How Come People Think When They Die They Go To Heaven?

A student came before his teacher with a question; "what happens after we die?"
"I don't know."
"How can you not know? You're a Zen master!"
"Yes, but I'm not a dead one."

 

No, I don't. The only 'heavens' or 'hells' which I am aware of we confabulate between our own two ears, believe to be true, then proceed to inflict upon ourselves and each other.

I choose to believe in Fiddler's Green...and I have just as much empirical evidence to support my notion as you do to support yours.

 

Can do both, but mostly I just ask and He answers in the back of my brain with thoughts sometimes with feelings. There was a time I talked to Him directly through the use of a device. Can't tell you what. I don't want beginners to try. As one spirit put it: "just because they're dead don't mean they're smart." It is possible to get bad advice from some elements of the spirit world.

 

There is room in this world for all beliefs. Celebrate diversity.

 

There are so many fabulous and fantastic issues / ideas / propositions to be considered in this life of ours including local and non local, personal and non personal , a priori and a posteriori. It's 's been 50 --60 years since I engaged with the likes of Emmanuel Kant, Plato and other influential hypothesists of yore. Since I'm 82 now, I'm not going to return to the postulations of those influential gentlemen in an attempt to prove how smart I am or my powers of retention. In fact, I can't. One hears about reincarnation, people coming out of comas being able to speak or write a foreign language, of magical cures, experiences of esp, ( of which I have had two cases myself), and all manner of mysterious occurrences that we , as humans , try to explain and understand. All very interesting. But really in the end---the bottom line for me is---and this can probably be phrased better by others--the everlasting questions humans have posed----why does existence itself even exist? (ridiculous question)How was existence formed? (ridiculous question) How far back--(ridiculous question) does existence reach? How long will existence in its present form exist? (ridiculous question). Where is our place and all known sentience in all this? Maybe not so ridiculous, that. And this little treatise of mine and my observation of human caused events over my lifetime, however interesting on many levels ,disallows me from being a believer in deity. I just am not going to take the word of any humans that assume that the answers have been given and are known by us in our present form. I wish that I could--it would make life a lot easier.

 

I think about why I am me. What makes me, me. I don't have a clue. There must be some reason for the questions that you think about, perhaps in the next world the answers will come to light.

 

I reckon that those millions and millions worldwide that have decided on the answers ie : deity belief, don't have to worry themselves regarding questions about existence. However--of course, I hope that you are right!

 

all possibilities exist. for each there are infinity minus one others.
i find it a bit sad that some people can only imagine one.
but that is up to them and to each their own.

 

The possibilities in our imagination may be limitless, but reality bites and beliefs have consequences. Among the real crises facing the world and our nation today is the plethora of truly absurd beliefs that are being acted on in political and religious arenas: that Trump is still the President, that he is like King David, Cyrus the Great, etc. Or the Q-Anon crap about Democrat leaders being Satanic cannibalistic pedophiles, or the FBI being behind the capitol riots. We live in a world of alternative facts and private truths. On the Left.New Agers are equally guilty of generating nonsense. One only needs to check out the New Age forum to confirm that . I think a good reality test and a commitment to rational thinking would help a lot in combating the craziness that is besetting the country.

 

what bites is when people tell each other what to pretend about things that are not known.
not disagreeing about ignoring what we can see in favor of what people tell each other.
but rather that the unknown is not limited by or to what is in any one book of any one belief.
the whole self contradictory idea that anything wishing to be feared could be anything good is at the root of all that irrational crazyiness you mention.
again the road to tyranny is paved with a culture of inconsiderateness and tyranny is close enough to hell for me.
the whole idea that creation or the unknown would have to be hierarchal is as much a part of the crazyness.
all of those problem things mentioned, are problem things because they spread the false belief that they are the only things possible.
if their followers did not rule out the possibility of infinite other things being just as likely, they wouldn't be destructively adamant that their way was the only way.

people who hate logic and call the desire to be feared a good thing for its own sake, are not because the possibilities of the unknown are infinite and unlimited.

every case mentioned was gratuitiously mundane. if anything what they demonstrated was a lack of imagination. all those q-nuts and trump worshipers, that's not imagination, (though it is unreality), that's failure to look beyond the rectangular houses they're used to living in, beyond their own driveway, beyond their gas guzzling car they drive the same streets and roads to work and home every day. a totally artificial familiarity that hasn't even existed for more then a few decades or at most centuries. and wouldn't know the love of the unknown if it bit them where the door hit them.

 

I Am

I don’t know from whence I came,
nor how this Universe began.
I care not play the guessing game,
pretending wiser than, I am.

Some theorize it’s all just fate,
while others a divine plan.
But I am not convinced, at date,
that either way will stand.

I can’t say whether I’m heaven sent,
or a peg on the wheel of doom.
But I am certainly not an accident,
Nor will I live a life of gloom.


Tried to get this on the post above, but wasn't fast enough.

 

*Looks like Jay Ungar on fiddle*

 

Amen.