I would just be guessing, but it does seem to be the case that whatever we experience contributes to learning on some level. We can see this when people have life reviews during their NDE. They are never judged, but only asked what did you learn? — Sam26

I am questioning the wisdom of suppressing our memory to the point of having horrible experiences with not much meaningful benefit. Sure, you can learn from anything but there is a difference between taking a good course and taking a crappy one. We would not intentionally take a crappy course if we could take a good one instead. Taking a crappy course in such a situation would be an unintentional mistake or maybe a sign of mental illness.

Consider the things you may be willing to experience if you knew you couldn't ultimately be harmed.

Perhaps, instead of 'suppressing memory', it's more of a provision where by you can only remember certain things if you attain certain degree of experience. For example, with our humanity being largely primitive 'emotionally' and even 'mentally', imagine what someone like hitler would do if he realized in present times of his atrocities back then? Probably suicide or worse become unhinged and go on another killing-spree. Therefore, like Yogis, I think we unlock as much of our memories as we can handle.

Consider the things you may be willing to experience if you knew you couldn't ultimately be harmed. — Sam26

Even if I couldn't ultimately be harmed why would I choose to go through hell without not much to learn from it?

Remember, I'm telling you what the evidence is telling us, that doesn't mean that I have all the answers. I know I don't. Moreover, because you can't make sense of it doesn't mean much, unless of course there's an obvious contradiction.

Even if I couldn't ultimately be harmed why would I choose to go through hell without not much to learn from it? — litewave

First, I believe there is much to be learned from every situation. Secondly, you got me thinking, what about addiction? Addicts do choose to go through hell and most often without much to learn from it. I think the balance between knowing and not knowing has many shades of grey.

Perhaps, instead of 'suppressing memory', it's more of a provision where by you can only remember certain things if you attain certain degree of experience. For example, with our humanity being largely primitive 'emotionally' and even 'mentally', imagine what someone like hitler would do if he realized in present times of his atrocities back then? Probably suicide or worse become unhinged and go on another killing-spree. Therefore, like Yogis, I think we unlock as much of our memories as we can handle. — BrianW

I was talking about the suppression of our memory of our original loving nature. Supposedly we were once able to live with that awareness just fine, so losing the ability to handle such an awareness seems like a degradation and restoring that ability seems like a rehab. Dealing with traumatic memories from the degradation, including their intentional temporary blocking, may be part of the rehab, but that too shows that a degradation did occur.

From what I've learned from esoteric studies, the progression as we evolve from our initial, through our transitory and to the final phase of life cannot have a regression. There may be delays but never regression.
The teaching goes something like:
Initially, we are like 'electrons' in the 'sun'. We have the warmth and light (love and wisdom) of the 'sun' but we are solely dependent on it. That is, by ourselves, say the 'electrons' are hurled through space, the warmth and light would diminish gradually. Therefore, our evolution is the process by which we learn to become 'suns' and have the capacity to give warmth and heat of our own volition and nature.

Does this make any sense?

Remember, I'm telling you what the evidence is telling us, that doesn't mean that I have all the answers. I know I don't. Moreover, because you can't make sense of it doesn't mean much, unless of course there's an obvious contradiction. — Sam26

Remember, I am just questioning the claim that we intentionally choose to forget our original identity. How many near-death experiencers made this claim? And what makes you think that their claim is more accurate than the claim that forgetting our original identity was a regrettable mistake, a claim made by esoteric traditions that supposedly stemmed from similar experiences or revelations?

Secondly, you got me thinking, what about addiction? Addicts do choose to go through hell and most often without much to learn from it. — BrianW

But that is obviously a regrettable mistake, something similar to spiritual fall.

I don't know about mistakes or spiritual fall but I understand it from the perspective of necessity and choice. Necessity is law, Choice is will. Choice must align to Necessity. We choose to act in a certain way, we reap repercussions according to law.

