death
 

i wonder what happens when you die. i beleive in two things.... 1)- your dead thats it... just dead or 2)- everything is answered, you know everything, you float around the universe answering all your questions


what do you think???


and have you read that article in Scientific American about parrallel universes... some crazy shit....

I have a whole bunch of ideas, one is that we are reborn in different universes or somthing with minor/major changes to what happens in our life. The thing that bothers me about death is the whole 'eternity' bit. What if I get bored or somthing? There is no way out. Sometimes, late at night, that bothers me.

I belive that at death, we stop being conscious. We stop existing. It like going into a coma, forever. Don't worry about death however, you won't be alive when it happens!

I think we blink out. I don't want to believe that but I can't see it any other way. (Only because I haven't experienced it yet. Ha.) I want to think that life has meaning but it doesn't. We can make our own meaning but it is not written in the stars how we should live. I wish I was religious. Just to have something.
sigh.

It's probably like that part of sleep where you don't dream yet you can't remember it... Yeah... Nothingness.

In truth, I believe that when you die, you simply stop existing. Your body shuts down. However I do hope somthing other then this happens. It is a very deep question though, because you do not know what happens, thus you will always wonder.

I hope all questions are answered. I hope there is a meaning for all of us being alive other then to reproduce. Nothing on earth makes sense anyway so maybe somthing will happen when we die. My brain hurts, ill reply again later.

When you're dead, you're dead, you're wormfood. Effectively, your 'energy' is recycled. I don't believe in all the soul stuff. The body just stops and there simply is nothing else.

I don't expect anything to happen after I die.

When you are considering this question . . . remember that your theory must apply to all living creatures which die (from the eagle to the cockroach) . . . unless of course you think humans are magically special and different on account of our ability to invent pop-tarts!

Re: death
 

was this a seperate question? I don't see the connection.

I'm not sure what I believe exactly, but based on the opinions and experiences of a couple of people whom I trust very much, I think that our spirits are...hrm...how to describe it...?

I think we all start out as spiritual entities that are integral spiritual/energetic parts of a spiritual whole (god, for lack of a better word) and some of those spirits choose to inhabit human or other bodies (all matter is energy at base anyhow, right?). When we die, we may either forget that we are part of the spiritual whole and choose to inhabit another body, or we may return to the whole and know bliss and perfection. I think you probably can't define what it's like after you die - I think you retain memories and you learn, but it might be the same kind of hazy memories like how you remember your very early childhood. Maybe it depends on what kind of experiences you had as a physical being whether you choose to return to god or not.

A friend of mine who sees spirits and energy and whose knowledge I believe told me after my brother died that everything looks like love to him where he is now. Anger looks like love, guilt looks like love, grief looks like love, happiness looks like love. All the things I did with/to him, or said to him, look like love to him now.

I don't know how this matches up with any particular religious beliefs, but when I believe anything about an afterlife, which is only part of the time, this is what I believe.

your 'spark' goes, it gets extinguished. Thats it, nothing else. you are dead, do not pass go, do not get a new life, do not go to heaven. you. are. dead.

Otaku makes a great reference to the spark, however I think your idea is wrong. Einstein theorized on the subject, I don't recall exactly what he said on it but it was to the tune of this. Our said "spark" would be our essence, presumably the brain waves that dictate our existence. Those brain waves are electric and electricity never degrades or ceases, it is infinite. So perhaps that could be, unless what I heard was wrong... but hey it makes sense in my book.

Also I have read on the parallel universe stuff, better known as the Multiverse theory, and that is some crazy shit. Was I wrong in gathering that there is an alternate universe for every possible experience (i.e. turning left instead of right, etc)? I was kind of confounded when I read it, perhaps some has a link to some more reading about it.

You want crazy? Get a layman's book about Quantum mechanics. I reccommend "The Cosmic Code - Quantum Physics as the Language of Nature." by Heinz R. Pagels. Very easy to read, and very little mathematics, which is what scares most people away!

Basically, if you are to accept what is know about quantum mechanics, you need to give up, at least one, of your most basic beliefs. Things which are "obvious".

either:

Non-Objectivity: Does the tree that falls in the woods make a noise when no one is around to hear it? Those who accept the "Copenhagen Convention" claim that not only does it not make a noise, it claims that talking about anything, which is not observed is meaningless. Reality is defined soley by its observation.

Non-Local influences: In order for something to be affected by something else, they need to be in close contact...right? I mean, if I telephone you, I am still sending an electromagnetic signal to you, so I am affecting you via that medium Well some people claim that, all things in the universe are connected by a time/space independant manner. i.e. an instantaneous, undetectable, non-material carrier wave.

Antropic multiverse: Like you were saying, all possibilities of universe exist. When a random quantum event occurs (i.e all the time!) the universe spits in two! E.g. an emmited electron must that must "choose" to go through one hole or another instead goes through both...one in one universe, and the other in a second universe! But the really weird thing is that, "near by" universes can affect each other, so it can appear that a single electron passes through both holes at once!

There are numerous other interpretations also.

The other thing which may cuase the existence of other (literally parallel) universes, is higher dimensional physics. i.e. that there exists more than three spacial dimensions, but we are only able to experience three of them. These parallel dimesnions would not be like "twin universes" like the quantum anthropic multiverse theory, they would be completely different. It has also been hypothesised that the singularity from the big bang, resulted from an inter-dimensional fluctuation.
To read more on this subject, get Flat Land by Edwin A. Abbott. Haven't read it, but its supposed to be very interesting, and very accesible.

i geuss we cant know what happens after we die because none of us have ever been there....... but we probably just die.....

Death is only the beginning...

I firmly believe that when we die that is it. There is nothing more.

One interesting theory that I've played with in a script I was writing went something like this:

Have you ever remebered a dream and when you were in that dream it is reality... that is until you wake up and it ends. What if when you die that dream never ends. The moment gets stretched on forever giving your consciousness a home forever.

It was neat to me anyway.

you wrote waking life!? ;)

Just like us believers can't prove there is an afterlife, you can't disprove it either =P.

Consider people with Alzheimer's: their brains slowly stop working they lose ability to think clearly.

Also, people who are brain-damaged have their intelligence reduced or have some other brain function damaged or destroyed.

Now, when you die your brain stops working completely...so wouldn't it be reasonable to assume that all of your thinking ability would be erased and that you simply cease to exist.

I think the afterlife is the result of an inablility to let go, to accept death. I think that when you die, you're gone.

I admire you posters' willingness to accept that this life is probably all there is. But in a poetic sense, we do remain as part of the chain of humanity and in spite of Shakespeare the good that we do does remain and flourish, we hope... Merleau-Ponty writes that man is a network of relationships and these alone have meaning for him.

i am religious so i would hope there is a something after death. most people don't accept nothingness after death because they have no way to imagine what nothingness is. we have always known life so we hope to live again after death. if the afterlife i believe in isn't real, i think i would want reincarnation to be real, but only if you could pick what to be next. i think that would be interesting

I find the thought of oblivion comforting sometimes, actually.

people believe in a afterlife because they hope there is something more to life other than to live, reproduce, and die.... life is only what you make of it

you are definitely not alone in that thought my friend...

Don't expect anything to happen. I mean I'd like to go up into Nirvana or something and become one with the universe and see the face of God, but it doesn't really bother me.

"you float around the universe answering all your questions" - OMG how fun would that be, just imagine!

edit: i think that its whatever you want to happen, so forevery one it's different.

I had a strange experience on ketamine once. I won't be touching that stuff again.