RESEARCH INTO THE EVIDENCE OF MANʼS SURVIVAL AFTER DEATH

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Abstract
Scientific research on the question of whether human personality survives physical death has been conducted for almost a century. The present article offers a summary of this research and accounts of some new developments in the field that have occurred within the past 15 yr. The historical review is divided into 3 periods which, although not sharply separated, were characterized by different understandings and approaches both to the theoretical issues and to related empirical investigations. In the 1st period, extending from the 1880s to the 1930s, the investigators mainly engaged in collecting, classifying and analyzing spontaneous experiences of persons who saw apparitions of deceased persons or had other experiences that suggested some communication from a discarnate personality. In the 2nd period, extending from the 1930s to about 1960, most parapsychologists neglected the question of the possibility of man''s survival after physical death. They judged it wiser to defer a direct attack on the problem until after a more complete understanding had been achieved of the power and range of extrasensory perception on the part of living persons. During these years, some advances were made in the form of new types of empirical investigation and further efforts to clarify theoretical issues. In the 3rd period of investigation, dating from approximately 1960, proportionately more parapsychologists have entered this field of research; and they have tried to devise experiments that would exclude extrasensory perception between living persons (or on the part of a single living person) as a counterexplanation for communications apparently coming from deceased persons.

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