REVIEW: What awaits us? 'After Death' (film)

Eds., Wisdom Quarterly; Angel Studios, Premieres in L.A. on 10/26/23

This is a famous Buddhist thangka design about samsara, the Wheel of Becoming or Bhavachakra, cyclical rebirth as incessant oppression until one awakens from the illusory that was never real.

About Death

YOLO? No. How many lives are lived? Countless.

Opening this week is a movie about a most amazing subject: We don't die. We're alive now, and we'll be more alive when we're gone. This is the less real of the two places, a short reprieve, a chance to do much merit that would be useful in the hereafter. Near-death experiences change people, usually for the better, making experiencers much more aware of the purpose and value of this life. For most of us, not having a preview (except maybe through this movie), we squander this life, failing to appreciate what potential it held. Do it. Do something. Meditate. Study. Realize the Truth. YOLO? Ha, not even close.

WISDOM QUARTERLY REVIEW

Survival of Bodily Death (Dr. R. Moody)

This is an excellent documentary, with testimony by those who have directly experienced "death" (in the medical sense because all of them without fail, whether they had an ecstatic celestial experience or a dismal infernal experience or both, attests to the fact that WE DO NOT DIE at what we call "death."

Universally, a person who has a near death experience (NDE) loses the fear of death. Here we are in a sleepy illusion; by contrast (as the ancient Greek philosopher Plato noted in his discussion of forms and his Allegory of the Cave) there is the wakeful real thing.

The choice of a name for the movie is the oddest thing, as this documentary is all about Life after Life, as Dr. Raymond Moody, who also appears in the movie, named his famous book.

We do not die then become alive again, as many people misinterpret Buddhism and the other Dharmic religions to teach. Buddhist teachings, particularly in the Abhidhamma, state that the next life commences immediately, instantaneously, at the very next moment.

Excellent Buddhist explanation by Western monk

What causes confusion is talk of the bardo or "intermediary state" between this life and a future life. What happens in between is still life, life that began right after the last moment of the previous life. (This may be understood as one ego passing, the gandhabba or transitional-being (becoming) having experiences then another rebirth of longer duration:

If two lives are long and the one in between is short, this might lead to the confusion that one was "dead" in between "life" and the "afterlife" when, clearly, one was alive all along for all three lives, as well as the many lives that came before and the many to come hereafter.

We are dying at every moment, but what is reborn in the very next sub-moment is nearly identical, so we don't notice the falling away in rapid succession. The rearising moment after moment comes to seem like a "being" is living when in fact a "becoming" is becoming, passing away, rearising, passing away, rearising...

When there's a stark break in circumstances -- a new body, a new name, new circumstances, new characteristics, all born of karma -- one might well conclude that one has died and been reborn, never noticing that that was happening all along.

This is the meaning of impermanence (anicca), not that one will eventually die and pass away but rather that what is conceived of as "self" is passing away all of the time, incessantly without respite until we awaken from the illusion (delusion), arrive at enlightenment, and experience nirvana.

Life after life after life...

The Evidence Under Hypnosis

Life is not forever because one (the Five Aggregates clung to as self) will one day die but because whatever is conceived of as self is passing away, passing away, passing away... Nirvana is the deathless state (amata) when this is no longer the case: With the end of rebirth, all suffering is ended, and death is ended.

Having a Buddhist on or even religious scholars representing many traditions would have added great dimension to this film, but as was stated, this is largely a Christian film all about the science, the objective facts lined up alongside the story of the personal experiences of NDE characters.

Dr. Helen Wambach, Ph.D.

Adding in the scientific data gathered by researcher Dr. Helen Wambach, Ph.D., from her detailed scientific studies presented in the book Reliving Past Lives may have done wonders for bringing together the subjective accounts and the objective facts. He gathered and documented more objective data than any of the doctors in the film, although she gathered data through tens of thousands of hypnotic regression sessions (and progressions into future lives) and the film is dealing with NDE accounts.

Along with the teachings of Christianity, which is the driving force of this movie and its makers, a lone Buddhist subject tells his story of suicide, a negative NDE that turns positive, and being resuscitated and glad to be on earth in the hospital. His mother, a nurse, saw him take his own life, prompted by an unclean spirit, and she is at his bedside crying when he returns to life.

Karma and Rebirth (Appleton)

He ends up becoming a U.S. military chaplain, talking about God and a merciful son listening to soldiers' tales of war atrocities and their deep remorse for unskillful karma, no longer referring to a Buddhism he never really studied or understood when he was a Korean Mahayana Buddhist immigrant becoming an American rocker, drug abuser, and suicide victim.

(Suicide may be self-victimhood, but Chaplain Kevin speaks of an unwholesome spirit who tricked him, prompted him, and directed him on how to take his own life. He was tricked by being offered a deal that if he killed himself, that old man spirit would get his time in hell reduced by 50,000 years, just like a lawyer making big claims for some ulterior motive).

Most of the talking heads, according to the screen notes under their names, end up being best-selling authors, who wrote out their stories in gratitude for getting more time to live. They are not simply average citizens chosen at random to be on screen.