But that takes the fun out of it, besides, if it's not incest, I don't see how that's possible.

I've had 4 distinct experiences with someone I know dying. One was my great aunt, who I barely knew, died of a stroke or something. Two was this kid at my school, pretty much the only kid I didn't get along with. I came back from a weekend of checking out a college and I heard that he died. It was sad but I wasn't shook up or anything. The 3rd was my grandfather. He had a brain tumor for like 8 years, we all knew it was coming and were able to say goodbye to him. I remember eating Cheesy Puffs and watching a Braves game (I hate baseball with a passion, but I watched it just to be with him). It's kind of a cool memory in its own way.

The 4th isn't a person, it's a dog. She was the daughter(?) of a stray my dad picked up some years before, who turned out to be the coolest damn dog in the world. This dog was so much like her. One day out of the blue we just knew something was wrong, so we took her to the vet. Turns out she had a urinary tract infection, couldn't pass urine, and a boatload of piss was built up in her bladder and pressurizing her insides. After some such sequence of events, we ended up putting her down. It was the hardest thing I have ever done, I bawled like a little baby. I fucking loved that dog. We had her for 11 awesome years. The best memory I have of her is sitting out one night and watching a meteor shower with here under my arm. Never again will I put down another animal. Animals have been dying naturally for thousands of years without mans intervention.

Other than that, no one I'm super close to has died, which is pretty fortunate.

i don't know why people get so worked up about death. your entire life is just you killing time until you are dead

Yeah, but it hurts to see people you know and love die, regardless whether or not it is inevitable.

Quote from Scarecrow

i don't know why people get so worked up about death. your entire life is just you killing time until you are dead

....interesting view on life....

I have something to add to my previous theory. Now if you die, you disappear forever. That means you don't have a clue how much time's passed after you die. Once you wake up with a new conscience, it might be many years in the future, but to you, (even if you regain your past memories), no time has passed at all.
Dammit this is so creepy.

Quote from Hatchet Haro

You know, I am a Christian, but I'm starting to tear myself away from it. I don't think science and religion can co-exist peacefully together, and I stick to science. That gets me wondering whether there IS a Heaven or Hell. What IF there's no Heaven or Hell? That means that your soul doesn't have a place to belong to after you die... but then... what if there are NO souls at all, and 'souls' are some fictional spirit made up by religion? Well, that means if you die, you disappear forever. There's no feeling to it since you've got no soul already. It's like... you've disappeared.
This gives me the shivers.
I also have this ridiculous theory that if you DO have a soul, your memories get wiped after you die and your soul would be transferred to a newborn. Since you're memories were wiped, you don't suspect anything.
God... my imagination IS running wild isn't it?

just some food for thought, based on a book i've been reading that is more aimed towards achieving enlightenment than being a religion;

the idea is that we each have a 'consciousness', not a 'soul'. this is the entity that is really "you", and you exist in your body like you would live in a house. however, because of all of the nonsense that we need to go through to be a part of society, we have come to believe that our thought process, our 'mind', is what "you" is, and this is the basic cause of all suffering.

as we are now, while we are "alive", we are basically sleepwalking because we are identified with the mind. when we die, we go back to sleep properly. then we get up and sleepwalk some more in another life. and we have been doing this for many lives, and every time we fall into the same trap of the mind.

pretty much everyone has been brainwashed into thinking that the mind is the master, and we go on being slaves to its idiocies. enlightenment is the process of self-realization; discovering the REAL "you", as a deathless entity completely separate from, but living in, your body.

Quote from Fizzysoda

If You're soul continues to just move from place to place, then whats the point of having a soul if you can't remember you're past life?

and you've hit the nail on the head right there. there is no point. as i said before, our entire lives as they are now is just us killing time until we are dead. living like this, tending to the needs of our bullshit societies, trying to make other people happy who are going to die soon anyway... there is absolutely no point.

we are all just wasting time until we realize the self.

Too many drugs, lol

do not mistake me for an uneducated stoner.

Quote from Scarecrow

just some food for thought, based on a book i've been reading that is more aimed towards achieving enlightenment than being a religion;

the idea is that we each have a 'consciousness', not a 'soul'. this is the entity that is really "you", and you exist in your body like you would live in a house. however, because of all of the nonsense that we need to go through to be a part of society, we have come to believe that our thought process, our 'mind', is what "you" is, and this is the basic cause of all suffering.

as we are now, while we are "alive", we are basically sleepwalking because we are identified with the mind. when we die, we go back to sleep properly. then we get up and sleepwalk some more in another life. and we have been doing this for many lives, and every time we fall into the same trap of the mind.

pretty much everyone has been brainwashed into thinking that the mind is the master, and we go on being slaves to its idiocies. enlightenment is the process of self-realization; discovering the REAL "you", as a deathless entity completely separate from, but living in, your body.



and you've hit the nail on the head right there. there is no point. as i said before, our entire lives as they are now is just us killing time until we are dead. living like this, tending to the needs of our bullshit societies, trying to make other people happy who are going to die soon anyway... there is absolutely no point.

we are all just wasting time until we realize the self.

This just leads back to 'what is the meaning of life'.

It's either nothing or entertainment.

