The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Death is a biological phenomenon that every living thing most go through. However, it is very unusual for a living creature to experience a near death experience where they are privy to some form of the "after life."

People who have reported being on the verge of dying,but were then miraculous saved, tell amazing stories about what they believe might have been the after life.

One of the most common myths includes the theory that right before you die you begin to travel through a tunnel and at the end of which their is glowing light. The light presumably is the after life which may include heaven, or hell or any number of things. No person can be sure. There may not even be an afterlife. However, if there was one it is argued that this tunnel of light may be experienced because of previously unearthed memories of birth.

For example, when any one is born they are in the darkness of their mother's womb. and then they travel out into the light.

Many people have been led to believe that like when you are born, when you die the light at the end of the tunnel brings you to your loved ones, friends and relatives, who have already passed on and are there to greet and welcome you.

Can You Predict Death?

Type in death and you will find that a lot of interesting websites pop up. Some of the first results include a wikipedia definition of Death the bioligical occurence and Death the band, the next is the Social Security Death Index, then Near Death Experience, and the most interesting of all is the Death Clock.

The Death Clock can found at http://www.deathclock.com/ and it uses your date of birth including your day, month, and year. Then, it asks what is your sex? and what type of person are you normal, optimist, sadist, or pessimist? Also, it includes questions about your Body Mass Index and Smoking Status. From this little amount of information this website claims to be able to predict a relatively accurate death day.

However, this precision is easily questioned as you try again and again. A few times I have gotten the same day, but most of the time the day changes with every press of the 'check your death day' button, even with the same information.

However, suppose this clock was accurate. Would you check your death day? Would you want to know? Do you think you would live your life better if you knew when you would die to the exact day?

Decomposition

Death is the end of life. Some people believe the soul goes survives, but one thing we do know is that the human body doesn't. So then what happens to the humans exterior after death?

Well first the people who loved the recently passed away have to say goodbye. Around the world people grieve in thousands of different ways, but in Western Society when death occurs most people have funeral to give the person a formal goodbye. A funeral normally involves the church, a eulogy, a casket, and a burial. The body of person is placed in the casket and buried in a graveyard. This blog is about what happens to the body once it is placed in the ground and the dirt is shoveled on top.

To begin with, soon after some one dies there heart stops beating and their cells stop working. This causes such sensations like rigor mortis which happens about 3 hours after death and causes the stiffening of muscles. The muscles then remain stiff until they begin to decompose which usually starts to happen 36 hours after death. Furthermore, the front/ top of the body begins to pale while the bottom/ back half of the body turns dark and purplish. This phenomenon occurs because the blood from the upper half of the body leaks, drains, and collects in the lower surfaces of the body. Another interesting fact is that although the body gets cold from the core within 24 hours, bone and skin cells can live up to several days after death.

Once the body is buried however other creatures start to help along the decomposition process. For example, the first thing that inhabits the body is bacteria and is then followed by mites, moths, flies, parastoid wasps, maggots and worms. These organisms are usually responsible for eating the inside of a body. Another gross fact is that usually these insects lay their larvae and pupae in the flesh to hatch. Once the body is completely dry, then the beetles come in and devour the rest of the skin and ligaments while mites consume the hair. This leaves just the bones to slowly decompose overtime.

Another common phenomenon that occurs after the body is buried is called "grave wax." This white waxy substance accumulates on the parts of the body that used to carry fat- such as the cheeks, stomach, and butt. It is caused by a chemical reaction due to the presence of bacterial enzymes, hydrogen and water. Yet "grave wax" is unlikely to occur in the presence of a lot of insects.

If you want to avoid all of this, there is away, and it is fairly common- cremation- which involves burning the dead body into ashes.

The Meaninglessness of Life

Existentialism is a modern philosophy that became very popular at the beginning of the twentieth century, and especially after the end of World War II. It is a bleak outlook on life, and its basic tenants state that life as we know it is, in its basic nature, completely meaningless. Humans have come to live on the earth along with the rest of the living kingdom due to a series of complicated scientific accidents, and our main purpose in life is to reproduce to pass on our genetic information. Existentialists do not believe that God has a master plan for individuals or even the world because Existentialists do not even believe in the existence of any God.

Existentialism became a mainstream ideology because people across the world could not believe the types of tragedies that were occuring. For example, when Hitler rose to power in the 1930's and then began to systematically murder millions of Europeans, religous believers and many other could not believe that God,if there was one, would let this evil happen. So many people turned to the ideas of Existentialist writers for solace. These writers included Blaise Pascal of 17th century France, Kierkegaard of 19th century Germany, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre of 20th century France.

Existentialism is an even more disturbing outlook to a nonbeliever because of its atheistic docterines. Existentialists proclaim that once you die, then everything is over. There are no afterlifes, no spirit world, no reincarnation. You die and everything is black, there are no more thoughts or feelings or consicousness.

However, although Existentialism looks like a terrible way to live your life by, believers find peace in knowing that if they try to find truth in the world they will be happy. In other words, people will die happy and have a fullfilling life if they do not decieve themselves about the truth of life and don't pretend that life is different than it is. Existentialists call these people authentic.

Egyptians

Today, the Ancient Egyptians are famous for many things. For example, when you think of Egypt some of the first things that come to mind maybe the giant Sphinx and the Great Pyramids in the middle of the Sahara desert, the Nile River, Pharaohs, Cleopatra, Tutankhamen or hieroglyphics, but the thing I always think of when I think of Egypt are mummies.

