PREDICTING THE AFTERLIFE
A Natural Corollary of the Present Life
THE physicist Paul Dirac predicted the existence of “antimatter” before it was observed. What Dirac did on a scientific level, the preacher of God’s word does on a spiritual level: he predicts the afterlife.
Perhaps one of the main reasons why people fail to attach themselves to true religion in the modern age is that the teachings of religion cannot be observed or experienced in the normal scientific sense. Belief in the afterlife, which is the very crux of true religion, appears to most people as particularly hypothetical and far-fetched: if something cannot be seen, how can it be believed?
Scientific discoveries made in the 20th century, however, should have made it much easier for people to believe in the afterlife. In their initial stages most scientific discoveries have been no more than conclusions reached from theoretical, abstract data; they have constituted an inference of scientific “truths” from scientific “facts”. Will Durant wrote in his The Story of Philosophy: Every science begins as philosophy…; (science) arises in hypothesis.
In several cases it has been many years before discoveries were made in the laboratory. Yet even before these discoveries had reached the experimental stage, they were accepted as facts: they were not denied on the basis of the theoretical and abstract method of their presentation.
The prediction by the Cambridge physicist Paul Dirac (1902-1984) of the existence of antimatter was one such discovery. The first antiparticle to be discovered was the positron—the antiparticle of the electron. Its existence was first effectively predicted by Dirac in 1928. It was not until 1932, however, that the particle was detected in cosmic rays by C.D. Anderson. By that time Dirac was making new and farreaching predictions on the basis of facts already at his disposal. As J.G. Crowther wrote in his obituary of the famed physicist, “Dirac was quick to perceive the general implications of his discovery.” In 1933 Dirac shared the Nobel Prize for physics with Erwin Schrodinger.
In his address on receiving the reward he gave a virtually complete outline of antiparticles, antimatter and even hinted at the anti-universe. He specially forecast the existence of a negative proton, which was not observed until 1955.
Clearly, Dirac’s prediction of everything from antiparticles to an antiuniverse was based entirely on abstract theories. He had not observed antiparticles, nor had he experienced an anti-world; but he knew that the theoretical data at his disposal implied their existence. He started off with the laws of quantum theory and relativity, and conceived an equation to describe the motion of electrons in accordance with these laws. His equation made the spin of the electron a logical consequence of the union of relativity and quantum theory. The inference he then made was that the equation for the electron implied the existence of another particle having the same mass and spin as an electron, but with a positive instead of a negative electric charge. This is electron’s antiparticle, now known as a positron.
This world is finite: there must be an infinite world as well, for otherwise this world will be incomplete. Injustice prevails in this world: there must be a world of absolute justice, for otherwise, in a world founded on principles of justice, injustice will persist.
What Dirac did on a scientific level, the preacher of God’s word, one who calls humankind to belief in the afterlife, does on a spiritual level.
He takes the “equation” of this world and sees that it implies, with absolute certainty, the existence of an anti-world—the Hereafter—to balance it out. This world is finite: there must be an infinite world as well, for otherwise this world will be incomplete. Injustice prevails in this world: there must be a world of absolute justice, for otherwise, in a world founded on principles of justice, injustice will persist, and that is inconceivable. Certain limitations are inherent to this world; opportunities and potentialities, on the other hand, are unlimited. There must be another world where our unlimited potentialities can find unlimited fulfillment. Without an “anti-world”, this world is incomplete. The very existence of a finite, imperfect world implies the existence of another infinite, perfect one.
Dirac’s “discoveries” had not been observed when, in 1933, he expounded on them at length in his address on receiving the Nobel Prize. He was, however, so certain of the accuracy of his predictions that he was compelled to communicate them to others. So it is with the one who calls humankind to faith in the afterlife. He is so certain of his “discovery” of the life after death that he feels an obligation to convey the news to others.
And the latter, spiritual discovery, is no less certain than the former, scientific one. Indeed, it is one of the puzzles of the modern age that a world that has accepted Dirac’s “antimatter” and “anti-universe” as ‘the leading physical ideas for explaining the character and contents of the contemporary universe, its origin, and history’, has yet to accept the concept of an anti-world in the spiritual sense of the word. Perhaps the reason for this is that no one has, in recent times, conveyed the concept of an anti-world—or Hereafter—with the conviction that Dirac had when he put forward his idea of antimatter.
Patience gives the strength
to restrain one’s emotions in
delicate situations and use one’s
mind to find a course of action
along result-oriented lines.