Life in Afterlife with Stafford Betty (4K Reboot)

Summary

Religion professor Stafford Betty discusses his novel The Afterlife Therapist, a fictional journey through the afterlife built on decades of research into spirit communications received through mediums. He describes an astral world much like our own, where the newly dead take on youthful bodies, choose unpaid work, and grow spiritually, while earthbound spirits and self-made shadow realms trap those bound by addiction. The conversation ranges from rescuing Henry VIII from a 500-year imaginary kingdom to competing souls choosing reincarnation and saints visiting from higher heavens.

Key takeaways

• 1Betty's novel The Afterlife Therapist follows Aidan, a marriage and family counselor who dies at 85 and works in the astral world, partly as a rescuer of earthbound spirits.
• 2Betty credits Richard Matheson's 1978 novel What Dreams May Come as the only other novel he knows of that draws on the full spiritualist afterlife research, including a glossary of sources.
• 3Brazilian medium Chico Xavier's Nosso Lar, said to be dictated by a deceased physician using the name Andre Luiz, closely matches Betty's vision of the afterlife.
• 4Betty claims that earthbound alcoholic spirits attach themselves to heavy drinkers in bars and encourage them to drink more.
• 5In the novel, Henry VIII has ruled an imagined shadow city with thousands of followers for 500 years before Aidan helps him move into the light.
• 6Real figures appear as characters, including Huston Smith (Betty's teacher at a 1987 NEH summer class in Berkeley), the bodhisattva Ti-tsang, and Gregory of Nyssa, the 4th-century saint who taught endless progress 'from glory to glory'.
• 7Mishlove notes that Emanuel Swedenborg described visits to other planets, which inspired the novel's chapter on helping build an afterworld for another planet.

Glossary terms

Source

Transcript excerpt

One of his callings is to descend into the world of the shadows and try to help those who are caught up in their various earth addictions. Usually that's what lands a person into one of these shadowy worlds out of those addictions. It's not easy work and it's often frustrating. And many of the souls simply reject the efforts of these so-called, I call them missionary spirits, to help them free themselves from an environment that they think they enjoy. They don't really enjoy it, but they fear the light even more because the light stings them. They hated anything to do with religion or God or spirituality in earth life. Why should they suddenly discover, oh, it's nice. Now I'm ready to move on into the light. It's not that way. We come into the world with our personalities and our affiliations intact, for better or for worse. Keep watching to learn more. New Thinking Allowed is presented by the California Institute for Human Science, a fully accredited university offering distant learning graduate degrees that focus on mind, body, and spirit. The topics that we cover here. We are particularly excited to announce new degrees emphasizing parapsychology and the paranormal. Visit their website at cihs.edu. The New Thinking Allowed Magazine, issue 10, on UFOs and UAP is now ready for free download, and you can also order beautiful printed copies. Go to newthinkingallowed.org. Book 4 in the new Thinking Allowed Dialogue Series is Charles T. Tartt, 70 Years of Exploring Consciousness and Parapsychology. Now available on Amazon. The New Thinking Allowed Magazine, the New Thinking Allowed, conversations on the leading edge of knowledge and discovery with psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove. Hello and welcome. I'm Jeffrey Mishlove. ...

Excerpt from New Thinking Allowed, Aug 27, 2026. Rights remain with the original creators. Hear the full episode at the source.