Discussion Afterlife (and related) general discussion

[ivzxkou]

i don't know what will happen. i hope it's nothing. what's the point in ctb if i have to life another life after this.

 

[Challu]

Seems that non-existence is a more preferable option for users on here.

 

[scamper]

I don't believe in an afterlife. I've seen a lot of people say that death feels, "like before you were born" and that makes the most sense to me.

 

[canyouseeme]

To me I feel life itself is a "force". Its like energy that comes to your physical being then goes when you die. But I believe that energy never truly "dies" like physical vessels. It can usually change form but never truly "disappear". Explain why robots don't have a conscious mind like we do as living creatures. So I definitely believe there is something beyond death. Reincarnation, karma it makes sense to me.

 

[second attempt]

I believe in reincarnation altho of human kind and not animals. i have met more than a few old souls in my journey and i connect with them more than anyone else. the further up u go, the further disconnected u seem to be from others.

 

[nosoul]

I am a Christian so I definitely believe in an afterlife. I was always taught that there was an afterlife, and I never knew anyone personally who did not believe in one. That is, until I came to this forum. I never heard of this "nothingness" until I came here and could not figure out why. I now realize the reason. In Christianity, it is taught that suicide is a sin. Therefore, I am one of the few Christians on this forum which is dominated by atheists. I personally believe that there is a wonderful afterlife that awaits us all. The idea of nothingness scares the hell out of me. If someone here were to convince me of this nothingness, I would no longer be suicidal, and that also scares the hell out of me since I would have to continue living this horrible life.

So is your Christianity preventing you ctb? I also was raised Christian, and yeah I've been told its hell for suicide. I hope I can be forgiven, but I sometimes worry I will go to a worse place. My dogs would be hurt and my family devastated but I can't go on like this, so many challenges and I'm losing my mind.

 

[Atwr]

I hope there is no afterlife heaven,hell or reincarnation all sound like terrible fates.

 

[meowtistic]

reading everyone's replies is fucking awesome I love this thread

 

[luc]

I used to be religious and I think the concept of afterlife is scary. I hope it doesn't exist.

 

[Housefly]

If there is an afterlife, I hope it's the just and fair void. Good bad indifferent? Void. Swim in the thick and omnipresent primordial ooze. I used to believe in God and that they would fix my brain but I count it as a gain as there is nobody to answer to. Nobody to decide based on rules that I couldn't know for a fact. If there is a good, they will know that I searched for truth and found no god and no proof of an afterlife.

All this to say, I used to be scared but I'm not anymore of the wrath of a god, I look forward to the process everyone will face.

 

[Challu]

All this to say, I used to be scared but I'm not anymore of the wrath of a god, I look forward to the process everyone will face.

Same

 

[leahfocusplease]

as far as i'm aware, there is no consensus in judaism about what happens after death--and, as much as i like reading him, i can't take Dante or the doctrine he uses seriously. so i suspend judgement.
i do like imagining the afterlife as like a meeting so i could say hi to the people i never thought i'd see again, ask Levinas or Duns Scotus some questions i always had about their stuff, jam out with Arthur Russell, give a pretty flower to Anne Charlotte Robertson, hop into the heavenly library and spend g-d-knows how many cycles reading what was lost or unwritten on earth. g-d themself could not show up or just not say much and i'd still be very happy.

 

[ICan'tThink]

my belief is that you go to where you think you will go and there is not one true religion

 

[telro]

I used to be a Christian and have an old suicide letter where I said I deserve to go to hell and it's where I belong. I'm an athiest now and it's really comforting to believe that there is nothing after death, just the sweet void of nonexistence

 

[Challu]

I used to be a Christian and have an old suicide letter where I said I deserve to go to hell and it's where I belong. I'm an athiest now and it's really comforting to believe that there is nothing after death, just the sweet void of nonexistence

I'm suicidal, very likely to CTB soon, but I still believe that Jesus Christ is Lord.

 

[purity]

i guess i believe theres no afterlife, or atleast in my wishful thinking. eternal living seems like the greatest curse, regardless of if it's happiness or suffering. never ending, it has to get boring at some point. from what i know, some form of eternal living exists in many religions. ironically, all i can do is hope and pray that there's nothing beyond this world.

