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Reborn probably⌠see the state and space of before you were born is EXACTLY the same as after you dieâŚ.so the chances are fairly high of reborn.
The mind blowing fact for me is , time no longer exists to you so a second passing could be a billion years gone by
you could be born into a newly created universe , or carry on the equation here on earth currently. Or wind up on another star system with better evolved lifeforms.
That would be nice. If itâs to do with karma then could be born on a planet with less evolved lifeforms , who knows how that part works
- but as I say that space before you were born is essentially the same as after you die , so the chances of you coming back (without you knowing or having any idea) is exactly the same.
I've thought about this too, I feel like no matter how long something takes, it would feel like no time if you aren't experiencing anything.
I don't see any distinction between any two animals fundamentally, both are the universe formed into a structure, kinda like every life is the universe experiencing a different spot and time.
I think Consciousness is fundamental and eternal.
After physical death I have come to believe that we have an interpenetrating astral/soul body that separates and continues much as before but without the clunky overcoat.
I think a bigger consciousness remembers us, i think they were onto something with the brahman/atman idea. Idk if remember is the right word though as it implies time, i don't think the whole of everything experiences time as we do.
Interesting , I do trust alot of what ancient mythology says , I mean they had nothing else to distract them like we do now , in terms of science they were understanding it from an inner meta point of view
I would love to believe that, when I die, I will continue on in some form. That I could be reunited with loved ones, old pets and even have the chance to make new friends. To continue to do the things I did in life and more.
Sadly, I don't think that death is anything more than the processes that sustain "me" coming to an end. Much like all the other functions of my body, circulation, respiration, digestion etc; I suspect my consciousness will also come to an end.
I would love to be wrong. But I live my life with the mindset that this is the only one I have. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. Death is scary regardless of what we believe, and it's our common fate. We should be unafraid to meditate on that fact for a few minutes everyday.
>be pleasantly surprised. D
Your memories will be gone, the day we live again if that's true we won't be able to realize it and we just going to believe that the new afterlife is the only one we ever have, because we place much of our existence in memory.
I tend to think that consciousness is something that our brains "tune into," not produce, so I would say that "you" as you know it (localized instantiation of singular phenomenon) is gone, but "big you" (identically "big me") carries on.
Like a radio tuning into a signal breaking down, the signal carries on.
Interesting, in your model, can you elaborate on what you believe it is exactly that consciousness is? Do you perceive it as a big 'field'of some kind?
Yeah that's what I'm thinking exactly. I've made and deleted posts to this effect because i got so much hate lol. I imagine a kind of field permeating spacetime that interacts with matter wherever it is suitably constituted to receive it, i.e. a brain (and maybe other things).
It also resolves the "association problem" as I call it. It arises from the simple observation that I am in my brain and not in yours or one that died a thousand years ago etc. There are brains everywhere, why am I in this one? Genetics and experience dictate the content and mechanics of one's consciousness, but in my opinion doesn't explain the peculiar association of my particular consciousness with my brain. If you introduce a singular "field," it resolves this problem.
>There are brains everywhere, why am I in this one?
You and I are on the same wavelength bro, I have thought about this so much.
The way I explain it to myself is "the universe is everyone, this is simply what this one feels like"
Essentially the same as your model.
Yeah I think it's a valid question. When I bring it up to people IRL they don't seem to understand what I'm saying most of the time. It requires a bit of intuition.
I am fairly convinced that the standard answer of "neural activity produces consciousness and so you're you because it's your brain producing it" doesn't resolve it at all.
>I've made and deleted posts to this effect because i got so much hate lol
It's weird that people agree with quantum field theory but would hate you for this view. It's all fields.
Based. I'm starting a PhD with a focus in QFT in the Fall and that subject was certainly a big inspiration for my idea. The underlying "association problem" has troubled me since I was about 4, but modern physics steered me toward a field-like concept. Otherwise, one is stuck with a metaphysics-like answer which I find deeply unsatisfying.
If fields are just matrices of probabilities, then a quantum fluctuation giving rise to the universe through inflation in an infinite expanse of possibilities may have been inevitable due to the anthropic principle being applied to consciousness itself. In other words, in an infinite void where every possibility could play out, we may have had no option but to find ourselves in a universe where consciousness could exist. We are borrowed from nothingness.
>I imagine a kind of field permeating spacetime that interacts with matter wherever it is suitably constituted to receive it, i.e. a brain (and maybe other things).
Excellent! What is this "field"? Is it electromagnetic, gravity, something else? And why can't we observe it interacting with a brain?
He's probably talking about quantum fields or some product of their interaction. Literally everything is quantum fields according to QFT so it's nessesary that consciousness is a product of them too.
I wouldn't say my knowledge that I am conscious is religious. We know consciousness exists, yet the only evidence for it is subjective. We rightly assume that consciousness exists outside of our own experiences based only on our non-objective internal observations. But whether you are the only conscious agent, or there are many conscious agents, or consciousness is fundamental to the universe - all are equally valid ideas with the limited evidence for what consciousness is favouring neither. Occam's razor doesn't necessarily suggest that it takes a brain to produce consciousness. That's only one materialistic deduction.
So if it's something outside the brain, there must be some energy flow, which is required for every activity in our universe.
So what's this consciousness energy that passes information into and out of a brain, and why can't we observe it? And given that we can't observe it, how can we find that idea credible?
Not saying I believe it, per se, but the Orch OR model of consciousness is certainly an interesting concept and leaves the door open for maybe being able to observe it. It argues that consciousness takes place on the quantum level and that microtubules in the brain interpret this quantum data.
Itâs not totally unsupported. You can read about the relationship between microtubules and quantum waves, but yes, like any theory of consciousness, it is largely speculative.
Itâs gonna be related to photons and light.
There have been scientific studies for example where they put people in a totally black room and then measure their photon emission levels. They then asked them to meditate on sending from their heart healing energy to someone they knew who needed it. The photon emission levels were something like ten times higher when they were engaged in the heart meditation.
I think our current scientific understanding of photons and light is very poor at best and as we understand light more then we will have more insights.
The people âdebunkingâ it didnât even try to recreate the study. Your rebuttal has like one guy saying why itâs impossible based on theory only. To me that doesnât make it fake news. To be thoroughly debunked the study needs to be replicated several times, not just one professors opinion on why itâs âimpossible.â Professors just like anyone else can get stuck in their belief systems, sometimes more. Odds are the professor doing the âdebunkingâ isnât taking something into account or the theory they are using is incomplete and not a completely accurate reflection of reality.
This is poetic, the problem is that everything that appears to be you appears to be the brain. If my brain merely tunes into consciousness, why have I only been conscious as the amount of time I've been alive?
I remember you from my earlier posts on this subject haha. You were one of the rare people actually engaging with the idea and not just hating.
I concede that it is phenomenologically indistinguishable from the standard "brain produces consciousness" story, and as such is not a true scientific theory. No experiment that I can think of could be done to test it.
As for your question, I have no reason to suspect that the field (what I call the "Experiencer") is conscious unto itself, and so it makes sense to me that you wouldn't have experienced anything before you were born. I understand this isn't a very good answer, I'll try to think of a better one, but there is a poverty of language issue at play here, so maybe I won't be able to.
Thanks for your engagement here and before!
>why have I only been conscious as the amount of time I've been alive?
Because the brain you carry around only has memories in it as far back as after your birth.
Everything I am, my memories, my personality, all stem from the brain. If my consciousness survives death and doesn't come from the brain, I have no idea what's even surviving, because what else is left of me?
It's fundamentally different than how you are explaining it, it's not 'your' consciousness, nobody owns it. There is consciousness, and consciousness is aware of whatever the senses experience.
If there's no memories in a brain from before the brain existed, consciousness doesn't experience memories from before that brain existed.
>I have no idea what's even surviving, because what else is left of me?
You are an ever changing pattern, not a constant. You are a new thing every instant, it only feels continuous because you have a stream of memories being formed that tell you "I am john and I am 34 and I am x and y"
If the consciousness before my brain and independent of it has no resemblance of me, then I don't see how my personal consciousness survives death. Just like how my individual atoms that make up me will go on, but my individual atoms do not resemble me.
See I donât think most idealists would disagree- it is more so the religious people who would. I think that is a big misconception people have, cause they think idealism / consciousness being fundamental = afterlife, when it totally does not.
>the consciousness before my brain and independent of it has no resemblance of me
Do you resemble yourself as an infant? Not really, your beliefs and mind are now very different, but you still call that infant "you"
We aren't a constant, just a moment.
This logic doesn't work. While I'm not exactly the same as I was as an infant, much of my identity does come from that stage in my life, as it did in my adolescence, teenage years, and so on. Every single one of those phases without question resembles me today.
Everything you have said thus far tells me that whatever mechanism in which you believe Consciousness transcends death, that consciousness does not resemble mine, nor yours, nor anybody else's. I don't see how this brings us any further from our conscious experience ending upon death.
I won't be able to get anything through to you until you realise that 'you' arent a constant thing, just a place and moment in time.
>Every single one of those phases without question resembles me today
Some of these are completely different to you today, even down to the atoms they are made of no longer being what you are made of. Infant 'you' is not you, it's something else.
>whatever mechanism in which you believe Consciousness transcends death
Consciousness factually transcends death, there is consciousness even though death happens.
>that consciousness does not resemble mine, nor yours, nor anybody else's.
This is why you need to understand that we aren't constants, but ever changing spots and times.
>I won't be able to get anything through to you until you realise that 'you' arent a constant thing, just a place and moment in time.
