Updates

Abby has her own blog now, which you can read here.

2/12/12

In my previous two Updates, I referenced a book I'd discovered online, "Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief," ed. by Dennis Klass, Phyllis R. Silverman, and Steven L. Nickman, published in 1996. I just obtained a copy through interlibrary loan. This is a compilation of scholarly papers by 19 professors, scholars and therapists. It's extremely repetitive and dense reading (my book, "Matthew Franklin Whittier in his own words" is lively reading in comparison, though I've been told it's "too scholarly"). I have a master's in counseling myself, so I'm not intimidated by any of the theory. I used to ace theory classes. I can summarize the main premise of the book in a paragraph, as follows:

Modern therapeutic concepts of grief are culture-bound and derive largely from Freud, who, in his personal life, as an atheist, did a terrible job of resolving his own grief. The therapeutic goal of modern grief counseling is to help (read, manipulate, if necessary) the grieving person into letting go of their attachment to the lost person, so that they can form new attachments. This goal (the authors say) is unrealistic and flies in the face of actual clinical observations. It is, further, a relatively new development in Western society as of the last 100 years or so. It ignores the plurality of approaches to grieving among individuals and cultures. It may, in fact, be healthy and normal for a person to continue fantasizing a relationship with, or at least reviving the memory of, the deceased indefinitely.

There. Now, what fascinates and infuriates me about this book is that the authors cite numerous examples of actual people who open up in self-help groups, and share with each other experiences of an ongoing relationship with a lost loved-one. Group therapists are, as the resident authority, privy to these discussions, and report on them as though nothing the people are sharing is real. The authors also cite supposedly primitive beliefs from the Romantic era (the era Abby and I are from), as follows:

Grief in the Romantic Age

Given broad cultural differences in patterns of grieving and adjustment, further questioning of our own patterns is appropriate. Is it possible that the breaking bonds orientation, naturalized and universalized by Western practices of research and therapy, is largely a product of contemporary times? And if the prevailing view is the product of the modern age, what is being overshadowed? If alternative views of death and mourning have previously proved rich resources in the culture, does not the hegemony of the present view threaten their existence? To the extent that the professional view of proper mourning becomes accepted as normal, then previous orientations become irrelevant--if not deviant.

This possibility gains significant credibility when one begins to survey cultural reactions to death even a century ago. In bold contrast with the modernist modes, the romantic view of life held sway. Whereas modernists hold scientific rationality as the critical ingredient of successful human functioning, romanticists believed in the centrality of "the deep interior"--mysterious forces or processes, beyond consciousness, somewhere toward the center of one's being and one's life (K.J. Gergen, 1991). Many felt that the deep interior was occupied by the human spirit or soul, the source of love, creative inspiration, and the powers of genius. Romanticists placed love at the forefront of human endeavors, and praised those who would abandon the "useful" and the "functional" for the sake of a loved one. Romanticists saw marriage as a communion of souls, a family as bonded in eternal love, and friendship as a lifetime commitment.

Within the romanticism context, the concept of grief was far different from the modern one. Because close relationships were matters of bonding in depth, the death of an intimate other constituted a critical point of life's definition. To grieve was to signal the significance of the relationship, and the depth of one's own spirit. Dissolving bonds with the deceased would not only define the relationship as superficial, but would deny as well one's own sense of profundity and self-worth. It would make a sham of a spiritual commitment and undermine one's sense of living a meaningful life. In contrast with the breaking bonds orientation of modernism, in romanticism valor was found in sustaining these bonds, despite a "broken heart." [pp 36-37]

First of all, I do not believe that everybody in a particular age thinks the same way. I believe that all streams of thought are present in every age, but certain trends predominate in a given age. It is, for example, trendy to change jobs at the drop of a hat to advance one's career, whereas in the past, the trend was to remain with an employer--or at least with a particular line of work--for one's entire life. But always, there have been people who changed jobs and careers frequently, and people who worked their entire lives for one firm or who remained in one trade. In short, I strongly suspect that a great deal of what changes from age to age is what is "politically correct," not how various portions of the population actually think.

