Gazing into the Beyond: Alan Sanderson’s “Psychiatry and the Spirit World”
We live in times of political, environmental and social interregnum. Old ideologies have faded, or considered mute, and in the West the idea of organized religion has quickly lost its potency. For all the fear of Christian nationalism in the United States, the wider population at large has largely drifted away from the traditional ideal of the atomic family attending sermons or mass on Sunday morning. And yet, our human nature continues to seek out answers to the big questions. A supposed full turn to secularism has also brought with it renewed obsessions with extreme possibilities. Suddenly we are in thrall of government reports on the existence of UFOs. Tarot decks and astrology charts fascinate college students. Bereft of idealism, with the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists now updating its Doomsday Clock to 90 seconds away from midnight, we simply don’t want to believe this is it.
In this landscape, a book like Psychiatry and the Spirit World by Alan Sanderson, M.D., who passed away this past December, poses a unique sort of challenge. Here is a trained medical professional, with a wide breadth of experience, assuring us that he has found evidence of death as a transitory phase for the soul. In this very accessible book, you will also find the claim that reincarnation is quite possible. What even a skeptic will be able to appreciate in Sanderson’s book is the genuine sincerity that comes across from the page. His tone is not that of a fevered acolyte of esoteric belief systems, but of a seeker genuinely fascinated by experiences he perceives to be authentic. An immediate comparison can be made with Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens by John E. Mack, a Harvard professor of psychiatry who rattled academia in the 1990s with his insistence on believing his subjects had made contact with extraterrestrials.
As with Mack, whether one comes out of reading Sanderson’s book convinced or not, it still makes for absorbing, at times compelling, reading. At its heart is the biggest question of all: What happens when we die? For Sanderson, a stubborn attachment to the conclusions of “rational science” risks missing higher avenues of exploration. In the opening chapters, Sanderson explains the hunger for answers might just be in his DNA. His mother died in a riding accident in 1940, leaving behind several books on spiritual matters. So intrigued was Sanderson by the subject, that by 1949 he boldly declared to his horrified father that he wanted to dedicate his life to exploring the psychic experience. Upon returning to clinical psychiatry, Sanderson would cross paths with figures such as the hypnotist Lance Trendall. Trendall specialized in “releasing spirits” which had been plaguing patients. Before long, Sanderson wondered if such an explanation could account for certain diagnosis such as schizophrenia.
Some of the most intriguing personal sections of Psychiatry and the Spirit World deal precisely with Sanderson’s detailed accounts of his own technique in practicing with patients what he calls “spirit release therapy.” Hypnosis is a key tool, during which he would have “my entranced patient look at an imaginary mirror.” If the patient would see a different figure than themselves appear in this mental mirror, Sanderson would then try to deduce if it was confirmation of a separate spirit inhabiting their being. After introducing the basics of his career and technique, Sanderson gets to the real meat of his book.
Psychiatry and the Spirit World can best be seen as a collage in which the late doctor assembles cases, testimonials and accounts which serve to support his thesis through various factors. One is in similarity. A chapter on near-death experiences begins with facts which are hard to refute, such as how a Dutch study of 344 cases of cardiac arrest came back with 18 percent claims of near-death experiences. Most share the feature of a loss of fear of death, along with the familiar claims of white lights and tunnels. A woman named Kristin describes floating above her body, watching physical reality in a detached manner. 50 percent of children in the same Dutch study reported near-death experiences. One child’s testimonial recounts a light shaped like an angel instructing him to “go back.” More intriguing is the case of a woman named Maria, who during a cardiac arrest, saw herself floating above the hospital, spotting a man’s blue gym shoe on a third floor window. Later, a nurse found the shoe right where Maria reported it to be.
Sanderson’s own sessions with patients can prove to be quite harrowing to read. A session with a man named Pete, who might have lived a previous life in Tibet, becomes a near battle with an entity, “Askinra”, supposedly inhabiting the patient. Sanderson asks what effect Askinra is having on Pete. “I’m destroying him. If I destroy him, I can be free,” is the spirit’s reply. A battle also ensues with the spirit of a Chinese soldier who may have bayoneted the Tibetan in a past life. It’s a rather dark implication and an example of how Sanderson’s book is not always a feel-good manifesto. With the hope of life beyond death, there are also perilous threats of hostile invaders taking over one’s consciousness and body. A follow-up report confirms Pete was doing quite well after his sessions and was relieved of certain physical symptoms.
In addition to chronicling spirit release sessions, Sanderson also chronicles a whole variety of stories involving individuals coming across different forms of paranormal experiences. There’s the woman who found a missing harp with the help of a “dowser” (who are usually known to be able to find water underground). A medium receives new compositions from Chopin and Rachmaninoff, which she then presents to an impressed Leonard Bernstein. Reincarnation is claimed through cases involving a man born in 1998 who later relives his past death as a fighter pilot during World War II. A Methodist minister describes the “astral plains” of the afterlife, including “hospitals” which treat those who find the transition from this world to the next to be difficult. A patient called “Case 54” describes the hard road of overcoming certain problems and insecurities…over a thousand years. But now that he has shed his “protective armor,” he is renewed. Certain passages have a hallucinatory poetic quality, as when this particular patient describes using a “rope of flowers to swing over the abyss of pain and hurt.”
There is a rather beautiful episode of the second season of the influential show The X-Files titled One Breath, which deals with themes of near-death experiences. In an eloquently-written monologue, Assistant FBI Director Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi), tells the doggedly obsessed Agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) about a near-death experience he had while fighting in Vietnam. “I’m afraid to look any further beyond that experience,” says Skinner, “you, you are not.” Sanderson can be commended in the same way even by the skeptical reader. It takes a particular kind of courage and imagination to dive so headlong into these stories and their implications. It also takes a special dose of hope, which is the driving motivator one senses in the subtext of Psychiatry and the Spirit World.
Must we remain so materialist to be happy? Would we value objects and status so much if we were certain consciousness continues in a different, spiritual realm? Organized religion was the main provider of such answers. Now that we have lost our faith, many still wonder if this is indeed, our only chance to live. Sanderson argues that there is no end. He finds intriguing threads connecting all the stories he compiles, suggesting common attributes to near-death experiences, reincarnation claims and reported medium cases, suggesting through the scientific method that they are plausible. His study is so lucid, accessible and in many ways, entertaining, that its sense of possibility is infectious. Even if one remains unconverted, the journey with Sanderson, who has now crossed over into that place none of us knows anything about, is enjoyable, at times haunting, to embark on.
Psychiatry and the Spirit World by Alan Sanderson, M.D., is now available for purchase here: https://www.amazon.com/Psychiatry-Spirit-World-Survival-Consciousness/dp/164411576X/ref=sr_1_1?crid=RG1A2HR9PY8S&keywords=Alan+Sanderson&qid=1675315340&s=books&sprefix=alan+sanderson%2Cstripbooks%2C391&sr=1-1
