What is in the Great Beyond (Part 1)

Unofficial reproduction of Graham Hancock's various works.

Any monies gained via this account will be forwarded to Graham.

Granite stela of Axum, Ethiopia

DEATH IS THE FUNDAMENTAL
mystery of life.

It is certain for all and yet we do not know what it means.
The mystery can be reduced to simple dilemmas. When we die does every thing end for us, or is there some way that we go on? Is there nothing more to us than the sum of our material parts, or does the soul exist? Is the notion of the soul a figment of human psychology, or perhaps an invention of religion? Could it be something wonderfully real?

Science, which can weigh, measure and assess the corpse of a dead person, is powerless to tell us whether anything spiritual occurs after death. A widely held assumption of science, though it is by no means unanimous, tends to be that there is no soul, and that 'dead means dead'. Some scientists promote such views as though they are facts that have been empirically tested. Yet there are no facts here, only assumptions that cannot be proved. Indeed, the scientific case in this area is religious in nature since it expresses a passionate belief in the non-existence of the soul, but has no
evidence to support that claim.

Religion presents the opposite case, equally passionately, on equally flimsy grounds. There is no scientific proof of the existence of the various religious heavens and hells and afterlife realms. Nevertheless, the religious or spiritual point of view strongly asserts that the soul does exist, and will undergo a judgement after death, and can transmigrate through many forms, and can be reborn.

A QUESTIONER LIKE THEE ....

Confronted by these two polar opposite opinions, it is natural for thinking people to consider the universal law of physical death and to wonder what their own fate might be. One such person, according to an Indian sacred text called the Katha Upanishad, was Nachiketas, a brave and inquisitive young man who had found his way to the 'House of the Dead' and earned the right to demand a wish of Yama, the Hindu god of death.

• Nachiketas: This doubt there is of a man that has died: 'He exists' say some and ‘He exists not, others say. A knowledge of this, taught by thee, this is my wish ...
• Yama: Not easily knowable and subtle is this law .. Choose Nachiketas another wish, hold me not to it. Choose sons and grandsons of a hundred years, and much cattle and elephants and gold and horses. Choose wealth and length of days ...
• Nachiketas: Tomorrow these fleeting things wear out the vigour of a mortal's powers. Even the whole of life is short. Not by wealth can a man be satisfied. Shall we choose wealth if we have seen thee? Shall we desire life while thou art master. . ? This that they doubt about.... what is in the great Beyond, tell me of that. This wish that draws near to the mystery Nachiketas chooses no other wish than that.
• Yama: Thou indeed, pondering on dear and dearly loved desires, O Nachiketas, hast passed them by. Not this way of wealth hast thou chosen, in which many men sink .. The great Beyond gleams not for the child led away by the delusion of possessions. This is the world, there is no other he thinks, and so falls again and again under my dominion... Thou art steadfast in the truth; may a questioner like thee, Nachiketas, come to us.?

Yama, the god of material death, then goes on to utter one of the luminous statements of Indian scripture, a statement concerning the nature of the soul 'which is never born nor dies, nor is it from anywhere, nor did it become anything'

• Unborn, eternal, immemorial, this ancient is not slain when the body is slain. .. Smaller than small greater than great, this Self is hidden in the heart of man Understanding this the wise man cannot grieve ... Bodiless in bodies, stable among unstable … he is released from the mouth of death.

The evidence that follows will show that the revelations attributed to Yama in the Upanishads did not originate in Hindu religious philosophy. They are part of an ancient spiritual teaching that was promulgated not only in India but also as far afield as Mexico. Egypt, Indochina, the Pacific and South America. Hinting at the former existence of an important civilization not spoken of in any history books - a lost 'common source' that influenced all these regions - this mysterious system of ideas used an esoteric form of astronomy as its principal methodology, and built great works of architecture on the ground to reflect the patterns and movements of the heavens. The system was a kind of 'science of immortality' designed to release mankind 'from the mouth of death. Its origins are forgotten in prehistory. And prehistory itself is just the name that we give to the almost total amnesia that our species has suffered concerning more than 40.000 years of our own past. This amnesia covers the entire period from the emergence of anatomically modern humans until the first 'historical records began to be written down in Sumer and in Egypt in the third millennium BC.