Post: #1

I remember back when I was a child the world seemed so bright so alive and so wonderful.

I see the rays of the sunset come through the windows gradually turning red after turning yellow.

I see that even when the sun set there still was light across the horizon contrasting wonderfully with the oncoming darkness from above.

And I see that when the stars came out I thought that they were windows into someplace.

All the beauty I saw I had a desire to see its source to go where it all came from.

Its like its leading to something beyond but I can't quite put a finger where.

As if passing into that point of light in the sky or some reflection of the water or the light of the moon I might get there.

Perhaps this is a naive child way of thinking.

And when I contemplate death when I was a few years older in my late public school years I just can't accept that when I die all is oblivion.

That all the experiences and all my actions just gone when I cease to exist.

That my short lifespan of under 100 years is all that there is.

Death just seems so unnatural. Something not meant to be. I have a strange feeling that people are meant to live forever when I was a young boy.

Now that I think about that makes life all the more precious and experiencing the best of life is all that one can do. But even now it cannot shake that feeling that I have.

Surely there is more but perhaps this is just an illusion generated by my mind.

Post: #2

That's why every civilization, even the most primitive ones, had a story of what happened after you died.

This is also why people have children. So you can experience the joy of discovering the world for the first time again, even second hand. Maybe the fathers on this forum would even say it is more enjoyable seeing your child experience the wonders of life for the first time.

I want to believe that after I die I reunite with my loved ones in life, but intellectually I can't get there.

I do believe that dying surrounded by your loved ones is heavenly, while dying sad and alone is hellish.

Post: #3

@infowarrrior1

That was poetry dude.

Post: #4

Thats why as soon as humans had self awareness and knowledge of death, they started making up stories to god's, afterlives and rebirth.

Thousands of them.

If you are having trouble imagining death and nothingness, it will be identical to the the time before you were born. Remember that? I didn't think so.

Post: #5

If it brings you any comfort there is some scientific evidence for the existence of an afterlife.
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2017...ter-death/
This is a topic I also think about a lot the concept of a heavily paradise beyond the veil is an intriguing for many reasons and fills me with many questions.

Post: #6

(02-26-2017 07:24 PM)TheWhiteWolf Wrote:  If it brings you any comfort there is some scientific evidence for the existence of an afterlife.
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2017...ter-death/
This is a topic I also think about a lot the concept of a heavily paradise beyond the veil is an intriguing for many reasons and fills me with many questions.

Interesting Link. While I am religious as of now. I leave open the possibility that I could be wrong all along. But this study gives me hope if it is true.

Post: #7

(02-26-2017 06:20 PM)RatInTheWoods Wrote:  Thats why as soon as humans had self awareness and knowledge of death, they started making up stories to god's, afterlives and rebirth.

Thousands of them.

If you are having trouble imagining death and nothingness, it will be identical to the the time before you were born. Remember that? I didn't think so.

It seems that mankind as a whole has a longing for eternity. Perhaps this is an adaptation to prevent people from sinking into hopelessness and despair.

But I think that given the surrounding beauty of the natural world mankind was inspired to make up stories about God's, Afterlives and rebirths.

Now that the world has become more industrialized and urbanized with much ugliness as a result it seems to correlate with higher levels of apathy towards religion as a whole. I don't remember the source but it appears like cities in industrial Europe which received many catholic peasants ended up with non-religious men. As if the industrialized environment have an ability to make atheists out of the religious.

No living being can contemplate oblivion. But once there is oblivion that's it.

Industrialization lifted millions out of poverty but one cannot deny the negative impact as it proceeded.

Post: #8

(02-26-2017 12:37 PM)debeguiled Wrote:  @infowarrrior1

That was poetry dude.

Thanks.

Post: #9

(02-26-2017 11:15 AM)Enoch Wrote:  That's why every civilization, even the most primitive ones, had a story of what happened after you died.

This is also why people have children. So you can experience the joy of discovering the world for the first time again, even second hand. Maybe the fathers on this forum would even say it is more enjoyable seeing your child experience the wonders of life for the first time.

I want to believe that after I die I reunite with my loved ones in life, but intellectually I can't get there.

I do believe that dying surrounded by your loved ones is heavenly, while dying sad and alone is hellish.

Indeed. Perhaps dying being surrounded by your loved ones is a indication of things to come after death. Or perhaps a helpful illusion that shows you have biologically succeeded via your legacy.

