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From Spiritfold, Australian Spiritual Alliance: https://spiritfold.com.au/Afterlife

Afterlife

From Spiritfold

The afterlife is the life that many religions say follows death. The Spiritualists' National Union (SNU) in Britain notes that most religions affirm life after death, and says Spiritualism differs because it seeks to demonstrate that life through communication with people who have died, by means of mediumship.[1] In Australia, the Canberra Spiritualist Association puts it this way: Spiritualists ask for "proof of survival" rather than faith, looking for evidence that the personality survives death and lives on as spirit.[2] J. Gordon Melton describes belief in personal survival after death, demonstrated by mediumship, as the central emphasis of Spiritualism.[3]

Description

Spiritualist teaching on death and survival

The Victorian Spiritualists' Union (VSU) in Melbourne says the main aim of Spiritualism today is to prove that the soul survives death, which it describes as the doorway to a wider life. Its teaching runs as follows. Each person has two bodies, a physical one and an unseen spiritual counterpart, joined by a cord that is cut at death. The physical body returns to the earth, while the spirit body carries on. Death is usually like falling asleep and is not painful. People take no possessions with them, but they keep their character and individuality, faults and virtues alike.[4]

The Centre Christian Spiritualist Church in Subiaco, Perth, teaches that the spirit is indestructible and continues after death in another dimension, the spirit world. There, it says, a person has a spirit body that looks like their earthly body until they progress far enough, keeps the same personality, and goes on changing and growing through experience and effort.[5]

Heaven, hell and personal responsibility

The VSU rejects heaven and hell as places, calling them states of mind, says there is no hell of eternal punishment, and teaches that the world people enter after death is not far off but all around us, interwoven with this one. The kind of home a person finds there depends on the life they led: a selfless life leads to a happier one, reunited with loved ones, while selfishness has to be made good, and enlightened spirits show the way forward once a soul is ready to advance.[4] The National Spiritualist Association of Churches (NSAC) in the United States likewise says it does not believe in heaven, purgatory or hell as places. It teaches that life after death can be heaven-like or hell-like according to how each spirit makes it, that harmful acts slow a spirit's progress rather than bringing punishment, and that even the most degraded person can rise in time, though progress is easier to begin on earth.[6] The NSAC also says that because death does not end responsibility for one's actions, knowing this should make people more careful not to harm others.[6]

Spheres, planes and the Summerland

Early Spiritualists believed that people go on progressing after death.[7] Andrew Jackson Davis, like Emanuel Swedenborg before him, described six spheres in the afterlife: at death a person goes to the sphere closest to their own state, then rises through higher spheres, or the "summerland", towards God. Melton notes that such schemes of progress were common in early Spiritualism.[3] Davis pictured the Summerland as a socialist community of enlightened souls. Early Spiritualists argued over details, such as whether animals live on and whether a spirit could slip backwards after death.[7]

In his 1981 study of a Sydney Spiritualist church, Paul Gillen found that little was then heard of the Summerland. Many regular churchgoers spoke simply of "this side" and "the other side", and were content to wait and see rather than speculate. Mediums often held more detailed views, usually involving "levels" or "planes" through which souls progress, with the "Astral" the one most often named. A common pattern was of the soul staying close to the physical world soon after death, often disoriented, then moving to higher realms as it gained wisdom.[8]

The anthropologist Matt Tomlinson, who joined the Canberra Spiritualist Association in 2015 for his research, did not hear anyone there use the word Summerland; members usually spoke of the dead as being "in Spirit". He found that, for Spiritualists, the afterlife is much like life now: people keep their personalities and their friendships, and carry on with what they enjoyed. In the mediumship course he took, students were taught that the afterlife is happy and gentle but not paradise, that everyone eventually progresses, and that people in the spirit world can still be shy, confused or mistaken.[9]

Reincarnation: differing views

Spiritualists disagree about reincarnation. The NSAC rejects it, teaching that mistakes made on earth can be put right in the spirit world without returning to a physical body.[6] According to Tomlinson, the SNU has historically been sceptical of reincarnation but leaves individual Spiritualists to decide for themselves, while the leaders of the Canberra Spiritualist Association he studied were firmly convinced of it.[10] The VSU lists reincarnation, along with conditions in the afterlife, among the subjects its work covers.[11] See Past life regression.

