Facilitated CommunicationCover letter transmitting the article of Yechiel Menachem Sitzman entitled "No Time for Silence - Versus - A Passion to Disbelieve"This letter was written for the conference in Syracuse, New York on May 3rd. Following are some brief suggestions which I would like to contribute to the prestigious subject of your conference, one which I have followed with great interest for a number of years. My first suggestion is an alternative way to deal with the frequently appearing claims concerning the presence of the supernatural. Since they appear so consistently, it ought to be more productive to classify the supernatural, divine and related concepts, as unknowns, so they can be included in the system as unknowns, rather than dismiss them altogether. To do this would require less effort, and allow a more open field for further research and experimentation. It would enable a more objective treatment of the "knowns" in material which also includes references to the unknown. I have a further suggestion regarding the idea itself of the supernatural, spiritual or divine. Plato and Aristotle, for example, have a very simple approach, the non-material is more real than the material. This is a hard-headed claim, which obviates the imagery associated with religion that many people find distasteful. It would be very useful to re-read testimonies delivered by means of facilitated communication from this point of view, that the mysterious world of minds,, souls, and the Great One about which many of these testimonies speak, is simply a more powerful form of reality than that which we experience in everyday life. This theory may open up explanations of some very puzzling phenomena associated with facilitated communication. For example, the surprising fact that less the literate the subject, the more articulate are the communications. On the premise that the phenomenal world, of which literacy and verbal communication are a part, is less real than the unknown world in which mental communications originate, it is not illogical that the less there is of this less real dimension, the less it will interfere with the communication. This hypothesis leads to the heart of the question, what is autism, Autistic subjects who have become articulate through facilitation have sometimes offered explanations of their condition. One of these explanations is along the lines that, in them, the usual relationships between bodily and mental faculties are somehow loosened, so that one functions without the other. This might constitute a productive area of explanation for both the lack of bodily composure and also the astonishing mental resources which emerge when the abilities of the facilitator are borrowed. Aristotle might be useful here: actuality is in inverse proportion to materiality, in a hierarchical system of non-material and material realities. Interesting to note: for Aristotle, the non-material needs to come first in the order of reality, as required by reason. Matter represents disorder and ultimately chaos. I would like to convey to your conference all of my best wishes, and perhaps the expression of a bit of envy in your opportunity to spend several days working on this very important subject. Most sincerely, Dr. Judith Netzer-Pinnick, Retired Chair, Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Rockland Community College, Suffern, New York BACK TO TOP No Time for Silence - Versus - A Passion to Disbelieve by Yechiel Menachem Sitzman (revised version 25 May 1998)

I. SILENCE BY THE SUPPORTERS OF FC

The title of this May 3-5, 1998 Facilitated Communication (FC) conference “No Time for Silence” is a very apt one. There are tens of thousands of people who are suffering because they are being denied their voice by those who have a passion to disbelieve.

The apparent significance of the title of this article is that we must not be silent about the fact that FC is a valid form of communication and by our lack of silence we hope to counter those who have a passion to disbelieve all evidence that demonstrates the validity of FC.

I wish to suggest that this approach is likely to fail and that to be successful we must examine in greater depth and define what is being disbelieved and regarding what we must not be silent.

The leading facilitator in France, Anne-Marguerite Vexiau wrote in her book about FC, Je Choisis Ta Main pour Parler: “There is a silent international consensus not to mention the strange phenomena which are revealed through FC. One is afraid of it. Why has FC not become accepted by all? Because there are too many inexplicable aspects which call into question our conventional way of thinking.”

The scientific world had similar reactions to other developments such as the theory of relativity and the Big Bang Theory of the origin of the universe which challenged axioms previously thought to be self evident.

Professor Robert Jastrow, who was the director of NASA’s Goddard institute for Space Studies, described the reaction of scientists to the Big Bang Theory in an article in The New York Times Magazine of June 1978,

When an astronomer writes about G-d, his colleagues may assume he is either over the hill or going bonkers. In my case it should be understood from the start that I am agnostic in religious matters. However, I am fascinated by strange developments going on in astronomy - partly because of their religious implications and partly because of the peculiar reactions of some of my colleagues.

