(Alife abbreviation for After Life, I ran out of space...)

One could say that humans have the brain power more so than any other being....
But supposedly every living thing has a consciousness... Surely my dog and cat have a consciousness.....

They live in the moment... Not knowing the future....
I know what the future holds.

Death.
Decay.
Blackness. Darkness.
Nothingness......
The end.

The one thing we humans share with ALL ANIMALS is a will to LIVE.
It drives us. It moves us.
Death comes to us as a surprise every time.
For we know not....when it will come.
We know not... how it will come.
But we... as humans.... we know that it will claim us.

What I am. What I do. What I will become.
Nothing.
My heart, burns. My soul which I often question longs for meaning. For life.

- Mitchell Shelton (ME)
(I have been drinking some alcohol. I am in a different state right now.)

No.. I am not an alcoholic. I enjoy a good altered state every now and again.

Cheers to you. My fellow humans. May death stumble and have much trouble finding you.
http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/5552/cheersnl5.th.jpg

Yes, we all stumble now and then, even death, I suppose. Perhaps we should all sing a drinking song together, you and me and death and everyone.....

I love an altered state as much as the next guy. Or girl...

cheers, blink :)

[quote author=Terethian link=1203046354/0#0 date=1203046353](Alife abbreviation for After Life, I ran out of space...)

One could say that humans have the brain power more so than any other being....
But supposedly every living thing has a consciousness... Surely my dog and cat have a consciousness.....

They live in the moment... Not knowing the future....
I know what the future holds.

Death.
Decay.
Blackness. Darkness.
Nothingness......
The end.

The one thing we humans share with ALL ANIMALS is a will to LIVE.
It drives us. It moves us.
Death comes to us as a surprise every time.
For we know not....when it will come.
We know not... how it will come.
But we... as humans.... we know that it will claim us.

What I am. What I do. What I will become.
Nothing.
My heart, burns. My soul which I often question longs for meaning. For life.

- Mitchell Shelton (ME)
(I have been drinking some alcohol. I am in a different state right now.)

No.. I am not an alcoholic. I enjoy a good altered state every now and again.

[b]Cheers to you. My fellow humans. May death stumble and have much trouble finding you.
*****************
Well Terethian (or is that "Mitchell"?),
I see that you're inclined to the mechanist/materialist school
of metaphysics. Welcome to the club, I am also so
inclined.
But if you were SURE of the fact that there was no afterlife, you
wouldn't be here. I speak from first-hand experience. So, I'm
just curious...
Do you WANT death to be the end? Would knowing, not just believing
but KNOWING, that death was "The End of Everything" for you, make
you happy, or unhappy?
After many years of thought, I'd be happy to know it was "The End."
(Although some form of OPTIONAL reincarnation, in which I got
to pick the time and circumstances of my re-occurrence, might not
be so bad. Or who knows, maybe I'll buy a cryonics contract some
day. In any case, I'll have you know that I only think life worthwhile,
if it is PHYSICAL life. Being a "ghost" or whatever ain't for me! If only
because a ghost can't enjoy a drink every now and then, as both you
and I like to do.)
How about yourself? (Or am I the only one here who would make a
happy atheist..?)

B-man

[Brendan:] "Being a "ghost" or whatever ain't for me! If onlybecause a ghost can't enjoy a drink every now and then, as both you and I like to do."
______________________________________________

B-man, on Robert Bruce's site, he recounts an astral visit to a recently dead alcoholic friend whom he finds plastered, immersed in a bathtub full of beer.  His buddy was too drunk to talk with him. Anyway, I was just thinking--if we could relocate your dead spirit to that "Beer Heaven," would you be interested?  Of course, if you were, you would have to listen to my biblical teaching, preaching, etc. before you could get there  ::), but.... Anyway, enough of this!  Do you wanna go there?

Yours till the deserts freeze and the camels come skating home,
Don

I feel what I feel.

I trust what I feel.

However that does not mean that I will abandon all hope.

Even if I feel it is hopeless.

In response to Berserk2's question about what you want in the afterlife...(even though the question was not directed at me.) I will answer this because I wish to tell what I WANT.

