The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

If you've lost a loved one, if you are a fan of Jonathan Edwards or James Van Pragh or Sylvia Browne, this book will be a pleasure.

The book reports on scientific findings about consciousness after death from the University of Arizona Laboratory of Gary Schwartz, former Yale and Harvard professor. He works with mediums, who are "superstars of mediumship" including Jonathan Edwards.

The findings are based on data the mediums report based on their contact with people on "the other side" who are associated with "sitters" who are volunteers for these experiments.

For example, if a person says to a sitter that she had a grandmother, that's not impressive. If the medium says the grandmother loved the sitter very much, that's not too impressive either (My grandmothers died before I was born so it would be a wrong answer in my case) But if the sitter said that the grandmother is talking about daisies and her wedding-- well, that stands out. And if the medium reports that the daisies were in the sitters hair.. That's pretty amazing. Schwartz's research takes hundreds of items like this and then has the trained sitters rate them for accuracy. The mediums never meet, never see or hear the sitters, except when the medium hears the sitter in the next room sob, if the medium really nails a connection.

This work has evolved as a logical step in Dr. Schwartz's research into human energy systems and energy medicine, and from ideas that he first developed and reported with Lynda Russek in the book Living Energy Universe.

This research is very controversial, and while exciting and comforting to some, it is upsetting to some of the science skeptics, like James Randi, who seems to have made Dr. Schwartz his number one target recently. I've read his attacks though, and the attacks are personal and subjective, and if Randi submitted his own statements about Schwartz to the same requirements he expects of others, well, we wouldn't be hearing from Randi. I expect that I'll get more than the usual number of negative feedbacks on this from people who are skeptics, regardless of what the content of the review is.

The findings in this book are fantastic and call for further research and replication. And Schwartz is bravely continuing to do just that. Hopefully, as his research reaches broader audiences, other scientists will be encouraged to come out of the closet (there are plenty who believe, based on existing data) and start publishing and researching more on these and related parapsychology topics.

The author wrote the book to address our intellect, not our emotions. There is nothing "misty" and "spiritual" about his writing style or his facts. He is a scientist who, with professional hoax-exposers (hired to spot any funny business or "magic tricks"), put five psychic mediums through a series of tests to either prove or disprove their claims that they communicate with the deceased. Then they tested the results against a control group of non-psychics, and reported their findings.

The book begins with what, at first sight, appears to be a self-congratulatory chapter where the author seemingly brags about his background, education, and standing within the scientific and academic community. As dry as that is, I got the sense that he wasn't bragging, nor was he being defensive. He was simply trying to demonstrate to us he that isn't a kook, and was looking for the truth whatever that is. He put his career at risk to complete this experiment, and was merely telling us he risked quite a lot.

His conscientious attention to detail and completely balanced approach to the experiment appealed to me. I'm not looking for the misty and the spiritual; I want facts as much as he does, and I'm less concerned with what the truth is than with what can be proved. If something can be proved, I get over myself and accept it whatever it is and regardless of how sincerely I wanted the truth to be something else. So an approach that others might find dry works well for me - and was particularly fascinating because his Scientist Hat kept slipping momentarily as the author got more flabbergasted and excited with the results, and with the careful calculations of probability (he explains them to you so you don't think he's merely tossing numbers) that suggest to a factor of one in hundreds of millions that this is no coincidence.

Someone else might be looking for a book that supports their opinion that psychic stuff is all smoke and mirrors. Or, they're looking for someone who is going to stroke their need to keep spiritualism mysterious and creepy. If you're that person, avoid this book. If you're up for a challenge to your way of thinking, however, read it. I don't think you'll find a flaw - though the author repeatedly invites you to look for one.

Opinion: This is one of those times when society is going to have to shift its paradigm and accept the fact that the world is NOT flat, and that the sun does NOT circle the earth. It's tough, but the human race has done it before and survived. There are now reams of scientific data that indicate that there is life after death, and that the dead are around us and communicate if we can, or are willing to listen.

I saw the documentary of this experiment when it aired on HBO some years back. It blew me away to the extent that I bought a ticket to a John Edward seminar to see for myself. And I did. The stuff is real, like it or not, and it has now been scientifically tested and documented. Believe it or don't believe it, but you can't change the results or make them go away. That's all this book does: reveal the results of an amazing and mind-boggling laboratory test.

Rejecting the data because it is "saner" not to believe it is the antithesis of critical thinking, and is anti-science. There are those for whom NO evidence will EVER be sufficient because they already know all the truths of the universe (they'll tell you so!), and they happen to know life after death is hogwash. Let them. The author's tests were increasingly more stringent, and he's continuing to look for ways to improve them. Even without a perfectly airtight set of tests, the results suggest that 100% airtight testing won't change anything: mediums will still be able to communicate with the dead. Just read the book, and reach your own conclusions.

In offering evidence that consciousness survives bodily death, the author goes well beyond the "preponderance of evidence" standard required to prove civil law suits and, in this reviewer's opinion, easily exceeds the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard required for criminal cases.

Certainly, Dr. Schwartz has the credentials of a true scientist. He received his doctorate from Harvard and taught at Yale before moving on to the University of Arizona, where he is professor of psychology, medicine, neurology, psychiatry, and surgery as well as the director of its Human Energy Systems Laboratory. But Schwartz is not your mainstream scientist. Even though very much a skeptic himself, he had the courage to take on a research project in a scientifically taboo area after being introduced to a medium who immediately began communicating very evidential material from his mother.

Schwartz arranged for five mediums, including the well-known John Edward and George Anderson, to undergo testing at his laboratory. All possible scientific controls and precautions were taken. The conclusion by Schwartz and Dr. Linda Russek, who collaborated with him in the research, was that the mediums were indeed gifted and able to communicate with spirit entities.

In in the initial stages of the research, Schwartz found it difficult to believe what he was seeing and hearing. "My degree of doubt in the presence of all data was frankly irrational," he writes. "I was experiencing skeptimania." But as the research continued, Schwartz was forced to face the truth. "I can no longer ignore the data and dismiss the words," he continues. "They are as real as the sun, the trees, and our television sets, which seem to pull pictures out of the air."

While the appendix to the book reads like a scientific journal, the book itself is well written in layman's language. To the "believer" in survival of consciousness, this book should signifantly bolster his or her faith. To the "true" skeptic, the book will open some eyes and the light might be allowed to penetrate an open mind. To the pseudo-skeptic, however, it will, unfortunately, do nothing more than raise eyebrows. These pseudo skeptics are the intellectually arrogant with closed minds who don't really examine the data. If Schwartz's research can't convince them, nothing can.