Philosophy and the Afterlife: the concept of eternal return (a thought experiment)

[LOVELYDARKDEEP]

While it may not have been an original concept, originating from Stoic philosophers in Ancient Greece, Nietzsche is known for developing the theory of eternal return in more modern times. As a thought experiment, it goes something like this

Imagine that you found a definitive answer on what happens in the afterlife, and you know beyond a doubt that the information you received regarding the afterlife is true and accurate.
You find that your life is a cycle, and as soon as you expire you start right back at day one as a newborn, with no knowledge of the previous life cycle - reborn as the same person under the same circumstances. You repeat this cycle of death, amnesia, and rebirth ad infinitum, living the same life over and over again.

How would this make you feel?

These days the thought experiment has been popularized as a sort of litmus test; the concept being that if the described scenario provoked a negative reaction, it is a sign to make some changes in your life.

However I find the concept to be absolutely horrifying. I'd imagine that anyone who has experienced unavoidable trauma would feel the same way. I'd immediately start looking into methods that could destroy the soul along with the body to escape that torturous cycle.

Surprisingly, it seems that there are some summer souls that are genuinely not perturbed by this possibility. I can't relate.

In my opinion, the best permanent afterlife I can envision entails eternal non-existence, or something incorporating total ego death.

It's interesting how many individuals would find my ideal afterlife, or lack of one, a dismal prospect and would be willing to accept almost any other alternative that would allow them to persist in some way, shape, or form after death.

Like I said before, I can't relate. I've had a few loved ones and amazing pets pass before me, and I have to say the idea of some sort of reunion, even a brief one, would be appealing, but I also know that I wouldn't be at peace unless there was a final exit accessible at the time of my choosing.

I suppose that would mean I'd retain similar desires in death as I did in life.

What did you think of that that thought experiment? What's your ideal afterlife? (Feel free to share your religion as well, for context - I'm agno

 

[Darkover]

you'd have to be living in a simulation to start life over again and again in the exact same way and since we are not living in a simulation it's not possible to relive your life over and over again one thing for sure life is awful

 

[LOVELYDARKDEEP]

you'd have to be living in a simulation to start life over again and again in the exact same way and since we are not living in a simulation it's not possible to relive your life over and over again one thing for sure life is awful

A simulation would be one way to rationalize the concept, but the theory can stand on it's own merits without empirical proof.

Any afterlife theory, no matter how popular, whether it is rational or not, is purely speculative and can neither be proven nor disproven by any means available to us mortals.

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

Why hasn't anyone or any scientist detected or contacted anything like a power source for a soul or a soul or spirit,ghost etc ?With all the tech and they can't detect a soul or god or their power source or any kind of evidence?
Why not ?

even ai can detect brain patterns in humans , neural link etc
I'll never believe in any afterlife reincarnation soul god religion simulation etc.

AI re-creates what people see by reading their brain scans

A new artificial intelligence system can reconstruct images a person saw based on their brain activity

https://www.science.org/content/article/ai-re-creates-what-people-see-reading-their-brain-scans

 

[Stoked]

heaps of theories, they're merely speculations without any empirical evidence. unless someone were to come back from death (and I mean, death, none of those bs "near death experiences") and tell us.

i'd just rather return to the state of non-existence as before, or become an element of the universe merging with its consciousness. peace, one love, and complete ego death and permanent solitude. but not of this consciousness in this meat suit.

doesn't matter anyway, wouldn't have this consciousness in the same way to evaluate that when i've reached that point (that is to say, even if i would have any sort of individual consciousness, which I highly doubt). so whatever. in the end, it doesn't even matter anymore. i won't exist as i am right now. that is the most important part.

 

[wiinterfrost]

being a 5th dimensional ghost being who gets to contact people through dreams sounds like a pretty rad afterlife to me, if i were to exist in a sort of afterlife

but to your "theory of eternal return" i think most people on this forum would agree that re-living the same life in same circumstances would be very very undesirable, being suicidal usually stems from not liking this life here :D

but the concept could prove interesting if even though the circumstances are the same, we make different choices each time that through butterfly effect have different consequences, in turn living out vastly different versions of the same life over and over again.

but also i kind of wonder how logistically this would work to be reborn "under the same circumstances" because everyone dies at different times and circumstances are greatly defined by other people in your enviroment so does everyone just spend time in limbo while they wait for other people who were part of their lives to finally die so that they can be reborn so that those waiting can also finally be reborn? idk if i am making sense here is an examle: todd and fred are best friends since childhood and todd dies at 15, while fred lived to be 85. for todd to be reborn under the same circumstance he'd need his childhood friend fred but for fred to be reborn there'd be 70 more years to wait so the question is does todd spend this time in limbo waiting for fred to also be reborn? and then imagine that every person has probably hundreds, thousands of other people who touched their lives and for the counter to really be reset everyone would have to wait for all of those people to be reborn at the correct times too.
thus, i guess supporting @Darkover 's theory of a simulation.

or maybe i put too much thought into this and time isn't supposed to be linear anyway, who knows lol
philosphers are known to philosophise situations without thinking of the logistics much anyways :D

 

[LOVELYDARKDEEP]

heaps of theories, they're merely speculations without any empirical evidence. unless someone were to come back from death (and I mean, death, none of those bs "near death experiences") and tell us.

I concur, I don't put a lot of truck into NDE tales - seems like most of them are used as a vehicle to align with a person's faith.

I'd be a bit more likely to believe a NDE where the subject experienced an "afterlife" that contradicted their personal worldview, and not in the corny salvation story-esque way that crops up from time to time.

Christian has a NDE and goes to heaven, meets jesus, sees angels, loved ones, etc: overplayed, unconvincing, unoriginal.

