The Structure of Heaven

An encyclopedia of the paranormal, How Spirit is organized and how it affects your daily life

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  • About The Structure of heaven
  • Introduction
  • 1. Skepticism and Classical Physics
    • Skepticism/Humanism
    • Skepticism/Relativity and Quantum Physics
    • Skepticism/CSICOP
    • Skepticism/Why the Skeptics are Wrong
    • Skepticism/The advantages of belief
  • 2. The Human Soul
    • Why do we live in a material Universe?
    • The Human Soul and its Relationship to the Body
  • 3. God and Theodicy
    • Does God cause bad things to happen to good people?
    • Guardian Spirits and the Life Plan
    • What is Theodicy?
      • Zoroastrian Theodicy
      • Jewish Theodicy
      • Christian Theodicy
      • Why is Theodicy important?
      • Can Love conquer all??
  • 4. Psychics and mediums- an overview
    • What are psychics and mediums?
    • Why mediums can’t seem to agree about the afterlife
  • 5. The Structure of Heaven
    • The Universe according to Emanuel Swedenborg and Frederick Myers
    • A Map of the spiritual realm
    • Spirit Portals
  • 6. Heaven, Hell and the planes of illusion
    • Introducing The transitional plane (The Earth Sphere)
      • The functions of the transitional plane.
      • Crossing over
      • Time traps on the transitional plane
    • Evolution within the planes of illusion
      • The Summerlands and above
      • The Winterlands
    • The Hells
      • The Conditions in the Hells
      • Who goes to Hell?
      • Hell and the transitional plane
    • How spirits from different levels perceive each other
    • Vertical Stratification of the Spiritual Realm and How Spirits Progress
    • Horizontal Stratification and Spiritual Social Groups
  • 7. What happens when we die?
    • There is no external Judgment in the Afterlife!
    • Death doesn’t change a soul’s attitude
    • The life review
    • What do spirits look like?
    • Ghosts and their clothes
    • Zombies
    • Time 
    • Time in the planes of illusion
    • Memory in the world of spirit
    • What’s it like to be dead?
  • 8. Spiritual laws/The Law of Divine Love
    • Spiritual Laws/The law of compensation
    • Spiritual Laws/Spiritual Gravity
    • Spiritual Laws/Spiritual Frequencies
    • Spiritual Laws/The Law of Attraction
    • Spiritual Laws/The Law of Free Will and Good vs. Evil
    • The red devil and the white angel
    • The spiritual advantage of Living in a Material World
    • Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?
  • 9. The Human Aura and Theosophy
    • The Aura as a Protective Spiritual Skin
    • The Aura and Spiritual infection (Obsession)
  • 10. Dr. Carl Wickland and Thirty Years Among the Dead
    • Dr. Wickland’s Spirit Dialogs
    • Spirit Related Insanity
  • 11. Spiritual Infection and Modern psychiatry
    • Emanuel Swedenborg’s Spiritual Insight
    • Wilson Van Dusen
    • Wilson Van Dusen’s Heavenly and Hellish Voices
    • Entities that invade the minds of the living
  • 12. Earthbound Spirits
    • Will I end up an earthbound spirit?
      • Three reasons that GOOD souls get stuck on the transitional plane.
    • Where do ghosts get their energy?
    • Human Spirit Obsession
    • Human Spirit Possession
    • Criminal culpability and spiritual infections
    • Enthrallment by the living and Hypnosis
      • Enthrallment and Abusive Relationships
      • Enthrallment: Cults
      • Enthrallment in the afterlife
      • Enthrallment by God and angels
  • 13. Angels and demons
    • The Provenance of Angelic Beings
    • The War in heaven
    • Angels and their function in religion
    • Magic and Wicca
    • Demonology
      • The structure of Hell
      • How demons infect a person or place
