Thread: I just can't get my head around nonexistence after death

It gave me a smile, OneUp, imagining people at death, realizing that there was more, and how excited they would feel.

If there is a afterlife. Then Imagine the expression in James Randis face when getting there. It is either going to look something like this Or he might just start to debunking it all..

Randi: You never going to get my 1 million dollar prize god! Because Im not dead!
God: Omg...

Whatever happens when we die, I really wish there are people filming our entry into the "afterlife". Because I would watch that.

But something tells me, that if there is life after death, it won't be the celebration of our entry in a new and last immortal life, climbing the stairs to our new domain, holding hands with the all mighty God while all the citizens of the city play their favorite instrument and indulge in quinoa cookies.

I'm thinking more like being squeezed out of a new mother's womb's belly cesarian flaps and having your umbilical cord cut, with no past memory, and no past identity, just your sense of consciousness and purpose.

(Better get started with this dream yoga!)

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

Better get started with this dream yoga!

Good point!

Originally Posted by Ginsan

I find this so strange I can not even form a proper question.. The best thing I can come up with is: how does nonextistence after death make you feel?

Free..

Free of the threefold trap

Unencumbered...

Unencumbered by that which one so tenaciously holds onto...

Body

Person

Persona

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

I've been wondering, is it truly possible to detach yourself from your identity? It seems possible in theory, but I feel like it wouldn't be possible in practice. Because as much as you can say, I am not a person... That's what you are. You still have to wake up every day and face the obstacles. I do like to not be me, once in a while but it only works when I'm not in the middle of something super important.

Disclaimer: the following text is based on my own set of beliefs that I have created through observation, intuition, and logic. I don't ask you to believe it, but if you are curious as to how I came to these conclusions I will be happy to explain:

Enlightenment is detachment from the physical world, or what you seem to be talking about. An analogy would be water running over and around a rock rather than pushing it. You still experience everything you normally would, but it does not sway you. It is pointless, but beautiful, like a piece of art. This can be attained through understanding the absurdity and pointlessness of the world. I don't mean knowing it, but understanding it. It must permeate the mind.

There are other things that I would like to include but I am not sure about them myself. I have been developing this set of beliefs for years now, and I probably will be for many more years. This is because certain ideas take a very long time to wrap my head around. I also sometimes find a flaw, and need to change or backtrack months or even years of thought. I suppose it is like writing a massive set of equations, each pertaining to the others. While some of the ideas are firm in my mind, others are still being written.

Edit: Spelling

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

Whatever happens when we die, I really wish there are people filming our entry into the "afterlife". Because I would watch that.

But something tells me, that if there is life after death, it won't be the celebration of our entry in a new and last immortal life, climbing the stairs to our new domain, holding hands with the all mighty God while all the citizens of the city play their favorite instrument and indulge in quinoa cookies.

I'm thinking more like being squeezed out of a new mother's womb's belly cesarian flaps and having your umbilical cord cut, with no past memory, and no past identity, just your sense of consciousness and purpose.

(Better get started with this dream yoga!)

What if life is a crazy trip and when you die you wake up as an alien holding a bong and your friends circle around you and ask you if you felt it?

Originally Posted by Avian

but if you are curious

I am

Originally Posted by Avian

It is pointless, but beautiful, like a piece of art. This can be attained through understanding the absurdity and pointlessness of the world.

I am seeing, recently, the need to familiarize myself with this feeling of pointlessness/art beauty that life is.

Originally Posted by Avian

Enlightenment is detachment from the physical world

Okay. This is the thing that intrigues me at the moment. So, here is something I wrote about this, in my personal "thinking journal":
I was thinking about the ultimate eastern goal of leaving samsara and entering nirvana and how useful it was in practice to let go of all the illusions of this world but how undesirable it was simultaneously. It is paradoxical how the use of seeking this silence is so practical to living a good life but if one sees it as an ultimate goal, then, they are wishing suicide on themselves. Nirvana as I understand it is where only the soul exists and there is no body, no illusions. This means no perceptions (no images, no smells, no sounds, no feelings, no tastes, no perception of a body), no emotions and no thoughts. The only thing that remains is awareness (and no will because there is nothing to will), awareness of nothingness, and that, for eternity. There is no problem though, because at this point, you are emotionless and painless and therefore careless about the horrible disposition you are in. It is the most peaceful of hells and the worst part is you don’t even mind, (but neither do you enjoy it). I think it is a mistake to make nirvana an ultimate goal, it only serves to dissociate a soul from the world, transforming it into an ill and retarded wind gust that loses itself in space. I do however believe that this idea of letting go of everything that exists and putting yourself in a position where only your awareness exists is crucial to dealing with attachment and desire and other emotions. What I have come up with is that we must seek this state not as an ultimate goal but as a momentary distancing from the world, like the pause menu of a game. When you play a game, you never have the ultimate goal to pause the game and stay there forever. However, it is sometimes necessary to stop the game for a bit, especially if you find yourself getting more frustrated than entertained. It’s a method of controlling your emotions, not a favorable state.

