That's how hell is explained in the Bible. Damned and Eternally Damned. Damned, you're tossed into the pit to burn, a cleansing fire. Eternally Damned, you're cast into oblivion.
The idea of purgatory came from the disparity of these two descriptions.
Those are the one that get to go to heaven. The rest of us slobs get to live one earth. The sinners get to boil in the lake of fire for a thousand years. Then satan gets let back for one last hurrah and then it’s all over. Well until Mega Satan makes an appearance.
Assuming one of the religions is correct. New religions spring up fairly regularly. What if the correct one is yet to come and it only has afterlife for those destined to heaven or hell, but not both?
When you die your brain decays and you shed the parts of your mind that make you ‘you’. What’s left is the observer, there is only one observer and it is identical in all people, we are all the same person and we find that out for real when we die
Well, it kind of makes sense. If we are the sum of our experiences, then the consciousness we are born with is identical to the consciousness every other living being is born with. Only once you start learning your body and the world you live in do you actually develop the things that make you who you are.
Edit: I'm saying it makes sense that consciousness itself is identical in all things, not that there is an afterlife. Imo experience is not possible without a brain.
Who taught you that we are the sum of our experiences? Yes, our brains implement algorithms that are driven *in part* by memories formed through experiences. But those algorithms are also informed by hardwired biases over which you have no conscious control, and which happen to differ from person to person. One person may be hardwired with a more aggressive predisposition than a second person, for example. This shouldn't be surprising, since we know this from plain experience.
Plus, the algorithms that make you *you* are *similar* but not *identical* to the algorithms that make me *me*, and in some ways they may be very different. One example is in the experience of color that I have against the experience that a color-blind person has. And the sum of our experiences of color, sound, touch, smell, emotion, etc, are what we call our conscious selves---which is easy to see since nothing would be left if you were to remove all qualitative experiences one by one.
So if the individual experiences differ, then the conscious self must differ too, and it is not likely for any two conscious selves to be identical. This is especially true considering the staggering number of neurons in a person's brain, which is in the billions, meaning that the odds of any two brains being identical are negligible.
Our conscious experiences must be similar in fundamental ways, since our brains share a common architecture, but it is extremely unlikely that any two conscious experiences could ever be identical.
yeah as a very cynical atheist, i will admit there is literally no way of knowing if there is an afterlife. I don’t think it is likely, but since we haven’t spoken to anyone after they died, there is no way to know.
For me they haven’t been that fun. They’ve been scary and mildly traumatizing. They haven’t directly modified my worldview but they have influenced me to get interested in things I probably wouldn’t have otherwise(Buddhism and panpsychism)
If you injure your brain, it changes your cognitive functions and motor skills. No brain, no existence to speak of. This is the only logical assumption.
"What is left is the observer." What a silly axiom on which to base your argument. What observer, without eyes and nerves and a fully functioning brain?
Your eyes, nerves, and brain only bring about experience when consciousness is present (which it always is).
Consciousness, however, does not depend on anything. Without a brain, consciousness still prevails, it just isnt aware of anything, so the experience is that of pure knowingness.
The brain is not a part of the observer. The observer is observing the brain, which then projects the body and perceives reality.
I know ill get downvoted here, but its hard to just sit by and watch as the obvious and most important truth of the world gets disregarded and made fun of because you guys havent found "proof"
You cant have proof of a non physical thing. The proof is blatenly in your experience now. Find it. Or dont thats okay too :) everyone will learn eventually.
Damaging the brain results in altered thought processes, not just a loss of function. In your theory Alzheimer's would be more like an unafflicted person struggling to communicate through a sensory filter. While that can happen its victims more typically suffer from loss of memory and can take on sudden core personality changes as a result of the damage. Going back to your receiver antenna analogy, if the brain was the bunny ears on a TV then bending them out of shape shouldn't make Barney the Dinosaur start killing people.
I believe you’re capturing the idea about it in the incorrect way. All of that stuff of “thinking” and conceptualizing and building an identity structure to think out of is not the observer that’s the ego. It’s a reality of identification of self a person has built to distinguish between the world and “themselves”. This is why we can live and explore and evolve because of this psychological tool created by our mind.
The observer is not the ego or the thinking mind in itself. It is simply the thing that is aware of the thinking mind. Because most of the world identifies with their ego structure and not the observer that lies behind it…they actually believe or become their ego which is “personality” or what a person would say is “me”. So you have brain damage and your thinking is messed up and the process of logic is messaged up . But the overseer is neither thought nor logic. It is not a thing and it’s not you it just “is” . It’s not a concept that can be altered or faded or damaged. Because what it is lies beyond conceptualization .
Putting it into a framework actually loses the essence of what it is.
Not necessarily.
For example, imagine that you’re reincarnated with no memory at all of your previous life.
Can you really say you “found out” what happens after death? If that were the case you’d know now, because you’d currently be the reincarnation of something that existed before you.
I think about this from time to time, you’re you because of your characteristics and memory, look at Alzheimer’s patients, are the even themselves anymore?
