What happens when you die?

[psychoblast]

NOBODY KNOWS.

Everything everyone is saying in this thread is just conjecture.

Like the post above mine. ^ You just made all of that up.

I resent that. It is not just "made up." It is a logical extrapolation of what I know and observe about reality. Plus, God told me.

~psychoblast~

 

[psychoblast]

Two men were arguing about whether magic existed. The first man, who said it did exist, bet the second man that he could chop down a tree simply by waving a magic wand. They picked a time, a day and a tree. They both showed up. The first man man was carrying a saw. "Hey," protested the second man, "You can't use a saw!" "Why not?" said the first man, "It's my wand -- it just happens to be a saw-shaped wand." The first man then put the sharp blade of his "saw-shaped wand" against the trunk of the tree and began to move it back and forth. Saw dust flew. "Hey," protested the second man, "You can't saw the tree like that! You are only supposed to 'wave' your want." The first man replied, "A wave is simply a back and forth movement. Notice I am simply moving my wand back and forth? We did not say I could not let the wand touch the tree while I waved it." And so the first man continued to "wave" his "wand" back and forth against the tree until, after a while, the tree was cut down. Thus demonstrating that the difference between magic and just doing stuff is just a matter of perspective.

~psychoblast~

 

[abohafs]

i'm so sorry for my bad english but is it so bad?
anyway, did you read about Islam ? the man who seeks for the truth should read about everything that may give him that truth . what will happen if you know that Allah <God> in the holy qura'an declared the stages through which the child will follow to be born and that was at the seven th century A.C. God says " HE created you from a single being; then from that HE made its mate; and HE has sent down for you of the cattle eight pairs. HE creates you in the wombs of your mothers, creation after creation, through three stages of darkness. This is ALLAH, your Lord. HIS is the Kingdom. There is no god but HE. Wither then are you being turned away ? " if you studied those stages you will know that they all are right . God says also " 12. Verily, WE created man from an extract of clay;
13. Then WE placed him as a drop of sperm in a safe depository;
14. Then WE fashioned the sperm into a clot; then WE fashioned the clot into a shapeless lump; then WE fashioned bones out of this shapeless lump; Then WE clothed the bones with flesh; Then WE developed it into another creation. So blessed be ALLAH, the Best of creators.
15. Then after that you, surely, must die.
16. Then on the Day of Resurrection you shall, surely, be raised up.
17. And WE have created above you seven ways, and WE are never neglectful of the creation. " . Now i ask you is it luck ? . Off course no , you must know that who tells these sentences should by All-knowing , right? .

 

[abohafs]

I am surely convinced that the human being should exist on in the good universe proper to life , but my point is that " were we created by luck or by coexistence of the particles ? , so why cannot see many beings , like us , created with the same way ?do the particles stop interacting with each other to create the beings like us and why?


Is it natural that the earth orbits , this way , around the sun without derail its way ?

my last writing was not to force you read about Islam but it is a hope from a friend if you consider me a friend .

 

[abohafs]

there are many things in the holy Qura'an that shows its greatness but i give you just a hint

 

[qwe]

abo, no i don't know that those sentences were written by divinity. yes the earth's orbit around the sun is totally natural; the reason it does not simply fall into the sun is because it has momentum. i know how deep religions and belief systems can get, so i know what you gave me is just a hint. i can't say i'm your friend yet, because all we've talked about is islam. but i can say one thing with certainty, i am *quite* agnostic/atheist

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

abohafs, please use the 'edit' function at the bottom righthand corner of your post, if you've already posted by want to say more. Please don't post more than one post in a row.

Two men were arguing about whether magic existed. The first man, who said it did exist, bet the second man that he could chop down a tree simply by waving a magic wand. They picked a time, a day and a tree. They both showed up. The first man man was carrying a saw. "Hey," protested the second man, "You can't use a saw!" "Why not?" said the first man, "It's my wand -- it just happens to be a saw-shaped wand." The first man then put the sharp blade of his "saw-shaped wand" against the trunk of the tree and began to move it back and forth. Saw dust flew. "Hey," protested the second man, "You can't saw the tree like that! You are only supposed to 'wave' your want." The first man replied, "A wave is simply a back and forth movement. Notice I am simply moving my wand back and forth? We did not say I could not let the wand touch the tree while I waved it." And so the first man continued to "wave" his "wand" back and forth against the tree until, after a while, the tree was cut down. Thus demonstrating that the difference between magic and just doing stuff is just a matter of perspective.

