Developing research guide · Version 0.5.0 · Editorial update 24 October 2026 · Approximately 15 min read
What continues?
What can we check?
Death, grief, rebirth, reincarnation, meta-awareness and karma: connected questions with different kinds of evidence.
Historical foundations and a source-linked synthesis, not a new research announcement.
Documented reports, subjective experience, measured physiology and metaphysical interpretation remain distinct. This guide does not establish personal survival, reincarnation or a karmic mechanism.
Define the continuity
Experience, memory,
identity or relationship?
Meta-awareness means noticing aspects of one’s own experience. Its investigation in living people does not establish that it persists beyond life. Schooler and colleagues’ meta-awareness review provides background; a complete appraisal was not repeated for this guide.
Memory continuity asks whether information persists or is transferred. Personal identity asks whether the same subject continues. Accurate information alone would not settle identity.
Continuing bonds concerns relationships carried through memory, meaning and practice. Postmortem continuity makes a further claim about awareness after death.
“Across space and time” names a question for inquiry. The sources assessed here do not establish consciousness travelling through spacetime or between lives.
Empirical Research and Review
Claim–Evidence
Explorer.
Choose a research type, then open a claim to inspect its limits and the next useful checks. These are editorial assessments of the sources below, not new study results.
Showing 6 of 6 source assessments
ObservationsNDE · Awareness during resuscitationOpen Assessment
AWARE II · October 2023; online 7 July 2023
What Was Reported?
Parnia and colleagues: 567 cardiac arrests, 53 survivors and 28 interviews. The abstract reports no visual target identification and one auditory identification.
Alternatives and Limits
Low survival, interview attrition, target-exposure denominators and experience timing constrain inference. CPR is not irreversible death. No demonstrated postmortem survival.
What Would Help Reassess It?
Review target exposure and timing against resuscitation records, then seek preregistered, independently replicated target identification. An accurate report would still require a separate argument about personal identity and irreversible death.
What Has Been Read?
Primary abstract and institutional abstract records; main methods and raw data not reviewed for this guide.
Read the Primary Source ↗Literature ReviewsPLM · Children reporting past-life memoriesOpen Assessment
Moraes et al. · online 5 June 2021; issue May–June 2022
What Was Reported?
The UFJF/UVA scoping review maps 78 observational studies. Children predominate; 60% of studies are case reports and 73% use interviews.
Alternatives and Limits
A literature map is not confirmation of reincarnation. Information exposure, suggestion, retrospective matching, cultural expectations and selective reporting require case-specific tests.
What Would Help Reassess It?
Seek statements recorded before matching, blinded comparisons with plausible decoys, documented information access and complete reporting of misses. Repeated publications about the same case must be counted once when assessing independence.
What Has Been Read?
PubMed abstract and metadata; no fresh full-text or case-file appraisal.
Read the Primary Source ↗ObservationsParadoxical lucidity · Unexpected communicationOpen Assessment
Teresi et al. · 1 January 2023
What Was Reported?
A pilot developing a structured reporting instrument collected 33 professional interviews and descriptions of 29 events; 73% reported ever witnessing lucidity.
Alternatives and Limits
Retrospective reporting does not estimate patient prevalence or establish a neural mechanism. Episodes need not be immediately before death. Residual or fluctuating function remains an alternative to continuity explanations.
What Would Help Reassess It?
Obtain prospective recordings, clinical context and a prespecified definition of lucidity. Test detection in independent participants, including people without identified episodes. Behavioural change alone cannot establish awareness after death.
What Has Been Read?
Abstract and metadata inspected; no patient-level observations or data reviewed.
Read the Primary Source ↗Literature ReviewsBereavement · Sensing a deceased person’s presenceOpen Assessment
Kamp et al. · 2020
What Was Reported?
An interdisciplinary integrative review describes sensory and felt-presence experiences in grief as common and usually benign, interpreted within biography, relationship and culture.
Alternatives and Limits
Heterogeneous definitions and samples limit generalisation. An experience’s meaning and comfort do not independently authenticate an external communicator. Continuing bonds and memory offer psychological interpretations.