From what I've learned from esoteric studies, the progression as we evolve from our initial, through our transitory and to the final phase of life cannot have a regression. There may be delays but never regression. — BrianW

Then you probably mean something else than Western esoteric traditions like Gnosticism, Hermeticism or Neoplatonism, all of which claim that forgetting our original (divine) identity was a spiritual fall. Gnosticism even condemns the material world as evil, while Hermeticism and Neoplatonism regard the material world as part of an overall good creation and the souls' incarnation in it as part of divine plan but still insist that the souls made regrettable mistakes during their incarnation in the material world. Eastern mystical religions like Hinduism and Buddhism show a similar rejection of the material world as Gnosticism.

The teaching goes something like:
Initially, we are like 'electrons' in the 'sun'. We have the warmth and light (love and wisdom) of the 'sun' but we are solely dependent on it. That is, by ourselves, say the 'electrons' are hurled through space, the warmth and light would diminish gradually. Therefore, our evolution is the process by which we learn to become 'suns' and have the capacity to give warmth and heat of our own volition and nature.

Does this make any sense? — BrianW

Yes, but there are better and worse ways of learning something. You wouldn't want your child to learn that fire hurts by incinerating their hand. It is better to show them how fire can destroy an inanimate thing and let them come closer to fire so they can feel the increasing heat without getting to the point of getting burned. There seems to be a similar difference between learning through a "righteous" path and learning through a fall and then recovering from it.

The basis for the conclusion is the testimonial evidence of those who have had an NDE ... — Sam26

There was a project related to NDE. In short, at places where NDE are likely - objects were placed at places not normally perceived. The goal was to ask persons after their ND experiences about objects perceived during NDE...

The project is still in progress and there is no official report...

Enjoy the day, :cool:

Then you probably mean something else than Western esoteric traditions — litewave

Also try theosophy (mixture of eastern and western esoteric teachings), yoga (old teachings by Swami Vivekananda and Swami Sivananda, new by Dr. Vladimir Antonov - Swami Centre), books by William Walker Atkinson/Yogi Ramacharaka, also Bhagavad Gita, Spiritism books by Allan Kardec.

Yes, I am familiar with this project.

In the case of NDEs ... I have had one.
Objectively I was still alive.
A consciousness that is independent of being-in-the-world is absurd.
I maintain this even after having had this experience.
What I would personally think is that in death or in a NDE, MAYBE, the experience of time becomes in such a way that, when compared to the usual experience of time with others, the experience creates the illusion of the independence of consciousness from corporeality.
The best information about NDEs is with reference to DMT. That is the best reference I can give.

There's no solid evidence for consciousness surviving death. There's no solid evidence that it doesn't. However, given what we know about everything else in nature and the universe and psychology, we can argue that there's a very strong inductive argument against the consciousness surviving without the body.

First off, there's nothing that separates us from other animals other than higher cognitive functions. This higher function is the result of evolution and the byproduct of this evolution is our ability to think in abstract ways. This can lead to illusions of us being of a higher existence than animals, but in essence we are not, no data support that we are. Therefor, we are like animals and animals consciousness should therefor also continue after their death. Animal tests on this does not show any data that support that this is the case.

In psychology and neuroscience there's strong hypotheses about what happens when we die. The trauma that the body and brain goes through at the moment of death most likely fires off all the neurons in our brain in order to try and kickstart everything. This process resembles seizures and REM states, meaning if all neurons are firing, you might get a large flow of memory data scrambled together, like in dream sleep. This is why people can provide witness reports of events that they experienced at the moment of a near death experience. However, there's no correlation with those reports and anything actually supernatural.

We humans also have a tendency to be biased to what comforts us. Most of us have had deaths around us in our life and it's easier for us to cope if we believe that our friends and family are in a better place. However, this is a false comfort based on our need to overcome grief and cannot be used in an argument for the survival of the mind after death. We don't know if it's true, but we want it to be true and the "want" is so great that even the most intellectual mind can be teased into believing in an afterlife. This is probably why there are so many scientists that still believes in some religion, even though they are trained to view big questions with the scientific method.

We are therefor extremely afraid of death without an afterlife. It's a concept that is the most terrifying we can think of. That everything we were, everything we are goes right into the trash can, like a hard drive that fails to boot and you realize that everything you had on it is gone. But everything points to that being the truth. Therefor I think many have a missed opportunity in which they believe in an afterlife and therefor does not care for this life. If you know and understand that everything ends with all your memories destroyed and all the knowledge you had gathered, gone, then you might care for leaving that knowledge behind. We do it with our kids, but we can also do it, like we do it here, writing it out, expanding our thoughts and ideas, sharing them. Too many live their life in a closed space, waiting for an afterlife that probably never comes. That is the depressing waste of a life.

