Far.From.Here
New
As above, so below. As below, as above. I will die. You will die. This earth will die. The sun will die. This universe will die.
Probably, but I am now so sceptical about mainstream science, I somehow doubt they can predict anything several billions of years into the future. Remember Halton Arp, whose discoveries regarding red shifts could mean that the whole scale of the universe is wrong......As above, so below. As below, as above. I will die. You will die. This earth will die. The sun will die. This universe will die.
Yes, I will die and you will die.
We will all perish and perhaps our consciousness will be extinguished and perhaps not.
Perhaps it is joined in to a supreme consciousness, perhaps it survives individually.
But, the fact is, we will die and when we die we will experience something and something can be nothing or it can be much more.
It might be that we experience our last thoughts and then black out until our brain dies. It might be that we experience something of a dream-state or an actual experience of a next world.
If you want to involve death in a subject you cannot ignore the possibility that we don't know what the fuck is going on. People will claim to know but it is their opinion, basically. Neurosurgeons will say brain death ends with the physical brain; imagine yourself two years after your death in the coffin... the brain is dead and gone... so, where is the you? Gone, they would say.
The philosopher might say otherwise, the physicist might say otherwise, the believer might say otherwise but it is just opinion, there are even atheists who believe in survival. There are religious who do not believe in survival. So, if you want to bring your opinion to a forum then back it up. Why will "I" die? Has anyone's personality/self died before? Who knows. I don't.
And that's what is so intriguing about the subject. It is a true mystery and one of the ultimate mysteries.
If we take away memory, then we would experience every instant anew, we would greet every moment in wide-eyed surprise. It would not stop us from experiencing, the I would still be there. It night make it difficult to function here in this physical world. But if we base our ideas on the necessity to function in a physical world, inevitably that leads to a physical conclusion about what we are, it couldn't be otherwise. On the other hand, if we base our ideas on the ability to 'be', all that changes, in fact the physical contributes nothing at all. What is it, to be?I think this brings into question what we mean by "I". What is the self, the ego? What is it that makes us? I would say that it is memory. Remove your memory and where are "you?" Moreover, this "you" if we take for arguments sake that memories are stored in the brain, is rooted in a lump of matter that like all other lumps of matter is 99.9% empty space.
If we take away memory, then we would experience every instant anew, we would greet every moment in wide-eyed surprise. It would not stop us from experiencing, the I would still be there. It night make it difficult to function here in this physical world. But if we base our ideas on the necessity to function in a physical world, inevitably that leads to a physical conclusion about what we are, it couldn't be otherwise. On the other hand, if we base our ideas on the ability to 'be', all that changes, in fact the physical contributes nothing at all. What is it, to be?
Probably, but I am now so sceptical about mainstream science, I somehow doubt they can predict anything several billions of years into the future. Remember Halton Arp, whose discoveries regarding red shifts could mean that the whole scale of the universe is wrong......David
I see your point. But in a sense, what you say is true only because that's how you choose to define the concept of "you". What I personally find more interesting is what it is which continues from one incarnation to the next, where the continuity of memory may be lost during the current life - but during an NDE there are some reports of being able to remember once more some or many previous incarnations. In that sense, the idea of memory seems flexible. It may switch on or off, but there is still something which remains part of a unique identity, even in the absence of memory.Still, it wouldn't be "you" as you are now. If you lost all your memories, you'd essentially have forgotten who you were. It would effectively be the same as dying and losing all your memory.
Nothingness...I have not actually listened to this but maybe it's interesting ? I personally think "nothingness" is an absurd standpoint, and that what physics calls nothingness is not truly nothingness, it is something even if it is simply a "potential" for something...
Precisely, if one came from nothingness once, then why not again. And again. "It is no more surprising to be born twice than once" - Voltaire