tl;dr, the summary of it is that I was thinking that enlightenment, detachment from the physical world, is only as good as the pause option in a video game. It is a necessary option, that allows you to put everything back into perspective, but it is not an ultimate destination to be desired.

I think that "enlightenment" should not be about completely detaching yourself, but about being able to zoom out, see that you (I think of myself as a soul (consciousness + will(self-directionality/control) in a body(biological limits, biological and environmental disposition to emotions, thoughts and behaviour)) are not your body and you are not your thoughts and just detach from the physical world, but be able to plunge back in and out at will.

If you ever encounter yourself in a life or death situation, I don't think that detaching yourself from your body will seem very righteous...

Originally Posted by Avian

I have been developing this set of beliefs for years now, and I probably will be for many more years.

Same here

Originally Posted by Avian

What if life is a crazy trip and when you die you wake up as an alien holding a bong and your friends circle around you and ask you if you felt it?

Fun thought. But although I believe everything to be possible, I don't think any drug would cause any organism in the world to have such a trip. It would have to be lethal, to be incapacitated for so long.

This tends to be a hard thing to discuss... Here's what I think

We use these words, "you", "I", "me", so forth. We have this idea that there is "me" and then there is "other stuff" with a clear separation between the "I" and everything else when perhaps there is not.

Have you ever played the Sims? Sims may be very simple compared to real humans, but they do have a certain level of awareness and they do think and make decisions.

When a Sim dies or you leave the game, she doesn't really stop thinking, rather she is recycled by the system (your computer) which she was never truly separate from to begin with. Her thinking resources are reappropriated and used for other tasks. So a Sim doesn't really have an existence that has a start and an end, she is only a temporary embodiment of some relatively small pieces of the great whole. Those pieces existed before her and will continue to exist after her.

So it is with humans too. We are embodiments of things that have existed for billions of years and will continue to exist perhaps forever. The only thing that is temporary is the form they are currently in. So death is not followed by nonexistence, it is followed by a return to the great whole and a transformation into other things. A change of form.

So basically, I think the idea of "I" as separate from everything else is a bit misleading in the first place.

I don't know if you were responding to the OP or to the present conversation Whatsnext because both make sense. What I was saying though, is that however elegant the idea that our particles and the potential energy that is stored in our bodies has and will always exist, it seems very besides the point, because what is relevant is our "whole temporary form/our identity/our self" and not the skin particles that make up most of our domestic dust.

If I talk about a Sim, I am talking about the Sim in its transient form, when it existed, not the electrons flowing through the computer allowing electricity and the Sims program to work, and how one of these electrons was once part of a gold atom that was in the chocolate cup of the Aztec king and that in the future will be part of a carbon atom in a flower's cellulose.

The idea is elegant and beautiful and worth mentioning, but I don't think it is truly relevant.

Non-existence is, from the way the word is used in this context, the inert state of existence that exists beyond the dimensions of illusion. I use the word illusion to qualify anything we invest belief or meaning to beyond the limited value of belief or meaning it's capable of offering on it's own. When mapping out an existence/non-existence dichotomy, this includes everything one would label as existence, as existence when compared to an opposite must mean everything perceivable and everything perceivable remains inconsistent. Consistency is truth, and only that which falls outside of definition or perception can remain consistent.

All suffering comes from replacing truth with interpretation, in other words, from existing and investing meaning into it. None of it holds any meaning, for time is not real. Existence is an equation, whether you read through it one number at a time or not, the result in an equation is still zero. At the Big Bang, it is speculated that a flaw occurred which allowed all existence to follow, matter and anti-matter were generated in disproportionate number and so could not reach equilibrium with each other. Ultimately, this cannot be, and because it cannot be it is only necessary to see that it cannot be in order to rectify the equation and return to zero. Once one can see the truth, it stands for itself and dissolves illusions one by one. All of existence is merely an incubation chamber for non-existence.

