Saturday 18 April 2015

Life After Death-Through the Eyes of a Physicist




Few days ago one of my never-met friends on FB sent me a chat message.

“Chandima, what’s your opinion about life after death?”

I knew how to boomerang the question back to my friend, who is from a far away country.

“Can you tell me what is your definition of life? I will answer your question depending on your clarification”

There was a pause for 4-5 minutes before he typed asking what is my opinion about life……  I got very clever friends.

Have you ever thought that the word “life” is only a concept that is relevant to a body in the physical world?

And then comes the inevitable question: Does this so-called physical world exist…?

The entire physical world is based on our five senses + brain function.



Sadhguru, the popular God-man on motorcycle asks this brilliant question from his audience………..

“Where do you see me…?”

Many people point the finger towards where Sadhguru is sitting. He says “No”

Think how you see something. The light is reflected from the object and falls on your eye lens making a small image on your retina. This is where you see the object. The image processing and information analysis of the brain tells you that the image belongs to Sadhguru, or peacock or some unknown entity (when the memory store has no similar object to compare). If you have no physical body, then you have no eye lens + retina + brain to “see”.

Without a nose, you cannot smell. Without a tongue you cannot taste, without ears, you cannot hear, without skin and flesh, you cannot feel. Vision, hearing, odour, taste and feeling of touch are possible only if you have sensor + neuron + brain combination. In the absence of any component of this combination, that perception will not be possible.

If you cannot see, smell, hear, taste and feel how can a physical world exist…..?

As one dies, if the “I” still exists, it has to leave the physical body. Thus, unless there are some other forms of senses and information processing unit or totally different system (that can "sense" concepts of the physical world) exists on the “other side”, there is no compatibility between our perception on the physical world and that after death.


Many experiments on near-death experience and revelation of previous incarnations depict that the experimented subject seeing light as they die and transfer to the other side. How do they see light as “they” have no sensing and processing system after death? And don’t forget that light, in turn, is an entity of physical world.

This seems a riddle that I cannot answer at present. The best way of getting an idea is to ask a blind (from birth) what he/she dreams. Again the problem will be that his/her description of the dream is in voice form.

My friend dragged me into a sinkhole. I am sure that there is a way out.

Can someone help me out? But make sure that you are on firm logical grounds before you lend me a helping hand…..