What happens after death?

Thoughts on identity and interconnectedness.

6 minute read
What happens after death?

Among the biggest mystery regarding death that comes to mind is, “What happens after you die?”. This is an age-old question that we’ve asked ourselves for as long as we could ever conceive of it. Is it the afterlife, reincarnation, or nothingness? To answer difficult questions, it is sometimes helpful to think of the opposite question. In this case, the inverse question asks: “What happens before birth?”. This question is one that is not discussed as often as the other.

Where were you before you were born?

Imagine where you were before you were born. What did you look like? Did you simply not exist?

No. You have always been here, just in a different form. You existed in many forms that gradually fused together to create the “you” that you know today. The elements that took part in forming you were carried through your parents, grandparents, and your ancestors — spanning back to the creation of our universe and beyond.

When you perish, it’s only logical that the elements that fused together to form you will return to the earth in which they came from, replenishing it. The decomposers will do their part, enriching the soil and giving life to plants — plants that will be consumed by animals, which will then be consumed by other organisms in the ecosystem. You are partaking in the cycle of life.

I understand this answer may still not be as satisfying as one would hope it to be. There is still great discomfort in imagining a life in which one no longer is. For this, it helps to question and try to understand who it truly is that you and I are.

Who are you?

We think of ourselves as individuals. But to say that something is individual means that it cannot be divided. If you look at what makes us us, we are the sum of many “individual” parts — the trillions of cells in our body that function to give us life.

Is our true self any specific subset of those cells? How many of those cells would need to be removed from us in order for us to no longer identify ourselves as our true self? Are you your brain? Are you your personality? When you think of what makes you you, what is that? Surely, your genetics play a huge role in what makes you unique, but so do your environment and life experiences.

It is not only our genetics that makes us who we are, but the fusion of ourselves and the elements around us. Your interests, your ways of thinking, and what you do have all been greatly influenced by your parents, family, friends, society, and others. All of these factors that take part in influencing who we are cause physical changes in our brain structure. There is an actual transfer or fusion of elements that is occurring when we learn new things and adopt new behaviors. Just as gases and stars in the galaxy fuse to form a new universe, as cosmic entities ourselves, we fuse with each other and our environment.

Therefore, upon your death, whether or not you had children, the same elements of your being will persist not only through your flesh replenishing the Earth, but also through the physical material that was transfused upon others from the countless interactions you had with them. Any time that you shared a thought, a joke, an idea, you physically transferred elements of your being (which were previously stored in your neurons) onto others. These thoughts or ideas, however small, have the ability to change the way people think and feel — they’re transformative. And this transformation is manifested by the process of energy transfer. If you’ve taken a physics course, you may recall the Law of Conservation of Energy which states:

Energy can be transformed from one form to another, but can be neither created nor destroyed.

At our most fundamental level, we are beings of energy. Just as there are chemical fusions in the universe, there are chemical fusions within and around us — because we are the universe. We are one in the same.

Interconnectedness

It is important that we learn to see how interconnected we are with the world around us so that we understand that there is no true death. So that we can see that there is no true self — we are all one. You are the water that’s in your blood, you are the sun that keeps you warm, you are the air that fills your lungs. Without any of these things we cease to be. Practice looking deeply within yourself and recognizing the interdependent portions of your being. In this practice, you learn to dissociate with the self and recognize your essential being. This distinction of the self and our essential being is best illustrated by the late Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, in the Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching. Comparing our lives to that of an individual wave, he writes:

When we look at the ocean, we see that each wave has a beginning and an end. A wave can be compared with other waves, and we can call it more or less beautiful, higher or lower, longer lasting or less long lasting. But if we look more deeply, we see that a wave is made of water. While living the life of a wave, the wave also lives the life of water. It would be sad if the wave did not know that it is water. It would think, ‘Some day I will have to die. This period of time is my life span, and when I arrive at the shore, I will return to nonbeing.

In this passage, Hanh compares our sense of individuality to a single wave in the ocean. The wave that identifies with itself thinks that it will die one day once it reaches the shore. While each wave is unique, they are the same in essence. If the wave recognizes that it is made of water, it would realize that it will continue being as it’s a part of an infinite ocean.

The same applies to us. We must practice looking deeply to see who and what we really are at out core. Only then, we will see that birth and death are illusory; and, they are only necessary steps in the process of transformation — a process that is fundamental for life to be.

identity
interconnectedness
death