tecoyah

What do you believe to be waiting, lurking on the far side of the black door.

PLease post any personal experience that has been a guide to your belief.

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

tecoyah

My mother, a well respected clinical psycologist (and by far the oldest soul I know) had a heart attack and died about fifteen years ago. She was gone for about twelve minutes, and left the shell of her body. Had I heard this from anyone but her, I would be extremely skeptical, and likely blow it off.
The story she told me was powerful and enlightening, and I have never had the same understanding of life since. But still, who knows?

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

irateplatypus

care to tell us more of your mother's experience? sounds interesting.

i wish that you had included an "other" choice in the poll, as i'm sure many people would fit into that category.

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If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

Giltwist

I think the author Diane Duane described my idea of heaven well in her series of novels The Young Wizards (I believe the first book is called So You Want to Be a Wizard). She talked about this place called Timeheart. The rule of thumb is this: everything that is loved lives on.

TheKak

If life after death was true, then EVERYONE who has be revived would have remembered a vision, and this is not the case. You experience NOTHING when your brain is dead, everything they remember happens in the blink of an eye inside their head, but to them it is seamless from the point of death to revival because of a loss of brain activity.

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Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm a schizophrenic and so am I.

analog

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if that's the road you want to travel, i might point out that the brain has nothing to do with the soul, which is what would leave the body after death. If you were revived, then you were not really dead. "Brain death" is not dead, not yet.

tecoyah

Analog....would you care to add the "other" option to the above poll.....actually a very good Idea, wish I'd thought of it. thanx

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

:::OshnSoul:::

Our afterlife is all in how you percieve it to be.

Afterlife for me will be options a, b, and c. Some believe in physical places of heaven & hell, in which they create in their minds what it will be like or think into reality what they really will experience. It's really up to us. The possibilities are endless.

irateplatypus

i think an afterlife created in the mind would be a severe disappointment.

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If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill

:::OshnSoul:::

thoughts create. The most re-occuring thoughts become your reality. Depends on how powerful your thoughts are. Thoughts are pure energy which are put into motion.
How would you want your afterlife to be? It's how you live this life that will determine it. Not as punishment or reward, but as what you create in every given moment.

EDIT: Life is eternal. Period. We just evolve.

sixate

Afterlife? People actually believe in that stuff?

There's nothing after death.

KellyC

I'm wormfood when I die.......

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Him: Ok, I have to ask, what do you believe?
Me: Shit happens.

Giltwist

Same thing happens when you get put under by anasthesia. Heck, even I don't dream EVERY night. Does that means you are long gone when you are out? I'd say no. I'd say you just don't remember it. If you are the sort of person who gets inebriated to the point of not remembering, its the same thing, and lots oif stuff definately happens.

TheKak

When you are asleep your brain is still full of activity. Your brain still tells your heart to beat, and your lungs to take in breath. I believe you mis-understood what I meant by loss of brain activity. I mean ALL activity, not just concious activity.

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Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm a schizophrenic and so am I.

Tophat665

OTHER:
In the fractional second to 45 minutes or more it takes your brain to completely shut down upon death, you experience your last thoughts, which, because they are the last, last a subjective eternity. That's the afterlife. That white light is your occipital lobe shutting down.

That is why it is very important that one have something to focus on - that one focusses on unconciously - to keep one's final thoughts from being wretched, regretful things.

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Light a man a fire, and he will be warm while it burns.
Set a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

tecoyah

When my mother died, she was clinically gone for twelve minutes. In that subjective time, she actually watched the staff attempt to revive her body. She was no longer in it.
My mother was above the scene for an indeterminate amount of "time", before leaving. It was difficult for her to put in words, and more so for me to interpret but this is the essence of what then transpired.
The "light" was indeed there, but she did not go into it, rather it enveloped her and became .....something. She did not ask it anything, and the way she puts it she didnt need to. The "feeling"(this was the only word that came close to explaining the sensation) was one of bliss. But she was inclined to leave, and has no explanation as to why. She then woke up in the hospital, revived.

Before this experience my mother was wandering in her life, having been divorced recently, and finding herself. My mother is now a well respected and internationally sought Holistic Healer, and clinical Psycologist. She attributes the direction her life has gone to aftereffects of this experience, and I for one, believe every word of her story.

