The after Life might be like a lucid dream,

Hello guys,
First of all this is not looking at things from a spiritual/religious angle this is looking at it from a scientific angle. Now to start did you know some scientists believe that consciousness can exist out of the body? And when I looked further into this it's quite interesting there are good debates for both sides, but if this is not true then the whole 'after life' thing would be just a load of BS (from a scientific point of view). The thing which leans me to this being possible is because the arguing scientists say that consciousness and subconsciousness is a by-product of our brain. But how can this be? Imagine consciousness is you, without it IMO your a mindless robot, doing exactly what your brain tells you to do. It could never have been this way, it just seems so wrong. But then it's also argued that dreams are by-products but honestly I don't think they are, but lets get back on with the theory :content:. So provided that both your consciousness and subconious are both in tack after death then you should be you just without any body parts. This is where it starts to get really scientific because that first obstical was the hardest to look at from a scientific perspective. Ok so you have no body.... No sensory detection at all, not ears, not a mouth, no hands etc... You have nothing to build your visual stimuli or any stimuli for that matter. So what does you consciousness do... Hallucinate, a dream in other words. It creates a dream world after death, but provided you are not asleep when you die then you should have no lapse of consciousness and get lucid. The best part about this is that your dream would last forever because never would your coniousness hook up to external components for any sort of stimuli. Eventually this dream, becomes reality your in a lucid wonderland, you can create entire worlds and test them out and not worry about time or losing lucidity because you know that this is your new reality, because you remember dying. Now I thought I would add a extension on here because this is quite cool. Basically if consciousness can exist out of body it would explain so many things that branch off lucid dreaming and also it would in a sense allow two dead people to visit each others conscious hallucination because that is all they are as well. I know there is one huge loop hole here where does the coniousness go? I believe the answer of this is space, I believe that is one of the reasons it could be there. Because everyone knows that no scientist ever to exist will know two things, firstly what happens when we die? And secondly what is the mystry of space? And I'm not saying that this theory is true, because I would be going against my core scientific beliefs that what you see is what you get... But I thought I would get this out there because it seems like a pretty good semi- scientific theory to the after life and because this is a lucid dreaming forum it seemed quite relevant.
- GangsterPanda
Happy holidays :)

I'm a Catholic and I think this would explain Heaven and Purgatory right off the bat. Purgatory is you feeling guilty about certain things and believing you should suffer a bit for them before having fun (going to Heaven). The problem comes out when you try to work Hell in. Could it be when you did you also feel the conciseness's of other people specifically the people you have met? If that was true maybe the person would feel a little bad; however, I don't think someone like Jeffery Dahmer would feel an ounce of guilty for the things he had done. This is very interesting, and it makes me laugh at the thought that a few years ago people thought religion and science would never mix. Now science is proving a lot of the stuff in religion.

Terence McKenna theorized a parallel dimension made only of informations. I think that, when we are in a dream (lucid or not) we could consider we are in our personal information dimension: what we see, what we hear, what we sniff in a dream is a concept, an information we have inside. However i don't deny the possibility of shared dreams, rather, it would be awesome!
About the after life, i think it is a total and eternal (or anyway comparable in terms of longness with human life) immersion in the information dimension. However, this is what i hope.

Shared dreams! I forgot! That would also explain why you see dead relatives when you die.

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Originally Posted by Jkniager

Shared dreams! I forgot! That would also explain why you see dead relatives when you die.

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How exactly do you know you see dead relatives when you die? And wouldn't it be possible that you are simply dreaming the dead relatives up instead of sharing a dream with them?

To play the devil's advocate, is there any reason other than that it "seems wrong" that consciousness could not arise as a byproduct of the brain? And for the record I've been a bit bothered with the definition of sub-conscious that most people seem to have adopted. The sub-conscious is not an entity, it is not a being separate from you that communicates with symbols or feelings. It is merely a name for the concept that information is processed at a level below conscious thought. There are parts of the brain that work automatically without conscious effort, this cannot be disputed as it is plainly observable. The obvious example is the majority of the autonomic nervous system. A big degree of "gut feelings" and other natural processes often attributed to the sub-conscious (in the sense that it is an entity) are really just the brain and the nervous system responding to stimuli automatically. It is correct to attribute these functions to the sub-conscious, but only when referring to the sub-conscious as the appropriated name for physiological functions and information that are processed at a level below (i.e. sub) conscious thought.

Ranting aside, what tells you that consciousness cannot be a product of the brain? Wouldn't animals, insects and the like be capable of the same intelligence as man if this were true? Wouldn't humans have the same intelligence themselves as well? After all, assuming you're right, the consciousness is an external entity. What then limits higher levels of thought, if not the brain? How are there diseases like Alzheimer's where people cannot remember who they are, what they are doing, or who their family is (essentially losing their identity)? How does consciousness work without memory (if you've ever been blackout drunk or experienced some form of acute amnesia you know what I mean, it's like whatever happened the night before never even took place)? If there are diseases that affect consciousness, wouldn't this point to the brain being responsible for consciousness? Otherwise, consciousness could not be affected by disease or brain disorders.

