THE FLATLINER PARADIGM
THE NEXT STEP IN AFTERLIFE RESEARCH

One of the most fascinating mysteries is whether we survive the death of our bodies. And yet it somehow remains a topic that mainstream science insists on ignoring. Fashionable materialism makes the idea of an afterlife look like a nonstarter.

            On the other hand, it's not generally known that since the 18th century and the rise of mesmerism, an underground movement has been busy exploring the riddle of life after death. There were, for example, the late 19th century psychical researchers, Victorian ladies and knighted scientists. What of the last century? The 20th? Progress was made but not enough to solve the mystery.

            In fact, research today seems to have arrived at a stalemate; the best evidence strongly suggests the reality of some kind of afterlife. Unfortunately, nagging doubts persist, less about the evidence itself, which is robust, but about how to interpret it. I believe this stalemate is a good thing because it forces us to reframe the whole question. I suggest that for those who want to find out for themselves what may await us in the great beyond, a next step can be taken. A step into the flatliner paradigm.

            Not to be confused with the Hollywood movie, (which was pretty good), the flatliner paradigm aims for direct experience of the "next" world, which, if there is one, must be very "near." Now, the easiest way to prove there is a next world is for our bodies to die, and for our minds or souls to go there. Such is the logic of the flatliner paradigm but with one big qualification. Instead of physically dying--I see no point in rushing the inevitable--we put the stress on changing our consciousness.

            Death, if it has an "after" or a "next" world, must involve a shift in consciousness, and may be no stranger than waking up from a dream, or, as William Blake said, than stepping from one room into another. It is in this sense that the "next" world, if there is one, must be very near.

WHY AFTERLIFE RESEARCH?

The Renaissance thinker Marsilio Ficino once made the curious remark that the appetite for immortality is as natural to humans as neighing is to horses. In fact, most religious faiths assume that somehow we do survive the death of our bodies. Plato thought that that the belief that we do was the backbone of morality, and that extinction would be a boon to the wicked. We have to come to grips with the idea of death, Jung insisted, and get in synch with the wisdom of our psychic heritage. Sociologist Ernest Becker (1973) went further and tied the pathologies of politics to the denial of death; if Becker was right, science needs to find a way to cope with our death-denying, power-craving culture. Alan Harrington wrote in The Immortalist (1969) that that unless we learn to deal with death, the sanity of our culture is at risk. Meanwhile, Timothy Leary (1988) once opined that it's time for science to "snuff death."

            So is there a life after death? The question is important for yet another reason. There's a huge split between popular and academic views on the subject. Most Americans believe in some form of afterlife, but most educated persons seem to doubt it. In 1982, a Gallup poll showed that 67% of Americans believe in an afterlife, but the percentage plunged among the scientifically educated. Here, if anything, is the Waterloo of the culture wars. Are most people deluded? Is the majority lagging behind the insights of modern science? It may very well be, but a careful look at all the facts might cause one to be less dogmatic.

            The first thing is to look at the full range of relevant data. Unfortunately, most of the stuff is either unknown or ignored by the average citizen as well as by mainstream scientists. But it's a fact that a mass of data has slowly but steadily been collected. Since the early days of mesmerism, and with the founding of the British Society for Psychical Research in 1882, a small but persisent body of maverick scholars and scientists have kept guard over this body of theoretically explosive information. One of the founders of psychical research was Frederic Myers, author of Human Personality and the Survival of Bodily Death (1903). (Myers studied survival evidence and transpersonal states of consciousness.)

            Without looking at all the relevant material, it's hard to appreciate the subtlety of the afterlife story. It may even turn out, as psychologist Gardner Murphy once said, that we have yet to frame the right question. But whatever the question, firm conclusions elude us. All we can say for sure is that human beings either possess incredible psychological abilities or they do survive bodily death. On either view, this is important and challenging material.

CONCEPTUAL HURDLES

Life after death isn't a straightforward concept. Some skeptics wonder about what sense can we attach to talk of a person surviving bodily death. Can we think of persons without thinking of their bodies? Can we separate them from the social, biological and environmental context in which they come to be? If so, what could be left over that we could say survived death? A disembodied mind, floating feelings, memory images? Can we hope for more than the vacuous existence Homer ascribes to the souls of Hades? What of society and community in the afterlife? What about time? Will there be new kinds of law and order? What about sex, good food, the colors of the rainbow? And if not these, what then? An embrace with the light? What could action mean n an extraphysical environment? And so on; questions multiply.

            Attempts to deal with these questions have been made (see, for example, H. H. Price (1967), but there can be danger in such speculations, if they are pursued apart from attention to real data. For example, the philosopher Terence Penelhum (1970) concludes that disembodied existence is an incoherent idea and so must deny the possibility that anything could count as evidence for life after death. This would be a mistake, since there is much afterlife-related data, which, however you interpret it, suggests fascinating things about human nature.

