Recently i have been critically questioning the possibility of an afterlife , due mainly to having become more cynical of certain aspects of spirituality and those that proclaim to know exactly what happens after we die. What scares me the most isn't so much dying myself ,but more so losing someone close to me without having the comfort of believing that their existence/consciousness has carried on and not ceased for eternity.

Does anyone else relate to the thoughts im currently having and how do you guys personally view the possibility of an afterlife or the grieving process that comes with loss?

We are still quite primitive as it is and indeed these questions are important to ask.

So, we know for a fact that when we physically cease to exist.. well, that's just it. Our bodies shut down slowly overtime. So now where does our consciousness play out? Because if consciousness truly is a universal spectrum of light that exists within eternity, then where is this eternity? Is it the universe? Is death the psychedelic experience we encounter before we physically die? If one were to look closely enough at it, psychedelics are indeed like death. Or at least close enough to some kind of a reset.

And I think that's where I end it because psychedelics are the closest I've been to that feeling of impending crossover. It is spectacular and alive! To where and how? I don't know. But I stay positive knowing I have done good and am doing good on this planet.. and that is enough. For others it is quite different. That grief I feel for folks I've known that have passed away I have great prosperity for. Because of this knowing of not being taken for granted. Or in other words, seen as a beautiful and paradoxical being.. unparallelled from everything else.

It truly is a difficult process and subject to change with endless theories and calculations. But in the end, it's only what you perceive to be 'real' that will propel one into that which that is unknown to us.

I hope this wasn't too much to lay out. The mere fact we are alive and able to even speak of this is incredible.

Don't be afraid. The universe is unconditional. But then again, this is only my perception from a very limited experience compared to what can happen outside the realm of possibility.

Stop questioning afterlife and start living beforedeath.

If you have lived your life to the fullest, there is nothing to fear or grieve about regarding death. An overemphasized fear of death is the symptom of a life not lived. The need to control everything, even beyond physical death, is a futile attempt to compensate for the loss of contact with the living reality of being here and now.

Yes. Being present. And learning to catch oneself in thought before fearing the past or future and bringing oneself back into awareness of direct experience.. of how well you lived the life you are born intro. And how glorious the outro can seem from that POV..

What shall come will come.

i wanted to reply to "grief and afterlife" in the open discussion. here's what i wanted to say; if it's worthy enough can a mod please move this comment to that thread. thank you

so i can relate to this feeling of unknownness. and here's what my opnion is: the consciousness doesn't cease to exist. i mainly believe this because of experiences with near death experiences. such as this one in this link i'm about to provide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgBr1pt9r44

now i have a million theories on the afterlife due to my "near death experiences" (not literal near death experiences; but experiences that were the closest thing to what cognitive heart described as the "reset button" with LSA where i felt the closest thing to death and during this time i think there were subtle things that the LSA was telling me; ways to live my life to it's fullest and ways to be at peace with life. it sort of made me get a good headstart at living life to the fullest: i'm young and i already have this realization which gives me alot of time to live happily.

so yeah. i kinda like to think in a way there's an afterlife.

Have you tried filling out the questionaire for newbies to show their stuff? It seems like it would be possible to get promoted faster that way.

(BTW you got my vote )

Avoiding death deadens us; becoming intimate with death enriches us. Death is all around. In a sense you can say that at every scale, everything is energy for everything else; consuming on every scale. In a certain sense, when we're born, our parents are essentially giving us over to the hand of death. Keeping death at a distance distances us from life. Through the big and the small ...we're dying into life.

In western culture it's extremely common for us to adorn dead bodies as if they're about to attend a dinner party, attempting to hold onto that last little bit, without fully letting go and realizing that one day ..we will too be in that particular position. We shun the elderly and put them away in 'retirement' homes. The sickly, old and 'decrepit' we tend to keep at an arms length. We prize longevity and award in some sense, the achievement of 'a long life', putting off and prolonging the inevitable transience that we all face. All the while, places such as the Ganges in India, where ceremonial body burnings are common, is a direct relation with this process that we're all inevitably wrapped up in. Cultures like these are intimately linked with death; which I tend to think we're entirely lacking here in western society.

In being faced with the apparent transience of life through these ceremonial burnings, I believe these acts heavily enrich ourselves and our lives; slowly loosening the noose that death tends to have around us.

I think it was Mark Twain that said he was not alive for 50 billion years and it did not bother him the least. I tend to feel the same way.I cannot fathom what was going on with my consciousness or whatever I am before I was alive or after I'm dead. I really don't care. it's likely completely inconceivable to me and nothing I could ever figure out so why bother worrying about it especially fearing it. a lot of me looks forward to it. this is probably not at all comforting to anybody that has lost somebody. I have lost people myself. but the people I have lost I treasure the experiences that I had with them while they were here. all of that is forever and gone and all we have is right now. someday right now will be your death.

