Michael Prescott's Blog

It is my firm belief that unless ono is bi-polar or schizophrenic then prescription medication is unnecessary, even harmful, except perhaps for a very short spell.
Some fifteen years ago, after a period of extreme psychological stress, I was diagnosed with severe clinical depression. After lengthy consultation with my MD (who is very experienced in that field) we decided to go for SSRI antidepressants and forego the therapy as he felt I thoroughly understood the reasons/cause of my depression.
After a few months I dispensed with the antidepressants, increased the time I spent engaged in activities outdoors, and started taking a high-strength turmeric supplement. Since that decision I have never looked back. Moreover, I take no prescription drugs whatsoever. Admittedly, that has always been my preferred choice.
Very recently I came across Dr Joe Dispenza’s book, ‘You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter’. In it he explains what I had already come to understand from experience. I advise any and everyone to consider what he has to say before going down the pharmaceutical route.
Similarly useful books are, Dr. Lissa Rankin’s book. ‘Mind Over Medicine’ and Dr. Bruce Lipton’s ‘The Biology of Belief’. But in terms of readability, I prefer Dispenza’s book.
I urge everyone to read these books. Aside from ‘Life and How to Survive It’ by Robin Skynner and John Cleese, they are the most valuable therapeutic guides I have ever found.

Bill
You really, really need to be more careful about shooting from the lip from Wikipedia, or from any source cited there to do with psi matters – WITHOUT CHECKING THE ACCURACY FOR YOURSELF FIRST. That pertains especially to any source quoted there originally published by Prometheus and (especially) to do with the R101 case.
Last year I was asked by ‘Light’ magazine to reappraise the case after the almost mythical report into it by the late Archie Jarman became available for public viewing at Senate House in London for the first time. It had been stashed away as part of the Eric Dingwall Collection for many years. Jarman had sent it to Dingwall (who was a close friend of both Jarman and Eileen Garrett) for ‘safekeeping’, after Garrett (who had commissioned it) had declined to publish – and Jarman had spent months researching it for her in 1962/3. I found that Jarman had lied to Garrett, telling her that he had destroyed it (he admits this in a letter to Dingwall contained in the files). He further stipulated to Dingwall that it should not be released until certain participants in the case had died.
For that reason, I’m sure, various sceptical commentators had assumed that Jarman’s report contained something damning to the paranormal interpretation of the case. John G. Fuller appears to have done the opposite. I have to admit that, because of Jarman’s track record of being extremely critical of psi research (like his friends Dingwall, and Trevor Hall), I just took it for granted that the former would probably be the truth. I turned out to be hopelessly wrong. Fuller, as it turned out, was pretty close to the truth – despite Jarman’s protestations to the contrary.
Like you may have done, I read the Wikipedia article about the case. This was before I’d seen the ‘Jarman Report’ myself. Despite my own scepticism about Fuller’s account, my suspicions were aroused by the following: –
‘”Archie Jarman who had interviewed witnesses wrote an 80,000-word report on the case concluded the séance information was valueless and that we should “best forget the psychic side of R-101; it’s a dead duck— absolutely!”‘
Why was I suspicious?
Firstly, I had extreme doubts about whether anyone had had access to Jarman’s report up to that point. So, although the Wiki quote could be read as having come from it, that struck me as being extremely unlikely. Secondly, I recognised the ‘dead duck’ phrase as actually having come from an article that Jarman had written for ‘Alpha’ magazine (Jan-Feb, 1980, p.12), wherein he had lacerated John G. Fuller for allegedly misrepresenting his views on the case (guilty, as charged, I’d say – but only just – if one were to be really pedantic about it). Thirdly, in that Alpha article Jarman (in a rather confusing, self-contradictory mode), had also written that his report ‘…concluded that the source of Eileen’s “message” was a mystery…Perhaps the medium obtained information telepathically from some sitter…or…perhaps the shock of violent death drives the victim to inconsistency or insanity’. Fourthly, the reference cited was from ‘Investigating the Unexplained’ by Melvin Harris, published by (surprise, surprise), Prometheus Books.
You’re absolutely correct about John Booth’s book (again published by Prometheus and cited, in typically witless fashion, on Wikipedia). Certainly his brief piece about the R101 qualifies as unmitigated drivel, in my view – he doesn’t even get the date of the disaster correct. But I still expected Harris’ effort to be a lot better. I remembered him from my youth as being a moderately well known writer and broadcaster, who would pop up on TV, and in print, every now and then to comment dismissively about various popular ‘mysteries’.
But by the time I got hold of Harris’ book (still in advance of having read Jarman’s report) I’d already done a large amount of research into the ‘normal’ aspects of the R101 disaster.
I knew straight away, therefore, that Harris’ claim that there was nothing ‘secret’ about the R101 project was nonsense because two contemporary experts (Neville Shute – Chief Calculator and Senior Designer of the rival R100 – see his 1954 book ‘Slide Rule’), and E.F. Spanner (Naval Architect, engineer, and public critic of the British Airship Program) had complained loudly about exactly that; Spanner doing so while R101 was being designed, built and trialled. In answer to the latter’s criticisms, (see Spanner’s 1927 book ‘This Airship Business’ p.78.) Wing Commander Thomas Reginald Cave Brown Cave, a senior member of the R101 design team, even retorted ‘Is it customary to publish details of a new battleship or liner when she is being built?’ In fact Spanner devoted a whole chapter to the ‘secrecy’ surrounding R101 in that particular book.