      • The five stages of demonic attack
      • Why do demons want to possess people?
      • The characteristics of demons
      • Thought Forms
  • 14 exorcim
    • Major exorcisms (also called imperative exorcisms)
    • False, or fake possessions
    • How Religion Views Demons Vs. Ghosts
    • Avoiding Demonic Repossession
    • Who can Remove Demons?
    • Removing Human ghosts
    • Exorcism and poltergeist activity in disturbed children
    • Haunted Dolls and Other Objects
    • Dealing with Family and Marriage Disturbances Caused by Ghosts
    • Goodness and ghosts
  • 15. Poltergeists, Ghosts and Hauntings
    • Poltergeists versus Ghosts
    • How spiritualists view ghosts
    • How Parapsychologists view ghosts
    • Children and Poltergeist infestations
    • Poltergeists that make the news
    • Ghosts and spiritual imprints
    • Ghosts of famous people
    • Why do ghosts seem bound to the same location?
      • Ghosts and sensory deprivation
    • A Ghost Story
    • Differentiating between Human and Demonic hauntings
      • Hauntings by Human ghosts
        • Ghost hangouts
      • Hauntings by Demonic spirits
  • 16. All about Psychics and others prone to spiritual infections
    • 1. Psychic Sensitives
      • Psi and the human brain
      • The five general categories of psychics
    • 2. Spiritual infection and mental illness
      • Are the spiritually infected mentally ill responsible for their criminal acts?
    • 3. Spiritual infection and Acquired Negative Lifestyles
      • Spiritual infection and drug and alcohol addiction
      • Spiritual infection as a result of negative personality traits
    • 4. Spiritual infection and childhood abuse
  • 17. Criminals and Spirits
    • Why are criminals more prone to spirit obsession than other people?
  • 18. Religion and Government
    • The birth of Morality
    • Religion = Spirit + Politics
    • The paranormal and religion
    • Human Nature-The REAL reason for religion
      • Sex and Religion
      • Religion and War
      • Religion vs. Secular law
    • Religious Dogmas
      • The Catholic Sexual Abuse Scandal
    • Spiritualism
    • Why are the dark spheres necessary?
  • 19. Spirit Lies and Tall Tales!
    • Edgar Cayce
    • Edgar Cayce and Atlantis
  • 20. Suicide and its Spiritual Consequences
    • Nondiscretionary Suicides
    • Discretionary Suicide
    • Why you should never choose to commit suicide
    • Suicide Terrorists
  • 21. Reincarnation (An Introduction)
    • Spiritualism and Reincarnation
    • Allan Kardec and the Spirits’ Book
    • Allan Kardec, a warrior for reincarnation
    • Theosophy and Reincarnation
      • Madame Blavatsky
    • A House divided
    • Karma
    • Swedenborg on reincarnation
    • The group soul (the oversoul)
  • 22. Reincarnation: The evidence
    • The evidence for possession as an alternative to reincarnation
    • The early church and the history of reincarnation in the West
    • Past Life Regression
    • Is reincarnation really a part of God’s plan?
      • Why would a soul choose to reincarnate?
      • The Pitfalls of Reincarnation
      • If a soul reincarnates, what happens to the old personality?
      • The ultimate fate of old personalities 
  • 23. The Cross Correspondences
  • 24. The Fox Sisters and the Birth of Spiritualism Page 1
    • The Fox Sisters and the Birth of Spiritualism page 2
    • The Fox Sisters and the Birth of Spiritualism page 3
    • The Fox Sisters and the Birth of Spiritualism page 4
    • The Fox Sisters and the Birth of Spiritualism page 5
    • The Fox Sisters and the Birth of Spiritualism page 6
    • The Fox sisters: Original report of the Hydesville Haunting
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Skepticism/CSICOP

