Thread: God?

Aren't these just the final moments of the mind with the brain being the last to shut down.
Venetian blind moment. Curtains.

Have heard a few stories about the tunnel and white light and folk losing their fear of death when they come back from a death moment.
Saying stuff like it was beautiful and peaceful. Nowt to worry about,

So it seems.

After a NDE one's whole world view changes.

A bit like jumping in at the deep end when you can't swim, only to find you can.

Originally Posted by ENT

So it seems.

After a NDE one's whole world view changes.

A bit like jumping in at the deep end when you can't swim, only to find you can.

.....not guaranteed.
If one doesn't have a connected base disposition or tolerant/open "world view" from the outset, one cannot expect to grasp epiphany-like experiences.

Even very little children report NDEs as pleasant experiences, not religious ones.

Originally Posted by thaimeme

Originally Posted by ENT

So it seems.

After a NDE one's whole world view changes.

A bit like jumping in at the deep end when you can't swim, only to find you can.

.....not guaranteed.
If one doesn't have a connected base disposition or tolerant/open "world view" from the outset, one cannot expect to grasp epiphany-like experiences.

Or one has been a bad person in which case they are going to hell.

Originally Posted by billy the kid

Aren't these just the final moments of the mind with the brain being the last to shut down.
Venetian blind moment. Curtains.

Have heard a few stories about the tunnel and white light and folk losing their fear of death when they come back from a death moment.
Saying stuff like it was beautiful and peaceful. Nowt to worry about,

I think that's just that the brain has disconnected from the body momentarily and they are completely without attachment to the physical, there is only thought.
that's what I think.

How is that possible? and why is that possible?

Do you think a cat's mind can disconnect from its body and then reconnect? Or a monkey's mind? Or a Neanderthal's mind?

If not then at what point in the evolution of the human mind do you think it took on this magical ability to disconnect and float free from the physical organ that we know gives rise to the sensation of consciousness i.e. the brain? Why did it develop this magical ability? What is the purpose of this magical ability? What is the evidence for this magical ability? personal accounts of NDE do not count for anything as they are always entirely subjective and are always recounted by living humans claiming to have experienced out of body consciousness with no evidence that any such thing actually occurred.

Originally Posted by Looper

How is that possible? and why is that possible?

Do you think a cat's mind can disconnect from its body and then reconnect? Or a monkey's mind? Or a Neanderthal's mind?

If not then at what point in the evolution of the human mind do you think it took on this magical ability to disconnect and float free from the physical organ that we know gives rise to the sensation of consciousness i.e. the brain? Why did it develop this magical ability? What is the purpose of this magical ability? What is the evidence for this magical ability? personal accounts of NDE do not count for anything as they are always entirely subjective and are always recounted by living humans claiming to have experienced out of body consciousness with no evidence that any such thing actually occurred.

Think 'dream'.

Originally Posted by Looper

personal accounts of NDE do not count for anything as they are always entirely subjective

As are all your thoughts, opinions and experience.

Think Simulation.

Elon Musk.

1 in 1,000,000,000 chance we're not living in one.

Perhaps upon 'death' we get a flash glimpse of the real 'World', or 'Mont Clair' as I call it.

huuuum ,,, right, well i have personally experienced the light tunnel, the other side calling me scenario.

the experience first my analysis second..

i'm undergoing an operation, i'm being anesthetized, or am anesthetized. i get a white light, so painful , blinding, and i cant look away or shut the light out, the pain was not good, i am aware of something , space? an area ? behind the light..

my dead sister starts to call me and beckon me to come cajoling me to join her. i try to look through the light to see her but the pain is too great, same looking at the sun. my feeling was if i went through that light i was on a one way ticket, i was convinced that death was giving me the choice to go or not.

i chose not to go, told my sister it was not my time and i was not ready to go. all faded to blackness.

now,,, not being religious when i recovered the opp i analysed the experience...
rightly or wrongly .. my analyses is i was half way anesthetized, the crew put the opperation lights on, blinding me.. because i gave a reaction they started to call back to see if i was out or not. deciding i was out they put a blind fold /cover over my eyes. job done. the next day the anesthetist came to question me . she was concerned that i cried as i went under, and wanted to know if i felt the opperation.

so there u have it a first hand account, make of it what you will.

