Hi guys,

Who can prove there is an AFTERLIFE?  I'm pretty sure any of us had a deceased loved one.  How come there are a lot of people so possitive about afterlife?

Sorry for all the silly question, but i rather ask then don't know.

Thank you for reply
BRAVI

There is no way anyone can prove it to you, you have to prove it to yourself. A recent post in this forum (just a day or so back) from someone who had been to see a medium and recieved a message from his deceased father is a perfect example of someone who has proven to himself that the afterlife is real.

As spitfire says read up and this will give you the believe that it is real, then when your ready go and seek the proof you need. I am slowly reaching that point myself.

Bravi asks the most common question,...however in this scientific era we live in, we need scientific proof in order to believe something or see it for ourselves...Even then sometimes it is hard to believe in something that is totaly oposite to what we have learned....to the order of things as we know them. In all the situations however the answer is personal research..knowledge is the ultimate power  and it shapes our reality...it keeps us free...this why They don't want us to gain knowledge...they don't want us to be free cause they need us under their control....I know I got off-topic a little bit....What I am trying to say is that through your own research, a well organised research, you can learn and understand...there is something there that tells us there is something more that this life....There is plenty of material in this site as well as in the links section to establish an initial idea, and then start to expand. Take care.

Life is our Playground,
                                            Antonios

It's extremely simple to prove the afterlife exists, once you have the skills needed to do so.

If you can go OOB at will, you go visit someone you know, find out exactly were they were.. exactly what they were doing, and any/all details you can pick up while there, once out of your OBE, phone them, find out what they have done, where they was and who with etc etc. Repeat as many times a nessicary.

I could get a peice of paper, write a sentence on it.. someone could go out of body view the peice of paper and give me the sentence, problem is.. no one is willing to step forward, and do such things under controlled conditions, under tv camera's etc.. so it can be proved to the masses.

Once the basic's of OBE'S have been proved, then you move onto contacting the deceased of people, and if you can provide an exact name of someone's deceased relative, and i meen full name.

If you can accept that as 99% proof, then you would be a fool, and have no right... to try to delve into the subject of afterlife existance.

Quote:


Where i can gather my own evidence, for the existance of the afterlife, and i can do experiments to prove it's existance, and the fact, that you can repeat these experiment's to achieve correlating   results.  Theres no experiment thats proved god's existance, nor is there likely to be. Ultimately... both science and religon... are the same apart from 1 fact, experiment repeatability...

Quote:


But experience, comes before belief. So you cant open yourself to something which has not been experienced, you can be open minded about things happening.. but no point making something out of nothing, otherwise your just living in a nice fantasy.. and when reality slaps you in the face, it's gonna slap you good and hard.

Thinking = invention, and invention = experience which ='s belief...

Just the way humans work.

Quote:


Good point matt,

It's all about balance, an open mind.. most great discoverie's, are found by 1 or just a few people, until many discover the same thing, and it becomes a fact.

The more people that do it, the more re-producable it is.. and then it become's a widely excepted belief.

Hermes Trismestigis said something lke "As above, so below." The afterlife presumably follows this.

The problem with a proof is that the information on the afterlife is subjective. The best we can get is a statement that lots of people say the same thing. That's not a proof of the facts that they are repeating, but only a statement of the fact that they say it.

In general, a proof is going to be either a demonstration that people seem to say the same things most of the time, and that this would be very improbabe if caused by chance alone, or it will be a controlled experiment, although I have no idea how that could be done. In general, the methodology for experiments of this sort tends to be extremely intricate and messy. One additional problem is that having had so much information, most eople know how to respond as if there is an afterlife, so their opinions are not very useful, nor are their descriptions, even is highly detailed.

I'd be interested in any experimenting people might want to do in this regard, but t is definitely a difficult methodological problem.

d

Quote:

Bravi,

From my experience there isn't any way that someone else can prove the existence of the Afterlife to anyone else, we can only do it for ourselves through our own, direct experience.  My suggested way to do this uses what I call the Basic Premise:

1.  Find a way to communicate with someone known to be deceased. 

2.  Gather information from this person you have absolutely no other way of knowing except by this contact and communication.