CSICOP

Note: The Structure of Heaven is a 325-page book that can be downloaded from Amazon.com in Kindle format by clicking here. It is also available in paperback format by clicking here.

The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) (pronounced Psi-Cop, but today known as the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI)) was formed in 1976 at a meeting of the American Humanist Association.  The growing interest in all things paranormal alarmed Paul Kurtz, the editor of The Humanist magazine, and it was his idea to form CSICOP.

CSICOP is the modern enforcer of David Hume’s philosophy.  It is a secular humanist organization that masquerades as a scientific organization.  It got off to a very good start because it pledged to be an impartial referee for scientific literature pertaining to the paranormal.  It attracted a lot of famous academics including astronomer Carl Sagan, behaviorist psychologist B.F. Skinner, atheist philosopher Anthony Flew, author Martin Gardner, Harvard philosopher W.V. Quine and Marcello Truzzi, publisher of The Zetetic, a newsletter that dealt with academic research into anomalies and the paranormal.  Truzzi’s magazine was supposed to become the official magazine of CSICOP.  The new organization also attracted many stage magicians, including James Randi, perhaps the most skeptical stage magician in the world.

Note: it’s a myth that a majority of stage magicians don’t believe that people possess psi facilities.  A number of recent polls have consistently found that between 72% and 87% of the magicians belonging to professional stage magician organizations believe in ESP.  James Randi is more the exception than the rule.

Over the course of the first year, it became apparent that CSICOP’s central committee was dominated by hardline anti-paranormal crusaders who acted as grand inquisitors and who saw their job as stamping out any belief in the paranormal and to promote materialism and atheism.  This approach was in direct opposition to the stated goals of the organization, which was to be an impartial referee.  As a result, a few of their prominent scientific members quit, including Truzzi, who took his magazine with him.  The organization then began to publish articles in The Humanist magazine, a publication of the older American Humanist Association.  Later, CSICOP began its own journal, which was appropriately named The Skeptical Inquirer.

CSICOP’s first, and only, scientific investigation concerned the work of Michel and Françoise Gauquelin, a French husband and wife team whose main occupation had been debunking traditional astrology.  The Gauquelins did, however, uncover some compelling statistics in support of one aspect of astrology; namely that the position of the planets at the time of birth actually does appear to correlate with certain human characteristics.  Their most compelling positive result was called the “Mars Effect”.  

The Gauquelins’ results, published in 1975, just before the formation of CSICOP, showed that out of a population of 2,088 European Sports champions, 22% were born with Mars either rising or transiting.  The probability of Mars being in any two specific sectors of the sky at one’s time of birth is only 17%.  The odds are millions to one against the 22% result occurring by chance.  

Although the Gauquelins were mostly in the business of debunking the claims of traditional astrology, being good scientists, they did not withhold these results.  The first attack against this claim came from an article in The Humanist magazine, which objected to the Gauquelins scientific protocol and inferring that the statistics the Gauquelins had used were biased.  The Gauquelins responded, proving themselves to be more skilled in statistics than the author of the Humanist article, and in addition threatened a lawsuit against the magazine.  Kurtz, the editor of The Humanist, is said to have become frantic to attack the Mars Effect in print.

Other members of CSICOP jumped into the fray and suggested that the effect was probably due to an individual’s time of birth, since most births happen in the hours before dawn, and Mars appears near the sun more often than not.  They proposed that the Gauquelins redo the study with NON-champions born at the same time of day as the champions to see if their birth rates also corresponded with Mars rising or in transit.  If 22% of non-champions were also born at these astrological times, then the Gauquelins’ finding on athletes would not be significant.  

The Gauquelins repeated the study, this time for non-champions and controlling for location and time of birth.  They duly delivered the results, but Kurtz withheld them for two years.  When the results finally came out, they showed that the birth rate for non-champions during the times Mars was rising or in transit was 17%, exactly what would be expected by chance alone, and not the 22% that Kurtz and other CSICOP members had expected.  However, a second article in the same issue of The Humanist argued that the results weren’t really valid because when female champions were dropped from the sample, the statistical significance of the results was reduced.  Besides, most of the non-champions chosen for the second Gauquelin study were born in or around Paris, which for some reason further invalidated the results.

