Do you believe in immortality? “No, and one life is enough for me.”
—Albert Einstein
This may be hard to believe, but a number of research mediums, whom I use in afterlife laboratory experiments, regularly tell me that Einstein is alive and well on the other side, that he has important messages for humanity, and sometimes the receivers include me. If these mediums are correct, then the Einstein quote that introduces this chapter is no longer valid.
Although I listened quietly to these reports, until now I have done nothing about them. I have not written about the numerous, independently replicated claims of these mediums nor their emerging complementary evidence concerning Einstein’s existence in the spirit world. Moreover, I have yet to invite Einstein to participate formally in our laboratory research.
My discussion of Einstein and his continued consciousness points toward a real scientific dilemma that needs to be approached thoughtfully and thoroughly. It provides us with the opportunity to explore what we consider evidence of Spirit’s existence and why we need an expanded and intention-focused criterion. This criterion is important in not only establishing Spirit’s existence but also helping establish whether our internal voice is a psychological projection or if it has a character of its own and may be the whisperings of Spirit guiding us.
The Meaning and Use of Prove and Proof of Concept
A point of clarification and definition: It is important to understand that scientists do not typically use the words prove and proof, and this includes me. Scientists prefer statements like “determine the probability of a given explanation accounting for the available data.” The word prove is usually reserved for mathematics: “to verify the correctness or validity of by mathematical demonstration or arithmetical proof” (Random House Unabridged Dictionary).
However, I am intentionally using prove in this book in its more general, everyday dictionary meaning of the term: “to subject to test, experiment, comparison, analysis, or the like, to determine quality, amount, acceptability, characteristics, etc.” (Random House Unabridged Dictionary). Also, as noted earlier, there is the proof-of-concept stage, an experiment, pretest, or even a prototype model, which demonstrates in principle the feasibility of a scientific approach or a product’s viability to verify that the concept or theory is deserving of further or more formal experimentation or product development.
The proof of concept is usually considered a milestone on the way to a fully functioning prototype. I consider all of the preliminary and exploratory investigations and self-science observations included in this book as examples of proof of concept and proof in principle, because they are demonstrations of the potential use of the scientific method to address the questions, “Is Spirit real?” and “Can Spirit play a role in our personal and collective lives?” And by example, “Is Einstein still here?” and“Can Einstein play some role in our personal and collective lives?”
People often ask me, “Are you trying to prove X, where X is life after death or the role of Spirit in healing?” What I say is: “Absolutely not. What I am attempting to do is to give X the opportunity to prove itself.” If X exists—in this case, the larger and more general idea of Spirit and a greater spiritual reality—we are using the scientific method to ideally optimize the possibility of Spirit to establish its own existence. In other words, the proof of the pudding is in the tasting, a precept that businesspeople as well as scientists, and mothers, use every day. So, if Einstein exists, what we could do is give Einstein the opportunity to prove it in the laboratory—that is, if we are brave enough.
But before we consider this new approach, it will help us to conduct a related Einstein gedanken experiment, or thought experiment—one carried out by proposing a mental hypothesis only. Einstein loved gedanken experiments; his most famous was imagining as a boy that he was riding alongside a light beam traveling at the speed of light. Our gedanken experiment requires that we imagine that Einstein is indeed still here, and we try to put ourselves in his spiritual shoes.
Putting Yourself in Einstein’s Shoes (or Consciousness)
Let’s imagine that Einstein’s granddaughter goes to a medium. Let’s assume for the moment that the medium is not a fraud—engaged in fake mediumship (doing what is called “cold reading,” or using a mental magician’s set of techniques). Also, the granddaughter is being a good sitter—the person for whom the reading is being given—meaning she is not giving the medium cues or information about her grandfather. In fact, let’s imagine that she has not told the medium that she is related to Einstein; in other words, the medium is blind to this fact.
Einstein is aware—from his position on the other side—that just because the medium provides verifiable evidence of his past history, this by itself is insufficient to prove that his consciousness has survived bodily death to any objective observer. He and any objective observer understand that it is theoretically possible that the medium might be psychic and telepathically reading his granddaughter’s mind. If the medium is reading her mind, the accurate information, supposedly coming from him, would not in itself be proof that it was from Einstein on the other side.
Even if the medium is not reading his granddaughter’s mind, she might be obtaining the information from other sources, including what some scientists speculate might be the so-called zero point field (mentioned earlier). Just as information encoded in starlight continues to exist in the vacuum of space long after the star has died, it is theoretically possible that the medium is retrieving the information and energy Einstein left in the vacuum of space that was created while he was alive.
Let’s further imagine that his granddaughter is quite skeptical—even worse, that she is a professional scientist like him. Einstein is well aware of the theoretical possibility of mind reading as well as what is termed super-psi—such as reading dead information in the quantum vacuum of space. How would his skeptical loved one know that Einstein, in spirit, was actually in communication with the medium? How would Einstein demonstrate to his skeptical loved one that he was actually conscious, alive, and evolving on the other side?
What Does It Mean to Have a Mind, a Living Consciousness?
