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When we die.

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frankmilton

Greenlighter
Joined
Jun 2, 2014
Messages
40
I had this peculiar idea come to my mind when i was in grade 8.

I thought that when we die, we would just wake up in another world, or "real" world, and realize that we were just having a dream this whole time.

However, lately, i have been thinking that our souls, or spirits, might just be recycled at death, allowing ourselves to be born again in different physical bodies, possibly in different world, without any memory from the lives that we are currently living.

When i play video games, more specifically role playing games, and i find out that i had raised the character not in a "perfect" way, due to my OCD, i usually just start the game over from the very beginning.

Lately, i have been thinking that i have made many wrong choices in the past and somewhat "wasted" my youth, which goes against my "perfectionism" described above. If, by any chance, my theory of the recycling of our souls is correct, i would like to just greet death and start from the beginning.

However, at the same time, i do not want to leave the people in this world that i care about. And there is no guarantee that i will make the "right" decisions even if i were to be born again, because i wouldn't be able to remember the mistakes i have made in this life.

I might just be stuck in a really bad cycle of life and death.
 
I'm not sure what I think of your theory to be honest. Any speculation about what happens after death has one defining difficulty, and that is the impossibility of obtaining objective information about it.

I feel the immediacy and all consuming pervasiveness of our aliveness, how intense and real it is for each individual, makes it seem like there has to be something after death. It is very hard to imagine the world and history going on without us. I'd love it if we retain some knowledge of our lives, and that we have the ability to still see what happens on earth. I would dearly love to see earth in 1000 years to see how this all continues to play out.

You may want to flick through some of these threads:

Thread 1

Thread 2

Thread 3

Thread 4

As you can see, this is a much discussed topic in P&S. :)


frankmilton said:
Lately, i have been thinking that i have made many wrong choices in the past and somewhat "wasted" my youth, which goes against my "perfectionism" described above. If, by any chance, my theory of the recycling of our souls is correct, i would like to just greet death and start from the beginning.
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I know what you mean, and I think most humans would admit to having some regrets. We only have one life (at a time, at least) yet most of us would love to be able to do heaps and heaps of diverse things. I would love to be an astrophysicist, a visual artist, a mountaineer, a sound designer, etc. I could go on. However, I'm none of those things and instead am a librarian. :) The only way to really reconcile oneself with their regrets is to accept what has happened, and learn from it. The only really stupid thing to do would be to continue committing the same errors time and time again.

I guess that I am really stupid. :| :D

Ask yourself how you have wasted your youth. What do you mean? Is there an objective 'proper' use for our youth, a "currency" that should be spent wisely? Who determines this 'proper' youth? What is perfectionism? Does it exist outside the imagination?

However, at the same time, i do not want to leave the people in this world that i care about. And there is no guarantee that i will make the "right" decisions even if i were to be born again, because i wouldn't be able to remember the mistakes i have made in this life.
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If you could possibly end your life and start again, the evidence we have in our 'current' life suggests that we don't maintain memories or anything about our past life. Restarting certainly doesn't mean you'll get a chance to rectify these errors. I would make the assumption that, if reincarnation exists (I don't believe so) you won't recall your mistakes

I might just be stuck in a really bad cycle of life and death.
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But, you're probably not stuck in anything. The reasons for your concerns are not being imposed upon you, it is a (possibly subconcious) thought process that you initiate. Nothing is beaming misfortune onto you. No-one else is responsible for what your life currently is, only you. Only you have the ability to actually live your life; if you can think yourself into unhappiness, you can think yourself into peace. Our mind is what creates unhappiness, our mind is what creates happiness.
 
As willow said, more eloquently than I, nobody has any clue as to what happens after death. You dont even seem to have your mind made up on it, so how would death be a realistic course of action?

Let me add, if you are feeling suicidal, please seek out some help to get you through it. Besides, if you are young enough, there is ample time to correct the errors you feel you have made.
 
if you wish to find some sort of rebirth, just go check out some different sects of christianity. Haven't you heard the idea of the "born again" christian? Its not as dumb as it sounds , if you are seeking some sort of ritualistic redemption , a clean slate ..... get baptized deep in the water, the immersion washes away your sins and your past imperfection, allowing you a fresh start.......

I know many bluelighters who might mock me for this suggestion, but the truth is that as humans, religions, rites and ritual can help us and even religions based on lies or exageration can still play a big role for people who need that
 
There are more people alive today than have lived before us. If there was some sort of spirally circle of souls be prepared to be disappointed when you come back as a carrot.
 
