Death is a difficult topic of conversation. People would rather not think about or talk about death. While we all know that we will die, this is a fact upon which few wish to dwell. Even though, each day countless individuals reach an untimely demise in the prime of their life, rarely do we contemplate that this risk hangs over our heads as well. Despite its inevitability, death is one of the least discussed events in our lives. Nobody wants to talk about death, but everybody wants to know if there is life after death.
Video Transcript
In this video we will try our best to shed some light on this obscure subject and don’t forget to subscribe to our channel, like, share, and leave us a comment, we’d love to hear what you think.
What is death? Death occurs when the heart stops beating. We call this death by cardiopulmonary criteria, and it is how death is defined for more than 95 percent of people. A person stops breathing and their brain shuts down, causing all life processes to cease.
Let’s investigate this further by zooming down to the level of our cells to understand the process of life and death. Chemical reactions are constantly occurring inside our bodies, those reactions are powered by the glucose and oxygen that our body converts into the energy-carrying molecule Adrenosine 5’-Triphosphate known as ATP. ATP captures chemical energy obtained from the breakdown of food molecules and releases it to fuel other cellular processes.
ATP is the principal molecule for storing and transferring energy in the cells. It is often referred to as the energy currency of the cell and can be compared to storing money in a bank. ATP can be used to store energy for future reactions or be withdrawn to pay for reactions when energy is required by the cell.
Cells use this energy for everything from repair to growth and reproduction. Not only does it take a lot of energy to make all the necessary molecules, but it takes even more energy to get them where they need to be.
Eventually, the entire cell succumbs to entropy, and this will eventually result in death. In biology, the term entropy refers to the unavailable energy in a closed system, simply put entropy means disorder in any system.
In biology, death is the point of no return, the point where there is no coming back. Tremendous progress in medicine and technology have been achieved, but still doctors can only delay the inevitable but cannot reverse the finality of death.
Some animals are known to extend their life span and survive extreme conditions by slowing down their biological processes to the point where they are virtually paused. Humans are hoping to achieve the same through cryonics procedures. Cryonics is the low-temperature freezing and storage of human remains, with the speculative hope that resurrection may be possible in the future.
This idea may sound completely baloney to a lot of you out there, but scientists seem to back up (in theory) the feasibility of such a crazy idea. If the cells are frozen, they are very little molecular movement and diffusion practically stops even if all a person’s cellular process had already broken down. This could still conceivably be reversed by a swamp of nanobots moving all the molecules back into their proper positions and injecting all the cells with ATP at the same time, causing the body to pick up where it left off.
Presumably, a large amount of money is necessary to cover the cost of having your decrepit body frozen until such time that some tech persons can build some clever nanobots with the power to bring people back from the dead.
For the rest of us, normal people with no such financial power, we just have to face the reality of our own mortality with courage and grace. There are countless reports and testimonies of people who encountered near-death experiences. It is quite eerie to realize that those reports relate very similar experiences.
People with near-death experiences describe floating above their bodies, traveling through a dark tunnel, and encountering a beam of light that enveloped their whole being with a feeling of pure love and acceptance. Some recall being accompanied by deceased loved ones.
During this journey towards the light, people take stock of their entire lives before death. They don’t review their lives on what people usually strive for, like a career, promotions, or amazing vacation. Their perspective is focused on their humanity. They notice incidents where they lacked dignity, acted inappropriately towards others, or conversely, acted with humanity and kindness.
They re-experience and relive these moments. If they caused pain, they experience the same pain that other people felt, even if they didn’t realize it at the time. They judge themselves. They suddenly realize why their actions were good or bad, and many claim to see the downstream consequences of their actions.
What about reincarnation? Where does it fit in the existential question as to whether there is life after death? Reincarnation simply means that we leave one life and go into another. The purpose of reincarnation is for the soul to get purified and gain wisdom so that it comes out of the cycle of life and death. The soul may take the form of a human, animal, or plant depending on the moral quality of the previous life’s actions.
If you practice Hinduism, you believe in reincarnation; the soul or spirit begins a new life in a new body after the biological death. One is reborn through desire. A person desires to be born because he or she wants to enjoy a body, to try to find lasting happiness and peace. The Hindu belief in reincarnation is connected to their belief in karma, which is the belief that our soul bears the impression of every good and bad deed we perform while we’re alive. Evil is punished by being low born and goodness is rewarded by being high born.
After many births, and through the process of self-awareness and self-development, people will come to realize that the true “self” is the immortal soul rather than the body or the ego; all desires for the pleasures of the world will vanish since they will seem insipid compared to spiritual peace. When all desire has vanished, the person will not be born again. When the cycle of rebirth comes to an end, a person is said to have attained liberation.
The Buddhist concept of reincarnation differs from others in that there is no eternal “soul”, “spirit” or “Self” but only a “stream of consciousness” that links life with life. At the death of one personality, a new one comes into being, much as the flame of a dying candle can serve to light the flame of another. Buddhists also believe in karma or intentional action. Through good actions, such as ethical conduct, and by developing concentration and wisdom, Buddhists hope to either gain enlightenment or ensure a better future for themselves.
The concept of reincarnation is refuted by Islam. The reason for this is that it is against their basic teachings of a finite life for the human upon which he/she is judged and rewarded accordingly. The principal belief in Islam is that there is only one birth on this earth. Doomsday comes after death and people will be judged as to whether they will go to hell or be unified with God.
The major Christian denominations reject the concept of reincarnation. Christians believe that when a person dies their soul would sleep in the grave along with their corpse until the “final judgment.” Christians believe in the resurrection of the dead. This is the belief that our dead bodies will someday, like Jesus, be revived and brought back to life. They reject the concept of an immaterial soul being inserted into a new human life through reincarnation, but they believe that the dead would be brought back to full and pulsing life through resurrection. This said, there is evidence in the bible of Jesus himself teaching reincarnation to his discipline when he was talking about the concept of everlasting life.
Whether you believe that there is life after death or not is up to you and nobody can claim to know for sure that there is life after death. What is clear however is all the people who had near death-experiences came back to the world of the living with a completely new mindset and a will to live their life more intentionally and more intensely.
Although those out-of-the-ordinary experiences are interesting, it is not surprising to think that if you were at death’s door, went on the other side, then came back into the world of the living, for sure you will feel ecstatic and motivated to live your life differently. More difficult to tackle is trying to ascertain how contemplating death could teach us how to live without having to travel to the other side.
Philosophers spent their days thinking about the meaning of life and you can’t talk about life without having to talk about death. Countless philosophers, theologians, and psychologists did not hesitate to tackle this tricky subject and spend countless hours dwelling on it. Their conclusion: death is inextricably part of life and lifelong consideration of death enriches rather than impoverishes life. These individuals recognized that far from a morbid practice, periodically thinking about death can be life-enhancing.
The truth of the matter is that we mortals should be reminded from time to time of our own limitations. To live fully we must be cognizant of our limitations, the most significant of which is the scarcity and uncertain duration of time we are each granted. Failure to recognize this limitation and to live accordingly is one of the most tragic tendencies of mankind. We tend to sacrifice and devalue the present in the false hope that there will always be a future in which to make amends. But the future does not belong to us. Contemplating death forces us to reorient ourselves toward the present moment, and to live life with a renewed sense of urgency.
When de Dalai Lama was asked in an interview, what surprises him the most; he offered an insightful response:
“Man, because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as he is never going to die, and then dies never really lived.”
Thanks for watching, we hope that this brought you some clarity on this obscure subject, and don’t forget to subscribe, like, share and comment!
Yours Truly, Scriptwriter, Joanne Reed
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