I would like to go over the part of the abductees quickly because personally I am not too interested and, besides, this blog is about reincarnation, but I see it is not going to be possible due to the amount of things there are to criticize. In order to have an idea about what the study consisted of and its seriousness, here we have a description of the analyzed sample:
One group comprised adults who reported “memories” of extraterrestrial kidnapping, whereas a second group reported a history of alien abduction, but had no autobiographical memories of the experience. These participants inferred abduction from diverse indicators such as mysterious marks on their bodies, panic attacks triggered by seeing pictures of the movie character E.T., and an inexplicable passion for reading science fiction. When Susan asked them what happened to their memories, they conjectured that the aliens had zapped the memories from their brains or that the abduction had occurred in “another dimension.” The third (comparison) group comprised participants who denied ever having been kidnapped by space aliens.
Unsurprisingly, they found that the two groups of alleged abductees had a higher propensity to create false memories, as if that proved something.
On the other hand, to see if they suffered PTSD, they were subjected to several tests. One of them consisted of making them listen to a recording in second person that described with all detail a traumatic abduction experience, to make them relive the experience, so that they could observe their reactions. Beyond the results, I am scandalized that these scientists have no qualms about admitting how much fun they had while recording those audio excerpts. I feel embarrassed:
For each of these five scripts, we had them read a list of physiological reactions (e.g., sweating, pounding heart) that they recalled experiencing during the events described in the narratives. I then wrote 30-sec narratives in the second person, present tense that captured the essence of each of the events. Scott Orr audiotaped each narrative in a neutral voice, ensuring that each lasted 30 seconds. It occasionally took Scott several tries to record these narratives properly. He would sometimes burst out laughing while trying to record these stories with the necessary solemnity.
The syndrome takes effect because the person believes the influential memory to be true.
Well, at least, the psychiatric tests proved that these abductees were not crazy. Maybe this is the reason researchers could allow themselves to laugh at the subjects that were so convinced of having been abducted. However, these subjects did show a higher propensity to dissociation, magical ideation and absorption. Literally:
In other words, the abductees were neither depressed nor anxious, but they had reported unusual alterations in consciousness, belief in unconventional modes of causation, and had vivid imaginations and a rich fantasy life.
But what is indeed disturbing is the amount of beliefs abductees have in common with some reincarnationists. According to the study, anyone who entertains the possibility that aliens are kidnapping earthlings, taking them up to their spaceships and performing all kind of medical experiments with them, tends to have weird ideas... and, in addition to that, 70% of these type of people believe in foretelling the future or tarot cards, 70% in ghosts, 70% in bioenergetic healing therapies and 80% in alternative/herbal remedies. Of course, in the control group, where people were more “normal”, belief in this kind of things was less frequent. In other words, even though those of us who have “false memories” are not crazy, we are quite close, as, who in their right mind would believe in ghosts or reiki?
What comes next is really interesting. They noticed that the abduction episodes used to begin while the subjects were experiencing sleep paralysis, accompanied by hypnopompic hallucinations, apart from many other symptoms such as electricity coursing through their bodies, buzzing sounds in their ears or to glimpse the presence of alien intruders. They come to the conclusion that these subjects are hallucinating, basically. Well, perhaps this might be the only thing savable of the whole study, were it not for the fact they haven’t yet grasped what sleep paralysis is in reality. It doesn’t have anything to do with R.E.M. sleep, but with the separation of the astral body from the physical body that occurs every night. This is a completely natural phenomenon that can be controlled with the proper training. I know this from my own experience, but it is not the purpose of this entry, so I won’t say anymore. Only that, even taking sleep paralysis into account, I wouldn’t discard so quickly the existence of real abductions, nor the existence of aliens, of course, no matter if they live in other planets, in other dimensions, or in both at the same time. Not all abductions seem to take place in bedrooms or in moments near the sleeping state. If we don’t take ALL data into account, how do we want to reach good conclusions? Well, this is what we can expect from such close-minded scientists or such partial and wrongly performed research. And of course, I am not the only one who accused them of presupposing that reports of this type of experiences are not correct. To justify themselves and defend their position, the only thing that occurred to them was this:
There are two common explanations for why sincere, nonpsychotic people report recollections of alien abduction. One explanation is that they were abducted by aliens. The second explanation comprises the ingredients in the recipe I describe above (e.g., sleep paralysis, absorption). In principle, either hypothesis could be true. However, the first one is inconsistent with an immense amount of solid science in the fields of astronomy, physics, and biology, whereas the second one is not. An abductive inference -- or inference to the best explanation (Harman, 1965) -- leads one to accept the hypothesis as likely true that best accounts for a phenomenon without clashing with relevant, well-established findings.