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

I don't know if you were responding to the OP or to the present conversation Whatsnext because both make sense. What I was saying though, is that however elegant the idea that our particles and the potential energy that is stored in our bodies has and will always exist, it seems very besides the point, because what is relevant is our "whole temporary form/our identity/our self" and not the skin particles that make up most of our domestic dust.

If I talk about a Sim, I am talking about the Sim in its transient form, when it existed, not the electrons flowing through the computer allowing electricity and the Sims program to work, and how one of these electrons was once part of a gold atom that was in the chocolate cup of the Aztec king and that in the future will be part of a carbon atom in a flower's cellulose.

The idea is elegant and beautiful and worth mentioning, but I don't think it is truly relevant.

I was responding to the OP. My point is that existence in this context is a bit of a red herring in the first place, since consciousness is a property of a certain organization of things rather than a thing in its own right. I guess I would say that the China brain is conscious in the same way a human is, but that consciousness is, as is much easier to appreciate in that particular scenario, illusory.

I like that you brought up the China Brain. I searched it and it happens to be one of the things I imagine "God" to be.

I also don't agree with the standard buddhist nirvana, because don't you just get that same thing when you die? Sure your sensory perception is cut, but that doesn't necessarily mean your awareness is gone. That is why I think that we should live our lives, and experience all the emotion and beauty of the world, but not to let it affect us. We are rocks in the river of live, and my goal is to let the water flow around and over me, instead of moving me.

Originally Posted by Avian

I also don't agree with the standard Buddhist nirvana, because don't you just get that same thing when you die? Sure your sensory perception is cut, but that doesn't necessarily mean your awareness is gone. That is why I think that we should live our lives, and experience all the emotion and beauty of the world, but not to let it affect us. We are rocks in the river of live, and my goal is to let the water flow around and over me, instead of moving me.

Well, see, I am not sure I understand how one can or why one should "live our lives, and experience all the emotion and beauty of the world, but not to let it affect us."

With this approach, you would experience your significant other's love, but not be moved by it? You would not respond to it? You would simply bask in their love, but not be affected? And not give back?

The world affects us and we affect the world. This is the cycle of Samsara. And I like it. I am willing to accept the pains with the joys. I think it is useful, though, to disconnect ourselves from it all once in a while, just to put things back into perspective. It's important to look at our reality for what it is.

The world is already a pointless thing, there is no goal, it's only about having fun. We're in a playground. There is no ultimate goal to this playground, you just do whatever. I like to be grateful for this playground and enjoy the company of those with which I share this playground. But to say "I'm just gonna leave the playground, and look at it from outside, where I am not affected.", it doesn't seem... desirable.

That's how I see things at the present moment. I wish you luck disconnecting from the physical world, although, I have a feeling we might be on a similar path, that we describe with different words.

lol people are still discussing this, I have a lot of catching up to do

The way I heard it is that once the work is done and a monastic has moved beyond "form" they now can move through form freely. They can "merge," undetected, into a (real, living) horse, then migrating bird, elephant, human (and on and on) and return to formlessness (nonexistence) at any moment.

The world of form is the world of bodies. "Different" bodies like tree, insect, sea creature and so on and so forth have very "different" senses.

Beyond form, there are no bodies, therefore absolutely no senses. Those trapped in the world-of-form cannot possibly know or imagine Formlessness (nonexistence). And no one can get to Formlessness without doing "the work".

Here is a Youtube describing "the essential work" (me thinks):

***
Ask A Monk: Experience of Reality: Ask A Monk: Experience of Reality - YouTube

***(27:04) 39,213 views at 11pm 10-Feb-15

Transcript:

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

Well, see, I am not sure I understand how one can or why one should "live our lives, and experience all the emotion and beauty of the world, but not to let it affect us."

With this approach, you would experience your significant other's love, but not be moved by it? You would not respond to it? You would simply bask in their love, but not be affected? And not give back?

The world affects us and we affect the world. This is the cycle of Samsara. And I like it. I am willing to accept the pains with the joys. I think it is useful, though, to disconnect ourselves from it all once in a while, just to put things back into perspective. It's important to look at our reality for what it is.

The world is already a pointless thing, there is no goal, it's only about having fun. We're in a playground. There is no ultimate goal to this playground, you just do whatever. I like to be grateful for this playground and enjoy the company of those with which I share this playground. But to say "I'm just gonna leave the playground, and look at it from outside, where I am not affected.", it doesn't seem... desirable.

That's how I see things at the present moment. I wish you luck disconnecting from the physical world, although, I have a feeling we might be on a similar path, that we describe with different words.

