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Here’s an interesting fact borne out by multiple polls, surveys, and studies: people who believe in a life after this one generally tend to be happier than those who don’t.
Makes sense, right? If you have a belief that your consciousness will continue after this physical life ends, you can escape the doom and gloom often associated with our inevitable demise and our fears of a permanent non-existence.
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Regardless of religious belief (or lack of it), the studies show, belief in an afterlife is “consistently associated with greater happiness and life satisfaction.”
This all fits into a relatively new psychological premise called Terror Management Theory, or TMT. TMT has nothing to do with terrorism — instead, it focuses on the one basic human psychological conflict and terror common to every person: the fear of death.
It’s simple: we all have a strong desire to live, but we know we’re going to die. This fundamental conflict produces terror in our hearts and souls.
TMT, first recognized and named by the social psychologists Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski and Sheldon Solomon, only occurs in us humans. As far as we can tell, no other living being can contemplate its own eventual physical death, and then wonder what happens next. Only we have that unique distinction. The experts call this knowledge “mortality salience,” an existential anxiety brought on by the fear of our own extinction.
That’s the core human dilemma — our self-consciousness makes us aware that our self-consciousness may one day cease. We might not think about it much while we’re young, but as we age, and grow closer to that moment of our approaching physical demise, the fact of death increasingly occupies our minds, hearts, and souls.
So how do we manage this prospect, common to all and so fraught with terror?
According to the scientists, and to writers and social anthropologists like Ernest Becker, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Denial of Death,” we manage our TMT by creating culture. Our cultures — symbolic systems that give life meaning through participation in something larger and more lasting than any individual — help us symbolically manage the terror of death by allowing us to take part in that which endeavors to endure.
No one, the TMT psychologists say, can go through life tormented by a constant, permanent fear of death, so we build our civilizations and cultures as “immortality projects,” a term that Becker coined to describe our efforts to face the inevitable. We attempt to transcend death by creating something permanent, by leaving something behind that will last forever. With our cultural focus on youth and beauty, we try to avoid the topic of death. With fame, family, or fortune, we seek to deny death itself. With our constant, frenetic busyness, we even attempt to avoid thinking about the end of this material existence. Most human actions, Becker concluded, try to circumvent, ignore, or avoid our profound subconscious anxieties about dying.
The ultimate way to deal with TMT, of course, involves developing a strong, unshakeable belief in an afterlife.
That essentially religious principle — although polls show that at least a third of all atheists and agnostics believe in an afterlife, too — makes for happier, less anxious, and psychologically healthier people. Every survey affirms that conclusion: no matter what religion, those who have a sense of certitude about their immortality lead happier lives.
The Baha’i teachings reaffirm human immortality, and reassure us that this physical life precedes an eternal afterlife. Abdu’l-Baha, Baha’u’llah’s son and successor, wrote a great deal about this subject, including these two letters from the Baha’i magazine “Star of the West”:
If in these visible days and in this present world conditions contrary to your wish appear from the Realm of Decree be ye not depressed for happy and divine days shall come and spiritual worlds of holiness shall be manifest.
Be not grieved, be not disconsolate, be not depressed and do not lament, for this world is a mortal abode and we shall all be transferred from this world to another.
Belief in an afterlife diminishes and ultimately destroys the terror of physical death. It gives us hope, faith, and a sense of an unending future. A clear awareness of the continuance of life makes this physical existence not only bearable, but reasonable. It allows us to love freely, without fear. It gives us the freedom to have expansive, enthusiastic, and happy lives, looking forward to our transition to the next world. Baha’u’llah’s soaring description of the universal human afterlife offers us joy rather than terror:
Sorrow not if, in these days and on this earthly plane, things contrary to your wishes have been ordained and manifested by God, for days of blissful joy, of heavenly delight, are assuredly in store for you. Worlds, holy and spiritually glorious, will be unveiled to your eyes. You are destined by Him, in this world and hereafter, to partake of their benefits, to share in their joys, and to obtain a portion of their sustaining grace. To each and every one of them you will, no doubt, attain.
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Without question, the inner belief in an afterlife fortifies us while we exist here on Earth, and the belief in permanent oblivion does the opposite. In a talk he gave to the Theosophical Society in Evanston, Illinois, in 1912, Abdu’l-Baha explained:
Through his ignorance man fears death, but the death he shrinks from is imaginary and absolutely unreal; it is only human imagination. …
The conception of annihilation is a factor in human degradation, a cause of human debasement and lowliness, a source of human fear and abjection. It has been conducive to the dispersion and weakening of human thought, whereas the realization of existence and continuity has upraised man to sublimity of ideals, established the foundations of human progress and stimulated the development of heavenly virtues; therefore, it behooves man to abandon thoughts of nonexistence and death, which are absolutely imaginary, and see himself ever-living, everlasting in the divine purpose of his creation. He must turn away from ideas which degrade the human soul so that day by day and hour by hour he may advance upward and higher to spiritual perception of the continuity of the human reality. If he dwells upon the thought of nonexistence, he will become utterly incompetent; with weakened willpower his ambition for progress will be lessened and the acquisition of human virtues will cease.
Have no fear; the Baha’i teachings tell us — our human reality will everlastingly continue.
David Langness writes and edits for BahaiTeachings.org and is a journalist and literary critic for Paste Magazine. He and his wife Teresa live in the Sierra foothills in Northern California.
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Fire and paradise both bow down and prostrate themselves before God. That which is worthy of His Essence is to worship Him for His sake, without fear of fire, or hope of paradise.