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What Happens When We Die

October 28, 2011, 2:45 pm

Most of the people in this world believe in some kind of afterlife.  If this were a collegiate dissertation, then I would have been required to annotate that statement with reference to someone more credible than myself, or with a statistical analysis to offer, however, I only make the statement because I believe it to be true. 

There are a certain percentage of people who believe that the grave is the last stop for both the body and the spirit.  They are forever entwined and forever gone.  Like a leaf fallen from the family tree, you live on no more except to go back to the earth, which nourishes the tree, so that it can produce new leaves. That is a kind of afterlife, when you think about it, even if it does mean getting recycled. That old chestnut about not being able to destroy energy , etc.., can equate to a lot of post-mortem scenarios.

I once heard a story about a man who created a machine that would suck up the residual energy – what many believe to be the souls – of people who died.  He used the energy he harnessed to fuel his automobile, and, on the occasions when enough people died in the proximity of his machine, he was also able to supply his home with fuel for cooking and heating.  He was a doctor, and he kept his machine in his town car under the careful eye of his driver.  He was a good doctor, and he cared for his patients, but when his best medicine could not save them, his machine was always in proximity to harvest the energy that escaped their bodies after death.  He didn’t believe in souls or eternal salvations or damnations. To him, it was just like using the hide of a bear to warm you. After all, the dead bear has no use for it, he would reason, so why shouldn’t you have a warm coat?

The driver became very ill one day and begged his wife not to call for the doctor. He didn’t want to be anywhere near the town car in case he was to die and be sucked into the machine. When he is well again, he vows to destroy the machine. He hopes that the souls trapped within it will be freed, but his conscience is tortured by the soul energy that has already been spent.

I do believe in our spiritual immortality. I have seen it evidenced through reputable mediums, and in amazing first-hand experiences. I also believe in reincarnation. There is just too much in living, too many profound and astonishing reasons why this life can’t be all there is for each of us. The concept of living one life, a random collection of cells that happens to be born into circumstances that are privileged, or tortured, or evil, or blessed, for a long or short or medium length of time, and then gone forever into a void of nothingness just doesn’t make sense to me. This does not compute.

I don’t believe anyone who claims to know for sure what happens when one dies, and the things I was taught in catechism just seem ridiculous to me. In spite of the overwhelming empirical evidence of a tunnel and a great white light, reported by some who died and then came back, I am not sure that everyone will have the same experience when they pass.  I think our afterlife has much more to do with our state of mind, and the beliefs we carry when we die than anything else. It will be different for everyone. Does this mean that Jesus will be there to greet you? If you believe it hard enough it does. And that also means, unfortunately, that those young men who blew themselves up thinking they were martyring themselves for the reward of seventy virgins in paradise will probably get that reward, since that is what they believed. I don’t know what happens to the atheist who thinks the grave is the end. Perhaps it is.

Anyway, I am fascinated with all things ghostly, so I’m certain there will be other blogs to expand on this subject, but that’s it for now.

 Thanks for your time.

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