New Books and Media

From the publisher’s website: As individuals bring their raw potentials into existence, the human race evolves.

Trance states are the means through which these transformations take place. Trances are concentrated states of engagement with the world. They occur frequently in the ordinary course of living. Hypnosis is merely one variety of trance, but its study has led to a profound understanding of trance states in general. The idea that trance constitutes the technology for human advance has developed for Dr. Crabtree over a period of some thirty years. Memoir of a Trance Therapist is the story of that development, along with an explanation of the central elements of Dr. Crabtree's vision.

Adam Crabtree, PhD, is the author of books on hypnosis, the history of psychotherapy, and dissociative disorders such as multiple personality disorder. He is on the faculty of the Centre for Training in Psychotherapy, Toronto.

“This is a beautiful book that represents a life of profound thinking, historical scholarship on the "first great human potential movement in the West" (animal magnetism), and countless hours working with spirit possession, multiple personalities, and trance states with suffering and gifted human beings. Part memoir, part philosophical treatise, part how-to-manual, this is the book to go to for anyone interested in trance states, human potential, and the "how to evolve" question. There is even concrete advice here on how to be creative, how to ask or pray, and how to access one's own subliminal resources and astonishing new capacities. The ultimate message is one of hope and, ultimately, one of love.”

—Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of Authors of the Impossible.

Geh’ zurück in eine Zeit… / Indizienbeweise für ein Leben nach dem Tod und die Wiedergeburt / Rückführungen in „frühere Leben“ und deren Nachprüfung [Go back in time . . ./Circumstantial Evidence for Life After Death and Rebirth/Regressions to “Past Lives” and Their Verification] by Dieter Hassler is a two-volume book in German which explores the validity of lives recalled in regressions. There are extensive bibliographical references with 37 cases purported to be validated. However, the reports are verified by the persons involved, not by independent researchers. Included is a survey of the history dating from the 18th century. Together with the case-reports this represents the first time such material has been published completely. The book is written for both professionals and laymen. It is well organized and well indexed with a comprehensive table of contents. There are many cross-references and an extensive glossary.

Contents of volume 2a (504 pages):
•12 of 37 verified cases represented in detail
• Further 8 verified cases reported in shorter form
• appraisal of xenoglossy as proof for the interpretation as cases of reincarnation
• professor Wambach’s statistical research of many cases.
• 51 questions and answers • regression techniques and risks of regression
• a tour through the historic development of the method exemplified in 79 “halts”
• 37 unverified cases in short form as examples for specific features.
• list of contents, index, cross-references, glossary

This book was reviewed by Armin Albano-Müller in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 80, No. 3.

From the publisher’s website: The authors´ preoccupation with Indridi Indridason spans several decades. Erlendur Haraldsson first read about him in the 1960s, perhaps earlier. He joined the Psychology department at the University of Iceland in 1973 and, during his course on paranormal phenomena, he would regularly discuss Indridason, Iceland’s most prolific physical medium. Loftur Reimar Gissurarson, one of Haraldsson’s students, soon became interested and wrote his BA thesis on Indridason (Gissurarson, 1984).

Based on their research, they co-authored a monograph entitled The Icelandic Physical Medium Indridi Indridason, which was published in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (Gissurarson and Haraldsson, 1989). The monograph was subsequently reprinted partially and in full in Renaitre 2000 in France, Luce e Ombra in Italy, andParapsykologiske Notiser in Norway.

Loftur continued the work and co-authored with William Swatos, the book Icelandic Spiritualism: Mediumship and Modernity in Iceland (Swatos and Gissurarson, 1997), much of it dealing with Indridi and the history of Mediums and Spiritualism in Iceland.

Shortly after the year 2000, two Experimental Society minute books dating back to the Indridason period were unexpectedly found that contained new information (Haraldsson, 2009). Some time later, Haraldsson delved into the new material which resulted in three major articles being published in the Proceedings and the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (Haraldsson, 2011, 2012a) and the Journal of Scientific Exploration (Haraldsson and Gerding, 2010). It soon became obvious that only a book would do justice to Indridi, as he deserved to be known to the wider international public. This is that book.

About the authors

Erlendur Haraldsson is a Professor emeritus of psychology at the Faculty of social science at the University of Iceland who, despite having retired from his former post at the University of Iceland, continues to be an active academic. He has published work in various psychological and parapsychological journals, and done work with Ian Stevenson on reincarnation research and Karlis Osis on deathbed visions. As well as doing work in Iceland, Haraldsson worked in the United States and at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health in Freiburg, Germany. While in the United States, he worked with J.B. Rhine.

He has written several books including Modern Miracles: Sathya Sai Baba. The Story of a Modern Day Prophet (2013), At the Hour of Death (1997), and The Departed Among the Living: An Investigative Study of Afterlife Encounters (2012)

Loftur R. Gissurarson studied psychology at the Universities of Iceland and Edinburgh where he obtained his PhD from Robert Morris and John Beloff. He worked as a Post-doctoral Research Fellow sponsored by Trinity College, Cambridge, before taking up a post as Chief Psychologist at the Regional Office for the Disabled in Reykjavik.  Dr. Loftur later joined an Icelandic geothermal development company as Managing Director of Quality, Environment, Health & Safety and is now working for the company mainly in Africa and the Caribbean.

