Thread: After you die.

Originally Posted by Mario92

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.

I'm not going to be arguing about whether memories are true or not. They're but one example, and like I said - a touchy subject. Take it with a grain of salt for now.

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.

I'm also not going to sway this thread into a lecture about meditation because you're so closed minded about it. Perhaps you just see what you want to see.

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.

Can you actually answer my questions? I wasn't kidding; maybe what I just brought up can actually address and answer your own questions.

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.

You're already jumping to conclusions. The point is that the experience confirms that death is impossible.

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.

If you look into the real-deal spirituality (E.g. see Advaita or the Bhagavad Gita), actually you'd find that they do not present different "results." Hence when I said "...not provable/disprovable, yet not arbitrary or inconsistent either." Karma and the afterlife are not random, uncommon or arbitrary ideas.

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.

In essence you're telling me you'd rather just see it your way. I'm not going to try to change your mind, but just consider for a moment that you're missing the bigger picture. You don't actually know these things at heart. Like everybody else, you only really know of existence - that is not a scientific conclusion now is it? It is experiential. You can't say "Oh no but what grounds do I have to believe in that.." etc.

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?

Because non-existence is an invalid abstract concept, in the end. Therefore, if consciousness was a "sole product" of the human mind, it would have to negate the authority of existence by some act of magic. Reality is not an independent existence in consciousness, and if you agree that consciousness is a "sole product" of the mind, you are mistaking the paradigm difference and giving authority to superficial ideas instead of self-evidence.

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.

This is contradictory because if matter and energy are conserved, then so is consciousness. If you say we die and cease to exist, then from whence did we come? Did we become alive out of non-existence? I highly doubt that.

Originally Posted by really

I'm not going to be arguing about whether memories are true or not. They're but one example, and like I said - a touchy subject. Take it with a grain of salt for now.

I'm also not going to sway this thread into a lecture about meditation because you're so closed minded about it. Perhaps you just see what you want to see.

Call me close minded all you like, but until I see some valid evidence, I'm not going to sway.

You're already jumping to conclusions. The point is that the experience confirms that death is impossible.

It confirms nothing at all. It shows that people with NDE's have similar experiences. It does not give any accurate sense of what the source of these similar experiences are. It might as well be a physical process for all we know.

If you look into the real-deal spirituality (E.g. see Advaita or the Bhagavad Gita), actually you'd find that they do not present different "results." Hence when I said "...not provable/disprovable, yet not arbitrary or inconsistent either." Karma and the afterlife are not random, uncommon or arbitrary ideas.

They're ideas founded on thousands of years of religion. That doesn't mean they're real. As I've said...I require some form of evidence, especially in regards to the larger and more mysterious questions of the universe. You might call that close-minded, but as long as your arguments can be countered or negated with equally plausible ones, you haven't shown me anything. I'm not saying you absolutely have to be dead wrong, but the odds of you being correct are more implausible than the obvious solution that we as conscious beings die at the end of our lives. You're factoring in hidden and undetectable forces of dubious origin, outside entities as the source of consciousness that we cannot perceive. When people say they have confidence in one of these things, my ass begins to twitch. Now, you could be right. But I really don't think so.

In essence you're telling me you'd rather just see it your way. I'm not going to try to change your mind, but just consider for a moment that you're missing the bigger picture. You don't actually know these things at heart. Like everybody else, you only really know of existence - that is not a scientific conclusion now is it? It is experiential. You can't say "Oh no but what grounds do I have to believe in that.." etc.

Yes, I only know of existence. Of course, I have absolutely no reason whatsoever to believe in anything beyond existence. Now, I could be wrong. I could be a delusional, sophisticated penguin on some frozen outcropping of Antarctica for all I know. But without any evidence to back that claim up, why should I even consider it? Don't you find it funny that, in the thousands of years modern humans have been walking the face of the earth for, we have yet to find one single shred of evidence that supports unwaiveringly the notion of any sort of afterlife?

Because non-existence is an invalid abstract concept, in the end. Therefore, if consciousness was a "sole product" of the human mind, it would have to negate the authority of existence by some act of magic. Reality is not an independent existence in consciousness, and if you agree that consciousness is a "sole product" of the mind, you are mistaking the paradigm difference and giving authority to superficial ideas instead of self-evidence.

We're not talking about non-existence. I'm talking about the chemical reactions sustaining conscious thought ceasing to take place. All the components are still there...until recycled back into the earth, that is, it's just that no motion between particles is taking place. What causes that motion to stop varies from person to person, but generally aging or catastrophic failure causes some physical function necessary for life to shut down, and that chain-reacts itself straight to the brain. Faced without oxygen, blood, or nutrients, it rapidly parishes, unable to sustain the reactions. The reactions cease, and the consciousness that was the product of those reactions also ceases. Consciousness as I see it is not some unique form of energy or particulate matter. It is the byproduct of ions jumping the synapse. Now, you beg to differ that the brain is capable of being solely responsible for conscious thought. That's fine. I see it otherwise. But my conclusions are not illogical.

This is contradictory because if matter and energy are conserved, then so is consciousness. If you say we die and cease to exist, then from whence did we come? Did we become alive out of non-existence? I highly doubt that.

Consciousness is neither matter nor energy. Ergo, it needs not be conserved. Tell me...have you heard of something called evolution? Because that's what I think happened. You'll notice that creatures with consciousness or some semblance of consciousness seem to be higher up the food chain. Why isn't consciousness a selected trait? You treat consciousness as if it is absolutely there or it is absolutely not. In reality, it is a fuzzy gradient. Chimpanzees display at least rudimentary conscious thought. Given that it seems more like a gradient than just something erupting out of what was nothing, evolution as the ultimate cause of consciousness is not all that unlikely. Something wasn't just spontaneously created...and at the same time, that something has not always needed to exist.

I'm cutting out the middle man. Why does some outside entity need to be the source of consciousness? What created that entity? What created the entity that created the entity? Unless you're suggesting that once humans started being born, conscious entities started springing up, seemingly out of nothingness. The idea that our brains are the sole source of consciousness has the fewest variables and is actually verifiable. All you do with the outside source argument is raise even more questions without any definite answer. Again, could you be right? Sure. But I highly doubt it.