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cyberdad
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20 Jul 2020, 1:57 am

There is a simple hack to the question "What happens when we die"

Ask yourself: What do I remember before my first memory?

Answer: Nothing....

If I did not exist before I was born then why would I expect to exist after I die?



goldfish21
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20 Jul 2020, 2:31 am

cyberdad wrote:
There is a simple hack to the question "What happens when we die"

Ask yourself: What do I remember before my first memory?

Answer: Nothing....

If I did not exist before I was born then why would I expect to exist after I die?


And what if your earthly memories are only stored in your local braindrive and not uploaded to the cloud?

What if our consciousness is omniscient - all seeing, all knowing, by being able to tap into the infinite information of the universe on demand - thus being able to be ever present and never having to rely on recalling a personal memory from the past.. so we have no reason to pack them with us.

Besides that, there are people who do have memories of being in the womb before they were born. My nephew is one of them.

And then there are people who say they have memory recall from past lives.

And then there’s also the fact that we have genetic memories that are passed down generation after generation that help shape our abilities to survive in or environment.


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cyberdad
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20 Jul 2020, 2:42 am

goldfish21 wrote:
And then there are people who say they have memory recall from past lives..

Past life experiences are interesting. In hinduism and buddhism there is a belief in the transmigration of the soul. In hinduism the soul starts again in a new body and its a continuation of the same soul/consciousness. In buddhism individual identity is not possible and the soul returns to a amorphous life energy (like the force) and is reborn. I think some monks are capable of remembering many past lives.

goldfish21 wrote:
And then there’s also the fact that we have genetic memories that are passed down generation after generation that help shape our abilities to survive in or environment.


Cellular memories are like resonating experiences rather than perpetuation of life. There are some interesting experiences of people who have had organ transplants developing skills or interests that may be link to their donor.



Lilinoe
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20 Jul 2020, 6:19 am

According to vodoun, a person has 5 souls, and it's not the only faith that has the idea of multiple souls that each react differently when a person dies.



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20 Jul 2020, 1:20 pm

When the eyes decay, vision degrades and fades away. When the ears decay, auditory phenomena degrade and fade away. When the brain decays, mental phenomena degrade and fade away, and the same goes for all other sensory phenomena.

When vision, hearing, feeling, tasting, smelling, and thinking are gone due to the decay of the conditions that gave rise to them, what remains? Nothing that you now take yourself to be, for sure. Even if there were such a thing as a soul, it could not be the thing you want it to be. All that you know and care about, all that you can care about, including the act of caring, is comprised of mental and sensory phenomena that degrade and fade with the decay of their corresponding sensory organs.

"Nothing" is as much a satisfying fantasy as anything else. It's still more knowing than total honesty would allow. If you ask the question in earnest, thought is not a way of knowing and there is no other way of knowing. "Before birth, who am I?" "What is it like, not to exist?" A gap appears, a brief moment of nowhere to land. Stay with that. I think it takes something more than intellectual curiosity to really ask the question and not immediately retreat to some form of reassurance.



Last edited by wornlight on 20 Jul 2020, 1:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.

funeralxempire
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20 Jul 2020, 1:22 pm

Life is that brief instant of frustration that one experiences between not existing and not existing again.


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Lely
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20 Jul 2020, 1:38 pm

aghogday wrote:
All of Consciousness, including Imagination And Dreams is A Realest Reality We Experience now;

+
funeralxempire wrote:
Life is that brief instant of frustration that one experiences between not existing and not existing again.

+

goldfish21 wrote:

Besides that, there are people who do have memories of being in the womb before they were born. My nephew is one of them.

Interesting. Does he have memories from being a newborn and a baby too?

A few days ago I found out on youtube about Rebecca Sharrock (who is autistic too) who has memories dating back to when she was a newborn. She has HSAM - highly superior autobiographic memory. I found it quite interesting to hear what she remembered from being a baby.

Quote:
And then there are people who say they have memory recall from past lives.