The essence of these developments is that the universe had a sharply defined beginning - that it began at a certain moment in time. Was the creative agent one of the forces of physics or was it, as the old Testament Apocrypha says, ‘Thy almighty hand, which created the world out of formless matter’?

...Some scientists are unhappy with the idea that the world began in this way. Until recently, many of my colleagues preferred the steady state theory, which holds that the universe had no beginning and is eternal. But the latest evidence makes it almost certain that the big bang really did occur.

• ...Theologians generally are delighted with the proof that the universe had a beginning, but astronomers are curiously upset. Their reactions provide an interesting demonstration of the response of the scientific mind - supposedly a very objective mind - when evidence uncovered by science itself leads to a conflict with the articles of faith in our profession. It turns out that the scientist behaves the way the rest of us do when our beliefs are in conflict the evidence. We become irritated, we pretend the conflict does not exist, or we paper it over with meaningless phrases.  

  Einstein was disturbed by the idea of a universe that blows up, because it implied that the world had a beginning. In a letter to De Sitter, Einstein wrote, “This circumstance of an expanding universe is irritating” a“admit such possibilities seem senseless to me.”

  This is curiously emotional language for a discussion of some mathematical formulas. I suppose that the idea of beginning in time annoyed Einstein because of its theological implications. We know he had well-defined feelings about G-d, but not as the creator. For Einstein, the existence of G-d was proved by the laws of nature: that is; the fact that there was order in the universe, and that man could discover it...

  Some prominent scientists began to feel the same irritation over the expanding universe that Einstein had expressed earlier. Edington, the most distinguished British astronomer of the day, wrote in 1931, “I have no axe to grind in this discussion, but the notion of a beginning is repugnant to me...” The German chemist Herman Nernst wrote, “To deny the infinite duration of time would be to betray the very foundations of science.” More recently, Philip Morrison of M.I.T. said a few years ago in a BBC film on cosmology, “I find it hard to accept the big-bang theory; I would like to reject it.” And Allan Sandage of Palomor Observatory said, “It is such a strange conclusion -- it cannot really be true.” (The italics are mine. [R. Jastrow])

  There is a strange ring of feeling and emotion in these reactions. They come from the heart whereas you would expect such judgments to come from the brain. Why?

  I think part of the answer is that scientists cannot bear the thought of a natural phenomenon that cannot be explained. There is a kind of religion of a person who believes that every event in the universe can be explained in a rational way as the product of some previous event; every effect must have its cause. Einstein wrote, “The scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation.” This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under the conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications he would be traumatized. As usual, when faced with trauma, the mind reacts by ignoring the implications.

[following paragraph revised 25 May 1998]   Both among the opponents and the supporters of FC there are those who have a passion to disbelieve. Among the supporters there are those who personally believe but advocate public silence about the truth. The controversy, between us and those who reject FC, has actually been which aspects of reality to accept and which to ignore so as not to shake accepted unproven assumptions.

II. THREE APPROACHES SUGGESTED TO EXPLAIN FC

Last year, Diane Twachtman-Cullen wrote a book, A Passion to Believe: Autism and the Facilitated Communication Phenomenon. In this book she suggests that we are deluding ourselves that FC is valid. As we constantly witness communications which could not possibly have emanated from the unconscious minds of the facilitator, we know, not just believe, that FC is valid. It is she, who accused us of accepting FC without any scientific validation and completely ignored the three studies published in 1996 in “Mental Retardation” which do validate FC, who exhibits a passion to disbelieve. She even reported in her book FC communications which could not possibly be from the facilitator but took no note of the significance of them, as I will point out further on.

In spite of my reservations regarding this book, I find it a valuable text to use for presenting the three approaches which have been suggested for explaining the phenomena of FC and for data which can be helpful in determining the merits and demerits of each.

