If the human mind survives death, then you will eventually embrace a god

Originally posted by NorEaster
When the brain dies, the processing delays are minimized, as is the sheer amount of data sets that have to be processed, but beyond that, the Intellect is still running the show.

If the intellect is your god in this life, if this is your strong attachment, then I agree that the intellect will still be running the show in your afterlife.

Originally posted by mysticnoon

Originally posted by NorEaster
When the brain dies, the processing delays are minimized, as is the sheer amount of data sets that have to be processed, but beyond that, the Intellect is still running the show.

If the intellect is your god in this life, if this is your strong attachment, then I agree that the intellect will still be running the show in your afterlife.

um....You're responding to these posts by way of your own Intellect. It's true. Your Intellect is your conscious awareness. Your mind.

in·tel·lect [in-tl-ekt]
noun
1. the power or faculty of the mind by which one knows or understands, as distinguished from that by which one feels and that by which one wills; the understanding; the faculty of thinking and acquiring knowledge.

I'm probably not going to engage in a semantics tussle with you. The definition of Intellect is pretty well established.

Originally posted by NorEaster

um....You're responding to these posts by way of your own Intellect. It's true. Your Intellect is your conscious awareness. Your mind.

Yes, I understand what you are saying, but I guess I was trying to allude to the idea that the mind may not be the only faculty of perception, especially in non-physical existence.

The mind is perfectly suited as a vehicle for conscious awareness on this material plane, but I believe mind is not consciousness in and of itself. Mind is a tool of consciousness, not the reverse. Consciousness is primary.

Originally posted by NorEaster

Originally posted by yourmaker

Originally posted by Covertblack
My question is, what is so detrimental to believing an afterlife exists because of God?

There's no evidence. No basis for which an After-life or god could be presumed to exist in the first place beyond what other people have stated or written.

for no reason you're placing your energy into a black hole where it dissolves pointlessly.

I might just wait for you if I'm "there" before you show up. It'll be fun to completely deconstruct your reality view once you've failed to disbelieve yourself out of existence. Maybe I'll have you worship me for a while until I grow bored with you.

Then I suppose I could sell you to a "start-up" god effort.

I'm going to really enjoy the afterlife.

From what I gather, "There" is here right now, only in your mind as something tangible.
There is no "there". Ugh english.

Why would we live a life on earth like this only to die and play god? It makes no sense.

Does anything god's do make sense or is it just their natural being to completely screw with everything?

And if i'm creating my post life essentially experiencing all that is good and collecting that database for my mind to formulate in my own universe, then why limit myself to human?

Or is that it, this is just one phase of it all.

reply to post by NorEaster


I haven't had a chance to read all the posts up to this point, but going off your initial post I think I'm going to agree with a lot of what you've stated.

I have studied religious texts and philosophies tirelessly in hopes of gleaning definitive knowledge on the meaning of life or origin of consciousness. I can't say I've found anything definitive, but there are several commonalities and parallels between all religions that are easily examined if the time is taken to do so. "God" is present in all religions and belief systems, whether it is an omniscient being, collective conscience, "god particle", total non-existence or the individual itself. How we interpret "God" or what we call it varies, but what "God" is, is a constant. Science has a "God" just as religions do.

The "Conscience" isn't a physical entity, but rather something intangible and therefore can never be destroyed or disappear. While the body and brain will decay, the data and information of conscience will exist infinitely.

From further study in physics and from a mathematical standpoint, more parallels are definitely present. Science and Religion go hand in hand, but strict or devout followers of either will argue that as if they're in complete contradiction. I find that many spiritual and "Supernatural" experiences have very plausible scientific explanations and much of what is discussed in Buddhist texts, especially The Tibetan Book of the Dead, is in direct parallel with research and theories within physics.

I feel it is pretty bold to make any DEFINITE statements about the existence of conscience post mortem, but in the event that the conscious mind does survive death.. It is inevitable that you will embrace "God" or a perceived "higher power" of some kind.. It is at that point that you (or your mind anyhow) will know the unknown.

I suppose there is some rambling there, but just some quick thoughts on the subject.

Originally posted by yourmaker

Originally posted by NorEaster

Originally posted by yourmaker

Originally posted by Covertblack
My question is, what is so detrimental to believing an afterlife exists because of God?

There's no evidence. No basis for which an After-life or god could be presumed to exist in the first place beyond what other people have stated or written.

for no reason you're placing your energy into a black hole where it dissolves pointlessly.

