Gary E. Schwartz ~ The Spirit World

Biography:

Gary E. Schwartz, Ph.D, is a Professor of Psychology, Medicine, Neurology, Psychiatry, and Surgery at the University of Arizona and Director of its Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health. He is also Corporate Director of Development of Energy Healing at Canyon Ranch. Gary received his PhD from Harvard in 1971, was an Assistant Professor at Harvard, and was a Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Yale University and director of the Yale Psychophysiology Center before moving to the University of Arizona in 1988.

He has published more than 450 scientific papers, including six papers in the journal SCIENCE, co-edited 11 academic books, and is the author of The Energy Healing Experiments (2007), The G.O.D. Experiments (2006), The Afterlife Experiments (2002), The Truth about Medium (2005), and The Living Energy Universe (1999). He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, The Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research, and the Society of Behavioral medicine. His research integrates mind-body medicine, energy medicine, and spiritual medicine. His new book The Sacred Promise: How Science is Discovering Spirit's Collaboration with Us in Our Daily Lives was published Jan 11, 2011

Dr. Gary Schwartz, discussed his latest research on quantifying the spirit world including contacting the dead in the laboratory, and expanding on the work of Harry Houdini. An advocate for science or evidence-based spirituality, he suggested that Spirit could be thought of like air or water, something that is all around us. Science is now creating technology to detect the tiniest amounts of energy-- such as single photons, and these new instruments have the promise to detect spirits on the Other Side, he declared.

He used such a device (a silicon photomultiplier) in an experiment making contact with the late Harry Houdini, and found that the number of photon detections measured much higher when he made a direct contact request from Houdini. Interestingly, he noted that one of his contacts, the deceased medium Suzy Smith, was the first to bring Houdini to one of his experiments, and that other spirits known as "drop-ins" started spontaneously showing up.

Schwartz recounted how a living medium received an accurate warning from Smith that he was about to be "ambushed" on a TV talk show, which helped him to prepare. He also talked about angels, and spirit guides, who can serve as messengers, and the role of Spirit in physical and emotional healing.