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2017.
Will we soon be able to make calls to departed loved ones?

 

Press Release
28th March 2017 

 

"SoulPhone" could link us to the spirit world in two years, say experts

 

Spirit collaborators include Albert Einstein, Max Planck, David Bohm, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Carl Sagan and Steve Jobs. 

- A Psychic News exclusive this week but made available for use by the broader media commencing March 28th, via this email. ByRoy Stemman, Editor, Psychic News -psychicnews.co.uk - tel01376 563091emailpneditorials@gmail.com-

March 28th2017. Two teams of scientists are currently refining sophisticated equipment which, they claim, will soon make it possible for us to communicate with those we love who have passed to the next world.

Their early experiments, conducted with the help of mediums and experts in electrical engineering and other disciplines, are extremely promising, leading those involved to express a high degree of confidence in achieving their ambitious goal.

In fact, they are so confident that they have now decided, after years of secrecy, that it is time to share some of their results and ambitions with a wider audience. By doing so, they hope to attract the additional funding that is required to perfect their communication devices and expand the project internationally.

Psychic News,available in selected newsagents across the UK, is the first publication they have spoken to in depth about their work and publishes this article this week.

Endeavours to penetrate the veil between this world and the next with communications equipment are not new. Thomas Edison, the prolific American inventor, caused a media sensation almost a century ago when he told a reporter he was working on the development of a "spirit phone" (Next issue: "What happened to Edison's ‘spirit phone'?" - but see the end of this article for a summary).

In more recent times, various researchers have claimed degrees of success in communicating with the next world using radio equipment or similar devices. The results, initially described as "electronic voice phenomena" (EVP) but more recently known as "instrumental trans-communication" (ITC), are sometimes impressive but are not yet reliable, despite the hundreds of researchers in many countries who are experimenting with these techniques.

Now, following years of research, a very different approach appears to be reaping results. Two teams are reporting positive results as they strive to achieve a momentous collaborative breakthrough: a permanent communications link - which they call the SoulPhone - between this world and the next.

Before I introduce the team members, here's a brief summary of what they have achieved so far and, once funds are available, the projected timescale towards having a fully-operating and reliable channel of communication between this existence and the world of Spirit, the journal of science and healing. 

Stages of development

Gary E. Schwartz first used the term SoulPhone a decade-and-a-half ago, in his bookThe Afterlife Experiments(2002), when describing potential applications of his research work carried out with evidential mediums. This had satisfied him that human consciousness continues beyond death.

In communicating his theories and research findings to fellow scientists, Schwartz has to use cautious language.For example, when he published the results of important proof-of-concept experiments (in the peer-reviewedExplore, in 2010 and 2011), he referred to the entities he was detecting in the laboratory as "hypothesised collaborating spirits (HCSs)".

Their presence, he revealed, was detected using (1) a state-of-the-art silicon photomultiplier costing $2,500 (£2,000) per sensor, cooled to -22 degrees Celsius that can detect single photons of light in a pitch-black environment and, and (2) a state-of-the-art low light camera costing $40,000 (£32,000), typically used in astronomy for deep space imaging. 

These tests provided confirmation of a medium's perception of the presence of spirit entities in Schwartz's laboratory. Even more important was the discovery that a "skilled" spirit could use the technology to produce statistically-significant "yes" and "no" responses.

This, of course, is an essential first step towards developing a practical communication technology. In effect - though this is not an analogy that Schwartz uses - it is like an electronic hands-off replacement of the Ouija board.

He was able to replicate these findings in a soundproof and electrically shielded chamber at the California Institute of Human Science. The results, together with other experiments at his own laboratory, convinced him that the creation of a functioning working prototype of a SoulPhone was not only feasible but highly probable.

Schwartz and his colleagues have explored the use of nine different state-of-the-art technologies over the past seven years, each of which has produced positive findings to various degrees. These include fluctuations in magnetic fields, radioactivity, infrared beams or pulsed light achieved by spirit entities as a way of registering their presence.

 They also developed a super-sensitive microphone and sound-collecting system and combined it with certain computer and statistical procedures for detecting essentially subliminal sounds - far below the level that our ears can hear - to document the presence of a recordable audio signal.

To do this, it was necessary to build a sound-isolation chamber that was also electrically shielded (known as a Faraday cage) in the Tucson laboratory in order to eliminate the possibility that outside sources were producing the anomalous "noise" registered on their equipment.

Although the sound cannot be heard by the human ear, sophisticated computer software makes it audible by converting it into a measurement of decibels.