First approach:

On page 12 she quotes Dougles Biklen who maintains that the communication and language impairment found in autism is neuromotor in origin, the result of “a neurologically based problem of expression” and that “difficulty with communication appears to be one of praxis rather than cognition.”

On page 27 she explains that according to this viewpoint, simple environmental exposure is sufficient to allow people (even those challenged by developmental disabilities) to acquire literacy skills.

Second approach:

On page 6 she reports that research across several fields has supported the biological view of autism and extended it to include the concept that it is a neurological/neurophysiological disorder. She reports “clear evidence of functional and structural abnormalities in several brain regions in persons with autism.”

On page 122 she reports that “even high functioning individuals with autism who do demonstrathe abilito rand write inevitably evidence difficulty with the pragmatics of communication, as the latter is a universal feature of the disorder.” She therefore concludes that “even if the clients in this study had been able to amass a good deal of information about the words they may have been exposed to in their environment, this would still not account for the pragmatic sophistication of some of their facilitated messages.”

For these and many similar reasons the opponents of FC contest the claims that the facilitated possess the amount of intelligence necessary to develop literary and pragmatic skills by themselves. Because of this the opponents attribute both the total content of the communications and the literary and pragmatic skills of the facilitated, to unconscious influence in the form of ideomotor action. Twachtman-Cullen quoted W.B. Carpenter who said, “Ideas may become the sources of muscular movement, independently either of volitions or emotions.” She quoted on pages 145, 146 from a lecture given by M.R. Sheehan in which he explained that this can be either through inadvertent cueing, an example of which was the horse “Hans” who appeared to know the answers to arithmetic questions but was actually reacting to unconscious movements of his trainer, or unconscious responding which is the explanation which has been advanced for claimed paranormal activities such as water witching and table turning.

As there are indisputable instances of facilitator influence, the adherents of the first approach admit to the existence of this type of unconscious influence. However whereas the opponents of FC reject the possibility that many of the facilitators have literary or pragmatic ability and therefore attribute every letter to this unconscious guidance, the first approach maintains that the messages are usually the authentic expressions of the facilitated and that only sometimes the clients decide to react to the unconscious cues of their facilitator.

Third approach:

Twachtman-Cullen presents this in a very disparaging manner on pages 147-148.

The respectful and responsible manner in which issues related to the paranormal were raised by Sheehan, a proponent of FC training, stands in stark contrast to the reports of mind reading that have surfaced in the FC literature. These are often characterized by such anecdotes as the following:

A young man we know told his facilitator what her high school nickname was, and that she had a deceased relative who had been a musician. He was correct in every detail, including her feelings about her uncle. A mother told us about the adjustments she has made knowing that she can have no secrets from her teenage daughter. And another mother told us that her adult son has no need to hear what she and his other two facilitators want him to know: he simply types his responses to their unspoken comments. (Haskew and Donnelan 1992, p.9)

Unlike the “firm empirical basis” on which Sheehan rests his case, Haskew and Donnellan (1992) rest theirs on the following:

• It may be that a sixth sense is present in all of us at birth, but as speech and locomotion develop the need for it fades. Still, mapeople seem to retain vestigial psychic abilities, especially at times of accident or trauma, and there is much anecdotal and scientific literature describing these. For people with impaired communication capacities the sixth sense may remain active and utilized. The speaking world is simply rediscovering it. (p. 9)   Such anecdotes and done little to quell the genuine fears of those who seek to guard against facilitator influence and the havoc it has wrought in some lives. Neither have such anecdotes improved the credibility of FC in the scientific community.

On page 153 Twachtman-Cullen wrote “If we set aside such suppositious arguments as channeling and mind reading, unconscious facilitator influence has been demonstrated to be an unfortunate accompaniment of many FC experiences.”   Here, without any evidence, she dismisses an approach which she admits could explain FC and chooses instead a totally irrational explanation. As she quoted from Carpenter, (conscious) ideas can become sources of involuntary movement. This means that the trainer of the horse “Hans” knew the answer to the question and inadvertently moved in a way that cued the horse when the horses foot was on the proper square. Similarly, it is claimed that when the water diviner is in a place which he consciously thinks is probably above a source of water he inadvertently moves his hands in a way which causes the divining rod to dip.

