Evidence for life after death?
This mammoth collection of essays with huge prize money has a lot going for it, says Charles Foster, but it would have been more meaningful if it had been better balanced
Proof of Survival of Human Consciousness Beyond Permanent Bodily Death
Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies 2023
Hb, 5 vols, 2,266pp. ISBN: 9798987134207 https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/index.php/essay-contest
Robert Thomas Bigelow, aerospace and real estate entrepreneur, founded the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies after the death of his wife, Diane, in 2020. He was convinced that she personally persisted, and this vast and extraordinary collection of essays is the result of a competition designed to show that science agreed with him. The prize money was vast: $500,000, $350,000 and $150,000 for the top three essays. It attracted 1,300 applications; 204 essays were submitted, and 28 made it between the sumptuous red faux leather covers – and online. Diane’s photo beams at the front of each of the five volumes, over Bigelow’s dedication: “In a discarnate state, soon after her passing, she gave to me and others several physical demonstrations that were specifically identifiable to her and proved that she strongly survived.”
Bigelow is sure that the essays do the job he paid for them to do. They “successfully attempt to address beyond a reasonable doubt the proof necessary as it would be in court in order to convict”. That’s quite a claim. It is the declaration of a true believer who could not be swayed by any contrary evidence, and it will diminish the impact of the essays – as will the rigorous exclusion of any dissenting voices.
That’s a shame, for there is some serious and important scholarship here. There is also a huge amount of repetition. There has been no substantive editing. Again and again we read the same stories and the same contentions. It all amounts, indeed, to a powerful case for the survival of consciousness, but much of the force of that case is diminished by the difficulties of negotiating a text of 2,266 pages. I wish they had used on an index the money spent on the beautiful gilding of the page edges, and on the case containing the books. I might want to look again at the evidence from prospective studies of Near-Death Experiences in cardiac arrest cases, or about phone calls from dead relatives, but it’ll be very hard to track them down.
It’s all here somewhere: going down that clichéd tunnel towards the light, life reviews, seeing future plane crashes, meeting your dead mother in the bathroom, mediumship, furniture shifted with ectoplasmic rods, memories and birthmarks
