Bigelow Institute essays on life after death in PDF

Most of the essays were not among the winners. That's a huge resource which remains unpublished. I hope it doesn't mean those essays will be lost.

Here's one of them:

Beyond Disbelief, a new Essay by Carol Bowman

I wrote this essay, with much help from my husband Steve, as my entry to an essay contest sponsored by Robert Bigelow and the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies. The contest asked for entrants to answer the question:

What is the best evidence for the continuation of consciousness beyond bodily death.

We worked hard and took great care to write a clear, enjoyable essay. I jumped on this opportunity to consolidate all that I’ve witnessed and learned in the last three decades from working with parents and families, and to make the case that children’s past lives truly is the best evidence for what happens after death.

Some of the stories are shortened versions of cases first published in my two books, and some are published here for the first time.

The rest of the brief introduction is at the above link, followed by a link to download the pdf of the essay itself.

One can also comment and discuss the essay directly with the author here:

http://www.reincarnationforum.com/thread...lief.9890/

Most of the essays were not among the winners. That's a huge resource which remains unpublished. I hope it doesn't mean those essays will be lost.

One can also comment and discuss the essay directly with the author here:

http://www.reincarnationforum.com/thread...lief.9890/

Thanks for this. I'm going through the essays now and while there is some repetitiveness in the overviews I really find the essays focusing on more specific sub-sections of Survival evidence to be quite interesting/valuable.

Most of the essays were not among the winners. That's a huge resource which remains unpublished. I hope it doesn't mean those essays will be lost.

One can only hope that someone compiles a book from these essays.

My thoughts on the winning essay:

http://ian-wardell.blogspot.com/2021/11/...essay.html

My thoughts on the winning essay:

http://ian-wardell.blogspot.com/2021/11/...essay.html

Excellent review!

I somewhat suspect the prizes were awarded in such a way as to start with Mishlove's overview and then have essays that touch on deeper aspects of certain cases.

Regarding cultural influence on reincarnation - isn't it possible that cultures differ because who reincarnates when might actually be different depending on geographic location?

[Laird]

This article offers a few mini-reviews of the winning essays (hat-tip to Ian aka EyesShiningAngrily for pointing me to it):

https://futureandcosmos.blogspot.com/202...-best.html

My thoughts on the winning essay:

http://ian-wardell.blogspot.com/2021/11/...essay.html

Just a note on the section dealing with NDErs meeting spirits of people who are still alive.

Isn't this well documented in other areas of after death communications? I've certainly read of people who, while in an out-of-body state, help the recently deceased cross over. I've spoken to mediums who insist that is an essential part of their earthly mission. So why should it be surprising for someone undergoing an NDE to meet one of these "helpers", especially when, as you point out, this catergory of encounters usually takes the form of the "alive" spirit encouraging the NDEr to return to the physical life.

This article offers a few mini-reviews of the winning essays (hat-tip to Ian aka EyesShiningAngrily for pointing me to it):

https://futureandcosmos.blogspot.com/202...-best.html

I think it is a bit weird he says a few times that certain studies are wrong/flawed - specifically the ones Kastrup used - but doesn't go deeper.

It reminds me of Braude's essay where he bizarrely says CORTs are flawed though he can't go into why BUT also a future paper by Sudduth will take down a particular reincarnation case. OTOH it also recalls BK's lack of investigative depth re: Survival cases.

A lot people revealed their biases with regard to these essays, for better or worse.

This came in from my old pal David Haith whos into both the paranormal and UFO phenomena. He mentions the Bigelow contest and the contributions from NIck Cook and Donald Hoffmann. Quoted with David's permission.

Defence journalist Nick Cook interviewed in this podcast bridges two worlds and two mysteries dear to my heart - UFOs and the Survival of Death.
And the second of those topics has just won Nick £20,000 in millionaire Bob Bigelow's essay contest for the best evidence of life after death.
I first encountered Nick because of his best selling book Hunt for Zero Point about new energy physics which later led him to research UFOs which he believes have strong links to consciousness. But it was a couple of family happenings which sparked an interest in the paranormal and whether death is final. He details these in his prizewinning essay here:

https://www.bigelowinstitute.org/Winning...k_Cook.pdf

The first odd event was a lamp levitating after the death of his grandmother, witnessed by his father and grandfather and the second a 'shared death experience' by his wife as her mother died - she experienced 'the other side' to be 'more real' than everyday reality. In this interview and in his essay, he criticises scientists for shunning paranormal research. He says: "Whatever happened to good old fashioned curiosity. Let's find out what really drives this world - it's infinitely more complex than the reality we are traditionally presented with."

He draws on the work of Professor Donald Hoffman who interprets the world like a computer screen with a very limited vision of reality through the icons which "give us all we can handle but no more". He talks of 'rogue icons' which link us to UFOs, cryptids, angels, demons and miracles and also touches on UFO political developments,  and personalities like Jacques Vallee, Eric Davis, Hal Puthoff and remote viewer Ingo Swann.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtXh4bCvNyY

I was interested to see that there's an essay from Dr. Christopher Kerr, the hospice director who conducted a study of end-of-life experiences among his patients. I'm sure that most of us has seen his moving Ted Talk.

However, what interested me was that, whenever I've looked for some indication of what he believes regarding the afterlife, I'm always left with the impression that he doesn't want to talk about that. It is as though his professional credentials would be destroyed should he "come out" as a believer. An example is this interview:

https://medhum.med.nyu.edu/magazine/?p=39493

In short, he avoids the question of the afterlife as follows:

We are looking at pre-death as a mystery onto itself without projecting into the afterlife or the paranormal.

So it was quite surprising to see that he has contributed an essay entitled "Experiences of the Dying: Evidence of Survival of Human Consciousness". So I took a look at the introduction (I have yet to read the whole essay) and there he states:

The dying process is a continuum within which our patients experience a heightening of consciousness and an acute awareness of their past and present existence. This experience includes a consciousness that is most often shared with others who died before them and but who are now fully present to them. The dying process reveals a connectivity between and across lives, both living and dead. This continuity of connectivity persists regardless of time or bodily existence and supports the hypothesis that consciousness survives beyond bodily death.