Person has a NDE and experiences an incomprehensible Lovecraftian dimension that cannot be explained in a way that matters, possibly involving crab-men and a sixth dimension, slowly succumbs to insanity as a result: based.

maybe i put too much thought into this and time isn't supposed to be linear anyway, who knows lol
philosphers are known to philosophise situations without thinking of the logistics much anyways :D

Philosophy is fun because you can just think up a bunch of random bullshit and get into arguments with other people that have also brought their own random bullshit to the table to share with the rest of the class!

Philosophers have historically gotten worked up about intangible concepts enough to get their peers executed when the argument wasn't going their way, after all.

but also i kind of wonder how logistically this would work to be reborn "under the same circumstances" because everyone dies at different times and circumstances are greatly defined by other people in your enviroment so does everyone just spend time in limbo while they wait for other people who were part of their lives to finally die so that they can be reborn so that those waiting can also finally be reborn?

You can definitely start to get very obtuse and esoteric in this regard.

How can you be sure that anybody else exists? How can you be sure that you exist?

What is the common denominator between existence and non-existence, and how can you be sure that you are both perceiving the information you are basing that judgement on accurately.

Now that we're trying to prove or disprove existence itself, we've hit philosophical bedrock. Who's ready for some hemlock?

 

[Smaragdine]

Person has a NDE and experiences an incomprehensible Lovecraftian dimension that cannot be explained in a way that matters, possibly involving crab-men and a sixth dimension, slowly succumbs to insanity as a result: based.

"Person has a NDE and experiences an incomprehensible Lovecraftian dimension that cannot be explained in a way that matters, possibly involving crab-men and a sixth dimension, slowly succumbs to insanity as a result: based." Not even the comforting standard NDEs are taken seriously by most people. People how acknowledge them do that mostly because they find comfort in them. So the kind of NDE's you describe are self-limiting their reach due to who would be willing to listen to them. But they exist. They show patterns, the same way the ones do who are tailored to someones pre-existing believes. Wayne Bush has collected some of those on his homepage trickebythelight for example.

 

[It'sMyLife]

It sounds horrifying to me . I have recently become aware of what some call the "reincarnation trap" . Don't go towards the light they say . There was a reddit post I saw where a person stated emphatically that they had proof of this trap and that reptilians are behind it. No way to know of anything being true unless you experience it personally . Someone even on this board has it in their signature I believe ( about the trap). I've watched a lot of NDE vids on youtube . There are plenty of these channels that retell stories sent in - anyone could send in any story- and they show no actual interviews which I think is pretty lazy. Heaven awaits is one such channel . The "coming home" channel is much better and more believable with actual interviews. Some of these people have written books which you can find . But still I'm skeptical. One thing you said in your first post was you'd like to have a reunion (most of us would) that I think is a small contradiction . If you think you're sent back in short order or even after some period of time , then how could you have a reunion because they'd all already have been sent back ? Anyway, this will be an ongoing topic especially here . The topic comes along every so often and is analyzed in a slightly different way which is a good thing. May your day be better today than it was yesterday

 

[Smaragdine]

It sounds horrifying to me . I have recently become aware of what some call the "reincarnation trap" . Don't go towards the light they say . There was a reddit post I saw where a person stated emphatically that they had proof of this trap and that reptilians are behind it. No way to know of anything being true unless you experience it personally . Someone even on this board has it in their signature I believe ( about the trap). I've watched a lot of NDE vids on youtube . There are plenty of these channels that retell stories sent in - anyone could send in any story- and they show no actual interviews which I think is pretty lazy. Heaven awaits is one such channel . The "coming home" channel is much better and more believable with actual interviews. Some of these people have written books which you can find . But still I'm skeptical. One thing you said in your first post was you'd like to have a reunion (most of us would) that I think is a small contradiction . If you think you're sent back in short order or even after some period of time , then how could you have a reunion because they'd all already have been sent back ? Anyway, this will be an ongoing topic especially here . The topic comes along every so often and is analyzed in a slightly different way which is a good thing. May your day be better today than it was yesterday

if you are interested in the soul trap topic, here are a few links:

The Soul Trap Problem - A Critique of the current State of the Research

Read The Soul Trap Problem - A Critique of the current State of the Research by ajuna on Issuu and browse thousands of other publications on our pl...

issuu.com

https://www.youtube.com/@TheRebelliousMeatPuppet

https://www.trickedbythelight.com/tbtl/index.html

None of it is "THE truth", but its a start

 

[It'sMyLife]

Something I forgot to mention in my reply is the Dalai Lama. They believe they will find him reincarnated and have to wait a few years until word gets around of a child who knows certain things he could not know . They will then go to verify this which is what happened with the current DL as well . There are other documented stories of children knowing things they could not have known . Thanks for the links Smaragdine . I'll check them out

 

[Smaragdine]

Something I forgot to mention in my reply is the Dalai Lama. They believe they will find him reincarnated and have to wait a few years until word gets around of a child who knows certain things he could not know . They will then go to verify this which is what happened with the current DL as well . There are other documented stories of children knowing things they could not have known . Thanks for the links Smaragdine . I'll check them out

Well, the Dalai Lama is also personally and publicly friends with the war criminal George W. Bush, publicly while recorded asked a kid to suck his tongue, eats meat, and presided over an autocratic structure before the invasion of China. So spiritually speaking: Dalai who?

 

[It'sMyLife]

Yeah I don't know anything about that but , dubya, you're right about him. In the larger scheme of things he's not the biggest potato but that's another discussion for the off topic section. I don't keep up with all of the news admittedly so I'll have to look up some of the other things you said. As far as spiritual leaders go I have none personally . In the end , they're all still just mortal upright walking simians like the rest of us