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00:00 What happens after you die? Where do you go, if indeed you go anywhere at all?
00:05 What should you be expecting to see when you depart this waking plane?
00:08 This is Unveiled, and today we're taking a closer look at the different types of afterlife
00:14 you should know about. Do you need the big questions answered? Are you constantly curious?
00:20 Then why not subscribe to Unveiled for more clips like this one? And ring the bell for more
00:24 thought-provoking content! In this video, we're not discussing whether the afterlife does or
00:30 doesn't exist. It's something that we have covered before, so be sure to check out our channel if you
00:35 haven't already subscribed. But here, we're taking a closer look at the many, many versions of the
00:40 afterlife that humankind has served up over the years in one way or another. We'll first look at
00:45 our cultural ever afters, then those that are enshrined in legend, and finally we'll analyze
00:50 life after death from the scientific and technological point of view, discovering
00:55 some cutting-edge innovation that experts claim really could preserve our souls forever.
01:00 Culturally speaking, the afterlives offered up by religion are still those that most people are
01:05 most familiar with. Christianity, the most followed religion on Earth, has the entwined
01:10 concepts of heaven, hell, and purgatory, with the virtuous supposedly destined for eternal joy,
01:16 and the wicked condemned to a fiery torment. Here, the afterlife - so long as you do make it
01:22 to the good place - is apparently better than anything you could imagine while alive. In some
01:26 accounts, there is still a middle ground, though. Purgatory is a world suspended between heaven,
01:33 hell, and Earth itself, and a place for purification of the soul. Dante Alighieri's
01:38 Divine Comedy vividly illustrates it in his depiction of Purgatorio as a realm where souls
01:44 go to cleanse themselves. With Islam, the second most followed religion on the planet, there are
01:49 again ideas on arriving at a paradise or descending into hell. It's more specifically a culmination of
01:55 one's earthly deeds, though, and revolves around the Day of Judgment, where your living actions
02:00 are said to be literally weighed, and your destination determined by how well or badly
02:05 you've lived. With many of the world's polytheistic religions - meaning they have more than one god
02:11 - there's a different outlook. With Hinduism, there's reincarnation and moksha. The afterlife
02:16 revolves around samsara, the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, and is driven by the law of karma.
02:22 In Bhagavad Gita, a sacred text, it's explained that we will attain another body. So, although
02:28 we're usually unaware of it in the present, the afterlife is more like an extension of whatever
02:33 came before. In one sense, it means that everyone alive right now is already experiencing the
02:39 afterlife, and will likely already have lived many afterlives to get to this point. There is an even
02:44 higher goal in mind, however - moksha - which is the liberation from this cycle of birth and
02:50 rebirth. Here, there's a clear bridge between Hinduism and Buddhism. Buddhists also envision
02:56 a continuous rhythm of rebirth governed by karma, journeying towards a liberation from suffering,
03:01 as outlined in the Four Noble Truths. The ultimate goal here, though, is to reach Nirvana,
03:07 a similar state of freedom and enlightenment. The way to Nirvana is paved in the Dhammapada,
03:13 a collection of poetic teachings from the Buddha. For example, one mantra says that "hate is not
03:18 conquered by hate, but by love" and that this is a "law eternal". Now, it's quite a jump from
03:25 Buddhism to the afterlives of Old Norse, but if you were looking for something different,
03:29 then welcome to Valhalla, a glittering hall in Asgard where fallen warriors are honoured.
03:35 Most of what we know about it comes from the Poetic Edda, a vast collection of anonymous poetry,
03:40 and a written record of all the oral legends that were once passed down.
03:44 Entry into Valhalla is quite an exclusive club, however. First, you have to have died heroically,
03:50 and then you need to be chosen, with Norse heroes either ending up here or instead in Folkvangr,
03:56 an alternative "field for the slain". In Norse, if you didn't die a hero, then you're instead headed
04:02 to Hell. But descriptions differ as to exactly how bad this would be. In some tellings, Hell is a
04:07 dark and shivering place, slithering with snakes, and it's where all the worst people end up.
04:13 However, in other depictions, it isn't quite so grim, with Hell again being a vast hall for the
04:18 dead, and in fact where most people end up. It doesn't quite have the glamour of Valhalla,
04:24 but it is still possible to avoid eternal torment. As with most afterlives, your ultimate fate is
04:30 determined by your actions on Earth. Finally, and to head a couple of thousand years further
04:35 back in time, the mythology of Ancient Egypt paints another different picture of what awaits us.
