Photo Credit: Unsplash/Marc Olivier Jodoin
By Mark Pitstick
The term greater reality living describes how you might choose to live as you expand your awareness of reality, which is defined as the state of things as it actually exists. Because so much of reality escapes the five physical senses, you likely have viewed life as if through a tiny pinhole and then wondered why things don’t make sense. As the old saying goes, “There is much more to life than meets the eye.”
If you are now inspired to expand your perception and take action in your own life, the Greater Reality Living model outlined in this series of Transformation Coaching articles provides a roadmap to:
- LearnThat Consciousness Survives Physical Death
- InternalizeThis Great News
- VitalizeYour Body, Mind and Spirit
- Enjoythe Many Benefits of Greater Reality Living
- ServeOthers and Make the World a Better Place
I designed this LIVES model to prepare people for optimal living after learning about the findings of Gary E. Schwartz, Ph.D., who directs the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health at the University of Arizona. He is a Harvard graduate, former Harvard and Yale professor, and author of nine books including The Afterlife Experiments and The Sacred Promise. I also started the nonprofit SoulPhone Foundation (SoulPhone.org) to help fund research and development for the SoulPhone Project, which includes a reliable and highly accurate SoulSwitch (yes/no), which is being used in the production of the SoulKeyboard that will enable texting and typing with post-material (deceased) persons. This will greatly increase the quality and quantity of communication with “departed” loved ones and “deceased” scientists, inventors, and others who want to help us improve life on Earth. Replicated, multi-center, university-based scientific studies for the SoulPhone technology have just recently—for the first time in human history—definitively demonstrated that death is NOT the end of life.
Learn the Evidence: Life Continues After Physical Death
by Mark Pitstick MA, DC
“Speaking as a scientist, I am now 99.9 percent certain that life continues after the human body dies.”—Dr. Gary Schwartz
Significant scientific, clinical and empirical evidence clearly indicates that your consciousness survives after your earthly body dies. That may be news to you, so we’ll state it another way: a vast and varied amount of data strongly shows, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the death of your human form is not the end of your life.
Let’s explore some highlights of this evidence in three categories based on who is doing the analysis: research scientists, clinicians, or firsthand experiencers.
Evidence from Research Scientists
Evidence collected by a scientist requires a laboratory or research setting with double-blinded, experimentally controlled and replicated studies. Further, the findings must be statistically significant, peer-reviewed and published in reputable journals.
As described in his book The Afterlife Experiments, Dr. Gary Schwartz has conducted numerous studies to investigate the validity of mediums in contacting departed loved ones. In one of these, he looked at five mediums and their abilities to accurately communicate with postmaterial persons (PMPs). Using strict laboratory procedures, the mediums could not see or even hear the subjects (the people who hoped to receive messages from PMP loved ones). Furthermore, the mediums had no way of knowing anything about the subjects: not their names, gender, age bracket, background, city of residence, or any other details.
Dr. Schwartz concluded that the information consistently retrieved by the mediums can best be explained as coming from living beings who are not in physical bodies. Magicians, other scientists and professional documentarians with video cameras assisted in the research to spot any cheating—and no one who observed the laboratory’s work and data has been able to point out any critical flaws in the scientific methodology. Moreover, no rational alternative explanations have been found for the findings.
Statistical analyses show that the chances the totality of the results could have occurred randomly are at least one in one trillion. Finding a probability of chance in the one out of one hundred or one thousand range is the usual requirement for publishing research in respected journals. The data from this medium research is one billion times the requirement for acceptance of data validity in traditional scientific journals!
Scientists and nonscientists alike are experiencing a test of faith: In this case, whether we can believe in the scientific method itself. Because if we are to put our faith in the scientific method and trust what the data reveal, we are led to the hypothesis that the universe is more wondrous than imagined in our wildest flights of fancy.
Looking at the big picture, multiple double-blinded laboratory mediumship experiments have been published over the past 20 years from research at the University of Arizona, University of Virginia, University of Glasgow in Scotland, Institute of Noetic Sciences, and Windbridge Institute. In addition, imaging studies of mediums’ brains been published by Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Institute of Noetic Sciences suggest that mediumship is more than imagination.
