Discussion Is death the end? (UPDATE)

[telemark05]

In my last thread I was very negative about this, so I wanted to make a new thread and share my current views on this topic because it's a very interesting topic for me, and it has really improved my mental health so I wanted to share it. It has been a lot of back and forth about this for me, but I think this time is different and I am closer to the truth. (I MIGHT BE WRONG)
If you're open to science and spirituality becoming one, then you're more likely to grasp my views as it's not always easy to put this into words.

I think most of us can agree that when your body and brain dies, your "machine" stops working and you go back to what we call "nothing." The same "nothing" like before you were born, right? Doesn't this imply that "nothing" is the default state? I think the biggest logical fallacy we have is that we think "nothingness" means powerlessness when it is indeed the most powerful. Nothing is always the source of something. How could you know something without nothing? How would you be able to differentiate without a flat or even background? Science is very helpful for understanding forms and patterns in the universe and what they do, but science doesn't explain what it is. What I mean by that is if you were to use a microscope at a carpet for example, you will see the crystalline structure of the nylon or whatever it's made of. Then you wonder what the crystalline structure is made of, so you turn up the volume and you find molecules. Turn up the volume again and you'll find wavicles. Surely the wavicles must be of something? Then you find stuff totally vanishes. It's like empty space holding everything together like a god. Everything you see around you is a product of nothing, which is fundemental for everything and always the source for something. Change "nothingness" with "consciousness" which I believe to be the "core" of the universe. Consciousness is the observer and the flat or even background which is exactly what makes this world lively. It is of free will which cannot be predicted or explained by mathematics because free will is consciousness and consciousness created mathematics so mathematics cannot create consciousness which is why we can't know the future but only the eternal now. The less you worry about your future and past which you can never be certain of, the more connected to the eternal now you become which is peaceful and productive, hence why meditation is so powerful. My consciousness was there when I was a kid, and it is the only thing that stays still while my brain, body and everything else is constantly changing. Right now I am something with the help of my brain which is a tool, don't you see? "Quantum fields are conscious" as Frederico Faggin said, which is a physicist who invented the microprocessor. Nikola Tesla also had a very similar idea. He said "My brain is a receiver. In the universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists."

 

[Kali_Yuga13]

I like the idea of a radio transmitter I once heard. Spirit is the signal and matter (our body) is the receiver. If you smash the radio (the body) the signal can still be tuned into from another receiver. That doesn't solve the finer points about where the signal is ultimately broadcast from or why we have "tuned in" to this particular life but the idea resonates in a simplified way.

 

[telemark05]

I like the idea of a radio transmitter I once heard. Spirit is the signal and matter (our body) is the receiver. If you smash the radio (the body) the signal can still be tuned into from another receiver. That doesn't solve the finer points about where the signal is ultimately broadcast from or why we have "tuned in" to this particular life but the idea resonates in a simplified way.

I believe it is because the universe can only see itself by taking a form. You cannot see your eyes from the inside but you see through them. Also, if you had eyes across your entire head you wouldn't see the middle because the middle would be inside of you. Imagine taking a photo of a tree. Then walk around the tree and take 20 photos from different angles and put them together. The tree would start to look deformed, and then imagine taking photos of the tree from all different angles of the entire universe. What does the tree look like now?

 

[TAW122]

To my understanding (as an atheist myself), yes I would believe that once a living organism is dead, or no longer conscious and non-sentient, it is the end of that being. There is no perception of non-existence as that would not be possible to perceive even the lack of perception. In short, yes, there would be just nothing similar to all the time (billions of years) prior to conception or even the first perception of conscious.

 

[telemark05]

To my understanding (as an atheist myself), yes I would believe that once a living organism is dead, or no longer conscious and non-sentient, it is the end of that being. There is no perception of non-existence as that would not be possible to perceive even the lack of perception. In short, yes, there would be just nothing similar to all the time (billions of years) prior to conception or even the first perception of conscious.

I think you missed my point. Perception is in the brain which works as a tool for consciousness which observes the perception. You cannot have perception without consciousness, so how can you say that consciousness dies when your brain loses perception?

 

[Kali_Yuga13]

Also, if you had eyes across your entire head you wouldn't see the middle because the middle would be inside of you.

Ahh you have reminded me of the work of this guy D.E. Harding whom came up with this idea called "the headless way" and accompanying perception exercises a person can do to "prove" they're more than their meatsuit.

"Douglas Harding was born in 1909 in Suffolk, England. He grew up in a strict fundamentalist Christian sect, the Exclusive Plymouth Brethren. The 'Brethren' believed they were the 'saved' ones, that they had the one true path to God and that everyone else was bound for Hell. When Harding was 21 he left. He could not accept their view of the world. What guarantee was there that they were right? What about all the other spiritual groups who also claimed that they alone had the Truth? Everyone couldn't be right."

