Life after death: perspectives and evidence

Life After Death

Introduction classical point of departure in defining Death seems to be Life itself. Death is perceived either as a cessation of Life - or as a "transit area," on the way to a continuation of Life by other means. While the former presents a disjunction, the latter is a continuum, Death being nothing but a corridor into another plane of existence (the hereafter). A logically more rigorous approach would be to ask "Who Dies" when Death occurs. In other words, the identity of the Dying (it which "commits" Death) is essential in defining Death.

Those of a religious nature would argue that we are far more than that; they would argue that we have a soul. A soul is, for a layperson hard to imagine. How do you describe it? It is not something that we can detect, it is a spiritual thing without any physical substance, and it is this that supposedly lives on after our mortal bodies have died. So where is the soul while we are alive? It can be assumed that it must reside in the brain, as that is where we reside. It can also be assumed that when the brain dies the soul is released. That being the case the soul is able to survive without the need of a body, it is obviously independent of the body. So why does it need a body in the first place? Perhaps it needs a body to develop and is unable to leave it until the body dies.

We can alter our life today simply by learning not to fear death. And by fearing death less we discover that we live life more! Shakespeare comments on this in Julius Caesar:

It seems to me most strange that men should fear; seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come."

Gladys Hunt, in her book, Don't Be Afraid To Die, says, "Psychiatrists are now saying that death is the most important question of our time and that fear of death festers a variety of psychoses... Some psychiatrists believe a massive panic over death pervades young and old alike in our culture."

What about people who are dying? How does their fear of death limit their remaining months, weeks or days? Does it limit their remaining life experience due to a fear of accelerating their death? Does it distract them from their experience with loved-ones due to a fearful focus on death? And is it possible that our fear of death negatively affects our ability to heal from life- threatening, although not yet terminal, illnesses and conditions? Although we may never know the answers to these questions, there is no question that people's fear of death only adds to there suffering with a multitude of effects.

Facing death is raw and scary both for the person dying and for the loved ones close to the one who is passing on. Relating from the heart as separation nears is profoundly intimate and often terrifying. Some people ask to have no contact with their loved ones as they die because it is too painful to feel the emotional bond or the other person's pain and loss. Likewise, the one(s) being left may also disconnect in order to escape heart or soul wrenching pain.

Psychiatrist Dr. Raymond Moody, in his classic book Life After Life, has pioneered in showing us that consciousness continues after death. His new work, under way, is truly remarkable. His subjects sit in a dimly lit room, focusing relaxed concentration on a mirror slightly above them (so they won't see their reflection). Eighty percent of the time, they are able to perceive those on the other side. Remarkably, some of the experimenters have witnessed those from the other side, the dear departed, actually step forward from the mirror! (This was a personal communication).

All the prophets of God called their people to worship God and to believe in life after death. They laid so much emphasis on the belief in life after death that even a slight doubt in it meant denying God and made all other beliefs meaningless. The very fact that all the prophets of God have dealt with this metaphysical question of life after death so confidently and so uniformly - the gap between their ages being thousands of years - goes to prove that the source of their knowledge of life after death as proclaimed by them all, was the same, i.e., Divine revelation. We also know that these prophets of God were greatly opposed by their people, mainly on the issue of life after death as their people thought it impossible. But in spite of opposition the prophets won so many sincere followers.

The question arises: what made those followers forsake the established beliefs, traditions and customs of their forefathers notwithstanding the risk of being totally alienated from their own community? The simple answer is: they made use of their faculties of mind and heart and realized the truth. Did they realize the truth through perceptual consciousness? Not so, as perceptual experience of life after death is impossible. Actually God has given man besides perceptual consciousness, rational, aesthetic and moral consciousness too. It is this consciousness that guides man regarding realities that cannot be verified through sensory data. That is why all the prophets of God while calling people to believe in God and life after death, appeal to the aesthetic, and moral and rational consciousness of man. For example, when the idolaters of Makkah denied even the possibility of life after death, the Quran exposed the weakness of their stand by advancing very logical and rational arguments in support of it:

And he makes comparisons for us, and forgets his own (origin and) Creation: he says, 'Who can give life to (dry) bones and decomposed ones (at that)?' Say, 'He will give them life who created them for the first time! For He fully knows all! - The same who produces for you fire out of the green tree, when behold! Ye kindle therewith (your own fires)! Is not He Who created the heavens and the earth able to create the like thereof?' - Yea, indeed! For He is the Creator Supreme, of skill and knowledge (infinite)!" (Quran: 78)

Belief in life after death is a source of personal security, optimism, and spiritual betterment (1 John 3:2). Nothing offers more courage than the confidence that there is a better life for those who use the present to prepare for eternity. Belief in the unlimited opportunities of eternity has enabled many to make the ultimate sacrifice of their own life in behalf of those they love. It was His belief in life after death that enabled Jesus to say, "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" (Matthew 16:26). It is the same truth that prompted Christian martyr Jim Elliot, who was killed in 1956 by the Auca Indians, to say, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose."

