Signs From Spirit: Are They Real Or Are We Making Something Out Of Nothing?
How a Review of Tara Swart's book The Signs: The New Science of How to Trust Your Instincts got me thinking...
I first heard about Dr. Tara Swart through her YouTube appearances discussing intuition and signs from the universe. As a medium, I was curious about her latest book, The Signs: The New Science of How to Trust Your Instincts (2025). Before adding another validation-of-spirituality book to my reading list, I checked the reviews. That’s when I came across a comment that got me thinking—and researching a topic I’d never explored in a meaningful way.
A reviewer pointed out that Swart’s book (despite being written by a neuroscientist) doesn’t engage with research by Professor Iris Berent on cognitive biases. Why does this matter? Turns out Berent’s work directly challenges how we interpret signs and spiritual experiences by suggesting these perceptions arise from built-in psychological biases rather than actual metaphysical phenomena.
Before we dive in, I want to say that I believe in signs from Spirit. I’ve experienced them and I know that many of you have too. My intention here is to intentionally engage studies and views that challenge this belief, because I believe it’s important to explore all perspectives. In doing so we engage critical thinking, and we learn!
What The Signs Doesn’t Address
Dr. Tara Swart is a neuroscientist, medical doctor, and Senior Advisor for Neuroscience and Leadership at MIT Sloan School of Management. In The Signs, she draws on her personal grief after losing her husband to leukemia, alongside cognitive science, to argue that synchronicities are not random chance. She teaches readers to trust their intuition, recognize signs as guidance from the universe, and use neuroplasticity to rewire the brain to notice these signs.
The book has been critiqued by the Society for Psychical Research for avoiding “the very questions that psychical research exists to ask.” But the critique that led me to this deep dive came from a different direction—Swart doesn’t engage with cognitive bias research that might challenge the whole framework of her book, including:
Confirmation bias - our tendency to notice and remember things that confirm our beliefs
Pattern recognition - our brain’s evolved tendency to find meaningful patterns even in random data
Apophenia - seeing connections between unrelated things
The psychological need for meaning - especially during grief and stress
Iris Berent’s research - showing that our perception of consciousness as special may itself be rooted in how our brains categorize minds versus bodies
Swart uses neuroscience terminology to make spiritual experiences feel scientifically validated, but she doesn’t engage with research that might complicate that validation. I want to take a different approach and honestly engage with the challenges, including the cognitive science that questions whether spiritual and intuitive experiences mean what we think they mean.
Who Is Iris Berent and Why Should You Care?
Iris Berent is a cognitive psychologist at Northeastern University who studies how our minds naturally categorize the world. Her research on afterlife beliefs and dualism brings up an important question: What if our certainty that consciousness can survive death isn’t based on reality—but on the way our brains are wired to think?
What Berent does NOT study: She doesn’t research mediumship, psychic abilities, or spiritual intuition directly. She studies the cognitive biases - automatic thought patterns everyone has— that might make us believe in these things.
Berent’s Core Argument
Philosophers and scientists talk about “the hard problem of consciousness.” When you stub your toe, scientists can measure everything physical: nerve signals, electrical impulses, neuron activation, chemical releases.
But here’s the puzzle: Why is there also the actual EXPERIENCE of pain? Why does it FEEL like something to be you?
Berent’s claim: Maybe this isn’t a mystery about consciousness. Maybe it’s a mystery about US —about how our brains are wired to think.
Berent argues this split between mind and body isn’t based on reality. It’s based on two automatic mental patterns:
Essentialism: We naturally believe things have invisible “essences” that make them what they are. We apply this same thinking to people: there’s something invisible inside that makes you YOU.
Dualism: We instinctively categorize minds and bodies as fundamentally different categories. Bodies are physical objects. Minds are... something else. This happens automatically, without us thinking about it.
These aren’t beliefs you chose. They’re built into how your brain processes information, like wearing invisible glasses you’ve had since birth.
Here’s the key insight from Berent’s research: Our sense that consciousness is mysterious changes depending on what we’re comparing it to.
Imagine asking someone: “Could you have all the physical brain processes - neurons firing, chemicals releasing - without any felt experience? Could you be a perfect physical copy of a person but with nobody home inside?”
Most people say: “Yes, that seems possible.” Consciousness feels like something EXTRA beyond the physical.
