The Human Odyssey

The Afterlife: A Brain-Mind Puzzle

Is there life after death?  Most rational individuals would say no.  The brain creates consciousness, and when the brain dies, consciousness is annihilated.  Problem solved.  However, this quick dismissal of the afterlife may actually be somewhat irrational based upon what we know from the history of western philosophy.  This view of the brain-mind problem is based upon what I'd like to call the "sticks with heads" model of reality.  In this view, there is an objective universe within which exists a planet, earth, upon which walk human beings (sticks) who have brains (heads) that are conscious of this objective universe.  Sounds good so far?  Let's back up a bit to see what's wrong with this picture. The fundamental assumption of this model of reality is that there is an objective universe.  And yet, in the history of western philosophy, it has never been proven that there exists an objective world independent of human consciousness.  One of my favorite philosophers is George Berkeley (1687-1753) whose book Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous, made a huge impression upon me when I read it in high school.  In the book, Berkeley demolishes the idea that there can be an objective universe beyond our awareness (except in the mind of God).  According to Berkeley, we are only aware of our sensations of so-called objective phenomena.  If we eat an apple, we are aware of the taste, the smell, the textures, the shape and color.  But these are all subjective sensations.  If you take away these aspects of personal consciousness, what are you left with?  Nothing.  This, by the way, is something that the Buddha was acutely conscious of, which is why he said that at the heart of all things there is nothing, the void.  The Scottish philosopher David Hume (1711-1776)  was the next philosopher to demolish the idea of a stable rational world.  He argued, for example, that the notion of cause and effect was spurious.  We only infer that event x causes event y, because we have previously experienced cases where events like x were always followed by events like y.  And yet, according to Hume, there is no reason in the world why the next time event x happens, event z or q or s won't be the result.  It was this conundrum that Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) said "woke me up from my dogmatic slumber," and caused him to rush to the aid of the objective (or transcendental) world with his Critique of Pure Reason.  The amazing thing is that while Kant gave us some reason for hope (e.g. his transcendental categories of reason), he basically said that we CANNOT know the objective world (which he called noumena, or "things-in-themselves.").  This was about as far as western philosophy ever made it in terms of trying to prove the existence of the objective world.  After this there were the German idealists, who made quite a mess of Kant's philosophy, and the British positivists, who tried to show that only certain kinds of sentences had any objective meaning, and the American pragmatists, who didn't care whether there was an objective world or not just as long as there was some sort of cash value in whatever one believed, and a few other schools of thought.  But nobody ever proved the existence of the objective world -- that is, the world that exists apart from man's consciousness of it.  This means that the "sticks with heads" model of reality isn't really valid.  And if this is so, then the argument for dismissing life after death (e.g. annihilation of the brain destroys consciousness) is not valid either.  Notice that I'm using reason here, not wild New Age speculation. 

Visions of the Afterlife: The Pangwe of Cameroon

The Pangwe of southern Cameroon believe that after death the person lives on for a very long time in heaven, but then eventually dies, and its "corpse" is thrown out with no opportunity of any further existence.  Still, they practice a kind of cult worship of their ancestors, called the "bieri," which has at its goal the protection of the living from the deceased, and also the supplication of the dead for help with life.  They use ancestor sculpture (such as the piece illustrated), and consult these relics on important life issues.  Once the sculpture is separated from its reliquary chest , however, the sculpted object loses its sacred character and can be discarded. 

Maps of the Human Life Cycle: Tibetan Buddhism

In the tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, the human life cycle is just that:  a cycle.  An individual soul is born, dies, and is reborn over and over again until it achieves liberation from all future rebirth.  At that point the cycle ends.  Until then, however, the cycle consists of six bardos or "transitional states."  The first three bardos occur "between" lifetimes (from the moment of death until the time of rebirth).  The Bardo Thodol (The Tibetan Book of the Dead) is essentially a guidebook to help the dying individual achieve liberation (or a favorable birth) as it moves through these "in between" states. The last three bardos occur after we have been reborn and are living as human beings on earth.