While some believe it's impossible to know whether there is life after death, belief in immortality is a timeless phenomenon. From the pyramids of the Egyptians to the reincarnation of New Age thinking, people of all times and places in history have believed that the human soul survives death. If there is no consciousness or laughter or regret beyond the grave, then life has fooled almost everyone from the Pharaohs of Egypt to Jesus of Nazareth.

It would be difficult to believe that life is good if we knew there was nothing beyond the grave to compensate for problems of inequality and unfairness. While some people seem destined for happiness, others are born into terrible relationships and circumstances. If we could be sure there was nothing to offset unequal distribution of suffering, many would have reason to curse the day of their birth for the way life has treated them (Job 3:1-3). We could agree with King Solomon who at a low point in his life said, "I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun: I saw the tears of the oppressed -- and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors -- and they have no comforter. And I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, which is still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 4:1-3 NIV).

There is much about life that doesn't seem to correspond with personal problems of unfairness and hardship. But for all that is hurtful and unequal, there is beauty and balance. For moments of horror and violence, there are times of harmony and peace. As age-worn bodies succumb to pain and weakness, children and young animals play with carefree joy. Human art, in all of its glory, corresponds to birds in playful flight and morning song. Each sunset and dawn provides an answer to nature's need for rest and renewal. Dark nights and cold winters come with the awareness that "this too shall pass." If there is nothing beyond the grave, the pattern of nature is stunningly incomplete.

The clinical evidence for life after death is subjective and arguable. It's often hard to assess the significance of "out of the body experiences," encounters with bright lights, long tunnels, or angelic guides. It's difficult to know how to respond to those who speak of temporary near-death visions into heaven or hell. What we do know is that there are enough of these kinds of experiences to create a sizable library on the subject. Taken as a whole, this body of evidence shows that as people approach death, many sense they are coming not to the end of existence but to the beginning of another journey. The human heart hungers for more than this life offers. Each of us experiences what King Solomon called "eternity in [our] hearts" (Ecclesiastes 3:11)

While it is difficult to know what Solomon meant, it is apparent that he was referring to an inescapable longing for something this world cannot satisfy. It was an emptiness of soul that Solomon could not escape. For a while, he tried to fill this inner void with work, alcohol, and laughter. He tried to satisfy his longings with philosophy, music, and sexual relationships. But his disillusionment grew. Only when he returned to his confidence in a final judgment and afterlife could he find something large enough to satisfy his longing for significance (Ecclesiastes 12:14).

The Bible names God as the source of immortality. It describes His nature as eternal. The same Scriptures tell us that God created us in His likeness, and that His plan is to welcome His children eventually into His eternal home. The Scriptures also teach that God introduced death into human experience when our first ancestors trespassed into the darkness of forbidden territory (Genesis 3:1-19). The implication is that if God allowed the human race to live forever in a rebellious condition, we would have unending opportunity to develop into proud, self-centered creatures. Instead, God began to unfold a plan that would ultimately result in the eternal homecoming of all who chose to be at peace with Him (Psalms 90:1; John 14:1-3).

Some have argued that immortality is a New Testament idea. But the Old Testament prophet Daniel spoke of a day when those who sleep in the dust of the earth will be resurrected, some to life and some to everlasting shame (Daniel 12:1-3). An author of the Psalms also spoke of the afterlife. In the 73rd Psalm a man named Asaph described how he almost lost his faith in God when he considered how evil people prospered and the godly suffered. But then he said he went into the sanctuary of God. From the perspective of worship, he suddenly saw evil men standing on the slippery ground of their mortality. With new insight he confessed, "You will guide me with your counsel, and afterward receive me to glory. Who have I in heaven but you? And there is none upon earth that I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart fail but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever" (Psalms 73:24-26). Whenever we argue about whether a thing can be proved, we should distinguish five different questions about that thing:

Does it really exist or not? "To be or not to be, that is the question."

