Overview And Analysis Of Theories About The Life After Death

Have you ever wondered about the afterlife and what truly does happen to us once we are gone?

Some may ask, does an afterlife even exist?

This topic can be a controversial one based upon your beliefs as well as religion. Could it be Heaven, the place we’ve always heard about where you are free of stress, at peace, reunited with loved ones? Or may it just be a blank, dark, empty space of nothingness?

No one truly knows what will happen or where we may go which could be the scariest part of it all. So let’s discuss all the possible theories of what happens to our mind, body, and soul once they leave this earth.

The first obvious theory that comes to mind would be Heaven and/or Hell. Heaven is known as the “Eternal City” for the fact that it will be our eternal home. The city is said to have a river flowing down the middle with a tree bearing twelve different kinds of fruit on either side of the river, streets of pure gold, and walls of every kind of jewel including emerald, onyx, amethyst, and topaz. Pain and hurt will no longer exist in Heaven, our souls with be at ease. On the other hand, Hell can be described as a form of punishment for those who die with unforgiven, unrepentant mortal sin. It is characterized as a realm of darkness, separated from God in which evil souls are subjected to punitive suffering, often torture as eternal punishment after death.

So this belief is based upon the idea that once we die we will stand before Christ as judge where we will take account for every action we’ve made throughout our lives. The reasoning behind this, as stated by DesiringGod. Org, is that our good deeds will reveal who enters the age to come, as well as revealing the measure of our reward in the age to come.

The next theory is an interesting one that mainly arose from Hinduism, thus being the idea of Reincarnation.

Reincarnation is based upon the theory that “when the soul, which is eternal and part of a spiritual realm, returns to the physical realm in a new body. ” In other words, Reincarnation is the rebirth of a soul in a new body. This is basically a cycle that a soul will complete many times, each time learning new things as well as functioning through its karma.

One example of a real life Reincarnation story would be the case of four year old Ryan Hammons. In 2009, Ryan began waking up, clutching his chest, screaming about how his heart exploded in Hollywood. One day Cyndi, Ryan’s mother, was going through a book featuring old Hollywood photos as Ryan peared over her shoulder and began to identify a man by the name of “George” and the other as himself.

Following this incident, Cyndi contacted a psychiatrist from Uva Medical Center who conducts research on reincarnation. The psychiatrists confirmed the man in the photo was Martin Martyn, a hollywood agent. Ryan was then introduced to Martyn’s daughter but soon lost interest in his Hollywood memories stating that his daughters energy had changed. The psychiatrists states that Ryan’s reasoning for moving on may be that upon seeing people from their past have moved on, reincarnated children gain closure and forget their former existence.

The final theory that I am going to discuss is that of Quantum Consciousness. This is the idea that our mind is not strictly the product of our brain and that consciousness exists separately from material substance, so the death of your physical body is not the end of your conscious existence. The Quantum Consciousness theory can also be known as Biocentrism. Biocentrism explains that the universe only exists because of an individual's consciousness to it-essentially life and Biology are central to reality which in turn creates the universe; the universe itself does not create life. With this theory in mind, the concept of death as we know it “cannot exist in any real sense” as there are no true boundaries by which to define it. Some may describe this afterlife theory like finishing a good netflix series except the multiverse has a much bigger collection of DVD's than netflix. Just like at death you change reference points, it’s still you but you experience different lives, different friends, and even different worlds.

Throughout time so many theories have been developed but I believe that we honestly cannot rule out any theory for the simple fact that we truly have no idea. We all have our own beliefs and some theories may seem more realistic or believable than others but there is no factual proof or evidence behind any specific one. Truth is, we probably won’t ever know what happens until it is our time to go.