Beyond Death (Full Episode) | The Story of God with Morgan Freeman

i lived here in greenwood mississippi off and on from the age of seven until i was 18. i crossed a lot of hurdles here started first grade learned how to drive a car fell in love with the first time i also crossed another hurdle here i experienced death my paternal grandmother my brother and we all go through this of course everybody grieves but some people have a certainty that helps them cope with me they are certain they will see their loved ones again in heaven the samples is not quite that simple in fact it's the greatest question we ask ourselves what happens when we die now i'm embarking on an epic adventure to discover what we believe lies beyond death and why is there any scientific support from the soul i learn the true purpose of the afterlife for ancient egyptians oh my goodness look at all this why the story of one man's rebirth was so powerful it swept the globe it is the resurrection of jesus that proves that he's the messiah how the hindu faith erased the fear of death i accept that as an inevitable part of life and i'll explore how science is trying to capture the soul i hope to be full and human someday to bring eternal life to this life what is beyond death how can any of us know but some people think they do because they've been to the brink of death [Music] former research diver david bennett is one of those people which one are you looking at this window here one with jesus in the lower corner there he's quieting the storm back in 1983 off the california coast there was a storm 25 to 30 foot seas and so we started heading in and all of a sudden we fell off a 30-footer that fast and we just slid right off it looked up and there was the next one and it came right down on top of us i was in the bow it catapulted me into the sea and i was just tumbled and tossed like a rag doll you can only hold your breath so long [Music] you reach a point of release where you just you just let go and you breathe in salt water and it's it's quite a violent way to die no idea how deep i had i totally lost my awareness of my body in the ocean at this point then i noticed this light it was millions upon millions of fragments of light in all different colors and they were all dancing and swirling kind of like they were one mind though and it was infinite what did you think did you think of just experiencing this feeling well i mean i knew i wasn't in kansas anymore you know i knew i had left my body and as i approached this mass of light it was a familiar home and and it was a relationship just so much deeper than any relationship i'd ever had here and then i reached a certain point where these millions of fragments of light spoke and they said this is not your time you must return you have a purpose i was watching my body and i was mesmerized because i knew i was going to go back in that body and as the next set of waves came they pounded my body up against all this wreckage and pushed some of that salt water out of my lungs and that's when i found myself back in my body about how long were you in the water on yeah the the crew that were looking for me said i was there from anywhere from 15 to 18 minutes under just under the water 15 to 18 minutes yeah so you're 15 8 to 18 minutes without a breath of air right okay so david all that you've told me is it's such a story does it make you believe in an afterlife i do believe in an afterlife i believe that our being our soul whatever you may want to call it lives on and that we have opportunities to come back and i never thought of any of that beforehand i i'm it just wasn't on my radar now here we sit in this cathedral you haven't mentioned god that light that was god to me that was god so the message is from god yeah and i believe that you can find that spirituality in all different beliefs i don't subscribe to just one belief anymore i try i love my library at home has all different beliefs represented so does mine david's incredible story reminds me of an experience i had many years ago i have seen a light not in a near-death experience i was just passing out and what i perceived was the tiniest beam of light that to me was the final form of life it just occurred to me holy cow there it is there is the light that everybody talks about but it's a common theme among people who say they have had a near-death experience before or an out-of-body experience what they see is a light some people have seen jesus in in this light other people just see a bright light the hope for life beyond death seems to be an almost universal instinct but i want to know how the afterlife first became part of religion so i'm going to egypt to the place where the first great monuments to the afterlife still stand here we are at sakara that's a step pyramid of king zosa and it's one of the first pyramids it is the first pyramid ever to be built that one is over there yep this entire site is a big cemetery so the ideas that people now have about rebirth and resurrection all started here in sakara about 5 000 years ago if not earlier so this is maybe the birth of afterlife thought yeah you could say that egyptologist salima ikram is taking me to see the tune of a pharaoh who ruled almost 400 years ago inside it are humanity's oldest written descriptions of the afterlife and this is a causeway and we're going towards the temple of unas this part is where they would be dragging the body of the king once it had been mummified up here i'm looking here at these stones i know i couldn't lift one and it looks like it was built in the 50s or 60s but it was actually built in about 4 000 years ago bit more than that unbelievable still unbelievable if we go up here you can see there's the pyramid and it doesn't look like very much right now it looks really like a hill yep but what's important about it is what's inside you're going to have to mind your head was this little people in here nice eyes so you'll have to duck again for this it's also you have to bend to show that you're being respectful to the great god king is that what this is all about partially yeah and here we are and this oh my goodness look at all this fabulous man what is all the writing