Venting Not knowing if there is an afterlife or void drives me mad

[_Minsk]

I desperately want to know what awaits me, else I can't ctb, except im in a happy state of mood and less anxious (then i could pull trough i think)and thus won't project fears based on my feeling state onto death/ or what(edit: *i think*) might await me, .. but still while being in this low state i feel very unease, its a fucked up feeling to not know the answer to this question... Sorry for this cringe post

 

[FuneralCry]

I believe there is non existence after this and that thought comforts me. The way I see it, we will all die eventually and whatever happens after this is out of our control. I look forward to death, as I see it as being freedom from all suffering. I wish you the best.

 

[TheHatedOne]

Nah it's not cringe, it's completely understandable. I also feel irritated that we don't know what happens after we die and this matter consumes me. While I prefer to think that there's nothing after death, because, after all, there was nothing before we were born, I still can't just ignore the other possibility. Or, what if it's neither of these and it's something completely different? It's awful.

 

[SuccoDiGelato]

This is my personal idea.
A lot of people turns in life after dead and when they describe what they saw all the description are very similar to each other.
So for me there is something, where we can found our familiar and finally find true love and happiness, but I repeat that this is just a personal opinion, so yeah.
Sorry for my bad English

 

[_Minsk]

I believe there is non existence after this and that thought comforts me. The way I see it, we will all die eventually and whatever happens after this is out of our control. I look forward to death, as I see it as being freedom from all suffering. I wish you the best.

Thank you, i wish you the best too

Nah it's not cringe, it's completely understandable. I also feel irritated that we don't know what happens after we die and this matter consumes me. While I prefer to think that there's nothing after death, because, after all, there was nothing before we were born, I still can't just ignore the other possibility. Or, what if it's neither of these and it's something completely different? It's awful.

Thank you, knowing that im not alone with this eases my anxiety a bit

This is my personal idea.
A lot of people turns in life after dead and when they describe what they saw all the description are very similar to each other.
So for me there is something, where we can found our familiar and finally find true love and happiness, but I repeat that this is just a personal opinion, so yeah.
Sorry for my bad English

Thank you, do you mean near death experiences where people felt love and peace/tunnel and withe light? I find your English very good

 

[Snake of Eden]

Maybe trying psychedelics will help bring you a different prospective on this matter?

 

[fox_wannabe]

I am deep into this rabbit hole. It all depends on where you want to go after life. What do you imagine it to be. Like most religious people see Jesus or Allah.
There are some if's and but's here and there. Like how do we trust things we see in NDEs or in dreams or other weird experiences like psychedelics.
Also even if they are real experiences; how do wee trust things like Jesus or Allah, they might as well be fake "entities" or products of imagination.
I wish for your life to be better, but I cannot really do anything to help. But I am sure If afterlife exist It should not be as deterministic thus It can be improvement of our condition.

 

[Ta555]

Personally, coz I'm still fucked over by religion from my childhood, though I've come really far on my atheist journey, I still have this uneasy feeling that something bad will happen if you ctb as opposed to dying from natural causes or disease. Not full on hell perse but just this nagging thought that I'm not allowed to do this and that there will be some sort of consequence. I'm doing my best to remind myself it's just religious brainwashing.

 

[SuccoDiGelato]

I believe there is non existence after this and that thought comforts me. The way I see it, we will all die eventually and whatever happens after this is out of our control. I look forward to death, as I see it as being freedom from all suffering. I wish you the best.

Thank you, i wish you the best too

Thank you, knowing that im not alone with this eases my anxiety a bit

Thank you, do you mean near death experiences where people felt love and peace/tunnel and withe light? I find your English very good

Yep it's exactly what I Meant.
Recently I saw a documentary about near death experience and I founded strange that everyone had the same sense of love and peace,No matter sex, religion or Sexual orientation.
Also thanks for the English thing, I found that very Sweet^^

 

[WhiteRabbit]

I think it's going to be like sleeping. One minute you're conscious, the next you're just gone. Never to wake again.

but there's also a small part of me that worries about some kind of eternal damnation.

 

[stevieu]

My belief is that when our brains die, so do 'we': our personalities, our memories, our fears, our consciousness and everything we have ever known will be gone forever once it all shuts down - just like before we even came into existence.

My biggest comfort from the thought of death is knowing that along with all those things, I will no longer be suffering mentally.

Of course, there's a little bit of doubt, but the overwhelming evidence seems to point to 'nothingness'.

And your post wasn't cringe at all :)

 

[S like suicide]

You know ... I was close to death, in the sense that I was about to throw myself from a skyscraper there I had an enlightenment ... it just ends all... in fact you don't even realize that you are dead because you no longer exist.You are aware now just because you are alive.All these thoughts we have about who knows what is after death etc ... are all creations of the mind ... the mind is very powerful, it can make us see and imagine incredible things and has invented immense things But when the mind die it all ends.I feel deep down that this is the only truth but the mind is evil and in order not to let us kill and preserve us from harming us it makes us imagine that there is more and that there is a hypothetical heaven or hell .... i didn't see any guardian angel that evening or hear a divine voice block me yet i prayed deeply, it was just me and death waiting for me if i would have jumped off... so it's nothing special ... it's like when you shut down a computer forever.i think it is like that.

