There are many ways to debunk the ideas of an afterlife. Questions like “Where do you go after you die?” can be responded to with “To the same place you were before you were born!” But that may not be a convincing argument. For me, I’d found an analogy comparing life to music years ago and it’s served me extremely well and has helped me understand the nature of consciousness. It also helps get rid of pesky afterlife questions.
Just as music is produced from the vibrations of instruments, consciousness is produced from the processes of our brain. It is an epiphenomena – it exists only because the brain exists. It’s not a simple process of course. We know next to nothing about how consciousness works or why we even sleep, but the brain is a causally closed system – everything that happens is determined by the laws of physics. And we have no control over that.
It’s also true that our thoughts can affect our physical state. Pain is just one example. Just like musical vibrations can affect the instrument causing secondary vibrations (as a guitar resonates with itself), our consciousness interacts with the brain in some kind of incredibly complicated dance. But the prime mover is the brain – everything flows from it. We are slaves to it.
If this means we don’t have free will, then so be it. Quantum mechanics offers no help here. Even if quantum effects were to be present in the brain, they would be necessarily random and not subject to any kind of control. So free will is lost – either we are deterministic or we are truly random. Of course, from an ethical and legal point of view it’s crucial that we have the illusion of free will. Without it we might as well just throw up our hands and give up. But sentiments aside, the fact is that we have no control over our thoughts and actions whatsoever.
Spinoza once said that when you throw a stone of a certain weight with a certain strength at a certain angle, it’s trajectory is determined. However the stone itself would emphatically claim that it was moving of its own free will and that it chose to move the way it was moving. He also said it would be right!
We are all bound by chains. Spinoza’s view was that the mature person gathers up those chains within themselves. It’s possible to reduce the impact of the outside world on your emotions and actions. It doesn’t mean we have any more control, but at least we’re not subjected to the whims and fancies of the environment. At that point, we’re self sustaining.
So where does music go after it ends? After it “dies” and the song has played out or the instrument has broken? The answer is – just like consciousness – nowhere. There’s no “rebirth” for that music. No after life. No heaven or hell. No “changed state”. The same music may be played again of course, but that’s just another instance of the tune. It’s not the same tune that ended before. It’s like a duplicate model of a car.
In the same way, consciousness “vanishes” when we die. It just ends without any hullabaloo.
Nice analogy (consciousness=a particular tune of music), in trying to put the question ‘what happens when we die?’ to rest!
I see the brain as a ” window ” that allows consciousness to be experienced.
How do we explain Near Death Experiences…
Telepathy…..
Read about how Shirdi Baba told his disciples that he would be leaving the body for three days but would return to it. In case he didnt, to bury it after three days. After he ” died ” the district collector who was British had the District Medical officer certify that Baba was dead and ordered that the body should be buried immediately. The disciples did not allow it. After three days Baba opened his eyes and lived on..
In reply to tp
There are too many fake miracles for any of them to be given credence without proper evidence, investigation and documentation. Till a “miracle” has been verified by a team of investigators, by default all miracles are fake.
That is why when certain anesthetics block that ” window ” ( in lay mans terms ) we are alive but un – conscious. When the effect of the anesthesia wears off we are conscious again…
Same when we are in deep sleep; we are almost unconscious. When we wake up we are fully conscious
When a kitten we were caring for died, we comforted the kids with stories of how happy it was with god, with many other happy, healthy kittens in a perfect place, and how it could watch us from there – makes me now realise most of these stories are created to comfort, and since the stories are way kinder than real life, I wish there was afterlife and souls lived forever. But I also wonder how did evolution benefit from creating this need in humans to wish for life after death?
In reply to Indian Homemaker
I think the knowledge of mortality is a side effect of intelligence. No one wants to die after all. I think humans are the only ones to know that they’re going to die one day.