Episode 146: Good things are on the Horizon!

On each episode, we'll discuss the reasons we now know that our loved ones have survived physical death and so will we. Welcome to Shades of the Afterlife. Back in two thousand and five, I attended a conference in Atlanta, Georgia called Afterlife the Evidence. It was hosted by Tom and Lisa Butler, who wrote the book There Is No Death and There Are No Dead. That was the very first time I had ever heard about Sonia Ronaldi. You may remember her from episode number one. She was my

very first guest on Shades of the Afterlife. But I heard she was in Brazil doing these phone calls to the dead, recording empty space while talking to a parent, and when she played back the recording, the voice of their deceased child would be there. Now, so many years later, she not only receives voices but also images. You may be interested in our upcoming event with Sonia. She'll be sharing with us her most recent experiments. You want to check out We Don't Die dot com and the store page.

By the time you hear this, it might have already passed, but you can certainly watch the replay. The other person quite memorable to me was doctor Gary Schwartz. He did a fantastic presentation about some of the double blind and triple blind experiments he did with mediums. Let me tell you about him. Doctor Gary Schwartz is a former Harvard and Yale professor. He is now senior professor at the

University of Arizona in psychology, medicine, neurology, and psychiatry. In addition to teaching courses, he directs research at the Laboratory for advance in Consciousness and Health. Doctor Schwartz has published more than five hundred scientific papers. He served as the founding president of the Academy for the Advancement of Post

Material Sciences. Seven of his nearly two dozen books written include The Living Energy Universe, The Afterlife Experiments, The Healing Energy Experiments, The Truth About Medium, The Sacred Promise, An Atheist in Heaven, and Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence. And these books I mentioned are all related to his scientific investigations and findings addressing the survival of life after death. He frequently speaks about health and psychology, healing energy, survival

of consciousness, and so much more. Has been featured on some very prominent television and radio shows and the big newspapers like The London Times, The New York Times, the LA Times and others. Doctor Gary Schwartz is married to a medium, the beautiful Ronda, who I had an opportunity to meet both of them back in twenty eighteen. I think it was with our friends from the Afterlife Research and Education Institute Doctor Schwartz is also one of the

people behind the Soul Phone. You may remember that we talked to doctor Mark pittstick Back on episode twenty five. These words come to us from the International Spiritualist Federation and it's a good group to keep an eye on. You can find their website at THEISF dot co dot uk and they've just started a YouTube channel with several interesting videos. You can find them on YouTube at ISSF Science Forum, and of course doctor Gary Schwartz can be

found at the Soul Phone Foundation dot org. I am currently reading doctor Schwartz's book, The Afterlife Experiments, which will give you a much deeper view, but I want to share these words with you. It is very rare to hear doctor Schwartz, and on this episode he speaks about the soul Phone, about consciousness, survival, about mediums and more so. Here is the incredible doctor Gary Schwartz.

assumed that that was true. And it wasn't until I was during my time as a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Yale University that I began to question all that and literally stumbled upon a theory and developed the theory which, among other things, forced me to predict that not only was a life after death possible, but was sort of required by our understanding of contemporary of physics and system science. But that didn't mean I was going to do research in that area. It was just, you know,

a theory. There was nothing compelling me to do it. But then I had a series of experiences, actually mostly with women who had lost loved ones and really wanted to know whether their loved ones personality conscioussiness histories continued. These women were they came from different walks of life. Some were scientists, some were writers, some were just regular people. But they each approached me and beseeched me to help them,

help give them evidence. And so what I say to people is that I was pushed there by scientific theory and evidence, but I was pulled there by love, Linda's love for her father, Susie's love for her mother. And when you pushed and pulled in the same direction, it's very hard to resist. So I'm sharing it with you because when I began doing this work, not only did I begin doing it in secret, but also I did it with no knowledge of the history of the field.

I didn't know about s Rotha Conan Doyle and Harry Udiny. I didn't know about the early work in British Parapsychological Association or William James. I didn't know about any of the spiritualism movements and so on. And I didn't know also about other emerging literatures such as Near to That about the experiences or reincarnation. This was not part of my education, it was not part of my upbringing, and so I approached it the childlike heart and interest, open minded.