It is however preposterous to suggest that all the entire texts of the long messages which have been received through FC were planned out in advance consciously by the facilitator. Only if this were so would the facilitator make an unconscious response when the finger of the client would be above the required letter and cause the client’s finger to point.

III. TELEPATHY - COMMON SENSE AND REASON

Telepathy has never been disproved. It just has not been proven to the satisfaction of much of the scientific community. She herself quoted an explanation for this by Haskew and Donnellan which is that the sixth sense fades in normal people when they grow up and the attempts to verify telepathy were made with normal people. (More on this further on in this article.)

On page 148 she explained why she rejected the solution of telepathy. “Arguments in support of mind reading and channeling send a clear message that all things are possible under facilitated communication as long as one is willing to set aside common sense and reason to accommodate the preferred reality.

Let us examine this so-called common sense and reason.

In his book, ESP: A Scientific Evaluation, C.E. Hansel quoted D.O. Hebb, a Professor of Psychology at McGill University,

Personally, I do not accept ESP for a moment, because it does not make sense. My external criteria, both of physics and physiology, say that ESP is not a fact despite the behavioral evidence that has been reported. I cannot see what other basis my colleagues have for rejecting it; and if they are using my basis, they and I are allowing psychological evidence to be passed on by physical and physiological censors. Rhine may still turn out to be right, improbable as I think that is, and my own rejection of his views is - in a literal sense - prejudice.

To this the well-known English author, Aldous Huxley commented on Hebb’s statement in Life magazine:

That a man of science should allow a prejudice to outweigh evidence seems strange enough. It is even stranger to find a psychologist rejecting a psychological discovery simply because it cannot be explained. Psi [the process of ESP] is intrinsically no more inexplicable than, say perception or memory; it is merely less common.

This is what the French facilitator Anne-Marguerite Vexiau meant when she wrote that there are aspects of FC which call into question are conventional way of thinking. This is also an example of the phenomenon which Professor Jastrow mentioned of the reactions of some scientists when their (so called) religious faith is violated.

Hansel, a non-believer in ESP wrote on page 7 of his book that if the claims of the proponents of ESP are justified, “a complete revision in contemporary scientific thought is required at least comparable to that made necessary in physics by Einstein.” Actually this revision in scientific thought has already begun in physics even without proving ESP. Physicist Max Planck, the father of the quantum theory, wrote (as quoted in Main Currents in Western Thought by Franklyn Leven Baumer, p.662): “The essential point is that the world of sensation is not the only world which may conceivably exist, but that there is still another world. To be sure, this other world is not directly accessible to us, but its existence is indicated, time and time again, with compelling clarity not only by practical life but also by the labors of science.”

The famous neurosurgeon W. Penfield conducted extensive experiments which brought him to the conclusion that the mind ia basic element itself,which cannot be accounted for by any neuronal mechanism (The Mystery of the Mind: A Critical Study of Consciousness and the Human Brain). In the book The Self and Its Brain by Karl. R. Popper and J.C. Eccles, Penfield is quoted as writing, “The physiological basis of the mind is the brain action in each individual; it accompanies the action of the spirit, but the spirit is free; it is capable of some degree of initiative. The spirit is the man one knows.” Neuroscientist and Nobel Laureate Sir John Eccles wrote, “It is my thesis that we have to recognize that the unique selfhood is the result of a supernatural creation of what in the religious sense is called a soul” (Mind and Brain p.89).

In the light of the testimony of these eminent scientists there is no room to declare that claims of telepathy violate common sense or reason.

IV. HOW TELEPATHY RESOLVES CRITICISM OF FC

How does the explanation of telepathy resolve the many criticisms which the opponents of FC have made?

