January 27, 2015

Heavenly Lies


Magic pink rhododendron flowers on summer mountain. Dramatic ove Heavenly lies is the subject of this week’s spotlight. Not long ago I learned that my radio show was the target of a would-be boycott because I had questioned a guest’s credibility. The guest insisted that persons who experienced a NDE often returned with higher IQs, some 200 and above. That’s a pretty strong claim and as such, I sought clarification both on and off the show. I spoke with a stat psych expert about this claim and he informed me that it was a blatant misrepresentation because IQ tests today do not score that high.

If this claim were to be true, it would represent a material difference in how we view consciousness to say nothing about adding real evidence to the NDE reports. I remain open to receiving any and all such evidence, but unfortunately after nearly two years, no such evidence has been forthcoming.

Does It Really Matter?

So what’s the big deal? Let me share this one with you first. In January of this year, Alex Malarkey, now 16, in an open letter shared by his mother admitted that his tale of going to heaven was a concoction and that his book, The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven, was a lie! Quoting from the article that first appeared in the Daily Mail, the book describes heaven thus:

“When I arrived in heaven, I was inside the gate. The gate was really tall, and it was white. It was very shiny, and it looked like it had scales like a fish. I was in the inner heaven and everything was brighter and more intense on the inside of the gate. It was perfect. Perfect is my favorite word for describing heaven. . . Alex also describes in the book how he floated above the scene of his crash and talked to Jesus while firefighters extricated his body from the wreckage.” 1

The book is one of three ‘true stories’ of heaven on sale in most Christian book stores – 90 Minutes in Heaven and Heaven is for Real are the other two. Quoting Alex, “’I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention. When I made the claims that I did, I had never read the Bible. People have profited from lies, and continue to.” 2

Profit from Lies

People profit from lies, is that the problem? It’s certainly unethical but my argument with this sort of thing goes to the very credibility of the field. Spiritual research is in my view a legitimate human enquiry. We should be collecting and analyzing data about death and dying, out of body experiences, the extension of consciousness through mediumship and so forth. This information is important and in many ways, it may represent what our lives here are all about. However, not everyone shares my view. Indeed, many members of the scientific community scoff at this sort of research. You see, the fact is, it’s only been very recently that it was acceptable to research consciousness itself and that’s largely due to potential applications in the artificial intelligence arena. So the real problem to me is the issue that every one of these misrepresentations corrodes the integrity of truthful information.

I remember well the Bridey Murphy story and the sensationalism it brought to the story of reincarnation. In The Search for Bridey Murphy, the story of Virginia Tighe of Pueblo, Colorado who was hypnotized by the author of the book, Morey Bernstein, we learned of her earlier life in 1798. The success of this book led to a boom in reincarnation publishing.

Eventually investigators discovered that the story was a confabulation built from information Tighe had learned from Bridie Murphey Corkell who lived across the street from where Tighe grew up. Quoting again:

“Almost any hypnotic subject capable of going into a deep trance will babble about a previous incarnation if the hypnotist asks him to. He will babble just as freely about his future incarnations….In every case of this sort where there has been adequate checking on the subject’s past, it has been found that the subject was weaving together long forgotten bits of information acquired during his early years.”  3

For years following the exposure of the Bridey Murphy myth, serious reincarnation investigation was scorned upon by scholarship. That said, the myth lives on. Just a short time ago a friend of mine authored a book and she offered the story of Bridey Murphy as evidence for reincarnation. I had to point out to her that piece of evidence of a lie. Unfortunately that one lie undermined much of my friends case, just as you would expect it to do if it were testimony in a court of law.

Corrosion Contaminates

Corrosion contaminates the entire field of psychic investigation. As such, serious researchers, and there are many, often find themselves forced to defend their research by first excusing the ignorance, misinformation and lies that contaminate the field. And that is my issue with false representations and why this spotlight asks each of you to follow a simple rule: “When you hear hoof beats think first of horses, not centaurs.”

Thanks for the read and as always, I truly appreciate your comments and feedback.

Eldon Taylor

Eldon Taylor

Eldon Taylor
Provocative Enlightenment
NY Time Bestselling Author of Choices and Illusions
www.eldontaylor.com

Sources:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2913259/Man-wrote-best-selling-book-saw-heaven-near-death-experience-six-year-old-admits-thing-up.html

2 Ibid

https://skepdic.com/bridey.html