Post: #10

(02-26-2017 11:49 PM)infowarrior1 Wrote:  

(02-26-2017 07:24 PM)TheWhiteWolf Wrote:  If it brings you any comfort there is some scientific evidence for the existence of an afterlife.
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2017...ter-death/
This is a topic I also think about a lot the concept of a heavily paradise beyond the veil is an intriguing for many reasons and fills me with many questions.

Interesting Link. While I am religious as of now. I leave open the possibility that I could be wrong all along. But this study gives me hope if it is true.

Why does it give you hope? Why do you desire more than the physical?

If you had an eternity of your current life would that be so great? If not, why do you wish for an eternity in a life you dont even know. Doesn't make sense.

Coming from an ex believer but now Atheist background, I find these ideas are exactly what is wrong with people, society and religion. I find it equivalent to Leftist who desire security at all costs, even freedom. Give me welfare, give me security, give me eternal life in Heaven.

The idea that the physical world is some lowly and incomplete place and that we need to be saved to some 'other realm' of existence which is so perfect and sublime is an idea I consider appalling for many reasons.

Post: #11

Millions long for immortality that don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy afternoon.....

Post: #12

There is some sadness in what Info is saying about, as you get older everything looses its shine.

Those things you were passionate about fade. The causes you were militant in are seen in a million shades of grey interwoven.

The dreams you had have passed, and no you no longer hunger for them anyway.

The sunsets are not so red, the touch of a lover not so tingly and the taste of wine not so richly loved.

Its natures kind way of preparing you for death.

Post: #13

(02-27-2017 02:40 PM)kavi Wrote:  

(02-26-2017 11:49 PM)infowarrior1 Wrote:  

(02-26-2017 07:24 PM)TheWhiteWolf Wrote:  If it brings you any comfort there is some scientific evidence for the existence of an afterlife.
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2017...ter-death/
This is a topic I also think about a lot the concept of a heavily paradise beyond the veil is an intriguing for many reasons and fills me with many questions.

Interesting Link. While I am religious as of now. I leave open the possibility that I could be wrong all along. But this study gives me hope if it is true.

Why does it give you hope? Why do you desire more than the physical?

If you had an eternity of your current life would that be so great? If not, why do you wish for an eternity in a life you dont even know. Doesn't make sense.

Coming from an ex believer but now Atheist background, I find these ideas are exactly what is wrong with people, society and religion. I find it equivalent to Leftist who desire security at all costs, even freedom. Give me welfare, give me security, give me eternal life in Heaven.

The idea that the physical world is some lowly and incomplete place and that we need to be saved to some 'other realm' of existence which is so perfect and sublime is an idea I consider appalling for many reasons.

Nothing on earth satisfies in the end. You get one high but you adapt. Everything loses its lustre. I think Roosh experiences this too:




You find these ideas wrong with people. But that doesn't change the fact that the longing is there. And its quite universal in that respect. Perhaps you have deadened or killed this longing because you think that this is a uncaring universe with suffering and splendor that just happens to eixst.

And thinking that this materialist life is all there is thereby putting a lie to all the longing of the artists and poets of the past dismissing it as mere illusion.

Sure in your view this universe is indifferent and there is no true purpose but accident. But in my gut it doesn't seem right at all.

There is a good reason why religious men would say (Psalm 34:8).

Because material things never truly satisfy its like filling a bucket with a hole at the bottom with water.

You think longing for paradise is bullshit but I think that like hunger it must exist for good reason.

Why does hunger exist if not for food. So it is the same for this longing.

And with immortality sampling all the pleasures that the earth has to offer is not gonna fill the hunger within. Read the book of Ecclesiastes for an account for a Man who tried everything in this lifetime with all that wealth can offer.

But in regards to the physical plane that we live in we can see that in spite of all that is good it is marred. It has disease, parasitism and deformity. Humans have mutations that result in diseases both minor and major. Corruption permeates everything and human beings deteriorate.

You can see a lot of good there is also a lot of horror too. Things are not as good as they should be or they turn out worse than people think.

Nature does seem to give indications that it needs redemption.

But I don't think humans can and should do that. Only to make this world a little bit better step by step.

Post: #14

I used to think there was a dichotomy between the mundane and the mystical, between a rational, dry view of the universe and a faith-based one. Now I think that even if we die and that's it, for example, the materialistic universe that this exemplifies is just as incredible as one in which our consciousness goes on forever. Both are amazing miracles. And therefore, since I'm already entertaining miracles, I'm more willing to entertain the idea of the non-materialistic universe. Indeed, I think that modern physics is increasingly comfortable with the idea.