When you are playing on a playground you will sometimes hurt yourself. You can either freak out, or get over and forget about the pain and move on. The playground will certainly give you some scrapes and bruises, but it is your choice whether you want to acknowledge them or not.

Pain is to the body what crying is to a baby. To ignore it is negligence. But to be aware that the baby is not you, and so you don't have to panic when taking care of it is merely something that any sane people do.

So, I do think we both agree here, we might just be using different words. I don't think the ultimate goal of a parent is to disconnect from their infant, but there is no need for the parent to believe their kid and them are one and the same. They must work together, like we must work with our bodies as long as we are with them. No need to believe that we are the body. But that's a perspective I like. Many others will prefer the perspective that they are their body, I don't know why, but they surely have a reason why.

Ya I agree with this. I guess the simplest way to describe what I am talking about is that our entire reality is completely absurd and you don't really need to take it seriously. Everything we experience is just sensory input, which may or may not correspond with the real world. Assuming it does, you still can't be sure whether the world and your consciousness are real or just some kind of illusion or emergent trait of some system. You don't know what will happen when you die. You can't be sure that you don't "die" every time you sleep from interrupting your mental stream. The list of reasons why the real world has no significance goes on and on, probably infinitely.
Because of this I also think enlightenment/nirvana is not important. Sure it might be a blast but in the end nothing really matters anyways.

The belief that life and death are separate are just another persistent of our illusory reality. In a world where paradox is truth, to understand death we must ask what it means to be alive?

To me, life is death. Our existence is death, and I will explain this reasoning now. Many in this thread have said they view death similarly to what it was like before we are born.

Now, asking what yourself what it means to be alive and to be born, to come into existence. Well, we know energy can`t be created or destroyed, and our consciousness can certainly be considered energy. So our conscoiusness comes from the oversoul - the place we left to come here, into this universe. We journey through this life, and in the end, we die. But we never were alive in the first place. We simply go back to that place, the Oversoul, going circle in the most persistent illusion we know. Our births are illusions too, too powerful for our mind to comprehend here so we of course have no memory of it. Like death... only our births are the real death, and result from us "dyig" in the oversoul. For us to be born, we had to leave the Oversoul - For what reason? No one knows - but for us to exist on this plane, in this universe, we came from that place... maybe its the dream world? But at least I believe, that in death, we come back to where we left... who knows


Wee had to leave there to come here. And to go there we have to leave here.

Originally Posted by Whatsnext

This tends to be a hard thing to discuss... Here's what I think

We use these words, "you", "I", "me", so forth. We have this idea that there is "me" and then there is "other stuff" with a clear separation between the "I" and everything else when perhaps there is not.

Have you ever played the Sims? Sims may be very simple compared to real humans, but they do have a certain level of awareness and they do think and make decisions.

When a Sim dies or you leave the game, she doesn't really stop thinking, rather she is recycled by the system (your computer) which she was never truly separate from to begin with. Her thinking resources are reappropriated and used for other tasks. So a Sim doesn't really have an existence that has a start and an end, she is only a temporary embodiment of some relatively small pieces of the great whole. Those pieces existed before her and will continue to exist after her.

So it is with humans too. We are embodiments of things that have existed for billions of years and will continue to exist perhaps forever. The only thing that is temporary is the form they are currently in. So death is not followed by nonexistence, it is followed by a return to the great whole and a transformation into other things. A change of form.

So basically, I think the idea of "I" as separate from everything else is a bit misleading in the first place.

This is the idea I was striving towar, and couldn`t agree more. The individual is a paradoxical concept, as all truths are - the seperation between organism and environment is just another illusion. Perhaps rooted in the existence of the ego and human hubris

Or... what if when we die we are just re-incarnated in another conscious and sentient form, be it human or alien. Then all there is to the univer and everything is consciousness. Consciousness is everything, and experience is consciousness. It is a freely flowing freely like a stream, and like the stream and its ripples we see each peak and trough, through our conscious medium. We are born and we die, and the cycle repeats and over an infinite interval of time what do we have? Pure consciousness, an assimilation of atoms, protons, electrons, quarks, etc, trying to understand its existence over an interval of time... and in each existence, every time without fail, it finds itself in complete distraught trying to understand its own nature, but realizing that with each thing it knows about itself and its existence, more questions are raised... the universe is trying to understand itself, and to do it it needs consciousness - that is it. But the irony and the paradox is that the consciousness gets lost in its own complexity over the infinite interval of time - sageous claims that all of time is condensed to one moment - which is true, and exactly equivalent to saying it is contained in an infinite interval - at both a singularity, and every point on the plane.

the fusion of spirit and matter, that is experience. that is consciousness and truth. where reality skims the line in the happy medium of both extremes to the paradox.