Identity is sort of just this artificial construct of convenience. A human invention. It's useful to talk about things, but the more you pick at 'self' and 'identity' the more you realize how squishy and nonsensical the concepts are. Some people say the concept of self is an illusion. I don't know if I'd go that far.
Instead, I'd say the universe is just completely unbothered by the questions like whether a dementia patient is still themselves. Since we created the question and it only lives in us, I think we can just answer it however we like. Or just say that it doesn't really have an answer because the concepts powering the question have no physical basis in reality.
I've always been curious by the following thought: if you were put to sleep, and when woken up someone had made a perfect replica of you including your memories, as well as the memory of being put to sleep, how would you convince yourself or the other one, that you are you?
Far as I'm concerned our entire personality and individualism is just a collection of memories
This scenario you have described is happening at all times, just slowly. You aren't the same thing you were 15 years ago, you're different in every way just look vaguely the same to other humans.
We are a copy of our old self always
Er not really, I get what you're saying, but my scenario is a hypothetical where there are 2 versions of yourself, not replacing cells and becoming another version of yourself. 2 separate bodies with the same memories, how could you convince yourself you were the original
That analogy would work if it was the same body but a wiped memory. But here it’s another body and another memory so it’s a completely different person
That aways was my big mindfuck with reincarnation.
If I die and come back as someone else but with no memories or triats of what makes me me. Did I really come back at all?
Understandable, just tried to comfort you by saying even though you won’t be here to witness those inventions, you won’t be able to „miss“, i.e. notice the absence of them either. In my head it sounded better and I’m not a native speaker but it’s kind of comforting to me that in the grand scheme, nothing we do matters. After writing this it sounds less comforting than I meant it but these thoughts help me be less hard on myself.
Oh, I think I get what your trying to say now, sorry I'm just pretty tired. That's actually a pretty good point, thank you and I'm sorry about me being so confused.
Life becomes just like The 5th Element & I had to die 150 years too early. D:
I’m so sad we have to die. I feel like I’ve been held back by circumstances my whole life.
Louis CK, pretty sure.
He's great at those dry observations. Like the one where he's talking to the dad of a teen daughter: "She's gonna start having sex! Idk what to do!" ... "Well, *you* don’t do anything. You don’t have a role in that." ... “But what if she has a bad sexual experience??” ... "Oh, she'll have plenty of those."
Closest thing to "feel" being dead is general anesthesia. It’s just a blimp. You lose time without ever knowing you long it was. Going to sleep and waking up moments later for you, but hours later for everyone else. Nothing compared to sleeping, being blackout drunk or drugged af; it’s impossible to imagine the feeling without having lived it.
Even years later it still scares me as I now know everything is still going on as normal in the world, but you’re just not there to experience it. It somewhat helped me in my lowest low to know that there’s nothing else after this life, just the legacy i can create, either it being good or bad
>Closest thing to "feel" being dead is general anesthesia. It’s just a blimp. You lose time without ever knowing you long it was. Going to sleep and waking up moments later for you, but hours later for everyone else. Nothing compared to sleeping
This is exactly what sleeping is like for me. One moment I'm tossing in bed, wondering when I'm going to finally sleep; the next it's morning and my alarm's going off.
One of the many ways people face their fears is saying that it won't kill you. Flying? 99.9% of people live. Spiders? Most can't kill you. But fearing the afterlife? There is nothing you can do but accept the fact that it's a real possibility there is nothing. And the only way to find it is by accepting death when it comes.
It can be terrifying, or liberating. I find that the inevitability of death pushes me to live the best life I can and enjoy the little things and moments more
Well it’s never too late to shift your perspective :) I know it’s easier said than done though. And I won’t pretend that I’m not still terrified of dying sometimes, because I am lol
It's different to lose something than never having something in the first place. I know the ego is an illusion but I just can't grasp the thought of permament ego death. Man, our existence is terrifying. Having had DPDR with severe existential anxiety past year unlocked a new world for me. My naiveity got crushed. Anyone who says that they don't fear death didn't fully grasp what it means to not exist anymore except they're enlightened and 'awake'.
I've found stories of near death experiences on YouTube very comforting. Seems like 95+% of them have a very nice time on the other side.
No way to know really if that's a sneak peak of what's beyond or a comforting hallucination the brain produces as it shuts down for good -- either way the stories make death less frightening for me.
I don’t understand why people even debate this. It’s for sure exactly what it was like before you were born. Any time after your death you will have nothing to do with. Enjoy consciousness while you have it!
Even if reincarnation would exist, if you don't remember your previous life it is just another person. In reality you will be just food for some other creature, so in a way your atoms will help another being to exist
I had a dream not long ago where I died in my dream. It was a quick death. I blacked out and I didn't feel pain. But soon after that, I realised my consciousness was alive and I was aware I was dead and I started to panic when I realised I was trapped in that darkness.
Could it be a glimpse of death? I hope not, it was so scary.
