The afterlife...

[F.U.B.A.R.]

Not worthy of a response? If you don't want your cognitive dissonance pointed out, then maybe you shouldn't be in a P&S thread. I have no problem with your beliefs, if they are qualified as such... like saying that spiritual beliefs in an afterlife are merely a coping mechanism. Fine. But the way you state it with such certitude, and then refuse to be called on your own logical discrepancy, is nothing short of denial. You may call it unworthy but that just looks like an avoidance strategy in my eyes.

Anything that is alive is conscious.

Ah, 'cognitive dissonance'. That phrase which is overused by people who wish to seem intelligent.

You appear to have a problem with my 'certitude', yet you then go on to say "anything that is alive is conscious".

Can you see the irony there?


By the Way, NDEs and OOBEs are not supported by real science. There is absolutely zero evidence for them.

 

[PriestTheyCalledHim]

There have been studies done about out of body experiences, and near death experiences.

Frontiers | Voluntary Out-of-Body Experience: An fMRI Study

The present single-case study examined functional brain imaging patterns in a participant that reported being able, at will, to produce somatosensory sensati...

www.frontiersin.org

Out-of-body experience in vestibular disorders – A prospective study of 210 patients with dizziness

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are states during which people experience their centre of awareness as located outside of their physical body, along wi…

www.sciencedirect.com

CiteSeerX — The experimental induction of out-of-body experiences

CiteSeerX - Document Details (Isaac Councill, Lee Giles, Pradeep Teregowda): Anout-of-body experience (OBE) has beendefined as the experience in which a per-son who is awake sees his or her body from a location outside the physical body (1, 2). OBEs have been reported in clinical conditions that...

citeseerx.ist.psu.edu

World's largest near death experiences study | University of Southampton

Results of world's largest Near Death Experiences study published.

www.southampton.ac.uk

Neurochemical models of near-death experiences: A large-scale study based on the semantic similarity of written reports - PubMed

The real or perceived proximity to death often results in a non-ordinary state of consciousness characterized by phenomenological features such as the perception of leaving the body boundaries, feelings of peace, bliss and timelessness, life review, the sensation of traveling through a tunnel...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[Foreigner]

Ah, 'cognitive dissonance'. That phrase which is overused by people who wish to seem intelligent.

The term was applied accurately, though you can be dismissive all you want, I don't really care. When a person is challenged according to their own evidence standards and they still can't admit to the holes and inconsistencies in their beliefs, it's just calling a spade a spade.

You appear to have a problem with my 'certitude', yet you then go on to say "anything that is alive is conscious".

Can you see the irony there?

There's no irony, you just have reading comprehension problems. I don't live in a world of certitude, I live in a world of questioning. I believe that anything alive possesses consciousness. Do I know this to be factually true? No... but it is my world view.

But you don't see me going around calling other people's beliefs ridiculous as though I already know the supreme truth.

We are all just a bunch of monkeys with imperfect understandings.

By the Way, NDEs and OOBEs are not supported by real science. There is absolutely zero evidence for them.

"Real science". Who died and made you the god of science?

Correction, there's zero evidence for a mechanism, but there is plenty of evidence that a genuine phenomenon is happening. Your comments read as someone who has done no real looking into it, just a lot of assumptions about what is valid or not -- also known as pseudoskepticism. I personally find the topic near and dear because I've had both NDEs and OBEs my entire life. So I'm very well read on this subject.

The mechanism of NDEs and OBEs is not known which is why there is no conclusion drawn, but there are plenty of proposals. Also, plenty of "real scientists" have recorded the accounts of the experiences under close scrutiny, all over the world. Not just lay people. Many who have had these experiences have been scientists themselves. There are commonalities, themes, and many proposed mechanisms... but why would that interest someone like you who thinks they already know?

 

[Xorkoth]

Honestly guys, you have been coming across as quite rude to the point that I really don't understand what the deal is (not you, Foreigner). There is no reason to be so defensive and judgmental about this, we're in a philosophy and spirituality forum sharing our thoughts. What you've basically communicated, CE, is that someone questioning your idea that consciousness is 100% the result of the brain and that existence might happen outside of your timeframe of physical life, is being an idiot, and that we are certain beyond question that someone believing in continued existence before/after death is either delusional or psychotic. It's really quite an insulting way of communicating about this topic, so you're being called out for that. No one has a problem with you believing that, the problem comes from the lack of respect shown towards another's beliefs. And neither of us is even saying you're wrong, just that we couldn't possibly be certain of anything about this topic. I mean, there are a number of very valid points made against your argument. For example, the lack of the ability to remember something from pre-birth most certainly does not prove there was nothing. There are clear examples of lack of memory where the things that happened are most certainly real.

