# Why assume we "go anywhere" when we die?



## RMQualtrough (Jun 12, 2021)

If all of reality is fundamentally one thing, then where "else" is there to go?

It is impossible to "come out" of it, or to "go back" to it because we are inside it and made of it... So always are and always were fundamentally it.

Consider: When only one thing exists (metaphorical God), there is no space to allow creation to be placed somewhere "else", so it must be created inside of itself. There is nothing "else" with which to craft something from, so it must be created of itself.

That fundamental reality is where we are right now...

Like when you dream at night, you are in a rich environment with sights, sounds, characters, yet the entire time you are actually lying in bed... Envision this reality as a larger scale dream. We see a universe around us, but are actually metaphorically asleep in a metaphorical bed. We have never left there. We are always there and always will be.


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## Calvin Coolidge (Jun 12, 2021)

"When only one thing exists..." has a series of assumptions built in. "...no space..." likewise. 

What you want is an immanent god. Most people believe in a transcendent god--one separate from creation.   If separate, there are or can be "places".


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## Analog Devolved (Jun 12, 2021)

Sounds like someone has been reading too much Spinoza.


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## RMQualtrough (Jun 12, 2021)

Calvin Coolidge said:


> "When only one thing exists..." has a series of assumptions built in. "...no space..." likewise.
> 
> What you want is an immanent god. Most people believe in a transcendent god--one separate from creation.   If separate, there are or can be "places".


Well the no-space applies to a fundamental creationist God too. The first cause.

Say it is the Christian God. It creates space and time, it exists outside those confines, so is existent prior to both space and time.

There is nowhere "else" to place something because Christian God is the only thing that exists. There is nothing "else" to make anything from because Christian God is the only thing that exists.

Christian God would only be able to begin creation inside itself and made of itself.

Unless you do not assign first cause to it and have it as a kind of Deist proposal.


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## Smolrolls (Jun 12, 2021)

Because there's something to look up, something to strive towards to, in this gay-clown world.

Because there's something down there to push us up to be our best selves should we fail or think of doing something stupid.

Because should we fail, well we got someone who'll forgive us and tell us to get back up, even if our families, friends, and the world think there's no helping us.


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## RMQualtrough (Jun 12, 2021)

Smolrolls said:


> Because there's something to look up to in this gay-clown world.
> 
> Because there's something down there to push us up to be our best selves should we fail or think of doing something stupid.
> 
> Because should we fail, well we got someone who'll forgive us and tell us to get back up, even if our families, friends, and the world think there's no helping us.


Well whatever the case, there's a possibility you don't have as much faith in yourself as you ought to. Without something down there, I'm sure you wouldn't suddenly rape and pillage.


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## Smolrolls (Jun 12, 2021)

RMQualtrough said:


> Well whatever the case, there's a possibility you don't have as much faith in yourself as you ought to. Without something down there, I'm sure you wouldn't suddenly rape and pillage.


I mean't there's a hell down there waiting for those that do and think about pillaging and raping.


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## Troonos (Jun 12, 2021)

Because the thought of eternal unconsciousness drives people insane.


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## WhoBusTank69 (Jun 12, 2021)

I suppose there's many angles on the "why" in regards to the desire for, not belief in, an afterlife.
Most people do not have a fulfilling life and wish for either a continuation or vast improvement of what they have, depending on the situation, which is unfortunately rooted in their inaction. There's always the want for salvation or the fear of eternal punishment, but it's largely based on selfish comforts as opposed to simply falling asleep for the last time.

As to if it exists or even can exist - I hope we never find out. It's the one thing that, potentially, cannot be "spoiled" for lack of a better term, in our unending search for knowledge.


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## RMQualtrough (Jun 12, 2021)

Troonos said:


> Because the thought of eternal unconsciousness drives people insane.


But fundamentally speaking, we are there right now. Like the thing about the dream and the bed. We never left nothingness, that is the place where our true nature resides.

If there is only one thing, you are not separate from it, you are it. For You (capital Y) to go anywhere (like non-existence) there would need to be something/somewhere "else" for you to go...

To be afraid of eternal unconsciousness you must misidentify your true nature.

E.g. the idea of no consciousness is kinda flawed on a few grounds. From the point of metaphorical-God, there is no time only Now. The book is already written so to speak, and time is merely a turning of the pages to give a an illusion of the creation and vanishing of a moment... You are conscious right now. Given no time exists at the absolute level (time is not first cause) you can see eternity as a point or block. This moment is eternally engraved onto this block. It never goes anywhere.

Second of all there is a flaw of assumption that your consciousness can end rather than just a localization of it... Imagine for a moment a dream of a beach, the very second you see the beach you are localized somewhere inside of it. This creates an appearance of duality with observed (the beach) and observer... When localization (so for example your brain and everything you) ends, you are as the term would suggest, no longer "local" but everywhere and everything. And like the beach dream, that means you are unable to experience anything.

There can be no experience of nonduality. As such when all localized experience vanishes like when we are given general anaesthesia, we simply "skip forward" in time. We never experience a gap or interruption of consciousness. To believe it is possible to actually experience non-existence is false, but we do like to envision a black nothing. That is not right, eternity would happen INSTANTLY, not even in the smallest measure of time available. Literally no-time. Instantaneous.

But in any case loss of this localized self does not mean what you fundamentally are loses consciousness. Your localization does of course. But you were only a thought, and many more localizations will appear.

What is "seeing through your eyes"? What is "hearing through your ears"? We say our brain or our self. But consider that it is in fact metaphorical-God. And you (the brain) are merely attached to the vessel through which this localized form of experience takes place.


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## Queen Elizabeth II (Jun 12, 2021)

Because most humans aren't capable of accepting a reality where their biologically programmed worst fears will come to pass regardless of whatever they do.

Mental illness and chronic depression has long been correlated with higher intelligence; even folk knowledge has recorded this for a while in expressions such as "Ignorance is bliss".

Most people need something to believe and to give them hope. Staving off one of the biggest fears, death, is near universal in appeal.

There are a few who don't, but that's more a question of strength of character than anything else.


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## Dom Cruise (Jun 12, 2021)

It makes zero sense if you ask me for your consciousness to just go "poof", the fact that you're thinking right now means it's not just going to disappear, it's impossible to imagine because it is impossible.

I think when we go to sleep and dream we're already visiting the afterlife, I had an uncle who died of a stroke in 2017, I've had him since visit me in dreams, I don't mean to "Chicken Soup For The Soul" this as he acted confused, like he didn't know what was going on, as I imagine someone who suddenly had a stroke out of the blue and went into a coma before brain death would feel, but these dreams felt real, like he was actually there, I myself was confused, not realizing I was dreaming, I was like "John (my uncle's name) we thought you were dead, what are you doing here?" he just showed up at my home out the blue acting confused and I was confused as well, it all felt so real, when I woke up I was half asleep and in that space between being asleep and awake I thought I heard his voice talking to me, though I couldn't make out what he was trying to say.

One day I'll join him in whatever the afterlife is I guess.

I think the true nature of reality is that it's a vast, endless sea, it's infinite, we could never even begin to comprehend it's depth, it's turtles all the way down as the saying goes but somewhere in that sea our minds go on forever.


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## RMQualtrough (Jun 12, 2021)

Dom Cruise said:


> It makes zero sense if you ask me for your consciousness to just go "poof", the fact that you're thinking right now means it's not just going to disappear, it's impossible to imagine because it is impossible.
> 
> I think when we go to sleep and dream we're already visiting the afterlife, I had an uncle who died of a stroke in 2017, I've had him since visit me in dreams, I don't mean to "Chicken Soup For The Soul" this as he acted confused, like he didn't know what was going on, as I imagine someone who suddenly had a stroke out of the blue and went into a coma before brain death would feel, but these dreams felt real, like he was actually there, I myself was confused, not realizing I was dreaming, I was like "John (my uncle's name) we thought you were dead, what are you doing here?" he just showed up at my home out the blue acting confused and I was confused as well, it all felt so real, when I woke up I was half asleep and in that space between being asleep and awake I thought I heard his voice talking to me, though I couldn't make out what he was trying to say.
> 
> ...


"Our minds" or just "Mind" I wonder...

What if your Uncle was just a concept, and where he is now is literally one with the same thing that is looking through your eyes at this screen?

When localization ends (e.g. your Uncle), there is nowhere "else" for him to go, because there is only one thing and that is where we all are right now as per the dream and bed.

Localization is required for experience, but we reside in nonduality. That irreducible singular thing is what is everything and what experiences everything. There is no you. You are in the same place your Uncle is in. You and your Uncle are God and that is what sees hears touches loves fears (etc) through your empty vessel.


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## Dom Cruise (Jun 12, 2021)

RMQualtrough said:


> "Our minds" or just "Mind" I wonder...
> 
> What if your Uncle was just a concept, and where he is now is literally one with the same thing that is looking through your eyes at this screen?
> 
> ...


This is definitely something I've thought about myself, that everything is actually just the same thing, I am God, you are are God, God is us, everything is the same thing, I am you, you are me.

This universe is just my dream, I am the center of the universe, but you are the center of the universe and I am just your dream.

As much as I miss the 2000s the atheists of the 2000s were the biggest fucking idiots, why wouldn't the nature of reality be some weird ass shit? Why wouldn't God be real? Why wouldn't the afterlife be real? Nothing in life is simple, to say nothing happens after we die is too simple.

Nothing is real, nothing makes sense, but everything is real regardless and everything makes sense, everything is one big paradox, we shouldn't be here but here we are.

"Is all that we see or seem, but a dream within a dream?"


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## Carlos Weston Chantor (Jun 12, 2021)

RMQualtrough said:


> If all of reality is fundamentally one thing, then where "else" is there to go?
> 
> It is impossible to "come out" of it, or to "go back" to it because we are inside it and made of it... So always are and always were fundamentally it.
> 
> ...


"all of reality is fundamentally one thing"

"only one thing exists"

These are primitive ontological assumptions created by streetshitters who were high on cow dung while they were coming up with this crap. In the modern era, only degenerate loser junkies like john lennon or joe rogan entertain concepts like that. Sophisticated and Aryan worldviews such as Christianity (or even their simplified versions, like Islam) do not share this primitive low IQ assumptions of "oneness of existence". Even if you insist on being a pretentious peepeepoopoo "philosopher" instead of reading the Bible like a normal person, a nigga named Nietzsche has thoroughly buck breaked this type of pseudo-deep streetshitter monism like 150 years ago


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## RMQualtrough (Jun 12, 2021)

Carlos Weston Chantor said:


> "all of reality is fundamentally one thing"
> 
> "only one thing exists"
> 
> These are primitive ontological assumptions created by streetshitters who were high on cow dung while they were coming up with this crap. In the modern era, only degenerate loser junkies like john lennon or joe rogan entertain concepts like that. Sophisticated and Aryan worldviews such as Christianity (or even their simplified versions, like Islam) do not share this primitive low IQ assumptions of "oneness of existence". Even if you insist on being a pretentious peepeepoopoo "philosopher" instead of reading the Bible like a normal person, a nigga named Nietzsche has thoroughly buck breaked this type of pseudo-deep streetshitter monism like 150 years ago


Two things being fundamental is twice as complicated as one thing being fundamental.

If your Bible God exists, does he not require consciousness in order to intelligently design something? If so, you are also positing the same thing as cow-dung-people do PLUS a literal being of some sort.

Nonduality is the opposite of primitive. All evolutionary traits force us to believe in self and other.


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## Honka Honka Burning Love (Jun 12, 2021)

Have you seen the jokes we make around here?

If we all don't go to hell when we die then I will be heavily disappointed. That is Unless God is a Kiwi..and if you are here God..then why haven't written the word Nigger above the white house using clouds.


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## Pruto (Jun 12, 2021)

People want hope even if it means believing in whatever.

COPE it's literally all we have in this cruel world.


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## Smolrolls (Jun 12, 2021)

Troonos said:


> Because the thought of eternal unconsciousness drives people insane.


You mean autism?


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## The Great Chandler (Jun 12, 2021)

RMQualtrough said:


> Well whatever the case, there's a possibility you don't have as much faith in yourself as you ought to.


Believing in a supportive God could also mean faith in yourself by an extension. If all others fail to give you the needed affirmations in life, you'd turn to God or whatever being of worship to give you the confidence and faith to move on. If the literal omnipotent being of whatever believes in you, then perhaps you should believe in yourself as well.


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## Cabelaz (Jun 12, 2021)

I think God will sit down with me when it's all over and we will smoke a stogie before I take a long, long nap.