But with all this background in science and experimental design and statistics and how to analyze data, and what happened was I was privileged to end up meeting some very gifted mediums who were really interested in science, and they considered themselves to be evidential mediums, and they wanted the world to know that they weren't frauds, that they weren't

cold readers, that there was a real phenomena here. And I put them through ever more sophisticated experimental tests, and in every case the mediums who were real quote passed those tests, to the point where my first book was published in two thousand and two, which is twenty one years ago, which called the Afterlife Experiments break Through side

to its for Life after Death. And I was in awe of not only their gifts, but in awe of a greater spiritual reality that I had no idea existed, and that the amount of love and caring that connected these both within and between these realms. Now, over the years, the research became ever more sophisticated. We ended up doing what it called single blind studies, and then double blind studies,

and then triple blind studies. And a postdoctoral fellow who worked with me, who then created a instrument institute called doctor Julie Bischel. She went on and even conducted five

way blinded experiments. Scientists would get obsessed about experimental controls, particularly in controversial areas, and it became really clear that the conventional explanations could not account for this, and I reached the point where I didn't need any more scientific quote evidence to be convinced of it myself, nor did I feel that scientific evidence in that one area by itself would ultimately be convincing to the people who were

extremely skeptical or the quote disbelievers. So I began to shift my focus to research on technology. I went public with that work, that meaning in terms of publishing a couple of key scientific papers in twenty ten, in two and eleven on the use of super sensitive state of the art technology to detect the energy of spirit, the presence of the info energy systems that comprise our quote

energy bodies, and so on. And I did that work always in collaboration with gifted mediums, and so that's the kind of work that I've focused on, and I have left the continued development of mediumship research to others. The one thing I can say, though, is that I've maintained relationships and particularly private research relationships with special mediums, and they in turn have written books about research that they've

done with me through their practices and the like. I can honestly say I have witnessed hundreds and hundreds of research readings in a laboratory setting over the past quarter of a century, and I have witnessed probably thousands that were just more quote informal, and after all that time, I'm always struck with awe and wonder and gratitude and

celebration for both the phenomena, including its mysteries. There are, I mean, there are a lot of mysteries, as you know, and the mysteries and the challenges, the difficulties that most mediums have, even the very best a what's the word, The more intellectual and spiritual questions about all of us are really in some real spooks, you know, more interesting than just knowing that it's real.

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about data. There are many categories of data, each of which speak to life after death, and they have been discussed in many books, you know, and the latest you're probably aware of the Bigelow Institute for Conscious Studies and their contests that they had and so on. And there are these bodies of work and the major ones or

near death experiences. There's after death communications, there's reincarnation in children, there's deathbed visions, there's mediumship research, and the latest, of course, is the technology research. Each of those bodies of evidence have very compelling data. No one of those areas by itself is quote proof, although the one that would become the closest to providing proof is actually the technology for the reason that I'll explain, but it has not reached

that level that you'd call proof level. But each of these individual level areas by themselves are not quote definitive. But when you put them all together, the convergence of the evidence, the consilience of the evidence, the whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. And there is no other alternative explanation that it can account for all of that evidence when you have a body of evidence where all of the evidence points in that direction.

And the conclusion that I say is the single best theory that accounts for the largest amount of the evidence and also proposes hypotheses and experiments that could be proved or disproved in future research. That anothesis is the survival of consciousness to hypothesis, And it's very easy to come to the conclusion if you know all the evidence now within all that area, then there's this we go to the specific domains. Mediumship within that as one of those

categories is one that is quite strong. And what's interesting about mediumship compared to the others is that it can be quote brought into the laboratory. Right now, we don't do you know, near death experience research where we intentionally quote kill people or you know, and then study them. But during these periods of tide, they're very ethical reasons for not doing that, okay, but mediumship research you can

bring into the laboratory. Mediums can be brought in. They can do this under controlled circumstances and the meta what are called meta analyzes, where they've looked at put the various studies together, there is a debate about which studies you include in which studies you don't include, which is always the case with meta analysis. But again the beta analysis also in general support that same conclusion, even when you limit it to the very best studies. The better

the studies are, the clearer the conclusions are. So the mediumship research, again, if you know the research, it's hard to come to a different conclusion. Also, and this is where sophistication in the research area becomes important. So, for example, there are conditions which are optimal for obtaining positive results.

