Afterlife before death

Screenshot anime Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Com

Heaven, Hell or Limbo? Where do we spend our free time, if any?

There are various ideas about what the afterlife of the soul is like. Some people don’t believe in an afterlife at all. That sounds very convenient, actually. “What you see is what you get.” Except that materialism is kind of insane once you try to spell it out. “My opinions are simply electrical impulses in my brain; if there is a truth, I can never know it, and if I did, I don’t have free will so there would be no connection between the truth and whatever came out of my mouth.” So, most of us like to think that we have some kind of soul or something like that, so that we are not just lumps of protoplasm ambling pointlessly through the world.

With the idea of the soul comes the idea that it may survive death somehow, although that is not really obvious. I could write at length about this, but today I’ll just assume that the soul has an afterlife, probably, and talk about how we can estimate what that might be.

My proposition is that the soul actually gravitates toward one of the realms that make up a possible afterlife. Lately, I have begun to notice how this happens in daily life, when I don’t make an effort in some direction. If I just relax and watch my thoughts as if I were observing something outside myself, eventually the thoughts will gravitate toward something. I would not be surprised if this happens in full after death, when we are no longer recalled to (or by) the body with its interrupts from the outside world. Perchance to daydream, if you will.

Sometimes I will just sit there and wait for my psyche to drift toward something, so I can observe what it is. But often it will start moving on its own simply because it is not strongly tied to something else. Even at work if there is not something going on that grabs and holds attention, the mind may start to drift. Definitely on the bus or other places where boredom might otherwise have been an option. When this happens, it happens while my heart looks another way, so I won’t notice until I have already arrived and my mind is starting to interact with the other world.

So what are these other worlds? For simplicity, we could divide them into Hell, Limbo and Heaven.

***

Hellish thoughts and feelings become obvious as soon as we return to self-awareness. “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness.…” (Jesus Christ, in Mark 7.) “He abused me, he ill-treated me, he got the better of me, he stole my belongings;”… the enmity of those harbouring such thoughts cannot be appeased. (The Buddha, Dhammapada part 1).

You don’t even need to be religious to be aware of this. I read this year about a modern man, a left-thinking man and a would-be feminist, who was deeply disturbed by the fact that he could not see an attractive woman without being assailed by vivid visions of sexual interactions with her. He went in search of various cures, and eventually made progress by making a habit of not allowing such thoughts to linger. This was possible because he became aware of himself quickly. This ability of self-reflection is given to people to various degrees, but can be trained. We can become more aware of our thoughts and feelings by paying attention to them during the moments when we are aware, then there will gradually be more such moments.

***

What I called Limbo is more like the Ghost Realm, in which the world of the mind is much like this world on Earth. It frequently involves traveling in time, either to a past that was or a future that may be, or even to a past that could have been or a future that might have been. “If I had said this instead of that, this could have happened, and then that, and then one thing and then another” is the kind of thought that belong here. This kind of thought is actually very common. A beautiful example of this is found in the ending song for the anime Yahari Ore no Seishun… “Before the plane’s contrail were dissolved in the wind, if I could have said ‘I wanted to see you’ … maybe I could have avoided this endless sadness; maybe I could’ve been here alone with you…” (This is arguably a borderline case as the endless sadness is itself an aspect of Hell, but then Hell is said to be bordering on Limbo or the Ghost Realm.)

***

Above this earth-like limbo lies the first genuine Heaven, the Realm of the Good. In this life we can enter this when we spontaneously think warm, happy thoughts about others, thoughts of friendship or gratitude, thoughts about the joy of seeing others smile, things like that. Probably also thoughts of beauty and pure nature, playing children and animals. If you relax and let your mind wander and find yourself smiling innocently, this Realm of the Good is probably where your soul naturally gravitates. That bodes well for your afterlife, probably. And at the very least for this life!

There is also a second Heaven, different in some ways from the first. This is the Realm of Light, the home of the nurturing love, of those who are born to be teachers or leaders, a world of inspiration. If you relax and your thoughts by themselves go to how you can help others, or how you can improve yourself, or how things can be improved or something new invented … this may be your eternal home, for where your heart is, there also will your afterlife be. Probably.

Where else? Would you spend your eternity as a guest in a place where you could never relax, on the risk of drifting away to somewhere else? After all, without the body to anchor you, are you not yourself the soul that gravitates toward this or that spiritual “location” or state of mind?

***

I am not sure exactly why or how I began to become acutely aware of this recently. I am sure it has been a sobering experience for me. I like to tell myself that my home is in the six-dimensional Realm of Light, but the truth is that this is more like my highest aspiration, a place where a rope is fastened which I might have tried to climb up, or to which I might be pulled up. But it is not really my home in the sense that it is now my center of gravity and the place where my soul naturally finds its rest. I am probably not daydreaming in the sense that neurotypical humans do – I am half Aspie after all – so for the most part I will talk to myself inside, tell myself stories. And this summer they are almost all about time travel. More about that next time, perhaps.

One thought on “Afterlife before death

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