what would you accept as evidence of life after death ?

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Genuinely interested in some feedback.

For me cases like James Leininger and Ryan Hammonds are the most compelling. If small children can provide detailed information about a deceased person's life it certainly means there is some mechanism at work where at least a part of someone's consciousness survives. It might not mean Life After Death as we traditionally view it but the highly scientific term 'damned Freaky' about sums it up. In Ryan's case he seems to have some detailed memories about 'in between' where I don't think James does.

I like these best because they have some serious research behind them from the University of Virginia's Division of Perceptual Studies. You can see these cases on different tv programs and so forth, but I don't do couch based research. From what I've seen it would be hard to just dismiss these out of hand, although many do.

So what would it take to convince you? Not something blunt and direct like your long Grandma walking in the door and giving you tomorrow's Lottery numbers. Not something fuzzy like a butterfly landing on your head.

What would it take for real?
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Not too much traction I see. How about this.

What I would like to find is a non-commercial, not-for-profit medium that would be willing to participate in an genuine experiment. I've encountered two people who make their living from this and was underwhelmed. To those with real skill I think it's tainted by profit. They look at me as more of a problem, probably potentially injurious to their income.

I do have a friend who has participated in this and what I am looking for may not be possible. But 'no' I already have without doing anything.
 

Kchoo

At Peace.
Well, I think I would need to see a lost family member... someone I know well enough to recognize their subtle unique qualities... and they would need to be able to appear in a full form like Obi Wan... Then we would just hang out and talk about the afterlife and after that, we would just chat and reminense about things we did.

Since that has never happened, I don't give much credence to contacting the dead.

What little that may happen in a seance, (if it isn't just the house settling), is likely just a little bit of uncontrolled combined suggestion, maybe a tiny bit of telepathic embellishment among peers, and lots of imagination running away with itself.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
I guess you have to slice up the pie. Long one here, sorry but I am very interested in this.

First there would have to be the belief in a 'continuation of consciousness following bodily death' and historically there has been absolutely no lack of that. Belief. I have family members who follow tradition and are extremely pious who will give you very detailed description of how it all works. IMO, belief in these things is literally wired into us somehow and religious practices are simply demonstrating that. Think about it, if every last one of us were utterly convinced that 'this is all you get' with zero repercussions we would have had a difficult time building complex social structures and becoming the dominant species on this planet, which is why I say it's literally wired into us somehow. Goes straight back to when we were huddling around fires worrying - usually with cause - what might be out there in the dark. That's why I say that shamanism is the second oldest profession.

I look at say, 19th century attempts to contact the deceased and they appear incredibly hokey but in reality were just a reflection of what was current at the time. And like any human endeavor there were charlatans and opportunists mixed in with genuine attempts to quantify various experiences. The 'evidence' was questionable and largely anecdotal. We do the same thing today and have developed a technological hubris regarding our own abilities.

Thing is, we really do have capability that we could not possible have dreamed of even a couple of decades ago. Somewhere in these threads was a '50s notion of what a portable computer would look like in 2020 and that makes my point. Current trends want to use human consciousness studies as a potential explanation for everything and maybe it is. Also popular now is to use the phrase quantum physics as a magic wand to wave at everything. But, as I said we really do have capability we never did before. Wouldn't it be interesting if we could give AI a crack at all this somehow and see what a different perspective might bring.

So what would be acceptable proof of survival of consciousness ? Well, if you lend any credence to some of the extremely compelling reincarnation cases - and I find it hard not to - that might be a start. But it still doesn't mean you can actually talk to the dead, it just means that when that person died their experiences were somehow transferred to another person. That in and of itself is damned peculiar and warrants some thought before casually dismissed. If you want to take that next step and say that we do live a series of lives that would imply that who we are now, our personalities, are only some fraction of a larger whole and that after death even if communication with family members is possible or was even desirable before death, that maybe the different perspective would preclude it.

I've felt the presence of recently deceased loved ones and they have been unexpected and surprisingly intense but I tend to think of that as my own grief process. What I would be looking for is something like what Houdini arranged with his wife - a phrase only she knew. What if the concept was valid only the method wasn't and today with our greater capability we might actually be able to retrieve it in some way? I look at that as a dye marker run through plumbing and then all of a sudden you find the outlet.

I'd love it if my grandfather appeared one day and we could sit down for a beer and a smoke and just shoot the shit, but to me no matter how compelling or vivid the experience might be I'd still be looking for some small way to prove it actually happened. Tell me something no one knows and then have me prove it.
 

Kchoo

At Peace.
I think conciousness does not really continue for us.
I do believe telepathic transfer of conciousness can happen while we are alive, and that can be transfered through the minds of others until it settles on one who "listens" to it- such as a small child repeating stuff from a former pilot.

I've had two near death experiences myself, and as intriguing as the story may be, and as much as I would like to say it is true, I do not know if I can say it was anything more than hallucination due to oxygen deprivation.
 

SOUL-DRIFTER

Life Long Researcher
My psychic experiences and out of body experiences did it for me.
There is zero doubt for me.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
Interesting.

I really don't know if I'd accept an NDE as proof or not, but then again I've never had one. The argument is that the experience is brain is shutting down and maybe so. Dr. Eben Alexander makes a strange case and I doubt you'd find someone more qualified to comment on what our brains might do. Always worth remembering though that when a person is talking about some weird experience they are human beings first and anything else second. The uniform they wear or credentials they hold might or might not have bearing. It's extremely common to use things like that to lend gravitas to unusual reports and they may or may not be relevant.

There have been experiments set up that may still be in use in which various symbols are placed on top of cabinets, etc in emergency rooms or operating theaters that can only be viewed from above. Been some interesting stories, one I recall having something to do with a woman who pointed out a sneaker sitting on a ledge outside the hospital several stories up that nobody knew was there and couldn't be viewed from inside. I have no idea if that has ever been vetted or not.

This is a couple of years old but worth chewing on: The Science of Near-Death Experiences

A similar situation are those who are dying who interact with deceased loved ones shortly before death. There are tons of anecdotal stories from care givers that make me wonder. My own mother did that and let me tell you, it gives me chills 22 years later just thinking about it. She came out of a really heavy morphine fugue that she had been in for days and started talking quite lucidly to her father who was standing right behind me. Real or not it felt like it. But again, I really don't necessarily call that proof.
 

pigfarmer

tall, thin, irritable
telepathic transfer of conciousness

I was thinking along those line. Some natural process. Except in the two cases that seem to have been fairly well documented by the UVA it was decades between the death of the person and the birth of the child to an unrelated family.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
 

nivek

As Above So Below


This is a famous old Sufi story from the East, retold in the book Tales of the Dervishes by the remarkable learned author Idries Shah...Its inspiration comes from the experience of the Bedu Mystics of the Arabian deserts reminding us of the old saying ‘Out of the deserts, prophets come'...To me it also carries a two-fold reflection, something inner and something outer, because of a key element contained within, which I think was the reason Idries Shah chose to retell it in his book...

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