� is is the story of how an unseen world began to reveal itself to me in the years following the death of my son. It tells of the transformation I went through; how I was taken from viewing life through a lens which allowed me to see only the physical world to a vantage point where I was given a much broader view of our existence.

I invite the reader to take the journey I found myself on; what for me was a paradigm shift in my understanding of life. � is journey began at a point where my feelings were a mixture of hopelessness, deep sorrow and frustration. I began a search trying to fi nd answers to the question of what lies behind our existence, and in particular to try to determine whether or not I would ever be with my son again.

I am not a religious person, so I began to search for answers in a way that satisfi ed my scientifi c mentality and was surprised that, after a great deal of searching, both in the literature and in my own soul, the answers gradually began to appear. I discovered what for me is a new reality - a much better, far more interesting and more cheerful one than I ever had before.

www.UnderstandingAfterlife.com

Bill Kaspari is a retired engineer and businessman who now spends his time with family & friends, enjoying his grandchildren and competing in masters track while continuing to learn about new developments in the emerging fi eld of paranormal science.

John Patrick Kaspari Bill Kaspari

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This book is dedicated to my sons John and Ricky and to my mom and dad.

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Preface

This is the story of how an unseen world began to reveal itself to me in the years following the death of my son. It tells of the transformation I went through; how I was taken from viewing life through a lens which allowed me to see only the physical world to a vantage point where I was given a much broader view of our existence. I invite the reader to take the journey I found myself on; what for me was a paradigm shift in my understanding of life. This journey began at a point where my feelings were a mixture of hopelessness, deep sorrow and frustration. I began a search trying to find answers to the question of what lies behind our existence, and in particular to try to determine whether or not I would ever be with my son again. I am not a religious person, so I began to search for answers in a way that satisfied my scientific mentality and was surprised that, after a great deal of searching, both in the literature and in my own soul, the answers gradually began to appear. I discovered what for me is a new reality - a much better, far more interesting and more cheerful one than I ever had before.

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Contents

Page Chapter Title

6 Foreword

8 1 My View of Our Culture

12 2 The Early Days

18 3 Time for a Change

21 4 The Near Death Experience

25 5 A Glimpse of Other Paranormal Phenomena

35 6 The Study of Mediumship

48 7 Playing Charades

63 8 Three Special Messages

69 9 Understanding Mediumship

77 10 Fortune Tellers, Frauds or Gifted?

81 11 What Conclusions Can We Draw?

84 12 Memory

87 13 A Scientific Look at Paranormal Phenomena

95 14 Materialism vs. Dualism

101 15 Skepticism

112 16 Science and Spirituality

127 17 Letting Us Know They Are Around

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133 18 The Pendulum Begins to Swing Back

138 GLOSSARY

150 APPENDIX A Scoring Criteria

151 APPENDIX B Gordon Smith Book review

153 Recommended Reading

165 Bibliography

166 Website Addresses and Information

168 Acknowledgments

172 Index

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Foreword

The death of a child is one of the greatest tragedies loving parents can endure. Bill Kaspari, and his wife Diane, experienced this twice – first with their son, Ricky, when he was just an infant, and second with their son John, when he was twenty-two. The consequence of such losses is not additive pain; it is multiplicative. In the process of coping with John’s unanticipated death, Bill was propelled to attempt to understand whether life continued beyond the grave. Given his background in engineering and leadership (including his having served as President of a Medical Electronics Company), Bill approached this great quest in a deep and methodical way. I had the privilege to come to know Bill and Diane and assist them on their journey of discovery and healing. As revealed for the first time in this book, I arranged for Bill to have multiple readings with a few highly skilled and gifted psychic mediums who were participating in research in my laboratory at the time. These readings were novel in that Bill’s deceased loved ones – including his father as well as his children – were “brought” to the readings via the late Susy Smith, a former journalist who became an authority on psychic phenomena and life after death. Susy became one of our “departed hypothesized co-investigators” whose research “from the other side” is detailed in my books The Truth About Medium (2005) and The Sacred Promise (2011). As you will see, these controlled readings not only provided compelling evidence suggesting that the Kaspari’s children’s consciousness had survived physical death, but that they were continuing to grow and evolve. Moreover, Bill’s systematic approach to the analysis, scoring, and interpretation of these readings contributed to the advancement of mediumship research. Bill does more than just explain his journey and the process of doing high level research in this area; he places these observations in the larger context of theory and research in the field as a whole. Bill does this not only as an engineer and scientist, but as a loving father and husband whose mind and heart were transformed by what he learned.