Science, for some, is a reason to utterly shun the idea that spirituality is a real thing. Yet, many of the most impactful and regarded as the most intelligent scientists over the centuries have been spiritual people. Science and spirituality are not in any way mutually exclusive. Albert Einstein, for example, found the discoveries he made to only increase his feeling of the spirituality inherent in the universe.

Science is a method of thought, a process by which to gain rational understanding of the nature of reality. Science is not ever certain about anything, it is always up for revision. You claim there is zero evidence in science for the reality of the experiences of NDEs, for example, and yet that is demonstrably not true, if you investigate the links above for studies that have been done.

Again, I have no problem with you interpreting the evidence as suggesting that there is nothing after death or before birth, that consciousness is not a property of the universe but a phenomenon totally dependent on the central nervous system. But to claim that we have settled this 100% with science is simply an untrue thing to say, and is a misunderstanding about science and the scientific method itself, and furthermore it is rude and dismissive of the opinions of others when you suggest that those believing otherwise are delusional or psychotic

It's nice to not feel disrespected in discussions, which is all we are asking.

 

[Shady's Fox]

whatfhefuck


You people have too much time on ur hands.

 

[Xorkoth]

Great contribution as always, Shady. I don't get you. Should we stop discussing stuff? The whole point of this forum is to discuss stuff. Kinda weird for you to suggest we need to "get a life" or whatever because we take the time to articulate our thoughts on a subject.

 

[Foreigner]

Material reductionism is the dominant world view now, and those privileged enough to fully subscribe to it have no qualms letting you know. It firmly supplanted the Elizabethan world picture about 200-300 years ago. Back then you could at least pursue science while still considering how the divine order fit into the big picture. It's hard to have these conversations because people don't have enough knowledge of European world history to understand what a world view even is. They don't realize that societies and cultures have a shared view of reality that changes all the time. The way it is now is not the way it always was, and it won't stay this way for long.

Because of the mechanical wonders produced by material reductionism, people got excited and dismissed the spiritual aspects. Alchemy became separated from chemistry, astrology from astronomy, geology from geomancy, etc. The non-linear components then got relegated to "otherly" status, where they remain to this day, under the purview of religion.

Everything used to live side by side, but now we have separated the mechanistic from the spiritual into two separate world views. The mechanistic view says that the material world is all there is. Everything else irrational that humanity thinks or does got segmented away into religion and other spiritual schools, where it is now merely tolerated as something vestigial that just needs to eventually go away. In reality, those "irrational" things are very tied to human nature and will never go away. Humanity knows deep down that there is more going on than meets the eye and it's why the majority of the world still describe themselves as spiritual or religious.

You can see the differences in places like Russia, or China. The school of rationality did not manifest the same way there as it did in Europe. The mechanical universe and the non-mechanical universe have not been totally separated. It's why you see Russians doing research projects on OBEs and other "paranormal" things. It's why you have Chinese medicine hospitals combined with western medicine hospitals. You can go get an x-ray and cast for a broken bone in one department, and then go to the TCM department to make sure your qi is adequately flowing into the injury site for healing. They even do taiqi and qigong therapies in the hospitals.

What I love about the internet is that the hubris of material reductionism in the west is being overridden naturally by the huge body of experiential human knowledge now available that casts doubt on its epistemology. Knowledge and expertise have been democratized. Lies and control have been outed. The true scientists have a platform to show their genius and the charlatans who simply want to control human experience are being cast aside. The same is true of religious quacks and anyone who misrepresents the truth of reality.

 

[Crackedout420]

I believe in living life to the fullest, good and bad experiences. You only get one and personally in my opinion there is no afterlife. We get buried in a box and rot. Sorry if this offends anyone.

 

[F.U.B.A.R.]

I believe in living life to the fullest, good and bad experiences. You only get one and personally in my opinion there is no afterlife. We get buried in a box and rot. Sorry if this offends anyone.

My belief also. Seeing 'God' in a pipe of DMT only shows how powerful our imagination is. I would love to be proved wrong, and I sincerely hope that one day I will be. But somehow I doubt it...

 

[Crackedout420]

I would love an afterlife. I would be so happy if I believed in it but I just don't.

 

[Deleted member 521610]

My belief also. Seeing 'God' in a pipe of DMT only shows how powerful our imagination is. I would love to be proved wrong, and I sincerely hope that one day I will be. But somehow I doubt it...

