Death is Transition -Time at the Door of Eternity

A Natural Afterlife Discovered: The Newfound, Psychological Reality That Awaits Us at Death, 2022

This book reveals an amazingly long-overlooked psychological reality that dawned on the author when he woke up from a dream and thought: “Suppose I had never woken up? Though others would know, how would I ever know it was over?” Based on cognitive science research and analysis, the author found that consciousness is not extinguished with death but, from a dying person’s perspective, only imperceptibly “paused.” Given this, from your perspective, you’ll never lose your mind, self, and soul. And, given dreams and near-death experiences, you may experience a timeless natural—i.e., scientifically supported—afterlife, which can be a heaven of utmost happiness. Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection was an earth-shattering revelation about how life evolved. This book is about an equally earth-shattering scientific theory about how a human life ends, including its possible impact on society and on you. For more information on the book, including media posts and author interviews, visit bryonehlmann.com.

To make educated guesses about what happens to consciousness upon bodily death, one has to have some understanding of the relationship between body and consciousness during life. This relationship, of course, reflects an ontology. In this brief essay, the tenability of both the physicalist and dualist ontologies will be assessed in view of recent experimental results in physics. The alternative ontology of idealism will then be discussed, which not only can be reconciled with the available empirical evidence, but also overcomes the lack of parsimony and limited explanatory power of physicalism and dualism. Idealism elegantly explains the basic facts of reality, such as (a) the fact that brain activity correlates with experience, (b) the fact that we all seem to share the same world, and (c) the fact that we can't change the laws of nature at will. If idealism is correct, the implication is that, instead of disappearing, conscious inner life expands upon bodily death, a prediction that finds circumstantial but significant confirmation in reports of near-death experiences and psychedelic trances, both of which can be construed as glimpses into the early stages of the death process.

The only life we are consciously aware of is the present life. We have no idea of how we felt before birth or how will we feel after death. The concept of ‘the Punishment of Grave’ , however, suggest that there is a level of awareness after death. The author, in this paper, has made an attempt to understand what these levels of awareness are. His analysis suggests that our perception of the past and the future is viable only when there is a flow of information between our consciousness and memory (awake and dream states). Once this flow of information is blocked (partitioned), either temporarily during deep sleep or permanently after death or before birth, it only lives in the present. It feels what it is made to feel without our experience of the past or the anticipation of the future to rely upon. It feels the pain or the pleasure of what it is made to feel after death. Its feeling before the birth is probably neutral, neither pain, nor pleasure, since it has not gone through the trials and tribulations of this life.

2025

This research examines how individuals construct spiritual transformation in response to the sensory and extrasensory phenomena of Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) or similarly critical encounters. While prior studies have extensively explored the phenomenology of NDEs and attempted to explain their etiology through psychological and neurophysiological paradigms, this research focuses instead on how individuals subjectively make sense of the phenomena of critical encounters (and their intensity) as part of their spiritual transformation, or lack thereof. Using a comparative phenomenological approach, semi-structured interviews will investigate how participants from diverse spiritual and religious backgrounds articulate their experiences and interpret shifts in their identity in relation to the phenomena described. This research seeks to deepen our understanding of the sensory and extrasensory dimensions of NDEs and similar encounters while shedding light on how individuals may reorganize their spiritual identities in response to embodied or disembodied experiences of mortality.

