I'm obsessed with finding the REAL answers which I will probably never get

[WornOutLife]

I've been obsessed with understanding the true meaning of life and the universe since I was 12 and I guess that the lack of information I have is what makes me suicidal, for that reason I've posted this thread on this section.

At first, I was a Catholic so I really thought Jesus and "his dad" had all the answers I needed. I truly thought the world had been created by a smiling bearded guy in 6 days.

Then, I grew up and read a lot about different religions and ended up trusting none of them because they were always the same, nothing more than a method with the title "THINKING IS FORBIDDEN because everything has already been written."

Thus, finding the answers in the spiritual world seemed useless so, I picked science's side and that's how I ended up having more questions than before.

How is it possible, that having such brilliants minds in this world, we can't still know the true origin of everything? Experts have been able to discovered the so-called Big Bang but what was there before that? How can something come from nothing? How can I suddenly be conscious in this unfair world in which I never asked to be born? How can it be possible than no one knows what happens after death? Do we simply die and eternal nothingness is what we have left? That makes no sense!! Why being born in first place? This is ridiculous lol

I hate being just one more number in the system. I guess I would like to be special and know what the hell I'm doing here.

I think there are 2 possibilities:

1) Nothing makes sense and there really is an eternal nothingness waiting for us.

2) We're living in some kind of simulation in which we're "nerfed" so as not to understand the true meaning of everything. Maybe we chose to experience every single thing happening to us, like some kind of GTA. Just think of technology, it's quite scary! We won't be able to distinguish games from the real world in some hundreds of years if they keep improving!
Perhaps, the so-called "afterlife" is that world in which everything is probably perfect and boring and that's why they created a simulation in first place.

Damn, I really needed to vent about this.

Thanks a bunch for reading.

Any thoughts? Just what the hell are we doing on this blue rock?

 

[dummy]

there is no point. we're just a cosmic oddity. we make our own meaning. i had mine for a bit and it was fun, but i blew it so oh well.

i like to think some kind of spirituality makes sense, but we're just animals trying to make sense and look for patterns in the world. it really is just cruel and unfair and random. maybe i dont know enough about it, but that's why reincarnation makes me upset ("poor people in war torn countries were actually evil in another life and they deserved what they got!")

simulation theory is interesting, but i cant really get behind it. i guess i cant imagine human life surviving even the next fifty years (generous lol) that we progress to that. maybe some aliens are just really bored. id like if they gave me a respawn to an earlier checkpoint.

 

[WornOutLife]

there is no point. we're just a cosmic oddity. we make our own meaning. i had mine for a bit and it was fun, but i blew it so oh well.

i like to think some kind of spirituality makes sense, but we're just animals trying to make sense and look for patterns in the world. it really is just cruel and unfair and random. maybe i dont know enough about it, but that's why reincarnation makes me upset ("poor people in war torn countries were actually evil in another life and they deserved what they got!")

simulation theory is interesting, but i cant really get behind it. i guess i cant imagine human life surviving even the next fifty years (generous lol) that we progress to that. maybe some aliens are just really bored. id like if they gave me a respawn to an earlier checkpoint.

I also think that human life might not be around for so long.
We will probably end up destroying each other with nuclear stuff lol.

Damn, you might just be right and we could be a cosmic oddity but I hate it! haha

 

[lifeisbutadream]

You'll learn a little more about it in the next world.

 

[WornOutLife]

You'll learn a little more about it in the next world.

I deffo hope so!

 

[sunsetintehwoods]

You'll learn a little more about it in the next world.

Okay, now we next wolds pre-intelligence service, instead SS.

 

[Superdeterminist]

These are very important questions, I think about them all the time as well. My thoughts:

• We have a hard time getting to truth because in the grand scheme of things we're not that intelligent. The most brilliant minds are only brilliant relative to other human minds. Compared to what's (likely) possible, even the sharpest human genuises are dumb.
• It's hard to know what was before the big bang because apparently there's some kind of 'firewall' (plasma?) that that's blocking the view iirc. Hopefully they'll find a way around this soon.
• Consciousness is really bizarre indeed. How does electrical signals between cells become experience? People are working hard to try and solve this.
• I reckon we do just die and that's it. But you can't experience non-experience so you won't know you're dead. It's my belief that only life can ever be felt, but I'm always open to new evidence
• The abundance of suffering and lack of objective purpose to me suggests no god. If there is a god, they must be either not all-powerful or not all-loving, or both.

