I was just wondering, since no one has reported on what it actually is. People just say it's a place your soul goes. Is it physical? Or is it ethereal? If the latter why recently are there questions that correlate to this current life, even remotely relevant to the afterlife. If it is a destination for souls then I'm guessing isn't physical.
The only think I can imagine would be close to 'heaven' would be a virtual world where any and all desires can be realized but not physically experienced. Although, new advances in technology may get us closer to feeling whai t happens to us in the digital realm.
But would such a place even grant you access to those desires when restriction of self in this world is part of the requirement to even get into heaven. What would have been the purpose of denial here if you had no restriction there? And once you get there can you still get banished to hell? There are so many questions. But a whole lot of it makes no sense.
I could wax eloquent on all the various Jewish teachings of the arfterlife, but I don't think it would help you. It doesn't help you because it's faith based rather than empirical.
em·pir·i·cal
/əmˈpirik(ə)l/
adjective
- based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.
"they provided considerable empirical evidence to support their argument"
synonyms: experiential, practical, heuristic, firsthand, hands-on; More
Empirical evidence is the strongest evidence there is. If you really want to know what happens after death, you want to talk to people who have died and come back to life, and there just aren't a whole lot of those.
The nearest we have to that are those who have had what is called a Near Death Experienced (NDE). "Near" is a misnomer. These are people whose hearts have actually stopped so they are dead by medical standards. They do resuscitate and in a moment I will tell you what they report, which is amazingly similar across cultures.
But before I do that, I want to point out problem #1--are they brain dead? Science is discovering that a portion of the brain continues to live on for quite a few minutes after the heart stops. It could be that in the near future this ill influence how we deal with organ harvesting and such, as we may not declare death simply when the heart stops beating.
The most common thing in NDE's is out of body experiences. They will float above the operation table and watch themselves be resuscitated, for example.
Which brings us to problem #2 -- Some doctors are engaging in NDE research by placing poster board messages in their surgical theaters that can only be seen by someone high up looking down. So far, no one has accurately "read" any of these test messages.
The uncanniness of these NDE's comes from their similarity, despite differences of religious belief (even non belief) culture, geography, age, etc. The typical NDE includes some or all of the following: The individual senses that they are travelling down a long tunnel. At the end of the tunnel is a light that they are moving towards. When they reach it, it is a being of light, which is entirely Love. They will identify this being within whatever religious system they know, so for some it is God, for others Jesus, for others the Buddha, etc. Usually with the help of this being, but not always, they review their life. They see that every thing that happened was for a reason, so that they could learn and grow, even the mistakes that they made became opportunities to change. Finally they move towards a barrier. On the other side are friends and relatives who have passed on who are waiting to welcome them. But for some reason they are either told it is not yet their time, or they feel pulled back, and they do not cross over the barrier. They return to their bodies and are alive.
Now you know everything that is empirical. Is it actually the afterlife they are visiting? Or is it the last death throes of a dying brain before it shuts down completely? You'll have to decide. Or... perhaps you'll be like me and not decide at all, but simply put it all on hold until the future provides more evidence to fill in the holes.