I might just wait for you if I'm "there" before you show up. It'll be fun to completely deconstruct your reality view once you've failed to disbelieve yourself out of existence. Maybe I'll have you worship me for a while until I grow bored with you.

Then I suppose I could sell you to a "start-up" god effort.

I'm going to really enjoy the afterlife.

From what I gather, "There" is here right now, only in your mind as something tangible.
There is no "there". Ugh english.

Why would we live a life on earth like this only to die and play god? It makes no sense.

Does anything god's do make sense or is it just their natural being to completely screw with everything?

And if i'm creating my post life essentially experiencing all that is good and collecting that database for my mind to formulate in my own universe, then why limit myself to human?

Or is that it, this is just one phase of it all.

''I highlighted the last sentence because this is exactly what's happening here as we're each making our way through this material "life" we're engaged in.

The main thing to always remember about anything that physically exists is that it must originate somehow, by way of some sort of process or confluence of requirement and circumstance. The human being is no different, and it's the ongoing survival management processes of the Homo Sapiens brain that brings the informational human being into physical existence as a default ramification of all that "generated" dynamic information that the brain configures and launches into existence. If it was not self-aware, then it'd simply mass and react to its ongoing existence without ever pondering its own existence - which happens all the time with the "generated" dynamic information that's been launched from nonhuman brains.

The fact that each "burst" of this action-centric information is so densely packed with internal context makes it inherently isolated from those simple residual information fact sets that exist everywhere, forcing each "burst" to bond rigidly with every other "burst" that's generated from the same authoring brain - be it human or nonhuman. The net result is a burst collective that features a definite "primary expression", with the human being version of this collective equipped with both sentience and sapience, as was the case when the collective was being "built" by its authoring brain - burst by burst - while that brain was still functional.

You are human. That's the term that's used to describe a self-aware sapient being. It's just what you are, and it's because your brain is capable of responding to the survival requirements of material existence with self awareness and sapience. If you were physically made of plasma, and your brain was made of plasma, you'd still be ultimately human because of the capacity for self awareness and sapience. Homo Sapiens are only one version of material generators of human beings. Obviously, there are many others.

No one is capable of limiting you once you've "graduated" from this gestational phase and have transitioned to the eternal informational realm. Only you can limit yourself. And yet so many human beings do limit themselves as a result of the programming that they receive while in gestation - while "alive" as material bodies and brains.

This is the point of this thread. To open up a discussion about what's actually happening here on this planet, and perhaps on all other planets where human generating material brains exist. My ultimate effort is to educate people and give them the option of embracing these traditional notions or not. I just feel that all human beings should have the freedom and autonomy that they're physically capable of having. Then, if they want to join a specific community of humans as a result of agreeing with them and seeing the value in being a member of said community, they are free to join it and enjoy that community. As it stands, this isn't how community assignment is being handled once the human being emerges from this material realm.

Originally posted by mysticnoon

Originally posted by NorEaster

um....You're responding to these posts by way of your own Intellect. It's true. Your Intellect is your conscious awareness. Your mind.

Yes, I understand what you are saying, but I guess I was trying to allude to the idea that the mind may not be the only faculty of perception, especially in non-physical existence.

The mind is perfectly suited as a vehicle for conscious awareness on this material plane, but I believe mind is not consciousness in and of itself. Mind is a tool of consciousness, not the reverse. Consciousness is primary.

edit on 24-4-2013 by mysticnoon because: (no reason given)

I know that this is a common belief, but I have to admit that I see consciousness as a quality that the mind possesses. Consciousness is the state of being conscious. Like largeness is the state of being large. It's a noun, but it's dependent on the root noun - conscious - for its existence. The mind exhibits consciousness. Consciousness doesn't exhibit the mind.

This is the problem with esotericisms that are conceptually based on languages that don't translate well to English. You end up with notions that struggle to make literal sense.

Originally posted by NorEaster

Originally posted by Itisnowagain
reply to post by NorEaster

 

Has anyone ever seen a 'human mind'? It's an idea, a concept. No one has ever seen a 'mind'.
Can you see a mind?
What do you experience as 'mind'?

Seen a human mind? Have you ever seen a breeze?

No you have never seen a breeze, but you've seen the impact of a breeze upon something that cannot hide from you. You've felt the impact of a breeze on your skin. You can't see electricity either. You can't see gravity. There's a lot that exists that can't be perceived.