04:40 For the Egyptians, you were headed to a place called Duat, another realm of the dead where a
04:46 series of challenges and judgements await. Navigating Duat was no easy task, but if you
04:51 were worthy, then it certainly was possible, and you could perhaps even hope to one day ascend to
04:56 live alongside various gods, including Anubis, Horus, and Osiris, the undisputed lord of the dead.
05:04 Similarly to some other systems, judgements played a crucial role, with the heart of the deceased
05:10 being weighed against a feather. The heavier the heart, the more full of sin that person was said
05:14 to be. However, if you were to fail this test, then you weren't sent to a bad place as in most
05:20 other setups. Instead, you were more simply denied entry to Duat, expelled from the underworld,
05:25 and effectively erased from existence. Any form of afterlife was totally taken away from you.
05:31 Of course, with all of the above, there's a reliance on faith; on followers believing that
05:37 their afterlife is the right one. But, in the 20th and 21st centuries in particular,
05:42 the shift towards science and empirical evidence has increasingly meant that faith
05:47 might soon have nothing to do with it. First, the concept of digital immortality tantalises modern
05:53 technologists with the idea of preserving consciousness in a digital realm. Imagine a
05:58 world where whole personalities, entire memories, and personal intellect are all encoded in
06:03 algorithms. Where the mind is mapped to the point that it can be reproduced again and again and
06:09 again. For many, with the advent of everything from cloud computing to virtual reality, and with
06:14 our ever-increasing understanding of DNA, genes, the human genome, and of how the brain works,
06:21 this is where society is headed. Your life on file, ready to be picked out and loaded up
06:26 whenever it's needed. The clearest link between this and the afterlives of religion is that those
06:31 who populate both will have done away with their physical bodies. There are some ideas that a
06:36 digital consciousness could go on to inhabit an artificial body (and therefore remain on Earth,
06:42 to some degree), but the focus is still very much on your essence rather than your physical being.
06:47 What some might call your soul. As such, and imagining a time when the tech is possible,
06:53 there are clearly many ethical questions to consider. But perhaps the biggest potential
06:58 quandaries surround control and privacy. With a digital afterlife, there is no god. But there is
07:04 whoever uploads you - a higher being who would still exist, as if on a higher plane. If you'd
07:09 rather not submit to being translated into data bits, then perhaps there's something to be said
07:13 for quantum immortality instead. This is a still much-debated concept,
07:18 originally based on Hugh Everett's influential "many worlds" interpretation of reality.
07:23 Many worlds imagines that, whenever there is the potential for two outcomes in anything,
07:29 then both of those outcomes do take place and reality splits to accommodate them.
07:34 At the extreme end of the scale, however, some have taken this to mean that at the moment of death,
07:39 there's always an alternative where you don't die. And so, in this way, at least one version of you
07:44 is destined to live forever. Quantum immortality is widely held to be controversial to the point
07:50 of absurdity. But there are some theories arguing that, more generally, we might exist in some kind
07:55 of quantum state after we die. Here, the debate inevitably bleeds over into the mind-body problem,
08:02 with those on either side attempting to decipher where consciousness ultimately resides. Is it a
08:07 product of the brain? Or is it separate? And does the brain in fact work more like a consciousness
08:12 pylon, receiving and transmitting consciousness for so long as it's alive? If that second one is
08:18 true, then there are mounting suggestions that we could all essentially become interdimensional
08:23 beings in the afterlife. That because we'd no longer be confined to just one body on one planet,
08:29 in one galaxy, and in one universe… we might suddenly find ourselves - or our energy - flooded
08:35 with the unfiltered, true potential of the cosmos. Any attempt to then predict what will happen next
08:40 is almost impossible, because the options are so vast. For now, the one thing that is certain is
08:46 that we don't yet know what awaits us. From the vivid realms of religious traditions, to the
08:51 speculative frontiers of digital and quantum immortality, there are plenty of potentials
08:57 to choose from… but all are based on either faith, or as yet undiscovered scientific breakthroughs.
09:03 While the mystery of death remains, those are the different types of afterlife you should know about.
09:09 What do you think? Is there anything we missed? Let us know in the comments,
09:14 check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you subscribe and ring the bell
09:18 for our latest content.