What happens after death?

[mr_a500]

It's Monday, so naturally I'm thinking about death again. It's pretty reasonable to think about death now and then considering the fact that every single person alive today WILL die. You might die today. You might die in 100 years. But YOU WILL DIE.

So what do you think happens after death? (I'd like to hear calmly discussed theories based on your own logic - not pointless arguments on which religion is the best.)

The common belief - and seen everywhere from Shakespeare plays to modern movies - is that after you die, your "spirit" leaves your body. This spirit looks exactly like you, has your personality and your memories. It is basically YOU, but in a floating transparent form that can move through solid objects (somehow it's wearing clothes too). Supposedly, you can hang about (and haunt a bunch of teens at a camp or a pathetic family in Texas) or zip off to heaven or hell or wherever you're supposed to spend eternity.

Here's what I think:

Memory is physical. It has been determined that memories are created by chemical patterns in the brain. Memories can be destroyed by damage to the brain. Certain drugs can cause permanent memory loss. Therefore, memory is physical and something you don't "take with you" when you die. Personality is based on memory. Personality can also be radically altered with chemical changes in the brain. Therefore, personality too is physical and not something that will exist after death. So when you die, your brain dies and all your memories and your personality are gone forever. Whatever "spirit" leaves your body as you die does not have any of your memories or your personality. (This is a horrible loss, but when you think about it - do you really want all your memories and your personality (flaws) for all eternity? Wouldn't it get boring? Isn't it better to start over?)

The "tunnel of light" seen in many near death experiences and the sense of euphoria has also been shown to be physical - the results of your brain shutting down and releasing chemicals. An experimental pain-killing drug given to soldiers at a military hospital had a similar "tunnel of light" and "out-of-body" effect and had to be discontinued because of these strange effects.

As for the spirit or "life force", I think that it does exist. The body of someone who drowns or gets electrocuted - and can't be revived - still contains all the necessary things to be alive, yet is somehow missing the "life force" to make it alive. You can put together the exact combinations of chemicals of a simple life form, but it won't actually be alive. You can't create life. So I think that every living thing has a "life force". I don't know how it gets a "life force" when it is "born" (who does?) and I don't know where the "life force" goes when the living thing dies (possibly another new life). I think there must be some kind of "conservation of life force". There is "conservation of mass" and "conservation of energy", so maybe there is also "conservation of life force". This might be a reasonable assumption when you consider that most life forms can only eat other life forms. There is nothing that we can eat that didn't come from (or get heavily processed from) another life form. There are more humans than ever on earth, but there are a hell of a lot less animals and fish.

So, I believe that after death, your memory and personality - the main things that were YOU - are tragically gone forever. But the life force and sense of "being" survives and allows a new "you" to experience life again.

Energy never dies, it merely transforms from one form to another.

This is a scientific fact as far as I am aware.

[mr_a500]

Energy never dies, it merely transforms from one form to another.

This is a scientific fact as far as I am aware.

I know that. I'm using that to prove my point. That's what the "Law of the Conservation of Energy" is.

[Wilse]

mr_a500 wrote:
The common belief - and seen everywhere from Shakespeare plays to modern movies - is that after you die, your "spirit" leaves your body. This spirit looks exactly like you, has your personality and your memories. It is basically YOU, but in a floating transparent form that can move through solid objects (somehow it's wearing clothes too). Supposedly, you can hang about (and haunt a bunch of teens at a camp or a pathetic family in Texas) or zip off to heaven or hell or wherever you're supposed to spend eternity.

Popular because it's what most people would like to happen. This helps them get over the mental obstacle thrown up by the absurdity of such a nonsensical idea.


