Knowledge death isn't the end: Krohn excerpt #2

While typical scientific research sorely lacks necessary observation, observation is exactly what credible eyewitness testimony provides.

Though there is plenty of evidence, none of it can prove with certainty that consciousness survives permanent bodily death. No eyewitness has survived permanent bodily death. The next best witness is someone who has survived temporary bodily death, remembers remaining conscious during the event, and is able to recall and recount specific details from the event. This is an experiencer, someone who has actually experienced death (or near-death), remained conscious throughout the process, and witnessed the afterlife for themselves.2 There is an abundance of experiencer eyewitness testimony that serves as credible evidence in both the public and private domains—experiencers of near-death experiences (NDEs).

From reading or listening to individual NDE testimonies, an inference can be made that consciousness does survive permanent bodily death from the extrapolation that consciousness survives temporary bodily death in NDEs. And the best existing experience that comes closest to permanent death is near death. I am not a scientist, a scholar, or a faith leader. What qualifies me to address the question is my own near-death experience, which turned me from an adamant skeptic to—not just a believer—a knower. I now know that our souls continue on after bodily death.

More than that, the NDE changed me in ways I never could have imagined. On September 1, 1988 I was a skeptic. Nothing could have dissuaded me from believing that when a person dies, that’s the end—that they are gone and nothing of them remains. But a bolt of lightning literally jolted me into reality.

On September 2, 1988, that lightning bolt bestowed upon me a gift, the power and profundity of which remain unmatched more than three decades later. That gift was knowledge that death isn’t the end; knowledge that where we are now is a temporary place, and where we go when we die is home; knowledge that what we do with our time here matters and affects our afterlife; knowledge that our souls, the vessels that carry our consciousness, continue on after bodily death and actually become keenly aware, awake, and all-knowing once unencumbered by our bodies.

It’s this element of my NDE, the knowing, that qualifies me to answer the question of what the best available evidence is for the survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death. Unless they have had an NDE, no researcher, scholar, faith leader, or scientist can know without any doubt that consciousness survives permanent bodily death. I can testify to that, and I do so without reservation. The certainty and penetrating knowledge resulting from my experience and the experiences communicated by many who have had NDEs are the best and strongest evidence available.

 

Elizabeth G. Krohn and Jeffrey J. Kripal of Changed in a Flash: One Woman's Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks It Empowers Us All (North Atlantic Books, 2018). Krohn received an award from the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies for her essay “The Eternal Life of Consciousness,” available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Footnotes in the essay are not included in these excerpts from Changed in a Flash.

NDE due to lightning strike: Krohn excerpt #1

Elizabeth Krohn

Elizabeth G. Krohn is the author with Jeffrey J. Kripal of Changed in a Flash: One Woman's Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks It Empowers Us All (North Atlantic Books, 2018). Krohn received an award from the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies for her essay “The Eternal Life of Consciousness.” Her complete essay is available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

When Elizabeth Greenfield Krohn got out of her car with her two young sons in the parking lot of her synagogue on a late afternoon in September 1988, she couldn't have anticipated she would within seconds be struck by lightning and have a near-death experience. She felt herself transported to a garden and engaging in a revelatory conversation with a spiritual being. When she recovered, her most fundamental understandings of what the world is and how it works had been completely transformed. She was “changed in a flash,” suddenly able to interact with those who had died and have prescient dreams predicting news events. She came to believe that some early traumatic and abusive experiences had played a part in preparing her for this experience.
 
Told in matter-of-fact language, the first half of this book is the story of Krohn’s journey, and the second is an interpretation and analysis by Jeffrey J. Kripal, Associate Dean of the School of Humanities at Rice University who holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought. Kirpal is also Associate Director of the Center for Theory and Research at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California and served as the Editor in Chief of the Macmillan Handbook Series on Religion. He places Krohn's experience in the context of religious traditions and proposes the groundbreaking idea that we are shaping our own experiences in the future by how we engage with near-death experiences in the present. Changed in a Flash is not about proving a story, but about carving out space for serious discussion of this phenomenon.

