The Earliest Accounts of Out-of-Body Experiences (Part 2)

 In Part 1 of this two-part series I described the earliest accounts of out-of-body experiences, discussing account appearing between 1864 and 1911. Let us look at some more of the earliest accounts of out-of-body experiences, resuming the narrative from the early twentieth century. 

The image below shows the beginning of a much longer 1905 newspaper account you can read here. We have a very rare type of account of distinguished witnesses reporting they saw in the Parliament of London an apparition of a man (Sir Carne Rasch) who was sick and far away.  The witnesses include Sir Gilbert Parker and Sir Arthur Hayter. You could consider this an out-of-body experience involving Sir Carne Basch, alive at the time of the report. 

 

On the page here of the 1918 book Man Is a Spirit by J. A. Hill, we have an account of an out-of-body experience.  It is a second-hand account, but since many similar accounts have been collected since then, and since reports like this were all but unheard of in 1918, we have a strong reason for thinking the account is accurate. We read this:

"Some years ago I became acquainted with a stalwart ex-soldier of our Civil War. He was an artilleryman, and was sitting on the ammunition chest of his gun when it was hit by a shell from the enemy's guns and exploded. The man was thrown into the air and his body fell to the ground. He said that he was up in the air, looking down at his own body which lay upon the ground at some distance from him. He seemed to be yet connected with the body by a slender cord of a clear silvery appearance, and, while he looked on, two surgeons came by, and after looking at the body remarked that he was dead. One of the medicos took hold of an arm and turned the body on its side, and remarked that he was dead; and they both passed on and left him. Soon after the stretcher-bearers came along and found there was life in the corpse, and carried him to the rear.

After the turning of the body, he said, 'I came down that silver cord and returned to the old body and reanimated it, although my body was blind as a bat and my right arm was torn from my shoulder'; and he showed me on his face and chest forty-eight scars caused by the bursting shell. This man was living at St. Petersburg, Flo., and I think is yet living."  -- G. B. Crabbe.

On page 69 of the same 1918 book, we read this first-hand account by Beryl Hinton:

"I want also to tell you of my one and only psychical experience. Years ago, when only seventeen, I was, in Calcutta, put under chloroform to have a number of teeth out. I presently felt I, myself, was in space above my body, round which were the doctors, dentists, and my mother, and I remember wondering why I was not being judged, since I was obviously dead. I had been brought up as a strict Roman Catholic and taught that individual judgment followed death. I had never read any psychical books or experiences. I was afterwards told that my condition caused alarm, as I would not come back to consciousness. I've never forgotten that dream (?) and, when put under chloroform in September for my very serious operation, was anxious to see if anything of the same sort happened again. But it did not. I had no dream, and this time took the chloroform well. So it does look as if the soul had lifted from the body that long-ago time."

Later she says this, recalling the same experience:

"There was I, above my body, around which were gathered the people present. I could not talk to them, and I remember so distinctly wondering, 'If I am dead, how is it I am not being judged?' That I was out of the body I do not doubt. I am told they had some difficulty in restoring me to consciousness. In the long years that have passed since that experience, when doubts as to the future have assailed me, it has gone farther in my own mind to prove survival than all the books on faith I had read."

On pages 71-72 of the same 1918 book, we have an account by John Huntley:

"About five years ago I woke from sleep to find 'myself' clean out of the body, as the kernel of a nut comes out of its shell. I was conscious in two places — in a feeble degree, in the body which was lying in bed on its left side; and to a far greater degree, away from the body (far away, it seemed), surrounded by white opaque light, and in a state of absolute happiness and security (a curious expression, but one which best conveys the feeling).

The whole of my personality lay 'out there,' even to the replica of the body — which, like the body, lay also on its left side. I was not conscious of leaving the body, but woke up out of it. It was not a dream, for the consciousness was an enhanced one, as superior to the ordinary waking state as that is to the dream state. Indeed, I thought to myself, 'This cannot be a dream,' so I willed 'out there' (there was no volition in the body), and as my spirit self moved so the body moved in bed."

Doing an experiment involving what he described as "illusions of levitation,"  an experimenter in 1918 may have produced evidence for out-of-body experiences. His research is described in a later book:

"I cannot do better than summarize the interesting articles of Mr. Lydiard H. Horton, which appeared in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology (April, 1918 ; June, 1918 ; August, 1919), in which he attempted to prove this fact — that such illusions of levitation may be so produced — even without sleep ! He induced a number of experimental subjects to lie upon a bed or couch, and relax completely. Upon the degree of relaxation thus attained depends the success of the experiment. If the patient can induce this complete relaxation of the muscular system without falling asleep, he will often experience an 'illusion of levitation.' ' Out of the thirty subjects who relaxed completely, and of the twenty or so who retained consciousness after they had completely relaxed, eight of them reported illusions of levitation.'  The following are typical experiences of this nature :

“ One of them jumped out of the chair and was afraid to continue the experiment, so realistic was his apperception of a soaring motion.