"One day Harding stumbled upon a drawing by the Austrian philosopher and physicist Ernst Mach. It was a self-portrait – but a self-portrait with a difference. Most self-portraits are what the artist looks like from several feet – she looks in a mirror and draws what she sees there. But Mach had drawn himself without using a mirror – he had drawn what he looked like from his own point of view, from zero distance."

The obvious thing about this portrait is that you don't see the artist's head.

For Harding this was the key that opened the door to seeing his innermost identity, for he noticed he was in a similar condition – his own head was missing too. At the centre of his world was no head, no appearance - nothing at all. And this 'nothing' was a very special 'nothing' for it was both awake to itself and full of the whole world. "

Here's a link to the experiments page on their website. They're pretty fun and can give insight. I like the two-way pointing, single eye and seeing your nose ones.

Seeing Your Nose

 

[telemark05]

Ahh you have reminded me of the work of this guy D.E. Harding whom came up with this idea called "the headless way" and accompanying perception exercises a person can do to "prove" they're more than their meatsuit.

"Douglas Harding was born in 1909 in Suffolk, England. He grew up in a strict fundamentalist Christian sect, the Exclusive Plymouth Brethren. The 'Brethren' believed they were the 'saved' ones, that they had the one true path to God and that everyone else was bound for Hell. When Harding was 21 he left. He could not accept their view of the world. What guarantee was there that they were right? What about all the other spiritual groups who also claimed that they alone had the Truth? Everyone couldn't be right."

"One day Harding stumbled upon a drawing by the Austrian philosopher and physicist Ernst Mach. It was a self-portrait – but a self-portrait with a difference. Most self-portraits are what the artist looks like from several feet – she looks in a mirror and draws what she sees there. But Mach had drawn himself without using a mirror – he had drawn what he looked like from his own point of view, from zero distance."

The obvious thing about this portrait is that you don't see the artist's head.

For Harding this was the key that opened the door to seeing his innermost identity, for he noticed he was in a similar condition – his own head was missing too. At the centre of his world was no head, no appearance - nothing at all. And this 'nothing' was a very special 'nothing' for it was both awake to itself and full of the whole world. "

Here's a link to the experiments page on their website. They're pretty fun and can give insight. I like the two-way pointing, single eye and seeing your nose ones.

Seeing Your Nose

Man, this is exactly what I was talking about. Thanks for introducing me to this guy

 

[Kali_Yuga13]

Man, this is exactly what I was talking about. Thanks for introducing me to this guy

The fact that you intuitively came to this idea validates his work to me. Timeless truths have a way of popping up in strange ways. It's been years since I first delved into it but I think I'll revisit the exercises. There's a two person exercise called 'the tube' that I always wanted to try.

I've always gotten a kick out out of the name of his philosophy as it conjures imagery of Sleepy Hollow and the headless horseman in me. :D

 

[telemark05]

The fact that you intuitively came to this idea validates his work to me. Timeless truths have a way of popping up in strange ways. It's been years since I first delved into it but I think I'll revisit the exercises. There's a two person exercise called 'the tube' that I always wanted to try.

I've always gotten a kick out out of the name of his philosophy as it conjures imagery of Sleepy Hollow and the headless horseman in me. :D

I have to give credit to Sadhguru for the tree example though lol.

Also, I really recommend Alan Watts and I think you're gonna love him. He's insanely good with words, and make it as simple as it can be understood while being charismatic. When I began to seek, I came across Alan Watts video on existence and it is one of the best videoes I have watched along with Federico Faggin's video about quantum information panphysicism.

Alan Watts on existence:

 

[telemark05]

Ahh you have reminded me of the work of this guy D.E. Harding whom came up with this idea called "the headless way" and accompanying perception exercises a person can do to "prove" they're more than their meatsuit.

"Douglas Harding was born in 1909 in Suffolk, England. He grew up in a strict fundamentalist Christian sect, the Exclusive Plymouth Brethren. The 'Brethren' believed they were the 'saved' ones, that they had the one true path to God and that everyone else was bound for Hell. When Harding was 21 he left. He could not accept their view of the world. What guarantee was there that they were right? What about all the other spiritual groups who also claimed that they alone had the Truth? Everyone couldn't be right."

"One day Harding stumbled upon a drawing by the Austrian philosopher and physicist Ernst Mach. It was a self-portrait – but a self-portrait with a difference. Most self-portraits are what the artist looks like from several feet – she looks in a mirror and draws what she sees there. But Mach had drawn himself without using a mirror – he had drawn what he looked like from his own point of view, from zero distance."

The obvious thing about this portrait is that you don't see the artist's head.

