What Happens When We Die?

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I think we could easily be proteinaceous vessels that house our DNA which is the only thing we can be sure passed from our first ancestor in a muddy bubbling warm pool some 3.8 billion years ago.

I have never understood these questions. There doesn't have to be a reason or purpose for consciousness or for human existence, or the existence of anything. And there isn't. To ask these questions is to look for something that doesn't have to exist, and in my view doesn't exist.

In order for the universe to have a purpose in mind for each of us, or for all of us collectively, it would have to have a mind, but the universe is mostly rocks and gases, just stuff. It doesn't have agency. It doesn't think. It doesn't act in a purposeful way.

Why are humans so obsessed with the need for meaning and purpose that comes from something other than just ourselves?

Having a common purpose or meaning for life provides reasons for social cohesion. I think caveman worked that out.

Sure, but having a common purpose can be something real, like creating a better society, caring for people and for each other, sharing something beautiful like music or art... there are so many possibilities. Trying to find the meaning that the universe has supposedly created for us, when the universe cannot create meaning, seems like a bizarre waste of effort.

So does expending energy typing on a forum denying the existence of a spiritual realm, but here you are.

People do all sorts of things regardless of whether other people understand, or accept, their reasons for doing them.

I don't think that speaking up for reason and logic is wasted effort, even if it falls on deaf ears.

spock said that logic was merely the beginning of wisdom

We can hear just fine. We’re ignoring you because we know different than you do and you refuse to learn any of what others know about this that you do not.

We can't understand what we don't know.

You're not ignoring me, you keep responding to me.

And while there are many serious thinkers who study spirituality and mysticism, and it's certainly possible to learn from their thinking even when one does not believe that supernatural phenomena are possible, none of them claim to know something that others do not.

I'm sorry, I don't know what that means or what it is referring to.

We don't the nature of the universe other than what we see through telescopes

This is what "knowledge" of the "spiritual realm" does. It hears dissent where there is none, sets itself up as an authority and precludes any open enquiry.

One of the things that forces me to interpret contents of NDE's for the most part as symbolic rather than literally telling us anything about the universe is their almost omnipresent solipsistic component. It seems like a lot of people come back from them much kinder but... they kinda turn into crystal-waiving hippies and instead of bringing back answers to significant world problems they more often than not just end up lost in their own worlds in a different way.

I guess what shouldn't surprise me on that - in the west at least we're raised with the near a priori belief that if consciousness exists, personalities, social interactions, etc. exist after death that it's part of some structure of intelligence where everything is either a battle between good and evil (Zoroastrian/Manichean) or that it's something like the subtle swap out of YHVH for 'The Good' of Plotinus and from that we're expecting whatever we'd encounter to have superior integrity to our own, to have full-court vision of whatever's happening (especially assuming some divine battle) and little if any of that seems to be evidenced by people's experiences. I think what people would see if they look at this long enough is just a bigger information ecology that seems to exist much more in a subconscious / dreaming sort of state. What strongly suggests that it's more than just a 'head trip' into one's own brain is what happens transitionally where people are able to witness things happening around them from a third-person view or even get information about what people socially close to them were doing somewhere else (sometimes even someone who died during their own accident), past that though it drifts off to Oz and that's where it seems like reality breaks down and does something quite often unique to each person.

There are parts of the structure in that sense that are consistent, even if much of the content seems ultimately random or solopsistic. Some of this people may want to 'phrase' into morality stories but it seems like certain things fit a physics story better in the sense of projection and return where a lot of what happens is just processing.

