Life after life?

I like horror movies a lot. But i watch those kind of movies rarely. Of course, I don't want to get frightened the following nights of the movie. But every man has a desire to get frightened and that's why even most of the horror movies are made. Recently, I watched a nicely portrayed horror film in which I didn't realize until the climax that I was watching the ghosts for the whole one and a half hours. It's Alejandro Amenabar's "The Others", starred by Nichole Kidman and released in the year 2001. It's very clearly and cleverly, the director ratchets the suspense slowly, first illustrating Grace's problems in taking care of her children and later she had to encounter with the intruders in to her isolated mansion off the British coast, which questions her sanity. I don't want to reveal the suspense to those who never had watched this movie. I would highly recommend you to watch this movie, if you haven't yet!

Coming to my point, there is something which haunts me after this movie. But its not some ghost which happens to haunt me for two three nights after watching those "Booo" movies. My thoughts goes like this.

Is this the real world which we call so?

Is this our only life?

What happens to us after death?

Do our souls live in another world after death or they share the same world with us? so and so...

All these questions still remains and science still finds hard to answer all of them but man is always busy with his scientific inquiries and research. Almost every religion teaches us to believe in God and a life after death depending upon ones karma. Christians believe in life after death, in heaven or in hell, depending on the deeds one do in his life on earth. Likewise Muslims believe that all good deeds will be weighed against bad deeds on the last day, the day of judgement called Barzakh and their heaven or hell is decided. Hindus believes in reincarnation of souls through a rebirth and the souls continue their journey. It teaches that death is not the end of everything but it's a temporary cessation of physical activities and an opportunity for the souls to review its programs and policies. He himself creates his heaven and hell depending on his karmas in his previous life. But it fails to explain convincingly the origin of the increasing number of souls that are being born and the soul still remains the intangible mystery.

To find out some of these mysteries I googled through many topics. The common thing I saw in most articles is 'Near Death Experiences' or NDE's, a phenomenon reported after an individual has been pronounced 'clinically' dead or very close to death, comes back to his normal life. With the advancement of medical science, more and more patients are surviving clinical deaths and almost everyone have experienced the same feeling. The most related explanation of those who had such experience is about a journey that they almost took in their afterlife. They felt like levitated and travelling through a tunnel without any walls, towards a bright source of light where calmness, serenity or an absolute dissolution can be felt. Later a panoramic view of their life as if they were watching it on a big screen. Even blind people have experienced the same.

Consciousness is something believed to be something out of our body and it can exist far removed from our body but there is no proof that consciousness can survive death. The scientific explanation for NDE is as simple as it's a vision produced by brain which ends upon permanent brain death. Its a sensation the patient experiences due to low oxygen levels in the brain and when brain is deprived of oxygen, people become totally confused and thrashed around. Likewise science have got lot of things to explain and find out, while NDE researchers do not have anything to prove because the circumstantial evidence is in their favor. Science have got lots to prove against the claims of both NDE researchers and religion.

I'm not taking you much in to the researches and developments in the field of parapsychology, the science dealing with existence, causes of psychic abilities and life after death, in which i have knowledge about. These all started from my curiosity out of watching "The Others" which proves that there is something for everyone to think and question about our existence, death and a mysterious life afterwards, on which no science have a perfect explanation because of its lack of clues and which I call "Life after Life".