1. I want to die and find myself outside of my body.
2. I want to watch my body die.
3. I want to be able to monitor what happens to all of my loved ones still left on Earth.
4. I want to meet others that are dead including my special someone that has passed.
5. I want to interact and have full matrix like games to play along with others that enjoy the same type of fantasy role playing.

Will this happen? I do not know.

(I have not died yet.) (Obviously.)

But one can hope.

A sleeping state of death which some people claim happens from retrievals is NOT ACCEPTABLE to me. I need to witness and experience everything.
I will not sleep.
I will not rest.

If my WILL power alone is strong enough....
If my conviction is strong enough....
I will get what I desire.
And if I do not?
I suppose it won't matter since the nothing will be all that I have left.
From nothingness I have come.
Too nothingness I may return.
The sadness fills my heart and soul.
I weep tears of pain and sorrow.
But the end will surely come.

T-

Question....do you resist (fear?) going to sleep at night?

To some folks, sleeping is about as close as most of us can get to death.

If it's a deep sleep, we may as well be dead other than the fact that our brain is still functioning.

I also want to be fully conscious when I die, not comatose or killed suddenly in a car wreck.  

R

Greetings,

One day I saw a dog laying down at the top of a hill in a pasture. His head was on his paws but he was looking off to the east with the most wonderful expression in his eyes, like he was seeing or at least thinking of something absolutely amazing.

As I walked closer to him I got concerned that I would startle him, because he still hadn't noticed me. I thought this from a purely selfish point of view, getting afraid he might bite.

A few steps closer and I realized he was physically dead or almost so. But his eyes reflected something glorious.

Since then I've thought of animals differently. Between the fetch, down, and heel  we may demand of them, they have their moments for spiritual connection too.
I believe they know Spirit, death, and even God.

Bets

Beautiful post Bets.

Maybe animals are more "true", meaning similar to their higher self than humans are with their ego. Animals take it as it comes, while humans tend to isolate themselves breeding on their own agenda, this human trait is separating humans from their higher selves; but it might be that this is intended, to have this specific human experience as a special way to learn something.

Terethian:
In retrievals I came across people who were in a sort of sleep. These people were either believing that death was just nothing or sleeping, or they were denying their own death, or just fearing to move on for whatever reason, and so they used sleep to sort of freeze their present situation.
In most cases I came across I could wake them up, at least partially, so that they moved on to a different place where further attempts will take place to wake them up entirely.
 I'd say this doesn't happen when you believe that it is possible and desirable to have an active afterlife.

Spooky

Rondele-

To be truthful, it is not death that I fear....

I fear ceasing to exist.

wrote on Feb 16^th, 2008 at 11:11pm:

Rondele- To be truthful, it is not death that I fear.... I fear ceasing to exist.

***************
Ah, but if you ceased to exist...
How would you know you did not exist?
How could you be the worse off for
not existing?
And answer this question, to your own satisfaction.
(If you dare...)
Why is it better to exist, than NOT to exist? You'd lose
gain, but you'd also gain freedom from loss (and loss
IS part of life.) How can you lose anything, if there's
nothing for you to lose? What's the point of gain, if you're
destined to lose it all in the end?
Consider carefully.

B-man

Terethian,

I have had a profound nde and you are not free from JW indoctrination, here is an account of an JW nde:




Ex-Jehovah Witness Learns the Witnesses lie about our Spirit Bodies

The Near Death Experience of Haydee Cortes


I was baptized by the Jehovah witnesses in 1970. I believed in God but I didn't believe that Jesus Christ was God.  I believed Jesus Christ was a god created by the true God. I didn't believe in life after death much less that there was a conscious spirit that would leave the body when one died. I didn't believe in any kind of miracle healing nor I believed that God would communicate with people through visions or dreams. I believed that all kind of healing, miracles and visions were the work of the devil. I was very loyal to these Jehovah Witness teachings, and nobody could convince me of the contrary.

On September 12, 1973 I was ready to have a C-section done. While I was on the operation table I could see how the doctors and nurses were getting ready to do their job and they were kind of painting my abdomen with an orange liquid. I was concerned about it and asked what were they doing. The doctor explained to me that they were doing this before the anesthesia since they had to apply the anesthesia and start cutting right away to avoid the baby to be sedated.

