I don’t believe this, of course - those that know me or have read me know what I believe - but it would be interesting, I think, to consider this for those who believe there is no afterlife.  I contemplated this while reading the replies to the question of what they thought was going on with those people who had died for a short period of time and came back. 

These revived people told the common tales of looking down on themselves and seeing their dead body lying there; maybe doctors and nurses working over them.  Many go on to say they saw other things like the proverbial tunnel with the light at the end, angels, loved ones and what they would otherwise call heaven, Jesus, God on His throne, etc.

The response, by many, was that it was a chemical reaction of some sort, a response in the brain to stimulus that the person created for himself by believing that this is what would happen to him after death.  In other words, the spontaneous effect of the person’s belief system, a temporary mental reaction to things created in the person’s subconscious.  They said that they believe that had the person stayed dead, those “imaginary” images would have dissipated into the nothingness that is true death.

This caused me to wonder.  What if they are right to this degree:

I think most of us believe in and at least understand the psyche or its concept.  So I would like to ask them:  What if it is true permanently (not temporarily) that the psyche, or what we believe will happen, really does happen to us after death?  What if the psyche is creating for us the afterlife we are believing in now, while alive?

The Bible teaches that salvation (or the way to the utopia we call heaven) is by faith and there is a Bible verse that says we should store up for ourselves riches in heaven.    Well, for those who do not believe in God or an afterlife, I wonder – what would they believe for themselves “if” they believed that their psyche created their very own afterlife – if this was the natural way of things?  After all, if they believe these after-death-experiences are just creations of the psyche – it really isn’t a giant leap to believe that this could possibly be a permanent state instead of a temporary one.

So what would they create (believe for themselves) if this was found to be true ?  It would be interesting, I think, to hear their answer.