Why so many people–including scientists–suddenly believe in an afterlife

reply to post by AfterInfinity


OT, but yes, I had my own opinion about the topic.

No one wished to actually discuss the topic, however. It went into everything from "do we really have free will?" to biblical quotes. No one actually approached the intended topic. At best, people answered from a "why" standpoint rather than a "how."

I basically viewed the topic as a failed experiment, and one I will learn from. In my perspective, as I mentioned in the thread, it was like I posted a thread about model rockets and received responses about turtles. Then, when I mention that, I get told that I need to get out of "3d thinking," and such.

I ended up just discussing it with the people I know, and had some fantastic discourses. One person even quoted scripture that was actually relevant to the topic!

Serdgiam:

Would you mind going further in-depth about your "energy resonance hypothesis?"

Bearing in mind that it is only a hypothesis, a philosophical one at that, but one where I try to use as much validated science fact as possible, it is a series of thoughts that bring disparate strands together to weave a plausible scene of what underlies certain aspects of our existence.

Initially, I wanted to bed the core elements of NDE within a reality framework. The compulsion of this was that I like the idea of immersed consciousness as depicted during the 'life review' when encounters with beings-of-light took place. These episodes only occur in deep NDE, and are tutorial in their context. Rather like taking a multiple choice exam and then finding out what the answers were immediately after.

Everything that occurs to us throughout our life experience from cradle to grave is captured and assimilated as memory; according to NDE literature, nothing is lost, it is all captured for playback at the right time. Very similar to watching a film, images of one's life flash into impression in one's mind, and one can zoom in on particular scenes and relive them in total sensory recall of them, but with an added feature. We literally get to feel the emotions (good and bad) our actions, our non-actions, caused others to feel...we get to understand ourselves through the conscious experience others have of us. We feel the pain we caused them and the joy. Most people's experience of this would be moderate, but of course, they are many whom undergo extremes of it due to the life they led.

I thought this form of 'instant karma' was a good thing, even though it is supposedly a traumatic experience, even in moderation. It's process of enlightenment is devastating, and though it occurs within a non-judgemental scenario, one does tend to admonish oneself very harshly. I thought what if this was true, and what if it could be proven to be true, would it compel people to behave differently towards one another in a more positive and brotherly way? I thought that if people knew what they had to face when they died, maybe they would change? So I set out to place the event within the bedrock of reality.

Decades of lay research later brought me to realise just how naive I was, post-mortem consciousness cannot be true, because once the physical body is destroyed, there is no power source to maintain all content of memory, and there are no sensory inputs available. Life after death is simply an illusion of wishful thinking. Nevertheless, my research enabled me to author something of a plausible hypothesis for consciousness during physical life, and in the process provide for some rather enlightening conclusions.

I'd be happy to relate an overview of my hypothesis, with emphasis on the more important points, but it is as I stated earlier, just an hypothesis.

elysiumfireI'd be happy to relate an overview of my hypothesis, with emphasis on the more important points, but it is as I stated earlier, just an hypothesis.

First off, let me state that I would love to hear it. Especially if you have done some experimentation. Even if you have not, how do you think you would experiment on it?

Initially, I wanted to bed the core elements of NDE within a reality framework. The compulsion of this was that I like the idea of immersed consciousness as depicted during the 'life review' when encounters with beings-of-light took place. These episodes only occur in deep NDE, and are tutorial in their context. Rather like taking a multiple choice exam and then finding out what the answers were immediately after.

Everything that occurs to us throughout our life experience from cradle to grave is captured and assimilated as memory; according to NDE literature, nothing is lost, it is all captured for playback at the right time. Very similar to watching a film, images of one's life flash into impression in one's mind, and one can zoom in on particular scenes and relive them in total sensory recall of them, but with an added feature. We literally get to feel the emotions (good and bad) our actions, our non-actions, caused others to feel...we get to understand ourselves through the conscious experience others have of us. We feel the pain we caused them and the joy. Most people's experience of this would be moderate, but of course, they are many whom undergo extremes of it due to the life they led.