 

[GeorgeEastman]

I know it's oblivion.

I want it badly. I had it twice when I had surgery before. Anesthesia. It was so good. I was completely out of it. They could have sawed my head off and I'd have never known it. I wish they would have. But I eventually woke up.

Those were the two best times of my life.

 

[Salkak]

I hope that there something after death. But it won't make much difference cause there won't be any "you" left to feel.

 

[Eternal Oblivion]

There will be nothing.

10 million children die each other, mostly in poor countrys, from preventable causes.

Thats 27.397 children each day

1141 each hour

19 each minute.

So as I was writing this post about 20 children died worldwide in terrible suffer. Do you really believe those children are going to afterlife or a better plan of existance?

Humans are just an animal, like a cow. Do you believe in cow after life?

 

[Snake of Eden]

There will be nothing.

10 million children die each other, mostly in poor countrys, from preventable causes.

Thats 27.397 children each day

1141 each hour

19 each minute.

So as I was writing this post about 20 children died worldwide in terrible suffer. Do you really believe those children are going to afterlife or a better plan of existance?

Humans are just an animal, like a cow. Do you believe in cow after life?

Not disagreeing with the conclusion necessarily but what does statistics about death and cows have to do with disproving the existence of an after life???

The sky is blue. It has birds, birds fly, they also die, there are millions of them. They die everyday. Just think about it! Therefore there is no afterlife!

 

[Snake of Eden]

I desperately want to know what awaits me, else I can't ctb, except im in a happy state of mood and less anxious (then i could pull trough i think)and thus won't project fears based on my feeling state onto death/ or what(edit: *i think*) might await me, .. but still while being in this low state i feel very unease, its a fucked up feeling to not know the answer to this question... Sorry for this cringe post

The real question is. If you somehow knew there is an afterlife and you didnt like to suffer the consequence of suicide, what would you do?

 

[Samsal112]

Yep it's exactly what I Meant.
Recently I saw a documentary about near death experience and I founded strange that everyone had the same sense of love and peace,No matter sex, religion or Sexual orientation.
Also thanks for the English thing, I found that very Sweet^^

Do you happen to remember what that documentary was? So not one experience had something bad happen?

 

[ColorlessTrees]

Don't worry, the post isn't cringe. I think this is very common, very human; it's fear of the unknown. This is one more major obstacle to CTB for me.

I'm not religious, more agnostic, I suppose. What I'd wish for is "the void", or, what I believe, to be the pre-birth state of nothingness. And it scares me that I can't be certain of it, even though it's a likely possibility. Consciousness ceases when cognitive function ceases, as far as we know. But science is still limited; it's a slow process to advance, and humans don't know much in the grand scheme of things.

The fear of eternal damnation as a possibility is strong, but I belive it's the brain being irrational, or defaulting to the worst. If there were some kind of deity(ies), let's assume just ones, there would have to be some kind of purgatory, even for the worst of sinners, because humans are heavily influenced by biologic drive and environment, despite their free will. Imo. It never made sense to me that, at least with Christianity, God being "perfect", in my understanding, could create something deliberately flawed and then punish them for that.

And as for near-death experiences, I believe they have been mostly debunked as intense hallucinations from the brain going haywire; maybe something like sleep paralysis, where things feel extremely real, but they are only happening in the imagination.

Just know that you're not alone in this fear. It's truly difficult to deal with something like this, something so heavy. Because this is "the rest of eternity" we're talking about.

 

[demuic]

You know ... I was close to death, in the sense that I was about to throw myself from a skyscraper there I had an enlightenment ... it just ends all... in fact you don't even realize that you are dead because you no longer exist.You are aware now just because you are alive.All these thoughts we have about who knows what is after death etc ... are all creations of the mind ... the mind is very powerful, it can make us see and imagine incredible things and has invented immense things But when the mind die it all ends.I feel deep down that this is the only truth but the mind is evil and in order not to let us kill and preserve us from harming us it makes us imagine that there is more and that there is a hypothetical heaven or hell .... i didn't see any guardian angel that evening or hear a divine voice block me yet i prayed deeply, it was just me and death waiting for me if i would have jumped off... so it's nothing special ... it's like when you shut down a computer forever.i think it is like that.

I completely agree. Humans make up these stories about death because they are afraid to face the oblivion. It is fulled by the evolutionary and biological survival insinct, the power of which has been honed through millions of years of evolution from the first single celled life formed down to the creatures known as homo sapiens. The mind is capable of creating whatever fictions it likes and those stories are only reinforced by the dominant cultural narrative of an afterlife.

People fear the abyss, the absence, and so they create something in order to fill the void. I think the ants scurrying around on the ground don't worry about if they will go to ant-heaven or ant-hell or ant-reincarnation after getting stepped on by someone's shoe, all they know is that they must avoid it. Humans, being somewhat complex organism, have decided that this matter must also be complex.

I know it's oblivion.

I want it badly. I had it twice when I had surgery before. Anesthesia. It was so good. I was completely out of it. They could have sawed my head off and I'd have never known it. I wish they would have. But I eventually woke up.

