Discussion What do you want to happen after you pass away?

[TheSomebody]

"You don't experience the gap as 'nothingness', it's just a momentary interruption in the continuity of conscious experience."

A momentary interruption in consciousness would be the same as not existing during that moment.

If you do not have access to your conscious, even for a few seconds, then there is no conscious during that time-frame. If there is no concious then you basically returned to nothing for a few seconds.


So yes, death can be an infinite interruption of consciousness, which is basically the same as returning to nothing.

 

[Ghost2211]

want to know something, if memories cannot be reduced to nothing, then where is our memory from before we were born?

you seem to equate memory with consciousness. They are not the same process, work differently, and consciousness can exist without memory. Memory is a provable function of the brain whereas consciousnesses in the sense of being a "soul", "spirit", of unique energy that can potentially exist beyond the death of the brain is not.

 

[TheSomebody]

Without memories, there is no consciousness

 

[Rn110bg101]

What I think there will be: nothingness.

What I want: either to live together with my (now ex) friends, or to live like in my daydreams, in a peaceful utopian world with my friend.

 

[lostangel]

I want there to be a heaven WITH NO CATCH. I don't want to complete my ''soul contract'' if it's real, I don't want to re-incarnate I want a utopia. I have suffered enough I just want a safe place where pain doesn't exist and there is peace.

 

[Ghost2211]

Without memories, there is no consciousness

That is literally not accurate. People can have very sever memory conditions where the have no functional memory, but they are very much still able to to be alert and aware.

 

[esse_est_percipi]

you do not have access to your conscious, even for a few seconds, then there is no conscious during that time-frame. If there is no concious then you basically returned to nothing for a few seconds.

But the subjective expeeience itself is not one of 'not existing' during that timeframe. Consciousness just jumps from one stream to another. You didnt 'return to nothing' (since 'nothing' is not something 'you' can return to). The whole idea of deatg being the beginning of nothing is problematic from a linguistic, philosophical and physics standpoint

For death to be the beginning of 'nothing', you have to make nothing into.something substantive, and as a kind of receptacle into which we as post mortem pseudo- subjects can 'go'.

More logical is the idea that there is a generic subjective continuity which isnt tied together by memory but by simple awareness. At death that generic subjectivity continues, even if there are temporal gaps which break the flow of one stream to the next.

 

[TheSomebody]

That is literally not accurate. People can have very sever memory conditions where the have no functional memory, but they are very much still able to to be alert and aware.

They still have some kind of memory though. If, for example, an accident happens, but you haven't seen it, heard about it, then you are not aware of that accident. As the name implies, conscience is to be aware, but without memories you cannot be aware of anything.

But the subjective expeeience itself is not one of 'not existing' during that timeframe. Consciousness just jumps from one stream to another. You didnt 'return to nothing' (since 'nothing' is not something 'you' can return to). The whole idea of deatg being the beginning of nothing is problematic from a linguistic, philosophical and physics standpoint

For death to be the beginning of 'nothing', you have to make nothing into.something substantive, and as a kind of receptacle into which we as post mortem pseudo- subjects can 'go'.

More logical is the idea that there is a generic subjective continuity which isnt tied together by memory but by simple awareness. At death that generic subjectivity continues, even if there are temporal gaps which break the flow of one stream to the next.

What you are saying is the same as believing in heaven and hell.

To think that during a coma we simply perceive things differently, or to think that we are conscious even before we were born, or else to think that memories are always kept in a magical place are statements that can never be proved.

As far as we know, there is no awareness before we are born; comatose people do not feel, see, hear anything; memories can be erased.


The theory "everything that exists has always been and always will be" requires even more faith than any religion, because even religion believes that there was a creator.

 

[esse_est_percipi]

So yes, death can be an infinite interruption of consciousness, which is basically the same as returning to nothing.

Or 'life' can be a momentary interruption of a much wider scheme of consciousness and reality.

Even if it's granted that 'you' were nothing 14 billion years before birth, that nothing still managed to become something conscious. Given infinite time, the nothing after death will converge into conscious experience again, even if it's in another universe or parallel dimension.
In which case, the discontinuity wont be felt as a gap of nothingness.

without memories you cannot be aware of anything.

This isnt true. You can have simple awareness without memory or even a sense of self, as described in transcendental meditative states for example.

What you are saying is the same as believing in heaven and hell.

Not at all, I would maintain that what I've said s a matter of logic and philosophy, and also considerations of physics. Of course I could be wrong, but I'm not just stating things dogmatically without argument, or because it's written in an old book.

To think that during a coma we simply perceive things differently, or to think that we are conscious even before we were born, or else to think that memories are always kept in a magical place are statements that can never be proved.

I didn't say we perceive things differently during a coma. There is simply a gap which isnt experienced, then we wake up.

Just from a naturalistic standpoint, it's not the case that 14 billion years before birth has to be filled with subjective consciousness. Even if our 'last' embodied subjectivity occurred 12,000 years ago, the jump from.then to.now would be instantaneous.

I don't know about memories, but I think there's more going on than the idea that they are just neural connectivity patterns.

I know that nothing Ive said can be proved, but I maintain that from a logical and philosophical stance, awareness continuing after death in some form or modality makes more sense than the standard 'it's nothingness' position .

The theory "everything that exists has always been and always will be" requires even more faith than any religion, because even religion believes that there was a creator.

I agree that even belief in the past requires some faith. After all, all our memories of the past, and even our belief in an external.world, could have been implanted a second ago by some scientist in a lab, and 'we' could just be brains in vats being experimented on in some other dimension.

But I think there always has to have been something, even the creator god of religions is considered eternal.
The big bang cannot have occurred out of pure nothing. There had to have been conditions within which the big bang occurred, even if those conditions were quantum fluctuations in electromagnetic fields of 'empty space'.

 

[Spitfire]

The body stops working completely at a point once it is dead, becoming lifeless. A life >> >to lifeless body is IDKWTS !!

A lifeless body may regain life again is true.. Life is unique. It may completely leave a body and then come back. No doubt.

 

[TheSomebody]

" Not at all, I would maintain that what I've said s a matter of logic and philosophy, and also considerations of physics. Of course I could be wrong, but I'm not just stating things dogmatically without argument, or because it's written in an old book. "

No, because no matter how much evidence reality throws at you, you will always find a cause that cannot be proven to justify your argument. If one day science proves that things we don't remember are not listed anywhere in the brain, you can just appeal and say that there is a spiritual / supernatural plane that we don't have access to where memories are stored. So in a way, your belief is no different from the belief in heaven or hell.

It seems to me that you cannot stand the idea of "nothing" simply because your mind, like all of us, is unable to process "nothingness" so it automatically becomes "illogical".

" as described in transcendental meditative states for example. "


I do not understand how this form of meditation contradicts the requirement of memories for the formation of conscience. I would like to read more details about your opinion.

 

[EssenceFocus]

I make it short.
After death we will be, who we really are. A consciousness with unlimited potential.
There is the phenomenon named "channeling" and there is enough information available, that was given by "beings" or souls and you can read thousands of sites for free about every topic on earth...
My own experiences support this.

 

[Rue89]

I believe in God and that I'll go to Heaven, but sometimes I wish there was nothing after death.

 

[esse_est_percipi]