They started injecting me the anesthesia and I felt a strange sensation. My body got stiffed, but my mind stayed awake. I realized they were going to cut my abdomen and I was not asleep. I tried to move and scream in desperation but all efforts were in vain. I started feeling a terrible pain while they were cutting my abdomen. All of a sudden in the middle of my pain I heard an audible voice saying; "Look what is going to happen to you!"
In that instant I was pulled out of my body with a sudden swoosh. I was moving very fast in a circular motion heading toward the ceiling of the room. I stayed hovering there looking down to what they were doing. I could see how my baby was being taken out of my womb. I felt very sad and I said: "Nothing can be done, everything is over for me on the earth. I was so anxious to see that baby and I couldn't even hold it in my arms". I remembered my other children with sadness and said, "This is the end; now my children will forget all about me".

I then started going up. I was aware I didn't have a solid body. I was some kind of energy force moving at a high speed like in a circular motion. I was completely conscious. I knew I was me and I had all my memories with me. I knew I had left the earth. I found myself in a pitch black place. I started asking questions to myself. "Is this the universe? Where am I? Where am I going to? Am I going to stay here forever?" All of a sudden I started feeling something very strange. The only word I can use for this is agony or torment. At the same time I was feeling a need for my body. I wanted to get out of there and I wanted my body back. I couldn't bear the torment. I remembered the voice I heard at the hospital right before coming out of my body ("look what is going to happen to you"). I started screaming "PLEASE, DON'T LET THIS TO HAPPEN!" " I ACCEPT I WON'T EVER GO TO THE EARTH AGAIN , I ACCEPT I WON 'T EVER SEE MY CHILDREN AGAIN, BUT I CAN'T ACCEPT I WILL BE HERE FOREVER". "NO, PLEASE, DON'T LET THIS TO HAPPEN!" Immediately I heard a group of voices saying at the same time "This is for you to believe". I answered " I only believe in the Almighty God.

Then there was a silence.  

The torment I was feeling stopped and I started to come down at a high speed again. I found myself back to the ceiling of the hospital room. This time my body was laying on a stretcher and I saw a nurse tapping its face and saying "Haydee, wake up!" I could clearly see her while I was moving down closer. Then I was softly dropped inside my body. The nurse was still tapping my face and calling my name. I opened my eyes and there she was right in front of my face. I looked at her eyes while I was thinking "I wish you knew where I'm coming from". I couldn't take the experience away from my mind and I was in a big concern about people in the world. I thought, "The Jehovah Witnesses deceived me, we are Spiritual Beings inside a flesh body and we come out of the body when we die!" People don't know what can happen to them. They should know about this!"

With this experience I learned that since I didn't believe in the Son of God I was in darkness. And there is where I went.

Matthew 8:11-12," And I say to you that many will come from east and west, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. But the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Matthew 25:30 - And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

A few days later I was discharged from the hospital. I couldn't stop thinking about my amazing experience. I kept on repeating to myself, "I was deceived by the Jehovah Witnesses about no spirit coming out of the body when we died, and I just experienced it". I started to care for everyone in the world. I wanted to warn everybody about that dark place. I decided then to believe in Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord and started visiting a Christian church.

After I have received Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior I woke up one night and got up from my bed. While walking toward the door I looked back at my bed and I saw my husband sleeping and to my surprise, my body was also there next to him. I realized I was out of my body again but this time I was not a formless energy moving at high speed. This time I had a body. I stretched my arms forward and looked at this new body. I then looked at my children's bedroom and I felt sad to leave them. I thought, "now when my children wake up they will see I'm dead. They will bury me and they will forget all about me. They don't have anybody to take good care of them, poor things".

I then knelt on the floor and started praying, "Please Lord, in the name of your son Jesus Christ, return me to my body. My children need me." I felt a force lifting me up slowly from the floor and positioned me on top of my material body on the bed and I started to come down slowly until I fell inside it. Right away I tried to open my eyes and move but the body was rigid like a wall . All efforts to move were in vain. I got desperate and I started to pray "Please Lord, my children need me; there is no one to take care of them properly, bring me back to life." I started feeling like needles inside my whole body. I felt the force of life and the beating of my heart. I then opened my eyes and this time they opened. Then I moved my fingers to check and they moved. I then jumped out of my bed amazed.

