The Missing Solution in Dr. Becker's Masterpiece
By Michael Tymn | June 13, 2023
In his 1973 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial of Death, anthropologist Ernest Becker states that “religion solves the problem of death, which no living individuals can solve, no matter how they would support us….it gives hope, because it holds open the dimension of the unknown and the unknowable, the fantastic mystery of creation that the human mind cannot even begin to approach, the possibility of a multidimensionality of spheres of existence of heavens and possible embodiments that make a mockery of earthly logic – and in so doing, it relieves the absurdity of earthly life….”
In effect, religion gives some meaning to life – the lesson of overcoming adversity in preparation for advancement in a larger life. However, religion was fully impeached by science during the nineteenth century, thereby leaving the thinking person with no hope that we will survive death in another dimension of reality. Extinction was seen as our ultimate destiny.
The traditional worldview of organized religions was, in the nineteenth century, and is still today grounded in the acceptance of a God, a Supreme Being, a Creator, a Universal Being, whatever name be assigned to Him, Her, or It. To avoid abstractness or abstruseness, most religions have opted for a masculine being to fill the role of God, as it is necessary for nearly everyone to comprehend such a hierarchy by visualizing a person rather than a creative or sustaining force of some kind at the very top. The acceptance of an afterlife – consciousness surviving death in a greater dimension of reality – almost always follows the acknowledgement of that fatherly God governing all. If the existence of such a God is ruled out because “He” emerges as a cruel, power-hungry egomaniac demanding constant worship while permitting bad things to happen to good people, or simply because such a God is not consistent with scientific principles, the existence of a surviving consciousness is usually dismissed without further consideration. It is a deductive approach: No God, no afterlife. Such is the mindset that plagued our ancestors of the nineteenth century and continues to plague the world today.
The inductive approach is to consider all the evidence for consciousness surviving death—that coming from research of various psychic phenomena – and then to ask about the nature of God, or to conclude that God is beyond human comprehension and that it is not necessary that He, She, or It be given form and otherwise identified. If there is a God, but no afterlife, what good is God? On the other hand, if consciousness does survive death in an afterlife, does it really make any difference what God “looks like”? It is something of a pantheistic or panentheistic approach, although whether God is personal or impersonal seems irrelevant.
Those rejecting a God of any kind usually reject the afterlife as their only conception of it is the humdrum heaven and horrific hell offered by orthodox religions. The thought of an eternal life similar to the material life is as incomprehensible as that of the fatherly God. No “intelligent” person can wish for or believe in such a dreary and monotonous unending existence. Extinction of the individual consciousness is preferable.
During the latter half of the nineteenth century, a number of scientists and scholars, shocked by a worldview of materialism and nihilism, began taking the inductive approach, searching for meaning in various psychic phenomena, especially in trance mediumship. Mainstream science had looked upon such phenomena as nothing more than trickery or humbug. It defied natural laws and was too much like the follies and superstitions of religions.
The evidence produced favoring a spirit world and, concomitantly, life after death was controversial, but it is was overwhelming to many distinguished scientists and scholars, including Robert Hare, professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania and renowned inventor, Alfred Russel Wallace, co-originator with Charles Darwin of the natural selection theory of evolution, Sir William Crookes, a pioneer in radiology and the discoverer of the element thallium, Sir William Barrett, a physics professor and inventor, Sir Oliver Lodge, a physics professor, a pioneer in electricity and radio, and president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and Camille Flammarion, a world-famous astronomer, to name only a few.
Some of the early researchers, such as Professor William James, a pioneer in psychology, and Charles Richet, the 1911 Nobel laureate in medicine, attested to the genuineness of the phenomena studied, but stopped short of saying that it was evidence of a spirit world and, concomitantly, of life after death. They could not rule out subconscious activity not yet understood by science.