Quote from Hatchet Haro

I have something to add to my previous theory. Now if you die, you disappear forever. That means you don't have a clue how much time's passed after you die.

You don't have a clue how much time's passed after you die because "you" cease to exist. You didn't exist before you were born, and you have no conceptualization of the billions upon billions of years that preceded it. Same difference.

Quote from Hatchet Haro

Well, that means if you die, you disappear forever. There's no feeling to it since you've got no soul already. It's like... you've disappeared.
This gives me the shivers.

The only reason this concerns you is because you have the rest of your life to experience. It's a lot harder facing the end of your existence when your existence is still mostly potential.

If you died today you'd have a nearly endless list of regrets. That's where the fear you feel now comes from. All you can do is spend the rest of your life making sure that list is as short as possible once you reach the end.

Quote from Hatchet Haro

I also have this ridiculous theory that if you DO have a soul, your memories get wiped after you die and your soul would be transferred to a newborn. Since you're memories were wiped, you don't suspect anything.

So what is a soul, without memories of its own past? It sounds more like your attempt to assign a unique, personal identity to your own self-conceptualization. Why? What's so good about "you", in that case? You're just another chain in the link. That's just fucking depressing to me

Quote from Scarecrow

the idea is that we each have a 'consciousness', not a 'soul'. this is the entity that is really "you", and you exist in your body like you would live in a house. however, because of all of the nonsense that we need to go through to be a part of society, we have come to believe that our thought process, our 'mind', is what "you" is, and this is the basic cause of all suffering.

So where did this 'consciousness' come from? How did it come to exist separately from humans, which are essentially organic self-replicating machines, yet grow to become completely compatible with them?

Why does this process happen if the thought-processes and "mind" are an inherent basic cause of suffering? Why would two separate entities co-exist if there's no benefit to it?

Quote from Scarecrow

and you've hit the nail on the head right there. there is no point. as i said before, our entire lives as they are now is just us killing time until we are dead. living like this, tending to the needs of our bullshit societies, trying to make other people happy who are going to die soon anyway... there is absolutely no point.

There is no inherent meaning, but you're a fool if you think that equates to meaninglessness.

An ultimate reason for existing wouldn't be good anyway. The best part about our existence is the fact that it is just killing time, we have no pre-mandated purposes to fulfill, no reason for existing that we're pressured to follow. We're completely and absolutely free to create our own meaning, our own purposes.

If you're jaded because of society, that's one thing. Humans generally kind of suck. But taking it out on our existential situation seems a little unfair. It's without a doubt one of the most amazing aspects of this universe, and we're a part of it.

And while we're theorizing about death, and what happens afterwards, let me chime in really quick.

We're made up of nothing but natural elements found everywhere else in the universe. Our actual composition is not unique aside from the way its arranged, and the interactions that arise from it.

Prior to my birth there wasn't any sort of force traceable back to who I am now, just waiting for these elements to arrange themselves into a form that I can reside in. I am, completely and entirely, the byproduct of this specific arrangement of matter which has existed from the beginning of time. Before that, it was pure nothingness.

Here's the thing -- I can't find a single difference between the state that *I* was in before I was born, and the state *I* will return to after I die. Namely, complete and total non-existence. They appear identical, aside from the fact that my consciousness did exist, but that's irrelevant when the processes which maintained it no longer exist themselves. It's dead and gone, never to return.

If I was able to come into existence from pure and total nothingness, I see no reason to believe it can't happen again. It will be purely and completely irrelevant to anything that has to do with my current life, but I think the subjective experience of life isn't necessarily followed by nothingness. At least not as long as conscious life continues to exist in some form, somewhere in the universe.

The really mind-blowing thought is that time doesn't actually "pass", it's just another dimension to the universe which life can only experience in a linear manner. If time is disregarded than the above scenario can be repeated ad nauseum with every life form which ever existed -- a sort of non-transcendental "universal consciousness". But I don't believe in that concept as strongly as everything else I've said here.



sorry, slow day at work, forgive the pseudo-intellectual ramblings.

Interesting post to read, I like your thought process.

In response, I'd say that we dont reach a state of nothingness after death, perhaps our consciousness is wiped but our body remains. This is ultimately doing to degrade and be recycled, turning into nourishment for another living thing.. I don't know how consciousness comes into existence but it has to be made up of some conglomerate of cells created by energy, and eventually your decomposing body will fuel the creation of another consciousness, surely?.. Does that mean "you" effectively play a part in this consciousness and are reborn? Naturally if this was the case it would have no relation to your previous life and you would no longer be "you", so effectively every death is still final. But at the same time, you are "reborn" into a new conscience.
I'm bad at explaining ideas and thoughts but hopefully that makes sense, its a really interesting topic to consider though.

Edit: aimed at exilement

Quote from Mesmay

In response, I'd say that we dont reach a state of nothingness after death, perhaps our consciousness is wiped but our body remains.

Your logic for this is because of our physical remains after dying, but like I said, all of those elements existed way before they became "you". So it's still more or less the same state of nothingness.

But if you're just saying our bodies might be broken down to a point where the individual bits of matter might become part of someone else's physical composition, then yeah it's possible, but I don't see any reason to think that's significant. It's a new consciousness, nothing about it is impacted just because part of its physical structure consists of what was once me.