Life-After-Death: Process Reflections​
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Process philosophy offers two views of the possibility of life after death, typically called objective immortality and subjective immortality.

In objective immortality, the self (understood as a linear series of subjective experiences, each of which is its own subject) does not continue after the death of the brain, but the experiences nonetheless influence all that comes afterward, however negligible. Objective immortality thus understood can also include the idea that the experiences are remembered (and thus affect) God who is, as it were, the Deep Memory of the universe (Whitehead's Consequent Nature of God). Here the experiences, and the momentary subjects to whom they belong, would not fade in importance, but be valued everlastingly.  "I" would not live on after my death, but memories of me, on God's part, would survive and be woven into the beauty of God's ongoing life.  Thus, there are two kinds of objective immortality: objective immortality in the world and objective immortality in God.

Subjective immortality, on the other hand, is the continuation of the self after the death of the brain, whereby the self undergoes a continuing journey.  This journey may or may not be everlasting; it may be "immortal" in the sense of having no end, or it may be "immortal" in a metaphorical sense, as surviving the death of the brain and continuing for a finite duration.  David Griffin argues for subjective immortality but does not spell out the particular form it would take, saying that direct and indirect evidence from parapsychology points to its plausibility and perhaps even its probability.  Please note that all these kinds of immortality, objective and subjective, may be "true" from a process perspective. 

If subjective immortality, or at least a continuation of the self's journey, is a reality, God would be at work in the journey after death no less than in the journey prior to death: as an indwelling lure toward the fulness of life relative to the situation at hand (through initial aims) and as a companion in the journey, sharing in the sufferings and joys.  There could be spiritual growth after death: a soul-gentling. 

The essay below by Jay McDaniel builds upon the possibility of subjective immortality and soul-gentling; and the one after that, by John Cobb, covers objective immortality in God.  At the bottom of the page please find a video by John Cobb that addresses the topic of death in a general and comprehensive way.  
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Jay McDaniel, 1/30/2022

Life after death? It's a question that theologians, scientists, and philosophers have tried for centuries to answer one way or the other. One side appeals to divine revelation, the other side relies on mind-body dualism and limits what counts as evidence by denying the full range of human experience. Now, in an era when it is possible to contemplate not just individual death but the death of the species, philosopher-theologian David Ray Griffin weighs in on this provocative topic. Using the mature work of philosophers William James and Alfred North Whitehead, Griffin presents a lucid case for life after death that is broadly inclusive of all types of human experience, including near-death experiences. He counters mind-body dualism with his philosophy of panexperientialism and cites evidence of a universe "fine-tuned" for life to suggest a divine reality and that does require appeals to revelation. The result is a Jamesian-Whiteheadian, science-based affirmation for life after death.

Purchase the Book

​Life After Death
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as a Context for Soul-Gentling


​Jay McDaniel

Life after Death

Maria:  My grandmother died a month ago.  Last night she visited me in a dream, telling me she was all right.  

Jose:  That is impossible.  After people die they do not exist anymore. Their brains become energy that is found in the rest of the universe, but as persons they cease to exist.  

Maria:  But she spoke to me; I don't think I was just talking to myself. 

Jose: That is impossible.  If her brain was no longer functioning, she does not exist anymore.

Maria: How do you know?

Jose:  I know because that's what science tells me.

Maria:  Science tells you that a person's consciousness is precisely identical with his or her brain?

Jose:  Well, not exactly.  It tells me that there is a correlation between brain states and conscious states.

Maria:  Yes, that seems right to me.  But my point is that consciousness can be more than the brain, too, and that a person's journey can continue after death. 

Jose:  Are you talking about out of body experiences and the remembering of past lives, and apparitions and mind-to-mind connections that are not mediated by molecules and atoms?

Maria:  Yes, I am talking about things like that.

Jose: But I think people who talk about things like that are kind of looney.

Maria: There's actually more evidence for these kinds of things than people like to admit.

Jose: Can you point in the direction of a book that presents this evidence.

