There are at least 8 alternative theories of what happens after death: annihilation, torment, bliss, heaven/hell, addition of purgatory and limbo to heaven and hell, the last judgment, reincarnation, and timeless eternity. Since no one knows for sure, the choice of belief can be according to personal taste, but truth value is not guaranteed. As we each go into the death process in our turn, there may be surprises, as unthought-of alternatives emerge.
1. ANNIHILATION.
This is the naturalistic theory, which makes no distinction between soul and body. Since the body obviously disintegrates at death, it follows that the soul must also. Another line of evidence: consciousness fades in conditions such as fainting and anaesthesia, or even in deep sleep; so that permanent unconsciousness is easy to conceive – though in another way difficult to imagine, since we have trouble thinking of the world going on without us.
According to the book “The Crone”, the naturalistic theory of the life-death cycle was the original religion of humankind, linked to the ancient Goddess religions, called fertility cults or paganism or Wicca (witchcraft) by the Christians who persecuted them. The Goddess created life in the beginning (as all women create life), and swallowed it again in the end (as Mother Earth does when we bury the dead). In a bigger cycle, She created and swallowed the World. As Kali she was feared as the agent of destruction; as Demeter (Dei Mater = Mother of God), her daughter Persephone ruled the underworld in Greek myth, as Ceres she produced life-giving crops, as Isis of Egypt she saved her sonlhusband Osiris from death, as Morgan of Avalon she was King Arthur’s sister, as Diana/Artemis she was a virgin Goddess requiring periodic death of the king (see Frazer’s “The Golden Bough”), as Venus/Aphrodite/Freia she was a seductress as in the opera “Tannhauser”. She represents the female incarnation of life-fertility-death intimately intertwined, as in the world of nature.
The basic belief is that “life is meant to circulate”. No being or creature, not even the gods, can or ought to monopolize it for ever or for very long. Just as matter and energy circulate in metabolism, so spiritual substance (soul) also circulates through innumerable living forms. Recycling is the norm for everything. Even time is not linear, but cyclic. While each creature’s life is finite and limited, Life as a whole is potentially eternal and limitless as a principle – though the largest cycle seems to end it, it reemerges as a Phoenix from the fire.
There are other expressions of the idea of death as annihilation. It is probably the most common belief, even among traditionally religious people (nominal Christians). Though they may cover it up by a veneer of public pretence, and sometimes the private denial of wish-fulfillment, at bottom they know that “dust unto dust, ashes to ashes” refers not only to the body, but to the soul as well. They believe that animals are extinguished at death, and it is difficult to pretend that human animals are any different.
With the newly aroused consciousness now of nature and the Earth, this naturalistic view of death is coming to the fore again. Dualistic notions of an immortal soul residing temporarily in a mortal body are fading. The physical side of life is emphasized, as science reveals more about its wonders, and as we realize how precious life is, because it may be on the edge of destruction on a large scale. There is a new spirituality connected with deep ecology, but it is not of the dualistic body-soul type. It is much more goddess-like – her new name is Gaia. It is akin to the old Nature worship, which never really disappeared. e.s. Lewis warns against worshipping nature instead of “Nature’s Maker”, but some of us, having lost all faith previously, have to make this lengthy detour — if it is a detour.
I read a simple account of death as annihilation recently, though I don’t remember where. It goes something like this: For half of endless time, there is nothing. Then suddenly this peephole opens, and voices start explaining what it is all about before you can decide on your own. Then soon the peephole closes and there is nothing again for the second half of endless time.
2. TORMENT.
Another theory of death, though not a very commonly believed one, is that consciousness continues after death in undiminished clarity, that we will fully know all the details of our disintegrating body, with incredible pain and torment still pulsing through the nervous system. It is an unbearably horrible image, which is why few choose to believe it. It is also not a very likely one: where would the energy come from to operate the brain and nervous system when respiration and blood circulation stops? Yet the torment could exist for a time after clinical death, before progressive cell death spreads slowly through the system (for death does not occur all at once, it is a process).
