Life After Life

By Luke V.

Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy provides one explanation of what might happen after death. His Inferno renders hell, Purgatorio a place of judgment, and Paradiso provides a vision of paradise. Dante’s journey with Virgil which heads into the underworld, ascends out of the inferno through purgatory and into paradise presents a metaphysical perspective of our lives after death.

Have you ever asked yourself, “what happens after death? Where do we end up? Have you ever questioned the being of God or your Higher Power? What does he have in store for you?”

Dante’s vision says there are 4 stages that we can travel throughout our existence. Life is essentially what we are in now, at this present moment. Human beings are made of a collection of cells, and life on this planet is formed from a collection of cells. At the point of death we enter the second stage called judgment where we take a look on our “life” that we lived.

In Dante’s scheme this would be called purgatory, the waiting place before going to heaven or hell. The final stages are hell or paradise, depending on the quality of the life you lived. You could be sent to paradise, hell, or even according to some traditions, back into life.

Life can be divided into three parts. The first part is from birth until seven years of age. The next is from seven years of age until thirty-five. The final third of life is from thirty-five until death. Take a circle and mark along the circumference 3 marks, equidistant in length. Birth Life and death happen at the same point on this circle. You enter into the same point as you leave. Connected to this circle of life, is another circle on top connected by only one point. This next circle is the second stage, judgment.

Judgment is the point in our existence after our death where we relive and review our life from birth to death in a short amount of time. At this time we are a collection of molecules awaiting our fate from how we lived our life. We review the whole circle of life, seeing where we went wrong and how we can amend our faults. What would happen if during our initial stage in life, we amended a wrong doing and made it right with the person or group of people we hurt? Would we still have to review it during the judgment stage? The answer is no. The judgment stage is to make right the faults in our life and if we already made it right we don’t have to relive this part of our life in the judgment stage.

If we lived a good, just, honest life we move onto Paradise. What if you don’t live a life of goodness or morality? Where do you end up? Living a life of dishonesty, selfishness and in negativity buys you a ticket into the long painful experience of hell. Hell is the opposite of paradise. Hell would be the stage related to stone, granite and fire. There are two notions of hell. One is the never-ending or infinite process of pain a person must endure. The second notion is it is an extremely long painful process, but there is an end. Whichever perception you have, the overall theme is long and painstaking because of the wrongdoings you have done in your life.

The final option not in Dante’s scheme is to be reincarnated back into Life. In Hinduism, a person finishes judgment and depending on the way they lived their life they could be reincarnated as a person of prosperity and love or as a penniless beggar on the street corners. The cycle of our existence is never-ending.

What’s the value of these metaphysical speculations? They challenge us to question ourselves. Do I need to fix my life? Can I fix my life? The answer is simple. We are all granted free will to do with whatever we choose. At birth, there are an infinite amount of paths for us to follow. As we make decisions in our life, there become fewer paths to choose from. We can make sure that we are choosing the best path for us if we ask for guidance. Take a third step every morning. Give your will and your life over to your Higher Power and see where the path leads you.