 

[watchingthewheels]

"Who is John Galt?"

 

[signifying nothing]

So you've thought about 'out there' and you've thought about 'in here', but have you thought much about the interface between the two - the boundary where you end and everything else begins? I think that's where things get most interesting.

This kind of carries on from no. 2 - the simulation theory. If this is true you should be able to find how we 'connect' into it? How are we being fed information, by what 'software'? Even if we can't know it directly I think you can try to glimpse it mentally - like looking through a window: you can clearly see outside, but you can also just about see the glass of the window through which you're looking.

Then consider how clear is your window on the world? Is it clean, so that you see reality as it really is or has it got stuff in front of it or on it that distorts your view of reality, makes things seem better or worse than they actually are?

 

[GarageKarate07]

The Catholics are always "looking for answers". They use these big telescopes things!

Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I wonder what some of the names of these telescopes are? What would Holy Organizations name some of their telescopes?

A:
LUCI (originally LUCIFER: Large Binocular Telescope Near-infrared Spectroscopic Utility with Camera and Integral Field Unit for Extragalactic Research) is the near-infrared instrument for the LBT.
Telescope style: optical telescope
Location(s): Mount Graham, Graham County, Arizona
Part of: Mount Graham International Observatory; Steward Observatory
Alternative names: LBT

LUCIFER? LOL that's odd....

Large Binocular Telescope - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Life sucks]

The real problem about not getting the answers is not being inferior but because of the vast amount of information and details. The brain is very small and tiny compared to the universe so answers are impossible to get. However, that doesn't mean the brain isn't good, it can already compute which is an essential part of the universe and can also create imaginary scenarios and simulating stuff. Imagine an arbitrarily large or infinite machine (the universe) and tiny machines (the brain) which are almost 0 compared to the big machine. So its like a very limited machine and it's impossible to deal with infinite amount of information.

 

[intr0verse]

Humans...we're trying to do what Edison's mother told him not to: eat something that's bigger than our own heads.

 

[Odwin]

What do you want to do with the information? What would change if you knew the real answer?

 

[intr0verse]

What do you want to do with the information? What would change if you knew the real answer?

Spot on. I had an obsession with energy myself. If everything is energy, i said to myself, then what the hell is energy. I was obsessed with this for quite some time. Then the insight came: what would i do if i knew the answer? Probably move on to the next distraction/obsession.
I am now comfortable with the thought i will probably never know many things.

 

[mini_weeny]

Hahahah pase por el mismo proceso que tu, primero explorar religiones luego como una gran geek me puse a leer los libros de texto de biología y me sentí muy chingona pensando que sabia todas las respuestas pero después llegué al mismo punto del principio, como tu, que chingados hacemos aquí?????? Lo único que si es seguro es que no existe el libre albedrío y que somos ese puntito irrelevante, esa partícula que se mueve al azar en un mega sistema complejo sobre el que no tenemos control de nada (aunque pensemos que si). Ahora más que nunca, que la vida me trajo a este puto sitio siento que no entiendo absolutamente nada y que life is meaningless and that we are nothing. Just like a dog is run over by a car one day some shit in life runs over us and it's the end. I don't fucking know anything anymore. Creo que la vida es un proceso de auto replication de la materia que después presenta propiedades emergentes y más complejidad pero nada de esto explica que chingados hacemos aquí. Así que back to square one.
As for (1) some say if u can't remember anything from before you were born it's the same when u die. Si te han operado alguna vez con anestesia general yo creo es muy parecido, no hay nada. Muy similar a lo que describen los que se han "muerto" y revivido aquí. Que todo es negro y derrepente están en la UCI .
Sorry que escriba en inglés y español pero me da flojera escribir un tema más filosófico en inglés :)

 

[WornOutLife]

What do you want to do with the information? What would change if you knew the real answer?

