Afterlife

All descriptions of afterlife begin in this life with a series of questions: Do I have a future? Do we have a future? Will that future be good or bad? Is there anything I can do to make it good? Will my death or the end of the world affect that future?

The answer to these questions depends on the language, culture, and history of those who ask and those who answer them. Contemporary American language, for example, has two words that describe a human person: body and soul. American culture emphasizes the individual and the individual’s ability to control his or her own destiny. Most are interested in what happens to “me” and “death” is seen as what destroys the “body.”

Most opinion polls, therefore, describe life after death as where the soul lives a pleasurable existence with friends and loved ones in a place called heaven. Although many believe in a place of punishment called “hell,” they do not believe they will live there. They believe that they will live in heaven because the power of their imagination, or some use the word “belief,” will get them to heaven. In this way of seeing things, believing, or imagining strongly, creates our own afterlife. In a seemingly contradictory finding, many are of the opinion that we cannot prove anything about an afterlife while also believing that people may experience the afterlife in what is called near death or afterlife experiences. The belief in afterlife experience is that someone dies, their soul or spirit goes out of the body and experiences what is beyond death, then returns into the body and present, earthly life. The typical American culture and language is reflected in this belief: a body dies, a soul goes to some soul or spirit world, the soul creates its own future.

This “body-soul” distinction as well as the ability to create one’s own future gets in the way of someone from the United States culture understanding the afterlife views of those who do not have such a distinction in their language, believe that afterlife depends on one’s actions in this life, and is more interested in the life of the tribe than the life of the individual.

Although cultures differ, humans share a common desire to think and prepare for the future. This continual link to some future life is a necessary part of human identity. The psychologist Jay Lifton called this deep human need a need for “symbolic immortality” – a need to continue and express the connections to body, mind, and community into an endless future.

Symbols of Immortality

These symbols of immortality surround us. Many aspects of our self pass on as our genes, thoughts, values, hopes, desires, fears and hates continue through our words and actions. Somehow who we are continues. This is especially clear in the continued existence of famous people through street names, building names, memorials, songs, film.

These symbols are found especially in religions. In religious symbols we find how humans have answered these questions throughout time. The answers provided by religions reflect their culture both past and present. The reader’s understanding of these questions reflects her or his culture past and present. Many times it is difficult to understand another language and culture. What follows are answers to our questions using the language provided by some of these religions and the academic discipline of Religious Studies. We begin with Christianity, the religion that shaped the culture of the language you are reading.

Western Culture: Christianity, Judaism, Islam

Christianity

Many descriptions of afterlife surround us even when we state we are describing those put forth by one religion. The symbols of Christian architecture, song, art, and literature express not only their original intent but also the meaning given them over the centuries. The same holds true for the center of Christian life, the Bible. For the Bible was composed and compiled over two thousand years. To understand the Christian view of afterlife today one must understand, at least in outline, its history.

Jesus and the first generation of those who followed him were Jews born and raised in what is now Israel and Palestine at the beginning of the Common Era. As Jews they inherited the symbols and understanding of the afterlife as present among their people. By the time of Jesus there were two dominant views of afterlife: at death one enters more deeply into the history and life of the Jewish people; at death one ceases to exist but will resurrect when the world as we know it ends and the new one begins. It is important to understand the two beliefs that are inherent to these views of after life. One is the belief in God as creator. The only reason anything exists is because God keeps it in existence. Humans are kept alive because God keeps them alive. If we live after death it is because God continues to create us after we die. If God chooses to do that immediately after death, at some later time (e.g. the end of the world), or in some other manner than God does right now – that’s God’s choice not ours.

The first generation of Jesus’ followers believed that he was the first human to be resurrected – not resuscitated. In other words, Jesus was living as a human in a new way from the way he had previously (resurrection), not merely made alive in the same body (resuscitated). They also believed that they would be resurrected when they died and that this resurrection would happen to them at the end of time if they followed Jesus’ way of life. They rested in peace (RIP) until the end of the world when they would resurrect.

