What's after death?

[cynatnite]

I hope this is the right forum for this discussion.

I don't know what's after death. I don't know if it's heaven, hell, reincarnation.

Reincarnation sounds like a good idea. Heaven sounds boring. Hell would be a bitch and nothing just scares the shit out of me.

Please, discuss.

[Cary]

1. Lights out.

That's all folks. Make the best of it now, while you can.

[Tux]

53. I go with reincarnation

Some time periods, literally, feel like home. Eventually the cycle will break with Nirvana (good music by the way).

Of course, I could be wrong and preparing for nothingness.

[Warpy]

2. Near death was the best high I ever had

total peace, no worries, no pain, no fear.

I didn't see any visions, I didn't hear any voices. If that leads into nothingness, it's fine with me.

If all I find is that mean old nasty naked white man on a cloud with a ledger book and a bad attitude, I'll be terribly disappointed with the universe.

[Amfortas]

49. I understand....

I was once hit by car once ... total peace , acceptance .... nice feeling. hope real death is like that !

[papau]

3. Faith gives an answer - but there can be no proof of anything.

I will follow this thread as I am curious if you get more of a response than my near useless input! :-)

[Finder]

4. Wormfood.

They need to eat too, ya know.

[YankeyMCC]

5. The memories you leave

and the lives you've affected who may carry on the things they've learned from you.

[rzemanfl]

6. I think maybe it's this really awful place where a bunch of people

in black robes pick an idiot to run your country and everything goes to shit, and I think I am there.

[liberalpress]

7. Tonight, I think it's a "Law and Order" repeat...

...no wait, that's Thursday. Sorry.

[whistle]

8. Nervana is where you really want to get to, at one with God!

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

31. amin!

Sufis try to attain that in this lifetime-that is what is meant by the phrase "die before death".

[aneerkoinos]

41. Death is eternity

Time is ego-fixation, words are misleading, let's sing poems and dance!

Sufi's, Neo-Platonics, Christian mystics, Buddhists, etc all the different paths are one path ...

[aneerkoinos]

40. Nirvana

AFAIK means "sorrowless state", when the ego fixation has ceased. Buddhists speak also about Parinirvana, when all the conditions of (timed) being cease.

God is just a word, as is Buddha. What do you need a word for?

[KC21304]

9. I really, truly, have no idea !

I'm sure there is no hell, but I wouldn't bet either way about the rest.

[tubbacheez]

10. After death comes...

the funeral.

[cynatnite]

13. Probably the only thanks we get for our small contribution of living n/t

[tubbacheez]

16. LOL. I actually do get plenty of thanks from the people who matter.

I won't hold my breath for any apologies or "you were right" statements from certain folks I've debated.


But who has time for all that, anyway? :)

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

32. interesting experiences at funerals

the latest one I attended was for my late step-father. I saw him at the front of the chapel, looking at everyone who had come. I think he was very surprised there was something after the body.

At the funeral of one of my Sufi brothers, everyone could feel the joy! We call funerals the Wedding Night, when you are rejoined with the Beloved. My dear brother was there, singing with us as we did zikar (a ceremony of remembrance involving chanting, singing, and dancing).

[tubbacheez]

35. Very cool! :) n/t

[medeak]

11. believe there are different levels

just from the dreams I've had from loved ones who have passed on...(One said "there IS a purgatory") another was surrounded in a room with black people (he was always telling racist jokes) and said "I just have to hang with these nice folk for awhile)

Loved ones have hung around for awhile and then move on (dreams I'm speaking of)

Sure..they are just dreams...but they were life changing to me. Each one was full of a love that is not of this earth.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

33. I know what you mean

such dreams are life changing. I think that what occurs after the end of this life is different for each being, and depends a lot upon their belief system.

[medeak]

34. you must be a "receiver"

as well.

The weird part was uncle made a pact to contact me after death.. he was presbyterian minister and dream was a shocker that he was in purgatory...something he never believed in nor me?

Husband lost his father and we both had same dream same night of him reaching out with enormous love. We both woke up in tears at same time.

That was a life changing moment!

Have no fear of death and welcome seeing my friends.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

46. I had a pact too

My grandmother was my best friend growing up. About two years after my grandfather (her husband) died, he came back to visit her and kissed her on the lips. She felt this, and it woke her up. At first she thought it was a dream, until she smelled an odor that was particular to her departed husband-a combination of liniments and medication that had been gone from the house for over two years. When she told me about this, I asked her if she would visit me after she died, and she said she would.