I guess it would give me the best feeling of fulfillment and peace ever! I just want to know if I'm nothing (probably) or if I'm actually part of something bigger!

 

[Odwin]

if I'm actually part of something bigger!

I don't think that's something you would like. How would you feel like you are one sand grain of the beach?

 

[WornOutLife]

I don't think that's something you would like. How would you feel like you are one sand grain of the beach?

I would feel exactly like I do now! Frustrated and disappointed and I would still want more answers but if I'm just a grain, I won't get them. Thus, the eternal cycle of hating this nonsense universe starts again lol.
I guess I'm just one more random guy, who never asked to be born, in this pointless world.

 

[lifeisbutadream]

Humans...we're trying to do what Edison's mother told him not to: eat something that's bigger than our own heads.

Beyond our pay grade while we're here on earth.

And speaking of Thomas Edison, his last words were, "It's very beautiful over there".

 

[GarageKarate07]

Beyond our pay grade while we're here on earth.

And speaking of Thomas Edison, his last words were, "It's very beautiful over there".

I was reading about a guy who wanted LSD as a last meal before death. I know he was famous as a thinker/inventor. It might have even been posted here. I wish I could remember.



Oh! I found it! Also I found this big article about it. Auldus Huxley!! This article is also about afterlife and stuff and junk. Bored? Read this crazy thing.

After she had offered it to Huxley several times over those two months, he finally wrote out his instructions to her for the dosage. She injected it herself, then, a few hours later, gave him another 100 micrograms. As he died, under the effects of what she calls his "moksha medicine," Laura coached him "towards the light" as the Bardo counsels. "Willing and consciously you are going, willingly and consciously, and you are doing this beautifully; you are doing this so beautifully." After several hours, Huxley died.

These five people all said that this was the most serene, the most beautiful death. Both doctors and nurse said they had never seen a person in similar physical condition going off so completely without pain and without struggle.
We will never know if all this is only our wishful thinking, or if it is real, but certainly all outward signs and the inner feeling gave indication that it was beautiful and peaceful and easy.

You can hear Laura discuss Huxley's LSD-assisted death in much more detail in a conversation here with Alan Watts, who calls it a "highly intelligent form of dying." In her letter, she defies the judgment that Huxley's use of psychedelic drugs, in life and death, was irresponsible or escapist.

Aldous Huxley, Dying of Cancer, Left This World Tripping on LSD (1963)

Aldous Huxley put himself forever on the intellectual map when he wrote the dystopian sci-fi novel Brave New World in 1931. (Listen to Huxley narrating a dramatized version here.) The British-born writer was living in Italy at the time, a continental intellectual par excellence.

www.openculture.com

 

[SadJessu]

The Catholics are always "looking for answers". They use these big telescopes things!

Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I wonder what some of the names of these telescopes are? What would Holy Organizations name some of their telescopes?

A:
LUCI (originally LUCIFER: Large Binocular Telescope Near-infrared Spectroscopic Utility with Camera and Integral Field Unit for Extragalactic Research) is the near-infrared instrument for the LBT.
Telescope style: optical telescope
Location(s): Mount Graham, Graham County, Arizona
Part of: Mount Graham International Observatory; Steward Observatory
Alternative names: LBT

LUCIFER? LOL that's odd....

Large Binocular Telescope - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The Vatican telescope is named the Alice P. Lennon Telescope lol. I don't think they got to pick the manufacturer's cheeky acronym.

 

[bloomingdark]

When I was a kid i started having all this notions of my life and meaning and i understood i didn't believe at all, when I was twelve i started doing my own research and i liked to read books from Richard Dawkins and Carl Sagan,to understand life itself, i understood that a lot of what i thought was clearly not my own idea but rather a tendency of every individual of wanting to know it's porpouse , the one that's out of his mind,mainly we tend to look at it in those things we were taught, religion, love, morality,knowledge

I stopped thinking about it when I lost every drive, i chose love to be my reason and told myself , whatever this is,it just feels like a bad dream, and I'll try to survive day by day until I can free myself from it

 

[wait.what]

Wow, some very smart and very humble answers here. And so far, nobody clomping in here going "MY ANSWER IS THE ONLY ANSWER AND IF YOU DONT LIKE IT YOURE GOING TO HELLLLLLLLL!!" Most places, that's all you get in threads like this.

