What does it mean to cease to exist?

a reply to: neoholographic

You're the one with strong faith. There's no scientific evidence that anyone ceases to exist when they die.

There is plenty of evidence that shows what happens to us after death. Ever been to a funeral? You could also go to a cadaver farm and watch the decomposition with your own two eyes.

originally posted by: ArchangelOger
Blue Shift - Just a quick question. You were never declared clinically dead in medical terms, correct?

No, I was never declared clinically dead. But that just goes to the point. I didn't even have to be dead to "experience" the nothingness. All I had to do was to lose my perceptions and memory. My simple physical brain wasn't working. The same kind of thing that happens when you're dead. But I was still alive, and my brain eventually started working again the way it's supposed to.

Of course, there are all kinds of stories from people who have perhaps technically "died" about an afterlife or floating around or whatever. But you know what these people all have in common? They didn't stay dead, just like I didn't stay unconscious. So we don't know for sure what happened with these folks, or when they had their dreams or visions. The thing is, you need still to have a functioning brain and memory to process reality and sense the illusion of time passing. Had I not regained by ability to perceive and remember things, or had I actually been dead, my unconscious, timeless state would have lasted more than the four hours I lost and just continued forever. Forever, with no sense of time at all. That's the hardest to describe. A complete absence of time.

No more life, no more awareness, no more universe from my perspective. And my perspective is the only thing I know. Sorry about taking you all with me into nothingness when I die, but hey... That's the way the cookie crumbles.

I think it is just as likely that there is nothing after physical death as that there is some sort of continuation of perception.
The evidence in support of each seems, to me, to be pretty much equal.

Consciousness (generally speaking, not individual) seems to be a constant- we can observe that someone dies, and yet we here continue experiencing, perceiving, conscious.... so even I can't help but assume that if I die today, there will be others continuing to experience and perceive.

So there IS life after death- it just might not include "me".

But there is so many other possibilities too.... the idea of alternate realities....
What if we simply switch from one to another with no experience of death? While in one reality, our loved ones are moarning our loss, we are experiencing something totally different- that car *almost* hit us, but we both swerved at the last moment, and only experienced an adrenaline flash. Everything else seems normal- we get home to the same house as usual, interact with the same people (dopplegangers of the ones crying elsewhere) and life goes on.

Except maybe we finally decide to make that jump we've always wanted to and change careers, or get divorced, or sell that house ......make some big changes that we couldn't before because others' paths were in discord- we didn't have the same goals, desires and intents for experience. We might only look back on that event with the car as a scary moment we had, nothing else.

Perhaps our individual consciousness is just like a focus laser that goes through many different realities, that we either experience one at a time, or in a more diffused way, outside of time and space, simultaneously.
Perhaps that is what various brain wave states are evidence of?

I have various "dreamworlds" in which there is a timeline, an environment and characters which remains stable, and that I return to repeatedly. It has happened a few times that I remember the slip between the two realities (this one and that one, from wakefulness to dream), and the strangest part is that sometimes, as I leave the dream, and become aware of "awakening" it seems to be the opposite!

I mean, one time I felt almost panicked as I began to transition, because I had a full store of memories and awareness that were slipping away.... in that other world, I had a history, a timeline, complex relationships and understandings that seemed very clear and coherent,
While this life, with all it's personal history, experience, relationships, understandings, seemed like a wave of vague and illogical dream washing over that, dimming it. I actually felt like I was becoming LESS conscious, as I was (what we here will say) "waking up".

Soon this personality and it's world totally came into focus, and the life that was so lucid is "far" away, indecipherable, I don't remember it. But that was very thought provoking. Lucidity, even coherence, of perception and our awareness of reality is really only clear here- in other states, it seems as vague and disconnected as any memory of any dream.

That added another possibility to consider- I might be existing, as a conscious entity, on different levels, or alternate realities, simultaneously. Some might open up for me or close for me at different times, and that might have an impact on my experience in the others, in some way. But I have died in dreams before, and watched from above as my family buried and cried over my body, and I still woke up "here" with the same people. So who's to say which was the dream, and which was "real"?

With the many possibilities, there isn't much else to do but have fun exploring and discovering, God playing hide and seek with itself is a riot!

a reply to: neoholographic

The assumption made is that the human body is what supports consciousness, if you were to go to sleep or if you were to die, either way you would lose consciousness, however, because of the assumption, you are still "alive" when you are sleeping.

Since we have not precisely found what originates consciousness, we cannot say that the body is responsible, and due to that, there could be something else that is.

originally posted by: tgidkp

originally posted by: Ultralight
a reply to: grandmakdw

Perhaps YOU just haven't seen the evidence. Other people may have. Just saying...