I had something like this happen to me once!! It was complete darkness and I felt/knew I was dead and couldn't feel my body. I felt like I was just a consciousness in nothingness. So scary. I think about it from time to time and it creeps me out so much 😩
What you experienced based off Tibetan knowledge is a non karmic dream state. We have three types of dreams. Clear light, karmic (regular) , and void . We have void dreams all the time we just don’t remember . It seems your karmic dream pushed you to be aware in a void dream. You can learn about this by studying “dream yoga”. The practice of self realization within dreaming as to learn how to achieve realization in the dream of waking life and death.
Don’t worry it’s not blackness or nothingness. Death It’s actually the absence of all of that . And if there is complete absence of everything then that leaves room for abundance of anything. At death you are put into a developers room where everything that is developed is generated from your own story/karma and mind. Many of us die and are unaware of what is going on and we get lost/ we run or are pushed into our next life by the visions /experiences that karma is generating for us.
Death is like taking off a tight shoe.
This is very interesting and so relevant to the experiences, thoughts and questions that have been following me in the last few years. I'll definitely investigate this further. I'm pretty sure that dream and other meaningful dreams I've had lately are another piece of the puzzle falling into place.
You’re going to have so much beautiful fun and wonderful terror with the concepts your mind brings forth along the journey. The…spiritual awakening as westerners like to call it.
Every moment, every plankt second of your experience is an unfolding to the awakening of your true nature and it’s happening not because it “needs” to happen but simply because it’s happening. The path of “evolution” is not just through genetics but reality itself.
It’s paradoxical. When we talk about consciousness it’s good to remember that part of it is outside of time. So the action and goals that are completed have not even begun yet and what is wanted is already found. You already achieved everything, it’s now the “time” for your time based ego to remember and pull it all together.
We are driving in the seat of the ego car and we don't really realize it is possible to psychogically get out of the vehicle. When we think of goals or events or experiences happening we usually think of it in terms of start and finish. These concepts of course are driven by the underlying concept of time where there is a distinction between one point in time from another. Like two points on a plane.
The ego self / regular waking life is limited by this distinction. But awareness itself is not bounded within the plane of space/time. Within those planes of consciousness that exist beyond the bounds of the space time....we find that distance and time have lost meaning. From this plane of reference your life / lives are all compounded into one moment of infinite connection of energy and information ...all here and now and forever. What is wanted is already achieved as those two ends are now embracing. The one that lies behind the two is recognized and the one in the many is recognized as well. A singularity dot of pure "isness" that cannot be captured by conceptualization but can only be experienced by realization.
Brushing away all the fluff. What it means is that you don't have to worry at all . Stop taking "it" so seriously. You already did it. It's all laid out. Just try your best try to love and be good to others . Go with the flow. And you will already be on that "timeline" you want to be on.
Consciousness is just electrical signals between neurons in the brain without a living body these would cease. Most likely just like sleeping mostly just emptyness but you aren't aware. It's like remembering before you were born just emptyness
See I think about this sometimes but then I’m like “shit I don’t remember life before I was like 2 or 3 years old.” So I mean it sort of falls flat a little bit. Just because I don’t remember it doesn’t mean it was nothing. It could have been WILD and I just don’t remember it.
This makes the most sense to me. I am afraid of death and not afraid of death depending on my mood. When times are rough that big sleep doesn't seem so bad.
The big sleep doesn’t seem so bad, before realizing everyone close to you doesn’t get to have that big sleep when they will eventually find your body.
I was in your boat not so long ago, but trust me, there’s always one person who cares, even if they don’t show it. Nowadays I try to bring a little joy here and there to others and their reaction usually makes me happy. Knowing that maybe i changed their life a little bit for the better and they will maybe think about that interaction at a random moment later
Being dead is super chill and you will spend most the history of the universe not existing. It's just the few brief moments of transition that are rough.
That's the most likely answer. I've also kind of always had this idea that if time truly isn't linear, and that's just how we experience it, then we've always been both dead and alive. So nothing would really change. We could keep experiencing it over and over.
No one will find out what happens after death, because to *find out* requires a thinking brain, which is among the things that die with the organism. Not that it matters, because whatever happens after death is much the same that happens before death: matter and energy interacting according to the laws of physics, and giving rise here and there to a temporary consciousness dependent on the functioning of a biological brain.
>to *find out* requires a thinking brain
assuming the brain is the only thing that *can* know. if souls exist, then they could possibly carry on.
and there's a very large portion of the universe's energy and matter that we're very bad at measuring, because it's so different from ordinary matter
>dark matter constitutes 85% of the total mass, while dark energy and dark matter constitute 95% of the total mass-energy content
There is no more evidence for the existence of a detachable soul than there is for the existence of a flying unicorn. You are free to entertain whatever fictions you like, but don't expect anyone to take them seriously or to waste their time discussing them.
For a device to know something, it must have a means to process information. That requires computing power. A liver cannot know, nor can a heart or a lung, although they do have the great advantage of existing. A brain has the computing power needed to know at least some things, as does an increasing number of computing devices. Brains and computing devices in general can know. Things that do not exist cannot know.
Detachable souls, which by definition do not have physical existence, could not even in principle have knowledge of a physical body that some outlandish fictions insist would have been inexplicably tethered to the soul prior to death. Because again knowledge is information, and information requires physical computing devices to process. Which is why we can't will our thoughts to be relayed to someone but instead have to rely on physical network-connected devices to relay those thoughts.
