The afterlife
DirtySanchez
Regular
Well wether we like it or not each and every one of us will die. No matter what we do or how powerful we are death will come. So with that being the case we all will experience the afterlife yet we don't know for sure what it will bring. What are your thoughts on the subject. Do we go to heaven or hell? get reincarnated? Stay here as ghosts or does nothing happen and we just die? My thoughts on the subject is that unless you were a truly despicable person you wont be punished in the afterlife. I think heaven will be exactly like we want it if its to be a place of perfection. I think we'll create our own heaven or our own hell. But I am also open to the idea of reincarnation like I said nobody really knows but god and the dead.
Comments
Why do you assume there's an afterlife?
I said nobody knows for sure but for me most evidence points to a god therefore I believe in an afterlife.
What is this evidence?
Evidence pointing to a god doesn't necessarily mean there is an afterlife. This might be it.
I don't understand what you mean by "there's only one mind."
Obviously once you're dead, that's it. Your body will be eaten by insects as it putrefies and will become a food/energy source for other organisms. That's all there is. There is no frag cam like in Counter Strike or MW2.
This makes sense because there is no evidence to believe anything else.
Your not taking the soul into account.
This is assuming we are alive in any sense we understand in the first place. Since we can only observe ourselves from inside our own mind then we can't ever be 100% sure about anything. Besides, if our language is the map and our senses and biological lives are the territory; then what is it that our senses map from reality, and how much of the passage through biological time is just fleeting memories constructed from the mapping of sensation.
It seems impossible trying to pinpoint the conception of your personal self awarness, so anything that happened before some cutoff date is pre awarness; what is the difference between being dead and not being born?
To expand on this, how does anyone know that this state, the throes of eternity, isn't what we already occupy. I believe every moment is instantly created by our own consciousness and that it's merely a choice whether we create a moment of love to occupy, or a moment encapsulating ignorance of love.
This is an interesting concept can you expand on it some? Id like to here more.
Absolutely, thanks for showing the interest. Going to town atm, post reserved.
Actualy I'll just bump the thread.
You're assuming the soul exists.
Intelligence, agriculture and society. Sit outside some time and watch the birds fight. That's how humans would be without society. Nothing else separates us from them aside from the 3 things I mentioned.
There are no accidents. That's another silly human idea. Everything that exists simply is. Things are the way they are. It's not like thing accidentally evolved. We can say that, but that's simply a way of explaining chaos. Things happen. That's the best way I can say it. As for humans? Evolution sounds like the best explanation so far. Until someone finds a better one, that's the one I'm going to rely on. At least it's trying harder than "god did it."
thats evrywhere and in us yet around us?
Like, what would you do with your last moment of existence. If say, the world was gonna end in 54 seconds now, would you have a good idea of what your last course of action should entail. You could pray I suppose, if you didn't feel like you had lived righteously enough. Alternatively you could just sit around miserably and await the inevitable. A lot of fuckers would be doing that, I wouldn't judge ya for it.
See, they say live every moment as if it's your last. But that's fucking depressing, isn't it! I say, every moment is created instantly by every facet of reality. Faster than my fingers can move across this keyboard, again and again and again, moments are being created by all of us who make up the span of life on this plane. I believe in the one soul idea that states that we all got a collective unconsciousness which can be tapped into by those who strive to do so. I've done this, and I'm tapped into it (that may be slightly inaccurate, it's more like it is what makes up the consistency of my mentality). I know others have as well, meditation and prayer are thousands of years old and have always promised this kind of enlightenment to those who search for it.
Basically, since I didn't go too deep into any type of discourse or anything from this, I can pretty clearly wrap up this idea. If you just got one moment to really make your impression on the world, what type of impression are you gonna make? One of mourning, fear, hate, callous disregard for others, imposing hunger on people; you won't be alone in this choice. Personally, I'm gonna devote my being to creating a moment of love. In the hopes that others see this and start to do the same. See my location, on the right side of my post there? That's where I am right now, and I really want people to start realizing that they are here with me.
So basically your saying that as a whole we create our own "heaven or "hell" right now that instead of waiting for it we should strive for it in the here and now. Kindof like the Buddhist ideal of nirvana A we create our own reality type thing.
First of all, it should be noted that everything we say about God is metaphorical, more orless, being that God is infinite and we are finite, constricted by ego, often driven by fear.
IMHO, God is not a being, but the spark of divinity that lives within all of us. This is the "small, still voice, spoken of in the Bible.
Thats the definition Ive more or less been thinking when i use the term god. I think he is a being but in a way far removed from most peoples understanding.
I apparently died twice (both times of overdose) and while I had consciousness before and after the deaths during the in between there was nothing. I was resuscitated both times and had no recollection of anything in between then and dying. inbf You start saying anything about the nature of the deaths or if I even died at all (I did, everyone was freaked and people cried) have you?
