What happens when an atheist dies and found out that there is life after death?

Tagged:

I’m lucky enough to have resources to point to to answer this question. If you’re up for some reading and video watching, continue on. I don’t have any direct experience on this topic so my beliefs align with Swedenborg’s, with the important caveat that Swedenborg did most of his writing in the early 1700s, and the afterlife evolves just as human society does. While the basics don’t change much, the finer specifics of individuals and societies certainly can.

Karen Childs of The Swedenborg Foundation writes:

The important thing, from Swedenborg’s perspective, is to be someone who inwardly follows Christ, not outwardly. Someone can belong to the Christian religion and profess a belief in Jesus Christ and yet live in a way that’s totally contrary to Christ’s teachings. Those people, Swedenborg tells us, cannot get into heaven. That is why Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matthew 7:21).

As to the mechanics, generally speaking everyone follows the same process regardless of professed creed after death. This video from the SF describes the process. This video describes how memory works from a spiritual perspective and makes the argument that, just as old ideas you had, say, as a teenager, don’t make it into later phases in life unless you have a reason to really care about them, one’s beliefs on the true nature of existence, only have a mild impact in the afterlife.

Because of how common near death experiences are, we have a surprising amount of data points to consider, synthesizing them all together weaves a picture of a non-religious process. Nobody’s gotten it 100% right, and even mystics like Swedenborg have inner biases that color their perspective.