David Eagleman, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives
, Pantheon Books, 2009.In the afterlife you meet God. To your surprise and delight, She is like no god that humans have conceived. She shares qualities with all religions' descriptions, but commands a deific grandeur that was captured in the net of none. She is the elephant described by blind men: all partial descriptions with no understanding of the whole.
In the afterlife...
•You live your entire life backwards
•You learn that we are God's cancer.
•You become an actor in the sleeping dreams of the living
•You await the moment that your name is spoken on Earth for the last time.
•You learn that God is actually a married couple.
•You are offered the opportunity to make any single change to your life before living it over again.
•You find that it's been beauracratized.
•You learn that God is actually the size of a bacterium and that his minions are not us, but microbes who live upon us.
It turns out that only the people you remember are here. So the woman with whom you shared a glance in the elevator may or may not be included. Your second-grade teacher is here, with most of the class. Your parents, your cousins, and your spectrum of friends through the years. All your old lovers. Your boss, your grandmothers, and the waitress who served your food each day at lunch. Those you dated, those you longed for. It is a blissful opportunity to spend some quality time with your one thousand connections, to renew fading ties, to catch up with those you let slip away.
It is only after several weeks of this that you begin to feel forlorn.
In the afterlife, you discover that your Creator is a species of small, dim-witted, obtuse creatures. They look vaguely human, but they are smaller and more brutish. They are singularly unitelligent. They knit their brows when they try to follow what you are saying. It will help if you speak slowly, and it sometimes helps to draw pictures. At some point their eyes will glaze over and they will nod as though they understand you, but they will have lost the thread of the conversation entirely.
No strangers grace the empty park benches. No family unknown to you throws bread crumbs for the ducks and makes you smile because of their laughter... The missing crowds make you lonely. You begin to complain about all the people you could be meeting. But no one listens or sympathises with you, because this is precisely what you chose when you were alive.
"SUM is a dazzling exploration of funny and unexpected afterlives that have never been considered - each presented as a vignette that offers us a stunning lens through which to see ourselves here and now. In one afterlife you may find that God is the size of a microbe and is unaware of your existence. In another, your creators are a species of dim-witted creatures who built us to figure out what they could not. In a different version of the afterlife you work as a background character in other people's dreams. Or you may find that God is a married couple struggling with discontent, or that the afterlife contains only those people whom you remember, or that the hereafter includes the thousands of previous gods who no longer attract followers. In some afterlives you are split into your different ages; in some you are forced to live with annoying versions of yourself that represent what you could have been; in others you are re-created from your credit card records and Internet history. David Eagleman proposes many versions of our purpose here; we are mobile robots for cosmic mapmakers, we are reunions for a scattered confederacy of atoms, we are experimental subjects for gods trying to understand what makes couples stick together.
These wonderfully imagined tales - at once funny, wistful, and unsettling - are rooted in science and romance and awe at our mysterious existence: a mixture of death, hope, computers, immortality, love, biology, and desire that exposes radiant new facets of our humanity."
"A clever little book by a neuroscientist translates lofty concepts of infinity and death into accessible human terms. What happens after we die? Eagleman wonders in each of these brief, evocative segments. Are we consigned to replay a lifetime's worth of accumulated acts, as he suggests in Sum, spending six days clipping your nails or six weeks waiting for a green light? Is heaven a bureaucracy, as in Reins, where God has lost control of the workload? Will we download our consciousnesses into a computer to live in a virtual world, as suggested in Great Expectations, where God exists after all and has gone through great trouble and expense to construct an afterlife for us? Or is God actually the size of a bacterium, battling good and evil on the battlefield of surface proteins, and thus unaware of humans, who are merely the nutritional substrate? Mostly, the author underscores in Will-'o-the-Wisp, humans desperately want to matter, and in afterlife search out the ripples left in our wake. Eagleman's turned out a well-executed and thought-provoking book." - Publishers Weekly
"A slender volume of bite-size vignettes, Sum appears to be a whimsical novelty, amusing for idle perusal but quickly forgotten. In it, neuroscientist Eagleman offers 40 fates that may await us in the afterlife. A close reading of each carefully measured chapter provides an insight into human nature that is both poignant and sobering. In one afterlife, you relive all your experiences in carefully categorized groups: sleeping 30 years straight, sitting five months on the toilet, spending 200 days in the shower, and so forth. In another, you can be whatever you want, including a horse that forgets its original humanity. There are afterlives where you meet God, in one a God who endlessly reads Frankenstein, lamenting the tragic lot of creators; in another a God, female this time, in whose immense corpus earth is a mere cell. Eagleman’s engaging mixture of dark humor, witty quips, and unsettling observations about the human psyche should engage a readership extending from New Age buffs to amateur philosophers." - Carl Hays
"Scientists postulate a self-originating universe requiring no Creator God and containing no afterlife for living beings. The Big Bang, branes, dark matter, and space-time curvature all model a material cosmos that doesn't need to take spiritual components into account.
