UNCERTAINTY
GODHOOD
HEAVEN
HELL
TRANSCENDENT
MYTHOLOGY
OBLIVION
PET
PRISION
PURGATORY
PERCEPTION
REENCARNATION
SOUL

AGNOSTICISM
VBC · PHILOSOPHY · ASIA

Agnosticism, doesn’t profess to know whether there is or isn’t a deity. Instead, agnosticism argues that the limits of human reasoning and understanding make the existence of God(s), the origins of the universe, and the possibility of an afterlife all unknowable.

Like atheism, the term emerged around the fifth century BC and was contemplated with particular interest in Indian cultures. It gained more popular modern visibility when coined by English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley, who in 1869 recognized that incapacity of humans to truly answer questions regarding the divine. To Huxley, and the agnostic and atheist thinkers who followed, theistic or gnostic religions lack scientific basis.

However, while atheists completely reject any possibility without a proven source and argument, agnosticists don’t show any certainty of either believing or not in a religion or other spiritual movement. Therefore, agnosticists don’t have a strict belief on an afterlife and it depends on the metaphysical belief of each individual, whether they believe in one or not.

ANIMA SOLA
XVI CENTURY · CULT PRACTICE · LATIN AMERICA

The Anima Sola, whose popularity seems to have reached a pinnacle during the 19th century, was the subject of a cult of devotion throughout Mexico that grew in popularity to achieve a status equal to many of the most famous saints.

In a nutshell, the idea of souls in purgatory is related to the concept of sin in Catholic theology.  The precept is based on the notion that only a soul free from the taint of sin can come into the presence of God. Followers of the cult believed some people die with smaller faults, for which there was no real repentance, or the temporal penalty due on their sin was not wholly paid for in this life. According to Church teaching, temporal punishment was due to God as penance for sins. Even when the sinner’s transgressions may have been forgiven, the penalty was still owed.

Thus, according to liturgical teaching, purgatory, from the Latin purgare, meaning to make clean or purify, was and still is a place or condition of finite punishment for those who have departed this life in God’s grace, but were not entirely free from venial faults, or who had not fully paid the satisfaction due on their transgressions. As such, those who die with this taint on their souls must be purified by suffering some punishment before they can be accepted into heaven.  Purgatory is the place or state where tainted souls go to suffer for their sins and, through that suffering, reach a state of purification requisite to enter heaven.

In Catholic Mexico, cult followers believed the animas in purgatory could hear the prayers of the living and could intercede in the payment of the purgatorial debt of a petitioner’s loved ones who died in sin. In some sects of the cult, an anima was believed to have had an even greater power, for example the ability to create a living purgatory or condition of suffering on earth for a person or persons who had injured the petitioner.

ASTRAL PLANE
V BC · PHILOSOPHY · GREECE

The Astral Plane is roughly positioned over the same terrestrial space which we would call Earth, or in these spiritual belief terminology, the physical plane as it pertains to the cycle of incarnations in your system. The essential difference is that the astral sphere vibrates at a higher rate, transcending the vibrational rate of the physical plane’s molecular structures.

Many souls prefer the use of recognizable bodies in the afterlife, although they are not necessary. On the higher levels these bodies are often traded for light forms, but this is the personal choice of the soul. For souls still in the reincarnation cycle, the use of bodies is more common and helps keep the soul in touch with their former and future lifetimes on earth.

As far as a particular look, most souls assume the age level from a previous lifetime where they felt most in the prime of their life. But there is no rule of thumb here. Souls often present themselves differently to people depending on how they were most remembered by that person.

Just as there are seven colors in the rainbow and seven tones in a musical scale, each with a different vibratory rate, there are seven planes of existence on the spectrum of creation. The slowest speed of vibration occurs on the physical plane; the highest, on the buddhaic plane. From the buddhaic plane, energy returns to its source, the Tao.

ATHEISM
ATHEISM · PHILOSOPHY · GREECE

Atheism refers to either the absence of a belief in the existence of deities or to an active belief that deities do not exist. This belief system rejects theology as well as the constructs of organized religion. Use of the term originated in the ancient world and was meant to degrade those who rejected commonly accepted religious precepts.

It was first self-applied during the Age of Enlightenment in 18th century France. The French Revolution was driven by the prioritization of human reason over the abstract authority of religion. This prompted a period of skeptical inquiry, one in which atheism became an important cultural, philosophical, and political entity.

Many who characterize themselves as atheists argue that a lack of proof or scientific process prevents the belief in a deity. Some who refer to themselves as secular humanists have developed a code of ethics that exists separate from the worship of a deity. Determining the actual number of practicing atheists is quite difficult, given the absence of a unifying religious organization. Polling around the world has produced an extremely wide variance, with the largest rates of atheism generally seen in Europe and East Asia.

AZTEC
XIII CENTURY · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · SOUTH AMERICA

The Aztecs formed around the time when the Incas were emerging as powerful contenders in South America. Around the 1200s and early 1300s, the people in present-day Mexico lived in three big rival cities – Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan. Around 1325, these rivals created an alliance and the new state came to dominate the Valley of Mexico.

Since human sacrifice and obtaining candidates for human sacrifice dominated much of Aztec life, warriors and those who were sacrificed received great glory and honor for what they did. But the trade-off of this was that life could be tenuous and short.

The Aztecs believed that how a person died determined what that person’s afterlife was like. There were different realms a person could go to in their afterlife. Warriors who died in battle or by sacrifice either went to a paradise in the east and joined the sun’s rising in the morning, or joined the war god Huitzilopochtli in battle. Women who died in childbirth were considered just as courageous and honorable as warriors who died, and thusly went to a paradise in the west and joined the sun’s descent in the evening. People who died from lightning, drowning, certain diseases, or particularly violent deaths went to Tlalocan, a paradise presided over by the god Tlaloc located within the Aztec’s thirteen heavens.

In contrast, those who died of most illnesses, old age, or an unremarkable death went to Mictlan, the Aztec underworld. Once in Mictlan, a person had to traverse through a harsh terrain with many trials in order to descend from Mictlan’s top level to its final ninth level.

This grim path for those who died in more ordinary ways highlights how Aztecs perceived both life and death; in general, there was greater esteem for people who died from premature but honorable deaths than for people who avoided these endings and managed to grow into old age.

BAHA'I
XIX CENTURY · MODERN RELIGION · IRAN

Baha’i Faith, religion founded in Iran in the mid-19th century by Mirzā ‘osayn ‘Alī Nūrī, who is known as Baha’i Allāh (arabic for “Glory of God”). The cornerstone of Baha’i belief is the conviction that Baha’ Allah and his forerunner, who was known as the Bab (persian for “Gateway”), were manifestations of God, who in his essence is unknowable.

The principal Baha’i tenets are the essential unity of all religions and the unity of humanity. Baha’is believe that all the founders of the world’s great religions have been manifestations of God and agents of a progressive divine plan for the education of the human race. According to Baha’i, the faith has no priesthood and does not observe ritual forms in its worship. Bahá’u’lláh confirmed the existence of a separate, rational soul for every human. He taught that life and death are parts of an eternal process of a soul’s growth and evolution.

Baha’i teachings state that the soul does not die; it endures everlastingly. When the human body dies, the soul is freed from ties with the physical body and the surrounding physical world and begins its progress through the spiritual world. Therefore, they do not believe in reincarnation or that the soul is reborn in a different body. Baha’u’llah stated that death is reunion with God. Entry into the next life has the potential to bring great joy.

The analogy to the womb in many ways summarizes the Bahá’í view of earthly existence. Just as the womb constitutes an important place for a person’s initial physical development, the physical world provides the context for the development of the individual soul.

BIOCENTRISM
XIX CENTURY · SCIENTIFIC ARGUMENT · S/D

The theory of the universe, called biocentrism, in which life and consciousness create the reality around them, has no space for death at all. To fully understand this, we need to go back to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, one of the pillars of modern physics. An important consequence of his work is that the past, present and future are not absolutes, demolishing the idea of time as inviolable.

Notice how, for instance, when you are a child, days and weeks seem to drag on, while when you get older, they fly by. Time itself hasn’t changed, just our perception of it. Whether the universe actually works the way in which we perceive it isn’t readily known. One of the fundamental laws of Newtonian physics is that energy isn’t created or destroyed, it simply takes another form. The energy trapped in our brain must take another form then, even when a person dies.

In quantum physics, particles can be observed in several different states at the same time. This is called superposition. They in fact, exist in all possible states simultaneously. In terms of predicting what a particle will do, nothing is absolute. Each state has its own range of probability.

In Professor Robert Lanza’s view, each corresponds with a different universe. Another competing theory accounts for inconsistencies in quantum physics by stating that the universe is an illusion. It could be for instance, a projection created by a highly advanced quantum computer. Though still entirely theoretical, biocentrism offers those of us who want to hold onto a comforting afterlife scenario, without giving up a devotion to science, an avenue to explore.

BRITTIA ISLAND
VI CENTURY · FORMER RELIGION · FRANKISH EMPIRE

Brittia was an island known to the inhabitants of the Low Countries under Frankish rule, corresponding both to a real island used for burial and a mythological Isle of the Blessed, to which the souls of the dead are transported.

They imagine that the souls of the dead are transported to that island. On the coast of the continent there dwell under Frankish sovereignty, but hitherto exempt from all taxation, fishers and farmers, whose duty it is to ferry the souls over. This duty they take in turn. Those to whom it falls on any night, go to bed at dusk, at midnight they hear a knocking at their door, and muffled voices calling. Immediately they rise, go to the shore, and there see empty boats, not their own but strange ones, they go on board and seize the oars. When the boat is under way, they perceive that she is laden choke-full, with her gunwales hardly a finger’s breadth above water. Yet they see no one, and in an hour’s time they touch land, which one of their own craft would take a day and a night to do. Arrived at Brittia, the boat speedily unloads, and becomes so light that she only dips her keel in the wave. Neither on the voyage nor at landing do they see any one, but they hear a voice loudly asking each one his name and country. Women that have crossed give their husbands’ names.

The Austrasians imagined it was a great idea to use Brittia as a dumping ground for disembodied spirits, a job taken so seriously that their Frankish overlords, no doubt cognizant of the troublesome nature of the dearly departed, not only wholeheartedly endorsed, but offered tax breaks for, shocking in light of the fact that one of perks of being a Medieval king is squeezing every last penny out of your subjects.  There was some argument about where the actual debarkation point for souls was, and later tradition moved it westward to the Pointe De Raz (westernmost extent of the Brittany coast), which is quite some distance from what was considered Austrasia.

BUDDHISM
VI BC · MODERN RELIGION · INDIA

Buddhism is both a religion and philosophy. The traditions and beliefs surrounding Buddhism can be traced to the original teachings of Gautama Buddha, a sagely thinker. The Buddha lived and taught in the eastern part of ancient India, providing the template for a faith based on the ideas of moral rectitude. The Buddha’s teachings proliferated widely through much of Asia in the centuries that followed.

Buddhists believe in a cycle of death and rebirth called samsara. Through karma and eventual enlightenment, they hope to escape samsara and achieve nirvana, an end to suffering. All life is in a cycle of death and rebirth called samsara. This cycle is something to escape from. When someone dies their energy passes into another form.Buddhist believe in karma or ‘intentional action’. Through good actions, such as ethical conduct, and by developing concentration and wisdom, Buddhists hope to either gain enlightenment or to ensure a better future for themselves. These good actions are set out in the Eightfold Path, which includes right speech, right livelihood, and right concentration. Good actions will result in a better rebirth, while bad actions will have the opposite effect.

Being born as a human is seen by Buddhists as a rare opportunity to work towards escaping this cycle of samsara. The escape from samsara is called nirvana or enlightenment. Once nirvana is achieved, and the enlightened individual physically dies, Buddhists believe that they will no longer be reborn. The Buddha taught that when nirvana is achieved, Buddhists are able to see the world as it really is. Nirvana means realizing and accepting the Four Noble Truths and being awake to reality.

Some Buddhists believe that enlightened individuals can choose to be reborn in order to help others become enlightened. Others believe that, when nirvana is achieved, the cycle of samsara, all suffering and further existence for that individual itself ends. The Buddha taught his disciples not to fear death. This has been interpreted by Buddhists as suggesting that if they live well, their rebirth will be good. After his enlightenment, the Buddha could remember his previous lives. Some of these previous lives are recorded in the Buddhist scripture, the Jakata.

In Tibetan Buddhism there are many writings about life after death including the ‘Tibetan Book of the Dead’. This is a guide telling the dying person how to react and try to ensure a positive outcome of the experiences. It includes descriptions of the bardo states. These are states between dying and being reborn. Mahayana Buddhism also uses images to teach about life after death. The Wheel of Existence shows the different realms Buddhists believe you can be reborn into.

Belief in life after death may be influenced by the meaning and purpose it gives to the lives of Buddhists.

Buddhists believe in life after death because the Buddha taught that human beings are each born an infinite number of times, unless they achieve Nirvana. In the Dhammapada the Buddha states.

CELTIC
I MILLENIUM BC · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · EUROPE

The Celts were a collection of tribes with origins in central Europe that shared a similar language, religious beliefs, traditions and culture. The Celts spread throughout western Europe (including Britain, Ireland, France and Spain) via migration. Their legacy remains most prominent in Ireland and Great Britain, where traces of their language and culture are still prominent today.

The Irish believed in an otherworld, imagined sometimes as underground and sometimes as islands in the sea. The otherworld was variously called The Land of the Living, Delightful Plain and Land of the Young and was believed to be a country where there was no sickness, old age, or death, where happiness lasted forever, and a hundred years was as one day. It was similar to the Elysium of the Greeks and may have belonged to ancient Indo-European tradition.

Life in the Otherworld was not radically different from life in this world, and it was essential that those who crossed over were well equipped for the journey and for their arrival. High-ranking individuals were buried with all the trappings of their social status so that they could continue at the same social level in the Otherworld. Necessities of life were also included: enclosed in some tombs were chariots and/or carts, large amounts of food and changes of clothing.

In some parts of the Celtic world, great feasts and banquets were held to celebrate the return of the dead to the world of the living. The most famous of these was the Irish Féile na Marbh (or The Feast of the Dead) which was held on 31 October, Halloween.

At this time, the dead, usually in the form of animated corpses, would return to drink a glass of whiskey and eat a piece of bread with their descendants. Not to welcome a spirit into a house was to invite bad luck on the entire family, so the tradition said. In many cases, families simply left a glass of spirits and a piece of cake by the hearthstone on Halloween night. It was also common, to scatter fine ash around the hearth so that if it was disturbed in the morning, the household would know that it had received visitors from beyond the grave during the night.

CHINESE
II MILLENIUM BC · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · CHINA

The ancient Chinese believed that life carried on after death. People believed they would continue to do the things they had done in this life in the afterlife. Tombs were arranged with the objects that people would need in the afterlife weapons, ritual vessels and personal ornaments. They believed there was a very important link between the living and the dead. Dead ancestors lived in the spirit world with the Gods. They had the ability to influence the gods to bring good or bad luck to the people on earth.

The people on earth could make offerings and hold ceremonies for their ancestors, to persuade them to bring good luck. Early Chinese religion had a supreme god called Di. Later, in Zhou times this anthropomorphic idea of the supreme being was replaced by the concept of an impersonal, non-anthropomorphic force with overarching power, which the Chinese called Heaven. Although impersonal, Heaven can be worshipped, and does have a will.

