Survival Research: A Parapsychologist’s Perspective By Dr. Andrew Nichols The concept of survival of bodily death is one of the most profound and important concepts known to man. William Gladstone, the 19th Century Prime Minister of England, once said: “There is no area of research more important than that of psychical research because it deals with the immortality of the human soul.” In his soliloquy that begins, “To be or not to be, that is the question,” Shakespeare’s Hamlet refers to death as “The undiscovered country, from whose bourne no traveler returns.” In the midst of his trials and tribulations, the biblical Job asks the question, “If a man die, shall he live again?”

Science as an institution doesn’t accept the idea of a mind separate from body and brain, nor the existence of a soul, spirit, survival of personality or paranormal communication. But if the existence of a brain capable of self-awareness is no argument for its immortality, then are we any better off by looking at the data of parapsychology? We already know that more than a century of careful research has only left us with tantalizing hints. All the data have multiple possible explanations, and none of them provides coercive proof of survival. And in any case, survival isn’t the same as immortality. The most parapsychologists could prove would be that some part of some people survives the death of the physical body for some period of time. That’s a long way from saying all souls are immortal.

Those who experience related phenomena (experients) often feel the need for reliable advice and come to parapsychological researchers with one request: “Tell me what it really is.” Hopefully, the expert will carefully investigate, rather than inject his or her own beliefs. While the majority of parapsychologists aren’t well informed on the literature of survival research, a small group of them specialize in phenomena suggestive of survival. Surprisingly few qualified parapsychologists have done sustained work on postmortem survival during the last century. Many believe this to be a consequence of the secularization of our society: postmodern men and women have no room for survival ideas in their well-educated world-view. This argument is thoroughly discredited by all national polls I know of. In the United States, the level of belief in survival and the paranormal has changed little over the decades.

This article is a personal view, a summary after decades of participation in research and interactions with colleagues and experients. After many years as a parapsychologist, my passionate involvement in research and debate is waning, but not the fascination with the basic phenomena indicative of life after death. The mystery of death is still far beyond what the scaffolding of scientific methods can reach, and the psychic phenomena surrounding it are still awe-inspiring to me. The paranormal remains my window to that side of our being that transcends our mundane limitations, obsessions and self-centeredness.

Survival research during the last half-century or so has been a modest success story — slow growth of information in spite of the hostile intellectual, moral and cultural climate that surrounded it. The scope of phenomena researched was widened. Emphasis shifted from mediumistic communications and apparition experiences to other less-worked areas: reincarnation phenomena, out-of-body experiences, and near-death experiences. Research methods were refined and new ones applied or invented.

Today there’s more information available than newcomers can reckon with. In spite of this progress, a consensus in interpreting the data hasn’t been reached. A casual search of the Internet on the topic of survival reveals a discord of so-called “theories,” often passionately defended, along with a variety of other explanations by skeptics opposed to the survival hypothesis. This confusing variety of interpretations doesn’t help the millions facing death each year and their relatives.

The quest for facts that support the idea of postmortem survival didn’t appear suddenly. It’s rooted in the very beginnings of Western culture. Plato in Republic described an out-of-body journey of a soldier, Er, who was thought to have been killed in action; the Roman, Pliny the Younger, described a ghost case in Athens where the ghostly informant led to the discovery of the bones of a murdered man. Our predecessors in the British and American Societies for Psychical Research sought out the facts needed to ground the survival idea in reality and free it from the overgrowth of superstition and exploitation. Thoughtful men and women throughout our history wanted to know — not just believe.

Like all human experiences emerging from the depth of the psyche, the phenomena suggestive of an afterlife aren’t easy to investigate or evaluate. They are often modified by the experients, by the writers who publish these accounts, and by the researchers who organize them into theories. But they aren’t so pliable that they cannot be handled with reasonable objectivity. Reports from the mouths of credible witnesses are reasonably trustworthy. Good researchers don’t bend them to fit preconceived theories. We have to know and use methods developed through a hundred years of parapsychological research while remaining open to innovations and new developments in other scientific areas. Still, equally intelligent scholars have arrived at completely different conclusions. Human frailty causes meanings alien to the data to intrude, coming from cultural fashions and personal beliefs.

Dr. Andrew Nichols is Director of the American Institute of Parapsychology and a member of the American Psychological Association and the Parapsychological Association.  More of this article may be found in the Spring issue of Ghost!

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