Evidence rather than faith

The VSU says other religions offer an afterlife as a hope or belief, while Spiritualism holds that reasonable people can prove survival for themselves through mediumship.[4] The SNU is more cautious. It accepts that mediumship cannot give empirical proof of life after death, but says the evidence may become personal proof for the person who receives it, and that it can comfort the bereaved.[12]

How afterlife teaching is offered

  • Services and talks. The VSU's Sunday service includes a 20-minute talk by a guest speaker and a 30-minute "demonstration of survival" by one or more mediums.[13] The Canberra Spiritualist Association's services include Spiritualist philosophy and demonstrations of evidential mediumship.[14] See Platform mediumship.
  • Mediumship. The SNU says mediumship exists to give evidence of survival; it is not there to foretell events, offer advice or act as counselling.[15] See Mediumship.
  • Courses and circles. The VSU's Spiritualism course covers the philosophy and history of Spiritualism, phenomena and mediumship, and the development circle. Its development circles are open to members who have completed that course or similar.[16] In the Canberra course Tomlinson took, part of the teaching was about the spirit world and the lives lived there.[9] See Development circles.
  • Rescue work. The NSAC teaches that spirits "from the darker spheres" may visit a Spiritualist circle to learn what they did not learn on earth, and so begin to progress.[6] See Spirit rescue.
  • Funerals. Speaking at a Canberra service in 2018, one of the association's leaders described seeing, as a clairvoyant, people who had died standing by their own coffins, and spoke of the dead coming to stand with those who grieve. Tomlinson observes that in this picture the dead actively want to comfort the living.[9]

Scope

What it includes

  • Teaching, talks and study about life after death as Spiritualists understand it, in services, courses and circles[13][16]
  • Demonstrations of mediumship offered as evidence that the personality survives death[2][15]
  • Development circles and spirit rescue work that rest on Spiritualist ideas about the spirit world[16][6]

What it is not

  • It is not counselling. The SNU says mediumship is not for predicting the future, giving advice or counselling.[12]
  • It is not proven fact. The SNU itself accepts that mediumship cannot give empirical proof of life after death.[12] Scientific research on near-death experiences has not settled where they come from (see below).[17]
  • It is not a single doctrine. Ideas about the afterlife vary between Spiritualist bodies and individuals, for example on reincarnation.[6][10]

Research on near-death and after-death experiences

Near-death experiences

Near-death experiences (NDEs) are conscious experiences, often emotional, spiritual or mystical, reported by people who have come close to death and sometimes by people who have not. A 2019 review found that their features are now well described, and that some drugs, notably ketamine, can produce similar experiences, but that their origin is unknown and no physiological model yet explains every aspect of them.[17]

A Dutch study published in The Lancet in 2001 followed 344 patients resuscitated after cardiac arrest in ten hospitals. Of these, 18 per cent reported an NDE. Whether a patient had one was not linked to how long the arrest lasted, to medication, or to fear of death beforehand. The authors argued that if a purely physiological cause such as lack of oxygen to the brain explained the experience, most patients who had been clinically dead should have reported one.[18] In the AWARE study (2014), a multi-centre study of 2060 cardiac arrests, 140 survivors were interviewed. Nine per cent reported NDEs, and 2 per cent described being aware of their resuscitation with explicit recall of seeing and hearing actual events.[19]

A 2024 scoping review of eleven prospective studies found that the reported rate of NDEs after cardiac arrest ranged from 6.3 to 39.3 per cent. It also found that the way people's experiences were described tended to follow the wording of the questionnaires used, rather than the words the patients themselves used.[20]