When using FC with clients who are verbal, one frequently discovers that what the client says contradicts what he communicates using FC. Diane Twachtman-Cullen discusses this at length in “A Passion to Believe.” On page 39 she reports a description of a facilitated session in which a non-verbal profoundly retarded client was angry and his facilitator asked him what was going on. Via facilitation he replied, “I hate Jeff,” and “Kill Jeff.” The facilitator didn’t know who Jeff was so she asked him many questions about Jeff. His answers to these questions brought her to the conclusion that Jeff was really himself -- “as many autistic people use a name to describe their behaviors that they can’t help.”

Also, in the book Paid for the Privilege by Dan Reed, there is a report of a very violent autistic person named Randy. When the staff of the Midway Training Services facilitated with him, a totally different personality communicated. He told his facilitator that his name was Mathew and that he was the inside person.

These accounts seem to indicate that the personality or the “soul,” as Sir John C. Eccles calls it, consists of diverse elements. We have much evidence that the part of the “soul” which is handicapped and was referred to in A Passion to Believe as Jeff and in Paid for the Privilege as Randy has the main control of the body and it is this personality which is the focus of the scientific studies that appear to be challenged by FC. However there is a deeper or higher portion which has only a minimal ability to influence the body and exists mainly in the “other world” referred to by Max Plank. The technique of FC enables that portion of the personality to bypass or neutralize the more powerful outer part so that it can communicate. As this part exists mainly in the domain of the spirit and is not handicapped by the physical infirmity of the body, it can obtain its knowledge of literacy from the spirit of the facilitator. Its mastery of pragmatics is either an innate quality, or is also acquired along with the linguistics from the facilitator.

This process has been described by many FC users, among them Ben Golden, a 26-year-old who is autistic annonverbal. In a facilitated communication on July 24, 1997, Ben explained that it is the physical contact with the facilitator which enables him and other FC users to be instantly literate in any language known by the facilitator as well as to access the deepest memories of the facilitator. This process is most likely what Donnellanwas referring to when she wrote: “Are they learning to ‘read’ each other in some subliminal way, as some of the present learners have begun to suggest and learners and parents have reported in the past (Rimland, 1978)?” (Donnellan, Topics in Language Disorders, 1992).

The content of the messages usually originates with the facilitated, rather than with the facilitator, as a 9-year-old girl explained using FC: “You are my keyboard but I arrange the words in a specific order.” If this is the foundation of FC, the psychic connection between the facilitator and the facilitated is sufficient to explain facilitator influence which is so often observed and obviates the need to postulate other inadequate explanations such as inadvertent cueing.

[following material until V. added 25 May 1998]

The Association for the Enhancement of Facilitated Communication in Paris, France has adopted this explanation for FC as opposed to the learning of literacy skills from the environment or ideomotor action. In their publicity which is available on the Internet at http://www.visuelco.fr/tmpp/html they write:

Seemingly, physical contact allows for information to be passed on, and somehow, although a patient may not have developed reading skills, they can nonetheless utilize the assistant's equipment to put their thoughts over.

Further research is warranted better to understand how FC works and [to] ensure that an effectual strategy isn't passed off as magic. What is more, a facilitator does not prompt the patient's hand as [you] might think they did until you've tried it out for yourself and felt the patient's hand actually going for the keys.

V. DYSFUNCTION OF BRAIN EXPLAINS PARANORMAL IN FC Paranormal phenomena involving people who are autistic or otherwise mentally impaired have been reported extensively. In particular this has been noted in connections with FC. To mention some of these reports, they appear in:

A Child of Eternity, by Kristi Jorde and Adreana Rocha

Memoirs of an Autistic Child, by John Chambers

Nobody Nowhere, by Donna Williams

Paid for the Privilege, by Dan Reed

Je Choisis Ta Main Pour Parler (I Choose Your Hand to Talk) by Anne - Marguerite Vexiau of Paris

Why are these incidents more common among the mentally impaired?

Aldous Huxley took the mind-altering drug Mescalin and wrote about his experience (The Doors of Perception). He commented:

Reflecting on my experience, I find myself agreeing with the eminent Cambridge philosopher, Dr. C.D. Broad, ‘that we should do well to consider much more seriously than we have hitherto been inclined to do the type of theory which Bergson put forward in connexion with memory and sense perception. The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive. Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that very small and special selection which is likely to be practically useful’ According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large has to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system. What comes out at the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet.