That's a great post. I swear I once heard essentially the same message in one of those old conversations between two old Greek or Chinese sages. Magick is about changes within. The external actions are secondary to these, and look the same no matter what inner states motivate them.

 

[qwe]

and of course the wonderful quote,

any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from "magic"

 

[Trigeminal]

I resent that. It is not just "made up." It is a logical extrapolation of what I know and observe about reality. Plus, God told me.

~psychoblast~

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not (for the sake of humanity, I really hope you are), but I have a sinking suspicion that you're not. Explain to me how exactly what you said is not made up. You are reminding me of Joseph Smith in this episode of South Park right now:

http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/103933

Psychoblast is dumdumdum.

 

[naginnudej]

you create your own reality in all endeavors. death included.

 

[qwe]

i hope i havent offended you abo. you're sorta approaching this as a personal chatroom, when instead it's more a public thread. but yeah i would say most of the people in this thread, including you abo, are my friends

 

[Visionary_Kpsycho]

I honestly don’t know, Biology wise it seems god does not exist. Physics wise, I would say he does. Roger Penrose is an amazing physicist, and like he said the universe existed in a highly organized state at the beginning of the universe, because since the 2nd law of thermodynamics say entropy gets more random over time, that means at the beginning it was in a highly organized condition.

 

[Raw Evil]

you create your own reality in all endeavors. death included.

This!

 

[psychoblast]

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not (for the sake of humanity, I really hope you are), but I have a sinking suspicion that you're not. Explain to me how exactly what you said is not made up. You are reminding me of Joseph Smith in this episode of South Park right now:

http://www.southparkstudios.com/episodes/103933

Psychoblast is dumdumdum.

Well, let's start with some basics. When you die, either nothing happens (i.e., your consciousness is extinguished completely) or there is some sort of afterlife (i.e., your consciousness continues in some capacity). I believe the latter. I would explain, but this thread is not about whether an afterlife exists, but is about what it is like, so let's take the existence of an afterlife as a given and move on.

I think it is easy to see that the moment of death and movement to an afterlife is an abrupt, qualitative transition in consciousness. Have you ever experienced one of those? I think falling asleep and waking are probably the most logical analogies. In the absence of any evidence that this process feels like anything else, it makes sense to initially theorize it would be akin to waking up. This is called extrapolating from the known to the unknown and, in the absence of proof, it makes sense to expect the unknown to be like the known (the law of similarities).

Now, also from the law of similarities, we should theorize that everything is conscious. I mean, I'm conscious. I only know for myself whether I am conscious or not, and I certainly am. It would be absurd of me to assume other people or things are not conscious when my only sample study (myself) is conscious.

Also, we see fractals all around us in nature. It turns out, pretty much everything in the universe can be seen as a form of fractal. Even sentences. Applying the law of similarities, it is likely that consciousness is a fractal, that our consciousness is a part that makes up a whole of a larger consciousness. Similar to multiple neurons making up a brain.

Anyway, from having experienced ego-death, I learned that death is not to be feared because the larger, higher consciousness is immortal and my body is a relatively unimportant, if divinely inspired, physical shell.

Throw all this together and add a dash of habadashery (unless that means hat store, in which case omit it), and the most likely scenario seems to be that our death reunites our fractal / fragmentary consciousness with the next higher level of consciousness of which we are a part. We basically become that of which we are now only a part. Obviously, we cannot know what this feels like, but the most analogous experience we have on a regular basis is the process of reintegrating our consciousness upon waking. In fact, in dreams, we are generally not ourselves, but are a fragment of our self and so when we wake from dreams, we often have to reintegrate the dream-self with our fuller, real self.

The bottom line is, I doubt there can be any more logical guess for what death feels like, than that it feels like the process of waking from a dream -- in which this life was a dream -- and then being reintegrated into the larger consciousness of which we are a part.