The VSU points to hospital research on NDEs as among the studies it sees as supporting Spiritualist philosophy.[4]

Experiences of the dead in bereavement

Bereaved people often report sensing, seeing or hearing a person who has died. A 2020 interdisciplinary review of these "sensory and quasi-sensory experiences of the deceased" notes an ongoing debate about whether they are linked to complicated grief. It concluded that the great majority are benign, and that each should be understood in light of the person's life, relationships and culture.[21]

Traditions and lineage

Melton traces Spiritualism back to the eighteenth-century work of Swedenborg and Mesmer, and to Andrew Jackson Davis, who began a career as a healer and seer in the 1840s after being put into a mesmeric trance. Most American Spiritualists date the birth of their faith to 31 March 1848, when Kate Fox began to get answers from rapping sounds in her family's home at Hydesville, New York.[3] From the start, the séance was meant both as a communion between the living and the dead and as a test of whether the afterlife was real.[7]

The movement drew criticism from those who did not believe in survival at all, from some in the medical profession, and most strongly from Christian groups citing biblical warnings against contacting the dead. Exposures of fraudulent mediums also damaged it.[22] Spiritualism continued to flourish between the two world wars, boosted by the First World War, which left many people wanting to contact loved ones killed in the fighting.[22]

Context

Within Spiritualism

One of the SNU's Seven Principles is "the continuous existence of the human soul", and the SNU says many Spiritualists regard the communion of spirits, which demonstrates that survival, as a central principle.[1] Melton writes that the belief in personal survival, demonstrated through mediumship, is what sets Spiritualism apart from other psychic groups.[3]

In Australian Spiritualism

Australian Spiritualist churches teach survival in their own words. The VSU, which traces its beginnings to Melbourne in 1870, publishes a detailed account of death and the spirit world,[11][4] and the Centre Christian Spiritualist Church in Perth sets out its teaching on the continuous existence of the soul.[5] The Spiritualists National Union of WA says the difference between Spiritualism and other religions is the ability, through mediumship, to prove that people survive death.[23] The Canberra Spiritualist Association lists among its aims to uplift those who are grieving and to give people the chance to experience the reality of life after death for themselves.[2]

A Spiritualist perspective

For a Spiritualist, the afterlife is not a distant promise but the ground everything else stands on. We teach that the people we love carry on, still themselves, and that death changes where they are rather than who they are. That is good news, and it is offered to people at the most fragile moments of their lives, which is why it has to be offered carefully.

A good teacher keeps the evidence and the explanation apart. A message recognised by a grieving daughter is one thing; a detailed map of the spheres is another, and our own churches have never fully agreed on it. Spiritualism asks people to weigh what they receive rather than take it on trust, and to keep living well here, since personal responsibility does not end at the grave. Above all, afterlife work should never take the place of ordinary support. Grief needs time, company and sometimes professional help, and a Spiritualist who cares for the bereaved will say so plainly.

Afterlife in Australia

Spiritualism's Australian heyday came in the late 1870s, followed by a long decline. Gillen found that although the movement is presented as centred on the survival of the personality after death, that idea was less developed than beliefs in healing by touch, astral travel and clairvoyance.[24] He also found that most Spiritualists did not join mainly to contact the dead, although bereavement sometimes first brought them to it.[8] Arthur Conan Doyle, a convert to Spiritualism, began a lecture tour in 1920; on 28 November that year 3,500 people filled the Sydney Town Hall to hear him.[24] In the 2021 Census, 8,879 Australians gave Spiritualism as their religion.[25]

Near-death experiences have also been studied in Australia. In a national telephone survey of 673 people carried out by Roy Morgan Research in July 2004, 8 per cent of respondents reported an NDE. Thirty-six per cent said they had faced a situation of imminent death, and almost a quarter of those reported an NDE.[26]

Safety and good practice

The Canberra Spiritualist Association counts uplifting people in grief among its aims,[2] so Australian health guidance on grief is directly relevant to this work:

  • Grief is normal and personal. The Better Health Channel says feelings of grief and loss are completely normal, that grief has no timeline, and that there is no right or wrong way to grieve.[27]
  • Know when to point people to help. Healthdirect advises seeking help if sadness and despair persist, if grief has been distressing for 12 months or more, or if it gets in the way of everyday life, work or relationships. It notes that prolonged grief is more likely in children and adolescents, after the loss of a close family member, and after a traumatic loss.[28] People it suggests talking to include a GP, a counsellor, a psychologist, a bereavement counsellor and support groups.[28]
  • Crisis support. If someone is having suicidal thoughts and is in immediate danger, healthdirect advises calling triple zero (000); to talk to someone straight away, it lists Lifeline (13 11 14) and the Suicide Call Back Service (1300 659 467).[28] In Victoria, Grief Australia (1300 664 786) gives information and referral to bereavement services.[27]
  • Keep mediumship to its purpose. The SNU says mediumship is not for predicting the future, giving advice or counselling.[12] The Spiritualist Association of Great Britain tells people booking a sitting that success cannot be guaranteed and that no medium can produce a particular piece of evidence on request.[29]
  • Be wary of profit and show. A Canberra Spiritualist leader told Tomlinson he worries that when mediums work for profit at psychic fairs and social clubs, the wish to entertain weakens the work.[30]

Common questions

Do Spiritualists believe in heaven and hell?

Not as places. The Victorian Spiritualists' Union calls heaven and hell states of mind and says no one is condemned to hell forever.[4] The National Spiritualist Association of Churches teaches that life after death becomes heaven-like or hell-like depending on how each spirit lives it.[6]

What do Spiritualists say happens when we die?

The VSU teaches that the spirit body separates from the physical body, that death usually feels like going to sleep, and that people keep their character and individuality.[4] Spiritualists in Canberra describe the afterlife as much like life now, where people stay themselves and can go on learning.[9]

Do Spiritualists believe in reincarnation?

Views differ. The NSAC rejects it, the SNU has long been sceptical but leaves the question to each Spiritualist, and some Australian Spiritualist leaders accept it.[6][10]

What has research found about near-death experiences?

Studies of cardiac arrest survivors have found that between about 6 and 39 per cent report one, depending on the study.[20] An Australian survey in 2004 found that 8 per cent of people reported an NDE.[26] Researchers have described the experiences in detail but have not established what causes them.[17]

Is it unusual to sense someone who has died?