To understand Einstein’s dilemma, my deceased mother’s dilemma, or any other spirit’s, let’s imagine that you are the deceased. How would you, on the other side, go about proving that you were not only still conscious but alive as well?
To address these fundamental and far-reaching questions, it is helpful for us to step back and consider what it means to be both conscious and alive in the first place, and examine how we would go about proving that we were conscious and alive in the physical world.
Let’s consider consciousness first. How would I prove to you that I am conscious as I am writing this book?
The truth is that the only consciousness we know for sure is our own. I experience my thoughts and feelings; you experience yours. Though you may empathize with my thoughts and feelings, you cannot experience them directly. For example, I may tell you that I am seeing a beautiful orange sunset, and it may look orange to you too. However, you can’t be sure that what you see as orange is the same experience of orange that I have, nor can I be sure that mine is the same as yours. Just because I tell you that I am conscious is not proof that I am conscious.
As a case in point, I can program a computer to engage in complex dialogues that sound very much like me.
You could ask the computer: What is your name?
I could have the computer programmed to detect the vocal pattern, “What is your name?” and it could respond by saying, “My name is Gary.”
You could ask: Where do you live?
Likewise the computer program could detect this pattern, and respond with, “I live in Tucson, Arizona.”
You might then ask a trick question: Are you conscious?
I could have the computer programmed to detect the pattern “Are you conscious?” and say, “Obviously. Are you?”
I could program tens of thousands of possible questions you might ask and connect them with multiple kinds of answers designed by me, and thereby make the computer seem quite conscious, creative, and alive. In fact, if we were conducting this communication experiment over the telephone, you might think that you were actually speaking with me!
The bottom line is that I can’t prove to you that I am conscious, especially since contemporary computers could play me quite well. The take-home message is that the best you can do is to infer that I am conscious from my behaviors. And I must do the same with you: infer that you are conscious from your behaviors.
This fundamental challenge (some would say problem) is compounded after we die. If I can’t prove to you, definitively, that I am conscious when I am physically alive, how can I convince you that I am still conscious after I die? The crux is that the medium must infer that the deceased spirit is conscious just as you infer that I, in the physical, am conscious.
It is essential to understand that experimental physicists are used to inferring processes they can’t measure directly. They believe in the existence of a gravitational field because of the behavior of objects moving in space or the behavior of numbers changing on a computer screen. Gravity cannot be seen, heard, or detected with our primary senses. It is inferred indirectly by its effects on matter or light, and the same goes for consciousness. I know I am conscious, and I infer that you are conscious. You know that you are conscious, and you infer that I am conscious. Proving that we are conscious is difficult enough. Proving that we are a living consciousness is even more difficult.
Think about this: Obviously there is no difficulty in proving to you that I am biophysically alive. You can measure my brain waves, my heartbeat, my oxygen consumption, and so forth, and conclude that I am currently, physically alive. However, what would you measure to prove that my consciousness is alive? Moreover, how would I prove to you that I am mentally alive?
On the face of it, this may seem obvious too. You can ask me questions and I can answer them. But does this process prove that my consciousness is alive? The computer-programming example presented above—sometimes called the Turing test after the computer scientist who first described it—reminds us that the question-answer paradigm does not prove the existence of consciousness, let alone aliveness. Although creative and clever responsiveness is consistent with aliveness, it is not proof of it.
When a medium says, “I see Einstein, and he is jumping up and down,” does this necessarily mean that Einstein is actually jumping up and down on the other side? Or could the medium be seeing a historical record of Einstein jumping up and down, if not actually imagining Einstein jumping up and down?
Just because the medium says that she sees Einstein doing or saying specific things does not necessarily mean that Einstein is actually there and alive, even if the information is highly accurate and independently verifiable by other living relatives or scientists. The issue here is not one of accuracy; it is of survival of consciousness and aliveness.
So how does Einstein on the other side prove that he is still a living consciousness? How does his granddaughter, who in our thought experiment happens to be both a skeptic and a scientist, come to the conclusion that the great scientist—his very essence—is still here? And it doesn’t matter whether it is Einstein the deceased scientist or Shirley my deceased mother—they both have the same problem. And now conceptually you do, too, if you feel you’re having genuine contact with a deceased loved one or spirit guide.
Showing Scientists that the Deceased Have Minds of Their Own
This has been the ultimate question for scientists and afterlife researchers interested in documenting whether consciousness survives physical death. It is relatively easy for researchers to establish definitively that conventional explanations of mediumship such as fraud, cold reading, rater bias, even experimenter bias, cannot account for all of the findings. It is more difficult to establish that the medium isn’t reading the conscious mind of the sitter.
As I discussed in my previous books, there is substantial evidence that mediums typically fail to relay the precise information that the sitter is consciously thinking about, or provide information that the sitter has forgotten and recalls later, or provide information that the sitter never knew in the first place. Other professional scientists, such as Dr. David Fontana, as well as lay scientists, such as Susy Smith, have discussed this in their books as well. This still leaves open the possibility that the mediums were doing something that is superpsychic, such as reading the distant mind of a relative or friend, or tapping into information left in the quantum vacuum of space.
