Evidence of Life After Death: A Casebook for the Tough-Minded

By Arthur S. Berger

Is there life after death? Science says there is not. But what about those constant reports of paranormal phenomena supposedly proving life after death, such as near-death experiences that give people glimpses of another world? We must understand that not all paranormal phenomena, whether the near-death experience, messages from the dead, apparitions or other kinds, are evidence of an afterlife. Arthur S. Berger’s aim, as symbolized by the book cover picture of Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker as he sits in deep contemplation, is to encourage us to think critically about these phenomena. A veteran researcher, Berger shows us the right questions to ask and the possible explanations to consider. His book is aimed at the “tough-minded” reader who is open-minded and wants to form balanced judgments based on facts, reasoning and consideration of explanations pro and con. Berger presents 30 different cases that illustrate a variety of the mental, mediumistic and physical phenomena claimed as “proof” of life after death. Following each case, notes encourage readers to think critically about the case because they offer arguments and counterarguments, some that interpret the case in favor of life after death, some that interpret the facts in an another way, perhaps showing fraud or ESP, for example. Readers are called upon to consider the facts, evaluate which explanation best accounts for all of them, and arrive at a balanced judgment. Is the evidence convincing enough to support a belief in life after death? A separate chapter is devoted to the distinction between evidence and proof. The book also discusses what the standard of proof should be. The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research said, “this book is one to recommend...a valuable one ...as an introduction to the art of thinking critically about anomalous phenomena, it should serve many readers very well.” The Journal of Parapsychology said “Berger takes pains to show the whole range of laypersons’ reports, from the very weak and ridiculous to the best classics in the literature. This is useful for the lay-reader, who needs to realize the degree to which misconceptions exist amid the well-intentioned reports...Berger’s book serves a useful purpose.” Michael E. Tymn, Editor of the Journal of Spirituality and Paranormal Studies and noted authority on research into life after death, described the book as “a very informative and interesting read.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arthur S. Berger
• Release date: Jun 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301094370

Arthur S. Berger

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Arthur S. Berger practiced law as a City Attorney until his retirement from the law in order to deal with a subject to which he had always been irresistibly drawn and by which he had always been puzzled. He was both fascinated by the question of survival after physical death and troubled by the constant arguments and counterarguments over the quality of the evidence for life after death. Berger felt that, as a lawyer, he would be able to analyze the evidence and determine what was valid and what was not. He became active in the American and English Societies for Psychical Research, the Parapsychology Association and President of the Survival Research Foundation, a nonprofit scientific and educational organization whose mission is to search for valid evidence of survival of human consciousness after physical death. Berger is the author or co-author of many nonfiction books dealing with parapsychology. These included: Lives and Letters in American Parapsychology (1988) described as "superb" by Parapsychology Review and selected by for its "outstanding academic list”; Evidence of Life After Death: A Casebook for the Tough-Minded (1988) and Aristocracy of the Dead (1987). He was also the co-author of Fear of the Unknown (1995), The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research (1991) and Reincarnation: Fact or Fable? (1991

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FOREWORD

Originally published in 1988, this book is being reprinted for several reasons. Circumstances have changed markedly since its original publication. Death no longer is the unmentionable subject it had been. Advance directives, withdrawing life support, physician assisted suicide, do-not-resuscitate orders, organ transplantations, have placed it on everyone’s lips. Also bringing death to our attention were cases, such as that of Nancy Cruzan, decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1990 and the sensational one of Terri Schiavo in 2005, both of which involved patients in persistent vegetative states and the removal of their feeding tubes.

We have become concerned with two issues. The first is the dying process -so we make living wills in advance of illness to plan for future medical treatment in hospitals. We try to protect ourselves against unwanted medical treatment, to control the medical care given to us based on our values and our wishes and to make plans to protect the family from having to make hard decisions.

