What happens after physical death?

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The subject has been extensively covered by Emmanuel Swedenborg. I build my understanding of the afterlife and, indeed, my entire conception of existence, on top of his, and other mystics.

Other mystics have their take on the afterlife, but Swedenborg’s is unique both in descriptive weight and it’s foundation in Christian theology. I’ve never run into quite the same combination before, so I am forced to adopt, nearly wholesale, his perceptions.

Why Christian? That’s a big question. It essentially boils down to what I call the “additive nature of theology.” Theology forms a corpus of knowledge that can only be added to, never taken away from. Ancient ideas of tribal gods of good and evil are resolved both with the Judaic idea of monotheism, which evolved through the Zoroastrian conception, along with the Hindu idea of samsara. These ideas represent the purification of religious thought into fundamental ideas.

The next series of advancements came with Buddhism and Christianity, both movements founded by individual founders fighting against the common religious conceptions of the day. Despite later theologies making their teachings quite different, initially they were very similar. Jesus wanted you to get guidance on truth and goodness through God, Buddha wanted you to get it through meditation, and the two techniques, meditation and prayer, well it’s easier to say how they’re similar than how they’re different.

Swedenborg gives a clarifying theology for the spiritual world based on the twin principles of love and truth. His entire conception of the afterlife is grounded in these two principles, and I have done quite a bit of work trying to synthesize a picture of all of existence, not just what Swedenborg saw, by incorporating the work of another mystic who attempted to unify Eastern and Western theologies, Dr. David R. Hawkins.

With that all said, allow me to paint a picture of the afterlife based on my understanding of how we, and the universe, works.

Eternity is a weird concept. It’s intimately concerned with the idea of stasis. Something can only last literally forever if it literally never changes. Things last longer when they don’t change quickly. If things change too quickly, they’ll eventually fall apart.

Living things need something more than unchangingness if they’re going to exist for very long periods of time. They need an organizing principle. Most Christians call this the soul. The soul is ultimately the locus of identity. It doesn’t matter if you or your spirit dies, the soul will, eventually, imprint into another form of existence.

Spirits and bodies are merely forms of existence. When you dream, a dream version of you that is imprinted from your soul ventures out into a created reality and acts as the character in a created story. In the end this dream version, along with the reality it existed in, is obliterated. Death is no obstacle to the soul.

Religion hopes to teach us a better way to exist. They invariably involve subordinating the desires of the flesh to the needs of the spirit. Spiritual existence is divorced from physical existence and understanding it is ultimately the province of intellectual pursuit. Most intellectualism is based on ideas only found through the senses, eventually the concept of rationalism, created at the same time that Buddhism and Christianity, started to give more clarity and color to pure theology.

Through religion, and I’m using the term quite loosely here, just about any subordination of the base self to outside forces can be considered religious, one may raise consciousness.

Humans are extremely sophisticated entities, which require extremely advanced theology to come to full understanding of their capabilities and functioning. There are many ways to exist in the world, existing as a human is essentially living at the razor’s edge of all of creation’s evolution. There are more sophisticated ways to exist, but humans are special in special ways.

The reason why has to do with the stuff humans are made of, matter. This stuff is quite literally the bones of previous incarnations of sentient existence. Matter can be imprinted with souls, this soul imprinting mixes with the already-existing agency of the matter itself, and produces a human being that can produce results from the matter in accordance with will. How well the surrounding matter responds to will accords with the being’s level of consciousness, and anything the being learns raises the soul’s level of consciousness, which then makes each incarnation more powerful.

I used to entertain Buddhist-style reincarnation. I now believe solely in Christian-style afterlife. Buddhist theology isn’t exactly wrong, it’s just more easily reconciled with Christian theology than vice versa.

Thus, life has spiritual and material components. When the body dies, the spiritual component proceeds into a new realm governed by spiritual rules. This proceeds until the end of creation, then another big bang happens and more pan-psychic matter is created that is more powerful for souls to imprint on.

There’s an unfathomable community of accumulated knowledge and wisdom that governs the ‘matter’ that imprinted beings enjoy. And there’s an endless wonders that these beings can discover and command. The beings die, but the promise of this accumulated knowledge and wisdom, termed by us humans as God, is eternal and omni-benevolent.

All negative events are balanced by positive ones. If you suffer now, rest assured that greater rewards lie in wait. The rewards are intrinsically linked to the suffering, and each soul has experienced unfathomable heights and depths already, only the extra-ordinarily intricate nature of the lives we live is able to produce something truly novel to us, and only through experiencing everlasting novelty are we able to combat boredom and the eventual stasis that results.

The existence of pan-psychic matter has been of special curiosity to me lately. Brute matter is governed by spiritual law, this law is specially governed by the need to give brand new humans the best possible environment for growth. Material humans evolve spiritually, so that they can best exist amongst their spiritual brethren when the body dies. Humans have limited consciousness, so spirits make up the difference. Have you ever had a flash of brilliance or an idea that you didn’t feel responsible for? A whole community of spirits arrived at it through breathtaking coordination.

When you die you slowly, slowly, slowly shed elements of individuality, at the pace of your will to do so. You’re more willing to participate in collective pursuits, more willing to give up individualistic suffering for collective pleasure. It’s always going to be more pleasurable to give and receive than it is to merely receive.

Existence evolves, and the spiritual world is no different. Advancements filter out into the spiritual world and give collective spirits more reason to be more individual, and then the individuals find more interesting ways to be more collective. Stories and media like Star Wars represent the potential of future forms of existence, perhaps even within the timeline of this universe. Already magic is possible, and I explore the potential of magic regularly.

So what is the afterlife? Well it’s a realm where you get to be human, only without all the ugly downsides caused by material existence. Your spiritual body is composed of spiritual matter, which is infinitely more sophisticated than brute matter is. You’re given access to the full weight and power of spiritual wisdom and love and you can accept or reject it as you please. Anything you wish to do or learn is your birthright. You inevitably and invariably become that which you’ve always wanted to be, and you are given a peer group of people who want the same things the same way. All beings, from all universes, from all time, have contributed to the understandings you will enjoy in the afterlife.

So what then, is the purpose of Earthly life? Simple, differentiation. No one can understand everything at the same time. And if they did, things would be kind of boring. Earthly life feels very long for you, but it’s nothing compared to spiritual existence. You create the true self that you grow into here. It might not feel unique and special to you here, but trust me, when you hit the afterlife it will hit you like a ton of bricks.

Also because all of existence watches very very closely what humans do and why. Existence created this whole world, with all the knowledge and wisdom it possessed, from all the previous times it did this, so each act and consequence every human takes, is watched supremely closely. Our technology and internet must have evolved a thousand times before, but each time is new and fresh for the people who had a role in it those previous thousand times.

Countless beings are watching everything. You will eventually become one of them, one of the myriad of impossibly smart entities who have seen everything the world currently has to offer and chose to spend an eternity on a very specific part of it.

But only after you experience literally everything first. That’s the purpose of the afterlife. To show you why it’s all here.