So if you want to achieve positive results, you want to have skilled mediums who are evidence oriented, who are minimally stressed and can get into a state where they can feel comfortable receiving information and not worrying about whether it's correct or not and not trying to quote charge. You also need to be able to have sitters for whom loved ones as a strong emotional bond and a

reason for them to connect in this context. And thirdly, you want to be able to design the research in such a way that it as closely as possible reflects what mediums really do. In order to be able to perceive the information that they get because science has very often designed these very naive kinds of experiments trying to be quote controlling, and they don't realize they're throwing out the baby with the bath water. And I wrote about

that in two thousand and two. So you know, if you know these areas of work, and you're sophisticated at all, you realize that, yeah, it's very easy to not get a positive result and then say therefore, quote there's no

phenomena because you didn't get it under your circumstances. One of the things, by the way, sidebar, that I have been very impressed with is how easy it and how fragile mediumship is with the very best well Michael Jordan's of the mediumship world Michael Jordan was a basketball player, or now the Lebron James and the Stepth Curryes of basketball. How easy it is to have the very best medium's

performance de deteriorate, if not be completely impaired. I can design very simple experiments and under circumstances with the very best mediums that I were, and I know they're Michael Jordan's, but they can't do the task. It's like saying Okay, we want you to see whether you get the balls

in the basket, but you have to do it wearing blindfolds. Well, most people that are free throw lined, you know, if they put a blindfold on, they're going to miss most of their shots, even if they know where the basket is. I mean, there are just certain things that you can do that interferes with performance. But if you don't know what it is that is not optimal but is actually interfering, you can have the phenomena disappear. Again, the sophistication is

a factor, and again some of that. There's been an article written recently and I'm forgetting his name. I see it, but I can't say it. You Brazilian scientists, but they've written a methodological analysis of the optimal conditions to obtain mediums, not from just a control removing fraud or removing you making vague general statements, but optimizing the conditions forgetting a

positive result as opposed to. The third area is in the technology, and the technology area, which is one that I've been focusing on for the past ten years, I'd like to draw the distinction between proof of concept and proof of product. Proof of practicality as opposed to proof of possibility. So there's a proof of possibility versus a

proof of practicality. When you look at the totality of the data that we've collected, much of which is still not published, partly because of issues of intellectual property in the business world, part of women about the ethics of all this work, and also potential abuse. But when you look at the totality of the data, there is no question that we have achieved in our research proof of concept.

But we've even developed a paradigm for being able to do multi centered, double blind experiments replicating the very things that we have done in the lab quote over and over, and there's no question that we get a real phenomenon. And the metaphor that I use is like a Right

Brothers moment in the history of flight. Prior to the Right Brothers in the early twentieth entry, there were no powered airplanes, and nobody knew whether it was possible to have flight, and many people had tried and failed, in fact died. But then on that one fateful day in Kitty Hawk, five people witnessed this wooden and paper and cloth plane take off. It had no windows, it had no chairs, there were no stewardess. I mean, there was nothing that we just take for granted for flight today.

I think the first flight lasted. I've done all of fourteen seconds or whatever. I don't remember the details of it, and then the plane finally crashed. It was completely impractical, but we knew the flight was possible, and that by the way, the second time that when they tried to do it, the wind wasn't strong enough in the plane graft that they had to build it again, and the third time become so on. But once you know it was possible, then it became an engineering challenge to go

from proof of possible to proof of practical. So we've been spending the past particuli ot wo say, four years now on trying to see whether we can We call it tunnel emergence. So we're in the tunnel and we can see the end of the tunnel. We're seeing light at the end of the tunnel, but we have not

arrived through the tunnel. And the issue is primarily one of an issue of signal to noise because the amount of the intensity of quote physical energy, be it femto amp, changes in current flow or the behavior of single photons

of light in a pitch black environment. We now have the technology to be able to measure these ultra tiny changes, and we have the statistics and the paradigm to be able to using techniques both from astrophysics and also in EG recording what's called the evoke potentials, you can do some very clever things and decrease the signal to noise Rachio.

