May 8, 2018

The afterlife is the belief that an essential part of an individual’s identity or the stream of consciousness continues to manifest after the death of the physical body. According to various ideas about the afterlife, the essential aspect of the individual that lives on after death may be some partial element, or the entire soul, of an individual, which carries with it and may confer personal identity. Belief in an afterlife, which may be naturalistic or supernatural, is in contrast to the belief in oblivion after death.

Major views on the afterlife derive from religion, esotericism and metaphysics.

Some belief systems, such as those in the Abrahamic tradition, hold that the dead go to a specific plane of existence after death, as determined by God, or other divine judgment, based on their actions or beliefs during life. In contrast, in systems of reincarnation, such as those in the Indian religions, the nature of the continued existence is determined directly by the actions of the individual in the ended life, rather than through the decision of different being.

When asking about the afterlife to fellow students I got a wide range of views, a Junior named Mikki Matson said “I don’t believe in one set religion that I follow, I enjoy learning and getting to interact with lots of other religions and just to embrace everybody and what they believe in.”

But a Sophomore who would like to remain anonymous said their views on the topic said, “I don’t really believe in anything, I don’t see a point in believing in some greater power. We all die on day, some people just need to learn to embrace that.”

None of us know for sure if the afterlife is truly real or not, but one day eighty years from now we will. Enjoy everything you can, while you can still do it.