Here's what I think:

Memory is physical. It has been determined that memories are created by chemical patterns in the brain. Memories can be destroyed by damage to the brain. Certain drugs can cause permanent memory loss. Therefore, memory is physical and something you don't "take with you" when you die. Personality is based on memory. Personality can also be radically altered with chemical changes in the brain. Therefore, personality too is physical and not something that will exist after death. So when you die, your brain dies and all your memories and your personality are gone forever. Whatever "spirit" leaves your body as you die does not have any of your memories or your personality. (This is a horrible loss, but when you think about it - do you really want all your memories and your personality (flaws) for all eternity? Wouldn't it get boring? Isn't it better to start over?)

The "tunnel of light" seen in many near death experiences and the sense of euphoria has also been shown to be physical - the results of your brain shutting down and releasing chemicals. An experimental pain-killing drug given to soldiers at a military hospital had a similar "tunnel of light" and "out-of-body" effect and had to be discontinued because of these strange effects.

As for the spirit or "life force", I think that it does exist.

I don't but I concede that it's possible. Just not very likely, in my opinion.

The body of someone who drowns or gets electrocuted - and can't be revived - still contains all the necessary things to be alive, yet is somehow missing the "life force" to make it alive. You can put together the exact combinations of chemicals of a simple life form, but it won't actually be alive. You can't create life. So I think that every living thing has a "life force". I don't know how it gets a "life force" when it is "born" (who does?) and I don't know where the "life force" goes when the living thing dies (possibly another new life). I think there must be some kind of "conservation of life force". There is "conservation of mass" and "conservation of energy", so maybe there is also "conservation of life force". This might be a reasonable assumption when you consider that most life forms can only eat other life forms. There is nothing that we can eat that didn't come from (or get heavily processed from) another life form. There are more humans than ever on earth, but there are a hell of a lot less animals and fish.

So, I believe that after death, your memory and personality - the main things that were YOU - are tragically gone forever. But the life force and sense of "being" survives and allows a new "you" to experience life again.

Nice idea, though, and certainly more plausible than all that heaven and hell bollox.

[Boot_WB]

If it is you or I?

1) Put corpse in expensive wooden box, and
a) burn it, or
b) dig a big hole and bury it.
Get pissed, weep a bit and cherish the good times. Generally.

If it is Margaret Thatcher?

Paaaaaaaaarrrrrrrr-ty ! :pint: :hammer: :cheers:

There'll be dancing in the streets, children singing, birds tweeting, peace on earth for a single day as sworn enemies hug each other and celebrate the joyous day.

[recidivist]

Your Amiga gets tossed by relatives along with other junk.

The relatives are disgusted to find there is no money;you spent it on the Amiga!

Your cat or dog misses you....

[mr_a500]

There'll be dancing in the streets, children singing, birds tweeting, peace on earth for a single day as sworn enemies hug each other and celebrate the joyous day.

No, that will be when George Bush dies.

Your cat or dog misses you....

Your cat pisses on your headstone to mark it as his territory while your dog {bleep}s on your grave.

[Karlos]

From a purely scientific viewpoint, my only response is, "who can say?"

I suppose the real question is, is there some mechanism by which concious thought, memory and therefore personality can exist outside the biological body? A second question arises, is there some mechanism by which a transfer from one state to the other can occur?

I'm always a bit cautious about taking the 'well your physical body dies, ergo you, in any way shape of form cease to exist' approach. Whilst this may seem to be the logical outcome based on what we know today about physics, biology, physiology, neurology, psychology, it does tend to ignore the fact that just about every single time we think we understand the universe to a point that we can explain it fully, something comes along and completely turns the accepted world view upside down.

I would not be surprised*, if at some point in the future a non corporeal continuation of life was at least proven to be possible during one of these paradigm shifts, or even demonstrated to be true. How society would behave knowing something like that for scientific 'fact' is another question entirely.

*well I might be if it was within my (corporeal) life time ;-)

[mr_a500]

Whilst this may seem to be the logical outcome based on what we know today about physics, biology, physiology, neurology, psychology, it does tend to ignore the fact that just about every single time we think we understand the universe to a point that we can explain it fully, something comes along and completely turns the accepted world view upside down.