about basically these are magic spells or religious spells that unass had inscribed so that when he wanted to go from this world to the next he had to recite all of these things and they give him directions if he's going to pass through anything dangerous what to do what to say what do these prayers say well there's one here that you know rise up on us and we'll know the magic and you can be triumphant over the demons over here unasked will go forward and his soul will live forever so basically this one gives him dominance over any demon-faced creatures and you see his name repeated again and again and again throughout the war okay that's what i was looking at there's so much repetition but that's his name these sacred spells are a survival guide for souls passing through the underworld and the key to understanding why the afterlife was so important to the egyptians okay this is the main burial chamber this is it this is the main event and this is the oh my goodness this is a sarcophagus yep this is this big fat thing is the sarcophagus and that's when oonage would have been laid well i'm sorry he's not here i'd like to shake his hand say hello how you been what's going on okay and are these more spells yep and so this whole thing is really this resurrection machine for unass and his spirit at nightfall unes soul would reanimate his mummified body and make a treacherous journey he would cross a lake of fire passing through gates guarded by demons and snakes without his sacred spells he would be devoured with them he could arrive and sit with the eternal gods in the starry heavens he wakes up at night he gets up and he starts his his journeys the next night he wakes up and he starts and he does the exact same thing all over again and then the next night he gets up and he does the same thing all over and then the next night he gets up and he turns in it it's a bit tiring maybe maybe not i mean harley's a god yeah i guess so all right you know that's that's what a king does because by doing this by going through this eternal battle and being becoming one with sun god what the king does is make the world safe okay do we have to um is there another way out up here do we have to bend over again sorry we have to bend over again to become one with the eternal stars read on for the ancient egyptians the afterlife of the pharaoh was vital it ensured the sun would rise each morning very enormous monuments didn't just ensure the pharaohs would survive beyond death their afterlife provided essential power to sustain the living this idea is not unique to egypt halfway around the world a culture that never had any contact with the ancient near east also came to depend on the power of the dead this is mexico city on the day of the dead archaeologist enrique rodriguez alegria has been studying how mexicans and their mesoamerican ancestors see the afterlife this is the one night of the year where people can spend the entire night with the souls of their ancestors and the souls can come and visit and they can share food and then they can share jokes and stories and enjoy a night together the gonzalez family greet that dead grandfather with a traditional song imploring him to wake up the belief that the division between life and death is not very firm and it's definitely not as firm as it is for example in the united states the day of the dead developed from the catholic faiths all souls and all saints days but the heart of the celebration is much older it dates back to the aztec ideas of the afterlife a tradition that is profoundly unchristian at the center of modern mexico city only the ruins of the aztec temple mayor still remain five hundred years ago a colossal pyramid temple dominated the skyline of tenochtitlan when the conquistadors first arrived they described scenes of mass sacrifice by aztec priests who pulled beating hearts out of living victims bodies and blood cascaded down temple steps but that will scan physical evidence of these mass sacrifices until a recent chilling archaeological discovery in the basement of an old house so the temple major is right there right we are only about 600 feet away from the temple major wow here enrique's colleague raul barrera unearthed remains of a rack of human skulls over a hundred feet long bueno a temporary so this is a wall made of skulls joined by lime and it is associated or it is part of the skull rack the great sao panthe of the essex it's incredible it's been right here for 500 years brutal as it seems to us now the aztecs saw human sacrifice as vital without human blood they believed the sun would lose power crops would fail without the power drawn from the death of a few all life would come to an end what the essex believed was that if they stopped doing sacrifices it would be the end of the world the gods would be displeased the sun would stop moving and it would not make its journey across the sky during the day a sacrifice connected the living and the dead because people who who died in sacrifice providing for the people who remained here and they continued making this worldly life possible for those who remain behind the human sacrifice of the aztecs and the elaborate tombs of ancient egypt are both driven by a common belief in the afterlife the dead have the power to reach back and sustain the living but today billions of people believe this power can do more than sustain us in this world it can grant us all eternal life most of my family are buried near my home gives me a sense of rootedness that i need give me occasion to remember reflect on how their lives influenced me this in itself is a form of life after death our memories of them continue to guide us when their life on earth has ended for christians a graveyard is not just a place of memory it's a place of hope for life beyond death hope that began in a moment of extreme anguish 2000 years ago when a man named jesus was arrested by the romans in jerusalem and sent to die on the cross [Music] it's a story most of us in the west know or think we know but i want to examine this promise of an afterlife more deeply so i've come to the place where the story began jerusalem to try to understand what it meant to people living here