Recognizing the evidence: Taylor excerpt #25

Greg Taylor writes: A number of dedicated researchers continue collecting evidence for the survival of consciousness, with new approaches and more refined experiments. For example, veridical NDEs are now being investigated in studies involving various hospitals around the world, in which patients who survive a cardiac arrest are being asked if they saw hidden ‘targets’ placed in the room that are only visible from near the ceiling.

However, while researchers continue to search for more evidence, it should now be clear that there is currently more than enough to rationally believe that consciousness does survive death. We have barely skimmed the surface of the literature in this essay – I suggest readers seek out the source materials and explore them at length – and yet we have seen the quantity and quality of the evidence is abundant and strong.

Professor Bruce Greyson, perhaps the world’s foremost expert on NDEs, says that while he is always open to alternative explanations, at this point in his opinion “some form of continued consciousness after death seems to be the most plausible working model” to explain the evidence. 

Peter and Elizabeth Fenwick, after years researching end-of-life experiences (ELEs), note that “the hypothesis of extended mind manifesting at the time of death is a much more persuasive explanation for most of these experiences than coincidence or expectation.” Past-life memory researcher Jim Tucker says “I do think that these cases contribute, along with near-death experiences and the other things, to a good body of evidence that there are times where consciousness does survive after the body dies.”

Professor Stephen E. Braude, in his comprehensive review of the evidence for survival of consciousness – and related skeptical explanations, including super-psi – concluded that in his opinion we can say “with some justification, that the evidence provides a reasonable basis for believing in personal postmortem survival.” Alan Gauld in his authoritative examination of the evidence for mediumship says that in each area that we have reviewed there are “cases which rather forcefully suggest some form of survival,” and that “the super-ESP hypothesis will not suffice to explain the quantity of correct and appropriate information.”

And yet, orthodox science continues to largely ignore this evidence, with minimal funding and support for continued research – despite the fact that it provides answers to the greatest question facing us as humans, and a balm to the anxiety and suffering of those facing their own death or the loss of loved ones. Surely it is past time for honest appraisal of the substantial quality and quantity of evidence that has been collected by dedicated scientists, putting aside illogical fears of disrupting the scientific paradigm.

As Thomas Henry Huxley once said, scientists should be prepared to “sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads,” or else they “shall learn nothing.” A huge pool of evidence for the survival of consciousness beyond death has been collected across multiple fields, by honest scientists with critical minds using careful methods, often over the course of decades with little funding and chance of reward (in fact, often in the face of scorn or hostility from skeptics and fellow scientists):

10-20% of people who have a brush with death report undergoing an experience in which their consciousness separates from their body – confirmed by a substantial number of ‘veridical NDEs’ in which they provide details which they could not have known via any normal means – and meet deceased individuals and travel to another realm.

A majority of carers surveyed report that people, in the days and weeks before their death, undergo experiences in which they are greeted by deceased individuals and transit to and from another realm.

These experiences are not caused by drugs or a malfunctioning brain, and ‘Peak-in-Darien’ experiences provide evidence substantiating the reality of these visitations. Additionally, carers and family of the dying also often report experiencing anomalous events, including lights, ‘crisis apparitions’, and other strange phenomena at the time of death that have in a number of cases been corroborated by multiple witnesses.

Mediums who claim to be in communication with deceased individuals have been found by scientists to be able to provide accurate information that cannot be explained through normal, everyday means.

A collection of thousands of reports of ‘past-life memories’ reported by children across the globe provides numerous evidential cases where details were known about deceased individuals that the child had no means of knowing. Furthermore, in a substantial number of cases birthmarks and birth defects correspond to wounds on the body of the previous identity.

If we are seeking proof beyond reasonable doubt, we have it. A huge number of credentialed witnesses, providing details that have been found by honest, skeptical researchers to be backed by evidence, and pointing at the one conclusion. The only way not to accept the evidence is by being unreasonable; it requires multiple convoluted and unlikely explanations that reject all of the testimony of an impressive number of witnesses, motivated by an illogical desire to protect a worldview from being overturned.