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

sexymama

I believe very similar to this. We create our heaven and/or hell right now on earth. That "creation" stays with us when we move on. How far we travel "into the light" depends on how comfortable we are in the light. I believe we are all part of God and God is part of all of us; however, how much influence He/She has in our lives and deaths depends on us.

btw -- I didn't vote as none of the choices suited my belief system.

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If you can go deeply into lovemaking, the ego disappears. That is the beauty of lovemaking, that it is another source of a glimpse of god

It's not about being perfect; it's about developing some skill at managing imperfection.

Yakk

You mean, people actually believe in that stuff? If you are going to make fun of people for believing "there is an afterlife", you shouldn't follow it up with a declaration of faith "there is no afterlife" unless you are going for irony. =p~

Personally, I think the afterlife is a wonderful trick to fool hedonists into being good people. "Be good now, and you'll have an eternity to enjoy yourself!" So, I believe that people should, in general, believe in the afterlife.

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Last edited by JHVH : 10-29-4004 BC at 09:00 PM. Reason: Time for a rest.

HammerHand

I mean no disrespect to anyone when I say this, but there is no such thing as anyone being "clinically dead". That's like being a "Little bit pregnant". I mean, either you're dead or you aren't. Hindu Yogis have been able to place themselves into trance-like states that produce a simulation of death for all intents and purposes, but they aren't really dead. I mean, they can't be.
The only way to know if a person is really, truly dead is if they go through rigor mortis and then start to rot. And as far as I know, nobody but Jesus and Lazarus have done that and come back, and Jesus didn't report any bright lights, He reported the same thing He reported before He died.
But I had one of those out of body experiences that resulted in a heightened psychic ability and all that. I had a few grand mall (sp?0 seizures while going through the DTs while detoxing at home and I was accutely aware that I had stopped brething and my heart had stopped breathing. The next thing I knew, I was leaving my body and I was bathed in bright light and surrounded by an overwhelming presence that I knew to be love and forgiveness. I could suddenly feel my sin all over me. It was burning me and laid upon me like acid, and I felt filthy and ashamed and I knew I was deserving of death and hell and destruction and abandonment, but this presence kept coming closer to me and the closer it came, the filthier I felt and the more intolerable it became. The shame and guilt and despair of the sins I had committed were on me and they were unbearable and they stunk and burned. Finally, this presence was right in front of me, and I couldn't stand it anymore and I said "I can't take it anymore! I can't take it! I belong in Hell! Send me there! I deserve it!" But He considered me for a moment, ands His brightness was overwhelming and warm and enormous and finally He spoke, and His voice was soft, but it filled everything, and He said "But I LOVE you." And it was more than I could stand that this wonderful being who was so great and powerful and caring and loving and warm and sensitive and kind could Love me in all my filth! and I cried out in disbelief and denial "NO!" and I became aware on the physical level of taking a very deep breath, and my heart beginning to beat again, and though I was very weak and sick for a while, I regained my strength quickly and was soon baptised had gained the ability to "Know" things about people, and to "Read" objects and "heal" people in some instances. In one case, this ability to "read" objects lead to solving a murder that had been unsulved for a long time.
I think- It is my opinion that when we die, we go on to be with God if we have reconciled ourselves to Him, and go on to be alone, covered the knowledge of all of our selfishness for all time and cut off from everything but that if we have not. Not because God has kicked us out, but because we couldn't possibly accept a loving God's forgiveness.

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Thus endeth the lesson.

:::OshnSoul:::

It comes hard to many to comprehend seperating the body & mind from the soul.
Why can't the soul pass on, being eternal, while we exit our current form, leaving our body behind?

CSflim

It comes hard to many to comprehend the mind/body/soul as one.
Why can't the soul just fade out, being finite, when we die, leaving us conscious of nothing?

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:::OshnSoul:::

nice.

MSD

If something exists after death, it seems to me that the most likely answer is that we may either wander for a bit and be put back somewhere else, or that we will immediately reincarnate.

If an afterlife in another world exists, it would only be achieved by the consistent purification of the self through multiple lives. There is too much beyond our control for one lifetime to be enough to be judged on.