Personally, I don't think it makes a lot of sense to look for "purpose" on a human scale in anything as enormous as the universe. When people ask what the purpose of a thing is, what they're really asking is "How does this thing relate to me and my interests?" Most of the time the answer is "it doesn't." Small kids think that the sun shines "so we can see," but that's not why. The sun shone before there were any people, and it will shine after we're all gone. It's really got nothing to do with human beings' needs and desires at all. I guess that is disappointing in a way, but it's also nothing personal. Some people read hostility into the universe, but I think that's going too far. While it may technically be true to say that the world doesn't care about you or me, it's not like it COULD care and chooses not to for some reason. It's not like the universe is our deadbeat dad. Yelling at it for treating you badly is kind of like yelling at the walls of your bedroom for not being warmer and more nurturing toward you. That is to say, it's nutty.

To the extent that we're going to find warmth and purpose in our lives, we've got to look for it in other people. This kind of sucks, since a lot of us are embedded in families, communities, and/or entire cultures that are very cruel to us in particular or just everybody in general. I don't think those can be the conditions we evolved in, because if we had, there wouldn't be any humans left. We would have ctb as a species a long time ago. When you think about it, humans' real evolutionary advantage is not that we have big fancy brains, but that those brains allow us to plan and organize with other humans. This person can spend all their time becoming an expert at knapping flint, so our group has the best tools, and that person can spend all their time finding food, so we have the best nutrition. This other person's job is just remembering the important stuff we figured out, so we don't lose that knowledge in the future. If all those people were at each other's throats all the time, they'd be left as just a bunch of individual naked monkeys with big fancy brains, shivering alone on some Ice Age tundra. None of them would last a month.

I don't know how things are all over the world, but I personally live in a country where we just lost half a million people--far more than we had to--because too many of us decided we didn't owe our neighbors (or our own families!) a damn thing, and we weren't going to wear little squares of paper over our mouths just because some egghead doctor told us to. I don't know what to do with that. That kind of shit really has sapped my will to live. Because there is no "meaning" out there in the wider universe. No meaning that has anything to do with us and our tiny little plans, anyway. Pretty much everything that's relevant to human beings is contained within the circle of human society and the environment that sustains it, both of which we've pretty much trashed.

There's some kind of social theory about how humans can only keep track of about 250 other people, which is supposedly the maximum number of people a hunter-gatherer nomad would know. Anybody over and above that number is a de facto stranger, and therefore a competitor for resources and an enemy. So theoretically what's wrong with the world now is that we each have to look at too many of each others' ugly faces. Swarms of humans in cities, oceans of them on the internet. Too damn many of them. They start to seem threatening, and we treat them as such. They treat us just as badly. I don't know if that's really true, but it would explain a lot if it was.

Maybe I'd feel better if I moved to a tiny island with only people that I like. One that had no wifi. Might not really be an improvement, but a lot of people seem to have fantasies along those lines.

Sorry--none of that's remotely encouraging. Of course, this is definitely the wrong subforum on the wrong site to be looking for encouragement. If any of us had any pleasant answers, we wouldn't be here, lol. Sorry, @WornOutLife!

 

[Pigeonman]

I'm very deep into the occult, experienced things I would've never dreamt possible. I recommend hermeticism (but stay away from the darker sides of the occult.)

My basic philosophy of reality is everything in our physical plane is a creation of a collective mind, like an infinite universal mind. Our dreams are the creation of our personal finite unconscious minds and work akin to that of a universal but at a limited level. Science also is starting to move in the direction everything is a creation of mind.