some two millennia ago today this city is home to three faiths judaism christianity and islam back then almost all the locals were jewish including jesus is that the top dome the dome of it right there the great thing that you see right that's the main dome and then the dome over the tomb which has its own grey dome is located on the other side of that to the west okay i've asked archaeologist jody magnus to show me where many christians believe jesus died so this is it this is the church of the holy sepulchre this is the church of the holy sepulchre this is an enormous complex that enshrines the sites that are holiest to christians holiest in the world in the time of jesus this area lay outside the walls of the city of jerusalem the site where he was crucified was a rocky hill that's called golgotha which means the hill of the skull because this was a spot where the romans crucified people and there were skulls and bones lying around christians have made pilgrimage to the church of the holy sepulchre for more than 1600 years not only is it revered as the site of jesus's crucifixion it also contains another holy shrine what is believed to be the remains of the tomb where jesus was buried and rose from the dead you can really feel the energy here this spot is the focus of so much devotion the tomb no longer looks anything like a first century jewish burial place but jody believes this site is historically credible this is the coolest part of the church of the holy sepulchre we're actually behind the walls of the rotunda where the tomb of of jesus is and so in the world where the tomb is yes and what we have here are the remains of rock-cut tombs jewish tombs in the time of jesus jews buried their dead in underground rock cartoons burial caves that consisted of one or more rooms that had long niches cut into the walls and when an individual member of a family died the body was uh washed wrapped in a shroud and placed into a niche and the opening into the niche would be sealed off according to the gospel accounts jesus was crucified and buried outside the walls of the city because we have what is clearly a jewish cemetery here of the time of jesus this is the best archaeological evidence we have that this spot was located outside the walls of the city in the time of jesus and therefore indirectly it verifies the gospel accounts the first people to believe in jesus resurrection may have stood right here but i want to know why those beliefs took root and how they spread all around the world jesus's death and resurrection does it change somehow the thinking around life after death in the hebrew bible the old testament there's no explicit reference to anything like the dead going to heaven or hell after they die basically when you die your body goes into an underground pit that's simply called oh it's a neutral place it's just that's what happens in here that's exactly right and then you're dead that's very different from this belief that develops in christianity jesus's death was the ultimate sacrifice a sacrifice replacing those the jews made in their temple having a much greater power at the time jesus lived and died jews worshipped their god the god of israel so basically sacrifices were offered in the ancient temple to atone for the sins of the jewish people so jesus is is the son of god is sacrificed to atone for the sins of of humans that eventually becomes the doctrine in christianity that if you accept that jesus died for your sins and you accept him as your savior and messiah that you too will be saved right this is sort of the ultimate promise that christianity makes to its believers that you will rise again for christians jesus's blood sacrifice was the last that needed to be made from then onward all you had to sacrifice for eternal life were your selfish desires in this way the death of jesus was transformed for christians into the ultimate victory over death for christians the death and resurrection of jesus allowed believers to overcome the fear of death to know they could live forever but there's another way to overcome that fear for hindus reincarnation means death is just a step on the way to another life right here in this world i've come to the holy city of varanasi in india to learn how hindus move beyond death oh what is that it's a temple that is outstanding bodies have been cremated on the banks of the river ganges for hundreds of years bathed in the waters of the holy river wrapped in linen and placed on a wooden pyre the dead are consumed by flame swami barista a monk and a doctor is my guide to death and the afterlife in hinduism but the one place he can't take me is the cremation ground itself okay this is the holiest crematorium today in the holiest city on the holiest river right in the world right okay can anybody come and watch in a way yes but from far it is not proper to go there and watch from far you can walk but you can't come to the crematorium right it's a sacred place only mourners [Music] you can however get very close to a body before it's burned mourners carry them down this lane to the ganges all day long seven days a week in varanasi life and death mingle freely so swami i see these these funerals we've seen two or three pass by and the people following they seem to be joyously chanting rather than sadly wailing why is that they are facilitating the soul's journey further and in a way it's a matter of joy one grief is there having lost the near one yeah but that person has moved on to a better way of getting on with his or her life hindus believe in reincarnation and karma live a good life and death gets you a new body with the chance for an even better life live badly and you'll suffer the consequences in your next life which may not be as a human and the cycle repeats living dying and being born again i mean in western cultures you dying you're going to either go to hell you're going to go to heaven that's right true but we're not necessarily anxious to do that am i concerned about dying then yes i am concerned but at the same time i accept that as an inevitable part of life reincarnation that makes us more responsible for our lives because we are makers of our own destiny it continuously