Members of the UA Integrative Medicine Club explored the possibilities of life after death in a lecture with a UA professor last night.
Gary Schwartz is a professor in five departments, including psychology, medicine and neurology. Schwartz’s current research, which seeks to confirm or deny whether consciousness can exist after death, may be his most far-fetched yet.
But despite exploring a subject riddled with skeptics, Schwartz and his researchers have conducted numerous experiments that provide verifiable results.
“”In studying this, we need to put our beliefs aside and look at and address the question scientifically,”” Schwartz said.
Schwartz has been putting mediums through a series of experiments to test the accuracy of readings and weed out the magicians and imposters.
“”We defend our positive results, but if we catch you cheating, we will expose you,”” he said.
The most recent of these experiments was conducted at the UA last year. The experiment involved eight UA students who had each recently lost a loved one.
A proxy sitter gave the names of the dead relatives to eight mediums spread across the country and asked them to describe the appearance, personality, hobbies and circumstances of death associated with each name.
The information was scored on a scale of zero to six, with zero indicating no relevance and six indicating a near-perfect reading.
“”The average reading of the control was less than two, which is pretty much a failure, but when the students did their own reading, the average rating was about four, meaning the information was significantly accurate,”” Schwartz said. “”This was not fraud or magic tricks.””
Audrey Mitchell, a health education senior, said she was impressed with Schwartz’s methods and has become less skeptical of mediums since the lecture.
“”He did change the way I felt about the afterlife, made me question things,”” Mitchell said.
Schwartz said the bottom line is that his research is serious and what he is studying “”is not inconsistent with the laws of theoretical physics.””
“”We are not trying to prove the survival of consciousness,”” he added. “”We just want to set up conditions that would allow the survival of consciousness, if it does exist, to reveal itself.””