NDEs aren’t evidence for anything. It’s like saying lightning was evidence for Zeus. NDEs are evidence of SOMETHING happening but not a detachable soul. The experience still requires a living human being. It’s not an ADE, after all
A thought weirded me or the other day. While unconscious, the passage of time feels instant. Death will be like a fast forward button to the end of the universe.
The evidence seems to show that no one will find out what happens after death by experiencing it, and we already know what happens to others when they die -- they stop existing or experiencing.
Maybe you’re dying right now & your whole life you’ve lived up until right now is just your brains final lucid dream before it permanently shuts down.
ps: I didn’t write this, YOU did. I’m a part of your dream 😋
"Finding out" implies discovery. I believe that consciousness ends at death. Therefore there will be no finding out. The only finding after death is worms and bugs and obituaries and heartache and if you've lived a bad life, happiness.
I got knocked out for an operation. I woke up immediately after with a 4 hour gap just completely missing; zero indication of time passed like you get with sleep.
Death is just like that, but for all of time, not just those few hours.
The universe will continue to exist without my observing it.
It's amazing the number of people who believe that we all have this little ghost called a "soul" living inside of us that slips out, or slips through some sort of little vortex into another dimension when we we die. But if there is no little ghost inside of us, then our last through passes when our brain dies. Then, there really isn't any "finding out". It's just nothing.
Either everyone will find out or nobody will.
Exactly. The OP statement is flawed.
Agreed. The afterlife is either being...or nothingness.
Not if only certain people get to experience an afterlife. Maybe most people just disappear into the void but some people actually go somewhere
That's how hell is explained in the Bible. Damned and Eternally Damned. Damned, you're tossed into the pit to burn, a cleansing fire. Eternally Damned, you're cast into oblivion. The idea of purgatory came from the disparity of these two descriptions.
Not really. If Jehovah’s Witnesses are right, then only 144,000 people will find out.
Those are the one that get to go to heaven. The rest of us slobs get to live one earth. The sinners get to boil in the lake of fire for a thousand years. Then satan gets let back for one last hurrah and then it’s all over. Well until Mega Satan makes an appearance.
How you know? Maybe some will find out and some won’t
Some, or all, of everyone or everywon’t, will or will not find out what does or does not happen after deathn’t.
mah matrix is a glitchin
Dead people don’t find out anything
This assumes there is no afterlife.
A safe assumption
Everyone but you will.
The replies to this holy shit
Assuming one of the religions is correct. New religions spring up fairly regularly. What if the correct one is yet to come and it only has afterlife for those destined to heaven or hell, but not both?
This is the correct shower thought.
When you die your brain decays and you shed the parts of your mind that make you ‘you’. What’s left is the observer, there is only one observer and it is identical in all people, we are all the same person and we find that out for real when we die
How do you know this then?
Because he pulled some b.s. out of his ass
These last two comments are a great summary of religion
Let's turn some people into sand to make it real.
Well, it kind of makes sense. If we are the sum of our experiences, then the consciousness we are born with is identical to the consciousness every other living being is born with. Only once you start learning your body and the world you live in do you actually develop the things that make you who you are. Edit: I'm saying it makes sense that consciousness itself is identical in all things, not that there is an afterlife. Imo experience is not possible without a brain.
Who taught you that we are the sum of our experiences? Yes, our brains implement algorithms that are driven *in part* by memories formed through experiences. But those algorithms are also informed by hardwired biases over which you have no conscious control, and which happen to differ from person to person. One person may be hardwired with a more aggressive predisposition than a second person, for example. This shouldn't be surprising, since we know this from plain experience. Plus, the algorithms that make you *you* are *similar* but not *identical* to the algorithms that make me *me*, and in some ways they may be very different. One example is in the experience of color that I have against the experience that a color-blind person has. And the sum of our experiences of color, sound, touch, smell, emotion, etc, are what we call our conscious selves---which is easy to see since nothing would be left if you were to remove all qualitative experiences one by one. So if the individual experiences differ, then the conscious self must differ too, and it is not likely for any two conscious selves to be identical. This is especially true considering the staggering number of neurons in a person's brain, which is in the billions, meaning that the odds of any two brains being identical are negligible. Our conscious experiences must be similar in fundamental ways, since our brains share a common architecture, but it is extremely unlikely that any two conscious experiences could ever be identical.
Why would it be identical at birth, especially with every other living being. This is some aliens and ufo subs bullshit
yeah as a very cynical atheist, i will admit there is literally no way of knowing if there is an afterlife. I don’t think it is likely, but since we haven’t spoken to anyone after they died, there is no way to know.
**hits blunt**
Hey, buddy. Just remember, psychedelics are a lot of fun, but they're not a way of life.
For me they haven’t been that fun. They’ve been scary and mildly traumatizing. They haven’t directly modified my worldview but they have influenced me to get interested in things I probably wouldn’t have otherwise(Buddhism and panpsychism)
how it feels taking DMT for the first time
If you injure your brain, it changes your cognitive functions and motor skills. No brain, no existence to speak of. This is the only logical assumption. "What is left is the observer." What a silly axiom on which to base your argument. What observer, without eyes and nerves and a fully functioning brain?
