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The multiplicity of languages - an overlooked problem. Let us have a closer look at the little birds "voices" as they, with Raudive's usual somewhat pedantic carefulness, are quoted in his book and let us split them up into two groups. The voices before and the voices after Dr.Raudive became involved. There is one striking difference. Before the budgerigar "speaks" German only. As soon as Raudive enters the scene the bird's language immediately (at least in Raudive's interpretation) change to use besides German also other languages, mostly Latvian. But why should a deceased little girl suddenly speak Latvian through her beloved pet? What is the origin of this new knowledge? I think Raudive would immediate have given a kind of spiritualistic stamped answer. I have two answers. The one is that this interpretations like so many others simply only exists in Raudives imagination. The other is much more of principally interest. At the end of his second book Raudive enumerate the languages which were used in the quoted voice examples. It is an impressive collection: German, English, French, Greek, Italian, Latin, Spanish, Swedish, Russian, Latvian and Old-Latvian. Let me compare this list with a short retrospect of Raudive's life. It is certainly not too much to say that there is a strong accordance between what one could call "The Eleven-Language-Dictionary" hidden somewhere in Raudive's mind (or brain if you prefer) and the languages used in his "spirit-voices." I think it is not irrelevant here to enumerate, totally arbitrary, some other European languages: Finnish, Hungarian, Slovakian, Czech, Rumanian, Dutch.... They all have just two qualities common: 1) Dr.Raudive neither spoke or understood any of them. 2) They never appeared in even one of his "voices".It is also interesting for a moment to went back to Jurgenson and his voices. Jurgenson was born in Odessa where he attended a German-Russian school, his father was of Baltic origin. During the first world-war he and his family escaped to Estonia, during the second to Sweden. He worked for years in Italy as a portrait painter. He spoke the languages of all these countries. One also can find them in several of his voices - but used far more moderate and convincing then in Raudive's. The conclusion? Still the same. The origin of all the voices can be find in one single place: The experimentator's own mind. To economize on hypotheses and as far as possible make use of already established facts is a well-known principle for any scientific investigation. Seen in this light the EVP-phenomenon can be reduced to two main factors: The experimentator and the electronic equipment. Considering the above mentioned correlation between the linguistic content of the experimentator's mind and the electronically produced voices, the "Mind to Electronics" must be the most obvious hypothesis - at least seen from the technical/psychological level of today. End of part one |