Life Beyond Death: What Should We Expect?

183 Pages·2012·0.77 MB·English

by  Author

‘This ground-breaking book ventures into new territory by critically reviewing
and synthesising insights to the nature of the afterlife from many sources. Going
beyond the assertion of the survival of consciousness, David Fontana boldly
speculates about our ultimate journey and destination, coaxing readers beyond
their limited conceptions. A must-read for those seriously interested in the
meaning and purpose of life.’
DAVID LORIMER
Programme Director of the Scientific and Medical Network
‘This is a most valuable book, assembling as it does concepts of the nature of the
afterlife, made more so by the fact that it is written by a psychologist and
psychical researcher of great practical experience and perception. It should be
read by many who, in this world of increasing troubles and secular pessimism,
seek enlightenment, comfort and hope.’
ARCHIE E. ROY
Emeritus Professor, Glasgow University, Past President of the Society for
Psychical Research, Founding President of the Scottish Society for Psychical
Research, and Myers Memorial Medallist
A Selection of Books by David Fontana
Is There an Afterlife?
Psychology, Religion and Spirituality
Creative Meditation and Visualization
The New Secret Language of Dreams
The Meditator’s Handbook
The Secret Language of Symbols
Learn to Meditate
DAVID FONTANA is a Professor of Psychology, Past President of the Society for
Psychical Research, and a Fellow of the British Psychological Society. He has
been investigating the evidence for survival of death for more than 40 years, and
has written and lectured widely on the subject in Britain and abroad. The author
of over 40 books that have been translated into 26 languages, he chairs the
Survival Research Committee of the Society for Psychical Research. Among his
recent books are Is There an Afterlife?, Psychology Religion and Spirituality,
and The New Secret Language of Dreams. He considers that the question of
survival of death and of the nature of survival is crucial to our understanding of
who we are and why we are here.
LIFE
BEYOND
DEATH
WHAT SHOULD WE EXPECT?
David Fontana
CONTENTS
1 The Mystery of the Afterlife
2 Near Death and Actual Death
3 What Happens Next?
4 Sudden Death and States of Mind
5 Earthbound Spirits
6 The First Plane and Hades Conditions
7 The Plane of Illusion
8 Reincarnation
9 The Plane of Colour (Summerland)
10 The Formless Realms
References
For Professor Archie Roy and Patricia Robertson
of the Scottish Society for Psychical Research,
outstanding researchers into survival of death, and
wise and generous friends.
Chapter One
·
THE MYSTERY OF THE AFTERLIFE
Curiosity and belief
I have always been fascinated by the deeper mysteries of life. Even as a very
young boy I remember pondering about the next world. At church there was talk
of heaven for those who lived a good life, and a darker place for the wicked, but
beyond this broad division the details were few and far between. When I was a
little older and started seeking to fill some of the gaps, adults gave me the
distinct impression that everything should be left to faith. For me this didn’t
remove the mystery. What would the next life actually be like? What would we
do with our time? Would we meet old friends and family again? Where would
we live? Would there be new things to learn? Whatever adults thought, it seemed
to me that these were legitimate questions. After all, we were told at school that
questions were the sign of an enquiring mind.
As the years of childhood passed, I was surprised to find that curiosity about
the next world was strangely lacking amongst most people, many of whom even
seemed to have no belief in its existence. This lack of curiosity on the one hand,
and of belief on the other, puzzled me. Weren’t people intuitively aware of some
quality in themselves, call it a soul, that was not part of the physical world? It
seemed clear to me that existence must be much more than the passing moments
of our time-haunted lives on earth – which brought me back time and time again
to the question of an afterlife and of a soul that lived on after death. The more I
thought about the soul the more I thought about the mind, which seemed to me
central to the soul because like the soul it seemed non-physical, full of non-
physical things like consciousness, thoughts and memories. If the soul lived on,
then presumably so did the mind, and if the mind lived on this meant we carried
our consciousness, our thoughts and our memories and everything else that made
up the mind, with us to the next world. The more I pondered these things, the
more I came up against the fact that life was a very mysterious business. What a
miracle it was that we should exist at all, that we should actually be alive! And
what anyway was this strange thing called life? Life, soul and mind all seemed