Looking at it another way, Physicist David Bohm, Ph.D., author of Wholeness and the Implicate Order, described the ultimate nature of reality as unified energy that undergoes constant change. In his view, life is fundamentally best described as an enormous totality of energy in perpetual motion.
Bohm postulated two levels of reality that coexist and overlap. The material or explicate order is the manifestation of energy that is perceived by our brains as physical reality bound by time and space. The absolute or implicate order is infinite, consists of pure energy and transcends physicality. Together, these two orders comprise an undivided whole that constantly flows and changes.
Evidence from Clinicians
Evidence from a medical or psychological clinician of life after physical death requires systematic collection and analysis of data in a professional office, hospital or field setting. Categories include: near-death experiences, past-life memories, life between lives studies, terminal lucidity and deathbed visions.
Near-death experiences (NDEs) occur when people are clinically, but not yet irreversibly dead. Today, a large amount of NDE literature exists, thanks to investigations by many top university professors and physicians. Studies of diverse age groups in other cultures show the same patterns or universality of reports. NDEs provide some of the strongest clinical evidence that consciousness is nonlocal—that it exists separately from the body and brain.
According to renowned university researcher Ken Ring, Ph.D., approximately 10,000 evidentiary NDE cases have been documented by doctors and university professors. This data strongly points to a continuation of consciousness after death of the earthly body.
Ring concludes: “We now have good evidence and from multiple sources that the NDE is indeed an experience that has its own objective character and is, in a phrase, ‘on the level.’ I hope you will be reassured that the doubts about the validity of the NDE can be safely dispatched on purely scientific grounds.”
From another perspective, we have neurosurgeon Eben Alexander M.D. The author of Proof of Heaven, A Map of Heaven, and Living in a Mindful Universe, Alexander had a NDE after a severe case of bacterial meningitis affected his brain and, during his weeklong coma, he came to understand deep truths about the nature of reality and consciousness. Based on his professional and personal experiences, Alexander believes the brain does not create consciousness. Rather, he maintains that awareness survives death of the human body.
The phenomenon of past-life memories is another category of evidence indicating that life does not end after death of the human body. Such memories can be perceived spontaneously while awake or dreaming. They can also be accessed with the aid of hypnosis during a past-life regression. To skeptics who charge that subjects under hypnosis are deliberately lying about their experiences, Edith Fiore, Ph.D., author of You Have Been Here Before, responded: “I have listened to and watched people in past-life regressions under hypnosis for thousands of hours; I am convinced there is no deliberate or conscious attempt to deceive. The tears, shaking, flinching, smiling, gasping for breath, groaning, sweating and other physical manifestations are all too real.”
Overall, the massive amount of objective research by Ian Stevenson, M.D. is the most impressive evidence to date about the validity of past-life memories. Stevenson, who headed the department of psychiatry at the University of Virginia, spent most of his 60-year career perfecting methods for verifying the past-life memories of children. He and his staff compiled over 3,000 cases from Asia, Europe, Africa and North America. Nearly 900 of these were stringently verified and 35 percent had birthmarks or birth defects that matched injuries from previous lives.
When Michael Newton, Ph.D., who started out as a traditional counseling psychologist, began working with hypnosis, some of his clients began describing glimpses of life before they were born on Earth. He then began to systematically explore these reports through the eyes of his patients and map out what they experienced before human birth. Dr. Newton’s Life Between Lives® approach uses deep hypnotic regressions to access a person’s time before coming to Earth. He conducted this pioneering work for over 25 years before sharing his findings with the world, and he worked with more than 7,000 people during his 35-year career.
Terminal lucidity refers to a return to mental clarity in a person with profound memory loss or mental disorder. Such cases during the days or hours before bodily death have been noted in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, psychosis and mental disability—and these events have been reported for more than 250 years by doctors across the world.
