What happens when we die? Inquiring minds want to know, particularly those over 70. They think they’ve got it down for the most part but in the Computer Age, where today’s sensation is tomorrow’s yawn, it’s best to check and make sure.
Christians have narrowed their next address down to Heaven or Hell. They find solace in dreaming of a place of eternal light, where grandma is waiting with freshly-baked banana bread and the skies are not cloudy all day. Spot and Puff are there, as is Lawrence Welk, and the streetcars always run on time. All this is a Final Reward for going to church on Sunday, observing the Golden Rule and keeping immigrants out of God’s Country. And if not, well, the notion of it keeps the woebegone have-nots from rioting in the streets.
Naysayers, however, scoff at all this. It’s incredibly cumbersome, for one thing, and for another, why would God—assuming there actually was one—bother? Let’s take a look at the Christian logic.
Bored as hell, God created the universe just for giggles. Man eventually evolved, except in Kansas, where God shipped him in directly from Heaven on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. Man immediately started shooting the place up, spreading diseases across the land and establishing Communist governments. God recognized the need for a new sheriff in town. His son, Jesus, drew the short straw and was sent to Earth to straighten things out. He was doing a halfway decent job of it, but rival rap artists, jealous of his growing fandom, nailed him in a drive-by. Extremely pissed, God shot an industrial-strength lightning bolt down to Earth, revived Jesus, and beamed him back up.
Now, under the circumstances, goes the agnostic logic, why would God create a Disneyland North for these insufferable humans? It makes no sense. If a sinkhole the size of Orlando opened up, swallowed the entire lot of them and deposited them directly in Hell, we’d get it. The only other possible explanation for the whole mess is that St. Peter really needed a job.
Alternative Possibilities
Assuming the nonbelievers are correct and the Christians are in error, what now? Is our future the same as that of the unlucky armadillo skwushed on the highway—gradual disintegration into unpleasant gas fumes, then utter disappearance? How much fun is that to talk about? Are any other possibilities even viable? Interestingly, even atheists and agnostics often believe in an afterlife. A 2015 survey in England found that 25% of them believed in life after death. A similar 2014 survey taken in the United States found that 32% of those who identified themselves as atheists and agnostics believed in an afterlife in some form. And what form might that be? One alternative is that consciousness may be a fundamental force of the universe, which potentially exists everywhere and in everything. The function of the brain may not be to produce consciousness but to receive it, like a radio aerial. If it is true that consciousness is a fundamental force, then it is possible that it may continue in some form after the death of the body. Sounds like a stinky afterlife to us.
Near Death Experiences
All of us have read about near-death experiences. If not, pick up a National Enquirer, they’ve got one a week. In the typical close call, little Rosie has gone down for the third time and is unresponsive when a lifeguard finally drags her to shore. After several long minutes of CPR futility, the kid finally gurgles and spits up a bucket of seawater, drawing smiles and applause from terrified onlookers and relatives. And an ice cream cone—they always give the borderline-dead ice cream.
Later, Rosie tells her folks she was not too worried about it all because she saw grandma and smelled the banana bread. Nana was just inside a long, very bright tunnel and she was waving joyfully. Somewhere, Cyndi Lauper was singing “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and Dumbo was flying through the sky carrying Mr. Rogers.
There have been numberless attempts to explain near-death experiences in physicalist terms but none of them are very convincing. There are serious flaws in trying to credit them to cerebral anoxia, undetected brain activity, endorphin rush or the release of DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine). In a sense, NDEs don’t automatically suggest that there is life after death since this apparent continuation of consciousness and individual identity is only temporary. But NDEs surely suggest there isn’t a causal relationship between consciousness and the brain. They infer that consciousness may continue, however temporary, following a cessation of brain activity.
What’s with all the dead relatives showing up with the Welcome Wagon? In some cases, people speak of relatives they didn’t know were dead, family members they have merely lost contact with or who had died only recently. This could obviously be seen as more direct evidence of life after death, though providing few clues as to what form it might take after we follow grandma back through the tunnel. You’d hate to wind up in Cleveland.
