What's after death?

[Heisenberg]

This is an excellent question, and one that is difficult to answer. And the answer depends on one's personal paradigm.

I believe that our existence is related to two substances (I am searching in vain for a better word, I am not a native speaker, sorry for inconvenience) - infinite potentiality and universal consciousness. Some people think that Infinite Potentiality (which, as I think after reading some of P. J. Carroll's books, some call Chaos) is an attribute of Universal Consciousness. But I think that infinite, unlimited potentiality allows also for the existence of the Universe without any consciousness.

However, almost every thinking being can notice that there is at least one consciousness - he or she himself. So if there is at least one consciousness, the concept of Universal Consciousness makes sense - even if it is only a mathematical construction - as a set union or a direct sum of individual consciousnesses. Even if Chaos were the primary substance, we obviously exist in a variant of the Universe equipped with Universal Consciousness - whatever it is. And this should be the subject of investigation (whatever activity we imagine under it) - what properties does Universal Consciousness have. Here, considerations inspired by topology come in handy - is this consciousness continuous, or on the contrary, composed of isolated components?

Now, many concepts and approaches from physics, mathematics and computer science are suitable as inspiration. I believe that all existing things (regardless of how we answer the question of what actually exists) are instances of this Universal Consciousness, limited by the causal conditions of their emergence. Similarly, as differential equations (e.g. Schrodinger's wave equation) can have their initial and boundary conditions. Chaos has no limiting conditions, Universal Consciousness has one that it is a consciousness. We have many more, for example, we are humans, women or men, we were born into a certain environment and time, we are a product of the evolution of life itself, ... and therefore we have an extremely long causal chain or rather many mutually quantum-entangled causal chains of events behind us.

When we die, some causal conditions of our existence are released, but some causes of our existence continue to exist. So a human being will probably be born who is our continuation in some sense. Who is the realization of those continuing causes and conditions also of our origin. That is reincarnation. Or we will gradually manage to cancel the entire causal chain (I don't even know if we should) and we will return to the original substances mentioned at the beginning. To the Universal Consciousness, or the Infinite Potentiality of Chaos.

 

[deci belle]

Um, though decidedly late to this game …wouldn't it have been more appropriate to ask, "what's after life?"

The only reason I bring it up is that death (in terms of reality) does not exist. There is no philosophical speculation involved when I say that people do not have egos, and ditto for souls. As for gods and demons, well, not a one has a leg up on anything created— past, present or future. When the curtain is ripped away, their actual (effective) occupations can come to light in the most endearing way.

The matter of birth and death, taken as a whole, is certainly muuuuch more appropriate to the ongoing premise (of the OP). To wit, one birth and one death equal one change. Just this is true whether it be in terms of microcosm or macrocosm. It doesn't matter should the cycle under scrutiny be collectively or otherwise inanimate, warm or cold-blooded, or those termed inorganic being. The same postulate applies to relationships, situations, ciivilzations, galaxies or creation itself. Why? Because the matter of life and death only pertains to the Creative, carried out impersonally as the result of its (the Creative's) primal organization. One tradition refers to such relative patterning as karmic.

Then again, should one exist and function in terms of the unattributable, what about that? That is, karmic (causal) existence is attributable to incremental and kinetic process; and it's not just past times, actions and resultant psychological momenta influencing the living. That's because creation is playing out its program from an ultimate perspective of all-at-once in perpetuity (making sorcery possible); always so in terms of its primordial organization. To be sure, one's very existence and inertial pattern-awareness is purely karmic. I say inertial pattern awareness, to indicate that susceptibility to the unattributability of enlightening knowledge (having no momenta), is a liberating influence from endless inertial karmic cycles. I say inertial, because even though patterning and projections move, or rather change, Change is endlessly locked within its own patterning of habit energy. Karmic bondage is inertial; its influence relative to its own perpetual flux-state NEVER to resolve, clarify and know reality, in transcendent repose, authentically autonomous of the perpetually subsuming vortex-in-eternity. The everything inclusive of absence-of-everything defines eternity. As such, the relativity of eternity only accounts for the endlessly subsuming elements of the Creative.

For those souls who have experienced the knowledge of nonoriginated absence of absence, there is no thing construing the attributable. Awareness itself is only the quality of awake, uncreate. There is no thing or no absence of no thing to be construed as awake, much less awakened. Awake is the nature of nonorigination; tacitly and ineffably source, unattributably-not-a thing.

In this context, what's to die but a morbid fascination for itself?

