At my age of 63, I'm half-dead anyway.

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

On the contrary! Having so much life behind you (you're only 3 years older than I) means that you have such a store of being that you are almost certainly more than 99/100ths alive!

I've read the other posts, and the usual near-unanimous agreement that there is "something" after life. The problem, as I see it, is that we have all the confirmation that we'll ever need that death -- the absolute end of life as we know -- is certain. There can be no doubt of this.

We also do not have any way to understand what it means to be "not alive." We analyze everything through experience, through a sense of "what is it like to be..." But with death, it is not "like" anything. It is not experience, it is absense of experience. This is so foreign to our thinking that it makes as little sense as anything we know of.

And finally, while we have complete confirmation of the certainty of death, we have absolutely no confirmation of any kind of some part, some essential "us," that carries on past it. And yet, our inability to come to grips with death itself is reason enough for most people to assume that there must be something after, because they can't imagine there not being.

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evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.

ah well metis....if you are half dead at 63 does that mean you will live to 126?

EH.....

sorry but there is enough anecdotal evidence evidence about what happens in people who have temporiarily died ( according to clinical evidence) that i disagree with you. i hold that possibility.

"it is absense of experience. This is so foreign to our thinking that it makes as little sense as anything we know of."

Yet, there are living people people who profess to a state of awareness which is without experience.


Remindes me of the Okapi, that strange animal that was discvovered in what, the 50s? The experts of that time agreed it was all a myth in spite of eyewitness accounts, those witnesses were after all, just native people with no certificates of expertise.

Imagine what that birthday cake would look like!

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"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."-- Einstein

Cardero asks:


But what of the individual? In our current stage of societal development, its gradual descent into materialism assures us that death will only be considered by society as a whole in the context of our physical existence. But what of the individual that senses more in it? If their concerns become known it will annoy both the fundamentalists and secularists and whatever else around them that believe they have all the answers.

Suppose such an individual begins to consider if Jesus" death was the highest quality of death Man is capable of? He wonders if Jesus experienced the final Armageddon within his own being where all the emotional and physical agony of the Crucifixion was witnessed through his conscious will somehow establisning a connection between above and below? How does this pertain to re-birth?

The Fundamentalists will reject such speculation from the belief that Jesus is God. Secularism will reject Jesus as the highest quality of death because of this modern idea, natural for the growth in materialism, that Jesus was some sort of political Rabbi that got strung up. Naturally under such circumstances, the quality of death other than its relationship to our physical bodies is meaningless. However for those, and especially the young, who appreciate what is meant by quality of life, and believe there must also be a quality of death, it is good that the traditions making such things understandable have been kept alive for those willing to make the efforts to find them at the expense of the growls of fundamentalism, atheism, secularism, or any other ism. They can begin to explore psychology as distinct from its modern expression as behaviorism, from the point of view of the study of "being." It is only through the study of "being" IMO that quality of death can be understood and the connection between quality of life and quality of death can be rightly appreciated.

Here's a question for you, regarding the very, very few such anecdotes that have not been shown to have other causes. Invariably, these cases report on things that they have seen, heard and smellt from different vantages points than the "near-corpse."

The question is, if they can do all of this, if "the self" is capable of seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, thinking, perceiving, etc., etc., without the use of eyes, nose, nerves, brains and so on -- why do you imagine nature or God went to all the hugely expensive and complex trouble to create those systems (brains, noses, eyes...) to do what we are already capable of doing?

Strange, you know...

But aside from which, the fact is that the vast majority of such reports have been explained. There are very few left. Now, which is more reasonable to assume -- that almost nobody has such experiences (after all, thousands upon thousands have near-death experiences every year), or that there are just a very few souls which have earned the right to have them, or that they are explicable features of an oxygen-starved brain operating on almost nothing more than the brain-stem and a few connections to higher brain features?

