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West Bloomfield (248) 538-6000 HERCULES FAMILY RESTAURANT 33292 West 12 Mile Farmington Hills (248) 489-9777 Serving whitefish, lamb shank, pastitsio and moussaka r i NM MN MI MIN MI En NMI MI MI III I Receive I 0% (Hifi Entire Bill I not to go with any other offer with coupon Expires 5/31/2001 ION MEI MINI 11IM MIK 80 UM may come away believing that unknown data was developed by some wondrous means. Not so." Such thoughts have not dissuaded the work of Schwartz and Russek, both cur- rently pursuing their research at University of Arizona School of Medicine. The pair are now embarking on a double-blind, multi-centered study at University of Arizona, University of Washington, University of Virginia and University of Edinburgh that may ultimately prove or disprove the verac- ity of the power of mediums. In the study, individuals, called sit- ters, will be on the phone with a medium but neither the medium nor sitter will be able to communicate with the other. Both the sitter and the medium will be unaware of the identi- ty of the other. The medium will do a reading of the sitter that will be tran- scribed and sent to the sitter along with someone else's reading. The sitter will then have to mark the correct parts of each reading. Only after the correct responses are tabulat- ed will the sitters be told which read- ing was theirs. Schwartz admitted in an interview Drs. Linda G.S. Russek and Gary ER. published in May's Biography magazine Schwartz: "When our plTsical bodies that the mediums may demonstrate deconstruct, the energy and the less than stellar results because he or inforination that t('-as iivina. inside she will not be able to ask questions of the cells continues on in ril'e same the sitters, way that the light .frorii the distant He believes, however, that there will stars conti)zties long afier the ph sisal be a 50 percent accuracy rate for the star has died, — asserts Schwartz. mediums despite this handicap, com- pared with a 20 percent accuracy rate for the control group. through July 29 in a highly entertain- "There are three hypotheses about at ing show called Mind Games the data," he told the magazine. Detroies Century Theater. In the "One, the medium is reading the show, he is able to "read the minds" of mind of the sitter. Two, the informa- various audience members. tion is stored so the medium is just Although his fascinating skills reading "the book" on a dead person appear to be otherworld13,,, he says that who is no longer there. The third they are based on nonverbal cues and hypothesis is that the mediums are intuition, some skills he was born with talking to dead people. and others he has developed. "We [have] already done experi- He believes that mediums use the ments to strongly suggest that what same skills, but attribute their readings the mediums are doing is more than to messages from departed souls. Instead of communicating with the dead or with just telepathy," said Schwartz. As for what Dr. Henry Russek spiritual masters that live in the great would think of his daughter's work, beyond, the mediums, he asserts, have Linda Russek said that he would be the same intuitive abilities he does. proud of it. As a cardiologist, he was James Ranch, a former magician and one of the first to prove that emotion- escape artist, established the James al stress had an impact on the per- Randi Educational Foundation to formance of the heart. investigate psychic, supernatural and "He cared very deeply about the "magical" claims. Psychic mediums, he pursuit of truth," she told an inter- says, use a technique known as "cold viewer. "Our survival-of-consciousness reading." research is a natural extension of his "They tell the subjects nothing, but own interests as a scientist who envi- make guesses, put out suggestions, and sioned so much more than the eye ask questions," he says. "This is a very could see." D deceptive art, and the unwary observer Science And Spirituality Researchers engage the service of mediums to determine whether consciousness survives death. JILL DAVIDSON SIC_A_R Special to the Jewish News A fter cardiologist Henry Russek died, his daughter Dr. Linda G. S. Russek missed him intensely and believed that his consciousness still existed. But how could she prove it? When she met Cornell and Harvard-educated Dr. Gary E. R. Schwartz, she found someone who not only shared her belief but wanted to prove the same thing. Prior to meeting Russek, Schwartz, currently director of the Human Energy Systems T iboratory at the University of Arizona, had developed something called the universal living memory theory, hypothesizing that the energy and memory contained within our cellular makeup continues on after the death of the body. The pair began to examine this the- ory, later producing a 1999 book, The Living Energy Universe (Hampton Roads Publishing; $21.95). In the research for the book and since its publication, Schwartz and Russek studied the abilities of medi- urns to contact the energy of individu- als who had died, In one study in which five mediums were able to channel some 600 pieces of information about one individual, 83 percent of that information was found to be accurate. Repeating the experiment with individuals who were not mediums, there was a 36 percent accuracy rate. Schwartz and Russek, both of whom are Jewish, are two of only a few scien- tists who are not only studying but also measuring information on the ability to communicate with the dead. Most aca- demics have discredited the concept. In history, one of the more famous debunkers of mediums was Harry Houdini (born Ehrich Weiss, the son of a rabbi). Like Houdini, Mark Salem also believes that a medium's powers can be explained away as something other than supernatural, deriving instead from an inherited gift paired with honed abilities. Salem, also the son of a rabbi, holds a doctorate in psychology and is an expert in nonverbal communication. He also is a mentalist, performing