EDITORIAL

In this issue we present the first part of a reference guide on the research of spirit manifestations by L. O. Saraiva Ferreira.
The complete bibliography will be presented along future issues. At the  end (after the last part)  a version of the whole document in WORD 97 will be available  for downloading on the GEAE site (http://www.geae.inf.br).

There are several reasons to emphasize the importance of Saraiva  Ferreira's work. First it constitutes a genuine bibliographical
research, presenting almost 400 reference items collected along the years which includes contributions from several modern researches in the field. Since the onset of spirit phenomena in the USA (predicted by notable mediums) different approaches has been suggested (during the years) to explain some of those sometimes remarkable manifestations which spread throughout the world in the last quarter of the last century.  Many pointed out the seemingly logical fact that those phenomena could only appeared in a time when a truly scientific exploration was unavailable what,  according to them, justified the acceptance of Spiritism or the  Spiritualist thesis. For the incredulous, many leading  personalities of the XIXth century, in the lack of "scientific  instrumentation", were simply deceived on the hand of a smart class of  people.

However, as Saraiva Ferreira has shown phenomena which defied a simplistic explanation (sometimes purely verbal explanations based upon current prejudices) had ever occurred even well after (as well before) Spiritism appearance with the publication of the Spirit Book by A. Kardec. By 1857 Spiritism was a established doctrine as a consequence of the spirit teaching. Even so, the manifestations continued, with less intensity however, and their traces can be tracked until our days.

For how long will these strange manifestations be treated as pure truckery or attention to them be denied? What power will put them in their right place or stop them? Are we witnessing a similar situation as that of Galieo with the telescope before his friends and cardeals? Where are the minds ready to accept certain truths?

One can only hopes that this work can help to sketch a more logical argumentation for such questions.

GEAE Editors

Reproduction of this text is authorized for personal use only provided reference to the original source is given (title, author, and media).

Abstract - Near 400 references concerning the research on the spirit phenomena are presented. This bibliography starts with the history of their discovery, and follows presenting the scientific research and theoretical proposals developed to explain them. This bibliography allows the reader interested in the scientific research of the spirit phenomena to access the  main literature available and is well suited to those specially  interested in the survivance hypothesis.

CONTENTS

 Introduction
 The Meaning of Science
 Historical Review
 From Animal Magnetism to Hypnotism
 From Animal Magnetism to Spiritism
 The Spiritist Period
 The Beginning of the Scientific Period
 The "Psychical Research"
 Methapsychic
 Methapsychic and  Psychoanalysis
        Investigation Commissions
        Parapsychology
 Psychotronics
 Psychobiophysics
 Out-of-the-Body-Experiences - OOBE
 Near Death Experiences - NDE
 Reincarnation Research
 Electronic Voice Phenomena EVP
 Present Spiritist Research
 Conclusion
 Bibliography

Acknowledgment - this work was only possible thanks to Hernani Guimarães Andrade and Suzuko Hashizume (Instituto Brasileiro de Pesquisas Psicobiofísicas- IBPP), Alcivan Wanderley de Miranda Filho (Instituto Labor) and Aécio Pereira Chagas (Chemistry Institute - UNICAMP)  who provided important references.

INTRODUCTION

Since Hydesville facts in 1848 almost all the research about the spirit phenomena runs around the same point: to prove their existence. Each new generation of researchers denies the results from the preceding one, starts again from the same grounds and asks the same questions. Since materialism constitutes  a dogma of difficult negation, each new generation refuses to accept the unavoidable spiritualist conclusion which, in general, is the common conclusion reached by the preceding generation.

However, such vicious circle can only be bronke upon the acceptance of the survival hypotheses. We understand that Brazil might be the only Eastern country having the conditions of breaking  it, because there are millions of Spiritist adepts in Brazil. For them the Spiritist theory developed by Kardec and, therefore, spiritualism are the only natural way to understand Nature and the phenomena that characterize Spiritism. Therefore they have access to both a powerful theory and the practical knowledge required to develop a successful research line.