The only thing that could be considered close to a consciousness surviving death would be our gut bacteria. Researchers have found that our way of thinking might be influenced and work in symbios with our gut, i.e the bacterial makeup of our intestines. When we die, these bacterias are the first to eat us from the inside, they live on, feeding on the corpse and if there was any kind of consciousness that they make up with us, that's the only thing that exists after death, however, that might be considered "life" and not the supernatural energy we think of as consciousness after death.

The easiest way of thinking about our life is to compare it to a computer. It's turned on, with a blank hard drive. It has a boot up system that functions as our motor cortex, the things that makes us move as a body, but we have no mind, no memory to drive our identity. So we install an operating system, the basic genetic makeup of who we are, based on previous data from our parents. In that operating system, we gather information, we fill up the hard drive. Some hard drives are larger than others, some have problems, some have software errors and some have hardware errors. But the longer the computer is running and the more work it does, the more information is stored and the more it can do. The more programs installed, the more capabilities it has. Then the fans cooling the system gets broken, the cooling paste for the processor starts lacking, we patch it up, we try to keep it going, some drives start failing, corrupting data, it can't remember stuff well, remember stuff scrambled and with errors. Until one day, the drive fails, the processor fails, the power fails, and the life it had is dead, all data gone, corrupted, corroded. Others cannot access it, it's gone, but some of the data was uploaded, some information got saved to the network and others can gather around this info and use it going forward. But the drive will never work again, it is gone and that's that.

This analogy has one silver lining, if we are speaking in materialistic terms. If we find a way to remove the hard drive before it gets corrupted and we find a way to make it work in another system, we could potentially move consciousness from the body. However, our consciousness and the structure of our neurons are one and the same. This is why uploading our mind into a computer as in transhumanism only works as a copy, the original still remains. The copy might believe it was "moved" over to the computer system, but it wasn't. The best example of this in a story is Ghost in the Shell (anime), it both shows the only way to use a human mind in a robot body, in the way of actually moving the brain into another body, but also, the uploading and syntheses that happen in the end clearly states a new form, not that the others were moved. They died to create a new synthesis, which is a new life form, not the old, essentially the child.

So, in conclusion, there's nothing to suggest there's an afterlife, nothing to suggest that anything supernatural happens at the moment of death. Our consciousness works close to how a computer works and the same rules apply to us as anything else in the universe, meaning when we fail, we are gone. The probability that our consciousness keeps on existing after our death is minimal to non-existing and most suggestions that it does seem rooted in the deep fear of death and the deep need for the comfort of it's concept. However, if we're drawing up a deductive or inductive argument around this, there's little to support any claim that our consciousness can exist after death or go on to any afterlife.

We are of meat and matter, we are of neurons with electrons, we are that of a machine fearing non-existence so much that we deny our existence as it is. The greatest delusion of our species.

Emotionally, are you ok with an afterlife?

Ok with an afterlife or ok without an afterlife? I feel comfort in there not being an afterlife, since I accept it and live life by it. To live life and come to a conclusion that there isn't any afterlife at the end would be more horrific than living life as if it ends completely. As I mentioned, it's emotionally more comforting to think that there is an afterlife, but it's a delusion, the bliss of ignorance. It's seducing to comply to the idea of an afterlife since it's comforting, but comfort is not truth and accepting truth as it is and finding true comfort within truth rather than in delusion has a greater strength as a foundation for life than anything else.

Being ok with an afterlife is somewhat of a non-question since being ok without an afterlife is the more emotionally demanding. To be ok with the existence of an afterlife is like being ok with me living tomorrow, and the next day and the next. It has no real value other than just being. But being ok with that I won't live tomorrow demands of me to find a much more complex and demanding emotional foundation to exist on. That is the hard route, but I rather go by truth, than by comfort, rather be as true to existence as I can than live in ignorance in order to shield myself from the truth.

