Leaving the sterile towers of the Bonaventure Hotel in Los Angeles, Jude and I are driving north. Midmorning light scrapes the barren outcroppings of the San Gabriel Range. Strings of houses terrace the mountains’ base. We are heading toward the home of Austyn Wells, a medium who already knows Jordan (from working with Catherine) and whose specialty is teaching people how to forge their own contact with the dead.
Arriving at Austyn’s home, as we climb from the car I am struck by how different we feel now compared to that day in Chicago five years ago, when we first sought Jordan. Jude, in the intervening time and because of the experiences and messages from Jordan documented in these chapters, has gone “from hope to certainty” that Jordan is still with us. And I have been given this book, full of Jordan’s voice and one core truth: that we are together, and no one we love is ever lost. Jude and I look at the trees, the flowers; we listen to the birdsong. We are, as we walk into the courtyard of Austyn’s house, unafraid.
Austyn greets us in a flowing black dress. Her hair is up, framing tanned skin and an array of elegant jewelry. Her face is well cared for in middle age, and her appearance suggests both the accoutrement of privilege and a caring accessibility.
The room where Austyn works is dark, with crystals and candles and soft New Age organ music. I am put off by the mystical bric-a-brac, but I push myself to begin: “Jordan sent us to you.”
Austyn allows silence. She opens her notepad and reports that Jordan is in the room. “He’s excited,” she says. “He’s sitting right between you.”
I look at the small space between Jude and me on the leather love seat, and I imagine Jordan squeezing between us. Somehow he still seems remote, a figure held aloft by ones who make their living conjuring the dead.
“Jordan says your book is almost finished — twelve chapters.” Austyn pauses. “He’s showing me the first four chapters, how you wrote the story of making contact with him. And then it takes off — mostly written by Jordan — explaining how life and death work.” She looks at us. “Is that right?”
“That’s the way we did it,” I say. “Jordan told me that the last chapter would require seeking knowledge from someone else. That Jude and I would have to travel somewhere. Finally, he suggested seeing you.”
Austyn concentrates, looking at me. “Jordan says everything changed for you after he died. You were devoted to science, to research, and then you. . . discovered the spiritual side. And it caused a schism in you, where you now feel less involved with science. Jordan says you have to bring these two sides together” — she knits her fingers — “so you can hold them both. That’s what the last chapter has to be about — bringing the scientific and spiritual together.”
This is something that has never occurred to me. And I have the thought that it’s too radically different from anything Jordan and I have talked about to ever have entered our conversation. Though in life Jordan was very interested in science, since his death we have focused exclusively on spiritual questions.
Now, quite suddenly, I am downloading an entire model of how science and spirituality can interface. It shows up as both an image and an idea, at once whole and complex. I have experienced this phenomenon before — with Jordan and in communications from my council of elders in the life between lives. The entire concept arrives instantaneously, in one piece and without words. It’s like a picture that I glance at and put away for later; I’ll look at it again in detail when we get home.
Austyn stares down for a moment; she appears to be listening. “Jude?” Another interval passes; Austyn looks abstracted. “You have been waiting to hear from Jordan, but your medium isn’t words. He can’t reach you with words. Your medium is touch, sensation. That’s how you can feel his presence.”
Immediately I think of Chicago, where I heard Jordan’s voice but Jude did not. And I recognize the truth of what Austyn says: Jude was a dancer, and now she sculpts. She knows things in her body and her hands.
“Jude, just let your eyes close for a moment.” Austyn’s voice has become stronger, less the tone of a medium than of a teacher. “Go inside and let yourself be aware of your body. In a moment, invite Jordan in; let him be present inside you. Just let him in now and feel his energy. . . what do you notice?”
“I feel a strong tingling,” Jude says, “in my chest and arms.”
“Okay. In a moment, Jordan will briefly move away.” She waits. “What do you feel now?”
“It’s gone.”
“Okay. Invite him back.”
For the next few minutes, Austyn guides Jude to watch as Jordan’s energy enters and leaves her body. During this process, the location and physical signature of his energy become more and more clear.
“Okay, let’s establish some basic communication so you can ask him questions. Have Jordan show you his ‘yes’ energy; invite him to show you what ‘yes’ feels like.”
“The same tingling,” Jude says, “but just in my chest.”
“And now Jordan’s ‘no’ energy. Invite him to help you feel that.”