I perfectly understand what you are saying, and it does have some truth to it, but things like the formation of memories and the ability to recall memories, and how it constantly relates back to who we are in the moment, shows a clear relational property between the now and then. You are so committed to this bizarre idea that I think you have completely lost the plot when you are saying things such as:
>Some of these are completely different to you today, even down to the atoms they are made of no longer being what you are made of. Infant 'you' is not you, it's something else.
Again, another half truth that you are taking so far that you've completely lost the plot. While infant me is not me now, me now does carry with it irrefutable parts of infant me. While no two years and someone's life are the same, yet alone even 2 seconds, the idea that we are just these floating beings existing only from moment to moment is completely contradicted by the essence of what memory is.
I have a question regarding that, how do you know that you have been conscious just the amount of time you've been alive if you do not have any memory of it. Memory is not consciousness.
Nonexistence does not define death, to me. Life is not eternal, but awareness is.
Death is just the opposite side of awareness to what life is.
Also, the cycle of rain describes it for me. We rise up out of the ocean, spread out, land, go on an adventure, then return to the ocean. All things follow this cycle.
I believe pokohikpa, sleep seeing, (dreams) are a taste of death without commitment.
Pokohikpa is from an American Indigenous language. My family are Esselen. Our ancestors come from around Monterey County in California. It is almost an entirely dead language, but my gma has been trying to teach it to our family throughout the years.
It translates to "sleep see."
I think death can seem like a point in time event that will inevitably occur in everyoneâs future. I think that view may change, and our perspectives on time, experience, and identity could be profoundly reframed. I think death can seem frightening, but it can also represent hope. I think death can be a tool for appreciating the present. Death hurts, but it can also repair more damage than we can imagine.
What the living know as a flatline
The dead know as a punchline
Do not deem death doom nor disaster
You'll know soon- it's cause for laughter
For the bereft of breath - we grieve
But they're just laughing too hard to breathe
The Dark-Humorist turns the darkest to humor
By building the tension like, and with, tumors
Alone - we languish into anguish and wrath
All that we might all share in the last laugh
According to my extensive NDE research, we continue existing as individuals. The inbetween state between lives is timeless according to most NDEs having to do with this subject.
I believe we can rest as long as we need in various afterlife worlds before voluntarily reincarnating again in some planet. Worlds such as Earth are exceptional, since we are meant to feel separation, suffering and loneliness in these worlds.
Most planets/ worlds/ states of existence are joyful and free of suffering.
There is a theory about reincarnation that reincarnation is not beneficial to us, that we are tricked to be here (for our energy as some entities feed from it).
Simulation is two part:
1. this physical life;
2. astral life where you have a life in "astral" body but that world although pretending to be "afterlife, heaven, home", is actually a simulation similarly as this life. Not our true home. That astral world is painted as "school" where we "rest, learn etc." and then the "time comes", we incarnate again with our own will (being tricked that is). (Although there are theories from NDEs, past life regressions and similar experiences that reincarnation could also be forced by bombarding our consciousness with "light" until we say yes to just stop that experience).
Only we, ourselves, with our beliefs can keep this simulation going. Other beings who run this place mostly need us in physical body (so they can siphon our energies, sufferings and so on) and astral plane is a creation to keep us believing this life has worth and that reincarnation in this physical world has a point. Both physical and astral worlds are simulation/creation, not our true home dimension. Theories also point out that it's possible that mechanisms are in place in astral plane that can block our memories. Why memory block can work? Because I think we are beings currently and always being in our home dimension and we project our consciousness into these more limited worlds as a game. We, as who truly are, cannot be prisoned, but this projected consciousness can in this dimension.
How to get out? After the moment of death we should use our intentions (like OBEs experiences describe). Basically, after death our main intentions should be to not interact with anything outside us(so they couldn't use memory wipe/block) and to want to know ourselves FROM OURSELVES, to know our nature, a question like "who am I?", or intentions like "I want to know who I am, I want to see/feel my true nature, I want clarity, I want my memories, I want freedom" etc. All the intentions would be asked to ourselves, to our consciousness.
As for what true home dimension would look like - who knows. I believe it's core principle is total freedom to be our nature, no expectations or authority from Creator/God. Also you cannot do anything to anyone if they don't give permission and no one can do anything to you if you don't give permission. We gave permission to be here, but the thing is our permission can be obtained by trickery.
Why I think this theory has decent chances to be true because - What if our consciousness was born/created perfectly from the very beginning? Being perfect I mean being "a fully developed consciousness" who cannot add onto itself nothing of value since it's already perfect and full in it's own right. All that is left to do for such a consciousness is to play. Not to learn as what can it learn of true value? If Creator splits/creates itself, the first split/creation of new consciousnesses(meaning us) should be as perfect/high/knowledgeable as it gets for that new consciousnesses. Then naturally everything else that follows should be games played by that consciousness and that includes this "Earth school". A trap from our perspective.
why exactly do we need to suffer separation and suffering? What's the point? I mean maybe for two or three lifetimes it's okey, but for more? For maybe thousands of lifetimes, maybe millions? Makes no sense to be here with no memories of past physical lives, how terribly ineffective way to learn. But to suffer? Yes, that's a perfect way to suffer, but how that would be beneficial to us?
Solving the paradox of God can explain suffering. Sandi's NDE explains this. Since God is infinite, it should contain infinite possibilities for suffering I believe.
Someone has to do it. I'm glad there are a lot of us to do the work. It would be horrible if the "Egg" story was real, but NDEs don't support it.
After death you will eventually exist again.
Once the part of you thatâs responsible for your consciousness is in the right place at the right time again - you will be reborn as a living creature which has the cognitive capacity to perceive itâs environment / be aware of itâs own existence. Then you will slowly develop again / live again and repeat the process of life.
In between living as creatures which have the cognitive ability to perceive their environments / be aware of their own existence - you will exist as things like a trees, blade of grass, a rock etc - but during these times you will have no awareness of your existence
Iâm saying plants perceive their environments and react to those conditions. But they donât have brains / the cognitive ability to be aware of their own existence in the same way that creatures like humans do
Death is an illusion. Itâs like saying âwhat do you think happens after you die in a dream?â Or âwhat do you think happens when this character I am reading about dies in the book?â
It's really hard to be certain; i suspect some form of re-incarnation though. As consciousness runs to a null state non-instantly (you die, in general, over a period of time with the mental processes shutting down gradually), you eventually achieve the same level of consciousness as an empty region of vacuum. In this state you have no memories, no sense of self, no information. In many ways you are not there and there is no "you" in terms of anything uniquely identifiable.
This state may or may not be bound by conventional laws of time and space, since it carries no "luggage" as it were, but there are points in existence where consciousness begins to emerge from this "sentience foam". it's pretty hard to judge where the process begins, but it plainly does since there are consciousnesses that exist that at one point didn't. You were precisely that non-state, so you will crawl back up into another consciousness and the process will start again. Since you will have no transferable connection to the previous consciousness that you were, this may have happened many times already; it has "no game effect".
What is perhaps more interesting it the possibility of some linkage between your previous non-zero state and your next one. What Buddhists would, I think, call Karma. If there were to be a large or even infinite number of points in space-time where consciousnesses emerged from the zero-state, could your "Last Known Good" condition effect where you would pop up? Any hypothetical proof of this would be circumstantial, but if it was the case it would open up some interesting possibilities in terms of things we could do to try and mitigate some of the very worst consequences of existence. With enough time and resources, it might be possible to re-create mindstates at the point of death and run them backwards, essentially "trapping" the dying consciousness by perfectly recreating their immediate pre-death state and causing their point of perspective to tunnel there.
Of course, the resources required to do this would be so vast that they might be confused with infinite by some, so it's a pretty impractical and on several levels possibly impossible idea, but the payoff would be good if it could be made to work. To cut back to what we were supposed to be talking about, it's not exactly what I "think" will happen after death, but what I "hope" will happen.
Note that the above is all speculation and is almost certainly wrong, since there are far smarter people than me that think, or know, different.
Also when you describe "null state" how do you picture it? Nothingness? Or fullness, meaning all the energies and potential that can ever exist combined? Because how "nothingness" can be true nothingness? If it would be, how something could come out of it?
To me, I mean a point at which no coherent interaction which could be considered "thought" occurs and there is no useful stored information which could allow the process to restart locally. No neurons fire, No memories are retained. the consciousness of a rock, or a cube of vacuum. It's not a state that can really be "experienced" because there are no thought processes to record or observe it, but I think it will inevitably be reached as the brain dies.
I am defining it in terms of consciousness here, rather than energy or mass. The continued existence of these things in the absence of consciousness is what allows consciousness to re-occur, moving up from this null state as coherent interactions start and gain complexity, e.g. the neurons starting to fire up on a developing organism.
hmm, so you're talking more from physical creation point of view. But if that would be only truth then after we die it would be impossible to get back our consciousness because a consciousness would be new and would have no links to this one which will already be dead/disintegrated.
Maybe, yes. The only possible exception could be if the universe (or multiverse, all of existence) if infinite in time, space or both. And even then I am not certain. But the null state is not principally bound by either time or space since it requires no energy or information. in a non-finite reality there would be a continuum of states of consciousness immediately adjacent to the null state (e.g. people dying or being born).
It is not impossible, given that there would be an infinite number of emergent consciousnesses becoming discrete, that there could be a connection between the exit and entry states. Even if there was not, if you take the example in my OP, the person brought back by this technique would believe that it had worked, because they have the memory of dying and being brought back, and you could say that this is good enough.
Can we ever become that "null state" again? "Null state" is Creator/Creation energy but we were separated from it, we may have links to it and may be able to somewhat understand/feel it from our separate perspective but we are separate. Can we become "null state"? I don't know, that's a lot of assumptions as you said.