 

[littlestraguy]

What happens after death is, under strictly empirical criteria, impossible to determine. There is no direct observational access nor any replicable method of verification that would allow us to affirm, with absolute certainty, the continuity or cessation of conscious experience. Even so, I start from the principle that nothing is self-existent, since everything we know seems to depend on prior causes, conditions, or structures.

Moreover, it is necessary to recognize that there are dimensions of reality that are not fully quantifiable. Not everything that is real can be reduced to measurement, number, or equation. Mathematics, perhaps the most precise formal system ever developed, describes patterns with extreme effectiveness, but encounters limits when confronted with questions that surpass the observable physical domain and consequently enter the field of metaphysics. Today, science itself has already encountered the unquantifiable, as in the case of dark matter. Dark matter is detected through its gravitational effects on visible matter, since it does not emit, reflect, or absorb light. We know of its existence through the effects it produces, even though we do not observe it directly.


Thus, any conclusion about death must recognize two limits: the empirical limit of science and the formal limit of language and mathematics. What remains is philosophical inference, not proof.


If there is interest in metaphysics, it is worth studying Jesus Christ, something about him draws my attention. I postponed my studies, but he is someone I feel I need to examine in depth if I want to achieve a better understanding.

Rebirth on Earth as a new human?​

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Rebirth on Earth as a different species?​

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Rebirth on a different plane/dimension?​

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Continuing on in a different plane/dimension? Like heaven or hell...​

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Continuing on in a parallel universe where you never died... on and on forever till you're the last person alive?​

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Something, but something inexplicable...?​

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Nothing?​

Let me know your thoughts...

 

[Firetree]

Regarding post 1

all of the above ... and more , there are as many paths after death as there are in life .

Thats my 'belief system '

'what I think really happens ' ? :

 

[Ohana]

I read a story a bit in one of Plato's works. I remember it going that after life some go on and don't return and some souls engage in a big raffle and draw lots to see which life they will lead.

I remember that one of the people in the story was Odysseus and he said for his raffle he would prefer a quiet life instead of one of adventure.

I think Plato was shocked by that but Odysseus said he was tired of adventures I think Odysseus was onto something because I'm so tired of there being a new crisis every five second. I can't

But what I think happens is basically soul might have to go through trials then can choose to be reincarnated or not. And if not gets judged.

 

[Fish man]

Peace and rest.

Also a state of absolute immovability and strength. Becoming unchangeable.

 

[juanitos]

After death - we get into Bardho...after that we will reincarnate sooner or later . Some people who already attained enlightenment in their lifetime would not return here again.
Anyone seriously interested about the death and its stages might study the tibetan teaching about Bardho Todol...the most exhaustive and detailed description.

 

[ytyghhh]

There is a spirit realm and ethereal realm. Ethereal to me simply means one step above the physical, but below spirit realm. It is just like real world, but you experience it like a spirit would. Some spirits are stuck in this realm for one or other reason and they do not go or tend not to stay long in a spirit realm. My father is one such spirit which comes to haunt our house from time to time, especially if he receives an emotional response (like crying near his grave).

Other people were proven to reincarnate. This is usually due to traumatic experiences like dying in the war. Violent, sudden deaths like these tend to drag spirit straight from former self into a newborn. Due to its quick transition, such person has a lot of memories of his former life.

As for me personally, I believe a God had already offered me a place in an afterlife at his side. Well, I believe it was a God and experience of it was very powerful. These visions lasted for two days concurrently. I also had experienced via dreams what it feels like to die. How soul transitions from a body to an ethereal realm. How soul travels through spirit realm and how violently it can fall back to physical one. I also had some fights with spirits or demons in ethereal realm. Hmm, it was more like me being pestered by them and just deciding not to pay a demon any mind and I just returned my soul to my body. These are my own experiences in this.

Spirit or soul is merely a degree of consciousness or ability to feel and to comprehend. Even animals are capable of haunting the place of their death. However, as they are inherently far less, they leave far smaller souls which seem to usually disintegrate with death.

Overall, I'm afraid just of one thing. To wither away in my death, to become less in essence, memories and capabilities rather than more. To be stuck like other humans I see in this realm, wandering the Earth, contacting their next of kin via dreams, asking this or that, being stuck in what were their deepest desires before their death. If not that, then being unable to just move on from their homes, from their former lives. THAT is hell. To be just a shell of yourself, slowly withering away into nothing with time or with memories of a living.


Btw: To me when someone says "no" it merely means that I'm not trying hard enough to get what I want. To me, real issue is in getting that inner fire burning, in desiring something. To want, to lust, to desire something truly is that moves mountains for me.

Some thing here, have you found a solution to getting that fire burning?