The Spiritualist Vision of the Afterlife with Stafford Betty

Stafford Betty, PhD, is a philosopher and professor of religious studies at California State University, Bakersfield. He is author of Vadiraja’s Refutation of Shankara’s Non-Dualism, The Imprisoned Splendor, The Afterlife Unveiled, and Heaven and Hell Unveiled.

Here he points out that the spiritualist vision of the afterlife has been generated over the past 150 years through the testimony of ostensible spirits speaking through trance mediums. This literature has been extensively scrutinized by scientists and, in the best instances, is often accompanied by information that offers evidence of either an afterlife or extrasensory perception. Professor Betty describes many common threads that can be found throughout this literature that offer a vivid description of a realm of human existence beyond the physical life on earth. He refers to the stages of spiritual evolution that may occur in the afterlife.

New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He is the recipient of the only doctoral diploma in “parapsychology” ever awarded by an accredited university (University of California, Berkeley, 1980). His master’s degree is in criminology. He serves as dean of transformational psychology at the University of Philosophical Research. He teaches parapsychology for ministers in training with the Centers for Spiritual Living through the Holmes Institute. He has served as vice-president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, and is the recipient of its Pathfinder Award for outstanding contributions to the field of human consciousness. He is also past-president of the non-profit Intuition Network, an organization dedicated to creating a world in which all people are encouraged to cultivate and apply their inner, intuitive abilities.

(Recorded on July 10, 2015)