The evidence is freely available, vast, of high-quality, and is all explained by one simple, parsimonious solution – if we are just willing to take the next step, move beyond the current paradigm, and accept that it clearly shows that human consciousness can survive permanent bodily death.

 

Greg Taylor, “What is the Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death?” An essay written for the Bigelow contest addressing this question. I am presenting excerpts without references.

Elevating Consciousness: Taylor excerpt #24

Greg Taylor writes: When quantum physics changed the scientific landscape at the beginning of the 20th century, one of the pioneers of the field, Max Planck noted that he believed it also changed our entire view of reality. “I regard consciousness as fundamental,” Planck revealed. “I regard matter as derivative from consciousness."

Planck was hardly alone in his thinking. The famed cosmologist Sir James Jeans said that he inclined “to the idealistic theory that consciousness is fundamental, and that the material universe is derivative from consciousness, not consciousness from the material universe.” Influential physicist Freeman Dyson said that it appeared to him that “the tendency of mind to infiltrate and control matter is a law of nature.” And cosmologist Paul Davies has made clear that consciousness seems to him to be much more than some simple, accidental by-product of firing neurons:

Somehow, the universe has engineered not only its own self-awareness, but its own self-comprehension. It is hard to see this astonishing property of (at least some) living organisms as an accidental and incidental by- product of physics...the fact that mind is linked into the deep workings of the cosmos in this manner suggests that there is something truly fundamental and literally cosmic in the emergence of sentience.

The idea that consciousness may be a fundamental, stand-alone element of reality is obviously, therefore, not an inherently ‘anti-science’ idea.

Is it too much to believe that, in the early 21st century, we are laboring under the same illusion that our science is complete, and that it should not be questioned even when there is abundant evidence to the contrary? As Buckminster Fuller once warned, what we think of as ‘reality’ is always up for redefining. “Up to the twentieth century, reality was everything humans could touch, smell, see, and hear,” Fuller pointed out. “Since the initial publication of the chart of the electromagnetic spectrum, humans have learned that what they can touch, smell, see, and hear is less than one-millionth of reality.”

Numerous alternatives to our current materialist-centered paradigm have been suggested. For example, the French polymath Jacques Vallée has pondered whether our cosmos might be more informational than physical in its fundamental construction, a model which would more easily explain a number of the paranormal events that people regularly experience.

Alternatively, William James, in questioning the scientific ‘truth’ that consciousness is just a by-product of brain processes, asked if “we are entitled also to consider permissive or transmissive function.” In this ‘transmission theory’, our consciousness exists independently of the brain, which acts only as a receiver. Consider, for example, one of the Mars rovers – which to a 19th century human observer might seem like a creature with its own brain that, if damaged, stops the creature from functioning correctly. But its ‘thoughts’ are actually being transmitted to it from another world (and entity) entirely.

And perhaps we don’t even require ‘new’ ways of explaining the cosmos. The distinguished physicist Henry Stapp has stated that in his view, even quantum mechanics allows for “aspects of a personality” to survive physical death:

I do not see any compelling theoretical reason why this idea could not be reconciled with the precepts of quantum mechanics. Such an elaboration of quantum mechanics would both allow our conscious efforts to influence our own bodily actions, and also allow certain purported phenomena such as “possession,” mediumship” and “reincarnation” to be reconciled with the basic precepts of contemporary physics.

These considerations are, I think, sufficient to show that any claim that postmortem personality survival is impossible that is based solely on the belief that it is incompatible with the contemporary laws of physics is not rationally supportable. Rational science-based opinion on this question must be based on the content and quality of the empirical data, not on the presumption that such a phenomenon would be strictly incompatible with our current scientific knowledge of how nature works.

Stapp’s summation gets to the heart of the matter. As we have seen in this essay, we have copious amounts of data from a number of fields that point quite clearly toward survival of consciousness. We have not even considered a mass of data from other fields supporting the primacy of consciousness, such as can be found detailed in well-researched academic books like Irreducible Mind. But due to the materialist paradigm we live within, when we are confronted with the anomalous experiences reviewed in this essay, we are still conditioned to try and impose ‘mundane’ explanations upon them – even when those explanations are overly contrived and ignore the obvious answer (that they are exactly what they seem to be).