Stretching the evidence and the conclusions and scientific findings in order to support the concept of an afterlife is acting like Don Quijote. If you are thorough in any other field of science, but stretch the evidence thin whenever you adress the concept of an afterlife, you are acting ut of comfort and not truth. Do not assume the premises to be correct in order for the conclusion to be correct. If the premises clearly doesn't show any evidence for an afterlife, there isn't any and any notion of there being one is a delusion out of comfort, not out of truth.

Emotionally.

Once while pondering how information can endure on the skin of a black hole, the notion passed through my mind that this might actually be life after death: that we're just reflections of people who once lived, but have now passed through to join the One.

I thought I would probably have to rise up and destroy the universe. But I wasn't very happy at the time.

Sounds iike a really bad version of a trip that you didn't actually have, no disrespect. :up:

Explanation? It was just an episode.

No disrespect.

Weird mod editing just happened here, right? Super weird.

Don't know. Are you familiar with Buddha's struggle with the Lord of Illusion?

Obviously you haven't read my arguments. If you had you could have addressed them. Most of what you argued has already been addressed.

Unfortunetely no, since I wanted to add my input on the matter when I saw it, so I only read the original post for this. If what I've been writing about has already been adressed I'm not taking away anything from that, I just wanted to add to it. Sorry if it felt like ignoring arguments, that wasn't the intention. :smile:

But even so, more spiritual arguments keeps coming under this subject, which ignores the scientific arguments, so I'm still waiting for any deductive/inductive reasoning for the existence of consciousness after death, which I have never really seen. Metaphysics have essentially been replaced by science during the last hundred years so I usually find it hard to see philosophy argue metaphysics rationally in modern times. It becomes more spiritual and disregarding true dialectics.

I'm adressing these arguments then.

First, a high number of testimonials gives a better picture of the events in question. So the greater the number the more likely we are to get an accurate report, but not necessarily, i.e., high numbers don't always translate into accurate testimonial evidence, which is why one must also consider other important factors. — Sam26

If the process of dying is the same for everyone, does the testimonials not just describe that same process in it's subjective experience? Example: Everyone who drinks alcohol can describe the same consequence of being drunk, does that mean something supernatural exists or just that the process of getting drunk is the same? Same goes for near death experiences. If the process is the same, the testimonials should look similar or the same to everyone. The tunnel with people at the end of it would be the same if the same process of the dying brain is the same. You can induce similar experiences in people if you create the same conditions for them and the small variants might be because of the differences in memory and identity of the one experiencing them. Testimonials does then not equal any existence of the supernatural.

Second, seeing the event from a variety of perspectives will also help to clear up some of the testimonial reports. For example, different cultural perspectives, different age groups, different historical perspectives, different religious perspectives, different times of the day, and even considering people with different physical impairments (like the blind) will help clear up some of the biased and misremembered reports. — Sam26

Yes, but some experiences we have are rooted in the biology of being a human. These shouldn't be mixed up with experiences that happens between all cultures and people for being supernatural, the conclusion is just that we share some experiences based on our physical and neurological existence as humans.

Third, is the consistency of the reports, i.e., are there a large number of consistent or inconsistent reports. While it is important to have consistency in the testimonial evidence, inconsistency doesn't necessarily negate all of the reports. When dealing with a large number of testimonials you will almost certainly have contradictory statements, this happens even when people report on everyday events. Thus, one must weed out the testimony that does not fit the overall picture, and paint a picture based on what the majority of accounts are testifying to. It doesn't necessarily mean that what the minority is saying is unimportant, only that accuracy tends to favor what the majority are reporting. — Sam26

But this still doesn't account for experiences based on basic similarities between humans by their physical and neurological makeup. We are more similar to each other than we are different, meaning that under certain conditions we experience the same things and would report the same when asked. It doesn't prove that there is something after death.

Fourth, can the testimony be corroborated by any other objective means, thereby strengthening the testimonial evidence as given by those who make the claims. — Sam26

In essence, you mean backing up the testimony with external evidences? Yes in that case.