I suspect such memories work similar to alien abduction memories. I would like to have alien abduction memories. It would make life a bit cooler. :)



goldfish21
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20 Jul 2020, 4:30 pm

Lely wrote:
goldfish21 wrote:

Besides that, there are people who do have memories of being in the womb before they were born. My nephew is one of them.

Interesting. Does he have memories from being a newborn and a baby too?

A few days ago I found out on youtube about Rebecca Sharrock (who is autistic too) who has memories dating back to when she was a newborn. She has HSAM - highly superior autobiographic memory. I found it quite interesting to hear what she remembered from being a baby.


No idea. He’s 5 going on 6 in November. My sister told us a year or so ago that he told her/them, unprompted, about how it was so warm and comfortable in her tummy before he was born. I guess he was just reminiscing about the good ol’ days. Heh


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cyberdad
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20 Jul 2020, 7:51 pm

Lely wrote:
A few days ago I found out on youtube about Rebecca Sharrock (who is autistic too) who has memories dating back to when she was a newborn. She has HSAM - highly superior autobiographic memory. I found it quite interesting to hear what she remembered from being a baby.


There is some evidence that even people with HSAM are subject to the false memory effect. Cognitive neuroscience suggest the areas of the brain associated with long term episodic memory are not developed because of i) neural pruning and ii) networks being laid down are primarily involved with sensory learning rather than informational learning.



cyberdad
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20 Jul 2020, 7:54 pm

funeralxempire wrote:
Life is that brief instant of frustration that one experiences between not existing and not existing again.


The truth is we apply subjective meaning based on group consensus to a phenomenon we have problem with processing in our brains.



Dreamtastic
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20 Jul 2020, 8:38 pm

For me, it's still just too much of a leap to say that because "I" cease to exist when I die, eternal nothingness is all there is after that. I am pretty convinced, though not certain since I really can't be sure of anything, that there is more to the universe, consciousness, and existence than just little old me.
I don't know exactly for sure when my first memory took place, but I would guess I was probably about two or so. And I would guess that's probably about the average age of first memory for most folks. So what was there before that? Did I not exist until I was two?

And even if I did exist sooner and just don't remember it, what was there before that? Was it just nothing at all? Or were there other folks who lived and died? Likewise, after I die, what will there be after that? If it's just eternal nothingness, then to me, that seems to imply that I somehow still exist as me even though I'm dead. If there is something that separates me from all those other lives that happen before mine and will happen after mine, something that means that I can't be those lives and those lives can't be me, then somehow I must still exist as me even before I was born and even after I die. And that's a troubling thought that doesn't make much sense to me. :)

Really, the real question that this is getting to is what exactly is the self? What is it that makes me me and other people other people? What is it that means I can't be any of those other people and any of those other people can't be me? What is it that means that consciousness (not just my consciousness, but consciousness period) can only be experienced one time through the conscious being I am now?

Or is that sort of separateness between selves just an illusion? Are all of those people, all of those life forms, just different expressions of the same thing - consciousness?

Because of those questions, the whole "just remember what it was like before you were born" argument to prove the eternal nothingness theory has never sat well with me. Sure, for this particular self that is experiencing consciousness now, there was nothing before I was born. But I don't doubt that there was a universe with all kinds of consciousness even before I came into existence. And I don't doubt that there will be one again even after my personal existence ceases.

And when you think about eternal nothingness, it's a pretty hard concept to swallow. It's really not unlike the existing as you forever and ever in heaven idea. Trying to wrap my head around that is one of the reasons I eventually left my religious upbringing. I'm not sure that folks who believe that have put much thought into what that would actually be like - existing for all eternity.

But likewise, I'm not so sure that eternal nothingness makes any more sense. After all, the eternal nothingness before we were born would have an end, but the after nothingness never does. Ever.

I've heard that quantum mechanics suggests that nothingness is inherently unstable. Meaning that it can't last. To me that makes perfect sense. And look at sleep - it's just a blank void until that first dream that comes out of the nothingness. And then of course we wake up for real.

