The Proof of What Happens To Us After Death and the Subsequent denial of it.

Visitor2012:

Everything is consciousness in my 'view'...Consciousness being the very basis of existence itself. As such everything is affected by it, and it is everything being affected.

Okay. So you have an opinion on consciousness. Perhaps you ought to bear that in mind as you write about it, because it has no relation to reality whatsoever...and that's my opinion.

The best definition I can give you on consciousness is to provide you with an analogy. When you walk close by a pylon line carrying high voltage electricity, you can sometimes hear a 'hum'. That hum isn't the actual flow of the electrons through the cables, but is caused by the flow. Consciousness is a secondary emergent state apropos to the 'hum' as I have expressed here. It is passive, non-energetic, and is not even interactive. At biological death, it is snuffed out utterly and irrevocably.

Even memory (which is everything you are) completely disappears.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
I am very sensitive to death and the dying. What I am insensitive towards is dishonesty. The way you speak of people as "meat bodies" is dreadful to me. It is no wonder that when you look at them, you need to concoct a story of your own devising given this insidious notion. I sincerely hope they do not see themselves the same way, and that they only allow you to continue to concoct fictions out of respect for your feelings.

You are still trying to deflect from what I said earlier to you, by making these tangential comments. I understand why, since there is no argument to the obvious fact that we only ever experience anything and anyone as a psychic (perceptual) phenomenon. On that basis, we can begin to understand what transcends the apparently "material" world.

Your arguments always assume that we are the body - and that the world is "a set of objects out there" - as a priori knowledge. And from there, you develop all the rest of your arguments.

What I keep asking is that you examine this presumption based on this simple fact that we never experience anything outside of perception, that our only experience of the body and the world is psychic.

This is the only a priori knowledge that is certain about our relationship to the body and the world. Show me how this is not true. You only assume you are the body as a priori first and then you develop all your "proofs". This is the fundamental error in the philosophy of materialism - it all rests on that assumption.

Find out if that is REALLY the case for you. This takes profound inspection and full participation in our entire reality, which goes beyond one's bondage to the assumptions of materialism and only mental logic. Start with what is obviously self-evident - that everything we experience is psychic in nature - and really live and consider this possiblity.

But regarding your latest tangent, what I said was "they do understand something about being beyond the sheer physical meat body". This is obviously referring to the "material" body. You read too much into that "meat" descriptor - again it is your poor attempt to deflect from my previous response to you.

When people are conscious and even if completely sick from whatever is killing their physical body, they don't have any trouble relating to it as just that - a physical body made of flesh, bones, etc. Any preciousness about it often is forgotten. Obviously, it is not the body that is to be dwelled on at this time, so I wouldn't be calling it your "meat" body.

And if they are able to, they are very happy to feel what is beyond their physical body, and they then relax further into the process of letting it go at the appropriate time. I am old enough to have relatives and friends who are physically dying, and bring whatever I think will help them to understand and go through this process. There are many great materials available for this transition.

Fortunately it is the case that we survive death - I would think it would be much more upsetting to many if they were just bid farewell - and if they asked you, would you tell them with your most convincing logic, that when you are dead that's it? What would you say if they actually got into a debate with you about it? "But LesMis, I was just starting to see a tunnel and a light at the end; but I am not wanting to go yet."

What do you do for them?

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope
a reply to: CornShucker

Interesting thread, the ironic resemblance of your avatar to the late Beatle, George Harrison, is never lost on me. On this particular topic it's exquisitely apropos. Some of my old bandmates and I got together for drinks when he passed away. I was the only one that seemed to understand that the evening need not be so morose. George had devoted the majority of his adult life trying to come to terms with what life was all about. As we were lifting beers in his honor, either he finally understood or it didn't make any difference.

My lack of an opportunity to go on to higher education has never stopped me from learning when I can, as I go. I'm curious...

Are you trying to Convince or Be convinced?

George is my favorite Beatle. But the avatar is a painting of Vladimir Solovyov, a Russian philosopher and poet. He was also a very spiritual man.

As for convincing or being convinced, it is a bit of both. Writing helps get the thoughts out of my head so I may view them for what they are.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I don't remember my actual wording, but my ATS signature used to point out that if you are self-aware enough to acknowledge that each day is part of a learning process then writing is not a choice, it is inevitable.

Also, I appreciate the info on your avatar. I will make it a point to become acquainted with his works.

