Life After Death - Best of Coast to Coast AM - 7/19/24

in research in this field. So you know that to screen out people like you know, a journalist, people they can write well on any sort of subject, but are

not necessarily you know, experts in any of them. And I think that was that was a pretty wise move because otherwise people have had straight up thirteen hundred used to wade through kind of fifted this year quantity and the final number I think it was two hundred and something that actually submitted essays, and they had a panel of judges, seven judges who have course, they had to read all of those essays, and I understand that's a pretty grueling process four months in the summer of that

year to wait through all of this stuff and then of course you know, discuss it amongst themselves and work out, you know, which ones they were gonna champion, which ones they were going to have been essentially, I mean, no disrespect to people's work, but you know, they had to come down with a with a choice, so it was it was it was a very unusual process because you know, of course this kind of competitions like this aren't usually

held with regard to this subject. So it was great they wrote them ald and you know, this story was featured in the New York Times and all this kind of stuff, so it really got the kind of press coverage that the subject used to get you know, way back in the day we mentioned the Society Prosycutic Research when they they held just one of their regular meetings, it would get reported in the Times newspaper of London. They would report on that, right, but they certainly don't anymore.

So it was great to see you know, our subject back in the headlines. And and for good reasons. You know that it was an exciting contest as a serious contest, and the judges themselves were I mean they were all top notch and you know, really honored to be judged by them. They are really some some reputable names there.

and it had to be beyond a reasonable diet. You had that, you know, that legal bar that you had to get over, so you very truly had to make a case that other people were then going to judge, so it needed to be strong in those terms, and and that that points you towards presenting scientific evidence, because that's that's the strongest form of evidence that we have. So I think in terms of where these people were judges themselves were coming from, they're you know, they're all

subject matter experts and they needed to be. You couldn't have had this just judged by you know, people from completely different fields or whatever. It wouldn't have been appropriate and it would have produced, you know, the proper result. So it was. It was all carefully planned and executed, and you know, it was just amazing to you know, you can come, Sarge and just this incredible experience.

how did how did all that come about? With Robert Bigelow. He, I mean, he's a great friend here of Coast to coast am he we definitely spotlighted the contests, I believe as he started it and then as it wrapped up to George Knapp of course is a great friend as well as George Norri and then I've recently got to meet him and that's how I met you through that not all that long ago in Vegas at his at the headquarters and but I met him years and years and years and years and years ago, and it was

soon after my dad had passed away, and I had actually called him and got in contact with him to talk about an alien type situation. He was He loved Bud Hopkins as well and was working with Bud Hopkins. And I knew Bud, but more so David Jacobs, and so I was talking. I want to talk to him about that, and for some reason the conversation went to life after death and this was a long time ago, which was weird because that's really kind of his thing,

isn't it. That's that is? Is that his biggest question? And how did is that? How all this came about?

what is what is life? What is death? We don't you know here, We've got this problem with consciousness, which is its just it seems to be central to everything, including you know, UFO phenomena, and you know, other aspects of the paranormal and so on. So I think this is this is always you know, they say, it's one

of the fundamental questions that we all think. And so it was just perfect to have the opportunity to come to terms with that, you know, and get to grips of him, because I think when I started off writing, I was very skeptical and it's and it's been an issue that I'd just been kind of like flip flopping on for for years, and we could just never get off the fence because I would read, you know, one piece of research which would be absolutely convincing, you think, wow,

that that seems to settle it, and then you would read something else that would demolish it, and you'd be just back to square one again. And so this, for me, he gave me the opportunity to sit down and think, Okay, I'm you know, I don't actually really believe in life after death, but now I'm gonna you know, we've got the chance here. Because you know, the prize money was quite substantial, so it was a definite big carrot.

in this eral flip flopping state. So it was absolutely just worked it from a personal point of view to undertake that, to answer that question, or to take on

that question. And and I find myself, you know, in a position that I that I kind of describe at the beginning of the book, so at the beginning of the essay, and weirdly, and I have to explain how I ended up structuring it and all the rest of it, because yes, please, yes, it was accidentally picked up a couple I think I kind of quote online or something like that, and it accidentally led me to Charles Dickens Christmas Carol of all things. I loved it.

why I ended up calling the Scrooge paradox. It's got nothing to do with money, but it's got to do with belief from personal experience, because at the beginning of the story, Scrooge meets the ghost of his former partner who comes back to essentially warm and that these spirits, you know, the three spirits of Christmas, are going to come to him and and show them what's wort in

the world. And at the beginning of the story, Screwge has this conversation with the ghost which is just priceless, and he said, you know, I don't believe in you. I think the ghost is quite taken aback. You know, why why don't you believe in them? And screws the answer is basically, well, you know, you could be you could be caused by indigestion, for example, so essentially that you could be some sort of sigment of my imagination that's caused by some kind of imbalance in my system essentially.

But but Dickens used this far more you know, humorous way of talking about indigestion, and Scrooge ends up saying that there's far more of the gravy than the grave about you to this ghost, which you know causes them to shrine terribly. And and I think that's the key thing, is that we very often doubt our own experiences because we've grown up in a materialistic society, you know, and we're taught scientific materialism, and we're told about to believe in

these things and to rather look for psychological explanations. So I thought, wow, that is actually me, you know, so at the beginning of the essay, and then to take on board Dickens and the Christmas Carol that I thought he's describing me, and it also describes a lot of other people because the convincing factor and a lot of a lot of this is personal experience. So people who have not had a personal experience will very often remain doubtful in the face of the evidence. And I men,

people who have had an experience will remain doubtful. So I've had experiences, but I'd ended up, you know, arguing with them like Scrooge, and and I thought, wow, this really this explains a lot, in just in psychological terms, about how we've faced these these strange things in our lives.

And so that you know that that was a way in which I was able to just see where I was in in the in the bigger picture, and realized that, you know, I was I was doing something that Charles Dieting had described, you know, way back in the Victorian period,

and building on that. I mean, of course, you know Scrooge, he starts off he's not believing in the ghost, but he very soon does believe in in the ghosts of the as the ghost of Christmas thrown up and torment him with you know, had visions of his fate and so on. And that that opportunity, you know, to kind of face my own denial of the experiences and to look at the evidence, to set the evidence yes, and then to come away at the end of the process and think, you know, yes, or did something to it.

And I had convinced myself. And I think that that it's probably one of the things that you know, helped me get the position that I did in the context, because that kind of wrestling was going on in my essay. But a lot of people go through themselves, and I think the odd thing is that one of the explanations for belief in life after death that you often come across is that people find it comforting. You ever heard that, Yeah, because it's comforting. You want to believe in it, you believe,

you want to believe in it. They want to say something, Well, that was absolutely the opposite. I was fine with the idea of annihilation and then oblivion.

say in the Ditual Winners or whatever. But we've we've put all of the essays together and you know, we've got them on the website of course you can download them all for free, and we've also published them all as a wonderful Box said, and just bringing all of that work together is it's just kind of like a sledgehammer on the on the nut of doubt because there's

there's the evidence is so overwhelming. You know, if you if you sit down and read every single essay, I don't see how you could still maintain that it's all some sort of delusion, that it's all you know, misinterpretation or look forethinking or any of these explanations, because we do have very astonishing evidence and and armfuls of it.