Originally Posted by lob

so there u have it a first hand account, make of it what you will.

Ok, a whole load of shite.

Interesting account.

Did the anesthetist or surgeon tell you that you flat-lined, or that you were "touch and go", or that you had to be revived?

I had an NDE after an MVA, revived twice in 16 hours, flat-lined.

I asked for my medical records to verify that. The surgeon and other staff reckoned it was a miracle recovery.

Originally Posted by GracelessFawn

There's no accountability for one's actions.....

So Thailand must be God's country?

^^^Fuck off Icedick, you complete asshole...

Originally Posted by BaitongBoy

^^^Fuck off Icedick, you complete asshole...

I think it's you that should piss off - you have infected 11 separate threads in the past hour - possibly a record even for you. Get a life ya sick old boring cretin.

^ Still stalking every movement are you, wanker?...You're not sucking me, ye Scottish faggot...555

Originally Posted by Cujo

Think 'dream'.

Just evidence that the brain goes on functioning while we are asleep. Nothing to do with God or Cartesian duality.

Originally Posted by ENT

Originally Posted by Looper

personal accounts of NDE do not count for anything as they are always entirely subjective

As are all your thoughts, opinions and experience.

Yes and there is also objective reality which exists outside our subjective experience and can be apprehended by intelligent creatures like us and verified by our scientific experimentation. The question is:- is there any scientific evidence that human consciousness can exist without a functioning living brain - and the answer is no.

Consciousness is just the subjective experience of what it feels like to exist for a higher order cognitively advanced living organism. It is an emergent property of the functioning of the brain.

Once the human body has died, of course human consciousness ceases to exist.

After you're dead you're no longer a human being.

So what is that "you",.... that awareness?

Does awareness cease? Is awareness the prerogative only of living beings?

Are rocks and plants aware? Is energy aware, cognizant of other energies, like drops of water are?

Or is everything simply a mechanical function of electrons and ions banging against each other, nothing much more than electrical discharges and pulses performing in seeming patterns throughout the universe?

If so, the brain's electrical energy, has infinite life potential as part of a continuum of electrical activity throughout the universe.

Our life force, electricity, simply moves on into another pattern of activity once it's released from our bodies, and death as we know it only a stage in the process of life's electrical continuum, which started way before our birth or conception, before any kind of individuation formed, followed by the sense of self, the ego.

We're more than just the sum of our parts.

Originally Posted by ENT

Once the human body has died, of course human consciousness ceases to exist.

After you're dead you're no longer a human being.

So what is that "you",.... that awareness?

Does awareness cease? Is awareness the prerogative only of living beings?

Are rocks and plants aware? Is energy aware, cognizant of other energies, like drops of water are?

Or is everything simply a mechanical function of electrons and ions banging against each other, nothing much more than electrical discharges and pulses performing in seeming patterns throughout the universe?

If so, the brain's electrical energy, has infinite life potential as part of a continuum of electrical activity throughout the universe.

Our life force, electricity, simply moves on into another pattern of activity once it's released from our bodies, and death as we know it only a stage in the process of life's electrical continuum, which started way before our birth or conception, before any kind of individuation formed, followed by the sense of self, the ego.

We're more than just the sum of our parts.

