Rethinking Death: Exploring What Happens When We Die

If you only watch one documentary for the rest of your life, make it this one. I cannot recommend it emphatically enough.

This documentary falls into two main parts. First, it describes how, from a physical standpoint, the advancement of medical technology has revealed and/or created an increasing gray area between life and death. It's no longer accurate to say that nobody ever comes back from the dead, though of course it only happens under very limited circumstances. This, then, leads into the even more interesting part, which is what people experience while they're dead. As I've mentioned before, I don't know why people aren't shouting from the rooftops that we now know for a fact that consciousness continues after death. This is the discovery of the century. This is why, even though my views on God are all over the place, I'm very confident in an afterlife - not because of wishful thinking or a "spiritual witness," but because of what's been reported and observed. It isn't magic. It follows laws like everything else, even if we don't know what the laws are yet.

Of course, nobody's been dead for very long before coming back, so many mysteries remain. I don't want to commit to any specific beliefs without evidence. Here's what I think right now. Our most basic and true form is consciousness, which inhabits a different plane of existence from the physical universe, a more subjective yet more real one. The physical universe is a pale imitation of it, like Plato's cave. Our brains are like radio sets that harness consciousness. Not only do they not produce it themselves, they severely limit and distort it. We'll see and understand so much more the moment we're freed from physical constraints. But in the meantime, there's some reason we're here, even if it's difficult or impossible to see, which I believe is by design. So I don't advocate for trying to cut short our time on this craptastic planet, tempting though that may be. Here's where I diverge sharply from my Mormon upbringing and hew closer to Eastern religions. I was taught that bodies are super awesome and that every disembodied spirit yearns to have one. I mostly just find them disgusting and inconvenient.

Some have suggested that we all derive from one big mass of consciousness, that we're the universe coming to know itself and just pretending to be different people, that we're all one entity in the most literal sense. That's beautiful in a way, but I think it actually cheapens love in the long run. If my love for others ultimately boils down to love for myself in a literal sense, then it doesn't seem special or praiseworthy to me anymore. I also think it's great that the world is populated by people with different personalities, talents, interests, and I was going to say opinions, but that's only true to an extent because a lot of opinions make the world a worse place and don't deserve to exist. I hope that in the next world, we will become more one than we are now, but still retain our indiviidual identities and consequently our interpersonal relationships. But I don't have a belief about that, because my hoping won't make it so.

I don't believe in a "traditional" heaven and hell, or in the Mormon three-tiered heaven and outer darkness, but then I wonder what's to become of the truly evil people. Because all this stuff sounds lovely, but if Hitler and I are part of the same mass of consciousness and get unified into the same eternal bliss after our deaths, that doesn't sit right with me. Maybe he'll get reincarnated until he gets it right. Someone from the Unitarian Uniersalists raised this point a while ago. She said she doesn't want anyone to burn in hell, not even Trump, and if she were a loving God, she would send him back to Earth as many times as he needed to qualify him for heaven. I like that idea. I really don't want to be reincarnated myself. Having to suffer on this planet all over again with no memory of the helpful things I already learned in my previous life sounds worse than purgatory. It's supposed to suck, which is why the point of Hihduism is to make it stop. Like the oneness thing, it also would render my concern for others a lot less selfless. I could be reincarnated as a gay black woman, so making the world a better place for those demographics would be in my own best interest.

I've read some stuff, but I think this was my first time actually seeing and hearing people describe the experiences they've had while they were dead. They brought warmth to my heart and tears to my eyes. According to my Mormon upbringing, this was the Holy Ghost testifying of truth. I know it wasn't. I would have had the same emotional reaction if this documentary were a fictional movie. I had that reaction because these things are uplifting and beautiful. It's just fortuitous that they also happen to be true. Though many mysteries remain, it seems we've begun to empirically discover that despite all the inexplicable suffering and injustice in this blind, uncaring world, the universe, at least in some dimension, is ultimately uplifting and beautiful, and our existence is a happy thing, not a tragic accident.