If it does exist, do we know that it exists? A thing can obviously exist without our knowing it.

If we know that it exists, can we be certain of this knowledge? Our knowledge might be true but uncertain; it might be "right opinion."

If it is certain, is there a logical proof, a demonstration of why we have a right to be certain? There may be some certainties that are not logically demonstrable (e.g. my own existence, or the law of non-contradiction).

If there is a proof, is it a scientific one in the modern sense of 'scientific'? Is it publicly verifiable by formal logic and/or empirical observation? There may be other valid kinds of proof besides proofs by the scientific method.

The fifth point is especially important when asking whether you can prove life after death. I think it depends on what kinds of proof you will accept. It cannot be proved like a theorem in Euclidean geometry; nor can it be observed, like a virus. For the existence of life after death is not on the one hand a logical tautology: its contradiction does not entail a contradiction, as a Euclidean theorem does. On the other hand, it cannot be empirically proved or disproved (at least before death) simply because by definition all experience before death is experience of life before death, not life after death.

If life after death cannot be proved scientifically, is it then intellectually irresponsible to accept it? Only if you assume that it is intellectually irresponsible to accept anything that cannot be proved scientifically. But that premise is self-contradictory (and therefore intellectually irresponsible)! You cannot scientifically prove that the only acceptable proofs are scientific proofs. You cannot prove logically or empirically that only logical or empirical proofs are acceptable as proofs. You cannot prove it logically because its contradiction does not entail a contradiction, and you cannot prove it empirically because neither a proof nor the criterion of acceptability is empirical entities. Thus scientism (the premise that only scientific proofs count as proofs) is not scientific; it is a dogma of faith, a religion. The first reason for believing in life after death is simply that there is no compelling reason not to, no objection to it that cannot be answered. The two most frequent objections are as follows:

a) Since there is no conclusive evidence for life after death, it is as irresponsible to believe it as to believe in UFOs, or alchemy. Perhaps we cannot disprove it; a universal negative always is difficult if not impossible to disprove. But if we cannot prove it either, it is wishful thinking, not evidence, that makes us believe it.

Now this objector either means by 'evidence' merely empirical evidence, or else any kind of evidence. If he means the latter, he ignores all the following proofs for life after death. There is a lot of evidence. If he means the former, he falls victim to the self-contradiction argument just mentioned. There is no empirical evidence that the only kind of evidence we should accept is empirical evidence.

In most supposedly scientific objections of this type, an impossible demand is made, overtly or covertly a demand for scientific proof -- and then the belief is faulted for not satisfying that demand. This is like arguing against the existence of God on the grounds that "I have not found Him in my test tube," or like the first Soviet cosmonauts' "argument" that they had found no God in outer space. It can be hypnotized that if God exists he is not found in a test tube or in space. That would make Him a chemical or a meteor. A taxi trip through Cleveland disproves quasars as well as a laboratory experiment disproves God, or brain chemistry disproves the soul or its immortality. The demand that non-empirical entities submit to empirical verification is a self-contradictory demand. Observing the behavior of that system cannot disprove the belief that something exists outside a system. Goldfish cannot disprove the existence of their human owners by observing water currents in the bowl.

A b) The strongest positive argument against life after death is the observation of spirit at the mercy of matter. We see no more mental life when the brain dies. Even when it is alive, a blow to the head impairs thought. Consciousness seems related to matter as the light of a candle to the candle: once the fuel is used up, the light goes out. The body and its nervous system seem like the fuel, the cause; and immaterial activity, consciousness, seems like the effect. Remove the cause and you remove the effect. Consciousness, in other words, seems to be an epiphenomenona, an effect but not a cause, like the heat generated by the electricity running along a wire to an appliance, or the exhaust fumes from an engine's tailpipe.

What does the observed dependence of mind upon matter prove if not the mortality of the soul? Wait. First, just what do we observe? We observe the physical manifestations of consciousness (e.g. speech) cease when the body dies. We do not observe the spirit cease to exist, because we do not observe the spirit at all, only its manifestations in the body. Observations of the body do not decide whether that body is an instrument of an independent spirit, which continues to exist after its body-instrument dies, or whether the body is the cause of a dependent spirit, which dies, when its cause dies. Both hypotheses account for the observed facts.