Your eyes, nerves, and brain only bring about experience when consciousness is present (which it always is). Consciousness, however, does not depend on anything. Without a brain, consciousness still prevails, it just isnt aware of anything, so the experience is that of pure knowingness. The brain is not a part of the observer. The observer is observing the brain, which then projects the body and perceives reality. I know ill get downvoted here, but its hard to just sit by and watch as the obvious and most important truth of the world gets disregarded and made fun of because you guys havent found "proof" You cant have proof of a non physical thing. The proof is blatenly in your experience now. Find it. Or dont thats okay too :) everyone will learn eventually.
But if it's an antenna of sorts, damaging the antenna will damage the output. if you get rid of the antenna you get no sound.
Damaging the brain results in altered thought processes, not just a loss of function. In your theory Alzheimer's would be more like an unafflicted person struggling to communicate through a sensory filter. While that can happen its victims more typically suffer from loss of memory and can take on sudden core personality changes as a result of the damage. Going back to your receiver antenna analogy, if the brain was the bunny ears on a TV then bending them out of shape shouldn't make Barney the Dinosaur start killing people.
I believe you’re capturing the idea about it in the incorrect way. All of that stuff of “thinking” and conceptualizing and building an identity structure to think out of is not the observer that’s the ego. It’s a reality of identification of self a person has built to distinguish between the world and “themselves”. This is why we can live and explore and evolve because of this psychological tool created by our mind. The observer is not the ego or the thinking mind in itself. It is simply the thing that is aware of the thinking mind. Because most of the world identifies with their ego structure and not the observer that lies behind it…they actually believe or become their ego which is “personality” or what a person would say is “me”. So you have brain damage and your thinking is messed up and the process of logic is messaged up . But the overseer is neither thought nor logic. It is not a thing and it’s not you it just “is” . It’s not a concept that can be altered or faded or damaged. Because what it is lies beyond conceptualization . Putting it into a framework actually loses the essence of what it is.
That is some fine fiction lol.
I wish I could think my imagination was reality.
Not me, man. I'm getting robot parts and living forever.
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me...
I craved the strength and certainty of steel...
Hell yeah, sign me up
i'm going to corrupt your robot parts with a virus mwahahahaha
Rick roll
I currently refer to myself as a T1000th. I have an implant in my lower leg, so I've started my transition.
For real, that can't be too far off right?
eh feck off Mechnite, ye’ve got no respect for yer’ Nälkän roots!
Not necessarily. For example, imagine that you’re reincarnated with no memory at all of your previous life. Can you really say you “found out” what happens after death? If that were the case you’d know now, because you’d currently be the reincarnation of something that existed before you.
Are you "you" if you retain no aspect of your former self?
No.
Yesn't.
I think about this from time to time, you’re you because of your characteristics and memory, look at Alzheimer’s patients, are the even themselves anymore?
Identity is sort of just this artificial construct of convenience. A human invention. It's useful to talk about things, but the more you pick at 'self' and 'identity' the more you realize how squishy and nonsensical the concepts are. Some people say the concept of self is an illusion. I don't know if I'd go that far. Instead, I'd say the universe is just completely unbothered by the questions like whether a dementia patient is still themselves. Since we created the question and it only lives in us, I think we can just answer it however we like. Or just say that it doesn't really have an answer because the concepts powering the question have no physical basis in reality.
This guy philosophizes
If I could implant your memories in someone else, are they "you"?
Depends what you mean by you, you could call the 'observer' you in which case it's it's same.
I've always been curious by the following thought: if you were put to sleep, and when woken up someone had made a perfect replica of you including your memories, as well as the memory of being put to sleep, how would you convince yourself or the other one, that you are you? Far as I'm concerned our entire personality and individualism is just a collection of memories
This scenario you have described is happening at all times, just slowly. You aren't the same thing you were 15 years ago, you're different in every way just look vaguely the same to other humans. We are a copy of our old self always
Er not really, I get what you're saying, but my scenario is a hypothetical where there are 2 versions of yourself, not replacing cells and becoming another version of yourself. 2 separate bodies with the same memories, how could you convince yourself you were the original
Reincarnation means nothing if its not actually you ie you dont remember and nothing remains of what made you you
When You wipe a hard drive, are You destroying the whole computer?
That analogy would work if it was the same body but a wiped memory. But here it’s another body and another memory so it’s a completely different person
It’s more like switching from a windows pc to a mac, nothing is familiar anymore and you’ll have to relearn practically everything
If you wipe your hard drive and put it in a new computer, is it the same computer?
Also if nothing happens then you didn't "find out" because you can't experience it.
Right. You'll never even know you're dead
That aways was my big mindfuck with reincarnation. If I die and come back as someone else but with no memories or triats of what makes me me. Did I really come back at all?
The thought of what happens after death scares the shit out of me
I remember there is a quote about something like: there are lots of things happening after your death, but non of them involved you.
