I recently read of one very real possibility for the
"afterlife."
You may have heard of the "time dilation" effect which an astronaut would experience as he fell into a black hole. As he got further and further into the hole's gravity well, he would see time "sped up" such that he would see the entire future of the universe zip by as in an instant... from "now" until the "heat death of the universe" would seem to pass in an eyeblink.
Indeed, he might see the black hole "evaporate" before his very eyes (as he falls closer and closer to it) and would never fall into it... even black holes will one day "fade away" according to quantum cosmology.)
And there he'd be in his starship, trillions and trillions of years into the future... alone in a dead universe. But to HIM, only a MINUTE might have passed. (Unlikely though, he'd be dead from the tidal forces which tore him and his ship apart.)
For observers on Earth though, something FAR more
gruesome would transpire... we'd see him locked in time, perhaps screaming as tidal forces tore him apart... "plastered" on the black hole's "event horizon"...
FOREVER. (Or at least "forever", so far as we can visualize it! Maybe every couple million years or so, we'd see a slight change in the contortions of his Munch-esque, screaming visage...)
Enough science fiction - onto the GOOD stuff.
Imagine that when you die... something analogous happens, but in REVERSE.
To observers at your bedside, the last few minutes of your life after you lose consciousness go by as, well... MINUTES. But unknown to them...
As your consciousness fades, you begin to... DREAM.
(As in all dreams, you are at the mercy of your SUBCONSCIOUS mind.)
You have the "life review" which stretches first into DAYS, then maybe years, centuries. Time STRETCHES during what is (objectively) 5 or so minutes. Perhaps if you had great mental discipline and thought only HAPPY thoughts during your life, you'd experience "heaven."
But if you had a lot of PAINFUL experiences, or boring experiences, or (perhaps worst of all) GUILTY FEELINGS, for whatever reason...
You'd find out what REAL HELL was, as your subjective sense of time stretched out to...
INFINITY.
And the worst part is... your "afterlife experiences" could very well be largely be the work of OTHER PEOPLE (who you'd meet again, as constructs of your subconscious mind... but you WOULDN'T know that, as your rationality would not be there for you...)
Perhaps you might FORGET you'd died. NOW for some old-fashioned HELL, folks. Imagine we are talking about a five-year-old boy who has been abused his whole life, and step-daddy got drunk and walloped him a bit too hard... the boy dies, AND all the kid knew his WHOLE LIFE was... FEAR. Guess what his "afterlife" will be filled with, and who he'll get to deal with for the rest of a functional ETERNITY? (Yup, you guessed it... fear, and step-daddy!) This scenario happens EVERY day, people..!
It doesn't have to be this way for US though, if we take an elementary precaution.  A very SIMPLE expedient can at least spare me, and the rest of you, from this possibility. What is it, you ask?
Heavy surgical anesthesia. If you've ever been "put under", you know that the DREAM CENTER of your brain is shut down. You don't dream when you are drugged strongly enough.
Therefore, I am thinking of a living will which specifies that I be given surgical anesthesia as I begin to die (say in a hospital or hospice.) A "Mickey Finn", a knockout cocktail.
If what I just wrote about IS the "Real Afterlife" (and there is no way to prove that it ISN'T) then I DON'T want to experience it. I wonder if the doctors/nurses would honor my request for a knockout shot???
(BTW, my cousin pretty much destroyed his brain when he shot himself, as I heard it. There wasn't much left. Hopefully he was spared the above-mentioned experience, as you'd need a FUNCTIONING brain to dream. In any case, stay away from pills, wrist slashing, hanging, ect. if you ever commit suicide, and make DAMN SURE you don't commit murder and end up on Death Row..! Those criminals may have something infinitely more horrific than even Clive Barker could envision awaiting them, as they'd have GUILT... at least subconsciously... and that's all they'd need to unconsciously create a rip-roaring eternal Hell-nightmare for themselves - not to mention the miserable early-life memories that they'd have... as many, if not most murderers do!!!)
Does any of this make sense to you, folks?