These pioneers of psychical research were not one- or two-time observers of the psychic phenomena, as nearly all the debunkers were. Crookes carried out 29 experiments with medium D. D. Home, most of them in Crookes’s own home under lighted and controlled conditions. Lodge reported 83 experiments with medium Leonora Piper during 1889 and 1890 and more in later years, also under controlled conditions. Richet claimed more than 200 experiments with medium Eusapia Palladino. Richard Hodgson, selected by William James to study Mrs. Piper after gaining a reputation as a debunker in England, observed her on the average of three times a week for some 18 years. Are we to believe that men of that stature were duped by clever magicians so many times?
The resistance by science and academia to evidence of a spirit world was so great, so disparaging of the researchers, that even Professor James, who spearheaded much of the psychical research in the United States, avoided discussing it in his 1902 classic, The Varieties of Religious Experience, cited several times by Becker. It was James who discovered Piper, whom he called his “White Crow,” the one that proved all crows are not black in attesting to the genuineness of the communication coming through her. According to James Hyslop, a professor of logic and ethics at Colombia University before becoming a full-time psychical researcher in 1905, James asked Hodgson to review the proofs of his 1902 book before they were printed. Hodgson was somewhat perplexed at the fact that in 400-plus pages of the book, James never directly addressed the survival issue or the research supporting it. He apparently let James know of his disappointment. Whether to appease Hodgson or to correct his oversight, James then added a postscript to the book explaining why immortality got no mention in the book. He said that he was impressed by the favorable conclusions of Hodgson, Hyslop, and others relative to their research and conclusions supporting survival, but that he preferred to leave the matter open.
Writing in the November 1919 issue of the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, Hyslop, who had known James personally, stated that “James seems to have confused means and ends in the method of determining ethical truth, and also to have wholly missed the basis of scientific truth which may be wider than ethical truth.” He added that James leaned toward polytheism and seemed to prefer the doctrine of spiritualism, but he “could not openly avow such a doctrine.” Hyslop concluded that James “halted with more respect than the logic of his pragmatism required.”
During the 1930s, after the pioneers of psychical research had retired or died, parapsychology replaced psychical research and avoided issues pertaining to a spirit world or an afterlife, focusing on extra-sensory perception (ESP) and psychokinetic (PK) phenomena. There was simply too much opposition to the survival issue in the academic and scientific communities to risk losing reputation and funding by continuing to consider them. Meanwhile, the reports of the pioneers supporting the survival hypothesis were filed away in dust-covered cabinets, where they remain today.
More modern research in clairvoyance, out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, past-life memories, and deathbed phenomena have all supplemented the findings of the pioneers. However, mainstream science completely ignores it or arrogantly rejects it, while references, such as Wikipedia, claim that it has all been debunked, suggesting that all of those distinguished researchers were simply duped countless times.
In his 1969 book, The Immortalist, humanist philosopher Alan Harrington makes no mention of the early psychical research, although he does mention the early research into near-death experiences (NDEs) by Drs. Elisabeth Kűbler-Ross and Raymond Moody, dismissing their conclusions linking it to survival by saying that anyone familiar with LSD and having had nitrous oxide administered by a dentist can report the same “tripping out” experience, and therefore their studies are “no release from oblivion.” Harrington doesn’t explain why he thinks out-of-body experiences supporting survival should be limited to traumatic events nor does he otherwise consider that they all suggest mind-body duality no matter the trigger.
If Becker was aware of the pre-1930 psychical research or the early research in NDEs, he gives no indication of it. Certainly, it should have prompted a fourth solution, one separate from the religious, romantic, and creative solutions, and one restoring the hope that was lost by the impeachment of religion.
A 1958 graduate of the San Jose State University School of Journalism, Michael Tymn is a retired journalist. His primary interest since retirement in 2002 has been the psychical research of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. He has authored six books dealing with the subject and is the former editor of the Journal for Spirituality and Consciousness Studies. He has contributed more than 2,000 articles and essays to some 50 publications over the last 70 years. He was one of the runner-up winners in the Bigelow Essay Competition of 2021 with his essay dealing with the subject matter in this essay.