• The Chi-Kha Bardo - this state occurs at the moment of death, when the dying person has the potential to perceive The Clear Light of Ultimate Reality, and recognize it as his own ultimate being.  If the soul does this, it merges with the light and no longer has to be reborn.  This encounter, however, is quite an overwhelming experience, to put it mildly, and the individual may shrink back from this Light in fear.   If it does so, then the weight of its own karma will pull it into the next bardo.
• The Chhos-Nyid Bardo - this part of the journey is where the soul encounters "Peaceful Deities" and "Wrathful Deities," which are outer projections of its karma, or past experiences over innumerable rebirths.  The soul is counselled not to become attracted or repulsed by these deities, but to regard them as emanations of its own illusory self.  If the soul can do this, it achieves liberation.  However, if the soul ends up getting "caught" by one of these entities, it may end up hanging out in one of six possible "lokas" or "worlds," including those of the hungry ghosts, the warrior demons, the devas (or angels), the hell dwellers, the bestial world of animals, or back into the world of human beings (see next bardo).
• The Sid-Pa Bardo - this is the state where the soul, driven by the winds of its own karma, begins to seek rebirth.  It encounters the Lord of Death, who subjects the soul to a kind of "Judgment Day" that can be quite a painful ordeal.  Eventually it observes pairs of couples copulating (potential future parents), and goes through a kind of pre-birth Oedipal complex where it feels anger toward the same sex parent and lust toward the opposite sex parent.  Since there is no chance for liberation at this point, the soul is counselled to choose a "womb" that will optimize its chances of getting a favorable incarnation for future attempts at freedom from rebirth.
• The Skyes-Nas Bardo ("Life" ) - this is the bardo of ordinary waking consciousness experienced by a soul during its incarnation as a human being.
• The Rmi-Lam Bardo ("Dream") - this is the bardo of dream consciousness that occurs when we are experiencing rapid eye movement (REM) during sleep, or when we are in a semi-waking state of active imagination during our waking hours.
• The Bsam-Gtan Bardo ("Meditation") - this is the bardo of "trance consciousness" when we are in a deep state of meditation during our waking hours.

For more information, there are any number of translations of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, including those by:

Gyurme Dorje

Robert Thurman

Frencesca Fremantle and Chogyam Trungpa

W.Y. Evans-Wentz

See also, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche

See an online exhibit at the University of Virginia based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead

Vatican May Release Unbaptized Infants from Limbo

The Vatican this week released a document recommending that unbaptized babies who die should be released from limbo and given salvation.   Only the Pope can make such a definitive declaration, but the fact that Pope Benedict XVI served on the committee that created this document before he became Pope may bode well for little ones. Limbo (from the Latin limbus, which means "edge" or "boundary"), has been part of informal Church history since St. Augustine declared in the 5th century that children who die unbaptized will go to hell.   It has never been official church dogma, but over the centuries, limbo was declared by some in the church to be a place that unbaptized babies would go to in death where they would not be able to see God (only those in heaven could), but they would not suffer either (as those in hell do).  Thus, limbo exists, as it were, "in limbo" between heaven and hell.  The 41-page document, titled "The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Being Baptized," was written by the 30-member International Theological Commission, which acts as an advisory panel to the Vatican.  It suggests that the concept of limbo reflects "an unduly restrictive view of salvation."   To read the full report (online subscription necessary or $5.00 fee sent to site), go to OriginsOnline.com, a branch of the Catholic News Service.  Dante wrote about limbo in The Divine Comedy:  Hell, Canto IV, where he placed many figures from the classical era in the time before Christ.  To see what other blogs have written about this subject go to: State of the Queen, Darwiniana.

Thomas Edison's Telephone to the Afterlife

Thomas Edison was one of the greatest inventors who ever lived.  He patented the incandescent light bulb, the carbon microphone, the phonograph, the motion picture projector, and a thousand other inventions.  But few people know that Edison also was working on a machine that would be able to communicate with the dead.  In an article in a 1921 issue of The Scientific American, Edison wrote:  "If our personality survives, then it is strictly logical or scientific to assume that it retains memory, intellect, other faculties and knowledge that we acquire on this Earth.  Therefore, if personality exists after what we call death, it is reasonable to conclude that those who leave the Earth would like to communicate with those they have left here.  I am inclined to believe that our personality hereafter will be able to affect matter.  If this reasoning be correct, then, if we can evolve an instrument so delicate as to be affected by our personality as it survives in the next life, such an instrument, when made available, ought to record something."  Although it was believed that Edison worked on a prototype for this invention until his own death in 1931, models or plans for this telephone to the afterlife were never found.