Apart from the bromides of faith, the idea of life after
death has little purchase in our techno-materialist culture. And yet, anyone with an open mind who
does a little research might be surprised. The fact is that rational, scientific claims sometimes appear
to confirm or certainly suggest the afterlife hypothesis. The research has been
conducted by competent, scientifically trained individuals. There are case
histories of mediumship, apparitions, near-death experiences, and reincarnation
memories, behaviors and physical markings.
Whether all this makes the case—a conclusion that would be
momentous—is open for discussion. The point is that there
is something to discuss. Unfortunately, few competently trained
individuals seem interested in this core human question. The pre-scientific world included an entire dimension of
existence that modern science has dispensed with.
We have settled into a particular worldview since the rise
of modern science. Take Stephen Hawking’s view of the possibility of life after
death. Hawking is one of the most
famous scientists in the world, and in March, 2017, the BBC reported on his concerns over the dangers of computers
becoming a menace to human existence—and there is much to be said for this
concern.
Hawking is also interested in immortality. While admitting that science isn’t yet
up to it, he believes that one day we will have the technology to copy our
brains into digital modules. We will
become not only immortal but in principle infinitely replicable—a frightening
idea.
With all due respect to the great scientist, Hawking’s model
for immortality has one glaring mistake: it leaves out consciousness. Without that, what could immortality possibly
mean? The idea of acquiring digital
immortality is entirely vacuous; consciousness is not reducible to physics and
therefore cannot be computerized.
After announcing his belief in our potential digital
immortality, Hawking alluded to traditional ideas of the soul’s afterlife with
contempt as “fairy tales.” The fact is that real scientific data on postmortem
consciousness exists; it deserves to be treated with respect and not dismissed
as a “fairy tale.” Hawking, despite his achievements and status in his specialized
domain of science, is grossly deficient in his opinions about immortality and
life after death. He ignores the
empirical data and pronounces on the subject, ex cathedra, like a pope, not like a scientist.
Once in a while a scientist, perhaps a neuroscientist, has
an experience of transcendent dimensions—and, as a result, sees through the
errors of his or her flawed education.
Eben Alexander’s Proof of Heaven and Marjorie Woolacott’s
Infinite Awareness both describe such
transcendent changes in their worldview.
So, are there experiences before death that provide glimpses of eternity? Insights, impressions of the next world? Visions of transcendent otherness? The Canadian physician Richard Bucke
noticed that among cases of cosmic consciousness he collected, there was a sense
of the timeless nature of existence, of boundaries melting away, indeed, of
entering a zone of deathlessness.
Different things might induce this experience. Laura Dale, former editor of the
Journal of the American Society for Research, once told me that for her the
best “argument” for life after death was listening to Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis.
Music takes us out of ourselves, and the experience can
sometimes be very profound. I recall two such moments with music, one when I
was a high school student and first heard the strains of the medieval master, Johannes
Ockeghem. The other occurred
during Claude Debussy’s Nuages. I slipped into a unique state of mind. I felt I was ready to die—and with
pleasure. A very peculiar feeling,
impossible to describe but unforgettable.
In my opinion, the quest for evidence of life after death
needs to be balanced by the quest for evidence of the fullness of life before
death. Experiences where, as
William Blake put it, we can “hold infinity in the palm of our hand and
eternity in an hour.” Transcendence,
immortality, paradise—we can and should have intimations of these, and we know
from experience that it’s possible.
For this one looks to the world of the humanities—studies devoted to how human beings become human—for “intimations” of immortality.
Poetry, philosophy, religion, mythology, architecture, painting,
sculpture, music, cinema, and dance—all places where the different shades and
tones of transcendence may be experienced.
Unfortunately, times are bad for the humanities, for the
very notion of higher education, thanks
to the economically biased hegemony of science, which gains its superior power
by aligning itself with the state-military apparatus and the corporate
plutocracy. The current trend is toward cutting funds from the humanities to
feed an already bloated military-industrial complex.
Transcendent encounters occur in endless varieties, as
Marghanita Laski shows in her study of Ecstasy
(1961). These are states of radical
dissociation from our everyday self. All the filters are removed and the
personality is flooded with transcendent consciousness. From a practical point of view, the
problem of our mortality may be affected positively by such encounters, as it
was by Laura Dale when listening to the Missa
Solemnis.
In Larry Dossey’s invaluable book, One Mind (2013), there’s a chapter called “Immortality and
Near-Death Experiences” showing there are many ways of entering the state in
which our deathless nature may be sensed.
Dossey emphasizes the story of Nancy Clark, a trained cytologist
who had two near-death experiences before the phenomenon was even known. She later did research on cases where
the experience just spontaneously occurred, like one of hers did—while she was
eulogizing a dead person!
There was no interruption of her outward behavior, but meanwhile her
wider self was undergoing the most amazing experience of her life.
Here’s the point.
Being physically near death isn’t essential to experiencing the sense of
immortality. We may be in the thick of life’s challenges and suddenly find
ourselves immersed in the dazzle of the transcendent. But, narrowed mentally by our biological
compulsions, we mainly live in oblivion to almost everything around us, sensory
and extrasensory, although the barriers aren’t impassible. Higher education is possible.
Two ways to explore the idea of immortality: inference is
one. The curious inquirer needs to
do some homework to appreciate that.
But here I want to underscore the second way, which for short we can
call intuitive.
I suspect it happens at least once to every human being: a
moment when the divine beauty of the world lights up and when the sense of
immortality comes to life within oneself.
It could be caused by something totally ordinary or totally extraordinary. There are ways to explore these
interesting possibilities, staples of modern higher education, at least until
recently.
But if the humanities in higher education are being phased
out for business reasons, we can take it as a challenge to carry on our higher
education right in the middle of everyday life. Wherever we are and almost whatever we’re doing, it’s always
possible to see things in such a way as to open our eyes to the immortal dimension.
As far as higher education, we travel solo and the world is our university.
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