Postmortem Survival
Referenced in 2 episodes
Definition
The concept that consciousness or personal identity continues to exist after the physical death of the body, encompassing beliefs in reincarnation, possession, and mediumistic interactions.
Related episodes
Postmortem Survival and Analytical Idealism with Bernardo Kastrup (4K Reboot)
New Thinking AllowedSep 1, 2026
Philosopher Bernardo Kastrup argues that analytical idealism allows for the only kind of life after death that truly matters: the survival of our deepest sense of subjectivity, freed from personal identity, much like waking up from a dream. He suggests that at death our memories and even our skills spill into a wider field of mind, where mediums might pick them up, which could explain evidence for survival without requiring the personal ego to persist. Host Jeffrey Mishlove challenges him with famous cases, including a chess game played through a medium, the spirit healer George Chapman, and the Myers cross-correspondences, and Kastrup weighs each with cautious openness.
Postmortem Survival and the Physical Universe with Ruth Kastner (4K Reboot)
New Thinking AllowedAug 23, 2026
Philosopher of physics Ruth Kastner joins Jeffrey Mishlove to ask whether quantum theory leaves room for consciousness to survive bodily death. She rejects Einstein's 'block universe' consolation and argues instead for a quantum substratum, a real domain of possibility outside space-time from which physical events emerge. In her view, most of reality lies beyond space-time, which opens the door to mental or spiritual dimensions and to postmortem survival.