If I'd read earlier, it had slipped my mind... Glad to hear that your bouts with migraines have tapered off. From about the age of 7 or 8 'til mid teens, I suffered classic migraines. They became such a familiar part of my life that if I got a hint ahead of time there was a place in the lower left of my vision where I could hold my left arm out straight and my hand would disappear. At that point I knew I had 15 minutes or less to get into a dark room and on my back.

There have been plenty of places I've worked where a co-worker would complain of having a migraine. It has been my policy to make only one attempt per person to describe a TRUE migraine. I would never want to go through the given torture in order to make a first-person comparison, but anyone who believes they can stay on their feet and work with a migraine is misinformed. Of course there are terrible things that can be done to someone that are unbearable for even the strongest-willed and well prepared psyche. My migraines were like constantly being stabbed in the eyes and temples with an incredibly sharp ice pick and someone with an old-style bicycle pump doing their best to find the point at which my head would explode. For me, if I tried to sit up, I threw up... Time stopped... A true migraine is H*ll on Earth and it is possible to feel that it would be possible to have to get better to die (and there were many, many times I would have agreed to euthanasia rather than suffer another minute).

I will continue to check in to the thread. Rather than consider your OP as a non-starter (as some have implied), I see it as an opportunity for self-examination. Before you attempt to rebut someone else's point of view, it's best to take a hard look at foundation upon which you've planted your feet.

a reply to: artistpoet

Exactly that, thank you.

a reply to: elysiumfire

Okay. So you have an opinion on consciousness. Perhaps you ought to bear that in mind as you write about it because it has no relation to reality whatsoever...and that's my opinion. .

 Likewise. Look, any discussion about consciousness or even reality can be none other than conceptual. NO concept has any relation to reality. Alas, we do the best we can with the words available to us for sake of communication. I hope these views you reflect, are your own.

The best definition I can give you on consciousness is to provide you with an analogy. When you walk close by a pylon line carrying high voltage electricity, you can sometimes hear a 'hum'. That hum isn't the actual flow of the electrons through the cables, but is caused by the flow.

It's oscillating energy created by the magnetic fields of the electrical wires, either that or corona discharge. If it's rain on them, the sound can be micro droplets of water boiling off the insulators as a result of the micro paths created for the energy to travel through . Among many other reasons. The Bottom line, it's energy. And is the worst analogy to use when discussing the consciousness I'm referring to.

Consciousness is a secondary emergent state apropos to the 'hum' as I have expressed here. It is passive, non-energetic, and is not even interactive. At biological death, it is snuffed out utterly and irrevocably. 

My friend, you and I couldn't be further from talking about the same thing. Because from that point you're already 180 degrees opposite from anything I'm talking about. It's not even remotely related. You say 'consciousness is a secondary emergent state'  Perhaps this is where our views part ways and that is fine.

 Yours and mine are entirely different perspectives all together. The fact that you refer to consciousness as irrelevant to this so-called reality is simply ludicrous to me when I consider consciousness being both the source AND the fabric of not only space and time, but of the sentience itself, including you, me and everyone else including the animals, rocks etc.

  These two 'views' are, unfortunately, irreconcilable. I've given my take on consciousness, and you made yours. They're not even remotely related to each other.

In my view, this emergent state as you call it, to me is synonymous with anything else which comes or emanates from the source. Energy. But the source of it, is consciousness. When I say consciousness, I'm NOT referring to conscious awareness, through which one is aware of their existence (as in conscious or unconscious.)

To me consciousness is the source. The perceivable universe, the galaxies, stars, planets and our very own individual lives and the mechanism of conscious awareness is the emergent state. in my view, and it ALSO is an expression of consciousness.  Where could you and I possibly go from here? 

What an interesting discussion.

I'd like to offer up some questions, thoughts, comments if I may ~

What is it to be alive?

What is it to be dead?

Is there a difference? What is that difference?

What is it to experience? What is experience itself? Why should matter do such a thing at all?

Sure, we have bodies, but I never understood the reductionism that takes place by folks trying deny that which controls our body. To me this is consciousness. The subjective self. The emergent property of the body. The "who" behind it all.

To reduce "who" we are simply to a body, and that's it, is tantamount to sticking your head in the sand. You deny your own subjectivity in this way, your own self. This is beyond contradiction.

