Book: Conversations With History by Susan Lander

Marshall McLuhan famously said, "The medium is the message." He was talking about communication via radio, television, telephone, etc. However, that can also be said of psychic mediums. If, for the sake of argument, you are willing to accept for a short period of time that psychics are real, then I'll explain what I mean when I say that. If you're not willing to sit with that possibility for a little while, then you may want to go find something else to read. I've done nine other posts already and none of them are about things metaphysical. You can go back and read one of those while I make my way here.

If I am to consider the possibility that psychics are authentic (and I don't believe all of them are, but I do accept that some of them may be), then I believe the way it works is that they read energy through vibration manipulation. This isn't so far fetched considering we read and interpret energy through our senses. We interpret wavelengths of light through our eyes and sound waves through our ears. Some people see and hear better than others and some can't do either at all due to being born with certain issues, or having accidents or illnesses.

At any rate, a psychic may have a sense that is more acute and that allows her to experience communication differently. Since such communication would be non-verbal, but filtered and relayed in verbal means, the medium or psychic would have to use her own words and voice to offer the information received energetically. To conceptualize what I mean, think about describing the taste, texture, and smell of food to someone who isn't eating some exotic food that you had a chance to sample. Talking about them is a poor substitute for the actual experience, but you can't make someone have your sensations with your mouth and tongue so you describe it as best you can.

Just as your vocabulary, base of knowledge about food, and experience level make your ability to talk about what you're eating more vivid and interesting, a psychic would also be limited to his or her own ability to communicate some sort of energetically offered information from a so-called "spirit". This is how the medium is the message. If the medium is dull and poor at verbal communication, the message will be limited to the medium's poor skills. This is what brings me to the book I just struggled through a portion of, Conversations With History.

The premise of the book is that the writer is a medium who is having interviews with a variety of famous dead people like Gandhi, Ben Franklin, and Sappho. Whether or not she really did talk to the spirits of these people or she imagined she did is not as important as the fact that she can't string together sentences that sound like they weren't part of a senior high school girl's essay. Her writing style is boring and her choice of interview questions mundane and uninspired. If you had a chance to talk to someone who is dead and/or famous, you'd want to dig a lot deeper than she seems to have done and conveyed far less repetitive and insipid messages.

The book is published by Hay House. This is a publisher which focuses on New Age spiritual content and seems to focus more on telling people peppy messages rather than on recruiting good writers. My guess is that they are offering people what they want to hear. The focus too often is on serving up a lot of shiny happy (dead) people information rather than offering anything deeper or more complex.

I have some first-hand experience with an author who wrote another book for Hay House. In that case, I attended a talk by author Anita Moorjani when she was promoting her book Dying to Be Me. Ms. Moorjani's story is very similar to Ms. Lander's in nearly key ways. Both had a very different life professionally and spiritually before becoming critically ill and having a near-death experience. Both rather effortlessly got writing gigs with Hay House (Moorjani was recruited, Lander was chosen rapidly after a submission). It's clear that Hay House has found a market for people who have had such experiences. My best guess is that they play well conceptually to New Age crowds that need to be comforted about what happens after we die. Unfortunately, both are big on reassurances, weak on any real substance, and not especially great or engaging writers.

I'm disappointed that the New Age press doesn't seem to have a place for complexity or sophistication. I'm also unhappy that the message is focused on unicorns, love, and peaceful blissful unity. While I do believe that there is an energetic existence for the essence that runs our meat sacks after we die (I can't defend this - it's a belief - and I admit readily that I could be absolutely wrong), I think the message that we live in some sort of version of this (earth-bound) reality which is more free, more fun, and happy, happy, happy perfection seems not only banal, but "wrong". If we are to move on to another reality after this one, why should it be easier? Wouldn't the point be to be challenged to develop our energy further rather than to join in spiritual campfire songs and arts and crafts? The idea that it's one big hug and a round or two or thousand of "Kumbaya" with all of the other dead folks just seems too close to all of the stories of "heaven" in various religions. It's like a comforting bed-time story.

I'd be more impressed if the spirits had said they're sitting around manipulating energy to create solar flares or inhabiting water molecules to see what it is like to exist in that state. I'd be more impressed if they were haunted by what they'd done or if they had some sort of deeper insight into the nature of reality to convey or a message about what it takes to solve the world's problems beyond "clean house" or "love". Surely, someone who saw this reality from the broader perspective of being in the next could do more than your average New Age hippy. Conversations With History just doesn't offer much either in style of substance and I was deeply disappointed.