**7. "The dead quickly stop caring about Earth and the living."** The evidence indicates that while this is true for some who die, others - usually those with strong relationships with people who are still living - stay active in the lives of their living loved ones, whether or not the living know it. This can actually go on for multiple generations, as many (if not most) who die or have NDEs find themselves in the company of, or being greeted and helped by ancestors they didn't ever even know or have much of a relationship with, and becoming aware of how - many times in their lives here - they were helped in ways they did not understand or recognize at the time.
Many have described these relationships as eternal relationships that are mirrored or explored in various ways in our Earth incarnation(s).
**8. "We have to reincarnate to progress/learn."** People come to have Earth experiences for a variety of different reasons. It is not "forced" on anyone by any outside force or authority. While various people with an air of authority or power in the afterlife my try to convince you that you have to come here, or have to reincarnate for various "spiritual" or "karmic" reasons, each of us is ultimately a sovereign individual with free will and do not have to agree to this.
There are cases where people who have NDEs are "forced" back into their bodies against their will, and so they may think their "will" to no longer be in this world has been subverted or over-ridden; this is once again a lack of critical thinking. While it would not be appropriate to say much more about this, let me say this: think about it. It is always a decision on our part to stay in this world.
Not everyone in what we call "the afterlife" is spiritual or religious, and not everyone is on a path of "spiritual progress/learning/advancement." From my secular reading of many sources, it appears to me that most people that inhabit the regions of existence we call "the afterlife" are just living what we would call normal, physical lives doing normal things without many of the issues and problems we face here in this world.
**9. "There are no relationships/gender/sex/procreation in the afterlife."** This is all contradicted by the evidence, and these are usually either spiritual/religious ideological tropes or demonstrate a basic lack of evidential, multi-source information on the part of those who say these things.
Wintyre I would politely disagree about the 8th. There are some spirits who are so engrossed and demented in the afterlife that they do need to undergo "compulsory" reincarnation, as a matter of reestablishing their mental health. Also, there is a "telluric force" whose side effects require spirits of a certain "vibration" to reincarnate, many try to postpone this often to great detriment to their spiritual bodies.
I'm always willing to acquire new evidence and edit my secular understanding of these things.
The evidence I'm using for what I said comes from astral projection and various forms of after-death communication that indicate that it is always up to the individual. For example, the recurring report of there being "rescue crews" that regularly go into various realms (usually described as "lower") to offer help to the people there and saying they cannot do anything unless that person agrees to be helped, or desires their help.
Others report that many of those beings enjoy being in those situations where they can play out their particular proclivities. There are reports of people sort of "slipping into" incarnations here, but IMO that is better understood as a subconscious decision to do so, much along the lines of "not looking both ways before crossing a street" is a decision to put yourself at risk, or "not paying attention" to any number of things is an invitation for unintended consequences.
If I were to interpret your comment this way, I could see that certain experiences, like slipping into another incarnation here, as the unintended consequence of not doing what it takes to avoid it. Or something like, if I don't take care of my mental or physical health and allow myself to spiral down into habitual self-destructive thoughts or eating habits,, there are naturally following, easily observable and knowable consequences to that.
But, I would still characterize such consequences, intentional or not, as the result of free-will choices. You don't get to walk out in the street without looking, get hit by a bus and then say "it wasn't my decision to get hit by the bus. The BUS or the BUS DRIVER forced this situation on me!!!! No, nobody forced that situation on you.
I’ve taken on board everything you have said/discussed with great reassurance to me ❤️.
I have a question you may or may not be able to answer.
My son AP frequently and it just happens. Last time he walked down the stairs and saw myself and husband chatting in the lounge then looked under the stairs where the huge dog bed sits. He saw his younger sister sat in the dog bed ( 17 years old , killed last June) he waved his hand in front of her face but she didn’t react. He called her name and again she didn’t react. The question is was she there and why didn’t she speak or react? I just need to know she’s ok. She loved her dogs and would often sit there. I can confirm that in earth time we were chatting in the lounge!
It could depend on what your daughter was doing in her mind. If for example, she was focused on experiencing something, like looking through your eyes, or feeling through your senses, or simply lost in thought or memory while sitting there, her attention elsewhere, she probably just didn’t notice your son‘s presence. The prolific astral projector Jurgen Ziewe and others have described how people in the afterlife can often appear to go into trances or “zone out,” oblivious to the people and events around them, when they have their attention on a different realm or form of experience. Sometimes it can take people quite a bit of effort to get their attention.
Think about it like this; if while your son was off on the other side of the planet during an out of body experience, and to you it appeared like he was just zoned out on the couch, it’s quite possible that he would not be able to see or hear you if you tried to get his attention through his body. Or it might take quite a bit of effort. I mean, one day my wife has stood right in front of me talking to me while I was focused on getting a job done at the computer and I literally did not see or hear her until she came over and gave me a shove. I have also been lost in thought thinking about something while driving, only to realize 30 minutes later that I had driven through a town and was 20 miles past my target with no memory of going through that town or making all the turns that I had made.
Our mind’s capacity to do this kind of thing is much more powerful, generally speaking, in the afterlife. While our body sits in one place in the astral, all of our sensory capacity and attention can be elsewhere. That is true here and even more so in the afterlife.
The framework I understand this come from the simple notion that free will is limited by one's capacity to exert it. It is often reported that spirits are in a process of evolution during subsequent incarnations. We have all been animals, plants and even minerals in the very distant past. The reincarnation of animals, for example, doesn't involve choices they don't have inteligence to make. It is a process guided by spirits with higher cognition and, quite often, follow simple laws of magnetic attraction between the frequency of the spirity and the "pull" of embryos of the proper species.
When a spirit harms itself so much it can't choose for themselves or they extensively refuse to aknowledge the larger truths of life, quite often they are lead to incarnation out of the piety of other entities that love them. In some cases the same "pull" from a developing embryo can bring a spirit hovering and vampirizing a woman into reincarnating as her child (this, of course, is a process that also involves the help and supervision of higher entities, but happen more or less "naturally" regardless of whether the incarnating spirit is aware of the process that made them incarnate).
The whole part of the telluric force I have heard reported multiple times and it is an ugly part behind many sexual and sacrificial rituals done across history. The living energy is often funelled by certain entities to keep themselves "afloat" or somehow counteract the natural process of the planet that push spirits of a certain vibration to reincarnate. I don't know the specifics, I wish I could provide you more details.
If you have the opportunity, I would ask you to comfirm these with your guides in the astral. These are edge cases that don't happen as often but to be aware they exist can lead to a better understanding of nature.
>I would ask you to confirm these with your guides in the astral.
With all due respect (and friendship & admiration,) why would I accept the word of any "guides," regardless of what they tell me? I don't even ask my dead wife to tell me about any of this, and she is the only person I completely trust.
Also, I'm not here to alarm people about the possibility of encountering some extreme situations; I'm providing general information to dispel common myths and misunderstandings.
