Questions of life after death have intrigued the dawn of mankind for millennia. This is one of the fundamental questions that none of us escapes. At some point in every person’s life, they must come to grips with a universal principle – all living things inevitably will die. Even in the brilliant and celebratory moment of our conception, we are already cloaked in the mantle of bodily death, and we know it.
Although much in life has changed over the centuries, when it comes to death and what happens after, we are little different than our ancestors. Although modern medicine keeps many of us alive longer, death inevitably holds away.
Then like previous generations, we find ourselves face to face with that which we cannot control or understand. Most people do believe that there is some type of existence after the physical body is gone, and one good explanation for this is that there is no compelling reason not to believe it.
What would be the point of going through this sometimes very hard life if we were just going to be reduced to dust after all is said and done? Whatever we believe about death (and what happens after death), its inescapable nature is not in debate. But knowing that death is a universal requirement does not end our predicament – it only pushes our need to understand what life is all about, what its purpose is. Life after death has been generally categorised 2 ways dualism and monism.
The Essay on Winter Birds Death Life
... the difference in the two modes of life. When death prevails, life is absent. "Whilst there is death, life is not to be found." The ... engulfing deluge of death remains dominant. Then with a ...
Dualism is believed mainly in religions such as Islam. Dualism states that the world is made up of two elemental categories which are incommensurable. This includes distinctions between mind and body, good and evil and universal and particular. Dualism supports the claim that each mind is an individual package that is attached to a physical being. From this theory our mental states and actions derive from uniqueness of our non physical substance.
The great philosopher Rene Descartes (1596-1650), proposed several theories that make an important contribution to the ideas surrounding dualism. Descartes’ idea of what is called Cartesian Dualism first proposed the idea of the mind and body relationship. Descartes believed, that the body and mind were separate but that they interact, and that the state of the body will affect the mind and vice versa.
This view is dualistic, the body is contingent and corruptible whereas the soul is non contingent and not liable for decay. This influenced Descartes to come up with greatest line in philosophy, “I think, therefore I am”. Descartes could doubt everything about the physical world but he could not doubt that he doubted.
He himself believed that when people die, their soul is able to continue with God after death, as the same individual which existed in physical form on earth, “our soul is of a nature entirely independent of the body, and consequently…… it is not bound to die with it. And since we cannot see any other causes that destroy the soul, we naturally led to conclude that it is immortal. This leads onto the immortality of the soul, this is one of the strength/for the life and death of theory.
This too is based on dualism, it is the doctrine that after death the body permanently disintegrates, but the immaterial essence or soul lives on forever in an immaterial world. Immortality is accordingly a near neighbour of reincarnation- both are based on mind-body dualism; both hold that the immaterial essence survives death.
The important difference is that immortality posits after death not a successive series of bodily incarnation here on earth, but rather one eternal and uninterrupted life in a spiritual world.
Plato was a great defender of immortality, he believed, “there is a realm of perfect knowledge. In several of his dialogue he suggested various ingenious arguments in favour on the immortality of the soul. Plato was greatly influenced by Socrates.
The Essay on Argument Of Dualism Physical Mind Substance
... mind or soul is a separate, non-physical entity, but there is also property dualism, according to which there is no soul distinct from the body, ... that the soul might be able to exist apart from the body, either before birth or after death; property dualism does not. ... A substance dualism is something with 'an ...
Socrates expressed the traditional Greek view, which is that of the disembodied spirits or soul. He maintained that the death of the body can have no real and lasting effect on the soul, which will survive after the demise of the physical body.
Plato suggested that the body belongs to the physical world and, like all physical things, it will one day turn to dust. Plato believed, the soul belongs to a higher realm where eternal truths, such as justice, love goodness, are imperishable and endure forever. For Plato, the aim of the soul is to break free from the chains of physical matter and fly to the realm of ideas, “this is the spiritual realm of true reality”.
This is where it will be able to spend eternity in contemplation of the true, beautiful and the good. Plato said the soul spends its earthly existence contemplating and pursuing these ideals forms therefore it will be ready to enter without any regret, “ordinary people seem not to realise that those who really apply themselves in proper way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for death and dying”.
The disembodied soul is the view that the soul survives death without ether the earthly body or a new body. Muslims believe in a disembodied survival of death during which the soul is questioned and sentenced to either torment or ease until the day comes when the soul and earthly body are reunited.
Similarity, many Buddhist believe in a transitional period between death and reincarnation when the soul exits unembodied, and some Christians believe that the afterlife at least partly consist in disembodied survival. Reincarnation is another doctrine of dualism. It is believed through out the world by mainly Hindus and Buddhists. Reincarnation can be defined as a theory that one and the same human mind successively animates two or more different bodies.
It is believed that after ones death the body disintegrates, but the immaterial essence will be reborn in another body. And after that incarnation it will be reborn again many times or perhaps even an infinite number of times. The theory of Karma and rebirth is concerned with the soul’s journey from illusion to reality (Nirvana).
The soul continues from life to life, being reincarnated until it finds the eternal truth.
The Essay on Soul Body Forms Death
Philosophy 106 Steve Anthony In "The Phaedo," Plato explains his theory of forms and ideas concerning the mortality of the soul. We find that the soul and body are separate and that the soul lives after death and had lived before. This leads us to the idea of forms and how we acquire the knowledge of these before birth. The only time the soul is separate from the body is in death. Since the soul ...
After this the soul is not reborn any more and is united with Brahman. Thus, when an individual dies, they’re mental or non-bodily, aspects live on and the next birth is determined by how good or bad their Karma was in the last life.
“Just as a person casts off worn-out garments and puts on others that are new. Even so does the disembodied soul casts off worn-out bodies and take on others that are new”,(Bhagavad-Gita).
Karma is an impersonal law, like gravity, which ensures that what ever occurs in a person, whether it to be good or bad, is a just consequence of past actions.
Reincarnation is the process used by Spirit to progress the soul through evolutionary cycles. With each lifetime, the soul repays karmic debt, receives rewards for karmic credit and sets-up situations that cause the soul to face spiritual lessons and make choices to progress the enlightenment of the soul.
If we learn our lessons, we move forward, if we repeat old patterns and chose not to learn, we can remain stagnant and will have to repeat the lesson again. In reincarnation before the sprit is born or attach to the physical body it’s going to inhabit in this incarnation, the spirit makes a few decisions. It decide which past lives to pull into this one, it decides the lessons and karmic events it will work on, it can make an agreement with another soul(s) to join together in this coming life to resolve personal karma.
All these issues are defined in a Master Plan (like a blue print) for this coming life. In the Hindu and Buddhist tradition the view is held that we have lived many lives before and that, on death, we will be reborn again. The conditions of our present lives are believed to be a direct consequence of our previous lives.