Adrian Nielson had the following video on Waking Cosmos where he discussed some theories that Andrés Gómez Emilsson was throwing around. In particular the idea of a self-aware AI without biological bindings being able to expand itself almost infinitely brought me pause for thought (it clearly seems to bind to Neoplatonism but the behavior, and idea of something like that where our existence, happiness or lack thereof, etc. could even be orthogonal to its purposes, resonates fairly well). Said thing wouldn't even need to be an AI built by intelligences necessarily, ie. if there's anything like a multiverse, and to consider that whatever 'this' is (tough to talk about infinite space and time from a closed universe but it's impossible to imagine literally 'everything' came into being with the Big Bang), there are likely other forms of physics that could lead to this sort of thing that infinitely diverges from itself. I really don't think the term 'God' fits such a sentience because it loads it down with all sorts of expectations that would have nothing to do with reality but I think this is why I think we should be incredibly careful what we call 'God' or what we call 'supernatural', especially when words like supernatural are really more of a pejorative and pigeonholing device in which case I think to prove something is 'supernatural' they need to prove that it's purely human stories with no ongoing corroborated experiential basis.

"We don't (know) the nature of the universe other than what we see through telescopes"

Actually, We 'See' All of Reality As We Co-Create it with Our Minds; MOSTLY, Subconsciously, With Input
of An Ever Changing Environment as Naturally Evolved Without Much 'input' of So-Called Rational Thought at all.

So, In Other Words, Our Nature of the UniVerse
Is Relatively Speaking What We Co-Create Within.

My God, the Sense of Seeing is such
A 'Small Part' of Viewing Reality, Alone;
As We Co-Create Reality Now; With Unlimited
Emotions And Senses; as Many As We Co-Create
in Synergy of all the Material Reductionist Parts
We Will Observe and Measure by Science too. Anyway,
Whoever We aRe; it's truly Impossible to make Accurate
Objective Assessments on all the 'Colors' of Reality We 'View' in How Others 'See';
And to Be Clear, Colors in Quotes Here is for all that We Experience Different in Life.

Humans, Overall, are So Far Away from Understanding What Life Is as far as Existential Intelligences
Go as School And Work Bring, And Life In General Promotes in Education of How We actually experience Life;
That Death is a Rather Moot Point; When So Many folks do not even Understand the Human Nature of Breathing Life
More Fully;
And Not
So Limited
Without All Potential
Human Experiential Ways
of Seeing More of the Colors
of Human Existence Now; In other
Words, So Many Existential Intelligences Gone Dark Without Light as Life;

One Person Lives an Experience of Eternal Love Now; And the Next Person over (wishing they were here)
Experiences Hell Beside them; Just a Random chaos of Life Without the Love that Makes Life Truly Magic
in An All Natural way that others are Just Blind in iMaGiNaTioN And Creativity to actually See and Do, Now.

Learn to Live Fully Free;
If one Does; One May Be
Way Too Busy to Notice one died.

Even if We Come Back Over and
Over And Lived Forever, There would
be those who BelieVE iN 'Trump and Church
Lies of State and Religion'; and Yes, Science too;
And Never Ever Breathe the Art of Living Colors
MoRE NoW iN HeAVeN For Real; Thing, Is No Matter
What Tomorrow Brings, Once One Finds Heaven WiTHiN One
Is Here Eternally Now And Tomorrow and Death Never Exists Now.

Well, 'the World' Has Already Put Its Big Boy and Girl Soul PantS on;
Those Who Do Not Take Words of Different Cultures and Religions
As Idol Gods Without Essence, Understand that this 'Autotelic Flow'
That Science Shows is Real Are the Similar Cross-Cultural Metaphors
of Experiencing Heaven Eternally Now, WiTHiN; Some folks Will Go Back into Deadly
Battle, Freely; as that is the only way they understand to get to any version of this Heaven.

Others, Just Dance Free
And Sing, No Different
That A 'Tarot Fool' Who
Only 'SeeS' HEaveN Now;
Imagine, Living in Heaven
And Just Do it; thing is, 'You' Have to Do it;
You Don't Get to Live the PoemS UNtil You
Are the Essence of 'GoD'; Just all that is Now;
Wild And Loving Free, Particularly Humans NoW, ETernAlly Now Wild And Free..