She died some 16 years later. I went up to the funeral-it was a long trip, and I lay down to rest. It is important at this point to explain two things: my grandmother had fallen, and it had loosened some old surgery scars so that she could not eat or drink. And my grandmother LOVED to eat-she was quite plump and cheerful.

Anyway, I lay down to rest. And then I was in a field of white, and there was my grandmother. She looked at me and said, "I feel much better now. I think I'm going eat something." I told her she couldn't because she was dead. She had the most shocked expression on her face! Then she said, "I am?" and smiled, like she was thinking "This wasn't so bad after all". Then I heard a piercing tone and felt myself hit the bed-apparently I'd been out of my body and came back.

Like you, I'm not afraid of death. I know there'll be a lot of friends there to greet me, my grandmother included.

[Desertrose]

38. Good point...I agree...

...as we create our "reality" in life, I think we also do that after we leave the body and that people do experience quite often what they "expect"...eventually that can change. We still have the capacity for growth and change even though we are no longer in a body.

I completely agree that we are likely to continue our belief systems for a time after we "die".

[Hardrada]

12. "One life at a time," Thoreau said.

But I think this is it and I hope the impressions I have left with people will leave them smiling and perhaps more educated on certain issues.

[arwalden]

14. Nothingness.

You simply cease to exist. Since all we know from our own experiences and observations is "existence", it's difficult for many to even comprehend a state of NOT existing.

[aneerkoinos]

42. Well,

If you are a mathematical genious (I'm very much not) you can slowly start to digest movement and being that is not time related (aka "NOT existing").

Heidegger wrote a book on Time and Being, perhaps I'm doomed to read it... :)

[murray hill farm]

15. We will all find out the answer to that one..

sooner or later...i feel certain that it will be interesting, but even if it were nothing..which i doubt...but if it were..then no reason to fear it since it would be no different than before u were born...and none of us think of that as a fearful time.

[cynatnite]

17. Does death have meaing?

I spent years working in the medical field. I've worked in hospitals, ERs and as a Paramedic.

Whenever someone would die, we'd clean them up, put their belongings in a plastic bag and make sure they were presentable for family members wanting to say their goodbyes. Afterwards the funeral homes would come after them in majority of cases.

We'd wrap them up in the sheet, put them on the gurney and they are zipped up in the bag accompanying it.

I can't recall an instance where it didn't have a profound impact on me in the many times we've had to do this. It didn't matter the age, the impact was the same.

I would ask myself 'Is this it?'

Maybe this goes to the whole meaning of life question, but I would think that everything we did before dying seemed almost pointless because when we die, it's just over. Nothing. That's the scariest part of the whole death issue for me.

I know it's all about how we live that counts. Part of the reason I left the medical field is that death was just too damn scary and I was growing more and more cynical about life as a result.

I'm one of those people who want something to grab onto when life ends.

[Speck Tater]

18. Reincarnation.

And anyone who doesn't believe it hasn't taken a close look at the evidence. This evidence, coupled with my own personal recollections constitutes, for me at least, iron-clad proof. Obviously, my own personal experiences are just "anecdotal" to someone else, but the work of Dr Ian Stevenson is awefully hard to refute.

If you are seriously interested, start your investigation at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. http://www.healthsystem.virginia.edu/internet/personalitystudies/

The books on reincarnation research published by them are pretty "academic" in style, and not exactly easy reading, but here's a book that summarizes the work for the layman: OLD SOULS : Compelling Evidence from Children Who Remember Past Lives by Thomas Shroder ISBN: 0684851938

Arch-skeptic Carl Sagan stated that only four claims of the paranormal were backed up by enough serious evidence to warrant further serious consideration. One of those four, according to Sagan, was Dr. Stevenson's work at the University of Virginia on past lives.

Warning: Do NOT be taken in by popular paperbacks on past lives and hypnotic regression, or by new-age nonsense about "karma" and so on. Those claims are nonsense, and the hypnotic regression stuff is pure bunk of the worst kind. Separating the good science from the huge mountain of garbage and flim-flam is a difficult task, and the failure to do so is probably why skeptics find it so easy to dismiss the whole subject. They've only looked at the garbage, which is patently false and ridiculous.

[cynatnite]

21. Thanks!

I will definitely spend some time on this tonight after the kids are in bed.

[Speck Tater]

24. Also try this source

http://www.childpastlives.org/

The forums there are WONDERFUL. Lots of friendly people dealing with past life issues, especially trying to learn how to deal with their children who have vivid past life recall. Also lots of discussions on the scientific, philosophical and religious aspects of reincarnation. Tell them Fiziwig sent you and you will be warmly welcomed. :)

FWIW: Reincarnation used to be a standard part of the Christian religion until one of the popes (See: http://reluctant-messenger.com/origen1.html for details) decided it was politically better if people didn't believe they got a second chance so he declared it outlawed and most of the references to reincarnatino were edited out of the Bible by the Vatican at that point.