I have entertained the idea where when we die, we just wake up and realize we had been having a dream. The first time I thought of it was as a kid. It would trip me out thinking about what if I suddenly woke up and it was 5 years ago and the past 5 years had been a dream, or what if I woke up and was a different person and my whole life was a dream?

It's fun to think about, but we really can't know. I believe life is a dream anyway, a dream the universe is having, regardless of how that ties in with any individual personality. My current inclination is that all of subjective life is the universe experiencing itself in an infinite array of forms and circumstances, and that time is a continuum, and it's all happening in one endless moment, always, outside of our subjective experience of time. "I" (Xorkoth) have not lived a string of sequential lives, and "I" will never exist again after death. But I am me, and you, and everything. it's just that in Xorkoth's perceptual awareness, I am not able to perceive the rest of my/our existence.
 
OP here.

Let me just tell you all that this is just one of my only-if-fantasies.

Although i often think that suicide could be convenient, i dont take those thoughts seriously.

I just think this subject is amusing as we can never know what awaits us after life.

I think this subject is one of the reasons that people turn to faith/religion. Although i am an athiest, i do feel more comfortable having these optimistic ideas about afterlife. I suppose this is equivalent to heaven/hell concept that most religious people believe in.
 
It's certainly interesting to speculate about the afterlife. It is a bit frustrating, in that we'll simply never know...

I read a recent novel by Stephen King, called "Revival". Pretty good Frankenstein-like tale of communication from the grave. One of the main characters is trying to determine the fate of his family who died in a violent car crash. The conclusion (this is a spoiler mind you) is that when we die we enter a nightmare realm of slavery and eternal labour being whipped and punished by huge insectile sadists. When asking about his family and their whereabouts and their current situation, he is told "Gone to serve the Great Ones, in the Null. No death, no light, no rest". The sheer bleakness of that was very satisfying to me :D

I mention that because, whilst we do have idea's of heaven and hell, with both locations being 'earned' through our earthly livivng actions, imagine if the truth was that we end up suffering and imprisoned forever. Not uplifting, I know... But interesting to me. Then again, I love negativity sometimes as much as positivity. :\

That which is not dead can eternal lie
and with strange aeons even death may die.

8o

Miss Willow suggested that maybe when you die you are just stuck in your body,still using the senses of it but unable to move. Forever. :!
 
I did tons of drugs and got really close to death. It's a long story, but I started being able to see "otherworldly things" and caught a glimpse behind the veil. From the things I was able to directly observe I made the following conclusions.

1. Death is not the end. Our souls are eternal. After death you will effectively remain the same person you were in life (this was a big one for me because I've always been an athiest, so this came as a big shock to me)
2. Santa Clause isn't the only one watching you and deciding if you've been naughty or nice. There's something I call the illusion of privacy. For a long time it was hard for me to masturbate because I couldn't get used to the idea of "everyone watching". Now I just make sure to put on a good show.
3. What you do with the time you've been given in your physical body matters. I don't pretend to know how it all works, but the things you do in this life matter very much and you will have to live with the choices you make in this lifetime. I can't really elaborate beyond that, but I suggest you don't waste your time on this planet because the things you do here matter more than you could possibly realize. In a way I think you continue to relive the choices you made in your life long after your death.
 
You might be interested in quantum immortality. I'd suggest reading up on that. I find it fascinating and like u I believe there is something more to all this. Maybe wishful thinking as I don't believe in heaven and hell and whatnot but that we are all 1 with the universe and there is something of sorts after death
 
Anything that you think happens after death, including the way you describe it, is all just a story overlaying the truth. It's the same story that overlays the truth of your life.

I am this, my purpose is this, here's what *I think* happens next...

People who have the luxury of asking these questions don't understand that when death is near, you don't have the energy to entertain them. The only thing your body cares about when you're in critical condition is keeping your basic functions alive. So the first thing to go is your higher faculties. (I speak from experience.)

Once you enter that state, you become aware that all you are, is pure consciousness - unchanging, unending, unjudging. There's no past, no future, nothing beyond presence. The endless thoughts, narratives and stories to explain life and death don't exist in that state, they're gone. Our bodies are VERY stubborn and will grasp to life until the last possible second, but the conceptual mind is gone before that happens. You don't have to fully die to see that the speculative mind is part of a higher ordered brain and nothing more, and it is not maintained in critical states. You are born empty and you die empty - storyless. That might freak people out to hear, but don't worry, whether you are afraid of it or not, once you get to that state you are indifferent for the simple reason that you won't have the energy to worry about it. It's the ultimate letting go.

