What happens to us when we die?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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anarchyisbliss
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Post by anarchyisbliss »

pjkeeley wrote:
thats untrue people called mediums talk to the dead
No, people called mediums CLAIM to talk to the dead... big difference! :lol:
People called doctors claim to practice medicine, people called president claim to be making the nation a better place, people called skeptics claim that if they cant see it or prove it with human logic that it doesn't exist.
"If there is hope, it lies in the proles." - George Orwell, 1984
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Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
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Post by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes »

anarchyisbliss wrote:People called doctors claim to practice medicine, people called president claim to be making the nation a better place, people called skeptics claim that if they cant see it or prove it with human logic that it doesn't exist.
Indeed those claims are made--as are many other similar claims. Some of the philosophical questions we have to ask are: Which of those claims have more evidence supporting them? How much evidence does it take to rationally believe a claim? How do we distinguish between falsehoods, truth, and unknown faith-based beliefs?

Before we can start judging the various answers to the question of what happens when die, we need to establish a method for distinguishing the truth and believability of claims and theories.
My entire political philosophy summed up in one tweet.

"The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master."

I believe spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) manifests as bravery, confidence, grace, honesty, love, and inner peace.
MarkE
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Post by MarkE »

remember all that time before you were born? that wasn't so bad, was it?
I personally believe if there is something after death the only semi-logical explanation is reincarnation. And to tell you the truth I'm not all that concerned with it, as i used to be. And i believe it will be a great adventure, whatever it is.

Captain James Hook: Prepare to die Peter Pan!
Peter Pan: To die would be a grand adventure!
Captain James Hook: Death is the only adventure you have left!
Daniel Owen
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Post by Daniel Owen »

Our brain rots in 12 feet down with the rest of our body, I assume. 8)
"What does not kill me, makes me stronger." Friedrich Nietzsche
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Coahtemoc
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Post by Coahtemoc »

I agree with the people that say you cease to exist, though this is hard to comprehend; can you imagine absolute nothing? No feelings, emotions or thoughts?
Not a single thing going through your mind? That is what I believe death will be like. However, how I'd want the afterlife to be an individual's heaven made solely for that individual, with all their likes, yet it can change according to what the person wants. This, though, is highly unlikely.
anarchyisbliss
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Post by anarchyisbliss »

Coahtemoc wrote:I agree with the people that say you cease to exist, though this is hard to comprehend; can you imagine absolute nothing? No feelings, emotions or thoughts?
Not a single thing going through your mind? That is what I believe death will be like. However, how I'd want the afterlife to be an individual's heaven made solely for that individual, with all their likes, yet it can change according to what the person wants. This, though, is highly unlikely.
Are you saying an afterlife is unlikely or an afterlife of one's choosing? What brings you to conclude that?
"If there is hope, it lies in the proles." - George Orwell, 1984
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Coahtemoc
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Post by Coahtemoc »

I guess you can say that I think an afterlife is unlikely, but, as I said, I'd want the afterlife to be of one's choosing. What WILL happen and what you WANT to happen are two totally different things. As to how I concluded this, I merely thought about what I think death would be like and what I'd want to happen, there were no other sources directly influencing my idea.
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Abiathar
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Post by Abiathar »

Einstein teaches us alot of garbage, but one of the things that he has taught us that has yet to be disproven is the fact that energy does not stop traveling. Upon death the human body decreases in weight by just under one Oz. The oddity is at this same time, Neural function ceases, and of course, if energy does not stop traveling, there is only one logical conclusion... the energy goes elsewhere.

This energy, though no longer contained within the physical component, truly did basically -tell- your body what it felt. The thoughts appeared independant of this function, almost as if the body were simply a vessle for this energy to temporarily inhabit and interact on a physical level. Granted, we have a 'Thought Center' however this controls -logical- thought, which is strange in entities that appear as intuitive as the average human being.

Therefore, I think that when you die, you are suddenly devoured by the nether-droppings that wait just outside of the human consciousness in an old shed marked with a crescent moon.
"I aspire to say in ten sentences what one would say in a novel... and would not say" ~Nietzsche
Devamitta
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Post by Devamitta »

luciditee wrote:Is it even possible to find material evidence for that which is supposedly immaterial? If the brain no longer allows particular faculties to be used, due to illness or damage, does that prove consciousness does not exist beyond the machinations of the brain, or does it simply mean that consciousness is no longer able to interact with those bodily functions?

I would say that whatever person I think I may be, whatever personality or identity that seems to be 'me', this would no longer exist when I die. At the same time, however, I would say that all these imaginary constructions that I refer to as 'me' are not what they seem in the first place; they are simply ideas and beliefs to which I have become attached, and which heighten the apparent difference between myself and others. This difference, however, is not the highest reality of our being, which in fact is the pure undifferentiated awareness that each and every one of us were born into this world with. In that moment, this body was born, but not this 'self'. This self is merely a figment of my imagination, and so I was never born, and therefore I can never die.

Whether consciousness exists beyond death or not, either way it will not be 'me'.
From a Buddhist perspective, which I am want to see things, I agree fully with your response.
nameless
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Re: What happens to us when we die?

Post by nameless »

philoreaderguy wrote:What happens to us when we die?
When we die, we as 'physical critters' decompose and return unto the apparent basic ebb and flow of the ecosystem.

'We' as Perspectives of Consciousness?
We'd 'return' unto the Consciousness that we have never left in the first place.
What do you think happens?