What led you to so deeply dive into the NDE deep end? (If that hits too close to home, I understand)

So, do you feel memory is a derivative of consciousness? Or, do they have a more equitable relationship?

I can definitely see how you arrived at the conclusions you did if memory is basically a part of consciousness. In my studies, I have come to the hypothesis that memory is part of the sensory experience and will not live on past our body and the waves that body propagated (others memory of us, even if in books).

To give a bit better understanding of my thoughts on this, I view consciousness as that magnetic function that pierces through the surface tension. In that, I believe it is magnetic in space-time, takes on a certain shape in the surface tension, and is something else a bit "Different" in the timeless medium. I am actually starting to talk outside of the confines of the TE, but the TE wasnt that far off from my work-in-progress hypothesis. As we live through our lives, this transfer function (between the physical and timeless realms) works much in the same way as we see celestial bodies forming, and growing, and being destroyed. Our free will allows us to create a flux of sorts (and while this part is very interesting to me, its not very on topic). I even believe it is possible that this part of our "body," which has been referred to by many, many names historically manifests in many of the same ways that we see in celestial objects. So relationships in life, people we meet, people who are our friends, and even our pets are part of the same orbital structure that works in the same way as the planets revolving around our sun. Now, since that medium has no movement, it gets a bit more complicated (or simple, depending on your preference) but I also feel that part is a bit off topic. I just wanted to share a bit about my perspective, so we can understand each other a bit better.

Decades of lay research later brought me to realise just how naive I was, post-mortem consciousness cannot be true, because once the physical body is destroyed, there is no power source to maintain all content of memory, and there are no sensory inputs available. Life after death is simply an illusion of wishful thinking. Nevertheless, my research enabled me to author something of a plausible hypothesis for consciousness during physical life, and in the process provide for some rather enlightening conclusions.

I can see how one could quite easily conclude that post-mortem memory was a bit faulty, but what understanding of consciousness do you have that disallows it from being "stored" in a way that includes the body, but doesnt require it? Hope that makes sense.. Another way of looking at it is, what did you find that shows consciousness can not be something like a battery, where it is only "drained," when it is in use in a device (in this case, organic)?

Serdgiam:

...I would love to hear it.

I am in the process of writing it out, but am busy with other things at the moment. An overview should appear within the next couple of days.

...do you feel memory is a derivative of consciousness?

No. Memory is the focus of everything you are, your person-hood, your character and personality, every living second of your life is there. Memory is you...the-ghost-in-the-machine. It is the entity that is you.The scenario is not an entity having memory, but memory being the entity.

As life experiences are captured and stored as memory, they become the stimuli for the psychological and mental construct of self. Sensory stimuli, external and internal, are the initiators of the energy interactions that place the organism into the conscious state. So, memory is not a derivative of the conscious state, but one of its causes. The conscious state is not something into which sensory stimuli emerge, the conscious state is a consequence of sensory stimuli. This is a very important piece of the puzzle to understand about the conscious state and consciousness.

The 'conscious state' is a condition of the whole body, whereas 'consciousness' is that part of the conscious state, the top thin veneer of it, that we term 'mind'. Even our thoughts are stimuli, which is why we perceive consciousness as mind. We do not have a 'mind' that is conscious, but a level of the conscious state that is perceived as mind. This is why mind is erroneously perceived to be immaterial, and why the mind/body problem has never been solved. Anything that is immaterial is undetectable, because immateriality has no energy interactive capacity at all with anything. Mind is the quale of being conscious.

I would posit that our sentient awareness, that is to say, our faculty for self-perception, is due to feedback mechanisms of cross references with long-term memory data and activated (by stimuli) short-term memory (the consciousness layer of the the conscious state where our thoughts and thinking take place).

Anyway, I am getting way ahead of myself. I'll try and post a more succinct and more articulate response in the days ahead. It is quite difficult to articulate the mechanisms with coherent and precise meaning. It is a difficult concept to convey.