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One cannot help but be inspired by Bill’s academic and personal journey. This book not only honor’s his children, but all children whose physical lives have been cut short. Bill shows us how their spiritual lives continue like the light from distant stars, and how we can continue to be with them on their journeys.

Gary E. Schwartz, PhD1

1Professor of Psychology, Medicine, Neurology, Psychiatry and Surgery, Director of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health, The University of Arizona. Author of The Afterlife Experiments and The Sacred Promise.

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Chapter 1. My View of Our Culture

I feel fortunate that I have been able to do a great deal of traveling in my life, particularly to foreign countries. My international travels began when I was a nineteen year old sailor in the US Navy stationed on a destroyer that took cruises to places like Cuba, Japan, Hong Kong and Formosa (now called Taiwan). After being discharged from the Navy I went to college where I earned a degree in Electrical Engineering. My working life included a good deal of traveling around the United States as well as to many countries in Europe and South America. The main reason I enjoyed my travels is that they gave me an appreciation of different cultures, and I have been a student of world cultures ever since. When I speak of culture, I'm not thinking only of the differences in clothing, eating habits, and so forth, but primarily the differences in people's cultural philosophies. The most significant thing that happened in my life after getting out of college was getting married and having children. That seemed to make my life complete and certainly added more meaning to it. But a huge challenge was thrown in my path - twice: surviving the loss of two sons. The first time was tough, but after being hit the second time, I became aware of what I think is lacking in our culture - and certainly was lacking in my life - an understanding of the meaning of, or reason for, our existence. I became more aware of how our society has changed from one founded on religious principles to a technological society where a subject like survival of consciousness, or in non-scientific terms, life after death, is rarely discussed in mainstream science. Thinking about how our culture is changing made me think of how there have been paradigm shifts in societies over the centuries, especially in western society. I am reminded about people like Galileo who lived at a time when the scientists of his day believed in a geocentric theory of the universe which stated that the earth was the center of the universe and that the sun, other planets and stars revolved around the earth. Galileo's observations led him to support a heliocentric theory of the universe (first proposed by Nicolaus Copernicus) where the sun was the center about which the earth, other planets and stars revolved. When Galileo made his support of

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the heliocentric theory public, the rulers at the time (who were controlled by the Catholic church) decided that he could present his theory as a possibility, but not as fact, because their interpretations of religious scriptures stated that the earth could not move and therefore had to be the center of the universe. Stating otherwise was heresy. When Galileo's subsequent writings continued to defend the heliocentric theory and appeared to attack the Pope, he was punished by being placed under house arrest for the remaining years of his life. This is the best example I know of to demonstrate how a dogmatic belief system can prevail against evidence indicating that those beliefs are wrong. However, over the following centuries, those people who took a scientific approach to explain the physical world gradually became dominant, and in western cultures religion was kept separate. In other words, we went from a society where religious beliefs dominated to one where science dominates. Scientists have developed rigorous methods of conducting investigations, which have led to a much greater understanding of physical phenomena, but anything suggestive of a non-physical world is viewed by many scientists as heretical. In my view, in some ways mainstream science has become a dogmatic belief system. My way of thinking of this is that the pendulum swung to the opposite side, hence the name I chose for this book. My purpose in writing this book is to share my new perspective on a subject that suddenly became very important to me, and that I believe is important to most people: is there an existence that follows death? This question has been debated for centuries, and in general these debates have resulted in two proposed answers: 1) those expressed by traditional religious beliefs and 2) theories put forth by traditional science, theories that lack the kind of evidence I feel is necessary to give them credibility. I was not able to accept either of these views because of my need for some sort of validation. I have spent the last twenty years searching for answers in a way that satisfied my questioning mentality. Although the answers I have

