From Ashes to Afterlife (eBook)

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ASHES

It seems fitting to start with ashes. The phrase “ashes to ashes” arguably comes indirectly from the King James Bible (Genesis 3:19) when Adam and Eve are cast out of Garden of Eden: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” In popular literature, usage of “ashes to ashes” often substitutes for “dust to dust.” Although many Christians believe that after the body is returned to dust the soul lives on, in my prior belief system I had adopted the end-state version that at death our conscious self dies along with our body, and we assume the same soulless non-existent state we believe we had prior to birth. My view on this has changed markedly in recent years.

For instance, I now believe that the soul is our recognizable conscious self and that it survives the physical death of the body, exiting from a dying or dead body from one of the center chakras (heart-throat area) or from the crown chakra (top of the head). Some people report actually witnessing the soul--seen as a small thread of lights or sparks of light--depart the body of a dying or dead person. While the body is alive, it’s believed that the soul is tethered to it, joined at a cellular level. There are a number of studies aimed at showing that the soul is the seat of consciousness and is distinct from brain function and brain activity. Brain dead does not mean soul dead. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

The soul, simply put, is informational energy that vibrates at a high frequency. Each soul is unique, but shares information with every other soul--whether it be person, animal, or living creature of any kind. Some people believe everything has a soul--rocks, plants and trees, water, etc.--although some things have correspondingly lower energy vibration, less conscious awareness, lower intelligence, and fewer feelings. Supporters of this view see everything coming from God the Source and consequently everything bears at least some of the same information that human souls have.

On a more personal level, the soul is the unique essence of who we are as individuals--call it the recognizable you-ness in you or the me-ness in me. If we reincarnate, our soul brings our specialness to the new physical entity (new DNA) we become, whether we’re now a different gender, race, or even species. With a few exceptions (Jesus, for one, reportedly had soul memory from birth) we do not have soul memory when we are alive incarnate. Soul memory returns to us only after we physically die and shed our body. While we are alive, our body’s naturally lower energetic level (low vibration) is too low and dense to achieve soul memory or enable contact with the spirit world. Normally, our brain filters out or blocks soul memory. When the filter of the brain is removed because of physical death, our soul is released from our body, allowing us to regain soul memory as we shift dimensions from the low vibration level of the earthly plane to the higher vibration levels of the heavenly planes. During this transition, our soul maintains consciousness and awareness of what is happening, who we are, and regains soul memory and knowledge of who we were in past lives and in future lives. (The last part of the previous sentence is not necessarily a typo.)

While the fate of my soul is pre-determined and thus is beyond my control, the fate of my body is another story. I am reluctantly making plans now for my body to be buried or burned after my death. As of now, I plan for it to be cremated, which somewhat ironically means it will be turned to ashes.

The decision about what to do with my physical remains is being reached by determining what is most convenient and least painful for my survivors. In theory, soulless bodies from previous lives of mine (and of yours) populate graveyards around the world. In some cases, no doubt, they have been turned to dust or ashes by now. It’s possible that any single soul may have reincarnated hundreds if not thousands of times over the eons. I should be able to learn more about my track record once I have physically died, regained soul memory and crossed over. In a later section of the book, I write about an attempt of mine to try soul regression, while still in this life, to see if I could through hypnosis learn anything about myself in a previous life. It didn’t go well.

A Pew Research Center study in 2014, reported that most Americans (72%) believe in the existence of Heaven, while more than half (58%) of all Americans also believe in the existence of Hell. As expected, religious believers scored higher in both categories, while those who didn’t designate a religion (“none”) and those who designated atheist or agnostic, were less likely to believe in either Heaven or Hell.

I was born into a Conservative Jewish family. Like most who identify as Jewish, I was raised to be a believer in a Jewish God (YHWH), attended Sunday school as a young child, later attended Hebrew school, and eventually at age 13 studied and became a Bar Mitzvah. My religious heritage was handed to me and I pretty much accepted it on faith (mostly my parents’ faith) without questioning. This included all the trappings and tenets that Judaism had to offer. I could have done worse. Within the ancient writings of the Tanakh (which include the Old Testament or Bible), the Torah (which includes the Ten Commandments), and the scholarly writings of the Talmud, Judaism provides seemingly sensible and practical rules, laws, and ethics for living in the here and now. My religiously Conservative family was continually adapting these ancient practices to modern 20th century life.

Sometime after being a Bar Mitzvah, I began to question the existence of God, the veracity of the Bible, as well as the existence of a heaven. I wasn’t alone. That same Pew study indicated that only about 40% of American Jews believe in Heaven, while 22% believe in the existence of Hell. For whatever reason, I was never a big believer in Hell. And while I liked to think that Heaven was real, I eventually joined the group of those who would say, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” In other words, I became a firm skeptic, an ashes to ashes believer and stayed that way for many years. What existed before the Big Bang? Was there always God? What came before God? Does God know what I’m thinking right now? If there is God, does God care about me as an individual? About anyone?

I recall many long high-school level talks with a good friend (who for a short period of time, post-high school, studied for the Catholic priesthood), about the existence of God. I could never wrap my mind around there being a sentient, all-knowing, higher power, responsible for life as we know it. I couldn’t believe that God or divinity of any kind didn’t have better things to do than to make sure I hit a homerun at my next at bat in Little League. I obviously wasn’t thinking far enough outside the box.

It should not be surprising that a majority of Americans say they believe in some version of Heaven. Most all religions are grounded in a belief of Heaven. We grow up with a belief in Heaven, manifested in one form or another, dangled in front of us. The Bible, for example, mentions Heaven for the righteous and Hell for the wicked. Heaven (Paradise) is the Judgment Day reward for having lived a good and righteous life. The writings in the Bible, however, tend to be vague, metaphoric, and poetic rather than matter of fact conveyers of information. As believers in the word of the Bible, we learn of Heaven’s existence, but learn little about the nature of Heaven and what the afterlife is like. We learn little more than that those who are saved in the final judgment will be able to take their place with God in some abstract version of Heaven.

Among the great religions of the world, Judaism is regarded as having the least to say about survival after physical death and about the existence of an afterlife. Pamela Heath and Jon Klimo, in their Handbook to the Afterlife, point out that “Since Judaism embraces the existence of a benevolent God, one might assume that upon death we somehow return to such a Creator.” Judaism indeed mentions the continuation of life after death (late in the torah), but is not as clear about the nature of an afterlife as is Christianity, Islam and the other great religions.

As Roger Jones notes in Physics for the Rest of Us, religion and science share a common origin in the ancient human quest to find meaning and purpose in life. Biology vs. Bible--the empirical knowledge of nature versus the spiritual understanding of existence. This battle between religion and science has gotten slightly more complex in the hunt for Heaven and for proof of an afterlife. The heavy fighting these days seems to be less between religion and science and more between science and science---materialist science (focused on Newtonian physics) versus non-materialist science (focused on Quantum physics).

Religion may win a battle but lose the war should science ever confirm religion’s long held belief that there is indeed an afterlife that exists in a heaven presided over by a benevolent force or god. Organized religions may cease to be necessary if it is ever made clear that this benevolent force or god is God---the one and only such god---and that all religious paths lead to this same Creator or Source of all things---variously depicted as divine energy,...