Quote Originally Posted by really View Post
There may be inaccuracies and false memories, but past-life research isn't ordinary hypnosis. The hypnotists don't program you with special, arbitrary memories, but direct you to re-experience unique past happenings in vivid detail. Memory and interpretation seem like a very touchy subject; as if discussing the afterlife wasn't enough.
A psychologist doesn't have to implant arbitrary memories to unwittingly convince people of false ones. If a person goes in with a preconceived notion completely the product of their own mind, and under hypnosis intensify this self-made memory, voila, you have someone convinced of past lives. Repeated sessions lead to greater confidence and more vivid details, all self-developed.

Also, when I said 'this is more of a result of becoming aware of Karma and the intangibility of consciousness', I did not mean by specific meditation on past-life memories. I meant that it comes about as an indirect consequence of higher spiritual investigation, and not intellectually. Proving or disproving what has actually happened is therefore hard to do in some cases, particularly those that are not controlled and especially those that precede birth.
Why is spiritual investigation a good thing? How is it any different from delusion? You can "investigate" all you want, but in the end, you'll end up seeing what you want to see.

In addition to this, there's the phenomena of Out-of-Body Experiences. Have you heard of the Monroe Institute? Furthermore have you watched Thomas Campbell's Big Theory of Everything? See this thread for more relevant info on debating consciousness, but especially the first shown post by Xaq (contains Youtube video/series link). It is well worth watching and it is easy to draw links to this topic.
Out of body experiences...an unexplained phenomena. How is this evidence of the afterlife? Is it supposed to show that consciousness is separate of the body? Because there are other, equally reasonable possibilities with exactly as much evidence to back them up.

More experiences include those known as Near-death experiences, which are different than OBE's. These experiences reveal that one's consciousness is indeed not a product of the physical body. Again, not provable/disprovable, yet not arbitrary or inconsistent either. All of these experiences no doubt complement each other.
NDE's...like the tunnel with the white light at the end? The same one that can be replicated via oxygen deprivation, with the individual nowhere near death? I'd call this more a response of the mind shutting down than the soul leaving the body.

The validity is self-fulfilling and you can even find out for yourself. The proof, as I said, is something that I cannot provide. We're speaking of two different paradigms of confirmation.

A proof here is meaningless because the "afterlife" and "Karma" confirmed in experience and not in linear data. It is like me asking to prove to me that you know that you're alive: Let's say I ask you for proof that you know of life and existence. What can you prove to me? Even the phrase "I think, therefore I am" doesn't cut it because existing precedes thinking. Do note that this is not the same category of experience as whether a person can perceive or conceptualize something, as it does not appear within such normal realms of unreliable human experience.
What you're dealing with is a vague and mysterious world. Here's the thing: people who investigate this stuff on their own obtain different results. Who am I to believe? The guy who says he's been to heaven? The guy who has seen Jesus in an OBE? The man in harmony with the universe? The person who claims to have been a snake in a past life? You can't draw any solid conclusions. You can't say with confidence that karma actually exists. If your personal experiences have led you to believe so, bully for you. I think you're delusional.

There's no burden if you understand what I mean by not requiring proof. All spiritual phenomena are experiential and not concrete or perceivable. The very fact that you exist is a spiritual concern, but you cannot totally explain or prove it to anybody. If somebody says, "Oh you're alive because your heart is beating" - does that fully encompass the knowledge of existence and life, as it is to you? Looking into the afterlife goes in the same direction.
Is it a spiritual concern? Why can't it be a run-of-the-mill physical concern? When I look at myself, I see a series of self-sustaining chemical reactions. Nothing more, nothing less. My thoughts, memories, experiences, all driven by chemical reactions. If you want to find out if I'm alive or not, check to see if all my reactions are performing normally. There are hundreds of ways to test this...heartbeat, EEG, CAT scans, blood pressure, temperature, reflex, and so on. From the results you collect, you can determine within a very reasonable degree of certainty whether or not I'm alive.

Now I must ask you again. Would you like to supply the evidence for your claim? Or more importantly, why should I believe non-existence is possible? What we're debating here is not so much whether every spirit incarnates again (because that is not set in stone for everyone) but rather, whether your life persists after death in this lifetime. This means, simply that you exist as an entity and have the likelihood to incarnate again or not, and to evolve further beyond this lifetime. Going back to your argument: I would think that if we can see that non-existence is not possible, then the possibility of an after-life, in this sense, is far more promising than you might expect.
You're concerning yourself too much with this concept of nonexistence, and are placing variables where they do not belong. Why shouldn't consciousness be the sole product of the human mind? And if it is the sole product of the human mind, of the chemical reactions within the brain, then you don't have to worry about nonexistence. When the reactions stop (in other words, when you physically die or go brain dead), your consciousness basically dies. It stops working. It doesn't go anywhere but the ground. Matter and energy are not being created or destroyed. Your consciousness isn't some precious physical entity that evaporates into nothingness. It is a product of chemical reactions, and when those reactions cease, consciousness ceases, too. Adding spirits or external sources of consciousness only create more problems than necessary. Where do these spirits come from? What happens if there aren't enough to go around? Why are humans so special that we need an entire invisible world of conscious entities to give us consciousness? Why in tens of thousands of years have we been unable to obtain one single solid strand of evidence for the existence of any form of any afterlife?