Mark Ireland has been a leader in the field of proving afterlife survival for a great many years. In fact, he is the son of the prominent 20th-century psychic medium Richard Ireland. Mark Ireland is the co-founder of Helping Parents Heal, which is an organization with more than 26,000 members that assists bereaved parents worldwide. And he has participated in mediumship research studies conducted by the University of Arizona and the University of Virginia. He currently operates a Medium Certification program. And he’s the author of Soul Shift, and The Persistence of the Soul, both available wherever books are sold. It is his remarkable The Persistence of the Soul that is the topic of this program. And Mark can be reached at Markirelandauthor.com.
Roberta Grimes is the host of Seek Reality Radio. She interviewed Mark about his book, Persistence of the Soul. The interview follows. A summary of the high points of the interview follows the video controls.
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Summary of the Interview
The Persistence of the Soul by Mark Ireland. I’d like to kind of suggest that people read that book because it’s a handy compendium of a number of things about how we test mediums. And you test mediums and you certify them, right?
Yes, that’s correct. And my primary goal there is not, I’m not trying to get articles in science journals or anything like that. I’m just trying to vet resources for people so that bereaved people who are typically pretty fragile have a trustworthy resource to go to. And there’s never any guarantee that a reading is going to be great, but it does increase the odds of a good session.
Why It’s Important to Use a Certified Medium
It was probably within a year of our son Brandon’s passing that a therapist we knew introduced us to another family who had gone through something similar. Their son had fallen into a reservoir and drowned got knocked out on the way in, and so they were pretty distraught and wanted to talk to other folks who had been through the same thing. And they asked, you know, how we were able to move forward and kind of continue in life in a positive way or as positive as possible. And we just said, you know, we had an understanding of there being something more, a level of faith and also knowledge and understanding, but that, you know, we had found that in addition to a lot of other things, that good reading from a quality medium was helpful to us.
Unfortunately, the mother got impatient and didn’t consult me for recommendations, because I knew some people I was going to steer her to. And she was driving down the road and saw this sign for a psychic reader and went into the shop. And the woman charged her X amount of money and then told her that her son was in some kind of holding place and that he was there with a mother-in-law who was kind of an evil person and there was a spell on him and all this garbage and that you know but for 400 she could undo the spell and she was just so distraught she left there and went home and cried and they said, “Yeah that was a mistake.”
How Do You Find Qualified Mediums?
So I just wanted other people to understand that and that’s why that chapter is in The Persistence of the Soul to really help people avoid that kind of thing and know where to go if you want to have a mediumship reading where you have a much better chance with somebody who’s got integrity and is operating from an ethical standpoint do not go to a sort of street corner medium and if some medium says that your loved one is in trouble but they can help the person get out of trouble just pay them a certain amount of money walk out the door, because that person is a crook. Yeah, I mean, there’s no such thing as that kind of problem. It just doesn’t exist. Yeah, I think the thing is, they’re getting somebody who’s in a really fragile state. And they’re not that person may not be thinking rationally or really be in a position to make a good judgment about something like that at the time.
So that, you know, that’s why I included that because I think I have, you have admit there are people in the field who are fraudulent. There are a lot who are not very good. That too. And that’s what I was going to say. I think there’s far more that aren’t very good or are more deluded and think they’re better at it than they are than there are frauds. But both of those can be harmful to people who are grieving. Right. So that’s why. There are some who are downright frauds and there are a lot who are not very good.
How Can You Find Out If a Medium Is Qualified?
I have a certified medium site, a site for my dad, and videos of him from the past that people might find interesting. I also have a link to Helping Parents Heal. But all those links can be found on my website, markirelandauthor.com. You’ll find links to the certified medium site, my dad’s videos, and a lot of other media and things.
Yeah. And just so people understand what the certification process entails, anyone applying for it has to go through five blinded readings conducted on Zoom with no video. They don’t know who they’re reading for until the time it starts and they’re only given a first name. Then they go through a five to 10-minute stretch of just giving anything they get. And then they’re asked a series of questions about one specific deceased person, first name only. And so we basically measure the accuracy of all the comments they make, not only accuracy, but how specific, how pertinent it is to that relationship between the person who passed and the sitter, as well as bonus statements that are highly specific and highly applicable to that relationship.
