Marshall Pease always emphasized that life consisted of choices, and a non-choice was a choice. On June 3, 2001 Marshall Pease, FMBR Board Member and Newsletter Editor, with his family gathered around, chose to personally disconnect his life support equipment and leave the Ice domain to enter the Fire domain. Before he died Marshall completed his book on the Norse mythology of Fire and Ice and its relationship to our world. In Marshall's words: "The fundamental assumption is that we, each of us, is what I call a Fire spirit who has chosen to incarnate in this world -- the Ice domain -- in order to explore the possibilities of identity."

In the 1960's while a volunteer in Government sponsored LSD research, Marshall made a deliberate decision to explore the deeper meaning of death. In his autobiography about this experience Marshall wrote this conclusion: "Life requires change, to be life. But change means that that which was, ceases to be. Therefore life requires death. Without death there can be no change; and without change, no life. Death is not only essential to life. It is life, viewed from the other side. They are a single coin. They are the same, one signifying the passing of what was, the other the coming of the future."

After Marshall's death I received a phone call from Adrienne Juliano, a sensitive and channeler. On the following page is an account of her "message" from Marshall. How does one interpret such communications? The last paper that Bob Shacklett and I wrote before Bob's passing was What Science Can and Can't Say About Spirits. The question of the existence of spirits is one that mainline science has painstakingly avoided. The belief in the existence of a spirit world has been a staple element of the human race over thousands of years. What is the research evidence that there might exist a continuity of life after death? There has been more than a century's investigation of channeling and apparitions including work by top physical scientists such as Sir William Crookes and Sir Oliver Lodge and doctors such Arthur Conan Doyle, M.D. the author of the "Sherlock Holmes" stories.

More recent supporting evidence comes indirectly from the field of thanatology, the scientific study of death and dying. A related area of research that supports the existence of a possible afterlife is out-of-body experiences (OBE's) and especially near-death experiences (NDE's). A recent study of heart attack patients found evidence that consciousness may continue after the brain has stopped functioning and a patient is clinically dead. Studies of comatose patients offers another area of support. Reincarnation research also implies the possible existence of a spirit world. Ivan Stevenson, M.D., has done rigorous research on persons from areas of the world where reincarnation is an accepted belief for over 30 years. He has collected 2,600 reported cases of children who claim to remember a previous life. Last but not least is the research starting in the 1950's using electronic devices to purportedly receive information from the spirit level. This "instrumental communication" research started with recordings on magnetic tape, moved to two way communication via radio like equipment, then to telephone, television, FAX machines, and computers (see www.worlditc.org). Each of the research areas mentioned above are considered controversial. However, when taken in aggregate, Bob and I believe that they justify a serious consideration by science, and therefore have proposed a model that includes the world of spirit in a scientific framework. We all wish Marshall well in his life after life.

William C. Gough, Sep 2001