What happens after you die?

[David Maes]

Hi Harmonygirl, first of all i'm grateful you talk to me again; and i consider it also very interesting and instructive for myself.



Well, i tell you the truth of course about the origin of the analysis.
Of course Freud developped it himself (not me).

The fact is (being a layman) i was interested in what he says and i recognized immediately myself in it, so i stated it, so you could say your opinions also.

[David Maes]

I always thought alone (not public); sorry my friends; you'll never get the answer from me; even if I would know it. (I probably would never dare to say it).

First of all i don't really know it, it sounds very macho to say it that way, but i have my own ideas on that one; so i do actually dare to say it (so my statement of not daring to say it was wrong).

Why not saying it? It's an interesting forum isn't it? And i'm not the only stater here... so i just exchange information; which can be jugded by other people... so i learn! (interesting!). (don't think i'm ironical here, just saying my humble opinion).

[harmonygirl]

David,
I think that awareness is largely responsible for the tripart divisions that Freud (and yourself) have noticed. I believe that we are part of universal energy (only largely are not aware of this). As you become aware of the interconnectedness of everything, you notice patterns and start to simplify. I think that after we die, we simply become more aware of our immersion in the universal energy (I avoid the notion of "Universal Mind" deliberately). We also become aware of all the other realities that exist and can choose to experience any of them (including coming back to this reality). Our physical self destructs, but who we are is not only physical. Of course, this is a belief. I know it to be true, but I also know that it is no more true that some other deeply religious person who believes in God (I believe in Goddess). Simple, but difficult to accept sometimes.

[David Maes]

(just philosophizing)

'God' and Freud.

Remember what Freud said: "God is an infantile illusion; a projection from our unconsciousness. We kind of project our unconscious needs, questions, uncertainties on what we call 'God' from our consciousness."

'God' is something like an unconscious 'father'figure.
We think about God because we need something to hold on.

This is also true; but of course it doesn't prove the existence or non-existence of 'God'.

i personally believe in a God but i believe Freud also.

i saw some book in a bookstore, where some archeologist claims some belief systems don't match with archeologic findings. It seems what is a part of the belief system was being told from generation to generation (and you know what happens when somebody on the end of the street tells you something, first someone was hurt a bit; in the second street it's a coma and in the third one, he's dead already.

i think lot of belief systems are not exactly a description of what happened, but more like an ideological transformation of what really happened.

i believe that a belief system is more like a result of a collective unconsciousness which needs something to hold on.

Now, i'm not against any form of believe; because some belief systems contain a lot of wise information (i would already go to a church or a temple ... just to hear the wise words; and i don't doubt that's the same in other belief systems...)

i myself am rather interested in the background (i mean not interpreting everything literally; but try to figure out what it means, what life means,...etc.)

so i have my own belief system (and i think everybody has); i think everybody has his own image of what God is.

i belief God can never be an all-embracing logical system. That's probably why no-one is able to understand what God is! I consider God such a broad concept, i think we just can't tell. We all have our own ideas of God and we project it on God. But isn't it just this what gives us freedom?

We have a responsability for our planet, for our own, for other people,...
We're free. God will never tell you who He is or what He is...
We are the ones to make a choice.

We sometimes fight eachothers for our beliefs... our significance of life.

In my opinion instead of fighting eachother for the significance of life, we should rather fight against our real enemy; and that's death itself.

This enemy is using us against eachother.

We have a responsability (we already started to use skin of animals not to be frozen in winter,...); God won't interfer in what happens; we are the ones who have to do it.

In poor countries children die everyday (it could have been us).

We are talking about TOE, but we can't even solve our own problems.

When a comet would strike the earth, then we are the ones who have to try to change its direction.

God won't interfer.

Nature is a system of equilibrium. (a bit like the law of shortest action).

But we will not go quietly into the night,
and we will not vanish without a fight.

i can't help it, i trust more scientific stuff.

Even the laws of physics tell us that our universe is dying very slowly.

About time-arrow; drop a stone in water and see what happens with the waves. Now try to reverse the picture. (seems to be impossible (Karl Popper)).

i do have a positive idea...

imagen that within a few thousand years, humanity is still alive; and somehow they managed to bring everybody back. (remember what i said about 'jumping' to the future?); maybe it could be possible it happens?

