Some thoughts and quotations relevant to suffering

Suffering is a common experience in life. My sister recently died, and I have been experiencing the suffering or pain of grief. 

My brother-in-law and brother with Jennell about an hour before she died

Philosophers who have examined the theological implications of suffering have divided suffering into different categories, such as suffering caused by non-human sources and the suffering caused by the behavior of persons. 

The non-human causes of suffering are sometimes described as “natural evil” and many people take the problem of natural evil as a powerful reason to be atheistic or else conceive of God as something that is either not especially loving and kind or else not all-powerful. Consider the suffering caused by natural things; the loss of children in miscarriages, death from diseases, the torment of parasites, the mass misery caused by earthquakes, floods, fires, and storms that result in great loss of life, destruction, and famine.  Consider plagues, asteroids smashing into planets and wiping out civilizations, or volcanos and tsunamis wiping out hundreds of thousands of lives.  Contemplate these sorts of things.  A common argument is that if God is all-powerful and also loving and benevolent, God would not permit a reality in which so much suffering was built into the creation; thus God must either not be all powerful, or else not actually loving and benevolent, or else God must not exist.  This is one point of view. I don't share this point of view exactly, as I think God's benevolence and love may not be held in a personal relationship with each of us as if God was a person other than us who cared for us as a human friend would care. And, I also think God's love and benevolence is not directed towards our personal safety, comfort, or physical well-being, at least not generally.  There are other aspects of our existence that may be more deserving objects of God's benevolence and love.

Then there is the suffering caused by people; the way we harm and torment each other; the suffering we inflict on others. Wars, prejudices, injustices, unfair and unjust systems where no one can trust others. This is generally considered less of a theological problem.  Usually the issue is resolved by suggesting that God cares very much about human free will.  For example, God does not become manifested in such an obvious way that everyone must believe in God, and thus God must clearly value doubt and faith and the freedom for people to reject God and not believe in God, which suggests free will and autonomy must be an extremely high priority in this created world. It would follow that God also allows people to choose evil behavior; God allows people to engage in terrible activities that cause suffering.  Again, the ability of people to choose their course in life, choose between good and evil, and grow toward perfection or better actions in this life seems to matter more than just having people avoid suffering. So, human evil and its brutal manifestations in rape, genocide, war, violence, exploitive unfair systems, and so forth is understood as a natural outcome of the importance of free will and the ability of humans to make moral choices. 

I think another category of suffering is caused by loss, change, the passage of time, and separation.  Since persons who die generally do not communicate with those who are living, humans often suffer grief as everyone they know eventually dies.  This theme of suffering caused by the human desire to maintain contact with those whom we love, and the suffering of unrequited love, or the death of a loved one, is an issue addressed in modern Buddhism, where basic teachings of the faith concern the problem of human suffering, and ways to end suffering by embracing less attachment to things-as-they-are and increasing acceptance of change.  The impermanence of the created reality we perceive with our senses compared to the allegedly better world of supernatural or spiritual reality is a common theme in religions, and is sometimes described as the “otherworldly” or “mystic” branch of religion.

Another frequent theme of religion in addressing all varieties of suffering is the idea that suffering is good for us.  By experiencing suffering, we are forced to turn to spiritual truth.  By experiencing suffering, we can prove our worthiness by our steadfastness in the face of suffering. By experiencing suffering, we can appreciate and give thanks for the times and ways of living in which we do not suffer.

In the Jewish and Christian traditions, the story of Job, who lost everything, and remained faithful to God despite all his losses, is a sort of symbolic illustration story about the importance of remaining faithful and good. Like Job, we must be faithful and good simply because that is the way humans ought to live, and not because we are thankful for our blessings or hopeful of help when we are experiencing suffering.

Suffering is good for us

The early Baha'i theologian and leader in the early Baha'i Faith, Abú’l-Fadl Gulpaygání had something to say about suffering.  In October of 1900, Abú’l-Fadl Gulpaygání sent a letter in which these words were written: 

The will of God has decreed that the new souls be subjected to the trials of uncertainty, that the bad may be distinguished from the good and imposture from sincerity. Thus may truth be known from falsehood and steadfastness from inconstancy.

My friend, you well recognize the principle of testing and purification that has been revealed in all the holy books and decreed in the divine promises inscribed in celestial scriptures. Refer to Daniel Chapter 12. Thus may you know how God tests souls to distinguish the pure and genuine from the false and wretched.

The first verse of the 12th chapter of Daniel:

At that time, Michael, the great prince who protects your people, will arise. There will be a Time of distress such as has not happened from the beginning of nations until then. But at that time your people—everyone whose name is found written in the book—will be delivered.