In spite of its long-range improbability, this view remains a recurrent horrific nightmare. Weston (the Devil) describes it to Ransom in e.s. Lewis’ “Perelandra”. “Down here they take your head off…” There are stories of people not quite dead being embalmed and buried by careless undertakers, or burned alive in cremations. In certain medical conditions, patients’ muscles can be completely paralyzed while their mind is fully awake: treatment by certain drugs, advanced Parkinsonism, or awakening from “paradoxic (REM) sleep” before the muscles are “reconnected”. This latter experience I have had repeatedly, and it is still incredibly frightening, though I now know about it. I often feel that I will choke to death on a piece of phlegm before I can cough. Perhaps that could happen, but I doubt it. Yet precisely this may happen to infants in “crib death” or “sudden infant death syndrome”, when they stop breathing during deep sleep because of some defect or immaturity of the nervous system’s “panic button” in the brain’s respiratory centre.
The nightmare continues when you think about surgical operations. In deep anaesthesia, the doctors have your natural respiratory centre in the brain temporarily turned off by drugs, while machines breathe for you. What if your consciousness is not turned off, as everybody thinks, but only your memory? You may fully suffer the intense pain of the surgeon’s knife at the time, but simply not remember it afterwards; so no patient ever complains. When I say this to people, some say “even if it’s true, does it matter?” To them, a momentarily felt but unremembered horror is no problem. I disagree vigorously, as a believer in the Eternal Now; it matters like Hell, literally!
When I was having a broken wrist set, I was supposed to breathe nitrous oxide-oxygen mixture through a mask. When I did feel the surgeon pulling my band as if it would tear off completely, I thought amid the pain “It’s true!” Then I took a really deep breath of the gas mix and I was out like a light. Now this was not deep anaesthesia, and also I did remember it afterwards, so it was not quite what I postulated. But what if! was not really “out like a light” a little later?
I have never had deep anaesthesia; but I bad a muscle relaxant for dental surgery, which gave me a high – the opposite of torment. But more about tbat later.
In one of my essays (“Nightmares of the Dead”) (not in this collection), I go more into this theory of the afterlife as torment; though another theory, reincarnation, is mentioned there also.
3. BLISS.
This theory is favoured by tbe wish-fulfillers, though it is scientifically no more plausible than the theory of torment. The theory of bliss holds that the physical body is like a cage, preventing the soaring of the soul to its natural destination, pictured as “the Light”. When the cage releases its hold at death, the soul goes toward the Light by natural attraction, and finds eternal bliss and release from all pain automatically. This release or liberation is not conditional on good works or faith or any of the preconditions for salvation in heaven in the Christian scheme, to be described later. Liberation at death is unconditionally guaranteed to everyone, being simply the next stage of existence after earthly life.
Release into the Light follows death like life follows birth – everyone’s “death right” analogous to “birth right”. In fact, the process of death is often compared to the process of birth: both are physically painful, full of anxiety as one goes through a narrow passage like a tunnel, squeezed and not knowing when it will end. In both cases, there is light at the end of the tunnel; the new-born babe sees earthly light for the very first time on emerging from the birth canal, and the soul emerging from the body-cage sees the unearthly Light for the very first time. In each case, the light is a shock, a surprise, but when the surprise passes, it becomes a source of bliss and joy – a delight. The babe and the soul have to learn new ways to accommodate to their new mode of existence, whose rules and skills are radically different from the previous mode.
Yet there are connecting links. Above all, the soul is reunited in fellowship with dear and beloved ones it knew on Earth who have passed on before.
Relevant to this are recorded “near-death” experiences, recounted in several recent books and articles. The experiences of patients thought to have died, but later revived, include accounts of seeing a bright light, meeting loved ones who lead them toward the light, and feelings of bliss and happiness. In many cases, the patients are sorry that they were revived, forced to return to heaviness and materiality, sometimes even pain. In most cases, the result of the experience is the disappearance of the fear of death, at least until the vividness of the experience fades.
My own experience was not “near-death”, only an anaesthetic dream; it was nevertheless remarkable. I was administered a curare-type muscle relaxant for dental surgery. In the dream I found myself in an admission office to heaven, where a kindly man asked me to fill out an application form and asked me questions. He seemed puzzled, as if the information I provided did not quite fit – like a hotel clerk who denies having any record that you reserved a room for that night. Still, he seemed inclined to let me proceed through the door (still closed) to the next room, where, with great excitement and anticipation, I expected to find hitherto unimagined delights. But just before he could open that door, to my great dismay I found the dream dissolving, and I crashed down to earth with a very unpleasant shock. It was npt like an ordinary dream awakening, which is usually pleasant and easy. Alan was leaning over me in the recovery room, reporting later that I had looked very pale and still while under the anaesthetic and that he had been feeling sorry for me.
