1. Introduction: Reality is dynamic – There is always seeming change but there is at the same time constancy and continuity. Take, for example, the cycle of seasons – There is fall but there is spring as well: During the fall the leaves seemingly die and fall out but in spring there are new leaves. The dynamic reality seemingly changes but there is a basic continuity as we observe and perceive. In the same way in our life there seems to be an end of everything when one dies. But how much can we ascertain that reality such as consciousness which has evolved in time, as time passes through its finiteness, will also end just like that? One can raise the question, when a burning candle is blown off, where does the flame go? Does it just disappear into thin air or does it extinguish? The flame is dead, but the light, which is indestructible electromagnetic radiation, streams into interstellar space where it keeps going apparently forever (Kantonen, p.20). In the same way with regard to death what happens beyond death is not visible (Cohn-Sherbok and Lewis, p.5) but what came into existence in time, as time becomes eternal, might exist even beyond death. Hence in the scientific perspectives we could think not of life after death but of life beyond death (Cohn-Sherbok and Lewis, p.9). We could analyze how we might gain insight, through scientific and logical knowledge and perception, into life beyond death. We might surprisingly come to understand that, even without the support of religions and religious scriptures, there is the possibility of life beyond death. This life-beyond-life might have different parameters to understand.

2. Time and Life: Without any difficulty we could accept that time has had a beginning (at the creation) but it is progressing forward and it might flow into the future transcending the temporality and probably merge with eternity (Xavier, 2002). And time is related to space since we measure units of time by units of space. When we say that time ‘flows’ what is implied is not so much the ‘movement’ of time as our own perception of individual voyaging through space. Further, living organisms follow ever complex nature due to upward sweep of evolution as time arrow progresses in space. This could imply that life could cross over the bridge of mortality, that is the ability to go along the cosmic timescale, which is a pragmatic possibility without violating any known law of physics (Reanney, pp.19-48). Progressive evolution implies ever advancing level of consciousness even to the level of being freed of time, since when the consciousness is highly evolved the reality appears as a timeless continuum. And thus one could say that to be free of time is to be free of death (Reanney, pp. 215-219).

According to the big bang theory,

Time began with movement, and space was created by the internal trajectory of

the expanding mass’s internally differentiating parts (Neville, p.5).

Thus time began, so to say, with matter coming into existence which expressed itself as energy and then life bringing in consciousness in due course of action. And the flow of time is continuous from one moment to the next not losing its link with the past and ever establishing link with the future. And this smooth flow of time is eternal state of affairs (Neville, p. 105).

Creation for logical thinking is a singular act or event and in the words of  Neville:

Creation could not be a succession of acts because then a prior creation would be required to make them mutually relevant so as to be successive, just as eternal creation is required to provide the context for temporal succession of future, present, and past (Neveille, p. 177).

So creation is not just being but becoming since from matter energy evolves and from energy life, from primordial to complex form, evolves. And life-form attains complex in nature as perception, senses, and consciousness evolves. All this happens in time and space and hence as time merges with eternity, one expects that the consciousness (expressed as life in human beings) crosses over the boundary of the present. Thus human life, as Neville puts it, “is both temporal and eternal, and not one without the other” (Neville, p.186). Thus life that begins in ‘time-space’ as temporal at some boundary would become  eternal – This happens at some boundary event. At this boundary, taking individual into consideration, time that has been immanent becomes transcendent. And “there is no dichotomy between immanence and transcendence. There is only a distinction and a relationship in the experience of ‘the boundary’” (Moltmann, p. 1). This boundary is where the present temporal life becomes the eternal life-beyond-death.

3. Death – End of the Observable: We have seen and observed people dying – Very often we raise the question: What is death? And what happens at and beyond death? Biblically speaking life beyond death is very strongly indicated:

Your dead shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and

sing, you that dwell in dust for…..the earth shall cast out the death (Is 26:19);

and

many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake (Dan 12:2).