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## Question Mark (Jun 12, 2021)

It's not that implausible that reincarnation exists in some form, if eternal recurrence is true. It's also possible that Closed Individualism is the wrong theory of personal identity, and that Empty Individualism and/or Open Individualism are true. The idea that death is nothingness sounds too damn good to be true.


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## RMQualtrough (Jun 13, 2021)

Question Mark said:


> It's not that implausible that reincarnation exists in some form, if eternal recurrence is true. It's also possible that Closed Individualism is the wrong theory of personal identity, and that Empty Individualism and/or Open Individualism are true. The idea that death is nothingness sounds too damn good to be true.
> 
> View attachment 2257384


Good post. I think life continues for a slightly different reasoning, but very similar essentially. Your model shown supposes an individual soul which comes back? But I believe there is no such thing as a self speaking in absolute terms.

The difference I guess being that I believe it's not "your" consciousness, so it is in all things at once. And consciousness as well as all reality resides in Nothing.


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## Madre Muerte (Jun 13, 2021)

Shut up heathen


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## Luminous47 (Jun 13, 2021)

People fear death, well at least some people fear death. What is after death feels "mysterious" in a way I guess.


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## RMQualtrough (Jun 13, 2021)

Madre Muerte said:


> Shut up heathen


Goddamn mobile won't let me select goddamn "Islamic Content". Fml...


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## RMQualtrough (Jun 13, 2021)

Luminous47 said:


> People fear death, well at least some people fear death. What is after death feels "mysterious" in a way I guess.


Yes. I am not immune. There is a chance that I can believe something, or for something to be logical, and yet still wrong.

It is truly an irrational fear. Because there is no experience of being dead at all. So it can't possibly be a bad thing at the time no matter the case...

But I don't think there is such a thing as death. We may say, oh David died, Sarah died, whatever. But where exactly can they go when everything is fundamentally one? Nothing can leave that One.

To say David died upon clinical death is like saying "David died" if David just goes blind. What I mean is, to lose sight completely (not even see black or w.e.), one localization of consciousness in the form of seeing has ended. Eyesight has died from that perspective. David still exists. But fundamentally I believe there IS no David. So when all elements of David die, the fundamental nature of what David always was remains. It always existed, always will... Just all localizations that we conceptualize as "David" has gone.

Another more accessible example which I probably ought to have used first... David's clinical death would be like saying David has died during a general anaesthetic procedure that he wakes from. During anaesthetic his localization has ended and subjectively he is everything (which is experienced from his PoV as nothing, a time gap)... The only reason we consider it different is because firstly we are observing physical vital signs rather than the subjective nothingness from his PoV, and secondly because he "comes back".

But back from what? What exactly comes back? The concept we label David comes back and the localized experience that comes with "David", the fundamental Absolute (label it God whatever you want) never went anywhere and never does, never will, never has...

That is the theory anyway.


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## RW 1995 (Jun 13, 2021)

it's just fear of the unknown. early humans may have thought 'when my friend leaves, he goes somewhere. so when he dies he must go somewhere then, too'


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## Calandrino (Jun 13, 2021)

Philosophical Zombie Chad here. Sure doesn't feel not great to have no subjective experiences whatsoever.

Check this out: ooooh lookit meee, I have so much consciousness, bleh bleh bleh.... that's what you faggots sound like, I can imitate you dipshits perfectly and by definition cannot be distinguished from a sentient being. Have fun pondering whether your gay-ass personal experience survives death qualiacucks lmaooooo


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## RMQualtrough (Jun 13, 2021)

shoplifter7 said:


> it's just fear of the unknown. early humans may have thought 'when my friend leaves, he goes somewhere. so when he dies he must go somewhere then, too'



I think partly, people cannot conceive of nothingness. On an instinctual level we think we somehow experience that infinity in literal nothingness and it's a feeling impossible to shake. I don't think that's the case as outlined, but that is really what people deep down fear.



Calandrino said:


> Philosophical Zombie Chad here. Sure doesn't feel not great to have no subjective experiences whatsoever.
> 
> Check this out: ooooh lookit meee, I have so much consciousness, bleh bleh bleh.... that's what you faggots sound like, I can imitate you dipshits perfectly and by definition cannot be distinguished from a sentient being. Have fun pondering whether your gay-ass personal experience survives death qualiacucks lmaooooo



I don't think there is any such thing as "amounts" of consciousness. That would require consciousness to be fundamentally more than a singular thing, so that each person could individually have some different amount.

Well actually the baseline is the same, we have the same "level" of consciousness as a bird or ant, only the contents of consciousness change.

I can absolutely prove this if anyone is  really interested to know why that is.


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## Maurice Caine (Jun 13, 2021)

It's like ram sticks really, you turn your computer off and whatever's in it is gone. Same with you, you're gone, man. You don't even need to kick it for it to happen, Alzheimer's does the trick.


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## RMQualtrough (Jun 13, 2021)

Maurice Caine said:


> It's like ram sticks really, you turn your computer off and whatever's in it is gone. Same with you, you're gone, man. You don't even need to kick it for it to happen, Alzheimer's does the trick.


Alzheimer's is a good example of the contents of consciousness changing dramatically although the consciousness itself remains the same and static. I would have to describe first why our consciousness is the same in nature to that of a beetle or cat etc if required.

But anyway there is an assumption that wherever we "go" is somewhere we currently aren't (as well as the idea that we exist beyond a sort of "vessel"). That is what I challenge. Very much like the dream and bed analogy I think I mentioned a few times, you can be riding a jet ski in the ocean in a dream, yet lying perfectly still in bed... Where do we truly reside? Does our fundamental nature really reside here in this universe? I would challenge that this universe is any more real than a more persistent dream with more persistent rules.

There is no doubt that we are localized in this "dream" and that altering the brain alters the content of consciousness. General anaesthetic being a dramatic example. But you could imagine that you go to sleep one night and have a 100 year long dream wherein there is matter and brains etc. And in that dream you are having, if it had rigid laws in place as does our waking reality, it could well be the case that removing a certain part of that dream-brain causes total vision loss within that dream so that you can no longer see your surroundings in that realm... These localized forms of consciousness can be wittled down and down and down until it is as basic as observer and observed (NO thought, no feeling, just white void and you). Any further and experience ceases like general anaesthetic because the appearance of duality is vital for experience to occur at the level of the self... I guess that is pretty self-evident, if there is no longer any part of you, how can what you call you have any experience?