What Would Help Reassess It?
Separate frequency, personal meaning and claims of external information. Prospective sampling and independently checked details could inform different questions; comfort alone cannot distinguish their causes.
What Has Been Read?
Selected review excerpts and institutional summaries; not an exhaustive clinical appraisal.
Read the Primary Source ↗ObservationsREASSESSMENT · Hospice dreams and visionsOpen Assessment
Kerr et al. · online 11 January 2014; March issue · assessed 23 October 2026
What Was Reported?
A longitudinal interview study enrolled 66 patients and analysed 59. Experiences involving deceased people were reported as more comforting than other content. This source was already recorded in the corpus ledger; the addition here is an assessment of its denominator and interpretive limits.
Alternatives and Limits
Subjective realism and comfort do not authenticate contact. Single-site selection, attrition, repeated observations, expectancy, medication and cognitive state need full-methods review. No external-information test is described; effect sizes, blinding and preregistration remain unverified.
What Would Help Reassess It?
Review full methods and episode-level data, including medication, cognition, attrition and repeated observations. Replication could strengthen findings about reported experience and comfort without establishing contact with deceased people.
What Has Been Read?
Publisher and institutional abstracts/metadata only; no full text or raw data. Relevance 5/5; provisional quality 2/5 because access limits the observational appraisal; confidence moderate. Context for HIERATIC016 and HOMESENSE, not model support.
Read the Primary Source ↗Care TrialFOUNDATIONAL EVIDENCE · Care after bereavementOpen Assessment
Shear et al. · online 8 June 2016; July issue · assessed 23 October 2026
What Was Reported?
A four-site randomised trial enrolled 395 adults meeting historical complicated-grief criteria. Targeted psychotherapy plus placebo produced 82.5% response versus 54.8% for placebo with supportive clinical management (RR 1.51, 95% CI 1.16–1.95). Adding citalopram did not improve grief response, although depressive symptoms improved. Medication alone did not significantly outperform placebo on grief response.
Alternatives and Limits
Null significance does not establish equivalence. Psychotherapy participation cannot be blinded; attrition, unequal therapeutic contact and a predominantly white, female sample constrain interpretation. Historical criteria are not automatically interchangeable with current diagnoses. The registry reports a March 2010 start, first submission on 14 July and first posting on 11 August 2010: registration followed the start of enrolment. The paper reports moving the medication-only primary comparison from week 16 to week 12 after the 2011 citalopram dose limit, with data-monitoring-board consultation. These details qualify the registration label; they do not by themselves establish selective reporting.
What Would Help Reassess It?
Review original registry history, the dated protocol and independent trials with suitable comparison care. These would refine confidence in treatment effects; they would not turn a care trial into evidence of survival.
What Has Been Read?
Selected publisher full-text sections and the current ClinicalTrials.gov API record reviewed; first-version history, full protocol, raw data and code not audited. NIMH-funded; author financial relationships disclosed. Relevance 4/5; provisional quality 3/5; confidence moderate. Clinical care evidence, not a survival test; independent replication not assessed here. Educational context, not individual treatment advice.
Read the Primary Source ↗Reading Evidence Together
Publications Are Not Replications
This bounded map follows the cohort relationships documented in the existing lucidity review. It does not establish independence across the wider literature.
| Publication | Relationship | What It Adds |
|---|---|---|
| Gilmore-Bykovskyi et al. · 2025 | Wisconsin observational cohort: 20 participants; nine identified episodes in three people. | Prospective behavioural observations. |
| Kottler et al. · 2026 | 1,283 segments from those same three episode-positive participants. | Exploratory detection analysis, not an independent cohort replication. |
| Griffin et al. · 2025 · LEAD | Separate caregiver research programme; participant overlap with other caregiver studies remains unverified. | A study protocol, not completed outcome evidence. |
Three publications across two research programmes: prospective dementia observations, a detection analysis using the same three episode-positive participants, and a separate caregiver-study protocol. Historical reassessment with reading limits and cohort distinctions attached.