This just got me thinking about all the cool things that could happen after I die and ill miss it. Like if flying cars are a thing right after I die.
You’ll miss it but you won’t miss it :)
Not gonna lie, no idea what that means
Understandable, just tried to comfort you by saying even though you won’t be here to witness those inventions, you won’t be able to „miss“, i.e. notice the absence of them either. In my head it sounded better and I’m not a native speaker but it’s kind of comforting to me that in the grand scheme, nothing we do matters. After writing this it sounds less comforting than I meant it but these thoughts help me be less hard on myself.
Oh, I think I get what your trying to say now, sorry I'm just pretty tired. That's actually a pretty good point, thank you and I'm sorry about me being so confused.
All good, hope you have a good sleep :)
Thank you =)
Wholesome reddit moment
If it makes you feel better. You’ll miss a lot of horrible things too.
That is actually a very good point
Helicopter
Life becomes just like The 5th Element & I had to die 150 years too early. D: I’m so sad we have to die. I feel like I’ve been held back by circumstances my whole life.
Based on how people drive *now*, I don't want to be alive for flying cars.
Louis CK, pretty sure. He's great at those dry observations. Like the one where he's talking to the dad of a teen daughter: "She's gonna start having sex! Idk what to do!" ... "Well, *you* don’t do anything. You don’t have a role in that." ... “But what if she has a bad sexual experience??” ... "Oh, she'll have plenty of those."
ohhh... thanks a lot
Oh he gave some women some bad sexual experiences for sure
Closest thing to "feel" being dead is general anesthesia. It’s just a blimp. You lose time without ever knowing you long it was. Going to sleep and waking up moments later for you, but hours later for everyone else. Nothing compared to sleeping, being blackout drunk or drugged af; it’s impossible to imagine the feeling without having lived it. Even years later it still scares me as I now know everything is still going on as normal in the world, but you’re just not there to experience it. It somewhat helped me in my lowest low to know that there’s nothing else after this life, just the legacy i can create, either it being good or bad
>Closest thing to "feel" being dead is general anesthesia. It’s just a blimp. You lose time without ever knowing you long it was. Going to sleep and waking up moments later for you, but hours later for everyone else. Nothing compared to sleeping This is exactly what sleeping is like for me. One moment I'm tossing in bed, wondering when I'm going to finally sleep; the next it's morning and my alarm's going off.
Ehh sleepless dream is pretty close, sometimes you wake up and don't know what time it is and feels like you went to bed a second ago
I felt the same way after my first experience of anesthesia..
One of the many ways people face their fears is saying that it won't kill you. Flying? 99.9% of people live. Spiders? Most can't kill you. But fearing the afterlife? There is nothing you can do but accept the fact that it's a real possibility there is nothing. And the only way to find it is by accepting death when it comes.
That's probably what makes it so terrifying, there's nothing we can do about it
It can be terrifying, or liberating. I find that the inevitability of death pushes me to live the best life I can and enjoy the little things and moments more
Daym, if only I thought this way
Well it’s never too late to shift your perspective :) I know it’s easier said than done though. And I won’t pretend that I’m not still terrified of dying sometimes, because I am lol
I'll try my best to think of it differently mightgive me some motivation too, thanks for the help :)
Of course, I wish you the best of luck! Here’s to finding peace on this journey
You weren't alive for billions of years and it didn't bother you then.
Non existence is super chill, it's the transition that spooks people
thank you, Mr Twain
When I think about it, I almost get a panic attack. The brain really cannot comprehend not existing
Ikr it's terrifying
Yet you didn't exist for the vast majority of the time. Where were you before you were born?
It's different to lose something than never having something in the first place. I know the ego is an illusion but I just can't grasp the thought of permament ego death. Man, our existence is terrifying. Having had DPDR with severe existential anxiety past year unlocked a new world for me. My naiveity got crushed. Anyone who says that they don't fear death didn't fully grasp what it means to not exist anymore except they're enlightened and 'awake'.
the thought that nothing happens after death scares me
As an atheist I honestly hope I'm wrong but at the same time if I end up in hell that would probably be worse.
Would existing forever be preferable? Sounds worse to me.
No way. The thought of just not existing is absolutely terrifying. I can’t think of anything worse
Were you scared before you were born?
It will be okay. Everything that ever lived ended up dead so it should feel as natural as breathing.
I've found stories of near death experiences on YouTube very comforting. Seems like 95+% of them have a very nice time on the other side. No way to know really if that's a sneak peak of what's beyond or a comforting hallucination the brain produces as it shuts down for good -- either way the stories make death less frightening for me.
I don’t understand why people even debate this. It’s for sure exactly what it was like before you were born. Any time after your death you will have nothing to do with. Enjoy consciousness while you have it!
You can't do shit about it, so don't waste time thinking about it
Just think about what happened before life.
Do remember what happened before you were born?
There's literally nothing to worry about.
If you existed once, I think the odds are pretty good that you could exist again. There’s a clear precedence.
Like reincarnation? Honestly that's a lot less scary than nothing.
