[Mike 5]

What happens when you die? And when you sleep, and before you were born, as in the day before, the months before, a year before… All such excellent questions.

All is duality, in my view. The ultimate duality, the original encounter that started what we call reality, I do not call this a singularity but a duality. And that duality, for simplicity, existed within some beyond, that remains beyond space and time as we know it.

Reality as we know it is actually in truth a collection of individual experiences by all the billions of people, plus animals, insects, and so on. So I am saying that reality has no form, although that is a word to be careful with, no form in our own understanding beyond what we can imagine experiencing. If there is more than we could ever imagine or experience, well, it is irrelevant unless we can unlock it as mechanics, at which point we do imagine it and we do effectively experience it.

My model at this point is that two INANIMATE essences remain unmingled, unmixed, and for convenience I will illustrate these two inanimate essences as perhaps the words mind and body, or consciousness and material form. Other versions might say energy and matter. For now I want to focus on the structure, rather than fixate on what we cannot be sure about. The structure is two things that clearly cannot mix, and yet reality is the appearance of these mixing.

I am saying in effect that your body is made from well... dust, whatever, material stuff, and returns back to that, and I want to propose a point of view where in fact that material stuff or dust remains technically inert at all times. Time is in this explanation created and space is created as something I might term juxtaposition, but in simple terms our experience of this is that we feel alive. So yes, I say we cannot speak of the aliveness or not of clearly inanimate things, they are clearly alien to what we experience as life, we encounter objects and can only say, we have no idea what is going on there, probably nothing of interest, but everything we do experience is filtered through our very strong certainty that we indeed are alive and can sense the presence of aliveness in others.

On the other side, in this model or explanation there is not only the material stuff, on the other side is perhaps consciousness, or choose your own word, it is just the primal duality from which by now, all lesser dualities have fractally or umbilically dissipated to make this complex interactive reality. So I may feel that I am consciousness inside a material body within a material world. But a true solipsist, or someone too keen on The Matrix films, might point out that for all we know, material forms including our body, reality, and all that we might experience, are within our mind. And there are a couple of ways to think about this – yes, in my brain and neurology, somewhere, an internal cinema creates all that I experience as a suitable echo of whatever stimulates my senses, I cannot be sure that reality is not some clever technical illusion. Another view is that the reality – "out there" – is just indeed a technical illusion with your vast, beyond the stars vast mind, and mind (or whatever word you choose) is some essential stuff we cannot penetrate. Obviously it is beyond physical penetration, it is not physical at all.

Now I want to combine the two irreconcilable views as my model. This is still, by the way, Fractal Dialectics, but I am struggling so hard to express it clearly. Stay with me, it gets really juicy now. So how do these unmixable opposites appear to interpenetrate? What are the ripples of consciousness within material form and of material form within consciousness? Are these like the membrane or surface between oil and vinegar, do bubbles form and turbulence, and that is what reality is? A paper thin multifolded emulsion that remains inevitably un-mixed, as in undissolved, and we are just dancing that turbulence between two unmixables...

I want to mention the Bezier curve as an ANALOGY, a simplification as one way to imagine how two irreconcilable things flow into one new form. Adobe Photoshop and Adobe pdf files etc use Bezier curves. Basically two vectors, perhaps point A and point B exist, each with distinct force in a personal direction that is without any curve. A single flowing curve, which is in fact naturally pleasing to the human eye, joins these two irreconcilable vectors. So this is very economical for computers, storing vector graphics instead of all the pixels or other ways to store images. In fact computers store images and sounds and all manner of representations of our analogue world, using this kind of shorthand, vectors that seem irreconcilable, but go beyond the straight line of the vectors and wow, you magically have something flowing and wonderful. So the Bezier curve is a simple model where a simple form of mind, as a simple vector, and a simple form of body, as another vector, can be seen from beyond as some new form, unknowable to either vector. Put it this way - you eye looks at the Pole star and you feel a straight line exists and the pole star is there, exactly. But the light has curved by gravity, you cannot know where that light and that star originated. So that is in just one dimension. Extend the idea into more dimensions, if you can. and that is what I am proposing.