Fifth, are the testimonials firsthand accounts, as opposed to being hearsay. In other words, is the testimonial evidence given by the person making the claim, and not by someone simply relating a story they heard from someone else. This is very important in terms of the strength of the testimonials. — Sam26

If the experience can't be proven to be something supernatural, it doesn't really matter if it's a first hand accounts. Yes, it makes it stronger than hearsay, but if the first hand testimony can't be proven to be an experience of supernatural form, it cannot prove anything about consciousness existing after death.

Each of these five criteria serve to strengthen the testimonial evidence. All of these work hand-in-hand to strengthen a particular testimonial conclusion, and they serve to strengthen any claim to knowledge. If we have a large enough pool of evidence based on these five criteria we can say with confidence that the conclusion follows. In other words, we can say what is probably the case, not what is necessarily the case. — Sam26

Unfortunetely, testimonial accounts cannot be used as evidence and cannot lead to a conclusion. It can be in support of evidence, but it cannot be used as evidence since there's no correlation between it and with the truth or falseness of the claim of consciousness existing after death. You need to be able to measure that consciousness exists without the neurons. If a person gets his brain destroyed and you could measure the existence of his consciousness in the room after it, that would be evidence. However, how such proof would be attained is impossible to say, if it's even possible to measure.
Testimonials of near death experience does not prove anything in of themselves. They only provide accounts of experiences linked to the experience of death, meaning, they might say something about what happens to our consciousness while the brain is dying and shutting down. It's an interesting thing, but it does not prove anything about the consciousness existing after death or transcending to any afterlife.

There's no solid evidence for consciousness surviving death. There's no solid evidence that it doesn't.

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None of us here have died (and remember it).
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However, given what we know about everything else in nature and the universe and psychology, we can argue that there's a very strong inductive argument against the consciousness surviving without the body.

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Of course you never experience the time when your body has completely shut-down. Only your survivors do.
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You’re taking a Literalist interpretation, when you speak of whether or not you’re still there at the time when, from the point of view of your survivors, you’re gone.
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As I’ve pointed out in other threads, there’s no such thing as “oblivion”. You never arrive at or experience a time when you aren’t.
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You’d agree that death is sleep, and that that sleep becomes deeper and deeper. …but with you never reaching a time when you aren’t. …though you become quite unconscious, in the sense that there isn’t waking-consciousness.
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To quote Shakespeare:
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“To sleep, perchance to dream.”
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Therefor, we are like animals and animals consciousness should therefor also continue after their death. Animal tests on this does not show any data that support that this is the case.

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What kind of instrument-readings were you expecting? :D …with instruments like in Ghostbusters?
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From the point of view of the investigators, the animals that died are quite dead.
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See above.
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We humans also have a tendency to be biased to what comforts us. Most of us have had deaths around us in our life and it's easier for us to cope if we believe that our friends and family are in a better place. However, this is a false comfort based on our need to overcome grief and cannot be used in an argument for the survival of the mind after death. We don't know if it's true, but we want it to be true and the "want" is so great that even the most intellectual mind can be teased into believing in an afterlife. This is probably why there are so many scientists that still believes in some religion, even though they are trained to view big questions with the scientific method.

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Well, if someone is the kind of person who is expected to go to Hell, would he be hoping that there’s an afterlife?
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In the East, there’s the expressed goal of an end to lives, a time when reincarnation isn’t needed and doesn’t happen.
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At this forum, at least one poster has expressed that he doesn’t want there to be an afterlife or reincarnation.
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So you’re greatly over-generalizing when you say that everyone is hoping for an afterlife.
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You keep referring to the “Supernatural”. The Supernatural consists of contravention of physical law in scary movies about werewolves, vampires, murderous mummies, etc.
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Usually it’s just the Materialists who speak of “The Supernatural” (contravention of physical law) and seem to want to attribute beliefs about that, to non-Materialists.
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…Until one day, the drive fails, the processor fails, the power fails, and the life it had is dead, all data gone, corrupted, corroded. Others cannot access it, it's gone, but some of the data was uploaded, some information got saved to the network and others can gather around this info and use it going forward. But the drive will never work again, it is gone and that's that.

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A computer couldn’t care less if it gets turned off.
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Michael Ossipoff