When Did You Ever Become Less By Dying? AFTERLIFE: The Evidence

In this book Professor Stafford Betty pulls together the best evidences for survival of death. The very best, he maintains, come from psychical research. The near-death experience, deathbed visions, reincarnational memories of children, communication from the so-called dead through mediums, apparitions, poltergeists, spirits that reach out to us through electronic instruments, spirits that attach themselves to our bodies, and episodes of terminal lucidity in Alzheimer’s patients are all included. But philosophy has a lot to say as well. In simple terms Betty lays out the evidence against reductive materialism that claims all our experience is generated by the brain and that we perish at death. Viewing the brain as an instrument put to good use by the immaterial self is much more consistent with the evidence. Finally, he surveys the universal affirmation by the world’s religions that we survive death. Betty brings together memorable examples and careful analysis of each type of evidence. Each type is imposing enough by itself, but taken together they build a case for survival of death that is insurmountable. He shows that life after death, as mysterious as it is, should no longer be regarded as a hypothesis, but, like dark matter, a fact.