1984

The greatest part of what we say and do is unnecessary. MARCUS AURELIUS Presque toute notre vie este employée à des curiositées niaises. En revanche il y a des choses qui defraient exciter la curiosité des homes au plus haut degré, et qui, à en juger par leur train de vie ordinaire, ne leur en inspirent aucune. Où sont nos amis morts? Pourquoi sommes-nous ici? Venons-nous de quelque part?.... BAUDELAIRE The answer to human life is not to be found within the limits of human life. JUNG Man has not basically changed. Death is still a fearful, frightening happening, and the fear of death is a universal fear even if we think we have mastered it on many levels. KÜBLER-ROSS Medical advances may postpone death, but no degree of scientific sophistication is able to eliminate it altogether. Sooner or later each of us has to confront the prospect of the death of the physical body. Then what? The annihilation of a dreamless sleep, or might conscious existence continue in some sense? If so, what might be the nature of such a continued existence? Might my present conduct and attitudes influence its quality? The decline in infant mortality has made us less familiar with death in the immediate family. We may see disasters on the television news, we may read of murders in the newspapers, but such events rarely touch us directly: this kind of thing could never happen to us, we remain insulated and apart. Our old people are often carefully segregated in institutions out of contact with the rest of society, and when they fall ill they are discreetly transported to clockwork hospitals. Here they become patients, further isolated from their normal environments, and are often cloaked in a conspiracy of silence regarding the real nature and gravity of their illness. Kübler-Ross constructs a scenario of what may ensue at this stage: Our imaginary patient has now reached the emergency ward. He will be surrounded by busy nurses, orderlies, interns, residents, a lab technician perhaps who will take some blood, another technician who takes the electrocardiogram. He may be moved to X-ray and he will overhear opinions of his condition and discussions and questions to members of his family. Slowly but surely he is beginning to be treated like a thing. He is no longer a person. Decisions are made often without taking his opinion. If he tries to rebel he will be sedated, and after hours of waiting and wondering whether he has the strength, he will be wheeled into the operating room or intensive treatment unit and become an object of great concern and great financial investment. He may cry out for rest, peace, dignity, but he will get infusions, transfusions, a heart machine, or a tracheotomy. 1 The alienation is exacerbated. For medicine death is the ultimate symbol of failure and defeat: life must be prolonged where possible. Death is to be evaded and denied. Such evasion and denial surrounding the terminal patient may temporarily prop up the medical staff and relatives, but it is liable to elicit feelings of horror and revulsion towards the dying person at the very moment when he most needs human sympathy and comfort. People are afraid of identifying themselves too closely. But one day it will be their turn. During the earliest stages, air is conceived as participating with thought: the voice is air, and, in return, the wind takes notice of us, obeys us, and is 'good at making us grow', comes when we move our hands, and so on. When thought proper is localised in the self, and the participations between air and thought are broken, the nature of air changes by virtue of this fact alone. Air becomes independent of men, sufficient to itself, and living its own life. But, owing, to the fact that it is held to participate with the self, it retains at the very moment when it is severing these bonds, a certain number of purely human aspects: it still has consciousness, of a different kind perhaps than formerly, but its own nevertheless. Only very gradually will it be reduced to a mere thing. 3 We know that trees, idols, holy places, and human beings are recognisable objects of the external world, into which early man projected his inner psychic contents. By recognising them, we withdraw such 'primitive projections', we diagnose them as autosuggestion or something of the sort, and thus the fusion effected by participation between man and the objects of the external world is nullified. 5 First, concerning souls of individual creatures, capable of continued existence after the death or destruction of the body; second, concerning other spirits, upwards to the rank of deities. Spiritual beings are held to affect or control the events of the material world, and man's life here and hereafter. 11 He goes on to argue that, given the possibility of communication between these spirits and men, reverence and propitiation will soon arise, thus pointing to emergence of religion from a combination of ancestor-worship and worship of elemental forces. This view has been contested by, inter alia, Evans-Pritchard 12 but a discussion of the issues falls outside the scope of this work. Whatever the controversy over the actual sequence of beliefs, it is generally recognised that the primitive outlook is characterised by the kind of animism formulated by Tylor. This view does not limit the possibility of continued post-mortem existence to man. Frazer states that The explanation of life by the theory of an indwelling and practically immortal soul is one which the savage does not confine to human beings but extends to the animate creation in general ….he commonly believes that animals are endowed with feelings and intelligence like those of men, and that, like men, the possess souls which survive the death of their bodies either to wander about as disembodied spirits or to be born again in animal form. 13 Once the moon charged the hare to go to men and say 'As I die and rise to life again, so shall you die and rise to life again'. So the hare went to men, but either out of forgetfulness or malice he reversed the message and said 'As I die and do not rise to life again, so shall you also die and not rise to life again'. Then he went back to the moon and she asked him what he had said. He told her, and when she heard that he had given the wrong message, she was so angry with him that she threw a stick at him and split his life, which is the reason why the hare's lip is still split ….before he fled he clawed the moon's face, which still bears the marks of his scratching, as anybody can see for himself on a clear moonlight night. 64 This myth is notable for its economy in explaining at one stroke the origin of death, the hare's lip, and the man in the moon. A third theme, that the serpent and his cast skin, has a tenuous connection with the Genesis story. Some Melanesians say that a messenger was entrusted with the message of immortality for men, providing that they shed their skins every year; but serpents were to be mortal. Unfortunately the secret was betrayed to the serpents and the message reversed. In another case in Annam 65 the messenger was entrusted with the same message but was intimidated by a group of serpents and obliged to repeat the message in reverse. It is interesting that both myths assume that the serpent somehow expropriated a privilege originally accorded to man. Another Sumatran story tells of a certain being who was sent down from heaven to put the finishing touches on creation. He was The idea of immortality was an axiom to the minds of the Egyptians; their notions might be confused, might be rebuffed by pessimism, might develop in various ways, yet from the first burial, with its regular offerings, the belief was always acting until it was expanded in the conversion to Christanity.9 with the calm assurance common to all close and confined religious associations, the Eleusinian society divided mankind into two classes: the 'Pure', that is those who had been initiated at Eleusis, and the innumerable multitude of the uninitiated'. 34 'Alexander's Tomb'. Here the essential items were distributed between three automatists, Mrs Piper, Miss Verrall, and Mrs Holland: Mrs Piper: Moorhead, I gave her that for laurel.

