Spirituality

The question of life after death is one that continues to intrigue and mystify. The theories of existence beyond life on the material plane are many and varied. Some believe there is nothing beyond the physical life, while others believe that we continue to survive as a spiritual beings. Most of us have been taught to believe that the way we live our lives on earth will determine whether we will live blissfully in heaven or suffer eternal damnation in hell. Yet we continue in our quest to determine whether life continues beyond the physical realm. There are those who believe that the answer lies in belief itself. Knowledge that life exists beyond this plane of existence would alleviate the fear of death and comfort those suffering the loss of a loved one.

So the search continues for some sort of tangible evidence of life after death. Most people agree that some part of an individual's being does survive bodily death, namely the soul. But what constitutes the soul? The spirit or soul is thought to be perception, thoughts and feelings that make up the individual. Down through the ages, people have sought to prove the existence of life after death and to communicate with those on the other side. They have enlisted the help of psychic mediums and tried a variety of techniques to make contact with the spirit world. Some of the methods and psychics seem to be valid while others have proved to be no more than parlor tricks performed by skilled deceivers.

Those who have had near death experiences do not seem to need any further confirmation of survival beyond death. The experiences all have similar details with the individual describing a tunnel, the bright light, meeting a figure that is interpreted by the experiencer as God, usually encountering a relative and being told to go back because their time on earth is not yet done. Those who have had near death experiences also have no further fear of dying. They come back with a more positive outlook on life, a greater knowledge of their purpose and a reassurance that life does not end with bodily death.

Reincarnation is another possibility of life after death that suggests that we are reborn many times. Through the process of reincarnation we are thought to live many lives until we reach a certain level of attainment. Death has been described as the sum of all we are and have been and is only a transition, more of an altered state of consciousness. Death might be thought of as a progressive climb up the spiritual ladder of attainment. Some experiencers of near death have reported similarities to a dream state. One element that lends credence to the theory that fragments of the mind survive death is that material surroundings are created by mere thought, indicating that some sort of imaginative process is at work.

The same beliefs a person had in life seem to be present in the afterlife. It has been speculated that what we believe to be life is only an illusion created by the human mind to make our experiences more understandable. We have to wonder if this could be true. It has also been said that what we perceive to be as living is actually a type of sleep and that at the moment of death we awaken from our sleep-like state to the true experience of life. Is death merely an extension of the physical life? Does death reveal the true inner self as the physical garment is shed? The outer layers of matter and materialism may need to be stripped away before the inner self can truly be realized and eventually progress to its fullness. Then why the need for life in the physical plane? Existence on the physical plane would be necessary to learn through experience in order to evolve. Perhaps death is nothing more than a revelation of the true self and, in dying, the real journey begins.

More Articles:

2. Afraid of Living, Scared of Dying
As most of you will recall, I've been in New York now for several weeks. This is the first time I've left Wyoming in almost a year, and my first visit to a big city in almost a year. I guess I'd forgotten what city life is like. People here -- not all, but certainly most -- are living fear-filled lives. In Wyoming we have all the same problems of places with far more people. But the energy, the feeling of Wyoming and the rural Far West is much different, more positive and upbeat. I suppose one r…

3. Why is Kabbalah so Attractive to Hollywood "A-Listers" Like Madonna, Britney Spears and Demi Moore? By James Ray
CARLSBAD, CALIFORNIA: Of course we may never know the real answer, but speculation could be that Kabbalah is a mystical and practical approach to evolution and growth.I, for one, am tired of so-called “spiritual gurus” who can’t pay their bills! (And they certainly can’t tell you how to do it either.)Maybe Hollywood is as well.Unless you’re prepared to sell everything you own…Eastern mysticism will bring you limited results at best. Let’s face it: most of us live in a modern society and are …

4. The Art of Acceptance By Dennis Diehl
“To offer no resistance to life is to be in a state of grace, ease and lightness. This state is then no longer dependent upon things being in a certain way good or bad.”“There are cycles of success, when things come to you and thrive, and cycles of failure when they wither or disintegrate, and you have to let them go in order to make room for new things to arise or for transformation to happen.If you cling and resist at that point, it means you are refusing to go with the flow of life, and you…