But essentially I think we are just in another bed a layer deeper than this, a bed of nothingness. Nothingness which has to be everythingness by the fact that in nothingness there are no limits... If nothingness can ONLY be nothingness you are imposing a limit, you are making it finite, Boundary and limit does not exist here at absolute nothing. To be infinite and unlimited it must be able to be all things. Like having a magical hat you can pull unlimited things out of, eventually you pull space, time, matter, consciousness.

The idea of "nothing" is common in Eastern philosophy for sure, although a lot of times fundamental reality is described as "consciousness". I am not sure at present if that is what I think. I think consciousness may just be part of that nothing too.


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## Maurice Caine (Jun 13, 2021)

RMQualtrough said:


> Alzheimer's is a good example of the contents of consciousness changing dramatically although the consciousness itself remains the same and static. I would have to describe first why our consciousness is the same in nature to that of a beetle or cat etc if required.
> 
> But anyway there is an assumption that wherever we "go" is somewhere we currently aren't (as well as the idea that we exist beyond a sort of "vessel"). That is what I challenge. Very much like the dream and bed analogy I think I mentioned a few times, you can be riding a jet ski in the ocean in a dream, yet lying perfectly still in bed... Where do we truly reside? Does our fundamental nature really reside here in this universe? I would challenge that this universe is any more real than a more persistent dream with more persistent rules.
> 
> ...


Man, we're only gonna solve death when we can transition our brains to synthetic ones. Then all bets are off...


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## RMQualtrough (Jun 13, 2021)

Maurice Caine said:


> Man, we're only gonna solve death when we can transition our brains to synthetic ones. Then all bets are off...


But how would it possible for robo-us to know if it truly is the same "us", or just a replica with all of our memories? That might be a bridge that can't be crossed.


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## Maurice Caine (Jun 13, 2021)

RMQualtrough said:


> But how would it possible for robo-us to know if it truly is the same "us", or just a replica with all of our memories? That might be a bridge that can't be crossed.


There's some theory on how you slowly replace your neurons for fake ones or something like that, kinda like how we shed our skin. I mean, is the you from last year the same you now? I'd argue so... I think it's something similar.


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## ArnoldPalmer (Jun 13, 2021)

The fact that I am able to take in and engage with my environment from a unique perspective that only I have, and can even leave the corporeal realm if I get knocked unconscious, go to sleep, take hallucinatory substances, or even die and be revived, seem to imply that there's something about consciousness that isn't a simple component of the environment. My brain's electrical impulses creating my id, ego, superego, and phaneron, do not account for why "I" am here to observe all of this. A being could go about its entire life interacting with its environment, without ever needing a "helmsman", in a first-person perspective. Every last one of us could have been NPCs, to a very much identical end result. There is a component to consciousness that cannot be rationalized, measured, or logic'd away, something beyond the mere interactions and understanding of our environment that we all know is there, but can't even put into proper terms. The term consciousness itself doesn't even do a good job of explaining it. You can call it a soul, but a soul in the conventional sense implies being a part of your experiences, and I'm not sure if that's 100% true, either. I find it hard to believe that a mass of biological material moving around and spreading fluids all over the planet needs to be convinced that its experiences are important in order for it to keep doing its job. We have something rocks, dirt, water, air, and space don't have. The fact that all that shit came together and produced me, may very well be true, but I don't think I am purely material, because it isn't logical for me to be able to experience my existence on so disturbingly deep a level, given just our material makeup. For that reason, I have some faith in the concept of "soul", even though the concept itself isn't articulated well.

I don't have an answer for you, but I have a lot of fucking questions regarding the subject that there are no words for. There are real, rock solid, mental blockades in place keeping us from understanding exactly what consciousness is. It is an observable individually subjective phenomenon, but outside of that information, we have no measuring stick for it at all.


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## Haim Arlosoroff (Jun 13, 2021)

RMQualtrough said:


> If all of reality is fundamentally one thing, then where "else" is there to go?


Have we condensed all of reality into one interpretation of quantum physics yet?  Some of them are fantastical and yet a valid hypothesis for how the system is working because of how few of the facts we truly have about our world.  The sky is not the firmament, the earth is not flat, and reality is not just what we immediately see.  Dark matter and Dark Energy exist, and we cannot properly categorize them because of our lack of knowledge.

The answer is "I don't know" and a lot of the time "I'm afraid of death, so maybe.." but the answer is unknown and that is the only thing I can rationally tell you.  Except maybe more about the questioners and the nature of psychology, obviously that is strongly related because of the unknown variables in life and our need to answer them anyway.


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## RMQualtrough (Jun 13, 2021)

Haim Arlosoroff said:


> Have we condensed all of reality into one interpretation of quantum physics yet?  Some of them are fantastical and yet a valid hypothesis for how the system is working because of how few of the facts we truly have about our world.  The sky is not the firmament, the earth is not flat, and reality is not just what we immediately see.  Dark matter and Dark Energy exist, and we cannot properly categorize them because of our lack of knowledge.
> 
> The answer is "I don't know" and a lot of the time "I'm afraid of death, so maybe.." but the answer is unknown and that is the only thing I can rationally tell you.  Except maybe more about the questioners and the nature of psychology, obviously that is strongly related because of the unknown variables in life and our need to answer them anyway.


I read someone say a paper was published very recently stating dark matter doesn't exist. I have not Googled it myself so might be BS.


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## Disappointed Kenny (Jun 13, 2021)

Man, I hope there's nothing when I'm dead. I'm tired of all the shit I deal with in life already and I'm not even middle-aged yet. Be a nice fucking break if I don't have to do anything when I'm dead.


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## Manah (Jun 14, 2021)

Basically all of human culture has developed to cope with fear of death. That includes religion.


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## Haim Arlosoroff (Jun 14, 2021)

RMQualtrough said:


> I read someone say a paper was published very recently stating dark matter doesn't exist. I have not Googled it myself so might be BS.


No it doesn't exist, what exists is that the arms of spiral galaxies rotate around their galactic center and the luminosity of a spiral galaxy decreases as one goes from the center to the outskirts. So if luminous mass were all the matter, then we can model the galaxy as a point mass in the center and test masses orbiting around it, similar to the Solar System. From Kepler's Second Law, it is expected that the rotational velocities would decrease with distance from the center, similar to the Solar System. Fundamentally what exists is that this is not observed. Instead, the galaxy rotation curve remains flat as distance from the center increases.  So, knowing little about gravity, we say there must be additional matter there to account for the rotational energy.  However because we cannot see it, we called it 'Dark Matter'.

