As the sun melts into the horizon’s embrace, with that iridescent and ethereal last shimmer of light before the evening closes, you are suddenly struck by thoughts of ultimacy. The transition from a molten golden sky into a starry tapestry of shadows, is enough to provoke such thoughts in anyone. Ever since the first spark of self-consciousness, one of the thoughts that has both paralyzed and mystified us, is whether or not we continue to exist in some capacity after death. Some believe we do, while others believe we do not. But of course, no one really knows. After all, “death,” wrote William Shakespeare, “is the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns." Although we cannot ask a dead person what their experience was like,1 we can still employ reason to arrive at what may happen after death. This article considers three outcomes of what occurs after death. I am not saying here what I find most likely to be the case. Instead, I wish to merely illustrate some of the more common responses.
Nothingness
If atheism and its philosophically sophisticated expressions of naturalism and materialism are true, then there is nothing beyond the physical world at all, certainly nothing like God. Reality is ultimately impersonal, matter and energy are the fundamental processes or entities from which all things come, and persons are nothing but material clumps of junk. If these propositions are true, then death is almost certainly akin to something like a dreamless sleep. You disappear into sheer nothingness the moment the physical brain stops functioning. You are here by a complete accident, forced to suffer, create some subjective meaning to help you cope with that suffering, procreate perhaps, and then die. There is no overarching meaning or purpose. You are a material clump of junk destined to rot, forever.
Disembodied Minds
The second view of life after death is found in the idea of disembodied minds. What makes you a person is your mind or in religious language, your “soul.” A mind is a being or person who possesses a distinct subjective identity. Your thoughts, desires, memories, ability to reason, beliefs, and values are things that make you who you are. You are not your leg, arm, hair, or skin. You are a person insofar as you possess a mind. This view has a long philosophical history, one that can be found in Plato’s Phaedo. In fact, the idea that the soul or mind floats off the material brain in some incorporeal sense upon death, is actually a Greek idea. Interestingly, this idea has stuck as we modernists tend to believe this is exactly what death is like. For example, at funerals, we often say things like, “She is watching over us. She would be so proud of you.” What we do not realize is that, in philosophical jargon, we are “substance dualists.” In other words, we believe persons are made up of immaterial and material stuff. So after death, we do not need our material bodies to exist. We exist independently of them. The philosopher René Descartes was a proponent of the substance dualist view:
“My essence consists solely in the fact that I am a thinking thing. It is true that I may have (or, to anticipate, that I certainly have) a body that is very closely joined to me. But nevertheless, on the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am simply a thinking, non-extended thing; and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far as this is simply an extended, non-thinking thing. And accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body and can exist without it.”—René Descartes, Meditation
Resurrection
The third view of life after death says that persons survive death in bodily form. After we die, we continue to somehow live physically either right away or at the end of the age, as some believe. This is actually the Biblical approach to life after death. The New Testament scholar, Bart Ehrman, has argued that Jesus and much of the Jewish tradition do not affirm the Greek view of disembodied minds. They believe the mind and body cannot be separated. So on this view, to exist you must have a body. You cannot exist in non-bodily form. A lot of times we assume that the Biblical writers were speaking about death like the Greeks did. But the Old and New Testaments, for instance, understand persons as psychosomatic unities and refer to survival of death in bodily terms. This is why the Apostle Paul states, quite unambiguously, that if Christ did not rise bodily from the dead, then your faith is in vain. That is another way of saying, “Christianity is a fraudulent religion.” Paul and other Christians alike believed that, ultimately, we are raised with new bodies, a sort of transformed body that can still be understood as our own.
As stated, the scope of this article was not intended to convey what I think is more likely to be the case. As a theist, I do believe that some sort of experience happens after death. But I do not know what, when, or how such will happen. It is a mystery. There are, of course, strong arguments for each of the views that would take considerable time to unpack. I did not want to get into them here, however. Perhaps at another time. Be that as it may, these are three common views of life after death.
I am aware of the literature surrounding Near Death Experiences (NDE), some of which I find persuasively appealing. Here, as well, there are strong arguments for and against NDE. At some other time, I will address these arguments.
You left out rebirth. Dr, Iain Stevenson collected over 2000 cases "suggestive of reincarnation," and Dr. Jim Tucker carries on his work at the University of Virginia Division of Perceptual Studies.
Forgive me for this overly long excerpt from our book, "Yoga Psychology and the Transformation of Consciousness, but I have yet to hear anything coming close to a reasonable rebuttal of the information here:
Rebirth: Across the Gap of Death
The body of Benjamin Franklin, printer (like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out and stripped of its lettering and gilding) lies here, food for worms: but the work shall not be lost, it will (as he believed) appear once more in a new and more elegant edition... revised and corrected by the author.
(Self-composed) Epitaph of Benjamin Franklin
[The Soul, the] inmost entity... puts forward a psychic personality, [the psychic being], which changes, grows, develops from life to life; for this is the traveler between birth and death and between death and birth, our [surface personality is] only its manifold and changing vesture.
According to Sri Aurobindo, the purpose of rebirth is the evolution of consciousness. This evolution is not just for the sake of awakening the Soul to its true nature, but for expressing its infinite and unique qualities. Over the course of many lifetimes, the growing psychic being strengthens its connection to the Divine Soul behind, making it possible for the essential soul nature to be communicated more directly to the outer personality. In moments of special intensity, we may become aware of an inexplicable attraction or affinity, drawing us toward some goal of which we are – on the surface – entirely unconscious. These may be intimations of our true Divine Nature, summoning us to some work that is aligned with our deeper purpose. In those whose psychic being is more awake, such intimations may emerge spontaneously, or may be summoned by the touch of a synchronous outer event.