Logically speaking, I would have to say that a form of reincarnation is the only plausivle answer. For souls to be created then judged is a horribly inefficient process, and I have felt too much outside of the normal physical range to exclude the possiblity of a non-material existance. This leaves me with the theory of a closed system in which we nothing is created or destroyed, it just is.

TheKak

Tecoyah I have no doubt that your mother saw what she saw, but I think it was all created in her dying brain and not some afterlife like experience.

HammerHand: I have no doubt that you also saw yourself having an out of body experience, but coming down off of drugs, I am not sure that you should trust what you saw as being anything more than the shit leaving your system.

There is no proof of us even having a soul, so why should I believe that some mystical force drives my body and mind, and seperates during death to move on to something else? It really just sounds like a security blanket kind of thing to me (no offense intended to anyone).

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Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm a schizophrenic and so am I.

Destrox

You live, then you die.

There is no second chances, there is no "After-Life".

Its all just somthing we tell children to remove the fear of death in thier minds. (Dont bend my words saying I called you all children.)

And a soul? Its your brain, thats what makes you "you", not some invisible object that has a mystical ability to travel out side of your body and then back in. More fairy tails is all.

This is my opinion, so dont get flustered and pissed off if you dont like it.

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You bore me.... next.

tecoyah

That may very well be the case. Still the experience completely changed her, and gave her life a new direction, which in the proccess changed mine. We will all find out eventually, until then belief in something afterward is a way to direct this existance.

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

KellyC

Dude...I really like your opinion. You said right on the spot on what I'm thinking, but sounds a lot better and shorter.

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Him: Ok, I have to ask, what do you believe?
Me: Shit happens.

sam95519

At least this is a question all of us will get a chance to find the answer to. The brain is you...that "you" is generated by electro-chemical processes and can be thought of as a waveform (energy field..)
String therory..6 extra dimensions wraped up in our 4
At the Quantum level where empty space is not empty what do we really know about how this energy field may propagate. You don't just turn off an energy field-- the generator or source may stop but the signal is still out there--the energy may change form but is not destroyed. I know a jumble of a lot of ideas but I can't see how we can just wink out at the end.

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"Soylent Green is People!"

doncalypso

I have no personal experiences to back up my beliefs and hypotheses on the subject. However, I refuse to believe that after death we just fade to nothingness.

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Doncalypso... the one and only Haitian Sensation

Nancy

I'm kinda hoping that the "after-life" will be whatever I want it to be. That if I want to spend eternity on my father's fields with my family and friends then that's how it'll be

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I have all the characteristics of a human being: blood, flesh, skin, hair; but not a single, clear, identifiable emotion, except for greed and disgust. Something horrible is happening inside of me and I don't know why. My nightly bloodlust has overflown into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy.
I think my mask of sanity is about to slip.

Stompy

IMO, the events you experience after you die are the same as the events you experienced before your birth: nothing.

I believe that religion is a man made tool used to control people through fear. A reason I believe this is because of all the different types of religions out there. According to Christianity, if you worship anything other than God, you're committing a sin. So... Buddhists are sinners by that definition. Conversely, Buddhists believe that THEIR religion is 100% correct, so on and so forth. You have a big pot to choose from, pick the wrong one, and you go to hell! For example, if you're a Christian, you believe in God/Jesus, but what happens to the Buddhists? What happens to the Muslims/Jews/other? Do they automatically go to hell because they don't believe? See what I'm sayin? It's a big contradiction.

There was very little historical documentation from 2000 years ago (and beyond), and even less scientific discoveries as opposed to now, so it was very easy to believe that the stars in the sky were the eyes of god, or that fire, which burns you, is the domain of the evil one, etc etc... It's very easy to have claimed something back then and have enough people believe it.

On the other hand, the universe is a strange place.

This is why I choose to be agnostic. I won't completely 100% disbelieve in any god or supreme being, but it's illogical, and to me, very man made. Not enough proof to believe, not enough proof to disbelieve. On the other hand, if religion X wins and happens to be the "real" religion, then I expect to be granted eternal paradise, because it's not MY fault that I thought logically and, given what's presented to my human form, chose wrongly.

Kinda pointless to even think about it.

