The short essay below gives an inkling as to how an eternal consciousness and afterlife are “natural” by briefly explaining their psychological basis. The article “The Theory of a Natural Eternal Consciousness: The Psychological Basis for a Natural Afterlife” provides much more detail on these phenomena. It describes their elusive essence, presents a formal model and arguments supporting them, and briefly addresses their impact on philosophy and religion, which should be enormous.

If you are willing to read the article carefully with an open mind, I would greatly appreciate your views. A caution, however: Ensure 1) that your comments are not simply based on a belief in the absolute truth of Hypothesis 1, given below, and 2) that you are viewing death strictly from the perspective of the dying person, i.e., from only what they perceive.

The Psychological Basis for a Natural Eternal Consciousness and Natural Afterlife

From a general understanding of psychology, two opposing hypotheses can be deduced for what one will experience upon death. The first is based on the definitions of mind and consciousness like those given in many introductory psychology textbooks. The second delves just a bit deeper and is based on human experience and established cognitive principles in time and conscious perception.

Hypothesis 1: Quoting from a © 2014 psychology textbook by Zimbardo: “The mind is the product of the brain,” consciousness is “the brain process that creates our mental representation of the world and our current thoughts” and “as a process … is dynamic and continual rather than static.” Therefore, when the brain dies, the mind as its product and consciousness as a brain process must totally cease to exist and one will “experience” a before-life kind of nothingness.

Hypothesis 2: Before death a still functioning brain produces a last discrete present conscious moment of a perceived event within some experience and then is forever incapable of producing another moment that would cognitively supplant the last present moment from one’s consciousness. Therefore, one is never aware that one’s last experience is over, and so a remnant of consciousness, an experience as captured by its last moment, will become imperceptibly timeless and deceptively eternal, i.e., static, relative to one’s perspective. (Here experience is not in quotes as it is indeed experienced before death.)

Hypothesis 1, despite lacking empirical verification, has been accepted as orthodoxy by many. It can only be verified after death, which is impossible. Hypothesis 2 on the other hand, hitherto likely overlooked by the orthodoxies of both 1 and religion, can be verified before death. It is verified to some degree with each everyday human encounter with death-like timelessness, e.g., dreamless sleep or general anesthesia. Especially relevant are the timeless periods when one awakes instantly surprised when their first conscious moment is completely inconsistent with their last, e.g., as in waking up from an intense dream. One need only ask: “Suppose I never woke up?”