In the same way, there were, in previous eras, people who espoused the "get over it and move on" view, and people who espoused the "commitment beyond the grave" view. I, in my past life as Matthew, got caught up in this in a very painful way. If my memory serves, Abby and I promised to remain together even should one of us die. But after she died, I began doubting her survival. Meanwhile, well-meaning (shall we say) relatives and advisers counseled me with the very "let go and move on" philosophy that these authors are claiming for the modern age, and I succumbed. I have suffered from that manipulation ever since, until I finally understood that Abby was still waiting for me, and that I could pick up where we left off, 170 years ago. Because she really did survive death.

I am reminded of one story from the history I studied, in the course of my research for "Matthew Franklin Whittier in his own words." Abby was, apparently, named after one Abigail Weld, the wife of the local doctor, Elias Weld. Elias Weld was praised in John Greenleaf Whittier's poem, "Snowbound," as the "good doctor." He moved into the "Countess House," the home of Abby's father's cousin, Count Vipart, after the latter went back to his native Guadeloupe following his wife Mary's death. It was Mary who was immortalized in John Greenleaf's poem, "The Countess."

But Dr. Weld's history in Haverhill is kind of interesting. Turns out Abigail was married to the previous doctor, who died. When he died, Elias moved into town to take over the practice. While taking over the practice, he took over the previous doctor's wife, as well, by marrying her. It was, apparently, a package deal.

We know Abby was named after her because of the embroidered sampler that showed up at auction, done by the Poyen family, showing her full name as Abigail Weld Poyen. Later, she must have changed her middle name to Rochemont, part of her father's extended family name. We don't know why. If anybody reading this does know why, I'd be very interested to find out!⁽¹⁾

In any case, Dr. and Mrs. Weld hardly typified the "romantic" view cited by the authors (though admittedly, this took place at the very beginning of the romantic era, or a little before). How many were like that, we don't know, but clearly, to me, this practical "move on" philosophy was around long before Freud.

But there was something else I found deeply disturbing about this quote from the book. Have you ever seen programs in which the botanist with three advanced degrees goes to South America or the Australian Outback, and meets with an aboriginal healer? He--the botanist--assumes an air of great respect for the healer. They are equals, and the botanist, in all humility, learns from him.

Hogwash. What does he really think--and what are you, the audience, actually encouraged to think? I mean, really, deep down? That the aboriginal healer is, after all, a deluded savage, but that it is very modern (i.e., very "white") of you to act like you respect him.

Why? Because he believes in spirits. He believes in a spirit world. He believes in "The Force," which we all know is Star Wars sci-fi. He believes, in short, that a person is a spiritual being having a physical experience. And therefore no matter how much one tries to respect him, his beliefs are superstitions, and your (materialistic) beliefs are the modern, correct ones.

One of my cultural anthropology professors once said he had attended a ceremony in which ancestors were said to appear from the dead. His comment? "And they did, too."

Well, cultural anthropologists are crazy. They don't count.

My point is that this book is written by the good guys. If these are the good guys--sickeningly patronizing in their suggestion that maybe you should leave grieving people alone and let them imagine a continuing relationship if they want to, since obviously they turn out to be as healthy as anybody we "treat" by using every sophisticated method in the book to manipulate them into believing their loved ones are permanently extinguished--I repeat, if these are the good guys, how monstrous must the deeply entrenched materialism of the bad guys be?

I suddenly understand why I and my colleagues have had so little apparent success trying to move this thing. I had studied numerous solved reincarnation cases, and I wondered if I could prove my own. I did it. Seemingly, nobody cares. But if I can do it, you can do it. She can do it. They can do it. Each of you reading this has reincarnated, which means, you can do it, too. I had two past-life regressions, two psychic readings by genuine psychics, I have some ability to recognize people from past lives, and I had the internet. And I put three years of intensive research into it. I worked hard, but no harder than some people work to build their family tree, using much the same skill set.

But will anybody who needs to, read my book and understand that I've done it? Perhaps not. Perhaps one is doomed to forever "preach to the choir."