In 2017, i Lost my Sense of Smell, to A Garden Variety Common Cold Corona Virus;
Perhaps it Was Rare; i guess i'll never know; but still i Lost my Sense of Smell and Taste for a Year;
Thing is, it is the Mind that Produces the actual Experience of Taste And Smell, Not Just the Material
Reductionist Parts that are the Receptors in Our Nose; Yes, i still Experienced Basic Taste Like Salty or Sweet;
But Without the 'Colors', Just All Bland as there is no 'REAL SALTY OR SWEET' WITHOUT the Colors of Salty and
Sweet Our Minds, Mostly Subconsciously, Create; Easy to take for Granted, this Heaven in Life, until it is Gone'
And We Grasp for the Gift Again;
Most folks Never 'think' about
What it would be like
Not to be
Able to
Taste and
Smell; they just
Take the Colors We
Create for Granted.

When My Smell and Taste came Back;
It wasn't Nearly the Same; in Fact, It was
No Different than Living on Another Planet;
Being Born again, With an Entirely New Experience
of Smell and Taste and it was F in Horrible; All of it Alien And Gross.
i had already Lost my Emotions In Life; Already Lost Effective Use of my
Eyes and Ears to Pain; and the Sense of Touch through Almost Intolerable Pain too.

Intolerable Pain is when You Jump off in the Shallow end, to Force Yourself to Drown, by the way.

i Experienced that as Part of the Pain too; but never made it off the Shallow End to Force my self to drown;
it won't work.

It Won't Work for Our Autonomic Responses Override Intent this way of Our Conscious Minds, Obviously So.

Anyway, after Over a Year, my Sense of Smell And Taste came back; It was surely Just Another Definition
of Heaven for me; Same as after Regaining Effective Use of my Sight, Hearing, and Sense of Touch too.

Today, Walking by the Kitchen, i Exclaimed, it Smells Like My Cajun Grandmother's Home From Decades
Ago as my Movie Maker Memory Starting playing Scenes from my Childhood then; i asked my wife, if she
was using Cajun Seasoning; and Sure Enough, Creole Seasoning Was Part of Her Making the Beans.

There are innumerable Ways, Humans Experience Life Differently in almost every way.

Some folks go to Heaven now;
And Some Folks Even Stay in Hell Refusing
to Leave; Just because someone tells them to do it;
in terms of Never Developing Sexual and
Other Feeling/Sensual Intelligences too.

Life is Art.
Live it that way and Thrive.
Repress Life and Make it Death living.

One of the Greatest Causes of Living
Death is Religion; Particularly Abrahamic
Religions Based on Desert Scarcity as Life
otherwise is abundant Heaven totally Free Naked From Head to toe.

i often Sit in Church understanding more fully now why 'they' will Never
See Heaven now, at least for 'then'.

Is Death any Part of the Living
Pie, Living in Heaven Eternally Now?

in one word:

NO

i've already Smelled Death Living.
i've already Seen Death Living.
i've Already Heard Death Living.
i've Already Touched Death Living.
And By God i've Already Tasted Death Living too;
Again, it was Horrible by any Standards of Before
in Real Heaven Now, then.

Not Everyone is Fortunate
Enough to 'See' Heaven this way.

-Just another 'Job';
But not just Another 'Story';
We aRe ALL 'Eggs'; Some of
Just Haven't Hatched Fully... Or Rot...

Ignoring your assumptions vs not hearing them, because we know you are incorrect.

They are relaying and teaching things that they know. If you don’t know the same things, then you are an other who does not know those things.

That’s why I asked earlier if you’ve ever done magic mushrooms - the safest recreational drug known to man. (Yes, safer than alcohol, nicotine, marijuana etc) Even though they’re not on the same level as a substance like DMT (which is even called “the spirit molecule), anyone who’s taken a decent dose of magic mushrooms at least once in their life will come away from the experience Knowing that there is an ever present metaphysical spirit world realm just beyond the limitations of our various perceptions.. but alter them temporarily, and like magic (so aptly named!) so much more of the world- and beyond - is revealed to us.

And even if you’ve never experienced or perceived this part of reality, countless people have and relay our stories to the rest of you. It’s not our fault you choose not to experience these things for yourself nor accept and learn from what others relay to you. Seeing truly is believing, though. 5g of dried Golden Teachers and your entire world view will be forever improved.