You're talking about Isness...
One of the things that makes this discussion difficult is that we are totally dependent on our senses and experience to describe things.
It is, for example, the case that human vision is an illusion... our eyes operated like a camera with a particular shutter speed, and the brain knits it all together, filling in the blanks... thoughts... little packages of chemical code have a speed limit (about 200ms), and this plays a part in that illusion of 3D flowing vision... but then we have the most difficult illusion to deal with, which is the perception of linear sequential time... it's been shown that pilots can have accidents because of events the speed of which is so slow that it is outside the human frame of reference; similarly there are things that happen faster than we can perceive; a bit like how our hearing has a finite range.
Many years ago I started to wonder whether all events were actually occurring simultaneously - or perhaps without reference to time, and that our brains simply assembled this construct of sequential events - of liniear time, in order to process everything - this stemmed from an idea a nanotech prof I had that there could be really only one electron in the universe, but it could be everywhere at the same time within a quantum mechanics paradigm. If you go with that idea, then you can begin to wonder what the difference is between being alive or dead; if you can continue into the infinitesimal for eternity (or the reverse), where are the boundaries for anything? where is the start and the end? is not the question of what happens after death, the same as the question of what happens before?
We tend to assume that there can be no before because our emergence into existence is supposed to have start point, whence experience and the log of change begins to accumulate... and we think this because we cling to the notion of linear sequential time, and yearn to preserve all that we believe we have accrued, for it's own sake... because it defines what we are and why we are... but does it? This then feeds into a question of whether any of us are individuals at all... or are we just droplets of spreay thrown up from the eternal sea, for a brief moment, where we take a form and an illusion of distinctness and separateness... only to fall back into that eternal ocean... yet there's something within us that resists this notion... that we cling to... and it is our sense of will... of desire... the notion of wanting something... and as all literate Buddhists know that "Desire creates suffering"... because it is that tension between whether we truly know ourselves to be individuals or not, and search for the boundaries of self and seek to preserve whatever essence of self if contained within those difficult-to-define parameters... I think Popper has some stuff on this question of the illusion of linear time, better than Heideggar's "being and time". I found the Ontology of Prejudice helpful in understanding the deterministic motivation of individuals, but still not sure about what is an individual, save for the overlayed operating system that manages the sum total of emotions that we feel, that themselves are chemically-driven processes within the body.

Although I'm more of a Zen Druidist... I would say that agnosticism is the one true faith! (< ... > all the infidels!).

http://www.ted.com/talks/garrett_lis..._of_everything

http://www.newscientist.com/round-up/reality/

Brilliant.

With awareness, thought is the agent that brings awareness
When attention is interrupted ( attention has no self awareness)
we are aware that thought is muscling in
cause it is a controlling agent and demands attention.
But attention to what; the manufactured self ?
The self that is preoccupied with illusions; the me me me.my security.
Energy manifested is what we are. The past operating.
And then there is 'acceptance' of what we are
and many reject what, who they are and want to change it.
In death we resist or are fearful of an unknown
but finally we have to accept it. The candle has to burn out eventually.
No more energy to play with.
Maybe we see the pettiness of a god that uses punishment and reward to guide a spirit. The illusion in which every thought is controlled; even down to the sexual act.
All for the security of a pleasant after-life.
This is how our minds have been controlled/conditioned for 100s,1000s of years; all passed down through all the generations.
Those who resisted were taken out of the gene pool. fkg crazy.

So all the questions about god and after-life can never be answered.
Belief or no belief in god are meaningless questions.
All this created or invented by thought;by another human.
To keep the mind occupied forever and ever.
The Buddha said to die to every moment.
And this can only be done with Attention.
But buddhism had other ideas that muddied the waters.

The manufactured self will cease to exist with death so all questions
on what happens are just petty and show us what idiots we have become.
We may hear the sound of roaring laughter though.

In Meditation awareness comes from thought butting in on Attention.
Cause thought is a control freak.

Originally Posted by ENT

Brilliant.

Yeah....especially the Zen Druid tag.

Originally Posted by CaptainNemo

whether any of us are individuals at all...

The word individual,, not divided,, is just another invention.

Most people are divided, the high the lower. The world of opposites.

In the real world,,,,

Power to the people.

Originally Posted by CaptainNemo

and as all literate Buddhists know that "Desire creates suffering"...

Capt. The Desire that creates Suffering is the desire that one seeks to be near God.
ie, all organised religions make insane promises.
The first desire is knowing or sitting next to God,
So being a Buddhist, a Christian, a Muslim, Guru follower, whatever, all offering something that their religion/philosophy will deliver on death.
With no come-back.


So all religions cause suffering because of the insane desire to know God,, promises made.

Watching how the mind works when desire rises is an education though.
How the manufactured mind reacts to it.
And how it reacts when your desire ain't gonna happen.