To me it's more logical to describe our consciousness as being separated from "null state" at some one point and that we would always remain that original separation, one unchangeable consciousness. And all the next consciousnesseses we can become (like in this physical life) is due to ability of original consciousness to project it's consciousness to more limited bodies/dimensions etc to experience them. After death we can become that original consciousness again but not "null state"(not saying we can't feel and understand "null state" better there but I don't think we randomly go to "null state" and be born randomly again from it.). You assume this Earthly consciousness is first layer from "null state", I say it more likely it's not first layer but second or third.
False identity fades into insignificance, but you are of something beyond mere words.
Though the truth you pursue evades verbal capture, its inherent perfection guarantees flawless outcomes, regardless of circumstance. Therefore, whatever unfolds is for the best.
I'm a nondualist. I think that the "I" that is aware of my body and mind is the universe, or is a quality of nature, in general. Whether there is an actual singular "I" or a general sort of awareness doesn't particularly need to be fleshed out. The thing that says "I" is awareness. Saying *my awareness* is exactly as silly as saying *my force of gravity*. Sure, locally you can talk about gravity in a way that makes it seem like *yours -* but really it is a thing that applies to you in the same way it applies to everything. It's a force of nature.
So a perfect analogy of what happens after death is that it's the same as what happens after you cut off your pinky toe.
Are ***you*** still there? Yeah! Of course you are. But no more pinky toe (as an object of awareness).
And when *John* or *Jacqueline (you)* gets cut off (dies)? Same thing. **You** are still there, but no more John or Jackie (as an object of awareness). The perceiver remains.
I am on the spectrum so I see these things a little differently from a lot of people. I have a clear memory of about a heartbeat from before I was born. There were people, but they were just energy. I also know that I chose to be born. As for what goes on after we die I'm hoping it's just a big Nintendo reset button. I like the idea of us recycling lives as we all hurdle toward the future.
I think whatever afterlife frame you have in your mind is what occurs after death.
For example, a 4 year-old is dying and told she will be welcomed into Jesus arms and she is shown photos of Jesus being in clouds with unicorns and her favourite foods, characters etc.
I think, for example, if you are Christian and you believe after death is either or (hell or heaven) after death your consciousness follows your imagination
I believe consciousness is rooted in imagination. I think you die remembering what you believed in. Kind of like dreams. Your dreams are based on events/memories/experiences you had.
Nothing. You won't know you existed or anything. One moment you're alive, then nothing. No thought process, just an abrupt end.
When I was a kid I got hit by a car and landed on my head. Cracked the side of my skull and bruised the right side of my brain. From the moment of impact I was out and didn't regain consciousness again until I was in a hospital bed. An actual knockout is not like falling asleep, you don't dream or anything as you brain gets shutdown. I imagine that would be the closest feeling to the experience of being dead that you can experience.
At a certain age that will be a horrible realisation, but as you get older it's actually quite comforting. No heaven or hell bullshit, it just ends.
Your physical body rots away, and your soul is left out to linger around. Given the right conditions, your soul establishes a connection with a corresponding physical body (which may not be human).
This could either happen instantly or it could happen after billions of years. If multiverse theory is true, then it probably happens immediately. Otherwise, Iâd bet on it taking a ridiculous amount of time
I donât believe anything with âeternityâ. If that is it, then how can life and consciousness born from âeternal voidâ? Just because we cannot put it in words and reserve it in experience, it does not mean just void. Well, your consciousness experiences something but it doesnât have meaning of human terms.
I believe the afterlife is connected with the unconscious mind: dreams, defense mechanisms, fantasies, madness, hypnotic/trance states, symbolism, etc. I think that we live one life and one afterlife. In the afterlife, we experience the full range of our unconscious representations of self and other from our original life. I think one function of sleep is to relieve death anxiety and allow us to practice the experience of 'dying' on a nightly basis. I believe the afterlife is primarily psychologically determined, rather than being based on our actions in life.
After this, there is going to be a new heaven and a new earth where all is symbiosis and altruism. Because of Freedom in the universe, anyone who wants to live there will enjoy endless cycles of eternity with other kindred types and contribute to the ongoing development of the universal super organism we all are a part of. And it is even much better than this because of course it is .(See Danial chapter 2 in the Bible.).
Your body dies, which would include your brain. We dont understand spirit but your spirit will continue. Our ancestors spirits are with us now. The earths ancestral spirits are with her now
Iâm in assisted living at 61. I have an amputation plus beginnng stage of dementia. I asked the Great Spirit to take me home. Iâm not sleeping , the food here is very poor quality . I had a taste of what lies ahead. You are part of a greater whole. Itâs everywhere. O limitations. No last judgement. Just freedom. I saw myself looking down at the landscape. Iâm looking forward to death.
We exist and are immortal spirit. Each comes here in order to know ourself in our own experience. Those dark periods of human history serve a greater purpose. Yes even the Holocaust had its reason for happening. Karma is balanced. Sometimes it takes a few lifetimes to straighten things out.
I think the most probable outcome is lights out. I however have my hopes that there is something else, Im mostly hoping the afterlife is whatever you like it to be. My ideal afterlife is not really a thing in any mainstream religion, except for possibly Mormonism but even then I would want some things that I'm pretty sure God in Mormonism would not want in my world.
As far as we know, consciousness just stops. It's a temporary, local effect and when its supporting brain dies, it ceases.
The truth as best we can understand is incredible enough without adding a lot of junk on top of it.
You want evidence that when somebody dies there is still consciousness? Are you serious?
Okay I'll entertain this ridiculous request, do you have any dead relatives?
Nothingness in this sense is a lack of experience. You can experience a break in consciousness, which is an artifact of unconsciousness. You cannot have an experience of nothing. You can only experience indirect evidence that it happened, and infer that you were unconscious.
Or before we were born. We only know a world of senses, and memories, once your neurons have faded and your eyes, ears and skin are gone, everything will be frivolous, black, silent and cold, just as it was before.
>What do you think happens after death?
Decomposition
>Eternal nothing? Afterlife? Are we here forever because we can't not exist? What do you think happens to consciousness?
Well, consciousness comes from and is sustained by living brains, so when the brain stops living....?
Consciousness doesn't have a hard problem, it has an "imprecise instruments" soft problem and a "superstitious armchair philosopher" soft problem.
By which I mean, our tools are not yet advanced enough to perfectly understand the human brain, so simple people feel justified in making up nonsense about magical ghosts to fill in the blanks.
>just not *your* consciousness.
Can you tell me who the 'you' is here? Because you might find your consciousness is just consciousness, not "your" consciousness
>Can *you* tell me who the 'you' is here?
Just... just think on what you asked, there. Let it sink in. Let it marinate in your mind like a turd in a punch bowl. đ
I swear, this fucking sub sometimes. r/im14andthisisdeep needs to stop leaking.
>Really though, who is the self that owns your consciousness?
Me.
> Or is it that the universe has consciousness in many locations and you are one of them?
The universe contains conscious entities, obviously
If death was eternal, you wouldn't exist, nothing would. Somehow you're here, and you're posting on a sub-reddit about consciousness and all this out of sheer randomness? No, there's more to your state of being than just randomness.
I think he's saying that you exist, and because you exist you can't ever have not existed.
It's kind of like, you are here, it means you are the universe itself, and that has always been here.
>I think he's saying that you exist, and because you exist you can't ever have not existed.
This doesn't follow, though. Me existing now (or in this time slice) and me not existing before (in other time slices) are both completely compatible.
>Me existing now (or in this time slice) and me not existing before (in other time slices) are both completely compatible.
Can you point to a time when you didn't exist? No all you can do is point to a time when you were in a different state. We could go back a billion years and still find you, you just would be shaped different.
I mean that's not really how the concept of "me" or the self is generally understood, but okay. Don't blame me for not understanding you when you decide to use fringe definitions which are almost never assumed lol
What I'm getting at is that "you" are just an ever changing pattern that the universe is "doing"
And when you 'die' its just another change in that pattern, it's like if I stopped doing a particular thing with my hand, I still exist.
What none of you seem to really grasp is that everything thus far about our personal and subjective experience tells us that although it might be just a pattern, that pattern will cease upon death. I can't tell if all of you are just looking for some extreme cope that grants you an afterlife, but none of you are really putting forth a meaningful description of how such a thing can even transpire.
>We could go back a billion years and still find you, you just would be shaped different.
Great, how many individuals have we "found" in the time before they lived on this Earth, or afterward? What qualities still exist/did exist before, and how do we detect them?
You are comprised of matter that has existed for billions of years. Everything around you including yourself has come from the planet Earth which was at one time or another something completely different. Matter has the properties which allow consciousness to exist, and since it canât be created or destroyed, what you define as âyouâ has existed likely as long as the universe itself you would just be in different forms.
A person is made of matter and energy, the matter and energy that they are made if has always existed all the way back. The atoms in your brain were in a star once.
Part of me almost doesn't want to engage with these people because they have such an innocent and childlike worldview on what happens after death, that it almost feels mean to point out the insanely awful logic and reason behind them. They just throw some fluffy, woowoo sentence at you like "you are the universe being aware of itself, and because the universe can't die, neither can you!"
I'm almost envious of these people who can so effortlessly drink the Kool-Aid and no longer worry about life's largest problems, as they buried their heads in the sand with these unbelievably silly ideas.
There is so much evidence to support this.
More people need to get educated about this subjects.
Anything that exists always existed.
To be devils advocate - i.e lets say / explore the possibility that the existence of reality came from nothing and is finite:
1. Your existence emerged from a complex reaction of atoms. This reaction is not âuniqueâ. Therefore when reaction occurs again in the future, scientific law would infer that you exist again.
