Life After Death Essay Research Paper Life

Life After Death Essay, Research Paper

Life After Death

As the irritating, yet monotonous beeps of the life-monitor in the

emergency room began to slowly die away, George struggled to hang on. It’s not

my time yet, he thought. Please, give me just one more day. The beeps soon

became increasingly far in between, while the doctors frantically bustled on in

a futile attempt to stabilize the dying man like a bunch of panicking bees

trying to save their doomed hive from a pouring rain. The world turned hazy,

then completely dark, as George felt himself slowly floating into the darkness.

He flew and flew without end. Then there was the light – that infamous “light

at the end of the tunnel.” (Randles 2) It gave out a strange, comforting warmth

that enveloped him, easing his fears and relieving all doubts. George somehow

knew what to do – to just let go. He felt quite at home.

Back on earth, the rhythmic, mechanical beeps suddenly turned into a

solid, continuous high E, signaling the end. George was about to cross over.

Being bathed in the strangely comforting light, he was soon greeted by his long-

lost friends and relatives, beckoning for him to come, come join them. George

wanted to stay. More than anything he cared for, George wanted to stay right

here, basking in the light of love. But he felt something pull him back. Wait,

not yet, he thought. It’s not my time yet… The next moment, George was

somehow reunited with his physical body, lying on that uncomfortable hospital

bed, amidst the doctors sighing in relief, surrounded no longer by that soft

glow, but again by that rhythmic beep, beep, beep.

Is there a parallel between George’s account of a near-death experience

(NDE), and what really happens when we ourselves die. Is there indeed a part of

us that conquers death and continues to live a different kind of existence where

it has new powers and undergoes unfamiliar experiences. Is there really a

heaven, or numerous heavens, full of blissful joys awaiting some of us and a

hell, or countless hells, full of different punishments for others. Or is

physical death, in fact, the end of life as we know it. Such questions about

death and dying has intrigued humanity since the dawn of time. One area to

which we might look for some answers to this puzzle is religion. Unlike science,

dealing only with the material and tangible, traditional religion takes another

view of our reality by recognizing the validity of metaphysical experiences.

World’s major religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity, as well

as primal pagan ones, such as the Greek and Roman mythology, although quite

different in basic fundamentals of belief, all attempt to give its followers an

explanation of the world on the other side of life.

In Greek and Roman mythology, Hades is the god of the dead. He was the

son of the Titans Cronus and Rhea and the brother of Zeus and Poseidon. (Cumont

34) When the three brothers divided up the universe after they had deposed

their father, Cronus, Hades was awarded the underworld. There, with his queen,

Persephone, whom he had abducted from the world above, he ruled the kingdom of

the dead.

The underworld itself was often called Hades. It was divided into two

regions: Erebus, where the dead pass as soon as they die, and Tartarus, the

deeper region, where the Titans had been imprisoned. It was a dim and unhappy

place, inhabited by vague forms and shadows and guarded by Cerberus, the three-

headed, dragon-tailed dog. Sinister rivers separated the underworld from the

world above, and the aged boatman Charon ferried the souls of the dead across

these waters. Somewhere in the darkness of the underworld Hades’ palace was

located. It was represented as a many-gated, dark and gloomy place, thronged

with guests, and set in the midst of shadowy fields and an apparition-haunted

landscape.

To Greeks and Romans, life after death was not a pleasant thing. Hades,

a dark and gloomy place, was originally the apparent destination for all – the

good and the bad. Perhaps with the unintended influence of the incipient

contemporary Christianity, Hades was mollified into a much more organized place,

giving rewards to the good and punishments to the wicked. One notable aspect of

this mythology is that Greeks, much like most of the major religions today,

believed in an eternal, undying self in each of us that conquers death and

carries on another life after a physical death.

Today, unlike the Greeks and Romans, Hindus do not believe in a set

place where our undying selves end up after the inevitable physical death.

Personal eschatology is concerned with the immediate fate of righteous and

unrighteous souls following death, and the conditions governing each category of

souls between death and the universal resurrection of humanity. General

eschatology, on the ot

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