Adult regression-associated memories and spontaneous childhood reports involve different populations and controls. This historical reassessment separates source-monitoring errors, measured suggestibility and historical accuracy.
A concealed-image experiment reported no significant above-chance correspondence. Exploratory environmental descriptions remain separate. The framework review records source-version uncertainty and the tests needed before another claim shift.
Philosophy, testimony and listening · Added 24 October 2026
Bache, Deep Time
and the Diamond Soul.
Explore the worldview map, videos, books and proposed tests →
Christopher Bache interprets his psychedelic experiences through a developmental account of consciousness across lives. His Diamond Soul concept describes a larger awareness integrating many lifetimes. This is his philosophical interpretation, rather than an independently demonstrated account of personal survival. Read his direct interview.
Listen: Deep Time and the Birth of the Diamond Soul
Christopher Bache with Tami Simon · Sounds True, Insights at the Edge · Published 23 September 2025. Free publisher-hosted audio, not a complete audiobook.
Official episode and audio download →
Documented IONS connection: the Institute of Noetic Sciences lists Bache as an Emeritus Fellow. Its 20 May 2022 book event describes his philosophical exploration. Affiliation and hosting establish that connection; they do not independently validate his interpretations or imply IONS endorsement of this guide.
Across the HIERATIC opening trilogy
- 016 · Death, Grief & Impermanence: accompany grief without claiming that suffering was chosen, deserved or necessary.
- 017 · Reincarnation & Continuity of Consciousness: compare the Diamond Soul hypothesis with alternative explanations and ask which observations could distinguish them.
- 018 · Karma, Intention & Consequence: connect reflection with care, accountability and repair, without making ethical action depend on a survival claim.
These are editorial connections to developing chapters. The companion proposals and seven proposed tests remain open for review. No test has been run and BQ001 remains UNRESOLVED.
Access scope: the official episode description, audio link and IONS references were checked on 24 October 2026. Complete audio playback and transcript review have not been completed. This addition does not replace the clinical and textual assessments dated below.
An Interpretive Map · Five Facets
Explore the Diamond Soul
Open a facet to separate Bache’s reported experience, his interpretation and an editorial question. The arrangement shows conceptual connections, not measured dimensions, a causal mechanism or a sequence everyone follows.
A conceptual reading of Bache’s worldview
01Deep TimeTime and the experience of a life
Reported Experience
His life experienced as a completed whole, with its moments present together.
Bache’s Interpretation
Awareness can encounter a wider temporal perspective.
Question to Consider
How could a changed experience of time be distinguished from access to information about the future?
Read Bache’s Interview With Jamie Wheal ↗02Collective PsycheIndividual and collective experience
Reported Experience
Suffering experienced as extending beyond his individual biography.
Bache’s Interpretation
Participation in a shared human field.
Question to Consider
What observations could distinguish a shared field from empathy, cultural imagery and altered self-boundaries?
Read Bache’s Interview With Jamie Wheal ↗03Diamond SoulMany lives and integrated awareness
Reported Experience
An apparent synthesis of multiple lives accompanied by diamond-like light.
Bache’s Interpretation
A larger awareness integrating lives can awaken within embodied life.
Question to Consider
What would independently establish those lives, and what further evidence would establish continuity of the same person?
Read Bache’s Interview With Jamie Wheal ↗04Future HumanIndividual transformation and humanity
Reported Experience
Visions of a transformed humanity.
Bache’s Interpretation
An evolutionary possibility for consciousness.
Question to Consider
Can a specific, dated prediction be recorded before events, with clear failure criteria and comparison against ordinary forecasts?
Read Bache’s Interview With Jamie Wheal ↗05Embodied AwakeningInsight and everyday responsibility
Reported Experience
Awakening described as compatible with physical existence.
Bache’s Interpretation
Spiritual development can unfold within worldly life.
Question to Consider
Can its practical effects on care and accountability be assessed without assuming its cosmology is true?
