The Green World

It is possible to objectively prove the existence of God. Is it possible to objectively prove the existence of an afterlife as well?

I think it is, at least for some, by an appeal to their own experience.

Northrop Frye wrote a book, “The Green World,” in which he argued that most of Shakespeare's comedies feature a retreat to such a realm of nature, “typically a forest,” in which all the problems faced by the characters are somehow solved; and they live happily ever after.

He was close. Shakespeare's comedies, and romances, do usually feature such a world, but it is not really a realm of nature—it is not the real forest at all. For what do you make of an English forest that, in Shakepeare's conception, includes lions and palm trees? And sometimes the “green world” is instead some form of celebration, a holiday, or a performance.

“Nature” itself, in other words, is a metaphor for what these worlds really represent. What they really represent is the world of the imagination, aka “second sight,” which mimics the physical senses, and is also like nature in being endlessly fertile.

And as such, it is a keen analysis by Shakespeare. Every artist knows that it is in the imagination that problems are solved. According to Arthur Koestler's painstaking study, “The Act of Creation,” every important inventor or scientist knows this as well. You cannot be creative in any way without it. Einstein's “thought experiments,” for example, were and are green worlds in the same sense.

The imagination, I think, is also objective proof, for the strongly imaginative, of the existence of heaven and of an afterlife. One can become aware, powerfully, of a realm separate from the common physical world, but which has its own definite rules and exists apart from our own consciousness of it, out of our conscious control.

If one's imagination is powerful, one also becomes aware that this realm is a much better place than the everyday world—so much so that one develops a powerful yearning for it, and a corresponding disappointment with the visible world of the tiresome daylight hours.

I guess everyone has some experience of this second world—in dreams, at a minimum. But some clearly have far more awareness of it than others. When someone seems to think imagination is something under our control --- “stop daydreaming!” the teacher insists, or someone says “it's only your imagination” -- it seems to me they reveal that for them it is quite weak. But I think you can see clear references to it in the work of any really good artist—this is what makes artists, their awareness of the other world. Frye's “green world” could just as easily be located in the works of Edgar Allan Poe, or Samuel Taylor Coleridge, or Robet Louis Stevenson, or Stanley Kubrick, or anyone of that calibre; under various metaphors.

I think it is also the reason that artists of all kinds are also very likely to be depressives, or manic depressives. They become depressed, because they are painfully aware of this better place, and unable to go there, trapped mostly in this insufficient present world.

Conversely, I think most depressives I have known have been depressive because they are too aware of this other world.

“Schizophrenics”? I think schizophrenia may happen when one has no concept of the existence of this other world, and it suddenly manifests itself vividly. That's when one is liable to mistake the things of imagination for the things of the material world.

One corollary, I suppose, if this is right, is that people in general are wise to fear the mentally ill. For if this conception is true, it is also likely that mental illness is contagious. We may know that, instinctively.

The kingdom of heaven is among us.

For those of us who do not have a strong natural ability to perceive the imagination, the experience of art often does it for us. If and when we can become fully engrossed in a book or a movie, as most of us can, we are there.

That is our warrant. That is our proof that we can exist quite apart from the physical world around us, and apart from our physical bodies.

All human cultures have known this. It is more obvious than the nose on your face.