When you die! (4)

There has never been a race of mankind that didn’t believe in some kind of future life; whether it’s the happy hunting ground of the Native Americans or the sensual abode of bliss of the Muslim. How do you explain that? Long before any evidence for this worldwide belief had been gathered, Cicero said, “In everything the consent of all nations is to be accounted the law of nature, and to resist it is to resist the voice of God.” On the night Socrates died, Crito asked him, “In what way would you have us bury you?” He replied, “In any way that you like, only you must get hold of me, and take care that I do not walk away from you.” In his Phaedo, Plato presented powerful arguments in favour of immortality. Others argued for it too: great thinkers like Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Jefferson, and the German poet Heinrich Heine. Alfred Lord Tennyson’s most famous poem goes like this: “For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place the flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face when I have crost the bar.” And Byron wrote, “I feel my immortality o’er sweep all pains, all tears, all fears, and peal, like the eternal thunders of the deep, into my ears this truth—‘Thou liv’st forever!’” All these great minds shared the conviction of the psalmist: “As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness.” When you think about it, “good night” here just means “good morning” over there.