Blog#1 - 1000 words on the afterlife
Have you ever wondered what life is like on the other side of the Pearly Gates? Do you imagine scattered fluffy white clouds drifting slowly across a clear blue sky; angels gracefully gliding above the flower-bestrewn ground singing heart-warming songs; peace and tranquillity; being surrounded by friends past and present who are always smiling beneficently; perhaps this is your conception of what you might call Heaven? Or maybe you have considered that, because of the way you have conducted your life, you are destined for a somewhat less pleasant time among the fire and brimstone, a hotter than hot smoky sulphur atmosphere, when you end your ferry trip across the River Styx at the Gates of Hades.
Perhaps, however, eternal life is not like either of these. As Lieutenant Spock might have said aboard the starship Enterprise, “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.”
Take a look around yourself now as you read these words and you’ll see solid, physical things, maybe people too, you can reach out and touch them. You can communicate with the people by vocalising the words you wish to convey to them. In this way you are connected with them, and everything surrounding you. Let’s imagine that, wherever you are now, you realise that you need to be somewhere else. Maybe you need a loaf of bread and a pint of milk, or maybe there’s someone you need to see, whatever the reason the only way you’re going to get there is by physically getting yourself there. Whether by walking, driving, flying, or any other means of transport, you need to make a physical transition from your current location to your desired destination. That, of course, takes time – the duration of which is dependent on the distance.
Now forget the actual physical reality that exists around you and imagine an apparent physical reality. You can still see objects and people, you can still reach out and apparently touch them, yet in effect there is nothing there in reality, only in your perception of reality. You appear to utter words to speak to people, and you hear when they respond so it feels very much like the reality you were used to when you existed in a physical from. The difference now is that you are in a spiritual form, everything physical has been left behind. This includes your physical body which has now done its job of giving your spirit its singular individuality. Everything non-physical about you still exists – your thoughts and memories, the way you perceive yourself, and the way others perceive you – you are still you. Your friends in the afterlife will recognise you by the way they remember you, and you will recognise them in the same way. New people you meet will see you the way you want them to see you, and they will be presenting you with their own image of themselves.
You still feel contact with everything around you because that is what your mind is telling you, and in a non-physical sense you are correct. What happens now when you realise the need to get some groceries, or to visit someone? Without a physical body to move from point A to point B how are you going to achieve this? Simply by thought. In your new spiritual world you only need to think yourself somewhere else and, in the blink of an eye, you will be there. If it was groceries you were after you’ll be in the shop you were thinking of, you can make your purchases then just think yourself back home. If you were thinking of a person you will be with them conversing as normal – apparently. It will all feel just as it had before. Anything you want can be yours using the power of thought. Use this wisely, though, and with due consideration or you might just find that there is another path you could still be led down – and in this context down is the operative word. Your stay on the pleasant side is not necessarily set in stone. That aside, you will still feel as connected with your surroundings as you have ever been - but in a much more flexible way.
In your current physical world as you read these words, and I know you are still reading them, you are also connected with me and my thoughts. You may know my name, even if only from the source of these words, you may have seen a picture of me, but you certainly are connected to the thoughts that run through my head as I am writing. My connection to you, however, is extremely tenuous – in fact I don’t know you at all. The only way I would know you is if you were to contact me to either heap praise on the insight I have provided you, or ridicule the very ethos of what you have just read.
Just as you can accept that this connection between us as you are reading has no physical elements so too will you be able to accept the non-physical existence that lies ahead of you once you shuffle off this mortal coil. It will take some getting used to, but it is life – almost as you knew it. Maybe we’ll meet up one day in the afterlife and if we do, please do come over and say “Hi, I enjoyed what you wrote.” If you are a disbeliever, and we happen to meet one day in the spiritual world I’m still happy for you to make your presence known to me. I will accept your apologies with grace, and I promise not to tell you, “I told you so!”
If I’m wrong then I guess none of us will ever meet up in the endless black void of eternal, unknowing death. Only time will tell – but I know which afterlife I’d prefer to believe is true. What you choose to believe is up to you.