The followers of Jesus’ way of life increased. Many of these followers were from another culture that surrounded the Jewish one – the Greco-Roman. This culture, and its language, contained the body-soul division inherent in many of the cultures of the Western world today, including English. It was not long before the followers, now called Christians, began talking about a person’s body and soul. In doing so they had to confront another idea inherent in the Greco-Roman culture: immortality. For the Greeks and the Romans immortality meant that you were a soul. Your body was something you lived in while you did what was necessary to return to the heavens from which you came. This soul was eternal. It was not born and did not die. For the Jews and the early Christians, God was eternal and only God could live forever. In order to keep their faith in God as creator and the resurrection of humans, they conceived of humans as both body and soul, as the Greeks did but that God created both the body and soul when a person was born. Death separated the body from the soul. The body decomposed; the soul rested until resurrection.

With time, and a gradual acceptance of the “heavens,” the place of light and perfect materials, as a place for the soul (also light and perfect) Christians of the West began to believe that when people died their soul went to heaven to be with God while their body decomposed in the earth. At least the souls of the Christians who followed Jesus’ way went to heaven. Those souls who did not follow Jesus went to a place devoid of God – hell. At the end of the world, the church authorities stated, everyone would be resurrected and go to heaven or hell. Some theologians thought that at the end of the world only the good people would live forever. The others would not.

Over time, and the interaction of cultures with the Christian way of life, the afterlife also gained a population of angels and devils. The place of both heaven and hell also changed as people’s views of the cosmos changed. At the beginning, heaven was above the clouds with mountain peaks marking some of heaven’s boundaries, then it shifted to the edge of the solar system, then to the edge of the known cosmos, and finally to a dimension beyond the senses. Some stopped talking about heaven as a place and saw it as a relationship with God which intensified as we lived our life here on earth and then later in other dimensions. Hell, as a place, was usually seen as the opposite to the heavens, at the center of the earth – a place one could also enter through caves and volcanoes. Ultimately it too, as a place, was posited in another dimension beyond the natural senses. It too was seen as a relationship where those who rejected anything of God lived their life without God – forever.

For some Christians, especially Catholics, a place, or later a relationship, called Purgatory developed. This was where those who died need purging or purifying to live with God. They spent their time in this place called Purgatory becoming a better person until they were prepared to live with God forever. Since Christianity was seen as a community (communion of saints) who helped each other in this life, it was understood that they could help each other in the next. So people prayed, fasted, and gave money to the poor in order to help those in Purgatory become better just as they were supposed to help them in this life. Of course, this communion of saints worked the other way around: those in heaven could help those on earth.

Another afterlife place developed as Christian thinkers tried to understand two seemingly contradictory parts of their belief: 1) A person can enter heaven only if they are baptized and believe in Jesus and follow his way of life; 2) there are many good and innocent people who are not baptized. How could these people go to hell? The tentative response to this seeming contradiction was answered by the concept of Limbo. Limbo was where these good, innocent, people lived their lives apart from both God and Devil in the best possible life after death.

Christians, then, have a variety of answers to the question of their individual future after death. Today most of them would say that their soul has an afterlife in heaven with friends and God. This afterlife is one in which the person has a memory of their life on earth as well as their life in heaven. Some of these Christians also believe they will live again as some kind of body-soul after this world ends, i.e. resurrection. Evil people go to hell where they suffer forever now and after the resurrection. One goes to heaven or hell dependent upon their knowledge of and how they follow Jesus’ way of life.

Judaism

Two other religions share with Christians many beliefs, significant religious figures, and moral imperatives. These are Islam and Judaism. Some call these three religions Western, Monotheistic, or Abrahamic religions. Historically Judaism is first (1800 B.C.E., then Christianity (33 C. E), then Islam (632 C. E.)