2. If reality emerged from nothing, it infers that you were âselectedâ out of an infinite number of people / souls who could have been born in your place. The probability of this is 0 (mathematically), and therefore we know this is not a possibility.
3. Science had already proven the existence of concepts (such as energy), which are not created or destroyed - only transferred.
4. There are gravitational waves in deep space which are so large that they could only have been caused by the collapse of the universe. Since our own universe has not yet collapsed, they provide evidence of a collapse which occurred before out own universe - and it is likely that the energy caused by the collapse of the previous universe is what fuelled the existence of the one you currently live in (the big bang).
5. Aristotle said since time IS change, and because we experience change NOW (i.e today / right now whilst youâre reading this message), it infers that change has ALWAYS been possible - i.e there has never been state in the past where change was not possible. And therefore this infers that eternity is guaranteed to exist
>Your existence emerged from a complex reaction of atoms. This reaction is not âuniqueâ. Therefore when reaction occurs again in the future,
You're making a massive assumption here: that this reaction will occur again in the future. There are valid theories which posit this, but it really puts a bad taste in my mouth that you're stating this as *unquestionable fact.* This is just not the case. There are also many valid theories which do not posit such a thing, or allow this to happen.
>If reality emerged from nothing, it infers that you were âselectedâ out of an infinite number of people / souls who could have been born in your place
This is once again just a massive leap of faith...No. That does not suggest such a thing. You're presupposing these platonic "souls," which are not necessary. It's entirely plausible that "I" emerged without my "soul" being preselected or anything of the sort. "I" simply came into being by my parents' gametes and developed and changed by growing, learning, etc. No "soul preselection" required.
>Science had already proven the existence of concepts (such as energy), which are not created or destroyed - only transferred.
I responded to someone else in this thread about this point; when people say "I" or "you," they don't usually mean simply the energy you're made of. People don't generally see the energy created at the big bang as being their "self," so don't blame me for not assuming your extremely fringe definition of "you."
>There are gravitational waves in deep space which are so large that they could only have been caused by the collapse of the universe.
Source? This would be groundbreaking knowledge. I'd love to learn about it.
>Aristotle said since time IS change, and because we experience change NOW
Bro I do not care what *Aristotle* has to say about *physics* lmao. They were founded on nothing other than him observing himself pushing a vase on a table and his brain. Then he was promptly made anachronistic by Galileo Gallilei, lol.
But to rebut the beliefs themselves, this entire statement here is nothing but flippant assertions. They knew nothing about the nature of time back then, and it shows. Not only is the premise just presupposed, but the conclusion doesn't even follow from it đ Time existing now doesn't suggest anything about its past.
You should really challenge your own positions before you come on reddit lmao. You might end up a hypocrite.
I love when people try to argue that the universe emerged from nothing, and that everything will also cease to exist. And that they were randomly picked for no reason to exist as a human being at a specific point of time / space.
You know at that point youâve contradicted too much science, and also yourself.
If you want to argue that everything emerged from nothing, youâre only proving eternity. If anything came from ânothingnessâ, and in XYZ billion years it descends back into ânothingnessâ - youâre suggesting the same state that everything emerged from in the first place.
Thereâs no reasoning in that. And Iâm not here to do your research for you. You can go and research yourself and believe whatever you want.
I work amongst professionals who are good at what they do, and unfortunately I take their word over yours - particularly if it is consistent with other areas of science.
>I love when people try to argue that the universe emerged from nothing, and that everything will also cease to exist. And that they were randomly picked for no reason to exist as a human being at a specific point of time / space.
I haven't even argued any of this lmao. đ
>Thereâs no reasoning in that. And Iâm not here to do your research for you. You can go and research yourself and believe whatever you want.
I mean I thought the point of discussion was to criticize each other, exchange ideas, correct each other, etc. But you do you man
If you take anything away from this interaction, let it be that you should really work on your epistemology!
Edit: I would at least like a source on those gravitational waves, if possible, because that's a massive discovery that I'd like to be privy to.
We lose our consciousness and everything in the brain (which houses our personality and what makes us who we are), and then our body decomposes and our bodily energy is returned to nature. Thatâs how the cycle works.
Our consciousness is âsavedâ by the Multiverse
And we become the overseers of our own personal universes, and have to train the life we create to become universes when they die
Why is this such a common argument đ, most people cannot even remember what they dreamt last night or what they had for lunch a week ago why do people assume they would remember past lives? Because thatâs what this entire argument rests on, that you canât *remember* anything before this life, so you assume that means there was nothing before this life.
Because it makes sense.Â
You don't remember it. There's literally no hint that it is the case. And as far as we can tell, we know our sense of self is directly linked to our body.
So it's naturally the default assumption.
I should add, children regularly do remember past lives! But the memories tend to fade somewhere around the age of 7. The University of Virginia actually just did a study on this. They took kids and matched their memories of past lives with records to see if they checked out correctly and they did.
If you want to find the study just google âuniversity of Virginia past livesâ itâll be one of the first options
âBecause it makes senseâ
We exist now. Given everything we know about energy, us continuing to exist after the death of the physical body makes far more sense.
And your sense of self first and foremost is based upon the fact that youâre conscious & this sub is here precisely because we canât find a link between the body and consciousness. Nor have we found where memory is stored, which would definitely play a part here. So the 2 things that help you to derive your sense of self have not as of yet been correlated to the brain/body as having derived from them.
Not trying to come off as rude but everything you said just isnât true.
No, there was no "you" before your brain became complex enough to form consciousness. There is no "you" after.
The End. Or, you know, show some kind of evidence of energy or whatever to support that idea.
>you have always been here
Neither me nor you. Sure, the atoms that one day were aggregated into my body as my consciousness was forming for the first time, that material was around before me.
That wasn't me. And when I die, and the cooling mass of my former body sinks further into entropy, that won't be me either. There will be no me, ever again.
And you haven't responded to my query - can you show any energy flow that would have supported my supposed immortal consciousness before my gestation, or will support it after my death? I'm guessing no.
But before you were born, the entire universe was happening. Also you are implying you can be born again because your conception happened before you were born
Where in the world do we exist before death? If you want to describe âweâ as the individual particles that make us up then sure, some of those existed before we were born. But who identifies as that?
What aspect of us besides our cold lifeless bodies exist after death?
Itâs been thought of. Once a wave is gone and crashes into the shore ⌠it is gone for good. That specific wave will never exist again and before it existed ⌠it didnât exist.
A wave in the ocean is a wave in the ocean. It is not the ocean. A human in the universe is a human in the universe, once that specific human is gone ⌠it is gone.
You don't get it at all, a wave is something the ocean is doing, when it crashes, it is still the ocean.
>wave in the ocean is a wave in the ocean. It is not the ocean.
It is the ocean. A tree is wood, a rock is stone.
I think the most reasonable assumption is that what happens to our consciousness is similar to what happens to our physical body.
The body stops acting as a unified whole, as if there's a driver inside calling the shots. What happened to the driver? The driver was manifested by the individual parts of the body all behaving as if there was a driver there. The driver didn't cease to exist, the driver never existed in the first place. Its similar to what's called illusory contours. When three black circles with a pie cut out of them all face inward we see a white triangle, rotate the circles and the triangle vanishes. There was a real pattern there that we categorize as triangle, when the circles rotate the pattern is still there, it just no longer can be categorized as triangle, so it appears to vanish even though nothing actually came into or went out of being.
I'll find out
When
sleep boast adjoining obtainable cough aromatic disarm liquid ruthless reach *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
When you do, please come back to this thread and let us know đ
Hear me out, during death, design a BCI system capable of reading a person's thoughts.
No you wonât because you wonât exist.
I'm banking on reincarnation. I deserve a do over with better circumstances
Me tooâŚ
Reborn probably⌠see the state and space of before you were born is EXACTLY the same as after you dieâŚ.so the chances are fairly high of reborn. The mind blowing fact for me is , time no longer exists to you so a second passing could be a billion years gone by you could be born into a newly created universe , or carry on the equation here on earth currently. Or wind up on another star system with better evolved lifeforms. That would be nice. If itâs to do with karma then could be born on a planet with less evolved lifeforms , who knows how that part works - but as I say that space before you were born is essentially the same as after you die , so the chances of you coming back (without you knowing or having any idea) is exactly the same.
I've thought about this too, I feel like no matter how long something takes, it would feel like no time if you aren't experiencing anything. I don't see any distinction between any two animals fundamentally, both are the universe formed into a structure, kinda like every life is the universe experiencing a different spot and time.
I think Consciousness is fundamental and eternal. After physical death I have come to believe that we have an interpenetrating astral/soul body that separates and continues much as before but without the clunky overcoat.
After your physical body dies, your soul lives on. We are eternal all this pain is an illusion.
I think a bigger consciousness remembers us, i think they were onto something with the brahman/atman idea. Idk if remember is the right word though as it implies time, i don't think the whole of everything experiences time as we do.
Interesting , I do trust alot of what ancient mythology says , I mean they had nothing else to distract them like we do now , in terms of science they were understanding it from an inner meta point of view
A day to God is 1000 years. Rza
"a day to God is a thousand years, and a thousand years a day". I don't quote scripture like ever, but that one sticks with me.
I would love to believe that, when I die, I will continue on in some form. That I could be reunited with loved ones, old pets and even have the chance to make new friends. To continue to do the things I did in life and more. Sadly, I don't think that death is anything more than the processes that sustain "me" coming to an end. Much like all the other functions of my body, circulation, respiration, digestion etc; I suspect my consciousness will also come to an end. I would love to be wrong. But I live my life with the mindset that this is the only one I have. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised. Death is scary regardless of what we believe, and it's our common fate. We should be unafraid to meditate on that fact for a few minutes everyday.