Post: #15

(02-28-2017 02:11 AM)RawGod Wrote:  I used to think there was a dichotomy between the mundane and the mystical, between a rational, dry view of the universe and a faith-based one. Now I think that even if we die and that's it, for example, the materialistic universe that this exemplifies is just as incredible as one in which our consciousness goes on forever. Both are amazing miracles. And therefore, since I'm already entertaining miracles, I'm more willing to entertain the idea of the non-materialistic universe. Indeed, I think that modern physics is increasingly comfortable with the idea.

I think as quantum physics continues to advance the materialistic conception of the universe is starting to give way especially in regards to Consciousness. If consciousness is independent from the material. Then it may prove that he mystical and the physical intersect and that one impacts the other.

The dry rational view and the mystical view may turn out to be a false dichotomy.

Post: #16

I would say consciousness doesn't exist in the non-physical sense. It is an allusion. We don't know the inner workings of the universe but I would say we are all completely physical beings. Having adjusted to this view I find it to be the most amazing way to look at things.

I used to believe in an afterlife, I used to believe all kinds of things. Nothing beats the view I have now. I have no longing, maybe I did before but not anymore, because what is there to long for, and what is missing from life? Perhaps you hope for seventy virgins at your beck and call?

You should note how when you see 'consciousness' or the 'spirit' or infact anything as being non-physical then that dichotomy parallels the one between This World and 'That Other World'.

But ofcourse someone like myself has only disdain for the non-physical, which is infact the unreal, the fake, the imaginary Untruth. The Truth is all that is here and that exists and leads to goodness, The Untruth is that which is the false, imagined, non-real, non-physical and that which is at the root of mans misery.

Call me lazy, but I'm just gonna post this here rather than write it all out in my own words.

Quote:As a complete man with his honour unsullied, the honest Indo-European stands upright before his God or Gods. No religiosity which takes something away from man, to make him appear smaller before a deity who has become all-powerful and oppressive, is Indo-European. No religiosity which declares the world and man to be valueless, low and unclean, and which wishes to redeem man to over-earthly or superhuman sacred values, is truly Indo-European. Where “this world” is dropped, and in its place the “other world” is raised to eternal good, there the realm of Indo-European religiosity is abandoned. For Indo-European religiosity is of this world, and this fact determines its essential forms of expression. As a result it is sometimes difficult for us to comprehend its greatness today, because we are accustomed to measuring religiosity in terms of values taken from decidedly non-Indo-European and mainly oriental religious life, and especially from Mediaeval and early modern Christianity. It follows therefore that our view of Indo-European religiosity must suffer in the same way as would one’s view of the structure of the Indo-European languages if they were described in terms of characteristics appropriate to the Semite languages. We are today accustomed to seek true religiosity only in terms of the other world and to regard religiosity of this world as undeveloped or lacking in some aspect — a preliminary stage on the way to something more valuable. Thus the Jewish-Christian religious ideas transmitted to us prevent us from recognising the greatness of the Indo-European religiosity, so that in comparative religious studies Indo-European religious values are again and again represented purely scientifically as being less important, since the proponents of these views have unconsciously accepted the ideal of Oriental spiritual values as a yardstick for every religious value. This criticism is also applicable to Rudolf Otto’s study called The Sacred (1948). Thus the greatness and fullness of the Indo-European world is never recognised.

Whoever wishes to measure religiosity by the degree of man’s abasement before the divine, or by how questionable, valueless or even tainted “this world” appears to man when faced with that “other world”, and whoever wishes to measure religiosity by the degree to which man feels a cleft between a transitory body and an indestructible soul, between flesh (sarx) and spirit (pneuma) — whosoever seeks to do this will have to declare that the religiosity of the Indo-Europeansis truly impoverished and paltry.

Gods and men are not, in the eyes of the Indo-Europeans, incomparable beings remote from one another, least of all to the Hellenes, to whom Gods appeared as immortal men with great souls (cf. Aristotle: Metaphysics, III, 2, 997b), while they believed that men, as well-formed shoots of noble genus, also possessed something divine, and as such could claim to approximate to divine stature — the “Godlike Agamemnon”. In the nature of man himself, just as the deity wishes, lie possibilities, seemingly divine in origin, diogenes, and thus it is that every Indo-European people has readily tended to assume the incarnation of all aristocratic national values in human families, the kalok’agathia.14

http://www.theapricity.com/earlson/raie/index.htm