AFTERLIFE IN WORLD RELIGIONS

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Belief in continuing life after death. Most religions hold that there  exists an afterlife. The way in which this afterlife  is pictured varies greatly among the world’s religions. Some envision a shadowy other world or  one similar to this one; some see eternal reward  or punishment in HEAVEN or HELL; some believe in REINCARNATION (or coming back to be born again) in human or animal form; some envision ultimate absorption into GOD or eternal reality.

Many of the world’s early religions held that the afterlife was about the same for almost everyone. The Ainu of northern Japan considered it a  world that was just the opposite of the present world, so that when it was day here it was night there; one alternated between the two. Native Americans often viewed the world of departed spirits as being like this one but better; it was a place where crops and the hunt were always bountiful and the weather mild. Among them, as among many primal peoples, the shaman  was an important religious figure who was believed able to travel between this world and the next, bearing messages, invoking gods and spirits, and guiding the souls of the departed to their eternal home.

For the ancient Egyptians, the afterlife was very important, above all for the pharaoh as the supreme human being in charge of all others. The soul’s journey after death required elaborate preparations, such as making the body into a mummy. It was said that the soul would be weighed against a feather to see how virtuous it was.

In ZOROASTRIANISM it is believed that after death the soul crosses a bridge to the other world, which becomes a wide highway for the righteous but narrow as a razor for the wicked. The latter then fall off into hell to be temporarily punished. On the last day God will resurrect (raise up and restore to  life in their bodies) all persons and create a fresh and beautiful Earth where they all will live joyously forever. The same themes—an individual judgment after death, then a general resurrection and new Heaven and Earth at the end of the world—can  be found in the Western family of monotheist  (believing in one God) religions besides Zoroastrianism: JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY, and ISLAM. In the Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament to Christians) there is little reference to the afterlife until the last few centuries B.C.E., after the Jews had encountered Zoroastrian or similar concepts during their exile in Babylon. Modern Judaism has not emphasized the afterlife as much as some other religions. It is more concerned with the good life in this world and the survival of the Jewish people. Many Jews acknowledge, however, that the righteous continue for all time to live in the presence of God. Jews have held differing emphases, some stressing the immortality (undying nature) of the soul and its reward or punishment after death; others believe in the RESURRECTION of the body; a few have believed in  reincarnation; still others have just emphasized life in this world.

Christianity, influenced by both Jewish beliefs and Greek concepts of the immortality of the soul, has given great importance to heaven as a place of eternal reward and happiness, and hell as a place of eternal punishment for the wicked. In ROMAN CATHOLICISM there is a third state, purgatory, where those neither ready for heaven nor bad enough for hell can suffer temporary punishment to purge away their sins and finally enter heaven. Christianity traditionally speaks of an individual judgment of the soul at the time of death, and then a bodily resurrection of all the dead at the end of the world with a final judgment. Islam affirms a day of judgment, when the righteous will be assigned to a paradise filled with wonderful delights, and there is a more vaguely described place of punishment for the wicked.

In the East, HINDUISM emphasizes reincarnation based on KARMA, or cause and effect; for every thought, word, and deed there is a consequence.  One can be reincarnated as an animal, human, or in a heavenly or hellish state that will last until the good or bad karma is exhausted. The ultimate ideal is to become one with God, and so go beyond death and rebirth altogether.

BUDDHISM is similar to Hinduism. There are six places of possible rebirth, depending on karma: the hells, the realm of the hungry ghosts, the realm of the asuras or titans (fighting giants), as an animal, as a human, or in one of the heavens. These too last only as long as the bad or good karma, and the supreme achievement is to become a Buddha  and enter NIRVANA, unconditioned reality beyond  life or death. In one important form of Buddhism,  PURE LAND BUDDHISM, those who express faith in AMIDA Buddha will be reborn after death in the  Pure Land, a paradisal realm from which entering  into Nirvana is easy.

In China, TAOISM speaks of becoming an immortal, a deathless one, in this world or a heavenly realm. There are ways to attain immortality through YOGA or MEDITATION, through taking medicines of immortality made by ALCHEMY, and through virtuous living. CONFUCIANISM, because of  its emphasis on the family, makes much of ancestral spirits that continue to bless the living. They  are venerated at ancestral tablets in the home, in  family temples, and at the grave.

Although images of the afterlife in the world’s  religions are varied, many of these images have  in common three features. First, the afterlife is a  place of judgment in which the injustices of this  world will be corrected; the wicked will be punished and the good rewarded. Second, the world religions’ concepts of the afterlife see it as—at least for the righteous—a place of ease and beauty that compensates for the hardness of this world. 

Third, whatever its form, the belief means that there is more to the fullness of human life than  just this world, that our lives are lived out on a  larger stage.

By Robert S. Ellwood and Gregory D. Alles in "The Encyclopedia of World Religions", Facts On File, New York, USA, 2007, excerpts pp.8-10. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted buy Leopoldo Costa.