Posted on 05 May 2025, 6:30

In my blogs of January 6 and January 20, 2020, I offered 30 reasons why the overwhelming evidence for survival has been ignored or rejected by mainstream science and the mainstream media.  Those same 30 reasons were also set forth in the appendix of my 2021 book, No One Really Dies. The Society for Psychical Research featured 26 of the reasons as a cover story in a 2021 issue of its quarterly magazine. The reduction to 26 had to do with space limitations in the magazine, requiring me to merge four of them into one and to scrap one (machismo) completely because the editor didn’t agree with it.  In spite of some overlap among others in the 30, I’m sticking with 30 and am now considering a thirty-first.  I’ll call it “snubbed science,” although it could also be included under several of the 30, namely “scientism,” “hubris,” “media bias and ignorance,” and “fear of peer rejection.” 

My “snubbed science” addition refers to the cumulative research carried out before 1920, much of it summarized in my Bigelow contest essay of 2021 in which I provided the testimony of 11 researchers in support of the survival hypothesis. I’ve upped the number to 15 witnesses, as discussed in more recent blogs here, but I still have more witnesses to add. All that old evidence seems to have been snubbed and filed away in dust-covered cabinets while modern-day researchers focus on the near-death experience and rarely make mention of all the research that took place between 1850 and 1920. I should make that 1850 to 1935 so that the research of Dr. T. Glen Hamilton is included.

Nearly all of the current research involves the near-death experience. An April 2024 article in The Guardian, authored by Alex Blasdel, and titled, “The New Science of Death,” discusses NDE research.  Blasdel see three categories of researchers: 1) The spiritualists; 2) the parapsychologists; and 3) the physicalists.  The distinction between the first two is not entirely clear, but I infer that the spiritualists are convinced that the NDE is evidence of a “soul,” while the parapsychologists lean in that direction with some caution.  The physicalists are, however, pretty much convinced that the NDE is nothing more than a biological process not yet understood by science. 

Blasdel has Dr. Raymond Moody as the “spokesman” for the first group, making no mention of the fact that Moody pretty much sat on the fence relative to the duality aspect for most of the last 50 years, not really endorsing it until a few years ago.  He quotes Dr. Sam Parnia in talking about the second group, while Dr. Jimo Borjigin, a professor of neurobiology at the University of Michigan, is his hero in having concluded that the NDE is strictly a biological process.

“The spiritualists, along with other kooks and grifters, are busy peddling their tales of the afterlife,” he writes. “Forget the proverbial tunnel of light: in America, in particular, a pipeline of money has been discovered from death’s door through Christian media to the New York Times bestseller list and then to the fawning, gullible armchairs of the nation’s daytime talk shows. First stop, paradise; next stop, Dr. Oz.”

Borjigin’s research, aimed at finding a biological cause for the NDE, has apparently been frustrated by a lack of funds and not having a good answer as to what is to be gained by proving such an origin. How does humankind benefit from identifying the biological trigger? In noting that brain activity can extend as much as six hours beyond the cessation of heart activity, Blasdel dares not touch upon the implications of this relative to organ transplants, i.e., are organs being removed while the dying person is still “alive”?

Deeply Weird

Blasdel, an Oxford graduate, admits “something deeply weird” is happening to people when they die, but he claims we are wrong to assume the happening is in the next life rather than this one. Nevertheless, he somehow concludes that further research by Borjigin will “achieve not a deeper understanding of death, but a longer and more profound experience of life.” It shows, he adds, what is possible not in the next world, but in this one. As I read it, if we know the scientific name for the NDE trigger, we should all jump for joy and look forward to total extinction.

Blasdel makes no mention of research carried out by many esteemed scientists between 1850 and 1935.  He might have browsed Wikipedia and concluded that it was just so much bunk that it wasn’t worth looking into.  He’d probably have a good laugh if someone suggested he consider the early psychical research. On the other hand, even our dedicated NDE researchers rarely say anything about it or offer it as a foundation for their own findings.  I can understand that, because one has to dig deeply into the subject matter to really grasp it; moreover, it is not something that can be explained in a few paragraphs of even a chapter. 