I will qualify this to the extent that it may require that our own consciousness is unified and somewhat in touch with the higher consciousness, so that we are drawn up upon death. Otherwise, if our mind is divided against itself and we are rooted into the conflicts inherent to our physicality, it may be that we go the other way, and our consciousness fragments, and we become lots of conscious, albeit inert, organic parts that then get slowly reintegrated into higher consciousnesses (like worms to birds, etc.)

Basically, there is a whole consciousness food chain and you can slip down the chain or rise up it. It really does not matter since, in time, everything works its way up.

~psychoblast~

 

[33Hz]

Decay... As for consciousness, well you can never really be sure until you experience death yourself. Though I am inclined to think that a functioning brain is necessary for consciousness, and so in the event of brain death, consciousness dies with it.

 

[jpgrdnr]

I've kinda bought into this whole DMT/dream state thing upon death. I mean its a nice comforting idea, but nothing more. I think there is probably some hidden physical process that allows your consciousness to die in your brain. It may only last subjectively seconds, but I would think there would be some safety mechanism in place that creates a dream(?) that allows you to confront death.

But what happens when you get your head blown off?

I think the worst part is that's it. Nadda. Finito. So enjoy this thing called life.

And stop worry about this death bit.

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

psychoblast, that was a good post.

I also agree that consciousness is just a property of, and a necessary ingredient to, 'existence'. That's what the whole tree falling in the woods koan is all about, when you think about it.

I think 'mind' which we're experiencing now, is just a recurrent thing, like the basic particles of matter. So essentially after you die, and the universe is done experiencing itself through your eyes, it'll soon create a new mind through which to look reflexively at itself. This, to me, is what Buddhists mean by rebirth, as opposed to reincarnation, whereby there is no direct causal link between one iteration as a sentient being and another -- no 'thing' that travels between them, but they're stacked upon each other like blocks, depending upon each other for structural support.

 

[qwe]

I honestly don’t know, Biology wise it seems god does not exist. Physics wise, I would say he does. Roger Penrose is an amazing physicist, and like he said the universe existed in a highly organized state at the beginning of the universe, because since the 2nd law of thermodynamics say entropy gets more random over time, that means at the beginning it was in a highly organized condition.

one possible resolution to this (there are many) is black holes and their information paradox

everything that goes into a black hole loses all its information. a black hole with equal parameters as another black hole are EQUAL. so, imagine a universe collapsing into a BH. the result, is the universe has become a singularity of the highest possible order / lowest possible entropy (AKA what the universe was, as far as we can tell, before the big bang)

thus leading to the idea of BANG CRUNCH BANG CRUNCH BANG CRUNCH

we exist within the bang and the crunch

 

[Enlitx]

Well, let's start with some basics. When you die, either nothing happens (i.e., your consciousness is extinguished completely) or there is some sort of afterlife (i.e., your consciousness continues in some capacity). I believe the latter. I would explain, but this thread is not about whether an afterlife exists, but is about what it is like, so let's take the existence of an afterlife as a given and move on.

I would suggest that since the only consciousness that we know of is causally linked to organic brains, once the brain stops functioning, consciousness ceases to exist. There is no mechanism that I am aware of that could explain the continuation of conscious thought beyond the death of brain tissue.

I think it is easy to see that the moment of death and movement to an afterlife is an abrupt, qualitative transition in consciousness. Have you ever experienced one of those? I think falling asleep and waking are probably the most logical analogies. In the absence of any evidence that this process feels like anything else, it makes sense to initially theorize it would be akin to waking up. This is called extrapolating from the known to the unknown and, in the absence of proof, it makes sense to expect the unknown to be like the known (the law of similarities).

I can understand the transition to death mirroring the transition to sleep, as both processes would represent a suppression of the neural activity required for a functioning consciousness. The difference with death is that once this suppression takes place, there is no route to regain the proper chemical balance required for cognition. Thus, consciousness comes to an end permanently.

Now, also from the law of similarities, we should theorize that everything is conscious. I mean, I'm conscious. I only know for myself whether I am conscious or not, and I certainly am. It would be absurd of me to assume other people or things are not conscious when my only sample study (myself) is conscious.

