Quentin Crisp speaks at séance: 'Even homos live beyond death'

A winged Quentin Crisp

The Australian contingent of the Church of Madame Arcati informs me that the late Quentin Crisp has communicated his thoughts via a medium. A recording of the séance has been posted on Australian former lawyer and outspoken Spiritualist Victor Zammit's website  (scroll down for the link on his site).

The voice purporting to be that of Quentin says: 'One of the reasons that I come through is to prove that even homosexuals live beyond death... It proves that the Catholics are speaking out from where the sun doesn't shine. Why, pray, would you not live beyond death because you're homosexual. There's lots of ignoramuses ...'

I have to say that the voice sounds nothing like Quentin's, though the speaker has adopted a pawsh drawl of the Lady Bracknell variety: and the opinions expressed would predictably be those of Quentin. The vulgar allusion to an anus is out of character, however. And Catholics do not claim that homosexuals do not survive death; rather, that eternal damnation is the devil's Pontin's for poofters, though you won't hear old Ratzi with his pussy cats saying that publicly.

As for the voice of Quentin, where's Rory Bremner these days?

Francis Wheen shock - 'Meditation is good for you!'

Francis Wheen: Anti-mumbo jumbo guru recommends meditation for its benefits - halting the interior dialogue through what some have described as the use of "magical passes"

In a shock development, Francis Wheen - author of the bestselling anti-new age How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions - has admitted that meditation is "good for you". This will surprise many of his followers who delighted in his mockery of Transcendental Meditation self-help gurus such as Deepak Chopra.

Wheen recanted in response to a Madame Arcati meditation science report which concluded that the new age practice helps keep the brain young. To read his letter and Madame Arcati's reply click here and then go to comments.

Those whose minds are still keen may also notice how Wheen's view has been somewhat exaggerated by this report without being entirely misrepresented.

Francis Wheen: Wrong on mumbo jumbo meditation

Five or six years ago, Francis Wheen's How Mumbo-jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions had a giggle at the influence of the new age industry and its mystical ideas and practices. He was particularly scornful of the Hollywood "self-help guru" Deepak Chopra and the $20m he earns pa peddling spiritual advice to the likes of Demi Moore and Bill Clinton. Once a respectable "Harvard-trained endocrinologist", Chopra lost his way - as Wheen saw it - when he turned to transcendental meditation (among other things) in the early 80s: mumbo jumbo silliness had turned the head of an enlightened scientist - what a waste!

But a new study on meditation by researchers from Yale, Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, may even cause Wheen to think again. They have discovered that meditation increases grey matter in the brain (related to "sensory, auditory, visual and internal perception, such as heart rate or breathing") and that "regular meditation practice may slow age-related thinning of the frontal cortex," reports Science Daily (click here).

I trust Wheen will include this research should his know-all book ever be updated.

Victor Zammit: His $1m challenge to afterlife deniers

Retired Australian lawyer Victor Zammit is offering $1m to any afterlife researcher who can rebut evidence for the afterlife. Click here. The applicant must understand scientific methodology, must know about admissibility of evidence and is recognised as an investigator in this field. In other words, your average pig ignorant sceptic who just hangs on the words of Richard Dawkins or Christopher "bisexual word god" Hitchens is not likely to get very far.

"Any evidence [for the afterlife] that's not rebutted remains valid," is quite properly his mantra.

You can read his book A Lawyer Presents the Case for the Afterlife here. It begins with this statement: "There is undeniable scientific evidence today for the afterlife. I am a former practising attorney-at-law formally qualified in a number of university disciplines. I am also an open-minded sceptic."

Zammit: What happens to us when we die, click here.