Where Do We Go When We Die? | Unveiled - video Dailymotion

Unveiled

Watch Where Do We Go When We Die? | Unveiled - Unveiled on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00 Do you want to live forever?

00:02 Could immortality happen in your lifetime?

00:04 And just in case life forever after isn't discovered during your years on Earth, then

00:09 what are you hoping for in the great beyond?

00:12 This is Unveiled, and today we're answering the extraordinary question; where do we go

00:17 when we die?

00:20 Do you need the big questions answered?

00:22 Are you constantly curious?

00:24 Then why not subscribe to Unveiled for more clips like this one?

00:27 And ring the bell for more thought-provoking content!

00:32 Part way through the 21st century and death is still a certain fact of life.

00:37 Despite all of the efforts made, a true elixir of eternal life just isn't something that

00:41 humankind has discovered yet.

00:43 The numbers are a little sobering.

00:45 Every year, around 60 million people die.

00:49 That's roughly two deaths for every single second that passes.

00:52 Around 100 people will have died since the beginning of this video, and most of them

00:56 of the same kinds of things; of heart disease, of cancers, or in road traffic accidents.

01:02 On the plus side, life expectancy has generally risen all over the world, as health and medicine

01:07 practices have improved.

01:09 But there's only ever so much that science can do.

01:12 In that murky, unknowable time post-dying, that's where religion comes to the fore.

01:17 And local legend, and mythology.

01:20 The history of human culture is pinned into place by fables and allegories about what

01:24 we can expect to happen, what we might expect to feel, and where we can expect to go once

01:30 this life is over.

01:31 The Egyptians built pyramids for those deemed the most worthy.

01:35 The Norse pushed their dead out into the sea to be taken back by the waves.

01:39 Some cremate to ash, others embalmed to preserve forever.

01:43 And although all faiths offer different versions of heaven and hell - sometimes slightly different,

01:48 sometimes dramatically - the idea that there's a good and a bad place waiting for us has

01:52 really caught on.

01:54 Some envision eternal bliss, and a reunion with God.

01:58 Or else unending damnation and the torture of the devil.

02:01 Theologically speaking, there's really no right answer here, other than the one that

02:05 you yourself have faith in.

02:08 On the other side, and especially in the years and centuries since the Enlightenment, science

02:13 has tried its hand at gaining some kind of control over what happens next.

02:17 In places, it has succeeded.

02:19 Today, we have a near-total, hour-by-hour knowledge of what the physical body of a dead

02:24 person goes through.

02:26 From phenomena such as rigor mortis, right through to the final, grisly moments of rot

02:30 and decay.

02:32 Much of what we know comes thanks to so-called "body farms" - purpose-built facilities

02:36 at which scientists can study the decomposition of dead bodies in supreme detail, and under

02:41 all sorts of conditions.

02:43 While controversial and often criticized as disturbing, advocates for these places claim

02:48 that they have contributed a great deal to forensic science and criminology.

02:52 The original and most high-profile "body farm" is the University of Tennessee Anthropological

02:58 Research Facility, in Knoxville, Tennessee.

03:00 A tour around it, though, would not be for the faint of heart.

03:04 Since at least the 1600s, science has wrestled with questions of the mind, as well.

03:10 Namely, what is it, and where is it?

03:12 The great and still ongoing debate surrounds whether or not the physical brain creates

03:16 the mind, or whether it actually channels it from some kind of higher, external realm.

03:22 Science doesn't yet know the answer.

03:25 Ever since the Renaissance days of René Descartes, there's been some argument for the brain

03:29 operating as kind of a connector, a checkpoint, at which a person can sift through all their

03:34 higher spiritual influence to produce what we recognize as our inner thoughts, emotions,

03:40 likes and dislikes.

03:42 Meanwhile, there are those that believe that if we could only understand the brain minutely

03:46 enough then we should find that, actually, the mind is nothing more than the product

03:50 of an intricate physical arrangement of cells and synapses, nerves and blood vessels.

03:56 One endgame for this way of thinking is the advent of digital consciousness, which has

04:00 been variously tipped as a coming, near-future technology.

04:04 So, according to religion, fable and story, we go to heaven, hell, Elysium, the underworld,

04:10 Valhalla… we fall into limbo.

04:12 We are, somehow, transported to somewhere else when we die.

04:16 To somewhere that isn't Earth, but is presumably still recognizable to us.

04:20 Do we retain any semblance of a physical body?

04:23 In ancient times, there may have been some belief that we would.

04:26 Embalming and preservation techniques, plus the building of magnificent tombs for some

04:31 people in some cultures, often filled with important artefacts, all suggest that, when

04:36 imagining the afterlife, we pictured moving through it as we do in the here and now.