				It seems to me that you cannot stand the idea of "nothing" simply because your mind, like all of us, is unable to process "nothingness" so it automatically becomes "illogical". This is an ad hominem fallacy. What I can or cannot stand or what I do or do.not desire is irrelevant to the substance of the arguments I put forward. I don't really have any strong feelings against death being an infinite cut off point to awareness. It would be better than this life. But on philosophical and logical grounds I don't think it's plausible. There are also theories like the pribram-bohm hypothesis, which place consciousness at an infinite number of center points (planck lengths) within the universe, and the spacetime-energy world is postulated as an unfolding of this consciousness, via a fourier transform, across a sub-quantum.event horizon. Consciousness is primary on.this model, and spacetime/matter are derivative. Ok, it's not proven and it's speculative, but it's consistent with all known laws of physics, maths and electrical engineering. I could equally say that you're maintaining your position because you have a personal preference for consciousness ending forever. Which is fine btw. And I would maintain also that the reason the mind cannot process nothingness is because there can be no such thing. 'Nothingness' is a linguistic unit which doesn't correspond to anything in reality. If the multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics is true, then everything which can exist does exist, with no room for nothingness. Consciousness/awareness, it could be argued, will always break through or continue in some form, and evidence of that is that you're conscious now. The fact that you're now conscious is evidence against nothingness being an eternal existential state. I also think it's plausible to say that memory isn't needed for a kind of generic awareness in the present. I assume that 6 month old babies are aware, yet do.not have fully formed memories, and no one remembers being 6 months old. If one day science proves that things we don't remember are not listed anywhere in the brain, you can just appeal and say that there is a spiritual / supernatural plane that we don't have access to where memories are stored. So in a way, your belief is no different from the belief in heaven or hell. My points about consciousness or life after death are not predicated on considerations of memory. What you're saying is that the idea that memories are never forgotten or are somehow not reducible to neural network patterns is unfalsifiable. That may be the case, but I would also like to know how neuroscience will ever be able to directly access a person's memories from a first person perspective, and not just the supposed neural correlates. do not understand how this form of meditation contradicts the requirement of memories for the formation of conscience. I would like to read more details about your opinion. Well if you read all the accounts and documents, including neuroscientific literature and buddhist tracts, of those types of states of awareness, they almost all talk about experience of ego-death, the subject-object distinction becoming meaningless, and personal memories disappearing as a consequence. No self, no external objects as separate entities, no memories, just pure awareness/experience in an infinite present. I know they're just first person accounts and cannot be 'proved', but their consistency and similarity across time and cultures are compelling. Someone like sam harris talks a lot about this.

 

[TheSomebody]

Well if you read all the accounts and documents, including neuroscientific literature, of those types of states of awareness, they almost all talk about ego-death, the subject-object distinction becoming meaningless, and personal memories disappearing as a consequences. No self, no external objects, no memories, just pure awareness/experience in an infinite present.
I know they're just first person accounts and cannot be 'proved', but their consistency and similarity are compelling.
Someone like sam harris talks a lot about this.

Now I ask myself, how can you be conscious without memories and without generating new ones? What will you be aware of? Having no memories and being aware is as absurd to process as "nothingness".
Just try to imagine yourself on a plane like this, where you know nothing, you will never know, but at the same time you are aware (???).
Every kind of consciousness you have requires some kind of memory. Even feelings need memories to be processed, otherwise it would be impossible for you to recognize what pain or sadness is without even knowing what it is about. You would basically be the mindless machine (and even these have some memories programmed into its chip to perform certain movements)

 

[esse_est_percipi]

What will you be aware of? Having no memories and being aware is as absurd to process as "nothingness".

Im not sure why you're so hung up on the idea that memories are required for subjective experience to occur.
In the transcendent states, you're aware of patterns, colours, lights and shapes, but you are also all those things and they are not separate, in an indefinitely dilated state of infinite awareness. Time becomes meaningless so memory, as a function of time, becomes irrelevant. I can only recommend that you read the literature on the phenomenology of transcendent states of awareness.

 

[color_me_gone]

We humans are the only animal that worries about this shit.
All other animals just procreate and die, with no worries.
That makes them smarter than us.

 

[Aolelife]

Nothing.

 

[greebo6]

Eternal nothingness sounds nice.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

 

[esse_est_percipi]

Every kind of consciousness you have requires some kind of memory

This is just an assertion on your part, although I can understand that in order to recognize things, objects, people, i.e. in order to have a recognizable experience of the world, your experiences need to be contingent upon a backdrop of stored (unconscious) memory.

However, a lot of first-person phenomenological data can be leveraged against the claim that you can only have conscious experiences if some kind of memory is involved.

But anyway, if you're right and there is just 'nothingness' at death, then I'm fine with that.
Better than this hellhole existence on earth.

