Discussion Afterlife (and related) general discussion

[esse_est_percipi]

Found an interesting near death experience today

Hazim Probable NDE 9063

Narrative description of Hazim Probable NDE

www.nderf.org

pretty weird. Just a subjective hallucination caused by the release of certain neurochemicals?
It's strange the way they describe going 'faster than the speed of light'. That suggests going back in time, from a physics perspective.

But how? There is no direct connection between your brain and the outside world

yes, it's all mediated via photons, electrical signals, neuromodulation with chemicals and synaptic transmissions etc.

Yet we think the 'consensus world' we perceive is very accurate and 'really there', yet so-called 'hallucinations' like when on psychedelics, or with nde's, must just be completely unreal and aberrant chemical by-products.
I don't think it's as clear-cut as that.

 

[Xocoyotziin]

pretty weird. Just a subjective hallucination caused by the release of certain neurochemicals?

I hope so. If we really are mind controlled slaves going through successive memory wipes by an oppressive hierarchical regime of beings who control many if not all facets of our existence our situation appears to hopeless without external intervention or a big enough accident.

But this is also a common fear if you're someone who does believe in reincarnation so it makes sense that it might be something someone would hallucinate. He was muslim though so he would have had to have either pondered this on his own or picked it up somewhere, and maybe the idea struck a subconscious chord with him while he outwardly and consciously retained his faith.

Yet we think the 'consensus world' we perceive is very accurate and 'really there', yet so-called 'hallucinations' like when on psychedelics, or with nde's, must just be completely unreal and aberrant chemical by-products.

I don't think it's as clear-cut as that.

Sometimes I like to imagine alien beings who are configured in such a way that their default perception is much like ours when on psychedelics or a psychotic state, and who have modeled their way of life around the idea that this is the truth of reality. If they were given a drug that made them view reality the way we do when we're sober and of a normal "sane" mind, wouldn't they disbelieve in it the same way we often do of their mode of perception?

Consensus reality is a lot more fragile than people think. I think it's why isolation and mystical experiences tend to go hand in hand. The constant reinforcement of consensus reality is blocked out, so your mind can play around in ways it normally wouldn't.

 

[esse_est_percipi]

I like this one

Stephen K NDE 9061

9/17/2020 I became aware that the murky waters were now crystal clear. I could see the ripples in the sand and shells scattered on the sea bed. I then was aware of my body, just below me, seated on the ocean floor and rocking gently with the waves. I was aware that I could see everything at...

www.nderf.org

 

[TheQ22]

pretty weird. Just a subjective hallucination caused by the release of certain neurochemicals?
It's strange the way they describe going 'faster than the speed of light'. That suggests going back in time, from a physics perspective.

yes, it's all mediated via photons, electrical signals, neuromodulation with chemicals and synaptic transmissions etc.

Yet we think the 'consensus world' we perceive is very accurate and 'really there', yet so-called 'hallucinations' like when on psychedelics, or with nde's, must just be completely unreal and aberrant chemical by-products.
I don't think it's as clear-cut as that.

Yes it's all very strange. There is a fantastic tv program by Dr David Eagleman about the brain - it is mind boggling and I highly recommend anyone and everyone to watch it.

It makes you think and re-assess everything you know, think you know - well just everything really.

 

[LonelyDude15]

I think the experience is like a T.V. suddenly shutting off. One sec your hear then blank. Not even dark just nothing and that's all their is to it.

 

[Irishman]

Some part of me wants to believe that there's an afterlife but I hardly believe it.

When I attempted to ctb for the first time, I was in a coma for 9 days.

I haven't seen or dreamt about anything at that time. Quite frankly, I don't remember anything from that time, except the
time when I woke up.

I don't think that death is any different in terms of experience.

 

[TheSomebody]

I used to be an atheist, but then I became an agnostic. With so many near-death experiences that I read around, it is a little difficult to believe that there is nothing but death. We don't know 100% how the brain and consciousness works though, so we can't say with any certainty that NDEs are evidence that there is life after death.

My personal belief is that we will not suffer after we die. Even if there is something beyond this world, I cannot imagine that it would be hell or any kind of divine punishment. I don't think it makes sense for the cosmos to want us to suffer after death, since we don't owe anything to this world and we don't even asked to be here. This desire to believe in hell and other forms of divine punishment is nothing more than people wanting to satisfy their own personal desires for revenge against those they regard as evil.

 

[EssenceFocus]

Some part of me wants to believe that there's an afterlife but I hardly believe it.

When I attempted to ctb for the first time, I was in a coma for 9 days.

