Life after death, and why I believe it exists.

Every function the brain has is a result of a chemical reaction. When your body dies, it stops producing said chemicals, and you brain stops functioning, thus death.

But, what some people miss, is that though we cannot sense after the brain stops producing chemicals, we can still perceive. (IE, Sending someone into hypnosis, then giving them subliminal messages. They are unaware that they are being given them. (They cannot see, hear, taste, etc), but they are still given them). Which brings me to my point. If you can perceive situations without processing them, (consciously), then what happens to that ability to perceive when the brain decays? If you can perceive without process, then surely you are able to take in information after your are dead and buried.

But you can't just lay in a hole, staring at the black horizon ahead of you, something has to happen to that ability. Which is why I believe there is life after death. Whether it be reincarnation, or just an afterlife, it seems that there has to be something more.

Sorry if I went on a bit of a tangent there. I can explain more if you want. Though it might not do any good. The ultimate nature of the mind is beyond all concepts, and cannot be conveyed by words.

reply to post by Hexidecimal

---

I don't know what is out there, after....but I also believe that there has to be something. We spend our lives learning and surviving...but what for? If it suddenly just ends? What is the point of all this knowledge - if we don't get to keep it forever? And if we do keep it forever, will i remember after I die?

Unconscious processing still involves brain activity. Many many imaging studies show this. The information just doesn't enter into higher level neural states.

For example, if I flash a Black face at you for 30ms, you won't perceive the face, but it is very likely that you will show amygdala responses. Indeed, Joe LeDoux has demonstrated that there are two visual pathways - a fast unconscious neural network, and a slower conscious neural network.

I believe there is life after death because Tupac and Notorious BIG keep releasing albums.

There is a certain kind of connection between all things in the universe.
Because we have minds, we can sometimes translate some of that connective energy into thought.
Once we die, we are still connected but we can not use it on a conscious level.
So, when we die, we go from being a brain, to being a toe-nail.

Life is akin to a cup of water floating on an vast ocean. While we are inside the cup, we have no comprehension of the greater ocean. Our consciousness, limitations and boundaries reside within the cup. But once we die and the cup sinks to the bottom, we once again become one with this vast ocean of divine knowledge, which is so vast that while inside the cup, its breadth can never be seen and its depth can never be fathomed. When we experience it, all our limitations and boundaries suddenly cease to exist as we become fully aware.

[edit on 5-7-2008 by kindred]

Life is a balance between the brain's functions and the heart's pumping of blood. Without the brain working, you'd be a vegetable. Without the heart working, your brain would die of oxygen starvation. There is no... afterlife. Using semantics to explain something unsupported by concrete evidence is wacky. What I'm trying to say is that wishful thinking will get you nowhere.


Life is finite, so while you're here have a blast. And help others have a blast.

You obviously haven't had any personal spiritual experiences then, so howcome you're an expert all of a sudden?

reply to post by kindred

---

Indeed I do lol.

Yeah I guess that proves it then.

Alright fine then, let's take a critical analysis of your hypothesis and we'll see why I think it sounds like a big bag of crazy.



How is life like a cup of water on the ocean? When you start with an idea, at least have a concrete foundation. What is a concrete foundation? For one, it is not an assertion that relies on semantics and symbolism. You need concrete evidence, peer reviewed and widely accepted evidence that came from research and reason.


What is the cup? What is the ocean? What is the oceanwater? How can you make such an assumption without clarifying these analogies that have nothing to do with one another?



You need something to back this up. Anything we can measure, see, touch, feel? If not, then your entire hypothesis is only an empty assumption. Thats why I don't take it seriously, and neither should any reasonable person. I'm not saying that you can't have an opinion on what life after death is like, but certainly don't assert that your opinion has any validity in the realm of facts. And certainly don't claim that it does until you have evidence.

It's called thinking outside the box. You're obviously a believer in the principles of science, but even science does not have an answer for everything. There are just somethings that you can't measure, simply because either we are just not that knowledgeable or the technology just doesn't exist yet.

Take something as simple as a gold fish in a bowl, sitting on a table. Is a gold fish even aware of it's surroundings. Can it see beyond it's bowl, can it even comprehend and make sense of the world beyond the bowl. Humans know the world beyond the bowl exists, because we live in it and to a certain extent our intelligence enables us to understand and comprehend it. But I very much doubt the goldfish can make any sense of it, but then we will never know because science cannot prove it either way. Even science has it's limits and then you have no choice but to think outside the box.