Honestly its just a theory, I was referencing that we cannot account for how the universe works at very large or very small levels.  Its wild how little we know about the human brain, the cosmos, and the fundamental forces and energy which make those up.  And Yet, we ask the big questions and expect to receive a meaningful answer which isn't just some kind of metaphysical woo-woo.  We cannot even put the questions into the right box of brain, cosmos, or quantum yet.  We look to our brain to tell us about the smallest fundamentals, we look to the smallest fundamentals to tell us about the universe (dark matter and energy), and we look to the universe to tell us about our brain when it dies.


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## Lichen Bark (Jun 16, 2021)

Maurice Caine said:


> It's like ram sticks really, you turn your computer off and whatever's in it is gone. Same with you, you're gone, man. You don't even need to kick it for it to happen, Alzheimer's does the trick.


I interpreted this as not the Alzheimer's removing consciousness, but it is removing the personality. Eventually you forget how to eat/breathe. You can still experience nice sensations though. Alzheimer's is sort of like regressing to a baby, in that you are helpless, and can no longer do anything. How conscious is a baby? I have no memory of my infancy, was I conscious? Does being conscious make me, me? 

Where's the value in being conscious, if your individual personality is gone? If we lose all of our experiences on death, where is the value, what can be learned?



RMQualtrough said:


> I would have to describe first why our consciousness is the same in nature to that of a
> beetle or cat etc if required.


Yes, go on, I find this thread interesting, a bit over my head, but interesting.


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## RMQualtrough (Jun 17, 2021)

Lichen Bark said:


> Yes, go on, I find this thread interesting, a bit over my head, but interesting.


Well to put it simply, awareness has one property, it is aware of things.

All experience requires two components to exist: ExperienceD and ExperienceR. You cannot separate the two from each other or there is no experience.

So when investigating what consciousness is, there is the directive in many ideologies: "Not This, Not That" (Neti-Neti), which is because the moment you think of an object or concept or thought, it is on the experienceD side of the coin. Even when saying "I", the I is a thought and something has to experience that thought.

When stripped of all components but the raw fact of consciousness, we can imagine for a moment that consciousness is inside the brain and that both you and a bird have it. Now if I took your consciousness (devoid of the content - that is, the observed) and switched it with the consciousness of a bird what would happen?

There may be an instinctive thought that for example you would be like "woah wtf I'm a bird now?!" but in actual fact, you could not know that you had ever been anything OTHER than the bird, you would know nothing of your human life, personality, or behavior. You would for all intents and purposes literally BE that bird. And conversely the bird would then literally BE you.

In fact if I had just swapped a bird consciousness for yours right now by magic, you (originally the bird) could not possibly know or realize it since that "I" now experiences the human brain.


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## Large (Jun 17, 2021)

RMQualtrough said:


> If all of reality is fundamentally one thing, then where "else" is there to go?
> 
> It is impossible to "come out" of it, or to "go back" to it because we are inside it and made of it... So always are and always were fundamentally it.
> 
> ...


Nothing exists.
Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it.
Even if something could be known about it, knowledge about it cannot be communicated to others.


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## L50LasPak (Jun 17, 2021)

The older I get the more I lean towards the theory that consciousness is just an illusion of our perceptions and not anything particularly special. The hardcore atheistic point of view has always been that we're just a bag of meat capable of perpetuating electricity, which seems almost like an  unfair exaggeration. Until you realize that so far medical science has shown, well, pretty much that we're just a bag of meat capable of perpetuating electricity. It seems like as you examine the human condition further and further you eventually just turn up nothing but increasingly inconvienient flaws.

I believe in very few paranormal things, and those that I do believe in don't seem to form any kind of coherent pattern or line up in any particular way with other people's beliefs. Which to me suggests it really is just a matter of what you're exposed to growing up.

The world we live in does not reflect in any recognizable way the possibility that there may be an afterlife. The only thing you really have to support that point of view is someone else's word for it, and I consider that sort of thing to be quite unreliable.


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## RMQualtrough (Jun 17, 2021)

L50LasPak said:


> The older I get the more I lean towards the theory that consciousness is just an illusion of our perceptions and not anything particularly special. The hardcore atheistic point of view has always been that we're just a bag of meat capable of perpetuating electricity, which seems almost like an  unfair exaggeration. Until you realize that so far medical science has shown, well, pretty much that we're just a bag of meat capable of perpetuating electricity. It seems like as you examine the human condition further and further you eventually just turn up nothing but increasingly inconvienient flaws.
> 
> I believe in very few paranormal things, and those that I do believe in don't seem to form any kind of coherent pattern or line up in any particular way with other people's beliefs. Which to me suggests it really is just a matter of what you're exposed to growing up.
> 
> The world we live in does not reflect in any recognizable way the possibility that there may be an afterlife. The only thing you really have to support that point of view is someone else's word for it, and I consider that sort of thing to be quite unreliable.


Consciousness is something the Absolute does, I think. The Absolute being Nothingness fundamentally.

"As Shankara would say, we can never pinpoint what Brahman is as an object, for to assign labels to it, even ones as slippery as ‘awareness’ or ‘emptiness’, is to limit it. We cannot even say something as trite as, “Brahman simply is,” for that circumscribes Brahman inside of the notion of ‘being’, which naturally invites its opposite, ‘non-being.’ And as seen above, Nisargadatta completely eradicates the possibility that Brahman is ‘being.’ Meister Eckhart resolves this, as best as one can within language, by saying that “God is Nothing.”"

This idea is pretty critical to a lot of Buddhist tradition, and the Tao symbol (the black and white Yin and Yang disc thing) is made to represent this. If you made all of the white black, you would no longer see the little white circle in the black. The idea is that rather than saying something must come from something, it is like something and nothing are two sides of the same coin.

The Nothing side is considered more important to our true nature.


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## ToroidalBoat (Jun 17, 2021)

The "New Church" explanation is that there's a spiritual mind and a natural mind, and it's the latter that dies at death. Maybe it's simpler to imagine that God just revives someone who dies in the next life.

If there's no afterlife at all, that's definitely still better than burning in hell forever, reincarnating, or living a shitty life over and over and over because of "eternal recurrence". At least with no afterlife, one isn't around to experience the lack of experience. But it would still suck if this shitty world of decay and suffering is all there is to existence. Especially if one lives a shitty life.


