Life After Death

life after death, the Hereafter or the Next World) is the idea that consciousness or the mind continues after the death of the body occurs, by natural or supernatural means. In many popular views, this continued existence often takes place in an immaterial or spiritual realm. Major views on the afterlife derive from religion, esotericism and metaphysics.

Deceased persons are usually believed to go to a specific plane of existence after death, typically believed to be determined by a god, based on their actions during physical life. In contrast, the term afterlife refers to another life in which only the "essence" of the being is preserved, and "reincarnation" is another life on Earth or possibly within the same universe.

There are two fundamentally different types of views on the afterlife: empirical views based on observation and religious views based on faith.

• The first type are loosely based on observations and conjecture made by humans or instruments (for example a radio or a voice recorder, which are used in electronic voice phenomena, or EVP). These observations come from reincarnation research, near death experiences, out-of-body experiences, astral projection, EVP, mediumship, various forms of photography etc. Academic inquiry into such phenomena can be broken down roughly into two categories: psychical research generally focuses on case studies, interviews, and field reports, while parapsychology relates to strictly laboratory research.

• The second type are based on a form of faith, usually faith in the stories that are told by ancestors or faith in religious books like the Bible, the Qur'an, the Talmud, the Vedas, the Tripitaka etc. This article is mainly about this second type.

In metaphysical models, theists generally believe some sort of afterlife awaits people when they die. Members of some generally non-theistic religions such as Buddhism, tend to believe in an afterlife, but without reference to a God. The Sadducees were an ancient Jewish sect that generally believed that there was a God but no afterlife.

Many religions, whether they believe in the soul's existence in another world like Christianity, Islam and many pagan belief systems, or in reincarnation like many forms of Hinduism and Buddhism, believe that one's status in the afterlife is a reward or punishment for their conduct during life.

Agnostics generally hold the position that, like the existence of a God, the existence of other metaphysical phenomena such as the existence of souls or life after death is not verifiable and therefore remains unknown or unknowable.

Atheists and Humanists generally believe that there is insufficient evidence to assert the existence of an afterlife.