Revisiting my thoughts on an afterlife.

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Red Ryder
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Revisiting my thoughts on an afterlife.

Post by Red Ryder » Tue Jun 06, 2023 11:29 am

For background, I fell down the rabbit hole of disbelief around the end of 2004 but held onto the typical Mormon afterlife belief centered on living again with family and friends through eternity. Perhaps all the positives without the endless missionary work and the trappings of three kingdoms. I held on to the hope for an afterlife.

Then around 2014 I started to come to believe and understand that perhaps once my last breath was taken, the lights were out for good. Nothing. Nada. Darkness. Non-existence. It made sense to me at the time. I found beauty and peace in not knowing my eternal future let alone having to work towards and worry about my eternal reward.

Now recently my pendulum has swung back to hoping for something more. I don’t know why I’m feeling this way. Perhaps Ive found joy in my existence on this planet and hope that it will continue into the next life. Only with an effortless transition without the religious narrative.

Or is the idea of an afterlife a residue of my previous religious upbringing that is suddenly rising to the forefront of my thoughts and my unconscious self wanting to be explored again?

I’m not really sure where I’m going with this. Perhaps just another thought experiment between my ears influenced by recent events?

I’m interested in Hagoth and Rubenhighlander’s response. 😀
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Ghost
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Re: Revisiting my thoughts on an afterlife.

Post by Ghost » Tue Jun 06, 2023 2:21 pm

The idea of an afterlife that has nothing to do with God or religion is an interesting one. Horror stories sometimes involve ghosts that are tied to where they died, and while the focus in those stories might be on people who encounter the ghosts, maybe the real horror there is the idea of surviving death only to have your consciousness stuck where your body last was for eternity (or until you get "released" by some contrived nonsense like in movies). Too bad for you if you die in a mine collapse.

What if we survive death but, without a body, no longer have any sensory input but remain conscious forever in a void? Fortunately, these unpleasant scenarios seem just as unlikely than the ones taught by religions. You kind of have to start by defining what it is that carries on with a copy of what was stored in your brain, and how that might happen.

My views on the afterlife have gone from belief, to hope, to halfhearted wishing, to isn't that a nice idea? No wonder religions always seem to pop up in cultures. People are always going to latch on to an idea like that if there seems to be even the slightest chance. It probably helps that religions give vague explanations that you can't think too much about even if you want to because there's really nothing to think about below the surface.

Some people say that life is meaningful only with an afterlife. Others say that they find more meaning after concluding that death is the end. I personally don't really sympathize with either of these views. Either there's an afterlife or there isn't, and what we believe doesn't change that. I think that life is meaningful if we decide to find it meaningful, whatever our reasoning. A pleasant afterlife would be great, though.

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hiding in plain sight
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Re: Revisiting my thoughts on an afterlife.

Post by hiding in plain sight » Wed Jun 07, 2023 8:29 am

I continue to choose to believe that there is something after we die. But I recognize that I don't have memories before I was born and if I blink out of existence and its one long dirt nap, I will probably feel the same way as before I was born. Nothing.

But I choose to want something after this life.

I read this book with my oldest daughter and I kind of like the model it presents.

https://www.amazon.com/Life-After-Bests ... ished%20Dr.

Reincarnation and eternal progression. And we are near others to help us and us to help them.

I do have a number of experiences that give me hope in my choice of beliefs. I had a co-worker that love to go ghost hunting. She would take a tape recorder and visit cemeteries or notoriously haunted homes/buildings. She would walk around talking and asking questions. Later she would listen to the tape and see what she could hear.

I have listened to her tapes and can hear voices for myself. Voices that are answering her questions. Voices of women, children, men. Voices with different accents. Etc.

What the hell is that??????

So I put that on my list of reasons why I am okay to choose to believe in an after life.

But as I said. If it is one long dirtnap then okay.

Gatorbait
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Re: Revisiting my thoughts on an afterlife.

Post by Gatorbait » Wed Jun 07, 2023 9:38 am

This is the topic that has driven religions throughout the ages, and I trust we all agree on that.

Like CS Lewis famously said about belief in a god or gods: Plan A- some or part of what you learn may be true. There may be a god. Or plan B: None of any religion is true. All are wrong, which is the atheistic point of view. That's it.

A dirt nap sounds like the way to go, at least for me, live life, die, and as others said- nada. But I don't think that's the case.

