Why assume we "go anywhere" when we die?

[Lichen Bark]

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?

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.

 

[RMQualtrough]

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.

 

[Large]

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.

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.

 

[L50LasPak]

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.

 

[RMQualtrough]

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.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

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.

 

[RMQualtrough]

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.

 

[draggs]

Why assume that we dont

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

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

 

[L50LasPak]

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.

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.

This is incoherent and so much cope

Its rather the opposite.

 

[RMQualtrough]

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.

 

[L50LasPak]

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.

 

[Captain Syrup]

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.

 

[Lichen Bark]

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 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?

 

[RMQualtrough]

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.

 

[Sopressata]

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.

 

[cuddle striker]

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

 

[Un Platano]

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.

 

[Alex Hogendorp]

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.

 

[Seventh Star]

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.

 

[Lichen Bark]

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."