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Chapter 1
Links Page
See also Tymn's List .
This sidebar lists some of the eminent scientists and researchers who have studied the afterlife and believe that it exists.
It wasn’t long after the birth of modern Spiritualism in 1848 that scientists and scholars began investigating the phenomena. Many of them started out with the intent of showing that all mediums were charlatans, but one by one they came to believe in the reality of mediumship and related psychic phenomena. A few of them sat on the fence when it came to professing a belief in the spirit world, but others were more courageous.
Recently, researchers such as Dr. Gary Schwartz of the University of Arizona and Dr. David Fontana, a psychology professor in England, have continued to verify the existence of genuine mediums, and, concomitantly, of a spirit world.
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David Fontana, Ph.D.
(1934 - 2010) A professor of transpersonal psychology in Great Britain, Dr. Fontana is a past president of the Society for Psychical Research and a fellow of the British Psychological Society. He has done extensive survival research and is the author of many books, including Is There an Afterlife? published in 2002.
Sir William Crookes
Sir Oliver Lodge
Robert Crookall
http://www.answers.com/topic/robert-crookall
Robert Hare
Rev William Stainton Moses
While remembered primarily as a gifted medium, Moses, who received his master’s degree at Oxford before becoming an Anglican minister and English Master at University College in London, was the first vice-president of the Society for Psychical Research. He was searching for answers about his own mediumistic powers as well as those of others. Before his own powers manifested in 1872, he considered all mediumship either fraudulent or demonic.
The current Big Bang theory, whereby the Universe was created from out of a massive explosion, contains some major flaws and inconsistencies. The biggest of these is something called the cosmological constant. In the light of these and other flaws, Ron Pearson, with his background as a University lecturer on Thermodynamics and fluid mechanics decided that a new theory was needed. At the heart of the original theory was one of the biggest dilemmas facing physicists today - How to combine the mathematics of Quantum physics and those of Relativity. This is what Ron has sought to conquer. In doing so he has shown the reality of the Afterlife. See: Interview with Ron Pearson Summary of Ron Pearson's Theory www.pearsonianspace.com www.bigbreed.org www.darkenergymysterysolved.co.uk
(1934 - 2010) A professor of transpersonal psychology in Great Britain, Dr. Fontana is a past president of the Society for Psychical Research and a fellow of the British Psychological Society. He has done extensive survival research and is the author of many books, including Is There an Afterlife? published in 2002.
Sir William Crookes
AFTERLIFE ESSAYS
Chapter 1 A QUICK LOOK AT THE AFTERLIFE
THE AFTERLIFE IN A NUTSHELL
There is an afterlife. We interact with it in many ways, and from this interaction comes convincing evidence that it exists. Sadly many people either don't know the evidence exists or pretend it doesn't exist for one reason or another.
Here are two good reasons for taking it seriously.
Many scientists and other reputable people have asserted that there is overwhelming proof of the afterlife. A list has been compiled by Michael E. Tymn, author of “The Articulate Dead” you can see it at Tymn's List .
Also the 1939 Church of England’s Report on Spiritualism was very favourable, but the House of Bishops took the surprising step of pigeon-holing it. Fortunately, a clerical mole disclosed it and it can be read at several links including http://www.cfpf.org.uk/articles/religion/cofe_report/cofe_report.html and http://www.victorzammit.com/articles/churchofenglandreport.html
So we afterlife believers are in good company. What do we mean by afterlife? In brief I believe that I will continue to be the same person in another world with another sort of body after I die. I also believe that the same applies to you.
Whereas there is direct evidence about the existence of the afterlife, evidence for what it is like can only be second-hand for most of us, i.e. transmitted through mediums from those who are there. There is inevitably some variety in what we hear about the afterlife, since people of different levels of awareness are reporting from different areas in that vast eternal place, but a common core emerges.
This tells us that in our earthly life our souls grow more or less spiritual depending on what we have done on earth, and after we leave our bodies behind we automatically gravitate with our spiritual bodies to an appropriate level in the afterlife. The average decent person lands in pleasant surroundings, and they are met and guided by friends and others into their new way of life, however some people have problems.
WHAT NEXT?
If you are a convinced death-is-the-end believer who has managed to read this far, read no more. You will not believe a word. However, if you are wrong, when you die what you have read might help you to come to terms with your unexpected new life.
The following brief survey of where the evidence is to be found should be helpful to all seekers for truth. In particular, if open-minded people in the media could be persuaded to change their current paradigm and adopt the same respectful attitude to an evidence-based belief system as they do to faith-based systems, atheism, materialism and so on, this could be very helpful to progress.
TERMINOLOGY
To avoid using cumbersome expressions I call afterlife people “spirits” although they tell us they are very real and have solid bodies albeit of a different nature to ours.
I use "paradigm" to mean "the generally accepted perspective of a particular discipline at a given time". (Other definitions abound!)
THE EVIDENCE
Most evidence is transmitted through mediums, who act as channels between the two worlds. A notable exception is evidence from NDEs (Near death experiences) which comes from the people whose bodies were temporarily dead.