I am not here to put you or your ideas down, I am just pointing out holes in your argument. I do not know myself if consciousness is a product of the brain, or if the brain mediates consciousness or acts a some sort of receiver (like a radio antenna) of consciousness. I would like to get as close as possible to the truth, and in finding the holes in your argument I hope I have helped myself and anyone else actually thinking about interesting subjects such as this move closer to understanding the truth as well. Just to reiterate, I'm not trying to be a jerk, I'm just asking the questions that come to my mind after reading your theory.

So, if YOU get flattened in a big flattener, your whole brain and body gets destroyed, you'll still have the "lucid dream" afterlife?

What I believe:
The concept of transitioning from consciousness to total unconsciousness doesn't make sense to me. It's simply incomprehensible. Anyone know what I'm talking about? So, I believe that there has to be some form of an after-life whether it be heaven or a dream state or whatever.

Does 1902 make any sense to you?

Unless you're really really old, that would be a time before you were alive. Did you have any kind of awareness then? Is there a pre-life as well as an afterlife? I have no problem with conjectures like this, but I just wish people were able to come up with some better arguments than "I can't concieve of it therefore it can't be possible." People of past generations couldn't concieve of a lot of the technology we take for granted and use everyday - and yet it was obviously possible, and now is real. The inability to concieve of something speaks more of the limitations of the human mind rather than of reality itself.

So, let's go with the consciousness byproduct hypothesis; if consciousness is a byproduct of the brain, then a pre-life wouldn't be possible because there is no brain to produce a consciousness. Just try to imagine losing your consciousness permanently. You can't, because it's an inconceivable thought as a conscious being. When you pass out, you lose consciousness; you can only recall the events before your passing out and after your passing out. I can't imagine it being different with death. You would die, lose consciousness, then regain consciousness, except you would be "somewhere else".
Wow, this is a difficult subject to understand, even harder yet to explain.

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Originally Posted by 123north123

So, let's go with the consciousness byproduct hypothesis; if consciousness is a byproduct of the brain, then a pre-life wouldn't be possible because there is no brain to produce a consciousness. Just try to imagine losing your consciousness permanently. You can't, because it's an inconceivable thought as a conscious being. When you pass out, you lose consciousness; you can only recall the events before your passing out and after your passing out. I can't imagine it being different with death. You would die, lose consciousness, then regain consciousness, except you would be "somewhere else".
Wow, this is a difficult subject to understand, even harder yet to explain.

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And if your brain is dead / damaged it can't produce consciousness.
That's from scientific point of view, because my theory is that soul gives you consciousness.

I'm wondering what the scientific theory is for unexplained phenomena, because that's where I start to agree with the idea of life after death or some kind of spirit energy (whatever you want to call it). I was never a very religious person and I always had a lot of questions that most people couldn't answer when I was little (or so my mother tells me). I probably wouldn't feel the way I do about life continuing after death if I hadn't had some very strange, unexplainable experiences throughout my life. I mean, even lucid dreams can be said to be produced by the mind, but what about strange events that happen when you're awake? I realize that some people will still say that they can be caused by your brain just leading you to believe something is happening when it isn't, but when I was younger my cat would react to these things as well, and I don't think my brain could have imagined that.

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say here is that, if life continues after death (and it could be like a heaven/hell/dream...who knows) it could be possible that strange experiences could be explained from this type of energy around us showing itself at times (including in your dreams). My husband is more of the scientific mind and feels that it's all in my head, but I don't agree. If nothing else, my cat's reaction confirms it for me. So, along with these experiences, as well as the lucidity in my dreams (which he also doesn't have), I'm convinced there's something more to life than what's here and now.

My husband doesn't always have a very good argument other than there has to be a scientific explanation for everything. My argument isn't any better since I have no proof, just feelings and personal experiences, so I honestly believe that consciousness can exist out of the body, even in dreams. Since we disagree, we don't talk about it very much ;) I guess I'm wondering what other people with a scientific view might have on unexplained phenomena?

***p.s. is ok that I added experiences that didn't involve dreams in this post? I just read something about not posting things like that in this section, but I felt it was related to how I feel about my dreams and dreaming in general, so they seem to go hand in hand to me here.

