Roy Abraham Varghese is a Christian writer perhaps best known for having helped persuade philosopher Antony Flew to discard atheism in favor of theism. In cooperation with Flew, Varghese then wrote a book called There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.
Now he's back with a new book, There Is Life after Death, in which he argues that human beings are "transphysical" beings -- a union of physical body and nonphysical soul -- and that the soul continues to exist after bodily death. In support of this view, Varghese relies primarily on near-death experiences and what he calls "After-Life Visitations" (ALVs). The latter include Marian apparitions and what are usually referred to as "crisis apparitions" (though Varghese does not use this term). One of the most interesting ALVs involves the appearance of C.S. Lewis in the home of a severely depressed friend, biblical scholar J.B. Phillips. Looking "rosily radiant," the recently deceased Lewis said simply, "J.B., it's not as hard as you think." This statement -- and the accompanying manifestation -- worked wonders for Phillips, who recovered his will to live. Amusingly, when Phillips shared the story with a bishop, the cleric replied breezily, "My dear J___, this sort of thing is happening all the time." (Pp. 158-159)
Varghese makes many good selections in the NDE and ALV evidence he presents, though his choices are clearly influenced by his Christian beliefs. He includes the full story of Howard Storm's NDE, with its hellish elements and eventual salvation, brought about by Storm's desperate prayer to Jesus -- a life-changing event for Storm, who was an atheist at the time of his NDE and afterward became a minister. (Incidentally, anyone who insists that European health care is invariably superior to America's might ponder Storm's harrowing ordeal in a Paris hospital, where he was left unattended, in agony, without benefit of painkillers or any other treatment, for more than eight hours, no doctors being on call and no surgeons being available to operate on his perforated intestine. The hospital staff appeared quite content to let him die. But I digress.)
There Is Life after Death pulls no punches in critiquing "physicalist" theories that claim that consciousness can be reduced to brain chemistry. Varghese cites leading neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga as saying that, as far as brain research is concerned, "We are not a few miles down a long road; we are a few inches down the long road." Writes Varghese:
Gazzaniga notes that theorists like E.O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett "know about as much on the human brain as a second-year graduate student in neuropsychology." He notes that the area is simply not their field. He acknowledges that Wilson is a great zoologist and then adds, "Dawkins, I'm afraid, is now just a PR man for evolution. He's kind of like John the Baptist -- he goes around announcing the imminent arrival. Dennett, of course, is a philosopher and doesn't pretend to know anything about the brain. I think it has distorted the whole discussion." [p. 190]
For Varghese, the "first-person" nature of consciousness is not amenable to physicalist explanations or even to scientific methodologies as such. It is not tangible, quantifiable, or physical. As he writes in the second paragraph of the Prologue, "... the I, the center of our consciousness and unifier of our experiences, makes us see things from a first-person perspective unlike anything else in the physical world." (p. 19) Part Two of the book, which runs about sixty-five pages, is largely devoted to making this argument.
Part One is more concerned with building an empirical case for life after death on the basis of NDEs, ALVs, and the nearly universal belief in an afterlife. To develop the latter argument, Varghese engages in a quick survey of world religions. Here his commitment to Christianity is most obvious, as he devotes a scant ten pages to all other faiths, then spends thirty pages on the Judeo-Christian tradition. Moreover, he seems to assess other religions largely in terms of their compatibility with Christianity. Hence, Buddhism and modern Hinduism are dismissed as relatively late developments of the original Vedic Hinduism, which Varghese sees as more authentic. Why? Apparently because Vedic Hinduism does not include reincarnation -- and since reincarnation is not part of Christianity, Varghese is eager to discredit it. In a later chapter, Varghese goes out of his way to debunk Ian Stevenson's reincarnation research, making use of nitpicking skeptical arguments that he would surely reject if they were applied to NDEs or to the Bible.
This same approach -- evaluating the evidence in terms of Christian teachings -- surfaces in Varghese's attitude toward other kinds of afterlife evidence, such as mediumship. He simply dismisses this evidence out of hand, refusing to consider it. His rationale is that only "spontaneous" phenomena are free from suspicion of fraud; therefore "induced" phenomena like mediumship must be ruled out of bounds.
There are obvious problems with this approach. First, not all mediumship is induced; there have been spontaneous cases. Second, stringent precautions against fraud have been taken in the investigation of some mediums. Third, a good deal of Varghese's own religious tradition is clearly grounded in mediumship. What were the Hebrew prophets if not channelers, entering a trance state to convey messages from the spirit world? Though Varghese would be scandalized by the notion, it can be argued that Jesus himself was one of the world's great mediums. Was not the Transfiguration an "induced" event?
At any rate, I don't think Varghese is really rejecting mediumship because it is "induced." I think he rejects it because the Bible warns against communing with spirits, and because some of the messages conveyed by mediums contradict Biblical teachings.
Perhaps even more oddly, Varghese rejects paranormal phenomena in general, claiming that even ESP remains dubious and unproven. This is a strange position to take, given the author's belief in NDEs, the intercession of the saints, apparitions of Mary, visitations by deceased persons, and the resurrection of Jesus, all of which surely qualify as paranormal events.
Speaking of resurrection, Varghese maintains that actual bodily resurrection will eventually follow a period of existence in the spirit world. He claims that this view is found in most other world religions, but his survey of those traditions is too brief to make the point convincingly. My own impression is that bodily resurrection is a feature of the Abrahamic religions (Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), but not of most other faiths.
There's also the question of Hell. Varghese is keen on defending the reality of Hell as a state of everlasting separation from God, with no possibility of redemption. No doubt this is one reason why he disdains mediumship and Spiritualism, which often teach that punishment in the afterlife is temporary, and that everyone will eventually progress to an exalted, heavenly state.