Two years later, the Skeptical Inquirer published the results of its own study on American sports champions which unequivocally disproved the Mars effect.  But…  

Shortly after the publication of the CSICOP study, astronomer Dennis Rawlins, who had earlier been excommunicated from CSICOP, published an article called “Starbaby” in Fate magazine.  Prior to his excommunication, he had been the only resident astronomer involved in the CSICOP Mars study.  According to Rawlins, when the CSICOP study had been completed and the original results came in, they supported the Gauquelins’ study showing that 22% of American sports champions were born when Mars was either rising or in transit.  However, Kurtz and others in the committee manipulated the results, distorting the data and making it appear that the study did not support the Mars Effect.  Rawlins was thrown out of CSICOP because he had refused to go along with the ruse.  

Rawlins final words on the subject were, “I am still skeptical of the occult beliefs CSICOP was created to debunk. But I have changed my mind about the integrity of some of those who make a career of opposing occultism”.  

A number of independent investigations backed up Rawlins’ charge, and eventually CSICOP admitted that it had “made mistakes”.  However, they never acknowledged Rawlins’s more serious charges that a Watergate style cover-up had occurred.  

CSICOP’s original mission statement claimed that it would be an organization dedicated to an impartial review of all claims of the paranormal, but its founder and many of its members knew that its real purpose was to put an end to all this nonsensical belief in spirits, God, and ultimately to religion, which they believed, in their hearts, was simply the lingering remnants of a bunch of superstitious nonsense left over from the dark ages.  Now, the Starbaby scandal had exposed its real intentions.

Several members resigned after reading Rawlins’ article, and CSICOP resolved never again to do another scientific study.  Therefore, today, most of the opposition faced by parapsychologists and other proponents of “unusual claims” comes from an organization that has been exposed cheating and as a result, now refuses to conduct any scientific research into the paranormal itself.  Its refusal to actually DO science allows CSICOP to sit on the sidelines and hurl non-scientific accusations against scientific studies without actually having to defend its conclusions against charges of fraudulent science.  

In 2006, CSICOP changed its name from Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal to CSI, the “Committee for Scientific Inquiry” as a quiet acknowledgement that trying to use science to debunk the paranormal hasn’t worked out well for them.  It still doesn’t perform any research of its own, and it has become simply a vigilante organization promoting a narrow brand of scientific fundamentalism.  Its main occupation is to influence the media and public opinion.  The name change allows it to masquerade as a non-biased scientific institute, but in reality it is really just a secular humanist organization with a huge budget.  CSI, more than any other organization, accounts for the public suppression of belief in the paranormal and the media’s refusal to acknowledge religious belief as a necessary social institution. (This very important subject is covered in chapter 18.)

Today, the skeptics attack all scientific studies concerning the paranormal as either flawed or fraudulent, even if the studies and their statistical analysis are immaculate.  CSICOP still doesn’t do any scientific studies of its own in order to avoid scandals like “Starbaby”.  They stick pretty much to collecting money from their membership and vandalizing Wikipedia and other popular media venues.  They also send biased fools like James Randi around to various universities and colleges to spread the holy doctrines of secular Humanism and atheism.

Note: The Structure of Heaven is a 325-page book that can be downloaded from Amazon.com in Kindle format by clicking here. It is also available in paperback format by clicking here.

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Science, Math and God

Science, Math and God is the companion book, originally written as a preface to The Structure of Heaven. It's a book that explains why the skeptics are wrong, and why modern science no longer rules out the paranormal. Learn why God now has a place to live. (Also available as an eBook and paperback at Amazon.com)

The Lower Reaches of Heaven

The Lower Reaches of Heaven is a modern rendition of an of an old book; Thirty Years Among The Dead by Dr. Carl Wickland. It is essential reading if you want to understand Earthbound Spirits and the dynamics of their environment. It also contains lots of editorial comment and historical facts, as well insight into how ghosts think.

The Structure of Heaven is a 350 page book that can be downloaded from Amazon.com in kindle format by clicking here. It is also available in paperback format by clicking here.

If you have a question for me, you can email me at: author@thestructureofheaven.com. Be aware, however, that the answer to almost all your questions concerning this subject are best found by downloading the e-book or purchasing the paperback direct from Amazon.com

You can contact me directly by email: author@thestructureofheaven.com