It is above all the ruler’s responsibility to pray to this mighty spiritual force on behalf of all mankind. This is reflected in traditional Chinese science, and has time and again resulted in a fruitful inventiveness, such as the development of the compass, which came out of efforts to enable architects to align buildings to be in harmony with the universe; and gunpowder, which came from the search for an elixir of immortality.

Ghosts played a very important role in Chinese religion and culture and still do. The ritual still practiced in China today known as Tomb Sweeping Day (usually around 4th of April) is observed to honor the dead and make sure they are happy in the afterlife. If they are not, they are thought to return to haunt the living. The Chinese visit the graves of their ancestors during the Festival of Qingming, even if they never do at any other time of the year, to tend the graves and pay their respects. The Chinese believed that, if the person had lived a good life, they went to live with the Gods after death. These spirits of one’s ancestors were prayed to so they could approach Shangti with the problems and praise of those on earth.

CHRISTIANITY
0 · MODERN RELIGION · JERUSALEM

Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. Christianity teaches that Jesus is the Son of God and the Messiah. Christian scripture incorporates both the Torah with the story of Jesus, his teachings, and those of his contemporaneous disciples. These form the Bible, the central text of the Christian faith.

Christian beliefs about life after death are based on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christians believe that Jesus’ death and resurrection are part of God’s divine plan for humankind. Through his death on the cross, Jesus pays the penalty for mankind’s sin. Mankind’s relationship with God is therefore restored. This is called atonement.

Many Christians believe that after death they will be taken into the presence of God, and they will be judged for the deeds they have done or failed to do during their lifetime. Some Christians believe that this judgement will happen when they die while others believe that there will be a Day of Judgement at the end of time, when everybody will be judged. Some believe that judgement will happen in two stages an initial personal judgement when you die, followed by the definitive judgement at the end of time.

However, since God has given human beings free will, there must be an opportunity for people to reject God. This is the basis of the idea of Hell. Hell has traditionally been depicted as a place of eternal fire that symbolises pain and suffering. This is seen as the result of the refusal to accept the happiness that God wants people to share with Him or any other offense that one practices while on Earth.

There's also the concept of purgatory; a place neither holy or suffering where one who hasn't done major wrong but didn't also led an exemplary life, goes through to redeem itself from its sins before going to Heaven.

All this various perceptions of an outcome of the afterlife scenario in Christianity is due to the multiple churches inside Christianism. Many believe in The Bible as the word of God but many also interpretate it differently.

CONFUCIANISM
V BC · PHILOSOPHY · CHINA

From a Confucian perspective, it’s important to live what’s known as a meaningful life. This is when one develops their moral potential to the fullest. They fulfill their social obligations and live in the present. People do not act based on the expectations of a reward (Heaven) or punishment (Hell) after death.

One should live life fully because it is the best way to live. Confucianism does share some common belief structures as other religious groups. While the Christian saying is to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, Confucius coined a similar saying about the importance of acting morally and with respect. Confucianism believe on five main relationships:

1. Ruler and subject

2. Father and son

3. Elder brother and younger brother

4. Husband and wife

5. Friend and friend

Confucius was not concerned with an afterlife or any spiritual realm where souls go after they die. Life is enough, no matter how short. If someone lived according to his golden rules, they shouldn’t be concerned with what comes next since they already played their role in society. Death is a natural part of life, though it’s not discussed often in the most popular texts or in the teachings of Confucius. In Chinese culture, it’s not seen as appropriate to talk about death. To do so would disrupt the harmony of society.

It would be impossible to talk about Confucianism views on the afterlife without mentioning ancestor worship. Because everyone needs to understand their place in society, this education begins in the family. This is where you learn to honor your elders and those who brought you into this world. While living well means being respectful to those on this earth, it’s also about honoring those who came before. Household shrines and genealogical records are at the center of daily worship, but it doesn’t stop there.

COSMIC COUNSCIOUS
XIX CENTURY · PHILOSOPHY · CANADA

The first ever psychological study of what it is called wakefulness — a higher functioning expansive state of being — was conducted by Canadian psychiatrist Richard M. Bucke and published as Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind in 1901. Bucke gathered 36 examples of people he believed had attained cosmic consciousness, including historical figures, such as the Buddha, Moses, Jesus, Dante, and a number of contemporaries, some of whom he knew quite personally. If you strip away all religious associations, higher consciousness is observational and experiential; the mind looks directly at itself rather than outward at things.

Things constitute Maya in the Indian tradition, a word somewhat misleadingly translated as illusion but which works better if understood as appearance or distraction. It also implies impermanence. The world out there appears to be self-sustained, distracting us from the truth: without consciousness, nothing is experienced, either “in here” or “out there.” Cosmic consciousness, then, isn’t just real, it’s totally necessary perception.

It rescues physics and science in general from a dead end: the total inability to create mind out of matter, and gives it a fresh avenue of investigation. The Higgs boson has gotten us a bit closer to a unified field theory (only a bit) but we are still far away from a full theory of quantum gravity.

In many versions of superstring theories, the so-called M-theories, it is deduced that a vast number of parallel universes exist, all forming what is called the multiverse. But the multiverse cannot be an explanation of why this particular universe of ours is what it is. Having a vast number of universes emerging from empty space still does not explain why consciousness is what it is in our universe. Quantum theory has reached the point where the source of all matter and energy is a vacuum, a nothingness that contains all the possibilities of everything that has ever existed or could exist. These possibilities then emerge as probabilities before “collapsing” into localized quanta, manifesting as the particles in space and time that are the building blocks of atoms and molecules.

CRYONICS
1962 · SCIENTIFIC PROGRESS · USA

Cryonics is the morbid process of freezing rich, dead people who can’t accept the concept of death, in the hopes that people from the future will be able to bring them back to life, and the community of hard-core cryonics people might also be a Scientology-like cult. If, rather than being buried or cremated after his death, he could instead be frozen in some way. Then whenever the scientists did eventually get around to conquering mortality, they’d probably also have the tools and know-how to resuscitate him, and he could have the last laugh after all.

Cryonicists view death not as a singular event, but as a process, one that starts when the heart stops beating and ends later at a point called the information-theoretic criterion for death; let’s call it info death. When the brain has become so damaged that no amount of present or future technology could restore it to its original state or have any way to retrieve its information.

What cryonicists suggest is that in many cases where today a patient is pronounced dead, they’re not dead but rather doomed, and that there is a Hospital B that can save the day, but instead of being in a different place, it’s in a different time. It’s in the future. That’s why cryonicists adamantly assert that cryonics does not deal with dead people, it deals with living people who simply need to be transferred to a future hospital to be saved. They believe that in many cases, today’s corpse is tomorrow’s patient (which is why they call their frozen clients patients instead of corpses or remains), and they view their work as essentially extended emergency medicine.

DREAM ARGUMENT
V BC · PHILOSOPHY ARGUMENT · GREECE

The dream argument is the postulation that the act of dreaming provides preliminary evidence that the senses we trust to distinguish reality from illusion should not be fully trusted, and therefore any state that is dependent on our senses should at the very least be carefully examined and rigorously tested to determine whether it is in fact reality.

While people dream, they usually do not realize they are dreaming (if they do, it is called a lucid dream). This has led philosophers to wonder whether one could actually be dreaming constantly, instead of being in waking reality (or at least that one cannot be certain, at any given point in time, that one is not dreaming).

In the West, this philosophical puzzle was referred to by Plato and Aristotle. Having received serious attention in René Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, the dream argument has become one of the most prominent skeptical hypotheses which clearly has an archetype in elements of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave also.

This type of argument is well known as “Zhuangzi dreamed he was a butterfly”:

One night, Zhuangzi dreamed that he was a carefree butterfly, flying happily. After he woke up, he wondered how he could determine whether he was Zhuangzi who had just finished dreaming he was a butterfly, or a butterfly who had just started dreaming he was Zhuangzi.

The dream argument features widely in Mahayana Buddhist and Tibetan Buddhist thought. Some schools of thought in Buddhism consider perceived reality literally unreal. The term visions denotes not only visual perceptions, but appearances perceived through all senses, including sounds, smells, tastes and tactile sensations, and operations on received mental objects. According to this theory when the dream ends all our reality ends with it.

DRUZE
XI CENTURY · MODERN RELIGION · MIDDLE EAST

Druze refers to an Arabic ethno religious group that originated in and still largely inhabits the Mountain of Druze region in southern Syria. Despite a small population of adherents, the Druze nonetheless play an important role in the development of their region (known in historical shorthand as the Levant).

The Druze view themselves as the direct descendants of Jethro of Midian, distinguished in Jewish scripture as the father-in-law of Moses. The Druze consider Jethro a “hidden” prophet, one through whom God spoke to “revealed prophet” Moses. As such, the Druze are considered related to Judaism by marriage. Like their in-laws, the Druze are monotheistic, professing faith in only one God.

Druze believe in one God and claim that the qualities of God cannot be understood or defined by humans. Al-Hakim is worshiped in Druze religion, he is called ‘Our Lord’, and his cruelties and eccentricities are all interpreted symbolically. But while God incarnated himself in al-Hakim in his unity, other aspects of God can be incarnated in other human beings. Frequently one hears from sources about a calf in Druze religion. It is believed that the calf is a central symbol which represents the negative forces in the world.

Central in the Druze world system is the belief in reincarnation, through which all souls are reborn as humans, good as well as bad. Good people have a more fortunate rebirth than bad people. Behind this system is the belief that humans cannot reach perfection and unite with God. Hell and Paradise in Druze religion are viewed differently from most other Middle Eastern religions, and bear clear resemblances with Gnostic philosophy and religion, as heaven is only spiritual, when man stops being man and is saved from more rebirths. Hell is just as spiritual and is the distance from, and the longing to, unity with God which goes on for one lifetime after another if a person has been evil.

EGYPTIAN
III MILLENIUM BC · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · EGYPT

The ancient Egyptians’ attitude towards death was influenced by their belief in immortality. They regarded death as a temporary interruption, rather than the cessation of life. To ensure the continuity of life after death, people paid homage to the gods, both during and after their life on earth. When they died, they were mummified so the soul would return to the body, giving it breath and life. Household equipment and food and drink were placed on offering tables outside the tomb’s burial chamber to provide for the person’s needs in the afterworld. Written funerary texts consisting of spells or prayers were also included to assist the dead on their way to the afterworld.

The journey to the afterworld was considered full of danger. Traveling on a solar bark, the mummy passed through the underworld, which was inhabited by serpents armed with long knives, fire-spitting dragons and reptiles with five ravenous heads. Upon arriving in the realm of the Duat (Land of the Gods), the deceased had to pass through seven gates, reciting accurately a magic spell at each stop. If successful, they arrived at the Hall of Osiris, the place of judgement.

Here the Gods of the dead performed the weighing of the heart ceremony to judge whether the person’s earthly deeds were virtuous. The weighing of the heart was overseen by the jackal-headed god Anubis, and the judgement was recorded by Thoth, the God of writing. Forty-two gods listened to the confessions of the deceased who claimed to be innocent of crimes against the divine and human social order. The person’s heart was then placed on a scale, counterbalanced by a feather that represented Maat, the goddess of truth and justice. If the heart was equal in weight to the feather, the person was justified and achieved immortality. If not, it was devoured by the goddess Amemet.

This meant that the person would not survive in the afterlife. When a pharaoh passed the test, he became one with the god Osiris. He then travelled through the underworld on a solar bark, accompanied by the gods, to reach paradise and attain everlasting life.

FATE OF UNLEARNED
S/D · PHILOSOPHY ARGUMENT · S/D

The fate of the unlearned, also known as the destiny of the unevangelized, is an eschatological question about the ultimate destiny of people who have not been exposed to a particular theology or doctrine and thus have no opportunity to embrace it. The question is whether those who never hear of requirements issued through divine revelations will be punished for failure to abide by those requirements.

It is sometimes addressed in combination with the similar question of the fate of the unbeliever. Differing faith traditions have different responses to the question; in Western Christianity the fate of the unlearned is related to the question of original sin. As some suggest that rigid readings of religious texts require harsh punishment for those who have never heard of that religion, it is sometimes raised as an argument against the existence of God, and is generally accepted to be an extension or sub-section of the problem of evil.

It describes an eschatological question about the ultimate destiny of people who have not been exposed to a particular theology or doctrine and thus have no opportunity to embrace it. It is sometimes combined with the similar question of the Fate of the Unbeliever. Differing faith traditions have different responses to the question.

The problem of the unevangelized does not arise in religious or spiritual traditions such as deism, pandeism, and pantheism, which do not include any revelation or require obedience to revealed rules. In deism, some believe that individuals will be judged by one’s obedience to natural laws of right and wrong to be obtained by the exercise of reason alone, and so, failure to exercise reason in the effort to make this determination is itself the cause for punishment.

FIJIAN
IV BC · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · FIJI ISLANDS

In pre-Christian Fijian mythology, Murimuria is part of the underworld. According to Fidji religion, after a man dies, his soul is brought over a stretch of water by a ferryman, and has to face many dangers on the other side by going through the Path of the Souls (Sala Ni Yalo).

For unmarried men, there seems to be no chance of surviving this path, because even if they escape the Great Woman, they would be killed by the monster Nangganangga, since no one ever got away from it, while married men could survive, if they withstand the Pandanus tree and the armed giant Killer of Souls. The survivors are judged by the god called Degei. Those who had the favor of Degei (chiefs with great wealth and many wives, who were destroyers of many towns, killers of many enemies and rulers over a powerful people) are instructed not to try to cross the lake. These go to Burotu. The rest inevitably try cross the lake by a boat that always capsizes. They eventually sink to the bottom, Murimuria, and are rewarded and punished appropriately.

Murimuria is considered a place neither of happiness, nor of unhappiness. As such, residence in Murimuria is characterized by both punishment and peace. Some of the souls in Murimuria are punished for sins committed while alive. However, these sins do not necessarily correspond to Christian notions of sin. Those who did not kill an enemy in life are forced to pound muck with clubs, which is regarded as the most degrading punishment. Those who did not have their ears pierced are forced to carry upon their shoulders for ever logs of wood upon which tapa cloth is beaten out, jeered by all who see them. Women who were not tattooed are chased by ghosts who use sharp shells to tear at their skin or turn them into bread. Anyone who has done an act which displeases the gods are laid in rows on their faces and turned into taro beds.

GNOSTICISM
I CENTURY · PHILOSOPHY · ASIA

Gnosticism likely refers not to a single religious orientation but to an interreligious phenomenon in which various groups across an array of regions evolved to a similar set of beliefs and ideas. A term adapted in modern historical discourse, gnosticism concerns the variety of religious systems and beliefs in the ancient world that emerged from the Judeo-Christian tradition. These belief systems held that emanations from a single God were responsible for the creation of the material world and that, as such, all humans carried the divine spark of God.

Gnosticism is dualistic and draws sharp divides between the superior spiritual world and the inferior material world, with the gaining or receiving of special, hidden knowledge (gnosis) allowing transcendence from one realm to another. Emerging in the first century DC (in close concert with the emergence of Christianity) gnosticism is perhaps best understand as the intermediary set of ideas shared by portions of the world as Christianity gradually eclipsed Judaism in size and scope.