Expressions of Grief

Fatima Munírih Khánum (The wife of ‘Abdu’l-Baha) wrote some letters of lament after the passing of her husband and her sister-in-law that are especially poignant.  Here are some excerpts from her letter of lament from a year after the passing of ‘Abdu’l-Baha (He died shortly after midnight on November 29th, 1921) as translated by Sammireh Anwar Smith.

From a letter of late November 1922:

O my Lord, O my Lord. Forsake me not, for troubles have encompassed me on all sides. Lord! Lord! Leave me not to myself, for misfortunes have seized me and assailed me….

…O kind and loving Master: for fifty years You fed us from the breast of mercy. At every morn You would call all to gather, and You would even instruct us to ‘wake the small children and, after breakfast, read the prayers and Tablets.” Cast Your glance of favor upon this poor, sorrow-stricken family from that other world, from [paradise]. Look down upon these leaves scattered in many lands and regions. Each one is in a different place and subjected to severe afflictions. 

Should I wish to describe fully this miserable year, and that midnight thunderbolt, I would need seventy reams of paper, and seas of blood would pour from all eyes….

…My home is in ruins, its foundations destroyed; 

I am caught in the talons of the eagle of sorrow….

…Lord, Lord, Thou sees and knows that these grieving hearts have lost all patience and strength. The thin thread of endurance is breaking. Resolution and tenacity have come to an end…

….God willing, this storm of sorrows will abate a little, this buffeted ship will reach the shore, and the light of the morn of hope will dawn.

That pure and holy, divine, benign, and benevolent Soul could never accept to see even one person sorrowful, and He did not wish that anyone should grieve. He would say, “I cannot bear to look upon a sorrowful face.” He was the follow-sufferer of all humanity and was loving to all on earth. When He spoke, it was usually with smiles and happiness.  He would inquire after children. He desired that all should be cheerful and joyous. He would say, “Children are the inhabitants of the Kingdom. They are always happy and cheerful.”…

But I must not pierce the hearts of the devoted ones any longer, or rub salt into the wounds of the sorrowing.

O our Lord, do not inflict upon us that which we cannot bear. Have mercy upon us through Thy generosity and bounty….

In the letter of lament you can see how the widow Fatima Munírih Khánum begins with hyperbolical description of seas of blood pouring from eyes, but as she continues, she reflects on the importance of finding joy and happiness, and seems to recognize that one can lament too much.

Suffering and life described in letters written by ‘Abdu’l-Baha. 

In one letter, ‘Abdu’l-Baha wrote:

O thou seeker of the Kingdom! Thy letter was received. Thou hast written of the severe calamity that hath befallen thee—the death of thy respected husband. That honourable man hath been so subjected to the stress and strain of this world that his greatest wish was for deliverance from it. Such is this mortal abode: a storehouse of afflictions and suffering. It is ignorance that binds man to it, for no comfort can be secured by any soul in this world, from monarch down to the most humble commoner. If once this life should offer a man a sweet cup, a hundred bitter ones will follow; such is the condition of this world. The wise man, therefore, doth not attach himself to this mortal life and doth not depend upon it; at some moments, even, he eagerly wisheth for death that he may thereby be freed from these sorrows and afflictions. Thus it is seen that some, under extreme pressure of anguish, have committed suicide. …

In another, ‘Abdu’l-Baha wrote:

O thou beloved maidservant of God, although the loss of a son is indeed heart-breaking and beyond the limits of human endurance, yet one who knoweth and understandeth is assured that the son hath not been lost but, rather, hath stepped from this world into another, and she will find him in the divine realm. That reunion shall be for eternity, while in this world separation is inevitable and bringeth with it a burning grief.

Praise be unto God that thou hast faith, art turning thy face toward the everlasting Kingdom and believest in the existence of a heavenly world. Therefore be thou not disconsolate, do not languish, do not sigh, neither wail nor weep; for agitation and mourning deeply affect his soul in the divine realm.

That beloved child addresseth thee from the hidden world: ‘O thou kind Mother, thank divine Providence that I have been freed from a small and gloomy cage and, like the birds of the meadows, have soared to the divine world—a world which is spacious, illumined, and ever gay and jubilant. Therefore, lament not, O Mother, and be not grieved; I am not of the lost, nor have I been obliterated and destroyed. I have shaken off the mortal form and have raised my banner in this spiritual world. Following this separation is everlasting companionship. Thou shalt find me in the heaven of the Lord, immersed in an ocean of light.

