Why I think There’s an Afterlife

(5-minute read) I think it might be reasonable to believe there is an afterlife – a continuation of your consciousness after you die.

Here are five reasons why I hold this opinion. They’re not meant to be conclusive or rigorous arguments – just thought touch points aimed at testing the certainty of the common clockwork universe counter argument.

Religion

The obvious answer is because of religious faith. And it is a valid first reason – here’s why:

I was brought up to believe in an afterlife in the context of a man who was prepared to go willingly to his torturous death because he had death daily before his eyes. A worldwide movement grew out of that, which for all its faults, has had a profound positive impact too.

But many of the concepts in the sacrificial man’s story from Nazareth, are common to other wisdom traditions. Together, religions collectively guide the lives of the overwhelmingly vast majority of humans. We can conclude that religion speaks universally to human beings, albeit in different symbols, names and myths. Human consciousness has perfectly evolved to be drawn to it – we have faith – otherwise why would religiosity be so common.

So why would I not accept one of the central tenets of all religions, namely that there is an afterlife – some form of continuation of your spark when your ticker stops sparking?

But that doesn’t mean I have to believe without my own reasoning. If that were required, why was I given a brain, and a very inquisitive one at that? So there are other reasons for my opinion, to which I’ll now turn.

The Natural World

I am convinced of an afterlife by the array of senses that have evolved in nature.

A totally blind shark locates its prey by detecting its electromagnetic field; baby turtles bob off into the sea and come back to the same beach years later to breed; and birds use the earth’s magnetic field to navigate thousands of miles across the hemispheres.

As far as I can tell, and science can calculate, these senses don’t lie. Not the shark’s senses, nor the turtles or the birds’, nor any of our meagre five senses. What we sense is real. The prey’s electromagnetic field is real or the shark would have gone extinct. The turtles are using currents and sensory flags that are real to guide them back to their beach, as are the magnetic fields that guide the birds.

At the pinnacle of nature, the forefront of evolution, is human being with its powerful sensing and computing matter inside its skull. We’re not so good at detecting things electromagnetically or navigating the globe (without a GPS smart phone). But we have developed a unique sense – a sense of our eternal selves, which has been given a multitude of different names, but, in the West, is most commonly called the soul.

If all the capacities that have evolved in animals to sense aspects of reality are actually sensing a true and present phenomenon, why would I doubt that the human sense of an eternal self is any different? If our brains evolved to sense an eternal self, there must be an eternal self.

To summarise, the deductive reasoning is as follows:

1. Animals evolve to detect real phenomena
2. The human animal evolved to detect an eternal self
3. Therefore the eternal self is a real phenomenon.

So, I think there’s an afterlife because the vast majority of humans sense an eternal self.

Note:

• The sense of soul is physical. It must use a physical structure in our brains, like all other sense that have evolved in the natural world. The sense as we know it dies when the brain dies – but the thing sensed does not.
• Soul, or the eternal self, was not a foreign concept created by religions. It predated religion and inspired spiritual practices and religious belief.

Testimonies

Millions of people report experiences of the afterlife, such as near death experiences, out of body experiences, presences of departed people, mediumship validations and more.

Sceptics say that these are probably wild imaginings, at best, or mental illness, at worst. I was a sceptic.

Then I married a woman who challenges my scepticism. And in the instances when her ‘spiritual gifts’ have been validated, I find another reason to think there is an afterlife.

Note: Why should imaginings and ‘abnormal’ brains (mental illness) preclude an independent reality? Maybe it requires a vivid imagination and / or an ‘abnormal’ brain to see a dimension to reality that ‘normal, dreary people’ can’t.

New Science

Consciousness has been a hot topic in science for some time. It is one of the mysterious phenomena that science has not yet explained. Broadly speaking, there are two possible scientific approaches to explaining consciousness.

Approach 1: Brain as computer

Consciousness is as a result of the complex activities of 100 billion neurons in the brain. It is not a ‘thing’ that exists out there. As such, a) given enough time, scientists will map all the neurons with computers and these computers will then be conscious; and b) because consciousness emerges from the brain’s complex computation, afterlife is impossible as the emergent phenomenon dies with the brain.

Approach 2: Brain as orchestra

Consciousness is in the universe as proto-consciousness (moments of awareness) caused by quantum reductions (the reduction of two quantum states of a particle into one). This proto-consciousness is collected and organised in the brain to form our complex consciousness, in structures inside the neurons called microtubules. So the microtubules sense consciousness from proto-consciousness like the eye (and relevant brain area) senses sight from protons. The brain is like an orchestra that makes its own unique music from all the notes.

I’m not saying Approach 2 is correct, or must be proven correct for me to think there’s an afterlife. What I’m saying is there’s enough non-classical, new physics thinking about consciousness that leads me to think it is not unreasonable to believe there’s something in the universe that exists beyond the material conglomeration of our physical bodies.

Personal Experience

I started this article by saying I don’t base my argument solely on any of the ‘exotic’ spiritual experiences. No. More than anything, I base my thinking on my experience of very mundane stillness in the present moment – the fleeting experience of everything else switching off around you and a mindful focus overcoming you. Maybe it happens when you’re in nature, or when you hear music, or when you’re tasting something beautiful, or in the euphoria of sexual pleasure.

We have forgotten that we all have this connectedness beyond self because our societies are so over-stimulating.

Meditation helps to reset our consciousness.

I’ve been an avid daily meditator for more than twenty years. And all I can report is the occasional subtle clarity of the present moment when my thoughts and emotions go dead still – which, I think, extrapolates into eternity when the noise of our brains is permanently switched.

The delectable dissolving of the dualistic self into the one self, the dissolving back into the source of consciousness, is an experience of eternity that changes the whole meaning of ‘life after death’, but in its simplest interpretation shouts out loud and clear, yes, there is such a thing.