I hope that idea is sufficient, to show how I link the irreconcilable duality of consciousness and material form. So I am saying that we are already dead and never alive. In as far as we are consciousness. I am saying our bodies remain dust and material stuff that you can chop up, it remains always technically dead, but, but, but, but, our experience is not the cogs and wheels turning reality, this is not apparent to us because we sit in a very priviledged seat observing the reality show. We actually experience the illusion, the maia, the life, the change, the flow, the deepest beauty and yet, when we think rationally, it all falls to pieces. It cannot be – there is no mind to be found in the material body however we look, and there is no substance to consciousness however deeply we think.

So personal death, in a way, recreates the cosmic. At some cosmic level, all the consciousness currently conscious, and all the material form that is currently material, through mechanics we simply cannot imagine nor know, may be said, if you like as an axiom, as an article of faith or argument, these two vast essences and the potential of all there now is, they were somehow separate. That does imply reality as we know it is just one of many many such realities. Which need not be here nor now, nor could there be any path or means to know or meet how that took place. That is no more esoteric than a spontaneous creation of matter and energy from nothing. We are indeed forced to compromise somewhere as even a TOE must have some axioms by Goedel’s proof. I put these ideas forward, I think they primarily show a better form of data storage (Fractal Dialectic Synthesis) that you cannot get to by cartesian thinking alone. I'm sorry, this paragraph goes so far beyond my ability to explain clearly, ask me questions and I can notice where I have jumped stages and condensed it too rapidly. All we can be sure is that here, now, the apparent mixing of consciousness and material form makes a reality that seems pretty solid, but, it is not. Consciousness remains essentially without anything to be conscious of, but now, here, all is deeply real. Gradually reality will fizzle back to unmapped and unmappable nothingness, with consciousness restored to deathly boredom, and material restored to deathly immobility. Many many many ideas to discuss here, movement and being, progress and so on (Vata Kapha and Pitta in Vedic ideas...)

So as axioms, two DIFFERENT membranes or other structures encountered to create space and time. The membranes encountered in ripples and YOU, and I, and each conscious life is these membranes encountering, bubbles and turbulence forming that then burst or subdue. We are each a tiny flowing jigsaw piece of this dual membrane encounter. So duality (not singularity) is the origin of time and space at all, and also YOUR time and YOUR space as it were "within" all there seems to be, yet confined locally, limited to your ripple.

Death therefore is not so dissimilar to sleep. Technically reincarnation could be said to be and also not to be, for my consciousness will never re-assemble, nor will this body, but just as statistically you certainly have some few atoms that were in Einstein’s body, others that were in Jesus, Hitler, and so on, the dust and material atoms are recycled, so consciousness or mind too is recycled. But that is sort of irrelevant. Unless, unless, in your path, your life, you have some form of Near Death Experience, or hypnosis that leads you to parallel possibilities, in fact all paranormal phenomena would be statistically to be expected for some people at some times. And what of dreams? Is it not odd that virtually all living things sleep, as if the ripples of consciousness within matter have some inner mechanics like breathing in and out and in and out...

Furthermore, spiritual practise, or hallucinogenic drugs, may alter "your" consciousness to slip as it were to glimpse through adjacent windows (sights sounds sensations thoughts etc) that you consider to be "yours". Maybe you view through a plant window, or some other person, who knows. Then some dream or esoteric experiences then would corroborate – drugs might even lead to scientific discovery (indeed NLP, Human Design, and shamanism, all used heavy drugs to obtain apparently empirical ideas in their cultural contexts).

So what happens when you die? In this model, we are already dead, life is clearly an elaborate, mostly shared, but false appearance. We dream differently, each in our own personal world, yet sometimes, we wonder if that dream space and time, could it guide us here, and now? And when we die, do we dream on and on without the formality of space and time. Do we linger in nightmares we want to awaken from, unable to escape deep fears? Perhaps a few – those who have no fears and no nightmares through spirituality or other experience, those said to be already awakened in this life, so awakened perhaps that maybe even death is just another fascinating, if isolated, roller coaster. Where dreams pass, and neither this world of appearances, nor the appearances in the utter solitude of death, none of it perturbs nor feels particularly real. Sometimes I think that "awakened" beings, and I have encountered several at close distances including the Dalai Lama, are already aware that all consciousness, and all material forms, remain dead, flowing in beautiful patterns that trick us to say "I". And "I". And "I". If so, the Rastafarians, who use "I and I" instead of "we", are saying that through their spiritual (ganja) experience, "you" are in fact "I", and the separation is a false appearance only. I love that, so delicious conceptually, it makes it so impossible to offend or not be peaceful. For the Rastafarians, death is literally impossible.

