Research Does Not Begin and End with a Google Search

In my previous writing, I asked a question that I have been asked several times: can you coach someone and still talk about spirits?

That question leads me to another conversation that I believe we need to have, particularly when we discuss spirituality, Spiritism, consciousness, life after death and experiences that we cannot easily explain.

Research does not begin and end with a Google search, and human attempts to understand spirituality did not begin with modern academic research.

I have reached a point where I no longer publicly tell people which researchers they should follow, which books they should read or which particular areas of research they should investigate. That is a deliberate decision.

It does not mean that I don't read. It does not mean that I don't research. It certainly doesn't mean that I don't want you to research. Quite the opposite. I want you to research properly and, most importantly, I want you to develop your own ability to question what you are reading.

We live at a time when an extraordinary amount of information is available to us. We have search engines, academic search engines, libraries, books, lectures, podcasts, interviews and educational material that previous generations could never have accessed so easily. There are academics and professionals discussing their work publicly. There are long lectures available online. There are conversations between people from completely different disciplines that we can sit at home and listen to.

Yet having more information available to us does not necessarily mean that we have become better researchers.

Sometimes we type someone's name into a search engine, read the first few results and believe that we have researched that person. We haven't. Sometimes we find criticism of a researcher and assume that the criticism automatically disproves everything that person has ever studied. It doesn't. The opposite is also true. Finding someone with impressive qualifications whose work supports something we already believe does not mean that everything that person says must be correct.

Research requires considerably more from us.

You have to read. You have to compare. You have to understand what the person actually investigated. You have to distinguish between someone's personal beliefs and their professional work. You have to understand what conclusions were actually reached rather than what somebody else online says those conclusions mean. You also have to be willing to read disagreement.

This is particularly important when we enter subjects such as spirituality and Spiritism because people arrive at these conversations carrying very different beliefs. Some people already believe in spirits. Some believe in an afterlife but would never use the word Spiritism. Some are religious. Some are spiritual without following a religion. Some are interested because something has happened to them that they cannot explain. Others are sceptical and simply want to understand why somebody else believes what they believe.

There is room for all of those people in a serious conversation.

What I don't believe is useful is entering the conversation having already decided that everything must either be proved or ridiculed.

My own understanding comes from years of personal experience, reading, studying, questioning and changing my mind about certain things as I learn more. I have experiences that I understand spiritually, but those experiences belong to me. I can tell you what happened to me. I can tell you how I understand it. I can tell you what I have learned from it. What I cannot do is demand that my experience becomes your evidence.

This is one of the reasons I tell people: don't take my word for it.

Go and research.

But when I say research, I don't mean typing one question into Google, reading three paragraphs and returning ten minutes later with a conclusion.

Take your time.

If you are interested in consciousness, study consciousness. If you are interested in what people report around death and dying, explore that subject. If you are interested in spirituality, understand that spirituality itself contains an enormous number of traditions, interpretations and experiences. If you are interested in Spiritism, study what Spiritism actually teaches rather than relying entirely on somebody else's description of it.

And don't only search for information that agrees with you.

If something challenges what you believe, read it. If something supports what you believe, question that as well. Ask yourself why you find one argument convincing and another one uncomfortable. Sometimes research teaches us about the subject, and sometimes it teaches us about ourselves.

There is another reason I no longer publicly provide lists of names.

When I am working privately with someone and that person demonstrates genuine curiosity about something we have discussed, that is different. I can recommend reading within the context of our conversation. We can discuss it afterwards. They can tell me what they understood, what they disagreed with and what questions it created for them. I can also make it very clear that I am giving them something to explore, not something they are required to believe.

A public blog cannot provide that same conversation.

Someone can take one name, search for that person, find a negative article or comment, and suddenly something that had been helping them understand their own experience becomes associated with an argument that may have very little to do with the actual subject they were researching. Someone else can do exactly the opposite and become so convinced by one person's work that they stop questioning altogether.

Neither response is what I want to encourage.

I want people to think.

I want people to remain curious without abandoning their judgement. I want people to be able to say, “I don't know,” without feeling that they have failed to reach a conclusion. There are questions about human existence, consciousness, spirituality and death that humanity has been asking for generations. We should not be embarrassed that we still have questions.

We should also remember that human beings were questioning existence long before we had modern laboratories, universities, search engines or the scientific terminology that we use today. Different generations have attempted to understand life, death, consciousness and human experience using the knowledge and methods available to them.

Modern research gives us extraordinary tools with which to investigate some of those questions. It does not mean that every question has been answered, and it certainly does not mean that every spiritual interpretation has been scientifically established.

That space between what we know, what we believe, what we experience and what we are still trying to understand is exactly where I believe some of the most interesting conversations happen.

So I am not going to give you a convenient list at the end of this blog.

I'm going to give you something considerably more demanding.

A question.

What are you curious enough to research properly?

Find the subject. Read about it. Question it. Give yourself permission to disagree with what you find. Give yourself permission to change your mind as well.

Then, if you want to, come back and let's talk about it.

Because research does not begin and end with a Google search.