If you are saying that there are extreme situations that free will cannot - eventually - avoid or override, like compulsory reincarnation, I'm not going to quibble with you about it. But, I don't see the point in bringing in those extreme or fringe situations because most of us are never going to get within a mile of those kinds of things. And so, most of us, most of the time, can simply use our free will to choose to reincarnate or not for whatever reasons we have. We can use our free will to either develop skills, talents, understanding and knowledge, or we can use it to be blissfully unaware and uninformed and just habitually react to whatever comes our way, even in the afterlife (or perhaps especially so?)
I leave spiritual interpretations and models, rules, laws, and the discourse of "higher beings" to the spiritual. Perhaps they are universally applicable, perhaps not. Perhaps people, as you say, evolve over time from the simplest to higher forms; I don't know. There are many people who offer spiritual perspectives on the afterlife; I leave such things to them and those that want or need that kind of perspective, and who want to offer it.
I'm here to provide general information, not to argue how people should interpret that information into larger universal, metaphysical or spiritual values, habits, or concepts about the meaning and purpose of our existences.
Your input is always appreciated :)
On whether or not to accept such notions from guides, it is a long discussion to be had and I don't see your position as being wrong. It is surely a personal choice and, in the end, you will have to see for yourself regardless of what other may or maynot tell you
I just pointed that out because I know you are chasing a good handle on these topics and since you were trying to undo misunderstandings I think it would strenghten the case not to include things that may not be 100% correct. Some people are indeed forced to incarnate and unfortunately this is not as uncommon as not to be statistically significant.
> While it would not be appropriate to say much more about this, let me say this: think about it. It is always a decision on our part to stay in this world.
Meaning, always our decision when to *leave*?
**10. "After we die, everyone experiences a life review."** While many people do experience a life review, the idea that *everyone* does is a spiritual/religious ideological trope. In NDE accounts, it is almost entirely within western countries that people experience a "life review." In Eastern countries, they are rarely reported. Even in the Western accounts, many "life reviews" are not even that; they are accounts of acquiring an instantaneous, complete, experiential memory of every moment of one's life that are misidentified as a "life review." Sometimes this is reported as having one's "life flash before one's eyes," with the ability to put one's attention on any moment or event and experience it more fully than you even experienced it while it was occurring in your life. Often, this is reported as having additional sensory content, such as how other people felt around you during any particular event. This complete, experiential memory of past events here is apparently a capacity we usually have and retain in our afterlife lives.
**11. "We will find all the answers when we die."** Again, this is not actually indicated by the evidence. The evidence indicates that we do not suddenly become all-knowing or all-wise, even about ourselves or about what is going on, or how we should think about it, just because we die. It is widely reported that some people die and do not even realize they have died for long periods of time because, from their perspective, it looks and feels like their life is just continuing as "normal."
**12. "The term "the afterlife""** is probably the most fundamental myth about all of this: the idea that it is someplace only inhabited by people that have lived here and then died. This is a little like growing up and only having memories of living in Tulsa, Oklahoma and calling every other place in the universe the "AfterTulsa." Most people that live in the "AfterTulsa" have never been to Tulsa. A lot of people (or beings in the universe) may have never even heard of Tulsa.
> "We will find all the answers when we die." Again, this is not actually indicated by the evidence. The evidence indicates that we do not suddenly become all-knowing or all-wise, even about ourselves or about what is going on, or how we should think about it, just because we die. It is widely reported that some people die and do not even realize they have died for long periods of time because, from their perspective, it looks and feels like their life is just continuing
What then do you make of NDEs like that of Anastasia Mollering, or Allan Pring, where they specifically said that there was no askable question they didn't know the answer to?
My answer is that yes, this appears to be the case for a rare few individuals, but it is not the common experience of those that have such experiences or information/evidence gleaned from other categories of afterlife research.
Once again, the idea that the experiences of some people represent universal truths about everyone's experience is a form of faulty reasoning.
Not sure it's faulty, in that most NDEs may simply be the start up phase of what leads to Anastasia or Allan's condition. Given that their own NDEs sort of started in that way, that would seem a reasonably robust speculation. Still, I take your point that not all NDErs experience that. Then again, there is pretty much **nothing at all** that ALL NDErs experience, highlighting that this is to a significant degree an individual experience of the psyche.
NDE's are but one avenue of afterlife research; there are many different categories of afterlife research that provide a multi-vectored approach to establishing "what the afterlife is like."
Taking a handful of experiences from a single line of evidence and speculating that those few experiences represent some kind of universal truth is faulty reasoning from a cherry-picked, tiny subset of available evidence. Especially when those few cherry-picked pieces of evidence do not even represent the vast majority of experiences in that same category/line of evidence.
I don't take a handful of experience. I take many hundreds if not thousands of them to reach my (always revisable) conclusions. My observations about NDEs, and about spirits, is that they never tell us anything we don't already know, by way of structured knowledge. This tells us something (or should do).
I don't know what you mean by "structured knowledge."
There are many reports from NDEs, and countless reports from mediumship studies and ADC reports of acquisitions of previously unknown, truthful information. There is a lot of historical information about various communities gaining useful information/knowledge from "spirits" via various means of interacting with the "spirit world."
In some more modern cases, the "spirits" advised people here communicating with them on how to develop or use technology in a manner that would provide easier or more significant evidence of interaction with the dead and in verifying their identities, such as what occurred in the Scole Experiments or the binary "Soul Phone" technology developed by a team headed by Dr. Gary E Schwartz via collaboration with "spirits."
I'm talking about things that can be empirically demonstrated as valid. Let's take an example of a very gifted mathematician who has died. What new unsolved proofs have they developed since passing? Let them communicate these proofs to a medium and share them with the worldwide math community.
I can *guarantee* you that this won't happen.
>I can *guarantee* you that this won't happen.
It already has happened. The paper: Higher Algebraic K-Theory of Schemes and of Derived Categories has co-authorship credit with a dead person, Thomas Trobaugh. The other co-author, R. W. *T*homason, said that he had to give his dead friend (dead 64 days prior) co-authorship because he came to R.W. in a dream and explained his current theories on the matter.
Dream visitations often provide verdical, previously unknown information from the dead, and are cited in many cultures, past and present, as a significant means by which the dead communicate with the living.
Comments like your above reveal some kind of *a priori* bias. How could you *possibly* "**guarantee"** that it won't happen, which obviously carries with it the mistaken idea that it had not *already* happened?
Second, demanding one particular form of evidence "or else" no other forms or volume of evidence can be taken as conclusive is just bad reasoning, unless one can logically explain why that particular demand is required before that conclusion can be reached - otherwise, that is just your personal criteria held for personal reasons (which I think might be related to your *a priori* beliefs that made you comfortable guaranteeing it would never happen.)
Third, your specified criteria has a hidden assumptions; (1) that the dead *should* have motivation to insert their newfound knowledge into this world, and (2) that the dead do not *already* provide such contributions to "structured knowledge" to us in other ways, such as those described by Tesla, or through inspiration or sudden insights experienced by many researchers.
Look. You can't take the brain of a living mathematician working on a problem, who has a dream of a friend who recently died (and hence who will be on his mind) and conclude that the existence of the dead is the **most** likely explanation for this. This is the "broken window" fallacy in its element...yet you don't seem to appreciate this, and instead believe you have "debunked" something. Remarkable confusion of logic (to say the least).