There is a pattern to the way most humans live, that of how their actions will affect their future, and in most cases, how their actions will affect their journey after death. Different cultures and religions may have formulated different benchmarks or guidelines to this effect, but one thing remains clear, the purpose of these rules and guidelines for the way we live are done keeping in mind what we want to happen to us after death. We know for a fact that Human beings, like all other organic creatures, die and the physical body perishes. But, there is a widespread and popular belief that in some way this death is survivable, that there is a possibility of life after death. This concept of some kind of journey after death has become possibly the most debated topic, and has created countless theories over time. On different levels, human actions are guided by the enigma of what will be in store for them after death. This paper looks in to the various teachings and beliefs of different cultures and religions and how they have shaped the understanding of death and how this thought process was furthered through literature and has been used to manipulate the emotions of audiences through history and changed the way people perceive death and the consequences on the way they live their lives.

DEATH AND THE INTERMEDIATE STATE: COMPARISON OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC, ORTHODOX, AND PROTESTANT DOCTRINAL VIEWS ABOUT THE CHRISTIAN’S ETERNAL STATE PAPER TYPE: Synthesis and Expository THESIS STATEMENT: The study will contrast and compare Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant doctrines concerning death and the intermediate state, with the purpose of understanding what happens to the soul upon death, the intermediate state, the resurrection of the body, and how its implications affect the way we live our lives in preparation for our eternal life. ABSTRACT: Death is as much a part of life as life itself. One day, everyone will die, and until that day, most will encounter the death of a friend or a loved one. For unbelievers, death is tragic, and yet for Christians, death is the servant who ushers us into God’s presence. However, erroneous beliefs abound to the point of superstition. In Kallistos Ware’s article, ‘One body in Christ’: Death and the communion of the saints, he described how little the immanence of death is discussed in Western churches and how we should instead discuss it as a vital part of life, rather than something that hits us when we least expect it. When Christians fail to properly understand death, the intermediate state, and the resurrection to come, it minimizes the missional impact of the church on our culture. In N.T. Wright’s book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, Wright explains the importance of understanding the resurrection in such a way that it influences the way we live in the body and propels us to a greater emphasis on building the Kingdom. Different theological views abound when the intermediate state is compared between the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant faiths. Roman Catholicism teaches Purgatory as the state where the souls are purged from venial sins. Alan Schreck’s book, Basics of the Faith: A Catholic Catechism describes the purging process, not as a second chance, but as an exercise of God’s infinite mercy. Richard P. McBrien’s book, Catholicism, explains the doctrine from Scripture and its development from its patristic roots. Kallistos Ware’s book, The Orthodox Way, describes “A journey into the infinite” (Ware, 137) and how this concept befuddles our “fallen imagination” (Ibid.). Constantine N. Tsirpanlis, Introduction to Eastern Patristic Thought and Orthodox Theology, argues against the doctrine of Purgatory outright, claiming that no eastern or western patristic father taught the this doctrine. From an Anglican Protestant perspective, Wright described paradise as the Christian’s state of blissful rest, but not sleep, but in a state of conscious presence with Christ, awaiting the final resurrection. What we believe about the resurrection, ought to shape the way that we view the mission of the church and the manner in which we live in the body until we meet the Lord Jesus Christ in the veil of death. Death is the servant who ushers us into the very presence of Christ and is nothing to fear.

Foreword, Kenneth C. Nystrom, ed., The Bioarchaeology of Dissection and Autopsy in the United States (Springer, 2017), vii-xi.

