AFTERLIFE

We all know about it, whether it exists or not. We know of ghosts and reincarnated entities, and we all have some knowledge of the idea that we might experience afterlife upon death.
Philosophers and priests have thought about it for as long as thinking man has existed. Alternatively, scientists have tried their best to sweep it under a thread-bare carpet. So what is the reality of afterlife?

POLITICS AND MORALITY

The first thing to realize about afterlife is that it has been quite useful in the life we class as ‘living.’ Medieval Christendom split Afterlife into Heaven and Hell, and applied transgressing The Ten Commandments to eternal redemption.
This was a means of social and moral control, using superstition to scare people into obedience. A similar concept exists in the east, where karma is a moral imperative towards good so as not to be reincarnated in a lower status next time.
Christianity went so far as to debar mere mortals from experiencing evidence of afterlife in life. To do so was to be Christ-like, and only Jesus was such. Hence, those who claimed communion with entities in life were classed as ‘evil’, dealing with the Devil. In this way, Christianity attempted to banish paganism and the occult.

INDIVIDUAL PROBLEMS

In the above, we can see that Afterlife is a useful system of control, guaranteeing its survival as a concept within religious society. But today, science and individuality has banished the idea and classed it as nonsense.
Individuality has to ignore Afterlife, for it implies something above the individual. But individuals continue to form societies and cultures. Our place in a society is defined by cultural interpretation. Hence, there is something above the individual.
In light of this, could we argue that culture, or even our species, could be a continuing communal entity in its own right? If we are prepared to accept such a thing – and history itself shows a form of continuance above the individual – then we begin the philosophical step towards the idea of continuance after life.

WHAT WE KNOW SURVIVES

We do actually know that much of ‘us’ does survive death. For instance, there are memories of us in other people’s minds. If naturally buried, our organic body decays and released nutrients for renewal of nature.
If we go even deeper into the ‘construction’ of life we are fundamentally an electrical vibration of the subatomic field – an astral body, as it were. Here, the particles that make up the ‘vibration’ are identical to similar particles throughout the universe. And guess what – they survive our death.
There are ideas in fringe physics that this field forms an ‘information universe’. In other words, the information available to the universe is within its construction, which would logically include its history. Does this constitute a form of ‘survival’?

WHERE IS CONSCIOUSNESS?

One of the great metaphysical debates revolves around the location of consciousness. It is said to reside in the brain, but if information is in the subatomic field, could what we class as the mind be simply an individual segment of this universal consciousness?
A materialist would class this as ridiculous. We can track certain brain functions, and are aware of their existence in the brain. To which I would ask: could the brain be simply analogous to a computer? If so, we haven’t yet found the software.
Many believe the Near Death Experience shows evidence of our personal consciousness going to the universal – in this case, down a dark tunnel where a light is met, and a decision taken whether you shall live or die.

DEATH AND REBIRTH

I’m not sure whether this is evidence of survival, but certainly a strange phenomenon occurs within the experience. Indeed, research has shown that even a deep faint can include imagery of what is culturally accepted as Afterlife.
This is particularly interesting as early tribal ritual revolved around hysterical ceremony, leading to the deep faint of a shaman-like individual. In the faint he is said to visit the Afterlife and return with knowledge thereof.
The shaman can be seen to have believed the faint involved a ‘death’, followed by rebirth upon awakening. This process actually formed the central proof of Afterlife within mythology. Yet realistically we can argue this is a symbolic, psychologically induced Afterlife rather than the real thing.

EVIDENCE OF SURVIVAL

In the above we can see the possibility of a ‘symbolic’ Afterlife, sculpted by impressions of a particular culture, which we went on to believe was ‘real.’ But nonetheless, it could have formed the basic proofs that led to religion and spirituality.
Other ‘proofs’ of Afterlife are said to include sightings of ghosts, mediumistic talents and evidence of reincarnation. However, again, we can argue that all this evidence can be found in the known psychological anomalies of the human mind.
Indeed cryptomnesia (the ability to remember obscure facts), multiple personality, hallucination and other mechanisms can adequately explain evidence of such survival. For further information on these mechanisms, posts can be found by clicking Paranormal UFO Occult at the bottom of this post.

TOWARDS UNDERSTANDING

This said, there are problems with our understanding of life and the universe that are not adequately addressed by science. For instance, it is known that the body exists as a co-ordinated lifeform, but it also exists as a congregation of cells, etc; and at its fundamental level, as an electrical vibration, as already mentioned.
Science accepts this, but is hazy when it comes to the relationship between each of these levels. But surely, if one leads to another, then interaction between the three levels must take place.
This logical assumption tells us that, if the information universe is a reality, then somehow it must connect to the conscious life form – i.e. us. Hence, if consciousness is in the information universe, we must ask: does it die upon death of the body? Or does it continue as some form of existence?

FUTURE SCIENCE

We are not at the stage of knowledge where we can answer. This is mainly because we are not asking the right questions, which should be: Do we live in an information universe or not? Is our ‘electrical vibration’ related to us or not?
A negative answer to either of these questions leaves us disconnected from the rest of existence, which is ridiculous. A positive answer leaves room for the tantalizing existence of an Afterlife of some kind.
And seeing that it would imply a connection between ‘us’ and the universe, then knowledge of this survival would be in the information universe. So therefore, somewhere, we would be aware of this.
So who knows, maybe SOME of those ghosts, communications and possessions are from somewhere else after all. Once we have discounted the fraudulent, spurious and delusional, of course.

© Anthony North, June 2007

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