Death - is it the ultimate end

[Cubjo]

Hey all

My biggest fear of all is that Death is the ultimate end. I am constantly seeking for some confirmation that there is life after death. I have read a lot of texts from established religions to spiritual books and none of them has convinced me that there is life after death no matter how much i want to believe it.

I spoke to a friend who is a devout christian about this matter and he laughed and told me I am to logical and analytical and the answer will only be found through faith. While I agree that I am very logical in my approach to a lot of things I do not see this as a fault. I think faith is a great thing but I feel it is a matter of being blidnly lead and accepting the beliefs of someone else. I need to find the answer within myself and as yet have not been able to do so.

I suppose I am hoping that some people can tell me why the believe of not believe in life after death and what lead them to this belief. I mean if there is no life after death then what is the point. The best I can hope for is 100 years on this planet and after that everything is wiped away....and the worst part is I will not be around to remember it. The concept is scaring me as I write this.

I hope someone can help me overcome this fear

Yours peacefully
Cubjo

 

[eudaimonia]

I mean if there is no life after death then what is the point. The best I can hope for is 100 years on this planet and after that everything is wiped away....and the worst part is I will not be around to remember it. The concept is scaring me as I write this.

I personally don't believe in life after death. There's no point in explaining why, since this won't address your fears.

I personally do not think that my life is pointless just because I will die one day. The point of life is found within life, not outside of life.

I think that what torments people is, in large part, their imagination. We can project our imagination into a hypothetical future after we are dead. We can imagine "nonexistence after death", and probably picture it as pure "blackness" or "void". When we take that abstract perspective, we can get scared because there is nothing there. However, this is an impossible perspective in reality. You will not ever be a ghost crying "Boo hoo! How terrible it is that I don't exist! Why is there all this endless blackness?! And now I don't exist to remember my life!"

It may help you to overcome your fears by understanding that the only valid perspective is one that focuses on your life. Life is where the action is. Life is to be cherished. Life is the realm of values and meaning. Life is what really matters.

Shifting perspective in this way can be a challenge if you are used to the other perspective, but I guarantee you that it can be done, and I know because I have done this. Good luck!


eudaimonia,

Mark

 

[BucephalusBB]

Hey all

Well Hello

My biggest fear of all is that Death is the ultimate end. I am constantly seeking for some confirmation that there is life after death. I have read a lot of texts from established religions to spiritual books and none of them has convinced me that there is life after death no matter how much i want to believe it.

Can't help you here, I don't believe in afterlife either..

I spoke to a friend who is a devout christian about this matter and he laughed and told me I am to logical and analytical and the answer will only be found through faith. While I agree that I am very logical in my approach to a lot of things I do not see this as a fault. I think faith is a great thing but I feel it is a matter of being blidnly lead and accepting the beliefs of someone else. I need to find the answer within myself and as yet have not been able to do so.

And the chance is there you never will though. As there is no proof for whatever will be after life, even logics can only guess or at least come up with scenario's.

I mean if there is no life after death then what is the point.

Here I have to ask you 2 things. First of all, if there is a life after death... what is the point then?
second, is there really a need for a point? Aren't you happy with your life as it is now?

The best I can hope for is 100 years on this planet and after that everything is wiped away....and the worst part is I will not be around to remember it.

Don't worry, if you are not around to remember it, you won't be around to be bothered by that either

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

It depends entirely what you think life after death means.
Does a butterfly remember what his life was a caterpillar.
I suspect we will not remember our previous existence and it will have no importance to us.
Others believe we will have all the trappings of life in heaven.
While I believe we shall have a continuing existence I would not have any confidence in describing it.

 

[Kungfuzed]

Hey all

My biggest fear of all is that Death is the ultimate end. I am constantly seeking for some confirmation that there is life after death. I have read a lot of texts from established religions to spiritual books and none of them has convinced me that there is life after death no matter how much i want to believe it.

