Posted on 06 January 2020, 10:36

To any open-minded person who has thoroughly studied the psychical research that took place between 1850 and 1935, the evidence suggesting that consciousness lives on after death should be overwhelming. The evidence developed in recent years, primarily in the areas of near-death experiences, clairvoyance, past-life studies, instrumental transcommunication, electronic voice phenomena, and deathbed phenomena, has added significantly to the “old” evidence, which was primarily in the area of trance mediumship. The old research produced a solid wheel and the newer research has tightened the spokes, but the prevailing materialistic mindset in the modern world resists both the old and the new.

In my blog post of November 21, 2016, I identified 15 reasons why the evidence has been ignored or rejected.  In giving the matter further thought, I realize I missed many and there are at least 30 reasons, the first 15 of which are set forth below and do not match the numbering in the 2016 post.  While some of them overlap with each other, they are distinct enough to be listed separately.  Numbers 16 through 30 will be discussed in my next blog post here.

1. Fear of Death:  “The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human mind like nothing else,” wrote anthropologist Ernest Becker in his 1974 Pulitzer prize-winning book, The Denial of Death. Becker explained that to free oneself of death anxiety, nearly everyone chooses the path or repression. That is, we bury the idea of death deep in the subconscious and do our best to escape from the reality of it while avoiding any discussion of what might come after, whether it be total extinction, a horrific hell, or a humdrum heaven. No consideration is given to the more dynamic and progressive afterlife suggested by modern revelation.

2. Philistinism:  In escaping from the reality of death, we concern ourselves with mostly meaningless activities – reading and watching fiction, playing games, idle chatter and texting, etc. – what Søren Kierkegaard, known as “the father of existentialism,” called philistinism.  A philistine was man fully tranquilized with the trivial.  As Kierkegaard saw it, most people are so absorbed in philistinism that they don’t even realize they are in constant despair from their fear of death.  Pioneering psychiatrist Carl Jung wrote that most of his patients were non-believers, those who had lost their faith.  They were neurotics.  “They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward success or money, and remain unhappy and neurotic even when they have attained what they were seeking,” Jung explained. “Such people are usually confined within too narrow a spiritual horizon.  Their life has not sufficient content, sufficient meaning.”  In effect, a philistine, even one who subscribes to a religion, becomes increasingly indifferent to matters of the spirit. 

3. Carpe Diem Syndrome: Being a philistine is one thing; going beyond that mundane state to “seize the day” in a pleasure-seeking life of Epicureanism (below) or hedonism is something else.  Believing in an afterlife involving punishment for our misdeeds, especially an eternity of torture in the hell of orthodoxy, conflicts with having free rein in pursuing a life of pleasure and comfort. If we are to “seize the day” in a hedonistic way, we should have no restraints, no fear of punishment after death.  Those subscribing to this philosophy find it convenient to dismiss the whole idea of an afterlife.

4. Religious Fundamentalism:  Based primarily on self-serving or misinterpreted passages in the Bible, most of orthodox religion saw the mediumship studied by psychical research as a demonic practice.  Adding fuel to the fire was the fact that some messages coming through mediums conflicted with various Church dogma and doctrine.  The position of orthodoxy remains much the same today as it was in the days of the pioneers of psychical research, thereby discouraging people who accept survival on nothing more than blind faith from moving on to true faith or conviction. 

5.  Scientism:  At the other extreme from religious fundamentalism is scientific fundamentalism, also called scientism, a belief that nothing can be accepted as truth unless subjected to testing by application of the scientific method, including replication.  The scientific method begins with a materialistic/mechanistic a priori assumption that brain and mind are one in nature and that no cause shall be invented when known causes can explain the facts. When no natural cause can be found, either deception or unexplored subliminal activity must be invoked. Since deception or unknown subliminal activity trumps spiritistic explanations, the spiritistic/survival hypothesis is defeated before it begins. It is a Catch 22 situation.

6.  The Causality Paradox: The religionist, the scientist, the media and the general public all assume that we must come up with proof of God before dealing with the survival issue.  No God, no afterlife, is their illogical reasoning. It is a deductive or a priori approach.  The inductive, or a posteriori approach, of first looking at the evidence for survival does not require identifying a Supreme Being, whether anthropomorphic (humanlike) or some abstract form of cosmic consciousness, but most people, even atheists, continue to cling to religious indoctrination that one must find and fully identify God before even considering the survival of consciousness at death.  Those stuck in the mindset that an anthropomorphic God is pulling the strings and is very cruel and vindictive in permitting all the evils we witness in the world, even allowing small children to die of diseases, are among the most steadfast deniers. 