You can not escape your own subjective state. You are your body, yes. But we are not defined by our bodies. This is what is meant by consciousness, soul, or what have you. You may not like these words, or concepts, but hand waving them til your arms fall off doesn't make the "self" go away. Why would anyone do this?

So then:

What is it that controls your body? Directs your body? Is it the brain?

What is it that commands your brain to recall something? Sing something? Kick something?

Isn't it "you"?

You want to say there is no afterlife, or whatever. You say you have proof. Yet, you don't know who or what you are, or what it is you're doing here. Someone said entropy. What is that, but some human derived concept. Just like universe, gravity, and space/time. Simple words to describe our version of the experience of these things.

Science? It has certainly helped us to cope with our existence. We scramble around for answers like mad men and proclaim to have most of them, so we can feel secure in this mad and crazy world. And, also, to feel good about creating threads like these. It's funny.

I walk around outside some days and wonder - WTF is all of this? Why the hell is it here? People so content to live out their lives as they've been told. It's true - ignorance is bliss.

Try to step out of your conditioned mind state and come to grasp what it all really is. Try it. Reality? Please. You have no clue my friend.

We're only slaves to our own conditioning. By products of our own vernacular and its meaning. We think that this is a planet. And that is a sun. And we are humans. That the sounds that come out of our bodies, which we call language, actually have meaning.

No. Those things are none of that. We can never know the true objective reality. Never. Threads like these only show how hard we try to pretend we know, and then project that onto others... It's funny.

originally posted by: elysiumfire
The best definition I can give you on consciousness is to provide you with an analogy. When you walk close by a pylon line carrying high voltage electricity, you can sometimes hear a 'hum'.

Consciousness: the hum of an electrical wire forever snuffed out when the power goes off. Nice analogy, really!

But how about: The air within a bubble, rejoining the atmosphere as the shell between it and the universe is breached?

Or -- a trapped bird, finally emerging from its cage, now free?

Or -- the wind, no longer restrained by the burdensome sail of a ship?

There are lots of cool analogies one can make. Not all of them have a dark implication. And none of them can actually be proven one way or another. One analogy is just as good as another.

You can always depress yourself by speculating on "what might be" -- as opposed to admitting that something is "simply not known."

I really like this thread, and I am glad I checked back!

a reply to: PhotonEffect

Try to step out of your conditioned mind state and come to grasp what it all really is. Threads like these only show how hard we try to pretend we know, and then project that onto others.

For the record (maybe the final comment here?) I personally think you nailed it perfectly, at the end. You deserve more than one star for that summation.

FWIW.

originally posted by: elysiumfire
Consciousness is a secondary emergent state apropos to the 'hum' as I have expressed here. It is passive, non-energetic, and is not even interactive. At biological death, it is snuffed out utterly and irrevocably.

Then where does this consciousness emerge from?
Is it the product of lots of brain cells combining and a certain minimum number of informational pathways being able to interact? How many?

And how come none of this can actually be created in the lab if brain cells create consciousness?

And how would you even know if you did? How do you measure consciousness?

It's not being able to answer even simple questions like these that make scientific-materialists decide consciousness is basically an irrelevant by-product of the body. They just don't know how to deal with Consciousness because it is not body-based, but unconditional - and most simply cannot consider that possibility.

originally posted by: elysiumfire
Even memory (which is everything you are) completely disappears.

If memory is everything one is, who perceives or recalls a memory then? Someone other than oneself?

Regarding Life after death, belief in God; I never understood, from a logical perspective, why people would utterly reject the idea and cite science as the basis of their rejection. I suppose they must place different values on the gain vs loss if their right or wrong.

God exists (G). God does not exist (¬G)
Belief (B) +∞ (infinite gain) −1 (finite loss)
Disbelief (¬B) −∞ (infinite loss) +1 (finite gain)

Without a circuit for electricity to flow through, no structured embodiment of said energy can be had. As such, when the brain (circuit) dies, so too does the information (energy) flowing through it. Brains have a very limited faculty for retention of information without an 'electrical feed'; so once someone dies, by and by the information therein contained is lost.

To suggest that the consciousness [of a being] lives on outside of the confines of this said structured network, can only be qualified by irrational concepts - metaphysics - and therefore flies in the face of the faculty of analytical thought - a faculty bestowed by the the very 'god/s' attributable to said ethereal notions - thereby indirectly rejecting these 'god/s' through the spurning of rational thought and ensuing logic which the brain is directly responsible for.

tl;dr -- Life after death is a crutch for those without the cerebral capacity to rationalise the finality of death, thus the catatonic fear of this 'unknowable' overrides the very reason and logic their god-given brains imbue them with.

