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[NF] Do you believe in an afterlife?

firstjudge

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I've been experiencing a lot of death around me lately. First, my grandfather died of cancer, then my grandmother followed him shortly - presumably from grief. Last night, I found out my uncle has also died of cancer. Oddly enough, they all shared the same abode.

Although I was quite close to them when I was younger, I find myself not grieving as I should about their demise. I never cried once, and I feel somewhat guilty about that. It's as if reality hasn't set in; I feel that they are not actually dead at all, despite what reason tells me.

Part of me feels very strongly that they are still alive, somewhere. I can't explain it, or rationalize it. I think it is for this reason that I am not grieving over them.

And yet, I myself came very close to death at one point in my life. Nobody had told me anything about it until my brother revealed it to me out of the blue. It must have happened while I was having my major surgery, and for some reason my parents decided to keep it secret from me. I didn't see any light, or experience anything of that sort. So if it did happen, death was the end, and there was nothing.

So I'm conflicted. Is there an afterlife? I've been contemplating about this since I was a small child. I thought religion helped me find the answer at one point, but since I had extricated myself from it, I'm again left with unanswered questions.
 

BlackCat

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Moiety

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More important than answering that question is - does knowing the answer even matter?

But no I do not believe in the afterlife. But I'm open to the possibility of there being one.
 

enfp1091

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Hey, I always ask myself the same question. But my thought are kind of complicated. One day I may think about reincarnation. The next I may think about an idea I have that when we die, we will fly by the universe freely. The next It could be both ideas mixed :shock: and sometimes I also think about something bigger than us.

P.s. Sorry about your loss.
 

jcloudz

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It is therefore quite proper to speak of three kinds of physical death: clinical, biological, and cellular. Clinical death occurs first: confirmed by cessation of pulse and breathing. Thereafter, sooner or later, there follows biological death which has been defined by Dr. A. S. Parkes as "the state from which resuscitation of the body as a whole by currently known means is impossible." (45)
Death: Event Or Process?


how long were you dead?
 

Unkindloving

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Start off by saying that i'm sorry for your losses :hug:. I'm likely be experiencing a lot of deaths in the next few years. I can imagine it being a hard time.

As for your question, i don't believe in an afterlife, per se. The closest thing to it is thinking we are all just energy and energy cannot be destroyed, so our energy is recycled back into the earth and people. Maybe for a brief time after someone's death their energy still maintains characteristics of its past, but fades off as it is in queue before next use.
This provides the idea that we are always here, always renewed.
It also makes me think about how there can be increases in humanity, yet decreases in environment. We may say we create and destroy, but perhaps we only destroy different vessels to create room for other vessels to harbor the same things.

All rough thoughts that make me sound like a hippie, but i prefer them.
 

Lady_X

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i'm really sorry for your loss too. :hug:

i do believe in an afterlife...i'm open to the possibility of being wrong ..maybe we do just go on in the form of memory of our loved ones...maybe that's all there is...but i'm really inclined to believe that we are to here experience life in physical form and our spirits inhabit some spiritual world after...believing in that makes it easier to deal with loss...personally.
 

Nonsensical

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I think it's an alteration in consciousness. Into another plane of existence. It can't ever be proven, or even imagined. It is a possibility..a belief..a feeling.
 

nolla

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I haven't really lost anyone I'm close to, yet, so I can't say anything about the grief and how it is supposed to be...

But, afterlife. I don't have an opinion about it. It's irrelevant to me, at least for now. I see three options. 1) There is some kind of afterlife 2) There isn't 3) There is an experience of afterlife. The third option is pretty much the same as the first, but with an exception that it is much more easily handled by logic. If the brain starts to shut off, who knows what the experience of the person is? Time might disappear, the memories of your life might fill your consciousness for seemingly indefinite amount of time.

Well, anyhow, the only reason the thought of afterlife might effect me now, it's the question about morals. Some people think that if you don't think there is an afterlife that is somehow a judgment of how you lived, then there would be no point of morals. But, I see it like, if there is no afterlife, then it is up to me to now get the best of life since I'm not coming back, and good life as I see it is very much concerned with being good to people. But, if there is afterlife, then the motivation would be to get that place on the cloud. So, in any case my morals are the same... thus it seems irrelevant to think about it.
 

KLessard

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I do believe in the afterlife. I am a Christian. Have you ever heard of "Visions beyond the Veil" by the late missionary H. A. Baker? Very interesting. I read it two weeks before my father died of a sudden heart attack.

I know this man who was in a very bad car crash. He came out of his body while doctors were performing surgery on him (he can quote everything that has been said by each doctor during that moment), and eventually found himself in a place where there was light on one side and a dark pit on the other. He was reaching out for the light put was pulled down into outer darkness. He was then revived and started looking for answers until he became Christian.
 

King sns

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I have kind of an interesting story for you, though it still makes me feel crazy. I was really close to my grandmother, conservative Roman Catholic woman, and one of my best friends. I would call myself a "Spiritual agnostic" to put it simply. I'm not really sure if I believe in in afterlife or not as it is very hard for me to understand, but some cooincidences and circumstances keep me kind of, believing in something.

The week that my grandmother died I was devastated, but still went ahead on the yearly camping trip that is so very important to me. I remember, one night, I was lying and looking up at the clear starry night, feeling really really sad about her fairly sudden loss. And, started praying to her. I was like, "Nana, if you hear me, send me a shooting star to tell me if you're okay. Not a dinky one. A big, huge, shooting star across the entire sky." I continued to pray for about five minutes when of course, the most flaming, magnificent shooting star i've ever seen crossed the sky. Everyone around just gasped, some WOWS! and so forth. I let out a squeal.

Shortly thereafter I was in a car, I was with the same boyfriend, thinking about my grandmother and the same exact thing happened. Sometimes when stuff like this happens, I can't help but believing. It was so strange.