I spoke to a friend who is a devout christian about this matter and he laughed and told me I am to logical and analytical and the answer will only be found through faith. While I agree that I am very logical in my approach to a lot of things I do not see this as a fault. I think faith is a great thing but I feel it is a matter of being blidnly lead and accepting the beliefs of someone else. I need to find the answer within myself and as yet have not been able to do so.

I suppose I am hoping that some people can tell me why the believe of not believe in life after death and what lead them to this belief. I mean if there is no life after death then what is the point. The best I can hope for is 100 years on this planet and after that everything is wiped away....and the worst part is I will not be around to remember it. The concept is scaring me as I write this.

I hope someone can help me overcome this fear

Yours peacefully
Cubjo

What do you think you were before you were conceived? Does it scare you to think about the billions of years that existed before you were born? Why should it be any scarier after you're gone? Remember, there is no such thing as nothing, so you have to become something when you die. There is no dark void that you disappear into. Everything that dies is reabsorbed into the earth and becomes the earth. Does it sound so bad to become a planet, galaxy or universe, and also part of all living things? The Lion King isn't just for kids.

 

[Random]

Death is transformation, that is all. However, those that die believing it is the ultimate end will not become anything lifelike again. For them, by their own decree and self-imposed limitation, they will die and that will be it for them.

Choose your belief carefully.

 

[Papersock]

I suppose I am hoping that some people can tell me why the believe of not believe in life after death and what lead them to this belief. I mean if there is no life after death then what is the point. The best I can hope for is 100 years on this planet and after that everything is wiped away....and the worst part is I will not be around to remember it. The concept is scaring me as I write this.

I do not believe in any afterlife because no evidence for an afterlife has been very convincing for me.
If there is no afterlife then this life is the only life you get. So you might as well enjoy it while it lasts.
It seems to me that a belief in life after death is just a way to cope with our own mortality.
I don't know how to help you not fear death. For me I see death as an eventual relief.

 

[Wandered Off]

However, those that die believing it is the ultimate end will not become anything lifelike again. For them, by their own decree and self-imposed limitation, they will die and that will be it for them.

If our beliefs actually shape our posthumous environment, then what if I believe you will not become anything lifelike? Did I just hose your afterlife? I don't see how you could have any interaction with someone else in the afterlife unless your beliefs *exactly* coincided, which seems impossible. Please elaborate on the causes, effects, and interactions you predict.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

There is also fear in the conscious experience of eternity. Imagine going on endlessly, no end. This is something that I personally find uncomfortable, since my experience of reality is built off finite projections.

But, if there is something, a conscious experience, there is nothing that says it will be the same as the current one.

 

[Papersock]

There is also fear in the conscious experience of eternity. Imagine going on endlessly, no end. This is something that I personally find uncomfortable, since my experience of reality is built off finite projections.

Good point. What would you do with your time if it went on endlessly and unchanging?

 

[TheWhiteWizard]

Do not fear death as you do. There is no reason to. Even if there is no after life, just a great nothing, we still had a life. And you gotta make it a good one. Live yor life with no regrets, an afterlife will either come or not. It is beyond our control. One of my favorite quotes on the subject (although admittedly it has nothing to do with my religion):

" In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! We are not bound forever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than a memory. Farewell!"- Tolkien

 

[Mike182]

Hey all

My biggest fear of all is that Death is the ultimate end. I am constantly seeking for some confirmation that there is life after death. I have read a lot of texts from established religions to spiritual books and none of them has convinced me that there is life after death no matter how much i want to believe it.

I spoke to a friend who is a devout christian about this matter and he laughed and told me I am to logical and analytical and the answer will only be found through faith. While I agree that I am very logical in my approach to a lot of things I do not see this as a fault. I think faith is a great thing but I feel it is a matter of being blidnly lead and accepting the beliefs of someone else. I need to find the answer within myself and as yet have not been able to do so.