What do you experience as 'mind'?
The word 'mind' is a concept but what does it mean?

Originally posted by NorEaster

Originally posted by mysticnoon

Originally posted by NorEaster

um....You're responding to these posts by way of your own Intellect. It's true. Your Intellect is your conscious awareness. Your mind.

Yes, I understand what you are saying, but I guess I was trying to allude to the idea that the mind may not be the only faculty of perception, especially in non-physical existence.

The mind is perfectly suited as a vehicle for conscious awareness on this material plane, but I believe mind is not consciousness in and of itself. Mind is a tool of consciousness, not the reverse. Consciousness is primary.

edit on 24-4-2013 by mysticnoon because: (no reason given)

I know that this is a common belief, but I have to admit that I see consciousness as a quality that the mind possesses. Consciousness is the state of being conscious. Like largeness is the state of being large. It's a noun, but it's dependent on the root noun - conscious - for its existence. The mind exhibits consciousness. Consciousness doesn't exhibit the mind.

This is the problem with esotericisms that are conceptually based on languages that don't translate well to English. You end up with notions that struggle to make literal sense.

If the 'mind' is experienced then one must be awake (conscious). Can a thought be experienced without consciousness?

The self has a mind. A mind does not have the self.

Originally posted by Itisnowagain

Originally posted by NorEaster

Originally posted by mysticnoon

Originally posted by NorEaster

um....You're responding to these posts by way of your own Intellect. It's true. Your Intellect is your conscious awareness. Your mind.

Yes, I understand what you are saying, but I guess I was trying to allude to the idea that the mind may not be the only faculty of perception, especially in non-physical existence.

The mind is perfectly suited as a vehicle for conscious awareness on this material plane, but I believe mind is not consciousness in and of itself. Mind is a tool of consciousness, not the reverse. Consciousness is primary.

edit on 24-4-2013 by mysticnoon because: (no reason given)

I know that this is a common belief, but I have to admit that I see consciousness as a quality that the mind possesses. Consciousness is the state of being conscious. Like largeness is the state of being large. It's a noun, but it's dependent on the root noun - conscious - for its existence. The mind exhibits consciousness. Consciousness doesn't exhibit the mind.

This is the problem with esotericisms that are conceptually based on languages that don't translate well to English. You end up with notions that struggle to make literal sense.

If the 'mind' is experienced then one must be awake (conscious). Can a thought be experienced without consciousness?

The self has a mind. A mind does not have the self.

edit on 25-4-2013 by Itisnowagain because: (no reason given)

The mind is the self. You seem to like to confuse things with phrase turnarounds. It's simple. The self is the mind. Period. There is no Doppelganger entity that's riding shotgun with the mind and the body. The body (brain) generates the mind and adds to its development over the course of an entire lifetime. That's all there is to it. All that other foolishness is ancient ignorance of what's actually happening that's been retrofitted again and again by people who refuse to accept the fact that their ascendant thought leaders were doing the best they could with what little they actually knew about reality.

reply to post by NorEaster


You really should watch and follow along with the video but if you did it would change your belief so I doubt you will. I would rather forget belief and have truth instead.
The mind is experienced as thoughts and ideas and beliefs and concepts, projection in time - past/future - personality.
What do you experience as 'mind'?

NorEaster:

The mind exhibits consciousness. Consciousness doesn't exhibit the mind.

Do we have a 'mind' into which consciousness emerges, or do we perceive 'consciousness' as mind?

Apparently, we have a 'conscious' mind and an 'unconscious' mind, and even a 'subconscious' mind. Bearing in mind (no pun intended), that an unconscious mind is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard. Is it possible that we could get along quite well without resorting to the use of the term 'mind' at all? Could we strike it from our lexicon without any consequence at all?

We know we are conscious because we are capable (like Descartes) of perceiving being in a state of consciousness, and we perceive it in others whom are equally in a similar state. In his 'Discourse on the Method', Descartes famously coined the percept "Je pense, donc je suis", 'I think, therefore I am'. By doubting all his perceived attributes and stripping them away like veils obscuring the truth, he realised that he was left with the only attribute that he could not doubt...his ability to think; he saw this as confirmation of his own existence, and brought cartesian dualism into the philosophical mix.