Yes, exactly. I think we also have to consider that me might not even be physically capable of understanding the universe - it might require a more advanced brain just to comprehend it. If there are lifeforms out there that understand the universe, they might think we're far too stupid to even bother trying to tell us. It would be like teaching a fish to drive a car. No matter how smart the fish is, there's no way he's going to understand.

Also, the only way we know anything is from our senses. We have made instruments to detect things beyond our senses and convert them into forms our senses can understand. There are probably many things beyond the range of our instruments or in a format that we don't have an instrument for that we don't know about. We can't detect them, so we don't know they exist.

If there are lifeforms out there that understand the universe, they might think we're far too stupid to even bother trying to tell us.

Maybe, just maybe, the only one that does understand the Universe already told us, but most of us are, as you say, too stupid to understand.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

nicholas wrote:
If there are lifeforms out there that understand the universe, they might think we're far too stupid to even bother trying to tell us.

Maybe, just maybe, the only one that does understand the Universe already told us, Who, L. Ron Hubbard? ;-) :-P

[metalman]

Speelgoedmannetje wrote:

nicholas wrote:
If there are lifeforms out there that understand the universe, they might think we're far too stupid to even bother trying to tell us.

Maybe, just maybe, the only one that does understand the Universe already told us, Who, L. Ron Hubbard? ;-) :-P :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:

[iamaboringperson]

The living know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything.

[Karlos]

After death, your employability as a car park attendant increases substantially. Or so I'm told.

[whabang]

My theory:
Just as others have pointed out, energy can't be destroyed.
Mind is energy, ergo, our minds can't be destroyed. When we die, whatever we are, will float out in various forms, I don't beleive our beings would stay intact, much more likely, they will dissolve, and become parts of other processes, in which energies are involved.
In other words, our thoughts, feelings, and emotions will never cease to exist; however, they will most likely evolve beyond recognition, into things like bad jokes, Britney's new track, data communication, or something as simple as rain.

[mr_a500]

Interesting, but I don't think the mind is energy. The mind uses energy. Compare it to a CRT monitor - the phosphors that make a display need a constant supply of energy to display an image. When the power is cut off, the image is gone. The brain requires constant energy and when that energy is lost, the mind is gone. The energy helped the mind function, but the mind was not the energy.

Naturally, I could be wrong. Maybe I'll die, find out what happens, then come back to post here. ;-)

After death, your employability as a car park attendant increases substantially. Or so I'm told.

:-D Undead zombies need jobs too. They can't just go around living in graveyards and eating the brains of the living. With the cash from their jobs they can buy a nice bottle of wine to go with the brains. (red wine best with brains)

[Dandy]

mr_a500 wrote:
It's Monday, so naturally I'm thinking about death again.

You aren't referring to the old BoomTownRats-song "I don't like Mondays", are you?
;-)
(Given all those assaults in schools recently the story of this song is really up-to-date)

mr_a500 wrote:
It's pretty reasonable to think about death now and then considering the fact that every single person alive today WILL die. You might die today. You might die in 100 years. But YOU WILL DIE.

I really like to think and speculate on this since I was a 13 year old boy back in the late sixties and read the books of Einstein.

mr_a500 wrote:
So what do you think happens after death? (I'd like to hear calmly discussed theories based on your own logic - not pointless arguments on which religion is the best.)

Basically I agree with Nicholas:
"Energy never dies, it merely transforms from one form to another."

And I would say that conscious/personality are a form of energie as well and so cannot die - just transform.

mr_a500 wrote:
...
Here's what I think:

Memory is physical. It has been determined that memories are created by chemical patterns in the brain. Memories can be destroyed by damage to the brain. Certain drugs can cause permanent memory loss. Therefore, memory is physical and something you don't "take with you" when you die.

I'm sure its not that simple.
Don't forget that you interact with your environment all the time before you die and so leave "traces".