            As to how to conceive of the "next" world, a word or two might be useful. Our afterdeath selves, world, and mode of being could be described as imaginal (Corbin, 1977) or imagy (Price, 1967). "The world of imagination is the world of eternity," said William Blake. "It is the divine bosom into which we shall go after the death of the vegetative body." The afterdeath state is conceivable as an extension of our imaginative or dream life, but a dream life shared with the dream life of others. But now on to a capsule summary of the evidence.

TYPES OF EVIDENCE

Regardless of the conceptual difficulties that face afterlife research, an impressive amount of data does exist that could be explained by the afterlife hypothesis. Two general points about afterlife evidence: 1) The full weight of the evidence cannot in some cases be captured in written reports. Mediums who assume the voice, gesture, characteristic speech, humor, and mannerisms of alleged discarnate communicators cannot be adequately appreciated through written records. 2) Detailed narratives bearing on survival are frequently convoluted and quite lengthy; this is true for cases of the reincarnation and cross-correspondence type. The inquirer must hunt down the original sources.

PHENOMENA ON THE THRESHOLD OF DEATH

Several categories of afterlife report describe what happens at, near or shortly after the moment of death. In 1889, Henry Sidgwick and his associates began a five year project to compile a Census of Hallucinations, and found that waking hallucinations significantly correlated with distantly occurring deaths within a twelve hour period (Sidgwick, 1894). Although interesting in themselves, and possibly paranormal, these so-called crisis apparitions carry little weight as survival evidence: dying may simply trigger veridical hallucinations. A similar point could be made about Bozzano's (1948) collection of reports of unexplained physical events occurring at the moment of death such as watches stopping and starting, bells ringing, paintings or photographs falling, and other events symbolizing or announcing a person's death. However uncanny such events may be, they prove very little about a person's survival of death.

            Some early writers gathered reports of deathbed visions (Barrett, 1926). Dying people often experience unaccountable elation after seeing lights and deceased relatives; it is notable that dying people, when they do have visions, tend mainly to see dead people. Is this a coincidence or should we view such visionary encounters as part of a welcoming committee to the next world?

            Osis and Haraldsson (1977) conducted a cross-cultural study of deathbed visions with findings that support the afterlife hypothesis: for one thing, the visions and the elation that subjects experience seem to be suppressed by medications. Their occurrence is typically brief and so suggest ESP-like communications rather than the prolonged action of sick, dying brains. Related to deathbed visions (in which subjects do not recover) are the more widely known accounts of near-death experiences (Ring, 1980; Sabom, 1982). NDEs are similar to deathbed visions: they produce elation; diminish the fear of death; and are typically of deceased people. With NDEs, it is possible to study the aftereffects of the experience, which often includes profound spiritual awakening. Another aftereffect claim is increased psychic sensitivity (Greyson, 1983). Many NDErs claim to "know" there is a life after death, and the collective impact of such claims has been to modify the public perception of the nature of death, as may be seen in the steady flow of movies, sitcoms, novels, short stories, and other signs of the changing mythology of death (Grosso, 1991).

            The NDE, because of its transformative and mystical character, is also a subject of keen interest to transpersonal psychologists. As evidence, however, for life after death it is probably no stronger than the veridical out-of-body (OBE) component of near-death narratives. Evidence for veridical OBEs is largely anecdotal though a few experimental cases also have been reported (Tart, 1968). The relevance to the afterlife hypothesis is this: if one can "see" at a distant location from one's body, the tight dependence of consciousness on the body seems radically loosened. The looser that relationship the more plausible the afterlife hypothesis. If your center of awareness could separate from your body, it is easier to imagine that you might survive the more drastic "separation" implied by bodily death. Experiments performed by Osis and McCormick (1980) with Alex Tanous appear to prove that a localized source of consciousness is present during some out-of-body experiences.

APPARITIONS OF THE DEAD

Apparitions are sometimes seen on the threshold of death. But ghostly apparitions often appear long after death. Among these some carry more weight than others, for example, apparitions that convey accurate information unknown to the percipient. An often cited case is reported by Myers (1903, Vol. II, 27-30). A salesman saw an apparition of his sister, dead nine years, with a red scratch on her cheek. The man later discovered that his mother had accidentally made such a scratch on the cheek of the deceased while preparing the body for burial. What is curious about this account is the suggestion that bodily scars turn up in our postmortem apparitional bodies. Perhaps it is parsimonious to explain this case as an example of the salesman's clairvoyant retrocognition or telepathy with his living mother, who produced the scratch in the first place.

