I have serious regard for the work of Robert Schoch and thus welcome
his thoughts on the afterlife. He certainly forced us to rethink the
age of the Sphinx which may well be many thousands of years older
than the pyramids. The work in Bosnia is also reopening the whole
question. If these structures do have a technological genesis, then
the Bronze Age effort could well have been a reworking.
Here he tackles the reality of he soul and builds a compelling
presentation that something survives and that was part of the ancient
worldview.
My own take in the here and now is that if it is possible to create a
soul in whole or in part and if that soul can be part of GOD itself
and ultimately both a human construct, we are now approaching that
point in which we can implement such a construct to preserve our
presence past death provided only that it is possible. If it is
possible, then it is obvious that we already have done so thousands
of years ago and we are presently protected as has been stated in the
scriptures anyway.
This is a worthy effort. What is missing is the insight that these
stone structures could well have been built by a pre 13900 BP
(Pleistocene Nonconformity) civilization that matched and long
surpassed ours.
What Lives On?
Investigating Life After Death
March 2, 2013
Robert Schoch
Do we survive
the death of our physical bodies? Is there such a thing as a
postmortem continuation of the individual? If there is survival, what
survives? Does everyone survive? What does it even mean to survive?
Answers to these
questions are central to the dogmas of many religions. These same
issues are amongst the most refractory when addressed using the
techniques of scientific inquiry: data gathering, hypothesis
formulation and testing, logical analyses. Indeed, such topics are
generally viewed as outside the scope of scientific inquiry, not
worth serious thought. As Bertrand Russell commented, “most people
would die sooner than think – in fact, they do so.”
Sphinx Geology
In my youth, I didn’t
bother to give the afterlife much consideration. I never needed the
threat of future hell and damnation to persuade me to be moral now. I
identified with those ancient Hebrews who did not necessarily believe
in an afterlife (de Vesme, 1931), yet still found it prudent to
pursue an honourable life in this world. In college I pursued a very
earthly field – the study of rocks – ultimately earning a Ph.D.
in geology and geophysics from Yale University (1983).
My life changed in
1990. At the invitation of independent Egyptologist John Anthony
West, I took my first trip to Egypt – specifically to study the
Great Sphinx from a geologic point of view. After several more trips,
undertaking various tests and analyses, I came to the conclusion
that the oldest portions of the Great Sphinx date back to a much
earlier period than previously believed by most Egyptologists and
historians. Conventional wisdom places the Great Sphinx in the
reign of the Pharaoh Khafre (Chephren), circa 2500 BCE. My studies
indicated that the oldest portions of the Great Sphinx (the statue
has been repaired many times, and the head re-carved) date back to at
least the period of 7000 BCE to 5000 BCE, and perhaps 9000 BCE
or earlier.
My Sphinx work
immediately caused a firestorm and, though the controversy has abated
somewhat two decades later, the implications have only deepened.
Essentially, sophisticated culture and civilisation goes back much
earlier than formally thought; “history must be rewritten.” Over
the years I have been pleased to see confirmation of the crux of my
work, as other very ancient sites have been uncovered. A good
example is Gobekli Tepe in Turkey where a major monumental carved
stone building phase dating to the period of 8000 BCE and
earlier has been discovered.
Egypt And Its
Obsession With Death
Working on the Great
Sphinx, I could not help but become fascinated with the pyramids,
temples, tombs, and other relics of ancient Egypt. According to the
traditional view, what was the overriding preoccupation of ancient
Egypt? Death and the afterlife. Say “Egypt” and pyramids
(popularly interpreted as giant tombs), mummies, and the so-called
Book of the Dead immediately come to mind.
Having studied them in
depth, it is clear to me that the pyramids, and the Great Pyramid in
particular, were not solely or even primarily overblown mausoleums.
Indeed, the Great Pyramid may have served both
astronomical/astrological functions, literally being an observatory
at one stage of its development, as well as ritualistic purposes.
Many modern visitors describe powerful and life changing experiences
in the Great Pyramid. One of the most famous is Napoleon Bonaparte.
While in Egypt, August 1799, Napoleon visited the Great Pyramid. He
entered the King’s Chamber and asked to be left alone. Upon
emerging, Napoleon was pale, faint and silent. Asked by an aide what
happened, Napoleon refused to say anything of substance, intimating
that he had experienced a preview of his own fate. Just before his
death in 1821, Napoleon appeared to be on the verge of telling a
close friend what had occurred in the King’s Chamber. Then he
hesitated. “No. What is the use? You would never believe me.”