Well, the boyfriend, (even less spiritual than I am) was a little freaked out too, to say the least!
 

Stanton Moore

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I have kind of an interesting story for you, though it still makes me feel crazy. I was really close to my grandmother, conservative Roman Catholic woman, and one of my best friends. I would call myself a "Spiritual agnostic" to put it simply. I'm not really sure if I believe in in afterlife or not as it is very hard for me to understand, but some cooincidences and circumstances keep me kind of, believing in something.

The week that my grandmother died I was devastated, but still went ahead on the yearly camping trip that is so very important to me. I remember, one night, I was lying and looking up at the clear starry night, feeling really really sad about her fairly sudden loss. And, started praying to her. I was like, "Nana, if you hear me, send me a shooting star to tell me if you're okay. Not a dinky one. A big, huge, shooting star across the entire sky." I continued to pray for about five minutes when of course, the most flaming, magnificent shooting star i've ever seen crossed the sky. Everyone around just gasped, some WOWS! and so forth. I let out a squeal.

Shortly thereafter I was in a car, I was with the same boyfriend, thinking about my grandmother and the same exact thing happened. Sometimes when stuff like this happens, I can't help but believing. It was so strange.

Well, the boyfriend, (even less spiritual than I am) was a little freaked out too, to say the least!
:hug:
Thanks for sharing that, Shorts. Simlar things happened to my mother and sister when there were deaths in my family. both had dreams the night before, where the person involved said don't worry. It will be ok...
 

The Outsider

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I am sorry about your loss. You shouldn't feel guilty, everyone grieves in their own way.

As for an afterlife, I am open to the idea, but as there is no way to know if it exists or in what form, it doesn't matter to me right now.

I am fine either way. If there is no afterlife, I will live on in flowers and trees and people's memories.
 

syndatha

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So sorry for your losses - cancer is a grim disease :hug:

I strongly believe in reincarnation - and recommend Michael Newtons books to those who are interested to read more about it. ("Life between lives" and "Destiny of souls").
I also believe that the souls of the departed stay around us for a while after death, and that they sometimes choose to contact us.
 

Totenkindly

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I would like to believe there is one, and that it's someplace worth being, but there's no way to know for sure.

There is just choice, and faith, and hope.

I think a turning point came for me when I realized how I wanted to live my life and the sort of person I wanted to be... regardless of what might come after. I don't think about the afterlife much at all, I just focus on what I must face in this life and make the most of my time with the people I love while they are here, while learning to accept the natural change and flux that is part and parcel of a world like this one.
 

Prototype

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Why?
I believe that death is the next stage of life, like switching over to another plane, or dimension... Maybe after you die you are born on another version of Earth.
 

firstjudge

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Thank you everyone for your condolences. :)

I have kind of an interesting story for you, though it still makes me feel crazy. I was really close to my grandmother, conservative Roman Catholic woman, and one of my best friends. I would call myself a "Spiritual agnostic" to put it simply. I'm not really sure if I believe in in afterlife or not as it is very hard for me to understand, but some cooincidences and circumstances keep me kind of, believing in something.

The week that my grandmother died I was devastated, but still went ahead on the yearly camping trip that is so very important to me. I remember, one night, I was lying and looking up at the clear starry night, feeling really really sad about her fairly sudden loss. And, started praying to her. I was like, "Nana, if you hear me, send me a shooting star to tell me if you're okay. Not a dinky one. A big, huge, shooting star across the entire sky." I continued to pray for about five minutes when of course, the most flaming, magnificent shooting star i've ever seen crossed the sky. Everyone around just gasped, some WOWS! and so forth. I let out a squeal.

Shortly thereafter I was in a car, I was with the same boyfriend, thinking about my grandmother and the same exact thing happened. Sometimes when stuff like this happens, I can't help but believing. It was so strange.

Well, the boyfriend, (even less spiritual than I am) was a little freaked out too, to say the least!

That is a very interesting story. Stuff like this makes me wonder...


I just suddenly remembered a book I read on the Fourth Way, which is a spiritual philosophy associated with G.I. Gurdjieff. According to his teachings, the soul is not immortal in the strict sense. The soul exists only temporarily after one's death; however, it can transcend to higher levels of existence. To do that, a person must reach a spiritual awakening on earth and undergo a process of individualization. Most people fail to reach this state in their life, and merely function as robots, not real persons.

If one manages to reach this state, their soul will be able to move to the higher levels of existence, prolonging its life. Eventually, though, the soul can only reach a certain level before it becomes assimilated by the universe. So we cannot retain our individuality (in the way we understand it as humans); rather, we can only exist eternally as part of something greater than ourselves.

I hope I explained it correctly. It's pretty deep and it has been a long time since I've read it.
 

stardancer

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I am sorry for your losses. It is hard losing someone close to us, and so much harder when it happens in multiples. Regarding your question, I can't decide if I believe in an afterlife. I am pretty anti organized religion so I do know that I don't believe in the traditional Catholic view that I was brought up with. I am currently thinking that maybe we are reincarnated. Then again, maybe our energy just gets reabsorbed and that's it. Sometimes I like to think that we can become ghosts so I can cause chaos for people I don't like. Like putting gummy worms in people's bathtubs, or a dog poop under the seat in their car. :)
 

souffle

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No, I don't believe in afterlife. My view of life and consciousness is the most cold, harsh and biological one possible.

I do however like to think of everyone and everything living forever in history, which is like a magical realm of it's own. The person, and all the things they thought, felt and did, would always have happened, they will forever be stamped in history, always be real. So even when someone you love dies, and their consciousness does not exist in the present, it still existed in the past and nothing can change that, therefore it still does exist in it's own way. As does your relationship with them.
 
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