 

[skybluesuicide]

I believe there's nothing after this. 13 billion years have passed and I didn't feel a thing, and a trillion more could and it would be the same.

 

[catsandrocks]

I might have posted on this before. I've honestly forgotten. I mentioned suicide to my therapist, and she brought up the idea of the afterlife. What if the afterlife is just us watching our lives over and over again on repeat? What if the afterlife is just like "respawning" in another universe and our death is seen as a close call, so we have to live infinitely. It kind of terrifies me, in a suicide related way but in also a fundamentalist Christian way. What if being gay or not waiting until marriage is a reason to go to hell? And I can't think of anything more hellish than living this life over and over again.

 

[SuicidalOrganism]

I think any form of afterlife is a bad thing, if it never ends.

Reincarnation: If you die and supposedly be reborn as a different human being in this world, not only you'll lose memories and your sense of self, but you will also have to repeat the same process of growing up in this world. School, bullying, hardships, working every day etc. Your next life would be either good or bad. What if you were reborn in a 3rd world underdeveloped country? Every single day of yours would be awful. Repeating the same reincarnation process over and over again until humanity is no more.

Heaven: I see heaven as a place of joy and ultimate happiness (lets just ignore what each type of religion precisely describe heaven as, but TLDR - a good thing). At first, you would be thrilled, excited then happy. But since heaven is eternal, surely there are infinity things around to keep you satisfied. What does happiness and joy mean after you have experienced heaven for lets say, a million years? It loses its meaning. Think about it, an eternity with God. Also, obey him or you will be sent to hell

Hell: Pretty self explanatory

The only blissful thing to experience out of this reality is nothingness after death. No consciousness, nothing. Just like before I was born.

My personal rankings of what I would rather experience after death:
1. Nothingness
2. Reincarnation (hopefully it ends one day)
3. Heaven
4. Hell

 

[theslasher]

I have absolutely zero belief in the afterlife. However it is impossible to prove / dis-prove so I could easily be wrong. For me it's just our man made religions that I don't believe in due to my education on the origin of religions and our lack of proof besides anecdotal claims. But at that point it's like what proof do we have for a god itself? None really, other than a book written by humans lol.

 

[lyfsoverrated]

I expect disappointment

 

[MiraiShisen]

I dont know what to believe, if there is nothingness after death OK, but we are alive now, so at least ONCE we all have been interupted from that nothingness by this live we are living, but are we sure it wont happen again? It was possible once, it can happen again and again.
But it starting to be complicated here... if there is this possibility which I think there is, are we decidng what life we will live ? Do we pickup our physical body, gender ? Or specie we wanna live? (you know we are just like animals with big brain we are not that different from others) If not, who or what is deciding that ?
Is it completely random? Is there some kind of hierarchy "path of soul" ?
We could end up being animal and have even worse life because how we treat them, look up at what happen to little male chicken first day when they are hatched. Or how we killing everything not even for food just for things we dont really need. Polluting oceans, destroying nature, you dont wanna end up as animal at the bottom of chain food because of condition there are and even what we created. When I look at the broad spectrum on this planet or life as such there is unbalanced polarity of good/bad (in our perspective because from universe perspective bad or good does not exist)

As I observe more and more and try understand life or finding some meaning to it, it just make me more depressed how things really works. Even our freedom is limited to the limits of body, if we were in body of other animals we wound not be even able to think at this level... sorry I take this little more philosophically


After I die I just wanna have some fairytale heaven like shire from LOTR without evil because I had enough of bad thing in this life and I can not hold it anymore, I can appreciate good, this is not reason why I wanna delete myself but it does not help either.

Nothingness probably wound not be bad, but we are here now, and there is chance we could end up here again and maybe not even decide about it. So from my perspective if we can decide that we wanna life and choose life etc... why not, but If we dont, then death is just like long sleep between two lives you did not have power to choose and you are limited to the body limits. And if we do have that power then why are we doing it? Choosing hard life to not be even able withstand and end up earlier ? Do our souls need to learn things? How about animals then, what are they learning? Hence I would prefer heaven and create my own paradise but I know this is utopy and even if this was real, living milions of years in that place would be enough and eventually nothingness would prefered over heaven. Sorry for my weak english I really tried to be as clear as possible.