 

[TheSomebody]

This is just an assertion on your part, although I can understand that in order to recognize things, objects, people, i.e. in order to have a recognizable experience of the world, your experiences need to be contingent upon a backdrop of stored (unconscious) memory.

However, a lot of first-person phenomenological data can be leveraged against the claim that you can only have conscious experiences if some kind of memory is involved.

But anyway, if you're right and there is just 'nothingness' at death, then I'm fine with that.
Better than this hellhole existence on earth.

"... you're maintaining your position because you have a personal preference for consciousness ending forever. "

Not really, I just my doubts on your position about nothingness ...

Honestly, I can't swallow that conscience can exist without memories. People who meditate still have their functions of the cortex working, so it is biased to say that they did not remember anything. Babies also have memories. However, it is interesting to note that the level of consciousness is always linked to its potential to keep memories. There are types of long-term and short-term memories. Any move you make requires at least short-term memories, which is similar to RAM. Without any kind of memory, you would be just an inert object

But ok, assuming I agree with you. Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed.


Even if physics concludes that this is true, then how does it apply to the conscious? Something that is not made of matter?


If consciousness could have existed all this time without memories, then it means that memories had a beginning. Which goes against the "nothing is created"

If memories have always existed throughout our existence, then it is up to you to explain where our past life memories are. And this is a evidence against "nothing is lost"

This doesn't just apply to memories, but also feelings and anything else abstract.

 

[esse_est_percipi]

We humans are the only animal that worries about this shit.
All other animals just procreate and die, with no worries.
That makes them smarter than us.

exactly.
The human mind is overdeveloped with too much self-awareness, and has now become evolutionarily burdensome.
It reminds me of peter zapffe talking about certain species of deer in paleontological times who acquired very large and heavy horns through evolutionary mutations, which ended up being their demise as their weight ended up pinning them to the ground.
Humans are being pinned to the ground by their overflowing self-awareness and consciousness.

People who meditate still have their functions of the cortex working, so it is biased to say that they did not remember anything

I don't think there have been any experimental studies to determine this question one way or the other.
Just going by what people relate, and their accounts of such experiences, memories don't seem to play any role.
It's just pure experience which is divorced from the concept of a self, an object-subject distinction, or any conscious memories.
But who knows, maybe basic residual memories play some kind of part in these experiences.
This is all undecided.

Even if physics concludes that this is true, then how does it apply to the conscious? Something that is not made of matter?

I don't know.
Maybe consciousness is a form of matter/energy, one that we haven't been able to detect yet.

If consciousness could have existed all this time without memories, then it means that memories had a beginning. Which goes against the idea that "everything has always existed, nothing has a beginning"

If memories have always existed throughout our existence, then it is up to you to explain where our past life memories are

Memories have a beginning yes.
But a beginning of something is only possible because of the end of something else, and the line separating both is arbitrary.
It's like, when did the human species start? There isn't one specific point in time that marked the beginning of humanity. Very subtle genetic mutations which themselves depend on atomic and subatomic processes are involved in evolution, as well as the more determinate effects of natural selection on large populations across vast timescales. It's not as if one day the first human was born who couldn't pass its genes on to the members of the species of its parents.

So although we can separate things into beginnings and endings, this is arbitrary and says more about how the human mind divides the world than about external reality itself.
An extreme expression of this view in metaphysics is 'mereological nihilism', which denies that there are any objects with proper parts (trees, buildings, animals, books, boats, stones, etc, which are all the mind's way of arranging and classifying the raw data of experience), and that only simple things with no parts really exist (presumably whatever turn out to be the most fundamental particles).

As for past life memories, I don't know.
Maybe past life memories died with whoever had them in the past.
Maybe they are somehow preserved in a field of consciousness which underlies the physical universe.
I'm not saying I know or have the answer to anything, I'm just exploring ideas.

 

[NotOkay_]

This may sound strange but I just want to start again. However many goes it takes to get it right. That's because I don't really want to die I want to go back in time but I'd rather die than wish for that for the rest of my life. If there's nothing I'll never know so it won't matter.

Same, I've heard it's possible to shift into "that" alternate timeline. Someones NDE mentions this