My sense is that this is precisely the same sort of monster that we were up against, in 19th century America, with slavery. And I am very much afraid that it will require another blood-bath. Because "I am a spiritual being having a physical experience" is coming, folks. It is a social tsunami bearing down on materialistic Western society. If you put your ear to the ground you can already hear the rumbling. Do you understand that there has been a study done, in which congenitally blind people, who had near-death experiences, proved that they were able to see during the experience? Do you understand the implications of that?

On my desk in front of me, resting under the "Continuing Bonds" book, is, coincidentally, a book called "Heather's Return" by Geri Colozzi Wiitala. This is one of those people whom the therapists might have evesdropped on as they shared their stories with other grieving parents and spouses. Keep in mind, as you read, the patronizing interpretation that the learned pundits have projected onto these stories. I hope the author will forgive me quoting her experience at some length here:

I'm a light sleeper and usually awake early. It was about 6:00 a.m. and I was getting up to make some coffee. Suddenly, Walt woke up and said to me, "Heather was here last night!" This was an odd way of putting it, and I assumed that he meant that he had a dream about her.

I said to him, "Do you mean you had a dream of her? What was it about?" He looked at me very seriously and half-whispered, "No, I said that she was here last night!"

This sounded crazy. Walt was an atheist at that time, and it was totally out of character for him to make a statement like this. So, I asked him again what he was really trying to tell me. He became annoyed with me and said, "I tell you, Heather was actually here last night!" I asked him, "How do you know that?"

He explained to me that he had been in a deep sleep, but that a feeling of intense warmth (not heat) had awakened him. He said that he was lying there for a few minutes trying to figure out what was producing the sensation of warmth in him. Since Walt is a building contractor and had designed and built our house, he knew that our heating system (which is radiant heat) was located in the ceiling. But the warmth seemed to be coming from beside him and near the headboard of the bed. He also knew that the heating system had been turned off, since it was a mild night.

He further explained that, just as he seemed to have determined the location of this heat source and was wondering what could be the cause of it, something began to move near him.

He saw something that he described as "a mist" or "a cloud" begin to move slowly beside him. This cloud (or mist) felt as if it passed right through him and then began moving into the wall next to where he was sleeping. It disappeared into the wall at a point right next to a large 45"x45" contemporary design that Heather had created in art class. He explained that he couldn't see its face, but he just knew it was she.

I asked him how he could know that for sure. He said, "I'm telling you, I just know; it felt so warm, so peaceful, and so close; and I can't explain how I know it was she, I just know." His eyes filled with tears as he dropped back down on his pillow."

This happened when the family was about to take a flower arrangement to Heather's grave, which was identical to the bouquet she had during one of the highlights of her life, when she was crowned prom queen even though she had been battling cancer for a year. That same night, a polaroid photo of her with that bouquet had somehow moved itself off the bureau, to a position on the floor six feet away in front of a sliding door. On the crowded bureau, one photo of her had been turned over, but nothing else was disturbed. There was no normal way for either of these things to have happened. And, relatives, who were visiting, also independently reported seeing the apparition.

Now, can you get some sense of the absurdity of a room full of people telling each other stories like this, as the therapist smugly reframes everything they say from a materialistic, reductionistic standpoint? As though the therapist knows better, but patronizingly recommends, out of his or her great liberality, that the patients be permitted to continue with their comforting delusions. And this is supposed to be progressive thinking.

I've been saying for several years now, with regard to proving reincarnation, that it's a "done deal." There is no debate anymore, leastwise, no rational debate. This is like trying to overthrow slavery. Materialists are hanging on to materialism the way that slave owners hung onto slavery. They will lose. But what it will take, how it will go down, we don't know. When even this crew who wrote "Continuing Bonds" was marginalized--have you ever heard of this book, or this movement?--what happens to people like me, who claim to be reunited with a wife from 170 years ago? I'm entirely sane--how can I be saying this?⁽²⁾ What if I'm not the only one? What if some of them start coming forward, or if more diaries are found like that of Gifford Pinchot, the 28th governor of Pennsylvania and a founder of the Conservation movement, who continued a spirit relationship with his fiance, after her passing, for 15 years? If you think I'm a nut, do you realize that the same kind of nut was once running the State of Pennsylvania?