No. Bereaved people often report sensing, seeing or hearing someone who has died, and a 2020 review concluded that the great majority of these experiences are benign.[21]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Spiritualists' National Union. "The Seven Principles". SNU (no date shown; accessed 14 October 2026).
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Canberra Spiritualist Association. "FAQ" (no date shown; accessed 14 October 2026).
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Melton, J. Gordon. "Western Esoteric Family II: Spiritualism & New Age". Melton's Encyclopedia of American Religions (Gale), reproduced on Encyclopedia.com (edition not stated; accessed 14 October 2026).
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 Victorian Spiritualists' Union. "About Spiritualism" (no date shown; accessed 14 October 2026).
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Centre Christian Spiritualist Church, Subiaco. "Teachings" (no date shown; accessed 14 October 2026).
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 6.7 National Spiritualist Association of Churches. "Frequently Asked Questions". NSAC (no date shown; accessed 14 October 2026).
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Buescher, John B. "Spiritualism". Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd ed., 2005. Reproduced on Encyclopedia.com (accessed 14 October 2026).
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Gillen, Paul. The Spiritualists: Gnosis and Ideology. PhD thesis, School of Behavioural Sciences, Macquarie University, 1981, ch. 3, PDF pp. 32–33. Macquarie University Research Data Repository, doi:10.25949/19431146 (accessed 14 October 2026).
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Tomlinson, Matt. Speaking with the Dead: An Ethnography of Extrahuman Experience. Earth: punctum books, 2024, pp. 122–126. Open access under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (accessed 14 October 2026).
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 Tomlinson, Matt. Speaking with the Dead (2024), pp. 126–127 (see above).
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Victorian Spiritualists' Union. "About VSU" (no date shown; accessed 14 October 2026).
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 12.3 Spiritualists' National Union. A Guide to Mediumship Provides Evidence of Life After Death (leaflet). SNU Publications, © 2014 (accessed 14 October 2026).
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Victorian Spiritualists' Union. "Sunday Service" (no date shown; accessed 14 October 2026).
  14. ↑ Canberra Spiritualist Association. Home page (no date shown; accessed 14 October 2026).
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Spiritualists' National Union. "Mediumship" (no date shown; accessed 14 October 2026).
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 Victorian Spiritualists' Union. "Courses" (no date shown; accessed 14 October 2026).
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 Peinkhofer, C., J. P. Dreier and D. Kondziella. "Semiology and Mechanisms of Near-Death Experiences". Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports 19, no. 9 (2019): 62. doi:10.1007/s11910-019-0983-2. Abstract read via Europe PMC (accessed 14 October 2026).
  18. ↑ van Lommel, P., R. van Wees, V. Meyers and I. Elfferich. "Near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: a prospective study in the Netherlands". The Lancet 358, no. 9298 (2001): 2039–2045. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(01)07100-8. Abstract read via Europe PMC (accessed 14 October 2026).
  19. ↑ Parnia, S., K. Spearpoint, G. de Vos et al. "AWARE – AWAreness during REsuscitation – a prospective study". Resuscitation 85, no. 12 (2014): 1799–1805. doi:10.1016/j.resuscitation.2014.09.004. Abstract read via Europe PMC (accessed 14 October 2026).
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Kovoor, J. G., S. Santhosh, B. Stretton et al. "Near-death experiences after cardiac arrest: a scoping review". Discover Mental Health 4, no. 1 (2024): 19. doi:10.1007/s44192-024-00072-7. Read via PubMed Central (accessed 14 October 2026).
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Kamp, K. S., E. M. Steffen, B. Alderson-Day et al. "Sensory and Quasi-Sensory Experiences of the Deceased in Bereavement: An Interdisciplinary and Integrative Review". Schizophrenia Bulletin 46, no. 6 (2020): 1367–1381. doi:10.1093/schbul/sbaa113. Abstract read via Europe PMC (accessed 14 October 2026).
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Crissman, James K. "Spiritualism Movement". Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying (2003). Reproduced on Encyclopedia.com (accessed 14 October 2026).
  23. ↑ Spiritualists National Union of WA. "About Us" (no date shown; accessed 14 October 2026).
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Gillen, Paul. The Spiritualists: Gnosis and Ideology. PhD thesis, School of Behavioural Sciences, Macquarie University, 1981, abstract and PDF p. 25. Macquarie University Research Data Repository, doi:10.25949/19431146 (accessed 14 October 2026).
  25. ↑ Australian Bureau of Statistics. Census of Population and Housing: Cultural diversity data summary, 2021 (spreadsheet), Table 8 "Religious affiliation by state and territory". ABS, released 28 June 2022 (accessed 14 October 2026).
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 Perera, Mahendra, Gayan Padmasekara and John Belanti. "Prevalence of Near-Death Experiences in Australia". Journal of Near-Death Studies 24, no. 2 (2005): 109–116. doi:10.17514/jnds-2005-24-2-p109-116 (accessed 14 October 2026).
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 Better Health Channel. "Dealing with grief and loss". Department of Health, State Government of Victoria. Reviewed 14 October 2015 (accessed 14 October 2026).
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 28.2 Healthdirect Australia. "Grief and loss". Healthdirect, last reviewed February 2026 (accessed 14 October 2026).
  29. ↑ Spiritualist Association of Great Britain. "Private Sittings" (no date shown; accessed 14 October 2026).
  30. ↑ Tomlinson, Matt. Speaking with the Dead (2024), p. 180 (see above).

Further reading

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