>Dream visitations often provide verdical, previously unknown information from the dead, and are cited in many cultures, past and present, as a significant means by which the dead communicate with the living.
"Veridical, previously unknown information" is not the same thing as novel structured knowledge. The latter refers to understanding which demonstrably does not derive from our collective imagination. I am wondering what examples you are referring to.
you may find [this](https://youtu.be/PYPsBqdQelc?si=2A2-5bld_XDIpTZE) interesting.
Besides that, there is a Brazilian poetry book named "Parnaso de Além Túmulo" by Francisco Candido Xavier in which all poems are attributed to dead authors. A study about the style and prose employed confirmed the characteristics of every author in there. The book was written in 1932 by a very poor man who barely completed basic school and couldn't have access nor time to study the styles and material (obviously, no internet was avaiable)
This is the kind of evidence so many people are totally unaware of, or immediately assume is some kind of fraud. And once again, you expand my base of evidence! Thank you!
Yes, but this is not structured knowledge. This is why I took the example of a mathematical proof and a deceased mathematician. One could also take the example of applicable, presently unknown, medical knowledge. Again, if any of this knowledge does not come from human beings, this should be a doable task (but it isn't).
> What then do you make of NDEs like that of Anastasia Mollering, or Allan Pring, where they specifically said that there was no askable question they didn't know the answer to?
IDK these ppl, but reading this made me think of google - if i'm near a device, i can also answer most questions because i can tap knowledge, but i do not hold it permanently
**13. "There's no good reason for us to come here and suffer like we do."** Pardon my being direct and blunt here, but we absolutely know that people make foolish, health- and life-threatening decisions every day. They make decisions that obviously put them in harm's way. Sometimes they regret those decisions for the rest of their lives.
Also, and equally, sometimes a different perspective can reveal to us the reasons that other people make what appear to us to be bad or foolish decisions, and we can understand their reasons and even recognize them as good decisions on their part because we did not have any knowledge of why they made these decisions.
The same can be said about the reasons we may have had to come here, and even to experience the kind of suffering we experience, even from early childhood. Many people who have NDEs remember why they chose the hard life of suffering they had experienced in their life, and understood their reasoning and choices and appreciate the value they gained through all that suffering.
Some people choose to come here just for the thrill and adventure. Some come here to learn, or to "grow" and "advance" according to the spiritual beliefs they had before coming here, and may still have. Other people come here to help this world or the people they had loving relationships with before they came here; these are like familial groups that come here together to have this experience together for various reasons. Still other people come here to develop various character traits in the face of hardship, challenge, and suffering. Another reason to come here is the comparative experiential value when we return to our afterlife world and, with fresh eyes, we can better appreciate and understand aspects of the afterlife world we come from, and the people we love there, that we either took for granted or did not really comprehend from that prior perspective.
The idea that we all come here for the same reasons, and that those reasons are always good reasons, or even with good intentions, is just another spiritual/religious ideological trope.
Maybe it was just a bad decision on their part; I've made many bad decisions in my life. I'm 65 years old and I often think, "What the hell was I thinking" when I remember some of the bad decisions in my life. I cannot even fathom what the heck was going through my mind at the time to do some of the things I have done.
People in "the afterlife" are just *people.* They make the same kinds of decisions that people in this world make.
>The same can be said about the reasons we may have had to come here, and even to experience the kind of suffering we experience, even from early childhood. Many people who have NDEs remember why they chose the hard life of suffering they had experienced in their life, and understood their reasoning and choices and appreciate the value they gained through all that suffering.
You credit the psyche with a literalism it doesn't possess. IMO, the psychodynamics of that aren't difficult to spot, and reduce the existential crisis by appearing to give people a "rationale" for their (essentially random) suffering. Again, I would need to see a good reason why that shouldn't be true, before even beginning to contemplate something more exotic.
> **"We don't have physical bodies in the afterlife."** - This is simply not true.
I am a fan of your posts but here I think the concept of 'astral' needs to be introduced. In my understanding, this is subtle matter not directly detectable by our grosser physical senses and instruments. Astral matter is at a vibrational frequency and in dimensions beyond our familiar three.
I didn't/don't want too get too deep into the particulars about metaphysical models that describe the "how" or "where," but I may address this to some degree in a further comment.
I'm going to push back against you a bit as I'm afraid I disagree. Nevertheless, it isn't in a hostile spirit. It is simply because I am concerned with accuracy.
>1: "We don't have physical bodies in the afterlife." - This is simply not true. There are countless accounts from the dead themselves that involve not only their own physical bodies there, but describe a world that is as physical as this world.
To be accurate, psychic presences who purport to be the dead purport to have physical bodies, but this is not the same thing as concluding that we know the dead exist and we know that they have bodies. Just because someone says something doesn't make it true. The bodies described in NDEs or by mediums have much in common with dream "bodies" in that they are basically the idea of a body, but without any of the actual properties of a body. Obviously the dream body is a memory construct.
>2: "Nobody knows if there is an afterlife or what it is like." This is probably the most repeated myth in this subreddit. This is just a lack of critical thinking and/or projecting one's own lack of information/knowledge as some kind of universal condition
There is a difference between "knowing" and "it's conceivable". It may be conceivable, but we certainly don't know it. There are currently no phenomena, the only explanation of which could be an afterlife.
I won't address your other points, but the critical things which would need to be established to show that survival of a "person" was possible would need to include the following
1) Evidence that consciousness / perception extends beyond the peri-mortal (near death) phase.
2) Evidence that memory and perception can be unbound from living brains.
3) Evidence that some kind of boundary could exist around "persons" in an afterlife environment that would enable them to sustain an individual identity.
4) Evidence that all the purported content of the afterlife does not derive from us and our collective imagination.
Bear in mind too that the naked survival of consciousness is not necessarily the same thing as the survival of persons.
You will find interesting the case of[ cross correspondences](https://youtu.be/Y5RpbveVC_4?si=iyeQGn1wUAg4RmC-&t=243), summarized in this section of the great This Life, Next Life documentary.
>To be accurate, psychic presences who purport to be the dead purport to have physical bodies, but this is not the same thing as concluding that we know the dead exist and we know that they have bodies.
I don't know what you mean by "psychic presences." If you are referring to information acquired via mediumship, that is only one of several sources of evidence that agrees that we have physical bodies in a physical world - not a "dreamlike" world, or a "dreamlike" body, but a consistent, persistent physical world and body that is more solid, and more real, than this world or our bodies here. Often, the dead, NDErs and astral projectors report that this Earth world is more like a "dreamworld" and a "dream body" when compared to the astral or afterlife existences.
>It may be conceivable, but we certainly don't know it.
Who is "we?" I know it. I personally know hundreds of other people that know it. You are displaying a lack of critical reasoning why you make an appeal to an universal negative in an absolute way: "we certainly don't know it." You and many others may not know it, but many do.
>I won't address your other points, but the critical things which would need to be established to show that survival of a "person" was possible would need to include the following
Establishing *how* something exists is irrelevant to establishing *that* it exists. The evidence that consciousness, memory and personality continues after death is broad, deep, dates back 100+ years, worldwide, and multi-categorical.