Have you ever woken up and you were someone else? like, your consciousness shifted and you were now your mom. Would nothing change? your mother's brain wouldn't have any memories of what it was like inside your body a few hours ago. My point is, we are all stuck within our bodies, and we are aware of it, but are we our bodies? If you lose an arm, aren't you the same person? maybe depressed, but you're still the same person.
Nothing can be destroyed, so when we die, what happens to our consciousness? And what happens to our memories? do they all "die" as well?
I've never had that shifting thing happen. I don't think you understand the body. If you lose your head, you die. Why? You can't live without it. Arms are not necessarily essential to survival. The head is. Your arm example doesn't seem to prove anything except that we can live without our arms. Your argument that "we aren't our bodies" doesn't make sense if you look at the body as a whole. If you lose your head, you're dead. There's no evidence of souls or that our "consciousness" lives on. It makes sense that if your arm is smashed and gone forever, when your head is smashed you're dead and your mind is gone forever.
Sure things can be destroyed. Not in the technical sense, but if your body is smashed, it is for all intents and purposes "destroyed", i.e. it no longer functions as it did because you're no longer alive. Our memories are stored in the brain. Some people lose memories when they get brain damage. When we die we lose our consciousness. Consciousness isn't material in and of itself, but it makes sense that it is something the brain (which is material) allows. Without your brain you have no consciousness and no memories, because you'd be dead.
If I remember correctly that's just residual brain function.
No organized religion says that's what god is. There's a whole shitton of other stuff that belief in god entails. If you reduce god to a sort of "divine clockmaker" (deism) or say that god is everything (pantheism) then belief in god becomes completely pointless and arbitrary. In pantheism god would be everywhere and thus nowhere.
Looking at what AM says, if god is something inside of us (Gospel of Thomas?) then once again religion becomes irrelevant. Individual spirituality also seems to be pointless, because this belief doesn't entail an individual, immortal soul. We'd all be part of the All Spark (sorry, couldn't resist).
Personally I think that the best course of action in life is to help fellow humans and take care of our surroundings. A steward mentality, basically.
01010101010101010101
UP/DOWN/UP/DOWN/UP
This world/life/reality is a big game of hide and seek, or peek-a-boo.
There is no reason to believe the cycle will ever end.
That is precisely why I praise, man.
Uh, yeah there is. Shit dies, the end?
So you believe death is The End. The end of what? 'Your' life? What are you?
You might tell me your name, but what's in a name. So you might tell me a story, about where you came from and what you do, how you began. But in doing so, you would probably overlook how much 'you' depends on everything else. And if you don't notice that, if you believe you are separate and individual, you may become afraid of what's going to happen when 'you' go away. And that's why people have, for quite some time now, been afraid of death.
In reality your life isn't some drying up little puddle, its more like a wave breaking on the shore. It's not really separate from the ocean, it actually more like an activity the entire ocean is doing. It's waving. These waves eventually break and roll back, but more keep coming.
I don't think there are any beginnings or endings, fanglekai, I think those are just arbitrary concepts created out of mans attempt to describe what is actually indescribable.
See, it's not about belief. We are born and we have consciousness. We die and we lose it. Makes total sense. Peekaboo is nonsense. Life and death are a one time cycle for each individual, but they continue for the species.
There are beginnings and endings. Not everything can be infinite and eternal.
Yes, on/off/on/off, consciousness, non-consciousness, consciousness, non-consciousness. How could one be without the other.
I never said you die, and consciousness just goes on. I said you aren't really what you think you are. What you are is the whole picture. Everything. What you think you are is just one little wave, one little expression of the entire activity of everything.
No, individuality is nonsense. Nothing is individual. Your individuality is imaginary.
Peekaboo, on the other hand, is the way of everything. If we examine ourselves enough, you know, cut off a piece and zoom in, and divide it smaller and smaller, until we get down to the atom, and then we keep going, getting smaller and smaller, and eventually we reach a point where we can no longer determine if we are dealing with particles or waves. Everything is constantly vibrating, really fast, on/off/on/off, up/down/up/down, day/night/day/night, summer/winter/summer/winter, life/death/life/death, crest/trough/crest/trough.
Everything is going through this cycle.
No, in reality there are no beginning or endings because there are no things or events. Things and events are just concepts created by man in an attempt to describe what is more accurately indescribable.
It is a matter of belief - your belief, fanglekai. You believe that 'you' are an individual thing, but in reality you are not. You believe 'you' began, and that 'you' will come to and end. But in reality what you are calling you isn't really individual or separate from everything else. Everything else has always been here, waving, and this 'you' is merely one of those waves. That 'everything else', that whole picture, that's what you really are.
What I'm really curious about is why you are so fixed on this idea of "The End", when everything in reality points towards a continuous cycle. Just because you die and lose consciousness, you don't think you could be born again and regain it? It happened this time. Why wouldn't it happen again?