Lama Govinda was a German man who spent many years studying Buddhism in Tibet. In the course of his life, he received several striking confirmations that the work to which he had been drawn, was an expression of his Soul that transcended the surface personality of his current lifetime. As a child, he had written a story describing his spiritual beliefs and experiences – a story he thought one day to expand into a mystic novel. Years later as a young man, he read that story to an archaeologist friend who suggested he look at the work of a writer who, more than a century earlier, had started a similar novel that was left unfinished due to the writer’s early demise. Intrigued, Lama Govinda sought out this author’s works and found that not only were the ideas and characteristic phrases of the author uncannily similar to his own, but certain passages were literally identical. He also discovered that the writer had died of the same disease which had brought Lama Govinda to the sanatorium where he met his archaeologist friend.
Around the same time, he attended a gathering where he was introduced to a man who happened to be writing a biography of the deceased author. The man stared at Lama Govinda in shock because of the striking resemblance he bore to the only existing portrait of the author. More significantly, the earlier author had outlined a spiritual vision of the universe – an outline which precisely mirrored a plan Lama Govinda, as a youth, had drawn up for his present life’s work. He had realized the plan was too large in scope to be fulfilled in a single lifetime and had contented himself with addressing those subjects to which he felt most drawn by training or temperament. Lama Govinda later wrote that being able to pursue his work in the context of many lifetimes filled him with such peace and confidence that he was able to concentrate unhurriedly on the task of the moment, trusting that whatever was left undone would be continued in lives to come.
Lama Govinda had been living out his Soul’s calling across lifetimes but had been unaware of it until, as an adult, he encountered the series of “coincidences” initiated by reading his story to a friend. While traveling in Burma in the 1930s, he met an eight-year old boy who had awakened to the continuity of his Soul’s work at the age of four. Lama Govinda described seeing the little boy preach: “It was an astonishing sight to see a small boy speaking with the ease and self-assurance of a practiced speaker, his face radiant with happiness and his voice clear and melodious like a bell... it was a joy to hear this voice, that seemed to come straight from the depth of his heart like the song of a bird.”1
Lama Govinda later met with the boy’s father, who told him this story.
One day, on the way to a local fair, he and his two sons met up with a man who offered sugar cane to the children. The younger boy eagerly took the candy, but four-year-old Maung Tun Kyaing, told him, in a rather authoritative tone, not to eat it until he had offered a blessing of gratitude. As he uttered his admonition, a memory suddenly awakened and he directed his father to lift him to his shoulders so that he could give a sermon to the people on the virtues of giving. Considering this a childish whim, his father good-naturedly did as he was told. Much to his surprise, his little son began to speak with an eloquence and wisdom way beyond his years. Crowds gathered to hear him preach, but Maung Tun Kyaing was unfazed. Upon completing his sermon, he turned to his father and said, “Come...let us go to my [monastery].”
The boy gave directions to a nearby monastery – one he had never visited – and was taken there by his father. When the senior abbot came to meet them, the boy, rather than bowing as he had been taught, greeted the monk as an equal. The abbot said to him:
“Don’t you know [I am the head of this monastery]?”
“Certainly I know!” said the boy without the slightest hesitation. And when the [abbot] looked at him in surprise the boy mentioned [the abbott’s] name.
“How do you know? Did somebody tell you?”
“No,” said the boy. “Don’t you remember me? I was your teacher, U
Pandeissa.”
The abbot was taken aback, but in order to test him he asked the boy, “If
that is so, what was my name before I entered the Order? If you know it you may whisper it into my ear.”
The boy did so. And when the Abbott heard his name, which nobody knew except those who had grown old with him and had known him intimately, he fell at the boy’s feet, touched the ground with his forehead, and exclaimed with tears in his eyes: “Now I know, you are indeed my teacher.”
Lama Govinda goes on to recount further tests that were given to Maung Tun Kyaing in order to make certain he was indeed who he claimed to be. The boy led the others through the monastery, pointing out the room where he had slept, his meditation room, and many details of his former daily routine. In addition, the boy was able to read and interpret the Buddhist scriptures, written in the ancient language Pali, despite having grown up in a home where nobody knew how to read or write.
After all these proofs, nobody doubted he was a rebirth of the former abbot. Subsequently, the four-year old boy received numerous invitations to preach, and he spoke before groups of hundreds and thousands of people. When his family expressed concern that his health might be affected by his extensive preaching, he declared: “The Buddha spent innumerable lives in self- sacrificing deeds, striving to attain enlightenment. I too, therefore, should not spare any pains in striving after Buddhahood. Only by attaining the highest aim can I work for the benefit of all living beings.”
Soon news of the young boy’s fame reached Sir Henry Butler, then governor of Burma, who wanted to determine for himself the veracity of the boy’s story. After hearing only a little of the child’s masterful exposition of the essential teachings of Buddhism, any doubts he may have had were quelled. It was obvious to the governor that the boy was expressing his own understanding and not simply reciting words he had been taught.
According to Lama Govinda, Maung Tun Kyaing spoke with such conviction and sincerity that Sir Henry was visibly moved and encouraged the boy to bring his message to all the people of Burma.
“You should go from one end of the country to the other,” he said, “and preach to high and low, even to the prisoners in the jails, because nobody could touch the heart of the people deeper than you. Even the hardest criminal would melt in the presence of such genuine faith and sincere good will.”
And thus it happened that even the gates of the jails were opened to Maung Tun Kyaing and wherever he went he inspired the people with new religious fervor, strengthening their convictions and filling them with fresh life.