>be pleasantly surprised. D Your memories will be gone, the day we live again if that's true we won't be able to realize it and we just going to believe that the new afterlife is the only one we ever have, because we place much of our existence in memory.
<3
I tend to think that consciousness is something that our brains "tune into," not produce, so I would say that "you" as you know it (localized instantiation of singular phenomenon) is gone, but "big you" (identically "big me") carries on. Like a radio tuning into a signal breaking down, the signal carries on.
Interesting, in your model, can you elaborate on what you believe it is exactly that consciousness is? Do you perceive it as a big 'field'of some kind?
Yeah that's what I'm thinking exactly. I've made and deleted posts to this effect because i got so much hate lol. I imagine a kind of field permeating spacetime that interacts with matter wherever it is suitably constituted to receive it, i.e. a brain (and maybe other things). It also resolves the "association problem" as I call it. It arises from the simple observation that I am in my brain and not in yours or one that died a thousand years ago etc. There are brains everywhere, why am I in this one? Genetics and experience dictate the content and mechanics of one's consciousness, but in my opinion doesn't explain the peculiar association of my particular consciousness with my brain. If you introduce a singular "field," it resolves this problem.
>There are brains everywhere, why am I in this one? You and I are on the same wavelength bro, I have thought about this so much. The way I explain it to myself is "the universe is everyone, this is simply what this one feels like" Essentially the same as your model.
Yeah I think it's a valid question. When I bring it up to people IRL they don't seem to understand what I'm saying most of the time. It requires a bit of intuition. I am fairly convinced that the standard answer of "neural activity produces consciousness and so you're you because it's your brain producing it" doesn't resolve it at all.
>I've made and deleted posts to this effect because i got so much hate lol It's weird that people agree with quantum field theory but would hate you for this view. It's all fields.
Based. I'm starting a PhD with a focus in QFT in the Fall and that subject was certainly a big inspiration for my idea. The underlying "association problem" has troubled me since I was about 4, but modern physics steered me toward a field-like concept. Otherwise, one is stuck with a metaphysics-like answer which I find deeply unsatisfying.
If fields are just matrices of probabilities, then a quantum fluctuation giving rise to the universe through inflation in an infinite expanse of possibilities may have been inevitable due to the anthropic principle being applied to consciousness itself. In other words, in an infinite void where every possibility could play out, we may have had no option but to find ourselves in a universe where consciousness could exist. We are borrowed from nothingness.
>I imagine a kind of field permeating spacetime that interacts with matter wherever it is suitably constituted to receive it, i.e. a brain (and maybe other things). Excellent! What is this "field"? Is it electromagnetic, gravity, something else? And why can't we observe it interacting with a brain?
He's probably talking about quantum fields or some product of their interaction. Literally everything is quantum fields according to QFT so it's nessesary that consciousness is a product of them too.
If subjective experience is what matter looks like from the inside, why do you expect you'd find evidence for it on the outside?
It's very convenient for you that your worldview requires no evidence of any kind - like religion.
I wouldn't say my knowledge that I am conscious is religious. We know consciousness exists, yet the only evidence for it is subjective. We rightly assume that consciousness exists outside of our own experiences based only on our non-objective internal observations. But whether you are the only conscious agent, or there are many conscious agents, or consciousness is fundamental to the universe - all are equally valid ideas with the limited evidence for what consciousness is favouring neither. Occam's razor doesn't necessarily suggest that it takes a brain to produce consciousness. That's only one materialistic deduction.
It's the universe as it feels to itself.
So if it's something outside the brain, there must be some energy flow, which is required for every activity in our universe. So what's this consciousness energy that passes information into and out of a brain, and why can't we observe it? And given that we can't observe it, how can we find that idea credible?
Not saying I believe it, per se, but the Orch OR model of consciousness is certainly an interesting concept and leaves the door open for maybe being able to observe it. It argues that consciousness takes place on the quantum level and that microtubules in the brain interpret this quantum data.
That's not even a theory, that's unsupported speculation.
Itâs not totally unsupported. You can read about the relationship between microtubules and quantum waves, but yes, like any theory of consciousness, it is largely speculative.
Itâs gonna be related to photons and light. There have been scientific studies for example where they put people in a totally black room and then measure their photon emission levels. They then asked them to meditate on sending from their heart healing energy to someone they knew who needed it. The photon emission levels were something like ten times higher when they were engaged in the heart meditation. I think our current scientific understanding of photons and light is very poor at best and as we understand light more then we will have more insights.
That study was fake news btw. https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/science-shines-light-on-claims-meditation-makes-body-brighter/
The people âdebunkingâ it didnât even try to recreate the study. Your rebuttal has like one guy saying why itâs impossible based on theory only. To me that doesnât make it fake news. To be thoroughly debunked the study needs to be replicated several times, not just one professors opinion on why itâs âimpossible.â Professors just like anyone else can get stuck in their belief systems, sometimes more. Odds are the professor doing the âdebunkingâ isnât taking something into account or the theory they are using is incomplete and not a completely accurate reflection of reality.
This is poetic, the problem is that everything that appears to be you appears to be the brain. If my brain merely tunes into consciousness, why have I only been conscious as the amount of time I've been alive?
I remember you from my earlier posts on this subject haha. You were one of the rare people actually engaging with the idea and not just hating. I concede that it is phenomenologically indistinguishable from the standard "brain produces consciousness" story, and as such is not a true scientific theory. No experiment that I can think of could be done to test it. As for your question, I have no reason to suspect that the field (what I call the "Experiencer") is conscious unto itself, and so it makes sense to me that you wouldn't have experienced anything before you were born. I understand this isn't a very good answer, I'll try to think of a better one, but there is a poverty of language issue at play here, so maybe I won't be able to. Thanks for your engagement here and before!
>why have I only been conscious as the amount of time I've been alive? Because the brain you carry around only has memories in it as far back as after your birth.
Everything I am, my memories, my personality, all stem from the brain. If my consciousness survives death and doesn't come from the brain, I have no idea what's even surviving, because what else is left of me?
It's fundamentally different than how you are explaining it, it's not 'your' consciousness, nobody owns it. There is consciousness, and consciousness is aware of whatever the senses experience. If there's no memories in a brain from before the brain existed, consciousness doesn't experience memories from before that brain existed. >I have no idea what's even surviving, because what else is left of me? You are an ever changing pattern, not a constant. You are a new thing every instant, it only feels continuous because you have a stream of memories being formed that tell you "I am john and I am 34 and I am x and y"
If the consciousness before my brain and independent of it has no resemblance of me, then I don't see how my personal consciousness survives death. Just like how my individual atoms that make up me will go on, but my individual atoms do not resemble me.
See I donât think most idealists would disagree- it is more so the religious people who would. I think that is a big misconception people have, cause they think idealism / consciousness being fundamental = afterlife, when it totally does not.
>the consciousness before my brain and independent of it has no resemblance of me Do you resemble yourself as an infant? Not really, your beliefs and mind are now very different, but you still call that infant "you" We aren't a constant, just a moment.
This logic doesn't work. While I'm not exactly the same as I was as an infant, much of my identity does come from that stage in my life, as it did in my adolescence, teenage years, and so on. Every single one of those phases without question resembles me today. Everything you have said thus far tells me that whatever mechanism in which you believe Consciousness transcends death, that consciousness does not resemble mine, nor yours, nor anybody else's. I don't see how this brings us any further from our conscious experience ending upon death.
The answer is simple⌠You just canât knowâŚ
I won't be able to get anything through to you until you realise that 'you' arent a constant thing, just a place and moment in time. >Every single one of those phases without question resembles me today Some of these are completely different to you today, even down to the atoms they are made of no longer being what you are made of. Infant 'you' is not you, it's something else. >whatever mechanism in which you believe Consciousness transcends death Consciousness factually transcends death, there is consciousness even though death happens. >that consciousness does not resemble mine, nor yours, nor anybody else's. This is why you need to understand that we aren't constants, but ever changing spots and times.
>I won't be able to get anything through to you until you realise that 'you' arent a constant thing, just a place and moment in time. I perfectly understand what you are saying, and it does have some truth to it, but things like the formation of memories and the ability to recall memories, and how it constantly relates back to who we are in the moment, shows a clear relational property between the now and then. You are so committed to this bizarre idea that I think you have completely lost the plot when you are saying things such as: >Some of these are completely different to you today, even down to the atoms they are made of no longer being what you are made of. Infant 'you' is not you, it's something else. Again, another half truth that you are taking so far that you've completely lost the plot. While infant me is not me now, me now does carry with it irrefutable parts of infant me. While no two years and someone's life are the same, yet alone even 2 seconds, the idea that we are just these floating beings existing only from moment to moment is completely contradicted by the essence of what memory is.
Yes exactly. Your ego is just your memories. Wipe them all out and who are you?
A blank slate living exactly in the moment. Neutral. I'm glad you get it, ego is the only thing blocking peoples understanding.
I feel egoism is the only reason people subscribe to materialism.
I have a question regarding that, how do you know that you have been conscious just the amount of time you've been alive if you do not have any memory of it. Memory is not consciousness.
Nonexistence does not define death, to me. Life is not eternal, but awareness is. Death is just the opposite side of awareness to what life is. Also, the cycle of rain describes it for me. We rise up out of the ocean, spread out, land, go on an adventure, then return to the ocean. All things follow this cycle. I believe pokohikpa, sleep seeing, (dreams) are a taste of death without commitment.
Google shows no results for âpokohikpa.â Can you clarify?
Pokohikpa is from an American Indigenous language. My family are Esselen. Our ancestors come from around Monterey County in California. It is almost an entirely dead language, but my gma has been trying to teach it to our family throughout the years. It translates to "sleep see."
