As a non provable data point, I once had a well respected psychic explain to me that the "soul" (that organized system of energy having our recorded "experience" or sentience) enters the body sometimes well after a baby has been born. Further, she explained, that on some occasions, a body is not selected or taken for use. She credited some of the cases of SIDS to this. She appearantly has been able to see peoples aura's since a child and she further claims to be in contact with spirits and "guides" who are not currently living in the physical. In a reading she gave my first wife, without prompting, she told my then wife that her father was there in spirit. She went on to describe the surrounds of where my first wife's father had died. She went on to describe some rocks and kelp. My first wife, 13 at the time went on a scuba dive of the family's boat with her father and a local diver off Baha. They all agreed to meet at the anchor. The father never came to the anchor and his body was never found. Needless to say, this was a trama for my first wife that she is still likely dealing with. The psychic, to the best of my knowledge, had no idea or knowledge of this "episode". She told my first that her father (she named him), wanted her to know that everything was OK.
According to this same psychic, when a person is near theend of their physical life, the aura she sees shrinks and in fact will disapear completely prior to death; sometimes by a matter of days. Some physicians of terminal patients have used her on consultations for her "take" on a patient's state of affairs.
Whenever I had a chance to talk to her, I was always full of doubt and questions. She told my mother that she enjoyed our exchanges. This woman claims to be able to look at a black and white photograph and see auras as well as other things that "normal" people don't see. One of her students once showed her a clipping of a family posed together and asked her if she recognized the people in the photograph. She didn't but asked the student if this family was still alive. The reason she asked, she explained to me, was that she sees the aura of the person as it was at the time the photo was taken and not the condition of the aura at present. In this particular clipping, none of the people pictured had a life aura present. The student explained to this psychic that the photograph had been taken of a family a few days prior to them being gunned down by a "random" shooter. The psychic told me this story and then suggested that I consider if the shooting was in actuality, random. She suggested that contrary to conventional wisdom and social convention, that the shooter perhaps had sacrificed his well being in this life as an "agent" of some "higher" program. He was simply the means by which this group of people were able to exit their present incarnations. Now I realize that this is all out there in left field and complete hearsay. Anyone reading this has no experience with me or the people I have mentioned. I have no proof of veracity nor do I take any of this as pure fact. I also have a strong conviction in the character of this psychic and I have no reason to believe there was any reason for fabrication. For me personally, this is more real and subject to consideration than old text originating from sources unknown to me. If this psychic can perceive the things she claims, then I have hope that these perceptions can be perceived by equipment made by man at some point and possibly mapped and/or understood to some extent, if not verified. I do trust and believe that even though I can't see radio waves or light of frequencies beyond the visible, these levels and waves of energy do exist and in fact, with tools, have been put to use and demonstrated.
I am confident that with advances in technology, new discoveries will be made and with them more questions will be formed. However, even though there will always be questions, the base of knowledge is sure to grow and at some point it may well be accepted, beyond an act of faith, that there is some hand or being behind the creation. Further, it might just be demonstrated that some part of us does trancend the physical. I would further suggest that if there is a propensity of benevolence in the universe, such discoveries and information will likely surface at a time when man, more or less, is at a position in his "growth" to accept such knowledge and not abuse or misuse it.
For the survival of mankind as a species, I propose that a well based "fear of God" is much more likely to insure survival than a society bankrupt of any moral or ethical constructs; something possible if it were widely accepted that there is no accountability required for ones actions. I suspect that many fear the latter and will embrace the former as a means, regardless of what they might actually believe. When a person, especially in power, seems to behave as they consider themselves "above the rules", it is likely that they *do* consider themselves either above the rules or that the rules are ultimately arbitrary.