YEAH GRANDMA.

there is evidence and stuff.... like the ridiculous abuse of this Einstein quote which doesn't even nearly extend into the supposed.. ..

... EVIDENCE! 1! it proves stuff and stuff DUH!


(give me a mother-fu$&@n break, neo. if you think there is evidence either way you are truly deluded and have lost my confidence as a legitimate supporter of alternative theory. GET A GRIP MAN!)

You are beyond rude and immature in your responses.

You didn't even read my post correctly, that was NOT a quote from Einstein, go back and read it, right under the quote is the name of the real person who said it.

Your response makes you look like a person with out of control emotions and quick to emote irrational thought.

I expect the Mods to censure me for this reply as I expect them to censure you for your reply.

(faked the wrist band) and snuck in

a reply to: vethumanbeing

Woo Hoo !!, glad you're here with us.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
a reply to: neoholographic

You're the one with strong faith. There's no scientific evidence that anyone ceases to exist when they die.

There is plenty of evidence that shows what happens to us after death. Ever been to a funeral? You could also go to a cadaver farm and watch the decomposition with your own two eyes.

It is not difficult to understand that you have no idea as to what you are talking about.

Energy cannot be destroyed and because of that consciousness moves from one energy state to another.


Just as everything else does.


Any thoughts?

a reply to: Kashai

Do you know what energy is?

No one ceases to exist. All energies, animate and inanimate have a teleos function, ie like a seed they grow up to a plant, and then they transform to higher energies and levels. All energies are made to grow forward, healthy, postive, and Good., not sick and twisted out of shape. We're in a system of infinity and infinite progression.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope


Energy is the ability to preform a task.....

Energy

In physics, energy is a property of objects which can be transferred to other objects or converted into different forms, but cannot be created or destroyed. It is difficult to give a comprehensive definition of energy because of its many forms, but one common definition is that it is the ability of a system to perform work. In SI units, energy is measured in joules, the energy transferred to an object by the mechanical work of moving it 1 meter against a force of 1 newton.
en.wikipedia.org · Text under CC-BY-SA license

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

Lets discuss the existence of the Strange Quark which in the Scientific perspective is actually Virtual. The Strange Quark is a material aspect of the structure of the Proton and in relation to it blinking in and out of reality?

The manner in which it does presents as a function, that supports the structure of the atom.

Without this process the atom would effectively collapse.

A point being the strange quark does not blink in and out of realty, just reality as we are able to understand.

In relation to the large scale structure of the Universe we could be similar in that. If all forms of life in the Universe were, hypothetically in a moment extinguished?

The Universe would collapse.

Any thoughts?

Thanks for all the responses.

I think it goes back to Einstein. What does death mean in the context of four dimensional space-time?

Einstein said the distinction between past, present and future is a persistent illusion. It's important to look at the context in which he said this:

In a letter of condolence to the Besso family, Albert Einstein wrote his now famous quote "Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

en.wikipedia.org...

It's crystal clear. He was saying death means nothing. This is why he wrote this in a letter to a friends family at his death. How can death have any meaning if the distinction between past, present and future is a persistent illusion?

He wasn't giving a lecture or writing a publish paper, he said this to a friends family at his death for a reason. What does it mean beyond our perception of a 3 dimensional now, if a person dies at 8 p.m., 7 p.m or 9 p.m.? It only has any meaning in that perception of "NOW." Einstein said:

Since there exists in this four dimensional structure [space-time] no longer any sections which represent "now" objectively, the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated. It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence.

Again, crystal clear.

The evolution of 3 dimensional existence or the distinction between past, present and future isn't objective reality. So saying a person dies in any 3 dimensional now has no meaning outside of the perception of that 3 dimensional now.

So to say someone ceases to exist makes no sense unless you think the sum of reality must equate to your limited perception of reality. If this is the case you're just stuck in Plato's prison.

There can be an infinite or close to infinite number of 3 dimensional nows embedded in 4 dimensional space-time. So there can be a 3 dimensional now where a person gets hit by a car and dies and a 3 dimensional now where the person gets hit by the car and doesn't die but has a broken leg.

Like I said, there could be an infinite or close to infinite number of 3 dimensional "NOWS" evolving in 4 dimensional space-time.

This means separation is an illusion of consciousness. There exists a singular awareness in say the 5th or 10th dimension. All the dimensions below this dimension would have an infinite or close to infinite number of nows and the illusion of separation.

Say this singular awareness is in the 5th dimension. That would mean there's an infinite or close to infinite number of 4 dimensional nows and below that there's an infinite or close to infinite number of 3 dimensional nows.