            Sometimes dead people unknown to the percipient appear. There are tales of individuals in hotels who see apparitions of strangers they later identify through photographs and verbal descriptions; these cases are not easily explained as resulting from any obvious need on the part of the percipient. I would stress the distinction between need-relevant and non-need-relevant apparitions. You have to show there is some need at work in the percipient, before jumping to the conclusion that the apparition is merely a subjective hallucination. An additional point worth making here is that apparitions collectively witnessed or witnessed by various people over a long time argue for objective reality in a way that, all things being equal, a single witness in a single episode cannot.

            Now, suppose some identifying trace of a deceased human being is certified, via single or collective witnesses, beyond reasonable doubt; this is still a long way from making the case for the conscious survival of that personality. Objective, ghostly entities may represent some unexplained, albeit unconscious, trace that is activated from time to time when certain (admittedly unspecified) conditions allow. In fact, many ghostly apparitions appear to be unconscious and self-absorbed when they appear. It's easy to raise questions about whether or what or how other people are conscious-the classic philosophical problem of other minds. In dealing with fleeting apparitions, it is easy to be skeptical.

            What we need, then, are apparitions that display initiative, purpose-indications, in short, of a fuller self-consciousness. Richmond (1938) compiled a volume of cases, drawn from the records of the British Society of Psychical Research: cases of apparitions that showed purpose. The following is an example that borders on the surreal. A man visits his nephew in a Romanian hospital. The nephew dies, but the uncle is unable to attend the funeral. Two months later the uncle sees an apparition of his nephew, and asks what he wants. The response: "Put me in properly; the coffin is narrow; the coffin is short." A year later, the uncle meets the ward-servant who buried the nephew; she remarks that the "coffin proved to be so narrow and short, that when he was being laid into it, the bones cracked. . ." (Richmond, 1934). The odd thing here is the possibility that a discarnate being should take umbrage over the poor treatment of its corpse. As far as I can see, it is hard to account for the apparition by invoking the needs of the percipient. What possible need could the uncle have to rectify the matter of his nephew's cramped coffin? On the other hand, one might dig up some relevant facts that make a credible non-survival story possible.

REINCARNATION MEMORIES

A widespread form of belief in survival is the belief in reincarnation. The concept of reincarnation forces into relief the question of what survives. Here we are mainly indebted to psychiatrist Ian Stevenson and his associates for the data that we have. (Accounts of past-life readings and hypnotic age regression are generally more therapeutic than evidential of reincarnation.)

            The evidence is typically from children who remember previous lives. Stevenson has built up a database of about 2,600 cases from all parts of the world. In a model case, Stevenson cites five characteristics: predictions of rebirth prior to death, announcing dreams, birthmarks or birth defects, statements about the child's previous life, and unusual behaviors characteristic of the life remembered. Birthmarks are cited as possibly the strongest evidence in support of the reincarnation hypothesis.

            Given that cases are authentic, one still has to consider explanations other than reincarnation. Stevenson says he gradually has come to feel that paranormal explanations of reincarnation memories are less compelling than he previously supposed. There is, for example, no evidence that his subjects demonstrate ESP in any context besides their past life recollections.

            Stevenson believes that reincarnation memories may explain unexplained phobias, likings, talents, and gender confusion. If this data truly supports the reincarnation hypothesis, it is important for human psychology. It adds a new dimension to our understanding of human personality, which becomes more complex and many-layered, conceivably containing residues from the past. If Stevenson's work on birthmarks and birth defects in reincarnation cases is valid, it would prove that environment and genetics do not account for the whole of our mental or our physical characteristics.

            As a form of survival of consciousness, reincarnation seems at best a partial, fleeting, and, in time, fading form of survival. It is partial because my old personality in conjunction with my old body loses its continuity in a new body; it is fleeting and fading because, according to the reports, these memories last only the first few years of a child's life, and mainly in people whose previous personalities died violently. The self that I was gradually disappears into the newly embodied self that I become; moreover, the self that I become is destined to disappear into my reincarnated future self. From a subjective viewpoint, reincarnation seems like a kind of transient haunting that perhaps in the long run is equivalent to annihilation. On the other hand, as Stevenson points out: Krishna tells Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita: "You and I, Arjuna, have lived many lives. I remember them all: you do not remember." The deeper, multiple self that I am may remain subconscious though still work as a source of influence. Stevenson suggests that previous layers of our reincarnated selves may from time to time overflow into our dream lives, but admits the evidence for this is shaky.

MEDIUMSHIP

Quasi-experimental evidence suggesting an afterlife is available from mental or trance mediumship. Although many professional mediums have proven fraudulent, during the heyday of psychical research there were several who gained the respect of most careful investigators: for example, Leonora Piper, Gladys Leonard, Helen Verrall, and Mrs. "Willet" (Coombe-Tennant).