However, even religions don't agree on whether God exists and in what capacity. Some preach the Personhood of God, others a more abstract Highest Power. The great traditions also split on what happens to us when we die. Reincarnation anchors a number of belief systems, while others firmly decree we only live once. And some insist on a Heaven with streets of gold and buildings of jasper and emerald, while others claim death brings a melding with the Supreme Force and a dropping of all individual characteristics.
All of this confusion about the nature of God and the afterlife can be attributed to living in a universe that doesn't simply lay its mysteries at our feet. And although some human beings have testified that God has spoken to them, history records no event at which the Almighty unambiguously revealed Himself to every living person simultaneously. God remains elusive and that teases the question of whether the Most High exists at all. And although an afterlife isn't necessarily dependent upon the existence of God, we human beings aren't equipped to know with certainty what happens when we die. Psychics, gurus, and mystics tell different stories about what lies beyond the veil.
This maelstrom of hypotheses and augural extrapolations leaves room for an infinity of further "what ifs" about who, what, where, and when runs our cosmos and what kind of "life" might follow physical mortality. Neuro-scientist David Eagleman has seen his opportunity to contribute his conjectures. His SUM: Forty Tales from the Afterlives plunges right in, brashly inventing new benchmarks for Divine behavior and eternal life. This small book of only 110 pages brims over with ideas as each vignette envisions a different, often ironic and amusing, afterlife. For instance, in Mirrors "you" die but don't really feel dead...until all the reflections of how you looked in other people's eyes assemble before you and "that's what finally kills you." For real.
Then there is Distance which allows "us" to ask God face to face why He lives in a palace far, far away instead of "in the trenches with us." God replies he used to live among us, but "[o]ne morning I awoke to find people picketing in front of my driveway."
And Circle of Friends tells of an afterlife in which each person exists on an earth peopled only by those he or she knew in life - for most people about 0.00002 percent of the world's population. "The missing crowds make you lonely."
Eagleman's biological expertise makes stories such as Descent of Species and Microbe especially lucid and rich reading. The former asks what would happen to a weary sentient being -- say, you -- who decides to reincarnate as a lower species -- say a horse. What would happen to your capacity to make a higher choice during the next life/death cycle? After all: "The thickening and lengthening of your neck immediately feels normal as it comes about. Your carotid arteries grow in diameter, your fingers blend hoofward, your knees stiffen, your hips strengthen, and meanwhile, as your skull lengthens into its new shape, your brain races in its changes: your cortex retreats as your cerebellum grows, the homunculus melts man to horse, neurons redirect, synapses unplug and replug on their way to equestrian patterns, and your dream of understanding what it is like to be a horse gallops toward you from a distance. Your concern about human affairs begins to slip away...."
And the latter, Microbe, explores this radical proposition: "God created life in His own image; his congregations are the microbes. The chronic warfare over host territory, the politics of symbiosis and infection, the ascendency of strains: this is the chessboard of God where good clashes with evil on the battleground of surface proteins and immunity and resistance." We human beings are just "the backgrounds on which they live....We are neither selected out by evolution nor captured in the microdeific radar. God and His microbial constituents are unaware of the rich social life that we have developed, of our cities, circuses, and wars...."
One of the most intriguing tales is Mary in which Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, sits on a throne in heaven because God so admires her book: "Like Victor Frankenstein, God considers Himself a medical doctor, a biologist without parallel, and He has a deep, painful relationship with any story about the creation of life. He has much to say about bringing animation to the unanimated. Very few of His creatures had thought deeply about the challenges of creating, and it relieved Him a little of the loneliness of His position when Mary wrote her book."
Science fiction writer Larry Niven, in a short story entitled The Subject Is Closed, had a priest try to talk religion with members of an all-female alien species called the Chirpsithra. The aliens, who supposedly were "aeons old" and "rule[d] the galaxy," told the father that they knew "all about life and death." If they did, he wasn't sure he wanted them to tell him. When he went back to pursue the topic, one of the extraterrestrials rephrased, "I told you we know as much as we want to know on the subject." Then she made it clear that another race of beings had apparently learned the secret and died out as result. The Chirpsithra curbed their curiosity to avoid following those others into extinction. "Be cautious in your guesses. You might find the right answer." she warned the man of God. In other words, some mysteries are better left unsolved, at least prematurely.