I have told this experience in different churches and many lives have been touched and have given their hearts to the Lord. To God be the glory.

alan

Thanks for sharing that Alan. It was very interesting!

Ceasing to exist is not acceptable. It is not what I consider an option. Each breath I take solidifies my need to exist. True, I see your point that if one ceases to exist then one will cease thinking and needing anything.... yet this is unacceptable.

You do not want to know what terrible things I am capable of if I knew that doing them would make me live forever.

....terrible things.

[quote author=Terethian link=1203046354/0#12 date=1203262505]Thanks for sharing that Alan. It was very interesting!

Ceasing to exist is not acceptable. It is not what I consider an option. Each breath I take solidifies my need to exist. True, I see your point that if one ceases to exist then one will cease thinking and needing anything.... yet this is unacceptable.

You do not want to know what terrible things I am capable of if I knew that doing them would make me live forever.

....terrible things.
*****************
You wish to live forever and would do terrible things to
secure your immortality?
I wish I had the power to grant you your wish, and come
back to see you again in 500 years or so. (It would be
interesting, to see if you were wise enough to specify certain basics,
such as having your aging process halted or if you would
have defenses in place against certain types of injuries. BTW,
those are just TWO of a pretty big list of caveats.)
You're a young guy, so would your story be a classic in the
annals of "be careful what you wish for" stories? Or have you
carefully thought through just what "living forever" would
really mean?
Pretty interesting stuff (to me, anyway..!)

B-man

Oh I am a... loving... married man. I love my family, my friends.

If I knew with complete certainty the continuance of my consciousness or forever life I would do such things that would make little children quiver in fear.

Like Lord Voldemort I would destroy and drink a unicorns blood...
Like Darth Vader I would join the dark side...

I cannot even tell you the limit of what I would do because I would be embarrassed and ashamed at the lengths I would go.

Regardless such a knowledge and choice to make will not happen because we live on the planet EARTH in a thing called real life. So no one will have to know.

Forget what you know of a good person. A good person who has lived they're life in a good way can do the unthinkable. For no reason at all.

I guess T that it's worth pondering a little about the nature of self interest, and the rules that underpin existence. Especially the idea that even if there was no prospect of continued existence after death that it still makes sense to live through love.

One way of looking at it is that love is in a sense the highest or most sophisticated form of self interest there is. We start by deferring gratification for longer term gain, but in the end may come to realise that in life any pursuit of gratification for its own sake leads to suffering.

It's presumably species dependent, but my personal experience is that many animals have both quite decent intellects and  are more than capable of projecting future events - and getting scared of what they see coming. They suffer this way too.

The difference is that they seem better able to rest in the moment, and go with flow - presumably because they do less thinking which seems likely to do with less intellect. But they do get nervous and neurotic and need love too (thinking of a cat) so they presumably grasp/project too.

There's times I wonder about the value of intellect in that it creates the human monkey brain and all the striving, grasping and suffering that entails in the untrained state, but I suppose that it's potentially the means of helping us to overcome the fear it created that makes us grasp too, and is one step up on Jacob's ladder. Maybe this is just the apprenticeship!!

Animals seem insofar as their intellect allows to be bound to the selfish view, their intellect seems not sufficient to enable them potentially to transcend this. There's other ways of getting there, but we can as above figure out very complex views on where our self interest truly lies.

So that with time we can transition from an intellectual position to become something else...

The main thought that comes to mind is.... if there is no afterlife....then why are we here? Why do we exist?

Why we exist is a question I could ask either way.
No one can truly answer that question.
No human mind can comprehend something coming from nothing.
Or something simply having always existed.
It does not seem logical. Theories... hypotheses... this is all that we have and will ever have in this world.

Why are we here?
Are we simply an evolved form of animal?
Are we the finest creation of God, made in his image?
Are we ourselves all connected, one etheric God-like being, on Earth to explore and become more?

These things are certain...
1. This planet is the only planet with life as we know it in this solar system. Oh there could be traces of life but none to the extent of Earth.

2. We also know for a fact that the universe is huge. We know there are other huge planets and other "life giving" stars.