            The bulk of this data lies for the most part ignored in the archives of psychical research. In my opinion, after studying the best of it, one is forced to conclude that the great mediums either 1) obtained information from minds deceased and discarnate or 2) created compelling illusions of deceased persons by obtaining relevant information by paranormal means, often from a variety of sources (minds of living people and written or photographic records). Subconsciously, all this would be synthesized into convincing personas of deceased persons. Stronger conviction may result when the medium dramatically reproduces the voice inflections, gestures, mannerisms, speech patterns and other identifying traits of the dead person.

            Gardner Murphy (1945) has graded various types of mediumistic performance according to increasing theoretical punch. For example, the medium may communicate facts not known to the sitter. Murphy quotes William James on his sitting with Mrs. Piper: "The aunt who purported to `take control' . . . spoke . . . of the condition of health of two members of the family in New York, of which we knew nothing at the time, and which was afterwards corroborated by letter." (Murphy, 1945, 19-11). From here we move to cases of communication of facts not known by any living person whatsoever. We find examples in so-called book tests; Mrs. Leonard's "control" Feda directs a sitter to a book belonging to her husband, which she had never opened, and which contained material uniquely significant to the deceased (Murphy, 1945, 14-15).

            Another type of mediumistic occurrence involves the sudden intrusion of an unexpected communicator. Gauld (1982) has called attention to these so-called "drop-in" communicators, whose identities are later confirmed. Their appearance seems less readily accountable by the needs of sitters acting upon the subconscious mind of the medium. In a similar move to reduce the likelihood of the medium obtaining information from the sitter there are so-called proxy sittings. Here, somebody visits a medium acting as a proxy for a distant party seeking confirmation of postmortem survival; the proxy has no knowledge of the bereaved.

            Another type of mediumship, regarded by some as yet more cogent than the types described so far, consist of "cross correspondences," in which deceased persons appear to convey bits and pieces of an integrated message through several mediums (Saltmarsh, 1938). This type of evidence came to the fore after the deaths of Henry Sidgwick and F. W. H. Myers, and seems to have emanated from the discarnate minds of these scholars in an attempt to circumvent the objection that telepathy of the living explains survival evidence. Much of this material gives the impression that a cooperative effort of discarnate minds was made to communicate from beyond the grave. Objections, of course, have been raised. It has been said that evidence of pattern is not necessarily evidence of design; if one looks hard enough, one can find pattern in almost anything. Also, mediums such as Mrs. Verall had the necessary classical scholarship to subconsciously engineer the impression of cross-correspondence. This, of course, would presuppose some pretty fancy subconscious machinations on the part of living mediums, which again leads us to reflect: Afterlife research has tremendous implications for human potential, however you interpret the best data.

KNOW-HOW AS A TOKEN OF SURVIVAL

Demonstration of skills or know-how from alleged communicators strengthens the case for survival. It is said, for instance, that there is no evidence that people can acquire a skill--like speaking a language or producing music or poetry--by telepathy. If a medium displays skills she is known not to possess, it seems that a person who does possess that skill, other than the medium, must be invoked to explain the display. That, presumably, is the deceased.

            Stevenson (1974) reports cases of responsive xenoglossy, the ability to speak continuously and responsively in a language one has never learned. A related example of this type of evidence concerns mediumistic scripts thought to derive from the excarnate mind of Oscar Wilde, much of it similar to Wilde in style and wit. Then there's the story of Pearl Curran, who wrote automatic script, allegedly produced by a seventeenth century lady, Patience Worth, whose literary skills clearly transcended Mrs. Curran's (Prince, 1964). Unfortunately, "Patience Worth" was poor at identifying herself as a bona fide historical person. The case of Rosemary Brown has puzzled some experts. Brown is a medium who claims to be transmitting the postmortem musical compositions of the spirits of Liszt, Beethoven, and other musical greats (Parrott, 1978).

MACHINE-MEDIATED COMMUNICATIONS FROM THE DEAD?

With classic Yankee temerity, Thomas Edison toyed with the idea of inventing a machine for communicating with the dead. As it turns out, there is a growing body of reports of machine-mediated mediumship. In the early history of photography there were claims of "extras," photographic drop-in communicators, images of dead people turning up on photographs, taken by folk with a knack for psychic photography or, to use Jule Eisenbud's term, by folk with a knack for "thoughtography." Of course, the specter of fraud haunts this area of investigation; clever photographers can fob off good ghost facsimiles.