This is a profound social legitimacy crisis--a terrible clash between two paradigms. How it will resolve, I don't know. I do know this. I have a book which is a historical survey of philosophies from India, put out by the Vedanta Society.⁽³⁾ Without looking it up, I remember that there is only one materialistic school of philosophy in the whole book. Only one group took the position of materialism seriously. These ancient Indian philosophers had an intellectual brilliance that makes our philosophers--you know, the ones you studied in college--look like a bunch of preschoolers. This position of materialism never gained much popularity over there until we dazzled them with technological marvels.

And what about technology? Doesn't it prove that we, the modern materialists, were right about the universe?

In a word, no.

The human mind excels at anything it is poured into. If you take the human mind and channel it into material things, it excels in that realm. But this is an aberration. Do you understand? Such extreme development in technology is symptomatic of a spiritual disease. Technology can be fun, though most of it is poison to the human mind, body and environment, given the intellectual, social and physical infrastructure necessary to maintain it. We just haven't had it long enough to come to that conclusion. Partly this is because we put our garbage "somewhere else." But what price have we paid for these toys? The cost is staggering. All our drugs have side-effects, we know--but do we understand that all our technology has side-effects, as well, by definition? And in the process of embracing the materialistic world view which enables it, we have all but lost the pole-star of what it means to be human.

I would say that's too high a price. And the worst of it is, we aren't right. It would be bad enough if we were right about the nature of reality. If this material world really was all there is, and the result of that is spiritual, environmental and personal suicide, then, I guess, that's the price of facing reality. It's been nice knowing you, but at least we found out the truth before we destroyed ourselves.

But it isn't even right. It's a mistaken view--a horribly mistaken view. If it were true, trust me, congenitally blind men and women would not be proving that they saw things during their near-death experiences.

Now, what happens when you confront a materialistic scientist with this evidence? He repeats a slogan he has learned from his colleagues, which goes something like "Near-death experiences are hallucinations produced by the dying brain, which still has enough oxygen left to create them." But hallucinations do not create verifiable sight of actual things in blind people. So that means he is going into denial, like the little boy who says, "I didn't take the cookie out of the jar," as the crumbs are sticking to the corner of his mouth.

So who is being rational here? Isn't rationality supposed to be the sole property of materialists?

Remember the poor, deluded romantics, fools like Ralph Waldo Emerson?

In the passage I quoted at length about romantic beliefs, note the part that says, "Whereas modernists hold scientific rationality as the critical ingredient of successful human functioning, romanticists believed in the centrality of "the deep interior"--mysterious forces or processes, beyond consciousness, somewhere toward the center of one's being and one's life." Do you seriously think that all romantic writers were irrational fools, driven by sentiment? Do you think they adopted this idea of a central spiritual core in man idly, without any rational foundation?⁽⁴⁾

You do? Then I can't help you. But I'll leave you with this: the tsunami is still coming, and those blind people really did see during their NDE's.

Best regards,

Stephen Sakellarios, Producer

1) You might wonder why I don't ask Abby. I wondered the same thing, so I asked her. Getting specifics like this is difficult, but what I gather, which matches what she's told me previously, is that as a young woman she experimented quite a bit with her identity, and she was trying to be more French, so she adopted "Rochemont" as her middle name.

2) A madman would not be writing a blog with this degree of coherence, nor would he be able to continue it consistently for years. By the way, if you notice that my writing has ramped up a notch, it's because Abby is helping me with the editing.

3) "The Spiritual Heritage of India," Swami Prabhavananda, with the assistance of Frederick Manchester, Vedanta Press, 2nd ed., 1969.

4) The Romantic writers were highly rational people, and they were not anti-science, but they were not materialists. Science does not equal materialism--rather, science has been taken over by the philosophy of materialism to such an extent that materialism has become mistakenly identified with both science and rationality. The writers of this book have set up a false dichotomy between Romanticism and science, associating rationality solely with the latter. I would go so far as to say that "Romanticism" is probably a disparaging term coined by materialistic scholars, who do not understand it. All it means is that the spirit is supreme, and one does not step on the heart with one's intellect. It does not mean that one should not be rigorous. If we were not stepping on the heart with our intellects and denying the spirit, society would be in much better shape, today.

Updates Archive