Ancient Judaism’s view of the afterlife might be seen to begin with God’s creation of humans when (Gen. 2:7) God breaths into the dust the spirit of humanity, thus creating the first human. Death, to the first Jews, was when this breath of life returned to God and the dust of the ground returned to being dust. Each human was a unity of earth and spirit animated by God. As is evident in Gen. 12:1-3 God promises the Jewish nation will live forever not the individual.

Gradually this vision of ancestral life after death develops into personal life after death through resurrection. Initially resurrection is portrayed as the Jewish dead rising from their graves to provide an army for Israel (Ezek. 37:7-10). Then this prophetic vision is applied to all humans and their judgment at the end of time (Dan. 7). By the time of Jesus, resurrection is the dominant Jewish view of afterlife and it becomes embedded in the culture with the destruction of Jerusalem (70 C.E.). It is this literal view of our bodies returning to life which is a seed for further development over the next two millennia.

These ancient views of afterlife are retained among contemporary Jews within a culture that sees the human person as a composite of body-soul. Some will say our afterlife is found in how our children and our children’s children remember us. Others will say we will resurrect at the end of the world. Still other’s will claim our soul lives forever with God and there is no such thing as bodily resurrection.

Muslims

Islam begins and ends with the oft repeated proclamation “There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet.” The word Allah, being the word for God in Arabic. God causes life, death, and after life. (Surah 22:66) Islam shares with both Judaism and Christianity the dominant view of afterlife in its original, seventh century, culture: bodily resurrection. It shares too with the common challenge to the belief in bodily resurrection: what happens to the person while she/he waits for resurrection to happen. Judaism and Christianity answered the challenge in two ways. One was to say we rested (Rest in Peace) until the resurrection. Another, which accepts the body-soul view of the person, has the soul go to heaven upon death while waiting for the resurrection. The dominant view within Islam understands the rest of sleep to be a time when we return to God. It is also a time for eternal rest. Thus when we go to sleep every night we enter into God’s world. Our death is a permanent entry into what we experience every night. We are able to communicate with those who are in eternal rest through our dreams. Upon awakening from eternal rest through the resurrection, the good will enjoy the pleasures and wonders of the afterlife; the evil will suffer the pain and torment of eternal punishment. The majority of Muslims retain these original views of afterlife contained in their holy scriptures, the Qur’an.

Judgment

Contemporary modern western culture many times escapes responsibility for action through a scientific explanation for action. Ancient cultures, and the religions that originated within these cultures, affirmed that we are responsible for all our actions and these actions are part of who we are. We are a good person or a bad person dependent upon what we have done. Contemporary Jews, Christians, and Muslims include in the understanding of a good person the intent and wish of that person to do something good as well as bad. Most legal systems are based on intention, willfulness, and what the person has actually done. One religious symbol of our continuing into the afterlife as a good person or a bad person is the act of Judgment by God or one of God’s delegates, for example, an angel. All three religions have some version of a judgment scene - either upon the moment of the individual’s death or at the end of the world before or after resurrection. Since the concept of “soul” did not exist in ancient Judaism, judgment was first seen in reference to the nation of Judaism being judged as it carried out its covenant duties with God. As the idea of resurrection developed, so did the concept of a judgment at the end time that resulted in either resurrection to life or damnation to destruction. (Ezek 37:11-14. Dan 12:1-2). Christianity inherits and elaborates upon these images of judgment from its understanding of Jesus’ role as Messiah. The last book of the Christian Bible, Revelation, provides an especially vivid judgment scene and description of the place where God dwells, the heavenly Jerusalem (Rev. 21; 22). One is judged in Christianity as well as in Judaism according to how they have kept the covenant obligations. Of these obligations one obligation in particular is highlighted in both religions’ visions of judgment: how the nation and/or the individual care for the poor. The judgment scene in the book of Mathew in the Christian bible perhaps summarizes this emphasis the best when it describes Jesus coming at the end of time and all the people gathered around his judgment throne. He begins to divide people according to whether they gave drink to the thirsty, food to the hungry, and clothes to the naked. Those who were rejected asked “When did we see you like this?” and the judge, Jesus, says “When you didn’t do it for the least of those near you, you didn’t do it to me.”

