Carv's Thinky Blog I'm an author with a focus on satirical science fiction.

18Nov/100

The Undiscovered Country

It surprises people when I point out the Bible changes its mind several times about the nature of death. The Bible was written from stories and ideas conceived over thousands of years, so it's inevitable that philosophy would evolve. In the Old Testament, heroes and villains alike go to Sheol, the Land of Forgetfulness. The dust of the body returns to the earth, and consciousness descends to a cold abyss of silent rest. The third chapter of Job offers a moving poetic description of the Jewish afterlife.

By the time Jesus came along, the Jewish view of death had been influenced by Greek and Roman ideas. The realm of Hades was described many different ways, but only once in the Bible is the word "Hades" associated with posthumous rewards or punishments, and that's in Jesus's parable about Lazarus. It seems odd to me that anyone ever took this parable literally. It postulates a burning hell in which all torment can be relieved with a single drop of water. Jesus was clearly making a metaphorical point about life, not what comes after.

Jesus was also speaking figuratively when he referred to Gehenna, aka the Valley of Hinnom. The valley is a real place just outside Jerusalem. As a Jehovah's Witness child, I was taught the valley was an ever-burning trash heap. This idea derived from a Jewish rabbi, David Kimhi, who wrote it in a commentary on Psalm 27:13 around the year 1200. Recent scholarship has found no evidence to back this up, but we do know Gehenna was the site of ritual child sacrifice by fire back in the bad old Ba'al worship days. In any case, there is no gate to hell in the Valley of Hinnom. Only gradually did Christian thought coalesce around the idea of two possible outcomes for the dead, one a place of eternal reward, the other a subterranean barbecue pit with devils wielding pitchforks. Why pitchforks? Why no Tasers or Muzak? Seems a bit medieval. Those demons need to get with the times.

For truly awful afterlife fun, check out the Muslim hells. They have several, including Zamhareer, the blizzard hell. Here in America, we call that "Wyoming."

My point is, no one knows what, if anything, happens to our consciousness after we die. The evidence of our eyes tells us we decompose. We can see (and smell) that. New Age types tell us our "energy" goes out into the world, but "energy" is a word with an actual scientific definition. It doesn't just mean some hypothetical magical aura. The energy in our body is heat and electricity, and it does, in fact, dissolve into the greater matrix of the planet. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to take any of our memories or thoughts with it.

In Mary Roach's excellent-as-usual book Stiff, she goes looking for reliable scientific evidence of an afterlife. The closest she finds is anecdotal evidence from so-called "Near-Death Experiences," or NDEs, on operating tables. A major study of these phenomena is still ongoing; but we've also found NDEs can be stimulated by psychedelic drugs like Dimethyltryptamine, which seem to affect some patients' pineal glands. We're not sure yet. Most open-heart surgical patients do not go through Near-Death Experiences, so it seems unlikely they represent some universal state of higher consciousness. It may even be that psychedelic experiences in shamanistic rituals have influenced cultural beliefs about the afterlife; in other words, "The medicine man got ripped on peyote last night and saw a long, white tunnel, so I guess that means we go through a tunnel when we die." Who's to say?

And that's just it: Who's to say? Death is like the mysterious jungle temple in many an adventure serial. "They say, sahib, it is filled with a thousand deadly traps. It is so dangerous that no man has ever returned!" Well, then, how do you know about the thousand deadly traps? Hamlet famously called death "that undiscover'd country from whose bourne [boundary] no traveller returns." "[T]the dread of something after death," he says, "puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have, than fly to others that we know not of." In other words, we don't dare commit suicide, because what if the afterlife is worse?

I attended a funeral this weekend, and while I didn't know the deceased personally, I knew many of his family members. It was, of course, awful watching them huddle together in a brave attempt to cope with the intolerable. I listened to all the rituals, knowing from personal experience how little they help. Whether we believe our loved ones have "gone to a better place" or not, we want them here, in our place. I find little solace in the idea of being "called home" to a place I have no memory of seeing. What kind of "home" is that? I have no interest in "ruling at Jesus's right hand." Heck, I don't even want to rule a local theatre group. And I figure Jesus has got this one, y'know? Omnipotent powers, by definition, don't need any help, especially mine.

When I die, I expect to dissolve. Maybe I'll see one last hallucination before the lights go out forever, maybe not. I'm okay with that. What I'm not okay with is the shallow, ridiculous guesses about where I've gone that'll be foisted on my family in my absence. I've asked to be cremated, and my ashes can be spread wherever people see fit. Please don't talk about me as if I've just gone on vacation in Heaven. I'm gone. Celebrate my life.

If there is an afterlife, I'll help prove it. I plan to whisper my Hotmail password into my girlfriend's ear. Once she's gotten over the spooking of a lifetime, she can test it very easily. If it works, babe, hide the really incriminating stuff before you tell my mom I'm okay.

I understand why people wish there were more than this little life rounded with a sleep. This weekend I held the ashes of a man in the palm of my hand. It seemed so little to be the end of so damn much.

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  1. Omg. THAT’S your password?????

  2. Lovely work, Carv.

  3. Excellent post as always, Carv. Last month, a young (36) friend of ours died unexpectedly. Because he was heavily involved in the fire-spinning community, I heard a lot of New Age-y blather about him “choosing to transcend to the next realm” and it was really frustrating to keep my mouth shut, lest I disturb their (to me) pathetic rationalizations. I want to be cremated, too. And I would certainly prefer that no one blather on about me being in Heaven, but I guess there’s nothing I can do about it if they do. As for an afterlife, I don’t believe in one. But if there was one, I’d prefer to spend it speeding around the cosmos, getting close-up looks at supernovae or beautiful nebulae or other civilizations. I wouldn’t want to spend eternity sitting around basking in the “Big Guy’s” glow. Sounds boring.

  4. Remember….Amanda doesn’t have ALL the incriminating stuff….just sayin’.


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