Maria: Yes, I recommend a book by the philosopher of religion, David Ray Griffin called Parapsychology, Philosophy and Spirituality (State University of New York Press).  It is very dense, but you can work through it.  It brings together a lot of the evidence in a rational way that can appeal to skeptics.

Jose:  Well, are you sure he isn't some kind of kook who just wants to believe in those kinds of things because they are comforting?  

Maria:  He's really not like that at all.  He tells us that he began his own studies as a skeptic, and in his book he bends over backwards to consider counter-arguments.  He's as rational as they come.

Jose: Why does he call it a "postmodern" exploration?

Maria:  Because he thinks that perspectives like yours, which see the brain and mind as absolutely identical, and which dismiss the possibility of a continuing journey after death without even considering evidence, are overly shaped by modern, western points of view which now, in a more global context, seem short-sighted and unscientific.

Jose: You mean that he thinks it is unscientific not to believe in life after death?

Maria: Yes, he thinks that science appeals to evidence, not preference, and that the evidence points toward a differentiation of consciousness and the brain.

Jose: So Griffin thinks that consciousness and the brain are not the same?

Maria:  Griffin thinks that there is a two-way relationship between consciousness and brain activity.  Our consciousness influences our brain activity and our brain activity influences consciousness.

Jose:  What do you mean by consciousness?

Maria:  I mean what others mean by the mind or the soul.  It is not a supernatural entity; it is the ongoing process of experiencing, from a first-person point of view.

Jose: Is this mind or soul always conscious?

Maria: Great question.  If by consciousness you mean clear and distinct awareness, much of it is not.  The word consciousness has different meanings in different contexts.  Sometimes it means the mind and sometimes it means clear and distinct awareness.  When I have said "consciousness" above, I have meant the mind or soul.

Jose:  Does this "mind" or "soul" endure unchanged over time?

Maria:  No, it is different at every moment, and at each moment in its ongoing history, it receives influences from the brain and the surrounding world and also responds to those influences, precipitating responses. 

Jose:  Is it self-contained, like a billiard ball?

Maria: No, it is not self-contained at all.  It is partly composed of its relations with other things. 

Jose: But still it has agency of its own?

Maria: Yes, it has agency of its own.  For example, as you wave your hand your mind is causing the waving.  Your stream of experiences is making decisions all the time, and you are this stream.  Your stream is a stream of decisions.

Jose:  And you think that this stream of experiences can survive the death of the brain?

Maria:  Yes, Griffin's work shows that there's lots of evidence for this.

Jose:  So you think that your grandmother was really talking to you?  

Maria: I think she was trying to make things all right between us before she travelled to the next phase of her journey.

Jose:  What do you think the end of her journey is?

Maria: I don't know.  Buddhists tell us that we live in a multi-planed universe and that we journey through various planes of existence until our consciousness becomes so wide that we are enlightened.  I find this a hopeful idea.

Jose:  Are you sure?

Maria:  I am not sure about anything.  How about you?

Jose:  I am not sure, either.

Maria:  Then we are in the same situation.  But it seems to me that, at the very least, you should consider the evidence marshaled in Griffin's book and think for yourself.

Jose: I'm ordering it now.

...as a Context for Soul-Gentling

Recently I ran into a friend in the grocery store whose husband had died.   Her marriage had been a good one; the death was not easy for her.  But she also felt she was being guided by him even after his departure and that, in some ways, their relationship had grown even closer.  "We have grown even more intimate," she said.  "I feel his guidance and friendship all the time.  We are no longer separated by the flesh."

She reminded me of something I should have already known.  Relationships do not end with death.  They continue, at least on our side and perhaps on both sides.  

For my part, I find that, when people whom I love die, I become more gentle, less judgmental.  I remember what I loved about them and set aside what troubled me.   Their death is an opportunity for soul-gentling.  

By soul-gentling I mean a widening of the heart and mind.  As our soul gentles, 

1. We find greater freedom from greed, hatred, and confusion.

2.  We grow wider in our capacities for empathy with others, sharing in their subjective states and perspectives in a spirit of understanding.