non-physical and inextricably linked with each other. So where did they go after
leaving the physical body? Which brought me back time and again to my
original question, what would the afterlife be like?
My interest in such things was one of the reasons why, in due course, I
became a psychologist, since I assumed that psychology was about the mind and
just possibly also had something to say about the soul (since the term
‘psychology’ in fact derives from pukhe, the Greek word for soul). I soon
realized my mistake. Psychology has taught me a great deal about the brain, and
about human behaviour, emotions, personality and much more besides. For 40
years I have been in love with the subject and my love is as strong as ever. But
as with all branches of science its approach is firmly based in the physical world,
and as such it can only take us so far. Science and the scientific method pause
before non-physical realities such as mind and the soul. Science studies the
brain, which is a physical organ, but the assumption that the mind is no more
than a function of the brain and therefore also physical is just that, an
assumption. Certainly when the mind is active there are electrical changes in the
brain, but electrical changes are not the mind. Similarly there are chemical
changes, but chemical changes are not the mind. Attempts to dismiss the mind as
nothing more than a function of the brain are in fact based upon the
presupposition that mind is a function of the brain, and presuppositions are not
evidence. Mind and brain certainly interact, just as a television signal interacts
with the electrical circuitry in a television set, but this does not mean the brain
causes the mind or that the mind dies when the brain dies, any more than the
electrical circuitry in the television set causes the signal or that when the
television set is destroyed so is the signal.
And if the mind resists attempts to treat it as a physical organ how much
more does the soul. So, to the sceptic who insists that thanks to science we
‘know’ there is no such thing as a soul or an afterlife I would reply that we
‘know’ no such thing. This point will be touched on several times in the book
but let us be clear from the outset that since science deals with the world of
physical matter it has nothing to say as yet on what comes afterwards. Certainly
there are interesting developments in science (particularly in quantum physics)
that suggest that not only is matter a form of energy, but that matter and mind
may be part of a continuum that links the physical world with the non-physical
dimension of consciousness, even that mind and matter may both be expression
of the one underlying reality (see Goswami et al 1993 and Goswami 2002 for
excellent introductions to this field). But far from suggesting that mind is merely
a by-product of matter, these developments seem to point in the opposite
direction, namely that matter may be a product of mind. And far from serving to
weaken the case for survival of physical death they can actually be interpreted as
strengthening it.
However, even work of this kind has nothing to tell us about the nature of a
possible afterlife, and we must leave it at that; for the present at least, science
effectively stops short with the fact of death itself. Incidentally, this is perhaps
the point at which to say that as my concern in the present book is with what
comes after death I shall not have space to say much about the evidence for
survival per se, although I must make it clear that when studied with the care it
deserves, this evidence shows that belief in survival of death has strong support,
as I have attempted to show in a previous book, Is There an Afterlife? (Fontana
2005).
Source material
For anyone who writes about the afterlife there are many pitfalls. How does one
approach a subject that may involve concepts for which we have no adequate
language, and that touch on many of the most cherished ideas and beliefs of
readers? And when selecting material to include how does one decide what
seems reliable and what does not? We cannot send volunteers into the next
world and then bring them back to tell us what they have discovered (although,
as we shall see in due course, so-called ‘near-death experiences’ bring us close
to this). And when individuals claim to have received communications from the
next world, through mediums or through seeing visions or apparitions, how
much weight can we attach to these claims, especially as the fact that we may
want the departed to contact us can leave us very vulnerable to wishful thinking
and self-deception? Mediumship, through which the majority of these contacts
come, must obviously be approached with caution. Some mediums receive their
communications in a state of trance, while others remain fully conscious and a
very few are associated with the physical materialization of the deceased.