Did this God create all of this? Did he make a bunch of other planets and "MESS UP" several times till he got it right with the Earth?
Did we just happen out of pure happenstance? A reaction from many years of evolution and amazing explosions?

To most people the idea of a God seems more rational than some explosion.
Perhaps humans have evolved just like they say....
Perhaps humans have evolved beyond the need for a living body already?
Perhaps once our body dies our consciousness has evolved to a point beyond the norm and continues.
Or perhaps every living thing has this consciousness, this spirit.

Or perhaps we are just globs of living tissue with little purpose than to stay alive as long as we can.

One thing is for sure.... The answer is not going to come by itself.

wrote on Feb 18^th, 2008 at 5:34pm:

The main thought that comes to mind is.... if there is no afterlife....then why are we here? Why do we exist? Why we exist is a question I could ask either way. No one can truly answer that question. No human mind can comprehend something coming from nothing. Or something simply having always existed. It does not seem logical. Theories... hypotheses... this is all that we have and will ever have in this world. Why are we here? Are we simply an evolved form of animal? Are we the finest creation of God, made in his image? Are we ourselves all connected, one etheric God-like being, on Earth to explore and become more? These things are certain... 1. This planet is the only planet with life as we know it in this solar system. Oh there could be traces of life but none to the extent of Earth. 2. We also know for a fact that the universe is huge. We know there are other huge planets and other "life giving" stars. Did this God create all of this? Did he make a bunch of other planets and "MESS UP" several times till he got it right with the Earth? Did we just happen out of pure happenstance? A reaction from many years of evolution and amazing explosions? To most people the idea of a God seems more rational than some explosion. Perhaps humans have evolved just like they say.... Perhaps humans have evolved beyond the need for a living body already? Perhaps once our body dies our consciousness has evolved to a point beyond the norm and continues. Or perhaps every living thing has this consciousness, this spirit. Or perhaps we are just globs of living tissue with little purpose than to stay alive as long as we can. One thing is for sure.... The answer is not going to come by itself.

*****************
There's a couple of things woth noting here, T...
#1. SETI search attempts have all come up dry. From all directions
we listen in the galaxy, comes the soft crackle and hiss of natural
events, and nothing more. (Compare that to Carl Sagan and his
"billions and billions" of alien super-civilizations.)
Either we're somehow unique (and the only technological species that
has ever existed - an idea I find VERY hard to believe - OR could it be, that civilizations are common as dirt...)
But short-lived? SO short lived, that whatever messages they send out, are only sent for such a brief time that we'll likely never catch the signal?
Could intelligence, be self-destructive by its very nature?

#2. Do a google on "James Lovelock+global warming" and see how
we're probably a deader as a species, by 2100 if not sooner. (Apparently climate change is upon us, and it is too late to do anything about it.)
All this suggests to me, that life in general (and conscious, sentient,
self-aware life in particular) is a sad joke perpetrated by a mindless
universe whose only purpose (if you want to call it that) is the degradation of matter and energy to a maximum state of entropy.
We arer simply a means to that "end", as rather efficient degraders
of our local energy system... self-aware bags of chemicals, going about our business of reducing our surroundings to a maximum state of disorder until we die off and add the collective decaying corpse of our species to the dead pile of organic rubbish which used to be Earth's biosphere, perhaps fertilizing it for  the NEXT round of entropy-increasing lifeforms that emerge on the planet...
The sadly comical thing about it, is how important we consider ouselves
to be, as if we even mattered in the grand scheme of things (such as there is such a thing.)
I wonder how many alien species went down just like us - all the time thinking that they were something "special?" Oh well. We'll never know and they never got to know, either. (And in the end, does it really matter anyway, outside of the pitiful little dreams and silly desires which churn in the fantastically complex, yet oh-so perishable little meat computers we call our "minds?")
Considering all this, what "purpose" does life need to have, that would require an "afterlife"???

B-man

[The sadly comical thing about it, is how important we consider ouselves
to be, as if we even mattered in the grand scheme of things (such as there is such a thing.)
I wonder how many alien species went down just like us - all the time thinking that they were something "special?" Oh well. We'll never know and they never got to know, either. (And in the end, does it really matter anyway, outside of the pitiful little dreams and silly desires which churn in the fantastically complex, yet oh-so perishable little meat computers we call our "minds?")
Considering all this, what "purpose" does life need to have, that would require an "afterlife"???