The problem is, as you get higher and higher sensitivities, you also pick up unanticipated noise problems which have been the what's the word the achilles heel almost of this work, and maybe that's not quite the right phrase. So let me give you an example. We were doing research detecting the capacity for our hypothesized spirit collaborators, and we call them probably heard of the term post material psychology and postal scientier. We refer to them as PMPs or post

material persons or post material participants. We effectually refer to them as the A team and we're the BT because they do a lot more about what the other side is like there we do, and that includes very distinguished scientists. And we were studying the capacity to see whether or not we could detect subtle shifts in the absorption and reflection of light passing through a pmp's hand, because you know quote spirit of PMPs can if you're fully formed.

That's why certain mediums who can see can see spirit. They see a body, they see jewelry, they see clothing, thefcy hair. It's all you know there, and they can engage in tasks just like we can.

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And we did very creative things, and we built this piece of apparatus and then we couldn't use it. You know why, Well, first of all, any kind of vibration, any car in that drive way or a block away would produce bigger effects than them. But secondly, we couldn't calibrate the mirrors because the system was so sensitive. We're

using micrometer mirrors. The problem was that our body heat walking up to the equipment, and so we didn't have Unless you've got a completely environmentally controlled situation and you've got the technology to be able to control them remotely where you're not imposing heat like this, you're immediately producing confounding variables. That takes a lot of money. So there's been a challenge of it's not that we don't have the technology to be able to develop this kind of

precision and measurement. It's that we don't have the resources now to implement it. And most people who have money don't see what it would mean. They don't recognize what it would mean if it was really possible to produce for the lay public. We call the soul switch a

binary switch. That would be the equivalent of a keystroke, because if you could go from proof of concept to proof of practical and what do I mean by proof of practical where when our PMP makes a response within a finite period of time, we could be ninety nine percent sure that it was them and not an artifact. And if you can do it for one switch, then

you could do it for forty switches. If you could do it for forty switches, you have a keyboard, if you have soul texting, you've now got direct communications.

that quote breakthrough. So what's happened is that we've gone from where it would take us ten or twelve hours of data collection and analysis to where we can now probably within five minutes, get an average single response that is statistically significant. Now, that's a huge increase in time and practicality. But if you have to wait five seconds.

I'm hoping that by the end of the summer or early fall is we're going to have a book tendatively called the Soul Phone Experiments that lays out enough of the research and the case for the soul phone, including its opportunities and its pitfalls, which includes its potential abuse. This is not a technology that should be quote available until we can treat it with the reverence, respect, gratitude for being able to have such an opportunity.

To call that loving openness. As my writing partner once referred to me for the Flife Experiment's book as well as the Aeriblical, the Energy Healing Experiments, and also the Good Experiments, Hughes to describe me as being an Orthodox agnostic, and what he meant by that was whether the question was is there gravity or is there God? My response is, I don't know, could be as could be. No. Show me the data. I'm open. And the plus side of being an Orthodox agnostic is that you're willing to listen

to anything. You're willing to entertain, You're willing to be wrong, You're willing to you have humility, you're willing to enter. You know, you're seeking the truth, that you're going to follow the data where it takes you. You're not going to be pre judging whether something is true or not. And I've discovered that makes actually for a very good scientist because it leads you to be open to surprises and to be you know, willing to change your mind

as a function of what you learn. The downside by the way turns out to be personal because if you have quoted a disease called science, which I do, I call it a disease because I am on a sidebar and sayd what do I mean by disease? Because I sort of can't help myself. Somebody tells me something something, They'll share some quote, curious idea or experience I have or I'm crazy, whatever, And what will happen is I'll hear their experience. It will then get translated into a question.