Dying is not the same as death. Dying can be experienced; we do not experience death. Nevertheless dying is closely related to death. It forces us to ask the perennial question: What is death? Do we survive physical death? Who can answer? Those willing to believe on the grounds of faith that there is an afterlife, listen to the theologians. Those willing to accept speculation as the basis of belief, listen to the philosophers. For centuries prior to our present age, religious and philosophical doctrines were acceptable as solutions. But, for a considerably large segment of people in our present scientific age, these doctrines are no longer as acceptable as they once were. The current emphasis is more on evidence as a basis for a rational belief in an afterlife than on faith or speculation. For these people, the survival issue can belong only to psychical researchers (also called parapsychologists) and organizations like the Survival Research Foundation, a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit scientific and educational organization. The mission of the SRF is and has been to search for valid evidence of human survival after death in the belief that such empirical data would have enormous implications for the way we live and think.

As mentioned, this book is reprinted because new developments have turned the face of society toward death instead of away from it. Another reason is that a new generation of general readers, students and people interested in the question of survival after death have never read it. And then the same powerful reason drives its reprinting as drove its original publication. The book returns to print in order to suggest again to people that many possible explanations may exist for what is offered to them as evidence of life after death. Its goal is to encourage critical thought as symbolized by Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker as he sits in deep contemplation. It aims at providing guidance so that they can separate the wheat from the chaff, know when evidence is bad and when good and arrive at a balanced judgment concerning an important issue that may color their lives and help them cope with death.

But a writer never knows if his book will achieve its goal. What finally encouraged me to reprint this book were favorable critical reviews of it indicating that it had. One said, this book is one to recommend…a valuable one …as an introduction to the art of thinking critically about anomalous phenomena, it should serve many readers very well.(1) Another said, Berger takes pains to show the whole range of laypersons’ reports, from the very weak and ridiculous to the best classics in the literature. This is useful for the lay-reader, who needs to realize the degree to which misconceptions exist amid the well-intentioned reports, …Berger’s book serves a useful purpose.(2)

Notes

1. Cook, E.W., Evidence of Life After Death: A Casebook for the Tough-Minded, Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 84, 1990, 155-158

2. Osis, K.,. Evidence of Life After Death: A Casebook for the Tough-Minded, Journal of Parapsychology, 53, 1989, 265-268

PREFACE

Obviously, we don't know if some component of the human being continues after biological death. If we did, men and women of science and letters on both sides of the Atlantic would not have begun scientific research into the question a century ago, nor would organizations like the Survival Research Foundation be continuing this investigation today. Neither common sense nor orthodox science has provided us with evidence of any afterlife. So if the SRF or any other investigators are to discover empirical facts suggestive of its existence, the search must be conducted among those phenomena and faculties called the paranormal, a word used by the philosopher Broad (1) to describe occurrences outside what he called basic limiting principles, negative principles which Westerners assume unquestioningly and which form the framework of what lay and scientific thought consider possible.

From ancient times to the present, there have been reports of paranormal phenomena which seem to bear directly on the question of an afterlife. Investigations of such phenomena over the last 100 years have been preserved and published in the Proceedings and Journals of the English and American Societies for Psychical Research and organizations such as the SRF have accumulated these reports sent in by people who have had puzzling psychic experiences and want to know what they mean and why they occur.

Paranormal phenomena are divided into two types, mental and physical. This book is concerned with both and was written on two premises. The first assumes that people, interested to know what to think about the reality of life after death, have had neither the time nor the opportunity to plunge into the over 200 journals and proceedings published thus far by the English and American Societies for Psychical Research, pore over the reports of these two types of paranormal experiences and locate those that are relevant to the question. It assumes also that people interested in the subject want typical illustrations of these phenomena in the form of a book such as this that has culled the reports for published accounts, presents new accounts of psychic experiences from daily life and classifies them under one of the areas traditionally studied by parapsychology - from dreams, apparitions, out-of-body experiences and mental mediumship to physical phenomena from materializations and levitating tables to floating trumpets.

A Gallup Poll conducted national surveys to find out about American attitudes toward the possibility of an afterlife. One question asked was: Do you believe in life after death, or not? Sixty-seven percent of the respondents replied yes; 27 percent replied no and six percent had no opinion (2). But if the pollsters had asked people on what grounds they based their beliefs or disbeliefs, they might have detected within the 67 percent of their respondents who answered affirmatively the presence of many human sheep and numerous goats within the 27 percent answering negatively. In the vocabulary of parapsychology, sheep are people who believe that extrasensory perception is possible and score well in ESP tests. Goats are people who reject the possibility of extrasensory perception and score poorly in ESP experiments. With regard to the life after death question, there is a similar dichotomy but it is deeper, wider and bristles with hopes and fears, superstitions and preconceptions. People either are sheep who accept uncritically all paranormal phenomena in order to justify a fixed belief about life after death, or they are goats" who dismiss all such phenomena as old wives' tales because they contradict an equally fixed belief that life after death is impossible.

