Life after death

Or the magic of being alive

(versão portuguesa)

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It should not come as a surprise that in the past year, I have a had more-than-usual number of conversations about death. I welcome these deep incursions into the way people see the world, and death is an exceptional subject for this, albeit taboo for some.

When someone asks me if I believe in an afterlife, my immediate answer is no, but I almost always feel that the answer could be yes, but.

To believe is to accept that something is true, even when you have no proof. A belief is an opinion, even if sometimes it doesn't feel like it; it is a story we tell ourselves, built from the evidence we collect and the beliefs of the people we trust.

Miracles and magic

To understand what happens when we die, we have to understand what makes us living beings. Our body is made of cells; these cells have structures made of molecules; these molecules are made of atoms, which in turn are made of atomic particles, forming a bridge between mass and energy.

The trillions of cells that make up our body have learned to communicate with each other, produce substances and manage processes, from their own replication to the assembly lines that allows us to stay nourished, healthy and rested. Arthur C. Clarke, a famous science fiction writer and a futurist, said «Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic» — and there is no greater technology than the human body.

A beautiful part of this operation takes place when we die. When the heart stops pumping, and we cease to breathe, the excess carbon dioxide acidifies the blood, causing the cells to rupture. The released enzymes, bacteria, and later the insects will decompose the organic matter. The old life will feed the new life. 

We don't have to believe that we are all one: it's a scientific fact. Everything that exists, from seawater to cliffs and seagulls, is made from the same basic components, from the same energy and empty space. Death is just the first step in the process of relinquishing our body to the universe.

[I remembering realising this when I learned about the atom in school, and being mesmerised. I could not understand how people knew this and didn’t live in a perpetual state of wonder. I didn’t know back then, but that was the moment my mind decided to study chemical engineering.]

We are more than our body

Many people believe that there is a part of us - a soul, a consciousness - that lingers after death. Depending on the belief, this soul may reincarnate in another body or go to some kind of heaven or hell — and the way you live your life will affect your experience in the afterlife.

Although the existence of a soul is not usually presented as a fact, there are unexplained phenomena attributed to spirits trying to communicate with the living; there are records of people who have memories of previous lives; there are stories about the images that keep appearing when people have near-death experiences. 

Some phenomena have reasonable explanations, like the near-death experiences: our brains have the same structures and physiology and will stop working in a similar way, and one of the symptoms of a brain low on oxygen is hallucinations. Other phenomena are not so easy to explain, but there’s a chance they will be, when we fully understand how the brain works. But we don’t know what we don’t know, and, until we do, these could be clues to the existence of a soul and an afterlife. 

The story I tell myself

I see my consciousness as a cluster of experiences, memories, and the ability to contemplate them. It includes everything I've experienced, imagined and thought about, emotions, illusions, beliefs, and intuition. This cluster exists in a brain with certain characteristics, in a particular body, and it develops from a specific life story, place, and time. It is also influenced by the people with whom I interact and the society I live in.

I can't imagine this cluster surviving the death of my body, but I can see it enduring in the impressions I leave on the people who know me and read me and in the subtle changes that have come about as a result of my existence. I believe that with the last electrochemical impulse in my brain, this cluster will fall apart, and the only thing that will survive is its reflection in the world.

I have a strong conviction that this is it. We die and become part of the world we leave behind, in a physical and spiritual sense. This is the story I tell myself, and this - the reality as we know it - is magical enough for me. We become part of the whole, and that is wondrous. 

Maybe I’m wrong

The majority of humankind believes in an afterlife of some kind. What if they are right? What if there is a soul that migrates through bodies, a soul that lives on after the body dies?

It could be. In the end, we choose to believe one way or another. Maybe these labels of right and wrong are not important, and what matters is if this belief changes the way we live our life, and if it changes it for the better.

And you? What do you believe in?