For me, I’m 100% convinced that an afterlife exists, and this being not through blind faith but a number of factors, the first being what I perceive to be strong hints around us in the physical world in which we live in has been designed. If we take the Fibonacci Number (or Golden Ratio), this unusual mathematical rule reproduces itself in a variety of different sources and seems to be the building blocks to a great number of unrelated sources. From shells, to branches on trees, to reproductive habits in animals, to hurricanes, to pine cones and pineapples, to da Vinci's famed drawing of the propertions of the human body - they are all bound by Fibonacci, it is even hypothesised that space time is bound by the ratio 1.618. Take these links as examples:

http://io9.com/5985588/1...e-golden-ratio-in-nature

http://www.maths.surrey....tt/Fibonacci/fibnat.html

Surprisingly both these links omit an example we see every day, that of the formation of water going down a plughole. An easy pictorial reference would be in increasing magnitudes would be: water down a plug hole – hurricane – spiral galaxy.... the formation of these occur in different ways, however it is exactly the same mathematical principle but on vastly different scales. Take a look at this Romanesco cauliflower, I only first found out about these about a year ago, this again is designed through Fibonacci and looks like the archetypal psychedelic fractal.



Then I think about life itself, and the chances of it actually existing, there are so many factors that exist in the universe that if x were not the case then life would be impossible. This is often labelled as the fine tuning of the universe and the many factors are listed below, but bear in mind if any of these were not the case you would not be reading this now and the chances of all of these happening independently are 0.00000000000000001% We can always say, “well it just happened and that’s that”, but basic things like the fact that when atoms combine they exert the force of gravity. Without gravity stars and planets would not form, and of course life would be impossible, but why should atoms when they combine exert gravity? Then we have the Cosmological Constant Paradox which according to our calculations is much smaller than it “should” be by a mind boggling order of 120! Obviously this doesn’t point to a creator, maybe our scientific knowledge is not yet developed and we’re missing a trick.

http://www.sciencemeetsr...ysics/cosmo-constant.php

Then just the sheer volume of matter around us, our galaxy has 200 billion stars, around which orbits probably 5+ planets in each, not forgetting all the asteroid belts, pulsars, quasars, gas/water/alcohol clouds, and our galaxy is classed as average, of which there are another 200 billion! Not forgetting that visible matter accounts for only 5% of the universe, so multiply this colossal figure by 20. And the theory that all of this came out of a singularity by chance seems too incredible for me to believe. My belief is that it did come from a singularity but with design and purpose behind it.

Then we have the similarity of near death experiences, DMT trips, deep meditation, all of which give sensations of a greater power and creator. Throughout history humans have all been united by a belief in the afterlife, and those that used psychedelic substances seemed to be the ones that had the greatest understanding of the universe and technology. We take the Mayans, the Egyptians and other similar civilisations all using DMT related substances had knowledge of planets and the universe some of which has only been verified in the last few hundred years. All this to me links with the expansion of consciousness, and the merging of consciousness when we die.

Sorry for the long winded post, I may of course be talking absolute rubbish, but that’s my take on the subject anyway