As Tom Shroder asked in his book Old Souls, when he found himself reaching for ways to explain the vast number of convincing cases of past-life memories collected by Dr. Ian Stevenson: “Why was I so unwilling to accept the most obvious explanation, that these cases were genuine?” Stevenson asserted that: “Everything now believed by scientists is open to question, and I am always dismayed to find that many scientists accept current knowledge as forever fixed.”

Greg Taylor, “What is the Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death?” An essay written for the Bigelow contest addressing this question. I am presenting excerpts without references, but this essay is available with footnotes and a bibliography at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

Paradigms and skeptics: Taylor exerpt #23

Greg Taylor writes: On their own, each of the four areas we have discussed [Near-death experiences, end-of-life experiences, communication from the dead, and memories of past lives] offer compelling evidence for the survival of consciousness. Cumulatively, the evidence is overwhelming. People have NDEs, during which they often perceive themselves as leaving their physical body and being taken to another realm; the large number of veridical NDEs provide proof that their consciousness does indeed leave their body. People at their death-bed see deceased loved ones come to greet them and escort them to another realm; Peak-in-Darien experiences and other anomalous phenomena provide proof that their experience is real. Mediums communicate with deceased individuals and are able to produce verifiable personal information as a result. Children tell of memories of past lives (and often have birthmarks or defects related to injuries in that life), the details of which researchers have been able to verify.

Furthermore, the fact that all these evidential areas are pointing at the one, unified conclusion, the survival of consciousness beyond death – without having to rely on or necessarily reference each other at all – is evidence itself and makes the case all the more compelling. And yet still, while each does not need the others, these areas do support each other: NDEs and ELEs share common elements; deceased individuals communicating through mediums tell of experiencing facets of the NDE after death; and children’s past-life memories also reference similar elements. If this were a court of law relying on corroborated, multiple witness testimony, the jury would be convinced.

On the other hand, skeptical arguments must rely on individual, convoluted and often unconnected explanations for each facet; even NDEs on their own require a long list of suggestions of separate physiological and psychological causes that, as we have seen, researchers have dismissed. If we were to employ that favorite tool of skeptics, Occam’s Razor, to the arguments for and against survival of consciousness, the simplest and most parsimonious solution to the evidence is that our consciousness survives the death of our body.

So why isn’t it a generally accepted conclusion?

In modern society, the phenomena mentioned in this essay are considered mysteries and anomalies, despite decades of investigation and analysis. But they remain mysteries only when viewed from within the framework of materialism: the dominant scientific worldview that physical matter is all that there is. When viewed from a framework that allows consciousness to exist independently of the body, they actually make perfect sense, and the evidence from NDEs, ELEs, mediumship and past-life memories fit perfectly – similar to the simplicity that Copernicus’s heliocentric theory brought to the strange movements of the cosmos once it was accepted. On the other side, skeptical explanations for this range of phenomena introduce a complex list of individual explanations to suit each, like Ptolemaic cycles within cycles explaining the anomalous movements of the planets within an Earth- centered cosmology.

The reality of the matter is that modern skepticism is, for the most part, a defense of the materialist paradigm, rather than an unbiased system being used to seek after the truth. That is not to say that we should disregard skeptical commentary – it is absolutely necessary in the areas explored in this essay, and when employed correctly is one of the most valuable tools we have in analyzing evidence, testing our theories and ultimately understanding the world better. But we should be very careful in understanding the difference between good skepticism and bad, as many of the ‘authoritative’ skeptical sources that comment on areas related to the survival of consciousness are often ‘believers’ in the current paradigm, motivated to defend it by any means necessary.

When, instead of critically analyzing the evidence in total, skeptics instead pull out one case – such as pointing out a fake medium, or a hoaxed NDE story – to dismiss the entire topic, we should understand that this is bad skepticism. If they ‘cherry-pick’ data or misrepresent it to make a point, we should understand that this is bad skepticism. If they present convoluted arguments that make little sense, just to explain away anomalous data, we should understand that this is bad skepticism. And this is exactly what has happened in skeptical arguments that have marginalized the abundant evidence for the survival of consciousness.