3.  We awaken to how deeply interconnected all things truly are. 

Wide, Awake and Free.  I think that's another name for heaven. We can hope that heaven is the destiny of all souls: human souls, animal souls, plant souls, spirit souls, angel souls.  

Fallen angel souls, too.  Even the devils among us.  Orthodox Christians say that, when our hearts are truly wide, we pray even for the devil, whom God also loves with a tender care.  God doesn't give up on anybody, ever.  That's how wide God's love is.  And how awake and free, too.

In any case the soul that becomes gentle is not a substance that endures unchanged over time, but a living stream of experiences, different at every moment, each of which is here-and-now as it occurs.  

In process theology, God is the gentlest of souls.  This means that God is wider than anything we can imagine, like a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere.

Of course the Gentleness is not all powerful.  There are many things that happen in the world that the Gentleness does not and cannot prevent.  Witness the violence; witness the sadness; witness the tragedy; witness the meanness.

But the Gentleness is continuously at work as an inwardly felt lure toward creative transformation.  

I think of a friend of mine who suffered terribly from an addiction to anger, and who caused many people to suffer along the way.  I hope that, as his journey continues, he gains freedom from the anger and perhaps also a freedom to understand the harm he caused.  

At first, I am sure that this understanding will be painful for him: a kind of hell that he will undergo.   For him, at least at first, hell will be empathy, because he will feel the feelings and share in the sufferings of those he harmed. But it will be purgative not permanent.  

This is my prayer for him.  Not that he go to hell, but that he grow in love, learning to become part of the feelings of all people, including those he harmed.  

It hurts to grow wide, especially when we have to realize how narrow we've been and how our narrowness has been so harmful.  I suspect that I'll have a bit of hell to pay myself.  Growth into love is never easy, not for any of us.  Prayer is needed.

Perhaps prayer, then, is one way relationships can continue after death.  Relationships can continue when we pray for people who have died and when they pray for us, too.   We hear their prayers every time we feel beckoned to love our neighbors as ourselves.  

The Oddness of Modernity

I know it sounds odd to say that the dead pray for us.   It would not seem odd to Tibetan Buddhists or Native Americans, to classical Chinese or indigenous Africans, to biblical Christians or traditional Muslims.  They may have had different images of the place from which the memory occurs, but they all believed that in a continuing journey of one sort or another.

What is truly odd, from a historical perspective, is the rejection of the idea of such a journey by modern, western academics.   

Modern western academics somehow got it in their mind that it is intellectually irresponsible and unscientific to so believe.  This is where the work of David Ray Griffin is so helpful.

Until Wholeness is Realized

In any case, it seems to me that one life isn't enough for most people to find the wholeness for which their hearts yearn.  

For my part, I hope that people continue after death until they can taste the wholeness for which they yearn, after which they can be absorbed into the divine ocean.  My hope for them is not for everlasting life but for a continuation of life until wholeness is known.

Until then, let us remember the dead, not with monuments of stone but with monuments of love.   

A monument of love is an activity, not a building.  It is an act of adding goodness to the world in small ways, and thus memorializing those who have departed.  

The stones fade away in time, as do all things, but an act of love becomes infinite as soon as it occurs.  It becomes the presence of God on earth.

Being Savored 

Nevertheless, on our side of things, the memory fades and we move on with our lives.   

​Sometimes we feel guilty about this, but it's hard to keep remembering.  Indeed, in all likelihood, those who have left us may not be able to keep remembering either.  For every time there is a season.  Still there is a Savoring, not human but divine.

Patricia Adams Farmer speaks to this in her beautiful article: The Art of Savoring.  She invites us to trust in One whose memory doesn't fade at all, and that what was most beautiful in them is remembered as if it was yesterday.  

In process theology God is a deep Memory who always and forever memorializes those who have passed away.  Even as we might forget, God remembers.

We are made in God's image.  This means we are made to savor the beauty of every life, as best we can, living or dead, and also to accept the fact that, for new life to emerge on earth, old life must pass away.  