Read Bache’s Interview With Jamie Wheal ↗Source: Bache’s direct interview, published by Qualia; selected passages reviewed 24 October 2026. The questions and grouping are AkashicNET editorial work. This map does not verify reincarnation or forecasts. No mathematical model is supplied by this diagram.
Historical comparison: Read Fechner, Kardec and the HIERATIC inquiry → These are editorial comparisons; no direct line of influence between these authors has been established here.
Continue to the Videos, Audio, Books and Proposed Tests →Historical Philosophy and Textual Comparison · Added 24 October 2026
What Do We Carry Forward?
Love, information, identity and consequences raise different questions. This reading trail connects the HIERATIC opening trilogy with Fechner, Kardec and Bache, while keeping each author’s account attributed.
Read Fechner’s Free Book
The Little Book of Life After Death · Free at Project Gutenberg →
Gustav Theodor Fechner · English translation by Mary C. Wadsworth, with an introduction by William James · 1904 edition. Read online or download an EPUB.
Fechner connects our continuing influence in others with a proposal of conscious survival. His three stages concern prenatal life, embodied life and a proposed existence after death. They are not three successive reincarnations. William James explains the wider philosophy and identifies the generalisation from changing boundaries of experience as an analogy. Neither that analogy nor the book’s publication establishes survival.
| Meaning | Question to Examine | Distinction to Preserve |
|---|---|---|
| Relational | How do influence, memory and practices persist? | A continuing relationship does not by itself establish a surviving subject. |
| Informational | Does specific, independently checked information recur? | Accuracy and the source of information need separate assessment. |
| Personal | Is the same experiencing individual proposed to continue? | Resemblance or shared information alone does not settle identity. |
| Developmental | Does an author propose integration within a larger awareness? | A philosophical model needs its own arguments and discriminating evidence. |
Identity, Rebirth and Responsibility
Kardec’s Identity of Spirits chapter recognises difficulties in identifying a supposed communicator within Spiritism. Read it as historical doctrine. A contemporary study would also need controls for ordinary information access, suggestion, leakage and flexible matching.
Bache’s Diamond Soul interpretation concerns a larger awareness integrating lives. SN 12.17, in Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu’s translation, redirects a discussion framed around the actor and experiencer towards dependent arising. Their juxtaposition is an editorial comparison, not a claim that the teachings agree.
AN 6.63 centres intention in kamma through bodily, verbal and mental action. Its religious context remains distinct from Fechner’s future-life account. For present reflection, ask what an intention cultivates, what an action changes and what needs repair.
Across the Opening Trilogy
- 016 · Remembrance: What love or practice will I carry forward?
- 017 · Inquiry: What do I believe continues, and what could change my assessment?
- 018 · Responsibility: What consequence can I take responsibility for today?
Open the Book II Reading Trail →
Symbol, Meaning and History
Kuhn’s Hallowe’en: A Festival of Lost Meanings offers a related trail into masks and seasonal symbolism. The publisher’s book description introduces its scope; the full text has not been reviewed here. Symbolic readings and claims about a festival’s historical origins require different support.
Reading scope: selected Fechner passages and William James’s introduction, Kardec’s identity discussion, the linked short Buddhist translations and selected Bache interview passages. No complete comparative-history or translation audit. The grouping and questions are AkashicNET editorial work. These additions do not change BQ001’s unresolved status or the clinical assessments above.
Text, tradition and interpretation
Karma and rebirth
in their own contexts.
AN 6.63, in Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s translation, centres intention in kamma expressed through body, speech and mind. This is a Buddhist primary teaching, not an experimental demonstration. Translation ©1997; inspected Access to Insight edition revised 30 November 2013. These are modern edition dates, not the ancient text’s date.
Monima Chadha’s Personhood in Classical Indian Philosophy, first published 3 January 2022, compares differing conceptions of personhood. Buddhist rebirth without a permanent self and accounts of an enduring self must not be treated as identical.
