Is there life and existence after physical death?

Profound and meaningful words resound in my ears and mind whenever I go to a funeral or see the funeral hearse carrying a casket. “We were like you; you will be like us.” This saying is a popular inscription on tombstones that some people prefer to write. The very thought that one day we will be one more on this earth can horrify or maybe excite us.Every human person at one point and time stops for a moment and asks oneself a question, is there life after physical death? There are so many novels, poems, and also eyewitness accounts written and told on this subject. A classic example is the famous “Divine Comedy” by Dante Alighieri. I think it is the power of people’s and my curiosity, and the desire to live forever, that makes us often reflect on life after death. I have been brought up as Orthodox Christian. During my catechisms instructions, I learned about eternal life. When a human being dies, the human soul is separated from the body and continues to live. The souls of good people go to heaven, and souls of bad ones go to hell. I know that not every religion teaches the same doctrine. In my research, I would like to learn what other faiths say about the afterlife. I want to compare these different doctrines and see how they vary as well as how they similar. In addition to the teachings of the world’s religions on the above subject, there are also many personal accounts of near-death experiences. This is an excellent source of information for me, as well. I would also like to collect these stories and compare them and find out if they are similar. I do not know what I will find in my studies and what I will do, but I am definitively curious to learn more about this topic. Will that challenge my Christian believes? Will I change the view in the afterlife? I hope I will not change what I believed until now. I think maybe the opposite. My intense research and studies will only confirm what I feel now about life after death. As I already mentioned, the sources or references in my studies will be the teachings of major religious traditions and personal stories of the people about the question of life after death. “Memmento Mori,”  remember of death, the wise words to reflect upon and to live by them.

An Interview with Dinesh D’Souza on Life After Death: The Evidence. December 11, 2009.

(https://catholicexchange.com/an-interview-with-dinesh-dsouza-on-life-after-death-the-evidence)

Dinesh D’Souza is known for his public debates with atheists, especially with Christopher Hitchens. These debates provoked him to write the book “Life After Death: the Evidence,” in which he provides the reasons to maintain the belief or rather conviction that the death of the body is not the end of all. Another reason for writing that book was his reaction towards the breed of atheists that not merely deny the reality of the divine and, subsequently, the existence of afterlife. In the words of D’Souza, these new atheists do not simply think that religious belief is wrong. In fact, especially after 9/11 they think that these believes our downright evil, so they act indignant and belligerent. Other issues influencing the author was strange out of body experience of his wife and also the experience of his friend that was diagnosed with cancer. This sickness changed that man’s priorities. He maintained that “the normalcy of our everyday life is a sham, that we live in the pretense that we are not going to die.” The author also mentions the Muslim thinker Al-Ghazali, who is the original source for Pascal’s wager. One of the associates of the Muslim prophet Mohammad once engaged in a debate with an atheist. Finally he said, “Ultimately it’s a practical question. If you are right, then none of us is the worse for it. But if we are right, then we shall escape and you will suffer.” I certainly subscribe to this view. If there is no afterlife, than what we do in life does not matter. It is then completely irrelevant whether we our good and virtuous people behaving morally or if we are evil. If our earthly life is all there is, than either moral or immoral behavior has no consequences. If there is no immortal soul that survives the body’s death, then it does not matter what the body does. The absence of an afterlife poses not only a metaphysical problem of ceasing to exist after the inevitable death of the body, but also an especially egregious moral one. What is the point of existence, then? Why do we live here on earth? Where are we coming from, and where do we ultimately go? What is the point of our laws, of our rules of conduct or of the justice system in general? Without the existence of life after death our existence is truly meaningless. The type of genre involves dialog—a mutual exchange of questions and answers. This can be considered as an original source in scholarly research. This type of genre has more weight and more reliable.

“Proof of Heaven” by Eben Alexander, 2012.