My two cents. I think consciousness is outside of the brain (lol wut). What the brain does is allow this consciousness to submerge its self into the physical experience. Basically I think the brain is like a receiver for consciousness. So if it has been scrambled or damaged then less consciousness is being received by the brain and thus you get Alzheimers, drunk, etc. While we are connected to this brain we cannot access whatever memories we had before connecting to the brain, we are totally immersed in this experience. Dreams for example. While we sleep our brains are more active than ever before. It is doing things like processing memories, regenerating body cells, etc. We as the consciousness awareness however are in a totally different world entirely, in the dream world. Now consciousness is still connected to the brain, if it disconnected you would die. But what sleeping does is it would allow consciousness to shift it's focus aka dreaming. The brain is doing it's own thing but consciousness has shifted it's focus. Consciousness never leaves the body until death, until then it can only change focus and it is always connected to the brain, so even though consciousness is doing its own thing in dream land, the brain still registers sensory input even though there is no outside stimulus. This stimulus is coming from somewhere else non-physical however since consciousness is still connected to the brain, the brain registers these non-physical sensations as physical sensations.

Then we got astral projection which is "leaving the body" but even during that, consciousness is still connected to the brain. This is represented by this silver cord people always say they see when they project. The purpose of this cord is to send and receive data from the physical body to the spirit. This allows you to remember what happened during the projection and without it you remember nothing. So I think that what it all comes down to is just focus. If you lose focus of this body (sleep) you become aware of another body (dream). Lose awareness of the dream world and you regain awareness of the physical world. But the big question is when the physical body croaks and when we lose awareness of it for good, what would we become aware of? Maybe nothing changes and we become aware of the spiritual body and fly and create universes. Once again, this could all be a load of shit but it would be nice...

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Originally Posted by Daredevilpwn

My two cents. I think consciousness is outside of the brain (lol wut). What the brain does is allow this consciousness to submerge its self into the physical experience. Basically I think the brain is like a receiver for consciousness. So if it has been scrambled or damaged then less consciousness is being received by the brain and thus you get Alzheimers, drunk, etc. While we are connected to this brain we cannot access whatever memories we had before connecting to the brain, we are totally immersed in this experience. Dreams for example. While we sleep our brains are more active than ever before. It is doing things like processing memories, regenerating body cells, etc. We as the consciousness awareness however are in a totally different world entirely, in the dream world. Now consciousness is still connected to the brain, if it disconnected you would die. But what sleeping does is it would allow consciousness to shift it's focus aka dreaming. The brain is doing it's own thing but consciousness has shifted it's focus. Consciousness never leaves the body until death, until then it can only change focus and it is always connected to the brain, so even though consciousness is doing its own thing in dream land, the brain still registers sensory input even though there is no outside stimulus. This stimulus is coming from somewhere else non-physical however since consciousness is still connected to the brain, the brain registers these non-physical sensations as physical sensations.

Then we got astral projection which is "leaving the body" but even during that, consciousness is still connected to the brain. This is represented by this silver cord people always say they see when they project. The purpose of this cord is to send and receive data from the physical body to the spirit. This allows you to remember what happened during the projection and without it you remember nothing. So I think that what it all comes down to is just focus. If you lose focus of this body (sleep) you become aware of another body (dream). Lose awareness of the dream world and you regain awareness of the physical world. But the big question is when the physical body croaks and when we lose awareness of it for good, what would we become aware of? Maybe nothing changes and we become aware of the spiritual body and fly and create universes. Once again, this could all be a load of shit but it would be nice...

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I think an interesting question to ask is, even if consciousness did exist separate from the brain, would dying cause the same effect as blacking out? Could consciousness still exist but be, from a human standpoint, effectively useless as it cannot receive data/stimulus from its "reality receiver"? In effect, consciousness could still continue to exist, but be incapable of experience or any sort of perception. Perhaps rather than becoming aware of some sort of spiritual vessel or creating its own stimulus, nothing happens at all. Or maybe consciousness becomes tethered to a new "receiver" and you continue to "live" by being another human. Still assuming consciousness is separate from physical matter/your body, what if consciousness were only singular, and the same pool of consciousness received input from everybody, yet the "receiver" limits the knowledge of such an occurence and you are given the illusion of existing as a single unit/entity?

What about the moment when you're between being awake and dreaming? I mean, all that weird stuff happens and you don't even care, brain is doing everything for you. At this point your consciousness is basically dead, if it can happen here why wouldn't it happen after death?

@snoop. Well I think it is safe to say consciousness can create it's own stimulus, if it didn't then dreams wouldn't be possible. The only reason consciousness needs the brain is so it can actually interact with the physical world with a physical body, same way u need a dream body to interact with the dreaming world. But consciousness doesn't need a body to simply observe the physical world, but it can't interact with it. I am sure you had 3rd person dreams where you observe but don't interact with anything. I think it would be like that when we die. Then we can choose to leave the physical dimension and go somewhere else.

I think people mistake a concept here. Science promotes open-mindedness, and while for sure anything is possible, that doesn't mean we should go out and give any kind of validity to lines of reasoning that goes against logic. You could say that consciousness might be something outside of brain, but that kind of implication is already by itself filled with flaws unless you present a line of reasoning that can actually provide a way to further that possibility.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS4PW35-Y00

And part 2 here.