GREEK
VIII BC · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · GREECE

Ancient Greece is the birthplace of Western philosophy (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle), literature (Homer and Hesiod), mathematics (Pythagoras and Euclid), history (Herodotus), drama (Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes), the Olympic Games, and democracy.

The concept of an atomic universe was first posited in Greece through the work of Democritus and Leucippus. The process of today’s scientific method was first introduced through the work of Thales of Miletus and those who followed him. The Latin alphabet also comes from ancient Greece, having been introduced to the region during the Phoenician colonization in the 8th century BC, and early work in physics and engineering was pioneered by Archimedes, of the Greek colony of Syracuse, among others.

The geography of Greece greatly influenced the culture in that, with few natural resources and surrounded by water, the people eventually took to the sea for their livelihood. Mountains cover 80 percent of Greece and only small rivers run through a rocky landscape which, for the most part, provides little encouragement for agriculture. Consequently, the early ancient Greeks colonized neighboring islands and founded settlements along the coast of Anatolia (also known as Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey). The Greeks became skilled seafaring people and traders who, possessing an abundance of raw materials for construction in stone, and great skill, built some of the most impressive structures in antiquity.

The ancient Greek conception of the afterlife and the ceremonies associated with burial were already well established by the sixth century BC In the Odyssey, Homer describes the Underworld, deep beneath the earth, where Hades, the brother of Zeus and Poseidon, and his wife, Persephone, reigned over countless drifting crowds of shadowy figures—the “shades” of all those who had died. It was not a happy place. Indeed, the ghost of the great hero Achilles told Odysseus that he would rather be a poor serf on earth than lord of all the dead in the Underworld.

The afterlife was known as Hades and was a grey world ruled by the Lord of the Dead, also known as Hades. Within this misty realm, however, were different planes of existence the dead could inhabit. If they had lived a good life and were remembered by the living they could enjoy the sunny pleasures of Elysium, if they were wicked then they fell into the darker pits of Tartarus while, if they were forgotten, they wandered eternally in the bleakness of the land of Hades.

HAITIAN VODOU
XVI CENTURY · MODERN RELIGION · HAITI

Vodou is a religion of mixed African Caribbean religions and Catholic Christianity. Long stereotype of the outside world as black magic Vodou priests and priestesses also diviners, healers and religious leaders, who derive most of their income from instead of healing the attacker targeted victims.

Vodou comes from an African word spirit, most commonly practiced in the country of Haiti and the United States around New Orleans, New York and Florida. During days of the slave trade, this religion is fused with Catholic Christianity. Therefore, children born in this current century rural Haitian families are usually baptized the Vodou religion, and the Catholic Church.

Those who practice Vodou believe in a pantheon of gods who control and represents the laws and forces of the universe. In this pantheon, there is a deity and Loa, a large group of minor deities equivalent to the saints of the Catholic Church. These are the gods to protect people, and special discounts through their representatives on the ground that the hougans (priests) and mambos (priestesses).

Followers of Vodou believe that each person has a spirit that both the gros bon ange (great soul or universal life force), and your bon ange (little soul, or the individual soul, or essence). When a person dies, the soul is hovering near the body, seven to nine days. During this period, the spirit is vulnerable and can be captured and made a spiritual zombie in the wizard. Assuming that the soul is not made, the priest or priestess performs a ritual called Nine Nights separate the soul from the body, so the soul in the dark waters for a year and a day. If this is not done, your bon ange move through the land, and to the misfortune of others.

Like any other religion, it is intended to reassure people by providing a common bond. Vodou fits surprisingly well Catholicism, the official religion of Haiti. The main thing is holy, like ghosts, believe in an afterlife and invisible spirits, as well as the protection of the patron saints, voodoo is not different from traditional religions.

HAWAIIAN
S/D · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · HAWAII

In Hawaiian mythology, Lua-o-Milu is the land of the dead, ruled by Milu. Entrance to Lua-o-Milu is from the top of a valley wall or sea cliff where the soul departs via a tree. It is reported that each Hawaiian island has at least one leaping place. According to natives of the land, the entrance located in Waipio Valley has since been covered in sand and is now hidden from the sight of upper areas. Another documented area where souls enter the next world is Leina Kauhane.

Hawaiian stories of going to the underworld after the soul of the dead and restoring it to the body are based on the Hawaiian philosophy of life, whose tendency is to dissociate the spirit or soul (uhane) from the body (kino) and to think of it with a quite independent life of its own apart from the body, which is dead or inert without it. The spirit may wander away from the living body, leaving it asleep or merely listless and drowsy, and visit another in dream or as an apparition (hihi‘o) while the other is awake. Its exits from the living body are made through the inner angle of the eye, called lua-uhane.

Since this habit of wandering is dangerous, lest the spirit be caught and prevented from returning to its body, the kahuna will perform a ceremony and place a special kind of wreath on the head of a person thus addicted. Theoretically the kahuna alone can see the spirit (uhane) of the dead or dying, but practically everybody is afraid of the lapu or visible form of a dead person. It has human shape and speaks in the same voice as in life, but has the power of enlarging or contracting at will. It cannot change into another shape.

The gods alone have this power, called four-hundred-bodied (kino-lau). But the dead may enter an object, especially a bone, and hence it is that Hawaiians fear to disturb human bones or to speak of sacred things. They fear to carry food, especially pork, at night lest they be followed. They will tie to the container a green tea leaf or bamboo or lele banana leaf as a command to the ghost to fly away (lele). This is called placing a law (kanawai) upon the food. But unless the leaves are fresh the law will not work.

Restoration of the dead in Hawaiian story consists in bringing the body back to form if crushed, then in catching the released soul and restoring it to the body. Just as, in cases of fainting, manipulation begins at the feet and progresses upward, so in stories of bringing the dead to life the spirit is represented as pushed back into the body at the foot (instep or toe) and making its way upward with resistance, because fearful of the dark passages within the body, until a feeble crow announces the final resuscitation. Fragrant plants are wrapped about the body to tempt reentrance by the reluctant spirit. Chants play a determining part in the process. A purifying bath is the final step, out of which the body emerges transfigured and full of renewed life. This process of resuscitation is called by Hawaiians kapuku or kupaku.

The soul is often represented in such operations as fluttering about the body or over land or sea, visible to the eyes of the kahuna, who catches it in a gourd. Or it may already have joined the spirits in the underworld of the dead and must be brought or lured thence for return to the body.

HINDUISM
II BC · MODERN RELIGION · INDIA

Hinduism is regarded by some as the world’s oldest religion, likely dating back to what is known on the Indian subcontinent as the Vedic age. During this period, civilization transitioned from tribal and pastoral living into settled and agricultural living.

Most Hindus believe that humans are in a cycle of death and rebirth called samsara. When a person dies, their atman (soul) is reborn in a different body. Some believe rebirth happens directly at death, others believe that an atman may exist in other realms. Hindus believe that an atman may enter swarg (Hindu heavenly realm) or narak (Hindu hellish realm) for a period before rebirth.

Hindus believe in karma. Many believe that good or bad actions in life leading to positive or negative merit determine the atman’s rebirth. Some Hindus believe that humans may be reborn in animal form, and that rebirth from human to animal form only occurs if an atman has repeatedly failed to learn lessons in human form. Living life according to teachings in the scriptures will eventually lead to moksha.

Some Hindu scriptures describe moksha as the atman becoming absorbed with Brahman, from where each atman is believed to originate. Other Hindu scriptures describe moksha as living in the realm of a personal God. Most Hindus believe that good merit is achieved by following your dharma.

There are two beliefs about what happens after moksha:

∙ Some Hindus believe that the atman is absorbed into Brahman. This is because the atman and Brahman are the same.

∙ Other Hindus believe that the atman and Brahman are different and that after moksha they remain separate. They believe that the atman will be in the presence of Brahman, as a personal god, but will remain unique and individual.

INCAN
XIII CENTURY · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · SOUTH AMERICA

The Inca believed strongly in the afterlife. For them the heavens were divided into four quarters. They believed that the souls of its people were sent to live in heaven or in hell after the death of their earthly bodies. The people who obeyed the Inca rule:

∙ Do not steal

∙ Do not lie

∙ Do not be lazy, were sent to live a good afterlife in heaven, in the part of the quarters where the warmth of the sun was present and where there was plenty of food and drink. Those who did not live by this rule spent their afterlife in the underworld where it was dark and cold and they only had rocks to eat.

The Incas believed that the members of the ruling class were somehow direct descendants to a higher mind of which the first emperor, Manco Capac and his sister-wife Mama Ocllo, proved to be the first of its kind. To keep this sacred ruling the emperor would always marry his sister as his official wife, so that the heir would be a pure descendant of the all powerful force of the Sun (Inti) and they would rule with divine power. Important roles occupied by these powerful souls in their earthly life were, at the point of death, subject of greater care by its subjects, in embalming and mummifying their bodies before burial.

The body, then, was left in their palace or in a designated sacred place with numerous objects, in above ground chambers, to help them in the journey to their final destination known as Pacari’Na. Upon reaching the Pacari’Na, the mummies were supposed to be able to mingle with the ancient ancestors that were also buried there. The Incas even kept some servants to watch over the dead emperor as a symbol of continuity of its life force (mind power) towards the afterlife. For certain Festivals, the dead emperors were paraded through the streets.

The Incas believed in reincarnation, and this is the main reason why funerals were a very sacred events. The funerals rites were held for eight days. Relatives would re-enter the tombs or palaces and consult the mummies on important daily affairs. The dead were considered a manifestation of spiritual powers that were able to be manifested through natural events and/or through dreams using symbols. The priests were able to train their mind by using herbs and sophisticated methods to guide it to the correct channel of interpretation, otherwise they would ended up losing their own mind.

The Huacas, as sacred places or objects of natural source such as a rock, a statue, a cave, waterfall, mountain, or even a dead body, were manifestations of powerful forces, either from the light or darkness, alive in the spiritual world and manifested themselves in the physical world to communicate something sacred. The mountains, for example, were a very important and powerful source of energies and for this reason considered very sacred, since they were the source of the natural element of water. Compared to the human body, the mountains were similar in power as the mind that empower the whole physical human body.

The Incas believed in an existence of an overall supreme power, and that the course of history formed a succession of repetition and renewal. Each age was ruled over by the power of the Sun (inti), and the general course of development was from the most primitive to the sophisticated. Each world was supposed to end by some sort of catastrophic event.

INDUS VALLEY
IV BC · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · SOUTH ASIA

The Indus Valley Civilization was an ancient civilization located in what is Pakistan and northwest India today, on the fertile flood plain of the Indus River and its vicinity.

Soft clay writing seals from the Indus Valley. These seals with writing on were found in the city of Mohenjo-Daro. Pictures on seals and other artifacts show what look like figures of gods. But we don’t know what the Indus people called them. One looks like a mother goddess. People might have believed this goddess gave health and fertility to people, animals and plants.

Plants, trees and animals were probably important to Indus people. The pipal or fig tree is shown on many seals, and is still a sacred tree for many Buddhists and Hindus. Hinduism also places importance on ritual bathing. Many people believe the great bath found in Mohenjo-Daro suggests the Indus people held similar beliefs about purity.

Graves can tell archaeologists a lot. Indus Valley people were buried with clay pots and clay figures, as well as beads. Putting these items in graves may mean that they had a religious belief in an afterlife, in which they could use these belongings again. In the 1920s, 39 skeletons were found in the city of Mohenjo-Daro. Some archaeologists thought these men, woman and children might have been killed by invaders. However, only two skeletons had marks similar to those made by sword or spear. One was an old wound, another was healing perhaps after an accident.

INUIT SPIRITUALISM
S/D · MODERN RELIGION · NORTH AMERICA

Different Indigenous nations have their own religious institutions and sacred practices. Many Plains Indigenous peoples participate in the Sun Dance, while Coast Salish peoples typically engage in sacred winter ceremonies. The Haudenosaunee celebrate the Green Corn Ceremony, and some follow the False Face Society. Among the Ojibwe, the Midewiwin is a spiritual society and essential part of the Anishinaabe worldview. Institution stories tell about the origins of these cultural practices. Ritual tales, on the other hand, serve as detailed texts for the performance of institutions, ceremonies and rituals.

Fertility, birth, initiation and death rites are often clearly stipulated in spiritual traditions. Shamanic performances may also be described. Such ceremonies are often preceded by stringent purification rites, such as sweat lodges or baths (common for Salish, Siksika and Eastern Woodlands peoples), fasting and sexual abstinence. Feasting is also a common feature of these ceremonies.

Many Indigenous peoples subscribe to the idea of a Creator, Great Spirit or Great Mystery — a power or being that has created the world and everything in it. These beings are often described as good or well-intentioned, though dangerous if treated carelessly or with disrespect. Great spiritual power is also found in the spirits of all living things, natural phenomena and ritually significant places.

This power is a property of the spirits, but also belongs to transformers, tricksters, culture heroes, or other spirit figures, as well as shamans, prophets and ceremonial performers. Ritual objects such as the calumet, rattles, drums, masks, medicine wheels, medicine bundles and ritual sanctuaries are filled with spiritual power.

A key concept among many societies is the notion of guardians. Among the Abenaki, for instance, Bear is considered one of six directional guardians (west), representing courage, physical strength and bravery. Among the Inuit, the sea goddess Sedna is the guardian of sea mammals and controls when stocks are available to be hunted. Shamans may visit Sedna and coax her into releasing the animals by righting previous wrongs or presenting offerings.

As healers, shamans typically recognized natural causes for many diseases, especially physically curable ones; other illnesses were commonly believed to be the result of intrusion into the body of objects placed there by sorcerers. The shaman-healer’s treatment of such diseases was dictated by his guardian spirit, but usually consisted of the shaman ritually sucking the disease agent out of the body, brushing it off with a bird’s wing, or drawing it out with dramatic gestures. Illness could also result from “spirit loss” — the loss of the soul and/or guardian spirit power. The shaman-healer’s action was then directed to recovering the patient’s spirit and reintroducing it to the body.

Vision quests (sometimes referred to as guardian spirit quests) once occurred throughout most Indigenous cultures in Canada; it has undergone a revival in many communities. Males, especially at puberty but also at other times of life, make extended stays in remote areas while fasting, praying and purifying themselves by washing in streams and pools. The goal is to seek a vision of, or an actual encounter with, a guardian spirit — very frequently an animal, but possibly a mythological figure. Contact with a guardian spirit is believed to make an individual healthy, prosperous and successful, particularly in hunting and fishing.

The individual focus of the quest is also present in common celebration of life events. Among these rituals are ceremonies at birth or the giving of a name, at puberty, marriage and death, all of which are normally accompanied by some solemnity. Life-event ceremonies, though individual, had some level of communal integration.

The harsh living conditions of the Arctic have influenced the spiritual life of the Inuit people. Fear, rather than faith, takes a more central part in their spiritual practices. The Inuit would perform various rituals and customs as precautions against danger. Their central mythological figures are fascinating and largely based on animism and shamanism. When taking a look at their traditional belief system, one can only be mesmerized.

According to Inuit cosmology, the cosmos is ruled by no one.

The Angakkuq is the spiritual healer in most Inuit communities. Its role varies depending on the particular community. Among the Canadian Inuit, its duties are to help the community when sea mammals are scarce. According to legend, when there are not enough seals, walruses, and sea lions, it means that the Sea Woman keeps them imprisoned at the bottom of the sea.