Jude waits. “In the back of my head. Tingling, but centered here.” She brushes the hair above her neck.
Austyn has Jude practice “yes” and “no” and observe the difference energetically. As Jude reliably feels the shift, I realize she has found what she sought so long ago: a way to feel our boy again, to know he is with her. And more: to ask him questions and feel answers.
I experience an immense exhaustion as we embrace Austyn and say goodbye. Soft October light washes the streets and rooftops of Altadena below. We are only four hundred miles from home, and we have been gone just a few days. But I feel as if it has been years, and we have traveled past the last outposts of the world we knew.
After that visit, I am anxious to learn more about the intersection of science and spirituality. I ask Jordan, who says this:
Our book is our story, how we found each other through the curtain. Some may see it as just that — a story: well meaning, perhaps, yet unverifiable.
But, Dad, this is more than a story; it’s also scientific data. It’s not the kind of science where we measure distances to the stars, and it’s not based on randomized, controlled trials. Instead, it is the science of multiple, independent observations of phenomena. These include:
• the thousands of people who report seeing deceased loved ones in the hours before death.
• the hundreds of children who have reported verifiable past lives.
• the countless reports of near-death and out-of-body experiences.
• remote viewing, in which people can accurately describe places they’ve never been.
• the hundreds of naive subjects who, during hypnosis, have reported similar life-between-lives experiences.
These are all examples of collecting independent data from many individuals; over time the sheer numbers begin to point to something.
Science and spirituality belong together. The problem is that many spiritual practitioners have rejected science, and few are demanding that science take on spiritual questions. Meanwhile, science has been hijacked by the scientific method and the obsession with measurement.
We can’t measure a thought, but it nonetheless exists and can be “observed” via subjective descriptions. We can’t measure the experiences of the eighty-one veterans who heard the voices of the dead through their work with Allan Botkin, but their independent, unprompted experiences should be considered real data.
I ask Jordan how we join science and spirituality. He tells me the following:
There are two parts to spirituality: the method and the cosmology; the practice and the belief. Every spiritual method, and every belief, can be examined.
Does meditation work? We already know that meditation works via dozens of studies. Does prayer work? We also know that prayer can heal and access deep wisdom. They are both paths to wise mind, to knowledge locked in the immortal soul. There are many other spiritual methods that could and should be tested as well.
If spiritual practitioners were committed to science, they would ask these questions. Consider, Dad, the impact on your own life of talking to me. That could be measured. For example, by reduced fear of death, clarity of life purpose, well-being, quality of relationships, and so on. Every spiritual practice has outcomes, and we could measure whether they are better or worse than those of other practices, or than the human baseline.
Cosmologies can also be tested. Does hell exist? Are there bardos where souls are imprisoned to atone for sins? Not one medium has found such a place. Multiple independent reports of the afterlife offer little support for damnation. A science that uses independent observations of experience could help us put the idea of hell to rest.
Science is the path to bring religion into alignment with the deepest truth. Religion that rejects science or the investigation of its methods or cosmology is dangerous. It is ripe for manipulation.
In the history of the world, people have held thousands of belief systems. These theologies were mostly far from true. But the methods, the found pathways to wise mind, were often brilliant. We have to separate path from belief, the doorways we find from mere dogma. The beliefs often spring from the fevered imaginations of priests and sages. But there are hundreds of paths to truth, to knowledge, to love.
At that moment, I have a feeling of completeness, that the book is almost finished. I ask Jordan to identify the most important thing to say at the end.
There is no end; the conversation goes on. Between you and me. And between all the souls who love each other, living and dead.
I wait, but that is all: the simple truth that we go on — loving each other forever.
Spirituality is about seeking truth. It’s about recognizing the markers of what is false versus what is aligned with love. This book, these conversations with Jordan, is science-based. While it is true that my experiences of after-death communication can’t be measured because they are subjective and exist inside my mind, it’s also true that they comprise a single, independent observation of the phenomenon of after-death communication. And when combined with other reports from people who have conversations with the dead, they provide multiple independent observations of this experience. I encourage you to compare these accounts and see where they agree — and perhaps point to truth.
You have read this because you’re seeking truth. Jordan and I encourage you to be skeptical, to seek many independent observations of the afterlife. Spiritual truth is not the province of gurus, priests, or mediums. It is something to be found in the experiences of others and in your heart. Be your own scientist.