B-man[/quote]

You mean...........we're.........not........SPECIAL?????????????

So, when I see a rainbow.......it's not there just for me?

:) Potentially the biggest whoooooah!!! moment in all of this is that depending on your view absolutely everything that goes on not just in our intellect but in much higher levels of mind as well is very possibly ultimately irrelevant.

Or at least relevant only inasmuch as how we conduct ourselves has implications for our extricating ourselves from the self made and rather uncomfortable realities we've made. That may include everything in this samsaric time/space reality or cosmos - which seems possibly to be maintained in existence by some sort of collective concensus ....

Hi I  remember my other little darling dog i had as he was a rescued little dog and he was very nervous when i got him,he would just cower up in a corner, so i picked him up and looked straight into his eyes and told him not to be scared anymore because i loved him and he would only ever have love now he was living with me and after that day ,he followed me everywhere in the house and he started to trust and feel safe and most importantly loved,and he was a very happy little dog,i remember what Deanna said to me,your little dog got lucky because he and me found each other.
He lived till he was 15 yrs old and one morning i got up and he was asleep but was having trouble breathing,so i rushed him to the vet and i sat in the vets crying and holding him and telling him that i loved him so much.then when i took him in and layed him on the table,the vet said "I ,m so sorry but he,s dieing,well my heart was breaking and the vet said she would put him to sleep to quicken his ending,when she gave him this stuff i was strokeing his head and  then he wouldnt let go and tryed to fight this stuff and the vet said to me,"He,s fighting it,he does not want to leave you,so she gave him some more.

I looked in his eyes and kissed him on his head and said to him that i loved him and i would never forget him and then i asked dad to come and fetch him,pleading to dad not to let him go to the spirit world alone and as soon as i said that,my little dog died,the hurt inside me was to much to bear,i couldn,t stop crying over him,i loved him so much.

He died on the thursday and i went to the church on the sunday, but before i went ,i said to dad please come through dad and let me know if my little boy is with you and the medium came through and he said"I got your dad here and i,m not sure what he means,but he,s saying that you have got to stop crying because he,s looking after your little boy",after that i stopped crying because then i knew that my little dog was being looked after by my loving dad.

Animals feel love much stronger than humans sometimes and all they ask in return is to be loved also.

Dear Father God Please surround the animal kingdom with your protection of love and light,and please Dear Father God can you send healing to whatever animal is suffering around the world.Thankyou Father.  amen

Love and God bless    love juditha

Thanks for the great story. It gives me hope. I languish every day over not knowing what really happens to us.

Hi Terethian I'm glad that my storie has given you hope, i can tell you with certainty that our spirit does leave our body because i have had an outofbody experience.

Love and God bless     love juditha

Terethian,

What an interesting thread. The unknown of the afterlife was what propelled me to look for answers many years ago. Hence this site gave me so much hope in life. I refuse to believe that there is nothing after death. If it is so, I should live out a hedonistic lifestyle, instead of trying to live the bland, boring path that we call morality.

mmm.. that leads to an interesting question...

If there were no consequences whatsoever, what 7 sins would you commit? I would like to love more men. Being married to just one doesn't seem natural to me. Aren't we here to experience PUL, so what is the harm in loving more than one man deeply?  now, that would be my heaven....  :o hahahha... (don't judge, just thinking out loud)

<< I languish every day over not knowing what really happens to us.>>

Terethian-

Here's an idea......instead of languishing over this, why not get over yourself and do something worthwhile with your time?

Not to pick on you, but there's way too much whining on this board about death and the fear of the unknown.  

The earth was turning billions of years before you were born and will continue to do so long after you die.  So in the meantime, why waste precious time worrying about something over which you have zero control?

Courage is an attribute that is really critical to leading a worthwhile life, and I seriously doubt folks of courage carry on endlessly about their fear of dying.

R

On the other hand, what is most courageous? To question and doubt the afterlife, for lack of evidence and faith, or to blindly swallow what this board and other sources say about the afterlife? The first can obviously nurture fear, but I've not joined this board to delude myself. Does it touch your belief system in any way when people speak their doubts?