We can notice that both these passages strongly imply the resurrection of the physical body and the physical death is likened to sleep (Moody, p.106).

3.1. What is death?: It could be described in various ways. According to Kantonen there are three types of answer:

The first is that of biological science and the naturalistic philosophy based on it,

according to which life is solely a natural process and death its absolute end. The

second is that of idealistic philosophy, according to which the soul has its own life

underived from the body, and death is the release of the soul from the body. The

third is that of Christian faith, according to which both life and death are defined

on the basis of man’s personal relationship to God (Kantonen, p. 11).

3.2. Clinical Death: The declaration of Sydney, adopted by the 22^nd World Medical Assembly in August 1968 would define death as ‘a gradual process at the cellular level with tissues varying in their ability to withstand deprivation of oxygen supply’. In the case of brain damaged patients death could be described from cessation of brain activity, or cardio-respiratory activity, and the time interval may extend to hours or occasionally, days. Even within medical society certain authorities would argue in favour of multiple kinds of death occurring at different times (These include organismal death, psychic death and vegetative death). Thus death cannot be instantaneously determined under present medical criteria, though legally ‘death’ occurs precisely when life ceases and it does not occur until the heart-beat stops and respiration ends. It is a staged process which a person goes through (Horan and Mall, p.27-35).

3.3. Near-death Experience: Still comprehensive and clear definition of death is not easy. Taking death beyond the physical world, Moody attempts two contrasting definition of death, namely, i. annihilation of consciousness; and ii. passage of the soul or mind into another dimension of reality (Moody, p. 13). He has studied numerous cases of near-death experience and classifies them into three categories:

1. The experiences of persons who were resuscitated after having been thought, adjudged, or pronounced clinically dead by their doctors;
2. The experience of persons who, in the course of accidents or severe injury or illness, came very close to physical death; and

• The experiences of persons who, as they died, told them to other people who were present. Later, these other people reported the comments of the death experience (Moody, p.16).

Near-death experience, which is also known as out-of-body experience, is due to personal consciousness and it is an activity accomplished without the body, since in the near-death state sensory capability has ceased. One cannot be conscious externally, because sense transmission has stopped. Physiologically, sensation has become incapacitated. This, according to Geis, indicates that human being is immaterial. He/she does not become immaterial at some state of his/her existence but he/she is immaterial by his/her very humanity (Geis, p. 97-108). Thus death takes us beyond the physical cessation of bodily function or activities.

Is death just a subjective experience? In the realm of observation living implies movement – ability to act and achieve. Sign of active life is growth. Both, namely movement and growth, need energy. So far this creative and formative energy is in one, he/she is considered to be active and alive. When the ability decreases the potentiality to live reduces; when temporarily absent one is not vibrant with signs of life; and when energy is permanently gone off then one is declared dead. But whatever happens to the energy, that we label ‘life’, at death? Does the energy just vanish away (like the flame from the extinguished candle)? Does the energy get instantaneously destroyed? Physics states: Energy cannot be created nor destroyed – But it could be transformed. If death is the cessation of energy, does everything fall apart or does it emerge into another phase of reality? Subjectively speaking for the individual death is an encounter – Encounter with reality that leads one into a different phase.  It is, according to Lifton, a form of awareness that combines the immediate and the ultimate (Lifton, p. 394), that is temporal and eternal. It is a fusion of mortal and immortal, so to say, into one and the same personality. That fusion is a encounter/confrontation of temporal and material breakdown (of energy) with revitalization on a higher plane of newer (and ever lasting) energy (Lifton, p. 394).

3.4. Separation of Body and Soul: Even the classical concept that at death body and soul are separated needs closer scrutiny. For example, Pieper upholds the hypothesis:

First, that it is not man’s body nor his soul which “dies”, but man himself; and,

second, that the spiritual soul, although profoundly affected by death, connected

with the body by its innermost nature and remaining related to it, nevertheless

persists indestructibly and maintains, itself, remains in being (Pieper, p. 27f).