German biologist Michael Nahm, Ph.D. stated in a 2009 Journal of Near-Death Studies article: “The literature concerned with experiences of the dying contains numerous accounts reporting the sudden return of mental clarity shortly before death…The most peculiar cases concern patients suffering from mental disability including mental illness or dementia.”
In the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Nahm and Bruce Greyson, M.D. stated that out of 49 case studies of terminal lucidity, 84 percent occurred within a week of bodily death. In addition, 43 percent occurred on the final day of life.
Deathbed visions—which a dying person may have in the minutes, hours or days before his or her death—are one of the experiences studied at the Division of Perceptual Studies at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. Only 10 percent of patients are conscious just before their body dies, but estimates are that more than 50 percent of these individuals experience a deathbed vision.
In his 2017 ThoughtCo.com article “Deathbed Visions: Are Dying People Escorted to the Other Side by Loved Ones?” Stephen Wagner stated: “Close to the moment of death, apparitions of deceased friends and loved ones appear to escort the dying to the other side. Such deathbed visions are not just the stuff of stories and movies. They are, in fact, more common than you might think and are surprisingly similar across nationalities, religions and cultures. Instances of these unexplained visions have been recorded throughout history and stand as one of the most compelling proofs of life after death.”
Evidence from Firsthand Experiences
Evidence in this category, termed empirical, is perceived and analyzed by the person having the direct experience.
The term after-death communication (ADC) describes meaningful contact with people after their bodies die. ADCs may occur via the usual five senses or more ethereal ones such as seeing with the mind’s eye, telepathically hearing, or inner knowing. These experiences can also occur during dreams that seem more real than usual and leave the dreamer with a strong sense that actual contact was made. A sudden and lasting sense of peace and comfort about post-material loved ones suggests that dream ADCs are more than just a random dream. According to Raymond Moody, M.D., Ph.D., ADCs have been reported by 25 percent of Americans, 66 percent of widows and 75 percent of bereaved parents.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, M.D. had an evidentiary encounter with a patient who was a postmaterial person (PMP). As related by Dr. Moody in his book Reunions, Ross was walking in the hallway toward her office one day and noticed a woman standing in the corridor. They began talking and the doctor led the woman into her office. After a while, she said with considerable amazement, ‘I know you!’ and recognized the woman as ‘Mrs. Schwartz,’ a patient who had died several months earlier. Mrs. Schwartz acknowledged her identity and the two talked for some time. In an attempt to obtain verifiable evidence of the visit, Dr. Kubler-Ross asked the woman to write a note to her minister. Afterward, analysis of the handwriting matched samples written before Schwartz passed over.
By their very nature, firsthand experiences cannot be scientifically validated, but are often very meaningful for the person having the experience. As shared in my own documentary film Soul Proof, John Wells was tearing down an old three-story barn and kneeling 60 feet from the exit when he noticed particles of hay falling. He stood up just as the level above him, containing tons of hay and huge timbers, suddenly collapsed. His wife ran toward the barn, fully expecting to find John crushed to death. Instead, he was standing unscathed by a pond far from the barn.
I hope these brief examples help you to appreciate and trust your firsthand experiences. Perhaps you’ve had similar experiences, but discounted them because they seemed too subtle, fleeting or imaginary? According to Dr. Schwartz: “Not all of our firsthand experiences are necessarily valid and accurate. However, not all of them are necessarily invalid or inaccurate either. The key is discernment facilitated by caring individuals seeking truth.”
Greater Reality Living groups provide a safe and respectful place where you can learn the evidence that life continues after death of the material body and discuss your personal experiences. Stay tuned next month for more on how to “internalize this great news.”
Mark Pitstick, MA, DC is an author, master’s clinical psychologist, holistic chiropractic physician, frequent media guest, and webinar/workshop facilitator. He directs The SoulPhone Foundation and founded Greater Reality Living Groups. Dr. Pitstick can help you know and show—no matter what is happening to or around you—that your earthly experience is a totally safe, meaningful, and magnificent adventure amidst forever. Visit http://www.SoulProof.com for free articles, newsletters and radio interviews with top consciousness experts.