Billionaire Robert Bigelow founded the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (BICS) in June 2020, and announced a competition for the most convincing proof of the existence of life after death. The total prize fund was more than a million dollars; the 1st prize was $500,000. The list winners and their entries was officially published In November 2021.
Most of the contestants had a PhD or MD degree yet there were still a number of entries based on stories about mediums, telepathy, clairvoyance, and ghosts. The rest, however, focused on the statistics of near-death experiences (NDE) and the stories of the survivors.
As Jeffrey Long, MD and founder of the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF), pointed out in his work, the term NDE means “lucid, organized experiences occurring at the time of a life-threatening event so severe that there is unconsciousness or clinically apparent death with an absent heartbeat.”
Long cites 12 indications that NDE’s and the afterlife are real:
1. Awareness during NDE is usually higher than in everyday life.
2. The data obtained at the moment of leaving the body is often confirmed when subsequent verification is possible.
3. Feelings become more acute; completely blind people can see.
4. NDE often occurs under anesthesia when conscious experiences are impossible.
5. The experience often includes meetings with deceased loved ones.
6. Stories about NDEs are surprisingly consistent, regardless of country, language, or culture.
7. They are also consistent regardless of age.
8. Life often flashes before the person’s eyes, including long-forgotten events.
9. NDE survivors (NDErs) change values and beliefs. Faith in the afterlife increases, the fear of death disappears.
10. 93.8% of NDErs are sure that their experience is real.
11. When several people get into a life-threatening situation, but only one survives, he/she often talks about seeing or interacting with the others during the NDE.
12. Many NDE stories have spiritual content.
Similar statistics were provided by other participants – Arnaud Delorme, Dean Radin, and Helané Wahbeh. These researchers conducted several surveys among 2,389 ordinary people and 422 scientists from major US universities. The scientists were asked what possible experiment would convince them of the reality of the afterlife. Interestingly, the scientists found the following NDE experiment to be the most convincing proof: to conduct the experiment it would be necessary to equip the intensive care unit with screens that show different images visible only to those having out-of-body experience and observing the space from under the ceiling.
The winner of the 1st prize, Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove, cites, among other things, lucid dreaming (LD). Referring to a study by Annekatrin Puhle and Adrian Parker, the author retells the story of how 90 people studied LD techniques for 20 months in order to communicate with the dead. As a result, 28 subjects reported 80 successful meetings. We should add that a similar experiment was conducted by the Phase Research Center: volunteers reproduced flight through a tunnel in the LD. But this is more likely proof of the fact that the phase state (i.e. lucid dreams, near-death and out-of-body experiences, etc.) reacts to our expectations.
What do you think is the best proof of the afterlife?
The competition winners’ entries are published on the website of the Bigelow Institute for Consciousness Studies (BICS).