I got you. Its definitely possible. Ive thought about that same shit before it's simple but kind of a mindfuck at the same time. In a way it seems you'd almost have to create your own experience in the afterlife I mean heaven means different things to different people as does hell.
I can't pretend to know why we're here on Earth but I do know that people forget that Heaven and God's love are the same thing. So maybe that is why. I realized last night that, like all matter, I'm made out of love. Woo hoo!
(that means all matter is. Maybe I'm just tripping but I went from seeing the love in all things, to seeing love shining back at me, and now I see it all as one force, creating zion with seconds)
Duh. I don't think anyone has? Hence the whole, "one mind" concept. Why aren't we viewing life from all lifeforms?
My theory is that we view life from one organism because we are all part of one, very large (emphasis on very) organism. It's the fractal nature of the universe.
You might think you know a lot about life because you can tell people that there isn't anything after death. Look around you. When you die, if nothing happens, then there shouldn't be any life to begin with. How do you know we aren't just put in the body of another organism after death, the same way your mother gave birth to you? Why are you existing in this time period, rather than living the life of a deer in the 1700's?
After you die, bugs eat your flesh. Energy that was once used to support your brain is now supporting the brains of insects, plants, the earth....If you don't believe that humans have a soul, do we just become the organisms that eat us? life does not cease to exist after 1 person dies.
no matter how you look at it, there will be an "afterlife". It might not even be conceivable in this physical form. It might just be another physical life.
Have you ever died? how would you know this is true until you have died? Maybe this is one of many(possibly infinite number) of your lives that you've lived, and you just don't remember any of them, maybe because you have a new brain?
Which would render the idea of the afterlife completely pointless. If you can't remember past lives, then it's as if you never lived those past lives.
If when you die, you lose all progress, all memories, all happiness, all thoughts, everything that you've ever worked for......why not just kill yourself now and get it all over with? Something is stopping you.
"it's as if you never lived those past lives."
oh really? What if you are the incarnation of one of your ancestors?
Everything is completely pointless. Life is completely pointless.
But people do enjoy talking about this sort of thing, and I don't see any reason not to.
Just because you die and lose consciousness, you don't think you could be born again and regain it? It happened this time, didn't it? Are you not alive? Why couldn't it happen again?
It's supposed to be "everything is emptiness", not pointless. If everything was actually pointless you wouldn't be able to take a breath. The very act predicates an aim.
Very true. Pointless doesn't exist. Its like nothing what is nothing. everything is something and has some purpose.
Mmmm, I think you can impose a purpose onto anything. You can see meaning in whatever you see meaning in. But I don't think it's actually there.
And I disagree, obviously, that breathing has a purpose. You could impose a purpose; you could say that the purpose of breathing is to keep me alive, but all you're doing is explaining the situation in a way that makes sense to you. It doesn't make sense to you that anything could happen without a purpose. But really, everything does.
All of this is spontaneous. There is no reason for this. There's nothing wrong with that.
No, there's literally an aim in breathing lol. There's more of these types of aims in the world, like love and liberty and happiness free from oppression, but if you can't see those then at least you still can't refute that you're continued existence is based in a real and imperative aim. You gotta make it so you can always take your next breath, and if you see no higher purpose than that then you are gonna get pretty good at this one anyway. Try using your mouth lol jk
And what would you call the 'aim' of breathing, chris?
I have no reason to believe that. Existence is purposeless, as far as I can tell. What aim, or purpose, do you believe existence has?
I breathe without even having to think about it.
To breathe is to aim at continuing life. I simply showed you a base 'aim', as it were.
The only purpose you can take from life is that which you give to life. It won't change but you can tune out if need be, for some jungist reason??
It's spontaneous but if you didn't still have that aim to live, then you wouldn't do it.
All you have simply done is simply imposed the purpose of "continuing life". But that's not really why I breath, breathing just happens. There is no why.
Tell me, what is the purpose of continuing life?
Oh, so in other words, that purpose which you impose on life?
No, I would because my life spontaneously started. There is no purpose save for that which I impose, there never was a purpose, there never was any goal. I started living spontaneously, and I continue to live spontaneously. I started to breathe spontaneously, and I continue to breathe spontaneously. Reason, purpose, 'aims' as you put it, are not necessary for any of this. 'Reasons' are merely ways of describing and understanding a reality that is more accurately indescribable.
I continue to live, not because I intend to, or desire to, aim to or because there is some sort of purpose to my life - no, life has no purpose, it continues spontaneously.
What do you believe is the purpose of all this?
No? Lol, the feeling that you live your life with is the purpose you're giving.
The purpose of all life is to love every facet of being because this creates Zion. The purpose of life is to create every moment in Love.
oh yea, everything is you. This plane is you, so don't project feelings of worthlessness on it for this mere fact.