I wonder what this would mean: cosmic recycling? — Jack Cummins

What else? :smile:

This end is a personal condition. Something that will happen no matter what tricky moves I might make.
So, on one level, it is odd to make it about the world. The world seems content to have me pass.

So, I am interested in other people's thoughts on the question of what becomes of consciousness at death? — Jack Cummins

I think the physical part of us dies but a lot of our past work, our ideas, some of our desires/fears, live on through our offspring, family, coworkers, community and even our environment.

As parts of a greater whole, we all inevitably affect the people and world around us, much like how our parents shaped ours and how their parents shaped theirs and so on and so forth. It's really a never ending thing (until of course we see the demise of life itself).

So, I am interested in other people's thoughts on the question of what becomes of consciousness at death? — Jack Cummins

Same as that which happens when an orchestra (e.g. a brain) stops playing and its members (e.g. neurons) irreversibly-irreparably disband, namely, "what becomes of" the music (e.g. consciousness) is that it simply ceases.

I am not disagreeing with your points of viewing the end of individual consciousness at death, and I can take on board the idea that the person lives on to some extent in the effects their lives have upon other people. I am just interested to know why you think that consciousness ceases completely at death. Is this based on the premise that mind is totally dependent on the brain?

I think that many people do take this view and it may well be correct. However, this is not the only way of seeing consciousness, and I am thinking about the perspective of Henri Bergson and Aldous Huxley who believed that rather than the brain generating consciousness, it is a reducing valve. This is consistent with William Blake's view that if the 'doors of perception were cleansed', we would see 'all things as infinite.'

I don't think you have Huxley's reducing valve quite right. He thinks that a conscious brain includes a reducing valve to prevent us thinking about everything at once. It doesn't mean that the brain isn't the source of consciousness.

I do agree with your description of Huxley's understanding the brain as expressed in The Doors of Perception, but I think that his his understanding of the mescalin induced visions induced visions do allow for an understanding of altered states of consciousness. But perhaps I am twisting his argument.

I will say that my own bit of psychedelic experimentation, at a warehouse rave, certainly led me to question the mind and body question. I had the experience of sensing that I could walk through other people on the dancefloor. Also, I had the experience of looking at myself in a mirror and being able to see all my surroundings except myself, as if I had become invisible. I concluded that I could not see myself because I had left my body.

Of course, my experience might be regarded as a hallucinationary delusion. I had read Huxley's book and thought about it in relation to his views but perhaps I am twisting his argument to explain my own psychedelic experience.

My suspicion is that life is cyclical, and the microcosmic resembles the macrocosmic. We sleep, dream, and wake up, consciousness being a continuum of memory. The bigger sleep, death and birth, will be similar. What science calls genetics, would be a continuum of memory from previous life/death cycles. Basically, I believe the Universe is symmetrical in all respects. Clues to the macro can be found in observing the micro. This is what Daoists do. Interestingly, Hamlet's soliloquy alludes to this idea. I think that if we pass on with good memories, we will enjoy a nice deep sleep. The concept of Karma adopts a similar point of view. — MondoR

You triggered my memory of reading about genetic memory. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/genetic-memory-how-we-know-things-we-never-learned/

I think I may have a memory of past incarnations? Not much and the one just before this one seems the most complete. I am not the only person who seems to live with a memory of a previous life. I have contemplated this for a while and decided in order to have new lives, we must forget the past one. I would not want to repeat my present life but would love it if somehow I were born again and retained the knowledge I gain from intentional studying. This totally brings into question who am I if I come to life as different people with different life experiences and possibly retain some memory of each lifetime without being the same personality as the one before? Sort of like we are sitting in a theater and watching one movie after another. We experience each movie but do not end with each movie. :brow:

'all things as infinite.' — Jack Cummins

My goodness, this thread is trigging so many memories that I have not thought about for a long time. I am having a delightful time. I am also thinking I should write this stuff down because I want to be aware of some memories and I can not trust my brain to be aware of fading memories.

I had a few spontaneous transcendental experiences many years ago that strongly impacted what I believe about life. One such experience was to have no identity of my own but to think I am one with the fence, one with the field, one with the convict in prison, etc.... one with the universe. As you said, that experience gives me reason to believe you are right to refer to those who said our brains function to filter out information.

I can relate to what you are saying because one of my earliest memories is of being in a cot and a sensation of 'coming around again,' and this felt more than just waking up from being asleep in the usual sense.

