On the last week of July, 2023, Phil and JF were delighted to speak at Shannon Taggart's Science of Things Spiritual Symposium in Lily Dale, the nerve centre of the Spiritualist movement. As speakers, your hosts were part of an inspiring lineup of scholars, artists, and researchers committed to exploring the borderlands of art, science, religion, and the paranormal. They also had the honour of launching the symposium with a live recording held on the evening of the July 27th. The topic was Frederic W. H. Myers' autobiographical essay, "Fragments of Inner Life," first published in full in 1961, some sixty years after the author's death. Myers was one of the original members of the Society for Psychical Research in England. A poet and classicist, he remained committed to the scientific promise of paranormal investigation until the end of his life. His book Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, also published posthumously, argues that psychical studies have confirmed, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that death is just the beginning. In this talk, JF and Phil discuss Myers' relevance to 21st-century thinking on the Weird.
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REFERENCES
The Science of Things Spiritual Symposium (https://www.lilydaleassembly.org/copy-of-what-s-happening): July 27-29, 2023
Frederic Myers, Fragments of Inner Life (https://www.esalen.org/ctr/fragments-of-inner-life)
Alan Bennett, [History Boys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheHistoryBoys)
Arthur Machen, A Fragment of Life (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781731557421)
Alan Gauld, The Founders of Psychical Research (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780367182878)
Donna Tartt, The Secret History (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780367182878)
Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781644398913)
Frans de Waal, Mama’s Last Hug (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780393357837)
Daniel Dennett, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett) American cognitive scientist
Frederic Myers, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781544632636)
Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781015410480)
Phil Ford, Dig (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780199939916)
William James, Principles of Psychology (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781420973396)
Akashic Record (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akashic_records), Theosophical idea
Jeff Kripal, Authors of the Impossible (https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780226453873)