Existence after death

nero:

Great joke

 

random thought that has been bouncing around in my mind for a few days:
physics "M theory" or "String theory" claims multiple spacial dimensions right next to each other, the only force that freely travels through is pure energy, and gravity. what if the pure energy of the human "soul" passes from one " dimension" to the next?
private Catholic schools my whole life, including Military school ( Benidictine Military School). the catholic ( now corrupt) church was started as a means of crowd control for the ignorant masses. read Enoch, and what is known about the Dead Sea scrolls. makes ya wonder if we have the whole story or not. i believe there is a "something" that is made of energy. but not that we "go anywhere".

 

Having spent several minutes on the wrong side of life, along with many sleepless nights pondering the situation, I've come to my own conclusions based purely on logic, reason, and experience. My own experience involved a drowning incident a couple of years ago. A few minutes under water, lungs/stomach fill up with water, heart stops, not a good thing. However, once you're out, you're out. Just like someone else said already, your brain can't tell you "hey guess what, you're dead".. you don't even notice. My own thinking leading up to that incident was that there is pure nothingness, and my experience validated that for me.

Now then, the reasoning behind my 'nothingness' belief has its roots in a lecture from way back in 1st grade. A blind marathon runner came to my elementary school to speak to us about achievement against adverse conditions, namely running 26 miles without being able to see where you're going. The first question anyone asked him was naturally "what do you actually *see*?? pure black, pure white..??" Since the guy was born with the ability to see and only lost his vision later in life, he had a great analogy. He said "Try to look out the back of your head. That's what I see." Everyone sat there for a second squirming with their eyes closed, waving their hands behind their heads, trying to see where they can't. The lesson was that there is no black, no white, no shapeless forms. The guy simply can't see *anything*... pure nothingness.

How do you know you're alive? How do you interpret the world around you? This of course happens through your senses.. you see things around you.. you hear sounds, smell scents, taste food, and feel the touch of the chair under your butt, clothes on your skin, etc. We know we exist because we can sense it. If you extend the analogy to the rest of your senses, you can get an idea of what it's like to be dead that perfectly matches my own experience with death. Take away the ability to sense, and you're effectively dead to the world because you have no means of interpreting or interacting with it. So in effect, being dead is like seeing out the back of your head.

-R

 

I just cant comprehend it all, the idea of nothingness is just beyond me. try thinking about what was here before the big bang, is uncomprehensiable. My theory is that Time and Death, or as Robin said, nothingness, are so closely intertwined that it is impossible to comprehend. Now that my head hurts, i must indulge myself in some useless addictinggames.com

 

Great post, Robin. If there is any interest, I'd be happy to give an Anthrologoical/academic explanation of the development of religion and our search for answers to questions that cannot be answered.

I rarely venture into this area because of the passions it stirs up. Sooner or later, any discussion of religious beliefs gets hung on the faith or lack of it debate, which is itself a question that cannot be emperically answered.

I'll give you one hint of where this is headed. Some of the earliest findings of any type of religious artifact or other evidence of metaphyiscal thought is ancestor worship. It appears that death was enigma even to pre-historical man.

Again, if there is any interest, I'll keep going with this. But if you'd rather argue over which end of the egg to open, have at it!

DrTax

 

I experience nothingness often when meditating, I find it very soothing & calming, It gives your mind a short vacation. A lot of sleep is nothingness

Ive had a lot of wild spiritual experiences and nothingness is a welcome place to relax.

Having said that I know there is a lot more to death than nothingness.

I remember a few snippets from past lives as well

 

I've been dead twice.

Once a week after my birth a second time sixteen years latter due to a reaction to a drug at the doctors office.

Though I cannot remeber the first the second was a rather distrurbing experience. It's amazing how it is so vivid all these years latter.

However, I do not fear death. Being the arrogant bastard I am I fear for the loss of my winning personality to those around me.

I guess the third time really will be the charm.

 

I, too, have experienced soothing calm whilst meditating.

William, sounds like you are very far ahead of me in cultivating your inner being. What parts of your past lives have you remembered? I haven't cultivated enough to remember my past lives. My senses are still quite clouded.

 

LOL, believe me I am clouded too

I remember being a child riding a covered Conestoga wagon out west

I remember being a slave or a prisoner at some point

I was a Shaman in a past life as well

I know I fought in many wars throughout human history

 

LOL!! We are all clouded to some degree, me more so than you. Otherwise, we will all be buddhas by now!

It's cool that you can remember quite a bit about your previous lives. I suppose these flashbacks occurred when you were meditating?

When I am finally able to remember my past lives, I may find myself as a cockroach running around somebody's kitchen.