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_Universe
Fine Tuning Parameters for the Universe
1. strong nuclear force constant
if larger: no hydrogen would form; atomic nuclei for most life-essential elements would be unstable; thus, no life chemistry
if smaller: no elements heavier than hydrogen would form: again, no life chemistry
2. weak nuclear force constant
if larger: too much hydrogen would convert to helium in big bang; hence, stars would convert too much matter into heavy elements making life chemistry impossible
if smaller: too little helium would be produced from big bang; hence, stars would convert too little matter into heavy elements making life chemistry impossible
3. gravitational force constant
if larger: stars would be too hot and would burn too rapidly and too unevenly for life chemistry
if smaller: stars would be too cool to ignite nuclear fusion; thus, many of the elements needed for life chemistry would never form
4. electromagnetic force constant
if greater: chemical bonding would be disrupted; elements more massive than boron would be unstable to fission
if lesser: chemical bonding would be insufficient for life chemistry
5. ratio of electromagnetic force constant to gravitational force constant
if larger: all stars would be at least 40% more massive than the sun; hence, stellar burning would be too brief and too uneven for life support
if smaller: all stars would be at least 20% less massive than the sun, thus incapable of producing heavy elements
6. ratio of electron to proton mass
if larger: chemical bonding would be insufficient for life chemistry
if smaller: same as above
7. ratio of number of protons to number of electrons
if larger: electromagnetism would dominate gravity, preventing galaxy, star, and planet formation
if smaller: same as above
8. expansion rate of the universe
if larger: no galaxies would form
if smaller: universe would collapse, even before stars formed
9. entropy level of the universe
if larger: stars would not form within proto-galaxies
if smaller: no proto-galaxies would form
10. mass density of the universe
if larger: overabundance of deuterium from big bang would cause stars to burn rapidly, too rapidly for life to form
if smaller: insufficient helium from big bang would result in a shortage of heavy elements
11. velocity of light
if faster: stars would be too luminous for life support if slower: stars would be insufficiently luminous for life support
12. age of the universe
if older: no solar-type stars in a stable burning phase would exist in the right (for life) part of the galaxy
if younger: solar-type stars in a stable burning phase would not yet have formed
13. initial uniformity of radiation
if more uniform: stars, star clusters, and galaxies would not have formed
if less uniform: universe by now would be mostly black holes and empty space
14. average distance between galaxies
if larger: star formation late enough in the history of the universe would be hampered by lack of material
if smaller: gravitational tug-of-wars would destabilize the sun's orbit
15. density of galaxy cluster
if denser: galaxy collisions and mergers would disrupt the sun's orbit
if less dense: star formation late enough in the history of the universe would be hampered by lack of material
16. average distance between stars
if larger: heavy element density would be too sparse for rocky planets to form
if smaller: planetary orbits would be too unstable for life
17. fine structure constant (describing the fine-structure splitting of spectral lines) if larger: all stars would be at least 30% less massive than the sun
if larger than 0.06: matter would be unstable in large magnetic fields
if smaller: all stars would be at least 80% more massive than the sun
18. decay rate of protons
if greater: life would be exterminated by the release of radiation
if smaller: universe would contain insufficient matter for life
19. 12C to 16O nuclear energy level ratio
if larger: universe would contain insufficient oxygen for life
if smaller: universe would contain insufficient carbon for life
20. ground state energy level for 4He
if larger: universe would contain insufficient carbon and oxygen for life
if smaller: same as above
21. decay rate of 8Be
if slower: heavy element fusion would generate catastrophic explosions in all the stars
if faster: no element heavier than beryllium would form; thus, no life chemistry
22. ratio of neutron mass to proton mass
if higher: neutron decay would yield too few neutrons for the formation of many life-essential elements
if lower: neutron decay would produce so many neutrons as to collapse all stars into neutron stars or black holes
23. initial excess of nucleons over anti-nucleons
if greater: radiation would prohibit planet formation
if lesser: matter would be insufficient for galaxy or star formation
24. polarity of the water molecule
if greater: heat of fusion and vaporization would be too high for life
if smaller: heat of fusion and vaporization would be too low for life; liquid water would not work as a solvent for life chemistry; ice would not float, and a runaway freeze-up would result
25. supernovae eruptions
if too close, too frequent, or too late: radiation would exterminate life on the planet
if too distant, too infrequent, or too soon: heavy elements would be too sparse for rocky planets to form
26. white dwarf binaries
if too few: insufficient fluorine would exist for life chemistry
if too many: planetary orbits would be too unstable for life
if formed too soon: insufficient fluorine production
if formed too late: fluorine would arrive too late for life chemistry
27. ratio of exotic matter mass to ordinary matter mass
if larger: universe would collapse before solar-type stars could form
if smaller: no galaxies would form
28. number of effective dimensions in the early universe
if larger: quantum mechanics, gravity, and relativity could not coexist; thus, life would be impossible
if smaller: same result
29. number of effective dimensions in the present universe
if smaller: electron, planet, and star orbits would become unstable
if larger: same result
30. mass of the neutrino
if smaller: galaxy clusters, galaxies, and stars would not form
if larger: galaxy clusters and galaxies would be too dense
31. big bang ripples
if smaller: galaxies would not form; universe would expand too rapidly
if larger: galaxies/galaxy clusters would be too dense for life; black holes would dominate; universe would collapse before life-site could form
32. size of the relativistic dilation factor
if smaller: certain life-essential chemical reactions will not function properly
if larger: same result
33. uncertainty magnitude in the Heisenberg uncertainty principle
if smaller: oxygen transport to body cells would be too small and certain life-essential elements would be unstable
if larger: oxygen transport to body cells would be too great and certain life-essential elements would be unstable
34. cosmological constant
if larger: universe would expand too quickly to form solar-type stars

Hopefully the attachment of the Romanescu Cauliflower works this time!

If the fibonacci number did actually point to intelligent design, who"s to say that the creator(s) would bother to give us an afterlife? They would probably throw us away at the point of death like some past it"s sell by date, second hand playstation game.

As far as grieving goes, i think it is best to make the most of those around you and appreciate them while they are here. Afterlife or not, when your"e gone your"e gone. It doesnt really give me any consolation to think that my loved ones are in heaven. I still miss the hell out of them

Hug46, fair question and it’s impossible to prove either way.

My own theory is that it’s the other way round, in that consciousness came first and manifested itself in physical form in the universe in the form of life. In my opinion we are all droplets of this consciousness which then converge back into the great sea that is consciousness when we die, and are all one and the same. To me, the creator and the afterlife are exactly the same thing. Of course then the question is why would they bother with creating life in the first place? Maybe it’s a learning process, or maybe life just wants to be in every possible form because it is possible and will carry on doing so until all the possibilities have been done.

Agree totally about valuing time when you can – the saying that life is short is very true, we all tend to assume that our loved ones will live to 80 and die peacefully in their sleep. We all know far too well that’s not the case and when people pass before their time we’re full of regret. As much as I believe in the afterlife and the consciousness theory, it makes no difference at all to how I miss people who have passed and with regard to grieving as you know full well that in your lifetime that person will not be around anymore.