One woman said that she was Anne Frank in a previous life, whereas a firefighter from a small New England town mentioned that he had previously been General Gordon, an officer of the Confederacy during the American Civil War. He gave C.A. a copy of his privately published book, a dual memoir of his past life and his current one. The cover featured photographs of General Gordon and himself. The resemblance was striking. Despite their unusual beliefs, the past lifers did not appear mentally ill, consistent with the scant literature on this topic.
Second, it is a pity they make a comment about the striking physical resemblance between the man who claimed to be the reincarnation of General Gordon in the American Civil War and the real General Gordon portrayed in a photograph, though it is not clear to me if they do it like: “There was a man who looked like General Gordon and so he believed he had been him in a past life, how can someone be so mentally ill?”, or like: “There was a man who looked like General Gordon and he also had memories of having been him, isn’t that something unexplainable?” All right, I am afraid it is the first option, isn’t it? For a while I thought scientists are objective people who want to know the truth, I forgot they have already presupposed that past life memories are as false as abduction memories, so why bother researching in deep? By the way, physical resemblance shouldn’t be, in any case, an essential factor to value if past life memories are false or not. Rational reincarnationists (the majority of us) are perfectly aware of it. Not like the rest of the population that thinks we reincarnationists are as dumb as a post.
Of course, the test results showed that these people have significantly higher rates of false recall and false recognition. And, like abductees, they are also more prone to absorption and magical ideation. The only difference is they didn’t report sleep paralysis episodes... which, I say, should be more than obvious, as THEY ARE NOT COMPARABLE PHENOMENA.
Later on, with a group of 40 people that claimed to remember past lives, they observed they scored higher on measures of divergent thought, had a greater originality and were more creative. They didn’t show any sign of suffering any mental illness. Moreover, they had a reduced stress about their own mortality and a great capacity to find a meaning to life. Again, I don’t know what this proves or where they want to go. The article is entitled “Explaining ‘Memories’ of Space Alien Abduction and Past Lives” but it seems they only explained (and badly) the part of the abductees. In regards to past lives, they haven’t yet found how someone can hallucinate “so much” as to believe they were a newspaper boy in 19th century Boston, not even resorting to hypnotic regression, because, breaking another popular myth among skeptics, the majority of people who remember past lives don’t do it through hypnosis techniques. Take that. And now, what do we resort to? Wasn’t there LSD in that congress? What do we write in the conclusions? Make up something...
Yes, it is evident that these scientists belong to the group of normal people, with little creativity, as the article’s conclusion is more or less this: despite both groups have false memories, they both are glad they had these experiences (existent only in their imagination), because that makes them “special”. People who remember past lives seem to have a “quasi-spiritual” motivation for embracing this “distinctive identity”. These people believe in reincarnation and to them their memories are personal evidence that death is not the end. Yes, this latter is true. What the article’s author hasn’t bothered to corroborate yet is these “false” memories stop being such when you can validate the person you believe you were existed for real and lived what you recall. He thinks all of us who remember past lives only want to recover the mystery, the magic and the meaning we had before scientists came and provoked a “disenchantment of the world” in us. In other words, we want to live in a fantasy, we want to believe in space aliens, energetic therapies, reincarnation and the rest of unreal things. Those of us who remember past lives are just poor deluded people that spend our days dreaming, prisoners of our unleashed imagination and notable creativity. This is the “deep” analysis they have done about our psychology. And they worst of it all is they let it all out and seem so very pleased with themselves.
I would personally invite Richard J. McNally to recall with me what one feels when you are condemned to death and executed in the gallows, for example. Or what happens when a whole town rises up to fight for their rights. Or perhaps he would like to relive the repeated sexual abuse that a female back slave had to endure from her owner in a cotton plantation. Then he wouldn’t take long to realize how much fantasy, magic and illusion are there in someone who remembers past lives.
McNally, Richard J. 2012. Explaining "memories" of space alien abduction and past lives: An experimental psychopathology approach. Journal of Experimental Psychopathology 3(1): 2-16.