What I Really Think About the Afterlife
“Being alive at all is the most extraordinary stroke of good luck any of us will ever experience. The question is: What are we to make of the fantastically improbable fact of our existence, our moment of life?”
– Physicist Alan Lightman, The Atlantic
Like Hamlet, we all inwardly talk to ourselves and experience feelings that come from inside ourselves, we reflect upon ourselves. Isn’t it a miracle that a world appears before us, like a grand musical, whenever we open our eyes?
Our minds look at themselves in the mirror.
Anil Seth, the Oxford University neuroscientist, in his book, Being You, argues that consciousness is a biological controlled hallucination.
I must confess that some days it seems just like that to me.
Understanding what consciousness actually is, is one of the most significant unsolved mysteries in modern science and philosophy.
Is it only a matter of time before the mystery of consciousness yields to the power of science? Or will we never know, until maybe after we … you know.
I find it amazing that, with the exception of Sigmund Freud (1856 – 1939) and the American philosopher and psychologist William James (1842 - 1910), the scientific study of consciousness is as new as it is. This everyday miracle that we seldom think about wasn’t a central concern of science until late in the last century. Much of the reluctance to explore this has been the fear of scientists and philosophers of antagonizing the religious community which has its own beliefs when it comes to how consciousness came about and what it means. Not to mention the soul which they believe is their exclusive domain.
Is consciousness separate from our physical bodies? Does it originate in our brains? Will it survive our physical death? Can it be created or recreated using breakthrough AI?
Are we something more than the sum of the chemicals that constitute us? More than the firing neurons and synapses controlling electrical and chemical impulses which create our daily lives?
What is the soul? Does it even exist? Is it consciousness or separate from it? Isn’t the search for the nature of consciousness really about the search for the existence of the soul?
These are the real questions behind the thriller novels I’ve created, beginning with Death Never Sleeps (2013) and most recently, Death in the Kremlin (Putin gets in on the act). It will be the subject of the next book in the Michael Nicholas Series: “Where Did They Go?”
Yes, the stories are about people—but the real “rest of the story” asks these fundamental questions about our very existence. Just imagine if a thriller novel had the answers . . .
EJS