In any field of intellectual inquiry that involves research, the merits of theories must stand the test of time in at least 2 ways:
(1) The claims of researchers must be independently replicated by researchers outside the vested interest groups who made the original claims.
(2) The theories must continually prove their heuristic value as new light is continually shed on the key questions and verifiable knowledge continually expands.

In both respects, astral research has failed miserably.  (a) The expected unmistakable levels of verification have not been produced.  The impressive details provided by Spiricom (e.g the .social security number of the deceased engineer) have been called into question by doubts about the integrity of the data.  Nor has Spiricom ben replicated by neutral researchers.  Deceased engineer, Ed Carter, has not fulfilled his promise to help Bruce develop an afterlife communication device.  To date, no such device has been produced and we are left with the vagaries of EVPs.

In Charles Tart's OBE research, Miss Z's astral reading of a 5-digit number posted near the ceiling, while she was strapped down have not been replicated by Miss Z or any other OBE subject.  This is significant because the possibility of Miss Z cheating was demonstrated.  Astral visits to the Hall of Knowledge in Focus 27 should have produced astounding breakthroughs in knowledge, but have instead only produced reinforcement of dubious standard New Age beliefs.  Claims of access to the Akashic records have similarly not been backed up with the expected verifications. 

Indeed, the simplest imaginable expected verifications  cannot be reproduced: e. g. Astral explorer A visits discarnate soul S and asks for a piece of highly specific information about the afterlife.  Then Astral explorer B agrees to visit S and inquire about the detail communicated to A.  And so on.  The fact that such a rudimentary advancement in astral knowledge cannot be achieved warrants skepticism on the part of the honest inquirer.  Apparently, what starts with the imagination almost never transcends the imagination and achieves contacts with invisible worlds shared by discarnate beings. 

Emanuel Swedenborg is the shining exception to this appalling lack of quality verifications, but he lived in the 18th century and his insights need to be replicated by modern adepts.  As long as clashing belief systems muddy the waters of astral research, the jury must remain out on the question of genuine contact with the deceased.  NDEs can be more impressive, but are generally too brief to expand our field of astral knowledge.  No one would be more delighted than I if these problems could be remedied and afterlife research could at least be a fruitful discipline of ever expanding knowledge.

Don

It strikes me that until humanity experiences a quantum leap in spirituality in acknowledging that we are more than our physical bodies, most scientists and those who could perform a meticulous study of the afterlife will apply their talents to other venues such as chemistry, physics, etc. 

It should be noted that the remote viewing crew had a problem with the "interpreter" phenomenon of the human brain when they were trying to view distant objects, people or places.  The best viewers learned how to tune out their natural logical ability to interpret images, and be able to truly describe the information they were given without personal interpretation.  Most of us are not so skilled.  We may get images of iron girders.  Our brain/mind asssemble this into a metallic bridge, but the truly talented remote viewer describes the girders without over intrepreting and eventually locates a shipyard, which is verified........

How many of us travel to the afterlife on a whim, fully conscious and communicate in complete conversations with the dead?  I don't.  I have only been lucky enough to have several conscious directed experiences that were convincing. 

The other phenomenon, an important one, is that earthly memories of the deceased may fade as the outer layers of the person's old life fades.  So social security numbers may be offered by the newly deceased, but as their stay continues, and they are following their natural inclinations, they may have less information at their disposal. In fact Swedenborg encounters beings who told him they were most learned in their earthly lives, who then spoke only gibberish to him when they tried to show off their knowledge in the astral plane.  He reasoned that since they never displayed love of others or God, only love of their own superiority, that these discarnates could not hold onto their rationality, because in order to function in the astral, one had to realize and acknowledge that love was the foundation behind everything. 

If we ask 100 people on this forum to try to contact a recently deceased person, we may get some "hits" and "misses."  But how many of the 100 would have enough epxerience to travel in the astral and reach the dead at will?  1?  2?  I don't know the answer, but clearly we're not there yet. 

It might be interesting if the retrieval section had a moderated area for group activities to verify  retrievals.  Where one of us could report a newly deceased friend or family, with a short bio, and pick up the responses over the next few days, sort through the hits and misses, and gather it into a database.

Ultimately, you pay your money, you make your choice (so to speak).  I asked a brilliant agnostic neurosurgeon (a friend) about the afterlife.  He saw no evidence that it existed.  I gave the evidence I had amassed, and he admitted he didn't have answers for the issues I raised, but was not convinced.  So I said, "Jeff, what would you do if, when you die, you found that "you" as a being still existed?"  His answer was simple; he said "I'd start believing in life after death, and take it from there."   "As long as you keep an open mind," I said gently, "there is hope for you afterall."


Matthew

Hey Heisenberg,

I don't think astral research should be held to a higher standard.  Don is quite right though in pointing out how few controlled studies have been done, peer-reviewed and then put out there for all to see.  Mostly, I believe that is because those who contact the afterlife (mystics) are not going to be interested in the scientific method, unless, by some twist of fate, they happened to be one such as Swedenborg, who started off as a scientist supreme, and then had a life altering encounter (which opened him up to the spirit world).

M

I haven't seen this mentioned here, but it's something that will add mud to the overview. When incarnated in the earth system, the core stream of who you are is still moving through the physical when you as spirit roams the astral. In other words, the body's filters are still active with what the roaming the astral is experiencing.

Claims of access to the Akashic records have similarly not been backed up with the expected verifications. 

Just to confirm, is this with respect to using AP to access the Akashic records as opposed to the technique Edgar Cayce used?

.... and paradoxically, physics, the 'hardest' of sciences is at heart also the 'softest' in that at quantum level reality runs counter to everyday understanding of how the world works.

The problems I see go far beyond just trying to make reproducible studies. Who is a good subject? And why?

You would right at the start need some broad studies with many subjects to see if there are big differences in subjects. But you can't since you don't get funding.

Basically, when coming to AP scientists don't even know what they're looking for. They're making educated guesses to make it sound kind of a physical, not-understood process, but the reality is that we do not know anything about it at all. We don't know if the people tested so far have been good or bad test subjects.

Similarly, as far as I can see mystics don't necessarily agree on what is good practice and what is not. What one thinks as good tool I see another one reference as a bad tool. The explanations mystics offer are often contradictory in themselves or incomplete, or just sound good. And no process has been found so far that can be truly considered to have a greater success rate for AP than others, etc.

It's all very hit-and-miss, and I guess has been for most if not all of human history.

Upon deeper thought, I think we have to ask why astral studies would best be suited to studying the afterlife, compared with studies of near death experiences (NDEs)?

Astral travel is fraught with potential confounding variables.  The human being, bound in the physical world, tries to project his/her consciousness, and tune out their own physical interpreter, in order to travel in the astral.  Yet the line between traveling in space, time or just in one's own imagination is often blurred, as is the clarity of one's mind while attempting to do this.  Some people are convinced they are traveling in the physical plane, but may in fact be having a lucid dream........

NDEs are a different matter entirely.  There,  memories are often quite vivid during brief periods of what medical professionals will describe as true physical death.  Of course many people awaken with no memory of an afterlife, so there is variability. 

I think that while astral travel merits research, NDE study may be more fruitful.  Astral travels may, at times be clouded by consciousness retaining its physical limitations.  NDEs, by virtue of occurring when a person is near death or temporarily dead, involve sending the fishing line of consciousness out past the barriers of physicality (so to speak).  Thought of in that light, a study of NDEs could bring in bigger fish than studies of an astral adepts contact with the afterlife.


Matthew