I have spent many
hours, including several times almost the entire night (but not
sleeping, mind you), in the Great Pyramid. And I have spent much time
exploring other temples and tombs throughout Egypt, as well as
pyramids, temples and sacred places elsewhere in the world. Initially
I approached the ancient monuments as a geologist, focusing on the
materials from which they were constructed. Soon, however, I became
involved in studying not just the stones, but why past civilisations
had erected the stones into magnificent edifices. The why behind
the monuments, more often than not, apparently included religious
beliefs and practices, initiation rites and rituals, which in many
cases seemed to have an ostensible paranormal aspect, whether it was
clairvoyance, divination or manifestations of higher levels of
consciousness. Were, I asked myself, the ancient structures used
to genuinely alter consciousness and possibly enhance paranormal
phenomena? Or did superstition, perhaps combined with pious fraud on
the part of a priest or priestess, account for the tales?
Furthermore, I could not help but think about postmortem survival
issues, particularly when studying ostensible tombs! Death,
transformation, resurrection, union with the gods, attainment of
immortality – was all this ritualistic hocus pocus and pure
nonsense? Or were the ancients skilled psychic engineers, carefully
manipulating the incorporeal with their megalithic stone monuments
and occult practices?
My formal training as
a physical scientist certainly did not encourage the notion that
paranormal and psychic phenomena, much less life after death, were
anything other than imagination gone wild or charlatans preying on
the gullible. According to a conventional materialistic and secular
“scientifically rational” worldview, the paranormal does not
exist and death is the final end. It was all too easy, and indeed
comforting, to put such issues out of mind. Stick to the hard
evidence of the rocks, the domain of the geologist.
Exploring the
Paranormal
Issues of the
paranormal and questions about survival kept nagging at me.
Ultimately, I realised, I must address these topics head-on, if only
for the sake of satisfying my intellectual curiosity. For me the
first issue was to research various reputed anomalous psychic
abilities among the living, such as telepathy (direct mind-to-mind
transfer of information without utilising any of the conventional
senses) and psychokinesis (PK, essentially the concept of
mind-over-matter). I wanted to establish what, if anything, in terms
of the paranormal is possible among the living before addressing the
issue of postmortem survival.
It took me over ten
years from my first visit to Egypt to get to the point where I was
prepared to take a serious look at the paranormal. I have taught
fulltime at Boston University since 1984, and every year I have a new
batch of students. Many simply want to take their courses and get a
degree, but then there are those who really strive to go beyond their
formal studies. One such student was Logan Yonavjak. She served as my
field assistant on research expeditions to Egypt and Peru in 2003 and
2005, and she prodded me to take a serious look at the paranormal.
She and I undertook a comprehensive survey of the serious scientific
literature addressing psychical research and the paranormal (the
field now generally referred to as parapsychology). We read literally
thousands of papers, pro- and con-, and we both became involved with
the field first-hand. The result of our collaboration was The
Parapsychology Revolution: A Concise Anthology of Paranormal and
Psychical Research.
Our studies
convinced me that, once the fraud, bunk, and self-delusion are
eliminated, there is something to the paranormal. The
best-documented class of paranormal phenomena is telepathy. There
is strong laboratory evidence for telepathy, such as classic
card-calling experiments as well as many more sophisticated tests.
There is also a large and compelling body of evidence from
spontaneous cases (non-laboratory experiments) supporting the reality
of telepathy. For instance, crisis apparitions, veridical
hallucinations, or “ghosts” are well known. The evidence for PK
is also strong, including micro-PK studies at an atomic level using
random event generators and similar devices, such as the evidence
developed by the PEAR (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research) labs
over more than a quarter of a century, and the carefully studied
incidents of macro-PK (affecting larger objects) associated with
genuine spontaneous poltergeist cases. Another line of evidence for
the reality of paranormal phenomena is research on presentiments or
“pre-sponses,” essentially a form of short-term precognition as
measured by physiological parameters (heart rate, electrodermal
activity and so forth). Numerous replicated experiments have
demonstrated the physiological responses of individuals to disturbing
photographs, for instance, a second or two before they are actually
viewed by the person. According to conventional science, this should
not be possible.
