We all WANT to believe there is an afterlife, but we stumble across that we WANT proof. When we die, our bodies degrade and eventually dissapear - along with our brain which holds all our memories and experiences. It all physically vanishes. Now let's discuss the Spirit, how it contributes to the brain and how we enter the afterlife losing our brain.

[edit on 11-5-2006 by 7Ayreon]

Some people talk about how when you die, you goto heaven or hell but you still retain the human-likeness. I've heard people say everyone in the afterlife looks about 35 years old. I'm not so sure this is the case. I'm more inclined to believe that ANYTHING human about us dies when our bodies die. I think seeing, feeling, smelling, hearing, and tasting are all human-characteristics/abilities... I think we lose all those upon death. I've mentioned it in other posts but I think ultimately all of us eventually rejoin a giant "ball" of energy and that this energy is all life that ever existed rolled up into "One". I'd compare it to a water-drop returning to the ocean after a "life-cycle". When a drop is returned to the ocean from which it ultimately came from, it loses all characteristics of that single drop of water... the shape, the volume etc. But all along, it always had the basic makeup of water, of the ocean. Same thing with spirit. Here, on Earth, we're all single water-droplets walking around. We look, act, and think like humans. But we still have that connection to the source of spirit that we originally came from and will ultimately return to. In the "afterlife" I think we lose those 5 senses that humans have... but that "6th" sense that they always talk about becomes our only sense. We will lose our physicality, even our mentality. Only our soul will remain and even that will join an "over-soul" aka the big ball of life I was talking about. I think heaven is simply acknowledging this "Oneness" and opening yourself up to re-join it. I think Hell could be the experience of rejecting that "Oneness" for WHATEVER reason....material attachment, guilt etc.

But I also believe in the possibility of reincarnation... I think you can break free from that ball of life and be born as a physical person. I think the whole point of breaking free from the ball of life and incarnating as a person is a way of life collectively playing itself out, growing, learning, expanding. Every person who ever lived brings value to the life-collective by "uploading" experiences.

These are my thoughts on the subject... given time, I could probably formulate a more detailed belief-system (according to me, at least) but this is more or less where I stand on life, death, spirit, after-life etc.

The brain is part of the physical body and dies with the body. The MIND, however is a part of the non-physical. It has our personalities, our beliefs. It's not about firing synapses, but about thought, not on a physical scale, but an ethereal level.

I believe that we human beings are a soul, in possession of a body and a mind. Our bodies and minds help us operate in the world. When we die, we give up the body (including the physical brain), but at least part of the mind stays with our soul and moves to another plane, the afterlife.

And although I cannot prove nor do I have a desire to prove that there is an afterlife, I have had experiences that have proven to me that there indeed is an afterlife. And that some of who we are, aside from a nameless soul or spirit, remains as part of that being.

7Ayreon, please take a couple minutes to read the thread linked in my signature. It's the account of my near death experience, you may find some answers through my story.

Blessings...

I totally agree with this. Modern science is just recently begining to understand that human consciousness in not limited to the confines of our brain. Our physical body is just a fraction of what we truely are. I think you described it perfectly here.

I think Benevolent Heretic is correct.

We humans originate on this planet and grow a soul through our experience with our environment. The brain stores these experiences and the soul duplicates their value in the presence of spirit.

Upon physical death, the soul is detached. The soul form is made of a very real material substance of a frequency most of us can not see although more and more people claim to see "something" detach at the moment of death. Individual circumstances determine if the soul is unconscious upon detachment or allowed to be conscious of the transactions that lead to the transport of the soul to the resurrection halls located a far distance from our own planet.

Mind patterns - that is, the directions about how you work your mind - are imprinted into the soul during life, and upon death, the soul is refitted with a new mind using the old patterns and the indwelling spirit returns to activiate it, including memory, for the new life.

Briefly, man experiences three phases of existence at the same time on earth. First, the material body; second, the soul develops with advancing experience. The soul is not physical but something mid-way between the physical and the spiritual called what same say is called a "morontial" form; third, we are indwelt by spirit within the mind circuit from about age 6 on.

I hope this is helpful in your reflection upon the mind and how it gets from "here" to "there".

Ron