Elizabeth G. Krohn writes:

 

What is the best available evidence for the survival of human consciousness after permanent bodily death? While numerous scientific practitioners have attempted to conclusively answer this question, none so far have succeeded.

Why not?

Despite the advances it has attained for humanity, the scientific method is inadequate to conclusively answer the above question. Strong innate curiosity has compelled many brilliant minds to pursue science, usually using methods that overlay data with the rigidity of the scientific method. However, some of these same researchers find that there are times that this method does not—cannot—yield accurate answers.

An integral and inextricable component to the scientific method is observation. Observation is a cripplingly missing element when it comes to what researchers call “scientific” studies. It is not possible to effectively employ the scientific method in studies on this subject because the researchers cannot personally observe the data. They can only assemble the testimony of experiencers into groupings and make some assumptions that may or may not be what the individual narratives intended. Those studies, while good tools, are not the best evidence. The best evidence must come from individual near-death experiencers telling their individual stories.

Part of what makes science so dependable is the fact that it is an iterative process. In order for a theory to be scientifically accepted, it must be repeatable on demand. Therefore, to say definitively that human consciousness survives permanent bodily death from a purely scientific standpoint, one would be required to repeatedly run the experiment on demand and get the same results each time. Since this would involve intentionally causing permanent bodily death to humans, and then somehow communicating with the deceased in a documented and verifiable manner, it cannot currently be done in a legal or humane setting.

 

Elizabeth G. Krohn and Jeffrey J. Kripal of Changed in a Flash: One Woman's Near-Death Experience and Why a Scholar Thinks It Empowers Us All (North Atlantic Books, 2018). Krohn received an award from the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies for her essay “The Eternal Life of Consciousness,” available at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Footnotes in the essay are not included in these excerpts from Changed in a Flash.

Death and our purpose: Mishlove excerpt #16

Psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove ends his award winning paper, “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death," with these two conclusions. Footnotes in Mishlove's essay and videos he includeshave been removed in this presentation of his essay but are available and may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

Terminal Lucidity

This well-documented phenomenon occurs among individuals who have Alzheimer’s disease or who are otherwise brain damaged. Bedridden patients can sometimes sit up, bright-eyed and alert. They can carry on conversations beyond their earlier abilities. Since a severely compromised brain cannot regenerate suddenly like this while a patient is on their deathbed, the most reasonable interpretation is that consciousness can function independently of the brain. One might even say the brain has deteriorated so much it can no longer act as a filter keeping the larger consciousness (or self or soul) from awareness.

Terminal lucidity usually occurs between two-weeks and shortly before death. Philosopher Stafford Betty describes a typical case of terminal lucidity in the video segment below. The dying person, who may even be in a vegetative state, can suddenly “erupt” into their old personality with full memory. It happens in 5-10% of Alzheimer’s cases.

My wife, Janelle Barlow, witnessed terminal lucidity with my mother who was suffering from both Alzheimer’s and a stroke. The episode lasted for about two hours and occurred within a week of her final passing. It included a heartfelt conversation about life, marriage, children, and the progress of my mother’s disease. 

Postmortem survival is natural

Since 1972, when Uncle Harry came to me in a dream at the time of his death, I have spent my professional life exploring parapsychology and its implications for our understanding of postmortem survival and consciousness. Having a solid theoretical and practical knowledge of the field, I have over the decades been able to engage in persistent inquiries through the interview process – and have created video conversations with both experts and experiencers, going back thirty-five years.

Science has yet to show that consciousness is a product of neurological functioning. Alternative viewpoints have a lengthy history, going back more than a century. There is empirical support for the filtration theory of William James. We can also integrate postmortem survival into science by developing hypotheses entailing hyperspace mathematics. Pure logic favors metaphysical idealism as an explanatory model of reality, as Max Planck, quantum mechanics’ founder, explicitly said. From this perspective, consciousness survival is natural and expected.