But now ask the same person: “When you experience seeing red for the first time, does that change your brain physically?”
Same person answers: “Of course it does! That’s what brains do - they process experiences.”
Wait—is consciousness separate from the physical or not? The person just gave contradictory answers.
This inconsistency is the clue. It suggests we’re not perceiving consciousness accurately. We’re perceiving it through cognitive biases that make us categorize minds as “different from” bodies, even though we also know minds depend on bodies.
Why This Matters
Berent doesn’t study mediumship or signs. But her work raises questions I need to sit with including:
When I feel certain that consciousness continues after death, how much of that certainty comes from accurately perceiving reality, and how much comes from built-in cognitive biases? Can I even tell the difference?
When I see repeating numbers or a meaningful bird appears at just the right moment, am I perceiving actual guidance from the universe - or is my brain finding patterns and assigning meaning where there might be only randomness?
The feeling of connection I experience during readings - that sense of a presence, a personality, a consciousness reaching through - could that feeling itself be generated by my dualistic bias?
I can’t help but wonder if the strong intuitive certainty I experience when I’m working or experiencing “signs” isn’t proof - maybe it’s just my brain’s categorization system doing its job. YIKES!
That said, these questions make evidential accuracy more important to me than ever. I can’t just rely on the feeling of connection (though I still feel this is incredibly important to my work), I must also provide evidence—such as specific names, verifiable details, facts I couldn’t have known through normal means.
For signs and synchronicities, I going to need to be more conscientious. The cognitive bias explanation handles these well - they’re subjective, interpretive, and exactly the territory where pattern-recognition and meaning-making would operate strongest.
Lastly, it’s okay that science can’t fully explain mediumship, psychism, signs, near death experiences and other spiritual experiences. It’s also okay that we believe in them and feel they are healing, supportive, and miraculous because they are!
Where the Bias Explanation Struggles
Berent’s work has different implications for different phenomena. Let me be honest about where I think the bias explanation works—and where it doesn’t.
For signs and synchronicities, I think the cognitive bias research is genuinely challenging. When I see repeating numbers or a meaningful bird, I can’t prove that’s not my pattern-seeking brain at work. I hold these experiences differently now—with more openness to the possibility that some might be bias and some might be real guidance. The way I tell the difference is something I’ll have to work on.
But evidential mediumship is different territory.
The Evidence Problem
Berent’s research might explain why humans have historically believed in an afterlife, but it doesn’t explain the specific, verifiable, repeatable phenomena that occur in evidential mediumship sessions including:
Specific information I couldn’t know: When I provide a deceased person’s nickname that only the family used, and I’ve never met this family before, what am I actually accessing? “Your grandmother sends love” could be bias. “She’s showing me the yellow bird statue she kept on her kitchen windowsill” is different.
Physical details: When I describe a specific object hidden in someone’s home that relates to their loved one, where is that information coming from?
Convergent evidence: When multiple unrelated mediums provide consistent information about the same deceased person, how do we explain that convergence?
Post-death knowledge: When I share details about events that happened after the person’s death - information the deceased couldn’t have “known” while alive in the traditional sense - what mechanism allows this?
The cognitive bias explanation might account for the feeling that consciousness survives, but it doesn’t explain how specific verifiable information emerges. It’s like explaining a car by only describing the driver’s expectations about transportation—you’re not actually addressing how the engine works.
Both Things Can Be True
What if both things are true? What if:
We DO have cognitive biases that make us naturally perceive consciousness as mysterious (Berent is right about this)
AND consciousness genuinely continues after death in a way we don’t yet understand
AND understanding our biases helps us distinguish genuine connections from projection or wishful thinking
This isn’t anti-science. It’s acknowledging that our current scientific models may be incomplete. Just as physics once couldn’t explain quantum entanglement until we developed new frameworks, perhaps we need new models to understand consciousness after death.
Questions for Reflection
Have you experienced synchronicities or signs that felt too specific to be coincidence?
How do you distinguish between wishful thinking and genuine intuition?
What would it mean for your spiritual practice if some experiences were cognitive bias and others were genuine connection?
On that note, have you experienced a sign from Spirit? If so, I’d love to hear all about it. Leave a comment, send me a message, or email them to me at emily@bloomingwand.com.