According to this type of theory, when a person’s brain malfunctions it is easier for knowledge which is normally blocked by the brain from one’s consciousness, to penetrate.

VI. EVIDENCE FROM A PASSION TO BELIEVE

Twachtman-Cullen raised questions in her book which provide additional support for the third approach of explaining FC.

On page 99 she reported that she began to ask the client a question. Before she could get the words out he began to type. On page 108 she asks, “Did he not need to know the question before he started to answer it?” On page 99 she suggests that taking the clients hand ushered the typing response. If all typing through FC necessitates some type of inadvertent cueing from the facilitator such cues are not likely to begin till the facilitator has finished asking the question so her suggested explanation is, accto her understandiof FC, vunlikely. She herself quoted from Anne Donellan the answer that the clients don’t need to wait to hear the questions since they do read minds. Our experience has been that if when facilitating one asks the client one question and thinks a different question, the client often replies to the question which was thought and not to the one which was expressed verbally. This is true also when the one asking and thinking the questions is not the facilitator.

On page 121 she reported that she found that:

Instead of the more capable client evidencing greater sophistication in message generation, the less capable clients demonstrate this quality. This lack of conventionality, inexplicable though it may be, is very much a part of the FC landscape, as the following statement by Biklen (1993) clearly illustrates: “Nevertheless, it is especially noteworthy and encouraging that among those who are able to demonstrate high levels of literacy and numeracy through facilitated communication are people who were previously presumed [italics added] to be among the ‘lowest’ intellectually functioning person labeled ‘autistic.’ ”

She adds:

The findings of this study also contradict, or at least cast doubt upon, a “caught not taught” view of literacy development, an argument used by FC proponents to explain (rationalize?) the acquisition of literacy skills in the absence of specific attention to them. Here again, the individual with the more enriched environment (and hence ostensibly greater exposure to literacy materials) demonstrates a level of pragmatic and semantic skill development in facilitated communication that is lower that that of clients with more impoverished backgrounds (and hence less exposure to literacy materials). Surely even FC proponents would agree that the institutions of fifteen or twenty years ago could hardly be described as either stimulating or enriching, particularly regarding literacy skills acquisition.

According to the explanation which we have given above, the greater the dysfunction of the brain the easier it is for the client to utilize the lingual and pragmatic abilities of his facilitator which explains the above puzzling aspect of FC which she discovered. She ignores the fact that this disparity also counters her own explanation for FC. One would expect that the more capable client should also be more able to sense and react to the unconscious cues of the facilitator.

Twachtman-Cullen reported at least two instances of FC which could not have been the result of unconscious influence. On page 39 she reported the above mentioned incident in which the client gave the name Jeff to the personality that was responsible for the behaviors he couldn’t help. This client was nonverbal and diagnosed as being profoundly mentally retarded (page 51, 52). Before starting FC he was totally unaware of letters or words (page 114). His facilitator explained that it took some time till she understood that the Jeff he was mentioning was himself. How was he able to type “Kill Jeff” and “I hate Jeff” if the facilitator didn’t understand what he meant and he possessed no ability to spell?

On pages 44 and 45 she reports a client whofacilitated fantasies such as that he had gone square dancing. The facilitator at first thought these accounts to be true till upon checking she found out that these were lies. She had no idea how this client knew about square dancing. In the end it turned out that square dancing was the hobby of this client’s other fa. How could thfacilitator have provided the necessary cues for a subject that was a fantasy based upon information which she didn’t have?

These instances of her disregard of the implications of these incidents are examples of the passion to disbelieve which is responsible for the views of Diane Twachtman-Collen and her colleagues.

VII. SOME SUPPORTERS OF FC ADVOCATE SELECTIVE SILENCE

Among the supporters of FC there are those who advocate silence regarding the link between FC and the paranormal. These can be described as belonging to two categories. There are those who are like Professor Hebb who was quoted above as admitting that he is prejudiced against accepting evidence to the existence of the paranormal. The second category consists of those who personally admit that there are paranormal phenomena but as in the story of the Emperor who was naked, they are afraid of what will happen to themselves or to the supporters of FC if they personally or the group as a whole is linked to paranormal explanations.