I haven't seen or dreamt about anything at that time. Quite frankly, I don't remember anything from that time, except the
time when I woke up.

I don't think that death is any different in terms of experience.

I was under anesthesia for a short time many years ago for a little operation. I woke up the second I blacked out and didn't remember anything.

Our brain can't translate the experiences of what happens if we shift our attention to other perceptions. Being in coma, deep sleep and being dead is very similar and the perceptions while in this state are basically the same.
From a human state of view, death is like deep sleep or coma, that's right. But consciousness is never lost, it just shifts his attention to other areas, which we normally can't remember afterwards.

[...] This desire to believe in hell and other forms of divine punishment is nothing more than people wanting to satisfy their own personal desires for revenge against those they regard as evil.

Hell or Karma is of course a human belief system and I have compassion for those people who live in fear about that. Must be scary wanting to ctb while knowing, that there will be a great judge who might send you into doom or you will have to come back to earth as an insect...


Oh, how I love that topic

 

[esse_est_percipi]

This desire to believe in hell and other forms of divine punishment is nothing more than people wanting to satisfy their own personal desires for revenge against those they regard as evil.

exactly this. The invention/belief in hell comes from a very sinister yet very human desire for enemies/whoever is in the 'outgroup' to be punished and suffer.

Many early Christian theologians/church fathers (tertullian, augustine, aquinas etc) explicitly and unabashedly said as much, when they claimed that one of the pleasures of being in heaven was seeing sinners/having knowledge of sinners being tormented in hell.

e.g. "Wherefore in order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to God for it, they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned" -- Aquinas, summa theologica

It's eschatological schadenfreude.

But consciousness is never lost, it just shifts his attention to other areas, which we normally can't remember afterwards.

I think this could have something in it.
It's interesting that you said: "I woke up the second I blacked out and didn't remember anything", which indicates that there wasn't a 'felt gap' of non-being.

I think that the usual atheistic narrative which says that at death there will 'be nothingness' (a contradiction) forever is possibly false, because linguistically it relies on the faulty logic that nothingness is something and that we will 'go into' it at death, as some kind of post-mortem pseudo-subjects.

Perhaps consciousness/subjectivity is actually a fundamental feature of reality, and at death our center of conscious awareness simple gets shifted to another spacetime location.

 

[Wayfaerer]

Perhaps consciousness/subjectivity is actually a fundamental feature of reality, and at death our center of conscious awareness simple gets shifted to another spacetime location.

Like open individualism?

 

[esse_est_percipi]

Like open individualism?

Yes, though I wouldn't go as far as to say there's only one individual and each consciousness is a limited perspective of that individual.
Perhaps there's a baseline generic consciousness which arises with a certain level of biological complexity, which gets split as different individuals come into being. When an individual dies, its consciousness shifts to another individual according to some law of consciousness distribution or something. Like when someone goes blind, their other senses become heightened.

 

[RedFoxSwims]

I believe in heaven, hell and purgatory. I figure I'll wind up in purgatory once I ctb since I committed suicide and all.

 

[Jumper Geo]

It's funny I have watched hundreds of paranormal shows when ghosts are caught speaking on a spirit box and not once have I heard a ghost say I wish I was still alive or miss, food, booze or cigarettes, lol

All these psychics who say they can talk to the dead are FAKES, you finally get to say your final words to a dead relative and all they say is crap from the past never anything relevant what could actually help the living person.

Here is your very own ghost kit people.

7 Ghost-Hunting Tools Recommended by Paranormal Investigators

Between voice recorders and cameras, you don't need that much to document paranormal Halloween happenings.

www.mentalfloss.com

Cheers

Geo

 

[MariV]

I don't think that death is any different in terms of experience.

what experience? did you experience no-experience?

 

[Deleted member 22624]

and at death our center of conscious awareness simple gets shifted to another spacetime location.

Kinda what I've been worrying about. Consciousness from nothing has always bothered me. How I was plucked into this body always made me curious but when I get near CTBing I guess my SI makes me question life-long views and if I might be faced with some afterlife worse than this

 

[esse_est_percipi]

Kinda what I've been worrying about. Consciousness from nothing has always bothered me. How I was plucked into this body always made me curious but when I get near CTBing I guess my SI makes me question life-long views and if I might be faced with some afterlife worse than this

I don't think there's anything to worry about.
I agree that consciousness from nothing/inert unconscious matter doesn't make sense.
There are no sudden miraculous emergences in nature, it's all a matter of degree and subtle gradations, and higher levels are unfoldings of properties contained but only partially expressed in lower levels.
If particles and molecules and cells weren't conscious at all, not even in a very rudimentary form, what explains its emergence once self-organizing systems begin? Nature doesn't pull rabbits out of hats.