Both points are worth noting. There is no reason to worry about death to the point where you stop living....

Yet neither should a human with our intelligence ever stop to question and seek answers.

wrote on Feb 17^th, 2008 at 11:35am:

Thanks for sharing that Alan. It was very interesting! Ceasing to exist is not acceptable. It is not what I consider an option. Each breath I take solidifies my need to exist. True, I see your point that if one ceases to exist then one will cease thinking and needing anything.... yet this is unacceptable. You do not want to know what terrible things I am capable of if I knew that doing them would make me live forever. ....terrible things.

Terethian,

Your logic is what brought me to this site originally a few years back. I was drawn into this mode of thinking after my grandfather passed away and have struggled with it ever since. Ironically alcohol seems to quell those thoughts for me (I guess I am an alcoholic too  ;)) But seriously, there are two things that keep from from the brink of insanity by overthinking about this....

1. Regardless of your fear of the unknown, which it truly is because you really don't "know" for a fact until you in some way come to terms with the truth, you will face your exodus, so why worry about it to the point of affecting the life you are obviously sill living.

....and....

2. There are too many things around us that suggest "otherwise", meaning not existing after death can be debunked over and over and over and over again. There are too many supernatural unexplained, fanned at by some scientific bull as an answer, things that exist in this world. Prime example: How we got here in the first place!!

So I have become more open minded to the idea that there is SOMETHING after death, because too many compelling things suggest that, but I am not going to beat myself up over a definitive "what" right now, because it clouds the quality of my life that I should be enjoying living.

Today means more to me than anything because I am living it, and if I died tomorrow, then my questions about the future will be answered...........

And if that doesn't help......good luck. Maybe you weren't even looking for help, which I understand as well. Sometimes we are our own therapists without even realizing it....

- JG

Actually alcohol causes my worries to get worse... I don't drink too often especially since it causes my worry to be amplified. My best friend just got out of jail though so I am probably gonna get drunk with him sometime soon.

Well, I am not giving up on living forever just in case. The interesting thing about "old age" and the decay of the human body over time is that it is due to cells being unable to reproduce more than 50 times. This is because the telomeres which are attached to the cells get shorter every time a cell reproduces. One can try to slow cell reproduction by pumping full of antioxidants but this is not going to stop it from happening. Scientists are even now trying to find a cure to stop and even rejuvenate human cells. In fact, using nano-technology we one group actually has a product that is supposed to do just this! We are talking near immortality.

As long as one does not have an accident or perhaps eats poorly and has a heart attack etc.
Well, there will always be death... yet if you could stop the aging proccess the death rate and life expectancy would SKY ROCKET! This would in fact be very bad for the Earth but I can sympathize with the human need to live as long as possible. I would be willing to never have kids if I could live forever.

Here is the site which talks about cells if anyone is interested. The bottom of the page is the new technology being worked on.
http://www.viewzone.com/aging.html

Gee, man, I'd be willing to never have kids, just for a normal-length life. :D

[quote author=Terethian link=1203046354/15#28 date=1203627214]Actually alcohol causes my worries to get worse... I don't drink too often especially since it causes my worry to be amplified. My best friend just got out of jail though so I am probably gonna get drunk with him sometime soon.

Well, I am not giving up on living forever just in case. The interesting thing about "old age" and the decay of the human body over time is that it is due to cells being unable to reproduce more than 50 times. This is because the telomeres which are attached to the cells get shorter every time a cell reproduces. One can try to slow cell reproduction by pumping full of antioxidants but this is not going to stop it from happening. Scientists are even now trying to find a cure to stop and even rejuvenate human cells. In fact, using nano-technology we one group actually has a product that is supposed to do just this! We are talking near immortality.

As long as one does not have an accident or perhaps eats poorly and has a heart attack etc.
Well, there will always be death... yet if you could stop the aging proccess the death rate and life expectancy would SKY ROCKET! This would in fact be very bad for the Earth but I can sympathize with the human need to live as long as possible. I would be willing to never have kids if I could live forever.