Separately attributed Sikh, Jain and Hindu primary-source comparisons remain to develop. No universal doctrine is inferred. A person’s suffering must not be presented as evidence of deserved punishment or a previous-life debt.
Access scope: selected translated passages and scholarly sections. Textual evidence establishes what a source teaches; it does not establish the teaching’s metaphysical truth.
Research and editorial priorities
From a developing draft
to a stronger assessment.
- 01
Record before matching
Time-stamp specific past-life statements before identifying a proposed match; use blinded comparison and account for ordinary information access.
- 02
Observe prospectively
For lucidity and resuscitation, align reports with clinical observations, medication, physiology, opportunity to perceive targets and retained analysis populations.
- 03
Seek independent tests and criticism
Review null outcomes and replications, preregister analyses where feasible, and distinguish multiple reports from independent evidence.
- 04
Preserve care and cultural authority
Review grief language and tradition-specific translations, attribution, consent and permissions. Do not extract restricted teachings or turn spiritual testimony into laboratory confirmation.
HIERATIC · Past, present and future
A companion
across editions.
Earlier foundations
Awareness, interbeing and wisdom provide context. Historical editions retain their own dates and wording.
016 · Death and grief
Developing draft: care, presence and lucid episodes.
017 · Rebirth and continuity
Developing draft: reports, correspondence, identity and alternatives.
018 · Karma
Developing draft: intention, consequence and tradition-specific comparison.
Later previews may draw on this trail for ritual, compassion and transformation. No new chapter, completed appraisal or automatic publication schedule is announced.
The grief trial’s registration dates are now verified. Registration occurred after enrolment began; the current record lists response outcomes at weeks 12 and 20. Its last public update is recorded as 24 January 2017. Retrieval today is not a new study update.
ClinicalTrials.gov record → · Source receipt and access limits →
Next: compare original registry versions and the dated protocol. The current record cannot show when each analysis-plan change was entered. BQ001 remains UNRESOLVED.
Historical backlog · Textual scholarship
Karma, suffering
and present care.
SN 36.21, the Sīvaka Sutta, translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, rejects the view that every feeling arises entirely from prior action. It lists bodily conditions, environmental change, treatment of the body and kamma among causes. Nyanaponika Thera’s translation provides a comparison.
Ṭhānissaro’s preface interprets how old and new kamma relate to other causes. That is translator commentary, separate from the translated discourse. This assessment is a safeguard against fatalistic blame, not experimental evidence for karma or rebirth, and not a universal statement about Buddhist traditions.
Canonical composition date not established here. Nyanaponika’s source volume dates to 1983; its Access to Insight page was revised 30 November 2013. The ATI Ṭhānissaro edition is ©2005, revised 30 November 2013; the current dhammatalks page has no verified update date. Complete short translations and current preface read; no Pāli manuscript or critical-edition comparison. Relevance 5/5 for HIERATIC018; empirical quality N/A; attributed textual provenance, moderate confidence. Next: specialist review and comparison with SN 35.145 and MN 101.
Curated 23 October 2026: hospice reassessment, grief-care trial and this textual comparison. Deduplication used selected identifiers and receipts in corpus ledger version 241; cross-task completeness is not claimed. This batch does not constitute a fresh-news or 155-family scan. No accepted edges or model support were added.
Version 0.5.0 · 24 October 2026
What Changed?
- Editorial
- Added Fechner’s free book, a four-part continuity comparison and chapter-specific reflections across the trilogy. The Claim–Evidence Explorer, five expandable worldview facets and study-relationship table remain available. Existing HIERATIC reading paths and publisher audio remain available.
- Source Review
- Historical reading now connects selected Fechner, Kardec, Bache and Buddhist passages with explicit reading limits. Clinical assessments and their original access limits are retained; the relationship table summarises the existing lucidity review.
- Evidence Status
- No new experiment, independent replication or accepted model support. BQ001 remains unresolved. Questions in the explorers are proposals for inquiry.
- Listening Scope
- The official audio link is available; complete playback, transcript and chapter timestamps have not been audited.