Reincarnation is still an official (though not publicized) belief in the Jewish faith. (For example: Rabbi Gershom's Jewish reincarnation site is at http://www.pinenet.com/~rooster/ )

[Desertrose]

23. as a very young child I remembered a previous existence

actually more than one.

Never looked for proof...didn't need it - the memories were very clear and I was only a toddler thinking some very "grownup" things that I still remember today....

I've let go of a lot of the dogmas about "karma" ( :) I like that)....again they are only explanations from the human perspective.

I feel the spirit/soul comes back for the "experiences" more than for the "lessons".

But just my opinion... :)

[Speck Tater]

26. My very earliest childhood memory was...

laying in my crib, staring up at my hands, like babies do, and thinking "how strange it is to be small again." I always took it for granted that every else remembered their past lives too. Our parish priest set me right on THAT misconception!

As a child I called things by their French names while learning to speak English, even though I had never been exposed to French (Our town didn't even have a TV station in the 1940's when I was doing this, so there wasn't any "media contamination") My mom always thought my names for things were nonsense words until a lady moved in next door to us who spoke French. She commented on how well I spoke French and translated for my mother. That was before I even started school. By 8 or 9 I'd forgotten it all and spoke only English.

At seven I told my parents I couldn't go to Catholic church with them anymore because I was supposed to be Buddhist like before.

We went to Disneyland shortly after it opened and when we were on the pirate ship I told my parents it was so phoney because it didn't sound or smell like a real sailing ship. I remembered what it was like to be on a real sailing ship.

Of course none of this means a thing to anyone else. It's just my own personal memories.

[Desertrose]

37. my thoughts too about the small hands!!!

I remember being so frustrated that I was tiny again and my arms & legs did not obey me and that I couldn't speak!

I kept thinking it was a dream and I'd wake up BIG again.

I remember being pretty small, stuck in a clothesbasket (my Mom put me there to keep me from crawling away ) and as I stared at the green green grass while she hung up the wash, I kept getting visions of bright red blood everywhere drying to dark blackish brown. Of "my people" being killed and my not being able to fight anymore because I had no body anymore . I remember watching crows peck "my" eyes out....

Like you I had a hard time with church (UCC) from an early age because I "knew" they were not telling ALL the truth...very little truth in fact.

I remember the bible stories about Jesus and thinking ,"gee, thats really not the way it was at all".

I also spoke a language as a really little kid 3-4 maybe, that no one was sure what it was, but did sound a bit like Latin...

again...just our personal memories that doesn't mean anything to anyone else....
:)

[aneerkoinos]

43. Meaning is feeling

For those of little belief in any dogma or paradigm, the evidence of continuum of memory (also over physical death) has been a long accepted (scientific) fact, what ever the explanatory theory.

For me, personally, the descriptions of rites of recognitions of Tibetan Tulkus have been most touching stories, bringing tears of joy and sympathy to my eyes ...

[medeak]

36. "I was a dancer with slanted eyes"

at least that's what I told the fellow who was giving my Mom a reading into past lives when I was three.

My Mom asked him about me...and he said "just ask her..when someone is that young they often remember"

And I did remember something...had never seen asian people before..but said I had slanted eyes...and was dancing around a fire.

wierd eh?

[Stevepol]

19. Believe we cease to exist physically but continue to exist.

Our post-physical existence is like a carry-over of our dream world. So in a way we are living beyond the body even now at night in our dreams. At death we just lose the conscious physical part that responds to material stimuli, etc. and begin to live in the ucs parts, the parts we can glimpse thru dreams and intuitive feelings at times. Swedenborg says we don't go anywhere, just drop the outer facade and become our inner desires. What are you on the inside? That's what you will become at death. No change in that, just that you lose the physical aspect of it.

And I believe there are other dimensions of that as well. But it's really experience, not words, so talking about it will always mis-represent it to some extent. We "grow" into it, a personal thing: if you really believe you die and that's it, you will perhaps just do that, cease to have a csness, at least for awhile, unless you're awakened by the prayers of others for you or just by your own slowly rousing csness.

It's too big a subject really. Look at the night sky. The earth is just the tiniest speck on an infinite seashore, billions and billions of worlds beyond this one. Yet the soul part of us is somehow related to all this around us.

I don't believe the knowledge of this other world comes from faith so much as experience and faith in your own "inner" experience. If you constantly deny the real inner experiences you have, how can you have much of an experience when the body is gone? The only thing you will have then will be "inner" experience.