Doubt can be ‘weaponized’. Across the corporate world, sowing seeds of doubt is now an established method of disrupting scientific evidence. When cigarette companies faced the existential crisis brought on by medical evidence that smoking caused cancer, an industry report noted that their marketing strategy needed to change. Instead of actual cigarettes, the report decided, “doubt is our product [emphasis added], since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public.” Sowing the seeds of doubt, it continued, would provide “the means of establishing a controversy,” rather than allowing the facts to be accepted.

Our world is now awash in ‘controversies’, where reasonably established ideas – such as the overwhelming safety of vaccines, and results of carefully monitored elections – are now viewed with uncertainty, and sometimes even outright distrust, by significant portions of the population due to campaigns to sow doubts and disinformation – a strategy that author David Michaels calls “manufacturing uncertainty.” He cites the case of the aspirin industry delaying FDA regulation of their product – to warn that consumption by children with viral illnesses greatly increased their risk of developing a serious illness – simply by arguing that the science establishing the link “was incomplete, uncertain and unclear,” even though the medical community was virtually certain of the danger. Compare this to skeptics’ framing of the evidence for survival of consciousness as being incomplete and unproved, despite the fact that nearly every researcher who has spent substantial time investigating these topics thinks otherwise.

An analysis of the tactics used in such campaigns feels like it could just as easily apply to the large body of evidence for the survival of consciousness, and the tactics used by many skeptics:

The principles of scientific inquiry involve testing a hypothesis by exploring uncertainty around it until there is a sufficient weight of evidence to reach a reasonable conclusion [emphasis added]. Proof can be much longer in coming, and consensus still longer. The product-defense industry subverts these principles, weaponizing the uncertainty inherent in the process. Its tricks include stressing dissent where little remains, cherry-picking data, reanalyzing results to reach different conclusions and hiring people prepared to rig methodologies to produce funders’ desired results.

That is not to say that skeptics of the survival of consciousness are involved in knowing deception or organized campaigns against the idea; just that many of their strategies do mimic those of “product defense consultants.” In this case though, the defense of the ‘product’ (the materialist paradigm) is often motivated mainly by a staunch belief in it.

There are numerous examples of skeptics, and well-known skeptical organizations, presenting ‘authoritative’ cases against the evidence for survival of consciousness beyond death which do not hold up to critical examination. For example, the ‘authoritative’ debunking of Leonora Piper’s mediumship was written by the famous skeptic Martin Gardner, and having his name attached to the piece alone allowed it to be cited for decades as trumping decades of research done by multiple well-credentialed investigators of the S.P.R. And yet a close examination of Gardner’s essay, when compared to the original case notes, shows that he either disregarded nearly all the original research and testimony, or didn’t even bother to read it in the first place.

When looking at the large body of evidence accumulated over many decades supporting the survival of consciousness – and the quality of those investigations – we can only conclude that skeptics of the hypothesis aren’t so much at odds with the evidence, as they are with the conclusion it is pointing to.

As we will see though, it’s a strange stance, given that a change of scientific worldview – to one that includes consciousness as being a fundamental part of it – really isn’t that controversial, as some of the finest minds of recent times believe that is the case.

Greg Taylor, “What is the Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death?” An essay written for the Bigelow contest addressing this question. I am presenting excerpts without references, but this essay is available with footnotes and a bibliography at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

Past-life Interval memories: Taylor excerpt #22

Greg Taylor writes: Another study that made use of the University of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) database involved an analysis of ‘interval memories’ in past-life cases – that is, recollections by the children of events said to have occurred during the interval between the death of the previous personality and the birth of the child. It was found that interval memories were present in approximately 20% of the cases, and that children who reported interval memories, compared to those who did not, “made a greater number of statements about the previous life that were verified to be accurate, recalled more names from the previous life, had higher scores on the strength-of-case scale, and were more likely to state the names of the previous personalities and to give accurate details about their deaths.”