My research on
parapsychological phenomena among the living continues, but at this
point I agree with the following statement made by David Fontana,
Professor of Transpersonal Psychology at Liverpool John Moores
University and a well-known psychical researcher: “Psychic
abilities are a matter of fact not of belief. What they are and
what they mean for our view of reality is another matter, but one
cannot dismiss them as fiction and yet retain credibility as an
unbiased observer.” (Fontana, 2005, pp. 468-469)
But how do we
interpret paranormal phenomena? This brings us to the issue of
postmortem survival.
Survivalist
Interpretations
Serious study of
psychical and paranormal phenomena dates back to at least 1882, the
year when the Society for Psychical Research was founded. At that
time, and right up to the present day, some psychical researchers
have interpreted some of the phenomena they study as being
communications from deceased persons or discarnate (non-bodily)
entities. Indeed, among many people the prime interest in psychical
studies is to establish the possibility of an afterlife. To give a
classic example, let us suppose you attend a séance. The medium goes
into trance and begins to speak in a different voice. The voice
claims to have a message from the beyond, a message from your
departed grandmother. Through the medium, you are told that your
deceased grandmother still cherishes those moments you had with her,
and a very private story is related, a story that you are certain you
never shared with another person and only you and your grandmother
knew about.
So, is this proof that
you received a communication from your beloved grandmother? Does she
live on in the afterlife? Many people would say yes, absolutely (of
course, we are assuming there is no fraud on the part of any involved
in the séance). No one other than your grandmother knew the private
story, and so it must be her who now relates it (indirectly through
the medium). What other explanation can there be?
Indeed, there is
another explanation, and it gets to the crux of the arguments for and
against postmortem survival. Instead of your grandmother contacting
you from beyond the grave, perhaps the medium is telepathically
picking up information from your brain, perhaps information that is
stored away deep in the unconscious, and then relaying it in a form
that is ostensibly a communication from your grandmother? (Granted,
the medium is doing this unconsciously, and in no way intends to
deceive. The medium truly feels that she or he is communicating with
the dead on your behalf.)
Let’s make the
situation a little more complicated. What if the supposed
communication from grandmother relays information unknown to you,
perhaps concerning your aunt when she was young? After the séance
you consult your aunt, and indeed the communication is true, and what
is more, your aunt is shocked and flabbergasted because the
information is something that only she and your grandmother shared,
and absolutely no one else had ever known it. So, is this proof of
the continued existence of your grandmother in the “ethers”? Some
parapsychologists would counter that possibly the medium
telepathically raided, if you will, your aunt’s mind to find
interesting information that was then relayed to you at the séance,
information that appeared to come from your grandmother.
There are
well-documented cases that become incredibly complex. For instance,
at some séances entities, referred to as “drop-in communicators,”
make themselves known (Gauld, 1971). Some such drop-ins are
ostensibly deceased souls unknown to any of the séance sitters. The
drop-in is simply taking advantage of the séance setting, attempting
communication with the still living, perhaps asking that a relative
or loved one (a living person unknown to any of the séance sitters)
be contacted. Drop-ins can conveniently be dismissed by critics as
simply figments of the imagination of the medium and/or séance
sitters (the medium may pick up on the imagination of the sitters
telepathically, expressing this imagination in the form of a supposed
drop-in), except in the cases where the information given by a
drop-in is verified later. For instance, a drop-in requests that a
message be relayed to so-and-so at such-and-such address, and when a
sitter at the séance goes to the indicated address it is found that
the address exists, the person named lives there, and the message has
significant private meaning for the indicated person. Could, just
possibly, the medium have assessed all of the information
paranormally and then created, unconsciously, the purported drop-in
to “communicate” the information? (We assume that no fraud is
involved, and in the best cases it seems clear that fraud is not an
issue.) Yes, but to many this would seem a much more elaborate,
concocted, and complex explanation than simply accepting that the
drop-in was indeed a discarnate entity from the other side.
Super ESP
Basically, much of
the evidence that ostensibly supports postmortem survival can
conceivably be interpreted, with varying degrees of finesse, as due
to the psychical and paranormal functioning (even if masked and at an
unconscious level) of living persons. This is sometimes known as
the Super-ESP hypothesis (ESP refers to extrasensory perception), but
actually can include paranormal phenomena besides ESP, such as the
movement of objects. Take poltergeist activity, unexplained movements
of objects, such as items falling off shelves or being “thrown”
through the air without any physical cause that can be observed,
various unexplained noises and disturbances. Having observed a minor,
but I believe absolutely genuine, poltergeist incident, I am
convinced that such activities can be real.