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## RMQualtrough (Jun 17, 2021)

ToroidalBoat said:


> The "New Church" explanation is that there's a spiritual mind and a natural mind, and it's the latter that dies at death. Maybe it's simpler to imagine that God just revives someone who dies in the next life.
> 
> If there's no afterlife at all, that's definitely still better than burning in hell forever, reincarnating, or living a shitty life over and over and over because of "eternal recurrence". At least with no afterlife, one isn't around to experience the lack of experience. But it would still suck if this shitty world of decay and suffering is all there is to existence. Especially if one lives a shitty life.


If you search inwards you will find there is no you even while alive and conscious.

Unfortunately from the point of view of any existence outside of time, every experience you have ever had exists in an eternal now.

The passage of time is illusory, just a manifestation of infinite nothingness.


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## draggs (Jun 17, 2021)

Why assume that we dont 


L50LasPak said:


> The older I get the more I lean towards the theory that consciousness is just an illusion of our perceptions and not anything particularly special. The hardcore atheistic point of view has always been that we're just a bag of meat capable of perpetuating electricity, which seems almost like an  unfair exaggeration. Until you realize that so far medical science has shown, well, pretty much that we're just a bag of meat capable of perpetuating electricity. It seems like as you examine the human condition further and further you eventually just turn up nothing but increasingly inconvienient flaws.
> 
> I believe in very few paranormal things, and those that I do believe in don't seem to form any kind of coherent pattern or line up in any particular way with other people's beliefs. Which to me suggests it really is just a matter of what you're exposed to growing up.
> 
> The world we live in does not reflect in any recognizable way the possibility that there may be an afterlife. The only thing you really have to support that point of view is someone else's word for it, and I consider that sort of thing to be quite unreliable.


This is incoherent and so much cope


RMQualtrough said:


> If you search inwards you will find there is no you even while alive and conscious.
> 
> Unfortunately from the point of view of any existence outside of time, every experience you have ever had exists in an eternal now.
> 
> The passage of time is illusory, just a manifestation of infinite nothingness.


How very Zen


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## L50LasPak (Jun 17, 2021)

RMQualtrough said:


> Consciousness is something the Absolute does, I think. The Absolute being Nothingness fundamentally.
> 
> "As Shankara would say, we can never pinpoint what Brahman is as an object, for to assign labels to it, even ones as slippery as ‘awareness’ or ‘emptiness’, is to limit it. We cannot even say something as trite as, “Brahman simply is,” for that circumscribes Brahman inside of the notion of ‘being’, which naturally invites its opposite, ‘non-being.’ And as seen above, Nisargadatta completely eradicates the possibility that Brahman is ‘being.’ Meister Eckhart resolves this, as best as one can within language, by saying that “God is Nothing.”"
> 
> ...


I'm afriad I've genuinely never been able to understand this mythologizing of nothingness. Its kind of like that old phrase "When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you" but like, when you actually do it, nothing of the sort happens. There's just still nothing there. I've always written this up as just a trick of the mind as a result.



draggs said:


> This is incoherent and so much cope


Its rather the opposite.


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## RMQualtrough (Jun 17, 2021)

L50LasPak said:


> I'm afriad I've genuinely never been able to understand this mythologizing of nothingness. Its kind of like that old phrase "When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back into you" but like, when you actually do it, nothing of the sort happens. There's just still nothing there. I've always written this up as just a trick of the mind as a result.
> 
> 
> Its rather the opposite.


If something comes from something you just create an infinite regress of mechanistic causes. If the base is nothing, there is no regress.

Nothing and something are considered two sides of one coin, rather than separate things. Something is the manifestation of the unmanifest. Because the unmanifest cannot have limit or boundary lest you create a "something" (because any laws of logic etc are a something), it can be an anything.


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## L50LasPak (Jun 17, 2021)

RMQualtrough said:


> If something comes from something you just create an infinite regress of mechanistic causes. If the base is nothing, there is no regress.
> 
> Nothing and something are considered two sides of one coin, rather than separate things. Something is the manifestation of the unmanifest. Because the unmanifest cannot have limit or boundary lest you create a "something" (because any laws of logic etc are a something), it can be an everythingness.


Its more likely that there an inbetween or transitional state of reality in which nothing becomes something, but in my opinion it so greatly resembles nothing and is so far beyond the human ability to interact with it that it might as well not exist.


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## Captain Syrup (Jun 17, 2021)

L50LasPak said:


> I'm afriad I've genuinely never been able to understand this mythologizing of nothingness.


The disadvantage of a human brain.  Self-awareness. The ability to sit and contemplate our insignificance in the vastness of the universe. 

If you think about it, mortality can drive people to do crazy things.


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## Lichen Bark (Jun 17, 2021)

L50LasPak said:


> The only thing you really have to support that point of view is someone else's word for it, and I consider that sort of thing to be quite unreliable.








RMQualtrough said:


> This idea is pretty critical to a lot of Buddhist tradition, and the Tao symbol (the black and white Yin and Yang disc thing) is made to represent this. If you made all of the white black, you would no longer see the little white circle in the black. The idea is that rather than saying something must come from something, it is like something and nothing are two sides of the same coin.
> 
> The Nothing side is considered more important to our true nature.


 I didn't know that about the symbol. When you say "the Nothing side is considered more important to our true nature" can you elaborate on that? It's a value statement, but I am just trying to understand what is valued?


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## RMQualtrough (Jun 17, 2021)

Lichen Bark said:


> View attachment 2270524
> 
> I didn't know that about the symbol. When you say "the Nothing side is considered more important to our true nature" can you elaborate on that? It's a value statement, but I am just trying to understand what is valued?


Yes, in Taoist metaphysics things can't exist as form without a counterpart. E.g. we see the peaks of waves because there are valleys. If the water was always the height of peaks throughout as a constant, there would be no peak at all. It would all be level.

For a shape to appear like, say, a circular object in void space, there must be that void to act as a contrast. If the entire void were the circle then there would be no form of circle. Which can be shown in the design of the Yin Yang symbol if you MS Paint all the white to black and see how the teardrop shapes vanish.

So when we talk Consciousness, we talk about something that requires both experiencer and experienced. The two sides can't be taken apart because they come as a unit.

In conscious experience, the something is the object, and therefore there is subject. But if you investigate subject deep enough you will find there isn't truly anything "there". Because it is independent of ANY thought...

So for example, the moment you say the word "I" you've already lost it, because it immediately goes and hides behind that thought of "I" - because see, the word "I" is a thought and for a thought to happen there must be a thinker!

