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Immortality, Personal

Personal immortality is best understood as the belief in the actual survival beyond physical death of the core element of our personality or consciousnessoften called the soulfor an indefinite period. The primary assumption of this belief is that the core element of consciousness, or soul, is entirely distinct from our body, and so can be removed from it on the body's death with no compromise in quality or essence. The consequences of belief in personal immortality on one's view of time are profound and involve a comprehensive rejection of temporality. It is also considered of fundamental importance in the development of religion.

Beginnings

It seems apparent that some of our predecessors' earliest speculations revolved around death and its consequences. The existence of burial sites among Neanderthals from 60,000 years ago and early Homo sapiens from about 35,000 years ago suggest that death was believed to be a transitional state. The practice in primal societies of killing off aging people was due, in part, to the supposition that their bodies, not being yet decrepit, would be useful to them in the afterlife. And the mutilation or eating of enemies was done with the same view in mind; the destruction of their bodies so as to cripple their ability to exact revenge from beyond the grave.

Similar views carried on in the early civilizations. The Egyptians, for instance, held high store on immortality, but their extraordinary efforts to preserve the physical body with processes like mummification suggest they could not conceive of immortality without a physical body. The coronation of the pharaoh was held to coincide with either the rising of the Nile in the early summer or receding of the waters in autumn when the fertilized fields were ready to be sown. As part of the coronation the pharaoh would reenact the deeds of Osiris, who represented the life-giving waters of the Nile. Beliefs about Osiris embodied the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth around which Egyptian life revolved. And from this cycle came the promise of immortality, which for many centuries was the preserve only of the pharaohs but eventually became available to anyone who could afford the expensive rites and observances.

Asian Traditions

Indian notions of immortality resonate to a different beat, bound up as they are with the idea of rebirth. It is one thing for the soul to survive death, but immortality is another thing altogether. The Vedas spoke simply of an afterlife presided over by the god Yama, but ideas of rebirth developed later. In what has become understood as the quintessential Hindu view, the soul will undergo an almost countless number of rebirths and, along the way, gradually rid itself of the life-clinging vices of greed, hate, and delusion. The final aim in Hinduism is Moksa, or liberation. Here and only here is true immortality achieved, but at the cost of having shed all traces of existence apart from the universal whole into which it has merged. Much the same is true of the Buddhist notion of nibbana, or in Sanskrit, <>

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