A wise man once told me, “Death is perhaps the only destination every human being shares, and yet it remains the one journey about which no living person can honestly claim firsthand knowledge.” I agreed, aware that every civilisation, every religion and every age has wrestled with the same question that no medium, spiritualist, afterlife expert or YouTube guru has ever answered with evidence: What happens after we die?
What we have are suppositions. Some say Heaven and Hell. Others say reincarnation. That consciousness survives. Few believe we become energy. Most like to imagine we meet our loved ones. Many insist they know. Claims like these surface regularly on social media. I am not saying they are wrong. I am asking, as a hardnosed news editor who insists on seeing everything in black and white and not gray: How do you know?
Over the years, after I lost every member of my bloodline, I sat through séances, watched Ouija boards at work, met people who claimed to speak with the departed, and listened to those who described the afterlife in astonishing detail. I didn’t go looking to debunk them. Or wishing they would fail. I went looking for answers. But I returned with something far more valuable than answers: questions.
When grief enters our lives, skepticism becomes surprisingly fragile. People who have just lost a loved one will cling to almost anything that promises another conversation, another sign, another embrace somewhere beyond this life. There is nothing wrong about that. It is the human thing to do. Which is precisely why those who speak with certainty about the afterlife carry such a responsibility.
Hope is a powerful medicine. But it can also become an intoxicant. I have no quarrel with faith. Faith, by its very nature, does not claim proof. It believes. What troubles me are those who move beyond belief and begin speaking with absolute conviction about what awaits us after death. As though they have returned from the afterlife carrying a travel guide. I am arguing against unverified deductions presented as established fact.
As an editor, I have spent my life asking one question before publishing anything: How do we know this? I see no reason that habit should end where life does. Perhaps there is something beyond this life. Perhaps there isn’t. I don’t know. Neither, I suspect, does anyone else. Until evidence replaces belief, I remain content to treat the greatest mystery of all with curiosity, humility, and the honest admission that I don’t know.
I respect grieving people who find comfort in faith, memory or hope. Grief leaves us desperately wanting to believe that someone we love still exists somewhere just beyond our reach. What I struggle with are those who describe the afterlife as though they possess privileged knowledge. How can any of us distinguish between faith, experience, interpretation and fact? Until we can, how does anyone know? Who told them?
About Mark Manuel
The above thoughts/content has been proudly copied from the wall of Sir Mark Manuel. Being interviewing almost every role model of this country and going stronger each day. Mark Manuel is a respected Mumbai editor, writer, and columnist.
With over three decades of journalism in leading publications. This includes the Free Press Journal, Times, Dainik Bhaskar, Mid-Day, and Afternoon. He is famous for his brilliant pen interviews. He himself is a TEDx speaker.
Further
His interviews have featured in several leading media houses. They include the Hindustan Times, Huffington Post, BBC, and Network 18. Almost every famous person has been interviewed by him in the country from Mother Teresa to Muhammad Ali. His first book is just out. It’s titled Moryaa Re! It is a crime thriller that is perhaps the country’s first police procedural. He began his career covering crime. And in a tribute to his experience and knowledge of this beat.
Several distinguished officers of the Mumbai Police and its Crime Branch collaborated with him to make this book possible. Amitabh Bachchan wrote the forward in a statement of friendship for Mark Manuel and admiration for his work.
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