The Angakkuq must use its shamanic techniques to conjure the Sea Woman and make her release the animals for the hunters. Like the other Native American cultures, the Inuits are traditionally polytheists and their ancient world view includes numerous deities, spirits and supernatural beings. Myths and Legends of the various tribes were passed down orally, generation after generation until they were written down by western explorers and folklorists who made those stories available for the wider world.

Some of the most interesting Inuit tales relate to the spirits of the dead. A widely-known Inuit concept of the afterlife was that departing people would be sent to a different world depending on their acts on Earth and the way in which they died. In some parts of the Inuit homelands, the highest Heaven is the Aurora, where people who died violent deaths could enjoy an otherworld of peace and plenty.

The Inuits of Hudson Bay in Canada have another traditional tale linking the Aurora and the Afterlife: In their view, the Aurora is the reflection of the spirits of the departed entering the Land of the Dead.

The ends of the land and sea are bounded by an immense abyss, over which a narrow and dangerous pathway leads to the heavenly regions. The sky is a great dome of hard material arched over the Earth. There is a hole in it through which the spirits pass to the true heavens. Only the spirits of those who have died a voluntary or violent death, and the Raven, have been over this pathway. The spirits who live there light torches to guide the feet of new arrivals. This is the light of the aurora.

ISLAM
I CENTURY · MODERN RELIGION · JERUSALEM

Islam is a monotheistic religion that traces its roots to the Garden of Eden, Adam, and the prophet Abraham. Islam holds that God spoke to Muhammed through the archangel Gabriel some time around 600, delivering the revelations that would form the Quran. This primary text of the Islamic faith is believed by adherents to contain the exact words of God and therefore provides a full blueprint for how to live.

Islam teaches that there is life after death. This is known as Akhirah. It is Allah who decides when a person dies. Most Muslims believe that when they die, they will stay in their graves until Yawm al-din (the Day of Judgement). On that day, they will be raised from their graves and brought before Allah and judged on how they lived their earthly lives. This belief is known as the resurrection of the body.

Those who have performed more good deeds than bad will enter Jannah. Jannah is a place described as a garden of everlasting bliss and a home of peace. In Jannah there will be no sickness, pain or sadness. Those who have performed more bad deeds than good will enter Jahannam. This is a place of physical and spiritual suffering. Muslims believe that Allah is forgiving, merciful and compassionate, so not all bad actions will be punished. Allah will forgive those who have repented for their sins and those who have done some good in their lives, for example showing kindness to others.

However, there are some sins that many Muslims believe to be unforgivable. These include the sin of shirk (the sin of regarding anything as an equal to or a partner of Allah). Muslims believe that Heaven will be a “garden of bliss”. People will lie on jewelled couches, remain eternally young, drink wine from fountains and be served fine foods. Muslims believe that Hell is full of smoke, fire and boiling water. People will rage with thirst and there will be no way to escape the heat.

Belief in life after death is central to the meaning and purpose of most Muslims’ lives. Many Muslims believe that they are on Earth for a relatively short time. During this time they are preparing themselves for eternal life after death.

JAINISM
S/D · MODERN RELIGION · INDIA

Jainism is an ancient Indian religion that — according to its adherents — can be traced through a succession of 24 sagely teachers. Like Hindu and Buddhism, Jainism teaches the doctrines of karma, rebirth, and monastic (as opposed to theistic) spiritual practices. Jain ideas about the soul differ from those of many other religions. The Jain word that comes closest to soul is jiva, which means a conscious, living being. For Jains body and soul are different things: the body is just an inanimate container the conscious being is the jiva.

After each bodily death, the jiva is reborn into a different body to live another life, until it achieves liberation. When a jiva is embodied, it exists throughout that body and isn’t found in any particular bit of it. Jains believe that the soul exists forever. Each soul is always independent. Not all souls can be liberated some souls are inherently incapable of achieving this. The soul can evolve towards that liberation by following principles of behavior

Each jiva is an individual quite independent of other jivas. This is different from one of the Hindu Vedanta schools of belief where each soul is part of a single ultimate reality. Jains believe that there are an infinite number of souls in the universe every living thing, no matter how primitive, is a jiva and at any given time many of these jivas are not embodied. Some jivas have achieved liberation from the cycle of samsara or reincarnation and are not reborn. They are called siddhas.

Liberated jivas don’t have physical bodies; they possess infinite knowledge, infinite vision, infinite power, and infinite bliss in effect they have become perfect beings. This makes liberated jivas the beings most like gods in Jain belief, but they are very different from the conventional idea of god. So when Jains worship Gods they do so to set before themselves the example of perfection that they want to follow in their own lives. Every jiva has the possibility of achieving liberation, and thus of becoming a god, and each soul is involved in a process of evolving towards that state.

JUDAISM
II BC · MODERN RELIGION · JERUSALEM

Judaism is one of the oldest monotheistic world religions, among the first ethnoreligious groups to move away from idolatry or paganism and toward the recognition of a single deity. While Judaism has long taught that there is a life after death, the details of this are unclear and long-debated how and when it happened.

When the early Jewish scriptures were written, many Jews believed that on death, all people would descend to a dark place called Sheol. As Jews came into contact with other influences, further teachings developed. These included teachings on Gan Eden and Gehenna. Sheol then became a place of purification, or waiting, before the individual was sent on to either Gan Eden or destroyed completely.

It was around the time of the Pharisees and early rabbis that teachings about life after death were developed further. The early rabbis taught that those who lived according to the halakhah would be rewarded in a world to come, called Olam Ha-Ba in Hebrew. Later teachings about life after death included the idea that judgement would happen after the coming of the Mashiach. At this point some taught that the soul and body would be reunited, sometimes called resurrection of the body, while others believed that it would be the soul that would be eternal, a belief known as immortality of the soul. There would then be punishment or reward for the way they had lived, but there was no clear teaching on the exact nature of Heaven or Hell.

Many Jews believe in life after death because:

∙ In the classical Jewish tradition there are teachings on life after death. These include the idea that humans have a soul which will one day return to God.

∙ Other teachings suggest that there will be a future judgment when some will be rewarded and others punished.

∙ The Mishnah contains recorded debates and judgements that include issues of life after death.

∙ The Jewish philosopher Maimonides outlined Thirteen Principles of Faith for Jews. The 13th principle speaks of a revival of the dead, when it shall please the Creator.

MABUIAG
S/D · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · OCEANIA

In the mythology of the Mabuiag people of the Torres Strait, Kibu is the mythical land of the dead, believed to exist over the horizon far to the west. The correct full term is Kibukuth Horizons End.

The basic meaning of the word kibu is midpoint of an upright broad object, such as small of back, mid-slope of a hill, and horizon, which is the midpoint of the universe, between the bottom part which is the earth (apagœwa lower-ground, or arkath pit), and the top half, which is the sky (dapar).

Traditional Torres Strait religion can be characterised as totemic and ancestor worship, and as such the markai are the ancestors, and are specially revered. The ancestors are with the augadh totem, and the augadh generates the buwai clan/moiety, and the markai ultimately has a direct relationship to the augadh, though not necessarily being seen as being the augadh.

In the traditional mythology, the world (arkath hole, apagoewa underfurrow/ditch/garden) is at the bottom of a sphere, with the sky (dapar) above and around it. The markai live in Kibu, the main gateway of which is in the west (Kibukuth Horizons End). However, the markai often come back to visit. The land of the markai actually surrounds the world, so markai can be seen passing from east to west as well as west to east, coming down from the sky, and sometimes even coming up from under the ground via Apangab Netherway, Underway, the mythical pathway under the earth used by markai and others, such as dhogai long-eared witch women, maidhalaig magic-men, and others to travel under the earth and the sea from place to place.

Before becoming markai, the spirit of the dead person is called mari. Mari are the spirits of the dead who have not yet passed to the other side. The passage to the other side is made on the sand banks just west of Boigu, in north-west Torres Strait.

At Boigu, the mari either leave a sign or otherwise talk to the mariumulaimoebaig spirit talker, to let people know how he or she died, and if he or she was murdered (and if so, who killed them). This is done where the cemetery is at Boigu, just west of the village.

MAYA
I BC · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · SOUTH AMERICA

Among the Maya, human sacrifice was not an everyday event but was essential to sanctify certain rituals, such as the inauguration of a new ruler, the designation of a new heir to the throne, or the dedication of an important new temple or ball court. The victims were often prisoners of war. At Chichén Itzá, victims would be painted blue, a color that appears to have honored the god Chaak, and cast into a well. Additionally, near the site’s ball court, there is a panel that shows a person being sacrificed. This may depict a ball-player from either the winning or losing team being killed after a game.

Contrary to contemporary western ideas of heaven and hell, the Maya believed in different levels of these realms. There are three main areas to distinguish from one another, however. The Maya understand supernatural levels not as heaven and hell, but as the upper world, middle world, and underworld.

Death and afterlife beliefs have always played an important role in all religions. Some religions have similar beliefs while others are very different. The Maya religion is very similar to Roman Catholicism. Many Mayas were able to adopt Catholic beliefs while still maintaining their own faith: many of their customs remain evident today.

The Maya people believed that committing suicide sent one directly to heaven. During the Post-Conquest, many Maya people were punished for practicing their faith so many took their own lives to remove themselves from the hopelessness, hence the reasoning behind considering suicide a noble death. Other deaths such as death during childbirth and death during battles were also measured as noble. Death was usually considered a journey where one had the possibility of the rebirth.

Maize, which is an essential crop to the Mayas, was a symbol of rebirth. When a person laid to rest maize was placed in their mouths, it was known as food for the journey into the otherworld. Death rituals become an important part of the Mayan culture. The Mayas associate the color red with death and rebirth, similar to how many American cultures and religions associate death with the color black.

MESOPOTAMIA
S/D · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · MIDDLE EAST

Mesopotamia is a region of southwest Asia in the Tigris and Euphrates river system that benefited from the area’s climate and geography to host the beginnings of human civilization. Its history is marked by many important inventions that changed the world, including the concept of time, math, the wheel, sailboats, maps and writing. Mesopotamia is also defined by a changing succession of ruling bodies from different areas and cities that seized control over a period of thousands of years.

Mesopotamian religion was polytheistic, with followers worshipping several main gods and thousands of minor gods. The three main gods were Enki, the god of wisdom and magic, An, the sky god, and Ellil, the god of earth, storms and agriculture and the controller of fates. Each Mesopotamian City had its own patron god or goddess, and most of what we know of them has been passed down through clay tablets describing Mesopotamian religious beliefs and practices.

Ancient Mesopotamian views of the afterlife must be pieced together from a variety of sources across different genres. Many literary texts, most famously the Epic of Gilgamesh, contemplate the meaning of death, recount the fate of the dead in the netherworld, and describe mourning rites, as we already talked about before in the introduction of the Afterlife.

For Mesopotamian afterlife beliefs include burials, grave inscriptions, economic texts recording disbursements for funerals or cults of the dead, references to death in royal inscriptions and edicts, chronicles, royal and private letters, lexical texts, cultic commentaries, magico-medical texts, omens, and curse formulas.

Like all cultural systems, Mesopotamian ideas of the afterlife transformed throughout time. Beliefs and practices relating to the afterlife also varied with socio-economic status and differed within official and popular religious paradigms. With this in mind, however, cultural continuity between the Sumerian civilization and its successors allows a synthesis of diverse sources in order to provide a working introduction to Mesopotamian concepts of the afterlife. They conceptualized the netherworld as the cosmic opposite of the heavens and as a shadowy version of life on earth.

The Mesopotamian netherworld is therefore best understood as neither a place of great misery nor great joy, but as a dulled version of life on earth. In light of such descriptions, it is perhaps notable that Mesopotamian funerary rites for the elite could last up to seven days.

It must be emphasized that the Mesopotamian netherworld was not a hell. Although it was understood as the geographic opposite of the heavens, and although its environment was largely an inversion of heavenly realms (for instance, it was characterized by darkness instead of light), it did not stand opposite heaven as a possible dwelling place for dead spirits based on behavior during life. The Mesopotamian netherworld was neither a place of punishment nor reward. Rather, it was the only otherworldly destination for dead spirits whose bodies and graves or cult statues had received proper ritual care.

In the Old Babylonian Atrahasis epic, the gods created humans by mixing clay with the blood of a rebellious deity named We-ilu who was specially slaughtered for the occasion. Humans therefore contained both an earthly and a divine component. Yet the divine element did not mean that humans were immortal. The Mesopotamians had no concept of either physical resurrection or metempsychosis. The quest for physical immortality, suggests the Epic of Gilgamesh, was consequently futile. The best humans could strive for was enduring fame through their deeds and accomplishments on earth. Immortality, insofar as it was metaphorically possible, was actualized in the memory of future generations.

Humans were considered alive as long as they had blood in their veins and breath in their nostrils. At the moment when humans were emptied of blood or exhaled their last breath, their bodies were considered empty cadavers. The condition of this empty corpse is compared to deep sleep and, upon burial in the ground, the body fashioned from clay “returned to clay”.

The Mesopotamians did not view physical death as the ultimate end of life. The dead continued an animated existence in the form of a spirit, designated by the Sumerian term gidim and its Akkadian equivalent, emmu. The emmu is best understood as a ghost. Its etiology is described in the Old Babylonian Atrahasis epic I 206-230, which recounts the creation of humans from the blood of the slain god We-ilu. The text uses word play to connect the etemmu to a divine quality: We-ilu is characterized as one who has emmu, understanding or intelligence. Thus, humans were thought to be composed of a corporeal body and some type of divine insight.

Upon arrival in the netherworld, the emmu was “judged” by the court of the Annunaki and assigned a place in its new subterranean community. This judgment and placement was not of an ethical nature and had nothing to do with the deceased’s merits during its lifetime. Instead, it had rather a clerical function and confirmed, according to the rules of the netherworld, the etemmu’s entrance into its new home.

Yet the judgment and placement of the emmu in the netherworld was not entirely arbitrary or neutral. Just as social hierarchies existed within living communities, so too did a hierarchy between ghosts exist in the “great city” of the dead. The status of an emmu in the netherworld was determined by two factors:

∙ the social status of the deceased while alive

∙ the post-mortem care its body and grave or cult statue received from the living on earth. Kings like Urnamma and Gilgamesh remained rulers and judges of the dead in the netherworld, and priests remained priests. In this respect the social order underground mimicked that above. Some texts such as Gilgamesh and Enkidu and the Netherworld indicate that the deceased’s lot in the underworld depended on the number of children one had. The more descendents, the more privileged the emmu’s existence in the netherworld, for there were more relatives to ensure the performance of necessary post-mortem rituals.

In the underworld the emmu could be reunited with relatives who had preceded them in death. It should be noted, however, that although the emmu was capable of recognizing and being recognized by the ghosts of people the deceased had known during life, these ghosts do not seem to have retained the deceased’s unique personality traits in the netherworld.

As indicated above, the fate of the emmu after corporeal death depended on performance of the proper post-mortem rituals by the living:

∙ First, funerary rites, specifically burial of the corpse and ritual mourning, at the time of death were necessary for the emmu’s successful journey to and integration into the netherworld.