So this singular awareness empties itself into these lower dimensions and experiences these nows or the illusions of separation. We're this singular awareness under the illusion that the now that we're experiencing is a objective reality.

originally posted by: Ultralight
a reply to: vethumanbeing

You wouldn't.

Oh.... yes I would, its in process; [whatever it takes to pierce the Godhead] MAKE A COMMUNICATION BREACH (a paradigm puncture wound existing between Kether and Malkuth). God and human can finally speak to each other without the tiresome WRITTEN DOGMA OF the PAST's interference BY MAN. Get a grip, you can talk to the AUO directly; its available to answer questions (as your creator being).

a reply to: vethumanbeing

They have always been able to speak to each other. Where have you been?

originally posted by: donktheclown

(faked the wrist band) and snuck in

a reply to: vethumanbeing

Woo Hoo !!, glad you're here with us .

Absolute truism, I am faking my way through the best fun ever "being a human" getting into music festivals without paying any coin.

originally posted by: Ultralight
a reply to: vethumanbeing
They have always been able to speak to each other. Where have you been?

Not really, you and God do not have an 'on going dialog'. You have never before had to sneak into "heaven" the way I have (the back way complicated wristband faked) through devil security forces have you? Where have I been; (as Daniel Webster; extraordinaire attorney, your protagonist) negotiating your souls outcome? I am for hire.

How about the accounts of some pretty astounding testimonies from people all over the world that have had NDE's? Are they all bonkers, or do we have to throw science aside until it catches up with what some of these people have said? I find them intriguing on a level that always finds me trying to read about it, when the issues come up.

Spirit Science and MetaPhysics

I know, books and other fame, but between the lines, what really happened with some of these people? The scientist in me says look away, but I cannot do that objectively without real good answers as to why they tell a lot of the same stories.

a reply to: elysiumfire

It all comes down to "What level of proof is required" Their is not a high enough level of proof , to prove that we actually exist outside of our own minds in the first place. All levels of proof are only a degree of probability. Their is enough evidence that compels that their is a high level of probability, that a technically dead person on an operating table, still exists as an individual. How could they explain the procedures in the operating theatre during the time of their induced demise while their were no signs of life?

Their is enough evidence to say their is a high probability, that individual consciousness, can reincarnate . If it can reincarnate, then consciousness doesn't need a body to propagate, but uses one, made of ordinary matter, for the brief time of its function. The evidence to maintain the high probability of this as a fact, contains some highly professional names held in high regard. But like everything else a closed minded sceptic, will never have enough proof and is as a lost, cause, as the naïve person who believes every fairy tale told.

Next time someone says there's no evidence, you can point them here for a response. This is just a small list of published papers, books and articles written by Scientist looking into the areas of Psi and consciousness being more than just the sum of materialism which explains nothing.

The following is a selected list of downloadable peer-reviewed journal articles reporting studies of psychic phenomena, mostly published in the 21st century. There are also some important papers of historical interest and other resources. A comprehensive list would run into thousands of articles. Click on the title of an article to download it.

The international professional organization for scientists and scholars interested in psi phenomena is the Parapsychological Association, an elected affiliate (since 1969) of the AAAS, the largest general scientific organization in the world.

Commonly repeated critiques about psi, such as “these phenomena are impossible,” or “there’s no valid scientific evidence,” or “the results are all due to fraud,” have been soundly rejected for many decades. Such critiques persist due to ignorance of the relevant literature and to entrenched, incorrect beliefs. Legitimate debates today no longer focus on existential questions but on development of adequate theoretical explanations, advancements in methodology, the “source” of psi, and issues about effect size heterogeneity and robustness of replication.

allreality.com...

originally posted by: grandmakdw
Cease to exist is just that.

There is nothing that continues after death.

Think of it like going to sleep or being put under anesthesia. When not dreaming you know nothing, see nothing, feel nothing, the same under anesthesia.

That is the best I can explain it, nothingness, just nothing.

That is what most atheists believe, that after one dies, there is nothing, no sensation, no awareness, no continuation of knowing or knowledge, just ashes to ashes, dust to dust. That's all there is folks.

Objective reality has no proof of awareness after final death, objective reality has no proof of feeling, knowing after death. The work of those who say there is, actually is not proof of anything other than awareness may remain for a short period of time, but after that, well there is no objective reality proof. And there never will be. The objective reality we see in "life after death" may simply be the neurons in a sort of stasis where they can continue to function without "life support" for a short time or be put in stasis through a severe drop in temperature. There is only faith, there is no objective reality when it comes to final unalterable death.

That is where faith comes in, either you have faith which is not supported by objective reality and continue to exist in some form, or you don't have faith.

Pretty much this. Try to think before you being born, it's something like that. It's pure nothingness, at least no paint...