What is the afterlife like?

Emergent, RN · Jan 31, 2018

For the record, I have not mentioned anything about religion, and I couldn't give a rat's a... if someone is an atheist. I just want to know what people think about the afterlife--or if they simply think there isn't one. What pisses me off is when people out of ignorance, shallowness, and fear refuse to even contemplate the issue.

Is getting angry or annoyed over someone's answer on a discussion thread a sign of spirituality?

EGspirit · Jan 31, 2018

Based on the limited suggestions you have in the original post, I would select the non-existent one. That is the one that makes the most sense to me as a logical, scientific, and even spiritual person. But I'm not arrogant enough to say I know for sure either way, and I respect everyone else's guesses on the matter. It's one of those things we will never know for sure.

That is true. If we cease to exist, then the question about what the afterlife is like is unanswerable, meaningless, really. It would be like asking how dry is water.

I think ceasing to exist would certainly be a sought after rest. Experience would have to be different than it is now in order for it to work on an eternal scale. If we experience things then as we do now, eternity would very quickly become a relentless boredom, and that would be like a prison of the mind. It would be a mind bound in chains forever--even if at first it seemed perfect.

Imagine the most perfect day lived over and over and over for a billion years. Imagine the horror of being conscious of that. Or of constantly chasing goals that are either never reached or are constantly replaced with another goal once they are.

In the movie Groundhog Day, I read that it was originally supposed to start in the middle of Phil Conner's experience, and he had already been there for thousands of years. So, I wondered what that would be like, but to be conscious of such a state would ultimately mean to be utterly bound, and minds just don't seem to be made like that; we're not like automatons or robots.

It seems to me one would have to wake up each day with no memory of the day before. Then they wouldn't feel their chains. The chains would still be there, but they wouldn't feel them.

But what if it were like something that is far more common to us: a dream. Have you ever noticed dreams are a kind of infinite dynamic experience? I mean, they just go from event to event. There is no end, no particular meaning acting like brackets on the experience. They just go from one thing to the next, but never the same thing twice. They move forward infinitely, or at least they seem like they would. The only thing stopping them is that we wake up.

So, it seems to me that eternity would either be like an amnesic Groundhog Day, or it could be like an infinite dynamic experience. Anything else would be hell, eventually, and in that case, like you, I would hope for the cessation of all experience. I would hope for no existence at all. Just an eternal rest.

Thing is, I have reason to believe the mind does not come from the brain but is there regardless of the brain, and if I'm right, then eternal rest is not an option. And I don't know whether to take hope in that or not. Hence, the writing of the OP soliciting the opinions of y'all's educated minds.

EGspirit · Jan 31, 2018

Is getting angry or annoyed over someone's answer on a discussion thread a sign of spirituality?

Who cares if I have spirituality? Even more to the point, who cares what you think of my spirituality?

Whether I am angry or not, whether I am ignorant or not, whether my questions have any relevance or not, is not the issue. All you're trying to do is sidetrack the conversation into some kind of argument so you can derive some online entertainment from that.

And you know what? That actually illustrates my point. What will you do for entertainment in eternity? Do you even have the balls to think about that?

Mr_Edwino · Jan 31, 2018

Is it like a dream?

Probably only for a short period of time. The synapses continue after death but an REM state could not possibly persist without the rest of the body functioning. So in short, no.

Is it simply non-existence--no mind, no realization of any sort?

Probably this yes.

Is it a world, a universe of its own?

This is not meant to be sarcastic, but I view death as the antithesis to life. They are counterparts; one complements the other. To view death from the perspective of the living is an unachievable endeavor. We can't possibly (nor are meant to) know anything about death while we are alive. I do, however, believe that idea itself is by design; life cannot know death and vice versa. There is a harmonic force to everything in this universe.

What does Morpheus say to Neo in The Matrix? "Have you ever had a dream that seemed so real? What if you never woke up? How would you know it was a dream?" ...or something to that effect.

That is deep, but everyone else would know that you are deceased; and your brain still doesn't work when you are dead.

Faith of God me is rubbish as I believe it should be for any educated person, although I am faithful that my mail will come almost everyday and that I will have to pay taxes.

Emergent, RN · Jan 31, 2018

Who cares if I have spirituality? Even more to the point, who cares what you think of my spirituality?
Whether I am angry or not, whether I am ignorant or not, whether my questions have any relevance or not, is not the issue. All you're trying to do is sidetrack the conversation into some kind of argument so you can derive some online entertainment from that.
And you know what? That actually illustrates my point. What will you do for entertainment in eternity? Do you even have the balls to think about that?