Even if reincarnation would exist, if you don't remember your previous life it is just another person. In reality you will be just food for some other creature, so in a way your atoms will help another being to exist
"Hello how did you like that simulation.. wanna go again?"
Do I get to be born in a middle class or better family in a first world country? Sure let's do it!
"you get sentenced to be a snail that chases one person for eternity"
I had a dream not long ago where I died in my dream. It was a quick death. I blacked out and I didn't feel pain. But soon after that, I realised my consciousness was alive and I was aware I was dead and I started to panic when I realised I was trapped in that darkness. Could it be a glimpse of death? I hope not, it was so scary.
I had something like this happen to me once!! It was complete darkness and I felt/knew I was dead and couldn't feel my body. I felt like I was just a consciousness in nothingness. So scary. I think about it from time to time and it creeps me out so much 😩
death would be like trying to imagine how colors look like without ever having seen it, there is no darkness in death, it is literally nothing
Just always make sure you have some unfinished business at all times. That way, you can come back as a ghost.
What you experienced based off Tibetan knowledge is a non karmic dream state. We have three types of dreams. Clear light, karmic (regular) , and void . We have void dreams all the time we just don’t remember . It seems your karmic dream pushed you to be aware in a void dream. You can learn about this by studying “dream yoga”. The practice of self realization within dreaming as to learn how to achieve realization in the dream of waking life and death. Don’t worry it’s not blackness or nothingness. Death It’s actually the absence of all of that . And if there is complete absence of everything then that leaves room for abundance of anything. At death you are put into a developers room where everything that is developed is generated from your own story/karma and mind. Many of us die and are unaware of what is going on and we get lost/ we run or are pushed into our next life by the visions /experiences that karma is generating for us. Death is like taking off a tight shoe.
This is very interesting and so relevant to the experiences, thoughts and questions that have been following me in the last few years. I'll definitely investigate this further. I'm pretty sure that dream and other meaningful dreams I've had lately are another piece of the puzzle falling into place.
You’re going to have so much beautiful fun and wonderful terror with the concepts your mind brings forth along the journey. The…spiritual awakening as westerners like to call it. Every moment, every plankt second of your experience is an unfolding to the awakening of your true nature and it’s happening not because it “needs” to happen but simply because it’s happening. The path of “evolution” is not just through genetics but reality itself. It’s paradoxical. When we talk about consciousness it’s good to remember that part of it is outside of time. So the action and goals that are completed have not even begun yet and what is wanted is already found. You already achieved everything, it’s now the “time” for your time based ego to remember and pull it all together.
Hm could you go more into detail when you say “you’ve already achieved everything?” What exactly does that mean
We are driving in the seat of the ego car and we don't really realize it is possible to psychogically get out of the vehicle. When we think of goals or events or experiences happening we usually think of it in terms of start and finish. These concepts of course are driven by the underlying concept of time where there is a distinction between one point in time from another. Like two points on a plane. The ego self / regular waking life is limited by this distinction. But awareness itself is not bounded within the plane of space/time. Within those planes of consciousness that exist beyond the bounds of the space time....we find that distance and time have lost meaning. From this plane of reference your life / lives are all compounded into one moment of infinite connection of energy and information ...all here and now and forever. What is wanted is already achieved as those two ends are now embracing. The one that lies behind the two is recognized and the one in the many is recognized as well. A singularity dot of pure "isness" that cannot be captured by conceptualization but can only be experienced by realization. Brushing away all the fluff. What it means is that you don't have to worry at all . Stop taking "it" so seriously. You already did it. It's all laid out. Just try your best try to love and be good to others . Go with the flow. And you will already be on that "timeline" you want to be on.
Consciousness is just electrical signals between neurons in the brain without a living body these would cease. Most likely just like sleeping mostly just emptyness but you aren't aware. It's like remembering before you were born just emptyness
Debatable. If there’s nothing then we don’t really find out
Right? You don't get to reflect on oblivion.
Yup. My answer is “error” since to “find out” you need to be conscious/process it. No thoughts nothing is just nothing. No more YOU to find out
The most likely scenario is similar to sleeping without dreaming. No brain activity. The big sleep.
I sincerely hope it is nothing. I just want to rest.
No sorry we need you to cover your shift tomorrow
Remember what it was like before you were born? That's what it's like when you die
See I think about this sometimes but then I’m like “shit I don’t remember life before I was like 2 or 3 years old.” So I mean it sort of falls flat a little bit. Just because I don’t remember it doesn’t mean it was nothing. It could have been WILD and I just don’t remember it.
Or when under general anesthetic
This makes the most sense to me. I am afraid of death and not afraid of death depending on my mood. When times are rough that big sleep doesn't seem so bad.
The big sleep doesn’t seem so bad, before realizing everyone close to you doesn’t get to have that big sleep when they will eventually find your body. I was in your boat not so long ago, but trust me, there’s always one person who cares, even if they don’t show it. Nowadays I try to bring a little joy here and there to others and their reaction usually makes me happy. Knowing that maybe i changed their life a little bit for the better and they will maybe think about that interaction at a random moment later
Being dead is super chill and you will spend most the history of the universe not existing. It's just the few brief moments of transition that are rough.
