Most people don’t like to think about death but everyone at some point considers the possibility that perhaps life continues on in some way after our body is no more. This is the REALLY BIG question in science today…What is consciousness? Does it exist outside the body? Is it eternal?
Now it seems to me that there are really only three possibilities.
Now if you are a person who relies on faith alone then (a) or (c) are equally good ‘belief systems’. Neither can be proven and therefore neither are scientific. Option (c) absolutely relies on blind faith because no one can hope to prove the negative! No one can prove that the ‘afterlife’ does NOT exist. On the other hand there is an endless amount of evidence available for option (b). Admittedly much of this evidence is anecdotal but there is just SO MUCH of it. There is also a growing amount of scientifically repeatable evidence being collected by many reputable scientists who are willingly putting their own careers on the line in order to investigate this topic.
The most remarkable evidence comes from people who come close to death but are revived by modern technology at the last minute. Around one third of all such people report essentially the same core experience which has been labelled the Near Death Experience or NDE Novels. These are not dreams or as some have suggested ‘the brain’s last fling’ due to random electrical discharges in the dying brain. These are life changing visions which seem more real to the person at the time than normal life. Also they occur when there is NO measurable brainwave or heart activity. The person is ‘flat-lined’, that is’dead’ at the time!
Now add to this the scientific fact that the universe that we can see and experience (like our bodies, the Earth, the stars and galaxies even the farthest galaxies) only represents 4% of what is out there. The other 96% cannot be detected by electromagnetic or other means but can only be inferred from gravitational considerations needed to hold ‘our’ universe together. The scientists label this other 96% as ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ but that’s about all they can say about it.
So that’s where I come in with my books the first of which is called ‘Raised as an Angel’. I’ve developed an interesting fictional story with some varied characters to explore the concept of life continuing on after death on Earth. I’ve tried to envisage what a near perfect ‘utopian’ type world would look like where the inhabitants have every material comfort. Here there is no sickness, death or aging and in the event of accidental damage a new body is readily available. Now that all sounds wonderful except that without adversity to overcome the people would not be able to advance spiritually.
At this point the main character, Michael discovers that even though he is living in this near perfect world, this ‘Tranador’ that he is missing something or someone of huge importance to him. He has just returned from his life on Earth but he has left a huge part of himself behind on that world. At first he thinks that it may be the love of his life, his soul mate Alana but that is the subject of book 2 ‘An Angel in the Making’. He now embarks on a life long and illegal quest to return to his previous life on Earth to see what went wrong and to recover that which is so precious to him.
All three books share a common background and are centered around the main characters but the stories are really quite different. The first is the classic ‘the quest’ where in this case the character only has vague memories of what it is that he is questing after. The second book is a full-on romantic love story set against the horrific background of World War III. The third book, ‘Millennium’s End’ is pure adventure and a deliberate attempt to lighten the mood after the tear jerker that is book 2.
All three books carry what I see as the ‘core Christian message’ without all the religious overtones. ‘Love God and love one another as you love yourself’. To me this is completely logical because IF everyone did this there would straight away be the end of all wars, homelessness and there would be ample food for all. There would still be sickness and aging but there would be a huge influx of resources available to deal with these.