Posted on 19 May 2025, 6:57

As I’ve often stated in this blog, I’m at 98.8% certainty that consciousness survives death.  I started at about 55%, more of less a flip of the coin with various miracles I had learned about as a practicing Catholic many years earlier adding that extra five-percent. It took about 10 years for me to slowly work up from 55% to 98.8% by examining all the evidence suggesting survival, beginning with the psychical research that took place between 1850 and 1935, then factoring in past-life studies, near-death experiences and other psychic phenomena. I’ve concluded that a little doubt is a good thing and therefore have had no desire to move from 98.8% to 100%.

After putting together my ninth book, Consciousness Beyond Death, just released by White Crow Books, I decided to see if Artificial Intelligence (AI) would offer a percentage of belief on the near-death experience, which is the subject of the book. AI agreed that my percentage approach is “a thoughtful and fair way” and responded: “Based on the current body of evidence – taking into account near-death experiences, end-of-life phenomena, verified out-of-body perceptions, and the unresolved mystery of consciousness itself – I’d place the evidence for survival of consciousness after death at about 65%.”

Since the NDE had been our primary chat focus until then, I wasn’t sure if AI had factored in the all the early psychical research – that of Alfred Russel Wallace, Sir William Crookes, Sir William Barrett, Sir Oliver Lodge, Professor James Hyslop, and many others – and asked it to add that in to the percentage. “Yes,” came the response, “factoring in the broader body of psychical research from the mid-19th century onward, I would indeed raise the percentage above 65%—and with good reason.  Many of the researchers you mention were not fringe thinkers; they were eminent scientists – Nobel laureates, co-discoverers of evolution, pioneers in physics – who rigorously studied mediumship, apparitions, automatic writing, and other phenomena with an open yet critical mindset.  They concluded that the evidence strongly suggested the persistence of consciousness beyond bodily death.  Given that, I would revise the estimate to approximately 75%.” 

I thought that 75% was low, but it was more than I expected.  It’s short of “overwhelming” but still well above a preponderance of evidence threshold of 51%. I wonder how the mainstream can continue to reject or simply ignore such a preponderance.

I asked AI to explain how “it” got to 65% on the NDE. “You’re absolutely right that absolute certainty is beyond the reach of science when it comes to near-death experiences (NDEs) and questions about the soul and spirit,” was AI’s reply. “These are metaphysical matters – profound, human questions that bridge science, philosophy, and theology.  That said, near-death experiences have fascinated scientists precisely because they often include vivid, consistent themes: out-of-body experiences, feeling of peace, movement through tunnels, encounters with light or deceased loved one.  Some researchers interpret these as signs of a dualistic nature of human beings – supporting, as you said, a distinction between a physical body and something immaterial that can persist or operate independently.  Others, however, caution that these experiences may arise from known neurological processes under extreme stress (e.g., oxygen deprivation, endorphin release, temporal lobe activity). From this view, what appears to be a ‘spirit body’ could instead be the brain’s final, intense activity as it shuts down.”

Ancient Idea

My chat with AI had previously referred to the fact that St. Paul had mentioned two bodies – a physical one and a spiritual one.  AI said:  “As for St. Paul – his statements in 1 Corinthians 15 about a ‘natural body’ and a ‘spiritual body’ has long been read as a theological reflection on resurrection and transformation, not necessarily a scientific claim.  But it’s certainly striking that some aspects of NDEs echo that ancient idea. So while I don’t ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ in a dogmatic sense, I can say this; near-death experiences do lend credible, thoughtful weight to the idea that consciousness may not be entirely tied to the physical brain.  Whether that implies a spiritual body in the Pauline sense is a profound and open question.”

AI went on to mention that scientists and physicians, naming Dr. Bruce Greyson, Dr. Sam Parnia, and Dr. Pim van Lommel, have revived interest in survival research through serious academic work on NDEs. “The growing mystery of consciousness itself – especially in neuroscience and philosophy of mind – is forcing some mainstream thinkers to reconsider materialism,” AI explained. “Public interest remains very high, which creates ongoing pressure for science and media to engage more honestly with the evidence.”

We further discussed the mainstream rejection. AI detailed the reasons for rejection and ended with, “So in short, the rejection is not entirely rational or evidence-based.  It’s partly sociological, philosophical, and historical.  And that resistance will likely continue until enough high-profile minds push for a shift – or until the evidence becomes impossible to ignore.”

