the continuance of life as we know it beyond the barriers of death and time.
Many of those who accept in varying degrees spiritual concepts of life after death do so uncritically. They believe from a personal, emotional point of view. They merely replace a formal religion with an informal one. They replace a dogma they find outmoded, and not borne out by the facts as they know them, with a flexible, seemingly sensible system to which they can relate enthusiastically.
It seems to me that somewhere in between these orthodox and heterodox elements lies the answer to the problem. If we are ever to find the human solution and know what man is, why he is, and how he is, we must take into account all the elements, strip them of their fallacies, and retain the hard-core facts. In correlating the facts we find, we can then construct an edifice of thought that may solve the problem and give us the ultimate answers we are seeking.
What is life? From birth, life is an evolution through gradual, successive stages of development, that differ in detail with each and every human being. Materialistic science likes to ascribe these unique tendencies to environment and parental heritage alone. Astrology, a very respectable craft when properly used, claims that the radiation from the planets, the sun, and the moon influences the body of the newly born from birth or, according to some astrological schools, even from the moment of conception. One should not reject the astrological theory out of hand. After all, the radiation of man-made atom bombs affected the children of Hiroshima, and the radiation from the cosmos is far greater and of far longer duration. We know very little about radiation effects as yet.
That man is essentially a dual creature is no longer denied even by medical science. Psychiatry could not exist were it not for the acknowledgment that man has a mind, though the mind is invisible. Esoteric teaching goes even further: man has a soul, and it is inserted into the body of the newborn at the moment of birth. Now if the soul joins the body only at or just before the moment of birth, then a fetus has no personality, according to this view, and abortion is not a “sin.” Some orthodox religions do not hold this view and consider even an unborn child a full person. It is pretty difficult to prove objectively either assertion, but it is not impossible to prove scientifically and rationally that man after birth has a nonphysical component, variously called soul, psyche, psi, or personality.
What is death, then? The ceasing of bodily functions due to illness or malfunction of a vital organ reverses the order of what occurred at birth. Now the two components of man are separated again and go in different directions. The body, deprived of its operating force, is nothing more than a shell and subject to ordinary laws affecting matter. Under the influence of the atmosphere, it will rapidly decompose and is therefore quickly disposed of in all cultures. It returns to the earth in various forms and contributes its basic chemicals to the soil or water.
The soul, on the other hand, continues its journey into what the late Dr. Joseph Rhine of Duke University called “the world of mind.” That is, to those who believe there is a soul, it enters the world of the mind; to those who reject the very notion of a soul factor, the decomposing body represents all the remains of man at death. It is this concept that breeds fear of death, fosters nihilistic attitudes toward life while one lives it, and favors the entire syndrome of expressions such as “death is the end,” “fear the cemetery,” and “funerals are solemn occasions.”
Death takes on different powers in different cultures. To primitive man it was a vengeful god who took loved ones away when they were still needed.
To the devout Christian of the Middle Ages, death was the punishment one had to fear all one’s life, for after death came the reckoning.
West Africans and their distant cousins, the Haitians, worship death in a cult called the “Papa Nebo” cult.
Spanish and Irish Catholics celebrate the occasions of death with elaborate festivities, because they wish to help the departed receive a good reception in the afterlife.
Only in the East does death play a benign role. In the spiritually advanced beliefs of the Chinese, the Indians, and the ancient Egyptians, death was the beginning, not the end. Death