[Desertrose]

20. You continue on...only without a physical body

its a whole different ballgame...

How can you explain what its like...very simply.
You can't.

Just because the body doesn't continue doesn't mean its "over"...not even close...I personally don't believe in heaven or hell...all just constructs by human minds.

No god/goddess judging us...how quaint a notion...we are basically god...therefore there is no need to judge or be judged.

death=expansion

No words for something that is beyond the capability of words & "thinking" to encompass.


peace
DR

[aneerkoinos]

44. In other words

(not mine but I don't object:) the purpose of our existance (or successions of timed existances) is to replace our individual daimonion / guardian angel / soul with limitles God / Nous.

[Anakin Skywalker]

22. Nothing.

[andyhappy]

25. a question for the ages

somehow I do not think you are going to find out the answer surfing a website

I mean DU rocks and all but I dont think it rocks like that! ;)

[aneerkoinos]

45. DU

We rock and mind!!!

Truth is where ever you open to it.

[Stunster]

27. Some links that may be relevant to your question

can be found here.

[CrispyQ]

28. "The Riverworld" by Philip Jose Farmer has an interesting take.

[eternalburn]

29. An experience and what it left me with....

I had a good friend. Someone I had known since my early teen days.

One night (In early June of 2000) I had a dream that she was standing by my bed leaning against my bookshelves. She told me she was concerned about a prank that she had pulled on me a long time ago, that at the time had really upset me. It was such a trivial thing to me years later and I was surprised that she even remembered it. I told her so and not to worry about it. I knew that she was my friend and wouldn't have done it if she had known it would make me unhappy. She smiled and that was all.

The dream felt very real and I remembered it very clearly after waking up and it stayed with me.

A week later a man walking his dog found her partially clothed body in a local forest preserve. Her body had been there for about a week according to the coroner.

I am not a religious person. My father is a physicist and I was brought up by science but always had the freedom to choose to follow a religion if I wanted to. I still do not believe in organized religion or a supreme being but I do believe now (since the experience) that physical death is not the end. I don't know what happens. I can only base my ideas on what I personally have experienced and do not expect anyone else to be changed, accept it or moved by it.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

30. well,

having talked with those who have passed over, it seems that life goes on without the body.

[aneerkoinos]

39. Bardo

No death, no time, only hear and now, the fullness/emptiness between thoughts.

Mortal ego is time-related fenomenon. Modern physics, mathematicians and age old occutists don't take time at face value.

As for any and all time related continuums, you reap what you sow, death or no death. Just simple fact.

[FM Arouet666]

47. After death, you simply return to where you were before birth.

There is no evidence in the natural world for an afterlife, a heaven, a hell, reincarnation etc As an atheist, I find the whole religious promise of ever lasting life to be a bribe, with heinous punishment should you refuse the bribe.

Religion to me, is bunk. So what happens after death? Wherever you were before birth, is where you go after death. If the supernatural world exists your essence survives, if not, you return to nothingness.

And this is a most troubling thought for humankind. Returning to nothing, non-existence. However, I cannot conceive of a state of horrible non-existence for the eternity prior to my birth, and thus, do not conceive of it after death.

[papau]

48. As I had hoped - a great thread! Thanks for starting it! :-)

:-)

[Democrat Dragon]

50. Although I am religious compared to many DUers...

I don't really believe in the afterlife. I dunno, maybe its because its not really mentioned in the Bible(Unless you're a Deist or Non-Christian, Jesus was a special case). I think the concept of heaven being a place for dead souls and hell was actually borrowed from the Elysian Fields and Tartarus of Ancient Greek Paganism. Another reason is that life is harsh, and that most people and animals have an instictive drive to survive as long as they can. As for mediums, IMHO they're fake and as for ghosts, I think they are something else.

However if somehow someoen finds solid proof that life after death exists(some people claim they have), I wouldn't throw a tanturm and poorly deny it.

BTW if Hell supposedly exists, then wouldn't satan(or whatever being you believe rules Hell)be tourturing good people(since he's bad)?

[qazplm]

51. the answer

is unknowable, thats the most frustrating thing about all of this.

We just dont know, its the uncertainty that is the worse part, if we all had a way to know that there was nothing after this life, then at least we could all prepare, likewise, if there was a way to truly communicate with an afterlife that could be proven, that would help too.

But what we are left with is faith (either in the existence or nonexistence of an afterlife) or in the minds of agnostics like me, absolute cluelessness lol.

[Dcitizen]

52. definitely will be judged by seeing all events from the begining.

"Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again," (Matthew 7:1-2)