Three months ago, I listed ways that belief in an afterlife benefits us all as individuals. In the second half of this blog I list ways that contemporary research on the afterlife would be beneficial to our world as a whole.
- We would picture the afterlife in a new way. Most religious people live with notions of a heaven that is static, with nothing more left to achieve; or vague, with nothing concrete and colorful and beautiful to recommend it. The heavens would be reconceived as a challenging, stimulating, dynamic environment.
- Our lives would be seen as “going somewhere” or “adding up to something.” We would grow in confidence that we are participating in a meaningful soul-building process.
- Since life doesn’t end at death, we would see that those cut off early in life would not be denied their share, and that ancestors and their descendants would be reunited.
- We would be able to deal better with our grief over the death of a young child, or a son lost in combat, or a daughter lost to breast cancer, for we would know they were still very much alive and in good hands. Those grieving the loss of loved ones frequently report visits from the deceased but fear criticism from an uncomprehending world. A science that “verticalizes” our world would authenticate these visits and bring relief, even joy, to the bereaved.
- We would rise above the crippling melancholy that fear of personal extinction presently brings to billions of us.
- We would see why it is rational to give play to the near universal instinct to pray, and through prayer help alleviate loneliness and despair in the face of personal tragedy.
- We would find strong support for the conviction that good actions meet with a happy destiny and selfish or criminal actions with the opposite. This “law of karma” has through the centuries provided the glue that helps societies stay law-abiding, and it is affirmed by spirit sources.
- Young people would find incentive to get serious about their lives and give back something meaningful to the world. The law of karma would help them resist the temptation to throw their lives away on drugs and alcohol.
- The current epidemic of suicide, especially among middle-aged males, would probably be abated by considerations of its karmic consequences and would be less of a temptation in a better, happier world.
- A deepening, widening belief in the law of karma would lead to less crime, fewer prisoners, and more tax dollars for education, infrastructure repair, and green technology.
- A deepening, widening belief in a plausible, attractive afterlife would discourage those near death from taking heroic measures to extend their lives a few more weeks because nothing follows.
- A deepening, widening belief in a plausible, attractive afterlife would discourage rampant greed and encourage a spirituality of compassion. More billionaires would join Warren Buffet’s Billionaire Club, and the enormous contrast between the wealthy and the impoverished of the world would be attenuated.
- Consumption of the world’s resources would be reduced as people came to see that this isn’t their only chance at happiness.
- Racism and sexism would gradually diminish as society gets used to identifying persons by their souls, which have no color or sex.
- Gay and transgendered persons would find rational accounts in spirit literature for their orientations that in no way cast them as inferior.
- The worldview unveiled here would uplift women since the Creator, or Divine Source, or God is not defined as exclusively masculine.
- Dogmatic religion would lose much of its appeal as the more spacious, inclusive worldviews opened by this research replaced the divisive ideologies of bad religion. Resorting to war based on these ideologies would wane, and world peace become more achievable.
- Certain forms of mental illness would be properly diagnosed as having a spiritual cause and would be appropriately treated, including spirit release therapy. This treatment would bring relief to countless patients drugged out of their minds by uncomprehending psychiatrists who disbelieve in spirits.
The descriptions of an afterlife by spirits reaching us through respected mediums strike me as more attractive, rational, and plausible than any of the traditional accounts found in the world’s scriptures. The latter half of my career has been largely devoted to getting this good news out. My publisher, White Crow, has made it all possible.
Stafford Betty, Professor of Religious Studies, CSUB, (ret) is the author of When Did You Ever Become Less by Dying?, Heaven and Hell Unveiled and his novels which include,The Afterlife Therapist and Guardians of the Afterworld. His latest book, The Hell Dwellers: A Novel about the Dark Side of the Afterlife is coming in 2026. Stafford can be found at staffordbetty.com.
Stafford, as usual, an excellent summary. May I humbly add on other point: We no longer would willfully harm, rape, pollute and destroy our planet. And neither will we thoughtlessly harm the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms. We would learn to love and respect the various life forms that surrounds and supports us. Hans
Most detailed list I’ve seen, Stafford. I believe the “crippled melancholy” one is the most critical and most over looked. Unfortunately, mental health authorities are unable to recognize it as it is a “religious” matter.
Dear Stafford,
Thank you for writing this, and for doing it in the public square. I’m very much in sympathy with the broad aim: if the modern world is haunted by the fear that life is a brief, accidental flare ending in extinction, then anything that credibly restores depth, continuity, and moral significance is not a private consolation only, but a cultural corrective.