Eben Alexander is an American neurosurgeon. He is famous as the author of the autobiographical book “Proof of Heaven,” in which he relates his near-death experience.  As a neurosurgeon, he studied the most advanced medical treatments, especially those pertaining to stereotaxic radiosurgery, which allows the doctor to scrutinize a given part of the brain. He was also one of the pioneers of using Magnetic Resonance Tomography to study the brain. He knew that the human brain is a mechanism that produces consciousness. Consequently, if the brain is destroyed, consciousness should disappear as well. This is the basic axiom of neuroscience. However, something happened that made him change his mind. Due to a rare case of E. coli bacterial meningitis, he went into a coma. His brain, specifically his neocortex, stopped functioning. It means that, according to science, his consciousness should have disappeared completely. Instead, he experienced a very profound state, known as the near-death experience. He definitely heard about this state before from patients who suffered cardiac arrest, but he dismissed it as some sort of fairy tale. In his book, Dr. Alexander says, “During my coma my brain wasn’t working improperly, it wasn’t working at all.” Basically, he acknowledges that the brain is not in and of itself the ultimate source of consciousness. It is just an instrument that connects it to the body, to the physical realm. I completely agree with him. Even today, in the 21st century, no one really knows what consciousness is. Despite our great advances in biology and medicine, and in fundamental science such as physics, consciousness remains a mystery. It cannot be simply reduced to the material world, to the function of the brain. It seems to transcend physical reality. It is something that places human beings apart from the rest of nature. Our intellect makes us fundamentally different than the rest of the animal kingdom. It is really unbelievable that humans can ponder the questions of existence, can study how the universe works. In fact, mathematics, which is a human invention, explains the world in which we live, which is supposed to be an objective reality, with the utmost precision. How can that be? Perhaps, the material world is not all there is. Perhaps there is a spiritual realm that our senses cannot grasp under ordinary circumstances. Perhaps our brains are simply tools connecting our bodies to a different, non-physical, or spiritual reality. The genre is a more scholarly work. This is an excellent source for academics to go deeper into the subject matter.

Dr. Raymond Moody “I’m convinced Consciousness Survives” (https://youtu.be/jVRr39knLZs). Now 1, 2018.

Dr. Moody is an American medical doctor and psychologist. He is known especially for his bestseller book, “Life after life.” He was one of the first to study near-death experiences and was, in fact, the one who coined the actual term of NDE. In this video presentation, Dr. Raymond Moody says that he is not a believer at all. He has no affiliation with any religion. Instead, Moody is a philosopher, more specifically a linguistic logician. He admits in the video presentation, “to hear a statement God exists or life after death exists, sounds the same, as tomorrow will be Monday. The question of faith in God does not make any sense to him. Doctor Moody mentions his first time hearing about life after death when he was a philosophy student at Virginia State University and read Plato’s work. The philosopher says about a person who returned from death to life. Later on in life, while studying psychology, he met a person who told him how he was in a car accident and had a near-death experience. The person described going through a tunnel toward a most beautiful life, seeing friends who died a long time ago, also seeing a panoramic view of everything he ever has done is life. After this experience, he never feared death again. Last but not least, professor Moody was in Italy for a psychology seminar, and his friend professor of psychology shared a story of his NDE. He told him how he saw his body in an operation room and how doctors tried to resuscitate him. They thought they already lost him, but he knew he was not dead; he attempted to let know doctors, but they did not hear him. Now, this gets very bizarre. He went to his wife, who was waiting in a hospital corridor, and she saw him somehow and ran to the doctors and said, do something; he is not dead. After so many personal stories, professor Moody said he started to think there must be life after death. In the video, he concludes: “the primary reality is not a body but the conscience that survives.” I am very much amazed by the presentation of Professor Moody. He is not a practicing believer such as Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, yet he expresses a significant interest in the religious question if there us life after death. I think Dr. Moody is on the right path in his question about life after death. I firmly believe that truth is objective. When something is real, science and religion must confirm it. Human beings need both of them. Great 20th-century theologian and philosopher John Paul II, the Pope of Rome, wrote: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; (Fides at Ratio, Pope John Paul II,  14 September 1998). I think that the author used the genre to reach a large audience and educate them more efficiently. I think that some people prefer to learn through a video presentation.

“How different religions view the Afterlife” by Victor Zammit, 2001.

https://www.victorzammit.com/articles/religions3.html.

