Will there be an afterlife?

It’s harder to reply “Yes” to this question than to the question I recently answered on Quora: “Is there scientific evidence for an afterlife?” This is because some scientific evidence for existence doesn’t justify a scientific theory of existence. Nevertheless, the answer to both questions is “Yes.” However, the afterlife is not the kind you may envision, an eternity filled with many new experiences. Instead, it’s timeless and resides only in your mind. Although, it is like what many people envision in that it can be heavenly, hellish, or purgatorial. And it’s eternal–but again, only in your mind.

My book, A Natural Afterlife Discovered, thoroughly justifies the existence of the afterlife as described and discusses its many ramifications. Here, I only summarize the evidence (as I gave in my Quora answer) and then indicate how my “Yes” can be scientifically supported by a theory.

The evidence for this afterlife comes from human experiences and cognitive science. First, I give three thought experiments that point out some of these human experiences:

• When do you know a dream is over? Answer: Only when you wake up. But suppose you never do? Answer: Then, you’ll never know that the dream is over.
• When do you know you’re not on an operating table being given a general anesthetic? Answer: Only when you wake up in the recovery room. But suppose you never do? Answer: Then, you’ll still believe you’re on that operating table.
• Suppose your operation doesn’t go well, and you have a near-death experience (NDE) wherein you believe you’re in heaven. When will you ever know the NDE is over? Answer: Only when (and if) you recover. But suppose you don’t? Answer: Then, you’ll believe you’re in heaven forever.

Second, I give the relevant cognitive science principles:

• We experience consciousness as a stream of discrete (i.e., unchangeable) conscious moments, perhaps 20 to 25 per second.
• We are only aware of what we perceive in those conscious moments.
• We are not only aware of what we experience but self-aware of it–i.e., we are aware that we (our “self”) are aware of what we are experiencing (unlike a computer that has no sense of self and no self-awareness).
• Each conscious moment encapsulates the feelings and emotions aroused by previous moments and an anticipation of more consistent moments to follow.
• We are unaware of the moment of death as the brain can no longer produce another conscious moment to make us so aware.

So now, the last thought experiment: How will you ever know that the experience encapsulated in your final conscious moment, just before death, is over? Answer: You won’t (unless some other supernatural conscious moment arises).

The evidence above supports an imperceptibly timeless and deceptively eternal afterlife from the dying person’s perspective, rendering it an end-of-life illusion of immortality. This natural afterlife is supported by the theory of a natural eternal consciousness (NEC), which is a scientific theory. It’s scientific because its bases have been verified numerous times by testing and observation and can be so falsified–though, to date, it has not. The NEC is The Newfound, Psychological Reality That Awaits Us at Death, which is my book’s subtitle.