3.  Find a way to verify that the information is accurate and real.

4.  If the information is verified as accurate and real you have evidence that the deceased person still exists, some where.

5.  Continue this process until weight of the evidence, or the degree to which it satisfies step 2, convinces you that our afterlife exists.

This process is simpler than it might at first appear.  Obtaining proof, as opposed to evidence, is a matter of how well the verified information you gather satisfies step 2.

Many participants in 2-day workshops gather evidence during the workshop exercises.  Some have gathered proof.  But, again, from my experience evidence or proof gathered by some else will never prove it to anyone else. 

Bruce

Quote:


But how, can you confirm your finding's.. when theres nothing you could recieve, which you would'nt already know? there's always the possibility you are deluding yourself, as with dreaming, you can imagine people you know, used to know.. and you can interact with them, but there not real, and they dont tell you anything which your mind does'nt already contain.

I find your partnered exploration's the best form of evidence, especially if they were conducted under some easy, guideline's which would give you very good verification, such as passing along a sentence, or a few words while out of body, for the partner to write down, and check via phone afterwards.

While i tend to disagree, that you cant get proof from someone else, i think a more accurate statement would be, you cannot get conclusive proof, as i know space exists.. and i know i would die if i went there without protection, yet i have never been there before.. i am purely basing my beliefs on second hand evidence, and knowledge which i use to make sense of others claims.

Both Caryn and Bruce seem to have made the needed point, that we can "go there and look" and that will satisfy our desire for awareness, and lead to subsequent understanding.

The issue of "proof" however, is far trickier. Spitfire asked the same question as Descartes, "How do I know what I know is actually known?" And the answer is, you can't. What we can say, to paraphrase Descartes conclusion that he was a "thinking thing" (une chose pensante) is that to our best awareness, "something seems to be happening.

Given that "something seems to be happening", then we have an opinion about it. That opinion is as good as it's gonna get. We test our opinion about what's happening by living, responding in various ways to our imagery, and so on, but we still remain inside our own subjectivity with no way to "really find out" what is "really there".  Given that, what we discover is that if we stay within certain limits, things seem to work, while if we exceed these limits, things fall apart. The connection between our actions and the falling apart processes is usually called karma, and we can get others to agree with some of the principles, but we can never reach certainty that we share our world, much less our experiences. In other words, we are always stuck with a theoretical solipcism. I don't know what world others experience etc.

The usual requirements for "proof" involve logical demonstration of necessty and sufficiency, or the experiential demonstration of consistent results from consistent causal conditions of a sort that is highly improbable by chance alone. You can't readily cast subjective information into a form that conforms to either of those ideas. The best we can do is to point out that there seems to be a collective agreement, that it is sketchy and variable due to subjective factors, but when people "go to look" they often seem to agree that there is a "spirit world" and "afterlife". That still is not a proof, nor can it readily be made to look like one.

What we can do, however, is take a pragmatic approach,  to take it on faith that the world is as it seems to be. Then each of us can do whatever is needed to find subjective evidence that the experiences we have also seem to imply a "spirit world", an "afterlife" and all those other things involved in them.

d

Quote:


That's why Step 2 is so important.  The only way that the information can be proof is that you have ABSOLUTELY no other way of knowing the information you receive.  Otherwise the information can only serve, at best, as "evidence."

So, how might this be possible?  Here is a potential example of such information.

Let's say a person you know, call him Jake, who is deceased had a secret, something they never told any person before his death.  Maybe he hid an envelope, containing a letter to his daughter and a wad of cash, somewhere before he died.  He carried the secret of the envelope's existence and its location to his grave.   No physically livng person knows it exists or where it is.   Is it reasonable to assume that if anyone knew about the envelope they'd probably recover it after his death and at least lay 'finders-keepers-claim to the money?  I'd say that is reasonable assumption.  So, maybe that bears some weight toward the idea that if the cash is still in the envelop, it was a secret only he knew.

Let say that in a conversation with Jake after his death he tells you that he wants you to give a message to his daughter giving her the location of the envelope.  He also admonishes you not to tell his widow, the girl's mother, anything about the location saying that there's a problem between the mother and daughter so if mom finds out she will probably retrieve the envelope, destroy the letter, keep the money, and not tell the daughter.