For Harding this was the key that opened the door to seeing his innermost identity, for he noticed he was in a similar condition – his own head was missing too. At the centre of his world was no head, no appearance - nothing at all. And this 'nothing' was a very special 'nothing' for it was both awake to itself and full of the whole world. "

Here's a link to the experiments page on their website. They're pretty fun and can give insight. I like the two-way pointing, single eye and seeing your nose ones.

Seeing Your Nose

It gets even crazier when you realize that you never move anywhere which sounds crazy but I saw a guy who explained it very well so hear me out. You are always at the center of the universe and the universe moves around you like you're the center of a sphere. The simplest mandala is also a sign of the cross, and when two poles of opposition intersect, the center is found. In an ever expanding universe, infinity can be measured in any direction from any given point. This means that any specific point in the entirety of the universe is exactly at the center. The cosmic horizon event is roughly 14 billion light years from any point in the universe. Travel 2 billion light years away, and you shift the event correspondingly. I became dizzy by this.

 

[Hvergelmir]

we think "nothingness" means powerlessness

Power usually refers to the ability to affect things. "Nothing" has no effect on anything, and thus lacks power.
How do you define power?

Surely the wavicles must be of something? Then you find stuff totally vanishes.

There are various established hypothesis, but I've never heard that 'stuff would totally vanish'. What makes you think that?

The rest of you post relies on that assumption, that everything is build out of "nothing".
When you equate the word "nothing" with "everything", you deprive "nothing" of its meaning.

when you realize that you never move anywhere which sounds crazy but I saw a guy who explained it very well

That's just relativism. If the world moves, or if the observer moves is the same thing,
Bodies move in relation to one another.

If I am to measure your movement, I'd choose the earth as the reference point. If you jump, you jump upward; outward from the earth.
If I instead choose you as a reference point, everything moves downward; the earth, but also the rest of the solar system, and the universe itself. It's not wrong, but it's usually not a helpful way to think about it.

When we say that the earth orbits the sun, that is because we get simple orbits that are easy calculate. All planets have neat orbits around the sun.
If we instead describe all those movements relative to the earth (or some other point), it gets very complicated, and hard to calculate.
It's not inherently wrong.

 

[EvisceratedJester]

science and spirituality becoming one

The thing is, science and spirituality cannot be one since they are opposed to one another. Science tends to involve the employment of "methodological naturalism". Basically, this means that scientific research is limited to the study of natural processes and laws. Restoring to supernatural explanations goes against science. It's fine to have your own personal beliefs, but spirituality is typically seen as something personal and that should be kept divorced from science.

To be honest, nothing that you said in your post comes off as particularly scientific, tbh. It feels more like you are just looking to try and find a way to make your spiritual views of the world sound more logical than they really are. You proposed a bunch of questions and then immediately jumped onto some weird rant about consciousness. You didn't provide any evidence to back up your "truths", not that I think that would even be possible since I doubt that most of the shit that you proposed could even be meaningfully tested.

You aren't closer to the "truth" and that's fine. I'm not saying any of this to be mean or anything. I just don't get the point of bringing up science to try and support your spiritual beliefs, especially since a lot of what you are saying feels more like you are kind of jumping to conclusions, tbh.

 

[telemark05]

Power usually refers to the ability to affect things. "Nothing" has no effect on anything, and thus lacks power.
How do you define power?

There are various established hypothesis, but I've never heard that 'stuff would totally vanish'. What makes you think that?

The rest of you post relies on that assumption, that everything is build out of "nothing".
When you equate the word "nothing" with "everything", you deprive "nothing" of its meaning.

That's just relativism. If the world moves, or if the observer moves is the same thing,
Bodies move in relation to one another.

If I am to measure your movement, I'd choose the earth as the reference point. If you jump, you jump upward; outward from the earth.
If I instead choose you as a reference point, everything moves downward; the earth, but also the rest of the solar system, and the universe itself. It's not wrong, but it's usually not a helpful way to think about it.

When we say that the earth orbits the sun, that is because we get simple orbits that are easy calculate. All planets have neat orbits around the sun.
If we instead describe all those movements relative to the earth (or some other point), it gets very complicated, and hard to calculate.
It's not inherently wrong.

When you say I deprive "nothing" of it's meaning, you're implying yourself that nothing has a meaning. What is the meaning and how did everything come out of nothing unless what we call nothing has power? When I say nothing I mean "no thing." If my use of "nothing" is wrong, you can change it with "no thing" and even so my point still stands. The natural force which is comprehensibly nothing at it's core hence why we only can explain what the forms and patterns do, but not "why bother" or "what?" It's like saying is you is or is you ain't.

What I mean by stuff totally vanishing is what I said with the microscope example. Perhaps a better explanation is the quantum field where the smallest of particles are excitations of this field.

The thing is, science and spirituality cannot be one since they are opposed to one another. Science tends to involve the employment of "methodological naturalism". Basically, this means that scientific research is limited to the study of natural processes and laws. Restoring to supernatural explanations goes against science. It's fine to have your own personal beliefs, but spirituality is typically seen as something personal and that should be kept divorced from science.