∙ Second, continued cultic offerings at the deceased’s grave or (at least in the pre-Sargonic period) cult statue were required to ensure the emmu’s comfortable existence in the netherworld. We have seen that the emmu retained the needs of a living being. Most importantly, it required sustenance. Yet the netherworld was devoid of any palatable nourishment.

A person who did not receive proper burial rites or cultic offerings, however, became a restless ghost or vicious demon. Some cases where this could occur included people who were left unburied, suffered a violent death or other unnatural end, or died unmarried. Vicious ghosts pursued, seized, bound, or even physically abused their victims, and could also possess victims by entering into them via their ears. They could also haunt the dreams of the living. Sickness, both physical and psychological, and misfortune were often believed to be caused by the anger of a restless emmu.

The Mesopotamians developed many magical means of dealing with vengeful ghosts. Some methods included the tying of magical knots, the manufacturing of amulets, smearing on magical ointments, drinking magical potions, the burial of a surrogate figurine representing the ghost, and the pouring libations while reciting incantations.

In Mesopotamian conceptions of the afterlife, life did not end after physical death but continued in the form of an emmu, a spirit or ghost dwelling in the netherworld. Further, physical death did not sever the relationship between living and deceased but reinforced their bond through a new set of mutual obligations. Just as the well-being of the ghost in the netherworld was contingent upon offerings from the living, so too was the well being of the living contingent upon on the proper propitiation and favor of the dead. To a notable degree, these afterlife beliefs reflected and reinforced the social structure of kinship ties in Mesopotamian communities.

MIND UPLOAD
XIX CENTURY · SCIENTIFIC PROCESS · EUROPE

Imagine that a person’s brain could be scanned in great detail and recreated in a computer simulation. The person’s mind and memories, emotions and personality would be duplicated. In effect, a new and equally valid version of that person would now exist, in a potentially immortal, digital form. This futuristic possibility is called mind uploading.

The science of the brain and of consciousness increasingly suggests that mind uploading is possible, there are no laws of physics to prevent it. The technology is likely to be far in our future; it may be centuries before the details are fully worked out – and yet given how much interest and effort is already directed towards that goal, mind uploading seems inevitable. Of course we can’t be certain how it might affect our culture but as the technology of simulation and artificial neural networks shapes up, we can guess what that mind uploading future might be like.

Suppose one day you go into an uploading clinic to have your brain scanned. It gives that mind a standard-issue, virtual body that’s reasonably comfortable, with your face and voice attached, in a virtual environment like a high-quality video game. Let’s pretend all of this has come true. The first you, let’s call it the biological you, has paid a fortune for the procedure. And yet you walk out of the clinic just as mortal as when you walked in. You’re still a biological being, and eventually you’ll die.

At the simplest level, mind uploading would preserve people in an indefinite afterlife. Families could have Christmas dinner with sim Grandma joining in on video conference, the tablet screen propped up at the end of the table – presuming she has time for her bio family any more, given the rich possibilities in the simulated playground. It’s this kind of idealised afterlife that people have in mind, when they think about the benefits of mind uploading. It’s a human-made heaven.

But unlike a traditional heaven, it isn’t a separate world. It’s seamlessly connected to the real world. If you live the typical western lifestyle, then the smallest part of your life involves interacting with people in the physical space around you. Your connection to the larger world is almost entirely through digital means.

MIZO
S/D · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · INDIA

Pialrâl is the ultimate heaven according to the folk myth of the Mizo tribes of Northeast India. The Mizo word literally means beyond the world. Unlike most concepts of heaven, it is not the final resting place of the spirits of the good and the righteous, nor there is a role for god or any supernaturals, but is simply a reservation for extraordinary achievers during their lifetime to enjoy eternal bliss and luxury.

The Mizo ancestors believed in the existence of soul in two worlds beyond life, namely Mitthi Khua (literal translation being land of the dead) and the higher abode Pialrâl. It is every human soul’s destiny to go to Mitthi Khua, where most would end up eternally, but there is Pialrâl at the farther realm that is only for the select few. Mitthi Khua is an ordinary spiritual place, where all deceased must eventually enter and the hardships of earthly life still remain, forever. There is a tendency of modern evangelists and theologians to misinterpret Mitthi Khua and Pialrâl as synonymous to hell and heaven respectively. But in truth, the similitude is taken out of context

There is no conception of underworld, retribution, relentless suffering, demons or damnation for Mitthi Khua, as is confabulation of hell in most mythology; it is in simple description an inevitable destiny of all souls regardless of sins or virtues. Nor Pialrâl is an imperialistic kingdom of god with eternal worship as in other religions, it simply is a place of luxury and comfort for those who had made special deeds in life, called thangchhuah. The ultimate reward is simple: to be relieved from labour and be served with ready-made food. In fact the quintessential element of Pialrâl is an ever availability of milled rice for eternity (faisa ring, a common metaphorical expression in Mizo even today).

MOLOCH
II MILLENIUM BC · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · MIDDLE EAST

Claims concerning Moloch and child sacrifice may have been made for negative-propaganda effect. The Romans and Israelites describe child sacrifice as a practice of their evil enemies. Some scholars think that after the Romans finally defeated Carthage and totally destroyed the city, they engaged in post war propaganda to make their archenemies seem cruel and less civilized. The question of whether Phoenician child sacrifice was real or a myth continues to be discussed in academic circles, including the work of M’hamed Hassine Fantar.

The blood spilled and foreskin taken from the baby’s penis marks a claim on the Soul to be bound to serve the Moloch entity, which is further being organized and directed to the Yahweh collective, an Annunaki faction of the NAA, that pose as False Gods to lure humanity into servitude bindings in the afterlife.

Moloch can be implanted as an energetic signature in those children or adults that have been exposed to sexual abuse, genital mutilation, violent sex acts in which any sexual trama is generated in the consciousness of that person, no matter how young or old they are. Babies that are born from rape and a history of sexual abuse in the family of origin, can inherit the Moloch attachment at the time of birth, and carry this attachment sentencing them to heightened sexual misery programming and sexual organ siphoning for a lifetime.

Moloch is especially coveted by an assortment of satanic forces in the NAA that intentionally promote sexual predators and violent sexual acts that perpetrate the use of victim-victimizer software, which is to create masters and slaves, victims and victimizers, these are the main polarities required to foment the War Over Consciousness and reinforce beliefs of separation and division between humanity.

MORMON
XIX CENTURY · MODERN RELIGION · USA

Death in the Mormon religion is not considered to be the end of existence of the individual but the beginning of a new existence as the same person. Mormons believe that they have always lived and will always live as the same individual.

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints are saddened by the death of a loved one but are comforted in the belief that upon death the spirit is united with God in a spirit world, continuing to progress in knowledge, and await the coming of other family members, the resurrection of the physical body, and the final judgment. A belief in an afterlife is an essential part of the faith of the members of the Church of the Latterday Saints.

In Mormonism, only sons of perdition former believers who betray the church are destined for eternal punishment. All others are assured at least an entry into a lesser Paradise, called the celestial kingdom, where one spends eternity apart from God. The most faithful attain the celestial kingdom, where they commune directly with God and eventually may themselves become gods and populate new universes with their own spiritual offspring. The Mormon church is the only church that has a safety net. Any spirit that has not heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ in life will, before Judgment Day, will be given a chance in Paradise to hear it, and if the spirit accepts the teachings, it will receive equal blessings from God.

The judgment reported by Mormon near-death experiencers is essentially a self judgment. This self-judgment is similar to the reported life reviews and self-judgment that are reported in near-death experiences. Experiencers report that they see a panoramic review of their entire life and then judge their own actions while awash in the unconditional love of the Being  of Light. After the judgment, the spirit dwells with others that are most like it. As with many other religious groups, Mormon near-death experiencers consistently report meeting with deceased family members, and being in the presence of a being of light which they call God.

MULTIVERSES
XII CENTURY · PHILOSOPHY ARGUMENT · MIDDLE EAST

The universe we live in may not be the only one out there. In fact, our universe could be just one of an infinite number of universes making up a multiverse. Though the concept may stretch credulity, there’s good physics behind it. And there’s not just one way to get to a multiverse: numerous physics theories independently point to such a conclusion. In fact, some experts think the existence of hidden universes is more likely than not.

Is our universe just one of many? While the concept is bizarre, it’s a real possibility, according to scientists who have devised the first test to investigate the idea. The potential that we live in a multiverse arises from a theory called eternal inflation, which posits that shortly after the Big Bang that formed the universe, space-time expanded at different rates in different places, giving rise to bubble universes that may function with their own separate laws of physics.

The idea has seemed purely hypothetical, until now. In a new study, researchers suggest that if our universe has siblings, we may have bumped into them. Such collisions would have left lasting marks in the cosmic microwave background radiation, the diffuse light left over from the Big Bang that pervades the universe, the researchers say.

The premise of this theory is that there are an infinite number of universes out there that when we die, we only die in one particular universe. You could still be living at the young age of 400 in another universe. It provides us some comfort knowing that while we’re stuck at a boring desk job, we could be living as Beyonce in some alternate universe.

NATURAL AFTERLIFE
XX CENTURY · PHILOSOPHY ARGUMENT · EUROPE

The natural afterlife embodies all of the sensory perceptions, thoughts, and emotions present in the final moment of a near-death, dreamlike experience. With death this moment becomes timeless and everlasting to the dying person: essentially, a never-ending experience.

The theory defines the natural afterlife, implying its existence by its association with the NDE— a phenomenon evidenced by numerous accounts recorded across cultures and throughout history as far back as the oral tradition. Here, the NDE is assumed to be a near-death experience, not an after-death experience as some postulate. It occurs in an altered state of consciousness, as do dreams, and is thus dreamlike to some extent. To accept this seemingly implausible, NDE-based NEE and natural afterlife as plausible, one must fully understand its essence. To do so, one must be able to imagine what may be in their mind at near-death and think of nothing else.

The natural afterlife is dreamlike in that NDEs and dreams are somewhat similar. Both provide alternative, spiritual experiences to the fully conscious, awake one. Both can be very intense and indistinguishable from reality. Both seem mysteriously produced in content and have been historically viewed by many as providing a potential passage into a transcendental realm. In regard to whether a natural afterlife results with death, some differences between NDEs and dreams may not be that important.

The possibility exists that a dying person has no brain-diminished NDE but instead dies in their sleep interrupting an intense dream. Vivid and meaningful end-of-life dreams and visions have been recorded throughout history. A recent study found ELDVs to be very common and also found that comforting perceptions of meeting deceased loved ones within them were more prevalent as participants approached death. It seems very plausible that such vivid, “near-death” dreams have been reported as NDEs and with death also result in NEEs.

Given that the natural afterlife is NDE-based, it is spiritual. All beings — the NDEr, other humans, and nonhumans — are present only in spirit, certainly not in body, perhaps just as they are in normal dreams or perhaps not. Nevertheless, no physical objects of any kind and no physical space are involved. The natural afterlife exists beyond both time and space.

The natural afterlife can provide the most heavenly afterlife possible given the extremely pleasurable features of many NDEs, as has been reported, and the natural afterlife’s timeless, everlasting, logically consistent, spiritual, and personalized aspects.

First, in the heavenly natural afterlife one doesn’t know that nothing more will happen and thus won’t miss a thing. Instead, humanly habituated by the experience of time always marching on, one is left in a state of exuberant, unspoiled anticipation of many more heavenly moments to come. Second, are life’s events what give us pleasure or is it the feelings aroused by these events? The natural afterlife can be a moment where, based on past NDE events, one feels the ultimate in happiness, knowing they’re in heaven forever, immersed in love (in the absolute presence of God as the theist would believe).

Clearly, the percentage of people having an NDE before dying is unknown. For centuries humans have pondered and debated just two possibilities for what they may encounter at death: a kind of nothingness like that of their before-life or some type of supernatural afterlife. The significance of the NEE theory is that those now living have a third possibility to consider, the natural afterlife.

In doing so, those claiming that heavenly NDEs provide proof of heaven and a time-perceptible consciousness that continues after death may want to more justifiably claim that at the minimum they provide evidence of a relativistic heaven and altered state of consciousness that with death is made timeless and eternal; those claiming that scientific research shows that NDEs provide no evidence of an afterlife should instead unassumingly claim that they provide no evidence of a supernatural afterlife.

Theists may question their conventional view of heaven and perhaps welcome one that is scientifically and philosophically defensible—a timeless heaven, personalized by God, and one that can provide a realistic answer to the age-old question: Where is heaven?

Those who believe that one’s actions in life matter not at all, since in the end all merely “return to dust,” may wonder how one’s beliefs, morals, and memories impact the contents of an NDE.

Given the above, the theory of a natural afterlife can have a huge impact on how individuals view death and hence life (of which dying is a part). The strong possibility that at death one is forever frozen in a dreamlike yet very real, sensually and emotionally intense, heavenly (or hellish) state of mind would seem hard to ignore.

NIHILISM
V BC · PHILOSOPHY ARGUMENT · INDIA

Existential Nihilism embraces the notion that the world lacks meaning or purpose. All existence itself (actions, suffering, feelings) is senseless, nothingness. The existential nihilist regards all thoughts and feelings as merely the effects of prior causes. In other words, free will is denied.

Neither heredity nor environment is attributed to the nihilist’s futile existence. The philosopher and poet, Empedocles, reveals this skepticism in that the life of mortals is so mean a thing as to be virtually un-life. This embodies the same kind of extreme pessimism associated with existential nihilism. Other philosophers such as Hegesis believed misery’s domination over pleasure made happiness impossible, leaving suicide as the only recourse.

Existential Nihilism chooses to abandon any foundation for an essential self or human nature. The nihilist is then left with anguish as their nothingness plunges them into isolated, unresponsive universe. Centuries later, Jean-Paul Sarte (19051980) popularized the atheistic existentialist nihilist movement in France as: “Existence precedes essence.”

NORTE-CHICO
II MILLENIUM BC · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · PERU

The Norte Chico people were able to succeed without writing, and no evidence has been found to indicate social classes. But their ability to arrange massive pyramids, houses, and plazas around their temples suggests that the civilization enjoyed some kind of government, bountiful resources, and trained workers.

Unlike the ancient Egyptians, ancient Peruvians performed trepanation on all areas of the skull except for the skull base or regions covered entirely by muscle. While Nott believed that the trepanations were performed to treat skull trauma caused during fighting, Paul Broca, an iconic neuroscientist and neurosurgeon, hypothesized that trepanation was used to treat convulsions in infants. In the end, many scientists have concluded that the trepanations were performed to drain epidural hematomas due to the absence of any fractures, fissures, or other types of trauma.

Trepanation was used in both of these societies for medical and religious purposes. Interestingly, both these cultures preferred left-sided procedures, likely due to the anatomic location of the heart. Based on current evidence, it appears that Peruvians performed more trepanations and subsequently made more discoveries in trepanation than the Egyptians. Peru, therefore, is considered the center of trepanations.

Similar to the ancient Egyptians, ancient Peruvians placed great importance on the afterlife, and this impacted their daily life, architectural structures, and medicine. The spiritual aspect was based upon the sun. The solar divinity was Intil. Peruvians used to build pyramids to serve as tombs for their royalty and a home in the afterlife, which resembles the ancient Egyptian pyramids in the aspect of the wide base and sloping walls towards the top. The stones were meticulously crafted, leaving no room for errors. However, the Peruvians did not use the same mummification and burial techniques as the Egyptians. Peruvian mummies were not embalmed and their organs were left inside.

