Here are a useful few paragraphs from the internet encyclopaedia of philosophy summarising John Hick’s view of eternal life – contained in the recommended syllabus reading, John Hick, Death and Eternal Life (DEL) part iii. Here he discusses a replica theory of the after life and a state the moment we die which “is subjective and dream-like” and thus can take the form of the expectation of the deceased person” (DEL, 416). Because Hick believes that life is a continuous soul-making process, and that most of us have not completed that process at death, he thinks our earthly life may be “the first of a series of limited phases of existence, each bounded by its own ‘death’” (DEL, 408). At the end of the long soul-making process, each person will maintain his or her individual identity which will be completely devoid of any “ego-aspect,” having been filled instead with “the unselfish love which the New Testament calls agape” (DEL, 464).

source: http://www.iep.utm.edu/hick/#SH3c

John Hick argues that there is no good reason to rule out the existence of an afterlife a priori (before experience). He rejects naturalistic views of the human person, including mind/brain identity and epiphenomenal views, and argues that the evidence from parapsychology—which he believes is more formidable than is often acknowledged—points to

“The independent reality of mind and brain, as mutually interacting entities or processes” and “considerably decreases the a priori improbability of the survival of the mind after the death of the body” (Death and Eternal Life [DEL], 126).

Hick takes a decidedly empirical stance toward views of the afterlife from the various world religions. He invokes the principle of openness to all data, attempting to withhold any bias for or against any particular view. What results is a philosophical evaluation of the Western idea of the survival of a disembodied mind or soul, the Jewish/Western idea of bodily resurrection, and the Eastern concepts of reincarnation and rebirth.

Hick argues for the possibility of each of these views and examines each for internal consistency and explanatory value. For example, he argues that the popular conception of reincarnation or rebirth in which an individual person literally inhabits a number of successive human bodies “has limited support from the alleged memories of former lives…. but tends to be unconvincing to those outside these cultures, and indeed seems to be slowly losing its hold even within them” (DEL, 392). On the other hand, the more sophisticated understanding of reincarnation, in which a “higher self” or karmic package produces a series of persons, may be true but “lacks the moral and practical significance of the more popular pictures of reincarnation” (DEL, 392).

To argue for the logical possibility of a post-mortem bodily resurrection, Hick offers what he calls the “replica” theory. He explains this theory with a thought experiment that proceeds in three stages. In the first stage a person suddenly disappears in London and an exact “replica” of him reappears in New York. Hick argues that after examining the person in New York, we would find that “there is everything that would lead us to identify the one who appeared with the one who disappeared, except continuous occupancy in space” (DEL, 280). In the second stage of the thought experiment, a person in London suddenly dies and an exact “replica” appears in New York. Hick argues that even if we had the corpse of the person who died in London, we would still eventually conclude—after interaction with the person in New York—that the person who appeared in New York is the same person as the one who died in London.

Finally, in the third stage of the thought experiment, the person dies in London and an exact “replica” appears “in a different world altogether, a resurrection world inhabited by resurrected ‘replicas’ – this world occupying its own space distinct from the space with which we are familiar” (DEL, 285). Again, Hick argues that the “replica” in the other world would be considered the same person as the person who died in London. In order to avoid confusion, he uses the term “replica” in quotes to indicate his special use of the term. The point of the quote marks around “replica” is that these are not ordinary replicas, of which there can be many of the same individual, but “replicas” of which there can by definition only be one of each individual. He concludes that as bizarre as these cases may be, they support the logical possibility of bodily resurrection. He does not necessarily endorse the “replica” view but uses it as a helpful way of understanding the idea of post-mortem bodily resurrection expressed in Jewish and Christian thought.

Hick’s primary contribution to the philosophical discussion of the afterlife is his distinction between eschatologies (the Bible word for end-times), which describe the final state, and pareschatologies, which describe the state between death and the eschaton. By making such a distinction, he is able to combine multiple religious and philosophical conceptions of the afterlife into his afterlife hypothesis.

According to his hypothesis, which he posits tentatively, the state immediately upon death “is subjective and dream-like” and thus can take the form of the expectation of the deceased person (DEL, 416). Since the immediate post-mortem state is shaped partly by the person’s expectations, the devoted Christian may find herself before the throne of final judgment, while the secularist might have a dream-like experience largely continuous with her earthly life. However, because Hick believes that life is a continuous soul-making process and that most of us have not completed that process at death, he hypothesizes that our earthly life may be “the first of a series of limited phases of existence, each bounded by its own ‘death’” (DEL, 408). Notice how this echoes some of the themes of John’s Gospel – where eternal life starts now, and where we need to die to our sins and live in unity with Jesus Christ – a very different view to St Paul. Unlike traditional reincarnation views, though, Hick believes that each new life will be lived in a new world with its own unique opportunities to continue in the soul-making process toward one’s ultimate perfection.

Finally, Hick proposes very tentatively that the final state, or eschaton, will include all of humanity in a perfected state of unity with each other and with the Transcendent Reality. Hick considers this view to be expressive of the “point towards which the more eastern aspects of traditional western thought seem to converge with the more western aspects of traditional eastern thought” (DEL, 459). In contrast to traditional Western religious views, Hick rejects the notion of the immortal ego. But in contrast to traditional Eastern religious views, he also rejects the idea of complete personal extinction or absorption. Rather,

What Christians call the Mystical Body of Christ within the life of God, and Hindus the universal Atman which we all are, and Mahayana Buddhists the self-transcending unity in the Dharma Body of the Buddha, consists of the wholeness of ultimately perfected humanity beyond the existence of separate egos. (DEL, 464)

Thus, at the completion of the long soul-making process, each person will maintain her individual identity which will be completely void of any “ego-aspect,” having been filled instead with

“The unselfish love which the New Testament calls agape” (DEL, 464).