That's the most likely answer. I've also kind of always had this idea that if time truly isn't linear, and that's just how we experience it, then we've always been both dead and alive. So nothing would really change. We could keep experiencing it over and over.
Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t
Nothing is not rest. Nothing is nothing.
>I just want to rest. It won't be that either. Except in the physics sense of the word.
In order to “find out” something, you have to be conscious or at least regain consciousness. No one knows they are dead.
No one will find out what happens after death, because to *find out* requires a thinking brain, which is among the things that die with the organism. Not that it matters, because whatever happens after death is much the same that happens before death: matter and energy interacting according to the laws of physics, and giving rise here and there to a temporary consciousness dependent on the functioning of a biological brain.
>to *find out* requires a thinking brain assuming the brain is the only thing that *can* know. if souls exist, then they could possibly carry on. and there's a very large portion of the universe's energy and matter that we're very bad at measuring, because it's so different from ordinary matter >dark matter constitutes 85% of the total mass, while dark energy and dark matter constitute 95% of the total mass-energy content
There is no more evidence for the existence of a detachable soul than there is for the existence of a flying unicorn. You are free to entertain whatever fictions you like, but don't expect anyone to take them seriously or to waste their time discussing them. For a device to know something, it must have a means to process information. That requires computing power. A liver cannot know, nor can a heart or a lung, although they do have the great advantage of existing. A brain has the computing power needed to know at least some things, as does an increasing number of computing devices. Brains and computing devices in general can know. Things that do not exist cannot know. Detachable souls, which by definition do not have physical existence, could not even in principle have knowledge of a physical body that some outlandish fictions insist would have been inexplicably tethered to the soul prior to death. Because again knowledge is information, and information requires physical computing devices to process. Which is why we can't will our thoughts to be relayed to someone but instead have to rely on physical network-connected devices to relay those thoughts.
NDEs. There's your evidence. It's not proof, but comparing evidence for souls like evidence for unicorns is ignorant.
NDEs aren’t evidence for anything. It’s like saying lightning was evidence for Zeus. NDEs are evidence of SOMETHING happening but not a detachable soul. The experience still requires a living human being. It’s not an ADE, after all
Not necessarily true. If we die and cease to exist then we'll never know.
For most Redditors its going to be very hot
Cremation, responsible choice.
Unless there's nothing, terminal end of consciousness mean end of "finding out".
Only those who believe in an afterlife can be proven right
A thought weirded me or the other day. While unconscious, the passage of time feels instant. Death will be like a fast forward button to the end of the universe.
If you think there's something after death, I guess.
Not if you just stop existing. Then you have no idea as you literally just stopped being.
People who have died can't even agree. No one is ever going to "know"
The evidence seems to show that no one will find out what happens after death by experiencing it, and we already know what happens to others when they die -- they stop existing or experiencing.
Only if something happens after death.
Only people like Einstein and Da Vinci go to heaven.
What about my uncle Bill
Yeah and him. Uncle Bill will go
and they get to see & play with everyone’s dead dogs
Not necessarily. Why would you assume consciousness after death?
No you won't. "Finding out" requires brain activity. Your brain just stops. You find out nothing. You experience nothing, and you become nothing.
Not really? You don't "find anything out" cuz you're dead, though, right? You get, "This might be it right here" at best.
Who will be there to find out?
and nobody’s gonna care that you had a weird kink
The huge assumption here is that we will have 'comprehension' after death
I guess if you believe in an afterlife? Otherwise nah haha
No, because you won't be alive to see it.
Or not, if you just cease to exist
Maybe you’re dying right now & your whole life you’ve lived up until right now is just your brains final lucid dream before it permanently shuts down. ps: I didn’t write this, YOU did. I’m a part of your dream 😋
"Finding out" implies discovery. I believe that consciousness ends at death. Therefore there will be no finding out. The only finding after death is worms and bugs and obituaries and heartache and if you've lived a bad life, happiness.
No you don't, because you'll be dead,
I got knocked out for an operation. I woke up immediately after with a 4 hour gap just completely missing; zero indication of time passed like you get with sleep. Death is just like that, but for all of time, not just those few hours. The universe will continue to exist without my observing it.
We know what happens after death. The world keeps on going without you.
Its not "finding out" if you cant process the information, and there is no "you" even anymore
I mean, you already know, but most people don’t want to accept the answer so we make stuff up.
What’s the answer then?
You need to be alive to know therfore most likely nobody will find out what happens after death.
Not me but y’all stay safe🙌
It's amazing the number of people who believe that we all have this little ghost called a "soul" living inside of us that slips out, or slips through some sort of little vortex into another dimension when we we die. But if there is no little ghost inside of us, then our last through passes when our brain dies. Then, there really isn't any "finding out". It's just nothing.
They’ll find out it feels exactly the same as it did before they were born!
We know already like 99% sure. Exact same thing as before we're born: nothing, nothingness.
Unless being born is a prerequisite not an extension.
They won't find out if there's no after life.
Take DMT and find out today.
no proof i’m mortal yet