To be honest, nothing that you said in your post comes off as particularly scientific, tbh. It feels more like you are just looking to try and find a way to make your spiritual views of the world sound more logical than they really are. You proposed a bunch of questions and then immediately jumped onto some weird rant about consciousness. You didn't provide any evidence to back up your "truths", not that I think that would even be possible since I doubt that most of the shit that you proposed could even be meaningfully tested.

You aren't closer to the "truth" and that's fine. I'm not saying any of this to be mean or anything. I just don't get the point of bringing up science to try and support your spiritual beliefs, especially since a lot of what you are saying feels more like you are kind of jumping to conclusions, tbh.

I know you're not trying to be mean, it's fine lol. To answer your question about how science and spirituality can't integrate then explain quantum physics. I don't know if you're familiar with quantum physics, but there's a theory which suggests quantum fields are conscious and that consciousness is before matter. If we are just machines like most of science is telling us, then we are going to be taken over by machines. Well, our body is also a machine one can say, but it is infinitely more complex than our computers because it is a quantum and classical machine. Every single cell in your body is a part whole of your entire body, because every part in your body has the genome of the egg that created the entire organism. So every part of your body has the potential knowledge of the whole. In this case, the whole is just the body so we are holographic. We are made of parts whole, and we have 50 trillion cells and each has the potential knowledge of the whole organism. So a cell which is a part-whole can change within it's own life, by taking advantage of the potential knowledge of the whole and that's why epigenetics exist and if you mentioned epigenetics 20 years ago you would be called crazy. So we as human beings are fields which are part-whole of one, the totality of what exists, same patterns repeated at different scales. Every cell in your body is connected to the whole through "quantum fields" because a cell is not a classical thing, but a quantum classical thing. It's an informational system of a kind we still don't understand the foundation of because nobody understands how life works because we think it as a mechanism and that's because those cells remain connected to the field because they are made of particles, and quantum physics is telling us that particles are not objects but states of a field. They can not be taken away from the field and they are not separate from the field. They are like a wave of the sea which cannot be taken out of the sea. From this point of view, you can understand science better because it needs a foundation so it's closer to the truth in my opinion.

 

[Hvergelmir]

you're implying yourself that nothing has a meaning

Indeed. Nothing means absence of anything. No-thing.

"The room is empty." => "There's nothing in the room."
"I didn't say anything." => "I said nothing."

how did everything come out of nothing

It didn't. As far as I can tell, there was a big bang; extreme amounts of energy and the creation of the universe as we know it.
However, we don't know what was before; and there's probably no way to ever know.

I've heard scientists refer to "the initial conditions of the big bang". I guess that's a way to refer to what was before or a result of those preconditions.
As any talk about what was before the big expansion is mere speculation, most models simply omit it. It's both unknown and irrelevant to the theories; "nothing".

Perhaps a better explanation is the quantum field where the smallest of particles are excitations of this field.

This still doesn't equate to "nothing". Rereading your initial post, I think you're trying to define empty space as "nothing".
I don't know the true nature of space itself, but to conflate it with consciousness seem like big leap.

I think it's a fundamentally misguided approach to mix low level physics and high level psychological concepts such consciousness.
How would you quantify and measure "consciousness"? How do you apply that to particles, and sub-particles or space?

 

[telemark05]

Indeed. Nothing means absence of anything. No-thing.

"The room is empty." => "There's nothing in the room."
"I didn't say anything." => "I said nothing."

It didn't. As far as I can tell, there was a big bang; extreme amounts of energy and the creation of the universe as we know it.
However, we don't know what was before; and there's probably no way to ever know.

I've heard scientists refer to "the initial conditions of the big bang". I guess that's a way to refer to what was before or a result of those preconditions.
As any talk about what was before the big expansion is mere speculation, most models simply omit it. It's both unknown and irrelevant to the theories; "nothing".

This still doesn't equate to "nothing". Rereading your initial post, I think you're trying to define empty space as "nothing".
I don't know the true nature of space itself, but to conflate it with consciousness seem like big leap.

I think it's a fundamentally misguided approach to mix low level physics and high level psychological concepts such consciousness.
How would you quantify and measure "consciousness"? How do you apply that to particles, and sub-particles or space?

Okay, when I used the word nothing I ment "no thing" but then you can maybe understand my point better :) English is not my first language, but even so my point still stands if you change it with "no thing." And the fact that you cannot quantify and measure consciousness adds to my point. The fact that you can quantify and measure all forms and patterns but not counsciousness which is literally inside of you points to the possibility of consciousness being the foundation which science is missing and that quantum fields are conscious in a way. Also, free will is only with consciousness therefore it cannot be measured which further points to this.