Just re-read the 29th section of the D & C, and yes, dammit, I still read scriptures, almost daily, and I think it is a good thing, at least for me. Anyway, there's a lot of ghoulish stuff in there, eyes falling from sockets and flies with big teeth, chomping away on your flesh. I don't buy into any of that nonsense. Then Christ reigns for a millennium.....oh, almost forgot and the "rainy day fund" from the church will be used...for what, no one knows.

In any case, I think we die, we continue on, and the way to happiness in the hereafter is love, peace and service- same as here. Temple B.S. work and all the other crap, that's hell. I'd rather be tossed into the fiery brim-stone (whatever the hell that is) lava, all that hot stuff, than do that temple nonsense.
"Let no man count himself righteous who permits a wrong he could avert". N.N. Riddell

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wtfluff
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Re: Revisiting my thoughts on an afterlife.

Post by wtfluff » Wed Jun 07, 2023 11:13 am

If the "afterlife" is anything like "this" life... Well, count me in as hoping there is no afterlife. I haven't found anything in this life that sounds like "fun" to do for eternity. That sort of eternity sounds like hell. Even as a believer, I couldn't picture a version of the MORmON afterlife that sounded "fun." Do I have to wear Polygamy Pantaloons™, a baker's hat, a fig-leaf and weird robes for eternity? Again - No Thanks.

Reincarnation? That sounds intriguing. For eternity? I guess it depends on the "rules" of reincarnation.


As always, I like to quote Roger Ebert in these afterlife conversations - similar to HIPS:
Roger Ebert wrote:I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state.
Faith does not give you the answers, it just stops you asking the questions. -Frater Ravus

IDKSAF -RubinHighlander

You can surrender without a prayer...

hmb
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Re: Revisiting my thoughts on an afterlife.

Post by hmb » Wed Jun 07, 2023 11:39 am

I always liked the idea of mormon afterlife. I never wanted the CK, even as a TBM. I mean, I'm female, so it would not be a good fit for me. I wanted to be in either 2nd or 3rd kingdom. It just sounds so "chill." Afterlife was, and still is, the hardest thing for me at no longer believing. I also think an afterlife would be fun to tell all the smug LDS, "Neener neener neener." But I believe death is the great equalizer. We all will end up as worm food or ash.

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RubinHighlander
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Re: Revisiting my thoughts on an afterlife.

Post by RubinHighlander » Wed Jun 07, 2023 2:07 pm

Well Red, FWIW here's my nutshell spin on this topic:

I reject all religious explanations of an afterlife. The Mormon afterlife seems especially ridiculous to me now.

I reserve about 5% of my belief sphere for "maybe something but IDK and nobody does"

I've read and listened to dozens of trip reports from both NDEs and psychedelic ego death trips, non are conclusive and it appears there's a lot of overlap between the two experiences (the chemical DMT is naturally present in the human brain during an NDE). A close friend of mine who had a heart attack last January, he had been clinically dead for several minutes, he came back with absolutely nothing. Less than %15 of people experience an NDE when they die and come back.

I often spend time churning thoughts around about life's purpose or non-purpose, it's design and or pure randomness, it's chaos, the amazing madness we've evolved to. I have come to believe there is a some type of limited shared consciousness. This seems to have increased in the digital age or maybe it's just me getting older. This limited shared connection across this planet, to me, seems like some frequencies that our thoughts can share, some limited group of us that tap into some of the same thoughts at times. For me its not so mystical, although it feels that way sometimes, but it's more of some type of energy wave or vibration. The quantum experiments where we've learned more about particle behavior, this is more of what I'm trying to describe here. The ability for some species to communicate with each other in a natural order, like birds flying in formation and changing direction in a fraction of a second, or what might appear as some type of telepathy between living things.

At the end of every day I get on this marble: IDKSAF
“Sir,' I said to the universe, 'I exist.' 'That,' said the universe, 'creates no sense of obligation in me whatsoever.”
--Douglas Adams

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hiding in plain sight
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Re: Revisiting my thoughts on an afterlife.

Post by hiding in plain sight » Wed Jun 07, 2023 3:14 pm

hmb wrote:
Wed Jun 07, 2023 11:39 am
I always liked the idea of mormon afterlife. I never wanted the CK, even as a TBM. I mean, I'm female, so it would not be a good fit for me. I wanted to be in either 2nd or 3rd kingdom.
The celestial kingdom as described by mormons sounds more like hell to me. Eternally pregnant. Casting out the majority of your kids out of your presence. Your kids who do make it back to you are NOT with you. They are off doing the same thing themselves. An eternity of construction projects, running prisons, and being forever in ward council sounds horrendous.

