Survival of Bodily Death
An Esalen Invitational Conference
December 6 - 11, 1998
Conference Summary
Summary by Steve Dinan
The entire human adventure, with all its hopes, dreams,
and ambitions, ends with a question mark, a mystery writ large. Where
does our consciousness go when we die? Does it dissolve irretrievably
into nothingness? Or does it perhaps continue to live, grow, and take on
a different form? The answer to this question has long been the
province of old wives’ tales, religious mythologies, and folklore.
Today, however, we have the opportunity to approach the subject of human
survival of bodily death with empirical rigor, to subject ancient
beliefs to cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural research that may shed
light on this central human question. We feel that the practical and
theoretical benefits of research into survival warrant turning the
searchlight of science onto this core mystery of human life. For this
reason, the Esalen Institute has inaugurated a conference series to
bring the most creative and rigorous researchers and theoreticians in
the field into a collaborative fellowship.
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