And, in another letter to grieving parents, ‘Abdu’l-Baha wrote, in part:

O ye two patient souls! Your letter was received. The death of that beloved youth and his separation from you have caused the utmost sorrow and grief; for he winged his flight in the flower of his age and the bloom of his youth to the heavenly nest. But he hath been freed from this sorrow-stricken shelter and hath turned his face toward the everlasting nest of the Kingdom, and, being delivered from a dark and narrow world, hath hastened to the sanctified realm of light; therein lieth the consolation of our hearts.

The inscrutable divine wisdom underlieth such heart-rending occurrences. It is as if a kind gardener transferreth a fresh and tender shrub from a confined place to a wide open area. This transfer is not the cause of the withering, the lessening or the destruction of that shrub; nay, on the contrary, it maketh it to grow and thrive, acquire freshness and delicacy, become green and bear fruit. This hidden secret is well known to the gardener, but those souls who are unaware of this bounty suppose that the gardener, in his anger and wrath, hath uprooted the shrub….

Suffering and life addressed in old English folk songs.

One of my favorite songs is the Unquiet Grave (Child #78).  Some folklorists believe the song may date to the 1600s, but songs like it in which excessive grief disturbs the dead can be found as far back as the 1500s.  The lesson is: do not be excessively disturbed by the pain of separation from the dead:

Cold blows the wind over my true love,
Cold are the drops of rain.
I never had but one true love,
In the greenwood he was slain.

But I’ll do as much for my true love
As any young girl may
I’ll sit and weep down by his grave
For twelve months and a day.

But when twelve months were come and gone
This young man he arose,
“What makes you weep, down by my grave?
I can't take my repose”

“One kiss, one kiss from your lily-white lips
One kiss is all I crave
One kiss, one kiss of your lily-white lips
And return back to your grave.”

“My lips they are as cold as clay
My breath is heavy and strong
If thou was to kiss my clay-cold lips
Thy days would not be long.”

“Do you remember the garden gate,
Where we was used to walk,
Pluck the finest flower of them all,
'twill whither to a stalk.”

“My time be long, my time be short
Tomorrow or today
Sweet Jesus Christ will have my soul
And bear my life away”

“Don't grieve, don't grieve for me, True Love,
No mourning do I crave,
I must leave you, and all the world,
And sink down in my grave.”


These are the lyrics used by Wilfred Brown and John Williams in their 1961 album Folk Songs. Another version sung by Jean Ritchie in the style of Appalachian traditional folk music is also quite good.

Another song about grief calling the dead back into the world of the living probably originates in Scotland, and it is known as The Wife of Usher’s Well. (Child #79). In this version, a grieving mother gives up her faith in God because her grief for three lost sons is so deep, but the sons are allowed to return, and Jesus performs a miracle (a roasted and dead bird crows from the dish where he is being served as a meal), and the dead and living all lament the fact that the dead are kept apart from the living.


There lived a lady in merry Scotland,
And she had sons all three,
And she sent them away into merry England,
To learn some English deeds.

They had not been in merry England
For twelve months and one day,
When the news came back to their own mother dear,
Their bodies were in cold clay.

“I will not believe in God,” she said,
“Nor Christ in eternity,
Till They send me back my own three sons,
The same as they went from me.”

Old Christmas time was drawing near,
When the nights are dark and long,
This mother’s own three sons came home,
Walking by the light of the moon.

And as soon as they reached to their own mother’s gate,
So loud at the bell they ring,
There’s none so ready as their own mother dear
To loose these children in.

The cloth was spread, the meat put on;
“No meat, Lord, can we take;
It’s been so long and so many a day
Since you our dinner did make.”

The bed was made, the sheets put on;
“No rest, Lord, can we take;
It’s been so long and so many a day
Since you our bed did make.”

Then Christ did call for the roasted cock,
Feathered with His holy hands,
He crowed three times all in the dish,
In the place where he did stand.

He crowed three times all in the dish,
Set at the table head,
“And isn’t it a pity,” they all did say,
“The quick should part from the dead.

“So farewell stick, farewell stone,
Farewell to the maidens all,
Farewell to the nurse that gave us suck,”
And down the tears did fall.

These are the lyrics used by Mrs. Loveridge in Herefordshire in 1908 when Ralph Vaughan Williams collected her version of this song, “There Lived a Lady in Merry Scotland”.

My last view of my sister.  My brother-in-law says his final farewell.