" Another, this time a woman, gripped the chair in the momentary belief that she was floating away ; two others reported that they felt ‘ caught up ’ by a wave, but that their reason reassured them at the time.

" One other...reported himself ‘ just floating away,’ the sensation being overwhelmingly real. ...”

On page 46 of the February 8, 1919 edition of the periodical Light, which can be read here,  we hear an account by Captain Gilbert Nobbs of getting a severe head injury during World War I. He says, "I seemed for a moment somewhere in the emptiness looking down at my body lying in the shell-hole."

The 1919 book "Modern Psychical Phenomena" by Hereward Carrington had a Chapter IX entitled "Projection of the 'Astral Body' " that you can read here.  The chapter begins like this:

"One of the latest achievements of 'psychical science' — which is constantly making new and important discoveries — is the voluntary projection of the 'astral body' of man — the expulsion of the human 'double' or etheric counterpart of the physical body — by methods under control of the human will. Occult science has long since proved that — besides this physical body, which we know — there is also a more subtle and refined envelope — the 'spiritual body' of St. Paul — and that this body is capable of being detached, at times, and of being ' projected' — leaving the physical body entranced, while the subtle body journeys and makes itself manifest to others at considerable distance."

On the page here of the Carrington book we have a sketch showing the idea of astral projection, one that shows the "silver cord" reputed to connect the astral body and the regular physical body. 

The chapter has some interesting instructions on how a person can attempt to perform a voluntary out-of-body experience. But we have no testimonies by people who claim to have performed such experiences. A 1920 work by Carrington ("Higher Psychical Development") has a chapter entitled "Projection of the Astral Body." On page 282 Carrington makes this remarkable claim: "It is estimated that about 15,000 persons now living 'see' more or less on the astral plane; and that about fifty persons can consciously go out into that plane at will." The reference to going out into the astral plane is a claim of willful out-of-body experiences. 

The 1923 newspaper article here attempts to summarize a long book by M. Pierre-Emile Cornillier, one entitled "The Survival of the Soul and Its Evolution After Death." I have been unable to find the book on sites such as www.archive.org. The article makes it sound as if the author had out-of-body experiences. 

In 1925 a very long French work appeared on out-of-body experiences, one by Charles Lancelin entitled "Méthode de dédoublement personnel : extérioration de la neuricité, sorties en astral," which translates as "Method of personal doubling: exteriorization of neuritis, astral projections."  (The book is listed on www.archive.org with a publication date of 1925, although it may have been published earlier.)  At its end on page 504 we have the photo below, which has a French caption, which translates as follows: "Miss B's splitting following a serious cholera-anaemia condition lasting three years." The author apparently is claiming to have a photo capturing an "astral body" projected during an out-of-body experience. As I don't read French, I cannot say much about the credibility of this author or whether the photo should be taken seriously. 

The next major account of out-of-body experiences occurred in the 1929 book "The Projection of the Astral Body" by Sylvan Muldoon and Hereward Carrington, which you can read online here. Muldoon begins his account like this:

"When my first out-of-the-body experiences occurred I was but twelve — so young and immature in mind that I did not realize their magnitude. The occurrences came about involuntarily and repeated themselves frequently, until I became so accustomed to them that, as a matter of fact, I soon regarded them as nothing extraordinary and seldom mentioned them even to members of my own family, to say nothing of keeping a record of them, although I had been urged to do so by many interested persons.

I had been told, by persons professing to know, that conscious projection of the astral body was nothing unusual, and that many psychics could produce it at will. I, too, wanted to be able to produce it at will, and I admit that I was envious of those who (I had heard) could do so. So I began a search for some one who could produce the phenomenon voluntarily. But my search proved fruitless, and eventually I concluded that I could not find that 'some one.'  Thus I began to experiment with the phenomenon myself, and in this book you will find the results of my experiments."

The term "projection of the astral body" that Muldoon uses is a term equivalent to "out-of-body experience," although the term "projection of the astral body" has more of a connotation of something that happen from willful effort.  The term "projection of the astral body" also is a more dogmatic term, as it involves the doctrine that there is such a thing as an "astral body," a term that is pretty much equivalent to "spirit body." 