So that’s really how it goes. And it’s at this stage, it’s a very small percentage of people that are passing. So I think that’s actually a good thing because what it means is we’re getting better people in through the program that are certified and eliminating those who maybe have a little bit of it but aren’t quite good enough because, again, you’re dealing with people who are a bit fragile.
Medium Ability Runs in Families
One of the things about mediumship that we are discovering, and psychic ability in general, is that it runs in families. It’s hereditary. I’m pretty confident now that’s true. Before I wasn’t so sure, but we’ve interviewed quite a few people who have psychic ability now on Seek Reality, and almost always they have it in the family, many times on both sides, but almost always at least one parent has it, and your father had it, and it’s pretty clear you have that ability as well, and you have family members who have had this ability, which I is kind of exciting and fun. You have this hereditary
My father had it, his mother had it, his brother had it, and then on my mom’s side I had aunts who had it too. And these are all varying degrees. But nonetheless, I’d say that for me, it’s more of a guidance kind of thing, guiding my life to some extent. But I have not tried to practice it or, you know, become a full-time psychic or medium type person. I have had flashes of it that have been pretty surprising. You know, maybe someday I’ll be more interested in doing that. But I think I, like I said before, I still have a full-time job, I, the writing that I’ve been doing and the podcasting and shows are, have been more focused on taking this kind of journalistic approach that I felt was important to come across as detached observer, if you will, of the whole field and to be able to report on it in a fair and reasonable way.
So if tomorrow I said, okay, I’m going to fully develop this and I’m going to try and become a medium or something, then I probably couldn’t do that anymore, at least from the same approach. But yeah, it does run in family lines. I think that’s been validated by a number of different research institutions, like the Windbridge Research Center, for example, that it does run in family lines and whether that’s a biological component, a socialization thing, or just a spiritual thing, I can’t say, but it is true that it’s there. And even my son, it’s manifested with him too. I think more of the psychic stuff, you know.
What Happens When a Medium Receives Information
You kind of talk about it a little bit. You kind of get hunches. You get sudden awarenesses of things. Just the other day, I was talking to someone who I was talking about another friend who was, uh, who travels a lot for work and, uh, he said, “Oh, I’d like to invite her to, you know, this or that, but she’s, she’s in Asia all the time.” And I just said, “Kuala Lumpur.” And he goes, that’s where she is right now. It’s just a goofy thing. I mean, it’s, it’s meaningless, but why would I say Kuala Lumpur? And it didn’t come to me like in a vision or I didn’t hear it or whatever, it occurred to me to say Kuala Lumpur and that’s where she was of all places in Asia that I would see it at.
But in other cases it’s been a little more pronounced. I think the most predominant one or the most amazing one for me, and I don’t know if I mentioned this in our last one, if so I’m sorry for the redundancy, but I, for a three-year stint, I’ve been invited to go to speak at a spiritualist church in San Francisco called the Golden Gate Spiritualist Church. It was founded in 1924 by a woman named Florence Becker, who I heard was very similar in my dad and her abilities. She passed in 1970, and each of these three years that I would go there to do a talk, I brought a medium friend, Tina Powers, who lives in Tucson, and I would do a talk, and she would give readings to the congregation.
Now, this time, though, she wanted me to share a message. She said, “Mark, I think you’re going to get a message. Will you share it?” And I’m like, “Sure, I will.” And she kept pestering me about this repeatedly, even up until the day we go into the church and she’s like, “Mark, if you get a message, will you share it?” I’m like, “Yes.” So I went into their healing room, sat down and quieted my mind for a little bit. And while I was sitting there on the bench, a name came to me, Max, but then immediately Maxine. I said, oh, maybe it’s Maxine, not Max. Now, I didn’t see it. I didn’t hear it. It just came in like an idea or a thought would just float in.