Also if everything came from one thing the one thing could not create something outside of itself since there is nothing there, so the one thing must create inside itself, at no point could we have ever become separated from the one thing because how can the one thing create something within itself that's separate, so essentially we are the universe experiencing itself through a point of consciousness within itself.

Plus, the universe must have always been because something can never come from nothing so there must've been something in the beginning which wasn't just empty nothingness to produce something, religions call it potential. And if the universe has always been then time must not exist in the absolute sense, we measure time based off the positions of planets and stars (hrs, days, years) and these positions repeat themselves, what we call time is just the movement of planets and stars and the motion of one event to another. If the universe hadn't always been then time would by linear having a beginning and an end, but time is cyclical and repeats itself. I could talk about this shit all day tbh lol, spend half my time just thinking about the universe

 

[f merrick]

This is a beautiful thread. I've also gone down the rabbit hole of pondering these questions - more times than has been useful to me.

When I was 8 years old I had my first real traumatic experience, where I stared into the mirror at my own eyes and was profoundly hit by the realization that everything in my experience - my family, my parents, my home, the earth, etc. - existed only in my mind. My only way of accessing them was through my senses, in which I was utterly alone. I freaked out and had to have my mom talk me down over several days. It's a shame this happened to me so young rather than when my ego was more fully formed - I think it would've been fun and mysterious to explore rather than terrifying and traumatizing.

Since that moment I've always felt alone to some degree or another in the world. It's baffling and mysterious to think about - the question of what/who I am, where I came from, why I'm here, what is the universe, what is consciousness, and on and on.

I've always taken a pretty solipsistic view, that the "universe" and "reality" exists only in each one of our heads, and is a totally unique and special place in each one. When I've been less dysphoric that thought brought me a lot of joy and intrigue. However as I've gone through so many bizarre and disturbing and terrifying psychological experiences over the years - and have had to be medicated increasingly despite my strenuous efforts not to be - I've come to realize the thought is scarier and more troubling to me than it is beautiful.

I think heaven and hell are real, and they're right here on earth. Some people live blessed lives - i.e., that are full of meaning and connection and lacking in unbearable pain - and some people suffer beyond all reckoning, and there doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason to it. Personally I lived through many different eras in terms of my psychological health, some in which I was almost blissfully happy for years at a time, some in which I desperately struggled to live while my mind tried to eat me alive in one way or another, and some where for long periods of time life was kind of just boring and meaningless but utterly tolerable.

I've thought increasingly, as my own death approaches, about what happens to consciousness after we die. There's no way of knowing for sure. I think science has shown pretty definitively that anyone's idea of a single unified consciousness is actually an illusion created by the brain - i.e. there isn't really a unified you, just a bunch of different parts of your brain doing complicated electrical stuff that feels, when things are working correctly, to be integrated - so it seems highly unlikely from a scientific perspective that karmic reincarnation is a thing. However the laws of physics state that energy cannot be destroyed, so something of course happens to the energy that's inside of us after we die. The most simple/logical answer is that the energy of our body and conscious mind just sort of dissipates slowly until it's an undifferentiated part of the electromagnetism flowing through all things. (For this reason, btw, I have a fantasy of dying outdoors somewhere beautiful, although it would be very difficult for me to do that for a variety of reasons).

It would be strange and disturbing to have some sort of awareness of this process. It seems kind of nightmarish - like you are aware of yourself just coming apart and flowing into this undifferentiated cosmic energy, but you're paralyzed and you just have to watch it happen for the rest of eternity. There's an interpretation of quantum mechanics that basically implies it's not possible for your consciousness to disappear once it comes into being in the universe, that I think is related to this possibility. This is actually my main fear about CTB - like, maybe as shitty and awful as my brain makes my life, this is actually the best it's going to get for billions of years. Watching the shit show of my brain just collapse into mush and terror might actually be more entertaining than dying in a weird way. Something to think about! On the other hand, it seems that people who go into the process of death with openness and wonder rather than fear seem to have a pretty good time with death. That would suggest that the less trauma you leave with, the more "enjoyable" the experience is. It's a very Buddhist concept and I think also central to what Eckhart Tolle preaches.

