What is Afterlife Science?  

It’s the collective name for Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experience, End-of-Life Phenomena such as Deathbed Visions (DBV), Apparitions, Time-of-Death Communication, After Death Communication (ADC) and Mediumship. All these topics, although uncomfortable for sceptics, are receiving a great deal of attention from major research centres around the world – including universities.

Note that precognition, telepathy, and clairvoyance (remote viewing) Etc, though related to Afterlife Science, come under the title of Psychical Phenomena,

A paradigm shift is an event or discovery that brings about profound and fundamental changes in the world, and to our perception of the future. It seems that every century has at least one. 

The new physics of relativity and quantum mechanics brought the thermonuclear bomb and the very real threat of world annihilation. Ironically though, it brought also some truly bewildering changes to our perception of reality - changes which continue to this very day. (Visit the Reality is Weird page)

Afterlife Science could eventually prove to be the most profound paradigm shift of the millennium, let alone the 21st century.

It could bring a sea change in our perception of who we are, both individually and collectively, how we behave towards others and to why we’re here. It’s now taught in the majority of medical schools in the UK and over 90% in the US (as of 2012).

Is it something new or has it been known about for years?

Scholars of ancient Egypt found records of near-death experiences and deathbed visions on parchments dating back millennia; the Greek philosopher Plato, made several references to end-of-life phenomena. So, it’s certainly not new. 

From about 1969, medical science made huge advances in drugs and resuscitation techniques. A new breed of professionals, that we know now as paramedics, were able to bring people back to life when just a year before they would have declared them dead. This remarkable new phenomenon was the dawning of the age of the Out-of-Body and Near-Death Experience - and with it the awkward but obvious question: Were these people experiencing a brief visit to the afterlife?

Outrage and panic surged in the ranks of the dogmatic and the self-important in the scientific community. How could people possibly see themselves from above their bodies? How could they see dead relatives from other realms, learn from a life review that it wasn’t their time to die, and must return to this life to finish what they came to do? Such utter nonsense!

The struggle to rubbish these claims of an afterlife was enormous. People who see tunnels and beautiful realms were clearly just hallucinating, induced most likely by a lack of oxygen, too much carbon dioxide, perhaps even the drugs used during resuscitation. 

To make matters worse, virtually all those who’d had a deep near-death experience found their lives dramatically changed. They had no fear of death, they became so altruistic that some gave up lucrative careers to spend more time working to help others. The phenomenon was gaining global attention.

After nearly fifty years of struggle, there have been huge advances. To cut a very long story short, I take two quotes from Chris Carter’s book: Science and the Afterlife Experience.

1. All the attempts to explain away Near-Death Experience as the product of a malfunctioning brain have been examined (by the scientific community), and ultimately not a single claim has stood up to critical scrutiny. The conclusion finally arrived at was that these experiences are exactly what they appear to be: a genuine separation of mind from body during the early stages of biological death. 

2. The idea that the mind depends on the brain has been conclusively refuted, and no longer has the support of any scientific evidence. Continued acceptance is, therefore, unscientific. Opposition to the evidence that falsifies materialism is based on nothing more than ignorance or ideology.

Important Note: 

One of the most remarkable aspects of Afterlife Science is After Death Communication. The most well-known of course is Mediumship. Although very important, and used at times by psychiatrists, perhaps the most remarkable is Induced After Death Communication (discovered by pure accident in 1996). So important are these topics that, rather than include them here, I have dedicated a separate webpage to each: How to Train your Psychic Medium and Induced After Death Communication.

Communication at or nearing the time of death

A deceased person, it seems, has a time frame of about 24 to 48 hours immediately following death, in which to communicate briefly with loved ones. It’s very unlikely that even the most talented of mediums will be able to make contact just days or weeks, months even, after a loved one’s death. A year or so can pass. The deceased, it appears, needs time to learn how to communicate through mediums. 

(See the How to Train Your Psychic Medium). 

Communication just prior to or immediately following death, comes in several forms: Sensory, telepathic, auditory and visible, or combinations of all four. By far the most common combination is sensory and telepathic. For Visual Communication, see the section on Apparitions below.