Death is a way of making space for new life and, so Maria trusts, making way for a continuing journey, until we melt into the Gentleness, from which we emerge in the first place, one savorable moment at a time.

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​Life after Death: A Reflection by John Cobb

Question: 

​Can you explain the Process view of our ‘life after physical death.’ Are our satisfactions resurrected into God and do they grow into what they could be in God’s aim? Will we be able then to grow into God’s aim?

Publication Month: October 1999

Dr. Cobb’s Response

The question asked this month is more specific than the general topic of life after physical death. It is about the Consequent Nature of God and what it means that we are taken up into this. “Are our satisfactions resurrected into God and do they grow into what they could be in God’s aim? Will we be able then to grow into God’s aim?”

There is no one answer of process theologians to these questions. There are slight differences between Whitehead and Hartshorne, and those who follow them also have different views. Of course, no one knows.

But even if we can only have visions of what may be rather than of what certainly is, these visions are important. To be persuasive they need to be organically related to the rest of what we believe. If they are to function eschatologically, they must at some level satisfy our need to believe that life and history have meaning, that they add up in some way, that what we are and do is not simply lost forever, and that even when it is painful or seemingly vacuous, it makes some positive contribution.

This is the main point of both Whitehead and Hartshorne. Whitehead thinks it is more coherent to suppose that God has physical feelings of the world than that God only mediates pure possibilities to the world. He also thinks this belief makes contact with some very deep religious intuitions. For if God prehends us, there are good reasons to think that God’s Consequent Nature includes us far more fully and richly than even a successor moment of our own experience includes its predecessors.

There are two dimensions to this difference. First, in every prehension of my immediate past experience, some of it is omitted. Whitehead provides good reason to think that in God’s prehension, nothing, or virtually nothing, is omitted. Second, although the immediate past is felt in human experience with considerable immediacy, that is, its subjectivity functions as such, this fades rapidly. My memories of what occurred even a few minutes ago lack that immediacy. In God, there is no fading of immediacy. Each experience in its full subjective value lives on forever.
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Students of Whitehead sometimes miss this emphasis on experiential immediacy in the divine life because this is said to be a doctrine of “objective” immortality. This is set over against “subjective” immortality which means that persons would continue to enjoy new experiences after death.

This distinction is real and important, and although process thought does not exclude the possibility of subjective immortality in this sense, that is not what this question is about. The point here is that the data of God’s physical feelings are our subjective experiences. It is these that live on in God in their full immediacy.

The question, however, asks for something more than this, something at which Whitehead hints. As occasions of experience are resurrected in the divine life, are they changed and do they continue to change? Specifically, do they grow into what they could be in God’s aim?

Marjorie Suchocki has gone further than any other process theologian in exploring this possibility. Her book, The End of Evil, is to be highly recommended for its speculative development of Whitehead’s hints in this direction. Her development of Whitehead’s thought is motivated by her passionate conviction that sheer everlasting perpetuation of miserable experiences is no eschatology!

I have not been able to imagine as much transformation within the divine life as does Suchocki. Nevertheless, it is clear that there is some. A creaturely occasion as felt by God is not simply what that occasion was as an act of creaturely feeling. Whereas it felt itself in a very limited context, it is felt by God in a universal context. In that context it has a meaning and role that it did not have for itself. Further, as the Consequent Nature includes more and more events lying in the future of the one in question, the meaning of the original event changes. Since God’s lures have taken account of the original event, the later events, when responsive to those lures, may have built in positive ways upon it. Thus as time goes on the momentary experience in question may become part of the realization of aims of which it was itself unaware, even of aims that did not exist at that time.

The question remains whether this change of role and meaning affects the subjectivity of the occasion. Here my imagination breaks down, and I am disposed to answer negatively. The subjective experience prehended by God remains forever just that experience. An experience here and now may be positively affected by the assurance that God can use it beyond its merits in the larger scheme of things. But just what that use may be lies forever outside the experience.

The added element of assurance that God will do with us more than we can imagine is important. That it probably does not affect the immediacy of our lives in God need not detract from that current value. It can provide the deeper meaning required by eschatological faith.