I adopt stray dogs from shelters, and when I die, I’ll finally get to know where they came from and what they experienced before they met me. Life gives us mysteries like this that can only be solved through death.Â
Everyone dies, and everyone has a particular belief system - a personal cosmology - about what will happen when you die. The popularity of evangelical religions demonstrates that some people gain comfort from sharing the same cosmology with a group of people. However, I’d say that most people are like me, harboring a personal cosmology based on life experience. I accept the mystery. "The Truth is Out There," to quote the X-Files.
In Application of Impossible Things, Natalie Sudman tells the story of her near-death experience after she was critically injured in an explosion in Iraq. Sudman is a compelling narrator with astonishing memories of her perspective outside her body and away from her current lifetime. It’s a short, fast read, and an entertaining audiobook.
This book is here on the reading list to inspire you to think about your own personal cosmology. What do you believe happens after death? What are your core beliefs about your mind and its connection to your physical body?
The religion of orthodox science would have you believe a shared materialist cosmology that you are just your physical body and your physical brain, and there can be no consciousness or memory outside the matter of your living organism. Problem solved, there is no mystery. In the United States, mainstream society obligates people in most professions to give mouth service to this cosmology.
I, however, don't believe that human consciousness in a human body is so very special. If scientists and academics are honest with themselves, I guess that most of them don’t actually believe it either. Do you?