This week I watched the Netflix program, Surviving Death.
This thought-provoking documentary was incredibly interesting and covered quite a few controversial thoughts and opinions around life after death, mediumship, reincarnation, and near-death experiences.
It was tastefully made, featuring interviews with prominent and credible Professors, Doctors, Professionals and members of the public who are either experiencing phenomena or studying it.
It wasn’t presented from a particular religious angle or with the all-too-common sarcasm that this subject area often prompts, which is refreshing. It also wasn’t presented from a staunch believers’ point of view. It is an open-minded documentary, allowing the viewer to come to their own conclusion as to the areas covered and inspiring conversation around the subject.
I have personally found that all too often when the area of life after death is covered in the media it is portrayed from a one-sided school of thought, that of a sceptic or a believer. This skews the entire direction of the piece and the bias within the material makes the consumption of it extremely uncomfortable, whatever the leaning of the bias.
Bias of media portrayal aside, it really does get you to thinking about the potential mechanics of life after death and the various types of experiences that fall within this unquantifiable subject.
This documentary has inspired me to share what I think around the subject areas, and I would very much love to receive some of your comments with your thoughts and experiences. Knowledge is power and the more knowledge we gain and share the more hope we have in the future of being able to find a way to unequivocally prove the existence of life after death.
NB: For the sake of this article the terms ghost and spirit all mean the essence/consciousness of a human being who has physically died.
Where Do We Go?
I can say with certainty that I believe there is life after death in the form of ghosts/spirits because I have experienced paranormal phenomena and have recorded it.
However, can I say I believe in Haven, Valhalla, Hell, The Underworld? Well, no, I don’t think I can. This is because I haven’t seen any proof that these places exist. Mainstream science hasn’t taken this subject seriously because the existence of such places isn’t possible in terms of our current understanding of physics. The only “evidence” we have that such places exist is in anecdotal accounts or religious beliefs. This is what makes it so hard. I can’t believe something either exists or not without the evidence to make a decision either way. The only way I can describe my opinion on these “after death” places is that our consciousness or spirit must go somewhere to be able to come back to interact with us in this life.
Could it be there are alternative dimensions to our own, which include that of a dimension for spiritual entities, where we go after physical death? Could it be at the point of death something physical happens which causes our consciousness to move into another plane of existence within this physical world, like our consciousness becomes soundwaves or light waves. Could it be there is a place separate from this Earth and our Universe which holds all consciousness, a place our consciousness/soul, goes when our physical bodies are dead? I really wish we had an answer, but until we do many will keep searching.
Reincarnation
The potential answers above lead into the theory of reincarnation. Does our consciousness move to a “storage place” after physical death where it waits to be taken out of “storage” to be placed within a new life? Many religions around the world have a belief in reincarnation, The Hindu and Buddhist religions being the most widely known.
The most famous account of reincarnation is that of the Dalai Lama, the Spiritual and Political leader of Tibet. The Dalai Lama is the reincarnated being of Avalokiteshvara or Chenrezig, the Bodhisattva of Compassion and the patron saint of Tibet. After the passing away of the previous Dalai Lama it took many years of searching and verification of the children experiencing past-life memories before they were able to state that the current Dalai Lama was indeed the reincarnation of his predecessor. To learn more about this process I would recommend visiting the official site of the Dalai Lama.
When thinking about reincarnation it then makes me wonder; if everyone is reincarnated, why are there documented cases of active intelligent hauntings of human spirits? In theory, everyone’s essence/soul/consciousness is recycled into a new life at the point of the birth of a creature, that is if you subscribe to the reincarnation theory. This then encourages the question how can we experience paranormal activity and spirit communication by the spirits of people who have passed on? Surely there shouldn’t be any spirits without bodies, especially with the increase in population? Queue more inner turmoil over what theories to believe in, especially where there is an absence of mainstream accepted scientific evidence.
Ghosts and Mediums
Residual hauntings, intelligent hauntings, spirit communication, I believe in all of this because, as paranormal investigators, we have captured evidence of this type of paranormal phenomena. There is a plethora of documented cases of paranormal phenomena where activity has been measured using technical equipment and has been analysed thoroughly to rule out any logical or reasonable explanation.
I think that we all have the ability to connect with spirit when we are young children because we are completely open minded, life and the people in it haven’t left their impressions on us yet. The older we get the more our life experiences and interactions with others dulls our abilities because we start to replace our intuitive knowledge with physical world reason and logic, our ego-self takes over. Once these barriers start setting in place, the spirit realm moves further and further away from us, meaning we get to a point that even if we do interact with spirit, we think it is just a dream or imagined event. We can gain this ability back with hard work and dedication, so it isn’t lost to us forever.
There are people who never lose this connection with the spirit world and can communicate, seemingly with ease, with the spirits of those who have passed over. I have witnessed this for myself, and we are incredibly lucky to work with a fantastic team at Ghost Hunt Events, where several of the team members are mediums. Each of them experiences their interactions differently, which is fascinating.
So, what is a medium? Simply put, a medium is a person who acts as a channel of communication between the spirit world and physical world. They are the telephone exchange box where we and spirit are the different data lines going into the box.
There are two types of mediumship: mental mediumship and physical mediumship.
Mental mediumship is something we can all learn to develop. There are several types of Clair-abilities, and individuals can have one or more of the abilities below:
Clairvoyance – The ability to see spirit.
Clairaudience – The ability to hear spirit.
Clairsentience – The ability to feel spirit.
Claircognicence – An ability to just know something.
Physical mediumship is an ability that someone has from birth and involves a physical manifestation of a substance formed from the spirit world, which is then emitted from the body of the human medium. This substance can then be physically manipulated by spirit. This physical manifestation is often referred to as ectoplasm. (Ghostbusters anyone? No? Just me then). This type of mediumship is far less common than mental mediumship and poses a physical danger to the medium.
One of the biggest questions I would love to know is how are spirits able to interact and communicate with us when they don’t have physical bodies with which to create sound or movement?
Is there a physical process that takes place on an atomic level that allows them to convert their spirit energy in to sound, heat or movement? Is there a part of our brain that holds the communication channel that we aren’t yet aware of? Is it a type of telepathy or psychokinesis? Is it through osmosis – do we absorb the memories, thoughts, feelings, and words of spirit into our own bodies by some means in order to experience what they did and convey it to others?
So many questions, just not any concrete answers.
Summary
There are so many questions around life after death and a great many people have devoted their lives to the study of it as well as the study of paranormal events. Parapsychologists, physicists, theologians, and religious institutes have conducted vast amounts of research into paranormal phenomena and theories. This goes to show how important this question is to individuals and society, and it’s certainly something which people will continue to investigate and study.
From a personal perspective, I remain open minded to all of the theories above. It would be wonderful to have the answer to some of these questions, but until we do I guarantee that we will carry on researching and investigating.
If you want to look further into these areas for yourself, I can recommend the following sites as a good place to start:
Society for Psychical Research – https://www.spr.ac.uk
Parapsychological Association – https://www.parapsych.org
Official site of the Dalai Lama – https://www.dalailama.com/the-dalai-lama/biography-and-daily-life/reincarnation
I hope that you enjoyed this article, and I also hope that it has encouraged you to think further around what you may think and believe. I would love to hear your own theories, please leave a comment below!
Kirsty
PKB Paranormal