Try not to worry too much about an afterlife. No one really knows what happens, so why worry now? In all likelihood it'll be fine, and there is no reason to think things will be worse.

 

[Georgii]

High-key would be mad if I wake up after CTB and realise I still have to exist in any way possible .
Yikes

 

[woxihuanni]

I like this one

Stephen K NDE 9061

9/17/2020 I became aware that the murky waters were now crystal clear. I could see the ripples in the sand and shells scattered on the sea bed. I then was aware of my body, just below me, seated on the ocean floor and rocking gently with the waves. I was aware that I could see everything at...

www.nderf.org

Wow, so immoral. Take your loved one is a euphemism. Let us put it like this, your 'loved one's guts are wrapped around somebody's dick and you embrace him, offering a nice shower and a cup of tea. Honestly, it is not that the world today does not hold up to any sane person' ideals, it is that the ideals have become immoral poison. It is the ultimately irresponsible, lazy thing to deny that there is right or wrong, and to fight for what is right. I am sure somebody cleverer than me could put it better, but all I can do is find any words and suppress physical nausea at this.

I think hope for mankind was over once indian religions' ideals took hold over ancient ones.

Oh and, interestingly, time disappears in the stories of these marketers of immorality, but they remember only the past not the future. Surprise, surprise.

 

[Jumper Geo]

I have been watching unsolved mystery's I found 12 years worth of episodes on Amazon Prime, and they have lots of NDE' cases so I have addded my link below, intersting cases, why would a 7 year old girl lie but Tom Sawyer was given a name he would encounter in the future.

https://sanctioned-suicide.net/threads/original-unsolved-mysteries-series.51207/post-942469

Cheers

Geo

 

[gcarb]

Sorry to pop the bubble but, all afterlife exists only in religions and beliefs, and that in no way changes the fact that there is literally nothing after death.

 

[Wayfaerer]

I hate to be a buzzkill but there is a flat 0% chance of an afterlife unless: [A] We are living in a simulation and the creators can and care to simulate our consciousness after our bodies have died (simulated afterlife.) We reincarnate as ourselves for all eternity (eternal recurrence.) C.) We are all the same conscious observer and we just ping-pong between all living things forever and ever (empty + open individualism.)

I wouldn't hold any hopes that option A is the case and option C is a bit of a stretch imo.

 

[esse_est_percipi]

I would say that given certain prior conditions and assumptions the chance of consciousness continuing after death is actually not extremely low.

a) we are conscious now, for a seeming arbitrary reason we are conscious as a particular being and not as any other, of that we can be 100% certain

b) we don't know what the existential mode of base reality is: it is either 1) pure material unconsciousness or 2) idealistic and phenomenologically significant.
Depending on how the data of quantum mechanics are interpreted, base reality could be idealistic.

c) if 1) the basic structures of reality at the subatomic levels are non-conscious, then it needs to be explained why consciousness emerges out of the evolutionary process at some point in time. Because 'x is conscious' is a vague predicate, if you reverse engineer evolution back to the beginning of life on earth say 3.5 billion years ago, it would be arbitrary to pick a particular point in time at which consciousness doesn't exist or a particular animal or vegetable species to which consciousness/awareness cannot be applied in some form. This is the sorites paradox, which doesn't arise if 2) is assumed.

d) if we assume that before birth we never had any conscious experiences at all, that no instant of time from the big bang to the point of birth was experienced, but was just a blank nothingness, then it needs to be explained why that blank nothingness arbitrarily became filtered and siphoned off into the spacetime location of an organism resulting in a brief subjective experience within and of the universe.

e) if we assume that prior to birth we had other conscious experiences as other organisms, stretching all the way back to the beginning of time, and that even the thermodynamic error of the big bang singularity could have had a type of generic awareness, then it is less of an inexplicable datum that anyone finds themselves conscious as a personal singularity in a spacetime location.

f) until the chance of d) happening can be ascertained using relevant data, we cannot estimate the exact chance of it happening again after death.

g) a priori, d) is either the most unlikely thing imaginable (e.g. 1 in 10^20 or more all the way to numbers approaching infinity) or it is inevitable, meaning that death must necessarily be followed by other conscious experiences, perhaps in this universe (becoming conscious again as another entity which is born a second or less after death), perhaps in parallel universes or future universes (becoming conscious again perhaps in trillions of years). Whether we are born again a second or a hundred trillion trillion years after death, both will appear subjectively instantaneous.