The terrestrial kingdom where you get to hang out with Jesus. Have good friends around you. Learning and growing. Sounds about right.

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Hagoth
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Re: Revisiting my thoughts on an afterlife.

Post by Hagoth » Wed Jun 07, 2023 8:59 pm

When I was a kid I used to imagine what it would be like to project myself into the mind of a bird for a little while. Not just to see though its eyes, but to fully BE it, and experience life exactly as it does, and then return to myself with full memory of the experience of having been the bird.

I find it not too difficult to imagine something like a field of consciousness that is the sum of all experience. In that model, my mind is just one instance of that vast consciousness. When my body ceases to function "I" simply snap back into the cosmic consciousness, where I contnue to exist in some sense, coexisting with all other consciousnesses, all facets of the true reality that lies behind the the illusion that we experience as reality with our human brains and senses. I am there, my wife is there, my children, you guys... everyone and everything that has ever lived.

Of course, it is completely impossible to test a hypothesis like that, but my personal experiences make that kind if afterlife seem more likely to me than any Sunday school version of an afterlife.

A more practical version of this is that matter and energy are recycled back into the cosmos to make new life over and over again, and that consciousness results as an emergent quality of the laws of nature.

I'm OK with a kind of afterlife where my atoms go on living, even if my ego doesn't, but I like the first scenario too.
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain

Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Buddha: "Be your own light."

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Re: Revisiting my thoughts on an afterlife.

Post by Cnsl1 » Thu Jun 08, 2023 7:40 am

I hope to retain some version of my consciousness because I like who I am, and I like the idea of eternal progression, but progressing towards a better version of myself, with access to family and friends, and in a state of peace and happiness, doing things together that bring joy.

Anyone who claims to know what happens is just guessing, but I like to think afterlife might be different for different people but better for everyone. Better in the sense that physical and emotional pain is suppressed to some degree.

Reincarnation? I suppose that makes as much sense as being born in the first place.

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Re: Revisiting my thoughts on an afterlife.

Post by Angel » Fri Jun 09, 2023 6:04 am

Hagoth wrote:
Wed Jun 07, 2023 8:59 pm
When I was a kid I used to imagine what it would be like to project myself into the mind of a bird for a little while. Not just to see though its eyes, but to fully BE it, and experience life exactly as it does, and then return to myself with full memory of the experience of having been the bird.

I find it not too difficult to imagine something like a field of consciousness that is the sum of all experience. In that model, my mind is just one instance of that vast consciousness. When my body ceases to function "I" simply snap back into the cosmic consciousness, where I contnue to exist in some sense, coexisting with all other consciousnesses, all facets of the true reality that lies behind the the illusion that we experience as reality with our human brains and senses. I am there, my wife is there, my children, you guys... everyone and everything that has ever lived.

Of course, it is completely impossible to test a hypothesis like that, but my personal experiences make that kind if afterlife seem more likely to me than any Sunday school version of an afterlife.

A more practical version of this is that matter and energy are recycled back into the cosmos to make new life over and over again, and that consciousness results as an emergent quality of the laws of nature.

I'm OK with a kind of afterlife where my atoms go on living, even if my ego doesn't, but I like the first scenario too.
Beautifully written Hagoth.

A return to the vast sea of consciousness, the eternal cycle of birth, growth, decay, and transformation. Embrace the impermanence of the cosmic dance. Feeling our mortality, we awaken to the preciousness of life and cultivate a profound gratitude for each fleeting moment. Death is not separate from life but a continuation of it. Transformation, liberation, reconnecting, a drop of water returning to ocean. :)
“You have learned something...That always feels at first as if you have lost something.” George Bernard Shaw
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

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DPRoberts
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Re: Revisiting my thoughts on an afterlife.

Post by DPRoberts » Sun Jun 11, 2023 12:20 pm

This is an interesting subject for me. My current thinking is, I think, an outgrowth of the same kind of thinking that brought about my disaffection with Mormonism. To do that, I had to put what I wanted aside and allow myself to attempt in my imperfect way determine what is. So, while I am sure I my understanding can be flawed, I still try to understand using my best thinking and judgement to determine what reality may be.
When talking about an afterlife we venture into territory where facts are sparse. I admit to not having a keen interest in the subject, but my somewhat apathetic approach leads me to think that oblivion is the most likely after death scenario, and I am okay with that compared to most religious notions of an afterlife. Fluff quotes Roger Ebert, and I suppose I am in that camp until persuaded otherwise.