Despite with all that said I am gratful that I could experience life and observe everything.

 

[BonboTheMonkey]

Either its nothingness or we reincarnate eventually after billions of years, those are two outcomes I only see as possible

 

[enditall222]

I don't truly ever know what will happen after death, but I truly hope I'm reincarnated into someone else, and maybe I can live a normal life

 

[deathLiberation]

I just want to die. And by that i mean to just turn off this existence... Is it asking to much? Really just turn off this existence for some time, if not forever, just let me take a vacation out of this shitshow.

 

[San_Miguel]

I'm somewhat convinced there's nothing after death. I'm also somewhat convinced there has to be something because this universe is too wonderfully complex and big and rich to be simply a spawn of pure chance and random events.

My secret wish, though, is that after death we are free to roam without any bad feelings as invisible spirits, with no restrictions of physics laws. That way, I could travel across the universe in an instant to see all the stars, nebulas and other beautiful things without thinking about everything I've suffered. Just contemplate the beauty of existence in pure bliss.

I love astronomy, if you couldn't tell.

That's an interesting idea! There's this really cool youtube video that poses life as a kind of "egg" in which our soul grows and develops until we're mature enough to experience the world beyond planet Earth.

I believe this is actually fairly close to what the Christian afterlife is like. I think life and morality is about understanding the true Goodness and Beauty of our creator, and the more we understand Him the easier it is for our soul to be united to His. This is the concept of "Heaven", which is the eternal and perfect union with God. "Hell" is just the eternal separation from God, so it's not really a punishment as people make it out to be. It's just the permanent separation from all that is good and beautiful, and we do it to ourselves by turning away from God and pursuing more and more evil in our lives. The more we live with love and forgiveness in our hearts, the more likely we'll be able to experience the joy of being united with God, which is called "the beatific vision". It's a really cool idea and not far off from what you're proposing, but since it's dependent on you loving yourself and others, I would guess those who CTB are excluded.

I really love your hope for an afterlife, but I want to encourage you to look into the Christian faith a bit. Most people who reject Christianity only hate their own idea of what it is, but not the real thing. Real Christianity is beautiful and inspirational, and the whole heaven/hell idea is grossly misrepresented in popular culture. In reality, it's really fascinating and gives me a lot of hope.

Stay strong friend, for you are dearly loved :)

 

[sundown12]

i think afterlife is fucking awesome, you get to meet your spirit team, and finally become a fun little clump of energy free of those dreadful chains of existence

 

[benzol]

I am quite rational and dont believe in an afterlife.
I think there comes nothing. Which might be sad, but on the other hand nothing to fear neither.

 

[the_last_race]

I'm completely positive that there's nothing after. Brain just shuts down, synapses cease to fire and consciousness just stops - like a data stream when you disconnected a PC from the electric grid.
And it's just terrifying to me. I'd really like to believe that there IS something. I wish i was religious, i wish i had a strong belief in something, but there's nothing to me.
There will be no rest, there will be no peace, there will be no end to the suffering. We are going to get stripped of it forever, even when the universe dies, after it's heath death, after it snals back into singularity - there's no ME anymore. And it's the biggest unfairness of the universe thag sentient, self-conscious life is mortal. What use of consciousness if all it does - makes you realise that's it's all finite?
It might be counterintuitive that I'm feeling suicidal and thinking about how bad it is to die at the same time. But humans are full of contradictions. And maybe there IS something after all. This is the thing i wish to be wrong about more than anything else with all my being. Some kind of sentient existence, something at all.

 

[dazed_dreamer]

I love the idea of there being nothing, just an eternal sleep. But I was raised religious and deeply believed it as a kid, so the thought of hell haunts me. I honestly think it's one thing that discourages me from CTB, the fear of waking up in hell forever. But I also can't reconcile a genuine Christian faith, I've been burned too badly by evil pastors and trying to suppress my queer identity for years due to the consequential loss of religious identity and community. I remember nights I was scared to fall asleep, afraid I'd die in the night and wake up in hell because I hadn't "genuinely" repented from wanting to be a boy, or be with a woman.
But yeah, the thought of any afterlife just makes me feel tired and overwhelmed, even a positive one. I like that idea for my loved ones, but I just want to pass quietly and be forgotten.