Life after Death

Till recent times, scientists have believed that there is no way to know what happens after death, and that after-life, even if it exists, could not be proven. In the recent past however, there has been an increase in the number of ways in which people have started to think about this pretty common question, “What happens once we die?”

Most religion profess of some form or the other of “heaven” and “hell”, and many religions profess of rebirth. While not much can be said, scientifically, of the heaven and hell theory, many scientists now believe that rebirth may not be a farfetched idea. In a universe which is truly infinite, anything that can happen, must happen at some point of time or another. If we assume consciousness to be a manifestation of the physical arrangement of atoms and molecules, then at some other point of time (maybe in the very distant future or past), the atoms of your body which have split apart after your death, come together in a very similar form leading to you becoming conscious again. Since in the time that you’re “dead”, you have no notion of time, when you’d just die and wake up in a similar world (which could be different in a very important aspect such as whether dinosaurs are still living or as negligible as what you had for breakfast in the morning).

A similar theory, however, assumes that the universe may as well be finite, but that any “choice” or “decision” taken (even in the quantum physical sense of the word) may lead to a split of the universe into a parallel one. Hence, if you die in “this” universe, you’d be alive in an infinite number of other universes. Since we only are conscious when we are alive, we never will experience death. We tend to continue in whichever universe we live in. (Though this’d mean that we’d never lose in Russian roulette)

Sci-fi fans, however, propose that life is merely a simulation being done by a more technologically advanced civilization. That civilization too may itself be virtual, hence, we may actually be a simulation in a simulation in a simulation (and so on). This was formalized and brought to the attention of the scientific community by Nick Bostrom in 2003, with a paper titled 'Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?'

Atheists, on the other hand, believe in the theory of “nothingness” which says that consciousness passes back into the oblivion that existed before birth.

Personally, I like the persistent illusion theory that Einstein supported. It says that linearity of time is but a mere persistent illusion; that past, present and future are merely states of the mind. If a person died before me in this world, it’s only my illusion of time that tells me this. Reality may be very different.

Which one of these theories are true? We probably will never know, but we may even probably never need to know. With advances in science and medicine, it may be possible to stop or even reverse aging. Fatal wounds or infections could be remedied instantly. In such a world, “death” may just become folklore or a myth. Will this happen in our lifetime? And what kind of consequences will this have? We do not know yet, but the answers to these sure will lead to many interesting new breakthroughs.