But is poltergeist
activity due to literal ghosts (presumably mischievous departed
spirits), or can the Super-ESP hypothesis adequately explain
poltergeists? One theory is that many poltergeist manifestations are
unconsciously caused by, or emanate from, the person who
superficially appears to be the focus of the poltergeist activity.
Poltergeist activity may be a method (at the unconscious level) of
“working out” unresolved emotional and psychological tensions and
conflicts.
There are many other
classes of evidence that some claim as support for the reality of
survival beyond the grave. Classic séances sometimes include
movements and levitations of tables and other items, strange sounds
and voices, and even the supposed materialisation of objects and
beings (deceased persons?). If, and it is a big if in many
researcher’s minds given the amount of fraud documented in such
settings, any of these types of phenomena are genuine, are they due
to spirits from the “other side,” as is generally claimed by the
medium? Or might a Super-ESP explanation be applicable?
Near-Death experiences
and Out-of-Body experiences are sometimes cited as supporting
evidence for the survival hypothesis, but the counter argument is
that many such experiences are subject to conventional
(non-paranormal psychological and physiological factors) or Super-ESP
explanations.
Some researchers have
attempted to utilise modern electronic apparatus as a means of
communicating with those beyond the grave, a concept sometimes
referred to as instrumental transcommunication. One form, known as
electronic voice phenomena (EVP), consists of recording the static of
a radio that is tuned to a frequency carrying no transmissions. When
the recording is played back, perhaps at a different speed than
originally recorded, voices or communications from the other side may
be heard, or so it is claimed (Raudive, 1971). Even if such “voices”
are independently verifiable, critics of the survivalist hypothesis
can claim that the voices were encoded paranormally (and
unconsciously) via a form of PK by those involved or associated with
the experiments rather than by entities from the spirit world –
Super-ESP strikes again!
Reincarnation
What about
reincarnation? Isn’t reincarnation a type of afterlife, or the
continuation of life after the dissolution of a particular physical
body? While many supposed cases of reincarnation and past lives
remain unsubstantiated by solid data, there are also a number of
cases where something paranormal apparently is involved. The late Dr.
Ian Stevenson (1918-2007), a psychiatrist associated with the
University of Virginia (Charlottesville) for nearly half a century,
collected, scrutinised, verified, and analysed literally thousands of
cases of individuals who apparently demonstrated memories of former
lives.
Just because a living
person claims memories of a past life, does that mean it is the same
person inhabiting a new body? Or, is a person who appears to remember
a past life (and in most cases it is simply bits and pieces of a
presumed past life that are “remembered”) in reality paranormally
accessing information about a former person and/or time, perhaps even
from still living people? Many cases of supposed reincarnation, some
would argue, are nothing more than the latter. That is, Super-ESP is
the true explanation. Weakening the Super-ESP hypothesis in some
presumed reincarnation cases, however, is the finding by Stevenson
that in a few instances marks made on the body of a person after the
person died apparently appear on the presumed incarnation of the
deceased person. Here is a real example given by Stevenson. A young
woman in Burma with congenital heart disease died during open-heart
surgery. While preparing her body for burial, a mark was placed on
the back of her neck with red lipstick. The woman’s presumed
incarnation, born thirteen months later, had a prominent red
birthmark at the back of her neck, a line of diminished pigment
corresponding to the incision in her abdomen and chest made during
the surgery, and when the baby began to speak she seemed to have
knowledge of the previous life that she could not have acquired by
normal means.
If Stevenson’s data
on birthmarks in subsequent presumed incarnations caused by marking
or mutilation of a cadaver after death of the previous person stands
up to scrutiny, it could have far-reaching implications. It is one
thing to hypothesise that fragments or portions, or even the
totality, of a personality might be transmitted from a dying person
telepathically, including aspects of that person’s death, but to
suggest that somehow a lingering discarnate personality is aware of
what happens to its former physical body and incorporates marks or
mutilations to the body in the next incarnation raises many
theoretical and philosophical issues. Is this evidence for the
existence of “ethereal beings,” “spiritual entities,” or
“soul components”?
Super ESP or Something
Else?