Also, my grandfather died 6 weeks before I was born and I was often compared to him. When I was about 12 years old I really began wondering if I had been him in a previous life because I was into a fairly obscure author of school boy stories, which was not of my own generation. When I was talking of one of these books I wanted to read, my mother said that the strange thing was she was sure that the title had been one of the books which she had thrown away in the bookcase of books belongings to my grandfather.

I never mentioned my contemplation of reincarnation to anyone at the time because I was in a Catholic family and school, with set views, mainly of resurrection at the end of the world. I would have been told off for thinking nonsense, and it is likely that readers of this site may accuse me of talking nonsense too.

Same thing that happens when an orchestra (e.g. a brain) stops playing and its members (e.g. neurons) irreversibly-irreparably disband, namely the music (e.g. consciousness) simply ceases. — 180 Proof

That is very materialistic when reality is all about energy.

That is very materialistic when reality is all about energy. — Athena

Doesn't light carry the memory of the stars as they were millions of years ago. Who's to say that memory dies when the body can no longer function.

we must forget the past one. I would not want to repeat my present life — Athena

Yes. Death and rebirth is a manner to start afresh, like a new game of chess. We do not forget what were have learned, but we can start again to see how well we learned and how much more we can learn. The Universe is constantly playing the game of creating and learning, just like a game of chess.

I never mentioned my contemplation of reincarnation to anyone at the time because I was in a Catholic family and school, with set views, mainly of resurrection at the end of the world. I would have been told off for thinking nonsense, and it is likely that readers of this site may accuse me of talking nonsense too. — Jack Cummins

I have a very old book about logic and it clearly states we should never be too sure about what we think we know. A wise person maintains doubt. I have a big problem with religious people who think they can know God's truth and that anyone who does not agree with them is wrong. I once read, when we think we know God, we know God not. The Bible says God is beyond our comprehension and the religious folks keep making their notion of God comprehensible, rather than remain open-minded. From there, things can get really bad as some people are willing to kill for their notion of God to be the only one.

Some have argued Jesus spoke of reincarnation and I believe knowledge of Buddha improves our knowledge of Jesus because I believe Jesus's thinking was more oriental than western and culturally we are separated from oriental thinking.

Roman was very materialistic and the result is flipping the Egyptian trinity of being spiritual beings, into a trinity of God. The Egyptian trinity is more like we are spiritual beings having a human experience. One part dies with the body, one part goes on to be judged and may entire the good life or not, and always the third part returns to the source. The trinity of God denies our spirituality but has to impose a notion of souls? In Christianity, the trinity is God, Son, and Holy Ghost. I really do not comprehend Christian thinking, because to me the religion is dependent on believing in supernatural beings, but Christians see themselves as opposed to superstition. That is a little nuts to me. A new word had to be invented for the Romans to accept the trinity of God. Greeks had a word for the trinity but not Romans and for many years Christians warred against each other over the issue if Jesus was the son of God or God Himself.

Anyway back to reincarnation. Jesus made a statement about my father has many rooms and we enter and leave those rooms. That can be taken as a reference to reincarnation. There was a time when Buddhism and Catholicism came close to combining. The difference between eastern spiritism and western materialism with supernatural beings pasted on, holds the beliefs apart.

"The object of the idea constituting the human mind is the body ..." ~Spinoza

"The human body is the best picture of the human soul." ~Wittgenstein

I am just interested to know why you think that consciousness ceases completely at death. Is this based on the premise that mind is totally dependent on the brain? — Jack Cummins

"Consciousness" isn't a thing, it's a process like respiration or digestion; and the extant evidence to the contrary doesn't falsify the conjecture that mind is no more (or less) than what the human brain does - it's a CNS function, just as pumping blood is a heart function.

That is very materialistic when reality is all about energy. — Athena

And "energy" - vibration, motion, transformation - is not "materialistic"?

Doesn't light carry the memory of the stars as they were millions of years ago. Who's to say that memory dies when the body can no longer function.

Yes. Death and rebirth is a manner to start afresh, like a new game of chess. We do not forget what were have learned, but we can start again to see how well we learned and how much more we can learn. The Universe is constantly playing the game of creating and learning, just like a game of chess. — MondoR

I love the way you said that.

Has anyone here read Jose Arguelles's "The Mayan Factor"? Does anyone know of the Great Cycle as 13 Baktun Synchronation Beam and the Harmonic Convergence? The Mayans may have had a better understanding reality than we do?

And "energy" - vibration, motion, transformation - is not "materialistic"? — 180 Proof

Matter vibrates, moves, changes, but what is energy and where does it come from?