Near-death experiences are often cited as evidence for the existence of life after death. Yet this truth claim must be doubted. The patients whose experiences are cited were not really dead, nor could they ever be, if death is defined as permanent cessation of life from which one does not return. So judgment must be suspended. It has even been suggested that the source of the near-death experience is the dimly remembered event of our own birth – hence the similarities between birth and death noted above. In that case, we should be able to test this hypothesis by comparing the near-death experiences of people born by vaginal birth and those born by Caesarian section – for the latter have never passed through the birth canal.
4. HEAVEN AND HELL.
The previous two alternative views were torment and bliss, but of course, it is possible to combine them, as is the Christian view. In general, the “good” or “virtuous” people are rewarded by going to Heaven, and the “bad” or “evil” people are punished by going to Hell. However, opinion differs on how “good” and “bad” is judged, Le. what constitutes merit.
In general, Catholics say that people are “saved” (i.e. go to Heaven) by works, i.e. virtuous behaviour, while Protestants say that people are “saved by faith”, i.e. by accepting Jesus Christ as their Saviour. Both branches of Christianity agree that all people would go to Hell because of Adam’s and Eve’s original sin (let alone their own personal sins), if it were not for Christ’s sacrifice. Presumably, if Adam and Eve had left that apple alone, we would all go to Heaven, as long as we did not incur any deadly sins, without any vicarious sacrifice being required; or else we would all live forever in earthly Paradise – it is not quite clear.
The argument for being saved by works is similar to that of Karma in Eastern religions: by a law of spiritual causation, good actions automatically lead to beneficial results and bad actions lead to harmful results for the perpetrator; but in Christianity, unlike in Hinduism, the pay-offs happen in the afterlife, not in this or a future incarnation. The image is one of God as the keeper of the book of records for the lifetime of every soul, writing down the pluses and the minuses as in a ledger and working out the final balance. If it is in black ink, you go up to Heaven; if it is red ink, you go down to Hell. The process is so automatic that it could be done by a computer, but perhaps God must evaluate how many points (good or bad) each action deserves.
The argument for salvation by faith rather than by works is that human good works are not good enough to deserve Heaven; they are always tainted with sin (through hidden motives etc.), never pure. There would always be red ink at the end of every life, unless the deficit were made up by Jesus Christ. The extra brownie points he earned for us are a free gift (Grace), unconditional – but we have to claim it by believing in it and accepting him.
In contemporary Christian practice, Hell and the Devil are being de-emphasized more and more. Stories of eternal torment in Hell are said to frighten children too much; and indeed descriptions of Hell are incredibly sadistic. It is hard to believe that even the worst sinners deserve THAT much punishment let alone ordinary fallible human beings. If THIS is what most of us are destined for, it would be much better by far if we were never born, because after a relatively brief and not always pleasant life here, we would spend all the rest of endless time in incredible torment. How could a merciful God create such a scheme? Or was he forced into it by Satan, in some kind of a Job-like bet?
Most ordinary Christians nowadays, when their family members or friends die, assume without question that they have gone to Heaven, and all funeral eulogies say so. Otherwise, the grief of the mourners would be overwhelming. (Though some victims of the departed one’s misdeeds might vengefully prefer to see them in Hell.)
If Hell is shut off as a post-life destination, then the Christian description collapses into the “bliss” alternative previously discussed, and nothing more needs to be added here.
5. HEAVEN/HELL/PURGATORY/LIMBO.
Some Catholic theologians have worked out very elaborate schemes of post-life alternatives, because they disliked the stark “either-or” alternatives of Heaven and Hell. After all, there are bound to be shades of grey among sinners, and if the punishment is made to fit the crime, then every person should not be treated in only one of two ways; there must be finer nuances.
