Marco M. Pardi

Talking with the dead: why bother ?

November 10, 2009 |  6 comments
Image Credit: stockxpert Years ago, while teaching college full time, there were long stretches during which I lived alone. And, although I did not realize it, I was something of a recluse. Oh yes, I had a full daily schedule of day and evening classes and these classes were always filled to capacity. But one day I had an epiphany; I realized there is a great difference between talking TO someone and talking WITH someone. I was talking to these rooms full of people, not with them. At least, not talking with them in any personally meaningful way.

This is why I specifically titled this piece in this manner. Most of us who have known someone who is now deceased have talked to them, whether at the graveside, in meaningful moments in the day, or in those intrusive memories we sometimes disparage as daydreaming. And while it may seem in some sense that they are talking with us, we know we are putting words in their long closed mouths. After all, we like to assure ourselves that we are sane.

I found amusement in circumstances in which I heard fellow faculty members glow over how well they had gotten their points clearly across to their students, only to later hear their students complain to me or to each other that they had little to no idea what that instructor had said, much less meant. But isn’t that precisely what we do when we hold these imagined conversations with the reconstructed phantasms of people with whom we are not yet done? We feel better for having stood and delivered. Yet it’s all a fantasy.

Or is it?

An apocryphal African proverb goes something like, “You are not truly dead until there is no one left who remembers you.” Looking at that in a linear, temporal fashion commonly elicits an “Uh huh”, as if this is self evident. But expanding that both longitudinally AND latitudinally suddenly informs us that, for the vast billions of past, present, and even future humans we are not just dead; we never existed. Names carved into even the most elaborate headstones eventually become only arrangements of letters. Listen to tourists checking off famous tombs on their scribbled itineraries; “Who’s that guy?” “I dunno, somebody famous.”
If, like “the tree falling in the forest”, we exist only if and when someone else can conceive of us in some fashion, perhaps, in some as yet not understood fashion, we create and maintain each other. And, if this is somehow so, perhaps it is so in a linear, longitudinal fashion as well. But then, am I only what others make of me? Is there a me that “no one understands”, and if so, who is it? I will not here pursue this line of reasoning lest I devolve into a Cartesian paradox, gibbering softly in the corner.
It has been said that each of us is capable of talking with the dead; it’s only our “rational” minds that confine us, that insist to us that what we “hear” is only our echo, modulated through the memories of what that other person sounded like and how they would say things. To adjust an aphorism, “What you hear is what you get.” Yet, from its earliest examples, literature is filled with occasions of ordinary people talking with the dead. The Age of Reason arose to liberate Man from this kind of “superstition”. But, displayed on the continuum of human existence, the Age of Reason is only a period at the end of a book. Was everyone else deluded?

Admittedly, recalibrating one’s neural circuitry to genuinely receive, understand, and logically accept communication with the dead is unlikely to generally occur during the reading of this article. But, there are in our midst some individuals who apparently “did not get the memo.” These individuals, Mediums – or go-betweens, are not deficient in the rational mind, the idol of the Age of Reason. In many cases they are, if anything, more reasonable in that they are aware of so much more beyond those walls within which we have confined ourselves.

This is by no means saying that every crank with a pointy hat and a flickering neon sign is a bona fide medium. Were that to be said then every religious charlatan who excuses “healing” failures with the counter-accusation “You faith was weak!” must be admitted into the Cognoscenti, of whom we mere sinners can know nothing.

No, the genuine mediums (I do not think “media” is called for here) in fact comport nicely with the admonition, “Ye shall know them by their works.” In the class of mediums, there are those who report to us the pronouncements of disembodied persons, hearing them when we do not. Serving then as a relay, the medium sits with us as we voice a question – which the medium objectively hears just as anyone would in normal conversation, and the medium then relays to us the answer from the present but disembodied individual whom we cannot hear, or see. In fact, some mediums are also able to see and accurately describe the disembodied individual.

The analysis of this event centers on a fundamental issue: Is the medium presenting objectively verifiable information which external, independent observers can verify as not having come from the sitter in any way? A subset of this proof would be the question of whether the information was new, and yet verifiable, to the sitter. An even further subset would be whether the information pertained to a future event, of which the sitter had no knowledge. This latter proof, however, hinges upon the supposition that the disembodied individual has some knowledge of future events, a supposition not necessarily supported by logic.