Sensory and Telepathic

Contact through sensory control can create very powerful sensations. For example, a man was sitting with his wife in the living room in England. It was 8 o’clock in the evening and they were watching television. The man’s wife suddenly burst into tears. All she managed to say was: ‘My sister just died’. Her sister was in the palliative care unit of a hospital in Brisbane, Australia over 10,000 miles away.

At eight o’clock the following morning, the phone rang. It was the husband of her sister’s daughter. He was delivering the sad news that the woman’s sister had died. When asked at what time, the answer was at 5 o’clock in the morning (Brisbane time). In England, it was eight o’clock in the evening; exactly the time the woman felt her sister’s death. Such incidences are relatively common.

As another example of sensory and telepathic communication, I relate here the case of my own mother.

She was 92, had diabetes and dementia; due to arthritis she could move but only with difficulty and had very limited vision due to macular degeneration. She had carers, but I was with her all day and normally left at about 5 o’clock in the afternoon. The last carer would visit her at about seven in the evening. 

One night, back home with my wife and preparing for bed, a photograph on my bedside table fell over. I stood it back up and went to clean my teeth. When I came back to the bedroom, it had fallen over again. My wife commented that the photograph never ever fell over. 

The next morning, I arrived at my mother’s house at about 9:30 to find that she had died in the night. She had left her walking frame by the back door, walked through the quite large house unaided, turning off every light on the way (which she usually never did), then went upstairs, got into bed fully dressed, kicked off her slippers and died.

I phoned my sons to give them the bad news, but neither was surprised. They had felt something wrong the previous evening, around the same time the photograph had fallen over on my bedside table. My father died 13 years before my mother. I had promised him that I would look after her after he passed away. Her well-being was always a big concern for him, particularly because my mother and I didn’t get on particularly well.

The evening after she died, I was lying in bed, my wife was asleep, when suddenly I felt goose bumps and a chill, and heard the screech of an owl close at the window. It isn’t uncommon to hear owls where we live, but never right up at the window. One of the few things my mother and I had in common was a love of owls. I then felt her unmistakable presence and that, most probably following her life review, she had come to apologise for many things.

There is here a very important point. Cynics and sceptics would say that the sensation of apology that I had was just wishful thinking generated by a little anger. That is not the case. When you have a true psychical experience, it’s like no other. It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to explain how one is so sure of what has happened, but there is absolutely no doubt. In all probability, it’s created via a form of telepathy far more powerful and precise than we ever experience in this life. And that shouldn’t be surprising. People who return from a Near-Death Experience say that all communication in the other realm is through telepathy and extremely clear.

Apparitions (Ghosts)

Before pouring scorn on the possibility of apparitions, think of this. A magnetic field surrounds the Earth. A compass can sense it, but we cannot; we’re just not built that way. But wolves and turtles can see it, worms too. 

Relatively recently, research in physics has discovered the existence of potentially thousands of different types of matter so strange that for the moment, only under very special laboratory conditions are they detectable. Scientists don’t even have a name for them yet. It’s perfectly feasible that, under certain conditions, entities made of these strange types of matter could make themselves visible to us, perhaps as apparitions. (See the Reality is Weird page for more information).

Visual communication is when, for a brief moment, the deceased appears as a solid or semi-solid being (not at all like the wispy ghosts of horror films). The presence can last for about 30 seconds to a minute or two. Some have commented that during visual communication, the deceased appears confused and as if having not yet fully grasp that they are in fact dead. For others, the deceased appears very calm and ‘says’ they have permission to come and show that they well and to say goodbye – at least until brought together again after the living also die. 

In a large gathering, telepathy can work between just two people. Therefore, it’s perfectly reasonable to consider that an apparition might be capable of making itself visible to just one person of their choosing. This could be good; it could be bad.

There are a great many books covering every aspect of Afterlife Phenomena, some of which are, by necessity, highly academic. 

Suggested reading: 

Beyond Physicalism: by Kelly Crabtree and Marshall (Editors)

The Transcendent Mind: Rethinking the Science of Consciousness by Imants Baruss and Julia Mossbridge

The Art of Dying: a very popular book by the famous Dr Peter Fenwick and his wife.

Science and the Afterlife Experience by Chris Carter

The Self Does Not Die by Titus Rivas