Life after death?

I like to think that, at some point in time, all the morons who I have gone through life seeing do stupid things will get what's coming to them.

Does that count?

 

Fascinating topic. I believe in reincarnation, so I guess I actually believe in life after life and so on...

When I was younger, I thought atheism was the only obvious choice. But the more I learned about the world, the more it seemed that there was divine logic at the heart of all of it.

Finally, about five years ago, after a period of personal soul-searching, I picked up a copy of the Bhagavad-Gita and read it in one sitting.It made such incredible, elegant sense to me that I've never viewed death the same way since. I don't view it as an ending now, but only as a transition.

 

I was drawn to reincarnation through eastern religions like Buddhism and Hinduism. It is a central tenet in both.

The theory is that as you go through lives, you move up the ladder of incarnations. From the lowest forms of lives, plants, animals, etc... to human and, eventually, beyond. When the Buddha became fully enlightened, he was able to remember his millions of past lives in all his incarnations.

Buddhists practice loving-kindness to all creatures because they believe we have all known each other in some form during our many lives.

A slightly more New-Agey approach to this (a la Gary Zukav) is that the earth is a classroom and that we come into each life with a certain set of things to learn. Thus we choose our families, birthplace, appearance, etc...all with the knowledge that it will bring us closer to our goal of complete understanding.

To take your example of an athlete, it could go either way. Perhaps he chose to come here as an athlete because he had to learn lessons about not worshipping the physical form. Or maybe, if he uses his physical prowess as a means to make others feel inferior, he will come back as a handicapped person -- to balance the scales of karma.

Obviously I could jabber on about this. And certainly I don't have any concrete evidence -- none of us can. I just know that this belief resonated most strongly with me.

 

I believe there is a "life" after death. I have no idea what it would be. I like to think it's where all of your dreams come true. Maybe the whole purpose of life is to accumulate as much pain as you possibly can, so that when you reach the afterlife it's so unspeakably beautiful that you can do nothing but revel in perfection, and stand in awe of what unlimited possibility really looks like when staring you in the face.

That's what the Romantic in me thinks.

Sometimes I think that's why we cry at things that are unspeakably beautiful. Because inside we sense that we are looking at only a slice of what is relatively soon to come, and we instinctively know that it is not our time yet, and it makes us sad.....and unbelieveably happy, all at the same time.

That's what I like to think.

It makes me wonder if pure bliss can get kind of boring after a while. What would it be like to have everything go right and be perfect all of the time? My basic human instinct is to think it would get old. Aren't we funny little creatures? Pure bliss can be boring. We crave experience. Maybe reincarnation comes when the thrill of perfect bliss is gone, and the beauty of serene happiness becomes commonplace and therefore invisible....like the electric hum of lights that you notice initially but come to take for granted and therefore forget about.

The very nature of life is extremes. We don't know what "hot" really his until we know what "cold" is in opposition to it, or at least what the absence of "hot" is and how it is "cold" in comparison. You can't know hate until you know love, and vice versa. How can I know what it means to be far away until I know what it means to be close by? (Princess, I think you can relate to that one ) Life is invisible really, without extremes.

We forget how beautiful the world is. We forget that every day. We have to remind ourselves. We go through life fast asleep in that way. We see a tree and then think to ourselves, very quickly, "that's a tree", and, in labeling it, cease to really see it. When's the last time you really stopped to look at a tree? Really stopped to look at it and see how it's different from the next tree, and the one after that? We label things that way all day long, every day, and walk through the world on cruise control, without really experiencing anything. And I'm just as guilty as anyone.

Maybe that's what life and death is all about. It's all one repeated wake-up call. We can't know what HAPPINESS really is without knowing the misery of being without it, of forgetting that it's right there in front of you all of the time and all you have to do is open your eyes and WAKE UP.