What law are you referring to? I am aware of different laws relating to psychology or the grouping of elements in the periodic table, but could you reference which law you are referring to?

I think it would be absurd to assume consciousness exists in an object unless that object possessed the basic biological components that are required for brain activity. Perhaps that will change with the advent of computer generated consciousness, but right now we only observe consciousness in biological organisms. That is why it is easy to assume a rock is not conscious and a dolphin would be.

Also, we see fractals all around us in nature. It turns out, pretty much everything in the universe can be seen as a form of fractal. Even sentences. Applying the law of similarities, it is likely that consciousness is a fractal, that our consciousness is a part that makes up a whole of a larger consciousness. Similar to multiple neurons making up a brain.

Again, what law allows you to extrapolate that consciousness is a fractal because fractals exist in nature? The human brain does not represent a fractal in anatomy nor physiology. Neurons are not arranged in a fractal pattern. If organic tissue is required for consciousness, what do you assume makes up this larger consciousness? I guess I am unsure how you theorize a "larger consciousness" would exist. I haven't seen any empirical evidence to suggest such a thing exists.

Anyway, from having experienced ego-death, I learned that death is not to be feared because the larger, higher consciousness is immortal and my body is a relatively unimportant, if divinely inspired, physical shell.

Ego death is not the same thing as death. You were experiencing a shift in brain function brought on by chemical intoxication. Your brain was still very much functioning though, and death would be the exact opposite with a complete loss of function. You couldn't feel part of the universe without a functioning brain to convey that message.

Throw all this together and add a dash of habadashery (unless that means hat store, in which case omit it), and the most likely scenario seems to be that our death reunites our fractal / fragmentary consciousness with the next higher level of consciousness of which we are a part. We basically become that of which we are now only a part. Obviously, we cannot know what this feels like, but the most analogous experience we have on a regular basis is the process of reintegrating our consciousness upon waking. In fact, in dreams, we are generally not ourselves, but are a fragment of our self and so when we wake from dreams, we often have to reintegrate the dream-self with our fuller, real self.

I think that people just want to believe in life after death because survival is encoded into our brains. I didn't see anything in your post that has been suggested by any empirical evidence, it seemed like a vague association of ideas that don't really reflect what we know about how the brain works and how consciousness is generated. To the best of our knowledge, your experience after death will be exactly like the experience before you were born, that is, nothing at all.

I will qualify this to the extent that it may require that our own consciousness is unified and somewhat in touch with the higher consciousness, so that we are drawn up upon death. Otherwise, if our mind is divided against itself and we are rooted into the conflicts inherent to our physicality, it may be that we go the other way, and our consciousness fragments, and we become lots of conscious, albeit inert, organic parts that then get slowly reintegrated into higher consciousnesses (like worms to birds, etc.)

Basically, there is a whole consciousness food chain and you can slip down the chain or rise up it. It really does not matter since, in time, everything works its way up.

~psychoblast~

Could you explain exactly how this higher consciousness would work and the mechanism behind its function? I guess it sounds to me like these are vague ideas that don't really predict any behavior because they aren't saying anything specifically.

 

[psychoblast]

Enlitx:

What is the difference between gravity and love? I can show you all sorts of inanimate objects "choosing" to move toward one thing, or away from something else, much like a person might move toward some one they find attractive.

You take a very scientific approach to this topic, so you of all people should agree that brain chemistry obeys the laws of physics and is merely a very complicated interaction of various physical laws. Thus, there is no qualitative difference between a person driving a car to work and an apple falling from a tree. Both actions were equally the product of natural forces and natural laws.

Yet you want to conclude that consciousness is rooted in the brain. However, you are essentially assuming that natural laws -- forces that MOVE things in PATTERNS -- are divorced from any consciousness?

Let's step back and recognize that the brain is a democracy of neurons. Each neuron has a fragment of self-awareness and consciousness. These neurons are born, they serve a purpose, they communicate, they grow, they move, they adapt, they eventually die. You want to say the neurons are entirely divorced from consciousness? That they have absolutely ZERO consciousness?

