Q: If life after biological-death is real, how come we don't know about it for sure?
A: But we do know about it, every one of us - because such knowledge is inborn.
As young children, up to about age five, we knew that biological death was not the end; indeed it does not occur to young children that death would be extinction, annihilation, an end followed by nothing at all...
At about the age of five, there is often a realisation of death; of the fact that people die - that we may ourselves die and leave this world, or that people we love may die and be taken from us. But even then, death is seldom regarded as final.
How about knowing For Sure?
Well, what we do Not know for sure is what happens after death - since there are many theories (e.g. many variants of reincarnation, and many ideas of the nature of an eternal destination - underworlds, paradises, heavens).
This multiplicity of opinions concerning the exact nature of post-mortal experience may itself be a cause of doubting the reality of any kind of life beyond death. Many use this unsureness as a reason to reject their innate knowledge of survival.
Or, perhaps there really are a multiplicity of destinations, depending on the individual, and reflecting what exactly he or she most genuinely wants (as well as what is possible)?
However, setting aside this uncertainty; we should recall the qualitative fact that everybody has a built-in assumption that death is Not the end.
If we at some point personally decide to reject what we already know, for whatever justification; we are of course free to do so. But we should not then 'blame' the deity for 'failing to have told us' the basic fact of the matter!
3 comments:
Dr.Charlton;
the problem is that we will indeed DIE; if by 'we' you mean the common surface I (ego) you experience in everyday life.
This is why the base of all mystical religions, Christianity included, is learning to give up this surface I, so you can realize the deeper I; the surface I must die so you can be 'reborn' as a deeper I. This is the 'life throught dead' talked about in Christianity.
Therefore, the little children are wrong, if they think that the common everyday I they identify themselves (and the others) with - their memories, their friends, their dreams, their fantasies, their parents - will not die. It will die; together with their memories, dreams etc.
It is one of the tasks of this mortal life - to prepare for this.
Lao'C
@L - You illustrate my point. We (and everyone else) agrees or agreed that death is not the end; but we disagree about what comes after.
(In brief I think there are a range of outcomes, depending on the individual - because the creator is our loving parent, and takes his specific children's deepest wishes into account. For example, it sounds as if you may want something different from what I want; but both are possible.)
To acknowledge this as really true, and become explicitly aware of it; would constitute an axe blow at the roots of mainstream modern materialism. Which would be nice...
We don't know anything-but life. It's not possible to speculate about "dying" since it has to be done through conscious abstraction. There is no such thing as 'death', to my mind - except as a transition state 'into' more life.
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