Two people who sum up the evidence in an impressive way are Victor James Zammit and Michael Roll.
Zammit is a retired Lawyer of the Supreme Court of New South Wales and the High Court of Australia. He has set out to investigate the evidence for survival after death, and has concluded that the evidence, taken as a whole, constitutes overwhelming and irrefutable proof for the existence of the afterlife. His book “A Lawyer Presents the Case for the Afterlife” can be read in his website www.victorzammit.com , although you would find the reasonably priced paper copy easier to read.
Roll presents the scientific case for survival after death in The Campaign for Philosophical Freedom . He campaigns against the materialist scientific establishment and the orthodox religious bodies who suppress and censor evidence conflicting with their out-dated narrow-minded doctrines. See his comments on "Sir Oliver Lodge FRS: The Mode of Future Existence (1933 Lecture)" http://www.cfpf.org.uk/articles/scientists/lodge/lodge-mofe-2007.html
I will now present a list of the types of evidence available.
(a) Evidence from mediums.
There are a number of different types of communication through a medium. These are described below.
Clairvoyant mediums
There seem to be more clairvoyants than any other type or medium.
Although the name means "clear-seeing "many will also be sensitive to sounds as well, A clairvoyant has a spirit collaborator called a gatekeeper, who tries to ensure that only one person is sending a message at one time telepathically through the medium. The best clairvoyants will pick out the receiver quickly and succeed in transmitting an accurate convincing identification of the sender followed by a clear message. A series of clear readings like this can be impressive. Sadly there are some less impressive clairvoyants to be found demonstrating.
Trance Mediums
Somewhat more accurate messages can come from trance mediums, see Zammit's Chapter 14 on the mediumship of Mrs Piper http://www.victorzammit.com/book/4thedition/chapter14.html .
Direct Voice Mediums
“Direct Voice” is the most accurate system of communication, and is in the sphere of physical mediumship, in which there is materialization and movement of objects (see below). In "Direct Voice" the spirit collaborators cause an artificial voice-box and lung to be materialized and the messenger is trained to use them to speak to those present. Many interesting sessions, some with well known characters have been recorded. A very interesting collection of direct voice recordings is that of the medium Leslie Flint. See http://www.leslieflint.com/
Materialisation and physical mediums
Materialisation, whole or partial, of people who can be recognized by appearance and speech, and can be touched is particularly strong evidence.
To preserve power many parts of physical séances are in total darkness but some mediums such as Alec Harris, who was an outstanding medium from 1934 to 1974, have been able to produce full body materialisations in good red light. See Victor Zammit’s Chapters 3 and 10 on the subject http://www.victorzammit.com/book/4thedition/chapter03.html and http://www.victorzammit.com/book/4thedition/chapter10.html and book “Alec Harris” by Louie Harris.
Zerdin Phenomenal organise Physical Séances in various regions and publish excellent magazines on the subject. See their website: www.zerdinphenomenal.co.uk .
The Scole Experiment (set up by spirit, not by humans) is an important aspect of the work of spirit scientists and demonstrated a new form of physical mediumship without the use of ectoplasm. See www.thescoleexperiment.com/artcl_01.ht
(b) Evidence from new sources found by the spirits.
Spirits keep finding new ways to communicate. Some people in the afterlife are quite content to get on with their new interesting experience but some keep thinking up new ways of telling us they are there and of describing their new environment.
For instance, an amateur pianist, Rosemary Brown, was chosen to be the medium for a group of composers headed by Liszt, and she has taken down new compositions from them. One of her books “Unfinished Symphonies” tells the tale. A German company at www.arends-musikverlag.de supplies sheet music and Gerhard Helzel of Hamburg supplies CD’s.
Also, a group of scientists headed by Oliver Lodge have arduously channeled three very readable books via automatic writing through a Gibraltar medium, Raymond Smith. They are “Nobody Wants to Listen and Yet!”, “For Those Who Are Willing to Listen”, and “The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth” available from CON_PSY Publications.
Many people on both sides are working on “Instrumental Transcommunication (ITC)” which is discussed in Zammit’s Chapter 5., this means communicating with the spirit world through methods equivalent to radio and fax as used in our own world. Many research laboratories are reporting extended, two-way communication with spirit colleagues almost daily, receiving wide-ranging information through telephone answering machines, radios and computer printouts.
(c)Evidence from Spiritual Healing
Spiritual healing is applied to a person through mediums known as healers. Many cures which seem miraculous occur, but of course they have been carried out by the same interaction with forces or expert surgeons and physicians in the afterlife as occurs in materialization and direct voice. There are no miracles. Spiritual healers usually regard themselves as being auxiliary to normal medical treatment, for instance for speeding up recovery, but sometimes some ingenious operation that needs techniques developed in the afterlife is called for. Healers through whom such operations take place are often called “psychic surgeons”.