A human is made up of organs. The organs were once each separate organisms who, ages ago, came together to work together to survive. They all assumed different roles to help themselves survive. Over time, they evolved to better and better fulfill those roles. One such organism eventually evolved into a liver. Another into a stomach. Another into skin. They surrendered individuality for interdependence until they stopped being separate organisms and they merged into one, substantially more complex, multi-organ, organism. This is one of the ways that evolution works.

Those organisms, that we now think of as organs in our bodies, were themselves evolved when various single celled organisms elected to band together, to work together for survival, and over eons developed specialization and interdependence until they were no longer single celled organisms working together, they became the first multi-celled organisms.

You can look back at our evolutionary path and see how this process repeatedly unfolds, and then you can realize it is also unfolding in the same way in the present and future. Are people banding together to form more complex, interdependent entities? It has already happened. Every organization is a collection of interdependent people working toward a common purpose for mutual benefit. We have governmental bodies, corporations (or "artificial persons"), associations. We specialize for the good of the larger organization of which we are part. We have food growers, food transporters, communication facilitators, defenders, healers, etc. Just like your body has white blood cells (defenders), red blood cells (transporters), communication facilitators (neurons), etc.

Organ --> Organism --> Organization

And it is frankly incredibly conceited and short-sighted to believe this relationship does not extend further in both directions ala:

. . . --> ? --> ? --> ? --> cells --> organs --> organisms --> organizations --> ? --> ? --> ? --> ...

Disputing this, and insisting this relationship ONLY exists in the limited range we can perceive with our senses, is akin to believing there is no life in the unverse except what is on planet Earth, simply because that is all we see. I cannot believe you, as a scientifically minded person, would embrace such a view.

Anyway, at what point in this evolutionary path do you suddenly think, "okay, NOW conscious suddenly came into being." I mean, can anything be concious if its building blocks are not conscious? Can anything NOT be conscious if its building blocks are conscious?

Would you agree McDonalds ACTS like a conscious entity? It grows, it shows self-interest. It maneuvers in a very complex manner. It is mortal, and it appears to have a sense of its own mortality. How is McDonalds not a conscious entity? No chemical components? Are not the people who run it made up of chemicals? How are McDonald's management's internal memos not equivalent to neurons sending messages around a body?

I think you need to look into a philosophical approach called functionalism, as it may help you let go of some of your limited views on consciousness.

Anyway, if it looks like a duck and acts like a duck, it is probably a duck. I think most scientists would approve of such reasoning. When humans engage in patterned movements (dancing, for example), we agree that is a product of consciousness. So why, then, do you dispute that any patterned movement is a display of consciousness? And is not everything in the universe a product of patterned movement? There is no such thing as an inanimate object. A rock is full of particles flying around in amazing patterns. So is a hammer.

Going back full circle, I expect you will try to distinguish between self-propelled movement and movement that is a response to outside forces. However, going back to SCIENTIFIC belief that humans are merely organic substances obeying physical laws, any movement by any human is necessarily a predictable response to outside forces. A man driving to work is no more "self-propelled" than an apple falling from a tree.

But, yeah, you want to believe that the brain is the key to consciousness, that it cannot exist in the absence of this one organic structure. And you think THAT is logical?

Which brings me to my law of similarities. The scientific method is flawed to the extent it preaches skeptism in the absence of knowledge. That means you assume the negative of any proposal (e.g., that the earth ecosystem is a conscious being) in the absence of affirmative proof. The problem with this approach is that it violates something we should all feel is true -- that we are all fundamentally alike, that everything is fundamentally similar. In the absence of any knowledge, you should assume that the unknown is similar to the known. THAT is the law of similarities. Thus, in the absence of knowledge whether anything else is conscious, we should assume everything is conscious like us. That makes a lot more sense than thinking that nothing is conscious unless it has something we, with our limited perceptions, can recognize as a brain.

Perhaps the most well-known variation of the law of similarities is the Golden Rule -- "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." What is this rule based on? The assumption that people are similar, they enjoy similar things. Thus, what you like, other people probably like. If you agree -- as I think most do -- that the Golden Rule is brilliant in its elegant simplicity and truth, then I suggest you consider wider embrace of the law of similarities, on which the Golden Rule is based.

~psychoblast~