Matter vibrates, moves, changes, but what is energy and where does it come from? — Athena

E=mc^2 ... Anyway, the question is incoherent, or is begged, since any "where" (or when) - spacetime - is inseparable from "matter ... energy". To be is to "vibrate, move, change" à la dao.

What IS energy. Math and physics only deals with equivalencies (=). They can never say what it IS. Only WE can say who we ARE.

Has anyone here read Jose Arguelles's "The Mayan Factor"? Does anyone know of the Great Cycle as 13 Baktun Synchronation Beam and the Harmonic Convergence? The Mayans may have had a better understanding reality than we do? — Athena

The ancients observed life more clearly.

You seem to have answered your own question but do give the following argument some consideration.

1. If our brains shut down then our consciousness ceases to exist

2. If we die then our brains shut down

Ergo,

3. If we die then our consciousness ceases to exist (from 1, 2 Hypothetical syllogism)

4. We die

Ergo,

5. Our consciousness ceases to exist (3, 4 Modus ponens)

Sad!!!

I don't think I have answered my question. On one hand I have seen the logic of the physical equation of death with the physical body. But I don't know if you read my exchange about my own psychedelic experimentation and the issue of reincarnation with Athena this afternoon. I don't think that there is a clear, definite answer.

I don't think that the problem can be set out in a number 1-5 point strategy as you try to do. I think that our knowledge is limited.

I believe that the Buddha was uncertain about the whole issue of life after death. Of course the Buddha did not write books and his thoughts have been interpreted differently by the various traditions.

You are a lover of paradoxes and perhaps the mystery of life after death is one, because we are left with the whole conundrum of whether the body gives rise to the mind or the body to the mind ? Which is the more real? The one thing which you are right about me is that I am the seeker and explorer, and I haven't stopped searching yet...

According to all the science, we just die Jack. Reincarnation has never been shown to have any credibility. Psychedelic's merely alter your physical brain to encounter reality a particular way. But its all physical. Even the "Light at the end of the tunnel stories" have found that the patient did not actually die.

And that's the way you should live your life. When you're dead, you're done. Why waste time thinking that it will be something else?

I don't see the matter as a difference between mind and body. The brain is a meat machine that is clearly involved with "generating" consciousness. That doesn't explain anything by itself. The conditions that make the experience possible must be connected to the unfolding of the world beyond the horizon of any particular organism but it is very difficult to explore how that works.
When we consider what might be universal in regards to our existence, we get further away from the problems given to it. I think that is why Spinoza said we can only experience events as determined.

I appreciate what you are saying and I you are trying to be helpful and stop me wasting my time overthinking But, of course this site is meant to be about debating the questions of philosophy and not just about coming up with definitive answers, as provided in the name of science.

I appreciate what you are saying and I you are trying to be helpful and stop me wasting my time overthinking But, of course this site is meant to be about debating the questions of philosophy and not just definitive answers, as provided in the name of science. — Jack Cummins

Certainly Jack! I only added that at the end because it is a certainty of life that cannot be rationally concluded in any other way. I do believe questions like, "Why do humans believe they can live after they die?" are questions worth exploring. Same with, "If we know there is no afterlife, how should we live our life today?"

On the question of life after death however, I believe the answer is as solid as you can get from anything in life. We all die. And that is the end.

Consciousness no longer occurs?
Death, at first, is the last time consciousness ends and cannot recur, then, as determined by doctors and such, when bodily functions cease.
Is there anything ... extra, unaccounted for ... found...? Anything missing...?
I suppose you might check @Sam26's Evidence of Consciousness Surviving the Body thread; bit long though.

I am not convinced with any certainty that there is life after death but I know many people who have firm conviction that it is as real as this one. But these firm believers in life beyond death would probably would not be discussing the issue on a philosophy site at all, because from their point of view the matter is fixed too.

Okay, I will look at an old thread to see if there are any gems of wisdom. I know that The Opposite speaks highly of 'Sam', if it is the same person. But people are joining the site daily so I like to interact with these people rather than just read dead threads, or reply to comments by people who have not logged in for ages. But, it is worth looking in the archives, but part of the reason I do not do that too often is that if I find something wonderful I would not wish to commit plagiarism.

The ancients observed life more clearly. — MondoR

They had less intellectual debris to face. So their minds made up the missing stuff in the cracks of knowledge, and since the majority of creation thus became the product of their imagination, they saw the world more clearly. Everyone is very clear about the product of their imagination.

Sorry about joining so late.

What happens to the conscious after death? That I'd like to know too. Theories and fantasies may abound; evidence is non existent.

It is the great unknown.