So - even if your brain is destroyed - every single experience you made in your life is "stored" elsewhere too - not just in *your* brain.

For example our discussion here:
You started this thread by writing the initial post - the content of this posting is stored in your brain, here in this very forum and in the brains of everybody who read it.

So I'm quite sure that the memory of this posting is not automatically lost as soon as you die...

mr_a500 wrote:
Personality is based on memory. Personality can also be radically altered with chemical changes in the brain. Therefore, personality too is physical and not something that will exist after death. So when you die, your brain dies and all your memories and your personality are gone forever.
Whatever "spirit" leaves your body as you die does not have any of your memories or your personality.
...

I don't think so and here is why:

You must know that I moved to a new flat in February 1985 and that I was planning a housewarming party with all my friends.

Back in late march 1985 I tried to ring my best friend Winnie (my blood brother) all the week to invite him to the party planned for the weekend - but he wasn't at home.

Then - in the night from Thursday to Friday - I had a very strange dream.

My friend Winnie came to my bed and said:
"Dandy, wake up! I have to leave now and wanted to say Good-Bye before. My life is wrecked and so I'll better go - but you will make it."
I replied (still dreaming):
"Hey, old man, don't talk such an B.S.! You're frightening me!"
He answered:
"No, no - my life is wrecked and its really better for all of us if I go. But you will make it and marry Petra and have
two lovely daughters with her!"

I woke up drenched in sweat.
I got up and went to my living room.
There I noticed that a flowerpot with a palm tree in it layed in the middle of the room with the palmtree broken into three pieces.
Up to now I have no reasonable explanation for how the flowerpot moved from the window 3 meters across the room or what broke the palmtree into three pieces.

In the course of this day I nearly forgot about the dream, but in the late afternoon I remembered that I still had to get hold of Winnie for the invitation.

So again I rang him in his flat - in vain again.
Then I thought he might have visited his parents and rang them.
His father picked up the phone and I asked him if Winnie happened to be there.

He answered with a sad voice:
"Ha - Winnie died last night..."

That was the moment when the phone receiver fell out of my hand...
:boohoo: :boohoo: :boohoo:

I would say that if your theorie was right and memories are lost as soon as one dies, Winnie would not even had known that there was a friend whom he wanted to say good-bye.

And how can your theorie explain that he knew where my new flat was, as I had no chance to tell him the address as long as he was still alive?

And how can your theorie furthermore explain that he predicted the future?
(As Petra and I are married since 1990 and we have two wonderful daughters together...)

So I would say there are things between heaven and earth that physics can't explain up to now.

Or could the "Unified Field Theorie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heim_theory)" of the German physician Burkhard Heim (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burkhard_Heim) (died in Jan 2004) deliver the explanation?

Up to now I didn't have the time to read deep enough into Heim's theorie - but I read somewhere that his theorie would allow travelling exceeding the speed of light, a kind of hyperspace, life after death and would even include the possibility of re-incarnation.

According this theorie up to 12 dimensions are possible, where the "upper" dimensions domicile a kind of "control instance", that has an eye on what's happening in the "lower" dimensions...

[mr_a500]

@Dandy

Fascinating post. I have also heard of similar cases of "contact" after death. Years ago, an old woman told me that she didn't believe in ghosts, but after her son died she was visited by him and he said goodbye. At the time, I thought that it was probably a hallucination brought on by the extreme emotion of a son's death. But your story is hard to explain. I would have said that maybe he actually WAS in your apartment and talked to you (while you were half asleep) and he accidentally knocked over your plant, but you say he didn't know where you lived. Could he have looked up your address somewhere? Could he have come in the window where the plant was?

So - even if your brain is destroyed - every single experience you made in your life is "stored" elsewhere too - not just in *your* brain.

