I read this some two years or so ago and saved it. I thought I’d post it because I thought it was very interesting and insightful.
Is there a heaven after death?
There's no way to know for sure; No one has been dead for a lengthy amount of time and have come back to tell the tale. Those who were dead only for a few moments have reported similar instances of floating down a tunnel towards a light with all the worries being nullified, but even these have slightly different interpretations depending on which individual is giving the experience.
I doubt many of these people were lying about seeing something beyond their grave, but it's also possible this was an experience their brain was defaulting to in the final of final moments before they fully succumbed to their non-existence, sort of like a dream. It's also possible they truly didn't experience anything, but their brain inserted those memories after they woke up to help make sense out of what happened to them- After all, being told you almost died is no doubt a traumatic experience on some level.
It's possible the subconscious soul truly does exist and perhaps when we die, our soul constructs an experience that we would most want to feel, or what we think we most deserve to feel. After all, there's no way to confirm or deny that the life we're experiencing right now is that very world. For all we know, our current world exists only in our heads. This may be a rather dark thought to such a simple question, but perhaps there is a much more harsh and unfair world that exists beyond this one, and our brain was so unable to handle the reality of our existence, that it forced itself into some sort of coma, and the current world we are experiencing is one manifested by our brain to help make our life bearable. After all, what about those times you think you see something out of the corner of your eye but suddenly it's gone? Have you ever heard a strange noise or think you hear someone call your name, but you can't pin where it came from? Or maybe we get close to waking up and experience some sort of dizziness before our brain snaps ourself back into our made up reality.
I know I've said a lot, and little is related to the actual question, but my main point is that if heaven is real, it is probably on some level of existence that's beyond our understanding of consciousness. Consciousness is something we can never truly understand- Take dreams for instance. It's hard to understand how we can have dreams where reality is so different than what we know it to be, and yet while we were in the dream (unless if we lucid dreamed), we were so certain that that reality was the true one.
Even if nothing exists beyond the afterlife, there's nothing scary about being in an eternal unconscious state, identical to what we feel before we're conceived, under anesthetics at the doctor, or asleep but haven't begun dreaming yet.
Regardless of what lies beyond the grave, and regardless of whatever God(s) may be watching over us, I have a hunch that it's all going to be okay