There may be minor sinners who do not quite deserve Hell, but are not good enough for Heaven they need to be “purified”. For them, an in-between station called Purgatory was invented. In these temporary way-stations, souls are “purged” of their sins by a limited type of torment, and eventually they are admitted to Heaven. In Purgatory a soul expiates its sins, by doing penance as is done after confession among the living. Purgatory is like a limited sentence by a judge, while Hell is like a life sentence (really eternity sentence). Relatives and friends of the departed one light candles to shorten their loved one’s time in Purgatory – each candle being worth so many years.
Another conundrum is where the souls of the unbaptized go: children who died before baptism, or “savages” who never heard of Christianity and so had no chance of getting converted. These unfortunates lack the admission ticket to Heaven, even after a term in Purgatory, but obviously do not deserve eternal punishment. They are consigned to Limbo, the great catch-all category of left-overs or “miscellaneous” or “missing data” that every classification system must have. Presumably, these poor souls are permanently suspended in “nowhere”, at least until judgment day, because the authorities don’t know what to do with them. Maybe this comes close to the annihilation alternative, but the Christian writers do not want to admit that some souls might not be immortal.
Finally we have to add a place for the souls of the unborn, and perhaps never-to-be born, called Guv. I use this concept in my story “Changeling of the Universe”. It does not usually figure in the writing of Catholic theologians, but it is a part of Judaism.
Somewhere I have seen a diagram of this complicated scheme drawn up as a computer program, documenting “states of the soul” and the processes that lead to each. It is an interesting exercise in mathematical theology. And why not? I try to reconstruct it from memory.
From Guv a soul goes through birth to the state of non-salvation (if death occurs there, it goes to Limbo). Through baptism the soul enters into a state of salvation (if death occurs there, it goes to Heaven). If it commits a deadly sin, it enters a state of damnation (if death occurs, the soul goes to Hell). But through the process of confession and absolution, the soul moves from the state of damnation to the state of salvation (if death intervenes, the soul goes to Heaven). If a soul in the state of salvation commits a venial sin, it enters a state of conditional salvation (at death it will progress to Purgatory and eventually to Heaven). But if a conditionally saved soul goes through confession and absolution on Earth, it enters a state of salvation (from which it goes directly to Heaven at death). This scheme produces a neat and orderly state-of-the system diagram, where we. can always know where we stand. The nine states of the soul (Guv, non-salvation, salvation, conditional salvation, damnation, Limbo, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory) are unambiguously and deterministically connected by seven processes sometimes involving the sacraments (birth, baptism, deadly sin, venial sin, death, confession with absolution, expiation). An elaborate schem~, but satisfying to the believer.
6. THE LAST JUDGMENT.
This view is held by Judaism and also the Jehovah’s Witnesses in modified form. In this view, decision on an individual soul’s merit and fate is deferred until the End of the World. At a person’s death, the soul is temporarily annihilated, or perhaps put in Limbo; but on Judgment Day, both the soul and the body will be resurrected. The soul-body person, thus reconstituted, is judged as to its merits, and either continues to live forever in Earthly Paradise, or undergoes final and total annihilation.
The Jehovah’s Witnesses accept this view, and in addition believe that the Judgment will come in the lifetime of people now living. (“Millions now living will never die”, goes the saying.) Hence comes the urgency of their proselytizing, since only Jehovah’s Witnesses will be saved for Paradise – all others will perish.
The Book of Revelation (Apocalypse) teaches that this “sorting of the sheep from the goats” will occur at the Battle of Armageddon, the Last Battle. Armageddon is not a suitable model for nuclear war, though many people are taking it that way; for nuclear war would kill indiscriminately, sheep and goats, not do any sorting. However, some rightwing Christian Fundamentalists add the feature of “ravishment”, a process by which God plucks out all the righteous from the effects of a general nuclear war and saves them from death. Such people may even look forward to nuclear war as a process of purging the Earth from all sinners and evil-doers. Needless to say, this belief is extremely dangerous if such a believer gets into a position of power and tries to help the Lord along with his purge. Reagan was supposed to hold such views, and this inspired terror in many; but we now know that he did not do it, for whatever reasons. The Last Judgment view shares with the “salvation by works” view the idea that a ledger record is kept of each soul’s merits and demerits, in order to reach the final decision on that soul’s fate. The two views differ in three aspects: (1) when the judgment is administered (at the end of the world or at the time of death); and (2) the nature of the reward (Earthly Paradise versus Heaven) and (3) the punishment (annihilation or Hell). The Last Judgment view also has something in common with my essay “The Importance of Being Saved” (in Section IV), which postulates that lifetimes that are worthwhile contributions are “saved” like a computer text to be added to the build-up of Omega, while less worthy texts (lifetimes) are erased.