David Eagleman can't compete with the Chirpsithra with regard to knowledge, but he has a lot of intellectual and literary fun posing possibilities. He throws to the wind any caution about guesses. Yet, in Apostasy (from which the introductory quote came), he fashions a God who would undoubtedly appreciate the restraint of these aliens. This is a God who relishes "[h]er enviable position of revealing the universe's great secrets each day as the dead cross over to Her territory in the next dimension." Eagleman continues, "As you observe Her excitement about revealing this, you begin to suspect that deep down She was afraid that an especially clear-thinking theologian would guess the answer."
SUM is not a conventional religious book per se because it bursts out of established religious thought instead of reinforcing it. These tales conjure versions of the Supreme Being who have more in common with the foible Greek and Norse gods or us than with an image of an omniscient, omnipotent God. These imaginary Capital Beings cry, feel depressed and disappointed, and are uncertain and ignorant. They aren't the emblems of rectitude and glory usually portrayed by Western churches. These are a scientist's fabulous imaginings, not a parson's or a priest's.
This is also a humanist collection. SUM contains forty fables complete with subtle but unmistakable messages about living and loving in the here and now. For example, a person who isn't naturally gregarious who reads A Circle of Friends might begin to socialize more. Reading Descent of Species is apt to encourage people not to look a gift horse in the mouth, wouldn't you say? And so on.
SUM broadens our spiritual peripheral vision, reminding us that the human imagination can and does think of God and life after death in fresh ways. Some would say this is because God is really only a figment of the sentient mind. Others would counter that just because we can't understand God's ways doesn't negate his actuality, but only underscores our smallness in relation to the Holy One; after all, we don't expect an ant to understand us, do we? Whatever the truth might be, SUM shines a witty light on forty postmortem worlds that each reach out in clever admonition to us, the living. Don't miss it." - Kirstin Merrihew
“Of course you don't die. Nobody dies. Death doesn't exist. You only reach a new level of vision, a new realm of consciousness, a new unknown world.” – Henry Miller
Do you believe in the afterlife? Or do you believe that when we die we simply rot away, and that’s the end? What about God? Do you believe in a loving God, an angry God, or no God at all? Sum: forty tales from the afterlives is an imaginative work that proposes 40 different scenarios of what happens after we draw that last breath.
The tales in Sum are short; most are only two or three pages, and they are beautifully told. Even when he presents us with no God or no afterlife, David Eagleman offers an inventive array of things that could be, but probably aren’t, our after-death fates. The first, and titular, tale offers a view of the afterlife that is both boring and captivating; it not only makes us imagine the hereafter but also to think about what we are doing with our lifetime. It is the perfect introduction to a book of stories that may be indescribable for some.
Perhaps imaging God as so many characters could be labeled blasphemous. People that closed-minded won’t be picking this book up unless they are planning a book burning. The many Gods we are offered include a happy God, a bored God, a married couple God, a microbial God, and a God whose favorite book is Frankenstein (think about it; it makes sense), as well as no God at all. Since I believe that we really have no clue as to what God is or looks like, all these possibilities are intriguing.
Imagine awakening in the next world only to find that you are in suburbia. As pleasant and satisfying as it is, it lacks something — truly good people. This is the heaven that sinners attain. God has let those who have led exemplary lives rest in peace, rotting and becoming one with the earth. Those He dislikes He punishes with everlasting, ever-boring life, for “we were created not only in His image but His social situation as well.” And He’s found that situation to be pretty damn boring.
Throughout Sum there are classic visions of Heaven with fluffy clouds and harps, but there are also dystopian images of an afterlife that one might not pray to enter. Eagleman warns us that dying doesn’t necessarily mean you will see celestial shores or lush gardens, even if the theists are right about God.
The author also serves up variations such as finally finding the meaning of life, never finding the meaning of life, becoming a character in living people’s dreams, and reincarnation as a choice of beings. There are sad tales, such as “Egalitaire,” which ends with a God who is depressed because She wanted Heaven to be perfect for everyone so She gave everyone true equality, which they interpret as being in hell.
There are also laugh-out-loud stories like “The Unnatural,” which puts us back among the living with one wish that will come true; unfortunately, we choose to eliminate death, never imagining the repercussions.
Eagleman employs a whimsical, even poetic, style to convey these scenarios, and the result is a dreamlike collection of how one man envisions existence after death. What adds to the enjoyment is his inclusion of science, physics, and technology in the details. Whether we are just a series of ones and zeroes or are doomed to watch television for all eternity is unimportant; what is important is that we don’t know what happens after death.
