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Do you belive in life after death?

ninjadanslarbretabar said:
"the theory that the human brain is a quantum device that can receive information from beyond spacetime"
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That's funny, you edited your post and included what I was looking for (this quoted idea) while I was writing a response to you. I see now why, so long as we accept this idea, that the idea of subjective eternity in dying might work. I'll still include the post just in case any readers were looking for further clarification on what was said:

http://mind.ucsd.edu/papers/bt&pt/bt&pt.pdf

Here’s a link to a paper called “Brain Time and Phenomenological Time” that I think will cover the topic nicely. It begins with a quote from the German philosopher Husserl:

... there are cases in which on the basis of a temporally extended content of
consciousness a unitary apprehension takes place which is spread out over a
temporal interval (the so-called specious present). ... That several successive
tones yield a melody is possible only in this way, that the succession of
psychical processes are united "forthwith" in a common structure.

This is the idea I was trying to communicate earlier. I’ll give a hypothetical example. Let’s say that for that a person to have any sense of time at all requires 100ms of organized brain activity at a minimum rate of 1000 “brainbits” per second. This person gets shot in the head and the time elapsed between a fully functioning brain and brain death is 10ms. 10ms is not enough time for the brain to capture the process of dying and evoke a sense, a subjective experience, of any time elapsing at all. For it to do so in 10ms, now extrapolating from earlier, would require it to be operating at at least 10000 brainbits per second, in an organized fashion. The brain certainly will not be working either 10 times faster or in an organized fashion with a bullet going through it. Therefore, no concept of time can even be formed for it to feel like eternity because the minimal concept of time passing itself requires more time to form than the process of death takes to complete. Death for the shot person is a sudden nothingness, an instantaneous, dreamless, and eternal sleep. What are left are other people’s experiences.
 
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Regardless of beliefs, does anyone else think that the "you can not create or destroy energy therefore we must go somewhere" type idea sounds a bit pseudo-scientific and contrived to actually hold any real substance?

I can have my lamp on and then turn it off and it's not as if the energy has magically dissapeared. I'd assume that the same could happen to our brains without our spirits magically disapearing into some kind of mystical multiverse.
 
^Yes. It sounds like a kind of reversal of the idea that mind/spirit are entirely emergent from physical processes. Leibniz' Law states: "If x is identical to y then x has all the properties that y has and y has all the properties that x has."
Therefore, even without the special type of organization of energy in the brain, if we are ultimately entirely physical beings who experience "mental" phenomena, then energy itself must have some kind of "experience" inherent within it. The special type of experiences humans have, such a mental experiences, are just a particular organization of that energy. No one really beleives rocks have feelings though. Well, maybe they do (ask the person on salvia who just became wall paper).
 
Maybe you get the opportunity to live your life again over and over. As the amount of lives you experience, increases, so does your spiritual awareness, wisdom and ability to lead a good life. Of course there are those that are spiritually aware but decide to make life harsh for others. Thus reality is a perpetual struggle between good and evil.

People in your lives who are very, almost overtly friendly, and those you would consider plain evil, are the "Aware" The ones that direct what happens in your life experience.

It is therefore the "goal" of every living being to attain this awareness. Some are much further away than others. But as the millenia pass by, gradually every being will be aware. That is when the true war will begin.
 
When I was first old enough to understand the concept of death was at about the same time I realised there was no Santa or Tooth Fairy. I thus concluded that to believe in an afterlife and Heaven was a grown-up sort of Santa Claus. I thought religion was thus a crutch to help relieve people's inevitable horror of death.

But as I got into my teenage years, I began to sense more spiritual things and as an adult in my early 40s, I can attest to the reality of empatheogenic experiences which seem definitely telepathic in nature.

It seems just as possible that our life force is a marriage of spiritual as well as physical. Our brains may be more like radios while our spiritual energy is the transmitor. So long as we are live, we our consciousness is tied to and filtered through our brains. Perhaps at death, our awareness increases.

But I could flip a coin. I am really undecided but if I had to place a bet, I'd guess optimistically.
 
Maybe modern mythologies such as Santa and the Tooth Fairy were designed to condition us that things "of that nature" are unreal.
 
Maybe old mythologies such as Santa and the easter bunny were designed to condition us that things "of that nature" are real...
 
Dopeamine, that's a very Hindu view of the afterlife. It's one I'd entertain too, although, as I've already stated, I think reincarnation likely wouldn't be spatially or temporally contiguous to the end of this present life on this planet.

I find it interesting that in Hinduism and Buddhism, to be extinguished from existence and never being reborn again (once, as you said, the correct realizations are made about how to live one's life), is considered a gift, a break to a sentient being tired of being endlessly reborn. So much for religion always being built on existential angst.