B-man

Hey Man! -B-man,

Mello out!  You sure do get on a Roll-start to remind me of myself.  Remember to BREATH.  You’re OK and you’ve defiantly chosen the right place to work all this stuff through.  You’re most likely putting into words many of the thoughts that some of the lurkers on this board might have and certainly providing alternative view points for the rest of us.  Of course some of these viewpoints we’ve heard before, but hey, they are worth mentioning again.   I imagine that you are a lot healthier than those you’re surrounded by because of your ability to express yourself in a safe environment, this board, while you try to fit all the pieces together  8).  That’s why most of the rest of us are here, trying to fill in the gaps to tie it all together and to hear ourselves think.  Us humans need the audience and we need to connect with others.

So keep up the good work, remember to breath, and Mellow Out man!!! ;D

Love, Jean :-*

Chumley:

Perhaps instead of devoting a lot of time imagining how bad the afterlife might be, you might devote some time imagining how wonderfull it can be.

Check out Bruce Moen's 4th book and Michael Newton's books. They show that the afterlife isn't just some big unorganized mess. In fact, it's much more organized than the physical, because things like greed, the belief in transiency and ego don't get in the way. Also, they have a much better communication system going on.

Some people experience a negative afterlife because that's the reality they create while here in the physical. What kind of reality do you want to create for yourself?

What I would like to know is...
Why did so MANY ancient cultures conceive of the afterlife as a vile, dreary, gloomy "netherworld?"
Take the Sumerians, who believed that everyone except "super-heroes" (like Gilgamesh) would end up in a dark, cold, dusty cavern covered with gray feathers like "night birds", and with nothing to eat except mud?
What of the Vikings, who believed that EVERYONE (except the most valiant warriors) would go to a place called "Helheim" (sound familiar?) where they were wet, cold, and miserable and had only fecal matter to eat, and goat's urine to slake their thirst?
Why did the Greeks imagine a dismal existence in "Hades", where the dead titter like bats and required blood sacrifices to (temporarily) gain the ability to speak (Achilles, when he had been given an offering of some goat's blood by Odysseus, remarked that he would rather be "a servant of a poor man in life, than King of Hades." So much for heroes getting a better deal..!)
What of the Aztecs, who believed that most people (except warriors (again!) and those killed by lightning (weird!) would go to another "gloomy cavern" called "Mictlan" which was full of dead men's bones?
What of the ancient Hebrews, and their "Sheol" where the dead "are deprived of reason" and "stagger like drunkards" through a barren wasteland?
I could go on and on...
Now... does it not seem logical that the ANCIENTS would know more of the hereafter than we do? (They most likely based their conclusions on shamanic revelations, and weren't plagued by the arrogant scientism and willful ignorance which marks our times.)
AND... unlike modern (or even medieval!) organized religion, there was no motivation to "fleece the sheep" for their money as religions do today.
After all... who'd put a DIME in the collection plate to be told they were going to a dusty cavern when they died, and that's "all she wrote?"
So we must suspect that those who came up with these glum eschatologies, were being honest. What did they have to gain by fabricatring such visions as these???
Seriously folks, I'm not trying to provoke you or "poke" at you. I'm suggesting science turn itself toward this potential BIG problem, and try to address it as it has other problems so VERY well over the last two hundred years or so.
Perhaps cryonics is the answer... or perhaps we may find a way to "upload" our consciouness into computers (think "The Matrix.")
Who knows? Wish I did...

B-man

Question # 1: If you were God, how would you plan the after life?

Question # 2: Did God have a choice when he planned it?

Perhaps the afterlife has been improved over the last 6000 yrs.  While reading monroe's and moen's books, i got the impression that the parklike rereception area had been built by someone.  Maybe it was built after sumerian times.  I understand that most of the levels; heavens, hells, or other astral worlds were/are constructed.  I even read stories where retreivers found that their dead loved ones had built astral worlds just for themselves alone.  And so, perhaps the dead of those ancient cultures built their own gloomy afterlives.  To each his own, eh?