In general every scientific research starts with a bibliographic search that revises what has been done on a given subject and discusses what  can be done in the future. A bibliographic revision allows the researcher to criticize the present stage of knowledge and to propose new alternatives of though, thus creating new knowledge. This paper presents tools to facilitate the first steps of a scientific research on spirit phenomena: important references about modern concepts of science, thus avoiding wrong decisions in whatever future path of research, and, at same time,  a rich bibliography about the very spirit phenomena.

The modern concept of science is presented at first place because the widely and presently accepted concepts of science by our society and even by the academic community are completely outdated. First of all a right concept of Science is fundamental for understanding why so many researchers had continually thrown away good hypothesis and the vast evidence of the phenomena, substituting these by sterile efforts.

Then the bibliography on the phenomena is presented, starting from Mesmer's work in 1779; passing through Kardec's research, that started Spiritism; with special remarks to: the spiritist research period led by Sir William Crookes in 1870; Methapsychics, created by Charles Richet in the beginning of the XXth century;  Rhine's Parapsychology, created in 1934; Psychotronics, created in former communist countries after 1945; Andrade's Psychobiophysics, created in 1958; the researches about reincarnation, electronic voices, and out-of-the-body experiences. It then ends with the present Spiritist research by Tourinho and Miranda. The main researchers and institutions that produced important knowledge are refered, as well as theories and hypothesis on the natural mechanisms required to produce the phenomena. Short explanations on the subject of each bibliographical item are also given to make the search in the literature easy.

WHAT IS SCIENCE?

Even in the scientific community the exact meaning of science is unknown. The concept of science has been refined along the time since the XVIIth century, when what we know as Science today was born. The majority of the members of the scientific community still adhere completely outdated concepts of Science, as shown by modern works in history and philosophy of science.

Good references to this problem are found in the work of the Brazilian chemist Aécio P. Chagas.   Here one points out the following: 1) a paper [67] that presents a review of the history and  concept of science, emphasizing the collective character of the scientific production (community's science), the concept of philosophy of science, the science objectives, the myths about science, the idea of "official science", the scientific character of Kardec's work, the rule of science in human knowledge, and the relation between science and Spiritism; 2) a paper[68]  entitled "Espiritismo: Ciência da Mediunidade" (Spiritism: the science of mediumship), draws attention to the scientific aspect of Kardec's work, the study of religions from the Spiritist point of view, the contribution to the human sciences of the Spiritist view of  Nature, and tries to demystify the relationship between Spiritism and other sciences; 3) papers[70,78] dealing with the question of the scientific proof of the spirit's survivance, that such conclusion do not depend on an explicit agreement of other sciences, just like chemistry do not need an approval of physics for its theories and vice versa; and 4) a paper [71] where the relationship between  Spiritism and the academic community is analyzed from the historical, social and philosophic points of view. This last paper also doubts whether any scientific research of the spirit phenomena can be made by the academic community (universities and research institutes).

The Brazilian physicist and philosopher Silvio Seno Chibeni produced, among others, the following good articles on the same subject: 1) a paper [72] where Chibeni presents the classical view of science, the modern views of science under Popper [256],  Kuhn[257] and Lakatos[258,259], an analyses of the scientific character of  Spiritism, and a comparison between Spiritism and other lines of research that study the same phenomena, 2)  papers [73,74] where Lakatos's views on Science are presented as well as an analyses of Spiritism. The work concludes that "it (Spiritism) has all the characteristics of a progressive research program, being a truly scientific program, according to Lakatos' criteria", and is, at same time, clearly superior to the so called "PSI sciences" which are based on positivism, a surpassed view of Science, 3) a paper [75] that presents Kuhn's view of Science, compares it with the older conceptions and gives arguments showing that the Spiritist doctrine has a genuine scientific character, being a scientific paradigm in the sense pointed by Kuhn. Chibeni writes: "Kardec's work constitutes a genuine scientific paradigm that provides, until our days,  the only safe direction to the development of a scientific research of the spirit phenomena and  the spiritual aspects of the human being in general".

