Bryon Ehlmann
Contemplating Life
There is a heaven. (There’s also a corresponding hell, but I’ll focus on the heaven). It is not like the conventional heaven that most people envision, but I claim it can be the most heavenly possible. First of all, it is natural, versus supernatural—meaning its existence is supported by current scientific, i.e., psychological, principles and human experience and also its properties are logically consistent. Given it was found, how could it be otherwise? Second, it is relativistic—meaning it’s real only from the perspective of, i.e., relative to, the dying person, not from a material perspective. That is, when you die, “it’s all in your mind”—meaning it is psychological. And finally, although it is eternal (deceptively so and only to you when you die), it’s timeless—meaning no events occur, but you will never know this.
Admittedly, such a heaven may be hard to fathom. The short essay below may help by providing an inkling into the psychological basis for a natural eternal consciousness (NEC) and based on it, a natural afterlife. Articles about these phenomena can be accessed on the internet and describe their elusive essence, argue for their reality, and briefly address their relevance to religion. The article Your Natural Afterlife: the Non-Supernatural Alternative to Nothingness provides a short overview of the natural afterlife and references more comprehensive and scholarly articles.
Questions for debate: If you have read the essay below and one or more of articles on the natural afterlife, are you convinced of its reality? If not, can you identify any flaws in the arguments given for its reality? (Warning: If you find yourself just regurgitating hyphothesis 1, you don’t understand the NEC and natural afterlife. They don’t require a functional brain!)
The Psychological Basis for the NEC and Natural Afterlife
From a general understanding of psychology, two opposing hypotheses can be deduced for what one will experience upon death. The first is based on the definitions of mind and consciousness like those given in many introductory psychology textbooks. The second delves just a bit deeper and is based on human experience and established cognitive principles in time and conscious perception.
Hypothesis 1: Quoting from a © 2014 psychology textbook by Zimbardo: “The mind is the product of the brain,” consciousness is “the brain process that creates our mental representation of the world and our current thoughts” and “as a process … is dynamic and continual rather than static.” Therefore, when the brain dies, the mind as its product and consciousness as a brain process must totally cease to exist and one will “experience” a before-life kind of nothingness.
Hypothesis 2: Before death a still functioning brain produces a last discrete present conscious moment of a perceived event within some experience and then is forever incapable of producing another moment that would cognitively supplant the last present moment from one’s consciousness. Therefore, one is never aware that one’s last experience is over, and so a remnant of consciousness, an experience as captured by its last moment, will become imperceptibly timeless and deceptively eternal, i.e., static, relative to one’s perspective. (Here experience is not in quotes as it is indeed experienced before death.)
Hypothesis 1, despite lacking empirical verification, has been accepted as orthodoxy by many. It can only be verified after death, which is impossible. Hypothesis 2 on the other hand, hitherto likely overlooked by the orthodoxies of both hypothesis 1 and religion, can be verified before death. It is verified to some degree with each everyday human encounter with timelessness, much like that of death—e.g., when sleeping. Especially relevant are those encounters after which one awakes instantly surprised when their first conscious moment is completely inconsistent with their last—e.g., when waking up after an intense dream. One need only ask: “Suppose I never woke up?”
For more discussion of hypothesis 2, read The Theory of a Natural Eternal Consciousness: The Psychological Basis for a Natural Afterlife.
Admittedly, such a heaven may be hard to fathom. The short essay below may help by providing an inkling into the psychological basis for a natural eternal consciousness (NEC) and based on it, a natural afterlife. Articles about these phenomena can be accessed on the internet and describe their elusive essence, argue for their reality, and briefly address their relevance to religion. The article Your Natural Afterlife: the Non-Supernatural Alternative to Nothingness provides a short overview of the natural afterlife and references more comprehensive and scholarly articles.
Questions for debate: If you have read the essay below and one or more of articles on the natural afterlife, are you convinced of its reality? If not, can you identify any flaws in the arguments given for its reality? (Warning: If you find yourself just regurgitating hyphothesis 1, you don’t understand the NEC and natural afterlife. They don’t require a functional brain!)
The Psychological Basis for the NEC and Natural Afterlife
From a general understanding of psychology, two opposing hypotheses can be deduced for what one will experience upon death. The first is based on the definitions of mind and consciousness like those given in many introductory psychology textbooks. The second delves just a bit deeper and is based on human experience and established cognitive principles in time and conscious perception.
Hypothesis 1: Quoting from a © 2014 psychology textbook by Zimbardo: “The mind is the product of the brain,” consciousness is “the brain process that creates our mental representation of the world and our current thoughts” and “as a process … is dynamic and continual rather than static.” Therefore, when the brain dies, the mind as its product and consciousness as a brain process must totally cease to exist and one will “experience” a before-life kind of nothingness.
Hypothesis 2: Before death a still functioning brain produces a last discrete present conscious moment of a perceived event within some experience and then is forever incapable of producing another moment that would cognitively supplant the last present moment from one’s consciousness. Therefore, one is never aware that one’s last experience is over, and so a remnant of consciousness, an experience as captured by its last moment, will become imperceptibly timeless and deceptively eternal, i.e., static, relative to one’s perspective. (Here experience is not in quotes as it is indeed experienced before death.)
Hypothesis 1, despite lacking empirical verification, has been accepted as orthodoxy by many. It can only be verified after death, which is impossible. Hypothesis 2 on the other hand, hitherto likely overlooked by the orthodoxies of both hypothesis 1 and religion, can be verified before death. It is verified to some degree with each everyday human encounter with timelessness, much like that of death—e.g., when sleeping. Especially relevant are those encounters after which one awakes instantly surprised when their first conscious moment is completely inconsistent with their last—e.g., when waking up after an intense dream. One need only ask: “Suppose I never woke up?”
For more discussion of hypothesis 2, read The Theory of a Natural Eternal Consciousness: The Psychological Basis for a Natural Afterlife.