On this page the co-author Carrrington explains the term:

" The Astral Body may be defined as the Double, or the ethereal counterpart of the physical body, which it resembles and with which it normally coincides. It is thought to be composed of some semi-fluidic or subtle form of matter, invisible to the physical eye. It has, in the past, been spoken of as the etheric body, the mental body, the spiritual body, the desire body, the radiant body, the resurrection body, the double, the luminous body, the subtle body, the fluidic body, the shining body, the phantom, and by various other names. In recent Theosophical literature, distinctions have been made between these various bodies ; but for our present purposes we may ignore these distinctions, and speak of the 'Astral Body' as some more subtle form, distinct from the organic structure known to Western science, and studied by our physiologists.

The broad, general teaching is that every human being 'has' an astral body just as he has a heart, a brain and a liver. In fact, the astral body is more truly the Real Man than the physical body is, for the latter is merely a machine adapted to functioning upon the physical plane. But it must not be thought that the astral body is held to be the Soul of man either. That is a mistake often made. It is said to be the vehicle of the Soul — just as truly as the physical body is a vehicle — and constitutes one of the essential connecting links between mind and matter."

The idea may seem less fantastic when you consider that the modern astrophysicist claims that a spiral galaxy has essentially two bodies or forms: a visible body or form of regular matter, and an invisible body or form consisting of dark matter. 

On the page here Carrington argues for the plausibility of Muldoon's accounts of out-of-body experiences:

"I should like to draw the reader’s attention particularly to the fact that no wild or preposterous claims are anywhere made in this book as to what has been accomplished during these 'astral trips.'  Mr. Muldoon does not claim to have visited any distant planets — and return to tell us in detail their modes of life ; he does not claim to have explored any vast and beautiful 'spirit worlds' ; he does not pretend to have penetrated the past or the future ; to have re-lived any of his past 'incarnations' ; to have read any ' Akashic Records' ; to have travelled back along the stream of time, and reviewed the history of mankind, or the geologic eras of our earth. He asserts, merely, that he has been enabled to leave his physical body at will, and travel about in the present, in his immediate vicinity, in some vehicle or other, while fully conscious. This is perfectly rational, and is precisely what we should expect, on the theory that these 'trips' are actual experiences. "

On pages 116-117 of a 1936 book Sylvan Muldoon describes his first out-of-body experience:

"Slowly ...I was moving toward the ceiling, all the while lying horizontal and powerless. Naturally I believed that this was my physical body as I had always known it, but that it had mysteriously begun to defy gravity...Involuntarily, at about six feet above the bed, as if the movement had been conducted by an invisible intelligent force, present in the very air, I was uprighted from the horizontal position, to the perpendicular, and placed standing upon the floor of the room... where I remained for two or three minutes, still unable to move of my own accord... I managed to turn around. There were two of me! In the name of common sense — there were two of me! There was another 'me' lying quietly upon the bed. It was difficult to conceive of this being real — but there I was, fully conscious, fully able to reason and know what I saw was actual. The next thing which caught my eye, explained the curious sensation in the back of my head — for my two identical bodies were joined by means of an elastic-like cord, one end of which was fastened to the medulla oblongata region of my phantom counterpart, while the other end centered between the eyes of my physical counterpart. This cord extended across the space of probably six feet which separated us."

Muldoon's 1929 book includes this illustration depicting the idea of an astral body floating outside of a physical body, with the two connected by an elastic-like cord. 

Quite a few examples of people reporting the existence of such an elastic-like cord can be read in my post here. The author of a 2023 PhD dissertation ("Investigating the Nature and Psychological Impact of Out-of-Body Experiences") performed an online survey of 213 people who claimed to have had an out-of-body experience (page 156).  He states that 11% reported "seeing a ray of light, cord, ribbon, or rope connecting the nonphysical self to the physical self" (page 450).

The Earliest Accounts of Out-of-Body Experiences (Part 1)

 A recent scientific study "Out-of-body experiences: interpretations through the eyes of those who live them" gives us two cases of what we may call veridical out-of-body experiences. We read this:

"Participant 5 described an out-of-body experience where she visited the hospital to see her aunt in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). The following day, upon visiting the hospital in reality, she was deeply surprised to find that the hallway, the door, and the ICU where her aunt was located were exactly as she had seen during the OBE. Participant 10 reported that during her OBE, she visited a village in Scotland. As she flew in, she observed a bridge and a specific landscape, and upon 'landing' in the village, she noticed the village's name. Later, she confirmed on a map that both the river and the village existed."