DOPS researchers: Bruce Greyson, Ed Kelly, Marieta Pehlivanova, Kim Penberthy, Jim B. Tucker

Furthermore, a comparison of interval memories reported in Burmese cases were compared to reports of near-death experiences (NDEs). The study found features similar to the transcendental component of Western NDEs, and significant areas of overlap with Asian NDEs (e.g. they saw themselves from outside their body, encountered a mystical being or presence, and met deceased spirits). According to Dr. Tucker, based on this it is possible that “interval memories and NDEs could be considered parts of the same overall phenomenon, reports of an afterlife.”

Furthermore, a comparison of interval memories reported in Burmese cases were compared to reports of near-death experiences (NDEs). The study found features similar to the transcendental component of Western NDEs, and significant areas of overlap with Asian NDEs (e.g. they saw themselves from outside their body, encountered a mystical being or presence, and met deceased spirits). According to Dr. Tucker, based on this it is possible that “interval memories and NDEs could be considered parts of the same overall phenomenon, reports of an afterlife.”

One case recorded by Dr. Stevenson also provides an account of a veridical out-of-body experience during the interval period. The subject of the case complained of ‘seeing’ her ashes being scattered, rather than buried as requested. Upon checking, it was found that the previous personality had requested that her ashes be buried under a tree at her temple, but her daughter had found the tree’s root system made it impossible to dig there, so she scattered them instead.

Based on the number of strong cases of past-life memories collected over the past 60 years by researchers, Dr. Tucker says he is “now ready to say we have good evidence that some young children have memories of a life from the past.”

Currently, the best explanation for the strongest cases appears to be that memories, emotions, and even physical traumas can, at least under certain circumstances, carry over from one life to a subsequent one... [T]he cases contribute to the evidence for survival of consciousness after death.

 

Greg Taylor, “What is the Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death?” An essay written for the Bigelow contest addressing this question. I am presenting excerpts without references, but this essay is available with footnotes and a bibliography at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

A Prayer for All Seasons

O God of life and death.

 

May your grace and peace come,

may your will be done,

on earth as in heaven.

 

 

May we be healthy and humble

‘til our time has come.

 

And as we forgive those who’ve done us harm,

may we be forgiven for the harm we’ve done.

And may we resist temptation and evil.

For you are the Way, the Truth, Light and Love.

Amen.

 

 

 

                                                                                                            Robert Traer

Western reincrnation cases: Taylor excerpt #21

Greg Taylor writes: One of the initial criticisms of Dr. Stevenson’s research had been that the cases he reported were all from locations in which reincarnation was part of the religious culture. He addressed this issue in a paper in 1983 in which he documented 79 American cases – many of which occurred in families who did not have a belief in reincarnation – noting how they resembled cases from elsewhere in many ways, such as the early age at which they were reported and the effect on the child’s behavior.cxliii In recent years DOPS has concentrated on investigating more American cases, and according to Dr. Jim Tucker researchers “can now say with certainty that this is not purely a cultural phenomenon that takes place in areas with a belief in reincarnation.”

For instance, one of the most prominent American cases so far recorded is that of James Leininger, born in 1998 into a middle-class, Protestant Christian family in Louisiana, with his father in particular being quite opposed to the idea of reincarnation. At age 2, James began saying the phrase “airplane crash on fire,” and also slamming his toy plane nose first into the family's coffee table. He also began having nightmares multiple times a week, kicking his feet in the air and screaming “airplane crash on fire, little man can’t get out.” Not long after, his parents were able to have conversations with him where he told them his plane had crashed on fire, he’d been shot down by the Japanese, and that he flew a Corsair. When he was 28 months old, he said his plane had flown off a boat, and when his parents asked him what the name of the boat was, he said “Natoma”. It turns out there was a USS Natoma Bay that was stationed in the Pacific during WWII. When his parents asked him if he could remember anyone else’s name, he responded with “Jack Larsen.” When he was 30 months old, James’s father purchased the book The Battle for Iwo Jima. On looking in the book, James pointed at a photo and said that was where his plane was shot down.

