Key Perspectives on Life After Death

Life after death is a subject spanning theology, philosophy, and science, with beliefs ranging from spiritual immortality (heaven/hell, reincarnation) to the cessation of consciousness. Major religions suggest conduct in life determines the afterlife, while many scientists argue lack of evidence for survival of consciousness beyond brain death. 

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• Religious & Spiritual Beliefs: Many faiths, including Christianity and Islam, believe in the soul’s existence in another realm or paradise. Hinduism and Buddhism often emphasize reincarnation or cycles of rebirth.
• Scientific Perspective: Prof. Brian Cox notes that because life is a physical process of energy and information, it is unlikely consciousness continues once the body stops functioning. Some research indicates that brain activity during death may trigger memories or visions.
• Near-Death Experiences (NDEs): Reports often include intense feelings of peace, light, or reliving life events. Dr. Raymond Moody coined this term to describe experiences of those clinically dead who returned.
• Physical Process: After death, the body undergoes biological changes like rigor mortis (stiffening) and decomposition, which begin within hours. YouTube +5

Common Themes

• Soul/Spirit: The belief that a non-physical component of human beings survives the physical death.
• Judgment/Review: Concepts of a reckoning or life review.
• Transition: Many view death not as an end but a transition to another state or dimension. YouTube +3

These, often, contradictory viewpoints ensure that the topic remains a deeply personal matter of faith and interpretation.  Afterlife – Wikipedia

Doctor Dies and Meets God On The Other Side, Is Sent Back With A Message (Near Death Experience)

Visions of heaven? Stories of life after death? Is it real? – Terry Pluto’s Faith & You

• Updated: Apr. 23, 2024, 1:06 a.m.
• |Published: Apr. 20, 2024, 5:14 a.m.
  
  By Terry Pluto, cleveland.com
  • I’m grateful to my readers who have read me for decades.
    I’m the author of more than 30 books, a winner of the National Headliner Award as the nation’s best sports columnist in 2020 and best sports writer in 2024. I was the runner-up in 2022. My degree is secondary education, taught social studies for 6 months at Lincoln-West High to become state certified. Having spent 65 of my 68 years in NE Ohio, I know Cleveland sports and Cleveland sports fans. I began going to games at the old Cleveland Muni Stadium and the old Cleveland Arena. My father delivered the Plain Dealer. While at CSU, I worked at the old Cleveland Press part time covering high school sports. I’m extremely grateful and blessed to cover sports in my hometown.
    
  CLEVELAND, Ohio – For years, I’d run into Jean (not her real name) at Walmart, where she works. For more than a decade, she had cared for her elderly father. More than once, I prayed with her when that situation became very stressful.
• “I’m so glad to see you,” Jean said. “Maybe you’ll understand when I tell you what happened to my father before he died.” 
  Her father was in his middle 90s. In the final few weeks before his death, he kept saying he was seeing someone at the end of his bed. Jean didn’t see anyone. Her father said he didn’t know the man, but he seemed very nice and was watching over him.
• About a week before he died, her father told Jean about family members visiting him. They all were deceased. A few times, they told him, “It’s time to come home.”
• Jean said she never saw these people – or the visions of them.“I know my father saw them,” she said. “He wasn’t the kind of guy who had talked about spiritual things. But this was very real to him. What do you think?”
• I put that question to Linda Isaiah, who is a pastor at Akron’s House of the Lord, where she specializes in end-of-life care and helping families handle grief. She is a certified Grief Recovery Specialist and Mental Health Coach.“
• I often hear stories like that,” she said. “I recently had a 98-year-old woman who was in hospice. She said she had a vision of God. The lady told me, ‘God is coming for me, but he said not just yet.’ “LIFE AFTER DEATH?
• One of the great debates is, “What happens after we die?”
• A friend once told me, “I don’t remember anything from before I was born, so I assume I won’t know anything after I die.”
• The counter point is you wouldn’t know anything before you were born because you weren’t born. But the stronger theme is life on earth is all there is – here today, gone tomorrow.
• And when we’re gone tomorrow, it’s all over, period.
• “There’s so much about life after death that we don’t know,” said Walt Jenne, who is one of the priests at St. Helen Catholic Church in Newbury.
• Jenne said he’s had several people tell him that near the time of their death, deceased friends and relatives appeared to them.
• “Over and over, they’ve told me, ‘I never felt so loved,’ ” said Jenne. “They talk about white lights and very comforting music. One woman who had a near-death experience told me that it was so beautiful, she didn’t want to come back.”
  