There are many parts in nature, and every part has its own mathematics; those parts are complimentary.


i think when you die, nothing else has meaning; the only thing which has meaning at that time is to be alife, to live.

And i think that's just what the purpose of life is... to be; to live,...



Imagen you're on this ship called 'titanic'... suddenly everything you consider to be real is on the bottom of the Atlantic.

We are molecules which are binding to eachother... atoms... we eat, drink, breath millions of them day...
maybe you might just need a hundred years to simulate them with a desktop computer.
This is created, this has a meaning...

But everything is transitory...

So it's like it doesn't have a meaning.

Do we really exist? Are we real? Is the world real? Maybe we already are ghosts, maybe we already are dead...

i think this will sound really ironical, but i believe that's just what sets us free.

i think we cannot understand; we cannot say, we cannot answer...

i think it's impossible to answer a question like this, no words are enough, no million of them, no billions of them, no trillions,...

we just can't reach it;

but we are now, i think we're save (whatever we believe), in the end everything means nothing at all, but still it means something, otherwise it just wouldn't be there, wouldn't it??

So now i tried to post my opinion as objective as possible...
(which was really hard for me; anyway i'm glad i finally dared to do it). It's just my idea... it's not a general truth...

but i do ask myself... is there one?

[Mr. Nobody]

David, "The Power of Myth" by Joseph Campbell will answer your questions

[pagan3142]

Although I current lean towards the "Eaten by Worms" theory, I once leaned towards an afterlife and reincarnation. The countless stories of people who died and were revived, and then told very similar stories about what happened to them while they were dead, were very influential to me. You can't simply say that all those stories were fabrications can you? It would be interesting to know why these stories are so similar. Perhaps it's the way the brain is wired (by evolution perhaps) to operate as the body dies.

Two answers,take your pick.
1 ) you are buried
2 ) you are burnt
In either case I believe that there is a Universal Capacitor that collects the charge (soul) of the "Spitit" when it leaves the body.
Hence the universal conciousness.
As energy cannot be destroyed it must go somewhere, Perhaps it leaves part of the energy in the place it Haunts. hence seeing ghosts.
But as you know the mind can trick you into believing anything, just like an optical illusion of the mind.
Perhaps looking for an answer is another way of our minds tricking us into believing in an afterlife.
Whatever your own belief, after you are dead, maybe you will find out !!!

If you do, Please let me know. Thanx

[michellemfry]

David,
Please remember that you are among friends around here. Your awakening to the thought that these proceedings were a measure of public actions among individuals and how you were shaken, I thought was charming. The truth is that unless people know you deeply, all things are quite hidden in plain sight from the ignorant and the deceptive. We say things knowing that anyone could be listening, but that only the true participants have a slim chance of understanding the content of the discussion. With time, and practice, we get to know one another. We all got the standard drill in college, but we seek something else.
We are drawn to one another because we know that by ourselves, we are but singular and can only learn limited amounts of information.
We also participate here in the hopes that someone will read what we have begun and redirect us or add to it or take us to places we cannot go on our own. You are already yourself, all by yourself. When you come here, anything can happen. You may connect up and not worry about judgement or bad grades for bad remarks. All those things that you wished you could have expressed on in school but were discouraged by the system, can be played with here.
The courage to participate when your native tongue is not English is brave indeed. And your charm shines through when you are vulnerable and honest about being shook up.
Sometimes I read my posts and say what was I thinking! Actually, my only goal is to keep thinking. Not thinking at all is a much more shameful waste of potential.
I invite you to use the private message system until you are comfortable with the public forum.
About the 99% common DNA with animals, there is a gargantuan mass of dark matter and dark energy out there that is not considered in that %. Take all we know of and that only makes up about 5% of the true state of things. If we factor in dark, the difference between man and beast grows. I was not descended from an ape, I was formed in the fusion of elements that occurs in the stars. What happens out there can happen to me.

[David Maes]

To Michellemfry.

Reading your posts, i'm under the impression you kind of 'ruled out' yourself to know more. Even when you're stating i'm under the impression the information we read looks like you replaced yourself by the high level of your posting.

However there is something i have to mention.

i personally didn't really had the experience in school myself that i couldn't express myself.
Of course, i can understand someone like Einstein had (He was already thinking about constant light speed when he just was 16 years old...); i think the real reason why Einstein had trouble in school was probably because he was bored to death ((i mean he was bored stiff)). You also might have had that experience.