I've had an OBE and an NDE and that's why I believe in life after death. I can't prove it to anyone else, but then I don't need too. As far as science is concerned, it's nothing more than a believe, but from my perspective I got a glimpse of a greater reality and I shall continue to chip away at that reality until the bigger picture and truth reveals itself. I'm certainly not going to let the limitations of science get in the way of discovering the truth. There's just no greater truth than first hand experience. Sometimes even science has to take a back seat.

reply to post by TheB1ueSoldier

---

Kindred made a beautiful point.
I do not necessarily subscribe to it, but I can understand it.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion and should not be knocked for expressing it.
You can make a counter-point and explain how you can make a better point.
Nit-picking is not interesting or constructive.
I do not hold myself as guiltless, and a lot of people think I am judgmental and think I am always right.
Sorry, but I was born with this personality that people come away from, with that feeling.
I know that my adventure in life has been a long fought-out evolution of thought and I do not expect anyone to jump to my side.
I can point in a certain direction that others can follow, with their own long hard work, to get to.

reply to post by kindred

---

I have had an OBE and an NDE too, but I am not sure what they mean.
Both happened at stressful times and it could be a coping mechanism to make you think you might have some say-so over what happens to you, despite the fact that you are in a situation that is out of your control.

[edit on 8-7-2008 by jmdewey60]

They have a machine at NASA that triggers immense amount of g-forces on human beings. When this happens, their bodies act as a centrifuge and the blood rushes out of the brain making them technically brain dead for a few seconds. Astronauts have obe's and nde's all the time, and they can trigger them whenever they want when they have a training exercise.

So no, obe's and nde's are nothing special and a natural biological defense mechanism to trick your brain into thinking it is safe. Sure its very vivid and very real to the people who have them, but take a look outside the box. Its a normal biological function that most people have, but few have experienced.

Why is it so important to you b1uesoldier that everyone must come around to your point of view. You're entitled to your opinions, but then so is everyone else. I suggest you read up on remote viewing. Even some scientific studies have come to the coclusion that consciousness can somehow transcend the physical body.

What you said about the NASA machine isn't true either. It has not been proven conclusively that OBE'S & NDE'S are simply chemical reactions in the brain. If your going to make such claims, then please back it up with evidence, not just your own opinions.

Hi jmdewey60, My NDE & OBE experiences were slightly different to yours in that I was under no stress whatsoever. MY NDE came about while I was meditating, and I was very relaxed before it happened. The next day after the experience I seemed to have excess energy running through me, as everytime I touched metal or an electrical appliance, I kept getting acute electrical shocks. This went on for about two months before subsiding and has never happened again since. Weird, but true.

As for my OBE, I trained for it, as I spent 3 months doing the various exercises out of the book "Astral Dynamics". Then one evening it happened and it was truly an amazing experience, very liberating and serene. From there I continued with the exercises and eventually had another OBE experience, that was every bit as enlightening as the first.

I don't know what to make of my spiritual experiences and I've also had many other bizarre things happen that I can't explain, but I do believe there all connected spiritually somehow.

Here's a bizarre story, that science can't explain - man dead for an hour and half, comes back to life.

www.news.com.au...

[edit on 8-7-2008 by kindred]

reply to post by kindred

---

Maybe I am not understanding you correctly but I thought an NDE is a near death experience.
How do you die while meditating?
Mine was after a month and a half of being in the hospital and not eating for about three weeks.
I had some IVs going and a main line in my heart to supply some nutrients.
This was in the VA and my monitoring / pump machine would stop sometimes, and I had a few times that I passed out.
The internists thought I could go into a coma.
I do not know what happened exactly, but I ended up in the waiting area for Hell, or what seemed to be.
So, I can barely call it near death, but I had a lot of the expected things like looking at myself from the corner of the wall behind me, and the ceiling.

reply to post by TheB1ueSoldier

---

So what about OBE people have verified to themselves?

Well that's one of the bizarre things about my experience. I wasn't near death, but I did have a NDE type experience. When you read accounts of people who have had NDE's, they talk about going down a tunnel of white light. That's basically what happened to me. I didn't however go all the way through the tunnel, only half way. I guess tha fear of the unknown maybe got the better of me and I bottled it. It definitely wasn't an OBE, because I literally went inside myself, where as an OBE is when you project outwards. So what do I call it? Maybe that's the difference between an NDE and OBE.

There's quite alot of people here on ATS who have had OBE's and can Astral Project. Maybe some of you should try to project inwards instead of out and see if anything happens.

NDE's through meditation are alot more common than people realise.

Joni Maggi's NDE which was triggered through meditation. Her experience is not unique and there have been others.

www.near-death.com...



Yes, exactly. I can't remember the exact details, but I read about one women who had an OBE/NDE experience after she suffered a heart attack. As she was brought into the hospital, she was semi conscious and overheard two nurses talking about a missing shoe. While she was in the operating theatre, she had her NDE/OBE and found her self floating above her body. She then decided to basically have a look around and that's when she saw the shoe the two nurses were talking about, hanging on the ledge of a window, pretty high up near the top floor. When they revived her, she told the nurses and amazingly, it was exactly where she said it would be.

These stories aren't enough for scientists, they want hard physical proof. But then how does one go about proving the existence of a reality that isn't even physical.



[edit on 9-7-2008 by kindred]

[edit on 9-7-2008 by kindred]