All you people who believe in life after death...

I'm alive now, but there's a major shift in my reality. You see the puppet, but the puppet master is the one doing the writing. I have no interest in proving. The proof has already transformed "me" to "I." Thing is, you'll find out, sooner or later. Better or worse? One always has the choice to come back, let me put it that way. Therefore, "better or worse" doesn't apply, in the end. The only difference between reincarnation versus "awakening" is in "awakening," the doubting completely disappears. "Awakening" is resurrection, with knowledge intact.

"...living this life as though..." is your choice. I just live. Is your lifestyle better than mine? Do we really deserve a trophy just for being in the body? It's our choice, to begin with. Nobody placed a "spiritual" gun on an invisible head for a person to come back. It's really silly to judge another's choice. Besides, "awareness" will continue on, regardless of whether one believes it or not. Death is never the end as long as "awareness" is intact. When "awareness" gets deleted, that's another story. I still haven't found the logic in that. Thankfully, choices exist. Again, you just have to die to find out. It's your journey. If you come back in your original flesh, then you'd be an "awakened" being. If you do not come back, you'd be dead. "Awakened" or not, "spiritual" or not, shit will still happen to you. No one is exempt from that. No one is exempt from the constant "script" of life. Then again, there's always "grace."

 

Chris:

Separate how? Have you died, clinically speaking? I'm dying to wake up to myself, for all time, but not literally dying. Inspection of certain of my cells by people who are they themselves not as instrumental as their instruments may say otherwise. lol

Knowledge could be the lightest thing in the world, and I'd be none the wiser. : D

Oh, you wouldn't burst my bubble if you were really sorry to. And you haven't. I'm sorry to be at odds with your words, but disembodiment spells DEATH to all my instincts. Awakening is awakening. When shall we be fully awake? -The whole body. The dream has not yet departed; 'reality' apparently still compels our agreement/disagreement on what it constitutes.

Nothing?! Does anything have "nothing" to do with anything else?! : D

Walsh:

Not if knowing is on-going. Always on its way in as the in already. After all, novelty is only ever self-sustaining. Awakening to the world altogether would mean finding oneself in all selves past tiring of it. Such a thing, humanly speaking, would be transformative beyond our present understanding of what is 'available' to our evolution. : )

 

Yes. But just because a person gets resurrected doesn't mean that he or she is automatically "awakened." Sometimes, it takes days, months, or years (after resurrection) for the impact to happen. "Awakening" is a shift in one's perception, but resurrection of the body is a must in the "awakening" equation. Btw, resurrection doesn't necessarily mean that one's body has to be dead for more than six hours or so, for it be called resurrection. A person doesn't have to be "six feet under" as well, if you know what I mean. Have you heard of Lazarus Syndrome? If not, then look it up.

That's okay. I understand where you're coming from. And I'm not selling anything.

As I mentioned in one of my posts, if one is happy and content with one's current life, then wonderful. Besides, "awakening" is not a means to an end. It's just another way of seeing the world. "Awakened" people are not exempt from anything, as well. It has nothing to do with right or wrong or better or higher than, etc. "Awakening," however, will dispel the doubting associated with life after death...and so on.

What are trying to say? Please explain since English is your second language.

 

English is my only language. I hope it catches on enough for me to get by. : )

I mean that everything has to do with everything else, however directly, distantly, etc.

 

While we are on earth, I agree with you. After the "soul(?)" or essence leaves the body, there is no thing. "Awareness" is not a thing. "Till death do us part."

But, I hear ya. Hold tightly to your belief system. Happiness is what counts. To find the bluebird of happiness is another story, however.

 

your consciousness is NOT your body . . . it is the 'occupant' .

 

I believe mind is something that just doesn't go away. I think its a whole dimension of reality, like time and space. How its organized can change, just like the energy in matter, but its something eternal that doesn't just vanish into nothingness.

 

Where, exactly?

 

having no physical form, where is not a concept that applies. nor need "occupant" be taken litterally, as when you "occupy" your avatar on an mmo, are you physically inhabiting the server it is running on? something of THAT sort could well apply to this bussiness of souls and bodies too.

not saying has to. just saying this: nothing has to be known, or even imagined, in order to exist.

 

What do you mean physical form? Doesn't anything that exist have a physical form? Sound waves are physical, and if there's some kind of aura of consciousness surrounding the body, that has to be physical too. But if that isn't persuasive, if not physical then what?