  A CITY IN THE DISTANCE
• 
• Is there something beyond here, something supernatural awaiting us?
  Photo By Terry Pluto / Cleveland.comTerry Pluto
  I had a friend named Harry Watson, one of my mentors in jail ministry. For years, he was a salesman for Procter & Gamble. He was not a guy who had a lot of visions of dead people or angels.
• He had a major heart attack. At one point, he was in the hospital. They were pounding on his chest. His heart had stopped.
• Years later, he told me: “I know some people won’t believe me, but when I had my heart attack, I had a glimpse of heaven. It was a bright city on a hill. There was this beautiful music. There were people waiting for me, people I knew from church when I first joined who had since died. Then I woke up on the table in the hospital.”
• He died about 12 years later. I talked to him the day before he passed away. 
  
  “I’m ready,” he said. “I’ve seen it.”
  
  MANY SAME STORIES
• 
  People who have had near death experiences mention a tunnel or a road to the supernatural.
  Through the dark, there is light and hope. Photo By Terry Pluto / Cleveland.comTerry Pluto
• In Psychology Today, Thomas Verny wrote about near-death experiences:
• “They share strikingly similar narratives. They speak of having experienced peaceful tranquility and happiness, seeing a golden light. It’s often at the end of a tunnel, being greeted by deceased relatives, or detaching from their body and floating above it. They often report feeling obliged to make a choice — remain in this other world, or return to their life.”
• Is there another reason people have these visions?“Skeptics have raised objections to the credibility of these accounts by pointing out that they may be due to religious indoctrination,” wrote Verny. “However, the phenomenon is remarkably consistent across cultures and religions and has been reported even by children and toddlers who were not exposed to religious doctrine.
• ”Grief specialist Isaiah said her mother “had full-blown Alzheimer’s. She thought I was her mama.
• ”They’d sing Amazing Grace and other old hymns.“ They’s ask her who was president,” said Isaiah. “She didn’t know. But she could quote long passages of the Bible.”
  
  Then Isaiah told a story of an 89-year-old man she was with Monday. She has known him for more than 40 years. He is now in “something like a semi-coma, hardly responding,” Isaiah said.
• She said he was there with eyes closed and suddenly began singing.
• “I was around him most of my life, never heard him sing before,” she said. “He was singing, ‘Soon and very soon, I’m going to meet the King.’ “Isaiah said he was quoting some scriptures. She said he never opened his eyes. He wasn’t responding to those around him. He was communicating with others he was seeing.
• “I know he’s transitioning,” said Isaiah. “It’s a spiritual state. You’re going from life to death and then to a new life. It’s a peace so precious, it’s impossible to explain.”
  