Many similar cases of veridical out-of-body experiences can be read in my post  here, where we read many cases of people who seemed to learn about some details of physical reality during an out-of-body experience, with the details later being confirmed through regular observation.  The authors of the "Out-of-body experiences: interpretations through the eyes of those who live them" paper erroneously state this:

"Given the complexity and subjective nature of OBEs, analyzing and explaining them within the scientific paradigm is an extremely complex task. It is not surprising, therefore, that the first publications on this phenomenon appeared in parapsychology journals (Alvarado, 1982; De Foe et al., 2013; Irwin, 2000)." 

To the contrary, out-of-body experiences were thoroughly documented in many publications much earlier than 1982. Reports of out-of-body experiences date back to 1845. Let us look at some of the earliest writings on this topic. 

On this page and the next one in the 1845 book The Seeress of Prevorst by  the physician Justinus Kerner. We read that Frederika Hauffe (the subject of the book) had out-of-body experiences (like many others):

"She was frequently in that state in which persons, who, like her, have had the faculty of ghost-seeing, perceive their own spirit out of their body, which only enfolds it as a thin gauze. She often saw herself out of her body, and sometimes double. She said, ' It often appears to me that I am out of my body, and then I hover over it, and think of it ; but this is not a pleasant feeling, because I recognize my body.' "

Frederika Hauffe (1801-1829)

One of the earliest out-of-body experience ever recorded in a first person account was the account given on pages 44-47 of the 1864 book Incidents in My Life by Daniel Dunglas Home. 

Home undergoing tests supervised by William Crookes

Here are some excerpts from a much longer account by Home:

"One evening I had been pondering deeply on that change which the world calls death, and on the eternity that lies beyond, until wearied I found relief in prayer, and then ill sleep. My last waking consciousness had been that of perfect trust in God, and a sense of gratitude to Him for the enjoyment I received from contemplating the beauties of the material creation. It might have been that my mind was led to this by the fact of my having watched a beautiful star as it shone and twinkled in the profound stillness of the night. Be this as it may, it appeared to me that, as I closed my eyes to earthly things, an inner perception was quickened within me, till at last reason was as active as when I was awake. I, with vivid distinctness, remember asking myself the question, whether I was asleep or no? when, to my amazement, I heard a voice which seemed so natural, that my heart bounded with joy as I recognised it as the voice of one, who while on earth was far too pure for such a world as ours, and who, in passing to that brighter home had promised to watch over and protect me. And, although I well knew she would do so, it was the first time I had heard her voice, with that nearness and natural tone. She said, ' Fear not, Daniel, I am near you ; the vision you are about to have is that of death, yet you will not die. Your spirit must again return to the body in a few hours. Trust in God and his good angels : all will be well.'...I was at this instant brought to a consciousness of light, by seeing the whole of my nervous system, as it were, composed of thousands of electrical scintillations, which here and there, as in the created nerve, took the form of currents, darting their rayons over the whole body in a manner most marvellous ; still this was but a cold electrical light and besides, it was external. Gradually, however, I saw that the extremities were less luminous, and the finer membranes' surrounding the brain became as it were glowing, and I felt that thought and action were no longer connected with the earthly tenement, but that they were in a spirit-body in every respect similar to the body which I knew to have been mine, and which I now saw lying motionless before me on the bed. The only link which held the two forms together seemed to be a silvery-like light, which proceeded from the brain ; and, as if it were a response to my earlier waking thoughts, the same voice, only that it was now more musical than before, said, 'Death is but a second birth, corresponding in every respect to the natural birth, and should the uniting link now be severed, you could never again enter the body.' "

The long account might be dismissed as some fantasy, but it actually holds high credibility, coming from a witness of unblemished integrity, who very many reported as levitating during seances, with the witness passing with flying colors an investigation by the world-class scientist William Crookes, as described here. 

On page 67 of the February 9, 1877 edition of The Spiritualist, we have an account that should interest those who study near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences. We have an account by William Q. Judge claiming that he was able to willfully produce out-of-body experiences or telepathic interactions with others. He states this:

"In my sleep at night, through intense desire and will, I have gone long distances. Once, while down in New Jersey, sixty miles from here, I have come up to this city, and been visible to friends in Mdme. Blavatsky’s house. To her house in spirit I have frequently gone.....Now here I have to take the evidence of others. They say that while my body snored, my double, or simulacrum...or whatever you may name it—that is, a visible counterfeit presentment  of me—could be seen walking down the passage to the kitchen."