Then a question will become a hypothesis. Then what ideas will suggest themselves about how way that you can rest this question? And then a thought experiment will pop into my head if I had time, I had the money, resources, and so whether I could do the experiment? And then what can I conclude it? It's so much of who I am, and I've been doing it for so many years, decades, I sort of can't not do it. It's just part

of who I am. I met actually a neurosurgeon a few years ago, was very spiritually oriented, and I told him about my disease and he gave it an official diagnosis. He calls it scientitis, which I thought was pretty good. And so I have a chronic case of scientitis. I don't think it's treatable, but even if it was, I would not seek the treatment. So anyway, you need scientists who are going to be open and we're going to listen with an open mind and a heart and say

and say, okay, what would this mean? How would we go about testing this, How could we know or not know whether it's true? What meaning would this have for the things that we know, whatever field it is, psychology, biology, physics, whatever, Based on what this means, you need an open minded scientist.

But then you also need open minded people in spirituality, people who are also willing to be open to learn, to recognize that not everything that they were taught is necessarily the whole truth, is not necessarily completely accurate, and that all of us should be forgiven for our relative lack of knowledge or relative lack of discernment about what's the wheat and what's the chaff, what's the core essence

and what's not. But if you can bring such a team of people together under the optimal conditions, the opportunity for mutual education and growth, both personally and professionally and in service to the greater good both Here in the quote there is huge I think.

of this technology. And I'm not talking about abuse as in abuse in terms of having false technology or a lot of people make claims that they have an app that can connect with spirit or device spirit. They make extraordinary claims in the absence of extraordinary evidence. That's one

level of abuse. But I'm talking abuse of if we actually have a real technology, And one of my primary concerns has to do with people who would use it for political or military aims, particularly in the area of spying and in also identity theft, and of course, the only way that you can anticipate potential abuse is to imagine you have technology and say, okay, if I wanted to use it for various purposes, what kinds of things

could I do with it? And so the kinds of issues that are arising with AI in terms of unanticipated potential negative consequences for society, the soul phone, if it were to become real, would need substantial safeguards in order to minimize its abuse. Both here end quote there. Right now, we're fortunate that we don't have a breakthrough technology. So it's not like we're the runaway train hasn't started yet.

But my feeling is, and if I put a spiritual hat on that, it could be that the reason why we don't have a breakthrough yet is because we don't have the safeguards in place. First. So if there's a higher intelligence, of divine intelligence, and in particular with this technology wishes to as wisdom, not just intelligence, but wisdom, it would hopefully help us grow to be better stewards and caretakers of ourselves and the planet before we were given the keys to this technology.

currently reading. Also, I encourage you to follow our friends at the International Spiritualist Federation. Their website is THEISF dot co dot UK. Or an easy thing to remember is go subscribe to their YouTube channel. There's only a few videos on there now, but I expect great things from them, and that's easy to remember ISF Science Forum. So let's continue with doctor Schwartz.

especially if a soul phone comes along. But even if it doesn't, the first thing has to do with if there is no death, there's only transformation, then the way that we allow people to die presently is truly savage and horrific. The truth is we're kinder to our pets than we are to our parents, and so the notion of dying with dignity and being able to physically transition in a way that you could be prepared and look forward to future evolution would affect the grieving process. Obviously,

there's all that whole area. A second area has to do with increasing integrity for maintaining relationships, including both abuses of inheritance and also people's even their names, defamation, the phenomenon of defamation. It's good enough to to fame someone if it's false when they're alive, but it also is really horrific if you do it when somebody is deceased, because not only does it hurt the people who are living that love them, but it also hurts those who

have died. You can say, well, people don't care anymore about what you think about them, but they care that their loved ones are hurt and are being hurt, and they also care about truth, and caring about truth doesn't just disappear because you've transitioned to another state of being. Also, you know, very often, for example, money has been given to people's wills and then their children fight over how it's going to be used, or even worse, money is

given for causes. You know, you to take some of the quote wealth that you've accumulated, and you wanted to go to university to support particular research or to support a particular charity, and then after the person has died and the money gets read reapported for some other purpose. Well, you know, to what extent do you have the right

if you haven't died. Is there some way that you should be able to have some say in how your funds are spent after you've passed, or what if you come up with the technology you're a scientist, do you come up with some application that would benefit humanity and you help humanity to develop that technology if you want, should you have some say in how it's developed, particularly it's going to be used for purposes that are not

in your ideal. And you can even ask the question about well, if it's quote your idea, shouldn't you have the right. For example, if some of those funds were yours, if you were here in the physical maybe you'd like to have those funds given to your grandchildren. Albeit but you've now done it from the other side. There are so many questions that become put on the table once we start thinking about, well, what if the public began to really accept that this was real? Are their post

pecular person's rights? Are their responsibilities? Huge questions and I think they will require a lot of reflection.