I know of this group because I joined the FCnet and presented my suggestion for the resolution of the FC controversy. A number of people replied both on the net and in personal e-mail correspondence. Most of them confirmed that they had witnessed paranormal phenomena in their practice of FC. Most of these also requested that we keep these reports confidential for they are afraid of losing their jobs. Some advised against publicizing this aspect of FC for fear of the harm which it could do to the advocates of FC in general.

There are many people among FC advocates who have witnessed paranormal aspects of FC.

In the above quoted work of Haskew and Donnellan they also wrote, “Reports that facilitated communicators seem to be able to read their facilitators’ and other people’s minds surface wherever facilitation is attempted. We have reports from dozens of sources in several countries, and the numbers continue to grow” (p.13).

The author of A Child of Eternity, Kristie Jorde, established the “Adrianna Foundation,” named after her autistic daughter which taught the method of FC to thousands of people. She wrote, “From our research at the Adrianna Foundation we estimate that about ten percent of our respondents experienced some kind of unusual phenomenon (telepathy, extensive knowledge, etc.) with their autistic or otherwise ‘handicapped’ child or student. While I was active in the Foundation, several teachers, program directors, and parents both in and out of the United States contacted me to see if we, too, were finding that some autistic children and adults were capable of ‘reading minds’ and/or discussing past lives.”

Donna Williams who is speaking at this conference wrote in her book Nobody Nowhere:

At school strange things were happening. I would have daydreams in which I was watching children I knew. I would see them doing the most trivial things: peeling potatoes over the sink, getting themselves a peanut butter sandwich before going to bed. Such daydreams were like films in which I’d see a sequence of everyday events that really didn’t relate in anyway to myself. I began to test the truth of these daydreams, approaching the friends I’d seen in them and asking them to give a step by step detailed picture of what they were doing at the time I had the daydream.

Amazingly, to the finest detail, I would find I had been right. This was nothing I controlled, it simply came into my head, but it frightened me.

There are therefore probably thousands among us who know that there are paranormal phenomena. At this conference we must decide whether now is a time for a selective silence or shall we say no to all kinds of silence.

Only if we abandon the explanation of ideomotor action for ourselves can we effectively show how ridiculous it is to postulate that this is responsible for the totality of FC messages as the opponents of FC suggest.

Only if we accept the third approach will we cease to be in conflict with the many studies which are cited to show the impossibility of FC being valid.

It is true that as individuals there is reason to be afraid of the repercussions of publicizing our acceptance of the paranormal. But if the group as a whole changes its stance we can affect a major change. Divided we fall, but united we stand.

VIII. NEED TO OVERCOME FEAR CAUSED BY DISBELIEF

Who is the naked emperor of whom we fear? His name is disbelief.

Almost all cultures till the time of the French Revolution believed in spiritual entities and interactions. At that time influential sectors of society adopted unproved materiaaxioms and thus cthe “rel” faith of the scientist which Robert Jastrow wrote about.

Since then, there have been discoveries in astronomy, genetics, neurology, archeology, physics, paleontology, statistics and microbiology which challenge the above mentioned axioms. Those who have the prejudice of Professor Hebb (and I know that there are such people among the FC supporters) remain steadfast in their “faith” that science will eventually find a way to enable them to retain their axioms. I know that there is no point in my appealing to them.

To the rest, I suggest that you ponder the address of Vaclav Havel, the President of the Czech Republic, which he delivered in July 1994 and which was excerpted by the Times:

Many things indicate that we are going through a transitional period, when it seems that something is on the way out and something else is painfully being born. It is as if something were crumbling, decaying, and exhausting itself, while something else, still indistinct, were arising from the rubble. The relationship to the world that modern science fostered and shaped appears to have exhausted its potential. Classical modern science described only the surface of things, a single dimension of reality. And the more dogmatically science treated it as the only dimension, as the very essence of reality, the more misleading it became. We may know immeasurably more about the universe than our ancestors did, and yet it increasingly seems that they knew something more essential about it than we do, something that escapes us.