The great Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung addressed what he considers civilization’s primary ailment in his book, Modern Man in Search of a Soul.

“As a physician I am convinced that it is hygienic – if I may use the word – to discover in death a goal towards which one can strive; and that shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.”

We hide from our own deepest identity when we postulate that consciousness is extinguished with the death of the body – resulting in a severe gap in our capacity for self-knowledge.

 

Jeffrey Mishlove’s essay, “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” received first prize in the 2021 Bigelow Institute’s challenge to provide proof for the survival of human consciousness after death. Footnotes in Mishlove’s essay and videos he refers to have been removed in this presentation but are available in his essay, which may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Mishlove is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and host on YouTube of “New Thinking Allowed.” 

The parsimony principle: Mishlove excerpt #15

Psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove in “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” argues that consciousness is fundamental.

For centuries, scholars have recognized Occam’s Razor as the fundamental rule of explanation itself. The preferred explanation is always the one with the fewest assumptions that can account for all the relevant facts. There is almost universal consensus concerning this principle. In scientism’s dark age, we have deviated from this important principle by presuming dead matter is the foundation of reality. That’s why we say when something is important to us, it matters. In this dark age, we give precedence to external sensations over intuitions and feelings. That’s also why, when we agree with some statement, we say it makes sense. These ideas, elevating the importance of materiality and sensation, are so deeply ingrained we don’t normally even consider whether or not they are valid.

Paradoxically, all philosophy begins in the mind – and not in matter. Descartes made this explicit with his simple statement in Latin: Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore, I am.

We each have direct knowledge of our mind. Nothing is more immediate and intimate. We lack direct access to anything else but mind. The great twentieth-century physicists, such as Erwin Schrödinger and Max Planck, understood this. Planck, the founder of quantum physics, famously said:

"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness."

Planck’s position – an explicit statement of idealist metaphysics – is neither a fringe, nor outdated, viewpoint. Richard Conn Henry, Academy Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University, published a similar perspective in Nature in 2005. He wrote:

"Physicists shy from the truth because the truth is so alien to everyday physics... The universe is immaterial – mental and spiritual."

Unfortunately for the subject matter at hand, for many people, “immaterial” means irrelevant! This is yet another example of scientism’s distorting influence.

If Max Planck was correct and pure mind-at-large, as the fundamental category of reality, suffices to explain all knowledge – then there is no need to postulate dead matter as an extra category of existence! Idealism, the position the universe is essentially mindlike, satisfies the parsimony requirement in the metaphysical domain. Metaphysical idealism is a worldview where postmortem survival is both natural and expected. 

 

Note by Robert Traer: For scientific arguments in support of a post-materialist science, see https://rtraer.com/post-materialist-science.html.

 

Jeffrey Mishlove’s essay, “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” received first prize in the 2021 Bigelow Institute’s challenge to provide proof for the survival of human consciousness after death. Footnotes in Mishlove’s essay and videos he refers have been removed in this presentation but are available in his essay, which may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Mishlove is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and host on YouTube of “New Thinking Allowed.”

Medium evidence in courts: Mishlove excerpt #14

Psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove in “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” provides evidence of medium communication after death.  

Legal evidence from Chico Xavier. A few cases involve a court of law admitting testimony or evidence from a deceased spirit. In May 1976, Mauricio Garcez Henrique was at the house of his friend José Divino Nunes, age 18.

José was looking for cigarettes. He didn’t find any, but he came upon his father’s gun instead. He wondered what would happen if he shot at his reflection in a mirror. Mauricio suddenly walked between José and the mirror, at which point the gun went off, fatally wounding Mauricio.