The long Limbo time that most soul-bodies have to wait until the final dispensation is reminiscent of the recent high-tech possibility to quick-freeze the body at death to await eventual resurrection when a cure for the disease that killed it has been found. However, that is the only similarity. The requirement for the high-tech resurrection (if in fact it proves feasible) is only to have enough money to pay for the service, not any moral merit. This “solution” also runs counter in a very fundamental way to the naturalistic annihilation view, which teaches that “life was meant to circulate”. It is also irrelevant to the Christian view that the survival or revival of the body does not matter, only that of the soul. If the Torment view is accepted, physical preservation of the body would only prolong the soul’s suffering, or perhaps postpone it.
The second-last card of the Major Arcana of the Tarot cards is called “Judgment”, and carries the appropriate picture of the dead rising from their graves as the archangel blows the trumpet. This may shed some light on the origin of the Tarot cards and their underlying religious philosophy. Probably they do not come from the East (India or China), where the view of death is more linked with reincarnation; but perhaps from esoteric cults of the Western (Middle Eastern) religions. The carriers, if not the originators, of the Tarot cards may have been the Gypsies.
How bodies are resurrected is a problem. Not only how to reconstitute the web of life once it has lapsed; but also at what age and state of health will each body be revived? For the organism changes greatly. during a lifetime, through aging and medical history; it is an extended “life-line”, not a point event. Proponents of this view do not usually mean (if they have thought about it at all) that the body will be resurrected as it was at the moment of death; this would usually produce a diseased or damaged body, not suited for long-range happiness in Paradise. The bodies rising from the graves on the Tarot card are pictured as young and healthy, some of them children.
7. REINCARNATION.
This view is common to the Eastern religions, especially Hinduism and Buddhism. The soul is seen as circulating through a succession of bodies, animal and human (of different castes and classes). The next reincarnation in each cycle is determined by the Law of Karma, i.e. the merit or demerit in the life just ended. Only the truly perfect life is at the end rewarded by “getting off the Wheel of Life” and entering Nirvana, a state of perfect bliss and union with the Divine. A perfect life probably requires Enlightenment while still on Earth, i.e. a preliminary vision of Nirvana attained by deep meditation.
Presumably, the soul has a lesson to learn, called variously Enlightenment, Awakening, or Liberation; and it will keep getting reincarnated until it learns this lesson. Christians, too, see this earthly life (“vale of tears”) as a learning or testing time, to qualify for the next grade like a student at examinations; but in Christianity it is a once-only exam, while the Hindu student has a chance to repeat until he/she passes. In a way it’s like a Purgatory on Earth. It is assumed that every soul will eventually pass if it is recycled often enough, though some take longer than others. Therefore there is no need for Hell in the Hindu system, but one can descend to a lower grade as well as ascend to a higher one from one lifetime to the next, by the Law of Karma, in a very long and tedious game of Snakes and Ladders.
The aim of getting off the Wheel of Life seems like an anti-life orientation; but actually, believers only want to escape from suffering and enter into the bliss of a higher state of life. This higher state is the state of pure Being (having gone through the tortuous path of Becoming on the Wheel). This state of Being is the real goal of life, and getting off the Wheel is like finally reaching home, not at all like sliding into dissolution. It is an upward climb, not a downward slide. However, insofar as natural biological life is very much a state of imperfect Becoming rather than of perfect Being, the Nirvana orientation does seem other-worldly and anti-natural.
Reincarnation is also known by the name of transmigration of souls. In some primitive cultures allover the world (i.e. not only in the East), the soul of each new child is supposed to be the soul of a recently deceased relative, and sometimes the name is transferred to symbolize this. This kind of reincarnation has nothing to do with Karma; it is only the soul’s attempt to stay with the family or the tribe – its people. This belief provides spiritual continuity to reinforce the biological continuity “through the blood”. .