Stories are for the living... endless stories, from religion, to science, to rampant speculation. They all arise and dissolve within an egoic framework (and it too is constantly arising and dissolving) which is not present when all that's left is the omnipresent, basement level awareness. You are born as that awareness and you die as that awareness. Everything else accrued in between is sloughed off. What you conceive of as "you" does not survive, simply because it was never here in the first place. Its very nature is holographic and a product of mind. To put it another way -- your identity is the culmination of years of self-axiomatic stories. Without all those stories, who or what are you? That thing, that basic awareness, is all you are. Everything else is extraneous. Don't try so hard to answer the question, you'll get to see it first hand... unless of course you have an instant death, in which case you'll just get to the final statelessness without all the pesky waiting.

It's difficult to even contrive this discussion because in order to do so requires thought, and dualistic thought at that. Death vs. life, thought vs. emptiness, ego vs. present awareness, here vs. there. There's nowhere to go. There's no "over there" with death. If you can understand present awareness when you're alive then you'll understand what death is. When people go to sleep at night, they don't panic about losing themselves because they are reassured by the faith that they'll wake up tomorrow; but this doesn't negate that there's a period of time where they enter thoughtlessness. Death is kind of like that. You're not even aware that you're gone.

So really... all these stories and speculations, and all the things we do in life to prepare for death, are really just preparations for a point where we won't even remember.
 
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any idea about death that you have is just comfort for now imo.

i believe (since i also believe we create our reality) - that we create our own death. a DMT diamond if you will.

so that keeps me desensitized and relaxed for when that time comes.

religion plays the same role for most in which they all believe they will go to 'heaven'.

heaven is just an adjective for the death experience.

but my views are strongly based from DMT - i can go further in depth but i feel detachment from the ego is what death is.

as for our souls, being recycled.. well i sure hope that doesn't happen :\. i rather exist in a space where matter don't matter :D.
 
The problem with near-death experiences is that they are just that.. near death, not actual death. Neither do psychedelics take you to death either, though it is possible to go through a death experience.. which brings me to one of the points I would like to contribute to this thread and that is that the death and death experience/dying are not the same thing.

Also when we talk about death we tend to assume that everyone has the same experience or ends up in the same place/whatever you believe. If a person spends their entire life vegetating and doing nothing then I don't see how they can hope to be anything other than the fantasy they constructed for themselves during life. Brad Pitt probably thinks he's the shit and when he dies he will die with that thought/conception of who he is in his mind.. but unfortunately Brad Pitt is just a mirage, a construct.

Now realize that the overwhelming majority of people live like that, and that in all likely hood death for these people will be nothing.. oblivion. How can it be anything else when they've spent their entire life identified with something that isn't real. For those have begun to forge something of themselves beyond just instinctual life then perhaps they will enter a bardo or fantasy world when they die, see relatives and so forth.. which isn't anything more than trading one illusory world for the next, but it's a bit better than oblivion.

Two thing frighten me about death: 1) The possibility of having to come back to a world like this. 2) Everyone ending up in the same place.. I've had enough of most people in this life thanks.. I'll pass on Mormon heaven and just take oblivion if that is the case.
 
Well... I imagine that some of them are here with us if the total number of souls that have lived and passed is 100 billion some of them have been recycling for some time. There are certain theories out there that the we (as souls) choose when/if to come back, these theories also posit that time is much different on whatever plane of existence this may be.

But it's not like the exact number of souls has to be in circulation on earth or whatever... Also I think it's fair to argue that some inanimate and non human beings have souls as well.
 
Or you could also argue that souls are nothing more than the recycling of energy by the universe and what a living human experienced in this life counts for nothing once they die as their atoms are consumed by time
 
even as a believer of some kind of divine spark, i have to acknowledge that the majority of our individuality and personality is totally subject to our brains and bodies. when they die, if there is anything left at all, the remainder of what you are will be so unrecognisable as to be almost alien to what you are used to in this life.

One Thousand Words said:
So explain where the other 93 billion souls are
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recycling, and/or maybe some have attained nirvana. there are lots of possibilities when we talk about totally made up stuff.
 
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