When a body is paralyzed, the mind and will are still operative, though deprived of expression. Bodily death may be simply total paralysis. When you take a microphone away from a speaker, the audience can no longer hear him. But he is still a speaker. Body could be the soul's microphone. The dependence of soul on a body may be somewhat like the dependence of a ship on a dry-dock. Ships are not built on the open sea, but on dry-dock; but once they leave the dry-dock, they do not sink but become free-floating ships. The body may be the soul's dry-dock, or (an even better metaphor) the soul's womb, and its death may be the soul's emergence from its womb.

What about the analogy of the candle? Even in the analogy, the light does not go out; it goes up. It is still traveling through space, observable from other planets. It 'goes out' as a child goes out to play; it is liberated.

But what of the need for a brain to think? The brain may not be the cause of thought but the stopping down, the 'reducing valve' for thought, as Bergson, James and Huxley suppose: an organ of forgetting rather than remembering, eliminating from the total field of consciousness all that serves no present purpose. Thus when the brain dies, more rather than less consciousness occurs: the floodgates come down. This would account for the familiar fact that dying people remember the whole of their past life in an instant with intense clarity, detail, and understanding. In short, the evidence, even the empirical evidence, seems at least as compatible with soul immortality as with soul-mortality.

According to the medievals, the most logical of philosophers, "the argument from authority is the weakest of arguments." Nevertheless, it is an argument, a probability, and a piece of evidence. Forty million Frenchmen can be wrong, but it is less likely than four Frenchmen being wrong.

The first argument from authority for life after death is simply quantitative: "the democracy of the dead" votes for it. Almost all cultures before our own have strongly, even officially, believed in some form of it. Children naturally and spontaneously believe in it unless conditioned out of it.

A second argument from authority is stronger because it is qualitative rather than quantitative: nearly all the sages have believed in it. We must not, of course, answer the challenge 'How do you know they were sages?' By saying 'Because they believed'; that would be begging the question pure and simple. But thinkers considered wise for other reasons have believed; why should this one belief of theirs be an exception to their wisdom?

Finally, we have the supreme authority of the teachings of Jesus. Belief in life after death is central to His entire message, "the Kingdom of Heaven." Even if you do not believe He is the incarnate God, can you believe He is a naive fool?

Arguments from reason are logically stronger than arguments from authority. The premises, or evidence, for arguments from reason can be taken from three sources, three levels of reality what is less than ourselves (Nature), ourselves (human life), or what is more than ourselves (God). Again, we move from the weaker to the stronger argument.

We could argue from the principle of the conservation of energy. We never observe any form of energy created or destroyed, only transformed. The immortality of the soul seems to be the spiritual equivalent of the conservation of energy. If even matter is immortal, why not spirit?

The next class of arguments is taken from the nature of Man. What in us survives death depends on what is in us now. Death is like menopause. If a woman has in her identity nothing but her motherhood, then her identity has trouble-surviving menopause. Life after menopause is a little like life after death.

The simplest and most obvious of these arguments may be called Primitive Man's Argument from Dead Cow. Primitive Man has two cows. One dies. What is the difference between Dead Cow and Live Cow? Primitive man looks. (He's really quite bright.) There appears no material difference in size or weight immediately upon death. Yet there is an enormous difference; something is missing. What? Life, of course. And what is that? The answer is obvious to any intelligent observer whose head is not clouded with theories: life is what makes Live Cow breathe. Life is breath. (The word for 'soul', or 'life', and 'breath' is the same in many ancient languages.) Soul is not air, which is still in Dead Cow's lungs, but the power to move it.

Life, it is seen, is not a material thing, like an organ. It is the life of the organs, of the body not that which lives but that by which we live. Now this source of life cannot die as the body dies: by the removal of the soul. Soul cannot have soul taken from it. What can die has life on loan; life does not have life on loan.

The 'catch' in this argument is that this 'soul' may in turn have its life on loan from a higher source, and transmit it to the body only after having been given life first. This is in fact the Biblical teaching, contrary to the Greek view of the soul's inherent, necessary and eternal immortality. God gives souls life, and souls can die if they refuse it. But in any case the soul survives the body's death.

Another quite simple piece of evidence for the presence of an immaterial reality (soul) in us which is not subject to the laws of matter and its death, is the daily experience of real magic: the power of mind over matter. Every time I deliberately move my arm, I do magic. If there were no mind and will commanding the arm, only muscles; if there were muscles and a nervous system and even a brain but no conscious mind commanding them; then the arm could not rise unless it were lighter than air. When the body dies, its arms no longer move; the body reverts to obedience to merely material laws, like a sword dropped by a swordsman.