José was arrested and charged with murder. Prior to the trial, Mauricio’s parents had been to see Chico Xavier, the famous Brazilian medium. The message they received from their dead son described what had happened:

José Divino was not guilty, nor was anybody else. We were just playing around, thinking about shooting somebody’s reflection in a mirror, and when I passed in front of my image reflected in the mirror, the shot hit me. If anybody has to ask forgiveness, it should be me – I should have been studying instead of fooling around.

Attorneys presented the message in court, and Judge Orimar de Bastos noted it agreed with the evidence. He concluded:

We must give credibility to the message automatically written by Francisco Candido Xavier where the victim recounts the event, exempting the defendant from any guilt. He describes the scene where he and his friend were playing with the gun, and how the shot came to be fired.

The case was dismissed. Psychical researcher Guy Lyon Playfair writes that this was the first known instance of a criminal case decided on evidence purportedly originating from a deceased person. However, he also reports on three other Brazilian cases where a message from Chico Xavier was enough to influence a murder trial. One case resulted in an acquittal. In the other two, the court reduced the charges because of the mediumistic testimony.

Murders solved by mediums. In a 1977 case in Chicago, the court convicted Allan Showery of murdering a Filipino woman named Teresita Basa. Police arrested him following the claim by another Filipino woman, Remibias Chua. She had communicated with Basa’s spirit in their native language, Tagalog, and was told about the theft of a ring in addition to the murder. Confronted with this evidence, Showery (who had previously been interviewed by police) confessed, and police recovered the ring.

An even stronger case is the 1983 murder of Jacqueline Poole in a London suburb. Poole’s spirit communicated, unbidden, to a young Irish medium, Christine Holohan – who had no other connection to Poole, nor to her friends, or anyone else associated with the case. The information provided by Poole through the medium impressed the police. Although there was insufficient evidence at the time for a conviction of the identified murderer, Anthony Ruark – they saved the suspect’s pullover sweater identified by the medium Holohan. Police reopened the case in 2000 when new laboratory techniques analyzing the sweater enabled police to make a convincing identification of Ruark, who was convicted and jailed for life.

A careful analysis by skilled psychical researchers Guy Lyon Playfair and Montague Keen reached the same conclusion as the police. There was no plausible alternative to the hypothesis that Jacqueline Poole’s spirit had communicated with the medium Christine Holohan.

 

Jeffrey Mishlove’s essay, “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” received first prize in the 2021 Bigelow Institute’s challenge to provide proof for the survival of human consciousness after death. Footnotes in Mishlove’s essay and videos he refers have been removed in this presentation but are available in his essay, which may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Mishlove is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and host on YouTube of “New Thinking Allowed.”

Chapman/Lang healings: Mishlove excerpt #13

Psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove in “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” writes - In my estimation, the single most evidential case for human postmortem survival is the ongoing manifestation of William Lang (1852-1937), a prominent ophthalmic surgeon in London, through the mediumship of George Chapman. Chapman was a firefighter working in Aylesbury, UK, when his mediumship began in 1946. Lang’s spirit worked through Chapman regularly for sixty years until Chapman’s death in 2006. During these sessions, Chapman was in trance and knew nothing of what Lang was doing while using his body to conduct healing sessions.

George Chapman was a military veteran and a former boxer with no higher education. His personality, when not in trance, was manifestly distinct from William Lang. Through Chapman, Lang called these sessions etheric healing.

In 1966, noted psychical researcher Eric Dingwall pleaded for a serious investigation of this case. Nevertheless, the professional psychical research and parapsychology literature has ignored it. On the other hand, the spiritualist community knew of and celebrated this case. A search of the Psychic News archives, at the University of Manitoba, for the name “George Chapman,” returned 734 pages mentioning the name.

In March 2021, I interviewed Roy Stemman, former Psychic News editor and author of many articles about the Chapman mediumship. Stemman’s 2017 book, Surgeon from another World, was an updated version of a 1978 book coauthored with Chapman. Here are the salient facts about this extraordinary case making it especially evidential.