So this dream that we share, and we call that sharing reality, this dream moves onto a fairly claustrophobic experience of delusions that we cannot awaken from. Finally I cannot say if our consciousness disintegrates, I would suggest the lack of memory of previous incarnations shows generally the bubble of awareness of most newborn babies is not simply Uncle Joe come back. But I would expect some of us to pass into death, endure the dreaming flavours and solitude, and stumble back through some as yet unknown mechanics, and some might still "remember". How does the newborn cuckoo know to kick out the other eggs? We have no model to explain it. Why is a baby born with that light in her eyes, where does the personality come from?

Seasons Greetings everyone.


http://www.lulu.com/content/144312 (I describe my own Near Death Experience in a book recently published available through this link...)

[michellemfry]

An interesting discussion would be What would you like to happen after you die?(no 72 virgins allowed please) My dream would be to undergo fusion and release of myself as energy into the universe where I will live forever. The closest I could think of was cremation where I will be thermodynamically transformed from a corpse into heat. I can wait, though.

[Mike 5]

Originally Posted by michellemfry An interesting discussion would be What would you like to happen after you die?(no 72 virgins allowed please) My dream would be to undergo fusion and release of myself as energy into the universe where I will live forever. The closest I could think of was cremation where I will be thermodynamically transformed from a corpse into heat. I can wait, though.

I know exactly what I would like to happen after I die and I am prepared to live my life in preparation of that, and to be mistaken if that is wrong.

I was once lured into a reading with a psychic, by a close friend, utterly against my instinct and also at that time my mind was very closed to all things esoteric. The most shocking revelation in that was that I apparently was a Kamikaze pilot in my "previous reincarnation" and that was why I had such a tough tough life this time. Anyway that was many years ago and in idle moments I wondered about those pilots trained to face death, professionally, and apparently from a range of religions and personalities, some were Christian according to certain sources, for example. I thought of those young men talking and drinking and wondering about that doorway, and what was beyond.

The theme became the title of my third stage musical "Kamaikaze Reunion", I found the idea so interesting, that perhaps some of these men made a pact if there was reincarnation or whatever they faced, to find each other again, wherever that doorway of certain death led them. As both my parents fought for Britain in the second world war, it was rather spooky.

And so what I would really like to happen when I die, is to remain stable and conscious in some Tibetan lama kind of way, unperturbed by the apparent experiences whatever they might be, until some new form of contact or life would be there, and then to keep the memory of that journey intact enough to finally be able to share details in some way that not only is well expressed, but that reaches through and touches others. Then again, if it is a long wait, it might pass the time, and if there is nothing, nothing serious is different for me here and now really, just living as well as I can in a challenging world.

Because I did have a Near Death Experience in 1989, I have a map of what happened then, and enough clarity to see the possibility of surviving death in some form. Deep down, this is the only desire of my life. It is not as though I am doing any other great purpose as it is, and meanwhile, I think a certain amount of mild and decent hedonism and a solid approach to health is adequate - whatever the outcome. As for the 72 virgins, I would prefer a deeply lustrous and exquisite range of deeply sensuous and erotic experiences before death, within my flow of ethics and caring and situations.

I am a little surprised to find myself sharing this now. I thought it was rather private, and somehow, well, I don't find it inconsistent with mechanics, on the contrary, it might just be possible to map this mechanically and even describe it in a way that could be approached empirically.

[michellemfry]

I personally would like to thank you for your candor and honesty. It is nice, that's all. Near death may be a misnomer, for it may have brought you closer to actually living some predetermined destiny. It may be simple or complicated to comprehend. Sharing your life is a form of intimacy. I'm satisfied, how about you?

[Mike 5]

Originally Posted by michellemfry I personally would like to thank you for your candor and honesty. It is nice, that's all. Near death may be a misnomer, for it may have brought you closer to actually living some predetermined destiny. It may be simple or complicated to comprehend. Sharing your life is a form of intimacy. I'm satisfied, how about you?