HISTORICAL REVIEW

Conan Doyle[1],  Richet[80],  René Sudre[3],  Wantuil[4], the series of 27 papers by H. G.  Andrade (under the nickname Goldstein[13,..., [40]), collectively entitled  "Parapsicologia - Uma Visão Panorâmica" (Parapsychology - A Panoramic View), and  Miranda[5], are historical references of the spirit phenomena.

FROM ANIMAL MAGNETISM TO HYPNOTISM

Mesmer[3,5,15] was an Austrian physician who published a memory [84] in 1779 proposing  the existence of an "universal fluid" that could heal sick people. He tried firstly with magnets, but concluded that the human body itself emits forces more powerful than magnets. He named those forces "animal magnetism". One of his adepts, Puységur[3,5,16], discovered experimental somnambulism[85,86,87] while trying to 'magnetize' peasants and observed that patients under induced trance presented telepathy (could read thoughts), vision with the fingertips, clairvoyance, and other phenomena. Puységur made many followers. Although academically rejected for some time, in the beginning of the XIXth century, the doctrine of animal magnetism was very popular in Europe. Then it was natural that the turning table phenomena which started around 1850 in the USA and later was reproduced in Europe were classified as a new property of animal magnetism.

Sometimes, patients submitted to "magnetic passes" entered in a kind of variable and deep sleep state called "magnetic sleep" or "magnetic state". One of the Puiségur followers Abate Faria[5] (José Custódio de Faria) stated the basis for a scientific interpretation of animal magnetism[88], being also one of the first to try verbal suggestion in magnetic manipulation of patients.

Animal magnetism was welcomed to Germany where the research of Justness Kernel must be emphasized. Kernel studied the Pervert's Vident[102] , name given to the famous somnambulate medium Frédérique Hauffe, whose physical effects were testified by him together with Strauss and Pfaffen[4]. Also important were the research of the Austrian chemist Reichenbach[93,...,96] on the vision of magnets, crystals and human auras (between 1845 and 1868) and the memories published by Schopenhauer[97, 98].

The French surgeon Alexandre Bertrand[89,90] is given the credit for the discovery of suggestion as the cause of induced trance. He published his first book in 1823.

However it was the English surgeon James Braid[3,16], after his research on the phenomena, who established magnetism in 1871 in scientific and physiologic terms, creating the new terminology of hypnotism[83] of our days. According to this new theory, the imagination of the patient, acting on its nervous system, is the effective cause of all magnetic phenomena (the so-called animist hypothesis). Braid therefore rejected the idea of  animal fluids (fluidist hypothesis). His theory set up the division between the fluidist and animist parties which remains till today.

Since Braid,  the physiological interpretation of  hypnotism became the orthodox line, although among the phenomena attributed to animal magnetism and hypnotism there were some (among others telepathy [18]) for which no physiological or physical explanation [19] could be found.

Durand de Gros[3,99,100] was the first to recognize the difference among mesmerism,  hypnotism, and suggestion.

Not all persons are given the wisdom, but all do have the gift to testify through our daily experiences the love to each other.

In truth, our social condition, color or race, age or nationality, do not prevent us from the duty to serve. We are challenged to do good things at all times. "God is love".

Nobody is all good and nobody is all bad. Each of us is self-centered on a course of development to reach a higher plane of activities.

God has enshrined his divine attributes within us. As one goes higher, evolution is expressed by word, equilibrium, love and light.

Let us be progressive with Jesus. How can we do this? Service first.

Spiritual refinement is person's soul experience, life after life, over and over again. Our present awareness extends over an extended period of the past.

The area of experience varies from person to person. Each individual only exists in the place for which he/she has fitted himself/herself.

Nobody can evade that which is in his/her own consciousness. Actually there is no death. As we live in our earthly body, our life continues in the beyond, according to our thought.

Therefore we come back to the physical world through rebirth, to conquer perfection, till we get complete command of our impulses and functions.