Quote Originally Posted by Sageous View Post
Haven't we, though?

Isn't religion itself really just a culture of and for communicating with life-after-death? Don't the Tibetans et al practice dream and sleep yoga with the intent of participating in the life-after-death transition? The practice of Shinto is still fairly prevalent in Japan, isn't it? Yes, once greedy, or, worse, righteous, humans get their hands on the tenets of religion and turn it all into Organized Religion the cultural part may collapse, but doesn't that basic core of innate belief in something more that inspires religion count as a universal sense of communication with the afterlife? Or at least an assumption of communication (what, after all, is prayer, if not that?)?

Forget religion; what about pop-culture itself? We seem constantly inundated with new (very popular) books, movies, and TV series centered on the assertion of life-after-death. Why would they be so popular, if we all didn't already have that sense of it built into our psyches?

I think we have all been communicating, even professionally, with at least the notion of more for a very long time -- probably since we lived in caves and trees. Yes that communication might be one-way and delusional, but that does not discount its presence.
No - I think, we havenīt.
I mean it in a way, so that really people would go about finding murderers by holding seances.
Or get to know from authors, where they have put the end to their last novel - in which box..
Like - that it is not one-way - I can go talk to a tree then - it also wonīt answer.
And that it really works.
Which it doesnīt - people want to prove it does for ages - and nobody manages convincingly - let alone regularly and usefully.



Quote Originally Posted by Sageous View Post
Good question. And here is another that is worth considering, I think: If you have become an ascended, energy being, capable of an existence that completely transcends your corporeal life, would it matter if you were no longer you? Does a butterfly mourn its former life as a caterpillar?


Funny thing -- I have had a problem for most of my adult life (especially after a few years of advanced LD'ing) about the "classic" rationale for ascribing things like love, compassion, loyalty, honor, etc, to the spiritual side of existence. I've come to think the opposite, that all these things are simply our sentient amplifications of core, genetically-borne instincts. What is love, after all, beyond a drive to reproduce, and then protect those that we reproduced? What is compassion, beyond a need to maintain the integrity of the herd (or pack, as it were)? And so on. Yes, we've made much of them all, and their roles in our lifelong pursuit of joy is unquestionable ... but they are still genetically based -- we did not create love with our minds, or souls; rather, we interpreted the sensation of love that is part of our natural lives.

The point is, all these emotions may in fact only reside in the mind-brain, and could very well be let go of when their programmed purpose becomes moot. So, yeah, they would have stayed behind, and you as an ascended being might not miss them. (cue once more the umbrage-laden "damn, that's cold, Sageous; I would never be that way, or even want to be that way!" responses...)

I think there would be a consciousness. I would like to think that compassion of some sort would endure, perhaps as an echo of our corporeal origins, and that it might help define us. But that may just be hormone-based wishful thinking.



It does indeed. But I would think of it less as an "interest loss" than, perhaps an "interest shift."
Soo - your 'spirit' makes actually much more sense to me in the "Sageous-cold-mode".
Makes the brain-tool-need-for-spirits-to-have-mental-characteristics-of-a-human- argument wither.

The question in your case then really being to find out, where all that then will take place, and with what substrate.
If it were energy as we know it for substrate - I think, one will get tangled up in physics and itīs laws, when one wants to ascribe any such thing as consciousness or life to it.

But - so one could argue - isnīt energy matter - and do you not say yourself, that consciousness springs from matter?
It would be back to the lack of communication then, with all that goes into that - if they are conventional energy, in some sort of trans-phyical, or trans- current understanding of physics sphere.

It is an extremely far reach to propose.
I just feel the motives for doing this far reach are also hardwired in the brain - like love, compassion etc. - so there is laid down in us the inert capability to said experiences.
Were it not for them - our imaginations wouldnīt so readily go helter skelter with all that we otherwise know.

And personal experience - esp. introspectively witnessed phenomena of the mind itself - is so inherently prone to be flawed.
Not just flawed in any which way - but usually biased in a way to help us along, fitness-wise.
I canīt bring myself to "believe myself" there + there is not (yet?) something to scrutinise concerning convincing paranormal occurrences.
I will report, though, if something occurs..wink.gif



Quote Originally Posted by Sageous View Post
Now there is an excellent rationale for why we're not communicating with the dead. Eternal beings could very well use time in a different manner than we mortals, and it might be that we all cannot get onto the same temporal page; except of course for the blurry near nonsense that those few ghosts or mediums who insist on trying do manage.
Yupp - in the book - there are the so called "Dwellers" - beings who live ultra-slowly in the depths of a gas-giant planet.
And there are institutions - run by families over generations, the "slow seers" - who say goodbye to their fast contemporaries - and slow down to meet and communicate with these dwellers in super-pressure-save personal little ships.
Surfacing back hundreds of years later..
This is absolutely glorious, this book!



Quote Originally Posted by Sageous View Post

Quote Originally Posted by StephL
Buut - I am very much drawn to art about and around the very borders of experience and knowledge and technology and very surprising findings out.
This is a phantastisch playing field for the mind.
Yes it is. But the real thing to do here is wonder why this is so, I think!
Why the fascination?
Well - in the background or foreground, too - humans want a better life and do not want to cease to exist.
Such wonderings can in theory lead to an actual reality, too!!
For example substitute the body for the much cherished conscious mind of ours.
Grow bio-constructs and transfer the very structure and its content of your mind-brain over to that - potentially super cosy and immortal new shell.
Maybe laser-beam it to the stars..
There goes my question - can this be done??

So why am I drawn to such art?
Inspiration, flexing thought and freshening up perspective..

And it is a motive, around which there is already a large and elaborate and wonderful body of art - also philosophy, psychology, science and other non-art-texts/films/whatever to enjoy and build on around.
And itīs not so much the "transcendent" in a spiritual way in literature, I am drawn to, with some really beautiful exceptions - but rather speculative fiction.

A. Andrew Gonzales, dwelling in my signature with link would go into the spiritual section rather.
But even he does not in any way say, there is channelling going on, or he has messages to transport, or something - he receives inspiration in his experiences.
Now that is something nice for the "spiritual" to do!!



Quote Originally Posted by Sageous View Post
I'm not sure if Astralboy is still with us (though I hope so), but I'm also not sure we've strayed so far from topic with this stuff -- after all, isn't it all ultimately the same thing?
No we didnīt stray too much. But he had already announced to have said his all a while back..wink.gif