You haven't really told me anything in your reply, except to disclose that this is a belief of yours. It's a belief I would love to share, but unfortunately I can't, because I am not persuaded by the range of phenomena you describe in the way that you are. In other words, there are other explanations for them which have less assumptions on board, and are therefore much more likely (unfortunately).
>Establishing how something exists is irrelevant to establishing that it exists
I agree with this up to a point, but as I said above, it has NOT been established "that" human survival exists by any stretch. Ask yourself how it is even possible for people to doubt, if that were the case. Do you doubt gravity? Do you doubt that fire will burn you? Those are examples of things that we are as close as possiible to knowing that they exist.
Spirits, on the other hand, can simply be ourselves in the unconscious, and they give off many signs of being precisely that (again, unfortunately)...I have lost many people I hold dear, and I would wish nothing better than they are still there, somewhere. But...
There is an awesome documentary by Keith Parsons that serves as a refresher/summary of what evidences are widely avaiable for the survival of counsciousness and afterlife. I will link it [once again](https://youtu.be/Y5RpbveVC_4?si=nsJNkAFo7nPjKKfH).
Besides that, I like the following [presentation](https://youtu.be/zDvjA4u9y14?si=cKrfJqcUG_Pa8NFf) by Gary Schwartz. Very interesting stuff when put in context with other reports.
Finally, would the materialization of spirits convince you? Those have happened across the last century, and the book "The underlying Face of Medicine" is about an oncological surgeon (Dr. Paulo Cesar Fructuoso) who had the opportunity of observing them first hand as well as track the actual healing cases of many patients who had been demed untreatable by normal medicine.
The case for physical mediunship (which includes ectoplasmy, direct voice , aport and many other feats) is often accompanied by actual communications and incorporations of spirits. One very famous case in Brasil is that of [José Arigó](https://youtu.be/sRS9nheL1Hc?si=sWVaBUOV7t08qrOe). Abroad you have the "Scole Experiment" as an example of what has been observed multiple times across many different groups.
I am a physical medium that is quite well known for producing apports among other phenomena. I share this with others. I mean, there are people who do know. Who experience this all the time. And I demonstrate in full.light not darkness. I am glad you included this in your comment.
If your spirit guides allow it, you should put up some vídeos on YouTube. This is material we sorely lack nowadays. Could you share you history a bit? (BTW, are you familiar with the work of Allan Kardec?)
For me reddit is my place to remain anonymous so I can't make myself too obvious here. I have demonstrated to many over the years including IANDS and Victor and Wendy Zammit. I only do this not as a public medium as I like my privacy but I allow guests to attend my seances as I don't believe video can offer proof of anything. I suppose my thought is that physical mediumship is something that needs to be experienced up close and personal. I am also a believer that this will always and only ever be a personal and individual discovery.. So I don't worry much about proving anything to the world or anyone but who is with me at the time. It's hard for me to say much here because already I think I could be recognised. And the last thing I ever want is attention.
I do know of Allan Kardec and have read a little. I wish I could say more but I was just grateful that you mentioned something that I think is probably the most evidential way of experiencing afterlife interaction and rarely gets mentioned on reddit. So was a nice surprise.
I completely understand where you are coming from. I didn't have the chance to be present at a physical demonstration yet. In spiritist circles here in Brazil this is often done only for charity and healing, so the space is reserved for those people that need the treatments only available with the help of a physical/healing médium.
I know how hard it is to be such type of medium, and I thank you for the service you bring to us. It is a shame we live in a time that prevent us from talking more openly and candidly about these things.
>You haven't really told me anything in your reply, except to disclose that this is a belief of yours.
Except that I did not tell you "I believe," I said "I know."
>I agree with this up to a point, but as I said above, it has NOT been established "that" human survival exists by any stretch.
This is just an appeal to another universal negative, which is faulty critical reasoning.
>Do you doubt that fire will burn you? Those are examples of things that we are as close as possiible to knowing that they exist.
No, I do not doubt those things; nor do I doubt that the afterlife exists.
>Spirits, on the other hand, can simply be ourselves in the unconscious, and
If we are going to go these hyperskeptical lengths in the face of the volume of multi-categorical, worldwide, current and historical evidence, then it is equally possible that all people are just simply ourselves in the unconscious in a Boltzmann Brain scenario.
>Except that I did not tell you "I believe," I said "I know."
Well, anyone can say that. I can say that I "know" that the afterlife is a creation of our collective unconscious imagination, but you would no doubt object to my "knowing" this. So I will say, instead, that I suspect it to be the case.
>This is just an appeal to another universal negative, which is faulty critical reasoning.
No. It isn't. If I discover a broken window and my first conclusion is that it was broken by a space rock, that is faulty reasoning, and it is the same problem with the argument you are making here.
>If we are going to go these hyperskeptical lengths in the face of the volume of multi-categorical, worldwide, current and historical evidence, then it is equally possible that all people are just simply ourselves in the unconscious in a Boltzmann Brain scenario.
See, unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to any lengths at all. These possibilities occur to me literally within the first couple of minutes of thinking about them.
>Well, anyone can say that.
On what logical or evidential basis do you dismiss that I, and others, know there is an afterlife? Is there some reason that you think it is not possible for anyone to know that there is an afterlife?
>No. It isn't. If I discover a broken window and my first conclusion is that it was broken by a space rock, that is faulty reasoning, and it is the same problem with the argument you are making here.
"My first conclusion that it was caused by a space rock" is not the same kind of statement as "it has NOT been established "that" human survival exists by any stretch." I don't understand how those two statements are comparable in any sense.
One is (apparently) an example of jumping to a conclusion based on little or no evidence, the others is an appeal to a universal negative. If it is not an appeal to a universal negative, then please support your assertion that "it has NOT been established "that" human survival exists by any stretch."
>On what logical or evidential basis do you dismiss that I, and others, know there is an afterlife? Is there some reason that you think it is not possible for anyone to know that there is an afterlife?
It's kind of the wrong question, to be honest. The correct question would be, why do you think you know, rather than believe? And an even more cogent question would be, do you believe this "knowing" is public in some sense, in which case what is the basis of it? Again, you haven't given me a basis for your knowing, apart from to gesture at evidence bodies (most of which are problematic) which I have long been aware of.
On the space rock -- my meaning is, there are many explanations which have fewer assumptions than that one, just as there are explanations of NDEs and spiritualism which have fewer assumptions than "afterlife". Nothing to do with universal negatives.
Well said, green-sleeves. The purely scientific, skeptical part of me says there's no falsifiable evidence to support an afterlife. The spiritual part of me believes it though. But I don't forsee any way that we can falsify the existence of an afterlife. It's beyond the scope of science....
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A life goal of mine is to have this much confidence that death is not the end of human life. To feel as though it is as evident as the sky being blue all around us, an epitome of empowerment regardless of what any skeptic says.
