Chapter 14
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POSTMORTEM (origin: Latin): (1) adverb: After death. (2) adjective: Taking place, formed, or done after death or (colloquially) after the conclusion of a matter.—Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 6th ed., s.v. “postmortem”
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Sogyal Rinpoche, Tibetan lama and author of the best seller The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (1992, 7–8), writes:
When I first came to the West, I was shocked by the contrast between the attitudes to death I had been brought up with, and those I now found. For all its technological achievements, modern Western society has no real understanding of death or what happens in death or after death.
I learned that people today are taught to deny death, and taught that it means nothing but annihilation and loss. That means that most of the world lives either in denial of death or in terror of it. Even talking about death is considered morbid, and many people believe that simply mentioning death is to risk wishing it upon ourselves.
Others look on death with a naive, thoughtless cheerfulness, thinking that for some unknown reason death will work out all right for them, and that it is nothing to worry about.
When I think of them, I am reminded of what one Tibetan master says: “People often make the mistake of being frivolous about death and think, ‘Oh well, death happens to everybody. It’s not a big deal; it’s natural. I’ll be fine.’ That’s a nice theory until one is dying.”
All the greatest spiritual traditions of the world, including, of course, Christianity, have told us clearly that death is not the end. They have all handed down a vision of some sort of life to come, which infuses this life that we are leading now with sacred meaning. But despite their teachings, modern society is largely a spiritual desert, where the majority imagines that this life is all that there is. Without any real or authentic faith in an afterlife, most people live lives deprived of any ultimate meaning.
I have come to realize that the disastrous effects of the denial of death go far beyond the individual: They affect the whole planet. Believing fundamentally that this life is the only one, modern people have developed no long-term vision. So there is nothing to restrain them from plundering the planet for their own immediate ends and from living in a selfish way that could prove fatal for the future….
Fear of death and ignorance of the afterlife are fueling that destruction of our environment that is threatening all of our lives. So isn’t it all the more disturbing that people are not taught what death is, or how to die? Or given any hope in what lies after death, and so what really lies behind life? Could it be more ironic that young people are so highly educated in every subject except the one that holds the key to the entire meaning of life, and perhaps to our very survival? (51)
I resonate strongly with Sogyal Rinpoche’s point of view but, being a modern Westerner, recognize how difficult it is for us moderns to simply accept religious or spiritual teachings about death or otherwise resolve this issue, especially with a built-in biological fear of death lurking in the background of our more rational and conscious attempts to deal with it. Being sensible and rational about death is a fine aim, but I doubt we ever completely get there.
I’m sure it’s psychologically rewarding and useful to have a firm, spiritually oriented set of beliefs that include postmortem survival, reincarnation, or both for a possibility of long-term evolution of the individual and the world. That adds long-term meaning to life. But in these days when scientism has so thoroughly undermined the capacity for religious belief in so many, most of us need something more than teachings on what spiritual systems believe: we need supportive, empirical, scientific evidence for giving energy to spiritual ideas. Part of this undermining is irrational faith in materialism as a total worldview, but part is also genuine science showing that a wide variety of traditional religious views about reality are factually wrong; they just don’t stand up to empirical tests. Many of these religious ideas may have been the best people could do at the time to try to make sense of life, but tenaciously holding onto them after they’ve been superseded by scientific theories with much more evidence to support them, such as the earth’s age being hugely more than the five thousand years extrapolated from biblical scholarship, leads to unnecessary suffering and conflict.
As we’ve discussed in various places, that’s the main thrust of this book, looking at scientific evidence that makes it a reasonable strategy to invest in spirituality.
When we come to the topic of death—you and I, after all, are going to die someday—probably the most important question ever looked into by psychical research is the question of postmortem survival. Does our consciousness or mind, in some form, survive physical death? Or is such hope deluded and futile? Remember how Bertrand Russell (1923, 6–7) put it in this quote first given in chapter 1?
“That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought or feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system; and the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy that rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”
I personally find this materialistic idea quite depressing—an admission that, to materialists, will simply show that I have neurotic hopes and lack the courage to face the facts. If I believed that there’s no hope of any kind of survival, I would adapt as much as possible by becoming more “normal” in this materialistic age. That is, I would show excessive concern for my health, promote research that supports health and increases our life spans, and avoid taking any unnecessary risks that might endanger my health or my life, while otherwise trying to maximize my pleasure and minimize my pain. Psychologically, I would try not to think about the depressing reality and finality of death, work on distracting myself with constant pleasurable pursuits, and if the above steps weren’t enough, find a doctor who would prescribe mood-altering medications so I wouldn’t feel depressed.