My grief.

the loss of my younger sister is a harder death than the deaths of my father, step-father, or any of my grandparents, or my uncle.  She was younger than I, and I can remember her kicking from inside our mother’s womb. This grief is possibly even worse than the sadness that I still feel from the loss of our third child in a miscarriage back in 2007. It is horrible.  But, I notice that it's possible to feel happy and sad at the same time.  I do not think sadness and joy are two ends of a continuum.  I think, rather, that sadness and happiness can coexist, and they may have an inverse correlation, where we usually feel one feeling strongly and the other feeling is diminished, but I do think you can feel both joy and sorrow simultaneously, which is what I am feeling. Today, exactly three weeks after Jennell’s death, I very nearly cried again, and I have cried earlier this week.  I usually don't feel like crying when people die, but with Jennell, I have been weeping and sobbing a lot. But that sort of feeling has diminished.  In my family I was socialized to continue living and feeling positive in the face of death, and I have done that, but done so without denying the suffering of grief.

I think Jack Kornfield, the Buddhist and Psychologist who offers many lectures on wisdom and Buddhism, once said that pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.  His point was that life is going to throw evil at us, and we are going to be in pain.  However, there are ways of accepting pain and sorrow and grief where we do not feel full of misery.  This is an attitude I strive for.  I will not deny the pain.  I will not refuse to suffer.  But, I will not become miserable in the face of the pain and suffering. I will continue to feel happiness, and sometimes joy.  

Some thoughts on death and life after death

 As I write this, my sister Jennell is in the last stages of her experience with glioblastoma brain cancer.  Almost exactly a year ago, our father passed away, so recently two significant people with whom I grew up have left me. I came out to Oregon arriving in early June, so I’ve been here almost two months. It’s rough to lose your little sister to cancer, but the long, slow decline has given us lots of time to enjoy each other’s company.  In June, conversations were still possible.  In early July, interaction and a few words were possible.  This last week, she has been barely responsive.  As I write this, she may have hours, or possibly days, left in this mortal life.

I’ve been reflecting on my beliefs about what happens to us after we die.  I can remember learning about my own mortality when I was three or four years old, back in 1971 or 1972.  It was horrible.  I cried a lot to think that I would someday die.  This has given me pause when I consider my beliefs about life-after-death, because I can see that I have motivations to believe in life after death, and cognitive bias may be shaping my views. Most people are so eager to escape the fact of death that they will quickly latch on to beliefs about heaven or life-after-death, especially if their society offers this belief as normal. 

There have been times in my life when I did not believe in life after death as most people do: with the survival of the soul.  At those times, I considered that the positive qualities I liked about myself were qualities that many other people had as well.  I didn’t like the idea that I would die because I had so much love for people, and that love should continue, but other people would feel love and act on love for generations to come, even without me, so that love that I admire would of course continue without me.  I am intelligent and my intellect is always gaining knowledge and wisdom, and I didn’t want that to be lost either, but science and knowledge seem to be growing despite whatever contributions I made, so that's another case where I could take comfort in realizing that I was just a vessel for a specific manifestation of something larger, and that larger thing would continue.  I found comfort in perceiving that all the things I liked about myself would continue on in their abstract or ideal natures that transcend specific manifestations and experiences of them.  Some of my good character traits, such as my compassion, love of learning, my lack of jealousy, my inclination to forgive, and my passionate love, both erotic and platonic, seemed to me things that were lovely and should not be extinguished forever. But those things weren’t unique to me.  Everyone has the capacity to manifest those qualities.  The qualities themselves are transcendent.  I suppose anywhere in the universe where Life evolves, creatures will emerge to demonstrate some sort of ethical and moral quality, and there will be love and affection, and there will be curiosity, and love of truth. The fact that convergent evolution that will make those qualities appear reflects a reality of this universe, that wherever social beings exist and form social groups, kindness, honesty, compassion, caring, and justice will probably emerge, because those qualities are inherently potential in this universe.  Those things are not dependent on me, and I don’t “own” them.  So, when I’m gone, those good qualities won’t die with me.  They will be manifested in other beings for many generations, and in many other worlds all over the universe.

Also, when I have been a materialist, and believed (falsely, as I now know) that consciousness and personality emerge from the arrangement of matter and chemicals, I considered that my good qualities were inherently potential qualities of my universe, and if the universe is infinite, or expanding and contracting in infinite waves of big bangs and creations of new universes, eventually matter would again be arranged in a way similar to how it is now arranged in me, and other beings or persons would exhibit the qualities I liked about myself.  So, again, the things I like about myself don’t necessarily “belong to me” as if only I can exhibit them.  Many of my good qualities can be exhibited by anyone, and can be exhibited by animals, so those things go on, or will return in other lifetimes or other worlds and universes. 