In an 1892 edition of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research (Volume VIII, page 196), we have an account by L. J. Bertrand of an out-of-body experience he had 30 years earlier. He states this:

" 'Well,'  thought I, 'at last I am what they call a dead man, and here I am, a ball of air in the air, a captive balloon still attached to earth by a kind of elastic string and going up and always up. How strange ! I see better than ever, and I am dead—only a small space in the space without a body ! . . . Where is my last body ?  Looking down, I was astounded to recognise my own envelope. ' Strange ! ' said I to myself. 'There is the corpse in which I lived and which I called me, as if the coat were the body, as if the body were the soul ! What a horrid thing is that body ! —deadly pale, with a yellowish-blue colour, holding a cigar in its mouth and a match in its two burned fingers ! Well, I hope that you shall never smoke again, dirty rag ! Ah ! if only I had a hand and scissors to cut the thread which ties me still to it."

The report of something like an elastic string or elastic band connecting the body and a kind of astral body or spirit body floating above the physical body is one that would reappear many times in future accounts of out-of-body experiences. 

One of the earliest reports of an out-of-body experience is an 1899 report made by a Dr. Wiltse. According to the page here, the account "was printed in the St. Louis Medical and Surgical Journal,  November, 1889, and in the Mid-Continental Review, February, 1890." The account is quoted at length in my post here, which quotes from the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research edition here (Volume 8, page 180, from the year 1892).  We have in the account quite a few of the classic aspects of out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences. 

On page 288 of the July, 1894 edition of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, which can be read here, a witness reported being an observer above his own body, with an "elastic force" preventing him from floating too far away from his body. He reported he could not rise higher than "two yards" above his body. On page 34 of the January 17, 1903 edition of the periodical Light, which can be read here, George Wyld MD describes having an out-of-body experience in which his "soul-form" was "six or seven feet" above his body. 

On pages 254 to 255 of the 1895 book Brown Studies by George H. Hepworth, we have a description of an out-of-body experience, one that includes an account of being able to pass through matter. We read this:

"While sitting with my right hand resting on the arm of the chair I seemed to step out of my body, and stand beside it, looking upon it with mingled curiosity and astonishment. I felt as light as air, and said to myself, 'This must be what St. Paul calls the spiritual body.' It is true that I looked on what sat in the chair with a kind of tenderness, but the sense of freedom which I soon became conscious of was almost ecstatic, and it seemed as though I would not go back into those narrow quarters again for worlds. The body was so clumsy, so heavy, so uncomely, so uncouth and ungraceful, while this other body, on the contrary, was a delight, a dream, a poem....I moved away from my body toward the door, thinking to open it and go out into the starlight ; but to my surprise I found that the door was no obstruction whatever. I simply passed through it as the sun's rays pass through a pane of glass."

Around the time of about 1900 there appeared some newspaper accounts describing out-of-body experiences. You can read about them in my post here. In a 1901 newspaper article you can read this reference to out-of-body experiences:

"The. theory which Count de Rochas puts forth after ten years' investigation is that a subject under hypnotic influence can exteriorize the astral body, make it depart a certain distance from the material body, and when the air is grasped, as one would grasp an arm where the astral body is, it will be felt in the material or physical. It has been verified by eminent seers that the breath of this projection or astral-body carries sensibility with it."

In the very interesting 1907 book The Psychic Riddle by Isaac Funk (the same Funk of the famous Funk and Wagnall's dictionary), we read this account on pages 179 to 184 by a person who Funk tells is a " well-known gentleman in New York, a man whose veracity would be questioned by no one who knows him, a physician of standing, also an editor and publisher of reputation."  We read this account:

"As the movement continued upward, all at once there came a flashing of lights in my eyes and a ringing in my ears, and it seemed for an instant as tho I had become unconscious. When I came out of this state, I seemed to be walking in the air. No words can describe the exhilaration and freedom that I experienced. No words can describe the clearness of mental vision. At no time in my life had my mind been so clear or so free. Just then I thought of a friend who was more than a thousand miles distant. Then I seemed to be traveling with great rapidity through the atmosphere about me. Everything was light, and yet it was not the light of the day or the sun, but, I might say, a peculiar light of its own, such as I had never known. It could not have been a minute after I thought of my friend before I was conscious of standing in a room where the gas-jets were turned up, and my friend was standing with his back toward me, but suddenly turning and seeing me, said, 'What in the world are you doing here? I thought you were in Florida,' and he started to come toward me. While I heard the words distinctly, I was unable to answer. An instant later I was gone, and the consciousness of the things that transpired that memorable night will never be forgotten. I seemed to leave the earth, and everything pertaining to it, and enter a condition of life of which it is absolutely impossible to give here any thought I had concerning it, because there was no correspondence to anything I had ever seen or heard or known of in any way. The wonder and the joy of it was unspeakable, and I can readily understand now what Paul meant when he said, 'I knew a man, whether in the body or out of it I know not, who was caught up to the third heaven, and there saw things which it is not possible (lawful) to utter.'...I may add here that the friend referred to having been seen by me that night was also distinctly conscious of my presence and made the exclamation mentioned. We both wrote the next day and relating the experiences of the night, and the letters corroborating the incident crossed in the post....If the whole world was to rise up and say that there was no life after one left the physical organism, it would not make one particle of difference in my mind, as I am absolutely certain that I have been as free from my physical body as l ever will be, and that my life apart from it was far more wonderful than any life I have ever experienced in it."