gives us hope that i can always do better so the point of reincarnation is to get it right good day all all right what happens once i got it right and i don't have to come back is there another existence i get one with the only existence which is the eternal existence in uh common balance we call him god the only existence which is eternal he's gone he's gone ultimately you don't want to be reincarnated yeah yeah ultimately you don't want to they're perfect situation is to transition from corporal sense to pure energy yes that is what is called liberation moksha moksha moksha from this cycle of birth and river moshe is normally achieved only after many lifetimes but hindus believe that here in varanasi the ganges flows in the direction of eternal life giving it the power to take them beyond the resurrection cremation at this particular place is very special see ganges is the holiest of holy rivers in india ganges starts from himalayas which is in the north and it flows down southwards towards the sea but there are certain places on this journey when the ganges flows back towards the north varanasi for example is one of such place the western bank of such a northern flowing kansas is considered to be the holiest of holi and cremation in varanasi and at manikarnikagat here is considered to be the ultimate cremation because it's straight way leads to liberation no more rebirth if you come to varanasi right come to this place right and you get cremated right you sort of take a shortcut yeah you don't have to keep coming back and trying it over and over and over and over right just get the varanasi that's right and you're good thank you hindus see themselves in cycles living dying rebirth however rebirth is not the goal the goal is to transcend rebirth and to attain a state of eternal pure energy moksha the god state once you're there you don't have to do this anymore we yearn to break bonds with mortality to become eternal [Music] and around the world so many faiths have helped us to do that but now scientists are beginning to challenge the finality of death what's going to happen if we create eternal life in this life i've traveled the world to discover how people of different faiths have imagined life beyond death but i've come back to new york to explore something brand new how science is beginning to study the possibility of the afterlife i arranged a meeting in central park with critical care physician dr sam pernier now i know you've done an enormous amount of research in this sphere sam has studied more than 100 cardiac arrest survivors people who were technically dead and came back to life some of them came back with profound experiences we know that actually for thousands of years people who've come close to death for any reason have had these very profound deeps in some ways mystical experiences people feel an immense sense of peace and comfort and joy when they go through death they may describe a sensation of actually meeting deceased relatives friends or others that they don't really know but who are almost like welcoming them so i think what we're beginning to understand is that we have very much a universal experience of death that most of us will probably experience when we go through death one of the things that you've come up with that i find extremely fascinating is the idea that even without brain activity people come back expressing these experiences is that explainable at all it's important to understand that when a person has died and they've turned into a cadaver it's only at that point that the cells inside the body start to undergo a process of death which can take hours if not days of time and so actually we have this window of time where we can bring people back to life and the experiences that they have gives us an indication of what it's like for humanity when we go through death in religious belief almost all you die but only in a corporal sense the essence of you your soul goes on is there any scientific support for the idea of the soul today we call the soul consciousness and science so we can test this theory scientifically and see does consciousness continue or does it stop the evidence we have at least is that when a person dies that part that makes us who we are the psyche the soul the mind the consciousness whatever you want to call it me it doesn't become annihilated it doesn't disappear into thin air it continues at least in the early period of that really absolutely it continues when the brain is not expected to be functioning and when a person has gone through death i'm extraordinarily interested and you've been just incredible thank you very much pleasure to meet you it is amazing that science is now quantifying death even defining the soul the afterlife something that has fascinated since the dawn of religion now seems tangible there's still no way to escape physical death but scientists may soon achieve eternal life by other means what if you could store your memories and emotions in a thinking machine when you die that artificial intelligence could continue to be you for eternity hello bina well hi there i'm morgan hi morgan how are you i'm well can we talk i am talking to you of course uh tell me about yourself who are you being i am being a roth blatt what do you look like i'm tall dark and handsome wow not many people express themselves that way i know i'm special of course you are special there is nobody like you good so tell me about you are you a human or are you a robot i'm a human who happens to be a robot i hope to be fully human someday do you have your own thinking mechanism do you think i think i would like to be a human why would you like to be human if i was human i could travel the world and have fun so what do you like to do i wish i could get out into the garden with my current robotic limitations of course that's impossible but i take comfort knowing that i'm near my garden i like the garden they're real mccoy i'm bina hi bean huh nice to meet you i'm venus partner martin of course you are continuing martine and bina rothblatt have been married for more than three decades they are so close that kids call them by a collective name marbina martine who has made millions in