Meanwhile, remember that we are imagining in our thought experiment that Einstein happens to actually be there on the other side, and that he is trying as hard as he can to convince his loved one—and you and me, for that matter—that he is not only conscious but very much alive as well. How does he do this?
The answer is that he asserts himself, and he does so creatively and convincingly.
Spirits Assert Themselves in Evermore Ingenious Ways
The truth is, though I was familiar with the research spanning more than a hundred years addressing the survival of consciousness hypothesis, I did not anticipate that new convincing evidence would begin to show up unexpectedly, and repeatedly, in both my formal laboratory experiments as well as my informal self-science investigations, through no conscious effort or control of my own.
From the very beginning of my research program, I witnessed unanticipated and unplanned instances that were strongly suggestive of the survival of Spirit. This evidence was accentuated, sometimes extraordinarily so, following the deaths of distinguished persons who were scientists in their own right—especially Susy Smith—and who were very familiar with afterlife research. You will meet some of these people and the lessons they taught me in the next four chapters.
As I witnessed these accumulating instances of apparent survival, one after the next, it became clear to me that the way for deceased people—such as Einstein and my mother—to prove that they were alive is simply for them to assert themselves.
They could take charge of the situation and show that they had qualities of conscious intention—what we scientifically refer to as discarnate intention.
Basically, the deceased Susy Smith could establish that she has a mind of her own, and she could use it creatively, sometimes playfully, and in certain instances, definitively. She could show that she has at least as much freedom as you or I do, that she could make choices and march to her own drummer.
The deceased could even establish that she is not a slave to our experiments, but rather she is as much in charge of the outcome as, if not more so than, the scientists conducting them.
In other words, the deceased could demonstrate that the medium is not getting the information; rather, the information is being given to the medium. As Dr. Julie Beischel and I expressed in our 2007 paper published in EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and Healing, mediums do not retrieve the information; they receive it.
Curiously, my emerging research reveals that people who regularly took charge in life continue to take charge in the afterlife. People who asserted themselves on this side continue to assert themselves on the other side. Those who were creative and cunning on the earth appear to behave creatively and cunningly after they died. Remember, this criterion also applies to your internal voice: is it your psychological complex talking to you, or something independent of your own history that could be “other-directed,” as we say in afterlife research?
Using scientific language, the information received by mediums revealed properties that strongly implied the existence of: intention, assertion, decision making, self-control, disagreement, stubbornness, and so forth—characteristics that people showed in life that continued after they died.
Let’s consider one last key question before we explore the proof-of-concept evidence.
How can I prove to you that I have a mind of my own—and by extension, how you can prove to me, or your loved ones, that you have a mind of your own—regardless of whether you are in the physical or in the post-physical, on the other side?
If I choose:
1. I can interrupt you when you are speaking.
2. I can surprise you with an unexpected visit.
3. You can ask me one question, but I can decide to give you an answer to the previous question.
4. You can make a statement, and I can disagree with you.
5. You can ask me to stop, and I can decide to ignore your request.
6. You can ask for a specific piece of information, and I can say, “No, I won’t tell you.”
7. I can even choose to lie to you.
If survival of consciousness is real, then theoretically, I can do these things whether I am in the physical or not. If you give me the opportunity to assert myself, I can show you that I am my own person.
You can do this, too.
So can Einstein.
Emerging Unplanned Evidence for Discarnate Intention
The next four chapters detail a series of surprising instances, mostly unplanned and unanticipated by myself, that have occurred in the context of our afterlife experiments research. I confess my confusion, surprise, delight, disbelief, frustration, and wonder as each account unfolds. These unplanned instances include little-known deceased people like my mother and mother-in-law and well-known deceased individuals such as Princess Diana. As one of the deceased scientists taught me after he had died, “Survival is in the details.”
And as you are about to discover, the deceased are sometimes more crafty and compelling than we scientists could ever be—and a lot more mischievous.
If the deceased really have survived, then they obviously know more about the afterlife than we do.
The question is, are we ready and willing to listen? Are we willing, with their guidance and collaboration, to design and conduct the kinds of future experiments that can definitively establish, beyond any reasonable doubt, that they are still here?
As challenging as it is scientifically to establish that they are still here, it is even more daunting to establish that it is their fervent intention to help us, individually and collectively. Yet this is precisely what science must do: find a way to document that Spirit intention not only exists but that it is focused on our welfare.
This makes the scientific case relevant to my exploration of Spirit and yours. If we’re going to accept advice from Spirit or follow through with an alternative practitioner, we better be sure that this is real and we’re not just fooling ourselves or projecting our hopes and wishes into the vacuum of space. The Sacred Promise is about this great possibility; it provides the essential proof-of-concept evidence for taking this work forward in a serious and responsible manner.
Remember, if the research mediums are correct, Einstein and other great historical figures are semipatiently waiting for all of us, including conservative scientists, to finally take them and their intentions seriously. And as you will see, the perceptions of these responsible and devoted research mediums—as strange as they may sometimes seem—deserve our serious consideration.