Eagleman gives 40 possibilities, each of them as improbable as our own preconceived notions. Where did you learn of the afterlife or its nonexistence? Was it tribal lore, family tradition, religious training, or fairy tales? Sum presents a new option, imagine-it-yourself. Build your own which will be just as valid as any other. Believe in it, believe in someone else’s, or don’t believe at all.
Sum is best read leisurely. Each tale is an entity unto itself but, because they are so good, there is a temptation to read the next and the next and the next. Don’t do it. Take a few moments, relax, and reflect. This is not a book to rush through, there is no greater reward at the end than at the beginning.
Bottom Line: Would I buy Sum? Yes. Not only would I buy it, I would keep it. Although I have a reverence for books, I don’t keep them after reading, I pass them on for others to enjoy. Limited storage space encourages this practice. However, some books deserve one of the precious few spots available because I will want to revisit them. Sum is one of those books." - Miss Bob Etier
"By examining what a Higher Power may have waiting for us, “Sum” does much more than amuse and entertain. By having us ponder the fate that may await us, we are given the opportunity to take just a moment or two to consider what we have done with our lives and what we can yet do with them. That point is immediately driven home in the first of Eagleman’s 40 tales, in which the Afterlife consists of 18 days staring into the refrigerator, 51 days deciding what to wear, three months doing laundry – and 14 minutes experiencing pure joy.
If God is within us physically, the author asks, is he also in us spiritually? If we evolve and mature in our lives, what is the progression? Would we really, truly like to understand our stages of growth, or would we be repelled? Would we genuinely want to know what others thought of us on earth, or would we be content with the surface flattery and half-truths that pass so many times for constructive criticism or helpful friendship? If we want to leave a positive legacy on earth after we pass, does it matter what form that might take? Would we be happy struggling and growing as we did in human form, but doing so by literally becoming part of the earth? Would our threshold for boredom be pushed to the limit if we had the opportunity to be surrounded by a tried-and-true circle of friends and loved ones? Or might we find that confining, longing for the additional relationships that we never took the time to cultivate in our waking lives, terra firma?
“Sum” asks these and many other questions in sublime fashion, offering spiritual warmth, humor and an enveloping sense of Possibility to those willing to be just a little less doctrinaire and a bit more curious. Ending with a Benjamin Button-like moment, it challenges us to awaken from whatever inertia, ennui or pettiness we may fall prey to and embrace new ways of living. There must be at least 40 of them. If we are open to the possibilities of the Afterlife, can we not also be open to the possibilities of living?
Personal favorites include the clever, witty “Narcissus,” the surreal “The Cast,” the ultimate careful-what-you-wish-for “Descent of Species,” the entirely delicious “Graveyard of the Gods” and the take-a-good-look-at-yourselves “Absence,” the warm and wry “Seed,” and the ethereal, poetic “Search” (so beautiful it was almost enough to make me actually long for the immortality he describes). Some of the stories are dark, some hilarious, and a number of them have ironic twists, but they all share a common thread: all are brilliantly written and challenge you not only to think outside the box, but to kick the box aside entirely and go leaping joyously into the pleasures of exploring the unknown.
The fact that the stories address the afterlife is incidental; what each story really does is hold up a mirror for humanity to peer into, allowing us to consider ourselves, and the many-faceted aspects of human nature, from funny, new, often startling and always insightful angles. Chances are you’ve never read anything like this book, as there’s simply nothing out there like it, at least nothing I’ve ever stumbled across. And I agree with the sentiments of the other reviewers–once you’ve read it, you’ll want to share it with as many people as possible and read it over again yourself.
It’s enough of a struggle to come up with an idea that pushes the boundaries of the expected, something that is challenging, entertaining and remarkable. Even more difficult, though, is to then execute that idea with the brilliance it demands. David Eagleman has done exactly that, though: dreamed up the astonishing, then demonstrated the depth of talent needed to make it come alive on the page. He has said that writing this book was simply his way of shining a flashlight around the possibility space; here’s hoping that he goes on wielding that flashlight for many years to come so that we can continue to take a look along with him. SUM is a truly stellar effort from a very remarkable writer.
“Sum” just may go down as the 21st Century’s answer to Dante’s centuries-old imaginings. I’m guessing David Eagleman’s got a lot more locked inside him, just waiting to burst forth." - thehungryreader
David Eagleman: 'We won't die – our consciousness will live forever on the internet'
Excerpt
David Eagleman's web page