04:40 In modern times, that belief is clearly not so widespread.

04:44 We accept that when we die, our body will disappear, either very quickly or quite slowly,

04:49 depending on the circumstances.

04:50 So, wherever we go when we die, we do so without our physical selves that we know now.

04:56 So, would you be recognizable in the afterlife?

04:59 Would you recognize the people that you know and love?

05:02 Often religion doesn't exactly go into detail here, although the suggestion is that if you're

05:06 in heaven, the good place, then you're happy.

05:09 So, presumably, you would still know the people that you knew and liked and loved before.

05:13 On the other hand, if you knew that you were in heaven, then that would imply that you'd

05:17 also know that there was a hell.

05:19 So, how happy could you be with that knowledge inside you?

05:22 It's a difficult question to answer.

05:24 From a purely academic perspective, however, the nature of heaven is really irrelevant.

05:29 What's more important is ascertaining whether any part of us really does go anywhere.

05:34 We took a closer look in another recent video at how some scientists believe that we do

05:38 at least know when we're dying.

05:40 There is some still-undescribable part of us - what many term "the soul" - that is

05:45 aware of the finality of what's happening.

05:48 Meanwhile, there have been a handful of mostly contested experiments to seemingly show that

05:53 a small weight leaves the body once the person is dead.

05:57 Urban legend has it that that weight is the soul, departing physical flesh and siphoning

06:02 off into the ether.

06:04 But more generally, this isn't the line that mainstream science takes.

06:08 Instead, while the proof of this is contested as well, the majority lean toward nothingness

06:13 - the same kind of blank, open voidness that we all apparently experienced before we were

06:20 born or conceived or even thought about.

06:22 Yes, by some models we may well be aware that we're dying at the moment that we actually

06:27 do… but after that, we're wholly unaware, because we aren't anything.

06:32 Really, it's a rare kind of meeting point, where the ambiguities of both science and

06:37 religion pan out to produce pretty much the same thing.

06:40 Except that science doesn't generally attach goodness or badness to any of it - just total

06:45 and complete nothingness to everything.

06:48 Reincarnation is probably the most widely followed alternative model to all of the variously

06:52 spiralling afterlives that just never end.

06:55 Here, instead, the dead - their soul or being or energy - are recast into something else.

07:01 It could be an animal, a plant, another human being, an alien lifeform if your beliefs go

07:05 that way.

07:06 It's most common in Hindu scripture, some Buddhist texts, and in some more new-age sci-fi

07:11 concepts such as The Egg, a mind-bending, reality-blurring tale of revelation by Andy

07:17 Weir.

07:18 The empirical, scientific evidence, however, is lacking.

07:21 Perhaps the best that modern research has to offer are various case studies in which

07:25 someone - usually a young person - seemingly remembers a past life.

07:31 They might already know people that they've never previously met, have knowledge of events

07:35 that happened before they were born, or, most bizarrely, claim to remember exactly how they

07:41 last died.

07:42 The child psychiatrist Jim Tucker is one of the most high-profile names working in the

07:47 field, perhaps best known for authoring the somewhat controversial 2005 book, Life Before

07:53 Life, a scientific investigation of children's memories of previous lives.

07:57 The text is billed as the product of forty years' worth of research into reincarnation.

08:02 And while Tucker concedes that there are no "perfect" examples, he provides multiple case

08:07 studies - with some even involving seemingly physical links between the lives of now and

08:11 before, usually in the form of birthmarks.

08:14 Finally, and elsewhere, there's the again-controversial practice of past-life regression.

08:20 Although widely discredited and dubbed a pseudoscience, for those who swear by it, it's an ultra-specific

08:26 branch of hypnosis and hypnotherapy through which the subject is able to "remember" their

08:31 former selves - the people they were before they became the person they are now.

08:36 There are even reported cases of people casting their minds back centuries to remember their

08:40 involvement in historic wars, or their former lives in totally different countries, or that

08:45 they were once a high-profile celebrity - only one who had died shortly before they, as they

08:50 are now, were born.

08:52 Rather than scientific backing, past-life regression has almost universally attracted

08:56 scepticism.

08:57 But, nevertheless, in this, and in reincarnation generally, it's at least easy to see a simple

09:02 answer to today's question - when you die, you go to your next life.

09:07 All things considered, however, there probably is no simple, catch-all answer to this problem.

09:13 Religion, science, just plain life offers us plenty of options… but there is no certainty.

09:19 What do you think is most likely?

09:21 And what do you hope will take place?

09:23 Because for now, that's where we go when we die.

09:26 What do you think?

09:27 Is there anything we missed?

09:29 Let us know in the comments, check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you

09:33 subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content.

Where Do We Go When We Die? | Unveiled

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended