philosophy, afterlife Essay

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Is There Life After Death?

When a human being ceases to exist physically, does something within them pass on to another state or dimension, or do their life and consciousness in all forms come to an end? Is there life after death? Based on the Argument from Parapsychological Phenomena, I will argue that life after death indeed exists.
There are people who have experienced extrasensory perception by experiencing things that were not perceived by their physical senses, but within their inner selves. Experiences that are extrasensory reflect the existence of a substance that is beyond the mind and body. This means that this substance manages to survive after a physical death, proving in this form its immortality. Therefore, a deduction can be made that there is a paranormal dimension that exists. When a person dies physically, an immaterial substance exists within its physical component that does not die. Such immaterial is often referred to as the soul. Therefore, the soul amounts to being immortal (Barry, 2007, pp.130-138).
There have been several scientific studies based on other people’s experiences which suggest that souls do exist. Near Death Experience, Deathbed Visions, Apparitions, Materializations, Out of Body Experiences, and Messages from the Dead and Beyond, are some of the phenomena that have previously been researched by parapsychologists and which account as good evidence for the existence of paranormal activity.
Patients, who thanks to the application of science and technology in healthcare have been brought back to life after having suffered a clinical death. They claim to have endured Near Death Experiences, giving the description of extraordinary experiences such as seeing a figure of light or gradient, meeting and having conversations with deceased loved ones and going through a tunnel have been described (Barry, 2007, pp. 131).
In Death Bed Visions research, personnel who are employed in hospitals and hospices claim to have witness patients, who were about to die, see apparitions of deceased just before they pass away. Other researches regarding this matter have accounts of patients talking about travelling or going on a journey while they are at a stage where they are nearing death (Barry, 2007, pp. 131-132).
Research on Apparitions and Materializations has been done and like the preceding phenomena, this one to involve the apparition of a soul, but with the difference that not only someone who is near death can see such apparition. The apparition can as well be experienced by someone who is completely sane and in a healthy stage of consciousness (Barry, 2007, pp. 132-133).
During Out-of-Body Experiences, people felt to have exited their bodies and from another dimension in space, they saw their bodies lying in bed. The founder of analytical psychology, himself experienced an out-of-body experience at a time he was having a heart attack. While in this state, he wandered around different parts of the world and eventually was brought back to consciousness by his physician (Barry, 2007, pp. 133-134).
Messages from Dead and the Beyond such as the “cross correspondences” addressed to psychic mediums from three psychical researchers, Myers, Sidgwick, and Gurney, serves as crucial evidence for the existence of a dimension beyond this one (Barry, 2007, pp. 134-136). Death Experiences like the ones just
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