The sense of immortality, as expressed by Lifton, could be expressed in five general methods, namely, the biological, theological, creative (through ‘works’), natural, and the special mode of experiential transcendence (Lifton, p.18). Immortality of human life could be viewed on three levels as: a. a possibility; b. a probability; and c. a certainty (Geis, p.10). The physical aspects of human being, namely body, might suffer decomposition and disintegration at death but the consciousness (and its culmination: soul) continues to be, as consciousness in its structure presents itself as being of things, whereas nothing physical so presents itself (Geis, p. 16). The premise here is that consciousness is immaterial and immaterial is indestructible (Geis, p.17) and hence consciousness is atemporal.

3.5. Evolution: Even if we approach death from the point of view of evolution what we see as the evolutionary process ensures survival on a more complex plane of awareness. On the one hand the origin might be the matter (atoms, molecules etc) but as the evolution progresses the nature of evolved beings, like the stages of rockets soaring high in the space, points towards permanence of life that would continue even beyond the observable time.  Though life begins as single cell, due to evolution, awareness emerges through complexity in higher forms of life. This gives, eventually in human beings, expression to ‘personality’ creating an identity for each human being. This emerges without losing identity with the origin of matter and at the same time establishing a contact with the higher form of life (Shannon, p. 172). Thus evolution could be considered as the trajectory of continuation of life, namely, immortal life till all converge into the ONE, immortal and supreme (Shannon, p.116). In the concept of Teilhard de Chardin evolution is convergence towards the Omega point which is, in other words, merging with the eternal.

Thus death is not gloomy depicting the end of everything. It is still more positive – It opens the window to a newer reality on a higher plane of continuum of time. As life emerges from matter and as awareness (consciousness) appears along the corridor of time and as soul, as the higher form of consciousness, makes its way on the line of life the time-continuum keeps flowing along. And all that is created in time tries to keep up with the dynamic force of evolution.

4. Beyond Death: Once material objects came into existence energy as equivalent of material (E = mc²) exhibited and out of energy life emerged. As life form became more and more complex the level of consciousness advanced through nuosphere into the realm of spiritual level. And in the case of human beings, created in the image and likeness of God, the life- breath became the soul. However, the life that emerged sometime along the eternal flow of time is expected to go along to the destiny of time, namely, eternity. This continuation of eternal flow will be after the physical death of human beings. (The scope of discussion here is not about eternal reward/punishment nor about resurrection on the ‘last day’ – It is just about the possibility of life beyond death from scientific and logical perspectives).

Thus it could be seen that human being has an eternal destiny with him/her and hence human life should be considered in a cosmic perspective which is, along the corridor of time, ever evolving. The human (physical) life, evolving as the human personality and then as the consciousness finally leading to the spiritual element (soul) survives and subsists beyond death. Thus there seems to be the possibility for progress beyond the limits of the present life which could be life of unlimited progress towards the ultimate reality, known as God, the ultimate reality (Cohn-Sherbok and Lewis, p.119-125). The origin of matter (‘creating power’) may not be ever distinct and differentiated from the created being but rather become the dynamic force within for the continuous evolution from physical into spiritual (finitum capax infiniti). Thus as Paul would affirm the Creator would enter into creation, without confronting it, so that by this permeation all evil (or enemy), including death would be overcome (I Cor 15:24-28). Thus there emerges a new reality at death – A passage is made from temporal to atemporal in order to merge with the origin of matter Itself. Thus human being is an unfinished system at death (Moltmann, p.124-126). And hence the system continues to evolve, of course on a different level, till life merges with eternal flow of time, in order to conglomerate with the Origin of origins.

4.1. Cry for Freedom: This process could be also understood as a cry for freedom from within. In creation there is struggle for liberation from the bondage of decay – The tissues constantly changes and transforms into new reality as the old tissues tend to decay. Matter in nature, especially in human beings, seems to hunger for new power of new reality (in creation). As Moltmann would put it:

The cry for liberty therefore unites humanity and nature in a single hope. They

will either be destroyed by their division and enmity, or they will survive as

partners in a new community (Moltman, p. 98).