But i can't lie about myself.
In my own experience teachers always motivated me, helped me where they could...
i cannot let them be blamed for something which isn't true.
(it would be conflicting with my sense of justice completely)

i also have to say i'm very happy with what i am now.

School always was a struggle for me to make it; a fight; however teachers certainly elicited everything out of me which was possible.

i also got a lot of help in school of my father (who explained me lot of things and who is really very smart).

i'm grateful for what i learned there; there is some kind of determinism in it which attracts me and which gave me some insight.

[David Maes]

i interrupted my 'reading' holiday for a quick post.

i started to read some stuff here, and also have been wandering on other websites on the net...

being not really educated as toequester (i get my information from reading books, magazines, internet...and afterwards try to combine it to a whole),

i'm planning to read as much as i can now for a while now to resource myself again...

i can give you the impression i have at this moment...

i know relativity will be tested in the coming years.
some scientists believe it will be proven right again, some scientist believe it will be proven wrong...

concerning QM, some scientists believe very hard in it, others think it will be replaced by an other theory...

concerning string theory; i think it has been proven to be mathematically consistent completely... but i think it didn't really prove itself (yet?) with new experiments....
Some scientists believe it will replace other theories, others are sceptical...

i also think there are other mathematically consistent theories, but which still have to prove themselves with new experiments in the future....

i think there might be a lot of other mathematical theories possible which maybe even just might not have been thought off or created yet...

imagen what would have happened if somebody invented string theory before Einstein created relativity?

There could have been another theory where nobody thought off at that time which might have brought us a lot closer than relativity, who knows?

Or maybe even someone thought about it, but threw it in the paperbasket?

as i see it, in a historical meaning, people first believed in gods of thunder and lightning,... and stuff like that...

Afterwards they started to believe more in what they see and what they can grap with there hands...

They also started to use logical and artificial language (mathematics) which seemed to give them success when combining it by testing it with what they could see and grap...

Of course the grapping prove is difficult in a micro- and macro-world; so there we have to trust what we see...

Seeing is the best we've got.
i think mathematics on its own doesn't real prove anything except itself...
so we test this artificial language (which nature also seems to use) with what we see.

What we see has the highest probability of being the truth...
(if everything would have been dreamed, then why is there so much correspondence in what we see?)
But however, i still don't really think that proves a hundred percent that what we see is real...
But what we see is the best we can follow to come closer to the truth...

i think we already proved a few things, but neither of them or a TOI i think, they could suddenly get a complete other meaning in the future...

So also about life and death? anything is just possible i think...

Right now i believe most in relativity, than quantum, than strings,...
But it could just be that tomorrow some kind of scientist proves this is not right...

About faster than light in optical medium i'm also sceptical, cause i think we can still interpret it right with the present paradigms; it doesn't really prove against relativistic causality;
but i doesn't really prove relativistic causality also.

i think it could be that we only truly know something if we know everything, but i think this thought can also be wrong...

i think we best follow what we see, theorize about it, use mathematics on it, and see what's get proven in the future...

if possible i come here and just give my opinion on these matters (which i'm not really educated for) but which i'm interested in (more like addicted to)

i read some books now, in the mean time, keep toequesting, thinking,...
imagening, inspiration... this is crucial, and when people read this site, it brings them to new ideas which can be experimented with,...

if you wish so, i come back when i have some new ideas...

Greetings,
David.

[KAC]

I am not a buddist, but I understand and accept a number of the Buddist Philosophies.

Important is the Three marks of Existance.
Dukka - All is unsatisfactory. Dissatisifaction arises from Anicca and Anatta. The Ego desires that which is Impermentent. Nothing from the physical world can bring lasting fullfillment.

Anicca - All is Impermanent. All states are in flux. No state stays whole eternally. All that is; in the next moment will not be. I am Impermanent.

Anatta - All is Transitory. All states will decay into another state. Simply put, no ego survives death. We are as dust in the wind.

So. I am unable to make measurement of the world beyond, so I figure that weather it exists or not, is of no importance to me. I am here and now, on the path, the Tao. What I do here-now is more important, than what I do or get there-after.

Simply put, I believe that when I die, I cease to exist. That there is no cycle of reincarnation. That all that I am ceases. This is fine, so long as in the last moments I can be proud that I lived.