            One of the first spirit photographers was William H. Mumler. In 1861 he produced a photograph in which a ghostly extra of his twelve-year dead cousin appeared. "This photograph was taken by myself of myself and there was not a living soul in the room beside myself," he stated. Mumler's fame and success as a spirit photographer grew in North America and Europe, but in New York he was arrested for fraud. Credible witnesses sprang to his defense. A US Court of Appeals Judge, John Edmonds, who first tried to entrap Mumler, thinking he was a trickster, became convinced that the photographer had produced spirit photographs, and testified on his behalf. The case against Mumler was dismissed. Mumler's most famous spirit photograph was of Mrs. Abe Lincoln, mourning her husband; in this photo, an image of a serenely sepulchral Abe appears at her side (Permutt, 1983; Coates; 1911\1973).

            Of particular interest is Jule Eisenbud's World of Ted Serios (1967), an account of a bilious bellhop with psychokinetic abilities to project images directly upon Polaroid film. For an understanding of the survival problem, a careful review of this data seems essential. The more we understand the extent of exotic human abilities, the better we position ourselves to decide whether we are dealing with simulacra or real evidence of survival. Eisenbud, for example, speculates on the limits of the creative imagination, and wonders how much of what we automatically take to be "out there" is really a psychokinetic phantasm produced from within ourselves.

            Similar questions arise when we consider so-called Electronic Voice Phenomena. In 1959, filmaker Friedrich Juergenson picked up human voices of supposed dead people on an audiotape he was using to record the sounds of singing birds. A psychology professor Konstantin Raudive (1971) began to experiment and produced a multilingual collection of apparently paranormal voices, many claiming to come from previously living people. The movement has continued until the present, having spread throughout Europe, parts of Asia, and in North and South America. People claim they are recording voices from the dead.

            But there are difficulties. The voices are hard to hear, much too fuzzy as I recall in my own experience. Are listeners projecting meaning onto noise, or are actual words heard? Enough testimony suggests words are sometimes heard (Raudive, 1971; Bander, 1973). One may of course accept the testimony but still think that the voices heard are psychokinetic phantasms caused by living people.

            An article in the Spring 1993 issue of the Noetic Science Bulletin by Mark Macy presents an overview of recent developments in ITC--"instrumental transcommunication"-in other words, mediumship and divination by machine. Macy describes how one group allegedly is receiving intelligence from an entity known as the "Technician," whose job it is to initiate "interdimensional communication." Macy, who is working with George Meek and Meek's deceased wife, Jeannette, claims that the "Technician" and his cohorts are causing copy to appear on computer screens as well as images of deceased persons on television screens. Scott Rogo and Raymond Bayless (in Phone Calls from the Dead) also gave accounts of ITC from presumably parallel postmortem worlds.

            So, video, audio, and computer technologies reportedly serve for "transcommunication" with discarnate intelligences. Given Helmut Schmidt's experimental evidence of psychokinetic influence on random event generators, the idea of spirits influencing refined communication technologies seems plausible. Morris (1984) has reviewed evidence that people can paranormally influence machines, for example, computers. So, since there is evidence that the living can psychokinetically influence machines, the deceased, presuming they survive, might try to communicate with us via technology. This is an important direction for research; at the moment, however, the evidence for anything paranormal taking place at the machine-excarnate interface, appears minuscule.

PROBLEMS

The evidence has in the end convinced several careful students of afterlife research. (Hyslop, Lodge, Myers, Mrs. Sidgwick, Ducasse, and Stevenson, Gauld, Griffin, Almeder, Becker, to name just a few.) Some, equally careful, have rejected the afterdeath story, like E. R. Dodds. Others, like philosoper, Paul Edwards, exhibit an approach more venomous than enlightened. Still others hover in true Greek scepticism, for example, William James, C. D. Broad, and Gardner Murphy. Among close students, consensus is wanting.

            Now suppose that some of us do survive our body's demise. Communication with the dead would be no easy job for at least two reasons:

            1) Survival in an extrasomatic condition would of necessity occur in an altered state of consciousness, more "altered," I'd guess, than the dream state. It might, for example, be very hard to remember a combination lock number in one's postmortem state, as it would be hard to remember such things in a dream. If dreams are any indication of the nature of postmortem survival, it might be difficult even to remember precisely who one was in embodied life.

            2) Postmortem communication, if it occurs, must be by something like telepathy; but in life, telepathic communication is notoriously hard to demonstrate at will; why should it be easier in the afterlife?

            In view of 1 and 2, I think it rather surprising that we have that much apparent communication. But still, the answer to the great detective story continues to elude us. The more deeply we probe the human mind, especially its multiple subconscious dimensions, the more hidden capacity reveal itself. And these hidden capacities confound us.

            The histrionic talents of the unconscious It has been argued, for example, that the histrionic talents of the unconscious are so extensive, that we should never underestimate the storytelling, mythmaking capacities of the subconscious mind. Our secondary, alternate, or multiple personalities that may take on a life of their own and pursue agendas of their own, especially in mediumistic and other dissociated states.