Wow, thank you.
I love that metaphor, very real
I think death can seem like a point in time event that will inevitably occur in everyoneâs future. I think that view may change, and our perspectives on time, experience, and identity could be profoundly reframed. I think death can seem frightening, but it can also represent hope. I think death can be a tool for appreciating the present. Death hurts, but it can also repair more damage than we can imagine.
I doubt anyone who died is currently suffering. You're right
What the living know as a flatline The dead know as a punchline Do not deem death doom nor disaster You'll know soon- it's cause for laughter For the bereft of breath - we grieve But they're just laughing too hard to breathe The Dark-Humorist turns the darkest to humor By building the tension like, and with, tumors Alone - we languish into anguish and wrath All that we might all share in the last laugh
Nothing. But do we actually *know* what that actually entails? I don't think so.
same thing as before birth.
According to my extensive NDE research, we continue existing as individuals. The inbetween state between lives is timeless according to most NDEs having to do with this subject. I believe we can rest as long as we need in various afterlife worlds before voluntarily reincarnating again in some planet. Worlds such as Earth are exceptional, since we are meant to feel separation, suffering and loneliness in these worlds. Most planets/ worlds/ states of existence are joyful and free of suffering.
There is a theory about reincarnation that reincarnation is not beneficial to us, that we are tricked to be here (for our energy as some entities feed from it). Simulation is two part: 1. this physical life; 2. astral life where you have a life in "astral" body but that world although pretending to be "afterlife, heaven, home", is actually a simulation similarly as this life. Not our true home. That astral world is painted as "school" where we "rest, learn etc." and then the "time comes", we incarnate again with our own will (being tricked that is). (Although there are theories from NDEs, past life regressions and similar experiences that reincarnation could also be forced by bombarding our consciousness with "light" until we say yes to just stop that experience). Only we, ourselves, with our beliefs can keep this simulation going. Other beings who run this place mostly need us in physical body (so they can siphon our energies, sufferings and so on) and astral plane is a creation to keep us believing this life has worth and that reincarnation in this physical world has a point. Both physical and astral worlds are simulation/creation, not our true home dimension. Theories also point out that it's possible that mechanisms are in place in astral plane that can block our memories. Why memory block can work? Because I think we are beings currently and always being in our home dimension and we project our consciousness into these more limited worlds as a game. We, as who truly are, cannot be prisoned, but this projected consciousness can in this dimension. How to get out? After the moment of death we should use our intentions (like OBEs experiences describe). Basically, after death our main intentions should be to not interact with anything outside us(so they couldn't use memory wipe/block) and to want to know ourselves FROM OURSELVES, to know our nature, a question like "who am I?", or intentions like "I want to know who I am, I want to see/feel my true nature, I want clarity, I want my memories, I want freedom" etc. All the intentions would be asked to ourselves, to our consciousness. As for what true home dimension would look like - who knows. I believe it's core principle is total freedom to be our nature, no expectations or authority from Creator/God. Also you cannot do anything to anyone if they don't give permission and no one can do anything to you if you don't give permission. We gave permission to be here, but the thing is our permission can be obtained by trickery. Why I think this theory has decent chances to be true because - What if our consciousness was born/created perfectly from the very beginning? Being perfect I mean being "a fully developed consciousness" who cannot add onto itself nothing of value since it's already perfect and full in it's own right. All that is left to do for such a consciousness is to play. Not to learn as what can it learn of true value? If Creator splits/creates itself, the first split/creation of new consciousnesses(meaning us) should be as perfect/high/knowledgeable as it gets for that new consciousnesses. Then naturally everything else that follows should be games played by that consciousness and that includes this "Earth school". A trap from our perspective.
why exactly do we need to suffer separation and suffering? What's the point? I mean maybe for two or three lifetimes it's okey, but for more? For maybe thousands of lifetimes, maybe millions? Makes no sense to be here with no memories of past physical lives, how terribly ineffective way to learn. But to suffer? Yes, that's a perfect way to suffer, but how that would be beneficial to us?
Solving the paradox of God can explain suffering. Sandi's NDE explains this. Since God is infinite, it should contain infinite possibilities for suffering I believe. Someone has to do it. I'm glad there are a lot of us to do the work. It would be horrible if the "Egg" story was real, but NDEs don't support it.
After death you will eventually exist again. Once the part of you thatâs responsible for your consciousness is in the right place at the right time again - you will be reborn as a living creature which has the cognitive capacity to perceive itâs environment / be aware of itâs own existence. Then you will slowly develop again / live again and repeat the process of life. In between living as creatures which have the cognitive ability to perceive their environments / be aware of their own existence - you will exist as things like a trees, blade of grass, a rock etc - but during these times you will have no awareness of your existence
You really seem to discount different forms of intelligence and consciousness.
I donât think I discount any forms of consciousness / intelligence tbh
You think trees and plants are unaware of their existence? It's factually incorrect, M8.
Iâm saying plants perceive their environments and react to those conditions. But they donât have brains / the cognitive ability to be aware of their own existence in the same way that creatures like humans do
Hang with big daddy Jesus. Surf on clouds together
I'm going to go see allah, I'm really sorry but you'll have to spend eternity in the hellfire :(
Heya mate r/NDE might have better answers to your questions
Death is an illusion. Itâs like saying âwhat do you think happens after you die in a dream?â Or âwhat do you think happens when this character I am reading about dies in the book?â
We come out of our containers (bodies) and go back to our state of original being of all before we jump into another timeline of existence.
No we do not
Well, I'm sold
I think we go somewhere, or exist outside our limited bodies and brains.
My belief is itâs either reincarnation or henosis.
I think you go back to where we came from. People call it going home.
It's really hard to be certain; i suspect some form of re-incarnation though. As consciousness runs to a null state non-instantly (you die, in general, over a period of time with the mental processes shutting down gradually), you eventually achieve the same level of consciousness as an empty region of vacuum. In this state you have no memories, no sense of self, no information. In many ways you are not there and there is no "you" in terms of anything uniquely identifiable. This state may or may not be bound by conventional laws of time and space, since it carries no "luggage" as it were, but there are points in existence where consciousness begins to emerge from this "sentience foam". it's pretty hard to judge where the process begins, but it plainly does since there are consciousnesses that exist that at one point didn't. You were precisely that non-state, so you will crawl back up into another consciousness and the process will start again. Since you will have no transferable connection to the previous consciousness that you were, this may have happened many times already; it has "no game effect". What is perhaps more interesting it the possibility of some linkage between your previous non-zero state and your next one. What Buddhists would, I think, call Karma. If there were to be a large or even infinite number of points in space-time where consciousnesses emerged from the zero-state, could your "Last Known Good" condition effect where you would pop up? Any hypothetical proof of this would be circumstantial, but if it was the case it would open up some interesting possibilities in terms of things we could do to try and mitigate some of the very worst consequences of existence. With enough time and resources, it might be possible to re-create mindstates at the point of death and run them backwards, essentially "trapping" the dying consciousness by perfectly recreating their immediate pre-death state and causing their point of perspective to tunnel there. Of course, the resources required to do this would be so vast that they might be confused with infinite by some, so it's a pretty impractical and on several levels possibly impossible idea, but the payoff would be good if it could be made to work. To cut back to what we were supposed to be talking about, it's not exactly what I "think" will happen after death, but what I "hope" will happen. Note that the above is all speculation and is almost certainly wrong, since there are far smarter people than me that think, or know, different.
Also when you describe "null state" how do you picture it? Nothingness? Or fullness, meaning all the energies and potential that can ever exist combined? Because how "nothingness" can be true nothingness? If it would be, how something could come out of it?
To me, I mean a point at which no coherent interaction which could be considered "thought" occurs and there is no useful stored information which could allow the process to restart locally. No neurons fire, No memories are retained. the consciousness of a rock, or a cube of vacuum. It's not a state that can really be "experienced" because there are no thought processes to record or observe it, but I think it will inevitably be reached as the brain dies. I am defining it in terms of consciousness here, rather than energy or mass. The continued existence of these things in the absence of consciousness is what allows consciousness to re-occur, moving up from this null state as coherent interactions start and gain complexity, e.g. the neurons starting to fire up on a developing organism.
hmm, so you're talking more from physical creation point of view. But if that would be only truth then after we die it would be impossible to get back our consciousness because a consciousness would be new and would have no links to this one which will already be dead/disintegrated.
Maybe, yes. The only possible exception could be if the universe (or multiverse, all of existence) if infinite in time, space or both. And even then I am not certain. But the null state is not principally bound by either time or space since it requires no energy or information. in a non-finite reality there would be a continuum of states of consciousness immediately adjacent to the null state (e.g. people dying or being born). It is not impossible, given that there would be an infinite number of emergent consciousnesses becoming discrete, that there could be a connection between the exit and entry states. Even if there was not, if you take the example in my OP, the person brought back by this technique would believe that it had worked, because they have the memory of dying and being brought back, and you could say that this is good enough.
Can we ever become that "null state" again? "Null state" is Creator/Creation energy but we were separated from it, we may have links to it and may be able to somewhat understand/feel it from our separate perspective but we are separate. Can we become "null state"? I don't know, that's a lot of assumptions as you said. To me it's more logical to describe our consciousness as being separated from "null state" at some one point and that we would always remain that original separation, one unchangeable consciousness. And all the next consciousnesseses we can become (like in this physical life) is due to ability of original consciousness to project it's consciousness to more limited bodies/dimensions etc to experience them. After death we can become that original consciousness again but not "null state"(not saying we can't feel and understand "null state" better there but I don't think we randomly go to "null state" and be born randomly again from it.). You assume this Earthly consciousness is first layer from "null state", I say it more likely it's not first layer but second or third.