OBLIVION
V BC · PHILOSOPHY · GREECE

Eternal oblivion (also referred to as non-existence or nothingness) is the philosophical or religious concept of one’s consciousness permanently ceasing upon death, is an eternal state of lack of awareness thought by some to occur after death. This concept is mostly associated with religious skepticism and atheism.

According to contemporary scientific theories of consciousness, the brain is the basis of subjective experience, agency, self-awareness, and awareness of the surrounding natural world. When brain death occurs, all brain function permanently ceases. Many people who believe that death is a permanent cessation of consciousness also believe that consciousness is dependent upon the functioning of the brain. Scientific research has discovered that some areas of the brain, like the reticular activating system or the thalamus, appear to be necessary for consciousness, because damage to these structures or their lack of function causes a loss of consciousness. Through a naturalist analysis of the mind (an approach adopted by many philosophers of mind and neuroscientists), it is regarded as being dependent on the brain, as shown from the various effects of brain damage. The name of the idea derives from the original meaning of the word, referring to a state of forgetfulness or distraction, or a state of being completely forgotten.

Thomas W. Clark, founder of Center for Naturalism, wrote a paper titled “Death, Nothingness, and Subjectivity” (1994). He critiqued what he saw as a flawed description of eternal oblivion as a “plunge into darkness”. When some imagine their deaths (including the non-religious), they project themselves into a future self which experiences an eternal silent darkness. This is wrong, because without consciousness, there is no awareness of space and no basis for time. For Clark, in oblivion there is not even an absence of experience, as we can only speak of experience when a subjective self exists.

OLD NORSE
VII CENTURY · FORMER RELIGION · SCANDINAVIA

The Vikings’ religion never contained any formal doctrines concerning what happens to someone when he or she dies. Spiritual parts of the dead were usually thought to end up in a spiritual otherworld of some sort or another.

The most famous of these dwelling-places of the dead is undoubtedly Valhalla (the hall of the fallen), the resplendent hall of the god Odin. Those chosen by Odin and his valkyries live there as celebrated heroes until they’re called upon to fight by Odin’s side in the doomed battle at Ragnarok, the downfall of the gods and the rest of the universe. The goddess Freya is said to welcome some of the dead into her hall, Folkvang (the field of the people or the field of warriors).

Unfortunately, Folkvang is mentioned so sparsely in the sources that we today don’t have any idea what it was thought to be like. Those who died at sea, not an uncommon way to go in a seafaring culture like that of the Vikings, are sometimes, but not always, said to be taken to the underwater abode of the giantess Ran. But the afterlife world to which the dead are most commonly portrayed as going is Hel, a world beneath the ground presided over by a goddess who is also named Hel.

In addition to this conception of a general underworld, people from particular families and localities are sometimes depicted as remaining together in a particular place close to where they lived while they were alive – underneath a specific mountain, for example. And what do the dead do in Hel or the local variations thereof?

They typically eat, drink, carouse, fight, sleep, practice magic, and generally do all of the things that living Viking Age men and women did. The lines between these various abodes of the dead are quite blurry, and there’s no consistent picture of who decides where a particular person goes after death, or how the decision is made. An oft-repeated line is that those who die in battle are thought to go to Valhalla, whereas those who die of other, more peaceful causes go to Hel. Some sources also speak of the dead being reborn in one of their descendants, although never in someone outside of their family line. Here as well, the sources are unclear as to how exactly this would happen, but oftentimes the dead person is reincarnated in someone who is named after him or her.

Today, many people who believe in an afterlife think of it as a reward or punishment for one’s moral or ideological choices during life. The Norse held no such conception. The ideas of salvation and damnation were alien to their rather earthy worldview. Thus, people who search for a Heaven or Hell amongst the Norse dwelling-places of the dead are going to come up empty-handed.

OMEGA POINT
XX CENTURY · PHILOSOPHY ARGUMENT · FRANCE

The immortality claimed in the title is based on Frank Tipler’s “beautiful postulate” that life, having once come into being, will continue for ever. Of course, all carbon-based life must eventually perish, but intelligence is expected to engineer its own successive embodiments as cosmic circumstances change. Tipler believes that the most favourable case realising this is presented by the collapse of a closed universe subject to a specific future boundary condition which, roughly speaking, requires the causal network of the universe to condense onto a single ultimate point. This is the Omega Point, which Tipler says plays the role of a “physical god” in the new-style religion. In this closing hectic phase, the whole cosmos will become a computer racing at ever increasing speeds, capable of processing an infinite amount of information and so, in Tipler’s view, capable of producing “eternal life”.

The hope of resurrection and immortality resides in the idea that the Omega Point will use its infinite computing capacity to produce emulations of you and me. If we are just programs, that will be sufficient to restore us to “life”.

General relativity plays an essential role because its infinite phase space will prevent cosmic history being simply a repetitive sequence of returns to the same state. Like all quantum cosmologists, Tipler is driven to place his faith in the contentious many-worlds interpretation of quantum theory. He presents many clever ideas to develop his argument. One of these is that intelligence will have to take over the whole Universe and then manipulate it so that its terminal collapse takes place in a specifically asymmetric way. This asymmetric collapse will enable gravitational shear energy to become available to run the cosmic computer. The fact that gravitational collapse is a chaotic process, and so is sensitive to small triggers, will enable intelligence to get the cosmic leverage it needs.

Less happy is the claim that many-worlds quantum theory supports the freedom of things to be “otherwise” because there are other parallel worlds in which the same things are actually otherwise. Taken overall, the reliance of the many-worlds theory on the Schrödinger equation alone surely implies a deterministic rather than an open picture of total physical process.

The quality of explanation of the science for the general reader is variable. Sometimes it is very clear but at other times, for instance in the necessarily difficult amount of quantum gravity, a familiarity is assumed which the reader is unlikely to possess. There is a useful “appendix for scientists” to which technical detail has been relegated.

There are many quantitative estimates given, often based on the Bekenstein Bound, limiting the information which can be encoded in a quantum system of given size. The emulation of life can, at the earliest, only start within 10−n where n = 1010 seconds of the end of proper time.

Throughout there are references to theologians. These often seem to trade upon verbal parallels which require much more careful evaluation. Yet there is also an interesting degree of parallelism which, for me, serves to show up the thinness of the gospel according to Tipler. It is certainly the case that Thomas Aquinas, and many following him, thought of the soul as the “form”, or information-bearing pattern, of the body, and that they saw the Christian hope of the resurrection as being the reimbodiment of that form by God in a new environment of His choosing.

PAGANISM
S/D · FORMER RELIGION · S/D

Unlike other religions that regard reincarnation as a sort of prison from which one must eventually be liberated, Paganism generally does not promote such a pessimistic view of rebirth. Rather, reincarnation is seen as a tool for growth and learning and perhaps even joy. Although each incarnation will carry its measure of sufferingx and sorrow, it will also bring the joy of new relationships, new experiences, and new wisdom and insight. Each incarnation is followed by a period of rest and reflection before the soul gets on the merry-go-round again. This perspective affirms the cycle of rebirth as a positive process.

In addition to (or instead of) reincarnation, adherents of various Pagan traditions have mythical understandings of the afterlife in which they place belief. Typically, these otherworldly destinations of the soul after death are regarded as paradise, although some have a darker or drearier feel.

The Summerland the Wiccan concept of paradise, where one experiences happiness and sensual pleasure. The Summerland can function as a destination between reincarnations (a place of rest and renewal) or as the ultimate destination, when a soul eventually stops reincarnating.

In Irish mythology, Tir na n’Og is a blessed realm across the water where souls journey after death. It is a land of continual feasting and joy, without old age, sickness, or death. Perhaps reflecting the sensibilities of the Iron Age culture that gave birth to Celtic myth, it is also a land where the souls of heroic warriors engage in valorous battle.

Because of the freedom with which individuals can form their own opinions after the afterlife, some Pagans choose either to remain agnostic about questions of what happens after death, or even reject all such ideas as mere metaphysical speculation. Since many forms of Paganism are more oriented toward the material world rather than an abstract spiritual world, such a perspective maintains that it is more important to live well in the present than to waste time worrying about what will occur in a future that cannot be controlled anyway.

PASTAFARIANISM
XXI CENTURY · MODERN RELIGION · USA

The Flying Spaghetti Monster is the deity of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Pastafarianism. Pastafarianism is a social movement that promotes a light-hearted view of religion and opposes the teaching of intelligent design and creationism in public schools. According to adherents, Pastafarianism is a real, legitimate religion, as much as any other. The “Flying Spaghetti Monster” was first described in a satirical open letter written by Bobby Henderson in 2005 to protest the Kansas State Board of Education decision to permit teaching intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in public school science classes.

The central creation myth is that an invisible and undetectable Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe after drinking heavily. According to these beliefs, the Monster’s intoxication was the cause for a flawed Earth. Furthermore, according to Pastafarianism, all evidence for evolution was planted by the Flying Spaghetti Monster in an effort to test the faith of Pastafarians—parodying certain biblical literalists.When scientific measurements such as radiocarbon dating are taken, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage.

The Pastafarian conception of Heaven includes a beer volcano and a stripper (or sometimes prostitute) factory. The Pastafarian Hell is similar, except that the beer is stale and the strippers have sexually transmitted diseases.

Pastafarian beliefs extend into lighthearted religious ceremony. Pastafarians celebrate every Friday as a holy day. Prayers are concluded with a final declaration of affirmation, R’amen; the term is a parodic portmanteau of the terms Amen and Ramen, referring to instant noodles and to the “noodly appendages” of their deity.

PESSIMISM
XVIII CENTURY · PHILOSOPHY ARGUMENT · FRANCE

This theory believes that we might be already dead. It’s hard to say whether this is good or bad news. The whole world got created with a Big Bang and from the point of infinitesimally small; high density, no volume dot of non-existence! That means, from a dark dense dot to the Universe as it is right now. It is all over, beyond the present and up to the future. If we were to travel beyond speed of light we could travel to the other end of the universe that is expanding. And if you manage to reach the edge of the expansion to the very end of where it has reached and then it is the real present! is it not?

So if you do feel something different about it now, think about the present further. The present is already gone at the time of the explosion. The Universe just exploded beyond you, many light years ago. Imagine firing a cracker. The fire just reaches the tip of where it explodes and its all gone in a few seconds. That is how it would have banged out in the Big Bang!

What then is the present? Imagine an energy that passes through the journey or path of the explosion seeing through every activity that has happened during the explosion. Similar to this, an energy is passing through the path of the Big Bang experiencing what happened during the process. So the energy is still going through inside us, looking and experiencing and asking questions through us and understanding what happened. Does that mean, we can change the future? No, we cannot change the future because it is all finished! The future is dead as much as the present. We have to go through every second of the time to reach the end of what has already happened.

Likewise we may actually be reliving the Big Bang, slowing the time to experience it all clearly! So beyond the Energy that Einstein once characterised as mass and light in his famous E=MC2, there is another energy that is passing through the mass, space and time. And that energy cannot be understood easily because you cannot split it down, it is inside us and every organism including the rocks and the stones and the sand and everything. The life as you see was long over. That energy is just reliving the whole life!

PLAIN INDIANS
S/D · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · NORTH AMERICA

A belief that most native cultures have is in the existence of an afterlife named the Happy Hunting Grounds, name given by tribes from the Plains. Its name implies a place where hunting and game are plentiful, where everyone has what they need. Some will say it is the equivalent of heaven. But, it is a place where our ancestors are, their spirits which our spirit will join.

A world that resembles life on Earth but with plentiful resources for everyone and harmony between people. Because it is not seen as a reward for good behavior on Earth. It is not based on your behavior on Earth, it simply is a place where spirits go. Where people rejoin and from which they look over those who remain on Earth. As our ancestors are also always there with us to guide us and help us. They are not above us but rather around us and within us. Living the Red Road is the reward I would say. Because it allows you to live a balanced, honest and simple life.

The Ghost dance, related to the concept of afterlife was a spiritual movement that was active in the 1880’s. It was led by Wovoka, an Indian, who was, I guess we could say, a preacher. To summarize things, Wovoka had a dream in which he was taken to the spirit world and saw that all native people were taken to the sky while the Earth opened up and swallowed the white men. The Earth would then revert back to its natural, balanced and calm state. Finally, the native people were put back on the earth along with their ancestors. Wovoka believed that by dancing continuously in circles, the dream would become reality.

PLATO'S PHAEDO
V BC · PHILOSOPHY ARGUMENT · GREECE

The Neo-Platonist Olympiodorus claims that Plato borrows everywhere from Orpheus, but many of the afterlife ideas which Plato is supposed to have drawn from Orphism come not from the Orphica, but from the broader mythological tradition. Even those elements which Plato did draw from the Orphica or similar sources, however, he transformed in significant ways to suit his philosophical purposes in the particular dialogue that perceives an idea of an afterlife.

Examining the idea, which appears in many different sources from the earliest evidence, of a lively afterlife, an idea that differs from the epic vision of Homer where poetic glory provides the only meaningful form of life after death. Nevertheless, a differentiated afterlife with judgement, complex geography, and rewards and punishments was a widespread and generally accepted idea, which Plato manipulates in various ways in different dialogues.

By contrast, other ideas of the relation of the soul to the body, such as the soul entombed in the body or the process of reincarnation, appear marked, in the evidence of Plato and others, as extra-ordinary and unfamiliar ideas, which Plato again transposes to fit his arguments in the dialogue.

To assess the idea that Plato borrows from Orpheus, we must understand what was Orphic in antiquity. The category of Orphism is often defined in modern scholarship precisely by the presence of certain kinds of ideas about the afterlife, the nature and fate of the soul. Orphic ideas of the soul and afterlife are most often defined by explicit contrast with the Homeric view of the afterlife, which is taken as the standard view for ancient Greek culture.

Such an approach provides a misleading picture not only of Orphic ideas of afterlife, but even of the normative ideas in ancient Greek culture about the nature and fate of the soul, in life and afterwards. We cannot understand what Plato is doing with the mythological tradition unless we properly understand the place of those ideas within it. The ideas in Homeric poetry that are usually taken to be standard in fact represent a special perspective that stresses the power of poetry to provide immortality, while the range of ideas that are actually marked in the ancient evidence as extraordinary or linked with Orpheus and his ilk is much smaller. The persistence of the soul and the lively afterlife are not the exclusive province of Orphism but rather the normal and most widely accepted ideas in the tradition. Only a limited range of ideas about the relation of the soul to the body seem consistently to be labeled, in some way or other, as Orphic in the evidence.

RAËLISM
1973 · MODERN RELIGION · FRANCE

Raelism was founded by French born Claude Vorilhon, now known as Rael, who since founding Raelism has written many books on its teachings, such as Extraterrestrials Took me to Their Planet (1975) and more recently 2001’s Yes to Human Cloning. Vorihlon founded Raelism when he discovered a spacecraft inside Puy De Lassolas volcano in Auvergne. There he encountered a humanoid extra terrestrial named Yahweh of the Elohim. Yahweh told him that his people tore apart the sky, built the continents and used Solar Astronomy and genetic engineering to adapt life to Earth’s thermal and chemical makeup.