            Our common dreams are proof of the amazing creative power of the subconscious mind. The ability of the medium to conjure up compelling personas of the dead is no more surprising than the average person's ability to create fully compelling personas of the dead in dreaming.

            On the other hand, we cannot apply these theories automatically. We have to see in detail if they fit. The motivation factor has to be reckoned. That is why cases of the drop-in communicators, where the relevance of need to sitters is not clear, succeed in giving the impression of external influence.

            Superpsi This brings us to what some may see as the chief rival to the afterlife hypothesis. According to the superpsi hypothesis, no matter how persuasive the evidence for survival, we should always follow the law of parsimony and invoke the super psychic powers of the living to explain apparent survival data. The late Karlis Osis was fond of making fun of the superpsi bogeyman by calling it a "mouse" that eats up evidence like a lion.

            Several moves are typically made in response to those who are eager to eat up all survival evidence with superpsi. One is to point out that no laboratory evidence exists to support the existence of this godlike power supposed to be latent within us all.

            Another move is to complain that superpsi, the way it is defined, is logically equivalent to God and may be called upon to explain absolutely anything. Superpsi, in short, is convicted on account of failing to qualify as a scientific hypothesis; it cannot be falsified. The only constraints upon God and superpsi are logical; everything else is permitted.

            Another response to the menace of superpsi is to turn it against itself. Whately Carington said that the acceptance of telepathy, and psi in general, has "direct evidential bearing on the question of survival." Says Carington: "In the first place it is argued that the ability of one mind to communicate with another independently of the usual sensory and motor mechanism of the body--and indeed of any physical mechanism at all--renders it distinctly more likely that a mind can exist independently of the body" (Smith\Carington, 1920).

            Superpsi undercuts itself; the more you apply it, the more you ascribe quasi-divinity to the human mind and thus lend credit to the afterlife hypothesis. Life after death may simply be seen as the most radical expression of superpsi. But there are other obstacles to the notion of an afterlife.

            The biological objection -- Murphy (1947) has clearly stated the objection to survival from an evolutionary perspective. Since the human personality has evolved in response to the biological environment; how could we conceivably be adapted to a life beyond the grave where there is no biological environment? The survivalist may reply that it is precisely here that our psychic abilities come into play. It may be, as Myers suggested, that our psychic organs are pre-adapted for post-biological survival. We use our psi powers in embodied life in a halting, inefficient, and unreliable way; but after death, they may be the basis of our existence, as constituting, so to speak, the atmosphere we breathe and the landscape we inhabit.

            The data of psi invite us to tinker with our evolutionary outlook. It is a fact often ignored that Alfred Russell Wallace (1878), who was co-founder with Darwin of the modern theory of evolution through natural selection, was a pioneer in psychical research and a convinced spiritualist. Hans Driesch, Alister Hardy and Rupert Sheldrake have further contributed to this important discussion, while Ian Stevenson's recent work on the intersection of reincarnation and biology is important.

            The Role of Wish fulfillment -- Another objection to the idea of survival stems from the Freudian school. Here the claim is that survival evidence is a forgery of wish fulfillment, just as our belief in God is a neurotic illusion. Psychoanalytic writers say the OBE is a strategy in the denial of death (Ehrenwald, 1978). However, veridical OBEs show there is an objective content to OBE perception; it is not just a fantasy. What of the argument that fear of death is the inventor of survival evidence? Clearly, there are as many reasons that show how fear of life after of death is a motive for disbelief (Grosso, 1992). (For example, the fear of hell.) Finally, the data of anthropology shows that early people were not afraid of death but lived in acute fear of the dead. Depending on what aspects of the evidence you choose to stress or underplay, it's not that hard to conclude that belief or disbelief in afterlife is warranted.

BREAKING THE DEADLOCK

Speaking for myself, I cannot feel conviction either way; the most I can say (as C. D. Broad once did) is that I would not be surprised if I found myself surviving the death of my body. When I look closely within myself, what I feel constraining me toward belief in probable extinction is the sense that I do not inhabit the kind of universe where the leap into a new mode of existence after biological death is possible or, at any rate, probable.

            Search for a New Paradigm -- One way I can imagine freeing myself from the spell is to develop a new paradigm, that is, to put afterlife data in a frame of reference less constraining than dogmatic materialism. Some have turned to help from the latest conceptions of physics. As Arthur Koestler has shown in The Roots of Coincidence (1972), exposing ourselves to the ideas of the new physics is good for the mechanistic cramp in our metaphysical imagination. One hears from some physicists, for example, curious talk of the "dematerialization" of the universe.