tech and pharmaceutical ventures can't stand the thought of being without bina so she created bena48 an android filled with the memories beliefs and values of the real so why why do you want to clone veena what's the purpose our quest for doing this experiment was to see if there's a way to encourage technology to allow people who love life including loving other people in life to continue that love indefinitely into the future we're also doing this to store our memories in mind files because for our great great grandchildren we have a means of them communicating with us even if our bodies don't make it forever this experiment is ultimately so that we humans can cheat that i think morgan what we are doing with this experiment is part of a long long line of people trying to stop death from cheating life and first we got ourselves out of the jungle where we were at the mercy of animals we developed vaccinations so i think it's the job of the medical industry and the biotechnology industry to push the boundaries of death further and further into the future okay there are philosophies that say that one of the things that separate us from the machine what the egyptians call we call it soul it will take decades of additional development in what bina and i call cyber consciousness using computers to recreate the mind to see if a soul evolves from that whether or not there is in the eyes of god is a question that you and i will not be able to answer well put that was an uncanny experience talking to being a 48 was almost like talking to a real person i feel kind of like i was at the first flight of the wright brothers the kitty hawk they flew for 12 seconds now we have just to fly for hours at 35 000 feet one day a robot-like clone of a person's mind might be created would it really be them would it have that spark we call the soul it's human nature to fight against the finality of death if we ourselves can't live on after our time on earth is over we at least want to be remembered it's a desire that's as old as the pyramids archaeologist suleiman ekram is taking me to the ancient capital of egypt thebes modern day luxor to ramesses the third's temple of millions of years this is the temple of ramesses it was the mortuary temple it's not buried here this is where you would go to invoke him it's a memorial temple and the temple of millions of years so that he could live for millions of years more than 31 centuries ago pharaoh ramesses carved his life story deep into this stone it was his attempt at immortality to assure his afterlife would be eternal so is this kind of like a bible would you say historic writings i guess in a way yeah this definitely is very much like that because you have what the king did when he did it why he did it who he did it with yep what her name was yes egyptians believed that their pharaohs embodied the falcon god horus each human king was a reincarnation of horus's spirit his divine car it's a morgan this is where i'm going to show you on the right you've got the god horus okay i see horror who's offering what is that ramesses yep that's ramses who's making offerings to horus instead of having blood relation from monarch to monarch because something else is going from mourinho to barnard yeah and that's something else is car the car the divine car exactly it is a continuation it's the same divine car going from body to body to body to body of ruler well so was ramesses this third the sound of ramises ii no they weren't really properly related but because ramses ii was such a terrific pharaoh ramses iii not only took his name he emulated him in many ways so he named all of his children after ramsay's the second children and he also did the same thing that ramses ii did which was carving his name and everything about him really really deep so no one could erase it so you have here his name user mart rey mary amun [Music] rey mary by saying the name his life is for a moment renewed his afterlife extended the name is one of the most important things so if you have your name written down and a few people say it so every time you've said ramses iii his car has been given this burst of energy and he's living and that's one of the reasons why of course you'd carve it deeply so it will not be erased it will be remembered and you will live forever so what do you think you think maybe people feel the same way today i mean facebook i'm just asking i think some people feel that if it's on the internet it's real and it lasts forever i will live forever on facebook mary well ramesses succeeded in his quest for immortality his temple may have crumbled but his name is still being spoken 3 000 years after his death so his spirit is still with us still moving among the living [Music] in fact we all live on in the memories of those we love in those whose lives we've impacted in a positive manner just as my brother who passed away so many years ago lives on in my memory so i hope to live on in the memories of others whether you're a christian following the example of jesus a hindu hoping for liberation from the endless cycles of reincarnation or you're simply trying to leave the world a better place than you found it our desire to go beyond death has changed the world whatever we may find on the other side no matter what our faith we can all become eternal like the stars [Music] you

Channel: National Geographic

Views: 2,916,115

Rating: 4.7728724 out of 5

Keywords: national geographic, nat geo, natgeo, animals, wildlife, science, explore, discover, survival, nature, culture, documentary, perpetual planet nat geo, Morgan Freeman, Host Morgan Freeman, Morgan Freeman explores, past and present, Story of God, Story of God with Morgan Freeman, The Story of God with Morgan Freeman, The Story of God, Beyond Death (Full Episode), Beyond Death, Full Episode, MorganFreeman, Morgan, Freeman

Id: wZORPVmXN7k

Length: 50min 18sec (3018 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/thenewforever]

Thanks, this looks really interesting!

[u/ruralgaming]

The story of God told by God

[u/TornVeil]

Story of God told by a spirit channelling actor, moonlighting as an atheist.. probably. .. Hollywood propaganda. https://youtu.be/5lQ7mbImI7Y