When it comes to views on Afterlife, there are three main groups of people.
The largest group by far are the Religionists. These people usually hold vague notions about Heaven and Hell, which have been drummed into them from childhood, and some variation of a reward/punishment model for a virtuous or a sinful life.
The second group are the Materialists. They don’t believe in the Afterlife at all, dismiss it as nonsense, and don’t want to hear anything about it.
The third and the smallest group are those who actually study the surprisingly voluminous amount of knowledge and information available on the Afterlife from a large variety of sources.
But why bother learning about the Afterlife at all?
Most people are too focused on their day-to-day activities to have time for such abstract ideas as Afterlife.
In his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey tells a great story about a team of people cutting their way through the jungle with machetes.
They’re the producers, the problem solvers. They’re cutting through the undergrowth, clearing it out.
The managers are behind them, sharpening their machetes, writing policy and procedure manuals, holding muscle development programs, bringing in improved technologies and setting up working schedules and compensation programs for machete wielders.
The leader is the one who climbs the tallest tree, surveys the entire situation, and yells, “Wrong jungle!”
If you believe, like the Materialists, that you only live once and that when you die, you’ll disappear into the oblivion; or even if you believe like the Religionists in Heaven and Hell and the reward/punishment model, most of your life decisions will be founded in fear. You’ll stay in dead-end jobs or a loveless marriages for fear of scarcity and lack. You will not take chances, you’ll be too busy trying to protect yourself from all sorts of imaginary dangers. Fear, masked and suppressed, will rule your life.
If, however, you take the time to examine, learn and understand the materials on Afterlife, your perspective will change dramatically. You will begin making life choices based on fun and excitement. Your whole life will change dramatically and for the better.
Studying the Afterlife does not mean accepting anything on faith. There is a ton of legitimate, verifiable research available out there.
Inevitably, the question is asked: if there is so much evidence and legitimate information out there, how come this knowledge is not commonplace or accepted by science?
The answer is: we are human beings, not robots. We don’t always do things that are logical or even make sense. Not right away, anyway.
Remember Giordano Bruno? The guy who was tortured and killed by the Inquisition for saying that the Earth revolves around the Sun? There is evidence that most of the educated people of the era had that knowledge for about 200 years before Giordano. It just wasn’t publicly accepted or acknowledged by the Church.
in the same way, the knowledge and the evidence of Afterlife is out there, you just need to examine it and make up your own mind. Why? To gain some perspective. To stop living in fear. To free yourself and enjoy every moment of this wonderful, rich with meaning and purpose life of yours.
Like they say, perspective is everything.