Paranormal experience and survival of death /

Becker (comparative thought, Kyoto Univ.) reviews three kinds of evidence pertinent to the question of whether something of a human being may survive bodily death. One is evidence for reincarnation, implying that something of the mentality of a deceased person has survived and now functions within a new body. The second is the evidence for apparitions and out-of-body experiences; both of these, if they demonstrate that mental functioning can take place elsewhere than in the body, make more plausible the idea of survival beyond death. The third is those aspects of near-death experiences that seem to involve contact with the spirits of deceased persons or of religious figures, or glimpses of another world. Becker argues against attempts at naturalistic explanation of these phenomena, such as are provided fully and creatively for near-death experiences by Susan Blackmore, Dying to Live (CH, Feb'94). Taking them instead at their face value as reports, for the most part, of objective fact, he asks what they suggest about postmortem experience. He also considers the traditions in science that have long discouraged this approach, and the beginnings of their modification in recent decades. General; advanced undergraduate through faculty. I. L. Child; Yale University