That said, I cannot rule out that motivated reasoning may be at work here. Oblivion definitely has its advantages. What is there to fear? I would say for the departed they are as perfectly content as Ebert alludes if they are perfectly oblivious. Not conscious of anything, there is no emotional response. There is just . . . nothing.

What we fear when we talk of an afterlife is the thought of being conscious and consciously aware of the passage of time, but lacking the power we have in our current lives to grow, to love, to seek new gratifying experiences. This power is what gives life meaning, so we naturally fear a scenario where that is taken but consciousness and awareness of the passage of time is not. The scenarios of physical pain and suffering that humans have conjured are bad, but ultimately it is the lack of control over ones own circumstances and some ability to improve on them that make hell a hell.

So, is life just one and done? There I am not sure because I simply lack understanding about why I am me. What makes me, me? Is it my genes? Is it something the cosmos lends to this physical being and then takes back when the physical avatar dies? I do not know, but here is where I find that there could be the possibility of some kind of reincarnation. Is it possible that when this physical being dies my consciousness can also be dormant for eons of time that mean nothing to it because it is in a state where there is no meaning? Yet somehow, in the vastness of the multiverse random chance will find and produce that avatar again for my consciousness to inhabit? A hopeful, but also frightful scenario to contemplate. Here I am born into relative privilege in a very unequal world. Is this the best my avatar will ever get? Will the next time put me in the middle of some kind of holocaust, or abject poverty, or a nomadic hunter gatherer existence, or what? Or will my avatar be some completely different animal, like the bird Hagoth mentions? No way to know, and just a flight (pun intended) of imagination I suppose.

Certainly this is not what I would choose if I were to design a great plan for sentient humanoids. I lean more toward models where agency is assured to the extent it does not hurt or impede the progress of others, and progression and flourishing is the goal. But at the end of the day, I have to see those as lovely man-made ideas with little evidentiary support.
When an honest man discovers he is mistaken, he will either cease to be mistaken or cease to be honest. -anon
The belief that there is only one truth, and that oneself is in possession of it, is the root of all evil in the world. -Max Born

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Hagoth
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Re: Revisiting my thoughts on an afterlife.

Post by Hagoth » Thu Jun 15, 2023 7:17 am

DPRoberts wrote:
Sun Jun 11, 2023 12:20 pm
Fluff quotes Roger Ebert, and I suppose I am in that camp until persuaded otherwise.
Would you give it two thumbs up?
DPRoberts wrote:
Sun Jun 11, 2023 12:20 pm
...like the bird Hagoth mentions? No way to know, and just a flight (pun intended) of imagination I suppose.
The idea of consciousness as a fundamental emergent property of nature fascinates me. In that example no one becomes the bird; the bird is just a tiny and temporary perturbation in some kind of vast universal field of being (we must make an effort imagine such a thing without thinking of crystals and incense). I have mentioned this before, but I am blown away by how organisms too tiny to possess a brain can perform astounding, decision-based, behaviors. There are even individual proteins that have complex "behaviors." The universe is full of consciousness. Every cell in your body is full of consciousness.

Exhibit A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-uuk4Pr2i8
Exhibit B: https://youtu.be/2yI_SoOWFMU?t=48
Exhibit C: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBbnbB ... jLGUwX5Q3g

Whether all of these bits and pieces of awareness are somehow interconnected (e.g. field theory) and add up to some sort of cosmic consciousness thingy is probably beyond our ability to discover. But it does kind of make me wonder.

And, if I you will indulge me a bit of further wackiness, is there a possibility the human brain can actually detect that consciousness field in certain altered states of consciousness? I keep going back and forth between wondering if this could explain the commonality of mystical traditions and induced altered that are visible in brain scans from people of all traditions, or if it is best explained - and I suppose this is the more parsimonious answer - by the possibility that there are ways of accessing deeper functions of the common brain that evolution has given to all of us.

And finally, an anthropological question. Is it better to believe in an afterlife, even if there isn't one? It seems like there could be a real evolutionary/mental health advantage to being optimistic about what comes after death. But, of course, religions have to come along and twist it into fear mongering and manipulation for power and money.
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain

Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Buddha: "Be your own light."

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