Victor James Zammit was Australian psychology and lawyer. He is known as the author of the book ”Lawyer Presents the Evidence for the Afterlife.” In his article, “How different religions view the afterlife,” Victor J. Zammit gives a straight-to-point summary of Christianity, Buddism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Spiritualism about the afterlife. The article is straightforward to read and understand. All the religions mentioned above confirm in their way the idea of the afterlife. Here is the summary of the teachings of these different religions. In Christianity, the soul of a person who dies goes immediately to one of the three places: heaven, hell, or purgatory. Purgatory is a temporary state, but heaven and hell are the permanent states of the human soul. The Buddhist idea of the afterlife is very different from Christian doctrine. The goal of every Buddhist is to achieve a nirvana state. Nirvana means extinction. Nirvana can be achieved through overcoming passions and desires because they trap human beings in the cycle of rebirth and reincarnation. The author Zannit writes: “Following death, according to Tibetan Buddhism, the spirit of the departed goes through a process lasting forty-nine days that is divided into three stages called “bardos.” At the conclusion of the bardo, the person either enters nirvana or returns to earth for rebirth.” The idea of the afterlife in Judaism and Islam is similar to the Christian concept of the afterlife. Both Jews and Muslims believe that righteous people’s souls go to heaven and of the bad to a place of punishment. Muslims also believe in purgatory; Jews, on the other hand, according to Zannit’s: “Orthodox Jews can believe that demons of their own creation torment the souls of the wicked or that wicked souls are simply destroyed at death, ceasing to exist.” In Hinduism, the teaching of the afterlife is very elaborated. Let us first define important terms. Atman means the deep self of an individual human being. Brahma is an unchanging godhead like the divinity or god. Samsara is an unhappy world of death and rebirth. What keeps the people trapped in the samsara is the law of karma. Good deeds return as a reward and evil deeds as a punishment. Moksha is the state in which the individual self is released from the samsara to become one with Brahma, the main spirit, like a drop of water joining the ocean. Finally, Spiritism or Spiritualism does not base its teaching on faith or believes but on empirical evidence. According to the author of the article: “Spiritualism/Spiritism is the only religion which is based on evidence and direct experience.” Through the actual experiments, spiritualism claims to prove that human consciousness survives physical death and that those who survive can communicate with those who are physically on earth in several ways. This communication can be made through at least twenty different empirically validated processes. These processes include mental, physical, and direct voice mediumship, telepathy, xenoglossy, Electronic Voice Phenomena, Instrumental Trans-communication, Apparitions, Ouija Board, Death Bed Visions, and Poltergeists. Professor’s Zannit presentation of the teaching about the afterlife of major world religions helps college students like myself. His explanation is concise but gives essential points. After reading the material, I learned that almost all of the mentioned religions teach about the idea of purification and atonement. In one religion, it is called purgatory; in another religion, it is called rebirth and reincarnation until the final goal of blessedness, happiness, or illumination is achieved. It is very obvious that the author has an extreme interest in the topic of the afterlife. Suppose I could be anxious to know and ask the professor what doctrine he supports or did his studies and research change his view about this question. I think my studies and learning experience with this question only helped me to grow in my knowledge.

All my life, I have been thinking about what would happen to me after physical death. Growing up in the Christian religion, I figured out that my life would not end after physical life. My religion affirms that the body dies, but the soul survives. According to my religion, my soul will continue to exist after the death of the body. Before the research that I did for the last three weeks, I have never been so deeply focused on the other sources about the afterlife. This assignment was a good chance to learn more about the issues I was interested in during my life. In my research, I found much interesting information that I did not know, with the exception of what my religion told me before. In my research, I have learned a great deal about the afterlife. The most interesting part of the research was the point of view of philosophy and psychology. These disciplines, if you would compare them to a religion, are mot biased, but they base their conclusions on the evidence collected through scientific research. I was very surprised to learn that not only religions but also sciences such as psychology and philosophy study the afterlife question. These sciences do not have faith or belief like religions have based their conclusions on experiments or scientific data. I believe every person who sincerely searches for any existential question such as life after death must consider not only religious perspectives but also scientific views as well. The most important thing for me to learn was that all major religions teach very similar doctrines about life after physical death. Almost all of them teach about a purification process before the human soul can reach a beatitude. It seems to me that all common elements in different religions are pointing to an objective reality that happens to every person who dies regardless of race or ethnicity and faith. Human nature is the same for all people. We are all born in the same way, grow, develop, and all die. If the earthly reality or destiny happens to all people here in this life maybe, the same thing also happens to all in the afterlife. I still do not have all the answers to my questions. I believe every human being has a desire to live forever and also should always explore these questions. My research should interest all broad audiences since we all at one moment will die, and we need to think about what will be the next. I will finish my writings with a memorable positive philosophical thought better to be than not to be. The author’s genre is a short synopsis of the teaching of the major religions about the afterlife. The genre introduces a reader to a subject and tells the main ideas.