Why the afterlife idea as a fake remedy for fear is the worst definition of religion?

The idea of a Santa Claus is marvelous until it kills the very idea of generosity, on the grounds that Santa Claus doesn’t really exist.

When speaking of the afterlife projections and everlasting life expectancy, we tend to identify the birthplace of religion in our fear of death. But our problem is not fear. The major problem is its source. Fear lives on expectation and uncertainty. And this is all that a possible future afterlife is about: hope and fear, that is – expectation. Religion is not a cure for fear; religion is a cure for expectation.

We cannot get rid of our fear of death so we discovered a substitute: the afterlife. Is it so? I don’t think that the “afterlife” idea is very good, in the first place, because this isn’t proper medicine, it is L.S.D. It could be good material for mythic stories, but not a good rendering of a factual reality. The afterlife scenario will always leave considerable room for doubts. The idea of the afterlife is the very pillar that stands between you and life. Placing an obstacle between you and a possible total annihilation might seem reassuring, but is, in fact, a dream full of horrendous possibilities.

We should bring the so-called “afterlife” here. Those insightful people whom we call saints or rishis experienced personal epiphanies and recounted visions of the “afterlife” not because they were hoping to survive somehow after death, physically or even spiritually, but because they dropped-off expectations and replaced the “after-life” with “life”. To them, the blissful and timeless “afterlife” had been already here.

And anyway, religion cannot be reduced to the idea of the afterlife, it can’t be explained only by our fear of death, because religious human behavior doesn’t deal solely with the idea of an “afterlife”, religions’ scope comprises also the idea of reconciliation between fragment and totality, time and eternity, flesh and spirit.

The idea that the afterlife projection can cure the fears and unhappiness of the present moment is flawed by the simple fact that the incessant movement from the present moment to an ever projected “future better life” or “the afterlife”, or whatever is better than the present moment doesn’t make the present moment satisfying for too long. “The afterlife” is just an idea in the mind and just as any other idea - it cannot quench the human thirst for eternity for too long. It’s only a substitute.

The Buddha refused to answer any questions regarding the realm of the afterlife, not because he denied the afterlife itself, but because in terms of both rationality and imagination we tend to perceive “timeless” and “eternity” as mental projections of an “ever-lasting” experience of some sort.

We tend to empirically project realities of a noumenal order. And it is wonderful that we can do this, unless we contemplate our source, the numinous as a hard fact-sort of reality, which somewhere, “out there” and “then” or “afterwards”.

We forget that the circumference of our circle of life is only the reflection of the center.

 “Out there” imagined things are meant to drive your attention “in here”. The “afterlife” is meant to make you focus on “life”. I always try to avoid reductionist approaches, but if I were asked to say in one sentence what religion and mythology is all about, I would answer that it’s about walking the circumference of the circle as long as you need to figure out the right direction to the center. We need to the find the center, not another point on the circumference. 

“But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the kingdom of God” (Jesus Christ)