Meditation 82: The Longing for Immortality

Why is the wish for immortality so strong in human beings? As far back as we can see, there are images of a life beyond the grave or funeral pyre. Some are pleasant images; others not so pleasant. For example, the ancient Egyptians believed that, with the proper rituals, the soul of the dead person would attain the Western Paradise after overcoming many obstacles and dangers with the aid of magical charms and incantations. 

In ancient Greece, on the other hand, the idea of going to Hades was not a prospect to be eagerly awaited. The souls there are merely shades who glide around gibbering to each other, having lost the power of rational speech. Achilles, the great hero, says he would rather be a slave on earth than a king in Hades. The best place in Hades is Elysium, but only the few best souls go there. The worst are thrown into Tartarus, an unpleasant place impossible to escape.

With the Christian view, matters are even starker. If we live a righteous life, or are chosen by God, we shall go to Heaven and join the Heavenly Choir. If we do not live rightly, or are not chosen by God, then we are doomed to perdition. Our souls will rush to eternal torment.

Others imagine that the afterlife is really ‘another’ life, set in the future, starring you again, through the transmigration of your soul from one body to another according to the law of Karma.  According to this law, the life one lives now affects the quality of the next life. Your punishment or reward will catch up with you in an embodied life like the one you are living now.

The only alternative to the afterlife or ‘another’ life is no future life at all, and yet this has hardly been explored. Socrates does mention the possibility, only to say that we ought not worry about death if it is simple extinction, but that, if there is an afterlife, it would be better to have lived a good life than an evil one, for perhaps there are torments awaiting evil doers who manage to escape punishment in this life.

These examples show that most humans do want to live forever in some form or other, even if that means they have to suffer eternally in order to achieve it. They also show the uses of afterlife stories to frighten us into behaving well and becoming good (moral) persons. No matter, there is this deep longing for immortality in some form or other, and I am still puzzled as to why. Does no one think that carrying on through all eternity might pall a bit and that boredom or pain may become our dominant existential categories? Have we thoroughly explored what this longing really means, or have we simply assumed the positive value of immortality without critically examining its nature and desirability?

The question of the existence or non-existence of an immortal soul is a practical metaphysical question. We cannot know the answer, but we have to take a stand. How we answer it says something about our ultimate values, our conception of the good life for human beings, the art of living well and the meaning of death.