The central belief is that human life was created by extra terrestrial beings collectively called the Elohim. The Elohim is a Biblical term to mean those who came from the sky.

Raelism derives from the belief that these Elohim, when they came into contact with the human life they contacted, were mistaken for Angels, or extraordinary beings who taught significant wisdom to the human race. For example, extraordinary teachers, such as the Buddha, Christ, and Prophets such as Mohammed are all believed to have been Elohim sent out to inform people in different eras of life.

Raelians do not believe in the eternal life of the soul. However, they do believe that the Elohim’s scientific advancements allow them to provide eternal life to human beings who are worthy to live with them on the Elohim’s planet. People such as Jesus and Mohammad are two of the worthy humans already living with the Elohim. Rael claimed that there are over eight-thousand individuals deemed worthy to live on this planet.

RAINBOW BRIDGE
XX CENTURY · PHILOSOPHY ARGUMENT · USA

The Rainbow Bridge refers to an other-worldly place consisting of a sunny, green meadow and multi-colored, prismatic bridge the pet eventually crosses that leads it to heaven. The term is believed to have originated in several works of poetry from the 1980s and 1990s that were meant to help relieve deceased pet owners of the pain of their loss.

According to poems, upon death, the pet finds itself in a lush, green meadow filled with sunshine. The pet’s health is fully restored and it can run and play as it did in its prime with unlimited food and water. There, the pet waits until its human companion dies and is reunited with them in the meadow. Together, they cross the Rainbow Bridge to heaven. The concept for the pet Rainbow Bridge may have been based on the Bifröst bridge of Norse Mythology. The Bifrost bridge was said to be a burning rainbow bridge that reaches between Midgard (Earth) and Asgard, the realm of the gods.

The first reference to a meadow in which pets await their owners can be found in the book Beautiful Joe’s Paradise by Margaret Marshall Saunders. Beautiful Joe’s Paradise is a sequel to the book Beautiful Joe, which was one of the first that helped raise awareness toward animal cruelty and told the story Beautiful Joe, a dog from the town of Meaford, Ontario. In Beautiful Joe’s Paradise, pets await their owners in a grassland and help one another heal from cruelty they endured during their lives. However, the book makes no mention of a Rainbow Bridge and the pets eventually ascend into heaven by balloon.

The first appearance of the Rainbow Bridge in relation to animals is believed to come from a poem by Paul C. Dahm, a grief counselor in Oregon. He wrote the first Rainbow Bridge poem in prose style as seen below. The popular rhyming version by Steve and Diane Bodofsky came later and was inspired by this original version.

For animals that did not have an owner, it’s assumed they go straight to heaven and that the Rainbow Bridge is meant for pets who wish to cross together with their still-alive human companion. As losing an animal is a devastating event, it’s easy to see why this term gained so much popularity in just a few decades and will most likely continue to be widely used.

RASTAFARIANISM
XX CENTURY · MODERN RELIGION · JAMAICA

Rastafarianism is a newer religious movement that follows in the Abrahamic tradition of monotheism, referring to the singular deity as Jah. Rastafari hold the Christian Bible as their primary scripture but offer an interpretation highly connected to their own political and geographical realities based on the 20th century.

Rastafarians believe in physical immortality as a part of their religious doctrines. They believe that after their God has called the Day of Judgment they will go to what they describe as Mount Zion in Africa to live in freedom forever. Instead of having everlasting life, which implies an end in the word last, the rastas look forward to having ever living life possible.

Another group that believes in physical immortality is the Rebirthers, who believe that by following the connected breathing process of rebirthing they will live forever physically. When we all die, our body will no longer be with us, but the soul never dies. We have always existed and will. Rastafari Spiritual immortality, on the other hand, is a belief that is expressed in nearly every religious tradition. In both Western and Eastern religions, the spirit is an energy or force that transcends the mortal shell, and returns to either the heavens or the cycle of life, directly or indirectly depending on the tradition. Although they believe in reincarnation they are not concerned with the after life, as salvation happens here in their search for their home, in the search for Africa.

For Rastafarians, worship goes beyond the spirit of man, and incorporates the spirit of all living things. Therefore, the divinity of life in man is not seen merely in his earthly existence, but while he exists on earth, he must adhere to the laws of the earth, be at one with the earth and live in harmony with others. When these things are done, his life has gained purpose, and he has thus created a harmony within himself uniting his divine self with his lower self, and can do work in the mystics, in the arts, in the sciences to further humanity.

ROMAN
I BC · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · ROMAN EMPIRE

The way in which the dead are treated changes with every civilization in history and the Romans had their own specific traditions. Over time, there have been significant changes in their beliefs regarding the handling of the dead and the concept of the afterlife, especially with the introduction of Christianity.

The Romans followed a very specific series of steps when dealing with the bodies of the dead. A relative would close the eyes of the dead body, calling the name of the departed. The body was then washed and a coin was placed in the mouth. The coin was to pay Charon, who carried the dead across the river into the underworld.

The social status of the individual determined the length of time he or she was put on display for. If the person was from an upper-class family, the body was put on display for as long as a week. Lower-class members of the public were put on display for only a day. The funeral was generally held at night to discourage large public gatherings. In the case of major political figures, musicians led the parade, followed by family mourners who often carried portrait sculptures or wax masks of other dead family members. Funeral societies called collegia handled the proper burial of the body. They were paid monthly wages, and guaranteed a spot in the columbarium.

In Roman times death was defined as the separation of body and soul. They believed that the dead lived in their tombs and gave it the name eternal home and gave the tomb offerings of food and wine. The Romans believed the soul of a deceased person could only find peace when the physical body was buried or cremated in a proper manner and all ceremonies were conducted appropriately. The soul would haunt the home and family members if the burial or cremation wasn’t done properly and then, they paid Charon the guide to the underworld to cross the river Styx on his ferry. Before being judged by Aeacus, Rhadamanthus and King Minos after crossing over the river. When died, they were met by Mercury, the messenger god and son of Jupiter then, taken to Avernus, which is a cave that is believed to be the entrance to the Underworld, and dropped off at the River Styx that flowed nine times through the Underworld.

They could either bury or burn their dead, their family would put coins under the deceased family members tongue so they can pay Charon to cross the river Styx. The treatment of the deceased in terms of the cremation rituals showed their life status. After being judged, the soul would be sent to one of three places, Elysian Fields, Tartarus, or the Asphodel Fields.

Tartarus was for the people who turned against the gods, or were rebellious and evil, souls in there were tortured in various ways until a person’s debt to society has been paid with the amount of time they are there. The God of the underworld is Hades, one of three brothers, the other two being Zeus and Poseidon. King Minos is the king of the underworld. The Elysian Fields were for souls that lived pure lives, or were heroes in their life, it had green fields and valleys and the sun was always shining. Least, but not last, Asphodel Fields was like Purgatory in Christianity, Romans who were sent here had done equal amounts of good and bad in their lives, and didn’t deserve to be sent to either of the other two places.

SATANISM
XIX CENTURY · MODERN RELIGION · FRANCE

Although mainstream Satanism doesn’t even worship the Devil (followers are atheists who consider the devil a symbol for individualism and freedom, rather than an actual entity), its followers have been accused of some pretty devilish stuff. More often than not, to the unfamiliar, an air of doom, gloom, and death hangs over the Church of Satan. One of the biggest misconceptions is that Satanists focus on death, but that’s far from the truth: Satanism actually promotes the worship of life.

The fleeting nature of life is what informs every member’s desire to live life to the fullest. In fact, a 2011 study on Satanists’ views of death even suggested that Satanists believe that the deceased, assuming they lived their lives to the fullest, can live on in the memories of those they left behind. As comforting as that is, the Church of Satan doesn’t actually have a set of beliefs about the afterlife. Simply put, death really is the end.

Satanists don’t have an elaborate belief system around the afterlife, they don’t care how funeral rites are conducted, and they actually prefer to focus on how people lived, rather than how they died.

SCIENTOLOGY
XX CENTURY · MODERN RELIGION · USA

Developed by L. Ron Hubbard, Scientology is a religion that offers a precise path leading to a complete and certain understanding of one’s true spiritual nature and one’s relationship to self, family, groups, Mankind, all life forms, the material universe, the spiritual universe and the Supreme Being. Scientology addresses the spirit and believes that Man is far more than a product of his environment.

Scientology focuses on psychological technologies that people can use to make their lives better, calling itself an applied religious philosophy. It does not have formal doctrines and creeds like many other Western religions.

As such, Scientology has very little to say about God, the afterlife or other religious ideas. Just as Scientology is focused on humanity, so are its beliefs. Its applications emphasize the present life, as opposed to past lives like in many Eastern religions, or the next life, as in many Western religions. Nevertheless, the Church of Scientology considers itself a religion because of its focus on the soul and spiritual awareness and does include some beliefs on other traditionally religious subjects. Scientology does not include an official belief about the afterlife. Yet, it reports that during auditing, a person often recalls memories of past lives and Scientology ascribes to the idea of being born again into another body.

SHINTO
VII CENTURY · MODERN RELIGION · JAPAN

Oral traditions regarding beliefs and rituals appear to go back several centuries before they began to be written down. Some of the traditions and histories view the Japanese imperial family as the cornerstone of Japanese culture. There are myths about creation and a structural system involving gods and goddesses.

Shinto beliefs about death and the afterlife are often considered dark and negative. The old traditions describe death as a dark, underground realm with a river separating the living from the dead. The images are very similar to Greek mythology and the concept of hades. The Buddhist influence on the Shinto religion teaches that thinking and meditating about death is important. Any death reminds the follower that life on earth is short. Death should challenge the living to make life meaningful by words and actions. Mourning is seen as a natural reaction to death. Intense expressions of grief may be displayed on a specified day. At other times, grief should be shown in a controlled, almost stoic way that holds the deceased in highest honor and respect. Shinto traditions lean heavily on the concepts of the presence of kami and not reincarnation. The spiritual energy, or kami, in everyone is released and recycled at the time of death.

The spirits live in another world, the most sacred of which is called the other world of heaven. These other worlds are not seen as a paradise or a punishment. Instead the worlds are simply where the spirits reside. They can connect and visit the present world when people correctly perform rituals and festivals. Shinto believes that the ancestral spirits will protect their descendants.

The prayers and rituals performed by the living honor the dead and memorialize them. In return, the spirits of the dead offer protection and encouragement for the living. Shintoism also views that some individuals live such an exemplary life that they become deified in a process called apotheosis. Many in the imperial family have experienced this honor, as have successful warriors.

SIKHISM
XV CENTURY · MODERN RELIGION · PUNJAB

Sikhism or Sikhi, is a monotheistic religion that originated in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent around the end of the 15th century.

Though it is one of the youngest of the major religions, it is the world’s fifth largest organized religion, as well as the world’s ninth-largest overall religion, with about 25 million Sikhs as of the early 21st century. Sikhism is based on the spiritual teachings of Guru Nanak, the first Guru, and the nine Sikh Gurus that succeeded him.

Sikhism emphasizes simran (meditation and remembrance of the words of God), which can be expressed musically through kirtan, or internally through naam japna (meditation on His name) as a means to feel God’s presence.

It teaches followers to transform the Five Thieves:

∙ lust

∙ rage

∙ greed

∙ attachment

∙ ego

Sikhism is a monotheistic religion. In Sikhism, God (termed Va-higuru) is formless, eternal, and unobserved: niran-ka-r, aka-l, and alakh. While a full understanding of God is beyond human beings, Guru Nanak Dev Ji described God as not wholly unknowable. God is omnipresent (sarav via-pak) in all creation and visible everywhere to the spiritually awakened.

Sikhs believe that upon death one merges back into the universal nature, just as a drop of rain merges back into the ocean. Individuality is lost. Sikhs do not believe in heaven or hell. Heaven can be experienced by being in tune with God while still alive. Conversely, the suffering and pain caused by ego is seen as hell on earth. Sikhism views spiritual pursuits as positive experiences in and of themselves that transcend death, not as sacrifices made in order to collect a reward that is waiting until after death.

SIMULATED REALITY
XVII CENTURY · PHILOSOPHY ARGUMENT · DUTCH REPUBLIC

Are we the result of a huge computer simulation? Some people believe that our conscience was programmed so as to have our death correspond with the end of the program, but thankfully, like in the Mario Bros. game, we can relive as many lives as we want.

The simulation hypothesis is the modern equivalent of an idea that’s been around for a while, and it is the idea that the physical world that we live in, including the Earth and the rest of the physical universe, is actually part of a computer simulation. You can think of it like a high resolution or high-fidelity video game in which we are all characters.

For example, in the movie Matrix (1999), Keanu Reeves plays the character Neo, who meets a guy names Morpheus, who is aptly named after the Greek god of dreams, who leads him to take a pill, realizing that his entire life was all inside a game.

Elon Musk is just one of the people in Silicon Valley to take a keen interest in the simulation hypothesis, which argues that what we experience as reality is actually a giant computer simulation created by a more sophisticated intelligence. Reasons to believe that the universe is a simulation include the fact that it behaves mathematically and is broken up into pieces (subatomic particles) like a pixelated video game.

How can the hypothesis be put to the test? On one hand, neuroscientists and artificial intelligence researchers can check whether it’s possible to simulate the human mind. So far, machines have proven to be good at playing chess and Go and putting captions on images. But can a machine achieve consciousness? We don’t know. On the other hand, scientists can look for hallmarks of simulation.

Either way, we can’t be totally sure of the theory is real or not, but the more we understand technology’s capability, the more it seems possible.

SLAVS
III CENTURY · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · EUROPE

Ancient Slavs believed the world of the dead was shielded against the world of humans by a mystical river called Smorodina. This less famous version of the river Styx also formed a border between Earth and the Underworld in the Slav’s concept of the afterlife.

Instead of Kharon the ferryman who carries souls of the deceased across Styx, Ancient Slavs had no assistant to guide them and had to rely on other means to find their way to the Underworld. Ancient Slavs cremated their deceased only at dusk. The setting sun, they believed, was traveling to the Underworld, and the soul of the dead would follow its trail and reach its destination without taking a wrong turn and getting lost.

Ancient Slavs believed the River Smorodina gave off a strong stench that was repulsive to humans. Hence the river’s name, which means, stench (smrad). The only way a soul could cross the river was via a mystical bridge, Kalinov Bridge. The Ancient Slavs thought the bridge glowed with heat because the stinking river also burned with fire. To complicate the passage from Earth to the Underworld, Kalinov Bridge was where lived the dreaded beast, Chudo-Yudo.

Parallel worlds and reincarnation Although the passage to the Underworld terrified ancient Slavs with all sorts of dangers, their image of it as a whole was surprisingly benign. The tribesmen believed that the dead left the human dimension only to return in the future, though in the body of a different person.

When a man died, his soul was believed to leave Yav’ and travel to a parallel Underworld known as Nav’. Outstanding humans also had the chance to enter Prav’, though it would require a mortal to live a particularly righteous life. While Christians have no way to escape Hell or leave Heaven, ancient Slavs did not like to confine themselves in one particular dimension, be it Yav’, Nav’, or Prav’. They believed the souls of the dead would eventually find their way back to Earth in the body of a descendant or an animal.

