Well, I'm glad a cutie like you joins us so often in the circle jerk. Always nice to have some eye candy.

endless re-incarnation, saw Enter the void first time i doubble dropped, never been the same, please everyone who isnt afraid of the dark, see it (warning extremely graphic sex/violence)

You know I do it for you Alpha

I think that the consciousness dying with the brain theory makes perfect sense from a material/objective point of view, but it does not address the question of what death is like from a subjective standpoint, which I think is a far more relevant consideration since we experience the world subjectively.

Assuming that consciousness ceases after brain death, but what is perceived at the moment of death? After all, one cannot experience nonexistence. If death is defined as the transition from existence to nonexistence, then I think it follows that a conscious being cannot experience death and thus that, subjectively, a conscious being will never die. Perhaps the final moment before death lasts an eternity subjectively.

Otherwise, my main view is that consciousness as we conceive it is incompatible with materialism. Primacy of consciousness is a viewpoint that I acquired with the help of psychedelics, so psychedelics did indeed play a major part in my views on life after death.

I don't see how certainty is warranted at all. For example there is plenty of evidence IMO that consciousness has non-local aspects. Nothing is proven, but theres actually been a LOT of legit research that points towards this




So you think your consciousness will cease when you die, and yet somehow then reincarnate into another "vessel"? Isn't that somewhat paradoxical?

If at death your consciousness ceases to exist, how is it going to move onto that next incarnation? Even if your memory is wiped, isn't that next incarnation in some sense "you" then, and therefore your consciousness never really ceased to exist?

Maybe i should have waited to make this post after i go smoke this bowl

DMT only confirmed what I always felt. Although I reject the belief in a creator I do feel consciousness continues once the meat bag has expired. I believe we are nothing more than a vessel and what the vessel contains has never not been and will never cease to be.

DMT only solidified these notions. They are just notions but soon after our last human breath we will all KNOW.

I enjoy pondering but no longer think about it and certainly don't bother debating it. There isn't much of a point nor anything to be gained by endless contemplation of what happens post mortal death.

To add to what was so eloquently stated, DMT has taught me that the absolute true nature is vastly more strange and exquisite a system than our minds could comprehend or imagine.

Hmmmm... the ol' life after death circle jerk, eh?

(generally a bit more awkward and introverted than the life after death orgy... but whatever)



I suppose I will add my certain to be controversial 2c to this:

I don't think that the same thing happens to all of us.

I think that sustained ego consciousness after the death of your body is quite possible, but it is not assured. You have to build and work on your vehicle and make it capable of carrying you over the void. This is not really a new idea, many cultures had the concept that you had to do some shit to get ready for the after life... that many would be found unworthy when Ma'at weighed their soul, for instance.

I think people who have been relatively unconscious throughout their life, will likely cease to exist or be recycled... but powerful shaman, yogi, sorcerers and prophets can easily live on without their meat bag. If you are able to lucid dream and/or astral project, then you may have some chance at pulling the ultimate astral trick... that of surviving without the silver cord.

I am relatively sure that I already exist in myriad places in spacetime and on myriad dimensions and alternate timelines. Aside from the fact that this is my subjective experience, I have seen no shred of evidence to believe this waking state is any less a dream than any other place I go... and mountains of evidence that it is. Thus, you all could be figments of my imagination for all I know. I can not say for certain that you exist, but I am infinitely more sure of the fact that I exist and that my existence is not contingent upon the functioning of a few pounds of soggy grey flesh that may or may not exist in the illusory form I seem to inhabit.

Of course, this takes into account all of your other expressed beliefs. If A1pha is sure he will cease to exist (and yet somehow be sucked up in some inexplicable recycling program for things that don't exist) who am I to disavow him of this belief... it is probably true for him.

HF

Life and death are totally arbitrary and obsolete concepts.

These days, i find myself leaning further towards conciousness 'migrating' in to the astral body after death of the physical body. beyond that, i don't know. But i trust the the next checkpoint will be decided by my 'higher' self. Even if re-occuring amnesia is part of the process.

"At physical death a being loses his consciousness of flesh and becomes aware of his subtle body in the astral world. Experiencing astral death in due time, a being thus passes from the consciousness of astral birth and death to that of physical birth and death. These recurrent cycles of astral and physical encasement are the ineluctable destiny of all unenlightened beings. Scriptural definitions of heaven and hell sometimes stir man's deeper-than-subconscious memories of his long series of experiences in the blithesome astral and disappointing terrestrial worlds."