In the article "Astral Excursions" by Franz Hartmann MD, which appears on page 159 of the March 1908 Occult Review, which can be read here, Hartmann describes an out-of-body experience. He says that during this experience "when I tried to lift one of the instruments on a little table next to the chair, I could not do so, as my fingers passed through it."  

On page 480 of the October 7, 1911 edition of the journal Light, we read Mary Hamilton state this:

"The articles on ‘ Bilocation’ have been very interesting to me, and I think with ‘B. C. W'  that this phase of mediumship ought to be studied, for it is undoubtedly a form of mediumship, and in my own case I have had so many experiences of this kind that I never think of the physical body as myself. It is difficult to write on this matter, but I have been shown how the body is linked to the spiritual and sustained by it just as simply and naturally as the unborn child is by the mother. I have stood by my body fully conscious and been given this lesson by an Egyptian friend just as naturally as a teacher in the body could give it, and I have been overjoyed at the beauty and order of all things spiritual."

On the previous page of the same edition, we have a letter by Vincent N. Turvey of "Marrington, Branksome Park, Bournemouth." He quotes an account of an experience he had that could be an out-of-body experience. But the wording is too vague for us to tell whether what is going is an out-of-body experience or telepathy or clairvoyance. 

An important fact for anyone researching for the earliest literature on this topic is that before the phrase "out-of-body experience" became widely used, it was more common to use the slightly different phrase "out-of-the-body experience." Anyone searching for the earliest literature needs to search for all of these terms:

• Out-of-body experience
• Out-of-the-body experience
• Astral journey (an early term for an out-of-body experience)
• Astral projection (a term meaning a willfully produced out-of-body experience)
• Bilocation (a term meaning to be in two places at once, one sometimes used to describe a soul existing in a spot outside of the body)

The second part of this two-part series will take us from 1911 to the year 1930. 

The Martian Student: A Science Fiction Story

In the year 2126 young Josh lived in a tall tower on the planet Mars. His mother Lucy hoped that the education of Josh would be a breeze, and that he could learn all he needed to learn by the "brain downloads" that scientists had long promised.  But the hype about "brain downloads" had never materialized into a product anyone could use. So Josh did his studies in a pretty old-fashioned way, assisted by AI tutors which showed up in the form of talking life-like human-sized holograms. 

One day his mother Lucy gave young Josh a hard assignment relating to biology. 

"So I've seen how much you've learned about biology," said Lucy.

"Yes, Mom, I know so much," said Josh. "I can name many types of animals that live on that distant planet Earth I have never seen."

"But now I want you to go deeper," said Lucy. "This will be an assignment much harder than things like learning the names of animals."

"Uh, oh," said Josh, fearing some hard work was ahead. 

"What I would like you to do is research the topic: how did you and people like you ever get here? How did the human race ever arise? And how did your body ever arise? And how did your mind arise?"

"No problem, I'll just ask one of my holographic AI tutors," said Josh. 

"For this assignment, I don't want you to use a holographic AI tutor," said Lucy. "I want you to read a book to get the answers."

Josh groaned, realizing the assignment was a hard one. Using the very extensive electronic facilities of his Mars colony, he selected a book on biology, and began reading, trying to get the answers to the questions his mother had asked. 

The next day Lucy asked about how we doing. 

"I'm all done," said Josh. "I got the answers to those tough questions." 

"So tell me, Josh: what answers did you find?" said his mother. 

"The first question was how did the human race arise," said Josh. "The book told me the answer. It said every species arose because of random mutations in DNA that were saved and accumulated, because they were beneficial." 

"Random mutations?" said Lucy. "You think humans and bears and lions and whales arose from random mutations?"

"That's what the book said," said Josh. "It said they arose because of accumulations of random mutations such as copying errors."

