Tag: easter

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Soul, Heaven, and Butterfly Dream

Easter is a good time to ponder what happens to the soul

By Andrew Fiala

Fresno Bee, Friday, Mar. 22, 2013 | 04:16 PM

What happens when the brain and body die? A popular book, “Proof of Heaven,” by neurosurgeon Eben Alexander offers an answer based upon an out of body experience he had while in a coma. He claims that his experience proves that death is not the end of consciousness.Zhuangzi-Butterfly-Dream

“Human experience continues beyond the grave,” Alexander writes. “More important, it continues under the gaze of a God who loves and cares about each one of us and about where the universe itself and all the beings within it are ultimately going.”

Skeptics have argued that Alexander has not really offered proof of the sort we expect from science. Are we sure, for example, that Alexander’s comatose brain really was entirely “off-line”? A further interesting question is the cultural presuppositions we see in Alexander’s account of his experience.

Our interpretations of experience, including near-death experiences, are infused with meaning that we acquire from culture. Alexander speaks of heaven and of a loving God. If he were a Buddhist or a Hindu, would he interpret the experience differently?

From the Christian perspective, when the body dies, the soul moves on to another spiritual realm. But in other traditions, when the soul separates from the body, it transmigrates, moving on to another life. How can we know which interpretation of the afterlife is the correct one?

If we left our bodies and brains behind, wouldn’t we also leave behind our experiences, memories, and cultural standpoints, including the language, images and ideas we use to interpret our own experiences? Would we recognize or understand anything without the cultural experience that the brain has worked so hard to accumulate in this life?

The deeper puzzle is the connection between soul and body. If the mind is distinct from the brain, how are mind and body able to interact? This problem has puzzled philosophers for centuries.

The philosopher Descartes proposed the pineal gland as the focal point for the interaction between the body and the soul — an appropriate choice given the location of the pineal gland in the center of the brain. But we know better now: the pineal gland is a part of the endocrine system, not the seat of the soul.

The idea of soul points toward a substantial mystery. The soul is not supposed to be a material thing. It has no size or shape or density. So how does it interact with the matter of the body? And where exactly does it go, when it leaves the body?

To explain where the soul goes, we must postulate another sphere of reality — the spiritual realm. But that spiritual realm would not be extended in space, since it is outside of material reality. The spiritual realm is not a place located in space.

Nor is it clear that the soul is a “thing” in any ordinary sense of that term. Existing things are defined in terms of space. They have location and size and mass. But the soul is not a thing with weight and shape. Nor is it clear where it is located in relation to the body, let alone in the afterlife.

And yet, the religious viewpoint maintains that the soul and the spiritual realm are more real than the material world. Alexander asserts that his experience was “real in a way that makes the life we’re living here and now completely dreamlike by comparison.”

Alexander described one part of his experience as flying on the wings of butterflies. Butterflies have symbolic meaning. It is amazing that the lowly caterpillar is reborn as a beautiful flying insect. One wonders whether Alexander’s butterflies are a metaphor or supposed to be real. Would there really be flying butterflies in the spirit realm outside of space and time?

The butterfly dream is reminiscent of a Taoist story about Chuang-Tzu, a sage who had a dream in which he felt he was a butterfly. When he woke up, Chuang-Tzu wondered if instead of being a man who had dreamt he was a butterfly, was he really a butterfly dreaming that he was a man.

Easter is a good time to ponder those sorts of questions. Can the soul really fly off to another life? Or are we merely caterpillars who dream every spring of becoming butterflies?

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Bible and Proof

We need faith, but we still want answers

   Andrew Fiala

Originally published Fresno Bee 2012-04-07

Editor’s note: Andrew Fiala is contributing his column from Israel, where he is on sabbatical.

Is it possible to prove that religious belief is true? One approach would be to look for archaeological evidence. When ancient scrolls were found near the Dead Sea — the Dead Sea Scrolls — this discovery provided evidence of the antiquity of the Bible. But Christians and Jews still disagree about the meaning of these texts. Evidence still needs to be interpreted.

And archaeological evidence can be faked. Consider, for example, the findings of Ron Wyatt, who claimed that he had found the Ark of the Covenant buried in a cave in Jerusalem, directly beneath the spot where Jesus was crucified. Wyatt claimed to have found blood that had dripped from the cross. When he tested the blood, he found that it had only 24 chromosomes (23 plus a mysterious Y-chromosome), proof that it came from a man born of a virgin.

I learned about Wyatt when we visited a place called the Garden Tomb, which was where Wyatt claimed to have found his evidence. In the 19th century, this spot was suggested as a possible place for the crucifixion. Other Christians think it happened across town on the Mount of Olives. But most Christians believe that the Easter story unfolded at another place, at the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is an uncanny place, full of candles and incense and filtered light. The church holds shrines and altars commemorating the location of both the crucifixion and the resurrection. This ancient building conceals strange nooks and crannies. At one point, I took a candle and crawled into dark and dusty tomb in a hidden corner of the church. Later I entered the holy tomb itself and touched the stone of the resurrection. It was cold and dark and slightly spooky.

The Garden Tomb is not nearly so mysterious. It sits in the open air, near a rock that looks like a skull. This fits the Biblical story that Jesus was crucified at Golgotha — the place of the skull. The empty tomb here is much bigger and airier than the tomb in the Holy Sepulcher. There is a groove cut into the ground in front of the tomb, through which a rock could have been rolled away on Easter morning.

Our tour guide in the Garden Tomb was a retired minister. He acknowledged the dispute about the location of the first Easter. But he said that the essential thing was to believe that on Easter morning the tomb was empty — wherever that tomb may be.

He also said that for him, the most memorable part of the whole Easter story was the moment when Jesus asked God to forgive those who were crucifying him. I like the message of forgiveness, too. But I wonder what kind of archaeological evidence would prove that Jesus actually said those words? The Gospel stories contain differing accounts. The words of forgiveness only show up in Luke.

How do we know what Jesus said or where he said it? Archaeology simply cannot dig that deep. The religious answer points away from knowledge in the direction of faith. Faith comes in when evidence is lacking.

The hunt for archaeological evidence of Biblical events thus points to a paradox. If the evidence were indisputable and obvious, then there would be no need for faith. If we really could see the blood and believe that it wasn’t fake, then we wouldn’t need faith at all. It might even be that, from a religious standpoint, there is more virtue in believing when the evidence is lacking, more virtue in faith than in knowledge.

Sometimes the craving for evidence can inspire wishful thinking that leaves us vulnerable to frauds and charlatans. Even Jesus warned about false prophets, wolves in sheep’s clothing.

But who do we trust, who do we believe? And what do we do when there is no evidence? What do we do when there are conflicting interpretations of the evidence we possess? These are the sorts of questions that keep you awake at night. These are the sorts of questions that can lead you to want to crawl into a dark tomb with a candle in your hand, looking for something, waiting to be shown the light.