Were You Here 100 Years Ago?

A friend of mine died recently. It was sudden and unexpected, and therefore, what most people would regard as "tragic". He was in his early 60s and seemingly in good health, at least up to a few months prior to his death. The circumstances were those that we all fear - living with a fatal disease, and not knowing it.

He was advised by his doctor to have an MRI to hopefully reveal the cause of his emerging pain. But he dismissed the idea of anything serious and chose to skip the exam. It would be a number of weeks later that he died only a few hours after being admitted to hospital - the result of an undetected tumor.

Today - a few short months later, I look up into the sky and wonder if he's still around.?

As a child, I remember seeing a strange human-like figure rapidly move in the yard of our farm house. My brother would see it also on occasion, as would our mother. We all dismissed the odd sightings as nonsense - our minds playing tricks on us. We learned later that a man had died in our house 50 years prior to the strange appearances.

These days, I often wonder about my childhood experience, causing me to dig further.

Over the past 20 years, a number of researchers have been exploring the incredible possibility that our consciousness is able to leave our body when we die and either float around for eternity, or enter the physical body of a newborn baby on a pathway to another life. This is known as reincarnation. The belief that we never really die, but instead, occupy new physical bodies, as our "essence" or "consciousness" exists forever.??

But how is it possible for our consciousness to exist without a brain? Are we to believe that our essence is literally just floating in space? Perhaps more plausible is the idea that our core being is encapsulated within what has been called a "spirit" or "soul" - not visible with the naked eye, yet present never-the-less. This would be much like the air we breath. We cannot see it or touch it, yet it exists.

If we can make that leap of faith that air and space are eternal, all around us, and, at least in the case of deep space - without ending, then perhaps it is not as great a leap as we may think - to believe also in a soul that keeps our personality safe and with continuity.

Just because we cannot see something does not mean it doesn't exist.

In her jaw-dropping book "Surviving Death" journalist Leslie Kean interviews families that have experienced life after death. There are hundreds of documented cases of young children who - even as young as 2 years old - have recalled a past life with shocking accuracy and clarity.

In one case, a small boy remembered dying in a World War Two aircraft, even claiming that it was the Japanese who shot at him. He suffered many nightmares until he grew older when the memories faded. In another case, a child remembered being in a Hollywood movie. Even more unbelievable is that some of these children, when shown a photograph of a deceased person who fit the life circumstances they described, were able to confirm that the person in the photo was indeed them.

One case in the book was about a 6-year old boy who argued that he was not age 6 at all, but in fact, was 106. The age he would be, had his previous life continued to this day.

Psychological testing showed there was nothing wrong with any of these children. They were otherwise perfectly normal.

Then there is the shocking story of Dr Eben Alexander whose brain was severely damaged in 2008 by a case of bacterial meningitis. The doctor slipped into a week-long coma - but when he emerged, he told an unbelievable story. He claims that while he was clinically brain dead, he experienced "living" - even travelling to far away places, for what he says seemed like a full year, not one week.

In his book "Living in a Mindful Universe" Doctor Alexander suggests that the body is a temporary housing facility, and that consciousness does not depend upon it. It can exist on its own in what he refers to as "non local consciousness".?

Stories of out-of-body experiences in which a person sees themselves from the air, the reincarnation stories in the book "Surviving Death", the experience of Eben Alexander, and my own childhood memories of seeing what appeared to be a ghostly figure - all have me wondering if my conscience - the thing that defines who I am, might very well continue after my physical body has run out of steam (which it seems to be doing as each day passes).

If we choose to embrace the idea of an existence beyond the physical realm, we begin to see life differently. We may become less anxious and more hopeful.

We can take ourselves and our complicated, often frustrating lives, less seriously. And we can have a degree of comfort, that - no, this is not all there is - that loved ones who have gone before us, like my friend, are really, somehow, still with us. Or at least, as we often say when someone has died "in a better place."

As we try to figure out why the world has gone so bonkers, and why there seems to be one disaster after another - we can - maybe, just maybe - relax a little more - knowing that we'll be around to see a better day.