I only really read the first page of the post (I'm lazy like that at night) and so I'll just give my two cents on things, and wish to apologize in advance if I am ignoring or interrupting any good discussion that is going on now on this page.

Regarding the afterlife and nonexistence, the only thing that pops into my mind is ghosts. I use ghosts as a broad description of demons, ghosts, spirits: the paranormal mainly. It has always existed with humanity, and there are numerous proven paranormal phenomenons. Now, before you start objecting, I am aware that probably 90% (probably higher) of the ghost stories, encounters, ect, can be explained through science, hallucinations, or simple made up stories. But what of the other 10%? Of the kagillion ghost stories and encounters, demonic possessions, poltergeists, ect, that have happened in human history, if only ONE is true, then isn't that proof of AN afterlife? I'm probably sure there are almost as many religions and theories on the afterlife as there are ghost stories, but the basic fact that there is one is a good starting point.

I'm not all that religious, but I hold true to my belief that there is something out there once we die. I don't know what, I could be another human being, go to heaven, go to hell, who knows, (a lot of people claim they know for sure ) but after knowing of all the countless paranormal phenomenon that have occurred, and that chances are at least one of those is genuine, (along with experiencing some stuff that made me sleep with the lights on for a few months) I am certain that when we die that is not the end of the road.

the concept is sadly quite complicated actually (atleast in my opinion). See how i see it, you can't experience non-existence because to experience nothing, you have to be experiencing that your experiencing noting. Logic literally gets in the way of every theory someone makes. I'm not going to go over aall the rebirst, heaven and hell or death is an illusion theories. The fact is that the most possible theory which is nothing happens when you die is impossible. Think of it like this, When your brain decomposes you lose mental state of mind because wyou can't think with no brain. You need a mental state of mind to recognise a physical state of mind and to recognise a physical state of mind you need to have a mental state of of mind, it just keeps cycling over and over again (This is why getting born is also a little trippy to me).But now think of nothing, right now what are you thinking when you think of nothing? Most likely either pitch black or pitch white. Well the problem is to see these things you need a mental state of mind and to be experiencing them physicall you need a physical state of mind. So to experience nothing, something is needed to be experienced.

You can't imagine what it's like after death because it's impossible to do this. That's why every after death theory can be proven wrong, even Freaking nothingness. So if you can't experience nothing or something, what do you experience? The problem is that humans are not in a high state of mind to comprehend this because our brains are based on chemical reactions to be able to think.

Again, it's impossible to know what to think when after death becasue after death, you can't think or exist bc again you have no mental or physical state of mind therefore you can't experience nothing unless you are experiencing something. But to not experience something is experiencing nothing?? Honestly, logic just f***s with your thoughts on the thought of after death which means after-death can only be a state which is not possible to comprehend which is ermmm... yea you get it, i'm like all of yoou so even if i can tell you stuff, i can't even comprehend it myself

TBH, it's best to just not think about it, stick with your beliefs of heaven/hell or rebirth or nothing after death otherwise ul probably go mentally insane trying to prove this theory wrong. Your brain is based on logic and without logic, your brain won't be able to function and think of what's real and what isn't. If logic traps you in this kind of question then there is no way you can think about something like this, it may even be the brain's way to dodge mental damage that something like this might cause. You know how in shows, people kill robots with a paradox? Well that can happen to humans as well, sometimes you can suffer permanent mental damage, and this may jjust be the brain's way of protecting itself, IDK.

Again, you decide whether this can be real to you or not, my point is that after death and before birth are the two biggest paradox's that exist in this world (probably, dont quote me on this). I don't think you can prove them wrong, even if you point out some details i missed because they just lead to the same thing. After death and before birth might even be the same things, who the hell knows, the important thing is to enjoy the life you have right now and stick with beliefs you and your brain can comprehend bc something like this can actually seriously screw you up (like i mentioned with the mental brain damage) and you can try your hardest to prove this theory wrong, although it's not really my belief of death, i only say that so i don't make myself depressed bc i don't wanna live in a world where not even nothing can happen. In my eyes (or thoughts), there is not rly a way to deny this, this very long fact is actaully true and no matter how advanced our tech is, it will never be able to comprehend this just like our brains.