Those were the two best times of my life.

Yes. The awarenss of anything only results from being alive. I see death as similar to that, being under anesthesia, or a dreamless sleep. There is nothing, and you are not aware that there is nothing because there is no "you" who is awake to experience that nothing.

 

[S like suicide]

I completely agree. Humans make up these stories about death because they are afraid to face the oblivion. It is fulled by the evolutionary and biological survival insinct, the power of which has been honed through millions of years of evolution from the first single celled life formed down to the creatures known as homo sapiens. The mind is capable of creating whatever fictions it likes and those stories are only reinforced by the dominant cultural narrative of an afterlife.

People fear the abyss, the absence, and so they create something in order to fill the void. I think the ants scurrying around on the ground don't worry about if they will go to ant-heaven or ant-hell or ant-reincarnation after getting stepped on by someone's shoe, all they know is that they must avoid it. Humans, being somewhat complex organism, have decided that this matter must also be complex.

True,as human beings we are programmed to live and not to commit suicide, the survival instinct is really strong to fight ... damn, why can't it be easier? Having a way out when you really don't have hope anymore ... it's not fair that it has to be so fucking hard:(

 

[Morbid Cam]

That's not cringe, this is something that worries me as well. Contrary to most here,I would personally like to see an afterlife as long as it's better than this life as I would still like a chance at happiness that I wasn't given on this Earth. Even if it is just nothing, I suppose there's really nothing I can do about it so...

 

[little helpers]

I completely agree. Humans make up these stories about death because they are afraid to face the oblivion. It is fulled by the evolutionary and biological survival insinct, the power of which has been honed through millions of years of evolution from the first single celled life formed down to the creatures known as homo sapiens. The mind is capable of creating whatever fictions it likes and those stories are only reinforced by the dominant cultural narrative of an afterlife.

People fear the abyss, the absence, and so they create something in order to fill the void. I think the ants scurrying around on the ground don't worry about if they will go to ant-heaven or ant-hell or ant-reincarnation after getting stepped on by someone's shoe, all they know is that they must avoid it. Humans, being somewhat complex organism, have decided that this matter must also be complex.

this has to be the best thing I've read in regards to the afterlife argument.

humans hallucinate their consciousness. this entire thing is just primed to our own survival needs evolutionarily, such that each species has very different perceptions of the physical world.

the conceptions around death is nevertheless a conscious hallucination. like the way we see colors out of electromagnetic waves of varying wavelengths. it's neither truth nor falsity, it's merely what you see.

Edit: I don't really know if I'm getting the point across. someone gotta tell me to explain myself cuz my brain's all jumbled rn lol.

 

[lmon]

My belief is that when our brains die, so do 'we': our personalities, our memories, our fears, our consciousness and everything we have ever known will be gone forever once it all shuts down - just like before we even came into existence.

My biggest comfort from the thought of death is knowing that along with all those things, I will no longer be suffering mentally.

Of course, there's a little bit of doubt, but the overwhelming evidence seems to point to 'nothingness'.

And your post wasn't cringe at all :)

Yeah, the most relief I have found since my illness is when I passed out. Pure nothingness.

 

[EliphasBlackwood]

Not cringe at all. I think most of us have struggled with this at some point. I've never been much for religion or spirituality but as my ctb date is coming closer I do find myself thinking about an afterlife. That being said I don't think there is anything after. None of it makes any sense to me.

 

[DobryDen]

Man- I completely appreciate all the discussion - these are things that go on in my head and heart and I have no where else to read and share and talk... none of it makes sense to me so I have no idea what happens after death. Existence itself is so illogical and incomprehensible that I don't believe life-after-death has to be logical or fair, either. I think likely is there is just non-existence which isn't bad at all. It only frightens my ego-mind. But for me, I don't know- although its illogical and incomprehensible, there's no reason that there isn't a psychopathic God, or that hell doesn't exist.

I just keep hoping I come to the final point where I accept that death is inevitable and billions and billions of people have faced it- and that I just have to go for it. Let go and go for it. I don't have hope for anything more in life.

 

[nebulaz]

I'm going to go with nothingness. Just like before birth. Nothing "You" will understand if there is "afterlife" from what I understand about brains, I can't see the physical intricacy that makes up our thoughts, decision making- entire consciousness being transferred anywhere.
The brain probably just stops working like a computer and starts to deteriorate much faster. Only raw energy like heat and potential energy is transferred to other places and things

 

[Somber]

Thinking about the billions of years that the universe has existed before I was born and the billions of years that will follow after I'm dead, makes me believe that if anything, this life we had here was the anomaly with death returning us to the familiar.

 

[NormaJeane]

The most likely is that there are no heaven and afterlife, which comes from religion. The simplest explanation is that there is no God - no one created the universe and no one determines our fate, Stephen Hawking said.

 

[lostautist]

Maybe trying psychedelics will help bring you a different prospective on this matter?

The journey for enlightenment is a fantastic one. Achieving enlightenment is not, in my opinion. I had a miraculous life altering event on psychedelics a long time ago. It's also why I'm ok with going.