how do you know it's me?

Federal high court hearing in Calabar, Nigeria (Photo: Oto-Obongo Clement/CrossRiverWatch)

Who is writing this? Perhaps you know me personally. How do you know that the person whom you know as me is writing this? And if you don't know me personally but have read other entries here, you at least have a sense of my flavor. How do you know that the same person who wrote those other entries is writing this one?

Or let's say you receive an email from someone who says they are me. The email address is one you recognize. How do you know without a doubt that those words were written by me?

Or how about a phone call? You see my name on your caller ID next to a phone number you recognize as belonging to me. How do you know the voice is me?

And why am I asking these questions? Is this about spam? AI? impersonators? scam artists? No, although all those confound the subject.

These questions arose for me around the question of spiritual mediumship. And if we factor in the question of many spiritual and religious paths about the function of identity ("Who are you taking yourself to be?", "Who is asking that question?", etc.), well, it gets even more interesting.

But let's stick to mediums. These are people who communicate between the living and the dead. (Or what we call "living" and "dead," but you know that's a whole other line of inquiry for me.) Some give themselves over to, become possessed by, a formerly embodied...what?...person? personality? presence? Choose what word works for you. Others act more as channels, forwarding to the living information they receive from the unseen.

Let's say you're the client at a medium's seance. You have every reason to trust that what's going to happen is authentic. There's no trickery here, and the medium knows nothing about you or your history. The medium asks questions that help you realize that your deceased uncle wants to communicate with you. How will you know that this is your uncle?

(Granted, if you are skeptical or cynical about the whole question of mediumship or post-death survival, this all looks like hogwash from the get-go. I am not trying to convince you of the reality of either. Let's just agree that we're staging a hypothetical scenario to ask an interesting question.)

You will probably rely on some cues to reassure yourself that, yes, this is your uncle. Some mediums assume a voice similar to that of the deceased (or the voice manifests in some other way), so perhaps you can hear a flavor of your uncle's voice. If your uncle was from an area of the world where there's a strong dialect, maybe there are some words or phrases that are typical of that place. Most people would rely on information that could only possibly be known to the two of you. The medium says, "Your uncle is telling me about the time you fell off the apple tree in his backyard and he tended to your skinned knee." You quickly realize that the probability the medium has fabricated this and somehow hit upon a real-life experience is pretty remote. This has to be your uncle!

For most of us, this would be quite an amazing experience. And yet we experience this every single day: communication from an unseen entity. An email, a letter, a phone call, a voice mail, a text. We don't see each other and still we trust, we know, that the communication is from a specific individual known to us.

What's the point here? I am sorry to report that there is no point. These are only questions. AI and electronic media have certainly brought them to the fore in a very practical and seemingly real way, but the questions also have spiritual implications, psychological implications, and post-death survival implications. And I just find that very, very interesting.