To quote Professor
Fontana, “Given that the evidence supports the existence of psychic
abilities, these abilities are either explicable as telepathy,
clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis from the living (i.e. as
Super-ESP), or as communications in one form or another from those
who have survived death and live on in another dimension. There is no
way around these two possibilities. The evidence either supports
Super-ESP or supports survival.” (Fontana, 2005, p. 469)
In his book Is There
an Afterlife?, Fontana is adamant that he believes much of the
evidence cannot be adequately explained by Super-ESP. The Super-ESP
hypothesis becomes too complex and convoluted, and ultimately so
complicated that many prefer, or even find it necessary, to discuss
alternative explanations, such as postmortem survival.
Fontana asserts there
are two, and only two, ways to interpret the evidence: Super-ESP or
survival (to be clear, Fontana leaves open the possibility that
Super-ESP may explain some of the evidence while other evidence
supports survival). But is it really an either/or situation? Are the
only two viable alternatives Super-ESP and survival of humans (and
possibly other organisms?) that once inhabited Earth in bodily form?
It seems clear to me that there are additional possibilities (even if
not actualities). What about the time-honoured notion of discarnate
entities that perhaps never inhabited physical bodies: gods, angels,
demons, spirits and so forth?
Soul Components
At another level, the
concepts of Super-ESP and survival may not be totally distinct from
one another. Another time-honoured concept is that of a World Soul,
conscious of and remembering its past, that is all the past, and that
individual souls may merge with and draw from this World Soul.
Related to this is the concept of a spiritual record (sometimes known
as the Akashic Records) of all that has transpired, a record that
might be accessed from time to time by certain individuals or other
beings.
Rather than viewing
the issue of postmortem survival as a simple dichotomy, you survive
or you do not, I believe the issue is much more subtle, complex and
nuanced. It is not simply is their life after death, yes or no?
Rather is it a matter of which psychic components of a person may
survive, in what states, for how long, and how such components may
influence the living (for instance, via communication through a
medium, haunting, reincarnation or possession).
The ancient Egyptians
took a much more sophisticated approach to afterlife issues than many
modern people do. They had a number of terms for various psychic
components of a person, not fully understood to this day, but we can
list some as follows: ka (life force, vital force, spirit, double),
ba (individual personality, soul), akh or khu (spirit form,
transfigured spirit, ghost), ib or ab (heart, emotion, thought),
sheut (shadow, hidden self), and ren (name, embodiment of power and
personality). Upon death and dissolution of the body, the ancient
Egyptians believed these components could separate and go their
separate ways; part of Egyptian ritual involved reuniting the psychic
components. When it comes to attempting to understand the subtleties
of the psyche and the possibility of postmortem survival, I believe
we can benefit by studying ancient wisdom.
At this point I am not
sure what exactly survives, what form or forms it takes, or how long
it might survive (for a limited duration? forever?), but I believe
the evidence supports the conclusion of the early psychical
researcher F. W. H. Myers – something survives:
I hold that certain
manifestations of central individualities, associated now or formerly
with certain definite organisms, have been observed in operation
apart from those organisms, both while the organisms were still
living, and after they had decayed. (Myers, 1907, p. 27)
We have the foundation
for serious studies of the survival issue, a topic that I will
continue to pursue in this life – and perhaps the next.
References:
Caesar de Vesme, A
History of Experimental Spiritualism. Vol. 2, Peoples of
Antiquity (Translated from the French by Fred Rothwell), Rider,
UK, 1931
David Fontana, Is
There An Afterlife?, O Books, UK, 2005
Alan Gauld, “A
Series of ‘Drop In’ Communicators”, Proceedings of the
Society for Psychical Research, vol. 55, part 204, pp. 273-340 (1971)
F. W. H. Myers, Human
Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death (edited and
abridged by his son Leopold Hamilton Myers), Longmans, Green, USA,
1907
Konstantin
Raudive, Breakthrough: An Amazing Experiment in Electronic
Communication with the Dead, Colin Smythe, UK, 1971
Bertrand
Russell, Mortals and Others: American Essays, 1931-1935,
Routledge, USA, 1996 (quote cited originally published in
Russell’s The ABC of Relativity, 1925.)
Ian Stevenson, Where
Reincarnation and Biology Intersect, Praeger, USA, 1997
The Parapsychology
Revolution: A Concise Anthology of Paranormal and Psychical
Research is available from New Dawn Books. To order, see pages
71-72.
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