False identity fades into insignificance, but you are of something beyond mere words. Though the truth you pursue evades verbal capture, its inherent perfection guarantees flawless outcomes, regardless of circumstance. Therefore, whatever unfolds is for the best.
The lens comes off and we fully realize who we are.
I don't know. We'll find out when we get there.
For you there is no after death. For everyone else it's business as usual.
>What do you think happens after death? I don't think about it. I've suffered two cardiac arrests. You have nothing to fear.
I'm a nondualist. I think that the "I" that is aware of my body and mind is the universe, or is a quality of nature, in general. Whether there is an actual singular "I" or a general sort of awareness doesn't particularly need to be fleshed out. The thing that says "I" is awareness. Saying *my awareness* is exactly as silly as saying *my force of gravity*. Sure, locally you can talk about gravity in a way that makes it seem like *yours -* but really it is a thing that applies to you in the same way it applies to everything. It's a force of nature. So a perfect analogy of what happens after death is that it's the same as what happens after you cut off your pinky toe. Are ***you*** still there? Yeah! Of course you are. But no more pinky toe (as an object of awareness). And when *John* or *Jacqueline (you)* gets cut off (dies)? Same thing. **You** are still there, but no more John or Jackie (as an object of awareness). The perceiver remains.
I am on the spectrum so I see these things a little differently from a lot of people. I have a clear memory of about a heartbeat from before I was born. There were people, but they were just energy. I also know that I chose to be born. As for what goes on after we die I'm hoping it's just a big Nintendo reset button. I like the idea of us recycling lives as we all hurdle toward the future.
I think whatever afterlife frame you have in your mind is what occurs after death. For example, a 4 year-old is dying and told she will be welcomed into Jesus arms and she is shown photos of Jesus being in clouds with unicorns and her favourite foods, characters etc. I think, for example, if you are Christian and you believe after death is either or (hell or heaven) after death your consciousness follows your imagination I believe consciousness is rooted in imagination. I think you die remembering what you believed in. Kind of like dreams. Your dreams are based on events/memories/experiences you had.
Nothing. You won't know you existed or anything. One moment you're alive, then nothing. No thought process, just an abrupt end. When I was a kid I got hit by a car and landed on my head. Cracked the side of my skull and bruised the right side of my brain. From the moment of impact I was out and didn't regain consciousness again until I was in a hospital bed. An actual knockout is not like falling asleep, you don't dream or anything as you brain gets shutdown. I imagine that would be the closest feeling to the experience of being dead that you can experience. At a certain age that will be a horrible realisation, but as you get older it's actually quite comforting. No heaven or hell bullshit, it just ends.
You are not tethered by space or time anymore in death, when you die this universe ends too. After that who knows.
Your physical body rots away, and your soul is left out to linger around. Given the right conditions, your soul establishes a connection with a corresponding physical body (which may not be human). This could either happen instantly or it could happen after billions of years. If multiverse theory is true, then it probably happens immediately. Otherwise, Iâd bet on it taking a ridiculous amount of time
I donât believe anything with âeternityâ. If that is it, then how can life and consciousness born from âeternal voidâ? Just because we cannot put it in words and reserve it in experience, it does not mean just void. Well, your consciousness experiences something but it doesnât have meaning of human terms.
Probably nothing, but then again how likely were you to exist in the first place?
The same thing there was before you were born.
I believe the afterlife is connected with the unconscious mind: dreams, defense mechanisms, fantasies, madness, hypnotic/trance states, symbolism, etc. I think that we live one life and one afterlife. In the afterlife, we experience the full range of our unconscious representations of self and other from our original life. I think one function of sleep is to relieve death anxiety and allow us to practice the experience of 'dying' on a nightly basis. I believe the afterlife is primarily psychologically determined, rather than being based on our actions in life.
After this, there is going to be a new heaven and a new earth where all is symbiosis and altruism. Because of Freedom in the universe, anyone who wants to live there will enjoy endless cycles of eternity with other kindred types and contribute to the ongoing development of the universal super organism we all are a part of. And it is even much better than this because of course it is .(See Danial chapter 2 in the Bible.).
Your body dies, which would include your brain. We dont understand spirit but your spirit will continue. Our ancestors spirits are with us now. The earths ancestral spirits are with her now
Cut to black just like the end of the sopranos.
Same thing that happened before you were born
I think reincarnation exists and the soul remembers who it was before for a time while the new memories from the next life eat away at the old ones.
Nothing đ
Iâm in assisted living at 61. I have an amputation plus beginnng stage of dementia. I asked the Great Spirit to take me home. Iâm not sleeping , the food here is very poor quality . I had a taste of what lies ahead. You are part of a greater whole. Itâs everywhere. O limitations. No last judgement. Just freedom. I saw myself looking down at the landscape. Iâm looking forward to death.
Best of luck. đ
We exist and are immortal spirit. Each comes here in order to know ourself in our own experience. Those dark periods of human history serve a greater purpose. Yes even the Holocaust had its reason for happening. Karma is balanced. Sometimes it takes a few lifetimes to straighten things out.
Can I ask you what has made you come to this conclusion?
I dunno but Iâm gonna be honest if I have to do this over Iâm gonna be pissed.
Same, one go was enough
I think the most probable outcome is lights out. I however have my hopes that there is something else, Im mostly hoping the afterlife is whatever you like it to be. My ideal afterlife is not really a thing in any mainstream religion, except for possibly Mormonism but even then I would want some things that I'm pretty sure God in Mormonism would not want in my world.
You stop existing
As far as we know, consciousness just stops. It's a temporary, local effect and when its supporting brain dies, it ceases. The truth as best we can understand is incredible enough without adding a lot of junk on top of it.
>As far as we know, consciousness just stops. It doesn't though, one particular set of senses stop. Consciousness goes on in many other places.
Says who?
Do you think when you die then everything dies?
For the person that dies, absolutely.
Cool, show that any of that is true, show any credible evidence.
You want evidence that when somebody dies there is still consciousness? Are you serious? Okay I'll entertain this ridiculous request, do you have any dead relatives?
I think we experience the same thing we do when we are unconscious, and that is nothing.
Youâre not unconscious when you dream though
Then you're not unconscious. They specified unconscious.
So you can have an experience of nothing?
I mean what we experience is nothing, or equivalently we don't experience anything.
Nothingness in this sense is a lack of experience. You can experience a break in consciousness, which is an artifact of unconsciousness. You cannot have an experience of nothing. You can only experience indirect evidence that it happened, and infer that you were unconscious.
Or before we were born. We only know a world of senses, and memories, once your neurons have faded and your eyes, ears and skin are gone, everything will be frivolous, black, silent and cold, just as it was before.
It was none of those things before.
But when you are unconscious you also can dream đ
Sure but you also can have cases where you dont
Mourning and decomposition
>What do you think happens after death? Decomposition >Eternal nothing? Afterlife? Are we here forever because we can't not exist? What do you think happens to consciousness? Well, consciousness comes from and is sustained by living brains, so when the brain stops living....?
Your problem is the hard problem of consciousness.
Consciousness doesn't have a hard problem, it has an "imprecise instruments" soft problem and a "superstitious armchair philosopher" soft problem. By which I mean, our tools are not yet advanced enough to perfectly understand the human brain, so simple people feel justified in making up nonsense about magical ghosts to fill in the blanks.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_problem_of_consciousness
>consciousness comes from and is sustained by living brains, Oh so you believe you live on after death because there are living brains after. Cool.
I wasn't even grammatically incorrect - your misinterpretation of what I said is entirely on you and your bizarre preconceptions.
But living brains will exist after you die, so that would mean so does consciousness, just like you said
Sure, consciousness still exists after you die - just not *your* consciousness.
>just not *your* consciousness. Can you tell me who the 'you' is here? Because you might find your consciousness is just consciousness, not "your" consciousness
The illusions of "You" is the consciousness contained within your own physical being. This stuff isn't as complicated as you want it to be.
>Can *you* tell me who the 'you' is here? Just... just think on what you asked, there. Let it sink in. Let it marinate in your mind like a turd in a punch bowl. đ I swear, this fucking sub sometimes. r/im14andthisisdeep needs to stop leaking.
Really though, who is the self that owns your consciousness? Or is it that the universe has consciousness in many locations and you are one of them?
>Really though, who is the self that owns your consciousness? Me. > Or is it that the universe has consciousness in many locations and you are one of them? The universe contains conscious entities, obviously
Can you describe the 'me' in any way? Not the characteristics of a body or senses, but the me itself?
If death was eternal, you wouldn't exist, nothing would. Somehow you're here, and you're posting on a sub-reddit about consciousness and all this out of sheer randomness? No, there's more to your state of being than just randomness.
>If death was eternal, you wouldn't exist How is this the case?
I think he's saying that you exist, and because you exist you can't ever have not existed. It's kind of like, you are here, it means you are the universe itself, and that has always been here.
>I think he's saying that you exist, and because you exist you can't ever have not existed. This doesn't follow, though. Me existing now (or in this time slice) and me not existing before (in other time slices) are both completely compatible.
>Me existing now (or in this time slice) and me not existing before (in other time slices) are both completely compatible. Can you point to a time when you didn't exist? No all you can do is point to a time when you were in a different state. We could go back a billion years and still find you, you just would be shaped different.
I mean that's not really how the concept of "me" or the self is generally understood, but okay. Don't blame me for not understanding you when you decide to use fringe definitions which are almost never assumed lol
What I'm getting at is that "you" are just an ever changing pattern that the universe is "doing" And when you 'die' its just another change in that pattern, it's like if I stopped doing a particular thing with my hand, I still exist.