The more thoroughly all our organs and their functions.. are described, the more we seem to fail to grasp the spirit, purpose, and meaning of the system that they create together.... Thus, we enjoy all the achievements of modern civilization that have made our physical existence easier in so many ways. Yet we do not know exactly what to do with ourselves, where to turn.... Experts can explain anything in the objective world to us, yet we understand our own lives less and less....

Havel addressed the question of whether there is a way back, to regain an overall sense of life’s significance. He said:

Many believe this can be accomplished through technical means - the invention of new organizational, political, and diplomatic instruments... But such efforts are doomed to failure if they do not grow out of something deeper... In searching for the most natural source for the creation of a new world order, we usually look to... [the principle of] respect for the unique human being and his or her liberties and inalienable rights, and the principle that power derives from the people. Even these ideas are not enough. We must go farther and deeper.

[The answer lies,] in the awareness that we are not here alone or for ourselves alone, but we are an integral part of higher mysterious entities against whom it is not advisable to blaspheme.... The Declaration of Independence... states that the Creator gave man the right to liberty. It seems man can realize that liberty only if he does not forget the One who endowed him with it.

IX. SIGNIFICANCE OF SPIRITUAL MESSAGES

In the book A Child of Eternity, Adrianna Rocha, an autistic girl, gave many spiritual messages uFC. She wrote that she is a catalyst for history. She wrote that her purpose in her life is to show people the way to their Creator and how to love one another.

My colleague, Rabbi Yehudah Serebnick, collected many spiritual messages from around the world delivered through FC by mentally disabled ind. In their messages thegive spiritual advice to normal people and maintained that they had been sent here to help us mend our ways. Four months ago, Rabbi Serebnick and I published the book, Venafshi Yodaat Meod which contains our explanation for FC as I presented here, supported also from traditional Jewish sources. It contains many of the above mentioned spiritual messages. The book, which is mainly written in Hebrew, received approbations from leading orthodox rabbis in Israel, America and Europe. The book, which contains almost 400 pages, was received enthusiastically by the Jewish public here in Israel. Though we did not ask them to, various radio broadcasters recommended the book to their listeners and a family magazine ran a favorable review on it. So far we have sold almost 4000 copies and I have not heard of any public disapproval of the book.

The type of spiritual messages which we included in the book supply very good validation for FC. No one could suspect the facilitators of cueing some of these messages because of their content.

I have reason to believe that some of the guidelines which are suggested outside Israel to facilitators, interfere with the production of spiritual messages and that when such messages are received, the facilitators are advised to suppress them. If the general policy of the pro-FC group would change along the lines which I have suggested, these messages could advance the cause of validating FC. This is an additional form of silence which we should consider terminating. As Kristi Jorde wrote (A Child of Eternity, page 265):

I look forward to the day - and it’s coming soon - when autistic and other communicatively disabled people can claim their rightful voices in the world.

And as they do, we must expect that in the future, as in the past, we will not always comprehend, or even like, what some of these voices may say. Some may lie. Some may wreak havoc in the lives of their loved ones. But the solution is not to take away the voices of our children. Rather we need to step back ourselves and listen, to suspend our judgments, and to refrain from drawing conclusions based upon our limited experiences and perceptions. We do not know how autistic people experience the world, or what they might be experiencing beyond it. We are navigating through new territory here, and this requires courage, patience, strength, and daring.

I close with the words of Anne Donnellan from her article, “Facilitated Communication: Beyond the Quandary to the Questions”:

This journey may bring the discovery that this is not an autism or even a disability issue. Rather, it may be seen that this is a human issue and that the world of the mind is indeed one world. Yechiel Menachem Sitzman, Rechov Panim Meirot 13, Jerusalem, Israel. Tel. +972-2-537-1656 or Fax +972-2-537-2148.