Existence after death

Here, in sunny So. Cal., installed in a hillside along the coast, lays the Neuroscience Institute. Where some of the leading research is with respect to finding consciousness, and collective thought, in inanimate objects; i.e., chairs, washers, dryers, computers, etc.
this research, in its framework, is born of the notion that at the atomic scale, individual atoms, sense one another, and (may) act in a cohesive, symbiotic manner even when devoid of external stimuli.
This search for a collective consciousness, or 'self-awareness' was first initiated by nano-tech researchers that witnesses cohesive actions of atoms (during nano-tube construction) that seemed to imply that the atoms involved lead, and followed, one another, until they had formed a cohesive entity; i.e., a nano-tube, colony, etc.
it is therefore, the pre-amble of some, that lager objects, who are masse constituents of these smaller cohesive atomic blobs, may also become self aware, and in some way, act in a self-referential way toward the 'outside' world. Research is on going.
Don’t know if there's something to this 'collective, consciousness' you allude to Bill. Perhaps when people 'connect,' they simply do so b/c they've become adept at reading stimuli other than language (body posture, eye dilation, etc.); even then, such a change in sensitivity might imply that language, may be the crudest expression of self-awareness, and that the walnuts in our skull have more refined means for us to use -- once we dump these saline sacks off at the refinery. How many tabs, did you say?

 

William:

Since you are a person who is deeply involved with Eastern thought, I assume you are somewhat familiar with Bhagavad Gita as well as the Tibetan Buddhist texts.

Sample Quote:

"For the soul there is neither birth nor death. Nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying, and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain"

The Gita does not so much explain the actual after death experience in detail.

More so, it is an ancient Vedic (from India -- generally accepted by scholars to have been put in writing somewhere between 500 BC and 100 AD) text dealing with all aspects of the relationship of the individual soul to the supreme being. In the Gita, Krishna, God in Person, instructs his disciple Arjuna in great and comprehensive detail how to initiate this relationship with God, maintain it, and carry it through to its ultimate conclusion.

I recommend it highly to any person who can make the leap of faith beyond solely material-based scientific thought, and at least accept as a hypothesis that there could be a Supreme Being and a spiritual world that is indiscernable to the five natural senses.

 

I had an experience about 6 years ago where I "died" for about 8 minutes. It was due to a drug allergy/interaction that caused my heart to stop. Obviously, they revived me.

I had the whole "white light, all your family and friends are there" type of experience. But... having experienced it, I don't think it is any sort of proof of life after death. I think it's a chemical thing in the brain, some sort of pre-programmed sequence. We don't need to learn how to eat, or how to breathe, and if you never knew what sex was, you'd still know you wanted to do it even if you had never known about it. In other words, some things are pro-programmed.

I've also been in a bike accident where I got pretty banged up. Went into shock and had a lot of blood loss. I was borderling euphoric. You act really strange when you've had a bad accident - telling jokes, laughing, being very friendly. I had a friends who was in Vietnam and one of his buddies was hit in the stomach with a large caliber round that basically eviscerated him. He was alive for about 20 minutes with his guts all around him and when they found him he was laughing and telling jokes up until he died.

The body and mind do some strange things.

I think that when your mind "gives in" and you know you're dying, something happens - maybe a release of some chemical in the brain, but it induces a state of euphoria and a feeling of everything being OK in the world, of joy and happiness and forgiveness of anyone who ever did anything to you. If you had been murdered, and were lying dying, in those final moments where you faded out, you would feel good will and forgiveness even to the guy who just killed you. Its hard to explain. But having experienced it, it's certainly not proof of some afterlife - not even close. Why does everyone have similar experiences? It's pre-programmed like how everyone laughs without having to be taught how to - just built into the human animal.

On the plus side, anyone who'se died slowly or who has known they were dying, I can vouch for the fact that they weren't in agony, they weren't afraid, and they weren't anything other than blissfully happy and overjoyed in those last moments before they died.

My .02

 

Actually, humans do more fetching for dogs than dogs do for humans. Mmmmmm, horse meat.

 

Yes, Ive read the Gita several times, great stuff

 

Seems obvious to me, We know that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only change from 1 form to another form. We obviously have an energy that animates life, you may call it spirit, soul, or anything else. So when the body dies this animating energy must go somewhere, it cannot just cease or it would refute the Law of thermodynamics, Sooooo.

When you look at nature everything is reused, a leaf or a dead animal in the forest quickly becomes reintegrated into the ecosystem so the material part obviously returns to the Earth

 

Scientific people often take an atheistic stance and refuse to consider the possibility that spiritual traditions and ancient religious texts could have some relationship to their theories regarding the origins of the universe, life and consciousness, the relationship of matter and energy, etc.

Religious or spiritual people, even those that are highly educated and trained in critical thought, often tend to take refuge in their dogmas and blindly cling to totally irrational beliefs regarding the above.

I became interested in eastern spiritual traditions because the explanations of creation, consciousness, the origin and destination of the soul, etc., found in their texts, particularly the Vedic texts such as the Gita, makes much more sense to me in the light of scientific knowledge and thought than the more or less fundamentalist Biblical tradition in which I was raised and which predominates in my area of the country (Texas).

I have become convinced that there is a direct and clear relationship between spiritual and scientific thought; it will just take someone much more well versed in both areas and vastly more intelligent than myself to make this connection in a way that can be widely understood.

