A couple of days ago I was discussing the project I am working on in one of my afterlife groups. I made the comment that the SoulPhone seemed too good to be true. I think the person I was talking to took that to mean that doubted that the SoulPhone is technically feasible. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I started following Dr. Gary Schwartz’ research over a decade ago. His book The Afterlife Experiments was one of the first I read on the afterlife and it spoke to the engineer and the skeptic in me. Dr. Schwartz’ background is in Electrical Engineer and he is a psychologist. When he had a question bout the authenticity and accuracy of mediums, he didn’t just go with his gut. He set up experiments to determine whether or not, to a scientific certainty, some mediums were for real. For me anyway, the results were undeniable. Beyond any reasonable assumption of chance and with blinded conditions set up to control for cold reading, hot reading, prior research and even mind reading, some mediums came through with flying colors. The most reasonable conclusion from his data is that some mediums can contact those we thought of as “dead”. Dr. Julie Beischel has also studied mediums with similar results.
Since that time, Dr. Schwartz has been working on different technologies for spirit to communicate through. Again, through blinded tests, he has shown that it seems that spirits can manipulate electronic devices in response to what we ask them when you eliminate any other reasonable explanation. This is the basis for the SoulPhone. When Dr. Schwartz says he’s 90-95% certain we can have the first iteration of this communication in about a year from funding, it’s from a very conservative engineering/scientific perspective. He’d probably tell you the chance of the sun coming up tomorrow is something just less than 100%.
it’s apparent to me that we will get funding for this first phase of the project. And, I believe, we will see this technology at least fairly reliable in the next few years. Dr. Schwartz likens where we are today to the first few flights of the Wright brothers. They were short and not of much use for commercial application, but they proved the concept of manned flight. Manned flight was thought impossible by many. And today, we hop on airplanes without even batting an eye.
So, why do I say it seems too good to be true? Well, mankind has been around for tens of thousands of years. We’ve never had “proof” of the afterlife. My tradition, Christianity has made a huge deal about faith. It seems the more bizarre the thing you can believe, the better. Asking for proof is seen as gauche. Doubting Thomas isn’t someone we aspire to be. God has not proven His existence in all this time. The dead have not come forward to be scientifically tested. Why now? Would God allow us to peek behind the veil? Is man meant to have that knowledge?
I think this is maybe the time when we need this. For thousands of years people took the afterlife as a given. There were no atheists. People knew we were spiritual beings having a human experience. Death was all around us. Young people died. Babies died. Accidents were commonplace. Plague wiped out thousand or hundreds of thousands at a time. Life was hard. We thought of this life as a proving ground, a place to build our character, some thinking it was a place to earn our spot in the next life. But, we always thought of the next life. Once technology offered us a cushy world to live in; one where we expect to live to be at least 70, one where we expect to escape disease, to stay forever young, we stopped thinking so much about the next life. Death instead of being a passageway, a temporary separation at worst, became final. Death became the ultimate defeat. Some of still think technology will allow us to finally defeat death entirely. Meanwhile, we are in denial about the one thing, the only thing, that is guaranteed to all of us when we draw that first breath. That is that one day we will draw our last breath. This body will die, even technology with all its advances has not changed that. We’ve inched the life expectancy up. But, we haven’t made significant progress when you think of how short a period of time 70 or 80 years really is.
So, we lead miserable existences. We deny who we truly are and we seek earthly pleasures to make us happy and they don’t. We can never get over the hump of the reality of the troubles of this world. Things go well for a time, but inevitably, something goes wrong. Disease, destruction and death still ravage us. Even with the advances in technology, it’s not quite what we want it to be. And, we think “Is this all there is?” We forget that we only came here to stay for a short time. So, we’re miserable while we’re here; while at the same time trying to extend the stay for as long as possible because there’s nothing coming afterwards.
I think this might be why this is the time for the breakthrough. This is the time when we need to be reminded of who we are and why we are here. That’s why the SoulPhone is so exciting. We stand on the precipice of a new era. And it’s not just the SoulPhone. Physics is making discoveries. Scientists are investigating the “paranormal”. It’s all coming together. And that, to me, seems just almost too good to be true.
