By Mesha Oh
Perhaps ever since human beings arrived on Planet Earth they have wondered what, if anything, happens with or to them after death. Over the centuries, in different parts of the world, people have come up with numerous theories in this regard. According to one set of such theories, the human person is an independent self (called the ‘soul’ and by other names), which happens to take a human physical form for the period for which it appears on Earth. On death, the physical body that this self inhabited dies and its components return to the earth while the self continues to live, possibly forever. According to one variant of this theory, on the death of the body, the self takes rebirth (in a human or a non-human physical body, on Earth itself or perhaps elsewhere), depending on its record of deeds. It continues to pass through a series of lives until it is so purified that it unites with God and so, no longer has to undergo rebirth and death. According to another variant of this theory, on the death of the body, the self is judged by God and, based on its record, is sent to Heaven, to be rewarded, or to Hell, to be punished.
The answers that these theologies offer to the perplexing question of what, if anything, happens to us after we die seem convincing to many, which accounts for the fact that millions upon millions of people hold them to be true.
Despite their answers being very different, underlying these theories is the shared assumption of the existence of a separate self which survives the death of the body and which continues to exist even after this, in some realm or the other. But what if there is really no such thing as a separate self that outlasts the death of the body?
Here is another theory, which may or may not be true and is at least as plausible as any other such theory about what, if anything, happens to or with us when we die:
When we die, the components of the physical body return to the earth, and that is the end of the story really. There is no separate self that survives the death of the body and then goes someplace, whether to Heaven/Hell, or into some other physical body, human or otherwise, in a rebirth. The sense of being a separate self with a permanent identity was simply a temporary illusion, part of a cosmic drama, caused by the existence of Consciousness (or The Divine or God) that had been temporarily localized in a bounded physical human body, so that this localized Consciousness imagined itself to be a separate person, distinct from all other beings and things, and played its role accordingly. When death occurs to this body, the Consciousness that had been localized in the body for an allotted period of time in order to play a particular role in the cosmic drama merges with the surrounding Consciousness which exists everywhere (which is possibly another way of describing God’s omnipresence). The localized Consciousness, being God or The Divine, obviously cannot undergo rebirth or be sent to Heaven or Hell, to be rewarded or punished, as the case might be, for it is impossible for God or The Divine to undergo such experiences. Therefore, on the death of the body, it simply remains part of the overall Consciousness, as it had indeed always been.
If this theory is correct, then what possibly happens to us after death is simply that the notion of us as separate beings with a permanent identity, an illusion caused by the temporary localization of Consciousness in a bounded human physical for the sake of the cosmic drama, ceases to exist. It is not that we cease to exist as separate beings, being obliterated or annihilated, because we never actually existed as separate selves or beings, this having simply been a temporary illusion for the sake of the cosmic drama in which we—that is, the One Consciousness that was localized in different human bodies—played a part. And so, when death occurs, all that happens (besides the body going back to the earth where it came from) is that the illusory sense of being a separate self with a permanent identity is obliterated or annihilated. In this way, death simply removes the veil that Consciousness had placed on Itself when it localized Itself in a particular human body so that this localized Consciousness would imagine itself to be a separate self for the purpose of the role that Consciousness wanted to play through that body in the cosmic drama in which it is perpetually engaged.