DMT is beyond the imagination if aliens to were to land in spaceship on the white house grounds right now it would be way more probable and less mind blowing than the DMT experince. DMT is sooooo beyond anything human or anything we can come up. Its impossible to explain but i say just go ahead and do yourself and acutally breakthrough the veil then come back and critically assess the experince and see what you believe. 5-meo dmt is called the god molecule for a reason i wish most people could have this experince. I really dont bother explaining it people who haven't done it because they would never understand unless they have done it. Eventually everybody learns "TRUTH" whenever it be the first time on their death or not. Live a good life don't harm others and you have nothing to worry about because fundamentally in reality we all part of a infinite system all connected.

I know the UK itself is quite cut off from spiritualism in the general population living in concrete jungles does this people.

There are things that can anybody can try and then come back and see if their views are still the same.

 

[PriestTheyCalledHim]

My belief also. Seeing 'God' in a pipe of DMT only shows how powerful our imagination is. I would love to be proved wrong, and I sincerely hope that one day I will be. But somehow I doubt it...

Have you ever taken DMT, or taken Ayahuasca in a ceremony with a guide in Peru or Brasil? If so, what happened?

 

[Deleted member 521610]

Ayahuasca is called the vine of the dead for a reason. It is travelling many spiritual dimensions with mother nature the spirit of lady ayahuasca greets everybody in their journey with it it is also the toughest thing anybody could go through the purge hits and you can feel the aya in your very cells working to cleanse your body of toxins while everybody in the circle is also purging and you hear the powerful icaros from the shaman guiding the trip with each one they sing it evokes different gods and godesses to heal you and guide you through the spirit world sung in shinpibo given to the shamans by the plants you commune with the jungle the universe your soul the spirit healers and holy powers while your purging it feels amazing / terrifying liberating every thing hits you at once your purging all the negative energy you have accumulated it feels like you are dying or near death. Some of these shamans are legendary in guiding a spiritual trip singing into the late night and early morning.

One of the greatest things the average functioning person can do for themselves is take a aya trip with a good shaman in a circle. You will feel more amazing than you have in your life the morning after the trips lasting for months and years. Aya shows you everything and breaks down how to heal yourself from trauma etc. During these moments you will meet many spirits plant spirits animal spirits human spirits and spiritual entities residing on a higher plane of existence.

It costs alot of money for flights and retreats etc but the experince truly is priceless and the healing you never thought possible. Aya trips are really rough on ex opiate addicts but eventually heal all those years of damage clearing out those toxins and addiction. Aya will turn alot of people vegetarian or force you away from eating processed food ever again. You feel the toxins built up from years of unheathly living cleanse away restoring balance. Aya should be legal in every country that fact that is illegal shows how racist and controlling the world is in western countries.

All these things will turn the most hardest atheists into believers.

 

[Phoenix_rising]

Well that was entertaining. Like a game of tennis.
I love it when the juices get running and the old grey matter fires up. You can almost see the neurotransmitters shooting about.

The only difference here is there's no umpire.

Everyone is right and wrong,its just what we believe and if we can get enough people to think the same then it becomes real and right,factual. It doesn't mean it is though,it's just how it's perceived.

We like to carpmentlise and use our logic to make sense of it all. The not knowing frightens us like the dark did as children,fear drives us for survival so we create our realities.

In the grand scheme of things we are but a speck in a vastness that is beyond our comprehension. On a quantum scale we are but atoms.

That brain is vast and consciousness is but a speck. We're all born of stars,we're star children,the universe is in our heads and our heads in the universe.

 

[Asclepius]

Anemones, jellyfish, hydras. Let me guess, now you're going to say they're not conscious, because somehow you magically know that for sure too?

Also, Sponges - also, they have no nervous system.

 

[Asclepius]

There have been studies done about out of body experiences, and near death experiences.

Frontiers | Voluntary Out-of-Body Experience: An fMRI Study

The present single-case study examined functional brain imaging patterns in a participant that reported being able, at will, to produce somatosensory sensati...

www.frontiersin.org

Out-of-body experience in vestibular disorders – A prospective study of 210 patients with dizziness

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are states during which people experience their centre of awareness as located outside of their physical body, along wi…

www.sciencedirect.com

CiteSeerX — The experimental induction of out-of-body experiences

CiteSeerX - Document Details (Isaac Councill, Lee Giles, Pradeep Teregowda): Anout-of-body experience (OBE) has beendefined as the experience in which a per-son who is awake sees his or her body from a location outside the physical body (1, 2). OBEs have been reported in clinical conditions that...

citeseerx.ist.psu.edu

World's largest near death experiences study | University of Southampton

Results of world's largest Near Death Experiences study published.

www.southampton.ac.uk

Neurochemical models of near-death experiences: A large-scale study based on the semantic similarity of written reports - PubMed

The real or perceived proximity to death often results in a non-ordinary state of consciousness characterized by phenomenological features such as the perception of leaving the body boundaries, feelings of peace, bliss and timelessness, life review, the sensation of traveling through a tunnel...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

These are(apart from the last which is cite-seer- questionable?!) based on reports, only -proves nothing - just investigations into reports of subjects (just basic inquiry, not any proof, or even valid inquiry as this is low on pyramid regards research methods).
Yes, it is important for people and loved ones experiencing, end of life care however, sometimes treating the living is what we haven't yet mastered, well and need to progress in.