I'm going with the latter.
There are living people who profess to all manner of bizarre experiences. They are, to begin with, monstrously subjective. They are also, more importantly, impossible (on the basis of that very subjectivity) to verify. And there are a great many people who are very, very tempted to tell fibs in order to gain followers. You might look at a "Stripping the Gurus," for some very good anecdotes about some of those who report such experiences. You can download the whole book for free. You won't like the Vivekananda or the Ramakrishna that you find there, trust me.
The okapi isn't any stranger than its relative the giraffe. Less strange, actually. But here's the clincher. We've got some in zoos. They are real enough to be examined. This is ostensible evidence for their reality if there ever was any!

That is not true of any of the completely subjective, anecdotal reports that you make claims for. In spite of a huge amount of effort (even by people incredibly motivated to find proof), we've still got nothing that can be observed by anybody.

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evangelicalhumanist: Greek "eu"=good and "angelos"=messenger. Spreading the good news of Humanism.

Emphasis mine.

.... a bit like Dark Matter, wouldn't you say?


How odd, 90% of the Universe is invisible and un-detectable.

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"An object is perceived, or not perceived, according as the mind is, or is not, tinged with the colour of the object. "
Patanjali - Sutra 4:17

EH....


"The question is, if they can do all of this, if "the self" is capable of seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, thinking, perceiving, etc., etc., without the use of eyes, nose, nerves, brains and so on -- why do you imagine nature or God went to all the hugely expensive and complex trouble to create those systems (brains, noses, eyes...) to do what we are already capable of doing?"

i think that was a very perceptive question. There was a woman, blind from birth, who had a NDE and reported she could see. She looked at her own body and didn't recognise it until she saw the distinctive wedding ring she wore and was familair with the pattern from touch. She also described other things she saw. i am sorry i can't offer a link to this. It was on either the National Geographic channel or the Discovery channel and i found it quite by accident, i don't go around looking for this stuff.

And this..."But aside from which, the fact is that the vast majority of such reports have been explained. There are very few left. Now, which is more reasonable to assume -- that almost nobody has such experiences (after all, thousands upon thousands have near-death experiences every year), or that there are just a very few souls which have earned the right to have them, or that they are explicable features of an oxygen-starved brain operating on almost nothing more than the brain-stem and a few connections to higher brain features?"

As for being 'earned" i'd guess the primary requirment is one die for a little bit.
Most of the people regarding these experiences do not lay claim to a specialness. Tho the affect of it may have a life changing attitude.
Most of these experiences are not reported for fear of being taken as a lunatic. And a good many which are reported are never taken seriously...so it messes with the statistics.

i think one of the questions overlooked re an oxygen starved brain being the cause of this phenomena, is there are people who meditate who experience the same thing. i rememebr a while back when those who know about such things said the sight of the tunnel and the light at the end had to be the brain recalling the birth experience. i don't hear that argument being used much anymore since those born ceasarian also experience the same.

"There are living people who profess to all manner of bizarre experiences."

True, but there is a sameness to the one in question, and a sameness in the post experience perception which is reflected in the language used which will trip up a mistaken or faked phenomena.

i find the idea of specialness off kilter.

It's a little like saying the learned person in acadamia was chosen by the degree earned rather then the other way around. The primary prerequisite is an intrest in whatever one professes to have experience in.

My point about the okapi was it was NOT believed UNTIL it was found. In those circles of zooalogical expertise it was a myth, non existant, the product of ignorant minds. If you had told them you saw it, and the day would come when they would have them in zoos, you EH, would have been scorned by the learned and laughed at by the experts, and regelated to the ranks of the delusional.

Open minds deal with possabilities. Enough doubt to keep them from being gullable and enough memory of wrong past judgements to keep them from fossilization. With a let's see attitude.

Rather than proving death is real or unreal wouldnt it be "firmer ground" to acknowledge that until we have the expereince, We dont know ?

My God...just think about it: No one will ever experience "death". In order to experience anything you have to be conscious....but if you are "dead" you are without conscious and should consciousness survive "death".....we aren't dead.

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May your awareness be perfection