Another form of medium includes those individuals who are also able to “step aside”, allowing their bodies to be used by the disincarnate for direct communication, a process commonly known as “channeling”. This opens other issues. I once observed a self-described “channeler” claiming to be the vehicle for an ancient (both in time and in age) and mythical figure of wisdom. To say the performance was unconvincing would be kind; to say the performance was worthwhile theater would be an unacceptable stretch. And, simply, because no one in the room had lived for over 1,000 years and could attest to the historical veracity of the temporarily embodied Wise One, what you heard was, indeed, what you got.

Yet, there have been and are rare individuals who, in their channeling, precisely address issues of such complexity that any independent observer can clearly see that the discussion is well beyond the everyday knowledge base of the channeler. Jane Roberts, channeling “Seth”, was one; Jamie Butler, in Atlanta, Georgia, is another.

A subset of channeling proof, particularly as it pertains to the purported channeling of individuals known to the sitter, hinges upon linguistic issues. Each person has a distinct and unique way of communicating known as an “idiolect”. The idiolect is composed of elements far in excess of simple grammatical usages, and includes nuances and sometimes neologisms which clearly depict the individual. When a 3rd party tells us that a certain person we know said thus and so about us we put it to the idiolect test. When we respond that, “I don’t believe that because he/she does not talk like that” we are saying that we know a person well enough to know their idiolect, and can therefore judge reports against this knowledge.

All this being said, why bother talking with the dead? With the understanding that describing someone as a “self made man” is as idiotic as saying “He pulled himself up by his own bootstraps” (without the aid of a skyhook), we can readily acknowledge that the people we have known have contributed to the making of us, and we to them. Once it can be shown that, through a medium or through our own enlightenment we are in fact talking with a disembodied person who was formatively intertwined with us we can expand our understanding of ourselves, enhance and broaden our perspectives of our “present and future”, and hopefully continue to contribute to the development of the disembodied individual, whether we see that or not. We continue in the making of them, albeit in ways we do not necessarily understand, just as they continue in the making of us. I do not know of anyone who has had what they perceived as a genuine experience of this kind and walked away from it unaffected. We are not static entities, coming in at birth and running only until the tank empties. We are co-creators.

In the meantime, when I now hear fellow faculty describe their classes as being like “talking to the dead”, I must restrain myself from suggesting they change “to” to “with”.

Marco M. Pardi[!gad]Years ago, while teaching college full time, there were long stretches during which I lived alone. And, although I did not realize it, I was something of a recluse. Oh yes, I had a full daily schedule of day and evening classes and these classes were always filled to capacity. But one day I had an epiphany; I realized there is a great difference between talking TO someone and talking WITH someone. I was talking to these rooms full of people, not with them. At least, not talking with them in any personally meaningful way.

This is why I specifically titled this piece in this manner. Most of us who have known someone who is now deceased have talked to them, whether at the graveside, in meaningful moments in the day, or in those intrusive memories we sometimes disparage as daydreaming. And while it may seem in some sense that they are talking with us, we know we are putting words in their long closed mouths. After all, we like to assure ourselves that we are sane.

I found amusement in circumstances in which I heard fellow faculty members glow over how well they had gotten their points clearly across to their students, only to later hear their students complain to me or to each other that they had little to no idea what that instructor had said, much less meant. But isn’t that precisely what we do when we hold these imagined conversations with the reconstructed phantasms of people with whom we are not yet done? We feel better for having stood and delivered. Yet it’s all a fantasy.

Or is it?

An apocryphal African proverb goes something like, “You are not truly dead until there is no one left who remembers you.” Looking at that in a linear, temporal fashion commonly elicits an “Uh huh”, as if this is self evident. But expanding that both longitudinally AND latitudinally suddenly informs us that, for the vast billions of past, present, and even future humans we are not just dead; we never existed. Names carved into even the most elaborate headstones eventually become only arrangements of letters. Listen to tourists checking off famous tombs on their scribbled itineraries; “Who’s that guy?” “I dunno, somebody famous.”
If, like “the tree falling in the forest”, we exist only if and when someone else can conceive of us in some fashion, perhaps, in some as yet not understood fashion, we create and maintain each other. And, if this is somehow so, perhaps it is so in a linear, longitudinal fashion as well. But then, am I only what others make of me? Is there a me that “no one understands”, and if so, who is it? I will not here pursue this line of reasoning lest I devolve into a Cartesian paradox, gibbering softly in the corner.
It has been said that each of us is capable of talking with the dead; it’s only our “rational” minds that confine us, that insist to us that what we “hear” is only our echo, modulated through the memories of what that other person sounded like and how they would say things. To adjust an aphorism, “What you hear is what you get.” Yet, from its earliest examples, literature is filled with occasions of ordinary people talking with the dead. The Age of Reason arose to liberate Man from this kind of “superstition”. But, displayed on the continuum of human existence, the Age of Reason is only a period at the end of a book. Was everyone else deluded?