In recent years I have sometimes examined contemporary theory in anthropology and psychology, and it seems to me that many experts in those fields have adopted a theory of civilization that attributes much of what humans create in their cultures and civilizations to attempts to divert attention from the terror of their own mortality and death.  I think there is some truth in this.  People do not want to face their mortality, and they do not want to consider the frailty and brevity of life.  So, we are highly engaged in activities and diversions that only make sense if we don’t think we’ll ever get old and die.  I’m very influenced in my thinking by the work of the philologist and author J.R.R. Tolkien. In his epic stories, the human fear of death and the desire of humans to prolong their lives and escape their fate plays a large role in motivating the evil that occurs in the world.  

Also, another source of evil in Tolkien’s sub-creation (in his fantasy world-building) is the tendency of those with power to try to use their power to organize the world in ways that conflict with the Divine Plan.  That is, powerful figures rebel against the beautiful song of creation, and try to make a “better” (as it seems to them) world, and in the process, make the world hellish and corrupt. I sometimes feel this way about civilization, where human desires to conquer and dominate nature and other animals to feed the hunger for power and control over our lives leads us to excesses and ensnares us in futile pursuits of things that provide only brief and illusory comfort.  People are willing to sacrifice their humanity and genuine relationships to engage in soul-crushing activities that help them get more stuff.

To some degree, I think modern society does this to us.  Capitalism and technology provide us with ways to become insensitive to others, and to engage with our own striving toward impossible and absurd goals, distracting us from the real duties we have of creating a flourishing life and connecting in meaningful ways with other people.  To some extent, the fear of death and aging and decline of our mortal bodies may be a motive for much of this.  People would prefer to cope with their mortality with denial, escape, avoidance, and flight.  It’s a comforting distraction to pursue wealth and other successes beyond the point we need to achieve basic security, but the comfort is shallow and may come at the cost of erosion of our ability to love, to care, to enjoy, and to appreciate the miraculous world around us.

I don’t actually accept the theory that terror about death motivates much of what we do as we build civilization and religion.  I just think it offers an important perspective that we should consider, and keep in mind.  But I’ll set it aside now, and move on.

The mainstream argument that we survive death comes from religions.  The survival of death is a central belief in the Christian and Islamic faiths. The belief that the soul, or parts of the soul, or elements of soul, return to life through reincarnation is a common or central belief in Hinduism and Buddhism.  In most religions there is an understanding that personhood and individuality and identity continue after death.  This was also believed in early civilizations, in Sumer, Egypt, along the Yellow River in China, and in India. This was also a common belief in the civilizations of the Americas before European contact. 

The central religious scriptures of these faiths don’t seem to me to offer much detail about what life after death is like.  Much of the colorful detail is added through later texts. Popular beliefs and stories seem to infect the religions with some details that seem far-fetched to me.  Those texts that made it into the Christian Bible in which Jesus promised eternal life seem to offer few explicit details about what “eternal life” would be like.  

It’s not only the ancient religions that taught about life after death. Many of the more modern religions, and modern religious and spiritual leaders generally believe in some sort of survival after death.  Continued spiritual existence after death is taught as a basic principle in the religion I profess (the Baha’i Faith), and my religion has texts revealed in the 19th century, so we can be relatively sure of what the Central Figures of our religion thought, at least at the broad and abstract level, about what happens to us after death.  In addition, a wide variety of gurus, saints, holy people, and wise intellectuals have embraced belief in some sort of existence beyond death. 

It is generally better to trust in empirical evidence, reason, and experimental results to find things we believe, but I think “revealed” truths from experts and the wisdom of persons with great insight can also offer valuable facets of truth, so I take religious teachings and the opinions of people who seem especially saintly or holy or wise as a valid source of information about the world, and from such sources, I see some very reasonable people who have been confident in life after death.

Then, there is reincarnation phenomena.  Sometimes some people have had memories that seem to have belonged to other people. I think the phenomena is widespread and well-documented.  It seems to me that sometimes the person who has memories that belong to another person (usually someone who lived before them and is no longer living) also feels that they have the same identity as the other person whose memories they can recall.  However, my understanding is that this transfer of memories is spotty.  People may have some vivid memories and detailed knowledge about some aspects of another person’s life, but seem to have no understanding of other significant aspects of that person’s life.  They may remember two or three of the other person’s family members, but have no memory of others.  This is one (of several) reasons I don't believe in the folk religious conception that we return again and again through cycles of birth and rebirth.  If that was how things worked, shouldn't more of us have memories of our previous lives, and should those of us with such memories have more complete memories?  I have no theory to explain reincarnation phenomena, but I do think the phenomena undermine belief that our consciousness (and memories) emerge from the brain, and support the idea that mind and memories exist independent of the physical brain, at least sometimes, for some people.