As both Judaism and Christianity entered more deeply into a culture and language that emphasized the individual and accepted the concept of the soul, the vision of judgment at the end of the world began to be applied to the individual immediately after death. This judgment also began to reflect the dominant issues of the time.

As both Judaism and Christianity entered more deeply into a culture and language that emphasized the individual and accepted the concept of the soul, the vision of judgment at the end of the world began to be applied to the individual immediately after death. This judgment also began to reflect the dominant issues of the time. In Christianity, for example, the Ten Commandments were not central to norming the moral life for the first fifteen hundred years of the Christian tradition. Until the Protestant Reformation the Seven Deadly Sins were central in envisioning how people would be judged. From the sixteen century onward the Ten Commandments held center stage. Among the Ten Commandments, the ones dealing with stealing and justice were most important (129 pages) than those dealing with sex (12 pages). An example of this is a comparison between moral manuals used by Catholic priests: in those used between 1598 and 1716, the seventh commandment had eighty-eight pages and the tenth, thirty five. The eighth had thirty one. The sixth had twelve and the ninth had none. God’s judgment at death and resurrection, therefore, would reflect these norms.

Islam also has the symbols associated with judgment. As we’ve seen, it also reflects more of the Greco-Roman world that surrounded it. Both the judgment of the soul as well as the resurrection of the body is present within the Qu’ran. The souls of the wicked are torn out of their body and questioned immediately upon death. Not recognizing God or his prophet they are condemned to the fires of Jahannam. The good person’s soul is not interrogated by the angels of death but gently released and led into the sleep of the faithful until the resurrection. According to some accounts, the good soul is led by the angels into the garden of life to await the resurrection. (Surah 16:28-32). The original judgment is affirmed at the resurrection and the consequent afterlives described as living in the garden of sensual delights for the good and the horrible tortures of Jahannam for the evil ones.

Eastern Culture: Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shinto

Today the pluralism of past Western culture is matched by the pluralism of easily assessable visions of contemporary cultures and religions. One culture, however, only becomes visible to the other culture by adapting its language and way of life to the receiving culture. The result is that the symbols of the other culture may easily be understood through the concepts of the receiving culture as well as seen as meaning the same thing as in the receiving culture’s ideas. We have seen how Judaism and Christianity adapted to the Greco-Roman culture’s view of the soul. There were many other ideas and ways of life that were modified as Christianity became part of the Greco-Roman culture and, later, the cultures of Europe. Similar changes happen as the non Western cultures enter the Western world through such avenues as the English language. Four adaptations, or translations, have special consequences for discussions of afterlife in the English language: the nature of the “I” that lives in the afterlife; the relationship of the afterlife to this life; the nature of ultimate reality; the manner through which the afterlife becomes better than this life.

When those in the West ask the question “Do I exist?” They usually identify “I” with an awareness of the world around them, an ability to think, to desire, to will to do things, to remember, and to wish for a future that is beneficial to the one who is thinking, desiring, willing, and remembering. If they are members of one of the Western religions they believe that God is somewhat like them and possesses some of these same characteristics while still being completely different. Humans are not God. As members of these religions they believe that what they do and believe in this life effects their life in the next; they have only the one chance of this life to prepare for the next life. Time is linear. God is totally different from humans. There is an actual afterlife with this God.