Thus the spirit or the consciousness intercedes with sighs too deep for words (Rom 8:26). And this cry for freedom is universal (Moltmann, p.99). Even the attempts in physics “to construct a world alien to consciousness and in which consciousness is extinguished” (Rank, p.112) have not succeeded especially in the wake of modern physics such as principle of uncertainty and theory of relativity to suppress the cry of freedom of spirit from matter.

Moltmann foresees liberation as a five-dimensional reality. According to him liberation takes place today:

1. In the struggle for economic justice against the exploitation of man.
2. In the struggle for human dignity and human rights against the political oppression of man.

• In the struggle for human solidarity against the alienation of man from man.

1. In the struggle for peace with nature against the industrial destruction of the environment.
2. In the struggle of hope against apathy in asserting the significance of the whole in personal life (Moltmann, p.110).

He explains further the significance and implication of this universal cry for liberation:

“There is no liberation from economic need without political freedom. There is no

political freedom without economic justice… If we add the third demension of the

alienation of man from man through radicalism, nationalism and sexual

discrimination, the reciprocal effect of condition on one another expands even

more. As long as the alienation of man from man is not overcome, it will be

impossible to achieve either economic liberation from hunger or political

liberation from oppression….Further, a human society deserving of the name

cannot be built without peace with nature….Exploited, oppressed and alienated

people are often ‘a product of their bad conditions’….There will be neither

economic nor political liberation, nor the liberation of nature, without man’s

conversion from fear and despondency to the faith which Paul Tillich called ‘the

courage to be’, in defiance of non-being….This is shown by liberation from panic

and apathy, the fear of death the death instinct…We only hear the divine cry for

freedom when we listen to the universal cry for freedom…” (Moltmann, p.110-

114).

Ultimately the cry for freedom, on the level of individual, is liberation from death into eternal peace and harmony. The existence and continuance of life beyond death (known as ‘pareschatology’) depends on some nonphysical component of the human being which can become immortal (Cohn-Sherbok and Lewis, p.139). And since there is some component in human being which is vastly greater than human being (Cohn-Sherbok and Lewis, p.182), which is not mere materialistic nor temporal, the cry for freedom is ever growing as human being grows up reaching its finale at death.

4.2. Life indestructible: When life emerged from inorganic matter via organic cells it was quasi immortal. Among species, lower than human beings, death is neither sought after nor feared in. It is experienced, just like other phases of life, when the time comes. However, as evolution progresses in higher forms of species the development of complexity of the brain and the quality of the enlarged neocortex system seem to be accompanied by dawning of self-awareness. As human being emerges conceptualization of death comes in. By intuition or by instinct there arises an awareness of life even beyond death. This explains, in ancient history, ‘rites of passage’ at death and the dead were buried with provisions for the life beyond (Toynbee and Koestler, p.169-173). D.F. Jonas remarks:

The practice of wrapping the body in shrouds also echoes the covering of the

foetus by membranes, and the cleansing of the body of the dead is a ritualistic

equivalent (perhaps magical) of the cleansing of the newborn (Toynbee and

Koestler, p. 176).

This is from the concept of the phenomenon, as believed by the primitive ancestors, that each one has within himself/herself a mannikin or animal that dictates his/her activities – This miniature man is the primitive’s soul. Lastly the soul is pictured as being a person’s breath (anima). In this context the understanding of life as a whole and of death could be a biological function. Jonas asserts:

Surveying the panorama of the evolution of life and earth in its totality, we may

discern a continuum arising in inorganic matter and progressing from the simplest

forms to increasing complexity, ultimately achieving self-awareness and a sense

of concern about individual destiny. But whatever we hold life to be a divine gift

or an inevitable consequence of the chemical properties of matter, death is in

either case inherent part of it, and indeed essential for its continuation (Toynbee

and Koestler, p.180).