Through his own searching, James’s father found that there was indeed a pilot on the Natoma Bay named Jack Larsen, and that he was still alive. Additionally, there was only one pilot from the ship who was lost during the Battle of Iwo Jima: a 21-year-old named James M. Huston, Jr. Huston died in exactly the manner, and location, that James claimed to remember. Additionally, James appeared to have knowledge from the past life experience that a young child would not know (e.g. that Corsairs got flat tires all the time), and was able to discuss personal details of his life with Huston’s surviving sister Anne. “The child was so convincing,” she said in a 2004 interview, “coming up with all these things that there’s no way in the world he could know, unless there is a spiritual thing.”

In reviewing the case, Dr. Tucker was able to rule out mundane explanations:

He could not have learned from the people around him, because they knew nothing about either the ship or Huston when he began talking about them. James had made all of the documented statements by the time he was four years old, so he could not have read about them. Regardless, no published materials about James Huston are known to exist. No television program focusing on Natoma Bay or James Huston appear to have been made either.

“On the face of it,” Dr. Tucker concluded, the most obvious explanation was that James “experienced a life as James Huston Jr. before having his current one.”

Other recent American cases with evidential weight include that of Ryan Hammons, who had memories of a past life in Hollywood – not as a famous star, but as an extra. Researchers verified over 50 of Ryan’s statements as matching with the previous personality, Marty Martins, despite many of them requiring archival searches to uncover. Another case, of a little boy who remembers dying in an explosion in Vietnam, also has strong evidence to back it up. The boy gave his (unusual) surname, the state he was from, and the age he died (21). Dr. Tucker conducted a picture test with the boy when he was five years old, showing him images that were relevant to the previous life – such as a photo of the school the previous personality attended, and family photos he had obtained from the previous personality’s sister – along with similar, but non-connected images as controls. Altogether, Dr. Tucker showed him eight pairs of pictures, and while he didn’t make a choice on two of them, he correctly chose six from six with the others.

 

Greg Taylor, “What is the Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death?” An essay written for the Bigelow contest addressing this question. I am presenting excerpts without references, but this essay is available with footnotes and a bibliography at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.

Dr Tucker's research: Taylor excerpt #20

Dr Jim Tucker

Greg Taylor writes: In his final years, and subsequent to his passing in 2007, Dr. Stevenson’s work was continued on by other researchers, perhaps most notably child psychiatrist Dr. Jim Tucker, who in 2014 became the director of the Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS) at the University of Virginia. In that time, focus has moved beyond simply tracking down individual cases to also include examination of groups of cases to get a ‘bigger picture’ view of the phenomenon. To do so, each case of past-life memories collected by researchers is coded with regards to 200 variables and entered into a database, allowing large-scale analysis of the reports.

For instance, a strength-of-case scale – based on birthmarks/birth defects, behaviors related to the previous life, and other aspects – was applied to 799 cases. It showed that the apparent strength of cases “did not correlate with the initial attitude that the children’s parents had toward their statements, indicating that parental enthusiasm did not make the cases appear stronger than they actually were... The strength of the cases also correlated with the age that the children began talking about the previous life in a negative direction (so the children started earlier in the stronger cases), the amount of emotion that children demonstrated when discussing the memories, and the amount of facial resemblance between the children and the deceased individuals.”

DOPS now has over 2500 cases of past-life memories in their files – from every continent apart from Antarctica - 1400 of which have resulted in identification of the “previous personality." 400 cases involve a child with a birthmark or birth defect that corresponds with the fatal wound on the previous personality, along with another 200 in which such a mark or deformity matches a non-fatal wound. Most of the children only ever describe one past life, and their memories are mostly from near the end of that life; 75% of the subjects mention how they died. The average interval between the two lives (i.e.. the death of the previous personality, and birth of the child relating the memory) is 4.5 years (though the median is only seventeen months) – however, in a small number of cases the interval is much longer, sometimes more than half a century.

Greg Taylor, “What is the Best Available Evidence for the Survival of Human Consciousness after Permanent Bodily Death?” An essay written for the Bigelow contest addressing this question. I am presenting excerpts without references, but this essay is available with footnotes and a bibliography at https://bigelowinstitute.org/contest_winners3.php.