Afterlife

From the time that humans recognized that death is a part of every life, they have adapted their own lives and deaths to their afterlife beliefs. Theists such as Christians and Muslims believe both that a God-given soul survives after death and whether they spend eternity in heaven or hell depends on their acceptance or rejection of God and his laws. Hindus, Buddhists, Spiritists, Wiccans, and Kabbalistic Jews believe in reincarnation of souls, the idea that spiritual development continues after death as the soul begins another earthly life and progresses on the spiritual path toward eventual liberation. Reincarnationists believe that present lives are shaped by actions in both previous lives, and afterlives are the consequences of karma. Even in the twenty-first century, world religions grapple with the question of the afterlife and how to prepare for it, depending on faith and other factors without the benefit of eyewitness testimony.

Brief History

Ancient Egyptian civilization rested on a religious foundation, and the belief in the rebirth after death inspired funeral practices, with death considered as a temporary interruption instead of a complete cessation of life. People could ensure eternal life with practices such as piety toward the gods, mummification to preserve the physical body, and being buried in a sarcophagus or coffin carved with pictures and hieroglyphs.

Ancient Greeks and Romans envisioned Hades, or the underworld, as a place where souls lived after death. After judgment, the soul could travel to Elysium, Tartarus, Asphodel Fields, or the Fields of Punishment. People who had lived pure lives went to the Elysium Fields, and evil people were sent to Tartarus to be burned in lava or stretched on racks. The Asphodel Fields were for souls in whom goodness and evil were evenly balanced, and the Fields of Punishment were reserved for people who sinned frequently, but did not deserve Tartarus. The Romans held similar beliefs, although their gods carried different names.

The Poetic Eddas and Prose Eddas are the oldest sources shedding light on the Norse ideas about the afterlife. The Eddas describe several eternal realms for the soul, including Valhalla, or the hall of the slain; Hel, the covered hall where souls were neither good nor bad and were sent to be reunited with their loved ones; and Niflhel, or the Misty Hel, parallel to the Greek Tartarus where the evil went to suffer.

The Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—contend that a person merits hell or heaven depending on deeds or faith while on Earth. Heaven is the place of reward for the righteous to spend eternity and hell a place of punishment and torment for the wicked.

Reincarnation, the premise that the soul begins a new life in a new body after the old one dies, is a central belief of the Indian religions—Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and Sikhism—and in religions such as Spiritism, Theosophy, and Eckankar. The philosophy of reincarnation can also be found in many tribal societies around the world.

Topic Today

In the twentieth century, Swiss American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross pioneered near-death studies, authoring a groundbreaking book, On Death and Dying (1969), in which she discussed her theory of the five stages of grief. Later, in the 1970s, she helped found the hospice movement and delivered the Ingersoll Lectures on Human Immortality at Harvard University.

The existence and nature of an afterlife remains a controversial and hotly debated topic in the twenty-first century, with people expressing their deeply held convictions on all sides of the issue. American neurosurgeon Eben Alexander III, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, wrote the best-selling book Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon’s Journey into the Afterlife (2012). By April 2015, the book had spent ninety-four weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list. In his book, Alexander tells the story of his 2008 near-death experience and asserts that science can and will prove that heaven does exist. He argues that contrary to the contention of most scientists who conclude that the mind and soul die when the brain dies, his near-death experience disproves their theories. Critics of Alexander's work argued that he does not understand the basic neurological principles and mechanics of a dying brain.

One of the leading experts of near-death experiences, Bruce Greyson, a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia, has studied more than one hundred incidents of near death and relates that patients experience a sense of peace, love, leaving the physical body, and sometimes encountering deities or deceased loved ones. Many scientists dismiss near-death experiences as hallucinations triggered by a tremendously stressed brain, but Greyson believes that near-death experiences indicate that the human mind can function without the physical body and that near-death experiences often happen when the brain is clinically dead. Countering the arguments of Alexander and Greyson, Wendy Wright, a neurologist from Emory University, echoed the sentiments of a large percentage of the scientific community when she stated that near-death experiences are a biological function of endorphins released in the brain.

Biocentrist Robert Lanza, a leading authority on stem cell research and a professor at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, presented another view. He argued that space and time exist only as tools for humans to understand their world and without consciousness, space and time do not actually exist. In a Huffington Post blog, he wrote that “death is a reboot that leads to all potentialities.”

Scientific interest in understanding what happens after death continued into the 2020s, as researchers continued to explore the psychological and physiological aspects of near-death experiences. Advances in medical technology allowed scientists to monitor brain activity during near-death experiences to gain more insight into the neurological impacts of these events. For example, advanced imaging techniques have been employed to explore how certain regions of the brain are activated during near-death experiences, contributing to scientists' understanding of consciousness and its potential persistence after death.

People belonging to organized religious groups tend to take the punishment/reward view of the afterlife. A 2012 Pew Research Center Forum on Religion & Public Life study of more than 230 countries and territories revealed that eight in ten people believe in the heaven-and-hell, reward-and-punishment afterlife. A 2021 Pew Research Center study revealed that a majority of Americans believe in life after death, with 73 percent believing in heaven and 62 percent believing in hell. Many Americans also believe that different religions can lead to eternal life, with an exception being Evangelicals who believe that theirs is the true faith leading to eternal life. The Reverend Billy Graham summed up their position when he asserted that Jesus said there are two roads in life: One is the broad road that leads to destruction and judgment and hell, and the other is a narrow road that leads to heaven and paradise.

Bibliography

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Bell, Rob. Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. Harper, 2011.

Cheung, Theresa. The Afterlife Is Real. Simon, 2013.

Greaves, Helen. Testimony of Light: An Extraordinary Message of Life after Death. Tarcher, 2009.

Hill, Kyle. "The Death of ‘Near Death’: Even If Heaven Is Real, You Aren’t Seeing It." Scientific American: Blogs, Scientific American, 3 Dec. 2012. Accessed 1 June 2015.

Kübler-Ross, Elizabeth. On Life after Death. Celestial, 2008.

Lichfield, Gideon. "Solving the Riddle of Near-Death Experiences." Atlantic, Apr. 2015, p. 76. MasterFILE Premier. Accessed 1 June 2015.

Lutzer, Erwin W. The King Is Coming: Preparing to Meet Jesus. Moody, 2012.

Miller, Lisa. Heaven: Our Enduring Fascination with the Afterlife. Harper, 2010.

Moreira-Almeida, Alexander, Marianna de Abreu Costa, and Humberto Schubert Coelho. "What Would Constitute Evidence for Personal Survival After Death?" Science of Life After Death, Springer, 2022, pp. 27–32, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06056-4‗5. Accessed 20 Nov. 2024.

Nortey, Justin, et al. "Views on the Afterlife." Pew Research Center, 23 Nov. 2021, www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/11/23/views-on-the-afterlife/. Accessed 20 Nov. 2024.

Stafford, Betty. The Afterlife Unveiled: What the Dead Are Telling Us about Their World. O-Books, 2011.

Walsch, Neale Donald. Home with God: In a Life That Never Ends. Atria, 2007.

Weiss, Brian L. Miracles Happen: The Transformational Healing Power of Past-Life Memories. HarperOne, 2013.