Whenever I read the words "proof" and "fact" in a post I am immediately sceptical....

a reply to: institute

The irony of this thread bashing religion and using no scientific evidence at all about what happens to our consciousness after death.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope

What happens at death? We will have another psychic experience of whatever that amounts to via the psychic aspects of mind associated with fundamental awareness, that do not change during life, and are our mode of perceiving during and after the death transition.

But until you become sensitive to even the first aspect of this matter during your life - that everything anyone ever experiences is psychic in nature - you will never understand what is described in the second paragraph, so I won't argue with you about that.

Tell that to a dying man, cancer-striken, body near-hollow. "Hey don't worry, it's a psychic-experience." This is evil stuff here.

I don't necessarily believe that to be the best approach to consoling a terminal patient. You gave the example of a cancer patient. My sincere wish is that if would have been possible for my mother, who passed away over the week of Easter, but family stuff I can't go into made it virtually impossible...

I am an absolute believer in the value of a natural facilitator like psilocybin mushrooms in making possible a peaceful transition for someone with a terminal illness. What is the most heart-breaking part of this is that the ones who will be left behind would be most likely to make the process impossible (my own family is a good example). Under the supervision of a qualified therapist, such a spiritual experience (mushrooms) could very well aid the patient but also the family.

Any experience with mind altering drugs comes with the caveat of potential problems.

Your soul already knows what happens when it dies, the problem is the ego and the intellect.
Intellectually you can argue that you don't need to breath, it just doesn't happen to be the truth.
There is no need to argue the truth, it just is, and the truth will set you free.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

a reply to: CornShucker

I am so sorry to hear of the loss of your Mother recently. I believe that we are far more than our physical bodies and that we go on to something different, hopefully something better when we leave this place.

a reply to: PhotonEffect

Most of your thought is unconscious, something like 99% or something. Of course that little 1% will kick and scream, talking about how it represents the whole, while the rest of it furnishes every heartbeat, breath, and the metabolism it needs in order to do so. That is irony, friend. That is contradiction. That is sticking one's head in the sand. in order to find the self, you look clear through it.

One who looks in the mirror and says "nah, that's not me. Couldn't possibly be me. The lips are moving, but no, still not me". That belongs in comedy.

The reductionism of the self into something that doesn't exist as more than a word. It is frightening to me. If you were to peel away all that you don't think you are and were to finally reveal yourself after all this talk, all this complaining and all this mere promising, what would be left? I'd love to meet it, this little "you".

"You don't know", "you can't know", "you have no clue", is all you can tell me, yet like everyone else is unable to explain how or why this is the case.

a reply to: CornShucker

It pains me to hear of your loss. It must still be fresh in your head and heart.

Every terminally ill person I've been close to seemed at terms with their mortality, that it was usually them doing the consoling of friends and loved ones.

About the mushrooms, that is what cured my headaches. The symptoms you described sounded like mine, cluster headaches, usually behind the eye and on one side of the face. Excruciating. But a few grams of that fungus, I haven't had them since.

originally posted by: institute
Whenever I read the words "proof" and "fact" in a post I am immediately sceptical....

Have you watched someone die before? What's to be skeptical about a process you can watch at any hospital? Have you seen a funeral? That is indeed them in that box. How is this not proof?

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope

originally posted by: institute
Whenever I read the words "proof" and "fact" in a post I am immediately sceptical....

Have you watched someone die before? What's to be skeptical about a process you can watch at any hospital? Have you seen a funeral? That is indeed them in that box. How is this not proof?

Sorry to get in between ... but I just had to ask, proof of what exactly? Proof that body is just a meat suit, made from elements which you can all find on earth. That is correct, it is a proof for the body! But are you only your body? You say yes of course, but then what about this...

When you are experiencing a deep emotion like love, hate, jealousy, fear ... how do you experience it? How do you feel it? Did you had any belly butterflies when you were totally in love for the first time as a young boy? Or even now if the feeling is strong enough you can maybe still feel it. How do you describe what it means to feel the feeling?

How would you explain those different feelings which we can feel when we are deeply emotional?