anything in the physical world. Part of the driving force, of course, is truth seeking. That's number one. Number two is a sense of responsibility to seek truth that is of service to humanity and the greater good. You can say it's an ethical sense, it's a spiritual sense. I can see approach it from different points of view. For me, they're sell all merged because they're all pointing in that direction. But to the extent that you can do things that

are quote win win, win, win win. They win for the individual, and they win for relationships, and they win for larger elements of society, but also are good for now, not just the person in their physical form. You take a longer and bigger view. So even though I am not a pastor, I am not a religious person in

that sense. I went into psychology caring about the human mind and the human heart, and then when I discovered that that mind that heart continues after physical death, I cared about people's minds and hearts i e. Quote, their souls, whether they're here or there, and to the extent that what you do here has bearing on there, and what you do there has buried on here, especially if there's

a recycling process. I'm in an evolution process. Then this is probably one of the most important issues facing humanity, and we do a lot of very unfortunate things to each other because we don't know. Out of ignorance my motivation for this, I began to see it was much bigger, it'd be in a much larger context, and therefore felt

it was really important. Also, so it's not just to help a grieving parent make peace with the fact that their child may have died, also maybe have them look forward to being able to be reunited with their child if they like, in the future, or even continuing a relationship with them right now if they wish, Yes, all of that's very important to me. But it's not just

simply reducing people's pain and suffering. It's much broader. And I also see what I put on a bigger lens, that survival of consciousness is a step to even bigger questions. So for me, I happen to have a I'll call this this is a calle pet interest, no pun invented, and not just a pet interest in survivor level of consciousness of your pets and you know, animals and all

that kind of stuff. But I have a pet interest in the what I call the saint hypothesis, the idea that certain people who are quote bigger than life in this life, who are deeply loving and caring, that they can be given the opportunity and choose to continue to be of service to people on this planet, for example, if they wish in the form of in a religious context, and that there may be truth to the idea that you can pray to specific saints with the right intentions

and will sometimes receive guidance and help from these people who are so caring. If that was true, it places quote humanity in a higher, greater light and then imagine that there are even higher beings the quote Angel hypothesis, and I publish a book in twenty eleven called The Sacred Promise, How Science is Discovering Spirits collaboration with this

in our day the Lives. With the last quarter of the book, I applied it to the quote angel hypothesis, and I showed that you could apply the technology that we've been developing, both in mediumship and with actual technology to detect the presence of physical people and extend that to angels to the extent that they wished to collaborate in research, and they wished their presence to be known.

For me, my motivation is multi level, and I think on top of that, I then feel a moral and ethical responsibility to continue to play a role in nurturing that to unfold. Although you know, I would prefer there to be saints, prefer to be angels. I'd rather there be a universe of an infinitely compassionate and intelligent mind. My job as a scientist is not to confirm the way I wish the universe to be. My responsibility is

to help contribute to understanding how it really is. And so that's what I consider to be my more of an ethical job. But to the extent that these good things are on the horizon and the evidence is pointed that way, then I feel an add responsibility and gift of the opportunity to play a small role in that process.

look where we are now. When you take a flight, do you ever think about Orville and Wilbur? I sure do, because I think of the conversation being changed about the afterlife. I know it won't be one hundred and twenty years from now. It will be much much sooner, probably in our lifetimes when most people are communicating with their loved ones and feel confident about the afterlife. So you bet I'm going to do everything I can to share everything and everyone that I know with that Avery reminder to

come visit me. Come visit our Sunday gathering. Join about fifteen minutes early so you can say hello. That's our non denominational Sunday service with a Flair Medium demonstration, great music, and it's a lot of fun. Take a medium class, see what we have going on. Join our Facebook group. Just go to Don'tdie dot com. Good things there and

so much more. I'm Sandra Champlain. I really want to thank you for listening to Shades of the Afterlife on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network.