This article addresses the theme of ‘death and immortality’ from the perspective of consciousness, and takes as its starting point a root text of Hindu philosophy, the Sāṃkhyakārikā by Īśvarakṛṣṇa (c. fourth century ce). The text posits a dualist ontology in which consciousness is separate and autonomous from a material reality that includes body and mind. The goal is to be ontologically situated in a ‘pure’ consciousness (non-objective), which signifies existential liberation. There are mundane ways to understand this claim, such as referring to cognitive states that produce affective dissociation, or more radical interpretations, such as a post-death state. This article explores the question of what Sāṃkhya's consciousness is like: it is said to be immortal, plural, individuated, and contentless. What is the motivation for and implication of engagement with a system that describes an existential freedom that may only be known in a dualist reality or after death? And how can Sāṃkhya's concepts be brought into conversation with contemporary investigations into mind–body questions? Sāṃkhya rationality counters the argument of eternal oblivion or of consciousness as an illusion confined to the brain. Yet there are resonances with Chalmers's notion of consciousness as fundamental. This article concludes that contemporary Anglo-American philosophy of religion can be enhanced by adding Sāṃkhya thought to its purview.

This article explores the notion of immortality in Jaina philosophy by focusing on the problem of the persistence of the self. It considers the concept of persistence within the broader context of Jaina metaphysics and its specific application to living beings. The article analyses the relationship between the immaterial self and its material body to determine which aspects of living beings can be deemed immortal or persisting beyond death. It also investigates the state of liberation as an immortal condition. Drawing from the Tattvârtha-sūtra and four of its commentaries, the article demonstrates the complexity of the Jaina treatment of the issue of the self's persistence over time and its commitment to the doctrine of non-one-sidedness. It also shows that Jaina philosophers deal with this critical philosophical problem in a way that reflects their engagement with the intellectual debates of their time.

The Buddhist doctrine of transmigration (saṃsāra) offers a coherent model of a cycle of existence wherein a sentient being continues throughout life, survives death, traverses the afterlife, and is, sooner or later, reborn, thus inaugurating another lifecycle as a new life-form. The Buddhist tenets of no-self (anātman) and impermanence, however, deny the possibility of a self, soul, or any form of spiritual substance that persists throughout the cycle of transmigration. This article examines the argumentation developed by the Indic Buddhist philosopher, Saṅghabhadra (fl. fifth- century ce), as part of his effort to reconcile the doctrines of no-self and karmic continuity. In his *Nyāyānusāraśāstra and the *Samayapradīpikāśāstra, two seminal, yet vastly understudied, doctrinal treatises of Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma Buddhism that survive only within the translation corpus of the Sinitic scholar-monk Xuanzang (602?–664 ce), Saṅghabhadra defines the antarābhava, the ‘intermediate state of existence’, as the interstitial space and interim time-period existing between the locus wherein the sequentially reproducing psychic constituents of an individual sentient being, including consciousness, desert the no-longer viable body at the moment of biological death, and the locus wherein these psychic constituents become associated with a new gross physical body in the form of a new viable embryo at the moment of rebirth. By instantiating the antarābhava as an actual interval with real extension in space and time, necessarily traversed by the vast majority of sentient beings after dying in order to reach the next gross physical body, Saṅghabhadra provides, for Sarvāstivāda Abhidharma Buddhism, a rigorous account for how karma is transmitted, via the psychic constituents of a sentient being, beyond biological death into future lives, as well as future afterlives.

This article describes the group of ninth-century Zoroastrian philosophers I call the ‘Dēnkard School’ and sketches the way they do philosophy. It presents their argument against substance dualism, which the Zoroastrians argue is in tension with the belief in repentance. From an analysis of this polemic, there follows a reconstruction of the Dēnkard School's own doctrine of the consubstantiality of body and soul. To understand these arguments, I describe some background eschatological and ontological beliefs upheld by the Dēnkard School and their specific conception of substance, which includes the notions of ownership and responsibility. Overall, the argument can be seen as a new position on a traditional problem, and so increasing the scope of philosophy in a more global perspective.

This article analyses Moses Maimonides' account of the AfterDeath and, more specifically, of olam ha-ba’ (lit.: the world to come), the state of ultimate human happiness and perfection (in contrast to this world). Maimonides is unequivocal about what olam ha-ba’ is not. Contrary to a competing medieval Jewish tradition, it is utterly incorporeal and, contrary to rabbinic tradition, it is not a motivational reward nor compensation for undeserved suffering in a theodicy. Instead, Maimonides gives two positive accounts of the metaphysics of olam ha-ba’. The first is an intellectualist account on which the denizens of olam ha-ba’ are perfected intellects engaged in intellectual apprehension of the deity. The second is sceptical: it denies that humans have any understanding or knowledge (‘ilm, episteme) of olam ha-ba’ and claims that all language used to describe it is purely equivocal or homonymous, although it allows that some immutable thing, whatever it is, survives death. Instead of being a motivational reward or compensation, olam ha-ba’ is the end, that is, final cause or telos, of the best possible human life in this world at which one aims and which one attempts to approximate even if one cannot actually realize it.

This article examines Sikh conceptualizations about death and immortality, focusing on several thematic lines of inquiry drawn from the utterances of the Sikh Gurus (gurbāṇī): (i) ordinary or empirical death; (ii) deathless states; (iii) after death? (iv) this life; (v) personhood and the (non-)existence of God. These themes address philosophical issues related to concerns about fear of death, belief in an afterlife, as well as its implications for the nature of self and the concept of God in Sikhism. At the same time, however, the article complicates our understanding of these topics by resituating them within discussions of time and time-consciousness, thereby highlighting the need for a form of logic more conducive to the understanding of death and immortality in Sikh thought.

The purpose of this article is twofold: first, I will reconstruct Mullā Ṣadrā's complex arguments for the soul's immortality based on its immaterial nature. Second and finally, I will briefly probe and assess various epistemological and metaphysical objections against Ṣadrā's immaterialist conception of the soul. Ṣadrā contends that our bodily death marks an awakening to the reality of our consciousness on the plane of the imaginal realm (the imaginal world is an isthmus between the sensible world and the world of intelligible forms). For Ṣadrā, ‘death’ does not mark an end or discontinuity in human consciousness, rather it signifies an awakening to a new mode of existence in which the soul, having once been the active principle controlling the actions of the physical body, now manifests itself as the passive recipient of the form given to it by its imaginal reality – a reality shaped by the actions it had performed in its earthly, embodied state. Thus, death is seen as the passage of the soul from the sensible to the imaginal world, until the soul unites with the intelligible world (ʿālam al-ʿaql).

All the cards seem to be stacked against belief in immortality. Nonetheless, the resources of particular religious traditions may avail where generic philosophical solutions fall short. With attention to the boredom and narcissism critiques, intimations of deathlessness in Śāntideva's radical altruism, and recent Christian debates on the soul and the intermediate state, I propose two criteria for a coherent religion-specific belief in immortality: (1) the belief is supported by a fully realized religious tradition, (2) the belief satisfies the demand for self-transcendence as well as for self-preservation. Where self-transcendence and self-preservation are kept in balance, and where the whole idea rests upon the lattice-work of a fully realized religious tradition, immortality is a fitting object of belief. Moreover, such belief is compatible with considerable speculative freedom concerning matter and spirit, body and soul, and personal identity over time.