The Last Thing That Never Happens

Imagine death as an endless darkness. Now ask: who is looking? This book begins with a familiar picture of death and finds a problem hidden inside it. If there is an afterlife, what would make the person who experiences it the same person who died? From heaven and hell to reincarnation, the soul and near-death experiences, it asks what it would take for us to survive. Would someone who remembers my life be me, or only a convincing copy? And does the survival of consciousness mean the survival of my consciousness? Drawing on philosophy, the history of beliefs about death and research on the brain, the book asks what, if anything, could make an afterlife truly ours.