            I am, however, skeptical about trying to authenticate a transcendent psychology on the basis of any physical theory. In the days of Hobbes, materialists tried to model mind after images of clockwork mechanism; today we reach enthusiastically for quantum physics metaphors. I believe that consciousness is most likely an irreducible reality and prefer to take it as my starting point. An afterlife survival paradigm must boldly begin with its own premises and construct its own architecture of the possible. "Back to the things themselves," as Husserl said.

            In other words, to free ourselves from the constricting spell of one-dimensional metaphysics, we must not allow ourselves to be trapped by the thinking of scientists locked in their own departments of expertise. Our task as researchers is to create a "clearing" in the field of consciousness. As an initial task for liberating our cramped visionary eye muscles, we must open ourselves to the variety of transcendent experience. We have a great tradition of explorers who have led the way here, William James and Frederic Myers, to cite two stellar examples. The more open we become to transcendent experience, the less odd will seem the afterlife idea. But as long as we're stuck in one-dimensional universe, survival of death will feel like something improbable, and indeed escapist. . As we slowly come to realize that we are made from a subtler web of realities, life after death will seem less implausible, and easier to embrace as a live option. Paranormal and transpersonal experiences--these are the indispensable starting-points for the re-enchantment of our metaphysics.

            An Enlarged Database -- To widen our perspective on the afterlife hypothesis, we need to widen our database. Several classes of data exist that directly support the survival hypothesis, facts that directly bolster the claim that some known persons survive death. There are other kinds of fact that indirectly increase the plausibility of the survival claim.

            Ufology -- Anyone who rummages about the vast, tangled, and strange world of ufology will, as J. Vallee, A. Hynek, M. Cassirer, and others have found, know that UFO-related narratives are loaded with parapsychological motifs. Cassirer's (1988) monograph shows how UFOs, UFO occupants, and UFO "contact" and "abduction" narratives are filled with ghostlike behaviors, ectoplasm, teleportations, telepathy, stigmata, and other paranormal hijinx. UFO data suggest interactions with "another world," either from another planet or another dimension of reality.

            The UFO controversy, like the survival controversy, is about the question of other worlds. The big question is, Are UFOs real? Our question is, Are afterdeath people real? Both areas of research ask: Is there something intelligent "out there," something external to our minds, something with a life and will of its own? Ring (1992) compared profiles of UFO and near-death experiencers, and that there were some interesting similarities, for example, a proneness to dissociation. Whether or not the alleged proneness to association is a sign of delusion or a sign of receptivity to other worlds remains a mystery.

            Forteana -- What I have just said applies to another body of data that come under the rubric of "forteana"--after the writings of Charles Fort (1974). Anomalies--Fort called them the damned, the excluded--all the phenomena that don't fit in established science, frog-falls from nowhere, phantom black dogs, indeed, a phantom menagerie, battles heard and ships seen in the sky-all phenomena that play havoc with the "laws" of time and space. The marvelous universe of Forteana is full of otherworldly overtones and implications. It, too, is part of the afterlife story. How do all the pieces fit in?

            Transpersonal phenomena -- Myers' monumental Human Personality and the Survival of Bodily Death describes a tapestry of remarkable transpersonal experiences: apparitions of the dead, deathbed visions, prophecy, community of sensation, telepathic impressions, trance, dreams, visions, ecstasy, possession, creative inspiration, and more. Stories of such experiences have been around for a long time; they are part of the big picture of human experience. They are experiences in which our customary sense of selfhood breaks down; they point to the possibility that we may exist beyond the boundaries of the body. As such they too are part of the afterlife story.

            How did human beings come to believe they survived death or could travel to other worlds? The strange reality of dreams must have convinced many. Today we can see how people who have near-death experiences or see unidentified flying objects may come away with otherworldly convictions. Spontaneous, and sometimes ritually induced experiences in the ancient world that produced such convictions are well known: The ecstatic experience of the Jewish prophets or, as Irwin Rhode (1966) described, the ecstasy of the Dionysian revel, or the ingestion of LSD in the Eleusinian Mystery cult. We need to look at these transpersonal experiences for insight into otherworldly claims.

            The World of "Miracles" -- What Charles Fort called "wild talents" Hindus called siddhis and Christians charisms. These are the strange abilities, sometimes surprisingly well- documented, of levitation, bilocation, heat prodigies, bodily elongation, inedia (living without eating or drinking), stigmata, the odor of sanctity, materialization, and other human oddities (Thurston, 1951; Treece, 1989). With all this strange and provocative material placed squarely before our minds, it may be easier to imagine a universe in which people survive bodily death. In light of such a larger picture, it feels as if survival might be possible after all.

