of the séance-all based on the simplest tricks, an unswerving self-confidence, and most of all, on the monumental credulity, the utter lack of skepticism he found in his parishioners and clients. Keene believes, as did Harry Houdini, that not only is such fraud rampant among the spiritualists, but also that they are highly organized to exchange data on potential clients, in order to make the revelations of the séance more astonishing. Like the viewing of Alexander’s serpent, the séances all take place in darkened rooms-because the deception would be too easily penetrated in the light. In his peak-earning years, Keene earned about as much, in equivalent purchasing power, as Alexander of Abonutichus.
From Alexander’s time to our own-indeed, probably for as long as human beings have inhabited this planet-people have discovered they could make money by pretending to arcane or occult knowledge. A charming and enlightening account of some of these bamboozles can be found in a remarkable book published in 1852 in London, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, by Charles Mackay. Bernard Baruch claimed that the book saved him millions of dollars-presumably by alerting him to which idiot schemes he should not invest his money in. Mackay’s treatment ranges from alchemy, prophecy and faith healing, to haunted houses, the Crusades, and the “influence of politics and religion on the hair and beard.” The value of the book, like the account of Alexander the Oracle-Monger, lies in the remoteness of the frauds and delusions described. Many of the impostures do not have a contemporary ring and only weakly engage our passions: it becomes clear how people in other times were deceived. But after reading many such cases, we begin to wonder what the comparable contemporary versions are. People’s feelings are as strong as they always were, and skepticism is probably as unfashionable today as in any other age. Accordingly, there ought to be bamboozles galore in contemporary society. And there are.
In Alexander’s time, as in Mackay’s, religion was the source of most accepted insights and prevailing world views. Those intent on duping the public often did so in religious language. This is, of course, still being done, as the testimony of penitent spiritualists and other late-breaking news amply attest. But in the past hundred years-whether for good or for ill-science has emerged in the popular mind as the primary means of penetrating the secrets of the universe, so we should expect many contemporary bamboozles to have a scientific ring. And they do.
Within the last century or so, many claims have been made at the edge or border of science-assertions that excite popular interest and, in many cases, that would be of profound scientific importance if only they were true. We will shortly examine a representative sampling of them. These claims are out of the ordinary, a break from the humdrum world, and often imply something hopefuclass="underline" for example, that we have vast, untapped powers, or that unseen forces are about to save us from ourselves, or that there is a still unacknowledged pattern and harmony to the universe. Well, science does sometimes make such claims-as, for example, the realization that the hereditary information we pass from generation to generation is encoded in a single long molecule called DNA, in the discovery of universal gravitation or continental drift, in the tapping of nuclear energy, in research on the origin of life or on the early history of the universe. So if some additional claim is made-for example, that it is possible to float in the air unaided, by a special effort of will-what is so different about that? Nothing. Except for the matter of proof. Those who claim that levitation occurs have an obligation to demonstrate their contention before skeptics, under controlled conditions. The burden of proof is on them, not on those who might be dubious. Such claims are too important to think about carelessly. Many assertions about levitation have been made in the last hundred years, but motion pictures of well-illuminated people rising unassisted fifteen feet into the air have never been taken under conditions which exclude fraud. If levitation were possible, its scientific and, more generally, its human implications would be enormous. Those who make uncritical observations or fraudulent claims lead us into error and deflect us from the major human goal of understanding how the word works. It is for this reason playing fast and loose with the truth is a very serious matter.
CONSIDER WHAT is sometimes called astral projection. Under conditions of religious ecstasy or hypnagogic sleep, or sometimes under the influence of a hallucinogen, people report the distinct sensation of stepping outside the body, leaving it, floating effortlessly to some other place in the room (often near the ceiling), and only at the end of the experience remerging with the body. If such a thing can actually happen, it is certainly of great importance; it implies something about the nature of human personality and even about the possibility of “life after death.” Indeed, some people who have had near-death experiences, or who have been declared clinically dead and then revived, report similar sensations. But the fact that a sensation is reported does not mean that it occurred as claimed. There might, for example, be a common experience or wiring defect in human neuroanatomy that under certain circumstances always leads to the same illusion of astral projection. (See Chapter 25.)
There is a simple way to test astral projection. In your absence, have a friend place a book face up on a high and inaccessible shelf in the library. Then, if you ever have an astral projection experience, float to the book and read the title. When your body reawakens and you correctly announce what you have read, you will have provided some evidence for the physical reality of astral projection. But, of course, there must be no other way for you to know the title of the book, such as sneaking a peek when no one else is around, or being told by your friend or by someone your friend tells. To avoid the latter possibility, the experiment should be done “double blind”; that is, someone quite unknown to you who is entirely unaware of your existence must select and place the book and judge whether your answer is correct. To the best of my knowledge no demonstration of astral projection has ever been reported under such controlled circumstances with skeptics in attendance. I conclude that while astral projection is not excluded, there is little reason to believe in it. On the other hand, there is some evidence accumulated by Ian Stevenson, a University of Virginia psychiatrist, that young children in India and the Near East report in great detail a previous life in a moderately distant locale which they have never visited, while further inquiry demonstrates that a recently deceased person fits the child’s description very well. But this is not an experiment performed under controlled conditions, and it is at least possible that the child has overheard or been given information about which the investigator is unaware. Stevenson’s work is probably the most interesting of all contemporary research on “extrasensory perception.”