Not that the area isn't worth exploring, but for many; Cancers, Parkinson's, Huntingtons, MS, Alzheimer's... (and especially anything genetic that can be apprehended and tested for) - the list goes on - so perhaps, a few people musing on OBE's and such is less worthy than actual, issues that need support and taxpayers money and investment.

 

[PriestTheyCalledHim]

Ayahuasca is called the vine of the dead for a reason. It is travelling many spiritual dimensions with mother nature the spirit of lady ayahuasca greets everybody in their journey with it it is also the toughest thing anybody could go through the purge hits and you can feel the aya in your very cells working to cleanse your body of toxins while everybody in the circle is also purging and you hear the powerful icaros from the shaman guiding the trip with each one they sing it evokes different gods and godesses to heal you and guide you through the spirit world sung in shinpibo given to the shamans by the plants you commune with the jungle the universe your soul the spirit healers and holy powers while your purging it feels amazing / terrifying liberating every thing hits you at once your purging all the negative energy you have accumulated it feels like you are dying or near death. Some of these shamans are legendary in guiding a spiritual trip singing into the late night and early morning.

One of the greatest things the average functioning person can do for themselves is take a aya trip with a good shaman in a circle. You will feel more amazing than you have in your life the morning after the trips lasting for months and years. Aya shows you everything and breaks down how to heal yourself from trauma etc. During these moments you will meet many spirits plant spirits animal spirits human spirits and spiritual entities residing on a higher plane of existence.

It costs alot of money for flights and retreats etc but the experince truly is priceless and the healing you never thought possible. Aya trips are really rough on ex opiate addicts but eventually heal all those years of damage clearing out those toxins and addiction. Aya will turn alot of people vegetarian or force you away from eating processed food ever again. You feel the toxins built up from years of unheathly living cleanse away restoring balance. Aya should be legal in every country that fact that is illegal shows how racist and controlling the world is in western countries.

All these things will turn the most hardest atheists into believers.

So what happens after death or what did you or anyone else reading this, learn from Ayahuasca?

Ayahuasca is legal in the United States.

https://udvusa.org/

 

[Asclepius]

Honestly guys, you have been coming across as quite rude to the point that I really don't understand what the deal is (not you, Foreigner). There is no reason to be so defensive and judgmental about this, we're in a philosophy and spirituality forum sharing our thoughts. What you've basically communicated, CE, is that someone questioning your idea that consciousness is 100% the result of the brain and that existence might happen outside of your timeframe of physical life, is being an idiot, and that we are certain beyond question that someone believing in continued existence before/after death is either delusional or psychotic. It's really quite an insulting way of communicating about this topic, so you're being called out for that. No one has a problem with you believing that, the problem comes from the lack of respect shown towards another's beliefs. And neither of us is even saying you're wrong, just that we couldn't possibly be certain of anything about this topic. I mean, there are a number of very valid points made against your argument. For example, the lack of the ability to remember something from pre-birth most certainly does not prove there was nothing. There are clear examples of lack of memory where the things that happened are most certainly real.

Science, for some, is a reason to utterly shun the idea that spirituality is a real thing. Yet, many of the most impactful and regarded as the most intelligent scientists over the centuries have been spiritual people. Science and spirituality are not in any way mutually exclusive. Albert Einstein, for example, found the discoveries he made to only increase his feeling of the spirituality inherent in the universe.

Science is a method of thought, a process by which to gain rational understanding of the nature of reality. Science is not ever certain about anything, it is always up for revision. You claim there is zero evidence in science for the reality of the experiences of NDEs, for example, and yet that is demonstrably not true, if you investigate the links above for studies that have been done.

Again, I have no problem with you interpreting the evidence as suggesting that there is nothing after death or before birth, that consciousness is not a property of the universe but a phenomenon totally dependent on the central nervous system. But to claim that we have settled this 100% with science is simply an untrue thing to say, and is a misunderstanding about science and the scientific method itself, and furthermore it is rude and dismissive of the opinions of others when you suggest that those believing otherwise are delusional or psychotic

It's nice to not feel disrespected in discussions, which is all we are asking.