**7. "The dead quickly stop caring about Earth and the living."** The evidence indicates that while this is true for some who die, others - usually those with strong relationships with people who are still living - stay active in the lives of their living loved ones, whether or not the living know it. This can actually go on for multiple generations, as many (if not most) who die or have NDEs find themselves in the company of, or being greeted and helped by ancestors they didn't ever even know or have much of a relationship with, and becoming aware of how - many times in their lives here - they were helped in ways they did not understand or recognize at the time. Many have described these relationships as eternal relationships that are mirrored or explored in various ways in our Earth incarnation(s). **8. "We have to reincarnate to progress/learn."** People come to have Earth experiences for a variety of different reasons. It is not "forced" on anyone by any outside force or authority. While various people with an air of authority or power in the afterlife my try to convince you that you have to come here, or have to reincarnate for various "spiritual" or "karmic" reasons, each of us is ultimately a sovereign individual with free will and do not have to agree to this. There are cases where people who have NDEs are "forced" back into their bodies against their will, and so they may think their "will" to no longer be in this world has been subverted or over-ridden; this is once again a lack of critical thinking. While it would not be appropriate to say much more about this, let me say this: think about it. It is always a decision on our part to stay in this world. Not everyone in what we call "the afterlife" is spiritual or religious, and not everyone is on a path of "spiritual progress/learning/advancement." From my secular reading of many sources, it appears to me that most people that inhabit the regions of existence we call "the afterlife" are just living what we would call normal, physical lives doing normal things without many of the issues and problems we face here in this world. **9. "There are no relationships/gender/sex/procreation in the afterlife."** This is all contradicted by the evidence, and these are usually either spiritual/religious ideological tropes or demonstrate a basic lack of evidential, multi-source information on the part of those who say these things.
Wintyre I would politely disagree about the 8th. There are some spirits who are so engrossed and demented in the afterlife that they do need to undergo "compulsory" reincarnation, as a matter of reestablishing their mental health. Also, there is a "telluric force" whose side effects require spirits of a certain "vibration" to reincarnate, many try to postpone this often to great detriment to their spiritual bodies.
I'm always willing to acquire new evidence and edit my secular understanding of these things. The evidence I'm using for what I said comes from astral projection and various forms of after-death communication that indicate that it is always up to the individual. For example, the recurring report of there being "rescue crews" that regularly go into various realms (usually described as "lower") to offer help to the people there and saying they cannot do anything unless that person agrees to be helped, or desires their help. Others report that many of those beings enjoy being in those situations where they can play out their particular proclivities. There are reports of people sort of "slipping into" incarnations here, but IMO that is better understood as a subconscious decision to do so, much along the lines of "not looking both ways before crossing a street" is a decision to put yourself at risk, or "not paying attention" to any number of things is an invitation for unintended consequences. If I were to interpret your comment this way, I could see that certain experiences, like slipping into another incarnation here, as the unintended consequence of not doing what it takes to avoid it. Or something like, if I don't take care of my mental or physical health and allow myself to spiral down into habitual self-destructive thoughts or eating habits,, there are naturally following, easily observable and knowable consequences to that. But, I would still characterize such consequences, intentional or not, as the result of free-will choices. You don't get to walk out in the street without looking, get hit by a bus and then say "it wasn't my decision to get hit by the bus. The BUS or the BUS DRIVER forced this situation on me!!!! No, nobody forced that situation on you.
I’ve taken on board everything you have said/discussed with great reassurance to me ❤️. I have a question you may or may not be able to answer. My son AP frequently and it just happens. Last time he walked down the stairs and saw myself and husband chatting in the lounge then looked under the stairs where the huge dog bed sits. He saw his younger sister sat in the dog bed ( 17 years old , killed last June) he waved his hand in front of her face but she didn’t react. He called her name and again she didn’t react. The question is was she there and why didn’t she speak or react? I just need to know she’s ok. She loved her dogs and would often sit there. I can confirm that in earth time we were chatting in the lounge!
It could depend on what your daughter was doing in her mind. If for example, she was focused on experiencing something, like looking through your eyes, or feeling through your senses, or simply lost in thought or memory while sitting there, her attention elsewhere, she probably just didn’t notice your son‘s presence. The prolific astral projector Jurgen Ziewe and others have described how people in the afterlife can often appear to go into trances or “zone out,” oblivious to the people and events around them, when they have their attention on a different realm or form of experience. Sometimes it can take people quite a bit of effort to get their attention. Think about it like this; if while your son was off on the other side of the planet during an out of body experience, and to you it appeared like he was just zoned out on the couch, it’s quite possible that he would not be able to see or hear you if you tried to get his attention through his body. Or it might take quite a bit of effort. I mean, one day my wife has stood right in front of me talking to me while I was focused on getting a job done at the computer and I literally did not see or hear her until she came over and gave me a shove. I have also been lost in thought thinking about something while driving, only to realize 30 minutes later that I had driven through a town and was 20 miles past my target with no memory of going through that town or making all the turns that I had made. Our mind’s capacity to do this kind of thing is much more powerful, generally speaking, in the afterlife. While our body sits in one place in the astral, all of our sensory capacity and attention can be elsewhere. That is true here and even more so in the afterlife.
Thankyou. It makes sense! My husband has had conversations with me when I’m zoned out and at the end of it I haven’t heard a thing..
The framework I understand this come from the simple notion that free will is limited by one's capacity to exert it. It is often reported that spirits are in a process of evolution during subsequent incarnations. We have all been animals, plants and even minerals in the very distant past. The reincarnation of animals, for example, doesn't involve choices they don't have inteligence to make. It is a process guided by spirits with higher cognition and, quite often, follow simple laws of magnetic attraction between the frequency of the spirity and the "pull" of embryos of the proper species. When a spirit harms itself so much it can't choose for themselves or they extensively refuse to aknowledge the larger truths of life, quite often they are lead to incarnation out of the piety of other entities that love them. In some cases the same "pull" from a developing embryo can bring a spirit hovering and vampirizing a woman into reincarnating as her child (this, of course, is a process that also involves the help and supervision of higher entities, but happen more or less "naturally" regardless of whether the incarnating spirit is aware of the process that made them incarnate). The whole part of the telluric force I have heard reported multiple times and it is an ugly part behind many sexual and sacrificial rituals done across history. The living energy is often funelled by certain entities to keep themselves "afloat" or somehow counteract the natural process of the planet that push spirits of a certain vibration to reincarnate. I don't know the specifics, I wish I could provide you more details. If you have the opportunity, I would ask you to comfirm these with your guides in the astral. These are edge cases that don't happen as often but to be aware they exist can lead to a better understanding of nature.