 

When I studied for my Masters in Buddhism I concentrated on the nexus between Buddhism & Quantum theory, The intersections fit very neatly except that Buddhism offers more answers and seems quite a bit more advanced than the current state of Quantum physics

Nihilism doesnt make any sense to me, it avoids the obvious

Have you read the IMPLICATE AND THE EXPLICATE by Dr David Bohm ? Great read on quantum theory although the math is WAY beyond me

 

Yes, there is life after death. It is called your kids.

 

I agree with Dr. Tax. your kids are life after death.

I have seen some friends die, one especially was very religious and believed in the afterlife...he knew He would go to heaven and be with God when he died and always thought heaven was a wonderful place...for 19 months ( arecord I am told) he fought pancreatic cancer. He felt pain like no one I had ever seen before. He had told me many times that he was not afraid to die...that i happens to all of us, and he knew where he was going...but his wife told me he held on to life as long as he could and really was not ready to leave when he finally stopped breathing.

Is anyone ready to go...I dont think so. Is there afterlife...if there is I hope I go there to the better place. I sort of doubt it myself. I think when you die, everyone else knows you died except you. You lose your brain and your ability to know what is happening to you...we have been endoctrinated since birth about heaven and hell and good and evil. Good and evil are decent concepts and heaven and hell follow supposedly. I wish one person would come back and tell. Most near death experiences and deep anesthesia only talk about a tunnel or a bright light or something like that...but no one talks about being in heaven...

Sobering thoughts for sure

 

Move this to the politics and religion section...


-DC

 

I find the lack of faith intresting here.....if anyone here has ever been on a plane and looked out the window...the clouds, the sky...its unlimited beauty. On a ship or boat, the depths of the water, all its creatures. I look at the world as a car, bus or plane, it only works if someone is driving it. The world is the same, as human life, it only works if someone,something,some force is behind it. Whether it God to me, or a god to you,budda,muslim,or any faith for that matter the underlying factor is there must be an underlining force beyond our imagination, control. The reason why we fight for life until the end is because we do not want to let go of our strong earthly ties with family and possessions etc. It is very scary to let go of the known, for the unkown, hence the fight for 19 months of cancer. But make no mistake I bet it does exist, sorry I could not prove it to you in hard facts, I could, but I would have to say my source was Jesus Christ.

 

And why is that...because so many people are led to believe there is?

DL

 

Not at all my freind, you are allowed to believe whatever you choose to believe or not believe. As humans we always need to find the answer, so in this case there really isn't one per say. Therefore, you have non believers and believers. Even a religious person has to have all the answers, maybe we are not allowed to have all the answers, maybe we already have them, but to stupid to realize.Maybe we should think out of the box for a change, blind faith might not be a bad think.....

 

Big Red... You and I think alike. We can accept the fact that there are things that we as humans will never beable to comprehend.

 

Let's see now.

If I come back as a dog, then people

feed me
scratch my tummy
take me out and let me run around (mostly)
clean up after me (with some yelling)

and let me sit in the front of the truck

I don't think that qualifies as being a slave.

<g>

 

Ive heard it said by wise men that there are so many different religions because so many people are at different spiritual stages & each stage has its religion

I believe as Ghandi said that " All religions are but different paths up the same mountain".

 

And those are sensible points of view.

 

I love the quote by the Australian Aborigine Shaman who said, "We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience, We are spiritual beings having a physical experience."

 

funny how there is a default assumption, and if you're not part of that camp you're a "non".

it's just like being a NON-smoker...

there's loads of things we all don't know, i don't know why corn comes out the way it went in, everyone knows there's stuff they will never know, it's just that there are too many people on street corners telling me they happen to know the guy who does.

 

Same by Hermann Hesse who said that all religions are all after the same principles they are striving for in the depths of them, but it's the little things on the surface that everyone argues about.

 

Joseph Campbell, the great historian & mythologist said that the Christians, Jews, & Muslims create great problems in the world because they dont realize that the Old Testament is supposed to be interpreted metaphorically & not literally

 

Good point - I was watching this thing on Galileo on the history channel. When he first observed sunspots, it was seen as an attack on the very basis of the Catholic Church because the old testiment told them that the heavenly bodies were flawless and pristine. Such details seem to only distract from the message of the book which is good, but organized religion has yet to make those ideas work in a large context.
I never heard that the sun was perfect smooth and spherical, but I DID have to listen to the ramblings of a pastor who believed that evolution was a lie. The kicker: he was also a high school science teacher. I kinda lost respect for him because of his too-literal translation. Seek truth, not donations.

 

I will agree with that comment.

 

A man died and went to heaven. As he stood in front of St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind him. He asked, "What are all those clocks?"

St. Peter answered, "Those are Lie-Clocks. Everyone on Earth has a Lie-Clock. Every time you lie, the hands on your clock will move."

"Oh," said the man, pointing, "whose clock is that?"

"That's Mother Teresa's. The hands have never moved, indicating that she never told a lie."

"Incredible," said the man. "And whose clock is that one?"

St. Peter responded, "That's Abraham Lincoln's clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abe told only two lies in his entire life."

"Where's Bush's clock?" asked the man.

"Bush's clock is in Jesus' office. He's using it as a ceiling fan."