MS

Mr. S

          I do believe you have something there.

                      Best, Tim

Mr. Satan, I must give you CREDIT for that answer. It is a good one, and is certainly possible.
But wait a minute...
Humanity (fully modern humans, that is) have existed for something like 100,000 years on Earth...
Why did the ancients endure an afterlife of HORROR for so many deca-millenia, before they did something about it???
And why would Nature cause the afterlife (minus human "construction" to be a proverbial "dog" (with bad breath and muddy feet?)
And assuming that we "lose our rational minds" on the "other side"... how would such "construction of something better" be achieved?
I say we have more work to do... with cryonics, mind uploads, ect. (I for one would rather see our tax monies spent on THAT, than the untold billions we are currently wasting on a futile war in Iraq..!)
"Matrix", anyone?

B-man

Question # 1: If you were God, how would you plan the after life?
*****************
If I were "God", the afterlife would have ALL the good stuff of this life, and then some. (It would also have RISKS for those who choose to take them..!) I would also include the *OPTION* of oblivion for those who got tired of conscious existence. (Forever's a long time, child.)
It wouldn't be no dark dusty cave, I can assure you of that.
But then... I'm Not God.

Question # 2: Did God have a choice when he planned it?
*****************
Assuming "God" exists, why wouldn't he "have a choice?" He's God, after all...

B-man

Chumley

Go ahead w the crionics.  There is nothing wrong w that.


Quote:

Why did the ancients endure an afterlife of HORROR for so many deca-millenia, before they did something about it

I see everything as evolving upwards, despite the creation/maintanence/destruction cycles.  Take as an example the institution of slavery.  It was officialy used for centuries before two slightly more enlightened nations decided to put a stop to it.  If indeed the afterlife was changed as i suggested, and within the timeframe which you suggest above, then that situation is totally understandable.


Quote:

And why would Nature cause the afterlife (minus human "construction" to be a proverbial "dog" (with bad breath and muddy feet?)

The primordial (natural) afterlife state may have been as described by those ancient cultures, or worse.  Edgar cayce said that first there was light, then chaos.  After emergence from light, knowledge, experience, everything is in a lost, disorganised state.  Knowledge and organisation takes time to evolve.  Lacking the standard eternal, omniscient, omnipotent god to create all, why should the afterlife be any different?


Quote:

And assuming that we "lose our rational minds" on the "other side"...

Well, you are assuming, of course...


Quote:

how would such "construction of something better" be achieved?

Through beings who evolved to higher levels of conscousness.  

MS

Chumley

Go ahead w the crionics.  There is nothing wrong w that.



I see everything as evolving upwards, despite the creation/maintanence/destruction cycles.  Take as an example the institution of slavery.  It was officialy used for centuries before two slightly more enlightened nations decided to put a stop to it.  If indeed the afterlife was changed as i suggested, and within the timeframe which you suggest above, then that situation is totally understandable.



The primordial (natural) afterlife state may have been as described by those ancient cultures, or worse.  Edgar cayce said that first there was light, then chaos.  After emergence from light, knowledge, experience, everything is in a lost, disorganised state.  Knowledge and organisation takes time to evolve.  Lacking the standard eternal, omniscient, omnipotent god to create all, why should the afterlife be any different?



Well, you are assuming, of course...


Through beings who evolved to higher levels of conscousness.  

MS
*******************************
Perhaps the development of LITERACY... and the written word, education and so on had something to do with it...
Writing (and with it, EDUCATION) only developed over the last 6000 years or so, BTW.
Perhaps the spread of the written word, enabled people to share ideas, and apply THOSE to the betterment of the other side (i.e. how would Buddha, Confucius, ect. have been able to get their initial knowledge base, if they had been illiterate?)

B-man