WAKE UP




I don't know. It's just a theory. I like to think there's a period of time just after death where you can go back to certain moments of your life and relive them, changing things as you will just to see what would have happened, just for the pure thrill of it. You could go back in time and hug your parents again, or look into the eyes of your first love and forget about the agony of what it was like to say goodbye to them for the rest of your life. You could go back and sieze whatever moment you let go by, any one of the countless moments you let just go by without protest. You could sieze them over and over again until you got tired of it. And when you did, you could just go back and be born all over again, and walk the long, agonizing, painful, monotonous, wonderful friggin life that we have here just so one day you would die and do it all over again. I guess it would be kind of like a drug in that way. I guess life can be a drug, if you look at it the right way. But that's the real trick, isn't it?

I like to think just after you die your imagination is the only limit to what you can do, and the fetters of accepted reality are gone.

You can do anything.


Yeah, I like to think that. I like to think that a lot.


That's it. That's gotta be it, dammit.






The afterlife is a holodeck.

 

I am not at all a religous person. But the more I think about it, I hope being dead is like being asleep, without the dreams. Although it might sound dumb, being nothing would be bliss to me.

 

Absolutely everything, including our lives, is based simply on balance. I think every major religion has the "good go to heaven bad go to hell" system. You see it all around you in nature, the seasons change, dirt becomes life, which in turn becomes dirt again, only to continue forever. Reincarnation is not anything mystical or supernatural, it is natural, its not a spirit in the sky we cant see, its all around us. thanks for listening to me rant.

 

Very fascinating topic. I know Lynus would have loved to discuss it. And I think all of the entries have been good, especially Mrs. JB and Gascon.

As for my opinions, I'm not a very religious (as in, I don't go to church hardly ever, I don't pray very often). I have some big problems with certain people of every religion and how they conduct themselves.

I know I don't have all the answers. In fact, I don't have any. I have an extreme fear of the unknown (which is why I almost went crazy before Lynus left-I was going into something I had no knowledge of). The concept of infinity and everlasting time and life has always really scared me. The thought of living forever and ever was something I could not grasp at all. I would lose sleep over this for about a month the summer after my 8th grade year it was so bad. I was very comforted by the thought that there was no god and life just ended when we died. We wouldn't know though; it'd be just like before we were born.

And now, it's still a little scary. But I have also come to understand religions other than Christianity more. Lynus and I talk about religion all the time. It's something we have many similarities as well as differences on. I'm taking a class on the "Middle East" which has already taught me a lot about Islam. My suitemate is Hindu, and I've talked to her about it some. And even just reading the entries on this thread so far have enlightened me more. I've come to accept that something is out there that is divine. I don't know who it is exactly or what it is or does, but something has to be greater. As for the afterlife, I don't know. I think I saw in a movie that if there is no pain in heaven, how can the angels watch over the ones they love and see how they suffer (if anyone knows where this came from, please let me know). I guess there is something, but I think it's unexplainable. Even if we knew it existed and knew what to expect, it would be so completly different when we actually got there.

I always wondered as a kid what we looked like in heaven. Are we the age we were when we died, or do we get to choose or is everyone predetermined? Because when I was little, I wanted Mommy to be 32 and Daddy to be 38 and me to be 6 and my brother to be 4. But every year it changed. Kinda makes me laugh now, but I still wonder.

 

Good Lord -- I thought I was the only person who freaked out over this! The thought of existence with no end was just as frightening to me as the thought of never existing again.

When I start getting to wrapped up in it, I've found that it helps to take a pragmatic approach. I just tell myself that I don't have all the facts so it is absolutely pointless to worry about something I don't even understand.

I read somewhere that a human trying to comprehend the vastness of existence is a little like a grasshopper in a field trying to comprehend a freight train rushing past it. The train is of such an enormous scope and scale that the tiny grasshopper can't possibly grasp the full meaning of it. I try to comfort myself with the thought that it will all make sense to me when I die.