Former patients, family members, and medical colleagues acknowledged Chapman’s spirit control as Lang’s actual personality – complete with memory, professional knowledge, speaking style, and mannerisms.

William Lang’s daughter Lyndon Lang, and a group of Lang’s former medical colleagues (and colleagues of his son Basil, who predeceased him), held weekly séances with George Chapman for decades. They were convinced of the authenticity of Lang’s spirit. Journalist Roy Stemman reports how this arrangement came about. First Lyndon Lang’s skepticism was overcome by information from William Lang’s spirit that only he could have known. Then she introduced Chapman to medical colleagues of Lang and his son, Basil.

These former colleagues, family members, and friends of Lang so respected the work of George Chapman’s mediumship they gave Chapman many personal items – including the bed originally belonging to Lang. Stemman was a witness to this series of gifts. Chapman had so many of these personal items, he called it the “Lang Museum.” Today, they are still in the possession of Chapman’s family.

Lyndon Lang supported this mediumship financially, leaving a testimonial and bequeathing a portion of her estate upon her death to George Chapman.

During his six decades of mediumship, while in trance for as much as six hours at a time, George Chapman engaged in a spiritual healing practice that attained international repute. Medical professionals, who didn’t hesitate to send their patients for healing, often attested to cures.

As Roy Stemman reports, throughout his decades of journalistic coverage of the Chapman/Lang mediumship, there was never a time when he found any reason to question the integrity of either the medium or the controlling spirit.

In 1979, the prestigious Ophthalmology Section of the Royal Society of Medicine (of which Lang had formerly been president) invited George Chapman, the former firefighter, to speak about his mediumistic relationship with the deceased Lang.

William Lang’s manifestation is particularly evidential because it persisted over sixty- years. Multiple individuals who had known Lang attested to the authenticity of his discarnate spirit.

 

Jeffrey Mishlove’s essay, “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” received first prize in the 2021 Bigelow Institute’s challenge to provide proof for the survival of human consciousness after death. Footnotes in Mishlove’s essay and videos he refers have been removed in this presentation but are available in his essay, which may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Mishlove is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and host on YouTube of “New Thinking Allowed.”

More medium evidence: Mishlove excerpt #12

By psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove in “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death.”

Gladys Osborne Leonard’s mediumship.

There were many examples of information coming through Mrs. Leonard’s mediumship that convinced the eminent physicist, Sir Oliver Lodge, that his son Raymond who was killed in World War I was alive on the other side. Lodge’s book, Raymond or Life and Death: With Examples of the Evidence for Survival of Memory and Affection After Death, was a best- seller and immediately catapulted Gladys Osborne Leonard to international fame as a trance medium.

She continued her mediumship for the next half-century, during which members of the Society for Psychical Research studied her extensively. There have been over thirty articles about her in the publications of the Society, and seven more in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research. Nea Walker, Oliver Lodge’s secretary, made a long-term study of Leonard that ran for nineteen years. One researcher, the Methodist minister, Rev. Charles Drayton Thomas, had over 500 sittings with her. Throughout this entire time, there has never been a single, credible instance when Leonard’s integrity or sincerity has been questioned.

In 1921, Katie Dawson-Smith heard from her son who had been killed in WWI in a session with Leonard. He was insistent she find an old leather wallet, which she did. He said it held a tiny, yet important check stub. The significance of this became clear when, in 1924, she received a demand from a Hamburg firm for the repayment of a debt incurred by her son in 1914. However, the check stub enabled her to show that her son had already repaid the ten-year-old debt. She received an apology from the company. Dawson-Smith later sent the relevant documentation of this incident to the Society for Psychical Research.