Admittedly, recalibrating one’s neural circuitry to genuinely receive, understand, and logically accept communication with the dead is unlikely to generally occur during the reading of this article. But, there are in our midst some individuals who apparently “did not get the memo.” These individuals, Mediums – or go-betweens, are not deficient in the rational mind, the idol of the Age of Reason. In many cases they are, if anything, more reasonable in that they are aware of so much more beyond those walls within which we have confined ourselves.

This is by no means saying that every crank with a pointy hat and a flickering neon sign is a bona fide medium. Were that to be said then every religious charlatan who excuses “healing” failures with the counter-accusation “You faith was weak!” must be admitted into the Cognoscenti, of whom we mere sinners can know nothing.

No, the genuine mediums (I do not think “media” is called for here) in fact comport nicely with the admonition, “Ye shall know them by their works.” In the class of mediums, there are those who report to us the pronouncements of disembodied persons, hearing them when we do not. Serving then as a relay, the medium sits with us as we voice a question – which the medium objectively hears just as anyone would in normal conversation, and the medium then relays to us the answer from the present but disembodied individual whom we cannot hear, or see. In fact, some mediums are also able to see and accurately describe the disembodied individual.

The analysis of this event centers on a fundamental issue: Is the medium presenting objectively verifiable information which external, independent observers can verify as not having come from the sitter in any way? A subset of this proof would be the question of whether the information was new, and yet verifiable, to the sitter. An even further subset would be whether the information pertained to a future event, of which the sitter had no knowledge. This latter proof, however, hinges upon the supposition that the disembodied individual has some knowledge of future events, a supposition not necessarily supported by logic.

Another form of medium includes those individuals who are also able to “step aside”, allowing their bodies to be used by the disincarnate for direct communication, a process commonly known as “channeling”. This opens other issues. I once observed a self-described “channeler” claiming to be the vehicle for an ancient (both in time and in age) and mythical figure of wisdom. To say the performance was unconvincing would be kind; to say the performance was worthwhile theater would be an unacceptable stretch. And, simply, because no one in the room had lived for over 1,000 years and could attest to the historical veracity of the temporarily embodied Wise One, what you heard was, indeed, what you got.

Yet, there have been and are rare individuals who, in their channeling, precisely address issues of such complexity that any independent observer can clearly see that the discussion is well beyond the everyday knowledge base of the channeler. Jane Roberts, channeling “Seth”, was one; Jamie Butler, in Atlanta, Georgia, is another.

A subset of channeling proof, particularly as it pertains to the purported channeling of individuals known to the sitter, hinges upon linguistic issues. Each person has a distinct and unique way of communicating known as an “idiolect”. The idiolect is composed of elements far in excess of simple grammatical usages, and includes nuances and sometimes neologisms which clearly depict the individual. When a 3rd party tells us that a certain person we know said thus and so about us we put it to the idiolect test. When we respond that, “I don’t believe that because he/she does not talk like that” we are saying that we know a person well enough to know their idiolect, and can therefore judge reports against this knowledge.

All this being said, why bother talking with the dead? With the understanding that describing someone as a “self made man” is as idiotic as saying “He pulled himself up by his own bootstraps” (without the aid of a skyhook), we can readily acknowledge that the people we have known have contributed to the making of us, and we to them. Once it can be shown that, through a medium or through our own enlightenment we are in fact talking with a disembodied person who was formatively intertwined with us we can expand our understanding of ourselves, enhance and broaden our perspectives of our “present and future”, and hopefully continue to contribute to the development of the disembodied individual, whether we see that or not. We continue in the making of them, albeit in ways we do not necessarily understand, just as they continue in the making of us. I do not know of anyone who has had what they perceived as a genuine experience of this kind and walked away from it unaffected. We are not static entities, coming in at birth and running only until the tank empties. We are co-creators.

In the meantime, when I now hear fellow faculty describe their classes as being like “talking to the dead”, I must restrain myself from suggesting they change “to” to “with”.

Marco M. Pardi Comments (6)

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