I get the questioning of certitude and rightly so, however...
Really, you're supporting someone who, posts, or formerly posted" there is anecdotal evidence" - oxymoron, much?

It's actually not a scientific fact that consciousness cannot pre-date birth. It's an area that science is not qualified to examine because consciousness is non-material and science can only concern itself with materially examinable things. Science actually has no claim on this either way.

There's plenty of anecdotal evidence that consciousness can possibly exist separately from the body. The NDE and OBE research shows this -- thousands of cases. In the 60's and 70's Russia even did formal scientific investigations on this. Again, because science can't totally qualify this, the results are inconclusive. It's not like the Russians were able to say for sure... but there is reason to question.

If (big if) consciousness can act separately and on its own, then that calls into your question that a brain is needed for there to be conscious existence.

It is 100% your personal opinion. Don't pass the buck, just own it. There's nothing wrong with your opinion, but your overriding certitude and hubris are annoying. You can't possibly know for sure, no one can. And it's not like those of us questioning are just randomly doing so for no good reason... there are so many case reports out there, enough to form entire paranormal research institutions on.

100% real facs

lol

 

[Asclepius]

Well that was entertaining. Like a game of tennis.
I love it when the juices get running and the old grey matter fires up. You can almost see the neurotransmitters shooting about.

The only difference here is there's no umpire.

Everyone is right and wrong,its just what we believe and if we can get enough people to think the same then it becomes real and right,factual. It doesn't mean it is though,it's just how it's perceived.

We like to carpmentlise and use our logic to make sense of it all. The not knowing frightens us like the dark did as children,fear drives us for survival so we create our realities.

In the grand scheme of things we are but a speck in a vastness that is beyond our comprehension. On a quantum scale we are but atoms.

That brain is vast and consciousness is but a speck. We're all born of stars,were star children,the universe is in our heads and our heads in the universe.

Well, the grey matter is questionable by some who think that the cortex is not responsible for being conscious - which, ironically, would mean that they would probably now not be able to post, and just be existing possibly on the bottom of the ocean, and really not be posting on here but by alchemy, they are enabled to lol

Our comprehension is based on the interaction of our physiological matter ( mainly our forebrain interacting with all other parts of our brain and body and all the interactions of such) with our ecosystem and yet some need to look outisde and to BS to explain this - yet even what we know isnt fully understood but shitting onwhat we do is the realm of the weak, lazy and arrogant as it is from what we know, that we move forward.
Lest to spread ignorance.

 

[Deleted member 521610]

So what happens after death or what did you or anyone else reading this, learn from Ayahuasca?

Ayahuasca is legal in the United States.

https://udvusa.org/

USA is the only western country that sticks up for religious rights for all religions of the world. Europe is fucked and same with AUS and NZ in regards to indegious religion and rites.

Ayahuasca and other psychedelics have taught me and millions of peoples many things about death etc. Consciousness is immortal we never truly die its all change another moment of this fleeting existence reincarnation is endless in this world til your soul has evolved enough to move onto more higher planes of existence closer to divine love and source. This universe and life on earth is a first step of birth we are from the eternal source and will eventually return. We are the product of eternal immortal consciouness "god" exploring the infinite reality to try understand itself. Reality has no limits for it is truly infinite in every form. Our human minds would never be able to fully understand the extent of the infinite. Existence is eternal creation from nothing a paradox that we would never comprehend with our limited minds.

The wheel of karma spins and spins in a eternal cycle what you sow in the fields of earth you will accumulate and everything balances out. Hell is a real place in reality souls that end up in hell only have themselve to blame due to their karma they will evenutally repay this karmic debt and be given new life on earth to start over.

We are the universe or reality experiencing itself there is truly only one thing and that is god we simply pick up on consciouness its eternal all things have consciousness. We are not our brains or our body but the awareness under it all. The eternal true self immortal consciouness underlying all of reality. As our soul evolves we will live many many lifetimes as different things for infinity reality is endless. The closer we come to source we realize the ultimate truth that the source of reality is unconditional love this brings many problems for our human understanding of Morales evil suffering etc. Duality gives arise to creation all things had to be balanced to work. Time doesn't exist all things are happening at once in a one giant flash out of nothingness a true miracle. This topic would require alot more writing to give it any justice. But anybody can experince these things if your are willing to breakthrough the veil and see for yourself those who deny otherwise are just cowards plain and simple they will love to deny the divine nature of the universe because they hold to their ego and dont want to accept the truths of reality that everything is truly nothing this why they will never load a pipe of 5-meo dmt or n,n dmt or take 1000 ug of acid.