Advancing the Evidence for Survival of Consciousness

Throughout history and across all cultures, many people have believed in some sort of afterlife. Recent surveys show that 60% to 70% of adults in the United States believe they will survive after bodily death. Such beliefs are often motivated by the loss of a loved one, cultural expectations, religious faith, or existential angst. However, the strongest reason for belief in survival after bodily death is based on personal experience, like a near-death experience or after-death communication. Those who do not believe, roughly 40% of the population, either have not had such experiences or they are not concerned about the question of an afterlife. These people would require persuasive evidence to shift their skepticism. To assess the existing evidence, we adapted a method used in medical research to gauge whether a drug or treatment is effective. We established credibility criteria and then applied the criteria to assign a letter grade, from A to F, to each of nine main categories of evidence suggestive of survival. That exercise found that none of the categories achieved an A level, which is undoubtedly why the question of survival remains unresolved for many. Then we proposed ten new experiments and surveyed over 400 academic scientists and scholars to see which of those studies, if successful, they would find most persuasive. The most frequently selected study was a controlled, prospective experiment that would result in veridical out-of-body perceptions during a near-death experience, followed by experiments involving mediumship and reincarnation. We discuss the implications of these choices and conclude with some thoughts about why improved evidence for survival is important and could benefit individuals and society.