Dissatisfied mostly. I think most people are, frustrated, that is the general flavour I meet in the street, I seem sensitive to how people are underneath their pretense of "I'm Normal" and "I'm Fine". Especially in the US, where I feel rather exotic and almost recognised. Just by wearing a pinstriped jacket, having wonky Austin Powers teeth, a sweet toffee accent and a warm smile makes New York a most satisfactory place for me to experience. Anyone know any publishers there? The Austrians have a saying: I'll be back... (Ich komme gleich wieder...)

Near Death is totally a misnomer. My experience was unique and personal, but language is a clumsy compromise at the best of times. I glimpsed the unknowable.

You know what, this topic is all wrong. Who cares about what comes after death, when LIFE is not yet all it could be. I think it is time to be more and more ALIVE...

That probably means less time tap tapping whilst hypnotised in the delusional glow of this LCD screen.

Ah, appearances can be so tiresomely, deliciously superficial. Where's the party?

It is Saturnalia after all, a time to dance eat sing and celebrate all that it is to be human.

[michellemfry]

I happen to love the computer. I didn't get one till this last March, and how many years have they been around?

Hey Mike, will you do my chart? I thought the guys were protesting the results too much. You must have hit a nerve. I'm an open book. I'll grab hold of our conversation and it feels like I'll never let go.

I've been reading your stuff and there is a bit of sadness to your writing. I have a couple of strange stories to share with you sometime. Can I private message with you sometime? I feel so exposed asking that. Yeah, it's New Year's time and I feel "fine" today. I really do. The Vikodin helps a bit(little laugh).

[baudrunner]

Such a beautiful stream of consciousness cannot be allowed to go unanswered.

I determine the terms of the equation which allowed this flow of intro/extro-spection to roll so off your fingers to be...

+ NY + Starbucks + wireless = Nirvana²

I love reading these forums and then catering to my admittedly mildly egocentric mission to educate the world with my take on the fundamental nature of reality by contributing a little of myself to the soup. I am driven, but I know my limitations. We simply can't know everything because the more complex evolution makes us, the more refined the limitation to the extent of our understanding becomes. It is tantamount to a beautiful irony. The ancient scribes wrote literature that most people of today have difficulty stomaching. The library at ALexandria until the 2nd century CE was more complete than today's American Library of Congress. It is likely that the scriptures and books that make up the bible were probably on loan, or stolen from that great institution at Alexandria at that time when the Vandals plundered the area and burned it to the ground. Who knows what literary elegance, practical knowledge, and philosophical wisdom we are missing?

What I can say about life after death is that I am absolutely certain that the potential for the continuation of the singularly unique identity that your corporeality affords you the opportunity to define is established as surely as the matter that composes itself into you. Life is to inanimate matter as the spirit is to life itself. Neither is more miraculous than the other and I can see no reason to doubt the existence of either. Insomuch as evolution is an ongoing process, so is the nature wherein that evolution manifests an evolving context. We just happen to Be Here Now.

Idealism is merely an interesting philosophical sidebar. If we were making our own reality and life was just a solipsist interpretation of existence then I wonder at the lack of perfection in our world, of the genocide and wilfull destruction, the accidents, the pain we encounter, the trouble we land ourselves into. What sort of masochistic projection then is this Universe? Would we still have the capacity to be mentally unhealthy? Would we blame that on projection or an actual biological malady? What would compel us to project anything but a perfect Eden? No, my friend, I think only in practical scientific terms, of the real and the substance, symbiosis and ecology. We remind ourselves when we stumble that we are always in a state of collision with this world because of gravity. In the practical world we don't wonder at how it came to be. I more wonder at the fact that it is.

[michellemfry]

Paradise is not lost, it is just uncertain. We're building something here, I can just feel it in my gut.

[surya]

it will be like "what you where before birth", may be it will be deep sleep without any dream and in this case you are not going to wake up again.

[baudrunner]

The thing about deep sleep is that it is that stage of rest where the cells of your corporeal self regenerate and protein synthesis occurs. The remainder of your sleep is not so integral and can be missed if you are required to wake up early.

In the spirit there is no deep sleep of that nature, so no dreaming, you are right, but nothing to prevent the continuation of a conscious self identification but without the imperfections of the corporeal self that occur as a result of injury or afliction.