That said, I want to begin with what may sound like a pedantic point but is actually the hinge on which the whole thesis turns. “Belief in an afterlife leads to a better world” isn’t quite true as stated, because it leaves entirely open what kind of afterlife is being believed in. One can easily imagine afterlife-models that would not elevate the moral imagination at all: an endless void of isolation; a sterile stasis with nothing further to learn; or an infinite loop without growth, meaning, or repair. What has the constructive social effects you’re pointing to is belief in a morally meaningful, developmental afterlife — one that is dynamic, educative, and continuous with character-formation. You make that move immediately (and rightly) when you pivot to “contemporary research” and to the more vivid, graded, progressive afterlife described in serious spirit literature — but I think it helps to name the move explicitly. It’s not “afterlife” as such; it’s a certain afterlife-picture that does the work.
On your first point, are “most religious people” committed to a static or vague heaven? Perhaps many are, especially in modern popular imagination, but I’d treat that claim more cautiously. A fair number of traditions already contain rich and dynamic accounts of post-mortem development (even if ordinary believers don’t always absorb them). The stronger claim might be: many contemporary people, including many believers, have inherited either a thin, under-imagined afterlife or a “finished” one — and the research you’re highlighting supplies a more compelling developmental picture.
From there, I’m basically with you on the deep human goods: life “adding up,” early death not being the end of the story, reunion, and the tremendous relief to grief when survival is not merely hoped for but treated as rationally plausible. I’d underscore something you imply: a great many bereaved people already report meaningful contact and “visitations” and then silence themselves out of fear of ridicule. If a culture can make room for honest speech about that territory, the result could be a quiet revolution in pastoral care and mental health (work like Piero Calvi Parisetti’s on grief and survival-belief is exactly on this seam).
I also strongly agree about the cultural melancholy that follows from internalized extinction-fear. Ernst Becker was onto something when he treated denial of death as a central engine of modern pathology. Even if one sets mediumship aside, the psychological and cultural consequences of nihilism are hard to overstate.
Where I want to sharpen the framing is prayer. Yes, prayer can alleviate loneliness and despair — but that’s not its center. The real question is: prayer to what? If the afterlife is continuous with a living Divine order — God as ground, end, and origin — then prayer isn’t merely therapy; it is communion, orientation, and participation. And if that is true, then other spiritual disciplines (contemplation, meditation, repentance, service) also come naturally into view as part of the same “soul-building” arc.
On “karma”, I understand why you use the term, but I think it subtly imports an Eastern dress that may carry unintended assumptions — especially reincarnation as the default mechanism by which moral consequence is “worked out.” Many discarnate sources, by contrast, emphasize something more immediate and universal: an affinity principle — a moral ecology in which we gravitate toward what we love, what we habituate, what we become. Framing it as “affinity” or “like-to-like attraction” keeps your point while avoiding unnecessary theological freight.
Relatedly, I agree that a restored moral horizon could help young people resist the temptation to throw their lives away, and could reduce suicide by countering despair with meaning. But I’d add what you also gesture toward: knowledge alone often doesn’t reform human nature, which is inherently refractory. Humans routinely act against what they know. So the social effect likely comes not merely from “information” about survival, but from formation — communities, practices, exemplars, and a lived culture that makes the moral horizon real.
On end-of-life care, I’d also rephrase slightly. The benefit is not so much “discouraging heroic measures” as freeing people from panic-driven decisions — allowing more values-aligned choices, more peace, and (often) a more humane dying.
On the “dogmatic religion / bad religion” line: I confess you rub me up the wrong way a bit here. What exactly do we mean by “dogmatic religion” and “bad religion,” and by what criteria is it distinguished from religion that would merit approval? “Dogmatism” is a human vice that attaches to many banners—religious, political, and secular—and history hardly suggests it is uniquely religious. Also, the “more spacious, inclusive worldview” you gesture toward doesn’t depend on discarnate research to exist. The Perennial Philosophy—derived from the best and deepest that the religious traditions have already given voice to—already articulates a profoundly cross-traditional spiritual horizon with far greater conceptual depth. For me, the discarnate literature is a valuable and even precious cosmological adjunct to that larger framework—but not a substitute for it, and not something we should presume will “replace” religion rather than (at best) chasten certain forms of exclusivism and enrich the imagination. Perhaps the safer claim is not that this research replaces religion, but that it can temper exclusivism and deepen the moral imagination—provided we receive it with humility.
Finally, on mental health, there is intriguing testimony not only in the discarnate literature but also in adjacent clinical and therapeutic work suggesting that some conditions (or some sub-cases within conditions) may involve a discarnate ‘entanglement’. Whatever one ultimately concludes, like you, it seems to me a subject that warrants careful, disciplined inquiry rather than reflexive dismissal. In that connection, one of the more striking treatments I’ve encountered is the chapter in Frederic Myers’ Beyond Human Personality, through Geradine Cummins, that speaks directly to “obsession” and related phenomena—material that is at least strong enough to merit serious consideration and further testing.
All of that said: I’m grateful for the thrust of your post. The animating hope here is not escapism; it is the restoration of seriousness, compassion, and moral depth. Thank you for continuing to push that conversation forward.