The Arizona team believe the path towards their ultimate goal will involve the staged development of a number of "soul devices" but this will only be possible when additional financial resources become available from investors who recognise its potential, to take the project from proof-of-concept to practical working prototypes. Schwartz is currently talking to potential backers.

Once funding is in place, these developments will follow:

SoulSwitch:this simple binary device - no more complex than a light switch - will allow communicating spirits to give either "yes" or "no" answers to questions. In this way, the answers they give to a short series of specific questions will confirm their identity. The team believes there is a 90-95 per cent chance this device could be functioning within 12 months of receiving sufficient funding.

 SoulKeyboard:a series of SoulSwitches will broaden communication, enabling SoulText messages to be conveyed between this world and the next, in much the same way as we use smartphones or emails to communicate with each other today. The team says there is a similar degree of probability that the spirit keyboard will be ready two years after funding is made available.

SoulAudio:the next anticipated breakthrough will be a SoulAudio device that will enable people to hear and talk to those living in the next world.

SoulVideo:will enable visual images to be transmitted along with audio signals, much like Skype or Facetime

SoulStudios:just as modern telecommunications need satellite signals and relay stations to carry our messages, so the SoulPhone devices will need to be connected to a SoulStudio which houses the technology to make this concept possible. The team's ultimate vision is that it might be possible for people to have an "app" on their smartphones which will connect them to a SoulStudio.

However sceptical many people will be about this ambitious project, the teams involved have a high degree of confidence that what they are proposing is achievable. 

Meet the teams involved

The driving force and chief scientist behind the SoulPhone project isGary E. Schwartzwho is based at the University of Arizona (UA). Schwartz studied first at Cornell University, achieving a psychology major and a chemistry minor in 1966, then received his PhD in psychology from Harvard University in 1971 where he later served as an assistant professor for five years.

He then became a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Yale University where he held senior positions before moving to Arizona in 1988.

As well as teaching courses on health and spiritual psychology, Schwartz is professor of psychology, medicine, neurology, psychiatry and surgery at UA's main Tucson campus.

Author of over 400 scientific papers and editor of 11 academic books, he is now the Director of the UA's Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health (LACH) which was formerly the Human Energy Systems Laboratory.

In addition, Gary Schwartz's name will be familiar to manyPsychic Newsreaders as the author of several important books on mediumship, spirit communication and associated subjects (see panel).

"One of my colleagues has described me as the Helen Keller of afterlife research because I don't see or hear spirits," he told one interviewer. "So I have to rely totally on evidence-based mediums and until the technology comes along, I'm dependent on their eyes and ears." 

The Earthly ‘B team'

One of the mediums who plays a vital role in the SoulPhone research is Schwartz's wife,Rhonda Eklund Schwartz, whose mediumship developed after the death of her mother, Marcia Eklund, before she met Gary.

 Rhonda acts as the coordinator and interface between the spirits who are communicating and the scientists who are seeking a better form of dialogue between the living and the so-called dead.

In order to separate Schwartz's pure research from any future application of the discoveries being made at LACH, the SoulPhone Foundation has been established byMark Pitstick, author and broadcaster, andBob Staretz, a physicist and electrical engineer who has studied consciousness since early adulthood.

Pitstick, with a background in psychology and counselling, has over 40 years' experience and training in hospitals, mental health centres and private practice. He is also the author ofSoul Proof: compelling evidence that no one really diesand a documentary based on that book, andWellness: a Holistic Guide for Optimal Body, Mind & Spirit.

The foundation's co-founder, Staretz, studied at Tufts University and Ohio State University, then moved into leading edge research and advanced technology developments in electronics and telecommunications. He enjoyed a long friendship with Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the Moon and the founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), an organisation whose main focus is the study of consciousness.

During their 28-year friendship, Mitchell and Staretz collaborated on many research projects, journal articles, papers and presentations, includingThe Quantum Hologram and the Nature of Consciousness(Journal of Cosmology, 2011, Vol 14).

The foundation also benefits from the services of an optical sciences engineer and staff members Beth West and Tracy Soussi. They, and the LACH workers, are referred to by Schwartz as the "B team".

The other-worldly ‘A team'

In addition, various mediums have been involved at various stages, providing feedback and input from spirit entities who are as eager to contribute to the successful introduction of spirit communication technology as their earthly counterparts.