When it comes to Heaven, Varghese can offer little besides vague assurances of eternal bliss. Having rejected mediumistic communications, he cannot rely on descriptions of the afterlife environment provided by generations of mediums, so he is reduced to saying, "Heaven is indescribable in terrestrial terms ... [S]peculation about Heaven in purely human terms is pointless because, by its very nature, the immediate knowledge and love of God is something man cannot enjoy in this life and hence cannot describe or grasp ... Heaven is a union with the Creator of this immense universe, with the Author of all the love, joy, and goodness around him, with the One in Whom all these are found in perfection." He adds, "It may seem here that we are slowly backing into abstractions leaving in our wake a trail of tortuous verbiage."
Why, yes. Yes, it does.
Overall, I found There Is Life after Death a mixed bag. A good deal of interesting and informative material is to be found here, and it is presented in a lively and engaging style. I learned some new things and enjoyed large parts of the book. At the same time, I felt that the book not infrequently descended into Christian polemics, and I found the author's disparagement of parapsychology annoying and often uninformed. In a postscript to this review, I'll quote some of his statements so you can judge them for yourself.
Another feature of interest in the book is Raymond Moody's contribution of a Foreword and Afterword. Moody says some rather provocative and, to my mind, peculiar things. But I'll cover this in a separate post.
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P.S. Here are some selected quotes from There Is Life after Death, illustrating the author's disdain for various categories of afterlife evidence that don't appear to fit his Christian worldview.
We have to assemble all the claims concerning the after-life that have spontaneously emerged in the course of history. I emphasize "spontaneous" because claims involving mediums, ouija boards, channeling, hypnotic regression to past lives, and the like are "artificial" and hence, in my view, inadmissible. They are induced from "this world" and can well be accused of being "manufactured" or manipulated. [P. 31]
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Only those phenomena that emerge spontaneously can be considered free of obvious taint. [P. 37]
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And here we have to address the New Age reincarnationists. Although they profess open-minded intolerance, the reincarnationists dogmatically deny the possibility of the human person being able to continue as the same person after physical death. In their view, at the point of death, what was you in this life morphs into another person, a process that continues in successive lives until you "dissolve" into the Universal Spirit." [P. 39]
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On the other end of the spectrum [from conservative religionists] are the New Age/Gnostic liberals who do not believe that our choices here can have consequences in the hereafter and that there is such a thing as evil. Any report that involves divine displeasure with human evil or the possibility of freely chosen endless separation from God ... is suppressed or simply dismissed. [p. 56]
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It is true that, for lack of a conceptual home, NDEs have been appropriated by the New Age carnival of psi, channeling, energies, crystals, astral bodies, OBEs, and the like. [P. 57]
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It should be pointed out also that we are not arguing for the ideas of an astral body or ethereal energies and auras. Such claims, in any case, are quasi-scientific in nature because they concern a physical reality. As such, they should be tested scientifically, and science tells us that there is no evidence for their existence. [P. 59]
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What is remarkable about NDE research is the number of highly specialized doctors and distinguished scientists that have (a) conducted research on the phenomenon and (b) come away convinced that we are dealing with a non-physical phenomenon. This stands in contrast to the rarity of high-caliber researchers working on reincarnation and other New Age predilections. [p. 60]
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... there is no necessary link between NDEs and alleged paranormal phenomena. Whether or not paranormal or parapsychological phenomena take place is a different question from whether or not NDEs are legitimate after-life experiences. In other words, our acceptance of the validity of NDEs does not mean that we are simultaneously accepting any claim of the paranormal. Likewise, we are not bound to accept any of the claims of spiritualists and mediums and others who claim to have esoteric knowledge of "the other side." These latter claims are highly suspect for various reasons not least of which is the fact that they are not spontaneous in the same fashion as NDEs.
The debate on whether paranormal phenomena such as telepathy take place is a legitimate one. But the jury is still out on this question as it was a hundred years ago." [Pp. 79-80]
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Some of the [overly] elaborate NDE accounts seem very much like contemporary versions of the historically worthless private revelations of Gnostics and seers. [P. 81.]
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The renowned philosopher of science Sir Karl Popper rejected belief in life after death while noting that the accounts of mediums and spiritualists are positively unattractive. [Quoting Popper:] "Most terrible of all prospects appears to be the prospect which the people who believe in psychical research and spiritualism seem to offer. That is to say, a kind of ghostly semi-existence after death, and one which is not only ghostly, but which seems to be intellectually on a particularly low level -- on a lower level than the normal level of human affairs. This form of semi-survival is probably the most unpleasant form which has so far been conceived. I do think that if there is anything in the idea of survival, then it would have to be different from anything we can imagine in order to be tolerable." [P. 112]
With regard to the Popper quote, I would point out that a consistent claim in mediumistic communications is that the communicating spirits must "lower their vibrations" and enter a trancelike state in order to convey messages through the medium. Thus the poor quality of many (but not all) such communications reflects the difficulties inherent in the process, not any permanent loss of mental function. Indeed, some communicators display a high level of intelligence and alertness, and nearly all of them insist that, when not in contact with the earth, their mental powers are far superior to any they manifested while physically embodied.
A communication ostensibly from the discarnate F.W.H. Myers, via the medium Alice Fleming ("Mrs. Holland"), put it this way: "... the nearest simile I can find to express the difficulties of sending a message – is that I appear to be standing behind a sheet of frosted glass – which blurs sight and deadens sound – dictating feebly – to a reluctant and very obtuse secretary. A feeling of terrible impotence burdens me – I am so powerless to tell what means so much – I cannot get into communications with those who would understand and believe me."
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