Even more simply stated, mind is not part of the system of matter, not measurable by material standards (How many inches long is your mind?) Therefore it need not die when the material body dies. The argument is so simple and evident that one wonders whom the real 'primitive' is, the 'savage' who understands it or the sophisticated modern materialist who cannot understand the difference between mind and brain.

A traditional Scholastic argument for an immortal soul is taken from the presence of two operations which are not operations of the body (1) abstract thinking, as distinct from external sensing and internal imagining; and (2) deliberate, rational willing, as distinct from instinctive desiring. My thought is not limited to sense images like pyramids; it can understand abstract universal principles like triangles. And my choices are not limited to my body's desires and instincts. I fast, therefore I am.

Still another power of the soul which indicates that it is not a part or function of the body and therefore not subject to its laws and its mortality is the power to objectify its body. I can know a stone only because I am more than a stone. I can remember my past. (My present is alive; my past is dead.) I can know and love my body only because I am more than my body. As the projecting machine must be more than the images projected, the knower must be more than the objects known. Therefore I am more than my body.

Still another argument from the nature of soul, or spirit, is that it does not have quantifiable, countable parts as matter does. You can cut a body in half but not a soul; you can't have half a soul. It is not extended in space. You don't cut an inch off your soul when you get a haircut.

Since soul has no parts, it cannot be decomposed, as a body can. Whatever is composed (of parts) can be decomposed: a molecule into atoms, a cell into molecules, an organ into cells, a body into organs, a person into body and soul. But soul is not composed, therefore not decomposable. It could die only by being annihilated as a whole. But this would be contrary to a basic law of the universe: that nothing simply and absolutely vanishes, just as nothing simply pops into existence with any cause.

But if the soul dies neither in parts (by decomposition) nor as a whole by annihilation, then it does not die. One last argument for immortality from the present experience of what soul is, comes from Plato. It is put so perfectly in the Republic that I quote it in its original form, adding only numbers to distinguish the steps of the argument:

Evil is all that which destroys and corrupts... Each thing has its evil... For instance, ophthalmia for the eye, and disease for the whole body, mildew for corn and for wood, rust for iron...

The natural evil of each thing... destroys it, and if this does not destroy it, nothing else can...

(a) for I don't suppose good can ever destroy anything,

(b) nor can what is neither good nor evil,

- and it is certainly unreasonable... that the evil of something else would destroy anything when its own evil does not.

Then if we find something in existence which has its own evil but which can only do it harm yet cannot dissolve or destroy it, we shall know at once that there is no destruction for such a nature....

The soul has something, which makes it evil... injustice, intemperance, cowardice, ignorance. Now does any one of these dissolve and destroy it?

Then, since it is not destroyed by any evil at all, neither its own evil nor foreign evil, it is clear that the soul must of necessity be... immortal."

We turn now to a stronger class of arguments: not from the nature of Man but from the nature of God; not 'because of what I am, I must be immortal' but 'because of what God is, I am immortal.' The weakness of this type of argument for practical apologetics, of course, is that it does not convince anyone not already convinced, because it presupposes the existence of God, and those who admit God usually admit life after death already, while those who deny the one usually deny the other as well. Yet, though apologetically weak, the argument is theoretically potent because it gives the real, the true reason or cause why we survive death: God wills it.

We could first argue from God's justice. Since God is just, His dealings with us must be just, at least in the long run, in the total picture. ("The long run" is the answer to the problem of evil, the apparently unjust distribution of suffering.) The innocent suffer and the wicked flourish here; therefore 'here' cannot be 'the long run,' the total picture. There must be justice after death to compensate for injustice before death. (This is the point of Jesus' parable of the rich man and Lazarus.)

The next argument, from God's love, is stronger than the one from His justice because love is more essential to God. Love is God's essence; justice is one of His attributes-one of Love's attributes.

Love is "the fulfillment of the whole law." Each of the Ten Commandments is a way of loving. "Thou shalt not kill" means "Love does not kill." If you love someone, you don't kill him. But God IS love. Therefore God does not kill us. We want human life to triumph over death in the end because we love; is God less loving than we? Is He a hypocrite? Does He refuse to practice what He preaches?