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Part Three THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SELF DECEPTION “It is a fact that good-hearted people can honestly deceive themselves. There exists a definite mechanism which can be used by one part of our mind (the subconscious) to deceive and mislead the other half of our intelligence (the conscious mind).” Having dealt with hundreds of self deceived channelers and mediums over the years, Sadler presents a plausible rationale as to the trickery and treachery of the mentally deluded. He gets credit for formulating much of the material forthcoming in this report based on his everyday experiences through his psychiatric practice in Chicago and through his methodical investigations into every sort of mind phenomena having to do with spiritual reality. All believers in any form of channeling ought to have read The Mind at Mischief for an understanding of the forces at play during these brief encounters with the so called outside world. Sadler goes on to state that: “The imagination is in reality, the creative power of he mind, and it is ever at work forming new experiences out of old ones. It is the province of imagination to take our ideas and fashion them into ideals; that is, this is the higher work of the creative imagination. Still another function of this mental power is reproductive imagination, which is closely allied to memory…. It is now an accepted psychological fact that our experiences are all more or less perfectly preserved as memories in the subconscious mind, and there can be no question but that many spirit mediums and victims of hysteria are in possession of routes to the subconscious not used by normal individuals. In brief, genuine psychic mediums are able, at will, more or less fully to tap their subconscious reservoirs.” Now, it might appear redundant to continue to quote from Sadler’s book, however, since it has been out of print for many years and the fact that it was considered the definitive source of mediumistic explanations for several decades, and since the reader in all probability won’t be able to procure a copy, under the circumstances I will proceed with several more statements to further elucidate concepts relating to self delusional states of mind emanating through the power of the subconscious. REPRESSED IDEAS “When ideas are not in one consciousness, when they have been successfully repressed and cannot be recalled, they are said, by the psychologist to be slumbering in the unconscious, or the sub consciousness. At any rate, when our ideas are not in consciousness they must be somewhere, and no matter what the actual explanation may or may not be, we are but recognizing a practical fact when we definitely assign these repressed ideas to some place in the scheme of the human mind. This place whatever it is, wherever it is, and however it is, we call the “subconscious.” THE SUBCONSCIOUS – STOREHOUSE OF MEMORIES “There is a vast region of mental life which, while it is a part of one’s self, is unknown to the consciousness of its possessor; that this submerged mental region, nevertheless, may become known to those who observe us with the trained eyes of experienced psychologists… The subconscious mind, like the atomic theory, is a splendid and practical working concept, whether it really exists or not. One thing we are sure of - the thing for which it stands is an actual part of our own mental life. Neural patterns can be laid down in the human brain not only by stimuli coming from outside, but also by what originates in the mind itself from association and interassociation of ideas – by a reorganization of old impressions and memories, both conscious and subconscious. It is a well known psychological fact that as soon as percepts are formed in the lower levels of thinking, the mind forms symbols to represent these percepts. These symbols or images may stand for thoughts or for objects, and they are true to life and facts only in so far as our sensations and perceptions have been truly formed and correctly interpreted. Mental images may be correct or incorrect, as the emotions may be genuine, proportionate, and in harmony with the perception; or through fear, superstition, and other perversions of the powers of psychic associations, they may become so exaggerated, distorted, and highly deceptive in their effect upon the mind of otherwise well meaning and sincere souls – as is undoubtedly the case in certain types of clairvoyants and spiritualistic mediums – that these individuals become utterly self-deceived by the faulty working of their own intricate mental machinery. They actually think they see things which they describe, but see them through, and with the eyes of their own distorted and deceived minds. The human mind is capable of almost unlimited deception, and is subject to innumerable errors and inaccuracies in the thinking process.” SUBCONSCIOUS OVERFLOW “When individuals have long desired to and intensely wished to communicate with spiritual entities (mortal or otherwise), when they have studied, thought, and prayed over this problem; when they have faithfully allowed the longings of their souls to be focused and concentrated on the desire to draw the veil aside and communicate with the spirits beyond – is it any wonder that ultimately the overflowing content of the subconscious will emerge toward the attainment and realization of those visions and experiences which would in some measure gratify this intense longing of the soul.” There are several things that should strike the reader as being quite peculiar as regards much of the channeling; I will list only a few things that presently come to mind.
