My obsession as many of you will perhaps have guessed by now is story telling, whether verbal or through books or film. It has been an interest of mine for a long time. I am still trying to work out to a certain extent why we do this. What it does for us.

So far what I have come up with is this. If the world irs made purely of ideas and thought then stories are the building blocks with which we express those thoughts. A kind of laboratory of words and concepts. One of the problems with this is that sometimes that lab is taken over by folks with their own agenda. We won't go into that one here:)

In the context of the afterlife discussion what I was wondering was this:

Is death a central part of our storytelling traditions?

Take for example Romeo and Juliet. Would the story lose some of its feeling with the notion that the two lovers lived on after death?

There seem to be lots of other examples where surviving death would make a big difference to the story.

So if there is storytelling in the afterlife does it still involve death?

Dave

lol Dave you must have been Oscar Wilde in your past life!!

i do like your questioning though, it drives the ship forward.
And a very good question too - the crux of it being do we die in the spiritual world?

my thoughts are .. yes there must be death of the spiritual body in the spiritual realms.
and my reasoning is; we live a life of reversal.  What happens above happens below and what happens below happens above.

For example; when we sleep we are 'dead' to the physical world but awake in our home in the spiritual world.  When we are awake here we are 'dead' in the spiritual world.  That is part of us is;
we must take into consideration our Oversoul that cannot be 'dead'.

Although while awake in the physical world we attain to also be awake in the spiritual world.
So maybe while we are awake in the spiritual world we attain to be awake in the physical world. And this is the essence of survival?

mmm As above so below.

So, through death in the physical world we transform into the spiritual world - we go back home - but maybe home has moved now because we have reached higher attainment. We can always go and visit our old home though.

When we are in our spiritual home and feel the desire to come back to the physical there must be a death or at least a goodbye to our spiritual home when we start our journey back into matter.

it is forever the journey that gets us to where we should be.

also, yes ideas and thoughts do make up our existence but i say that these thoughts are very well thought through and are not whimsical ideas lol in otherwords there is a plot!

Thank you for your responses. I think I would like to think that some of the skills I have picked up will be at least a little bit useful in the afterlife, as they don't seem to be so much use here:)

Betson, I wasn't sure how death would be seen in he afterlife, but had an inkling that it woudlnt have the kind of finality that is so accepted by many people here.

augoeideian, you helped to clairfy ne ot two things for me there with the idea of the spiritual death being the return to the physical.

Baby duck, I have to say I like a bit of Meg Ryan every now and again...my bad:) It is true though that life and death situations add to the tension of a story. I was just concerned that any fiction in the afterlife because of the perception of death might end up like the every day story of multivitamin taking you suggested:)

Dave

baby duck, I will indeed ask them when I get a chance to. So far I haven't really made much of an effort of contacting anyone, or experiencing any of this. If anyone else gets the chance could they pop the question in to anyone they see about this whole death and storytelling biz. I would really appreciate it.

Having said about death being a big part of storytelling of course death and rebirth go hand in hand in mythology. Hmmmm...ponders.

Dave

Mactek,

A very interesting and well reasoned post. I feel more reassured about the whole story thing now. Though I must confess I do have a real love of the human drama, which may as you say hold me back a little bit from my evolution.

Dave

Ah, understood:) Though I think it is one of those toys I am going to give up reluctanlty at some point in time. I think this is one of the lessons I have set myself. To work out why we do the whole story and entertainment  thing.

I was reading somewhere that Depak Chopra describes where was are as a "recreational universe."

Dave

I think part of my fear is not knowing what those other interests will be:) One of the things I do like in this life is talking to people, so no doubt I will get to do a lot of that. There will be plenty to discuss. What a joy to be able to catch up with some of the wonderful people who have lived and made such an impression on our world. Or meet up with distant relatives.

I like the idea of travelling long distances and seeing new worlds, or even parts of this one I wont get round to see on this trip. I think my toys are the ability to be able to share this with other people. The way I have always seen this has been through books or films. There is probably a much better way of doing it on the other side.

There are still concepts my mind has to wrangle with:)

Dave