William James, one of the brightest stars ever to shine in America's intellectual firmament, once observed that the population can be divided into two groups: the tender-minded and the tough-minded. Sheep and goats are the tender-minded ready to believe or disbelieve paranormal phenomena because they have prejudged the issue of life after death or are emotionally implicated in it. They are not concerned with facts or arguments. But then there are also the tough-minded who have taken no aprioristic position on the issue. They want, as they study paranormal phenomena, to form balanced judgments based on facts, reasoning and careful consideration of points pro and con. For them, no affirmative sheep acceptance of a phenomenon which seems to imply an afterlife can be justified unless account is taken of alternative explanations for it. No negative goat denial of phenomena suggesting another existence is admissible unless fair account has been taken of the phenomena and then has dismissed them on rational grounds.

But although tough-minded people are not out to prove anything, will not fall easy prey to generalizations or prejudiced or incomplete accounts, they simply do not know the right questions to ask about events and experiences presented to them as proof of life after death. They don't know the alternative explanations to consider-not even the simplest and certainly not the complex. They just don't know how to ap¬proach this subject that must concern us all.

To help them, this book has a second premise: That after the tough¬-minded study the kinds of incidents and experiences that are pertinent to the question, they will want to go further. They will want to find out how to approach these incidents and experiences and what their good points and flaws are so that they can be thought about and appraised critically in order to distinguish reliable material from unreliable, impressive from vacuous. This book provides illustrations of a variety of incidents and experiences followed by notes which discuss alternative interpretations of apparently paranormal phenomena and which of them should be considered seriously in order to distinguish among the good, the mediocre and the bad and whether they provide solid evidence for a belief in life after death.

The complaint is heard often that in books written by parapsychologists to deal with this problem only events and experiences dating back to the last century are offered. Many cases are classics and deserve to be repeated as they are here. In this casebook, however, of the 30 cases given, over one-half are new and come from files of the Survival Research Foundation. The accounts are not presented in defense of any pet theory or religious or philosophical doctrine. They vary in length and range in quality from the non-evidential to the evidential. They were selected and are offered to readers for two reasons: Some where chosen not merely because they seemed interesting and typical but also because they were thought instructive and brought out certain points. Others were included to present evidence in logical order of evidential strength to allow readers to judge whether arguments that appeared to undermine some cases became strained when applied to later ones and whether fresh rebuttals were both needed and plausible.

In every court of law, a party making some claim lays his case before a judge or jury after which the other party is given an opportunity to do the same in order that the issues may be clear and a judgment or verdict made. In the Catholic Church, arguments and counterarguments are necessary before a person can be canonized: The advocatus dei (God's advocate) argues in support of the miracles occurring in connection with the candidate and advocatus diaboli (devil's advocate) has to provide arguments to show that the miracles claimed can be explained normally. The arguments and counterarguments that follow each of the cases in this book are a novel feature and are given to stimulate discussion of points, raise questions, bring out the real points in controversy. The object is to present both left wing and right wing analyses of the cases. Both are necessary to make an even-handed presentation of the subject. Both give tough-minded readers some guidelines by which to make a critical evaluation of the cases they will find here and a judgment of other incidents or experiences they may read, hear about or actually encounter in the future. These guidelines should help them make independent and informed decisions about the one question asked in all ages and phrased by the unknown poet who wrote the Book of Job as: If a man die, will he live again?

EVIDENCE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH:

A CASEBOOK FOR THE TOUGH-MINDED

CHAPTER 1

MENTAL PHENOMENA

Broads first basic limiting principle, simply stated, was that X could not know what Y was experiencing except: 1) by hearing what Y said or reading what Y had written; 2) by seeing Y's gestures, facial expressions or movements; or 3) by seeing and making inferences from pictures or other objects Y had made or used (1).