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I love lamp.

prosequence

There is an "afterlife", your life choices will determine whether it is pleasant or not.

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And now here I stand because of you, Mister Anderson, because of you I'm no longer an agent of the system, because of you I've changed...

Rodney

I think we're lucky to have the life we have now. We should live well and justly, neither for fear of consequences nor for anticipation of some eternal reward.

If I did believe in a God, and it told me that there was no life after death, that this was all there was, I could accept that. Because what we have just by being here is so much.

If there is an afterlife, I'll be pleasantly surprised. But I don't expect it.

That said, if you accept any of the theories of parallel universes, or even accept that this universe is vastly large and that there are only a finite number of combinations of matter, then in some ways you will always exist. The "you" here and now may die, but myriad other "yous" continue to exist in the multiverse, at all different stages in your life. Actually, I find that concept even more comforting than that of an afterlife.

TawG

not to get all technical... but what is the soul? Any theories anyone? Energi without substance? Quantums?

tecoyah

That which will continue to be, Grasshopper.

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Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

final_identity

I like the idea of losing a sense of time. G'wan, work out the ramifications ... ... it's kinda oxymoronic or paradoxical. Like, at the "beginning" of the universe, immediately as the big bang was revving up, there was no time, because all matter was compressed into a super-gravitationally heavy point which (if you're up on your relativity) would absorb all timeliness into itself, thus preventing it from moving forward. Weird, no? I think that we humans have a weak time-sense, forced upon us by our earthly presence, and when we are finally set free of our mortal shell, we develop a greater capacity to untime ourselves. Hence, a lack / superiority in the realm of self-awareness. Hmm ...

Maybe there are levels. Like, dogs have some degree of awareness of self, worms less, humans more (or so we like to think). How 'bout, when we die, we go on up another level or two beyond doggies and humans? Who says we are the pinnacle? Maybe Martians are much better at that stuff than we are, already ... kinda reincarnation but not earthly, is this theory.

I also like E.M.Forster's "The Life to Come," which has a variety of neat metaphors, mostly vaguely Manichean / Christian, including one neo-Plationic one which is just a narrative of a small bubble rising up into (and *pop* getting absorbed by) a larger one.

The Star Trek theory is, that there's GOT to be some kind of wave of life-essence that doesn't die, because we will some day have sensors for it, if only Geordi would get back to work on that project.

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The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. Friedrich Nietzsche

animosity

i do not believe in anything after life because i do not believe that people have souls... i am just a body, nothing more. i have yet to see any facts that would make me think otherwise. People make these things up to give meaning to their lives... I give meaning to my life by living it and not worrying about what comes after.
At the end of my life, when i die, i expect nothing. and if something happens.. ok, i was wrong, but i am happy with the way i lead my life.

CSflim

I don't believe the soul inherrently exists. There is no "thing" that is the soul. I guess you could say that the soul is dynamic pattern and structure. But it is a purely abstract concept that has no actual existence, just as "justice" say, is not a thing which exists, it's just a concept, or a word which allows us to get accross a particular idea or feeling.

I think that the idea of a soul is useful concept to have, just as the concept of 'life' is also useful. Neither of them are strongly defined words, but are useful none-the-less.

But I certainly don't believe in an immortal soul.

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idiono

I believe that life after death would be something like lucid dreaming, in that everything would appear real and tangible as it is in this life, except that you could willingly change it to suit you in the blink of an eye (think: Vanilla Sky). In this sense I think an afterlife would be something like your own personalized paradise world to create and explore. And yes I know that might sound like a bunch of idealistic fantasy crap, but in my opinion it's the most appealing idea I've heard of yet, or at least how I'm hoping it turns out to be.

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werd.

vdublover

Religions sprout up in all the corners of the world. This is because humans are always searching for the answers. In this case, we don't know the answer...so we make it up! I think we die, that's it. No more. Sounds sad, but if you think about it, your rotting corpse is energy returning to the cycle. Plants, flowers and trees can sprout from the decomposition of your carbon-based body. It's really quite beautiful, and if you want to call it an 'afterlife' please feel free. Your atoms will be recycled, just as other atoms have been recycled to build the body you are in today. It is really quite beautiful.