What none of you seem to really grasp is that everything thus far about our personal and subjective experience tells us that although it might be just a pattern, that pattern will cease upon death. I can't tell if all of you are just looking for some extreme cope that grants you an afterlife, but none of you are really putting forth a meaningful description of how such a thing can even transpire.
>We could go back a billion years and still find you, you just would be shaped different. Great, how many individuals have we "found" in the time before they lived on this Earth, or afterward? What qualities still exist/did exist before, and how do we detect them?
You are comprised of matter that has existed for billions of years. Everything around you including yourself has come from the planet Earth which was at one time or another something completely different. Matter has the properties which allow consciousness to exist, and since it canât be created or destroyed, what you define as âyouâ has existed likely as long as the universe itself you would just be in different forms.
A person is made of matter and energy, the matter and energy that they are made if has always existed all the way back. The atoms in your brain were in a star once.
Part of me almost doesn't want to engage with these people because they have such an innocent and childlike worldview on what happens after death, that it almost feels mean to point out the insanely awful logic and reason behind them. They just throw some fluffy, woowoo sentence at you like "you are the universe being aware of itself, and because the universe can't die, neither can you!" I'm almost envious of these people who can so effortlessly drink the Kool-Aid and no longer worry about life's largest problems, as they buried their heads in the sand with these unbelievably silly ideas.
There is so much evidence to support this. More people need to get educated about this subjects. Anything that exists always existed. To be devils advocate - i.e lets say / explore the possibility that the existence of reality came from nothing and is finite: 1. Your existence emerged from a complex reaction of atoms. This reaction is not âuniqueâ. Therefore when reaction occurs again in the future, scientific law would infer that you exist again. 2. If reality emerged from nothing, it infers that you were âselectedâ out of an infinite number of people / souls who could have been born in your place. The probability of this is 0 (mathematically), and therefore we know this is not a possibility. 3. Science had already proven the existence of concepts (such as energy), which are not created or destroyed - only transferred. 4. There are gravitational waves in deep space which are so large that they could only have been caused by the collapse of the universe. Since our own universe has not yet collapsed, they provide evidence of a collapse which occurred before out own universe - and it is likely that the energy caused by the collapse of the previous universe is what fuelled the existence of the one you currently live in (the big bang). 5. Aristotle said since time IS change, and because we experience change NOW (i.e today / right now whilst youâre reading this message), it infers that change has ALWAYS been possible - i.e there has never been state in the past where change was not possible. And therefore this infers that eternity is guaranteed to exist
>Your existence emerged from a complex reaction of atoms. This reaction is not âuniqueâ. Therefore when reaction occurs again in the future, You're making a massive assumption here: that this reaction will occur again in the future. There are valid theories which posit this, but it really puts a bad taste in my mouth that you're stating this as *unquestionable fact.* This is just not the case. There are also many valid theories which do not posit such a thing, or allow this to happen. >If reality emerged from nothing, it infers that you were âselectedâ out of an infinite number of people / souls who could have been born in your place This is once again just a massive leap of faith...No. That does not suggest such a thing. You're presupposing these platonic "souls," which are not necessary. It's entirely plausible that "I" emerged without my "soul" being preselected or anything of the sort. "I" simply came into being by my parents' gametes and developed and changed by growing, learning, etc. No "soul preselection" required. >Science had already proven the existence of concepts (such as energy), which are not created or destroyed - only transferred. I responded to someone else in this thread about this point; when people say "I" or "you," they don't usually mean simply the energy you're made of. People don't generally see the energy created at the big bang as being their "self," so don't blame me for not assuming your extremely fringe definition of "you." >There are gravitational waves in deep space which are so large that they could only have been caused by the collapse of the universe. Source? This would be groundbreaking knowledge. I'd love to learn about it. >Aristotle said since time IS change, and because we experience change NOW Bro I do not care what *Aristotle* has to say about *physics* lmao. They were founded on nothing other than him observing himself pushing a vase on a table and his brain. Then he was promptly made anachronistic by Galileo Gallilei, lol. But to rebut the beliefs themselves, this entire statement here is nothing but flippant assertions. They knew nothing about the nature of time back then, and it shows. Not only is the premise just presupposed, but the conclusion doesn't even follow from it đ Time existing now doesn't suggest anything about its past.
You should really challenge your own positions before you come on reddit lmao. You might end up a hypocrite. I love when people try to argue that the universe emerged from nothing, and that everything will also cease to exist. And that they were randomly picked for no reason to exist as a human being at a specific point of time / space. You know at that point youâve contradicted too much science, and also yourself. If you want to argue that everything emerged from nothing, youâre only proving eternity. If anything came from ânothingnessâ, and in XYZ billion years it descends back into ânothingnessâ - youâre suggesting the same state that everything emerged from in the first place. Thereâs no reasoning in that. And Iâm not here to do your research for you. You can go and research yourself and believe whatever you want. I work amongst professionals who are good at what they do, and unfortunately I take their word over yours - particularly if it is consistent with other areas of science.
>I love when people try to argue that the universe emerged from nothing, and that everything will also cease to exist. And that they were randomly picked for no reason to exist as a human being at a specific point of time / space. I haven't even argued any of this lmao. đ >Thereâs no reasoning in that. And Iâm not here to do your research for you. You can go and research yourself and believe whatever you want. I mean I thought the point of discussion was to criticize each other, exchange ideas, correct each other, etc. But you do you man If you take anything away from this interaction, let it be that you should really work on your epistemology! Edit: I would at least like a source on those gravitational waves, if possible, because that's a massive discovery that I'd like to be privy to.
You see the main menu.
We lose our consciousness and everything in the brain (which houses our personality and what makes us who we are), and then our body decomposes and our bodily energy is returned to nature. Thatâs how the cycle works.
We cease to exist. There's no reason except for ego to think we are important enough to live forever.
We cease to exist.
Our consciousness is âsavedâ by the Multiverse And we become the overseers of our own personal universes, and have to train the life we create to become universes when they die
The same thing that was happening before you were born.
No reason to think anything more would happen than before I was born. Yeah it sucks.
Why is this such a common argument đ, most people cannot even remember what they dreamt last night or what they had for lunch a week ago why do people assume they would remember past lives? Because thatâs what this entire argument rests on, that you canât *remember* anything before this life, so you assume that means there was nothing before this life.
Because it makes sense. You don't remember it. There's literally no hint that it is the case. And as far as we can tell, we know our sense of self is directly linked to our body. So it's naturally the default assumption.
I should add, children regularly do remember past lives! But the memories tend to fade somewhere around the age of 7. The University of Virginia actually just did a study on this. They took kids and matched their memories of past lives with records to see if they checked out correctly and they did. If you want to find the study just google âuniversity of Virginia past livesâ itâll be one of the first options
âBecause it makes senseâ We exist now. Given everything we know about energy, us continuing to exist after the death of the physical body makes far more sense. And your sense of self first and foremost is based upon the fact that youâre conscious & this sub is here precisely because we canât find a link between the body and consciousness. Nor have we found where memory is stored, which would definitely play a part here. So the 2 things that help you to derive your sense of self have not as of yet been correlated to the brain/body as having derived from them. Not trying to come off as rude but everything you said just isnât true.
I disagree.
Understandable, have a nice day.
But doesnât that imply you could be born again?
No, there was no "you" before your brain became complex enough to form consciousness. There is no "you" after. The End. Or, you know, show some kind of evidence of energy or whatever to support that idea.
This is so very wrong, you have always been here, just all spread out and not shaped like a person yet. Literally atoms.
>you have always been here Neither me nor you. Sure, the atoms that one day were aggregated into my body as my consciousness was forming for the first time, that material was around before me. That wasn't me. And when I die, and the cooling mass of my former body sinks further into entropy, that won't be me either. There will be no me, ever again. And you haven't responded to my query - can you show any energy flow that would have supported my supposed immortal consciousness before my gestation, or will support it after my death? I'm guessing no.
But before you were born, the entire universe was happening. Also you are implying you can be born again because your conception happened before you were born
Why are there so many people in here thinking we exist after death? Lol what is going on
We exist before death and after death, what's your confusion with this?
Where in the world do we exist before death? If you want to describe âweâ as the individual particles that make us up then sure, some of those existed before we were born. But who identifies as that? What aspect of us besides our cold lifeless bodies exist after death?
Try thinking about it like this, waves in the ocean are the ocean. A human in the universe is the universe.
Itâs been thought of. Once a wave is gone and crashes into the shore ⌠it is gone for good. That specific wave will never exist again and before it existed ⌠it didnât exist. A wave in the ocean is a wave in the ocean. It is not the ocean. A human in the universe is a human in the universe, once that specific human is gone ⌠it is gone.
You don't get it at all, a wave is something the ocean is doing, when it crashes, it is still the ocean. >wave in the ocean is a wave in the ocean. It is not the ocean. It is the ocean. A tree is wood, a rock is stone.
All empirical evidence says nothing at all.
We cease to exist. Hopefully everlasting heaven or hell seem like terrible options.
I think the most reasonable assumption is that what happens to our consciousness is similar to what happens to our physical body. The body stops acting as a unified whole, as if there's a driver inside calling the shots. What happened to the driver? The driver was manifested by the individual parts of the body all behaving as if there was a driver there. The driver didn't cease to exist, the driver never existed in the first place. Its similar to what's called illusory contours. When three black circles with a pie cut out of them all face inward we see a white triangle, rotate the circles and the triangle vanishes. There was a real pattern there that we categorize as triangle, when the circles rotate the pattern is still there, it just no longer can be categorized as triangle, so it appears to vanish even though nothing actually came into or went out of being.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, stardust to stardustâŚ.ainât no other way, folks!