Is Death Really The End?
In the first part of my series on dying I admitted that, like most of you, I am afraid of death.
Unlike most people however, I have had two close experiences with it – one was neutral (I felt neither sadness nor joy) while the other was supremely negative (feelings of recrimination, guilt and terror). I’ve never had the “typical” follow-the-light or see-yourself-on-the-operating-table experience. Of course, I have never been so close to death that my brain or heart stopped functioning.
Why did I have that one negative experience? It’s a question that haunts me to this day. I’m sure it had more to do with my high fever and the fact I hadn’t yet found serenity in my own life than it had to do with the hereafter. Of course, a superstitious part of me feels it was a sign to clean up my act, stop feeling sorry for myself and start helping others. I certainly can’t prove that, but it doesn’t make it untrue.
There are two things that we know about death.
- That it happens to all of us without exception
- That we have no idea what happens afterwards.
Of course there are a lot of people who think they do know. These people are roughly divided into two camps. There are those who have faith and religion who believe in an afterlife or afterlives ranging from absolute bliss to damnation and flames. On the other side are certain members of the atheist or scientific community who are just as sure that absolutely nothing happens to us at all after we die. We just cease to exist entirely.
Science does a great job at explaining the physical laws of reality and when it comes to things that exist in this universe, I tend to be biased towards the scientific method.
However, there is one small thing we likely will never be able to prove – that the reality we perceive is, in fact, reality.
- So now we venture in philosophy.
Each one of us knows the power the mind is capable of in creating its own reality. Ever had a dream where you can fly? In the dream it may have seemed natural but just as real as your everyday experience.
Most of us have dreams at some point where our past experiences and memory are different – we’ve married a different person or maybe lived a different type of life with a different type of career. Our mind can create decades of history in these alternate realities. So how do we know the reality we are in right now is real?
Okay, I don’t want you obsessing about The Matrix here – although the makers of that movie used a similar concept. It’s actually a concept that’s actually been around in the Western World since at least the ancient Greeks, but was expressed best in the 1600s when René Descartes (both a philosopher and scientist) said
I think; therefore I am.
The only thing each of us can really prove exists is our own thoughts. It’s humbling and perhaps even unsettling, but it all boils down to that simple fact.
- And back to science for a bit.
Before we wrap up our look at reality here, I’d like to go back to science again. As physicists look at quantum mechanics – the study of atomic and sub-atomic particles and energy – they realize that there are some things that don’t entirely make sense mathematically about the universe. This has lead to many theories about different dimensions and parallel universes that would allow the mathematics of our own universe to make sense. In fact, many eminent people in the scientific community believe there could be an infinite number of universes with different physical laws – meaning there would be universes where we could fly, and others where we would not die or even get old.
When we dream does part of our consciousness access these universes? Does our consciousness actually exist in these universes and continue to exist even after we die in this one?
If you have the time and aptitude to read up on some of these theories, I’ll include the Wikipedia entries. From there you can find excellent reading lists on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M_theory
- An uncertain, but not definite end
In life, most of us try to ignore the fact that we all die and that our physical reality can’t be proven. And frankly I think that’s healthy. Otherwise we’d spend all our time brooding about the futility and impermanence of everything, cease to care about ourselves and our world and make the reality we are in now quite unpleasant.
However, questioning reality is something that can be helpful to ease our fear of death. Since we can’t prove what happens beyond our life and whether it’s ultimately good or bad the only thing we can rationally fear is uncertainty. As fears go, the fear of uncertainty is at least one we are familiar with and much easier to deal with than the fear of non-existence.
The more we examine the building blocks of our universe, the more we understand that the reality we live in is not as simple and concrete as we think it is. Anything is possible.
___________________
If you’re looking to overcome fear, check out our free ebook.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Some of the more advanced theologians like Bishop Spong, (even though he is lamost 80 is one of the most modern. He would agree that we just don’t know.
Eternal Life…A new Vision. Spong, Shelby.
Bishop Spong woul also agree, I think, that the black and white answers of both the ”fundamentalist” atheist and the fundamentatist Christians(and other religions) are wrong.. Some of those presenting the atheist point of view are just as close minded to other opinions as the fundamentalists. As someone once said, ”I’m an atheist, thank god!
I agree with you Bob. Spong had some very rational and modern ideas about what religion should be.
I’m also a huge fan of Richard Dawkins, the British biologist and a man many people view as a “militant” atheist.
Even he has said, “Although many of us fear death, I think there is something illogical about it.”
{ 1 trackback }