More recently, in Nature Reviews Neurology, a team of seven scientists at the University of Liege, Belgium, explored neurobiological processes in NDEs. They list five theories, including the “Dualistic Theory,” which they say “posits that the mind (or soul) can detach from the physical body, allowing mental functions to persist even when the brain is seemingly inactive or impaired, or when an individual is near death.  From this theoretical perspective NDE’s present a specific state of the transcendental consciousness in which cognition, emotions and the self operate independently of the brain.”  But the team further notes that “we have excluded dualistic theories from our discussion owing to the lack of empirical evidence and the fact a fundamental tenet of neuroscience asserts that human experience arises from the brain.”

I may be missing something here, but I don’t understand why identifying a chemical or other biological or neurological trigger for the NDE repudiates the dualistic theory. To put it another way, why shouldn’t we expect a physical trigger of some kind in making the transition from the physical to the spirit world?  Also, why, as Blasdel suggests, does the heart have to be completely inactive for science to accept research supporting the dualistic theory.  If the out-of-body phenomenon takes place from drugs, from an anti-gravity machine used to train pilots, or even is self-induced as in “astral traveling,” why does that defeat the dualistic theory?  Who said that the separation of the two bodies can take place only when the heart stops completely or when approaching death?  That seems to me to be a false assumption by the pseudo-skeptics in their anxiety to debunk all things spiritual. 

Who today is qualified to say that such renowned scientists as Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Barret, Dr. Gustave Geley, Dr. James Hyslop, Dr. T. Glen Hamilton, and many others of the pre-1935 psychical research era were duped on hundreds of occasions by clever magicians? That their science is outdated science? 

Ectoplasm

With all the early research reporting on ectoplasm being exuded by certain mediums and further suggesting that “soul mist” seen leaving the body at or near the time of death is the same thing as ectoplasm, it would seem that science would have taken more interest in soul mist in more recent years. Of course, this can’t be done in the laboratory, so it would be a difficult undertaking.

In his 1970 book, Out of the Body Experiences, Dr. Robert Crookall, a British geologist who spent the second half of his life analyzing psychic phenomena, quoted R. B. Hout, a physician, who was present at the death of his aunt.  “My attention was called…to something immediately above the physical body, suspended in the atmosphere about two feet above the bed.  At first I could distinguish nothing more than a vague outline of a hazy, fog-like substance.  There seemed to be only a mist held suspended, motionless.  But, as I looked, very gradually there grew into my sight a denser, more solid, condensation of this inexplicable vapor.  Then I was astonished to see definite outlines presenting themselves, and soon I saw this fog-like substance was assuming a human form.”

Hout then saw that the form resembled the physical body of his aunt.  The form hung suspended horizontally a few feet above the body.  When the phantom form appeared complete, Hout saw his aunt’s features clearly.  “They were very similar to the physical face, except that a glow of peace and vigor was expressed instead of age and pain. The eyes were closed as though in tranquil sleep, and a luminosity seemed to radiate from the spirit body.” He then observed a “silver-like substance” streaming from the head of the physical body to the head of the spirit body.  “The colour was a translucent luminous silver radiance.  The cord seemed alive with vibrant energy.  I could see the pulsations of light stream along the course of it, from the direction of the physical body to the spirit ‘double.’  With each pulsation the spirit body became more alive and denser, whereas the physical body became quieter and more nearly lifeless…”

When the pulsations of the cord stopped, Hout could see various strands of the cord snapping.  When the last connecting strand snapped, the spirit body rose to a vertical position, the eyes opened, and a smile broke from the face before it vanished from his sight.

Crookall also cited the words of Florence Marryat, an English opera singer and popular author, who wrote about “a cloud of smoke” gathering over the head of a dying girl,  then spreading out and acquiring the shape of the girl’s body.  “It was suspended in the air two or three feet above the body…When she lay back unconscious, the Spirit above, which was still bound to her brain, heart, and vitals by cords of light like electricity, became, as it were, a living soul.”

Perhaps, rather than “Snubbed Science,” number 31 should be “Beyond Science.”

Photo IDs, top row: Leonora Piper, Andrew Jackson Davis, Sir Oliver Lodge, William T. Stead, Cora Scott Richmond—second row:  Sir William Barrett, Eileen Garrett, Alfred Russel Wallace, Gladys Osborne Leonard, Pearl Curran—third row: Frederic Myers, Chas. Richet, Etta Wriedt, Camille Flammarion, Minot Savage—fourth row: Hamlin Garland, Gustave Geley, D. D. Home, Eusapia Paladino, Sir William Crookes—fifth row: Geraldine Cummins, John Edmonds, Richard Hodgson, Lord Dowding, James Hyslop

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.