1998

Preface "Call no man happy until he is dead" wrote unhappy Aeschylus. "Death is nothing" opined the much more contented Epicurus. "Death is not an event in life. Death is not lived through" wrote the early Wittgenstein.

2017

Folklorists and theologians have maintained an interest in the cultural and theological aspects of death and burial-funeral customs; popular beliefs about death, dying and the afterlife; the folklore of forewarnings of death; and so on. Death is not only a natural reality but also a social and cultural fact. As one of the most important events of the life, a great number of beliefs, customs, tradition, ceremonies, rites, pattern behaviors, transactions have been grouped around death. The forms and contents of these beliefs, customs, tradition, ceremonies, rites, pattern behaviors connected with death may differ in terms of time, society and culture. Turkey has very rich folkloric traditions, which have been kept alive for centuries. There is a special place of the folkloric traditions connected with death in Turkish culture. Such beliefs, customs, transactions, ceremonies and pattern behaviors, which accumulated around the death, are categorized under three groups: pre-death, during death and after death. Most of Turkish people are Muslims. Their folkloric traditions are impressed by Islamic values. But, in fact, Turkish death traditions are composition of pre-Islamic customs, Islamic principles and other traditions. In this article, we discuss the comprehension of the Muslim Turkish people about the death as a physical and spiritual matter. They mirrored the understanding of death in the decease customs. But, on the other hand, like other traditions, death customs are affected by globalization.

These are exciting times for those with an interest in what might happen after death. One need not be a religious person to find some basis for believing that life can persist after the termination of our flesh-and-blood existence. Conversations about the possibilities of postmortem life are drawing atheists, agnostics, and scientists of all sorts to promising exchanges with religious people.

The questions about life after death existed itself even before the time of the Buddha. Many scholars, philosophers, religious persons, including scientists have tried to answer this question. All the answers are not heartily accepted. However, religions from the past until now have answered this question in three ways i.e., (i) annihilation, (ii) eternal retribution in heaven or hell, and (iii) transmigration. We may say that two-third accept the phenomenon of life after death. Buddhism believes in transmigration or another word " rebirth ". The Buddha confirms this by narrating his own experiences in his former rebirths as mentioned in the Jātaka or Stories of the Buddha's Former Birth. The Jātaka is not the only Buddhist text that mentions about life after death, but also the Vimānavatthu, the Petavatthu, and so on. These books can be read for pleasure and at the same time, the reader may gain knowledge about the Law of Kamma, Vipāka, and life after death. This work under the topic " The Concept of Life after Death as Depicted in the Vimānavatthu and the Petavatthu " is based on the Law of Kamma and Rebirth, which speaks of the joyousness in Vimāna or heavenly Mansion, and the suffering in the Petaloka as the result of merit and demerit respectively. There are two aspects of Kamma-Vipāka discussed therein. The Vimānavatthu narrates the meritorious deeds that the Devatās did in their former lives, and the rewards they gained from those particular deeds to enjoy themselves in heaven. The Petavatthu narrates the demeritorious deeds resulting either in hell or in the Petaloka and also narrates the misery lives of the Petas. In modern time, it is difficult to believe in the concrete perpetuation of a nomadic supra-atomic spiritual substance through endless births and death. Thus, 2 present work throws light on concept of life after death during Buddhist, Pre-and Post-Buddhist era. In the present work, the requisite details are provided to prove this point of view.

APPON Philosophical Quarterly vol. 3.2, 2024

is reported to have attempted answers to the puzzles of human existence namely, who am I? what should I do in life? What is the meaning of life? Is there a hereafter for humanity? These interrogatives which have situated the human species on an evolutionary continuum have not been fully answered by humans from time immemorial though, they still remained beholden to primitive survival impulses. The paper argues on this score that, as a being that encapsulate change, discontinuity and continuity, man's dissolution through death is not an external and public fact that creates a sense of loss and saddens humanity, but an internal possibility of his being. It is the fulfilment of the Man project of self-liberation, self-transcendence, and a process of surpassing one's existential condition. We shall argue further that, in this form of change, man ceases to be the impersonal social being among beings and has freed himself from the servitude of the anonymous "they" and thereby opened himself to his own most potentiality for being. In birth, there is the change of nonbeing to being, of nothingness to somethingness. In death man changes his constitution of somaticity to pure being; to a spiritual reality. We shall argue the conclusion that, in death, Man further becomes the most vitalizing fact of life and the cardinal indicator of authentic selfhood. He transcends from nothingness to somethingness.