Reincarnation phenomena suggest to me that on occasion, some memories and some aspects of a person’s sense of identity can be transferred. I cannot conceive of a material way that the transfer of memories and identity could occur, so I take this as one of many indications that our world is essentially based upon a mental or consciousness foundation, and the material world we perceive with our senses and instruments is a sort of interface our minds create to understand the underlying mental objective reality.  I don’t believe in standard reincarnation, but I cannot deny that sometimes phenomena suggestive of reincarnation have been observed. If memories and identity can be transferred across the barriers of death, time, and physical distance, that suggests to me that death is not the absolute end of a person, at least not initially, and not completely.  Sometimes, some aspects of a person continue.

The experiences of persons near death are another indication to me that life may continue after death.  I’m especially interested in cases of persons who have no heartbeat and no measurable brain activity for more than a few minutes, but then somehow are revived, and after revival report experiences that occurred while they were dead. The parsimonious explanation is that they did not have these experiences, but that upon their revival and the return of their brain function, their brain creates memories of the Near Death Experience. But, if someone can accurately report things going on around them at the time they were experiencing death, or if they have gained knowledge of events or things that they should not be able to know about in any other way, then their Near Death Experiences convince me that, at last for a short time, consciousness and awareness and identity can exist when the brain is not functioning.  This again confirms my belief that consciousness creates the brain as a sensory indicator of mind, and that mind and consciousness is not an emergent property of the arrangement of matter. The Near Death Experience also suggests to me that death is not the end of existence.  

A curious thing about near death experiences is that among those who are revived from a state of the brain no longer functioning while the heart was no longer pumping blood, most do not report the experiences.  Also, each experience is different, although there are common themes.  Also, not all the experiences are good.  Some people have horrific and terrifying experiences.  So, this suggests that the mind of the person dying has a role in shaping the experience during these short minutes or seconds of death, and culture and social expectations also shape the experience. This makes me hesitate more to say that Near Death Experiences tell us anything about the actual realities after death, but I think that Near Death Experiences to tell us that for some people, at least for a short time, life continues after clinical death.

There are also the cases of apparitions of the dead, or ghosts.  These may be visions of persons who have died, or hallucinations of deceased persons or animals.  Whether appearing in waking life or in dreams, the standard parsimonious answer is that people want to see someone or something that has died, and their minds create a hallucination to satisfy their desire.  The other parsimonious explanation, put forth by Gurney, Myers, and Podmore (in Phantasms of the Living, 1886) is that some sort of telepathy reveals a truth (often the truth that someone has recently died) to the person who sees an apparition, and the apparition is a hallucination invented by the viewer to help them interpret the telepathic communication they have received. I, however, think that in some cases the minds of a deceased person or animal may be able to influence a viewer and give them the vision of an apparition.  Especially interesting to me are cases where the apparition offers information or advice that seemingly could not have been known by the viewer, and when the apparition appears a significant time after death. Also, for me, when we accept telepathy, although that is something quite different from evidence for life-after-death, it does undermine the standard materialist model of reality, and it does conform to my suspicion that objective reality exists at a level of consciousness and mind (or, I might as well say soul and spirit, since I’m not sure what the distinction between mind and soul may be).  I think that when we see deceased persons in hallucinations or dreams, these appearances may often be wish-fulfillment fantasies or daydreams brought into reality through hallucinations, but I suspect that sometimes there is actual communication from a deceased person, and that suggests to me that identity and interpersonal bonds survive death, at least for some time. 