Further, considering the process of human existence Pieper says:

One who considers the universe, as well as body-and-soul man himself, as

creatura, as having proceeded from the absolute, existence-determining will of

the Creator and thus having received its being from this creative source – one

who takes this view cannot possibly regard such existence, summoned forth from

the void, as so inherently stable that there can be no thought of its reversion to

nothingness (Pieper, p. 108).

This is the single ultimate guarantee of the stability of beings once created. Further he asserts that “in creation something happens that absolutely cannot be undone again; the creatures which has once entered existence can never again vanish totally from reality” (Pieper, p.109).

There is something inherent in human being that directs one’s hope towards something beyond the present observable and there is something in human being that arrives somewhere after termination of the course and that therefore persists undestroyed through the events of death and in spite of it. This dynamic force ‘within’ inevitably makes possible of indestructibility and imperishability of the ‘soul’ thus leading to ‘immortality’. Thus death is basically a mere transition which scarcely affects the core of our being and what lies on the other side of death is a ‘continuance’ of life. Thus the indestructibility of the inner-self of human being is immortal which leads to life beyond death (Pieper, p.93-105).

Possibility of resurrection: Pieper further critically analyses the possibility of eternal life with regard to soul. He writes:

One who is steeped in the empirical knowledge that the living person is a matter

of the reciprocal influence of  body and soul, and who regards death as the end of

the real physical-spiritual man, stands mute and perplexed before the question of

how a soul separated from the body is to be imagined as ‘existing’ at all, let alone

as ‘alive’ (Pieper, p.117).

This perplexity with regard to indestructibility of the soul would require the possibility of resurrection (where the soul would be reunited with the glorified body) (Pieper, p.118).

5. Conclusion: In the physical world the Theory of Relativity has created indelible impact. According to relativity the velocity of light is very important and it is a demarcation line of moving objects: There are two types of objects in the world. Any object that could start from rest can never exceed the velocity of light and the particles that have velocity above that of light cannot have velocity less than that of light (and they can never come to rest). Thus the velocity of light makes the bridge between the two apparently different worlds. In the same way ‘death’ is the bridge between different phases with regard to the reality of life. From considerations of different angles and phases death is the demarcation point in the ‘continuous’ life process. Before death, life has the distinction of past, present and future time but after death it is one eternal flow of time. The external observable might change but the inner reality of life does not change in essence.

In death, therefore, life does not come to an end but the phase of life changes and it is the reality of dynamic life with a change-over for the better, that is, from temporal life into atemporal or eternal life. Thus death is a quantum leap, not into the dark but into the light of eternal life where the fragments of matter reaches a new phase and ‘glorified’ reality. The second law of thermodynamics would say: A moving object keeps on moving unless another force stops it. But there is nothing to stop the flow of life, created in time and space, and hence life keeps flowing even beyond death.

Creation is groaning and longing for unity and harmony. And the created being through the evolutionary process of matter-energy-life-awareness/consciousness-soul has the inner urge and inner dynamic driving force to reach the ultimate reality. This unity and harmony with the highest form of Reality can be obtained only in and through the continuation of life in human being who is the most evolved entity in the universe. This is ensured by life beyond death. Thus death is not an end but a passage or a bridge into the next phase of evolution, a step towards the Omega point.

The cry for freedom in created being finds its fruition in death which is a demarcation  and ‘passover’ phase between two phases of life, namely temporal and atemporal (eternal). The created matter through evolution of energy and life reaches the realm consciousness, with its culmination as soul, and at the death of the physical body it does not vanish from reality but merges with The Consciousness. Thus life which originates from the eternal breath of life continues to exist even after physical death and one understands, apart from any religious affiliation, that life is eternal and hence there is life-beyond-death.

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Cf Omega 2 (1) (2003) pp.66-79.