Based on all these considerations, using rough bayesian reasoning I would say that the chance of an afterlife in the sense of continued subjective experience in some form is higher than 0, but less that 1, and could even be a 50/50 depending on how you choose to parse and combine the a)-to-g) considerations.

 

[NA90]

I honestly hope not, ir if it is I wanna come back as a cat with a loving family .

 

[job1315]

Tangent: I have listened to dozens of NDE (near death experience) accounts.

Here are the best two Science videos I have found on NDEs and their veracity:





Hope it brings hope to somebody

 

[ManWithNoName]

This presentation IMHO does not prove the Afterlife, but it is additional food for thought:

 

[sadworld]

This presentation IMHO does not prove the Afterlife, but it is additional food for thought:

Very interesting video, thanks for sharing

 

[kane]

If panpsychism (consciousness being a property of matter/energy) is true, it's unclear to me why you would expect to continue on as an individual self. It seems to me that if that self is a construct of the brain, then as the brain ceases to function the construct would break down. In it's place would be numerous new ways of experiencing the world. But none of them will be 'you'. In the same way as 'you' are not the cow that you eat for lunch. What creates 'your' consciousness would become new life. But it would not carry your sense of personal identity along for the ride.

 

[maybepossiblyithink]

I feel like if there is any higher being or something after death then there is absolutely no way for our consciousness to imagine it. Therefore making me think ever religion is wrong and every idea of what comes after is wrong.
Idk if that make sense but that thought has been stuck in my head for a while.

I think maybe if there is a higher being they only made us able to imagine religion or an after life to comfort us

 

[ManWithNoName]

I would say that given certain prior conditions and assumptions the chance of consciousness continuing after death is actually not extremely low.

a) we are conscious now, for a seeming arbitrary reason we are conscious as a particular being and not as any other, of that we can be 100% certain

b) we don't know what the existential mode of base reality is: it is either 1) pure material unconsciousness or 2) idealistic and phenomenologically significant.
Depending on how the data of quantum mechanics are interpreted, base reality could be idealistic.

c) if 1) the basic structures of reality at the subatomic levels are non-conscious, then it needs to be explained why consciousness emerges out of the evolutionary process at some point in time. Because 'x is conscious' is a vague predicate, if you reverse engineer evolution back to the beginning of life on earth say 3.5 billion years ago, it would be arbitrary to pick a particular point in time at which consciousness doesn't exist or a particular animal or vegetable species to which consciousness/awareness cannot be applied in some form. This is the sorites paradox, which doesn't arise if 2) is assumed.

d) if we assume that before birth we never had any conscious experiences at all, that no instant of time from the big bang to the point of birth was experienced, but was just a blank nothingness, then it needs to be explained why that blank nothingness arbitrarily became filtered and siphoned off into the spacetime location of an organism resulting in a brief subjective experience within and of the universe.

e) if we assume that prior to birth we had other conscious experiences as other organisms, stretching all the way back to the beginning of time, and that even the thermodynamic error of the big bang singularity could have had a type of generic awareness, then it is less of an inexplicable datum that anyone finds themselves conscious as a personal singularity in a spacetime location.

f) until the chance of d) happening can be ascertained using relevant data, we cannot estimate the exact chance of it happening again after death.

g) a priori, d) is either the most unlikely thing imaginable (e.g. 1 in 10^20 or more all the way to numbers approaching infinity) or it is inevitable, meaning that death must necessarily be followed by other conscious experiences, perhaps in this universe (becoming conscious again as another entity which is born a second or less after death), perhaps in parallel universes or future universes (becoming conscious again perhaps in trillions of years). Whether we are born again a second or a hundred trillion trillion years after death, both will appear subjectively instantaneous.


Based on all these considerations, using rough bayesian reasoning I would say that the chance of an afterlife in the sense of continued subjective experience in some form is higher than 0, but less that 1, and could even be a 50/50 depending on how you choose to parse and combine the a)-to-g) considerations.

Thanks for your thoughts. I posted these videos a while ago on a separate thread, but here they are again. Two videos on consciousness. Both videos are each about 10 minutes long, total amount of viewing time : 20 minutes.

Here is part one:



And here is part two:

 

[ManWithNoName]

Thanks for your thoughts. I posted these videos a while ago on a separate thread, but here they are again. Two videos on consciousness. Both videos are each about 10 minutes long, total amount of viewing time : 20 minutes.

Here is part one:



And here is part two:

I forgot to include my afterthought: if consciousness can exist after death, that's all and good, but what about those who die of dimentia or Alzheimer's disease? Is there a difference in Afterlife for someone who dies with their mental faculties intact vs. someone who dies after they've lost all their marbles?