I have two personal examples here from my family history. First, my great-grandmother was having trouble running the restaurant she inherited when my great-grandfather died unexpectedly.  She had a visionary dream in which my great-grandfather gave her advice and told her what to do.  She followed his advice, and as it turned out, his advice was good, and she was able to achieve what she needed.  The parsimonious response is that she had an unconscious hunch that she ought to take a course of action, and she herself generated the dream, and her mind invented a figure of her late husband to give her the advice that her unconscious knew, but was hidden from her conscious awareness.  Another interpretation is that my deceased great-grandfather influenced my great-grandmother's mind and inspired her. I like to believe that persons who have died can inspire us, and I think that is a reasonable explanation.  Another case involves my mother-in-law, who had a massive stroke, and was paralyzed in half of her body and generally unable to speak. She sometimes could say a few words, or respond to certain people with certain common phrases.  I remember visiting her after the stroke and she called out my name, which seemed remarkable. About four months after her stroke, her second daughter passed away from cancer.  After some days or weeks, the remaining children (at least those who were able to visit her) decided they would tell her.  At the moment when these siblings came to see their mom, she looked at them and seemed to be gazing past them, and she called out to her deceased daughter, seemingly hallucinating her and then having a flash of recovery of her power of speech so that she could call out to her daughter. The parsimonious explanation is that despite the damage to her brain, she noticed that her second daughter was not visiting her, and that most of her children had come to see her without their sister, and she intuitively guessed that her missing daughter might have died, but then to avoid the grief that would come with that, she hallucinated that her daughter was there standing among her living children. The more interesting answer is that in her state of mind she was able to see the presence of a spiritual representation of her deceased daughter, or that her deceased daughter’s spirit chose this moment to appear to her mom, to comfort her.  I myself have hallucinated a ghost.  Our family cat had disappeared, and I suppose she had died.  We had a replacement kitten.  The small cat did not come to my bedroom or jump on my bed when I was sleeping, but this was a behavior or habit our old cat had regularly done before she had disappeared.  One night I felt a cat jump on my bed, and the cat was large.  It was as if our old cat had returned, but I had given up on our old cat ever appearing, and concluded that she was dead, so I assumed the cat I felt on my leg up on the bed with me was our new cat.  So, I was very pleased, as this was the first time our new cat had done as our old cat used to do.  This was at night, and my room was dark, and I was awakened from sleep at the moment the cat jumped on the bed with me.  However, as the cat on my bed started to purr, just as our old cat had done, I heard outside my room the sound of a cat.  That is, there was a cat outside my room, and there was a cat on my bed next to my feet.  This was an uncanny situation, and I felt unnerved and somewhat horrified.  But, as soon as my mood changed from happiness to fear and disquiet, the "cat" on my bed stood up, and jumped off the bed.  This was a ghost phenomenon, and I assume it was one part of my mind conjuring a wish-fulfillment hallucination that my old cat was still alive and still cared about me, but some other part of my mind being frightened by the hallucination.  Or, maybe some cats have ghosts.  

I’m also interested in mediumistic communication with persons who have died. The evidence for this is less solid, and a problem is that many people can use tricks to convince other people that they are communicating with the dead.  People are easily tricked, especially when they are so highly motivated to believe in life after death.  Nevertheless, I think there have been cases or situations where people did seem to gain special knowledge through the agency of a deceased person communicating with them.  This again suggests to me that identity, the power to communicate, and social bonds of love and caring do sometimes survive death, at least for a while, and that in some rare instances, the consciousnesses of those who have died can touch the consciousnesses of those who are living. 

So, up to this point, I count five reasons I think some aspects of us survive death.  I take the opinions of some very intelligent, or wise, or holy and saintly people who assure us that life after death is a fact as one point of evidence.  Another is the fact that there is some reincarnation phenomena.  The third reason is that some experiences of Near Death Experiences seem to indicate that some people survive death, at least for a while.  A fourth reason is that ghost phenomena or “apparitions of deceased persons” in dreams or in hallucinations seen by multiple people indicates to me that in some cases some aspects of people seem to survive death.  The fifth reason I believe is that it seems that sometimes people can act as mediums and receive communications from deceased persons.  

In all five of these categories of reasons for my belief in life-after-death, I am aware that there is a lot of bad evidence.  There are people lying, tricking, misleading, and offering false hope through deception.  I’m aware of that, and I’m also aware that people can be gullible, and they want to believe.  But I’ve looked into these various sorts of phenomena, and I’m convinced that some of these are true.

Finally, I have a personal reason for believing.  In my case, when I was 13 years old, I had a mystical experience of transcendence.  I saw for a few minutes a different reality in which everything was connected and all the created world was a sort of reflection of “love and light” or something like that.  The experience was overwhelming, and physically similar to the experience of being thrust into cold water, or of being electrocuted (I’ve survived being struck by lightening), although the feeling was pleasant, and those two physical sensations I’m comparing it to are horrible. I’m just saying the feeling was intense, and far more wonderful and affirming than any orgasm or any other peak experience I’ve had, including the birth of my sons. In that experience, I felt that the insights I was having were more real that my real life.  And, I felt something about how this mortal life was not all that we have.  So, that experience is for me a special case of a feeling that I have seen with my own consciousness the fact of life continuing after death.  But, my own experiences don’t really count as anything for anyone else.  It's just a private and personal thing that happened to me that gives me another reason for believing in life after death.