Out Of Body Experiences
In 1991, singer-songwriter Pam Reynolds developed a deadly aneurysm. Faced with the choice of dangerous surgery or certain death, Reynolds opted for the risky procedure. She was placed in an artificial coma, her body chilled to 60 degrees fahrenheit and virtually all blood was drained from her brain. Her eyes were taped shut, her ears plugged with molded speakers which drowned out all noise and allowed the monitoring of brain stem activity. Her neurosurgeon, Dr. Robert Spetzler, said “She was as deeply comatose as you can be and still be alive.”
Unexplainably, Pam Reynolds quickly became aware of it all. Suddenly, she felt herself floating above her body, looking down to see 20 people at work trying to save her life. She was very calm about the situation. She heard a woman standing by her left groin say “Her arteries are too small.” A surgeon was holding a specialized brain saw behind her head. Hotel California was playing in the background. She watched for awhile and then took her leave through a tunnel of light, returning to her body much later. Months after the operation, she told Spetzler about her experience and was shocked to hear him verify every detail.
It’s true, of course, that Pam Reynolds didn’t technically die. There is no way to prove that the spirit which hovered above her body would have survived if Pam had actually expired. There is also no proof that she wouldn’t have.
An unnamed participant in a study approved by the University of Ottawa Research Board—a woman age 24 who was a psychology graduate student at the time—spontaneously reported after one of her classes that she could move “out of body” at will. She was surprised that not everyone could do it. She described her experiences as having begun in preschool. Bored with “sleep time,” she discovered she could move above her body and used the practice as a distraction during the time the kids were asked to nap. She continued to perform this experience as she grew up, able to see herself rotating in the air above her body, lying flat, rolling along with the horizontal plane. Sometimes she watched herself move from above but remained aware of her unmoving “real” body. As an adult, she practiced the experience less, but never accidentally; it was always induced willfully.
‘I can make myself feel like I am moving even though I realize I am not moving,” she claims. “There is no duality of body and mind when this happens. In fact, I am hypersensitive to my body at that point because I am concentrating so hard on the sensation of moving. I am the one moving—me—my body. If I spin long enough, I get dizzy. I do not see myself above my body, rather, my whole body has moved up. I feel it as being above where I know it actually is. I usually also picture myself as moving up in my mind’s eye, but the mind is not substantive. It does not move unless the body does.”
If all of this proves nothing, it asks a lot of questions. If some part of us can emerge from the body and retain consciousness, how do we measure its possibilities? Can we train that part to make specific observations, perhaps even communicate? What happens to that part when the whole ceases to exist? And where is Rod Serling when you really need him?
Conclusions
So—what happens when we die? The wisest sage cannot say for sure, which is why even a dubious man may be caught in church. “Hey, it couldn’t hurt, right?” The closer we get to the precipice, the stronger the inclination to believe there is a Benevolent Force waiting behind the curtain, thus the old axiom “There are no atheists in the foxholes.”
Even when our old ally, Logic, tries to convince us that an afterlife is a rosy myth, we balk. Even when we knew better, we hated to give up on Santa Claus. As humans, we are merely a few steps ahead of the other animals, with limited understanding and awareness of reality. We like to think we are capable of understanding everything, that one day we will possess a complete explanation for all phenomena. We think we see the world as it is, that there is nothing behind our present conception of reality, but we really know better.
Our awareness is limited, the same as the awareness of a porcupine is limited. There are energies, forces, phenomena beyond our wildest imaginations. Is it likely that a materialist conception of reality hits the spot? Hardly. Can a clear-cut case be made that the cessation of the physiological functioning of our bodies means the end of consciousness? Not yet.
Dirty Harry once told us that a man must be aware of his limitations. Even the greatest geniuses cannot see all the phantoms which swirl around us laughing at our innocence, teasing us with a whiff of other dimensions, a tiny flash of hidden realms. Maybe there is finally a place where Karma rules, maybe we emerge again as red-lipped batfish or pioneer colonists on the planet Proxima Centauri, maybe we’ll be mules humping it down the Bright Angel Trail to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. There are no answers, only mysteries. If we get there first, we’ll leave the light on for you.
That’s all, folks….
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
