What happens when you die? Does your soul rise up to heaven or fall to the pits of hell? Do you go through some sort of reincarnation or transmigration process? Do you simply rot in the ground?
Usually the answer to the question of afterlife is based on one’s spiritual belief system, or lack thereof. But we don’t need to be limited to religious definitions of “the great beyond” thanks to David Eagleman’s imaginative new book, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives
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Eagleman, who is a neuroscientist by profession, concocts 40 afterlife scenarios in the slim 110-page book. The reading is light and simple, yet often profound.
In “Mary” when you arrive in the afterlife, you find Frankenstein author Mary Shelley perched on a throne surrounded by angels. Come to find out, the story of Dr. Frankenstein is one that God deeply connects with. Like the doctor in the book, after creating man he soon realizes that he has done something that he can’t control, something dangerous even.
In “Circle of Friends”, you soon realize that the afterlife is made up of only the people you remember, no strangers. “The missing crowds make you lonely. But no one listens or sympathizes with you, because this is precisely what you chose when you were alive.”
Sum is a book about afterlife, a subject usually reserved for religion and metaphysics, but this is no theology book. And although a neuroscientist, Eagleman didn’t make this a science book. Instead it is a study of human nature, community, values, and justice. Ironically, these stories are about what it means to live as apposed to what it means to die.
Sure, God is in many of these afterlife vignettes, but s/he is never the all-powerful omnipotent, omnipresent God of Abrahamic faiths. In these stories, God is often confused, disappointed, sad, and weak.
In “Egalitaire”, God has trouble setting up an afterlife system that she is satisfied with. “For months she moped around her living room in heaven, head drooped like a bulrush, while the lines piled up.” She eventually decides to allow everyone into heaven, creating complete equality. But this decision backfires as complete equality turns heaven into a sort of hell.
The book is always entertaining and thought provoking. But Eagleman is at his best when he forces the reader to examine his or her own life through the context of the book. In some of his afterlife scenarios it is impossible not to plop yourself into the pages. It’s kind of fun, and sometimes terrifying.