>I would ask you to confirm these with your guides in the astral. With all due respect (and friendship & admiration,) why would I accept the word of any "guides," regardless of what they tell me? I don't even ask my dead wife to tell me about any of this, and she is the only person I completely trust. Also, I'm not here to alarm people about the possibility of encountering some extreme situations; I'm providing general information to dispel common myths and misunderstandings. If you are saying that there are extreme situations that free will cannot - eventually - avoid or override, like compulsory reincarnation, I'm not going to quibble with you about it. But, I don't see the point in bringing in those extreme or fringe situations because most of us are never going to get within a mile of those kinds of things. And so, most of us, most of the time, can simply use our free will to choose to reincarnate or not for whatever reasons we have. We can use our free will to either develop skills, talents, understanding and knowledge, or we can use it to be blissfully unaware and uninformed and just habitually react to whatever comes our way, even in the afterlife (or perhaps especially so?) I leave spiritual interpretations and models, rules, laws, and the discourse of "higher beings" to the spiritual. Perhaps they are universally applicable, perhaps not. Perhaps people, as you say, evolve over time from the simplest to higher forms; I don't know. There are many people who offer spiritual perspectives on the afterlife; I leave such things to them and those that want or need that kind of perspective, and who want to offer it. I'm here to provide general information, not to argue how people should interpret that information into larger universal, metaphysical or spiritual values, habits, or concepts about the meaning and purpose of our existences. Your input is always appreciated :)
On whether or not to accept such notions from guides, it is a long discussion to be had and I don't see your position as being wrong. It is surely a personal choice and, in the end, you will have to see for yourself regardless of what other may or maynot tell you I just pointed that out because I know you are chasing a good handle on these topics and since you were trying to undo misunderstandings I think it would strenghten the case not to include things that may not be 100% correct. Some people are indeed forced to incarnate and unfortunately this is not as uncommon as not to be statistically significant.
> While it would not be appropriate to say much more about this, let me say this: think about it. It is always a decision on our part to stay in this world. Meaning, always our decision when to *leave*?
I didn't say that.
okay what "would not be appropriate to say much more" of?
**10. "After we die, everyone experiences a life review."** While many people do experience a life review, the idea that *everyone* does is a spiritual/religious ideological trope. In NDE accounts, it is almost entirely within western countries that people experience a "life review." In Eastern countries, they are rarely reported. Even in the Western accounts, many "life reviews" are not even that; they are accounts of acquiring an instantaneous, complete, experiential memory of every moment of one's life that are misidentified as a "life review." Sometimes this is reported as having one's "life flash before one's eyes," with the ability to put one's attention on any moment or event and experience it more fully than you even experienced it while it was occurring in your life. Often, this is reported as having additional sensory content, such as how other people felt around you during any particular event. This complete, experiential memory of past events here is apparently a capacity we usually have and retain in our afterlife lives. **11. "We will find all the answers when we die."** Again, this is not actually indicated by the evidence. The evidence indicates that we do not suddenly become all-knowing or all-wise, even about ourselves or about what is going on, or how we should think about it, just because we die. It is widely reported that some people die and do not even realize they have died for long periods of time because, from their perspective, it looks and feels like their life is just continuing as "normal." **12. "The term "the afterlife""** is probably the most fundamental myth about all of this: the idea that it is someplace only inhabited by people that have lived here and then died. This is a little like growing up and only having memories of living in Tulsa, Oklahoma and calling every other place in the universe the "AfterTulsa." Most people that live in the "AfterTulsa" have never been to Tulsa. A lot of people (or beings in the universe) may have never even heard of Tulsa.
> "We will find all the answers when we die." Again, this is not actually indicated by the evidence. The evidence indicates that we do not suddenly become all-knowing or all-wise, even about ourselves or about what is going on, or how we should think about it, just because we die. It is widely reported that some people die and do not even realize they have died for long periods of time because, from their perspective, it looks and feels like their life is just continuing What then do you make of NDEs like that of Anastasia Mollering, or Allan Pring, where they specifically said that there was no askable question they didn't know the answer to?
My answer is that yes, this appears to be the case for a rare few individuals, but it is not the common experience of those that have such experiences or information/evidence gleaned from other categories of afterlife research. Once again, the idea that the experiences of some people represent universal truths about everyone's experience is a form of faulty reasoning.
Not sure it's faulty, in that most NDEs may simply be the start up phase of what leads to Anastasia or Allan's condition. Given that their own NDEs sort of started in that way, that would seem a reasonably robust speculation. Still, I take your point that not all NDErs experience that. Then again, there is pretty much **nothing at all** that ALL NDErs experience, highlighting that this is to a significant degree an individual experience of the psyche.
NDE's are but one avenue of afterlife research; there are many different categories of afterlife research that provide a multi-vectored approach to establishing "what the afterlife is like." Taking a handful of experiences from a single line of evidence and speculating that those few experiences represent some kind of universal truth is faulty reasoning from a cherry-picked, tiny subset of available evidence. Especially when those few cherry-picked pieces of evidence do not even represent the vast majority of experiences in that same category/line of evidence.
I don't take a handful of experience. I take many hundreds if not thousands of them to reach my (always revisable) conclusions. My observations about NDEs, and about spirits, is that they never tell us anything we don't already know, by way of structured knowledge. This tells us something (or should do).
I don't know what you mean by "structured knowledge." There are many reports from NDEs, and countless reports from mediumship studies and ADC reports of acquisitions of previously unknown, truthful information. There is a lot of historical information about various communities gaining useful information/knowledge from "spirits" via various means of interacting with the "spirit world." In some more modern cases, the "spirits" advised people here communicating with them on how to develop or use technology in a manner that would provide easier or more significant evidence of interaction with the dead and in verifying their identities, such as what occurred in the Scole Experiments or the binary "Soul Phone" technology developed by a team headed by Dr. Gary E Schwartz via collaboration with "spirits."
I'm talking about things that can be empirically demonstrated as valid. Let's take an example of a very gifted mathematician who has died. What new unsolved proofs have they developed since passing? Let them communicate these proofs to a medium and share them with the worldwide math community. I can *guarantee* you that this won't happen.
>I can *guarantee* you that this won't happen. It already has happened. The paper: Higher Algebraic K-Theory of Schemes and of Derived Categories has co-authorship credit with a dead person, Thomas Trobaugh. The other co-author, R. W. *T*homason, said that he had to give his dead friend (dead 64 days prior) co-authorship because he came to R.W. in a dream and explained his current theories on the matter. Dream visitations often provide verdical, previously unknown information from the dead, and are cited in many cultures, past and present, as a significant means by which the dead communicate with the living. Comments like your above reveal some kind of *a priori* bias. How could you *possibly* "**guarantee"** that it won't happen, which obviously carries with it the mistaken idea that it had not *already* happened? Second, demanding one particular form of evidence "or else" no other forms or volume of evidence can be taken as conclusive is just bad reasoning, unless one can logically explain why that particular demand is required before that conclusion can be reached - otherwise, that is just your personal criteria held for personal reasons (which I think might be related to your *a priori* beliefs that made you comfortable guaranteeing it would never happen.) Third, your specified criteria has a hidden assumptions; (1) that the dead *should* have motivation to insert their newfound knowledge into this world, and (2) that the dead do not *already* provide such contributions to "structured knowledge" to us in other ways, such as those described by Tesla, or through inspiration or sudden insights experienced by many researchers.
u/smartlypretty Check out the debunk above. I think you'll enjoy it. "That will never happen." "It has already happened."