But ultimately, no matter which team you're on, I think the most important thing is to accept that there are just some mysteries that may never be solved. I think we need to go into death with an open mind about all possibilities rather than claiming that we know anything with certainty.



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20 Jul 2020, 8:59 pm

if this hellworld were all there was, i would have taken a long walk off a short pier ages ago. as it is, i have personal reasons for hope for something better. people far smarter than me have given this a great deal of experimental thought and have concluded there is an other-worldly realm of the spirit, that we all come from spirit and return to spirit, having a human [or other ET race] experience. edgar cayce said there was no reverse transmigration [from human to a lower life form] but the persian mystic Rumi said that we as spirit all start from the most elemental forms and graduate to higher and higher forms until we achieve a state that "no mind has seen." seattle pediatrician dr. melvin morse has written about the experiences of some of his juvenile patients who had prematurely stepped out, under various circumstances, some of them in a pre-verbal stage of development. one recollection that stuck in my mind was a little girl who described to the doctor her experience as an infant leaving her body during an allergic reaction, and in describing the place she experienced, said "it was bootiful!" a case that made me thrill with hope, was that of the late Pam Reynolds, who was the only thoroughly documented case of an OOBE verified by the personnel in the operating room at the time. below, she tells of her experience-

a day after my dad died, he awoke both me and my mom separately, simultaneously, he called me by my name and he called my mom "honey" - my mom and me compared notes afterwards. when i worked in the hospital, a doc related to me her experience of working late one night, then driving home in the evening, seeing a car pull in behind her, looking in the rear view mirror and seeing her brother in the car behind, waving at her, whereupon she turned around and no car was there. when she got home, a tearful message from her mother, awaited her on her answering machine, her brother had died a few hours before. when my mom died, i was in her house one night, when i heard the most horrendous howling, thumping, banging - a cacophony that lasted about a minute until i shouted out "OK ALREADY! I HEAR YOU!!" at which point the din stopped cold. she later appeared to me in a dream [we were both inside a movie theatre which showed god's creation and heaven on the screen] and made amused reference to the noise- making session that happened earlier. when my very non-demonstrative grandfather coded on the operating room table, he was quickly revived, and when he was back home from the hospital, my dad asked him "well, did you see anything?" and all he would say, as though he thought it was a sacred personal experience, was that "i'm not afraid of dying anymore." i over-gassed myself one day, as a foolish teen, on the dentist's chair from a self-administered OD of nitrous oxide [reached around to the tank while the dentist attended to another patient], i went to a place that was all-white and totally peaceful, i could hear the dentist work as though from a major distance. suddenly, i was jerked violently back into my body with a jolt, i had bitten the dentist on his hand while he was drilling on me, and he thought he had hurt me. i am not psychic but have had many strange experiences that can't be explained away as just my imagination as there was external verification involved.
"i know what i saw."



cyberdad
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20 Jul 2020, 10:44 pm

I think each person has their subjective experiences which informs their perceptions and beliefs. I respect all of these.

For me one of the fundamental requirements for existence beyond this body (including uploading our self to a computer) is the existence of consciousness. Currently nobody can prove that consciousness isn't just a series of chemical reactions in our neurons.



auntblabby
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20 Jul 2020, 10:48 pm

one hasta ask oneself, "self, why IS there consciousness in the first place? what is it all FOR?"



cyberdad
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20 Jul 2020, 10:51 pm

auntblabby wrote:
one hasta ask oneself, "self, why IS there consciousness in the first place? what is it all FOR?"


Yes but before the "why" is "what" and "how"....



auntblabby
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21 Jul 2020, 12:29 am

cyberdad wrote:
auntblabby wrote:
one hasta ask oneself, "self, why IS there consciousness in the first place? what is it all FOR?"


Yes but before the "why" is "what" and "how"....

the what and the how are contained within the why. "why am i here wondering about this all?" contains "HOW am i here in the first place?" and "what purpose is all this for."