Interesting read from "Autobiography of a Yogi" where the author meets his recently deceased Guru who schools him up about where he has been since he died and what the astral plane is like and how it works.

http://www.crystalclarity.com/yogananda/chap43.php

Ahhh Paramahansa Yogananda... love that book. Read it 3x already (like 12 years apart). That part about his guru going to Hiranyaloka to teach astral people to transcend their already transcendent lives was cool.

At any rate, nothing I have seen in my journeys would suggest that something like that is not possible.

Fair enough :]

Sorry if I came off as being argumentative, I was just curious

LOL. Yes I completely agree for the most part!



This however I don't agree with. I have gained a lot of insight from others here. Perhaps you aren't really trying to meditate and ponder what others are saying?




This is actually pretty profound and very true IMHO.

Question for the group at large, but more specifically for those that think consciousness survives death.

Do you think that consciousness will have access to your current life memories?
Will you still remember you were you, working at x job, married to y wife, living on z street, etc, etc.

I guess what I'm really getting at is at what level does consciousness survive. I use the word awareness, but I really use it as a base level sort of consciousness. If we use Buddhist terms and define the 5 senses as

1) eye consciousness
2) ear consciousness
3) touch consciousness
4) smell consciousness
5) taste consciousness

and Buddhism actually talks about the mind stream as a consciousness as well which I completely agree with.

6) mind consciousness.

At a bare minimum we know that 5 of those 6 cannot survive death without another body to use. This does however leave #6 up for question. Part of #6 is pretty obviously a generator of memories and other consciousness phenomena. However there are indeed very non localized part of this as well which could in fact be what survives. But this non localized part seems to be very subtle.

This kinda leads to hixidom's post.



What is the subjective experience of death?

Hixidom what is the subjective experience every night when you fall asleep?
Well for MOST of humanity it is a sort of darkening. Followed be intermittent periods of light (dreaming).
However for some people that have worked really hard to develop their awareness they are able to cross the chasm into a WILD (Wake induced lucid dream). An even fewer number of people are able to follow the rabbit hole of sleep all the way to deep sleep and they report an awareness of the clear light of the void.


So death for all of us will be like having the TV shut off...meaning the body will indeed die. The cable signal (awareness) may well still be there, but it won't have eyes, ears, nose, skin, or a brain. If there is anything remaining it will almost certainly not be immediately recognizable to MOST people as a self. Perhaps there will then be intermittent periods of light (new lives) arising from this darkness? Maybe some really advanced souls will be able to fully cross the chasm with awareness in tact.

This is were belief comes in...and no I don't cling to this belief. But I belief that if one learns to fully identify with this root level awareness (which appears to be completely universal and non local) then death will be like crossing into a wake induced lucid dream. This root level of awareness is the driving force behind everything. It's what causes atoms to dance and vibrate. It's what causes chemical bonds to form and break. It's what causes the earth to stay in orbit, it's what causes us to think. This root level awareness/energy/god/ whatever is our real nature. IMHO...or should I say IMHB (In my humble belief)



hixidom what if it's not primacy of conscioussness, but primacy of awareness?
The reason I ask this is because I can see awareness imbedded in everything.

Two uncharged particles in a vacume are aware of each other via van der Walls forces.
Two charged particles via electrostatic interactions.
As you climb the chain of complexity you see greater and greater levels of awareness.

Bacterial are aware of their chemical environment and will follow a concentration gradient to food.
Sunflowers are aware of the sun and can turn their heads to follow it.
Ants have both individual autonomy and appear to have a hive like mind as well (pheromone based no doubt).

Dogs are obviously more aware than ants..and elephants more so than dogs.
Eventually we get to humans which appear to be more aware than other forms of life on this planet, but even within the realm of humans we see vast differences in levels of awareness.

So for me when I talk in these terms I think of consciousness as a very very high level sort of awareness that is manifest from the universal awareness, but expressed though the highly evolved human brain. Without the brain and nervous system many aspects of this awareness that we identify with don't and can't exists.


What is everyone's though on this distinction between awareness and consciousness?