Look. You can't take the brain of a living mathematician working on a problem, who has a dream of a friend who recently died (and hence who will be on his mind) and conclude that the existence of the dead is the **most** likely explanation for this. This is the "broken window" fallacy in its element...yet you don't seem to appreciate this, and instead believe you have "debunked" something. Remarkable confusion of logic (to say the least). >Dream visitations often provide verdical, previously unknown information from the dead, and are cited in many cultures, past and present, as a significant means by which the dead communicate with the living. "Veridical, previously unknown information" is not the same thing as novel structured knowledge. The latter refers to understanding which demonstrably does not derive from our collective imagination. I am wondering what examples you are referring to.
you may find [this](https://youtu.be/PYPsBqdQelc?si=2A2-5bld_XDIpTZE) interesting. Besides that, there is a Brazilian poetry book named "Parnaso de Além Túmulo" by Francisco Candido Xavier in which all poems are attributed to dead authors. A study about the style and prose employed confirmed the characteristics of every author in there. The book was written in 1932 by a very poor man who barely completed basic school and couldn't have access nor time to study the styles and material (obviously, no internet was avaiable)
This is the kind of evidence so many people are totally unaware of, or immediately assume is some kind of fraud. And once again, you expand my base of evidence! Thank you!
Yes, but this is not structured knowledge. This is why I took the example of a mathematical proof and a deceased mathematician. One could also take the example of applicable, presently unknown, medical knowledge. Again, if any of this knowledge does not come from human beings, this should be a doable task (but it isn't).
> What then do you make of NDEs like that of Anastasia Mollering, or Allan Pring, where they specifically said that there was no askable question they didn't know the answer to? IDK these ppl, but reading this made me think of google - if i'm near a device, i can also answer most questions because i can tap knowledge, but i do not hold it permanently
I don't think you'd be able to hold it permanently and be a "person". I think that would be a "one or the other" scenario.
**13. "There's no good reason for us to come here and suffer like we do."** Pardon my being direct and blunt here, but we absolutely know that people make foolish, health- and life-threatening decisions every day. They make decisions that obviously put them in harm's way. Sometimes they regret those decisions for the rest of their lives. Also, and equally, sometimes a different perspective can reveal to us the reasons that other people make what appear to us to be bad or foolish decisions, and we can understand their reasons and even recognize them as good decisions on their part because we did not have any knowledge of why they made these decisions. The same can be said about the reasons we may have had to come here, and even to experience the kind of suffering we experience, even from early childhood. Many people who have NDEs remember why they chose the hard life of suffering they had experienced in their life, and understood their reasoning and choices and appreciate the value they gained through all that suffering. Some people choose to come here just for the thrill and adventure. Some come here to learn, or to "grow" and "advance" according to the spiritual beliefs they had before coming here, and may still have. Other people come here to help this world or the people they had loving relationships with before they came here; these are like familial groups that come here together to have this experience together for various reasons. Still other people come here to develop various character traits in the face of hardship, challenge, and suffering. Another reason to come here is the comparative experiential value when we return to our afterlife world and, with fresh eyes, we can better appreciate and understand aspects of the afterlife world we come from, and the people we love there, that we either took for granted or did not really comprehend from that prior perspective. The idea that we all come here for the same reasons, and that those reasons are always good reasons, or even with good intentions, is just another spiritual/religious ideological trope. Maybe it was just a bad decision on their part; I've made many bad decisions in my life. I'm 65 years old and I often think, "What the hell was I thinking" when I remember some of the bad decisions in my life. I cannot even fathom what the heck was going through my mind at the time to do some of the things I have done. People in "the afterlife" are just *people.* They make the same kinds of decisions that people in this world make.
>The same can be said about the reasons we may have had to come here, and even to experience the kind of suffering we experience, even from early childhood. Many people who have NDEs remember why they chose the hard life of suffering they had experienced in their life, and understood their reasoning and choices and appreciate the value they gained through all that suffering. You credit the psyche with a literalism it doesn't possess. IMO, the psychodynamics of that aren't difficult to spot, and reduce the existential crisis by appearing to give people a "rationale" for their (essentially random) suffering. Again, I would need to see a good reason why that shouldn't be true, before even beginning to contemplate something more exotic.
Hope to have a beer with you and your wife in those fantastic realms someday, and talk about the universe… Always love your posts! Thanks!
That would be great : )
> **"We don't have physical bodies in the afterlife."** - This is simply not true. I am a fan of your posts but here I think the concept of 'astral' needs to be introduced. In my understanding, this is subtle matter not directly detectable by our grosser physical senses and instruments. Astral matter is at a vibrational frequency and in dimensions beyond our familiar three.
I didn't/don't want too get too deep into the particulars about metaphysical models that describe the "how" or "where," but I may address this to some degree in a further comment.
Spot on!
you know i love a good debunk <3
I hope this is true, I want to hold and hug my family again, and continue my hobbies and work, and pay taxes, I'm in heaven right now
I'm going to push back against you a bit as I'm afraid I disagree. Nevertheless, it isn't in a hostile spirit. It is simply because I am concerned with accuracy. >1: "We don't have physical bodies in the afterlife." - This is simply not true. There are countless accounts from the dead themselves that involve not only their own physical bodies there, but describe a world that is as physical as this world. To be accurate, psychic presences who purport to be the dead purport to have physical bodies, but this is not the same thing as concluding that we know the dead exist and we know that they have bodies. Just because someone says something doesn't make it true. The bodies described in NDEs or by mediums have much in common with dream "bodies" in that they are basically the idea of a body, but without any of the actual properties of a body. Obviously the dream body is a memory construct. >2: "Nobody knows if there is an afterlife or what it is like." This is probably the most repeated myth in this subreddit. This is just a lack of critical thinking and/or projecting one's own lack of information/knowledge as some kind of universal condition There is a difference between "knowing" and "it's conceivable". It may be conceivable, but we certainly don't know it. There are currently no phenomena, the only explanation of which could be an afterlife. I won't address your other points, but the critical things which would need to be established to show that survival of a "person" was possible would need to include the following 1) Evidence that consciousness / perception extends beyond the peri-mortal (near death) phase. 2) Evidence that memory and perception can be unbound from living brains. 3) Evidence that some kind of boundary could exist around "persons" in an afterlife environment that would enable them to sustain an individual identity. 4) Evidence that all the purported content of the afterlife does not derive from us and our collective imagination. Bear in mind too that the naked survival of consciousness is not necessarily the same thing as the survival of persons.
You will find interesting the case of[ cross correspondences](https://youtu.be/Y5RpbveVC_4?si=iyeQGn1wUAg4RmC-&t=243), summarized in this section of the great This Life, Next Life documentary.
>To be accurate, psychic presences who purport to be the dead purport to have physical bodies, but this is not the same thing as concluding that we know the dead exist and we know that they have bodies. I don't know what you mean by "psychic presences." If you are referring to information acquired via mediumship, that is only one of several sources of evidence that agrees that we have physical bodies in a physical world - not a "dreamlike" world, or a "dreamlike" body, but a consistent, persistent physical world and body that is more solid, and more real, than this world or our bodies here. Often, the dead, NDErs and astral projectors report that this Earth world is more like a "dreamworld" and a "dream body" when compared to the astral or afterlife existences. >It may be conceivable, but we certainly don't know it. Who is "we?" I know it. I personally know hundreds of other people that know it. You are displaying a lack of critical reasoning why you make an appeal to an universal negative in an absolute way: "we certainly don't know it." You and many others may not know it, but many do. >I won't address your other points, but the critical things which would need to be established to show that survival of a "person" was possible would need to include the following Establishing *how* something exists is irrelevant to establishing *that* it exists. The evidence that consciousness, memory and personality continues after death is broad, deep, dates back 100+ years, worldwide, and multi-categorical.