Here's another idea I've been toying with: what if time, as we experience and measure it, is nothing more than a dimension of space, and our 'travel' along it in the direction we do and at the rate it seems to pass, is nothing more than a function of our brains? And so when we die and are released from our humanness, we are truly eternal, in that all points in time exist at once, the same way all points on the three Cartesian axes of space all exist at once to us now?
 
MyDoorsAreOpen said:
I find it interesting that in Hinduism and Buddhism, to be extinguished from existence and never being reborn again (once, as you said, the correct realizations are made about how to live one's life), is considered a gift, a break to a sentient being tired of being endlessly reborn. So much for religion always being built on existential angst.
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Thanks MDAO. I did not know this was a Hindu perspective.

I'm not certain they would call it " a sentient being tired of being endlessly reborn" Where have you read this as it would be interesting to see.

To my mind, as awareness grows, your sentient being would be more than prepared to come back and repair other damaged souls. Angels if you like.
 
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why would i believe in somethng that has absolutely NO basis in REALITY, or even the tiniest sliver of proof that it exists? i might as well believe in faeries and goobli-goblins...sillyness...wishful thinking...

i understand WHY people WANT to believe this (myself included). it's a comforting thought, but that is all. you are not special. you will die. like everything else and the universe itself. deal with it... :)
 
Dopeamine said:
To my mind, as awareness grows, your sentient being would be more than prepared to come back and repair other damaged souls. Angels if you like.
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Boddhisatvas, in Tibetan Buddhism - not seeking Buddha-hood for one's own benefit but to continue on the merry-go-round of existence in order to bring about the end of suffering of all sentient beings :|

Oh, and as for your views, lazyvegan, you're welcome to them - I know otherwise and I hope you come to know it too, one day.
 
fishface, if you really KNEW otherwise, you'd be recieving the nobel prize and be the most popular person in the scientific community. it would be THE most revolutionary revelation ever known to mankind, in the entire history of mankind!!!!...but you can't prove shit and you know it...otherwise I (and the rest of the world) would be worshipping you...and i honestly mean that in a non-confrontational way. got proof? i will happily believe you. :)
 
Yes and I hope it's just like the movie"What Dreams May Come". Was very high when I dropt in that DVD. Cried the whole time...
 
lazyvegan said:
fishface, if you really KNEW otherwise, you'd be recieving the nobel prize and be the most popular person in the scientific community. it would be THE most revolutionary revelation ever known to mankind, in the entire history of mankind!!!!...but you can't prove shit and you know it...otherwise I (and the rest of the world) would be worshipping you...and i honestly mean that in a non-confrontational way. got proof? i will happily believe you. :)
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I know you mean it in a non-confrontational way and can appreciate your standpoint, as it is one I once took.

However, various life experiences have demonstrated to me that the understanding of 'this' *waves hands around wildly, meaning 'Life, the Universe and Everything'* as explained by Tibetan Buddhists is, for me, second to none, those experiences shifting my viewpoint and thus changing my standpoint.

I lost my mother to cancer in May of this year and the experience of her passing, along with that of also this year finding my Vajrayana (spiritual 'other half') at the age of 52 (we married on 5th November) have demonstrated so much that I understand from Tibetan Buddhism to be true that I no longer require scientific proof. The proof is there to be 'seen', if you can see. My eyes were fully opened about 18 months ago and they can never close again.

I respect your viewpoint, I really do, and I really wish I could provide the proof you need. But only you can discover that and, from what you said above, I really hope you do. :D %) :|
 
Yes.

Living is like being the driver of a car.

When the car gets old and worn out, it falls apart and leaves you stranded.

Not long after, another new car that suits your needs gets built and is given to you to drive. This goes on for as long as you desire.

pretty cool eh?
 
Wavy Gravy once asked a Zen Roshi, "What happens after death?"

The Roshi replied, "I don't know."

Wavy protested, "But you're a Zen Master!"

"Yes," the Roshi admitted, "but I'm not a dead Zen Master."
 
I believe that the self is tied to the physical reality of your body, your brain.

I would not be "ME" if I didn't have the same exact brain/body/chemicals flowing through me, so once my brain ceases to function the me as I know it ceases to be.

If there is a "energy force", soul, whatever... that will exist after this point than that will not be "ME", so once the body is dead, the self that I know is dead...

Afterlife? Who cares, its not gonna be "Me"...

I'm pretty sure, after having 2 near death experiences about the reality of nothingness, about the beauty of life and the lack of any "afterlife"...
 
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