When all else fails, I watch "Hannah and Her Sisters." In it, Woody Allen goes through a spiritual crisis and seeks guidance from a number of sources. Ultimately, after a failed suicide attempt, he finds the guidance he was seeking in an old Marx Brothers comedy. It never fails to cheer me up.

 

Remember what it was like before you were born? That is what it will be like when you are dead.

 

If there is a blissful heaven waiting for us after death, then why is every natural instinct in the body designed to prevent it?
Death probably leads to an abyss of nothingness, but reincarnation is a fascinating possibility.

 

I only think about what I have now in front of me. That way, I can work to improve upon what I have. I, therefore, do not think about what will happen when I die because there is no point (other than driving one crazy trying to "know") and it will only diminish the significance of my life now.

Ninja,

You are a bit off with the "every major religion having heaven and hell" thinking.

 

Thanks Mrs. JB! It's always good to know you're not alone.

The advice is great. I don't worry too much about it anymore, but I still worry about other unknowns in my life (like Lynus leaving, graduation, getting a job, living on my own...). I've found comfort in Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, which helps me get over those earthly unknowns. I found the one for teenagers helped me the most (since I'm all of 20). Even my 50 year old aunt said it applied to her life!

I really think reincarnation is intersting. I'm still having a hard time embracing any religion openly though. I guess part of it comes with age, wisdom, and time (which all seem to come together). It's something to keep thinking about.

One of my favorite lines is from Dogma (and if anyone knows the exact quote, feel free to correct my). It said something about how people shouldn't really believe anything, instead, they should have ideas. It's always easy to change an idea, but a belief is hard to change. I think there's some truth in that, but at the same time, my brother (who is still figuring things out, but he's pretty much Christian) tells me that if I don't believe, I'm going to hell. Puts me in a bind.

But I guess we all will know when we die. And we're all going to die, so why worry? I want to enjoy life!

rimbaud-great words! That's exactly what I'm trying to do with my life. Therapy and drugs work wonders for that! (half kidding)
But you are absolutely right.

 

About this reincarcination thing. When we come alive again, do we come alive as humans? or as different animals like a squirrel or something? serious question

 

For me, it's much like the movie Defending Your Life.

We're here to learn particular lessons...especially letting go of fear (the opposite being a truly loving person). We keep coming back until the lesson is learned to a certain degree. Once optaining the level of the lesson, we move on to a higher plain of existence.

And I have no idea what life would be like to our physical senses, but I imagine the experience is going to be very loving and creative.

RR

 

The theory is that we move up the cycle of existence -- ie...plants, animals, then humans. So, theoretically, since you are now a human, you would continue to come back as a human or something higher.

In fact, Buddhists regard human life as a precious gift that is not to be squandered. They feel that the attainment of human form is akin to a precious jewel -- something that is rare and should be treasured because it affords us the opportunity to practice those things that bring us closer to enlightenment and ultimate peace.

There is the theory that if you accumulate enough negative karma (bad deeds) you may return in a lower form so you can relearn the lessons you chose to ignore. However, I am certain that this would not apply to anyone on this board.

 

I always thought the after life in "What Dreams May Come" was kind of cool.

Honestly, I try not to worry about what will happen to me when I die because it's not like I'll ever actually know until I'm dead.

So I'm in no hurry to find out...

 

I think that after I die I can end up in one of three places:

If I was a pure and righteous soul I would go to heaven and would be able to bask in the presence of God.

If I was like most of us, then I would go to pergatory, which I would imagine is really just a lot like Earth, where I would have to work at learning to forgive myself. After some period of time and experience, I would then be permitted to enter the kingdom.

If I was truly wicked and unrepentant, I would be barred forever from the kingdom of heaven. I don't think that there is such a place as hell, because the loving God that I believe in would have no reason to make such a place. Instead, the soul could either be forced to roam this plane for eternity, or perhaps just fade into nothingness. The torment being not any kind of torture like Dante envisioned, but just seperation from God.