My very best to you,
Paul
I’m with you, Paul. An afterlife that rewards, encourages, and ultimately demands righteous living (to keep it very simple) in order to advance is key. One that is based on belief, as in some forms of Christianity and Islam, is misleading and dangerous.
Dear Stafford,
I very much enjoyed your just-posted Soul Explorers interview with Gary Langley and Sally Taylor (Feb 22) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW8NQPCKcy0]. A few of your remarks there felt like natural extensions of your earlier White Crow post, and I wanted briefly to affirm—and gently nuance—three of them.
First, I appreciated your emphasis in the interview that “beliefs don’t count” and that what ultimately matters are the habits we form and the lives we actually live. I’m entirely with you in rejecting any notion of “mere assent” as salvific. A belief that does not generate transformation is clearly not doing much spiritual work.
At the same time, I wonder if the phrase “beliefs don’t count” may be slightly misleading. Beliefs and habits are not really separable. What we take to be real — about the nature of the self, the moral order, and our posthumous destiny — quietly shapes what we love, what we fear, and what we consider worth pursuing. In that sense, belief is not a substitute for transformation, but part of its architecture. Certain beliefs, contemporary nihilism chief among them, are sufficiently corrosive as to eventually render the very notion of virtue unintelligible, which can only tend toward spiritual catastrophe. Indeed, your own project seems to presuppose the general point I am making: if false conceptions of the afterlife distort human behavior, then truer conceptions can help reorient it. That is not belief as tribal badge, but belief as warranted trust — the kind that informs conscience and guides action.
So perhaps the stronger formulation is not that beliefs don’t count, but that beliefs without lived embodiment don’t count — while beliefs that are responsibly formed and integrated into life can profoundly shape the soul’s trajectory.
Second, on the question of “demons” raised in the interview: in surveying the classic discarnate literature, I find that the dominant framing is not an ontologically distinct order of non-human malevolent beings, but rather deeply degraded once-human discarnates. Franchezzo, in ‘A Wanderer in the Spirit Lands’, is explicit: “these demons or devils had themselves been once the denizens of earth”. By contrast, J.S.M. Ward in ‘Gone West’ does occasionally speak of “spirits who had never been men,” but confines such beings to the very lowest depths and presents them as relatively rare. Meanwhile, works like Wellesley Tudor-Pole’s ‘Private Dowding’ emphasize that descent into “hell states” is fundamentally self-induced: “No outside power can attract a man against his will.” Taken together, the literature seems to lean heavily toward an affinity-based moral ecology populated primarily by human agents, with the stronger non-human “demon” claim appearing in fewer sources and usually at the extreme margins.
Finally, on your remarks about invoking the Muse each morning — I was deeply struck by that. It reminded me of Steven Pressfield’s reflections in his ‘The War of Art’, where he describes the mysterious reciprocity between disciplined effort and higher assistance:
“…when we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen. A process is set into motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to our aid. Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose.
This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.
Just as Resistance has its seat in hell, so Creation has its home in heaven. And it’s not just a witness, but an eager and active ally.”
Pressfield elaborates on this theme in a series of blog posts about his daily invocation of the Muse (modeled on Homer’s Odyssey), which he treats not as metaphor but as lived practice:
https://stevenpressfield.com/2019/10/a-sacred-space/
https://stevenpressfield.com/2019/10/a-prayer-to-the-muse/
https://stevenpressfield.com/2021/05/a-prayer-to-the-muse-2/
https://stevenpressfield.com/2013/10/you-as-the-muse-sees-you/
https://stevenpressfield.com/2009/09/writing-wednesdays-8-what-the-muse-wants/
https://stevenpressfield.com/2021/07/why-invoke/
Elizabeth Gilbert’s TED talk “Your Elusive Creative Genius” (https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_your_elusive_creative_genius) offers a similar intuition from another angle. What strikes me in all of this is the same pattern you describe: inspiration is not passive fantasy, nor is it arbitrary bestowal. Discipline precedes cooperation. Fidelity invites assistance. The higher order — however one names it — appears less as a distant abstraction and more as an active collaborator with those who show up faithfully.
With appreciation again for the work you’re doing,
Paul
I agree with you on two of the salient points you make here. First, beliefs do matter if they encourage and inspire good behavior, as they should. Beliefs by themselves achieve nothing: Accepting Jesus as your lord and savior, as if that’s all that’s necessary for salvation, is untrue.
I also agree with you on the point you make about demons. As I make clear in my new book, The Hell Dwellers, the word “demon” is a handy way to name deeply ill-formed and malevolent deceased human beings who take pleasure in harming others. They are to be distinguished from lost souls who roam the earth as ghosts, not willing harm on others but harming us nevertheless as they attach themselves to us to escape their present misery.