SOLPISISM
IV CENTURY · PHILOSOPHY ARGUMENT · GREECE

Solipsism is sometimes expressed as the view that I am the only mind which exists, or my mental states are the only mental states. However, the sole survivor of a nuclear holocaust might truly come to believe in either of these propositions without thereby being a solipsist.

Solipsism is therefore more properly regarded as the doctrine that, in principle, existence means for me my existence and that of my mental states.

Existence is everything that I experience (physical objects, other people, events and processes) anything that would commonly be regarded as a constituent of the space and time in which I coexist with others and is necessarily construed by me as part of the content of my consciousness.

For the solipsist, it is not merely the case that he believes that his thoughts, experiences, and emotions are, as a matter of contingent fact, the only thoughts, experiences, and emotions. Rather, the solipsist can attach no meaning to the supposition that there could be thoughts, experiences, and emotions other than his own. In short, the true solipsist understands the word pain, for example, to mean my pain. He cannot accordingly conceive how this word is to be applied in any sense other than this exclusively egocentric one.

According to proponents of solipsism, you are the only person who exists, and the entire universe is but the fruit of your imagination. Thus, when you die, logically, the universe will no longer exist.

SPIRITUALISM
XIX CENTURY · MODERN RELIGION · EUROPE

Spiritualism is a religious movement based on the belief that the spirits of the dead exist and have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living. The afterlife, or the spirit world, is seen as a place in which spirits continue to evolve.

These two beliefs, that contact with spirits is possible, and that spirits are more advanced than humans, lead spiritualists to a third belief: that spirits are capable of providing useful knowledge about moral and ethical issues, as well as about the nature of God.

Some spiritualists will speak of a concept which they refer to as spirit guides, specific spirits, often contacted, who are relied upon for spiritual guidance. Spiritism, a branch of spiritualism developed by Allan Kardec and today practiced mostly in Continental Europe and Latin America, especially in Brazil, emphasizes reincarnation.

Spiritualism developed and reached its peak growth in membership from the 1840s to the 1920s, especially in English-speaking countries. By 1897, spiritualism was said to have more than eight million followers in the United States and Europe, mostly drawn from the middle and upper classes.

Spiritualism flourished for a half century without canonical texts or formal organization, attaining cohesion through periodicals, tours by trance lecturers, camp meetings, and the missionary activities of accomplished mediums. Many prominent spiritualists were women, and like most spiritualists, supported causes such as the abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage. By the late 1880s the credibility of the informal movement had weakened due to accusations of fraud perpetrated by mediums, and formal spiritualist organizations began to appear. Spiritualism is currently practiced primarily through various denominational spiritualist churches in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

STOICISM
III BC · PHILOSOPHY ARGUMENT · GREECE

The universe we live in may not be the only one out there. In fact, our universe could be just one of an infinite number of universes making up a multiverse. Though the concept may stretch credulity, there’s good physics behind it. And there’s not just one way to get to a multiverse — numerous physics theories independently point to such a conclusion. In fact, some experts think the existence of hidden universes is more likely than not.

The ancient Stoics rejected a permanent afterlife, and were agnostic about even any kind of temporary afterlife. The afterlife did not play any role at all in their value system or the argument they made for their ethics. In fact, the opposite is true: it is specifically because we will all die and we don’t know what happens after death that the Stoic life is so urgently needed. All Stoics whose writings survive were skeptical of Greco-Roman mythology. They said that Hades and the tales of Tantalus and Sisyphus, among others, were little more than a fairy tales.

Scientists have debated whether mathematics is simple Just because they rejected mythology doesn’t immediately mean they rejected the afterlife, however. Ancient Greco-Roman philosophers did in fact believe in a lot of religious ideas that we associate with divine revelation today, but they supported them through philosophical arguments rather than appeals to tradition, myth, or prophecy. This was called natural theology. Platonists, for example, had an elaborate theory of the afterlife which they supported with arguments about physics, consciousness, and the soul. The Stoics disagreed with the Platonists here. Unlike Plato, they did not believe in the existence of spiritual or incorporeal souls.

They believed that souls are made of matter (albeit a very special kind of matter), and thus could be destroyed. All Stoics believed that we cease to exist when the fiery matter that makes up our soul (pneuma) dissipates upon our death. They were uncertain, however, about exactly when that dissipation happened: Some Stoics believed that the elements of our soul could keep their structure and outlive the body for a short time. Cleanthes and Chrysippus even believed that the soul could last as long as the universe (but even they agree that we cease to exist when the universe ultimately collapses back onto itself in the conflagration). Boethus and Panaetius believed in an eternal universe, but Panaetius still affirmed that souls do die. For a Stoic, the value of life comes from whether it is lived excellently (courageously, temperately, justly, and prudently).

This is because morality is never treated as a means to an end in Stoic ethics, but always as an end in itself, synonymous with Happiness in its strongest and most genuine sense. When we fail to live excellently, or when we fall into irrational vices like injustice or avarice, then we are wretched. Having a vicious character is the worst fate we could ever receive—the only thing truly bad. Virtue, on the other hand, is its own reward: the highest and only good in life.

TAOISM
V BC · MODERN RELIGION · CHINA

Taoism (also known as Daoism) is a Chinese philosophy attributed to Lao Tzu which contributed to the folk religion of the people primarily in the rural areas of China and became the official religion of the country under the Tang Dynasty. Taoism is therefore both a philosophy and a religion. It emphasizes doing what is natural and going with the flow in accordance with the Tao (or Dao), a cosmic force which flows through all things and binds and releases them.

It is not surprising that once Buddhism had become established in China, many of its ideas about the afterlife were adopted by Taoism, because there were so many well-developed Buddhist ideas on the topic. Lingbao Taoism in particular incorporated many Buddhist ideas about the afterlife, and Lingbao priests perform rituals pertaining to the afterlife that priests of other sects do not, such as rituals transferring merit to the deceased. Shangqing Taoist scriptures include elaborate descriptions of the heavens and, to a lesser extent, the underworld; the use of Buddhist or Sanskrit terminology in naming some of these is a clear sign of their Buddhist origin.

The concept of rebirth also became a factor in later Taoism. Taoist notions of life beyond death are thus most easily discerned by looking at the time prior to the establishment of Buddhism in China. Generally speaking, early Taoist concepts of salvation focused on this life rather than an afterlife. Early Taoist groups were founded on utopian ideas of a new and perfect society, echoing sentiments found in the Taode jing. The focus for some individual practitioners, both fangshi, Taoshi, and some members of the nobility, was immortality of the physical body. They were not interested in what happens after death because they hoped never to die. Instead, they hoped to live forever in human form, with the supernatural powers of an immortal. Related to the quest for immortality was a popular interest in realms of the immortals that were believed to be located on earth, on mountains, islands, or other locations that are usually invisible to the human eye.

Some Taoist gods are believed to reside on the sun, moon, planets, and constellations, and the Taoist adept is able to travel to these places during ritual trances. Some of the mystical excursions of Shangqing Taoism, for example, are to astronomical realms. The Big Dipper and its central star, the Pole Star, are especially important to Taoism. The deity Taiyi is believed to have a residence on the Pole Star, and the gods who reside within the body also reside in the heavens. The origin of these beliefs can be traced to a highly developed astronomical knowledge and religious engagement with astronomical realms that date back to the Shang dynasty. Salvation for Taoism (absent the Buddhist influence) is a matter of participation in the eternal return of the natural world, a yielding to chaos followed by spontaneous creation, in a never-ending cycle. This is not a permanent transcendent state or redemption such as has been articulated in the Abrahamic traditions. For Taoism, salvation is not an escape from this world; rather, it is to become perfectly aligned with the natural world and with the cosmic forces that sustain it.

WICCA
XX CENTURY · MODERN RELIGION · ENGLAND

Beliefs in the afterlife vary among Wiccans, although reincarnation is a traditional Wiccan teaching. Raymond Buckland said that a soul reincarnates into the same species over many lives in order to learn and advance one’s soul, but this belief is not universal. A popular saying amongst Wiccans is once a witch, always a witch, indicating that Wiccans are the reincarnation of earlier witches.

Typically, Wiccans who believe in reincarnation believe that prior to this, the soul rests for a while in the Otherworld or Summerland, known in Gardner’s writings as the “ecstasy of the Goddess”. Many Wiccans believe in the ability to contact the spirits of the dead who reside in the Otherworld through spirit mediums and ouija boards, particularly on the sabbath of Samhain, though some disagree with this practice, such as High Priest Alex Sanders.

This belief was likely influenced by Spiritualism, which was very popular at the time, and which Gardner had had experience with. Despite some belief in it, Wicca does not place an emphasis on the afterlife, focusing instead on the current one; as the historian Ronald Hutton remarked, “the instinctual position of most pagan witches, therefore, seems to be that if one makes the most of the present life, in all respects, then the next life is more or less certainly going to benefit from the process, and so one may as well concentrate on the present”.

YANOMAMÖ
S/D · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · AMAZON

The Yanomamö believe that the cosmos consists of four parallel planes or layers that controll how we live.

∙ The upper-most layer is empty but was once occupied by ancient beings who descended to lower layers.

∙ The second layer, or sky, is the home of spirits of dead men and women, and it resembles the earth except that the hunting is better, the food tastier, and the spirits of people are young and beautiful.

∙ The third layer is the earth.

∙ The fourth layer, or underworld, is where Amahiteri, ancient spirits that bring harm to living humans, live.

The Yanomamö have multiple souls that exist in a complex relation to one another. All shamans can use demons over which they have personal control to cure or cause illnesses. Catholic and evangelical Protestant missionaries have been in steady contact with the Yanomamö since the late 1950s but have had very little success in making converts.

The shaman is called upon to divine the causes of illness or misfortune, cure the ill, and sicken the enemy by sending demons that he controls. Shamans are also expert at using wild and domesticated plants that are useful for casting spells. Only men can become shamans, and they must complete an arduous training period requiring food deprivation and abstinence from sex.

Close relatives, covillagers, and sometimes allies consume the ash, which is mixed into a large trough of plantain soup. This endocannibalism demonstrates affection for the dead and solidarity with the deceased’s relatives. It also helps insure that the soul of the dead will find its way to hedu, a Yanomamö paradise above the earth.

YANYUA
S/D · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · AUSTRALIA

Australia’s first people, known as Aboriginal Australians, have lived on the continent for over 50,000 years. Today, there are 250 distinct language groups spread throughout Australia. This particular group is the Yanyuwa people of the southwest Gulf of Carpentaria in Australia’s Northern Territory.

For the Yanyuwa, the body possesses two spirits: the first, Ardirri, comes from the land of one’s paternal ancestors, and begins the process of pregnancy. Upon birth, this spirit inhabits the bones of an individual, as they are considered the least corruptible body parts. The second spirit is the Nangawulu, which is often translated as the shade or shadow of an individual, also the Yanyuwa word for an actual shadow. This spirit is represented in the body by the pulse or the heartbeat. There is also the Wuwarr spirit, which upon death manifests itself as a ghost of a person. Certain ritual actions take place in the community to remove the presence of the Wuwarr spirit, potentially dangerous and malevolent, described as jealous of its living kin. The Nangawulu is said to travel east to the spirit world, where it will live in contentment in a rich environment, but speaking a new language.

In the past, the piercing of the nasal septum was a common practice in Yanyuwa society. This was said to open the nose so that upon death, the spirit of the deceased would be able to smell the spirit world. The body was placed on a platform until the flesh decayed, and then the bones were gathered for further ritual to take place one to two years later. Today, internment takes place in a cemetery, but the post-funeral rituals occur as in the past. These rituals are said to join the Wuwarr spirit to the Ardirri (creating a spirit called the Kuyara), and to send the spirit back to its own spiritual source on the land, where it can await rebirth as another human being. In the past, this return to country was actual, with the bones of the deceased interred in a hollow log coffin decorated with powerful designs relating to the deceased individual and country of origin. Contemporary Yanyuwa people see no conflict with new systems relating to death and dealing with various spirits, and indigenous Australians are able to construct relevant understandings of what happens after death.

There are times when the inhabitants of this spirit world and the land itself are seen to be one and the same. In speaking about the land and these deceased kin, people interchange the terms for land (Awara) and spirits (Lingabangaku) often colloquially as the old people (Liwankala), so that one can talk about how the country has become poor and then say that the spirits of the deceased are jealous or cheeky. Both of these comments mean the same thing. One way of dealing with a land that has spirits residing within it is by actively speaking to the land, or talking to country. This may involve long speeches in high oratory, or may consist of a simple statement that says no more than here I am. Senior men and women may do no more than shout to announce their presence. This is especially so if people are still often in touch with the locality they are visiting; the land and the spirits of the deceased residing there will be familiar with them. There are times when nothing needs to be said, because people are still moving through the location. When people have not visited a locality for a long period of time, or the actions of the deceased kin are said to be working against the living, speaking to country becomes one way in which a consensus is reached between the living and the dead.

The use of names provides a key by which an understanding is given to the event as it unfolds, but the names are also echoes from the past and links with the present generation, and are important for the negotiation of entry to place. A common phrase used in these orations translates as “do not be ignorant towards me.”

They are also rhetorical statements of an individual’s position in relation to significant others. The presentation of self and negotiation with such orations are not beyond dispute and are also the topic of conversations where they will be evaluated against the status of the individual. People can also still often have accidental interaction with these spirits; some of these interactions are seen to be alarming and potentially dangerous while others are seen to be humorous and to be expected. Either way, they become an important source of storytelling.

While there are formal means by which the spirits of deceased are to be dealt with, there is no clear-cut understanding about the ultimate nature of the spirit in Yanyuwa society and what happens at death. What is clear, however, is that a portion of a deceased person will still reside on the land and it is this spirit that involves constant negotiation. While generalizations can be misleading in relation to indigenous understanding of death and afterlife, this belief in spirits of the deceased on the land is widespread across much of Australia.

ZOROASTRIANISM
S/D · ANCIENT CIVILIZATION · POLYNESIA

In treating all subjects, including death, Polynesian religions are based on experience rather than faith. These include human beings who have died and assumed one of several possible forms. For instance, miscarried or aborted fetuses can be transmuted into vicious demons. Neglected souls can become wandering, homeless, pathetic ghosts. Revered relatives can be transformed into family gods. The diversity of such experience stimulates a wide variety of beliefs and practices.

Polynesians believe in life after death. When a person is about to die, one of his or her souls can (unbeknownst to him or her) warn the immediate family. Shortly after dying, a person can visit relatives and friends. The family of the deceased prays for the soul’s successful journey to the land of the dead. The dead can linger, however, around the living to whom they were especially attached. Elderly couples continue to converse long after one of them has died.

Family and friends must, therefore, establish methods for both detachment and attachment. The clothes and belongings of the deceased can be destroyed. Throughout Polynesia, the troublesome presence of a dead person reveals the existence of unfinished business that must be resolved before the soul can depart in peace.

Polynesian spiritual practices are possible because souls are physical. At death, a soul exits the body from a tear duct and begins a tentative, instinctive journey into the uplands for a time and then proceeds along the path of the spirits to the place on each island where the souls jump off into the land of the dead. If a soul expert feels the person should not have died, he or she can find the soul, “snatch” it between cupped hands, reinsert itunder the big toe, and massage it up the body until the person revives. On the other hand, an enemy can capture the soul and destroy it, annihilating the deceased. Polynesians believe in life after death, but not necessarily immortality.