7. Media Bias & Ignorance: Journalists like to think of themselves as intelligent investigators, and so they naturally align themselves with science.  At the same time, exposing shams and fraudulent schemes lends itself to sensationalism and makes for good copy.  Then, as now, the media frequently addressed any subject involving spirits as “woo-woo” stuff while putting a humorous or cynical twist of one kind or another on any story suggesting spirits of the dead.  In addition, today’s television producers don’t understand the “balance” issue.  When a researcher validates a medium, the producers believe they have to get a debunker involved in the program to counter the researcher, not taking into account the fact that the researcher has already dealt with and discounted the skeptical arguments.  It’s a “no-win” situation.

8. Hubris:  “Dabbling in the occult,” as some referred to it, was seen as a return to superstitions and follies of religion, and sanctioning it would have destroyed the foundation of the materialistic/mechanistic worldview and leave the majority of respected scientists and rational thinkers, especially professors who championed the materialistic worldview in academic institutions, embarrassed and humiliated.  They would have to rethink all they had taught and would not have answers for many things that go beyond known science.  Intellectual arrogance was and is characteristic of many leading scientists, while guerilla atheism has become very common in modern social media.  “We expect to prove our sanity by laughing where we are ignorant,” Dr. James Hyslop, professor of ethics and logic at Columbia University, once opined.   

9.  Fear of Peer Rejection: Many scientists and scholars were invited by pioneering researchers to observe certain mediums, but some feared for their reputations if word were to get out that they were showing interest in such “foolish” matters,” and they therefore refused.  There were a number, however, who accepted the invitations and observed genuine phenomena, but, with the same fears, they remained silent, not offering support for the more courageous researchers.  Sir David Brewster, a famous nineteenth century physicist known especially for his contributions to the optics field, is said to have witnessed a D. D. Home levitation.  Although seemingly quite impressed at the time, he later concluded that the only explanation was a trick he did not understand, or a delusion.  “Spirit is the last thing I will give in to,” he was quoted.  Such a mindset continues to exist.

10. Conflicting Objectives:  With reductionist science at one extreme and the new philosophy of Spiritualism at the other, psychical researchers attempted to remain objectively on the fence between the two as they searched for an explanation for phenomena that appeared to defy natural laws. Since the most fertile area of study was with mediums associated with Spiritualism, the researchers struggled to convince Spiritualists that strict controls, such as complete body searches and tying up the mediums, were necessary.  The Spiritualists saw such controls as counter-productive to good phenomena, as the discomfort of the medium as well as the anxiety created by the controls affected his or her ability to relax and achieve the necessary passive or receptive state.  Such discomfort and disharmony resulted in “off” nights for many mediums, who were then written off as frauds. 
   
11.  Too Many Variables: There were and are many different kinds of mediumship.  The physical mediumship of yesteryear included full materializations of spirit forms, partial materializations, e.g., a hand only, a face only, apports and levitations, while the mental type included the Ouija board,  trance-voice, automatic writing, clairvoyance, clairaudience, and clairsentience.  The direct voice, direct writing and table turning were a combination of the physical and mental. There were mediums who were proficient at one kind and had no ability in other kinds. There were simply too many variables for the few researchers to deal with.  They focused more on the trance mental mediumship.  It was all just too bizarre, too complex, too unworldly and too unscientific for the average person to grasp. 

12.  Semantical Issues:  Most people don’t know the difference between a psychic and a medium, and they lump gypsy fortune tellers, tarot card readers, witch doctors, astrologers, ghost hunters, psychics and mediums all together.  If they can’t predict the winner of the upcoming derby or come up with the winning lottery number, they must be frauds.  The only mediums they know about today are the clairvoyants they have seen on television and they are led to believe they succeed well beyond chance because the clairvoyant is fishing for information or has made a lucky guess.

13.  Actual Fraud: As the Spiritualism epidemic of the late nineteenth century grew, so did the number of charlatans – people pretending to have mediumistic ability by employing various tricks and duping the public for money. While Professor William James of Harvard said that Leonora Piper was his “one white crow,” the one who proved that all crows aren’t black, the more skeptical mind reasoned the other way: one black crow proved that all crows are black.

14.  Unconscious Fraud:  The spirit hypothesis held that while in the trance state, the medium’s body was controlled by a spirit or spirits and that various actions carried out by the medium’s body, which appeared to be fraud to the skeptical observer, were not consciously performed by the medium, hence not actual fraud.  If an ectoplasmic arm, sometimes referred to as the “third arm,” was produced by spirit agencies to effect certain phenomena, it was deemed fraud, whether conscious or unconscious, since spirits don’t exist under the mechanistic paradigm.  Here again, it was a Catch 22 situation.