Under the supervision of William McDougall at Duke University, John Thomas earned a doctoral degree in psychology for his extensive study of Gladys Osborne Leonard’s mediumship. Thomas was seeking evidence of his wife’s afterlife existence. She had died in 1926. His study ran for nine years. It included 2,964 specific points of information – a point being a single statement of a possibly verifiable fact. Of these, 2,358 were correct; 196 incorrect; 231 inconclusive; and 179 unverifiable. The percentage correct of the total verifiable points was 92.3%.171 Psychical researcher Trevor Hamilton describes Thomas’ approach as meticulous:

…he often had someone else sit with Leonard as a proxy on his behalf, ensured they were accurately recorded, looked for verifiable sources for the medium’s statements among his own records, and discarded unverifiable points, no matter how seemingly persuasive.

These examples merely represent some highlights from Gladys Leonard’s long career as a medium.

Forensic evidence via Eileen Garrett.

On October 5, 1930, the R101 dirigible crashed in France, killing 48 crew members and passengers. Two days later, Eileen Garrett, one of the twentieth century’s greatest mediums, experienced an unanticipated drop-in communicator, i.e., an unexpected visitor, during a sitting. The communicator identified himself as Herbert Irwin, the vessel’s deceased pilot. Irwin described the technical failures and design flaws that caused the crash.

This disaster was fraught with politics. The British Air Minister Lord Thomson, who had overridden the captain’s desire for more test flights, died in the crash.

Will Charlton, a former supply officer for the R101 who knew the airship and its personnel well, independently reviewed the mediumistic information. He confirmed the accuracy of many details provided.

William H. Wood, an airship pilot and a frequent contributor to the Freethinker, an atheist publication – conducted another independent review. In 1949, Wood shocked the British rationalist and atheist world by announcing the data convinced him of postmortem survival. He wrote in the Freethinker,

If this case does not prove survival, then nothing ever will. I consider the R-101 case to be cast iron.

While accepting survival, Wood kept up his status as an atheist.

Medium Ena Twigg and Bishop James Pike.  

Bishop James Pike famously resigned his post as California’s Episcopal Bishop after ongoing mediumistic communications with his son Jim who had taken his own life.180 Shortly after his son’s death, Bishop Pike, who was devastated by the suicide, began noticing poltergeist-like phenomena in the Cambridge apartment he had been sharing with Jim a few weeks prior. He drew up a list of 55 inexplicable events he suspected were signs of Jim’s surviving presence.

This led him to seek advice from Canon Pierce-Higgins, an Anglican Church official, who recommended a visit to the respected medium Ena Twigg. Eventually, Pierce-Higgins arranged a sitting, and Peirce-Higgins drove Bishop Pike to the séance. He took copious notes that he eventually shared with my next interviewee Roy Stemman, a journalist who covered the story for Psychic News in England.

Bishop Pike also confirmed that Ena Twigg provided information about his son she couldn’t have known or guessed. Through Ena Twigg, the late theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965) also appeared. Tillich had been both Pike’s friend and Jim’s godfather. Communications with Jim continued through other mediums Pike consulted.

Bishop Pike’s book, The Other Side, documents a lengthy conversation he held with his deceased son and Paul Tillich. The topics touched upon personal friends, family, educational matters, and the emotional turmoil that led Jim to take his own life. Another topic discussed was the poltergeist- like phenomena seen at the Cambridge apartment – which were Jim’s initial attempts to communicate. The conversation also touched upon the controversy swirling around Bishop Pike’s liberal attitudes toward church dogma. Each time, the responses given by the discarnate spirits, Pike’s son Jim or Tillich, were knowledgeable and appropriate. Pike regarded the session as highly evidential.

Jeffrey Mishlove’s essay, “Beyond the Brain: The Survival of Human Consciousness After Permanent Bodily Death,” received first prize in the 2021 Bigelow Institute’s challenge to provide proof for the survival of human consciousness after death. Footnotes in Mishlove’s essay and videos he refers have been removed in this presentation but are available in his essay, which may be downloaded at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php. Mishlove is a licensed clinical psychologist, author, and host on YouTube of “New Thinking Allowed.”