I have also thought about this. Your experiences are stored by other people, but probably not for too long - unless the person was a close friend or relative or unless the thing that you did was important enough (or shocking enough) to have lasting memory. This is usually a person's goal in life - to be remembered by many after death (and for as long as possible by as many people as possible). I don't think that this means that YOU live on, just the memory of something you did (however distorted that memory may become in the future).

[recidivist]

I once read an interesting science fiction story in which the protagonist slowly becomes more aware ,more intelligent and realizes he is undering a unusal forced growing up.
It turns out he is the second experimental person recreated from the combined memories of everyone who had any knowledge and contact with him.

The Old Testament God promises He remembers every hair on your head,etc.It actually sounds like you die and are then re-created from His memory of you.

Every night or perhaps,day , for some we lie down and experience a temporary shutdown of conscious thought (sleep).
How can you absolutely prove nothing changed ,i.e. your identity or the world, while you slept?

I submit man everyday operates more on faith and hope than many careto admit.

[Hyperspeed]

http://www.meskerdoors.com/telega/Ghostbusters.gif

[Dandy]

mr_a500 wrote:
@Dandy

...
I would have said that maybe he actually WAS in your apartment and talked to you (while you were half asleep) and he accidentally knocked over your plant, but you say he didn't know where you lived.

No.
He had problems with his circulation due to long term alcohol abuse.

Around mid of march 1985 he somehow lost conscious and fell unluckyly, so that he incured a fracture at the base of the skull and a vein in his brain got damaged.

He didn't go to the doctor for one week.

During this time the blood from the damaged vein pressed on his visual centre and on his moving centre with the result that he was nearly blind and nearly unable to walk.

With his last strength he went to his parents and they took him to the hospital the same evening.

During the long initial physical examination he wanted to go just outside the door to have a cigarette.

There he must have lost his conscious again.

He was found among the shrubbery the other day and they kept
him at the hospital - but in the meantime he had caught a meningitis.

In the course of the next five days (the days where I tried to ring & invite him) his condition became worse and worse, until they brought him to the university hospital here in Cologne with the helicopter.

Shortly after his arrival there he fell into a coma for one day and died the other night...


So I would say its most unlikely that he visited me physically - never heard that people in a coma can walk around...

mr_a500 wrote:
Could he have looked up your address somewhere?

I don't think so, as I didn't have a phone by that time.
This would exclude the possibility that he got my address from the public phone book.
He didn't have access to authorities or their data - so I have no further idea where he could have my address from.

mr_a500 wrote:
Could he have come in the window where the plant was?

Well, my flat was in the second floor of the building - so I would say its not impossible, but most unlikely that he physically came through the rather small window, which was just tilted btw.

mr_a500 wrote:

So - even if your brain is destroyed - every single experience you made in your life is "stored" elsewhere too - not just in *your* brain.


I have also thought about this. Your experiences are stored by other people, but probably not for too long - unless the person was a close friend or relative or unless the thing that you did was important enough (or shocking enough) to have lasting memory. This is usually a person's goal in life - to be remembered by many after death (and for as long as possible by as many people as possible). I don't think that this means that YOU live on, just the memory of something you did (however distorted that memory may become in the future).

Nahhhh - this isn't exactly what I meant.
Have you read Steven Hawkings "A brief history of time"?
There is a very interesting chapter on quantum physics.

One example describes an experiment where you only can see if a cat is in a room if you open the rooms door and have a look inside.

There are two possibilities of what you can see:
the cat is there
or
the cat is not there.

Both possibilities exist in parallel.

And it is said that all (physical) possible aspects of this universe would exist in parallell (like frames of a movie), but just a few of them would make up "our reality".


If it is possible to have *all physical aspects of the universe* stored like in frames, then I would think that this includes the personalities of all living beings in the universe as well.

Just read "A brief history of time" - I can not really explain it here with a few words.

Have you followed the links I gave to Burkhard Heim?
What I read about his theories up to now was enough to light my interest.
I will definitely buy his books in the near future and read them, as my time allows.