So I gave my talk. And then at the end, I’m like, did the names Max or Maxine mean anything to anyone here? And then the church pastor, he’s like, whoa. He says, well, Max and Maxine were twins born to the church founder, Florence Becker. And they were delivered stillborn, but they grew up on the other side in spirit. He says that’s a secret only known to a few old-time church board members. He says I think we know who is here right now. And then afterward, he took me upstairs to show me this painting. It was a landscape. It had a long winding road with two little figures at the end. And he says, that’s Max and Maxine. So to get something that specific with two unusual names is pretty wild. But it also was a lesson for me because it was very subtle and I think that’s the nature of how this can work for us typically at least for me very subtle not loud not you know like the burning bush kind of thing but just a very subtle thing like a thought flows in or something like that.
Everyone Has an Innate Psychic Medium Ability
I have a hunch that this is a latent ability in everyone, but it’s just that people who have it in their background, in their DNA, just have it much more strongly. I mean, I think all of us can think of a moment in our lives when we got this, but we just don’t respond to it because it’s just not in our background to respond to it. But I think it’s something, I think it’s a human trait, but it’s just not in your heritage, it’s something that’s just a lot stronger. Yeah. I think there’s some truth in that. My dad would say everybody is psychic to some degree, but I think there’s how much they could develop it if they wanted to, or how much they recognize it. And we live in a society really, that’s very materialistic and doesn’t take these things seriously anyhow. So a lot of people don’t want to be embarrassed about trying to even admit having a belief in it, let alone ability with it. But I think it does vary in intensity and strength. And I think there’s something to do with the lineage piece of that.
A Skeptic Sends a Message Back from the Afterlife That He Was Alive
Someone persuaded a skeptic that if you survived your death, which would be a big surprise to you because you’re such a skeptic, will you let us know that? And he said, yes. And I think, I don’t remember the whole story in detail, but it was something about, if you do, let’s come up with something you’re going to say at your funeral. And it was something that came at the end of a commercial, something like, do you remember the phrase? I don’t remember the phrase. This was actually someone else’s story that I know. I just included it because I thought it was phenomenal. Yeah, I thought it was too. Her name is Lindsay, and her story had to do with her husband, who, I guess, is morbidly obese and, because of his health, passed at a fairly young age. But I’m trying to think of the exact phrase, but anyhow. She was like, and that’s the way it is or something like that. Yeah, from me to you or from my eyes to you or something like that, but basically what had happened was, so he was a non-believer, he was a skeptic, but he did promise her that if he did survive death that he would come through and make his presence known.
It was at the funeral service that a man, I think his name was Mahal, who was at the service but didn’t know anything about this. He, he felt compelled to stand up in the middle at some point and say, well, he, he’s here right now and he has a message for you. And then it was from like a Pillsbury commercial, I think from, from my heart to yours. And he did the motion and the words exactly as the husband used to do to her all the time. He would say from my heart to yours or something along those lines, but he did the exact thing. So this, this guy who is was psychic stood up in the end, and he spread his arms and he said, “From my heart to yours.” Well, if ever there was proof of an afterlife, this skeptic guy gave it to his wife at his own funeral.
Why Hasn’t Science Accepted the Proof of Life After Death?
Well, first off, science never really, from my understanding, never accepts something as proven. They’ll say about the evidence, No, that’s crap. You could have a row of Albert Einsteins and you could have them return from the afterlife and skeptics would still say it’s not proven. No, I agree. And that’s where I was going to say, you’ll never be able to do that to their satisfaction. So I’ve long felt like I used to try and argue against skeptics, and I even have a chapter in the book about the skeptics and the mindset.
But I think I’ve gone to the point of just saying, you know, it’s going to be a grassroots thing to bring about change because scientific materialism, so deeply embedded in academia, and in culture on the whole, that to overturn that is it’s a very difficult proposition,
You know, you can’t change somebody’s mind. They have to be open to changing it. And usually I think that comes about by virtue of a personal direct experience. So some of these folks, if they had an experience that was compelling enough, then maybe that would shift their thinking. I don’t think it can. Maybe not. It’s their loss, you know, really, it’s, it’s a shame for them. Well, the saddest part is not just for them, but the false gospel that they spread, you know, false gospel, which makes other people fear death and mourn their loved ones in such a way that it just tears them apart. So, that’s the byproduct of that mindset, and trying to sell that to other people, it’s a depressing philosophy.