15.  Undetectable Magic: The Great Houdini is said to have exposed a number of charlatans during the early decades of the last century, at the same time disparaging many true mediums with allegations of fraud and theories as to how they “might have” or “could have” duped many people, including men and women of science. Today, with mind-boggling tricks and illusions witnessed by tens of millions on television, such as with David Copperfield and Michael Carbonaro, no spiritual phenomenon seems outside the scope of human magic.  Moreover, “photoshopping” and other digital enhancements have calloused the senses to the extent that every visual abnormality is considered by many to be a trick of one kind or another. 

Next blog post: January 20 (reasons 16-30)  

Michael Tymn is the author of The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die, Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife, and Dead Men Talking: Afterlife Communication from World War I.

Max,
My sympathies to you for the loss of your mother and wife within a period of a few months.  That must have been a very difficult time for you.  I hope you had other family members to support you when you were going through all of that and that you have recovered somewhat, although such losses leave an indelible mark upon one’s soul.  As we all eventually will if we live long enough, I too have lost many, many people and I have often thought that surely, if they have survived that at least one of the many would have made themselves known to me in some way.  But so far, I have not noticed if they tried.  Although not evidence of survival there have been several significant occurrences in my life that some people might think were evidence of survival, but they also could have been examples of coincidence, serendipity or synchronicity and not evidence of survival.

Increasingly my spirits have been dampened too.  - AOD

Max, you also mention personal experience. A medium telephoned me to say she had my “dead” father with her with an important message. I told her that I am very sceptical about this sort of thing, but if she could name all my father’s close friends on Earth, then I would take notice of the message. She named all my father’s close friends. Including two that I did not know. They turned out to be friends that he met in Australia.

Max, you say that you are a scientist, but you also say you would like to “believe” we survive. You do not believe that the world is round. It is a stone-cold fact that the world is round. It is the same with survival after death. Sir William Crookes proved that we all have a soul that separates from the dead physical body. In 1870 he carried out three years of repeatable experiments under laboratory conditions with a materialisation medium. All five senses are working at one of these experiments. This type of medium gives the proof of survival, not just evidence.

I disagree with the notion that it is all about money or stubborn science. I am a scientist by training and an historian by inclination, and I would like to believe in post-mortem existence.
I have read extensively and have experienced a variety of paranormal events over the 72 years of my life, but in every case I have, reluctantly, come to the conclusion that there was a simpler explanation. Most people seem to be convinced by personal experience, and I am eager for that to happen to me.
In 2003 my mother and my wife died within four months of each other and since then I have lived in hope of some personal revelation of their continued survival, but…. nada, zip, nothing. What am I supposed to think? Do they not exist, or do they exist and not care?
I continue on, hoping but not really believing, and one day soon I will find out for myself. Of course, it will then be too late to do something meaningful with my life. I try to be a decent person, but facing personal extinction without any real hope of survival, sort of dampens my spirits.

Just wanted to congratulate you on a terrific summation of all the reasons for denial of the afterlife.I continue to enjoy the work you are doing in revealing the reality of what is beyond. Thanks for your dedication to very important revelations for everyone.

Jon, I hope you are right about Einstein. However, I have a horrible feeling that there is a great army in the etheric wavelengths fighting just as hard against the scientific case for survival as when they were on Earth. James Randi and Susan Blackmore for example. Susan and I am both based in Bristol, England. We were invited to give lectures at London University. Susan went first and gave her usual case that the mind dies with the brain, “I have been reading this subject all my life and I can promise you that there is nothing in it.” Susan then sat through my lecture when I told the students that Sir William Crookes discovered the so-called next world way back in the 1870’s while carrying out three years of repeatable experiments under laboratory conditions. The results of these experiments were published in ‘The Quarterly Journal of Science’. These can now be read at the top of my website:
http://www.scsad.afterlifeinstitute.org
The big difference is Susan Blackmore has unrestricted access to all mainstream media outlets. This keeps the old-boy network intact. There is only a balance allowed on the Internet.

Brilliant! I could not believe there were so many reasons.

Very sad state of affairs, but so true…

I can’t wait to see the rest!

Yvonne

According to Gary Schwartz at the University of Arizona, an entity claiming to be Albert Einstein is helping from the “other side” to develop Schwartz’s SoulPhone device that he’s been working on for some years. Maybe Albert’s changed his mind.

https://www.thesoulphonefoundation.org/spirit-team-members

How right you are. As we try and present the scientific case for survival after death we have the whole of the religious and scientific establishment lined up against us. It’s all to do with money. Very powerful and wealthy people are making money out of the religious case for survival, and orthodox scientific teaching is locked into following Einstein into oblivion:
“I don’t believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbour such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism.”
Albert Einstein, New York Times, April 19. 1955.