I don't care about you. But I'm contributing to a thread on an open forum. I seem to have touched a nerve, based on your somewhat scathing response.

I personally believe detachment is generally a good practice, on forums, and in life as a whole. It will also help prepare us for eternity...

Mavrick, BSN, RN · Jan 31, 2018

I like a nice discussion with differing views expressed with respect for the other views.

When you hang on to the "I am right" or "My view is THE way as opposed to A way of looking at it" we get to a snarky level of you pushing your view onto me. That's when I really don't care about you anymore.

/username, BSN, RN · Jan 31, 2018

Nothing.

SpankedInPittsburgh, DNP, RN · Jan 31, 2018

I'm with the big nothing after you die. Personally I think this is a good thing as encourages people to squeeze as much from this life as you can as opposed to waiting for some reward in some cartoon-land, pearly-gated nonsenseville. Live the best life you can & if you get an un-provable afterlife then heck its a bonus but I wouldn't count on it.

Susie2310 · Jan 31, 2018

If I die and am reborn as a different person--then that's just the same thing as saying I (EGspirit) cease to exist when I die.

I think that if the deeper self of you, EGspirit, goes on (let's say, in a reincarnation), as distinct from the ego mind of EGspirit, then the deeper self of EGspirit doesn't cease to exist after death.

nehneh14 · Jan 31, 2018

What is the afterlife like? Non-existent. :)

Oldmahubbard · Jan 31, 2018

One night many years ago, after a horrendous shift, plus dealing with a severely personality disordered co-worker, I drove home in utter disgust. The evening was made worse by the fact that I was still grieving my beloved cat, whom I had to euthanize several weeks before.

I had a sandwich and got into bed. I was contemplating a job opening I had heard about in home care. It would be a little less money, and obviously less experience.

Still the tension at work had gotten unbearable, but I was in a real quandary.

Just then, I began to hear purring. Within a second or two, it was as loud and unmistakable as a purring cat on the chest, yet there was no cat in the house.

It went on for for 15 or 20 minutes.

He was letting me know that he was still with me, everything was going to be ok, and to follow my heart.

I now collect a small pension from that home care position.

I never heard from him again, nor have I had any supernatural contact with any deceased relatives, although I have asked.

Beldar_the_Cenobite, CNA · Jan 31, 2018

I'm not looking for any particular answer, but if you're an atheist and a skeptic, then surely you don't believe there is any afterlife. As an atheist and skeptic, aren't you also a materialist?

A materialist? Isn't that someone who likes to consume materials for pleasures? Like a profligate?

No one knows what happens when you die, and they sure can't prove it. The only way to know is to probably die yourself. There's a guy on youtube who dug up his mother's coffin. Why I don't know. He opened it after 3 months and it showed her mummified. She dried up, like everyone who is buried and isn't preserved.

My take on afterlife is when we die, we rot, our functions in the body cease. Like Packard cars closing their factory. Like Pontiac and Hummer closing their production line because lack of sales. No more EGspirit. Whatever he or she knows will never be repeated. His or her memories will fade into the abyssmal and become energy that can neither be created nor destroyed. Cells, mitochondria, immune cells all die with the body.

There's an article out there that the last sense we have when we die is hearing.

There's an interesting video on youtube "what happens in googl years to the earth" or solar system or whatever. The universe will constantly expand, but the darkness in outerspace will eventually become completely black. Trillions and trillions of years from now, stars will no longer be made because material and matter cannot meet. Stars already formed will die out. Ours will expand and become a big, dark rock of material. If humans are alive by then, they'll have a hard time finding somewhere else to live.

God and religous people can't prove heaven exists. People talk about holy scriptures, yet humans wrote those scriptures, the ones you read every sunday. What do the religious people think about when they see commercials about kids with cancer like St Jude's hospital? It's god's will. Sure, it is, but it's not god's will to take someone's age like Donald Trump or your mother and father if they're still alive? If you could afford to never work again, would you? Why worship morality and the idea that if you behave you'll go to a better place, when you can just go to that better place now and forget about this one? What makes this one worth living?

Remember the Vegas shooting? There was a 50+ year old who talked about seeing kids get killed by stray bullets. He said "Why them? It should have been me", was that massacre a part of gods will?

When we die, we cease. Our electricity and tiny little employees in us that keep us alive die with us.