You find a way to get the message to the daughter without the mother knowing, per Jakes request.  The daughter goes to the location finds the envelope, the letter and the money.

How do you explain receiving the information? 

Now you may say, Bruce, nothing like that could never happen.  Bruce, that example might go some way toward demonstrating proof (or at least evidence) that Jake still exists somewhere, but such a thing is impossible.  Well, the example I used is a description of the direct experience of someone who use to be a regular visitor at this Converstion Board.  The daughter told her, after recovering the envelope and reading the letter, that it explained many things in her life she didn't understand about her father, relationships in the family and details her father had never told her while he was physically alive.

Now you might say, but Bruce how do you know that the whole story wasn't just made up?  Maybe the lady who told you that story was just making up the whole thing!  My answer is, I can't know if she was telling the truth or not, she could have been lying to impress people, she could have been deluded, insane or what ever.  In my view it's not important that I know if she is telling the truth, it's only  important that she knows the truth, and, she is the only one who can know for absolute certain what he truth is.

That is why I continually say, the only way to prove the afterlife exists is through your own direct experience.  It's not important that she convince me she's telling the truth or fess up to lying.  SHE knows the truth and that's all that's important.

When something like that happens to you it  is extremely difficult to pretend it didn't happen.  Although, early in my own explorations I had experiences similar to the one I described and I continued to believe I was just making it all up, it was a lucky guess, it was all part of some grand, self-deceptive hoax, etc. etc.

Quote:



Yes, all those things are always possible, but you are assuming they are not real people in your dreams, and assuming there isn't any thing a dead friend (or stranger) could tell you that is not already in your mind.  What if those assumptions are in error?  I'm a great proponent of the idea that assumptions should be tested by 'running the experiment.'  Untested assumptions may be valid or they may not, the only way I know to find out which assumptions are which is to run a well designed experiment to test them.


Quote:


Yes, that's why I teach Partnered Exploration.  In my view it has the greatest potential for folks getting verifiable experience within nonphysical realities in the shortest amount of time.

Quote:


I can agree that such evidence gathered by others can have great value.  It may give me some folks a level of confidence to be willing to be more open to the possibility.  And yes, what you point out about "conclusive" is what too mean.  For me "conclusive" means absolutely no remaining doubt.  So far I've found other people's evidence might give some level of proof to others, but that someone else's evidence can't completely remove all doubt.  And, I also am of the opinion from my experience that it's doubt (coming from conflicting beliefs) is A, if not, THE key factor that blocks and distorts our perception beyond physical reality.  And that evidence gathered through direct experience removes some amount of this perceptual blockage making it easier to perceive more and more, deeper levels of evidence.  So, I encourage people to seek their own evidence or proof through their own experience because I know that any evidence they gather and accept will open and improve their perceptual capability.  But I agree with you, evidence gathered by others has definite value.

Spitfire, I hope this doesn't come across like I'm picking on you or criticizing.  That is not my intention at all.

Thanks,

Bruce

Quote:


Your are assuming they have no secrets, when you try the technique, maybe your relative will turn out to have information for you that satisfies #2, you won't know until you try.  And, OBE is not necessary.

Quote:


In my view the one who receives the relayed message is not getting proof, only the one who received it is.  If only two people knew the secret a skeptic could say it was "just mind reading" of the physically living person, a laughable argument in my opinion.

Quote:


Because if you get the information yourself there can be no reasonable doubt about what actually happened.

Quote:



Using the method I teach you don't have to go to sleep, dream, then wake up and remember what you dreamed.  You sit in a chair, close your eyes, get the information, open your eyes and write it down.  Since you never lose consciousness, it's easier to remember the info.

Quote:


It's more like a list, sometimes there are word for word identical description, BUT,  I do not do or teach OBE, I never figured out how to do OBE. 

Bruce

Good point, Cat.

Although on the Moody website, they say he leaves the door open to whether or not there is an afterlife.  My take on the book was that he said parapsychologists, christian fundamentalists and skeptics all are just showmen, not really proving or disproving the existence of the afterlife.  He was hoping, his initial book would stimulate real scientific research into the afterlife, but it did not.

My impression from the website is the Moody believes in near death experiences and just says he hasn't or can't prove them.

M