 

I think the whole universe has a dimension to it made up of mind and some kind of awareness, but the brain focuses it and filters it into a self aware, individualized form. An example I like to use is gravitational fields. Just as a large body warps the vector of space it happens to be occupying into a gravitational field, I think the brain warps the empty space it happens to occupy into a field of self awareness. In fact I think the contrast between the background and the individual (which I think is an altercation of the background) is the very thing that makes individuality possible.

When a massive body moves out of a of an area of space, the gravitational field formerly present there from the body shifts back to a neutral state. In the same way, a conscious field created by the brain goes back to a neutral state when the brain isn't occupying it anymore. However, in both cases, its all such a seamless process, the transitioning to other points in space-time by a planet or a brain, that the object or individual doing it all act as single entities or cotinuities.

My point though is that I think the basis of what makes consciousness possible is a property inherent in space-time, just like the basis for gravity.

 

think of a logic circuit. it doesn't matter where you put the gates, as long as they are connected in the proper arrangement. Likewise, consciousness is not restricted to a single form. I like to think that the stuff mind is made of, if it in fact can be regarded as a substance, is perhaps smaller than the planck length: too small to be detectable to the most sophisticated equipment conceivable, yet having a profound effect on things like chemical interactions. Perhaps it's all about supersymmetry or holography. Of course, this is all conjecture.

I love conjecture. it feels all warm and fuzzy.

 

So how does Science/Biology define life? I've yet to encounter a satisfactory scientific explanation for this. How does science explain the so called spontaneous formation of the originating living "organism"? Or the spontaneous formation of the universe for that matter. This is why I can't discredit anyone for having a spiritual believe. I don't think it's any more or less reasonable to believe in the spontaneous formation of the universe than it is to say that some supreme omnipotent being said, "Let there be light". Essentially, they are the same thing - the only difference is one has intention and meaning while the other is random and meaningless.

Anyone who chooses one and completely doubts the other is basically making a random and aesthetic choice, prompted by what they can't really know for sure isn't. If science had a complete and total definition and understanding of this notion of "life" - it could synthetically create "life" from subatomic particles, but it can't - because the rabbit hole of the infinitesimal is - well - infinite. In other words, we've only scratched the surface of the basic, essential building blocks of the universe - which may be infinite - forever expanding and contracting simultaneously.

I'm a man of reason and spirituality. I've perceived things, first-hand, that defy scientific explanation - not by my own definition, but by science's own definition. To argue that it could have been caused by this reasonable explanation or that reasonable explanation does not disprove it. The universe is and will always remain beyond complete and total human comprehension. I've personally had to come to terms with that notion and I'm fine with it. Call it cognitive dissonance, but there it is.

 

drawing from my own experiences, i feel that a soul is a part of the "one"... i remember three incarnations... in each of them, i retained a sense of me, but with a different life experience and different cultural impacts... but me, nevertheless...

 

For anyone interested: The ancient Hebrews and Greeks, from whom the Western tradition mainly draws its understanding of the soul, afterlife, etc., believed that the soul is the animating life-force (Hebrew nepesh or ruach, Greek anima or psyche). The interesting thing is that, because the soul was the animating life-force for both traditions, when the person died, the life-force ceased to be; that is, the soul was destroyed, and did not persist after bodily death. Rather, what both traditions claimed persisted after bodily death was the mind (Hebrew leb, Greek nous). But the thing is, because the mind, after bodily death, has no access to the body, it loses all capacities that it had by virtue of the body, including sensory perception, imagination, and memory. So it was believed that all that persisted after bodily death of a person is some kind of disembodied intellect, the experience of which it was like no one could really guess.

 

Animus animates animal.

 

the "soul" concept, is just a representation of our consciousness. For example,
many claim to have felt their "soul" leave their body, to later witness
either out of body experiences or bright lights. Lets clarify what consciousness
is, simply put, it's a state of awareness. An "out of body experience"
or witnessing these bright lights are simply your consciousness in another
state of awareness. Since your body has exhausted it's uses, the conscious
awareness that makes you who you are leaves the material world in one way or
another. In theory

So to answer you question, all that persists is your consciousness.

 

The way you have to look at consciousness is that its not generated by the brain any more than the body generates matter.

The brain just modifies consciousness that's already there into human sentience, just as our cells modify matter into their structures.

 

I believe consciousness to exist only in the brain / nervous system. It may be discovered elsewhere but so far we only find it in that one place.

 

How do you know it's there? How can I know?