These spirits, whom Schwartz referred to initially as the Sacred Promise Team, are now called the "A team". Their real identities were cloaked in secrecy for much of the time, even within the LACH laboratory, and they were given pseudonyms.

Now, however, various core members of the team of 33 spirit entities have been named and their contributions to the project fully acknowledged and honoured.

Marcia EklundandSusy Smithare key members of the "A team". Rhonda Eklund Schwartz believes her mother and Smith, a well-known psychical researcher with a particular interest in afterlife codes, brought her and Gary together. Schwartz regarded Susy as his adopted grandmother. She wrote 30 books on parapsychology and survival of consciousness.

The other spirit collaborators who have now been named include theoretical physicistsAlbert Einstein, who developed the theory of relativity, andMax PlanckandDavid Bohm, bothfamous for their work on quantum theory.

Also in the "A team" are theinventor of the phonograph,Thomas Edison, electrical engineer and inventorNikola Tesla, the mathematician who formulated the theory of electromagnetic radiationJames Clerk Maxwell,and astronomer and astrobiologistCarl Sagan.

As well as this formidable group of scientists, the team also includesHarry Houdini, the escapologist who was famous for his investigation of Spiritualism,Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,author and creator of Sherlock Holmes, and - who better to assist with the development of the SoulPhone? - Apple's co-founderSteve Jobs.

Lastly, a spirit who was a global celebrity is also an active spirit collaborator on the laboratory's subliminal sound experiments. The Arizona "B team" has been reluctant to identify him, except by the pseudonym "Peter", out of respect for his family. They have now decided to reveal that "Peter" isMichael Jackson, who is known to have taken an interest in Gary Schwartz's after-life research shortly before his untimely passing.

Houdini's identity was also kept secret at the start of the project, when he was referred to by the researchers simply as HHH, an abbreviation of "Hypothesised Harry Houdini".

The Arizona team realise that the identitities of the spirits who are working with them will result in controversy and possibly even ridicule, but they emphasise that ultimately: "It's not about the team, it's about the technology!"

Until the SoulPhone becomes a reality and opens up a direct channel of communication, the "B team" continues to rely on advice and encouragement from "A team" members conveyed in a more traditional way - through mediums.

Speaking to me from the Tucson laboratory, where he was spending a few weeks getting fully acquainted with the project, Mark Pitstick recounted a conversation he had with Schwartz over dinner the previous evening.

"Gary gave some examples of communications from David Bohm, who's one of the pre-eminent quantum physicists and a contemporary of Einstein. The sentence was something like: ‘Acceleration of energy can assist manifestation of communication'. And Gary says: ‘What am I supposed to do with that? What does it mean?' Right now, all that can come through to us are snippets."

Part of the story behind the SoulPhone project has been revealed for the first time in print in an additional section to a just-published revised edition of Rhonda Eklund Schwartz's 2011 bookLove Eternal: breakthrough personal and scientific evidence for life after death(Param Media, 2017) which is now available on Amazon. Her husband also contributes an Afterword.

As well as describing how her own mediumship developed, Rhonda touches briefly on how the spirits of Einstein, Houdini, Conan Doyle and others came into their lives and the striking synchronicities that occurred around them.

And she promises another book, to be published later this year, which will tell the full story.

"This isn't fantasy or wishful thinking," she assures her readers. "We sincerely believe it is a genuine reality on the verge of being discovered, for which science is already yielding convincing evidence.

"Let's be sure to grab this opportunity to usher in a new era of communication capable of transforming our world in a way that would rival that of the internet, and offer a future for humanity which would be bright and full of love, peace and hope."

*Attempts to build equipment that would simplify communication between this world and the next have a long history. Among those who attempted it was American inventor Thomas Edison. Not only is he a member of Schwartz's "A team" but he also successfully participated in the Scole experiments in the UK. We'll examine his two-world involvement in the development of spirit communication devices in the May issue ofPsychic News.

...ends...

Note to the media. For further information contact:

Roy Stemman, Editor, Psychic News -psychicnews.co.uk - Tel01376 563091email: pneditorials@gmail.com

About Roy Stemman:Psychic News editor Roy Stemman, who has had a five-decade association with the magazine, is also the author of several books on different aspects of the paranormal, notablySpirit Communication andThe Big Book of Reincarnation. His TV work has included an hour-long documentary made in Lebanon on children who claim to remember past lives. He is a member of the Society for Psychical Research, as is Professor Gary E. Schwartz, the University of Arizona researcher whose planned development of the "SoulPhone" spirit communication device is the subject of this exclusive feature.