This kind of thinking creates the catalyst for an emerging, often childish ideology; a sort of a reality/fiction fusion – a contamination or amalgamation of the real with the unreal, much like one gets in a movie partially animated with a combination of real people and cartoon characters. If the animation is done with digital technical expertise it becomes difficult to discern what is real. The same holds true with channeling; not so much the message but rather the source. An adept mortal can imitate a celestial personality. Dr. Sadler’s avocation for forty years was to investigate mediumship, fraudulent or real. Transmitters/receivers are mediums – a bridge between a source such as you and me and a teacher or personality on the other side. Sadler’s goal in life was to render a service to humanity in whatever he undertook, but always in the framework of reality. His contributions to humanity, including The Urantia Book was to present the truth as he perceived it and this meant learning to discriminate fact at the highest level; this is what a scientist does. He attempted to “follow the truth wherever it may lead.” The truth discerning individual challenges information for the specific reason to ascertain the truth, and Sadler was considered among his peers to be a genuine success, or perhaps successfully genuine in his pursuits of knowledge. He had a passion for exposing fraudulent mediums because they were disingenuous, albeit frequently unwittingly. Sadler went to great lengths to examine information imparted from hundreds of so called transmitter/receivers. To challenge the person as well as the information is not at all unreasonable. Sadler recounted several ingenious plots that he himself had to contrive to uncover the deceitful practices of fraudulent mediums who were intentionally perpetrating hoaxes upon the unsuspecting public. In other cases of inadvertent deceit where the individual had tapped into his own reservoir of unconscious knowledge, Sadler was able through various psychological techniques to derive amicable solutions, thus providing the medium with a hitherto unknown aspect of his own self matrix. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons most groups lack the motivation to expose the medium – maybe they feel it’s improper, a violation of decorum, unethical conduct, too embarrassing for the medium, a total shattering of belief, a collapse of one’s own frame of reference. Whatever the reason you can’t determine validity in most cases by just listening to the messages. Anyone visiting the planet has to get clearance – ask who they obtain this from, then research it in the book. Ask the transmitter to let you know what you had for breakfast on any given day during the week – make it a point for them to come by. Most likely you will get an evasive response like: that has nothing to do with the mission; you’re not taking this very seriously; that is not what we are focused on; we’re not here to play games; we’re not hear to prove ourselves, etc. Sadler went so far as to rent a hotel room above a visiting psychic and drilled holes into his room in an attempt to invalidate a suspected hoax. He went on at length informing me of some of his ingenious and somewhat nefarious schemes to uncover fraudulent mediums. He would often enlist the aid of his close friend, the famous magician Howard Thurston, who seemed to always have a means, one way or another, to uncover the truth. THE REALITY FEELING – TRANSFERENCE AND PROJECTION “There is something in the human consciousness which may very appropriately be defined as the reality feeling. Whatever it is, no matter what its component factors may be, it serves the purpose of causing one’s ego to be aware of the presence of reality.” “When our special senses report to the brain centers that they have made contact with certain real sights, sounds, odors, objects, etc. this reality feeling becomes attached, as it were, to these sensory recognitions, and the individual immediately chooses to affirm that these sensations are evidences of the presence and existence of the realities which gave them origin. And so, in the case of various neuroses, no matter whether the individual’s fears, sensations, feelings, and experiences be of outward and bona fide origin or of inner and imaginary origin, the ego in the presence of this reality feeling, immediately recognizes them as genuine, regardless of how foolish and fictitious may be the basis for such belief. The association with the reality feeling is a passport to the recognition of any sensation as real on the part of our consciousness.” “In the case of certain peculiar types and temperaments ‘the reality feeling’ works very well in connection with the clairvoyant state – automatic hearing. And it is easy to suppose that in a spiritualistic séance many individuals whose minds are attuned – ‘in rapport,’ as the professionals call it – will be able to see and hear the same things the mediums see and hear. It is sort of a collective sensation or collective illusion – someone has called it ‘collective hypnotism.’” End of Part Three |