"But that makes no sense," said Lucy. "The problem is that the bodies of creatures like us are enormously organized. A human body is as organized and fine-tuned as the spacecraft that first brought humans to Mars from Earth. In a human body there are organ systems that are built from organs, which are built from tissues, which are built from 200 types of enormously organized cells, which are built from many types of very complex organelles, which are built from superbly organized protein complexes, which are built from more than 20,000 types of proteins, which are each a special arrangement of hundreds or thousand of amino acids, fine-tuned to achieve some functional result. You can't accumulate your way to that kind of organization."

"But accumulation explains some things, doesn't it?" asked Josh. 

"Sure," said Lucy. "It explains the drifts of red dust we see piled up outside of our windows. But it doesn't explain things that are fantastically organized like rocket ships and human bodies. Now let's look just at you. What explanation did you find about how your body arose?"

"The book says I started out as a tiny little speck in your body," said Josh. 

"Well, at least the book got that right," said Lucy. "That is how you started out. That little speck is called a zygote, and it's all that you were just after I got pregnant. But how did that tiny little speck turn into a big smart boy like you?"

"The book explained it," said Josh. "It said that inside each of my cells is something called DNA, and that DNA is a blueprint for building a body. It seems that my cells read the blueprint, and so they knew how to build my body."

Lucy started laughing. "What a ridiculous tale!" she exclaimed.  "DNA has no blueprint for building bodies. DNA has only low-level chemical information like which amino acids make up cells. DNA and its genes do not even know how to make a cell. And cells don't have the smarts to read and understand blueprints on how to build a body, even if such blueprints existed." 

"But I thought it made sense," said Josh. "the idea of me getting built from a blueprint in my cells."

"Why would that make sense?" asked Lucy. "Do blueprints build things? Of course not. If you dump some construction materials at a spot and also dump a blueprint, that won't cause a new building to get built."

"I guess you're right," said Josh.

"Things only get built from blueprints if there are construction workers smart enough to read blueprints, and follow their instructions," explained Lucy. "The human body is so complex and so highly organized that a blueprint for making a body would be fantastically complicated. Were there any construction workers inside my body smart enough to read a blueprint for building a body, so that your body could be built from a tiny speck-sized zygote, and so that all of the 200 types of cells would know how to find the right place in the body to go to?"

"I guess not," said Josh. 

"You're not just a body, but also a mind," said Lucy. "What did your book tell you about how your mind arose?"

"It said my mind arose just from the electricity and chemicals passing around in my brain, and that my brain is like a computer that produces my mind." said Josh.

"How ridiculous an explanation!" said Lucy. "There's basically nothing in the brain that can explain the mind. And brains are not computers. Computers have an operating system and application programs. Brains have no such things."

"The book said my memories are stored in my brain," said Josh. 

"That was nonsense," said Lucy. "Brains do not have any component that can explain learning. Brains do not have any component that can explain instantly recalling a memory, as soon as you hear some name spoken you haven't heard in years.  I remember things very well from decades ago, but the proteins in brains are very short-lived, having an average lifetime of only a few weeks or less. And no one has ever found the tiniest bit of learned information by microscopically examining brain tissue." 

"So how could the book have been so wrong?" asked Josh. 

"When was it written?" asked his mother Lucy.

"In the year 2026," answered Josh.

"Oh THAT explains it," said Lucy, laughing. "Lots of people had foolish ideas way back then, a century ago. Around 2026 many people thought and did the stupidest things. They were so foolish they filled the Earth with nuclear missiles that could have caused the whole planet to be ruined. People have much better ideas now. So I have another tough assignment for you."

"Oh, no," said Josh, groaning. 

"The assignment is: get some answers to my questions from books that were written in recent years, books written in the 22nd century," said Lucy. "And if you think that none of them gave you answers that held up to your scrutiny, then tell me you didn't find any answers that made sense." 

"Mirror Life" Risk Means You Just Might Get Killed by a Mars Sample Return Mission

 Scientists and doctors have a long history of paying inadequate attention to very serious risks that are hard to quantify. Here are some examples. 