I can still remember what it was like to finally really, really get it and understand, “Yes, it’s like the door opens, and you suddenly realize you really don’t ever die.” Suddenly, there’s no ceiling, there’s no door, everything, the horizon is forever.
What Brought You to Realize the Truth of Life After Death?
I think from growing up with my dad, it was instilled in me at a young age that there was more; I could see that through the demonstrations he did and giving messages to people that he didn’t know with a lot of details, names, nature of relationships and things like that. So as a kid, I’m like, wow, there really is more, you know, it’s not just this. And so, but as far as a direct personal experience, I’d say that the closest that I can comment is I, it was a year after my son, Brandon, passed that I had a direct out-of-body experience with him meeting him in a place that was like a three-walled white room. And he was sitting on the, like what would be a countertop to it, but it really was not a physical place, I don’t think. It was more probable for me, but it was a three-walled glowing white room with him there. And it was more real than waking reality. And where the third wall should have been infinity. It was like the rest of the universe. It was just a, I felt like it was a meeting spot in the middle place between us. Ironically, just a couple of months ago, I read page 189, I think it was, of Soul Smart. The author, Susanne Wilson, wrote that she had the exact same experience in a three-walled white room and with the fourth wall missing where it was infinity, the rest of the universe. So that was pretty cool to read, not only to know she had the same experience, you know, confirming mine even more.
Everybody Gets to Lose Their Fear of Death in a Different Way
I think everybody gets there a different way. Hopefully, for most people, they do get there because to live in fear of death, your whole life is a drag on your reason for being here. You’re not really living. When you really get it, it’s just suddenly there’s no there’s infinity, there’s no end. What a joyous feeling this is. Yeah. And look at all the near-death experience accounts and how similar some of them are. And the feeling that people have they’re almost universal. Now there’s some that aren’t this way, but a lot of them, you know, they have this deep, pervading feeling of love beyond any love they’ve ever felt in a physical body. You know, colors that you can’t even describe don’t exist there. And then just this sense of joyfulness. So yeah, I think those all give us a hint as to what our future entails.
But we’re here now for a reason, I think. So it’s important to see that through and be of service and to grow yourself while you’re here. No, I mean, we are here. You and I are here to help other people understand what’s really true about reality. We’re here to teach, you and I.
Evidence of Life After Death from Reincarnation Accounts
The research done by Ian Stevenson and subsequently by Bruce Grayson and Jim Tucker at the University of Virginia pertaining to reincarnation really says, you know, there, the evidence is very strong, and it involves kids up to maybe age six or seven at the oldest. And then they kind of become socialized and forget those memories. I don’t remember them now. But my dad had this detailed conversation with me. And I was just answering questions, bam, bam, bam, without hesitation. So that, I guess tells me that, you know, we’ve been here a lot longer than we think we’re more than just even in the Gospels, Jesus talked about reincarnation. Everybody reincarnates repeatedly. You’re not just Roberta. I’m not just Mark. That’s our present identity, but we’re much more than that.
We Come into This Life with a Blueprint
You know, we come into this life with a blueprint kind of a path. And so when things line up, and things are going properly, we’re probably in that path, and we haven’t varied from it too far. So even though we don’t necessarily have vivid memories that come to the forefront, even though people may have periods of deja vu, or a young child, they may remember things from before. I think we have this kind of guidance in our life, and it steers us wherever we’re supposed to go, and we meet the people we’re supposed to meet, and things that seem coincidental just seem to happen, but they’re maybe more synchronistic. I’ve definitely seen that in my life, especially since the passing of my son, and that would involve the people I’ve met who are in the field of mediumship research, mediums themselves, meeting Elizabeth Boyson and the founding of Helping Parents Heal, all these kinds of things.
I remember back, I have a chapter in my first book, Soul Shift, where I had a reading from Linda Williamson, who’s a prominent medium in England. And during that, and this was back 20 years ago almost, she was telling me about how I would be involved in the formation of a huge organization that would have a worldwide impact and all this, and all I had to do was be myself and tell my truth. People would be drawn naturally and all this, and at the time I’m like, what? What are you talking about? And lo and behold, look what unfolded. It is an organization with 26,000 members, 165 affiliate chapters worldwide, and a conference every other year that draws a thousand people. It’s pretty amazing to think about.