Is 'thinking' mind in action? Do the terms 'mind' and 'intellect' pertain to the same thing? Although Descartes proved to himself his own existence by virtue of still being able to 'think and reason' after doubting all other attributes, what he failed to perceive was that he remained in a conscious state, the prerequisite for thinking and perceiving. At this point, some may believe that this supports mind being something into which consciousness emerges, but mind cannot be both mind and consciousness, as this requires an infinity of minds and consciousnesses, each one perceiving the one preceding it, because one has to ask the question, what is perceiving the mind? Mind cannot perceive itself, but only those things that arise in it, and anything that arises in mind, cannot be claimed to be mind. Is there a way around this philosophical 'infinity' predicament?

We come back to the question I started with...do we have a mind into which consciousness emerges, or do we perceive consciousness as mind? The former half of the question treats mind and consciousness as distinctly separate from each other, the latter half treats the conscious state as the only true mental reality, and mind as nothing more than a mental mirage. What we are doing here is exercising a similar doubting process that Descartes utilised, and stripping away the attribution of 'intentionality' (i.e., thinking) from mind, at which point mind must fade from perception, leaving us only in a conscious state. Why is this so?

We only perceive mind by the act of thinking. It is apropos to perceiving spatiality, in that it is the objects in space that define space. Take out all objects, and the meaning of space and spatial dimensions become contextually un-perceivable and meaningless. So it is with mind when the attribution of thought is not allowed, but this leaves us in a conscious state perceiving nothing more than radiated energy waves of light and sound and temperature, etc, but no mental response to them. Not a good state of existence! What it does present, however, is the primacy of the conscious state before that of mind. Mind must be subordinate to the conscious state? You cannot take away the conscious state and leave mind in place. With all this reductive reasoning, we are finding ourselves in a very sorry state indeed.

If we consider the conscious state as being the bedrock of our mental life, we must inquire on what the conscious state is and how we acquire it?

When we say we are conscious, we are pertaining to a particular state of condition, a condition of awareness; however, not only are we aware, but we are sentiently aware. We are 'aware' of being 'aware', or rather, we are 'conscious' of being 'conscious'. By what means are we imbued with this faculty of sentient awareness?

That we are in a 'conscious state', imputes something other places us in that state? Is there a mechanism at the biological and cellular level that places us in the conscious state, some electro-chemical process out of which consciousness arises? Materialists would have us believe so, that consciousness, and ultimately the 'person', amount to nothing more than the complex pulsations of the brain's neuronal network processes, but cannot answer the question on how these electro-chemical processes cause the life experience. There's no doubt they play a part in the whole experience of life, but do not seem to point to causality of the conscious state. Perhaps then, causality lays in some hitherto unperceived quantum process?

I will pursue this line of enquiry in my next post. Regards.

Originally posted by Itisnowagain
reply to post by NorEaster

 

You really should watch and follow along with the video but if you did it would change your belief so I doubt you will. I would rather forget belief and have truth instead.
The mind is experienced as thoughts and ideas and beliefs and concepts, projection in time - past/future - personality.
What do you experience as 'mind'?

edit on 25-4-2013 by Itisnowagain because: (no reason given)

Look. You embrace what you feel good about embracing. It's not my wish to dissuade you from embracing the reality view that best suits you, and my concern isn't for those who've found their faith-based community. My concern is for the folks who don't realize how deeply affected they have been by the social conditioning, and have no idea how vulnerable they'll be when they discover that their disbelief in an afterlife won't prevent that afterlife from being a reality for them.

The afterlife provides no objective reality anchors, so you'll experience what you expect to experience. For those who firmly expect to not exist after death, and who's belief in that expectation is rooted on their disbelief in a Creator God, the afterlife awaits like a curse that I'd really like to prevent with the decoupling of the notion of post-corporeal human survival from the actually disconnected notion of a Creator God.

It may seem like a Quixotic mission, but it's gotta start somewhere, and from my own efforts to educate those who are vulnerable, maybe it can grow and spread to at least spare some from being ultimately snagged by one opportunistic predator or another when the lights don't go out on them in the end.

I just want to start the conversation hat could eventually provide nonbelievers with a shot at their own post-corporeal happiness. They shouldn't be easy prey for predator "gods".

Originally posted by elysiumfire
Do we have a 'mind' into which consciousness emerges, or do we perceive 'consciousness' as mind?

Apparently, we have a 'conscious' mind and an 'unconscious' mind, and even a 'subconscious' mind. Bearing in mind (no pun intended), that an unconscious mind is about as much use as a chocolate fireguard. Is it possible that we could get along quite well without resorting to the use of the term 'mind' at all? Could we strike it from our lexicon without any consequence at all?