 

I want to come back as a Starship Commander

 

I'd definitely be interested in hearing your thoughts. Discussions on this topic generally wander into the realm of pure speculation and wishful thinking, without examining the core question, which is what makes people believe what they believe in the first place. I've always been interested in the issue due to the intense feelings it generates in people. Knowing how much difficulty we have coming to grips with death today makes me wonder how it must have been to people 30,000 years ago.

-R

 

absolutely ROTFLMAO !

 

If I had to chose a religion, I would fall under the category of non denominational Christian, but only by default. I think there is much more to learn than what is written in the bible. I want to learn more about Bhuddism, it sounds cool.
Basically, I think there is physical death, which is as far as humans can percieve. I like the post from Robin, like looking through the back of your head (which I am going to spend an hour trying tonight). I also think there is death of the concious(sp?) mind , where the mind escapes the limitations of the body. I guess I mean that the mind equals the soul (as in some religions) and the soul inhabits the body for a very short time, then moves on to being a tree or a shovel or gas nebula or whatever. Heaven and Hell are just what kind of thing your soul inhabits next, for instance, if your soul inhabits a layer of pondscum, that would be hell, but if your 'reincarnated' as some cooler life form (like a spore or a bird or the wind or something) that would be equivalent to heaven. Maybe you wouldnt mind being pond scum, I know I wouldnt care, then that could be your heaven. Im not sure if one's actions in one 'life' affect what you become in the next, but I think its more along the lines of how you would interpret and appreciate your next life that determines how you would enjoy it.

More on that rambling line of thought later, Im going to try to look through my brain, and clean out what I dont need.

Im not a druggie, but if LSD or LSA were ever re-legalized, Id sure like to try some. See what my brain can extract from my mind.

 

Unfortunately, this is a topic that I've given alot of thought. Al Qaeda nutjobs and thousands of ICBM's on hair trigger alert around the world doesn't help any.

As great as 2004 is, do you ever wish you lived in a different age?

Getting back on topic, we really have no idea what happens after death. We know so little about our world and our universe, that to speculate on what happens after death is just that, speculation.

For all we know, we could be in an elaborate set up, like in the movie "The Truman Show". Our reality as we know it is completely fabricated.

Our life as we know it could all be a dream and you could wake up on some distance planet. That's possible.

Where were you before you were born? Maybe that's the same feeling as death.

Overall, I have no conclusive answers. Just make each day count and you will have lived your life to the fullest.

 

some scientists believe our universe has something like 23 dimensions.

Apart from ET on other planets, there could easily be other beings living in other dimensions in exactly the same place we live. We cant percieve them because we humans can only percieve 4 dimensions

 

I gotta do some work today. But I'll try to write up something by Monday, if I can recall any of these 30-year old lectures!

 

Yup pretty much I forgot about that analogy.. it's basically an extension of my last post re: lack of physical senses. The last time you were unable to acknowledge your existance in the world was before you were born. Before then you had no heart pumping blood to your brain to interpret the world around you. When you're dead, your heart no longer pumps blood to your brain so that it can interpret the world around you. It's essentially the same thing, but when you're dead you leave a pile of stuff that makes grass grow.

I'm not sure why people feel the need to glorify death and come up with grand heaven stories and reincarnation fantasies. When you're dead, you're simply not here anymore.. It's a really simple fact that seems to perplex people to no end. I guess the human condition suffers the need to complicate everyday occurances to the point where nothing happens just because that's the way it is. We constantly seek out 'better' explanations that match our own desires more closely than reality allows. I guess there's nothing wrong with that if you don't mind living in fantasy...

Which reminds me of an exchange between Ann Druyan (the late Carl Sagan's wife) and an interviewer who was asking her about Dr. Sagan after he passed away. The interviewer was apparently shocked that Sagan didn't have some sort of deathbed conversion and asked "But didn't he want to believe?" to which Ann replied "Carl didn't want to believe, he wanted to know."

-R

 

You'd get a kick out of the book Hyperspace by Michio Kaku. It's all about multi-dimensional theory and how the modern mysteries of physics can be easily solved when calculated with an allowance for higher dimensions. I think he theorizes the limit to be at 10 dimensions though. Reason being that as you go up in dimensions, the physical size of the space in that dimension decreases as you add parameters (kinda like folding a piece of paper in half.. I think you can only do it 8 times).

In related news, you may have noticed that Stephen Hawking made a pretty important change to his black hole theories recently. He used to think that black holes might serve as wormholes to other dimensions and universes since matter apparently got sucked in and never came out.. it had to go somewhere. His latest information points to the fact that black holes actually trap all matter, then release it over time in huge bursts. So yeah.. universe hopping might not be too easy anymore

-R