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found are not absolute certainties, to me they are more believable than anything I was aware of prior to my search. I have gone through an amazing transformation, one in which I have been able to fill an empty void with an understanding I never thought I would gain. There are two general groups of people that I had in mind when writing this book: 1. People like me who suddenly lost a loved one and whose love for that person is so deep that they need something more than hope or a belief, who essentially need some sort of evidence to support the belief that they will see that person again. 2. People who have a curiosity about questions such as survival following what I call "physical death", what may follow death, and who are willing to spend time reading about the investigative work being done in this exciting new area of science. Many people seem to have a genuine fear of death. However, a great deal of evidential information, obtained through afterlife science investigations, supports the survival-of-consciousness hypothesis and indicates that the afterlife is not something to be feared. Because these studies are different than most traditional scientific investigations, it does require the reader to have an open mind. In addition, those who believe that there is nothing but the physical world may find this book interesting. It discusses evidential studies indicating an existence beyond the physical world, suggests that there is a "non-physical" world, and gives a glimpse of what this world may be like. But one thing needs to be emphasized: Research into afterlife phenomena is a new and different type of science. Unlike traditional science, we are not just dealing with physical objects or phenomena. We are attempting to detect and evaluate non-physical phenomena. Throughout this book I refer to the physical or material world, the world we are all familiar with that consists of organic and inorganic

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matter. I do this to distinguish it from a non-physical world, one that appears to consist of a "non-physical energy" that is different than any we are familiar with in our physical world. If we were studying physical phenomena, our task would be much easier. In studies involving the physical sciences, such as disease manifestations, geologic patterns or planetary motions we have clues that, while not always obvious, are observable using the various detecting devices that science has developed such as microscopes, telescopes and infra-red sensors. Because of the non-physical nature of the phenomena involved in this new science, we must rely on methods of discovery that are quite different. These methods include using the special abilities that some people either are born with or acquire at some point in their life, many times as the result of a life threatening illness. These abilities are generally not accepted as authentic by mainstream science. In order to show that studies in this area of science are being done by legitimate scientists, I reference the works of several professionals, mostly MDs and PhDs, in the area of afterlife research and paranormal studies, and combine this with my own personal experiences following the death of my son. While much of the material presented here is of a scientific nature, my intent is not to present a scholarly, scientifically rigorous document. My aim is to present very unusual material in a way that can be easily read and understood by people with a variety of backgrounds, and ultimately to introduce a new paradigm through which to view consciousness, a paradigm which, like heliocentricity, requires an open mind and a shift in traditional thinking.

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Chapter 2. The Early Days

When I was born my parents lived in Weirton, West Virginia. My dad worked at Weirton Steel Co. which had a giant steel mill in the middle of town. The mill burned coal in the process of making steel and since there were virtually no environmental controls in those days it dumped large quantities of black soot on the town nearly every day. Most people were not aware of the effects that breathing this dirty air could have on their health. When I was about a year old, and my brother Wayne around two and a half, my mother was diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB). As I remember my dad telling the story, he stated that in the same meeting with the doctor, when they were informed that she had TB, the doctor also told her that she was again pregnant. The only treatment for TB in those days was to put the person in a TB sanitarium so that they were isolated from the general population in order to prevent spreading of this very contagious disease. This meant that my mom was not allowed to hold nor be near her children. So my mom was put in a sanitarium in Pittsburgh, PA. when she was twenty-seven years old. Because TB is a disease of the lungs, there was concern whether carrying a baby to full term would inhibit my mom’s ability to recover from the disease, thereby raising the question of whether or not to abort the baby. The decision was made more difficult because both my mom and dad were practicing Catholics and abortion was discouraged by the church. My father told me many years later that he talked to mom’s doctor and that the doctor advised him not to abort the baby because he felt my mom would recover without having an abortion. So in 1936 my brother Lee Patrick was born at Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh, PA. (not in the TB sanitarium) and a few months after his birth was separated from my mom, who then went back to the sanitarium. It must have been extremely difficult for her but the concern was that the baby could contract the disease. My mother had fifteen siblings, mostly girls, and ten reached adulthood. They took care of my brother Wayne and I most of the time. Lee stayed at