Here is the site which talks about cells if anyone is interested. The bottom of the page is the new technology being worked on.
*****************
I'm all for this sort of technology. There's just
a couple of problems...
-Global warming will probably make the planet
uninhabitable within a few decades. Sure it's
great if you're age-proof, but what do you eat
if there's no food because agriculture has collapsed?
-If I were you, I'd get cracking on becoming RICH,
because my guess is, the poor are going to be left
out of the "endless youth revolution" if it does
occur.

Just my $0.02,
B-man
P.S. I'd trade having kids for agelessness, too.
(Count me IN on that one.)
Hmmm... could this be the answer to global
overpopulation then? Give people a choice of
having kids, OR the anti-aging serum (but not
both?
Time may tell..!

Taking on board FBs and going back to your original post T one view is that grasping after life (or fear of death) is the basic perception that keeps us bound to this reality.

There's a bit of an existential catch 22 question around this. Most traditions would teach that fear of death (or of non-continuity of the individual self) follows from a mistaken view of the nature of our existence (we fail to perceive how linked with and interdependent we are with everything - horizontally in terms of everything in the conventional universe, and vertically in terms of all levels of consciousness from what appears physical existence to God level or unity.

The more fearful we get the more convinced of our 'aloneness' and less able to perceive these realities we become.

The basic problem is that if we seek to duck the issue of death or to unnaturally prolong our existence beyond what fate or karma or God has in mind we risk getting fixated on it, and in our obsession becoming dominated by our fears and doing a lot of harm to others. Not to mention probably shortening our lives as a result of the ensuing behaviours. (drink is not exactly a life extender, nor are the other things we get into to take our mind off the issue, or in an attempt to take from others what we need to survive)

The other issue is that no amount of afterlife exploring is likely to give us very much certainty as to what happens after death. We can surmise, but we can not be certain. Fairly well summarised by Nanner's now defunct tag line:  

A samurai once asked Zen Master Hakuin where he would go after he died. Hakuin answered "How am I supposed to know?"

"How do you know? You're a Zen master!" exclaimed the samurai. "Yes, but not a dead one", Hakuin answered.

I guess two things follow from this. The first is that we're most likely to minimise our fear and suffering by living lightly and groundlessly in the moment - accepting that the nature of life is that we can't know, and so avoiding getting hung up on stuff that can bring suffering to ourselves and others.

If as most of us are we've got a bit hung up on stuff, traditions like Buddhism teach methods based on meditation by which we can release our fears - even those that have grown to the status of the gods or the demons mentioned before in the piece I wrote on the Tibetan Buddhist Chod healing practice.

This kind of stuff sounds wholly unconvincing to a testerone fuelled young person, and for sure is wholly counter intuitive. But it works, I've been there. If you're not already perhaps it would be worth considering getting stuck into some spiritual reading and practice.

:) It sounds wacky from the 'outside' so to speak, but meditation is especially effective in reducing the mental intensity that gets us suckered into stuff. The thread on meditation is worth a look....  

Vaj:
I am completely fine with death if my consciousness or spirit blah blah blah still lives on and can be pure  energy. That IS acceptable. But I have no way of knowing if that even exists!
...............

Regardless we know that all carbon based life forms on Earth will be born, live, and finally die.

1. Thus one can logically state the obvious fact that we are not meant to live forever.

OR

2. We have not been perfected yet.

Oddly enough Scientists are pretty darn certain as to why we get older and die. Even more interesting is the fact that we are smart enough to stop this from happening. Stop death completely? Perhaps not... especially not yet. But someday? Who knows?

I wonder what kind of an impact there would be on the afterlife if humans start to live hundreds or thousands of years?

Would this in fact call for a major move on God's part?
Would some sort of afterlife force move to thwart mans evil technology?

Or perhaps there is in fact nothing...!
Frankly it all gives me the shivers.... I need to know the truth.

The truth is out there!


P.S. My wife just gave me a coffee mug that has a built in stirrer. It stirs like a mixer. It's so awesome. What will they think of next? (living forever?)

Right now there's not much you can do about dying T, and we can't be certain as to where we're headed.

But that doesn't mean there aren't ways to live that lead to happiness, or at least radically less suffering than is the case if we willy nilly are led by our baser instincts...