The thoughts, emotions, etc, are the form appearing by contrast to the formless. The formless is what is observing them.


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## Sopressata (Jun 18, 2021)

I don't have a lot to add to this but I just wanted to say that there have been a handful of times in my life when I have been in the middle of doing something or in a particular place where I have absolutely never been and it hits me like a ton of bricks that I have done that exact same thing at a point in time or I have actually been in that place at a point in time but not in this lifetime. It has happened a few times when I've actually been in a car driving in places where I've never been and I knew how to get some place without looking at a map or using a GPS, the roads were extremely familiar to me and it was as if I was on some autopilot while driving. It's an extremely strange feeling that overcomes me where I will slowly realize wait a minute, I've done this exact thing before, even though in my current Consciousness I know I never have.. Or I've been here even though I've never been in that particular place. It has also happened to me a couple of times with particular people. I know we have never met, but I have an overwhelming feeling that I know the person. It's events like this that make me realize there is way more going on here than surface-level things. It feels like one long continuous existence with periods where the curtain comes down and then it goes up again.

Also, I work in healthcare with the elderly and I have formed a lot of close relationships with people who have passed away. There have been so many times over the years when something striking will happen that I can't deny that makes me realize everything is connected and the connections really don't end. Last summer at 9 on a Tuesday evening my cell phone started acting up. It started beeping and it gave me a message that said delete large files, some features will not work due to space or something like that. All of a sudden A video popped up of someone I was close to, it was a video I filmed of her singing. I thought nothing of it. A week later I was speaking to someone and this person came up in conversation and I related the story of what happened with my phone. It turned out that individual died at 9 that Tuesday night. Exactly the time when she popped up singing on my phone. These sort of happenings are not coincidence. It always makes me wonder what is happening on a deeper level.


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## cuddle striker (Jun 18, 2021)

I don't know if people go "somewhere else", but I can confidently say they are not inside their dead bodies.


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## Un Platano (Jun 18, 2021)

Sopressata said:


> don't have a lot to add to this but I just wanted to say that there have been a handful of times in my life when I have been in the middle of doing something or in a particular place where I have absolutely never been and it hits me like a ton of bricks that I have done that exact same thing at a point in time or I have actually been in that place at a point in time but not in this lifetime. It has happened a few times when I've actually been in a car driving in places where I've never been and I knew how to get some place without looking at a map or using a GPS, the roads were extremely familiar to me and it was as if I was on some autopilot while driving


Everyone gets deja vu and it's not a special phenomenon. The best way to think of it is that it's a glitch in your brain that causes the things you're seeing right now to be immediately sent to the part of your brain that remembers things. Your brain sees a duplicate of what you're experiencing and believes the duplicate is a past experience.
As for finding things easily despite having never been there, that's what city planning is good for. I don't know how you would have a destination in mind without already having a general idea of where it is beforehand.


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## Lunar Eclipse Paradox (Jun 18, 2021)

It's been said that heaven and hell are in a different realm where different rules apply. Kind of a 4th dimension-ish explanation from what I have been told, like one person's point of view could transition through them. Heaven presents itself as a realm of preservation and hell represents itself as eternal torture which could correspond well in a mindset of a person through changing times where the things that used to be there are no longer there while the new things tend to be a burden on someone.


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## Seventh Star (Jun 18, 2021)

Paraphrasing Bertrand Russell, if there is no afterlife, there's no reason to commit good deeds, since acts have no real permanence or meaning to them, we will be reduced to dust eventually. If there is an afterlife, acts have a meaning, and there's a reason to be good in the world. No matter what happens, there isn't a real choice in "believing" or "not believing" that you go somewhere when you die, you'll always believe in it, consciously or subconsciously.


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## Lichen Bark (Jun 20, 2021)

RMQualtrough said:


> But in any case loss of this localized self does not mean what you fundamentally are loses consciousness. Your localization does of course. But you were only a thought, and many more localizations will appear.


The only way I can experience something like this is during a dream. In a dream you might be many different things, or even some kind of creature, but one thing that I always experience is the feeling of accepting my current situation. There is a certain amount of basic infomation about the setting I just know, and I just snap into acceptance and start doing whatever it is I am supposed to be doing in the dream. Like if I was an italian pizza maker, in the dream I would feel like I have _always_ been this italian pizza maker. 

It's rather bizzare, but in the dream I don't miss being lichen bark, I am the pizza maker. I'm not sure how I feel about not missing my other "self."


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## Justin d Tipp (Jun 22, 2021)

Death is a combines all of the things humans fear most:

Permanent, irreversible change that forces you to confront what you are unable to fully perceive or even comprehend.

The infinite and the unknown.


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## Merried Senior Comic (Jun 28, 2021)

Remember the 13.5 billion years before you were born? It's probably something like that.


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## RMQualtrough (Jul 2, 2021)

Merried Senior Comic said:


> Remember the 13.5 billion years before you were born? It's probably something like that.


For my finite self yes. For my finite self it is infinite non-experience, but that is not so important because the infinite aspect that I am a part of cannot die. Life ending is just like a TV show you enjoy ending or something... There are other TV shows.


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## totallyrandomusername (Jul 2, 2021)

I never understood why people need to have there be something after death. I find the thought that after I suicide bomb that orphanage I just stop existing and my physical self will just rot very comforting. I consider the eternal peace of nothingness our reward for having to live our lives with so many assholes while we exist as a discreet, conscious, self-aware organism.


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## Lemmingwise (Jul 2, 2021)

Troonos said:


> Because the thought of eternal unconsciousness drives people insane.


I know it's the case. But I never understood why? I find the idea of eternal unconsciousness as comforting as divine reward for a life well lived.

It's not like I yearn for it, the unpredictability of life is exhilerating. But fearing it? Never understood it. I guess everyone has their own fears and they're not particularly rational.


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## RMQualtrough (Jul 3, 2021)

Lemmingwise said:


> I know it's the case. But I never understood why? I find the idea of eternal unconsciousness as comforting as divine reward for a life well lived.
> 
> It's not like I yearn for it, the unpredictability of life is exhilerating. But fearing it? Never understood it. I guess everyone has their own fears and they're not particularly rational.


Infinity is frightening for a human. But I don't believe there is such a thing as unconsciousness, only a cessation of experience from the point of view of a finite self...

I could ask you to imagine yourself in nothing. You probably picture a black void, no thoughts, no emotions, just the awareness of a black void. And then I say, take away the black and the void. What is left? If you say anything else remains that you are conscious of, take that away.