Why do so many people want to convince non-believers in life after death?  I think lots of people who tell us that “Jennell is going to a better place” are communicating what they hope is true.  By testifying to their beliefs in a life after death, they are helping to affirm their beliefs, and offering comfort to themselves and what they hope will be comforting to us.

I do not know that belief in life after death is completely comforting.  For one thing, I don’t know how long it lasts.  Perhaps our existence continues after death for only a few hours, days, or weeks.  Also, how much of us continues after death?  I suspect that most of the things I don’t like about myself, and especially my pride, egoism, selfishness, narcissism, sloth, anger, and that sort of thing would fall away. And, although those are all faults, being a mortal human is a process of contending against our faults, and if our faults are effaced by death, we would be transformed, and not quite who we were while alive.  For example, most of us love sex, and sex is considered a good part of married life in most cultures, but if we no longer exist manifested through physical bodies, I wonder what sort of sexual ecstasy will be enjoyed by us after death (orgasms are primarily mental, so perhaps we can have mental or spiritual sex in an after life, but I have no idea how that would work).  

If we just die, and it’s all over, then we have the security of knowing with certainty what happens.  If we continue existing, we are facing a situation of unknowns, and we lose control.  I think the human desire to know with certainty, and to have control, compels many people toward atheism and a belief in materialism where death is the absolute end of a person.  

I also doubt that the folk religion beliefs about heaven and hell are similar to whatever realities we experience after death. Perhaps our individuality merges with some greater consciousness or entity of which we become part of a composite.  Perhaps life after death is more dreary and dreadful than we imagine.  Perhaps the philosopher Bernardo Kastrup is correct and we are all alters of a single consciousness that has split up into sentient beings and plants and minerals and stars and the observable universe, but we go through something like integration and get merged back into the underlying unity consciousness after death.  Perhaps we will feel intense regret, shame, and loss as we perceive how we have failed to live well when we were mortal beings manifesting in this world through bodies.  I think that hoping for heaven and fearing hell is a level of spirituality appropriate for toddlers and small children, and I wish people would grow out of such spirituality levels. 

I think we should live our lives as if there is no life after death.  As far as I can tell, from the six sources of insight I’ve listed, I’m sure that something of us continues after death.  I suspect that memories, identity, some of our noble and positive qualities, and our love for other persons probably continues, at least for some people.  I don’t know if these all completely survive, or if merely fragments of us survive.  I don’t know how long we continue with our individual identities, if we even persist as individuals after death.  I really don’t know what happens after death, except that I’m pretty sure that for most of us, and perhaps all of us, we will continue in some form or another after death, at least for a time.

I like to believe that Jennell and I will continue to have a relationship after she is gone.  I will continue to love her and to think of her, and I will recall her when I pray for her, or remember an experience with her, or look at photographs of her, or listen to recordings of her voice.  But then, when I die, I will not be surprised if there is some sort of reunion, and the relationship can again become one with two-way communication. While I do not know with certainty that she will be “in a better place” after death, I trust what the leaders of my religion tell us, and they tell us that for many people, the life after this one is so wonderful and excellent, that we could hardly bear to continue living in this relatively drab and miserable reality if we really understood what comes next.  I also trust the Baha’i scripture that promises us that “death is a messenger of joy”.  The grief and loss for those of left behind is terrible, but the existences that follow in worlds beyond this one are opportunities for greater love and greater growth, and with that insight, if we really understand it, we should have joy at the thought of our mortality and the liberation of the person who has died.  And so, for me, death is a time of profound mixed feelings.  There is some joy, based on my religious beliefs, but there is grief, based on the grieving and loss and the diminishment of our lives whenever someone else has passed away.

In closing here is an excerpt from Meditation 17 by John Donne:

 …The bell doth toll for him, that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that minute, that that occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God.  Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises?  But who takes off his eye from a comet, when that breaks out? who bends not his ear to any bell, which upon any occasion rings?  But who can remove it from that bell, which is passing a piece of himself out of this world?

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors.  Truly it were an excusable covetousness if we did; for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.  No man hath affliction enough, that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction.  If a man carry treasure in bullion or in a wedge of gold, and have none coined into current moneys, his treasure will not defray him as he travels.  Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our home, heaven, by it.  Another may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell that tells me of his affliction, digs out, and applies that gold to me: if by this consideration of another's danger, I take mine own into contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my God, who is our only security.