Hmmm… doesn’t this sound like what a lot of people already do? Is there widespread, but largely suppressed, depression resulting from our materialistic outlook? Yet the way to effectively treat depression is not to pretend it isn’t there.
We can get chemical protection from emotional lows (and highs), but too often we give up the possibility of rich and vivid lives for the apparent safety of dull ones.
We’ll return later to questions about what differences good evidence for or against some kind of survival would make in people’s lives. But now let’s look at some of the existing evidence: first the indirect kind and then the more direct kind.
The a priori materialistic dismissal of the possibility of survival of any aspect of mind after death rests on the simple equation: mind equals brain.
If this is all there is to it, of course, mind couldn’t survive death. The brain shuts down its electrical activity within a few seconds of being deprived of oxygen, which happens when the heart stops beating. After a few minutes, at most, of being deprived of oxygen, the brain cells become irreversibly damaged. With physical death, the damage is complete and permanent, and the brain decays into mush. The usual materialistic analogy is that the mind is like a personal computer. Once the computer’s parts are destroyed, any programs it ran are gone forever. How could any aspect of mind survive the destruction of the brain?
But we’ve looked at many aspects of psychic functioning in previous chapters, psi phenomena that don’t seem limited by the known laws of the physical world. Telepathy and clairvoyance aren’t affected by any of the physical-shielding materials or physical distances that have been studied to date, for instance. PK and psychic healing don’t have any known or likely classical physical basis. Precognition (and perhaps postcognition, if it indeed is a distinct, real phenomenon) doesn’t seem limited by time as known physical energies are. One way of bringing this data into our worldview is to admit that, while ordinary mind and consciousness are strongly affected by the brain, you can’t totally equate them. You must say that in some real sense, mind does not equal brain, or, more positively: ordinary mind equals brain plus something else.
Thus the various psi phenomena open a possibility of survival of some aspect of mind. If mind is something (and the “thing” in “something” is probably misleading in its concreteness) more than simply brain, it’s reasonable to ask if that “something more” survives bodily death or has “spiritual” characteristics.
Basic psi phenomena, then, the big five, provide indirect evidence of possible postmortem survival.
From one point of view, OBEs and NDEs, discussed in chapters 12 and 13, provide more-direct evidence of postmortem survival. That kind of experience is usually conclusive from the viewpoint of the person experiencing it. After direct, personal experience of mentally functioning while experientially separated from your physical body, the typical attitude is something like, “I don’t just believe I’ll survive death; I know it. I’ve been there and had my preview.” Belief or disbelief is an inference, a theory, made from a lack of enough direct data, or direct experience. I might believe that, say, vanilla ice cream tastes sweet if I’ve never had any, judging from reports of what others have said, but since I’ve actually tasted it, I know it tastes sweet.
From the point of view of those of us who haven’t had an OBE or NDE, of course, we can certainly accept as data that those experiencing these phenomena claim that they have direct knowledge of survival; it’s their (from our perspective) belief, but we can rationally accept it only as evidence, of varying quality, not final proof. After all, none of these people having OBEs or NDEs was really dead. The person’s brain functions later, so perhaps it was functioning in some fashion during the OBE or NDE, even if we don’t see that it was? Maybe the Pam Reynolds case in chapter 13, where her psi perception of things during an NDE while there was no blood in her brain wasn’t really what it seemed to be? The idea that people who’ve had NDEs weren’t really dead is a reasonable objection in many ways. That’s why I usually present information about OBEs and NDEs as more direct evidence for survival than psi phenomena in general, but still indirect evidence, supporting but not proving postmortem survival.
As far back as recorded human history goes, and undoubtedly farther, people have experienced what they’ve called ghosts, spirits, and apparitions, and many have taken these as evidence of some kind of postmortem survival. Sometimes it seems as if these experiences are deliberately produced from the “other side” as a form of communication, thus the modern acronym ADCs, after-death communications. When looked at dispassionately and closely, many, if not most, of these reports aren’t very evidential and may well be hallucinations, but a significant number require more serious consideration.
Here’s an impressive case from my website, The Archives of Scientists’ Transcendent Experiences (www.issc-taste.org). The contributor, Joseph Waldron, received his Ph.D. in psychology from Ohio State University in 1975, has been a professor of psychology, and was a Distinguished Research Professor at Youngstown State University in Ohio when he sent in this personal experience. He’s well known for many contributions to rehabilitative medicine and research on one of the most widely used psychological tests, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. I mention this background information to remind us that many reports of psi experiences come from people we would expect to be the best kinds of observers, not from careless, superstitious people.
I’ve shortened this account somewhat to keep our focus, but other fascinating details are available in the original account on the TASTE website (Waldron 2000).