• When the first atomic bomb was being developed,  there were concerns that its explosion would cause an uncontrollable chain reaction that would set the Earth's atmosphere on fire. Anyone familiar with the way in which an atomic chain reaction occurs may understand why such a concern was reasonable. A nuclear chain reaction occurs in a way roughly comparable to how a fast-spreading virus spreads, with the reaction passing on very quickly between nearby units, which themselves cause the same reaction to be passed on to other nearby units, and so on and so forth. It was reasonable to fear that an atmosphere filled with oxygen molecules might allow a nuclear chain reaction to pass on endlessly from one molecule to the next. Chapter 17 of Daniel Ellsberg's book The Doomsday Machine makes quite clear that physicists still thought there was a significant chance of such a planet-killing event when the first atomic bomb was exploded in July, 1945. At one point Enrico Fermi estimated the chance at 10 percent, according to one source. Scientists basically shrugged off the risk that the whole atmosphere might burn up when the first nuclear bomb exploded, and approved the first atom bomb test. It was like playing Russian roulette with the survival of mankind. 
• After nuclear weapons were invented, there were all kinds of concerns about the testing of nuclear weapons. Critics said that the tests were creating radioactivity that would increase the cancer risk for very many people. Scientists assured us incorrectly that the risks were very small. This post  states that there were between 340,000 to 690,000 US deaths caused by atomic testing. The result was probably more US deaths than from the bombs dropped on Japan. 
• Many people pointed out the hazards of scientific experimentation modifying the genomes of viruses and bacteria. But scientists recklessly kept up "gain of function" experiments.  Three US intelligence agencies have concluded that the COVID-19 epidemic surging in early 2020 was caused by a lab leak from a laboratory doing gain-of-function research. 
• A health resource web page states this: "For over two decades, the United States has experienced a crisis of substance abuse and addiction that is illustrated most starkly by the rise in deaths from drug overdoses. Since the year 2000, over 1 million people died from drug overdoses in the United States. The annual number of drug deaths exceeded 100,000 for the first time in 2021, beginning a disturbing trend that has continued in both 2022 and 2023." How did this happen? For many years, doctors not paying adequate attention to the risks of opioid medicines went about casually writing prescriptions for such drugs, acting like they were blind to the risks of overdoses and prescription drug addiction. 
• The radiation hazards of CT scans were obvious from the beginning. But countless millions were encouraged to get such scans, often where there was no clear medical necessity for such a scan. Referring to CT scans in the United States, a scientific study stated, "The 93 million CT examinations performed in 62 million patients in 2023 were projected to result in approximately 103, 000 future cancers." Extrapolating, we can assume that millions of people worldwide have got cancer because of unnecessary CT scans. 

Scientists have recently discussed a type of risk that few have imagined previously. It is the risk called "mirror life."  To understand the idea, you have to understand the important idea of homochirality. 

A protein molecule typically has hundreds of amino acids. Chemicals such as amino acids and sugars can be either left-handed or right handed. A left handed amino acid looks like a mirror image of the right-handed amino acid, and a right-handed sugar looks like the mirror image of the left-handed sugar. Homochirality is the fact that in living things essentially all amino acids are left-handed, and all sugars in DNA are right-handed. But when such things are synthesized in a laboratory, or produced in experiments simulating the early Earth, you see equal amounts of left-handed and right-handed amino acids and equal amounts of left-handed and right-handed sugars.

But what if life had arose on Mars long ago? Such life might have a type of homochirality the exact opposite of the type we see in earthly life. For Mars life it might be that all proteins used right-handed amino acids, and all sugars were left-handed.  Such a theoretical form of life is called "mirror life." Recently articles have pointed out a great danger in trying to create such mirror life through laboratory experiments. If such mirror life escaped a lab, it might act like an unstoppable virus. Theoretically if mirror life were unleashed in the earthly biosphere, it might wipe out all or a large fraction of earthly life. 

So there is a danger in returning samples from Mars that might contain life. Such life might be mirror life. And if such mirror life escaped the lab, it might act like some unstoppable virus. The result might be a pandemic that might make the COVID-19 pandemic look like "a walk in the park" in comparison. 

The possibility I am mentioning is not some weird speculation I dreamed up myself. The possibility of a mirror life pandemic was raised recently in an article published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The article had the title "Black swans from the Red Planet—Could NASA bring back 'mirror life' from Mars?" The subtitle read this:

NASA and the European Space Agency plan to bring samples back from Mars. Could they harbor a type of life that scientists warn could trigger mass extinctions on Earth? 

Later in the article we read this: "With perhaps a 50-50 chance that any Martian life developed from a mirror biology, the return of samples from Mars has transformed from a scientific opportunity to a potential existential risk."

The possibility of a mirror life pandemic after a Mars sample return mission is another reason why such a mission should not be funded. The main reason is the very low likelihood of detecting life or traces of dead life, given that no type of amino acid has ever been detected on Mars. Amino acids are the building components of protein molecules, which (along with protein complexes)  are the building components of the simplest one-celled life. 

A more intelligent approach would be to send to Mars robotic instruments with whatever equipment is sufficient to detect life, if it exists. Or, simply wait until a manned expedition reaches Mars, a mission including a competent biologist with all the tools needed to detect whether life on Mars exists or ever existed. 

Oops, it was deadly "mirror life"