So let‘s say you‘ve gotten yourself into a situation,
what kind of a situation? Well it’s quite simple... you‘re dead. No matter though, I
mean statistically speaking that was quite likely to happen, the real question is what happens next?
Not to your physical body, I mean we all know what happens to that, but I mean to your consciousness,
who the person was inside (assuming there even is such a thing separate from the body in the
first place), which is where religion and culture comes in to at least try to answer this seemingly
unanswerable question, since it’s difficult (and also terrifying) to imagine your consciousness
disappearing altogether. So what do all the different cultures of the world believe
happens after death? And how does this affect those still living?
Starting off with the Abrahamic religions, Christianity-- like a lot of beliefs-- teaches of
the afterlife as consisting of multiple pieces, depending on whether the person in question
was good or bad. As Knowing Better and Overly Sarcastic Productions both already explained, much
of our concepts of Christian afterlife (namely in popular culture) come from Dante Alighieri’s
Divine Comedy, a series meant as a political commentary that nonetheless provided new,
detailed imaginings of heaven and hell, and the introduction of an intermediary called purgatory,
which in belief only really exists in Roman Catholicism, as beliefs in the afterlife
can vary drastically by one’s particular sect. Basically there’s always a heaven and a hell,
but who goes where, what they’re like, and what comes in between is highly disputed.
Islam has quite similar beliefs in some ways, though the Qur’an goes into much more detail
about the paradise (Jannah) and hell (Jahannam), one of which one might end up in depending on
their level of iman, or faith, in life. However, while Christians believe the transition from
life to afterlife comes somewhat shortly after death, in Islam the dead wait in their graves
for Youm al-Qiyama, the Great Day of Judgement, when God/Allah sends the good to Jannah and the
bad to Jahannam, though those still waiting in their graves still get a small taste of
what’s to come. Jannah is said to be a world of endless physical and spiritual pleasure,
whereas in Jahannam one is continually tortured with the body renewed to endure more torture.
So yeah there’s a bit of a difference. In Judaism however, well that’s a bit
more complicated. The afterlife isn’t generally talked about in Jewish circles, with no real
mention whatsoever in the Torah. One place often mentioned though is Sheol, a shadowy realm where
the dead go, though in some later traditions it’s only the wicked dead. It’s very much up for debate
and interpretation though, as Jewish tradition is much more focused on the actions of this world,
so don’t expect a straight answer from us. Hinduism quite famously doesn’t have an afterlife,
but rather believes in reincarnation. In Hinduism life exists in a cycle called samsara,
a chain of births and deaths strung together by reincarnation. Depending on one’s level of karma,
one might be reincarnated in either a higher or a lower form,
though the eventual goal is moksha, an escape from this cycle of reincarnation.
In Buddhism the belief is much similar, though with an Eight-Fold Path to an easier escape
from samsara, a cycle believed by Hindus and Buddhists alike to be a painful one,
though do keep in mind all desire must be purged before moksha can actually happen. Once
moksha does happen though, the spirit may merge with the creator god Brahma for all eternity.
In Shintoism however, the spirit merges with the divine, possibly becoming a god,
though the corpse is deemed dirty and impure, explaining the lack of Shinto cemeteries.
Let’s now go up north, where I should definitely talk about the famous afterlife belief
of Norse tradition. Much of the information on this has been lost over the millennium of
non-worship, but in short the Norse afterlife is divided into multiple different realms
where a dead Viking would go depending on how they died. Amongst those who died in battle, half would
go to Odin’s hall Valhalla and the other half to Freyja’s field Fólkvangr. The Realm of Rán
was where drowned sailors would go, having been caught in the goddess Rán’s net. Hel meanwhile was
basically where everyone else went. Despite its name, it wasn’t a place of eternal punishment and
damnation, but rather a grey, foggy underworld. While we’re still up north, let’s also briefly
talk about the Inuit conception of the afterlife. In Inuit beliefs, Silla is a formless spirit of
the wind and weather, with a person’s breath seen as being intertwined with the wind. Thus, when a
person dies, it is said that their breath departs the body to once more become one with Silla.
Of course what is believed to happen after death can strongly influence how a culture cares for the
bodies of the deceased. For instance in Ancient Egypt, dead pharaohs (and later also nobles)
were mummified as a way to help the spirit recognize its body to be reunified. TED-Ed
made a good video all about this, but we know much of this through a scroll known as the
Book of the Dead, a scroll describing a soul’s journey through the Duat, or the underworld,
past monsters and demons, and through to have their heart judged by the feather of truth,
if the heart is heavier than the feather (weighed down by the sins of their life) it gets eaten by
the part-crocodile part-lion part-hippopotamus Ammut, and the soul ceases to exist altogether.
If the heart weighs less however, the person in question is sent to Osiris to give them final
clearance to the afterlife, which it turns out is basically a giant farm to be tended
for all eternity. There’s no pain or sadness there, but hey you do you, ancient Egyptians.
Obviously it’s difficult to say whether or not there is something awaiting your consciousness
after death. On the one hand, if your brain is no longer working then logically your consciousness
would just disappear, but on the other hand, is that something you can even picture?
Just... not existing? Yeah, it‘s kind of hard to imagine that.
Thank you as always for watching. As always if you enjoyed it you can… yeah you know what, I’m
always telling you to like, share, and subscribe to learn something new every Sunday, but then
again I’m not your parent, I can’t tell you what to do. So yeah, just interact with this video and
the channel in whichever way you’d like I guess. I mean that’s how it always goes, it’s not like
I’m ever forcing you to do this stuff… Yeah okay that definitely took a different turn than normal.