Rene and I were married during 1966. Twenty-six years later (1992), we had three beautiful daughters and a wonderful marriage. In April she was diagnosed with cancer. She died November 19, 1992.
The last eight months were among the best and the worst of times. We seemed to be more and more in love as she slowly slipped away. We were rarely apart. While Rene knew she was dying, she did not want to know about the nitty-gritty of it. She wanted me to take care of “all that palliative stuff,” and so I did. During her last seven days I never left her side except to use the bathroom. And then she was dead. We were both confirmed agnostics: she was a former Presbyterian, and I was a Roman Catholic until I turned atheist at age fifteen. By twenty-five I was an agnostic, because it was the only reasonable position. Death, we agreed, was probably the best night’s sleep a person ever got. According to her wishes, she was cremated in something like a cardboard box, and we remembered Rene as she lived—not in death. Out of respect for her wishes, there was no memorial service. I cite these behaviors and ideas to indicate the firm belief we both had in agnosticism. However, as any good agnostic would do, I said to her two days before she died and while she was conscious that if she continued after death, I would sorely want to hear from her. I anticipated a very long, lonely road. Rene, in her usual, somewhat humorous way, raised one eyebrow as she looked at me in the way she would do when she nonverbally queried if the other person seriously meant what they said. We did not discuss it any more than that.
Two weeks after her death, I was going through the motions of acting as though life had meaning. Two of our daughters were still at home and “Dad” was needed to be there for them. Our family is about as close as five people could be, and Rene had been the center of our collective universe. I was sleeping a lot, as depressed people are likely to do. I knew I was clinically depressed, fought it for the girls’ sake, and tried to live a normal life—under the circumstances. I entertained no notions of seeing or hearing from Rene again. The black hole was deep and appeared to be never ending. I was learning to accept the idea that the major part of my life was over, and only cleaning up was left to do.
As best I can remember, I was lying on the couch [at] about 11:00 p.m. I was probably in a hypnagogic state when I got up to answer a knock at the front door. The girls were young adults, and I expected any twenty-something male or female at that time of night. I opened the door and was startled, surprised, taken aback. There stood Rene in the long, red velvet cape I had bought several years ago. I loved her in that “Red Riding Hood” cape. She was statuesque, regal, and commanded attention whenever she walked into a room. I was proud just to be with her when she wore that cape. Need I say that she only ever wore it at my insistence
My stupid comment was, “What are you doing here at the front door?” The thought in my mind was, “You are dead; how can you be here?” But I was trying to be tactful. She answered with, “You know why; I don’t live here anymore.” There was a smile of love and kindness, and also of hesitancy. She turned and walked across the porch to leave.
I was dazed, confused, and “came to” [while] standing in the living room. I had closed the door but do not remember doing it. The event was unbelievably real, “more real than real,” as the people who have near-death experiences say.
By the next morning I had pretty well dismissed the whole event. [It] [h]ad to be some kind of hallucination—though I have never, to my knowledge, hallucinated or suffered anything worse than the depression I was now in. It seemed that maybe I had better straighten up and get on with my life before my daughters noticed how strange their father had become. And yet, every memory of it was as though it were real. To say I was confused is to put it mildly. Over the next few days I seemed to become more confused, more depressed. Think of the possibilities: maybe she still lived in another world; maybe I would see her again after I died. No, the dead were—well—dead. This hallucination, if that is what it was, was more torturous than not having it. Was she alive; was she not alive? Does she love me; does she not? Like picking the petals on a daisy, though far more painful than such adolescent musings, I was contemplating the center of my universe. By turns I was elated, hopeful, a little giddy, and alternatively deeply depressed missing her, anticipating a dismal future, helpless and hopeless. I felt like I was going around the proverbial bend. “Definitely a sharp left turn,” I said to myself.
About ten days later I was in my study/therapy office. Our home was in the country, and I had a separate wing for my research and practice. This night, as had been common over the last few weeks, I slept wherever I found myself. I just could not bring myself to sleep in our bed. I had worked all day, and I had worked hard to try and lose myself in something other than my own depression. By 11:00 p.m. I was literally falling asleep as I sat reading on the couch. I nodded once, opened my eyes, and there stood Rene where it was impossible for her to stand, in a six-inch space between two file cabinets. In front of her was the wheelchair that I had pushed around for the last four months (in reality the chair had been returned to the supply company). Somehow the chair was now gone, and we were in a long embrace that seemed to last 20–30 minutes. I have never felt so loved and cared for in my life. We did not talk about anything of consequence. In fact I don’t really remember what we said. I do know that the conversation was not in words, and I also knew she was “dead” and I was not.
