Musing Over Life and Death

I attended my brother’s funeral. It was sad, it was uncanny, and I actually felt my heart being ripped out of my body. I looked at my brother and my body shook. I wondered if his soul was right there next to me, staring at that same coffin. I wanted so badly to feel his comforting hands on my shoulders, telling me it would be alright and that though he misses me, he is fine wherever he is.

The great mystery of life is what happens after death. Do you believe the soul goes on? Or is it buried to go to dust? I know many of us are interested in life after death. It is one topic I am not qualified to talk about. Nonetheless, I find quite enthralling different comments from scientists and ordinary people on the subject: a few inspiring, some thought provoking, while others give you peace.

Tibetan Buddhists believe that each Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of his predecessors, who in turn, are the manifestations of Avalokiteshvara, or Chenrezi, the patron saint of Tibet and Bodhisattva of Compassion. Tibetan Buddhists believe that the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, is the 74th manifestation of Chenrezi in a line that originated with a Brahmin boy who lived during the Buddha’s lifetime. 

In the history of Tibet, there are several cases reported of children considered to be the spiritual continuation of Lamas who have died. The children recognise adults as their former disciples, identify their former possessions, and acknowledge specific places where they lived in a former life. For example, as a young boy, the 14th Dalai Lama immediately recognised the toys of the 13th Dalai Lama as his own toys. 

Xenoglossy is a paranormal phenomenon whereby a person is able to speak a   language that he or she could not have learnt naturally. There are countless cases of people who, when deep in meditation or hypnosis, are able to mysteriously speak languages which in some cases are extinct.  The New Testament in the Book of Acts (2:1-13) describes Galileans speaking in non-native languages, taken from all over the Roman Empire, so that visitors from different tribes and regions could understand them.  Luke, author of the Book of Acts, called this phenomenon, ‘speaking in tongues’, a miraculous spiritual gift through which the speaker could communicate in natural language not previously studied. Modern day research into Xenoglossy by psychologists is rare and few studies done are unable to provide strong evidence to support the claims of Xenoglossy.

The term ‘near-death experience’ was thought up and promoted in 1975 by an American physician, Raymond Moody, in his book ‘Life After Life’. Near-death experiences are compelling paranormal experiential evidence of an afterlife. According to Kenneth Ring, a psychologist professor, there are five stages of near-death experiences: peace, separation from the body, entering the darkness, seeing the light, and entering the light. While conceding that not all experience these five stages, Ring argued that this five stages of near-death experiences is proof of a mutual spiritual realm waiting to be experienced. 

Near-death experiences are also triggering medical doctors to focus on the part of the brain that continues to function after death, aiming to find scientific and medical proof of life after death. The ruling of science is that although near-death experiences are real and personal, science explains them in terms of the brain and its transformed change of consciousness, or as the biology of dying, than in terms of immortality or any close encounter with death.  For many people, however, there is still something mystical about near-death experiences that cannot be accounted for by science. Near-death experiences are central to much spiritualism, difficult to deny, and have been essential to religious development inside and through many cultures. 

 Different people have reacted to the life after death mystery in various ways as presented here. For one person, looking at it from a Christian perspective, the best proof of a life after death is none other than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. One thing and one thing only can explain it: His disciples had encountered the real, solid, bodily-resurrected Jesus Christ. Not a hallucination. Not hypnosis. The flesh and blood risen Christ was seen and touched by many people, as narrated in 1 Corinthians 15, 6. 

Someone else recollected his experience when his grandmother died of cancer at the age of eighty-seven. His grandmother’s determination to live was amazing. He had said his goodbyes, cried, and his mother had told him to leave the room so she could have last words. As he got to the door, he stopped for a second and looked back to see his mother place a kiss on his grandmother’s lips. His grandmother, a strong Christian, raised her right hand in the air and told God she was ready. The next thing he felt the pressure in the room change. After about ten seconds, her hand dropped to her side and things normalised in the room and his mother wept. It was an experience he would never forget and strongly believes that his grandmother is waiting for him somewhere. The thought of death used to scare him, but no longer does. Funerals are still sort of creepy and gloomy, but, for him, the good news is that the soul continues to live on for sure, after all the body is made of sand and it is to sand it will return, a very good reason to nurture the spirit.

A  school teacher, who was brought back to life by some injections after her heart stopped,  said she needs no more proof having been there and seeing it for herself that there is life after death. She believes that the spirit lives on, because she saw family members who had died before her. The near-death experience showed her that even during the most traumatic and awful times, God is there. To have been able to see the other side and live to talk about it and spread the good news is a blessing. 

The world is terrible, admits a thirty-year-old banker, but she’s not in a hurry to leave it. She is not sure about life after death. Then again, she believes the world is not terrible for all the people all the time if they don’t obsess about it. As far as she is concerned, when something is terrible, she asks herself what she is going to do about it. She looks inward spiritually, gets a hobby, plant a garden, or just do something and she would not feel so awful anymore. The alternative will be to do nothing, moan about everything, which will not change the past, but that something you decide to do today can change the future. We can’t do anything about death. It will surely come, so the best way to deal with this inevitability is to make a difference while we still have life, not after, by caring for others.

Many years ago, a heart disease patient had a couple of near-death experiences which left him with the belief that when we survive death, we see our lives flash before our eyes, moving on with our souls and memories intact. The experience made him believe that the deceased have the ability to watch and hear all that is going on wherever they are at when they die, even see their funerals before they move on, be able to think, feel, move, communicate and exist but just in a different form. His near- death experience also led him to believe that he was pulled back into this world by the power of love and grace of God.

The debate over life after death is interesting, enlightening, confusing and controversial, or just simply thought-provoking. The important thing is to approach each different dimension with an open mind. For instance, someone argued that when you die, that is the complete cessation of the ability of life to exist in your body. So if you "come back," you did not die.  Cynics will stay cynical, believers will stay believers. Whichever side you belong, the simple truth is that death will come one day, and when that time comes, eventually, all of us are destined to learn individually the truth about death—whether there is a life after death or not. I want to believe when that time comes we will be happy with whatever is after. In the end, believing gives us hope. Without hope and without faith our lives would be quite meaningless.

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