This tribal view is a dualistic one; it sees the circulation through the generations of people of two “substances” or “essences” – the physical and the spiritual, body and soul. They circulate quite independently of each other: the physical through “the blood” (i.e. the genes) of mother and father, the spiritual through the timing proximity of deaths and births in the tribe. No soul wants to remain for long without a body, so it seeks out and enters the very next expectant womb. Some tribal doctrines specify that the ancestor’s soul enters the fetus at the time of “quickening”, i.e. about 4 months after conception. A fetus younger than that presumably has no soul, though it does have life – a living body and a beating heart. Perhaps in our debates about the ethics of abortion, we should realize that, for tribal peoples, the question “when does life begin” has a different answer than the question “when does the soul enter”; the answers are, respectively, “at conception” and “at quickening”.
8. ETERNITY.
This is a view of death which I developed in my essays “Time and Eternity” (Section I) and “The Importance of Being Saved” (Section IV). Because it is described there, I will not repeat it here in detail, though I will outline it for the sake of completeness in this essay.
The idea is that time is only one of the four dimensions of the space-time continuum; while we are alive, we move uniformly along the time dimension and cannot control the rate of this movement. However, at death we enter a new reality or mode of existence called “eternity”, which is not at all an infinite extension of time, but a state of being in which we CAN control our movement through time – go forward or backward at whatever speed we choose, just as we can now already control movement along the three space dimensions. Thus we can relive – truly relive, not just remember – any part of our life, or all of it at once. It lies there all laid out like a panorama.
It follows that, if our life has been a good one and we are satisfied with our conduct of it and with our contribution as co-creators of the universe, we are automatically in a state of bliss. (This is not a reward, but a straight causal consequence; and it is a self-judgment, not the judgment of an external God.) If we messed up or our contribution has been negative, then we can see at a glance all the harm we have done and we enter into a state of irretrievable regret (torment) – irretrievable because we can no longer change even one iota of our life performance after death. We see it all, but have no access to means of redress – it is done. We are no longer co-creating, but contemplating. We have perfect knowledge, but zero power or influence. We have created our own Heaven or Hell for eternity while still alive in the temporal order. A perfect self-administered Karma system has given us our exact just deserts. No ledger book is needed.
Yet the system is not sadistic like the Christian Hell. There is no mention of fire and brimstone. We only gain clear insight into our own actions or inactions, and the torment is spiritual, not physical, which is appropriate.
The other part of this theory has to do with “being saved” or salvation. This is compared to saving a text in the computer, i.e. accumulating it in long-range memory. This is seen as a cumulative process for all humans and possibly for other life forms as well, on Earth and perhaps on other planets. A good life-text is saved, a bad or useless one is scrapped. Only the poor tormented soul who lived the unsaved life can still read it; or perhaps that soul is eventually erased along with the faulty text and its torment is ended.
The saved life-texts gradually build up (co-create) the Omega according to Teilhard de Chardin. Eventually there is enough wisdom and virtue in the Omega file to deserve the name “God”. But because time as we the living perceive it is unreal (it is only a dimension in Eternity), an ultimate wrap-around (Hofstadter’s “tangled hierarchy”) joins Omega to Alpha, and God is our creator as well as we being the creators of God. This is expressed by the ancient symbol of the snake eating its own tail; also the symbol for infinity (a figure eight lying on its side) which looks like a Moebius strip, a space figure with only one surface. We contribute different amounts to Omega – the Saints a great deal, ordinary people only a little bit, sinners nothing at all. The contributions could be quantified by one with perfect knowledge. Creation is a collective enterprise. Death is only the time when we hand in our assigned homework.
This collective cumulation feature is the distinctive one. The other beliefs described here, except perhaps the naturalistic annihilation one or the tribal version of reincarnation, are individualistic schemes. In the Eternity scheme, each individual soul is not required to reach perfection, either in a single lifetime or in repeated reincarnations; it is taken as it is, and if its Karma is positive at all, even slightly, its contribution is accepted and merged into the common pool.
9. CONCLUSION.
This “tour d’horizont” of death theories may not be complete, but it presents a fascinating variety of views. Unfortunately, their validity cannot be established. Death remains as much of a mystery as ever. Yet the greatest mystery is life. It is easier to accept that there is nothing than that there is something.