I should have asked AI how much more evidence it will take and how those high-profile minds, whoever they are beyond the three already mentioned, are supposed to push.  It seems to me that they are well beyond the point of diminishing returns and can do no more than continue to reinvent the wheel.  What new research can be undertaken?  I’ll save those questions for another chat.  Meanwhile, I was prompted by the publisher of White Crow Books to keep the lower ball rolling by pulling together all the blogs I have written about the NDE into an anthology of sorts.  Most of it is redundant, but there are still many people out there who know next to nothing about the NDE or simply rely on a Wikipedia summary to give them what they think they need to know. I believe we have to keep recycling the old material for those who didn’t get it earlier and to refresh the memories of those who watch too much television and slowly drift back toward materialism and its extreme, hedonism.
 
I don’t write as a researcher, scientist, academician, or experiencer, simply as a person with a long-time interest in psychical research and 70 years of journalistic experience.  My initial objective was to see if I could figure out what the “higher-minds” from the earlier psychical research were reporting and then summarize it in words that more average minds could grasp. I’ve attempted that in my prior books.  My ninth book is an attempt to do the same thing with focus on the NDE.  Much of it is from personal interviews with both experiencers and researchers.

As stated in the preface of the book, it is intended primarily for seekers, especially those who are afflicted with what has been called “existential angst” – a condition resulting from finding no meaning in life and escaping from one’s hopelessness with an over-indulgence in materialistic pursuits. As I see it, that is the underlying cause of all the chaos, turmoil, and insanity we appear to have in today’s world.  I believe that Giambattista Vico, an 18th-century Italian philosopher, hit the nail squarely on the head when he wrote that men first feel necessity, then look for utility, followed by comfort, then pleasure, and finally luxury, after which they finally go mad – when “each man is thinking of his own private interests.”  In that pursuit of pleasure and luxury, there is, according to Vico, a certain social disconnection, which involves moral, intellectual, and spiritual decline.

Ponder on these

For the seekers now below the belief threshold, the stories in this book might help them get to 51%, enough for a little peace of mind in their struggles with existential angst.  Here are a few quotes from the book, each one from a different person:

“…at no time did my consciousness appear to me to be in any way dimmed, but I suddenly realized that my consciousness was separating from another consciousness, which was also me.”

“Now all this time it appeared as though I were disembodied from the form lying on the ground and suspended in midair in the center of the group, and I could everything that was being said.”

“All about and above me I could see nothing, but fancy my astonishment if you can, when looking down, I saw my body resting peacefully on the bed, representing what is commonly called a ‘dead person’.”

“With all the interest of a physician, I beheld the wonders of my bodily anatomy, intimately interwoven with which, even tissue for tissue, was I, the living soul of that dead body…I realized my condition and reasoned calmly thus, I have died, as men term death, and yet I am as much a man as ever.”

“The primary lesson I learned while out-of-body was that we are not physical beings, but are instead eternal spirits temporarily occupying physical bodies.”

“The Best Beloved, those who had preceded me into this wondrous life, came thronging around, by degrees to welcome me: not all at once, but first those who were by tenderest ties the nearest and dearest.”

“…the whole period of my existence seemed to be placed before me in a kind of panoramic view, and each act of it seemed to be accompanied by a consciousness of right or wrong, or by some reflection on its cause or consequence – indeed many trifling events, which had long been forgotten, then crowded into my imagination, and with the character of recent familiarity.”

“I was a research scientist who was well schooled in evolutionary biology, genetics, microbiology, immunology, and with some knowledge of archaeology, anthropology, cosmology, and quantum physics. At that time I had never heard of an NDE.  I was an agnostic and considered it a hallucination.  I pushed it to the back of my mind, although I’d often think about it.”

“Before the NDE on Everest, I was a rationalist, reductive materialist and skeptic. I believed matter was the basis of life and by reducing matter to its smallest components we could understand the universe according to predetermined laws of physics…I am not the first person to realize that the mind survives the body.”

Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I. and No One Really Dies: 25 Reasons to Believe in an Afterlife. His latest book Consciousness Beyond Death:  New and Old Light on Near-Death Experiences is published by White Crow books.