Ironically, Cave Brown Cave was one of the ‘experts’ mentioned by Harris. He had been largely responsible for deciding to fit the disastrously over-weight and under-powered diesel engines that contributed to the tragedy – as correctly identified at the séances. The other was Wing Commander Ralph Booth who was Captain of the R100.
Indeed, the complaint was that the R100 team and Spanner could only GUESS about the R101’s design from patent specifications. The Air Ministry only released extremely trivial details to the popular press in advance of the disaster and Spanner complained that even details given to specialist magazines (and at official Air Ministry lectures) were technically inaccurate, ill informed and shallow (e.g. ‘Gentlemen Prefer Aeroplanes’, 1928, p.391.)
But, to read Harris, you would think that only those directly associated with the paranormal aspects of the case had claimed that technical details of the R101 development program were kept ‘secret’ in the way suggested by him. They did not – at all. The idea was entirely a straw man fantasy created by Harris himself. The idea of ‘secrecy’, as I have shown, came from technical experts of the period. Although Harris does mention Shute, he could not have read his book ‘properly’ as he does not detail the full nature of his complaints. He does not mention Spanner at all, and he was more famous at the time for the objecting to ‘secrecy’.
The most questionable aspect of Harris’ piece, though, is that you could be forgiven for believing that he is quoting directly from Jarman’s report, or quoting him verbatim from conversation. Perhaps rather artfully, Harris does not tell the reader that he is quoting Jarman ENTIRELY from the Alpha article and is (rather stupidly) leaving out statements from Jarman in that piece, such as the example already given, that might suggest that the actual report had anything positive to say about a paranormal interpretation of the case. Another good example would be Jarman’s statement that the ‘number of experts’ you refer to (there were actually two, see above) were ‘somewhat biased’. Jarman is a lot less polite about that in his report – especially regarding Cave Brown Cave. One reason Garrett would have been mad to have published Jarman’s opus in the form she received it from him (before returning it), is that he lays into his own expert witnesses (Cave and Booth), and practically everyone else of importance (still living at the time) connected to the case, whether or not they were ‘pro’ or ‘con’ as to the question of paranormality. In fact he criticises virtually everyone except himself and, ironically, Garrett. So she would have been inviting several libel actions if she had published it.
Still, you give the impression that you actually have Harris’ book. You can’t be blamed for not knowing about the ‘Alpha’ article – if, indeed, that is the case. But, surely you must have noticed that, although Harris claims to have spoken to Jarman shortly before his death, he does not actually quote him when he states, in summing up, ‘Archie Jarman had no hesitation in dismissing the séance material as valueless’. Don’t you find that rather suspicious? As a self-professed ‘critical thinker’, didn’t that set any alarm bells going inside your head? It certainly did in mine, even before I received the actual report.
The truth is that, in his report, Jarman rejected the later Villiers séances as being virtually worthless (for very sound reasons, in my opinion). That’s fine. But, again, that much is stated in ‘Alpha’.
In the actual report Jarman states practically the exact opposite to almost everything that Harris claims he did with regard to the original alleged communication by the deceased Captain of R101, (Flight Lt. Herbert Carmichael Irwin) given via Garrett at the original séance arranged by Harry Price. This, as you should know, was held only a couple of days after the disaster – before the Official Inquiry had begun, and before speculation in the press as to the cause of the tragedy was becoming more informed. And Harris is factually incomplete or ignorant, in some respect, about almost everything else that he ‘researched’ on his own.
I obviously do not have the space to detail every one of the bloopers in Harris’ highly questionable piece here. You’ll have to consult my full article in the Spring 2015 edition of ‘Light’ for more, and there wasn’t enough room even there to convey adequately the baleful inadequacy of it as a critique. You could also, maybe, consult Alan Murdie’s commentary on my article in the May 2015 edition of ‘Fortean Times’.
For now, I’ll just leave you with this: –
Melvin Harris (p.176. of his book), on Jarman’s report: ‘He interviewed witnesses and drew up an exhaustive 80,000 word report…His findings were devastating’.
Archie Jarman (from the actual report’s conclusions, p.412 – 412a): ‘I am confident that Mrs Garrett gained her information in a paranormal manner. The technical information given at the Price Sitting was too orderly and sensible and devoid of absurdities to have emanated from her own brain, since she is quite ignorant of technical matters as displayed’.
Archie Jarman was an experienced pilot, by the way. Although, apparently, Harris did his National Service is the RAF, I haven’t seen it mentioned that he was similarly qualified to comment on the technical aspects of the case.

Steve, thanks for all that great info. I’m glad to know that somebody somewhere has read the elusive Jarman report!

We have a lot of experience of bipolar in our family – Bill, you have my sympathy!

Didn’t say it earlier Bill but you got my sympathy too.

Great summary Steve – thank you.

Hey, guys. I have a similar problem to Bill here in that I have pretty serious mental health issues and a gnawing nihilistic feeling. Reading here helps me feel like I’m not stupid or crazy for wanting hope or thinking it might be possible. I’m not going to be able to actually believe until I experience something, but hope’s not far off from faith. Just thought you may want to know you’re helping.

I’d like to say I’m in a similar position to chel and Bill. Well, I don’t have nihilistic tendencies, but I do have pretty severe anxiety, so I worry about death and the beyond a lot. This blog makes me feel better and gives me hope. Seeing you rational folks calmly discussing the evidence and formulating theories as to how it all works…reading it all makes my hope a little stronger and makes me want to believe, and feel less absurd when I do.