Three kinds of experiences or events in which X has obtained information about Y without hearing or seeing or using any other sense organ violate this principle. These occurrences, called paranormal, fall into the class of mental phenomena.

There are three subgroups of experience within this class. In the first, people in daily life or in parapsychological laboratories have-had experiences in which they become aware of something even though none of their senses of sight, smell, taste, touch or hearing are at work. This kind of experience, which attracted the earliest parapsychologists, commonly labeled psychic also has been called second sight, sixth sense or thought-transference. It is known today as extra-sensory perception or ESP.

The eyebrow-raising statement I saw a ghost! introduces the kind of mental phenomena contained in the second subgroup. These are accounts which tell of seeing the figures of people near or following their deaths. The term ghost, however, assumes that something representing someone dead really exists to be perceived. To avoid this implication, some prefer to use the term hallucination - the perception of the form of a person when no person is near enough to stimulate the percipient's sense organs to account for the experience. But the word hallucination, which implies that the experience is a delusion or a product of the mental processes of the experient, is a loaded one also. A better term to describe this subgroup of mental phenomena is the noncommittal word-

In the final subgroup are communications purportedly from the dead which are received through a medium and by which the medium acquires knowledge without use of the senses. If the communications truly proceed from the dead, this occurrence would be doubly paranormal. It would not only transcend the basic limiting principle that knowledge cannot be obtained except by way of the senses; it also would violate another of Broad's principles: that when we die, the personal consciousness that has been associated with our bodies ceases.

This chapter will deal with cases in the first two subgroups. Mental mediumship will be discussed separately in the next.

CASE 1

The Tunnel Case (3)

Mr. A, a resident of Florida, recorded this personal experience:

"I went to bed about 11:30 P.M. on Friday, May 20, 1983, and awakened about 6:30 A.M. on Saturday, May 21. Sometime before awakening (It might have been minutes or hours), I had a vivid dream.

"My wife and I were on a boat resembling a blue steel sloop we once owned. It was anchored in a city street that was flooded. Storefronts and buildings (and people, I think) could be seen on either side of the street. I found myself looking at a newspaper in a metal vending machine which had a dirty or cracked glass window through which I could see the papers for sale. It was difficult to read through it. I had to turn my head to see an article on the front page of the- paper. The details were very hard to make out. But I read enough to know that, in a tunnel in Italy, a great force or energy of unknown character had erupted or was erupting. Then I found myself on the deck or in the cockpit of the boat looking up at the sky. I saw streaming across it from left to right and in great numbers gleaming airplanes; it was like a scene from H. G. Wells' War oj the Worlds. My wife came out to see when I called her. No, she said, they were only glittering stars not airplanes. I realized she was right. I said to her that the effect had been created because of the heat waves between us and the sky caused by the explosion or force emanating from the tunnel in Italy.

After that great winds came up and the boat began to pull hard at the anchor and to swing around violently even though the street seemed a protected place. I was afraid they were from the tunnel also ...

Mr. A made a record of this dream immediately after he reported it to his wife at 7:45 A.M. on May 21. He told her about it because it was nightmarish and exceptionally vivid. The Survival Research Foundation received written confirmation from Mrs. A that the dream had been reported to her as stated.

Mr. A continued his narrative:

"On Saturday, May 21, at 11 P.M., a television newscast on a local channel reported that, in a tunnel in Italy, a chain collision involving many trucks or cars had taken place. Fires burned in cars. People were trapped and some killed. No more details were given. It was the first time I had heard of the disaster although I later learned that a local (Fort Lauderdale) newspaper had carried a brief item in its Saturday evening edition. The Sunday Miami Herald did not carry the item. A brief reference was made to it in a national television newscast and the name of the town, Savona, was given."

In an effort to get more details, the Survival Research Foundation was able to obtain an Italian language newspaper dated May 23, 1983, which reconstructed the incident and confirmed that the occurrence took place Saturday morning, May 21, in a tunnel on the Genoa-Savona highway. There were eight fatalities in four burned cars crushed by a truck against the tunnel wall.

Mr. A had never