  What happens after death, according to people who have been there
  For March’s Mortal Musings, we’re exploring fascinating stories of near-death experiences.
  Maura McInerney-Rowley and Hello, Mortal
  Mar 30, 2025
  What do you think happens when we die?That’s my go-to question at dinner parties. It either clears the room or cracks it open. Either way, it beats small talk, and I find it way more interesting than asking: “What do you do?”My own answer is a rebuttal: Is death the end of life, or just the end of this life? I believe we mistake death as a medical event when we should see it as a sacred experience. As I’ve come to understand it, death is not the end. Instead, it’s a transformation of consciousness—a passage of energy from one dimension to another—into something much greater. A space so vast and beautiful that earthly language can’t describe it.
• Merriam–Webster defines deathas: “A permanent cessation of all vital functions: the end of life.” But even that definition admits ambiguity. Adding complexity is the fact that there is actually no agreed-upon scientific definition of life. So how can we define death as the end of life when we don’t even know what life is? Death can mean extinction. Destruction. Transition. Transformation. A passing. A portal.
• I’ve come to this understanding of death through my experience in hospice, sitting beside people as they make the transition from one world to another. It’s also what countless people who have had near-death experiences have returned to tell us.
• What exactly is a near-death experience? It’s not fainting. And it’s not a dream. These are moments when people are clinically dead, or extremely close to it—and come back to life to tell vivid recollections: tunnels of light, panoramic life reviews, reunions with ancestors, a profound sense of peace, and messages about love, purpose, and connection.
• The patterns are too consistent to ignore: the light, the calm, the ancestors, the sense of home. Of course, there are variations. Death is not one-size-fits-all. But there are truths you can only glimpse if you’re willing to look.
• These accounts of near-death experiences seem to provide proof of some kind of afterlife. For the skeptics, I say this: Open yourself to the possibility. Lean in with curiosity. Your fear of the unknown may be the very thing standing between you and the deeper meaning you’re searching for.
• He was declared dead and zipped into a body bag—then came back to life with a message.
• This podcast episode of Spirit Speakers shares one of the most gripping near-death stories I’ve come across. Psychic medium Patty Davis and co-host Judea interview Vincent Todd Tolman, who was clinically dead for over 30 minutes before being miraculously revived. What he remembers from that time defies explanation—and just might reshape your idea of what death really is. He shares the 10 universal truths he was shown on the “other side,” the overwhelming sense of peace and purpose he felt, and why he believes death isn’t the end, but a return. Whether you’re a skeptic, a seeker, or somewhere in between, this one will stay with you. SPIRIT SPEAKERS
• Real people. Real deaths. Unreal experiences.
• The opening episode of Netflix’s Surviving Death dives headfirst (literally, in the case of a woman whose kayak plummeted off a waterfall) into the world of near-death experiences. Through a series of personal accounts, we meet people who flatlined, floated above their bodies, and found themselves in realms that language can’t quite describe. Their stories are woven with insights from doctors, scientists, and researchers exploring the frontiers of consciousness and unexplainable survival. If you’re NDE-curious (or skeptical), this is a perfect entrypoint into the mystery.  SURVIVING DEATH
• Lifting the Veil on Near-Death ExperiencesIf you want to go deeper into the science of NDEs, this 12-minute read from Scientific American is worth your time. It explores the latest research into what happens in the brain during cardiac arrest, what brain scans reveal about consciousness near death, and why some scientists are now questioning the old assumption that brain death = the end. It also touches on negative NDEs, the overlap with psychedelics, and the possibility that these experiences serve some evolutionary—or even existential—purpose. SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
• This neurosurgeon didn’t believe in near-death experiences—until he had one.Dr. Eben Alexander is a Harvard-trained neurosurgeon who, after contracting a rare form of bacterial meningitis, fell into a seven-day coma. During that time, his neocortex—the part of the brain responsible for consciousness—shut down completely. According to everything he knew as a scientist, he should have experienced nothing. But he returned with vivid memories of a journey through realms beyond this world and an encounter with what he calls the Divine source of the universe.
• His book, Proof of Heaven, challenges the materialist view of consciousness and continues to stir debate in scientific and spiritual communities. Whether you believe him or not, it’s become a defining story in the genre PROOF OF HEAVEN
• The Buddhist roadmap for what happens after you die.
• If you’re looking for spiritual guidance, not just stories, on what happens after death, start here. In Bardo: Interval of Possibility, Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche explains the Tibetan Buddhist view of the dying process and what happens in the bardo—the liminal space between death and rebirth.
• One reader, Aaron Holm, writes: “This is the clearest overview of the death process and bardo from a Buddhist perspective. I’ve had my own experience at the edge of death with heart attack and surgery and have coached many who’ve experienced sudden cardiac death. The experiences they share map to the process outlined in this book.” BARDO: INTERVAL OF POSSIBILITY
• Fifty years ago, this book started it all.
• Before there were podcasts, documentaries, and peer-reviewed studies on NDEs, there was Life After Life. Published in 1975, psychiatrist and philosopher Dr. Raymond Moody coined the term “near-death experience” and brought these private, often taboo stories into public view. His book gathered firsthand accounts from people who had been declared clinically dead—and came back with vivid, life-changing memories of what they experienced on the other side.
• Now, 50 years later, his work remains foundational. LIFE AFTER LIFE
• We cannot fully describe what lies beyond, but we can listen to the accounts of those who’ve seen it. Their stories are postcards from the edge of existence. If this piece sparked something in you, or if you’ve come across a story that moved you and it’s not listed here, drop it in the comments—I’d love to hear it. And if you’ve had your own near-death experience and feel ready to share, we’d be honored to listen. — Maura
  
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  10:14    I’ve been to all 63 US national parks and ranked them from my least favorite to my top pick for travelers
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Videos of the Final Act of Living By Barbara Karnes RN PDF – Search

This full-length book with a newly updated preface is where Barbara Karnes RN shares her insights and experiences gathered over decades of working with people during their final act of living. For both professionals and laypeople, this book weaves personal stories with practical care guidelines, including: living with a life-threatening illness, signs of the dying process, the stages of grief, living wills, and other end of life issues. 

The Final Act of Living: Reflections of a Long-Time Hospice Nurse is an end of life book; a resource that reads like a novel, yet has the content of a textbook.

Barbara wrote this book following years of being a hospice nurse at the bedside of hundreds of people in the months to moments before death. From the stories and experiences she shares, you will see that death doesn’t just happen, there is an unfolding; there is a process to dying. 

The Final Act of Living is used as:

*A resource on end of life for palliative care nurses

*A training handbook for hospice nurses and volunteers

*A reference book for anyone working with end of life issues:

*Lay ministers, social workers, counselors, nurses, chaplains

*An easy read for anyone interested in dying and grief

*A text book in college and university classes,

*CNA training, social work and LPN/RN classes

Listen today and embark on a transformative journey through personal stories and practical care guidelines. Whether you’re a professional in the field or simply interested in end-of-life issues, this book is for you. 

Don’t miss out – this material may be described as an “end of life book” however, as the title states, its content and philosophy is all about The Final Act of Living.