See the experience of that would be exactly like general anaesthetic, and could be achieved without touching the magical conscious-generating part of the brain theorized to exist.

For when there is no observed, there is no observer...

So then. When your body dies or w.e. of course that body no longer experiences anything. Has consciousness itself ended though? Because if it has, ask yourself what it is that is attending your funeral.

See the problem is: I do not believe brains generate consciousness itself. I think brains are something consciousness manifests as. I am you and you are me. I am not brain-you and brain-you is not brain-me. But God-you and God-me (what we mean when we say "I am conscious"; the pure thing itself) are not two different things. It is just God. Everything is God.


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## Kujo Jotaro (Jul 6, 2021)

I feel like this type of question inevitably spirals back to "why is there something instead of nothing", there is not proof that all of reality is a single unity. We could be experiencing multiple realities at once, the human brain and its senses have been proven time and time again unable to accurately depict the world around us. Personally I believe there is something after death, you can call it a cope if you like but I believe in the soul and its immortality. I don't think unending unconsciousness is all that terrifying a prospect, it's merely a dreamless sleep something people experience all the time. I'm unsure what happens after death as all people are, perhaps we reincarnate, maybe there is a judge who decides if you go to heaven or hell, maybe we're transported to a different reality entirely, maybe none of these are true. Ultimately you shouldn't be wasting your time with questions like these you'll drive yourself mad, just lead a good life whatever that means to you and accept death with grace. Don't go out whimpering and pleading for another day, accept that everything comes to an end.


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## Fek (Jul 6, 2021)

Carlos Weston Chantor said:


> "all of reality is fundamentally one thing"
> 
> "only one thing exists"
> 
> These are primitive ontological assumptions created by streetshitters who were high on cow dung while they were coming up with this crap. In the modern era, only degenerate loser junkies like john lennon or joe rogan entertain concepts like that. Sophisticated and Aryan worldviews such as Christianity (or even their simplified versions, like Islam) do not share this primitive low IQ assumptions of "oneness of existence". Even if you insist on being a pretentious peepeepoopoo "philosopher" instead of reading the Bible like a normal person, a nigga named Nietzsche has thoroughly buck breaked this type of pseudo-deep streetshitter monism like 150 years ago


One of the only posts worth a damn in this entire thread, and people are mad at it. Seems about right.

_"Have I then become your enemy by telling you the truth?"_


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## Absurdist Laughter (Jul 6, 2021)

Because it is easier on a human to believe that all their work, all their relationships, all their wealth, and all their spirtuality amounts to something when in reality, it doesn't.


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## Lord of the Large Pants (Jul 6, 2021)

Consciousness is fucking weird. Although it may depend on physical material and interactions (at least for life as we know it,), it doesn't seem to be reducible to physics in any coherent way. So I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to think that there's more to us than our bodies, and some non-physical part of us might continue to exist after the physical part dies.

It's probably worth mentioning that many religions (especially the most ancient ones) DON'T have any concept of an afterlife, or at least not a very happy one. That seems to be a relatively recent fixation. Not a recent invention necessarily, but even most older religions that believed in an afterlife didn't obsess about it the way we do.

But even if you believe in life after death, I think it's rather naive to believe that humans are INHERENTLY immortal. Humans, as far as we can tell, are finite. It would take an act of God for it to be otherwise. Will that happen? Well... depends what you believe about God.


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## RMQualtrough (Jul 7, 2021)

Kujo Jotaro said:


> I feel like this type of question inevitably spirals back to "why is there something instead of nothing", there is not proof that all of reality is a single unity. We could be experiencing multiple realities at once, the human brain and its senses have been proven time and time again unable to accurately depict the world around us. Personally I believe there is something after death, you can call it a cope if you like but I believe in the soul and its immortality. I don't think unending unconsciousness is all that terrifying a prospect, it's merely a dreamless sleep something people experience all the time. I'm unsure what happens after death as all people are, perhaps we reincarnate, maybe there is a judge who decides if you go to heaven or hell, maybe we're transported to a different reality entirely, maybe none of these are true. Ultimately you shouldn't be wasting your time with questions like these you'll drive yourself mad, just lead a good life whatever that means to you and accept death with grace. Don't go out whimpering and pleading for another day, accept that everything comes to an end.


"Why is there anything rather than nothing" is basically the entire foundation of Taoism since it turns that on its head and explains everything is fundamentally nothing. Nothing+something being two sides, but one coin.

In my personal experience the truth is found before rational thought takes place. It is in pure being. Pure being itself can't be wrong, which is why if I said "you don't exist" you'd instantaneously be able to ascertain that is moronic. How? You could have done this without some oldass ancient figure inventing "cogito ergo sum". So why and how is that?

Because that pure being precedes all belief, thought, concept, and ideas. "Stupidity" is something done by thoughts. "Belief" is something done by thoughts. Pure being precedes thought and itself cannot inherently be a belief as a result. Only what is applied TO it by thought can be belief (or "faith").

If you answer all questions precisely as you can verify as fact by direct experience, in the same way as you can verify you exist, you will find what is real.

Initially things appear to be solipsism. It isn't. Space and matter are not things you know by direct experience. Example: If you had no senses whatsoever would you know of a space or matter? No touch to even feel your own body. Your direct experience is not that you move through space or that you see matter, but that the EXPERIENCE of sight and EXPERIENCE of the sensation of movement is taking place. That is your direct experience. "Other people" as such only seem separated by space which you have never verified is there independently of mind, only perceived in awareness. No space = no here or there = no separation.

In your direct verifiable experience you have never experienced any time when you have not existed, you have never existed in any moment but the present (memories of the past are recalled and experienced in the present moment where you always are), you have never known more than one mind.

_Consider that these seem close to ideas found in nonduality. The facts of pure being align. It claims:_

1) Your true self (the pure "beingness") has never not existed because it is all things. Your own self (thoughts, emotions, identity) is an appearance which happens IN the pure being that is awareness... That pure beingness, it was never born and never dies(/died).

2) There is only one mind with no spatial dimension that encompasses all reality including all people such as you and others (not solipsism from the relative level, think of it as "God's mind" with our selves being limited parts OF that).

3) The only true time is the now. The passage of time happens inside awareness.

...

So you see the similarity. It requires both deconstruction of thought and assumed belief to get as close to a state of pure being-ness as possible.


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