            One might also wonder if these "miracles" and other insurrections against physical law are rumblings from the future of human evolution. Michael Murphy's Future of the Body (1992) supports such a speculation. Murphy, in fact, sees evidence for increasingly free forms of embodied existence that graduate insensibly toward the full-blown capacity to escape the shackles of death itself. Levitation, inedia, bilocation, and the like may be indications of powers our postmortem bodies will more fully enjoy. The future of the body may be to evolve into something more spiritual, something more akin to the spiritual bodies described by Plotinus or Saint Paul. The case for afterlife survival needs to be looked at in light of the evolutionary picture of human potential.

            Hagging -- Folklorist David Hufford's (1982) study of the nightmare, otherwise called "hagging" or the "terror that comes in the night," studies a phenomenon that medical professionals call "paralytic sleep." Hufford found that the experience was widespread across cultures. Typically reported is a presence, feelings of pressure on the chest, voices, laughing¹, shrieking, and transient paralysis. Hufford found no compelling explanation of the syndrome. Hagging adds data to the big picture and hints that we may suffer more intrusions from external intelligence than we suspect. Another piece of the puzzle.

            Entheogenic -- Stan Grof (1985) reports observations on psychedelic, or entheogenic, states that expand our map of the human psyche. Grof describes subjects seeing, thinking, and feeling things that go beyond their personal histories. Like Stevenson and Jung, Grof situates the individual in a transpersonal matrix; the everyday personality is just the tip of the self, which has depth upon depth. This entheogenic approach to afterworld research has a long pedigree in shamanic experience, and opens another door to possible personal experimentation.

BREAKING THE DEADLOCK

The evidence may convince some people of the reality of an afterlife. But as long as we remain this side the mystery of death, uncertainty will dog our trail. But an option remains, one that has probably been the basis of achieving conviction about these matters since time immemorial.

            Afterlife research has essentially studied traces of deceased personalities: ghosts, hauntings, apparitions, reincarnation memories, mediumistic deliverances. On the basis of these, we make inferences, work with assumptions, and try to determine if something has survived death.

            I suggest that we supplement the trace approach with a practical, experiential approach. Instead of trying to catch and analyze residues of deceased others, I would urge that we ourselves attempt to explore what Plato called the "other place." Not every one will be suited for this kind of research, but then not everyone is suited to be a nuclear physicist or a brain surgeon.

            In calling this the flatliner paradigm of afterlife research, I'm not suggesting that we imitate the medical students in the movie called Flatliners. Fortunately, nonviolent methods are available, and have been cultivated by many cultures. Chinese Taoists, for example, practice meditation and visualization techniques designed to induce afterlife experiences. Tibetan Buddhists have developed techniques designed to prepare one for the total release of the soul from the body that we call death. Even within the Western tradition, Plato understood the practice of philosophy as a practice of death and dying.

            Psychologically, meditative, trance, and ecstatic states have afterlife properties. Subjects during such states become, as in the state we call death, dis-identified from the body. Arbman (1968) reviews data that suggests that trance and ecstasy are physiologically akin to death and dying. According to Suarez, "ecstatics sometimes no longer seem to have either pulse or heart-beat." An English mystic Townsend was said to be able to "die at will," i.e., "stop breathing." Janet found that his ecstatic subject, Madeleine, like Saint Theresa, became immobile, stiff, with respiration drastically reduced and all metabolic functions slowed. Shirokogopov studied a Tungus shaman whose pulse became barely detectable. Eliade reports that shamanic experiences are a kind of "mystical death" where vital and psychic functions are arrested and inhibited to the verge of death.

            Before his death, I spoke with J. B. Rhine about the near-death experience. He suggested it was possible to gradually bring animals closer and closer to death. I'm not sure what we could find out from studying animals this way, though humans might experiment on themselves (as in the movie), and try to garner knowledge of the "next" world by inducing temporary death states. There are various approaches to this type of admittedly heady metaphysical experimentation. Terence McKenna (1991), for example, suggests, after Huxley, that psychedelics can take us into the postmortem bardo realms. Wanting direct acquaintance with the "next" world, you might project yourself there by chemically modifying your brain.

            An ophthalmologist, Reader (1994), had a near-death experience, and subsequently used ketamine, an anesthetic, to re-induce his near-death experience. I would mention in this context the work of Meduna, a psychiatrist who developed hypercarbia therapy. An excess of carbon dioxide in the brain produces many features of the classic near-death experience. Arbman cites examples of ecstatics that support this role of hypercarbia. Grof uses hyperventilation techniques to induce altered states.

            The question is: Can we learn to manipulate brain-states to induce otherworldly experiences? Can we break down the perceptual barriers between this and the "next" world? The important thing to remember is that if there is an "afterworld," it must be very close, perhaps as "close" as our dreaming world is to our waking. Dying, in short, may best be conceptualized in terms of altered states of consciousness. If this is so, the solution to the mystery of death must lie somewhere in our own consciousness.

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