So those kinds of things tell me, okay, there was a plan here. And I remember her also, because I was getting impatient back then, like, when is this stuff going to happen? You know, this is taking forever. And she did tell me, she goes, these things happen not all, don’t always happen in the timeframe we would like, or we think they should. They happen in their own time. Yeah, exactly. So I guess I’ve learned to back off and just relax a little bit and just figure things will fall into place. And many of them have.
As hard as it was for my family and me, I do tend to think it was my son Brandon’s time when he left this life. He was 18. But he fit the characteristics of what you’d call an old soul in terms of his level of compassion and empathy, simplicity of living, not being hung up on how he was perceived by other people, befriending kids that were not popular, or seeing those kids that maybe who were depressed or needed more of a friendship, didn’t have friends and things like that. And a lot of the other parents I’ve talked to whose kids passed away at a young age have a lot of these same characteristics. So I don’t know that he needed to be here that long. I think maybe he was here to set an example and to be a catalyst for all of this stuff to happen, just like maybe some of the other kids too.
I do recall, on two occasions, my father addressing Brandon and looking at him in a funny way where I thought my dad knew something he was not telling me. Now I never asked my dad, “Dad, is there something going on here that I don’t understand?” I never did that, and I would imagine if he did know Brandon was going to pass at a young age, he wouldn’t have said anything to me because it would just tear my heart out and make me worry every day and try and prevent you know. Yeah. Yeah, some gifts are very hard to receive, but that doesn’t mean they’re not gifts in a way. Yeah. And I still get, because I know so many mediums now, I’m getting messages. Every time I see one of them, they’ll say, this from your dad, or this from Brandon, and that kind of thing. So it’s pretty interesting.
I just had Molly, who’s a medium friend of mine who lives in Wisconsin, she said, “Oh, your dad’s showing me your granddaughter waving a wand and performing magic.” Well, that’s my almost six-year-old granddaughter, Lily. She loved the movie Frozen. And there’s this Queen Elsa in there that performs magic and waves a wand. So that’s exactly what she had been doing. Oh, of course.
Another one, Farrah Gibson, recently. I had not met her before until this dinner. I was meeting her and Michelle Clare, another medium friend, and so I brought up Brandon. I showed Farrah a picture of Brandon, and I mentioned that he played bass guitar. And she says, oh, he said, but he says that his new one, his new bass had an extra string. Well, that was true. His original bass was a four-string bass. And then, for his last birthday, when he turned 18, just months before he passed, he wanted a five-string bass, and we bought him a five-string bass. So that’s a pretty obscure piece of information. And then she went on to say, he shows you that you were, like I see taking all the strings off the guitar and restringing it. Well, just a couple of days prior, I’d been in Prescott, Arizona, with a friend, and she was walking downtown with me after a hike. And we went into a music store, and she asked the guy, “Oh, do you restring guitars?” And he’s like, “Oh yeah.” I said, “You don’t need to do that. I’ll do it for you.” So I bought her a set of strings and I restrung that guitar. I took all the strings off and put new ones on. So I get these little connections all the time, so it’s nice. I mean, it’s been a long time, but I still say a prayer for him every night, and I think about him every day. I feel like he’s part of my life.
Hopefully, people won’t fear death and understand there’s more so they can live fully now and not be consumed by that fear or debilitating grief over the passing of a loved one. So that’s, that’s it. You know, how people get there’s going to differ. But if this is all new to somebody, or they’re skeptical, they can read books about these phenomena, whether it’s near-death experience stuff by like a book by Dr. Bruce Grayson, or Eben Alexander, or on the mediumship, like my books, or others, there’s a number of different phenomena that are suggestive, provide a lot of evidence for this. And when you put them all together, it’s a very compelling body of evidence. So just enjoy life, live it. You’re here for a reason. Enjoy life and live it and you’re here for a reason. And it’s a wonderful, wonderful reason.
Mark Ireland talks about the truth that we are eternal beings having a physical experience. He describes the persistence of the soul.