Eventually a woman got my attention and said she wanted to show me something that Rene had made. The lady was kind; I did not want to be rude, so I walked into the other room so she could show me whatever it was. She showed me some sort of other-world crystal carving of a butterfly or something similar. I tried to be polite, said it was beautiful [footnote omitted] (which it was) but that I had to get back to the other room. When I got back, Rene was gone. During this whole interaction I was aware of someone else in another corner of the room where Rene and I met: A man who seemed to be there to help Rene do what she wanted to do (see me) and make sure that everything went as it should. He never spoke or communicated in any way, but I sensed he was there to help her in some way unknown to me. In (later) thinking about the presence of this other person, I have the idea that his function was to insure that I did not remember some of the things that Rene and I discussed. I know we talked about the kids and loving each other. I am also sure that I would have had a million questions about what it was like to be dead. However, I do not remember any of the content of our discussion, and that is not like me. In some way, completely unknown to me, this other person had the ability to make sure that Rene and I could get together and that I would take away from that meeting only the information presented here.
All this could be a hallucination or a dream, and indeed if I were to hear it in my clinical practice, I would place much emphasis on the hypnagogic state on both occasions. However, it happened to me, and I know it was real as well as I can know anything. The ramifications have been long acting, for now all of my nonteaching time is spent in studying after-death experiences. In the last seven years I have read and studied more about parapsychology, after death, near death, and dying than I ever read for a Ph.D. in developmental psychology….
To me these experiences are real. So real they have changed my life. My depression was gone, absolutely lifted, after the second instance. I have never looked back. I know she lives on somewhere and that life after what we call death is far too important a topic to leave for softheaded people to think about.??
Now from a hardball scientist who teaches multivariate statistics, research methods, and one who wrote computerized diagnostic software, I have joined the paranormal set. I am sure that some of my colleagues think I have indeed gone round that bend when they hear about my public talks and workshops exploring the issues as we in the sciences are prone to do.
And that little agnostic side of me creeps in and says, “Even if you are deluded, the positive effects of after-death experiences are too therapeutic to ignore.” They sure can be life changing.
As we noted in discussing OBEs and NDEs, this kind of ADC experience is directly evidential and convincing to those who’ve had the direct experience, but is still indirect evidence for those of us who haven’t.
Like most people in our culture, I’ve always implicitly assumed that these kinds of ADCs are rare, that I knew of them only because of my extensive reading of the exotic psychical research literature. A colleague who’s a well-known grief counselor, Louis LaGrand, assures me that having ADCs after losing a loved one is actually common (1998). In fact, a majority of people have had them! By and large, they never talk about them to others, knowing they’d be considered crazy as a result of their grief. By never talking about them, they help maintain the belief that it’s not “normal” to have such an experience.
Table 14.1 will give you some general idea of what ADCs are like. Bill and Judy Guggenheim (1997) have charted the characteristics and types of ADCs based on interviews with 2,000 people, yielding 3,300 accounts.
Table 14.1 Qualities of After Death Communications
Sensing a presence —Distinct feeling that deceased loved one is nearby. Feeling is often discounted with culturally approved beliefs that it’s just imagination.
Hearing a voice —May seem like an external, physical voice or may be an internal, telepathic voice.
Feeling a touch —Affectionate touches like pats, hugs, and caresses.
Smelling a fragrance —Smelling loved one’s favorite perfume or cologne, personal scent, or favorite food.
Visual appearances —Ranging from head and shoulders to full body; transparent mist to full, solid visual reality.
Visions —Loved one in a scene, like seeing a slide show or movie in the air.
Altered-state experiences —In the hypnagogic (falling asleep) or hypnopompic (coming awake) state, or while meditating or praying.
Sleep-state ADCs —Vivid experiences of contact during sleep, not confused with ordinary dreams.
OBE ADCs —Contact with loved one while having an OBE, at his or her “level” or “place.” Typically more “real” than “real.”
Telephone calls —Answer phone and hear loved one’s voice giving a message. Sometimes two-way conversations.
Physical phenomena —Physical manifestations such as paranormal movement of objects taken as a sign from deceased loved one.
Symbolic ADCs —Something happens in response to the bereaved’s request for a sign from the deceased loved one that reassures the bereaved that deceased loved one is okay.
Like OBEs and NDEs, ADCs carry powerful convictions that (at least some part of) consciousness can survive physical death, and ADCs have been experienced by enormous numbers of people, rather than being comparatively rare as with OBEs and NDEs. Some ADCs, like OBEs and NDEs, may be purely subjective phenomena, but some have psi components that don’t allow us to dismiss them as “merely” subjective.
Now let’s look at the most direct evidence that some aspect of consciousness may survive physical death.