From the publisher’s website: History comes alive in this textured account of the rivalry between Harry Houdini and the so-called Witch of Lime Street, whose iconic lives intersected at a time when science was on the verge of embracing the paranormal.

The 1920s are famous as the golden age of jazz and glamour, but it was also an era of fevered yearning for communion with the spirit world, after the loss of tens of millions in the First World War and the Spanish-flu epidemic. A desperate search for reunion with dead loved ones precipitated a tidal wave of self-proclaimed psychics—and, as reputable media sought stories on occult phenomena, mediums became celebrities.

Against this backdrop, in 1924, the pretty wife of a distinguished Boston surgeon came to embody the raging national debate over Spiritualism, a movement devoted to communication with the dead. Reporters dubbed her the blonde Witch of Lime Street, but she was known to her followers simply as Margery. Her most vocal advocate was none other than Sherlock Holmes’ creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who believed so thoroughly in Margery’s powers that he urged her to enter a controversial contest, sponsored by Scientific American and offering a large cash prize to the first medium declared authentic by its impressive five-man investigative committee.  Admired for both her exceptional charm and her dazzling effects, Margery was the best hope for the psychic practice to be empirically verified.  Her supernatural gifts beguiled four of the judges. There was only one left to convince…the acclaimed escape artist, Harry Houdini.

David Jaher’s extraordinary debut culminates in the showdown between Houdini, a relentless unmasker of charlatans, and Margery, the nation’s most credible spirit medium. The Witch of Lime Street, the first book to capture their electric public rivalry and the competition that brought them into each other’s orbit, returns us to an oft-mythologized era to deepen our understanding of its history, all while igniting our imagination and engaging with the timeless question: Is there life after death?

Review by Tom Ruffles

From the publisher's website: Science, mysticism, and psychical research are generally thought to be irreconcilable; this book centres on a towering synthesis achieved by the late Michael Whiteman, an Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town. It is revolutionary; Whiteman was able to meld mathematical physics and general science with psychical research and Indian and Western mystical texts, clarified by a life-time of psychical and mystical experience, and coupled with an extensive knowledge of philosophy and psychology.

Part One is about the experience of states, spaces, and worlds other than physical. It provides essential groundwork for understanding the psychical and mystical. Whiteman’s own experience is combined with evidence ranging from quantum mechanics to the Upanishads. Part Two centres on two murder cases that Whiteman studied, as an entry to the concept of the corporate structure of personality, and the workings of the mind in personal development. Part Three covers his analysis of ancient texts based on his understanding as a mystic. His interpretations differ radically from standard treatments. Part Four investigates his exploration of non-physical existence. Part Five considers the mystical life, including Whiteman’s own, and how it relates to physical laws. The book concludes with a brief biography.

"Science has been dominated for too long by a blinkered view which insists on the one-level view of reality espoused by materialistic reductionism. One of the most important proponents of higher levels of reality was Michael Whiteman. His prodigious writings combined both mystical and mathematical insights, yet they are not always easy to understand, so his contribution has been hitherto somewhat neglected. With this masterly exposition by John Poynton, his ideas finally receive the scrutiny and dissemination which they deserve. Poynton is arguably a better expositor of these ideas than Whiteman himself, so he has done a tremendous service by explaining them so cogently and comprehensively in this volume." - Bernard Carr, Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Queen Mary University of London; Fomer President of the Society for Psychical Research

"Michael Whiteman was an original thinker with a uniquely diversified life. To summarize Whiteman's thought and life is tantamount to capturing a rare tropical bird, but John Poynton has risen to the task. Whiteman lived for over a century, yet his books and essays are more relevant in this millennium than they were when he wrote them.

Ranging from mathematical physics to psychical research, and plumbing the depths of mystical experience, archetypes, and bisexuality, Whiteman wove a remarkable synthesis of East and West, science and spirituality, and male and female into a seamless fabric that cannot help but entrap and enrapture its reader." Stanley Krippner PhD, Alan Watts Professor of Psychology, Saybrook University

"Wide-ranging yet concise, thorough yet accessible, this is a marvellous introduction to Michael Whiteman's thought. It shows Whiteman to be an empiricist in the best sense, open to evidence of all kinds, whether from physics, psychical research, or mysticism. Dr Paul Marshall, author of Mystical Encounters with the Natural World; co-editor of Beyond Physicalism: Towards Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality.

“Polymath J.H.M. Whiteman combined a deep understanding of science and mathematics with an unusually rich history of first-hand experience of out-of-body and mystical states of consciousness. John Poynton's book provides by far the best available introduction to this important but neglected body of work." - Dr Edward F. Kelly, Research Professor, Division of Perceptual Studies, University of Virginia