What happens after death? - Page 4

GEE...I keep answering...but I don't see my rplies anywhere!!... (

wandering soul

quote:

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Don't think we'll EVER know!!

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That answer won't satisfy.

We know that death means in a physical term. It's the decay of the body.

But what about the other part of us? Call it the soul, spirit, whatever. What makes you YOU. What happens to that? Sometimes it disappears when you're body is still alive, in the case of those who become mentally disabled, or go into comas.

In order to understand what happens after death, we have to understand life and the spirit/soul within us better.

Realistically do you think we can ever figure out exactly what happens after death? It's a slot in my life I leave open. It's just something that no one can ever be even close to 100% accurate. Whenever I picture something in the future often I'm disappointed at the result. By staying open I'm not expecting anything.

To me, souls (if there is such a thing) and spirituality are merely physical thoughts/feelings. All thoughts/feelings only operate through a physical mechanism (the brain). Yes souls/spirituality may be part of our individual perceptual reality, they are purely physical (energy/matter frameworks). Once the body dies, all physicality shuts down. If the soul was able to interact physically with the body, or to view the world, it must have some physical structure and recording mechanism. The soul is merely a metaphor for one's inner self. Souls are not a useful or logical belief. Therefore when we die our reality dies.

I was reading through this thread and found wholly's quote about how snowflakes all have different forms and yet fall back to the sea only to realise they were water all along.

If we go to what we are first as with summit's base, is there such a thing as mind, body and soul? or are we just human beings. It really depends upon your view of it. Thats the point; are we human beings or just being humans? There is many answers science provides to the physical world but one it cannot ever route down to is why? This question perhaps we will never know, well in mortal time at least.

I think, however, there is possibly a life force which we are part of. This life force has intended for there to be life, materialism and classification-hence the perspective of relativism. But I think it was Aquinas who said if the hand does not move the stick, the stick will not move anything else. I dont think for one second we will carry on living as we are now. However, if there is essence and it feeds us then we must reduce to this. This means we could have reincarnation, but, though we may have memories of the past (though how I dont know-just a thought from hypnotic regressions), our mind and body would be such that we would be completely different. So if soul exists it is a life force with a endless resource of potential or intent. The question I know have for those that belive this is are souls individual or are they really just a one kind of essence which assumes individual characters of physical definition.

A mystic once pointed out to me that the human consciousness cannot imagine a time when it does not exist. It cannot imagine an existence other than that which it already knows, an identity besides that which it already possesses. The explanation for this was that each consciousness is contained within its own circle of time beyond which there is no existence. Time, for the mystic, does not exist beyond consciousness and, therefore, when we die we are reborn as who we are, in the same place, on the same date we were born the first time, living out our lives, and dying, over and over again, within our own small circle of eternity (which may explain experiences of deja vu). This is called eternal recurrence, what the mystic regards as the true form of what is often regarded as reincarnation. I think it's an interesting theory.

Interesting, yes. Whether it is true is open for debate; the possibilities are endless. And that I don't really feel this is true. When you subside a little through the material zone you begin to notice a field of pureness, a field of potential; what some people may call imagination. If this field exists then its a pretty dull for one to imagine its just a repeating cycle of finite time frames. I'd like to think that anything is possible.

Yes, if things eternally repreated themsleves like that, it would be a very dull existence, but hte theory of eternal recurrence does allow for the possibilities of change. It says that those who do not or cannot employ thier imaginations and creativity are like automatons destined to lives thier repeated lives in monotonous predetermined exitences. But since each moment contains infinite possibilities accessibile only through constant creative investigation into one's infinite thought processes and abilities, each person can actually "jump" into "new" lives possessing new directions and new possibilities each and every moment. I like that idea.

Then, according to the Eternal Reoccurrence, I might make a decision that kills me in one iteration of life and become maybe 30 years old, and then in the next iteration of life, choose not to do this and become 88 years old?

It is though an interesting theory!

But then, if we just continue in a cycle of the same life we had before, wouldn't there have to be some sort of linear chronological order of when people die? I mean, if I died tomorrow, and was born on my birthday again, wouldn't everyone who was alive the day that I die have to die as well, so that they could be who they are in my life again?

If the thoery was true then everyone would not have to die the second that you died. Your conciousness is only existant within itself. Your living your life within itself in a circle. Each consciousness is contained within its own circle of time beyond which there is no existence. So everythng (people,events,time itself) is only existent through your aknowledgment that it is there and real to you.

"But then, if we just continue in a cycle of the same life we had before, wouldn't there have to be some sort of linear chronological order of when people die? I mean, if I died tomorrow, and was born on my birthday again, wouldn't everyone who was alive the day that I die have to die as well, so that they could be who they are in my life again?"

No, because the people who lived throughout your life exist both the day you die and the day you are born. When you are born, these people have no knowledge of you, while after you die, they exist but you don't. I don't know if you understand my point?

If you draw a line on a piece of paper, and imagine that line to be the history of the universe, then you draw another line - a much shorter one though - somewhere on that line, and you imagine that little line to be the history of you. That line is all you can experience, because that is your time on earth. Other people have lines too, but their lines do not have to start and end exactly where your does.

That is my view. I really don't know if this idea is the right one, but it's funny to speculate a bit.

Ok, I get what you guys are saying, but then what about children who die in the womb, or at childbirth? Do they continue the same cycle? Or do their parents, because they live their life over and over again, find ways to fix whatever went wrong, and thus, giving birth to this child correctly the next time?

That is what I was trying to ask wizardslogic about above.

Maybe you have free will and can do things differently in the next iteration. It would be really sad if a person must do the same every time and live maybe only 10 years...

And, if we don't have free will, what do we need consciousness for then?

I do think we have free will, because, you know how everything that happens is supposed to "teach us a lesson"? Well, if we didn't have free will, what good would teaching us lessons be? We wouldn't be able to voluntarily implement them!