Mummies have been a source of horror for hundreds of years for the rest of the world. When we discovered the bodies of Egyptian rulers from centuries ago we were disgusted and frightened. We dressed up as the decayed creatures on Halloween, and made scary movies about mummies motives to seek revenge. We didn't understand why they would take stir up the brain to pour it out the nose or remove the liver and put it in a jar yet throw away the heart. Yet now after years of studying, historians and archaeologists have no realized that this was practice because it would help Egyptians into the afterlife.

In Ancient Egypt, it was believed that one part of your spirit (the Ka) went on a journey after you die into the underworld. When you arrived you were judged by the Egyptian Lord of the Underworld, Osiris. If Osiris deemed that your were a good person you would be reunited with your mortal body and live forever in paradise. However, to be reunited with your human body you soul would have to recognize it. It was the job of the "ba" - the human personality to reunited these two, and once the "ka" is reunited with the body, then the soul is transformed into the "akh" which is the glorified part of the human soul in the afterlife.

These beliefs meant that bodies had to be preserved perfectly so that after death you could move on into the afterlife. In order to do this, they removed organs and fluids, dried them, and then wrapped the bodies. These embalmed bodies were known as mummies, and have been the source of human curiosity and fear for hundreds of years.

Ancient Egypt was a unique society in many respects, but especially in their views of death. Unlike many other culture, the Egyptians looked forward to death and saw it as a necessary part of life's natural cycle.

Dante's Inferno

In the early 1300's an Italian man known as Dante wrote The Divine Comedy. It is considered one of the greatest works of literature in the world and is especially interesting because it deals with his view of the afterlife.

The Divine Comedy is broken into three parts the Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. Dante, the narrator, is escorted through the Inferno and Purgatory by Virgil - his hero who is not able to go to paradise because he was born before Jesus Christ- and through Paradise by Bellatrix- the love of his life. While Dante is on the verge of suicide Virgil rescues him and takes him to the underworld.

Although the entire work is astounding, my favorite part is the Inferno. The Inferno is Dante's description of Hell. Dante provides an interesting take on Hell, and one that is sure to discourage sin for most.

Upon entering Hell, Virgil and Dante pass through the gate famously inscripted with "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate" or Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. There are nine circles of Hell. Each of the nine circles represent a new sin and a new evil that is worst than the last, and every circle's sinners are punished in a manner fitting the crime.

The first circle is called Limbo ,and in it reside all of the souls who are unbaptized or born before salvation. They are faulted for lacking faith.

Yet their circle is somewhat of a broken heaven.

All of the sinners who do not belong in circle one (all of the conscious and willful sinners) are judged by Minos and sent to one of the eight lower circles.

Circle two is for souls controlled by lust, and they are forever to be torment with a raging wind that blows their souls back and forth perpetually. While Circle three is for all of the gluttons- in hell they are buried under mud while it continually rains and hales. Circle four holds the materialistic and greedy. These souls are forced to heave a great weights against another eternally. The fifth circle is a swamp divided among the wrathful, who fight each other on the surface, and the slothful who gargle under the mud.

The sixth circle claims the heretics who are fated to spend eternity in flaming tombs while those in circle seven- the violent, the suicidal, and the blasphemers are immersed in boiling blood, tormented by the Harpies, and forced to live in a flaming desert- respectively.

The last two circles contain the fraudulent and the treacherous.

In circle eight the seducers are whipped by demons, the flatters are covered in human excrement, the simoners are flung head first into holes, the false prophets bodies' are twisted around backwards, the thieves are pursued, bitten and mutated by snakes, and the falsifiers/ deceivers are afflicted with terrible diseases.

The last circle, the ninth, is full of the traitors. In the first zone, named Caina for Cain, the traitors to family are frozen up to their necks in ice. In the second zone, traitors to their countries are paralyzed from the neck down by ice. The third zone holds the traitor to his guest. These sinners are buried up to their noses in ice, and have their eyes frozen shut with their tears. Finally, in the fourth zone- saved for the traitors to their lords and God- frozen waist high is the devil. Satan has three heads, and each head separately chews on Brutus, Cassius, and Judas. Judas has by far the worst punishment of all. His head is clamped in the devil's mouth while the devil's claws forever skin his back.

Scientology

Scientology is a new wave religion created by self help guru and fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard, in 1952. He formed the first church of Scientology in 1953. Scientology is a stem off of his earlier self help system Dianetics. The difference is Scientology is "an applied religious philosophy" and it guides followers in morals, ethics, education, religion, and spirituality. Hubbard who once claimed Scientology to be secular, decided later in life that it was " a religion in the basic tenets."

One of the basic beliefs of Scientology is "that man is a spiritual being whose existence spans more than one life and who is endowed with abilities well beyond those which he normally considers he possesses." Man is naturally good at heart and his experience in the world corrupts him. Furthermore, Sceintologists never force issues of beliefs on people. You have the right to chose where you place you faith. Or in other words, "That which is true for you is what you have observed to be true."

What is most interesting about Scientology is that followers believe a person possess an immortal spirit known as a thetan. The thetan lives through many lives and continues to live after its human shell has fallen away/ died. Through a process known as "auditing" the souls cleanses its misdeeds and sins so that it can reach a state of goodness known as "Clear." After you reach the state of "Clear" you embark upon another spiritual journey to "Operating Thetan." Each of the stages represents the cleansing of the soul.

In the Axioms of Scientology it describes the thetan (spirit) as "having no mass, no wavelength, no energy and no time or location in space except by consideration or postulate. The spirit then is not a thing. It is the creator of things."

Scientology has become very popular over the last half century. Some of its biggest advocates in popular culture include Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Kristie Alley, and Priscilla Presley all of whom enthusiastically say the Scientology has changed their life drastically for the better.