The immediate above works best for me at the moment.
What do you want to happen?
I have no desires in the matter one way or another. If there is something, somehow, that happens after physical 'death' (an illusion, like 'life'), I'll find out soon enough.
What difference could it possibly make what I would 'want' to happen?
mike
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Post by mike »

you meet you're maker and then he tells you in you're heart what you already know.
ray
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Post by ray »

Hi, I have just joined this forum and would like to make a contribution to this thread.
Evidence for some kind of continuation after death exists.

First, there is the data collected by Prof Ian Stevenson in the sixties and seventies to do with reincarnation.("20 Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation".)

Then there are countless eyewitness accounts of paranormal phenomena, such as apparitions and poltergeists, - witnessed not just by silly emotionally driven people, but mainly by people like you and I.

Have you ever done the Ouija Board? I am utterly convinced the planchette or glass moves on its own.

Finally, I went to see a spiritual medium in 2004, and he told me things concerning my late father such that the most rational explanation to how he could have known them is some kind of paranormal explanation.

I am a simple minded Anglo-Saxon empiricist. I go by facts, - what is received by my own senses and the testimony of reliable others.
grawler
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Post by grawler »

Thats it. When your gone you become part of the earth. Man would like to believe he is some special being. Why can't we just live our existence and thats it, nothing more? Do we think every animal and insect has some sort of an after life or just humans. I just want to become one with the earth when I am gone.
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Akhenaten
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Post by Akhenaten »

The Observable Evidence:

When you die the energy that forms your mind and nervous system departs your body on a frenquency of energy outside of our visible spectrum.

When the 'bio-electricty' does its disappearing trick, the human body loses aprox. 1 Oz in weight... something with recordable mass leaves.

There is an endless number of reporting sightings of ghosts, from ancient times until now.

There is a huge number of those who believe in moving on to a better place after death.

There is a huge number of those who believe in re-incarnation... apparently even Christians.

~

If we combine all of them, I'd have to say what happens is that your 'bio-electricity', formerly you, ceases/slows in motion and thus drops in energy state... this, for all intents and purposes, deletes it from our reality. Afterwards, those with enough will power, mind structure, and overall firmness of their grasp of 'who they are' they can keep themselves together.

Those who appear as ghosts are those who, for what ever psychological reason, just cant get themselves away from somewhere important to them. As their mind has no physical framework to repair itself, and they themselves obviously had issues before death as it is, they are basically stuck this way.

Those who move on, and remember moving on, are those who had, for what ever reason, enough willpower or self awareness to hold their consciousness together... in a journey to elsewhere.

Those who only see a bright light are those who cannot hold themselves together and their energy loses its structure, being merged back with the 'magnetic field' of our planet and there-in being meshed back together with the ambient sphere of human alpha/beta waves surrounding the planet... as the Hindu belief in re-incarnation says, it takes 49 days to re-incarnate... they like every ancient religion worshiped the pineal gland as the house of the soul... oddly in a human fetus it takes 49 days for the pineal gland to form. Your energy, or whats left of it, is therefore transfered to a new host... the mixing and mingling of energy causing a loss of memory and uniqueness, creating a new individual with only residual sensations of their past incarnations. (I.E. Memories and so-forth)

Hell would be making your journey to elsewhere, in the form of energy, and getting lost... perhaps on a burning boiling sea of hydrogen like a star, or sucked into and confined and torn away at for an eternity in a black hole.

Those who move on are lucky.
DISCLAIMER: THIS DOCUMENT does not cover all individuals in the infinite and variable universe. This is in no way is speaking on cases of incredible, random, or odds of more than 1 : Pi against probability.
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wanabe
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Post by wanabe »

GOOD POST Akhenaten i think mine will be rather complimentary.

feel free to laugh at all the following, but its true

when we die our life force is slowly changed into dark matter. our body here simply decays and feeds other life. if we are in one of those limbo stages: coma, did die but came back. we didn't see this, what was seen is what you expected death to be like. think "what dreams may come" its a movie about death, where the first stage of heaven is what you are comfortable seeing.

(dark matter is all that once was in a different form, its not created or destroyed only changed)

our consciousness lives on to do whatever is needed.

in some cases this means helping the living in this world

one can communicate with the other realm but sadly this knowledge is abused by those that claim to be mediums to make money.

trust me they speak to me at night when im trying to sleep its rather annoying (go ahead and laugh and call me crazy) but its not speaking to me its more akin to thinking to me

i think, as i asked them and got a pretty solid answer it works like this

you must have some one who loves you. who wants to help you and talk to you. on the other side who is deserving of communication with the living ie those who lived a good life, the more love the easier it is for the frequency to come in clear.

eventually you can tune into what they are saying to you. its not by your choice that you speak to them its by theirs moreover they can strengthen the signal the more you listen and are selfless and do good they can also pool knowledge from other dead members in the dark mater realm and they as a clooective can impart there knowledge unto you

its possible to will them to talk to you but only if it is a truly selfless reason this is the exception.

for me its my grandfather who is primarily responsible for my having heard the dead the one time i did, also mescaline enables communication with the "gods" or all the dead, this was the other time that i communicated with the dead but i realized this after i heard them the second time, yea i had been smoking pot

so call me a crazy burn out but my beliefs are not better or worse than yours

in any case they are not reincarnated but their qualities are passed on to other generations

"the father the son the holy spirit" ~they are all one in the same~ religion is just a big metaphor people. take any passage in any bible literally and then think about how this could true loosely. and you will begin to answer the riddle of religion

thats enough crazy talk for now i want to hear the laughter that ensues
Secret To Eternal Life: Live Life To The Fullest, Help All Others To Do So.Meaning of Life Is Choice. Increase choice through direct perception. Golden rule+universality principal+Promote benefits-harm+logical consistency=morality.BeTheChange.
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