BTW All of this is solid food for thought.
My last couple of posts hinted at some of this to a degree.

As alway's great post HF.

Nice topic, might have been discussed before, dunno, but worth resurection imo.

Well to answer your question simply without going off on a back and forth pseudointellectualised romp. Yes, before my tryptamine forays I had a nice conventional view of life after death, a release, a shedding of a barely tolerable burden , a welcoming into a realm of understanding and peace. Union with quintessential love.

Dmt threw a spanner in those works, raised too many questions, divorced my belief system from the general "flow" of my fellow (DMT naive) earth dwellers.
At times it's made me scared of actually dying, othertimes facinated at the prospect.

In short, "doing" dmt doesn't change sh*t about the situation we all face. To die is to "know" and by that implication, nobody knows.

One of the problems with lots of these interpretations is the assumption that there is a physical self to begin with. What you are, in the here and now, may be neither physical nor a “self”.

Let me explain via a simple analogy (which I’ve used countless times before).

Imagine that you’re reading a novel written by an exceptionally talented writer. As you read, you come to know the characters very well. You know the neighborhood where they live out their lives. You feel their joys and their sorrows, You experience their births and their deaths, their triumphs and their tragedies.

And then the story ends.

Where did all of the characters exist? In their neighborhood or in your head?
Who was actually feeling their feelings and thinking their thoughts? The characters themselves or you?
Were any of the characters ever physically born? Did any of them physically die? Or did their births and deaths all happen in your mind?
After the story is over, you fondly remember the characters and their world. If it’s a good story, it changes you – it helps you to grow. The characters become a part of you.

Is it so hard to imagine that we are like the characters in the story? Not really existing, other than in the “mind” of a “reader”?

So maybe we’re asking the wrong questions.

^This.

There is no physical self and there is no separate, independent, unchanging self either.

Thx JD. I like where you are going with this as well. Not surprising that you and gibran are the ones whose conceptions mirror my own most.



Yes. This.

All too easy to get stuck in the assumption that we are, in fact, physical beings... or that we are alive, for that matter. People take these things for granted, but I know of no shred of evidence for either assumption... if any of you do, please share with me.

If anything, everything I have experienced points to the idea that the Omniverse is a giant mind, and everything is all just mindstuff... the stuff of dreams.

Something to consider is "what happens when you stop dreaming you are a certain person?" We have all been in dreams where we have different names, lives, dramas, and tribulations... that seem real to us when they are happening. At some point, we generally wake from the dream. Either into waking life, into another dream, or into lucidity. The other option is that we lose consciousness altogether, and slip into a kind of void... We experience a gap in our awareness for some period of time, after which, we reboot our awareness and go on with dreaming.

As has been said, falling asleep is very much akin to dying. And we all know what that is like. Eventually, you either can't keep your awareness going any longer... or you willfully leave your spacetime drama to go and rest in unconsciousness for a while, and at some point you find yourself in yet another life. Another illusory situation that actively tries to keep you from waking up... one that implants memories into your head and attempts to get you to believe that this current character you are playing is actually you.

But it never is. You can remember the most interesting or impactful of your various guises, and they are all stored somewhere... DMT showed me that. You can go ahead and experience all of your lives. (Past, future, after etc. are not really relevant IMO) They all happen now, and the illusion of linear time has no bearing on them. Certainly the arrow of time in each of them has no connection to that of the others, with it very possible that the past in one life is the future in another.

Anyway... enough mental masturbation. We may need a cleanup.

i totally agree with this

i would also like to bring Schrödinger's cat into all of this , as our problem seems to be very much the same

As I've stated before in various threads, I feel that consciousness, beyond the various faculties of mind and the many layers of thought/hopes/desires/memories/etc (present in all sentinent beings), there is a raw form of awareness that is neither male nor female, good or bad, this or that. This awareness is completely impartial. This awareness is ALL. We and the entire physical universe are bathed in this awareness. The stuff that dreams are made on perhaps? This awareness is neither real or non-real. Just is.

I can't pretend to know what happens upon death, but I feel DMT has shed a small amount of light on the matter. I will say this though...imho...death is certainly not the end. All is in transition, and it will never stop. Some are obsessed with the concept of immortality and/or extension of life....well they need not worry... I think we got that covered.

much lovr,
tat