Though I think it's merely anthropocentric metaphor, it's fun to think about karmic reincarnation. I don't really believe in moralistic reincarnation - i.e., if you do good deeds in life, or deal with your suffering in the "right way" and don't commit suicide, etc., you'll be reincarnated in a more auspicious life. It seems too complicated for humans to make decisions based on that principle. For example, I think obsessively about the pain my CTB will cause my family and friends and whether I would be karmically punished or that. But I kind of think in a way it would be more traumatic for them if I continue to deteriorate into a crazy, possibly terminally institutionalized person who they have to visit and see being miserable and suicidal until I die in some tortured fashion. In other words, there's an ultimate karmic reason why my CTB might actually be better for them in the long run, despite the fact that it will be extremely painful no matter what way I pass away. It's also possible I'm just being selfish - it's really hard to judge that when you're in so much pain, which I'm sure many of you understand.

Only tangentially relatedly - I've often thought, very boringly, I would want to be reincarnated as just a normie. The type of person who's happy to do their job, get a drink after work, come home and watch Netflix, get a nice house with a little garden, walk their dog in the woods and do yardwork on weekends, take 2 vacations a year, and that's about it. Life seems to be pretty pleasurable for that type of person, unless they get some unfortunate illness or fall victim to an accident.

There's a theory that the end of the universe will result in a big crunch, whereby (in layman's terms) it essentially caves back in on itself and then immediately expands back out again. So that history will repeat itself forever essentially for all eternity. I've thought pretty obsessively about that idea, and whether it would be possible to be me again but to make different choices in life. My fantasy is to be able to send myself a message through time and space about what to do differently next time, a la the movie Interstellar. There are a few huge mistakes that I made that I think would've made the quality of my life - and those of the people around me - very different. But again, I think this is more of a fun idea that what's actually likely to happen.

I'm very troubled and depressed about the idea that I'm the only subjective me that will ever have existed, and that's it. That was my one chance. My life has been satisfying and privileged in some ways - especially when I was younger - but also pretty awful and difficult compared to most people I know. I feel kind of cheated in that respect, and it really makes me want to do things all over again. Maybe billions of years from now, I'll get the chance! Fingers crossed...

 

[Meditation guide]

I have this question in my mind every waking minute from the time I was 12 too. That's the main reason I have been meditating since that age. I think I've found a few hints.

 

[WornOutLife]

I have this question in my mind every waking minute from the time I was 12 too. That's the main reason I have been meditating since that age. I think I've found a few hints.

I'm glad to know we have the same doubts about this weird world!

I've had my first meditation experience (with no spirituality) some days ago thanks to Sam Harris.

It was amazing. I felt extremely calm and satisfied. You probably know what I mean.

I've tried to have this experience again but couldn't do it do far. I need more concetration lol.

Btw, I'm trying to have lucid dreams now!

I've started writing down every single stuff I dream and I'm managing to remember my dreams but no control in them yet.

As you can see, I'm really having an existential crisis

 

[Meditation guide]

For lucid dreams the trick that might help is to ask yourself several times a day "am I dreaming now?"

If you can do that regularly it might help you to "wake up" and become aware you are dreaming when it happens. Lucid dreams are tremendous fun. And the broader implication is the we are dreaming now and not aware of it, just in a different way.

 

[WornOutLife]

For lucid dreams the trick that might help is to ask yourself several times a day "am I dreaming now?"

If you can do that regularly it might help you to "wake up" and become aware you are dreaming when it happens. Lucid dreams are tremendous fun. And the broader implication is the we are dreaming now and not aware of it, just in a different way.

I'm deffo gonna do this!
Ty so much, dear!

 

[kwho]

Humans...we're trying to do what Edison's mother told him not to: eat something that's bigger than our own heads.

Brilliant!

I think the obvious answer is then to get out of one's own head before trying to understand/eat anything, no ?

I have this question in my mind every waking minute from the time I was 12 too. That's the main reason I have been meditating since that age. I think I've found a few hints.

Did anything happen when you were 12 or did the questioning simply start with no apparent cause?