Ohazurike 1 Raphael Ohazurike Dr. Hasell ENGL 1301-29204 November 23, 2014 Rudiments of Eternity During the course of one’s life, one tends to cogitate about what would befall them at the end their mortal life. Such reflection leads to perturbing questions that make us wonder if we live our lives the right way. Philosophically, whatever we accept to be right is in one way or the other connected to our various religions. The theory of death and afterlife parallels directly with religion. First let us discuss the term “Eternity” or as some people would refer to it as the afterlife, it is the concept of a domain or a realm after one’s life where an individual’s soul or spirit persist to exist. It is a disparity to the belief …show more content…
As Christianity grew, so did the ideas of eternity. Christianity holds the notion that there exists two realms after death namely, Heaven and Hell, Heaven is known to be nice and lovely while Hell is known to be ugly and lonesome. Although there is no developed concept of Heaven or Hell in the Christian bible. The Body of ancient writings that make up the Old Testament assumes a kind of life after death*. In ancient times, various religions struggled to get followers, but keeping these followers was a problem, doubts in the mind of followers needed to be cleared. Assurance of rewards in the afterlife for these followers was required to totally convince these followers that they were in the right religion. As a result, the Christian church started creating myth, which got them the followers they needed. Christians also began receiving apparition in their dreams. Jacob had a dream where he saw a ladder connecting heaven to earth, and angels descended and ascended from heaven to earth. King David extols his own state of virtue and implores God not to leave his soul in Sheol [1] nor allow him …show more content…
Ancient Egyptians believed that every individual comprises of three elements; “the body,” “the ka,” and “the ba”. The body is the unique physical part of the human. The body undergoes various changes as the individual get older, death is considered to be the last change this body undergoes. The second unique element –ba, is thought to be an individual’s personality or character, a combination of all the non-physical things that makes an individual different from others. Examples of the ba includes our memories, the manner in which we express our emotions, our intelligence, preferences and so on. The final unique element known as the ka is the Ka is like a force, it doesn’t represent the individual, it is like something shared by all humans. Ka was believed to be created by the creator and being in possession or not in possession of ka is the difference between being alive and being dead. After death both ba and ka are released, and they depart for the afterworld. The Underworld, as the word suggests is located somewhere under the ground where life remains the same just that there is no suffering, no poverty or diseases and most especially, no death. It is like a permanent and eternal phase of life. These ancient Egyptians also believed that being mummified was the only way to have an afterlife, they thought only if the corpse of the dead was embalmed and entombed, the dead would not be able to live