But one certainly should have read the books of Einstein and Hawking, before he starts with Heim...

[mr_a500]

Yes, it does seem unlikely that someone in a coma can somehow squeeze into a small second floor window. (if he did, then that would be even more strange and unexplainable than the dream itself :-D)

I'll read the Stephen Hawking book. Yes, I looked (briefly) at the Burkhard Heim link. A few years ago I read a quantum physics book and I think it was a theory describing 11 dimensions, not 12. The author (can't remember who) explained that mathematical calulations describing a unified field theory only start to make sense when using 11 dimensions. The theory was that the unseen dimensions were extremely small and "curled up" inside atoms.

[Dandy]

mr_a500 wrote:
@Dandy
Yes, it does seem unlikely that someone in a coma can somehow squeeze into a small second floor window.

Indeed...

mr_a500 wrote:
(if he did, then that would be even more strange and unexplainable than the dream itself )
...

Well - since my friend`s death and my dream for me the question is not
"Is there a life after death?" - the question rather is: "What`s the trick behind it? What are the physical laws, that could make this possible?"

[Karlos]

@Dandy

At the risk of playing Devil's Advocate, have you considered that you might subconciously have considered the fact your friend had died (having not been able to contact him) and that it was partially responsible for your dream?

Also if this was possible, is it also possible that the agitation it may have caused you perhaps triggered you have somehow moved the plant (perhaps sleep walking, for instance) of which you have no concious memory?

In the past I have sleep walked and rearranged things for no apparent reason. The only reason I know it was me doing it was that the people I was sharing a house with actually all saw me do it.

[Hyperspeed]

If you're asleep and start walking around - you're sleep walking... so if you're narcaleptic and fall asleep whilst walking... are you walk sleeping?

:inquisitive:

[Dandy]

Karlos wrote:
@Dandy

At the risk of playing Devil's Advocate, have you considered that you might subconciously have considered the fact your friend had died (having not been able to contact him) and that it was partially responsible for your dream?

I took it into account, but I don't think so.

Karlos wrote:
Also if this was possible, is it also possible that the agitation it may have caused you perhaps triggered you have somehow moved the plant (perhaps sleep walking, for instance) of which you have no concious memory?

There is absolutely no indication that I'm a sleepwalker - no-one ever watched me sleepwalking.

Karlos wrote:
In the past I have sleep walked and rearranged things for no apparent reason. The only reason I know it was me doing it was that the people I was sharing a house with actually all saw me do it.

Yes - but as you said - you know you did it in the past.
For me it would be a big surprise - it would be the first time.

[Dandy]

Hyperspeed wrote:
If you're asleep and start walking around - you're sleep walking... so if you're narcaleptic and fall asleep whilst walking... are you walk sleeping?

:inquisitive:

Hmmmm - given your nickname I would have assumed that you must be highly interested in one or two of the possible outcomes of Burkhard Heims theorie: exceeding the speed of light and the possibility of a hyperspace...
:roll:

[Karlos]

@Dandy

Yes - but as you said - you know you did it in the past.
For me it would be a big surprise - it would be the first time.

It was a big surprise to me, too ;-)

Sleepwalking is a lot more common than people think, apparently.

[Dandy]

Karlos wrote:
@Dandy


Yes - but as you said - you know you did it in the past.
For me it would be a big surprise - it would be the first time.


It was a big surprise to me, too ;-)

Sleepwalking is a lot more common than people think, apparently.

Back in 1985 I was nearly 28 - if I *really* were a sleepwalker somone should have noticed this long before (parents, friends, girlfriends, ...).

But up to now no-one ever told me he saw me sleepwalking...

[Karlos]

@Dandy

I think you are missing the point I was trying to make. I am not a sleepwalker. I simply had a short lived bout of it one time. I'd never done it before (or at least nobody ever noticed) nor since.