Eastern religions do not look at life or afterlife in any of the ways we described above. The “I” as such does not exist since we are really all one. The universe, both seen and unseen, is one. Time is cyclical. The western word “God” is not applicable to ultimate reality. There is no afterlife as such only this life lived in the right or wrong way which we live over and over till we get it right. Lived correctly one realizes and becomes one with the universe which we are

In Hinduism (3500 B.C.E.) the real “I” is eternal, is divine, and is actually the universe. Everything we sense is false and leads us away from the true reality of this universe. Death, too, is a moment marking the false world we have and are creating. Everything we do creates our future. Until we act and think correctly we are destined to live forever, incarnate in this false world we create. Life after life, reincarnation after reincarnation, follows our inability to rid ourselves of our karma, our creation of false lives. Only through liberating knowledge will we discover the true nature of the world we are and break the endless cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth. In the experiencing knowledge that we are the divine we, as a conscious, sensing, thinking, willing, remembering, entity ceases to exist. Various types of meditation enable us to have this experiencing knowledge. Another way to stop this false existence is through the way of devotion. In this instance, one focuses one’s attention on one of the many gods in the Hindu religion. In the Bhagavad-Gita, for example, Krishna promises freedom from this illusory world if one fixes their attention on Krishna alone and follows his way of life..

Buddhism (531 B.C.E.) , with its origins in Hinduism, looks at the individual’s future in much the same way: affirming the ideas of continual rebirth or reincarnation; the falsity of this world as we sense it and become attached to it; and, the need to escape from this false existence. While Hinduism emphasizes that ignorance binds us to this falsity, Buddhism emphasizes the fact that our desires create and bind us to a false mode of existence. We must extinguish all desire to be conscious, thinking, willing, remembering, and feeling. When we are nothing we are in nirvana, saved from all craving.

In both Hinduism many false worlds exist. These may be seen as various types of post death existences. Some of these occur while we are dying, others immediately after death, and sometimes for long times after death before we are re-born into the false world that surrounds us right now. These worlds are populated with various beings who try to pull us into their false worlds.

Taoism understands ultimate reality as harmony resulting from the two complementary and interdependent forces of yin and yang: the positive and negative; being and non-being; light and darkness. Humans are one aspect of the Tao whether alive or dead. Death is part of the everlasting harmony of the universe. Our will, desires, memory, feelings, freedom and body does not continue beyond death. One’s present life may be extended by such actions as living a moral life, regulating our eating, esoteric sexual activities, and interaction with others. Confucianism is much like Taoism in its emphasis upon harmony, the extension of this life by natural means, and the denial of an individual’s soul existence after death.

Shinto understands ultimate reality as kami, a spiritual force that transcends and is expressed in all things. Life is a mirror of this kami energy; death is its mirror opposite. It is important for one to live a life worthy of being remembered as famous ancestor. Those who were famous enough as an ancestor world be remembered by all a worthy of becoming part of the eight hundred kinds of kami in the spirit world.

Summary

There are many views beside the few reviewed here of what the afterlife is, how to bring it about, and who lives in it. Humans have always sought some way to understand whether and how they will live forever. After reading about afterlife every reader will have an opinion. Whether that opinion is correct or false will be discovered upon her or his death.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• David Chidester, David. 2002. Patterns of Transcendence: Religion, Death and Dying. 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. ISBN 0534506070

• Matlins, Stuart M. and Magida, Arthur J. 2006. How to Be a Perfect Stranger: A Guide to Other People’s Religious Ceremonies. 6th ed. Woodstock, VT Skylight Paths Publishing. ISBN 1594731403

• McDannel, Colleen and Lang, Bernhard. Heaven: A History New Haven, Yale University Press ISBN 0300091079

External links

• Afterlife at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Death and Immortality
• A Tibetian Buddhist View of the Afterlife
• Reincarnation and the Afterlife
• Near-Death Experiences and the Afterlife
• Common problems with the concept of Heaven
• International Scientific Research into 'the Survival after physical death'
• VERITAS Research Program
• The Destiny of the Soul: A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life, available for free via Project Gutenberg (Extensive 1878 text by William Rounseville Alger)
• Many existing experiences of the Afterlife
• Eternal Perspectives, articles about eternity
• Afterlife psychic
• A Lawyer Presents the Case for the Afterlife
• Reincarnation, Fact or Fantasy? An essay that examines it.

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