We know we are conscious because we are capable (like Descartes) of perceiving being in a state of consciousness, and we perceive it in others whom are equally in a similar state. In his 'Discourse on the Method', Descartes famously coined the percept "Je pense, donc je suis", 'I think, therefore I am'. By doubting all his perceived attributes and stripping them away like veils obscuring the truth, he realised that he was left with the only attribute that he could not doubt...his ability to think; he saw this as confirmation of his own existence, and brought cartesian dualism into the philosophical mix.

Is 'thinking' mind in action? Do the terms 'mind' and 'intellect' pertain to the same thing? Although Descartes proved to himself his own existence by virtue of still being able to 'think and reason' after doubting all other attributes, what he failed to perceive was that he remained in a conscious state, the prerequisite for thinking and perceiving. At this point, some may believe that this supports mind being something into which consciousness emerges, but mind cannot be both mind and consciousness, as this requires an infinity of minds and consciousnesses, each one perceiving the one preceding it, because one has to ask the question, what is perceiving the mind? Mind cannot perceive itself, but only those things that arise in it, and anything that arises in mind, cannot be claimed to be mind. Is there a way around this philosophical 'infinity' predicament?

We come back to the question I started with...do we have a mind into which consciousness emerges, or do we perceive consciousness as mind? The former half of the question treats mind and consciousness as distinctly separate from each other, the latter half treats the conscious state as the only true mental reality, and mind as nothing more than a mental mirage. What we are doing here is exercising a similar doubting process that Descartes utilised, and stripping away the attribution of 'intentionality' (i.e., thinking) from mind, at which point mind must fade from perception, leaving us only in a conscious state. Why is this so?

We only perceive mind by the act of thinking. It is apropos to perceiving spatiality, in that it is the objects in space that define space. Take out all objects, and the meaning of space and spatial dimensions become contextually un-perceivable and meaningless. So it is with mind when the attribution of thought is not allowed, but this leaves us in a conscious state perceiving nothing more than radiated energy waves of light and sound and temperature, etc, but no mental response to them. Not a good state of existence! What it does present, however, is the primacy of the conscious state before that of mind. Mind must be subordinate to the conscious state? You cannot take away the conscious state and leave mind in place. With all this reductive reasoning, we are finding ourselves in a very sorry state indeed.

If we consider the conscious state as being the bedrock of our mental life, we must inquire on what the conscious state is and how we acquire it?

When we say we are conscious, we are pertaining to a particular state of condition, a condition of awareness; however, not only are we aware, but we are sentiently aware. We are 'aware' of being 'aware', or rather, we are 'conscious' of being 'conscious'. By what means are we imbued with this faculty of sentient awareness?

That we are in a 'conscious state', imputes something other places us in that state? Is there a mechanism at the biological and cellular level that places us in the conscious state, some electro-chemical process out of which consciousness arises? Materialists would have us believe so, that consciousness, and ultimately the 'person', amount to nothing more than the complex pulsations of the brain's neuronal network processes, but cannot answer the question on how these electro-chemical processes cause the life experience. There's no doubt they play a part in the whole experience of life, but do not seem to point to causality of the conscious state. Perhaps then, causality lays in some hitherto unperceived quantum process?

I won't address semantics, but you did toss in a few important points about consciousness that can be addressed by the concept of the "Emergent System". Screw reductionism. This 2013, not 1913. Strict reductionism didn't survive the 20th century.

Originally posted by NorEaster
...This is the point of this thread. To open up a discussion about what's actually happening here on this planet, and perhaps on all other planets where human generating material brains exist. My ultimate effort is to educate people and give them the option of embracing these traditional notions or not. I just feel that all human beings should have the freedom and autonomy that they're physically capable of having. Then, if they want to join a specific community of humans as a result of agreeing with them and seeing the value in being a member of said community, they are free to join it and enjoy that community. As it stands, this isn't how community assignment is being handled once the human being emerges from this material realm.

Of course, I'm the clown...but I am totally enthralled with your proposition.
So - Where do I sign up?
Your suggestion (don't know why it would be considered far-fetched) that "this life" is a gestational process for an "after-life" is certainly NOT in opposition to most religious suppositions.
I would love to have more insight into how you came to the brink of this...uhhhhhh...paradigm?
Sorry I don't have much to offer...yet... Hope to...before you've lost interest!!!!!
Thanks for all your work in putting this out for consideration.