Carter - Science and the afterlife experience : evidence for the immortality of consciousness

Dedicated to the memories of Curt Ducasse, John Eccles, and Frederic Myers, three remarkable individuals who never let fashion dictate their opinions.

SCIENCE
AND THE
AFTERLIFE EXPERIENCE

The evidence in favor of an afterlife is vast and varied. The evidence from near-death experiences and deathbed visions was described in two previous books by Chris Carter. Science and the Afterlife Experience is the final work of his trilogy, and one will see in this wonderful book that we do indeed have strongly repeatable evidence for the continuity of consciousness after physical death, based on children who remember previous lives, reports of apparitions, and communication from the deceased. What all these cases show is that human personality survives death and, by implication, human consciousness can exist independently of a functioning brain. When one has read the overwhelming evidence as described in this excellent book, it seems quite impossible not to be convinced that there should be some form of life after death. Any continuing opposition to the evidence is based on nothing more than willful ignorance or ideology. Highly recommended.

PIM VAN LOMMEL, M.D.,CARDIOLOGIST AND
AUTHOR OF CONSCIOUSNESS BEYOND LIFE

Chris Carter addresses the question that is, or should be, the single most important question for any being who considers himselfor suspects himself to bemortal. He argues that this is not the case. If he is right then this is not only the single most life-transforming realization for a mortal or perhaps immortal being but also one of the most potent realizations that could prompt such a being to enter on a better path during his or her known life.

ERVIN LASZLO, PH.D., AUTHOR OF
SCIENCE AND THE AKASHIC FIELD
AND THE NEW SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALITY READER

some of the best evidence offered by the near-death experience. This book is informative, interesting, intriguing, and inspirational.

MICHAEL TYMN,
AUTHOR OF THE AFTERLIFE REVEALED
AND THE AFTERLIFE EXPLORERS

This third volume of Chris Carters trilogy may be the best. Reincarnation, ghostlike visions, and messages from the dead make for some very stimulating reading. As an historical chronicle alone this would be a valuable work. But Carters historical treatment also combines philosophy and analysis into an always interesting and well-organized treatise.

ROBERT BOBROW, M.D.,
AUTHOR OF THE WITCH IN THE WAITING ROOM

The statement Survival of human consciousness past the point of biological death is a fact will seem an extraordinary claim to some, and they may reasonably demand extraordinary evidence to support it. Carter has both made the claim and provided the evidence.

GUY LYON PLAYFAIR, AUTHOR OF THIS HOUSE IS HAUNTED, IF THIS BE MAGIC, AND TWIN TELEPATHY

Carter boldly concludes that the survival of consciousness after the death of the body is a scientific factas well established as any other scientific fact.

NEAL GROSSMAN, PH.D., PROFESSOR EMERITUS
OF PHILOSOPHY, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO

Chris Carter has produced a compelling synthesis and brilliant analysis of some of the best evidence for life beyond physical death. This book should be required reading for believers and skeptics alike.

GARY E. SCHWARTZ, PH.D., PROFESSOR OF PSYCHOLOGY
AND MEDICINE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA AND
AUTHOR OF THE AFTERLIFE EXPERIMENTS

Chris Carter establishes the existence of the afterlife beyond a reasonable doubt. I congratulate him on such a solid synthesis of the relevant data and argumentsboth for and against.

EBEN ALEXANDER III, M.D.,
AUTHOR OF PROOF OF HEAVEN: A NEUROSURGEONS
NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCE AND JOURNEY THROUGH THE AFTERLIFE

In this wonderful book, a work of great erudition, Chris Carter succinctly examines the works of giants in the field of survival of consciousness . Carters careful analysis of evidence for survival promptly lays super-ESP counterarguments to rest . I highly recommend this book to the serious student.

JOHN L. TURNER, M.D.,
AUTHOR OF MEDICINE, MIRACLES, AND MANIFESTATIONS

The answer to human life is not to be found within the limits of human life.

CARL JUNG

Foreword

By Robert Almeder

I am a philosopher, and skeptics on the possibility of life after death occasionally defend their skepticism with reasons that are philosophical. Take, for example, three of the most popular philosophical arrows in the skeptics quiver.

The first is that the very idea of humans existing independently of their bodies is inconceivable or incoherent. It makes no sense, they say, to talk about personal survival after death, either because we cannot imagine what a human person is if it is not at least partially identifiable with a unique human body or else because the very idea of surviving ones death is conceptually incoherent. We are our bodies, so they say. In the end, of course, this objection is rooted in the mistaken belief that just because we may not be able to imagine what a disincarnate human is like without a human body, there cannot be any.

However, the history of science shows again and again that a failure of imagination provides no compelling reason to doubt claims that are supported by the evidence. Reports of rocks that fall from the skywhat we today call meteoriteswere rejected by scientists for decades on the grounds that there are no rocks in the sky to fall. Continental drift was ridiculed by geologists for decades because they could not imagine any means by which the continents could drift. The incredible claims of quantum mechanics may forever defy our ability to imagine them. And, finally, we might just find very strong evidence for accepting the ancient belief in the existence of disincarnate persons even if they are not physical bodies as we generally describe them in natural science.

The second objection is that even if human survival of death were logically and factually possible, we still have no scientific knowledge of anybody ever surviving biological death, because we have no experimental evidence for it that will hold up under serious scientific scrutiny. We cannot, so the objection goes, generate at will compelling case studies; we cannot control disembodied spirits in order to make them appear under empirically desirable conditions. Any evidence offered for the survival of humans or human consciousness after death is not repeatable under controlled conditions. Unless the evidence can be repeated at will under controlled conditions, the belief cannot transcend the anecdotal into the realm of human knowledge.

However, there are many things we know exist that cannot be repeated at will. The fact that home runs cannot be repeated at will does not mean that home runs do not occur. We now know that rocks do sometimes fall from the sky, even though we cannot produce at will the evidence for this belief. Unique historical events cannot ever be repeated. Even so, as you will see in this wonderful book we do indeed have strongly repeatable evidence