See websites about one, Stephen Turoff http://www.psychicvas.com/ and click on "Psychic Surgery" in the right hand side bar, and http://stephenturoff.com/en/stephen-turoff-2/
(d) Evidence from Near Death Experience (NDE)
Millions of people have had NDE’s and many doctors have investigated them. A detailed study of NDE’s is in Zammit’s Chapter 6. http://www.victorzammit.com/book/4thedition/chapter06.html
VALIDITY OF EVIDENCE
In séances it often happens that the clairvoyant identifies the sender of a message and the receiver that it is intended for. This is very satisfying for the recipient, but it is not necessarily valid evidence of the afterlife. A psychic, who is not a channel between the two worlds, but is a sensitive who can read people’s minds or an object (psychometry) could produce this sort of thing, with no contact with another world.
Fortunately many spirits have devised ways of getting round this problem. Firstly there are many recorded instances of messages including facts which were not known to the sitter, and which had to be investigated later and were found to be true. There are some examples in Arthur Findlay’s “On the Edge of the Etheric”.
Secondly, some ingenious people have “downloaded” parts of a message through mediums in all parts of the World which only make sense when put together. The most impressive case is that of the Myers Cross-Correspondences described in Chapter 16 of Victor Zammit’s book. http://www.victorzammit.com/book/4thedition/chapter16.html
FIND OUT MORE
Whatever you read you still need some practical experience. Don’t pay through the nose for a commercial medium. The safest and cheapest way to start this is to go to some Spiritualist religious services at which the last hour is usually devoted to a demonstration of clairvoyance (voluntary collection) or to one of their evenings of mediumship (£5 - £10). You can book private sittings at some churches costing around £20, with the assurance that the medium is genuine, although you can’t guarantee the quality!
If you want to go to any physical séances, costing about £30, you have to convince the organizers that you are not going to cause any disturbance, whether due to alarm (much will be in darkness apart perhaps from luminous objects flying around) or sabotage, either of which can cause severe injury to the medium.
READING
Just a few more titles:
"From Séance to Science", by George Meek and Bertha Harris, Regency Press, London and New York.
"On the Edge of the Etheric", by Arthur Findlay, THE HEADQUARTERS PUBLISHING COMPANY LIMITED, London.
“The Articulate Dead”, by Michael E. Timn, Galde Press, Minnesota, USA.
“Life in the World Unseen”, by Anthony Borgia, Two Worlds Publishing.
“Is There a Life After Death?” by Davis Fontana, O-books, Winchester. A comprehensive overview of the evidence.
“The Supreme Adventure - Analyses of Psychic Communications” by Robert Crookall, James Clarke & Co. Limited Cambridge. (This is the most detailed analysis of communications describing the afterlife I have ever read.)
"The History of Spiritualism, Volumes 1 and 2" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Spiritual Truth Press. (First Published 1926).
"This Is Spiritualism" by Maurice Barbanell, William Clowes and Son Ltd. London and Beccles. First published by Robert Jenkins, London in 1959..
And some useful websites:
The Campaign for Philosophical Freedom is a non-profit organisation founded by Michael Roll to present the secular scientific case for survival after death - the case for a separate mind and brain, the scientific proof that we all survive the death of our physical bodies, irrespective of our beliefs.
A website with an index to take you to what various people say about aspects of the afterlife:
http://www.aeces.info/Afterlife-Guide/AG_home.shtml
List of books that can be read online:
http://www.leo-bonomo.com/Free_Books.html (not all the links work!)
For viewers interested in physical mediumship:
Website of Brigitte Rix, clairaudient, with an interesting Q and A section and publicity about her book, I'm Not Dead: I'm Alive... Without a Body! which is obtainable at Amazon freepost.
"GOOGLE" "afterlife essays" for several other interesting websites, some offering free or priced essays for students.
FINALLY - A bit about the author of this website
So ends my quick look at the afterlife. I am George Barker, B.Eng., M.I.Mech.E., a mechanical engineer, born 1918. I have tried to show any newcomer to the subject in a few paragraphs of plain language how much information and evidence is available. I am sure they will find many of the links interesting. I am being assisted in editing this website by Nick Mellersh. For his web output see www.mellersh.org .Website comments to georgefb@afterlifeessays.org.uk
In your investigations follow the advice of Silver Birch* about information received that purports to be truth from the Spirit World, "There is nothing that appeals more to an old soul like myself than to see you testing everything at the bar of reason. We enthrone reason as the great guide. Always reject what your reason rejects, no matter through whom it comes or the source. These are the truths that should appeal to reason and intelligence. If reason revolts and intelligence is insulted, then discard them."
The other chapters will be about some subjects in detail, such as “Why Don’t They Believe the Evidence?”, “Who are these 'spiritualists'?”, “How many bodies do we have?”, “What is the afterlife made of?”, “Would it do any good if we all believed in the afterlife?” and so on.
* Silver Birch's teachings were recorded in Hannen Swaffer's home circle through the medium Maurice Barbanell in the 1930's. Many books containing selections of his communications are published by the Psychic Press, Essex..