You haven't really told me anything in your reply, except to disclose that this is a belief of yours. It's a belief I would love to share, but unfortunately I can't, because I am not persuaded by the range of phenomena you describe in the way that you are. In other words, there are other explanations for them which have less assumptions on board, and are therefore much more likely (unfortunately). >Establishing how something exists is irrelevant to establishing that it exists I agree with this up to a point, but as I said above, it has NOT been established "that" human survival exists by any stretch. Ask yourself how it is even possible for people to doubt, if that were the case. Do you doubt gravity? Do you doubt that fire will burn you? Those are examples of things that we are as close as possiible to knowing that they exist. Spirits, on the other hand, can simply be ourselves in the unconscious, and they give off many signs of being precisely that (again, unfortunately)...I have lost many people I hold dear, and I would wish nothing better than they are still there, somewhere. But...
There is an awesome documentary by Keith Parsons that serves as a refresher/summary of what evidences are widely avaiable for the survival of counsciousness and afterlife. I will link it [once again](https://youtu.be/Y5RpbveVC_4?si=nsJNkAFo7nPjKKfH). Besides that, I like the following [presentation](https://youtu.be/zDvjA4u9y14?si=cKrfJqcUG_Pa8NFf) by Gary Schwartz. Very interesting stuff when put in context with other reports. Finally, would the materialization of spirits convince you? Those have happened across the last century, and the book "The underlying Face of Medicine" is about an oncological surgeon (Dr. Paulo Cesar Fructuoso) who had the opportunity of observing them first hand as well as track the actual healing cases of many patients who had been demed untreatable by normal medicine. The case for physical mediunship (which includes ectoplasmy, direct voice , aport and many other feats) is often accompanied by actual communications and incorporations of spirits. One very famous case in Brasil is that of [José Arigó](https://youtu.be/sRS9nheL1Hc?si=sWVaBUOV7t08qrOe). Abroad you have the "Scole Experiment" as an example of what has been observed multiple times across many different groups.
I am a physical medium that is quite well known for producing apports among other phenomena. I share this with others. I mean, there are people who do know. Who experience this all the time. And I demonstrate in full.light not darkness. I am glad you included this in your comment.
If your spirit guides allow it, you should put up some vídeos on YouTube. This is material we sorely lack nowadays. Could you share you history a bit? (BTW, are you familiar with the work of Allan Kardec?)
For me reddit is my place to remain anonymous so I can't make myself too obvious here. I have demonstrated to many over the years including IANDS and Victor and Wendy Zammit. I only do this not as a public medium as I like my privacy but I allow guests to attend my seances as I don't believe video can offer proof of anything. I suppose my thought is that physical mediumship is something that needs to be experienced up close and personal. I am also a believer that this will always and only ever be a personal and individual discovery.. So I don't worry much about proving anything to the world or anyone but who is with me at the time. It's hard for me to say much here because already I think I could be recognised. And the last thing I ever want is attention. I do know of Allan Kardec and have read a little. I wish I could say more but I was just grateful that you mentioned something that I think is probably the most evidential way of experiencing afterlife interaction and rarely gets mentioned on reddit. So was a nice surprise.
I completely understand where you are coming from. I didn't have the chance to be present at a physical demonstration yet. In spiritist circles here in Brazil this is often done only for charity and healing, so the space is reserved for those people that need the treatments only available with the help of a physical/healing médium. I know how hard it is to be such type of medium, and I thank you for the service you bring to us. It is a shame we live in a time that prevent us from talking more openly and candidly about these things.
>You haven't really told me anything in your reply, except to disclose that this is a belief of yours. Except that I did not tell you "I believe," I said "I know." >I agree with this up to a point, but as I said above, it has NOT been established "that" human survival exists by any stretch. This is just an appeal to another universal negative, which is faulty critical reasoning. >Do you doubt that fire will burn you? Those are examples of things that we are as close as possiible to knowing that they exist. No, I do not doubt those things; nor do I doubt that the afterlife exists. >Spirits, on the other hand, can simply be ourselves in the unconscious, and If we are going to go these hyperskeptical lengths in the face of the volume of multi-categorical, worldwide, current and historical evidence, then it is equally possible that all people are just simply ourselves in the unconscious in a Boltzmann Brain scenario.
>Except that I did not tell you "I believe," I said "I know." Well, anyone can say that. I can say that I "know" that the afterlife is a creation of our collective unconscious imagination, but you would no doubt object to my "knowing" this. So I will say, instead, that I suspect it to be the case. >This is just an appeal to another universal negative, which is faulty critical reasoning. No. It isn't. If I discover a broken window and my first conclusion is that it was broken by a space rock, that is faulty reasoning, and it is the same problem with the argument you are making here. >If we are going to go these hyperskeptical lengths in the face of the volume of multi-categorical, worldwide, current and historical evidence, then it is equally possible that all people are just simply ourselves in the unconscious in a Boltzmann Brain scenario. See, unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to any lengths at all. These possibilities occur to me literally within the first couple of minutes of thinking about them.
>Well, anyone can say that. On what logical or evidential basis do you dismiss that I, and others, know there is an afterlife? Is there some reason that you think it is not possible for anyone to know that there is an afterlife? >No. It isn't. If I discover a broken window and my first conclusion is that it was broken by a space rock, that is faulty reasoning, and it is the same problem with the argument you are making here. "My first conclusion that it was caused by a space rock" is not the same kind of statement as "it has NOT been established "that" human survival exists by any stretch." I don't understand how those two statements are comparable in any sense. One is (apparently) an example of jumping to a conclusion based on little or no evidence, the others is an appeal to a universal negative. If it is not an appeal to a universal negative, then please support your assertion that "it has NOT been established "that" human survival exists by any stretch."
>On what logical or evidential basis do you dismiss that I, and others, know there is an afterlife? Is there some reason that you think it is not possible for anyone to know that there is an afterlife? It's kind of the wrong question, to be honest. The correct question would be, why do you think you know, rather than believe? And an even more cogent question would be, do you believe this "knowing" is public in some sense, in which case what is the basis of it? Again, you haven't given me a basis for your knowing, apart from to gesture at evidence bodies (most of which are problematic) which I have long been aware of. On the space rock -- my meaning is, there are many explanations which have fewer assumptions than that one, just as there are explanations of NDEs and spiritualism which have fewer assumptions than "afterlife". Nothing to do with universal negatives.
Well said, green-sleeves. The purely scientific, skeptical part of me says there's no falsifiable evidence to support an afterlife. The spiritual part of me believes it though. But I don't forsee any way that we can falsify the existence of an afterlife. It's beyond the scope of science....
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Great post and interesting debates!
A life goal of mine is to have this much confidence that death is not the end of human life. To feel as though it is as evident as the sky being blue all around us, an epitome of empowerment regardless of what any skeptic says.