For this assignment, I had some difficulty deciding on the main topic that I would want to tackle. At first, I was considering looking into the Mandela Effect. I found this idea fascinating in terms of how a group of individuals can form a collective memory that somehow, in some cases, years later find out was misheard or misread. However, looking into the matter, I realized that some of the Mandela Effect’s examples were already things that I have always thought to be correct. In searching for another exciting topic, I came across the frequently asked question of what life is beyond death.
As a child, like most other kids, there was this idea exposed to us of heaven and hell or this fantasy land that long-awaited us after death. However, having a Hindu upbringing, there is a major tenet towards reincarnation. For this project, I feel it would be interesting to explore the different ways that life after death is carried through different cultures, religions, and even how it is presented scientifically. It would be interesting to see if there are any similarities between the different interpretation methods as a starting point.
I would also find it interesting to dive deeper into reincarnation, particularly exploring cases where young children find themselves knowing specific details about their past life. There have been so many cases where children know exact details from a life they “once had.” There has always been something I was drawn to when I first saw a documentary, “The Boy Who Lived Before.” In this, it explored a young boy who remembers his life from a remote island, and as he and his mother travel to it, exploring his detailed memories from his "past life". To me, these cases pose the questions that I wish to explore within this project. Could there be a life after death? What does it look like? Is there a practical explanation for why these children have these memories?
It's an interesting project because the belief in an afterlife is quite common, even among people who are not religious. And there are so many ideas about the afterlife floating around.
ReplyDeleteI watched The Boy Who Lived Before and was disappointed at the end of the film when it turns out that his story does not match the actual Robertson family history at all. But it was an interesting film. It surprised me that his mother so readily arrived at a Buddhist cosmology to explain her son's stories.
There are lots of angles on this project you could take. I personally don't believe in an afterlife, but it is amazing how many traditions have grown up in practically every culture detailing what "life" is like after death. There are even elaborate geographies, as you see in Virgil's Aeneid, where the hero goes to "the underworld" to consult with his dead father.
"Heaven" in the Western and Christian tradition is usually imagined somewhere above the clouds and has similarly been given lots of detailed treatments. The Christian Bible is actually not very detailed about heaven, but a very popular book in 19th century America (published right after the Civil War, where so many Americans died) was The Gates Ajar by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, which described "Heaven" in great detail as just a nicer version of middle class America. She wrote a bunch of sequels, it was such a big hit, and it continues to be a popular theme.
Freud would have called visions of the afterlife "wish fulfillment fantasies."
I'd be curious to know what Leslie Kean writes about in Surviving Death. What form does life after death take for those not immersed in a particular religious tradition? What does life after death even mean?
And what would the consequences be? In the Robert Redford film "The Discovery," a scientist discovers evidence of life after death and it leads to an explosion of suicides. Not a very good result.