I suppose I am hoping that some people can tell me why the believe of not believe in life after death and what lead them to this belief. I mean if there is no life after death then what is the point. The best I can hope for is 100 years on this planet and after that everything is wiped away....and the worst part is I will not be around to remember it. The concept is scaring me as I write this.

I hope someone can help me overcome this fear

Yours peacefully
Cubjo

well, this is something everyone needs to really deal with themselves to be honest. myself, i don't worry about if there is a life after death, while i think there is reincarnation and other astral planes of existence for the disembodied spirit, i don't concern myself with such things. i leave them to the Gods and the dead, and focus my religious/spiritual life towards this life, the here and now.

why worry about what i can't change or affect, like death, when i can spend my energies on attaining knowledge and Gnosis in this life? <- just my take on it

 

[Don Penguinoini]

Well mate, i believe that there is (sort of) You are not your body, your bones skin and flesh. Your are the soul (jiv in hinduism) Your soul CANNOT die. It will simply enter a new body (a baby) You will live on forever and forever. But the memories are never carries with the soul, in extreme cases, there are stories with people who remember their past life.

Effectively, reincarnation.

 

[Random]

If our beliefs actually shape our posthumous environment, then what if I believe you will not become anything lifelike? Did I just hose your afterlife?

No. I decide my own limitations through my deterministic relationship with the Universe. Your thoughts about "me" concern yourself, even if you project them out.

I don't see how you could have any interaction with someone else in the afterlife unless your beliefs *exactly* coincided, which seems impossible. Please elaborate on the causes, effects, and interactions you predict

The afterlife is just that: a Life. Karma and Reincarnation explain this most adequately.

 

[cityms]

Yes I do believe there is some kind of spiritual existence after death, not necessarily the ones taught by religions. Although not making great claims, I have had some minor experiences that lead me to believe this.

 

[Katzpur]

Hey, Cubjo!

My biggest fear of all is that Death is the ultimate end. I am constantly seeking for some confirmation that there is life after death. I have read a lot of texts from established religions to spiritual books and none of them has convinced me that there is life after death no matter how much i want to believe it.

Well, it would probably be pointless for me to try to convince you of anything, so I'm not going to even try. But let me ask you something... What exactly are you afraid of? If you cease to exist and everyone you know and love also ceases to exist, I'm afraid I don't understand your fear. Now, if you believed in a life after death -- in particular, the Christian concept of Heaven for the righteous and Hell for the wicked -- I could see why you might be concerned (although my own theology, which is Christian, teaches that you'll likely end up in Heaven regardless of what you believe).

I spoke to a friend who is a devout christian about this matter and he laughed and told me I am to logical and analytical and the answer will only be found through faith. While I agree that I am very logical in my approach to a lot of things I do not see this as a fault. I think faith is a great thing but I feel it is a matter of being blidnly lead and accepting the beliefs of someone else. I need to find the answer within myself and as yet have not been able to do so.

Okay, now you're making sense. I can see what you're saying and I do sympathize. I, too, believe that mindlessly accepting a belief system that makes no sense to you would be pretty foolish. Even though I am kind of at the other end of the spectrum from you, I can relate to what you're saying. I am absolutely convinced that there is life after death, and it wouldn't matter what anybody said to me. I couldn't believe otherwise. To a certain extent, I do believe that we're more or less hard-wired as believers or as non-believers. That's probably not very comforting, since you're a non-believer who would like to believe. But what if you're right? What would be so horrible about ceasing to exist? After all, if you didn't exist, you wouldn't know it, would you?

I suppose I am hoping that some people can tell me why the believe of not believe in life after death and what lead them to this belief. I mean if there is no life after death then what is the point. The best I can hope for is 100 years on this planet and after that everything is wiped away....and the worst part is I will not be around to remember it. The concept is scaring me as I write this.

I can try to tell you why I believe, but I don't think for one minute that it's going to change anything for you. To me, the idea that there is not a Higher Power responsible for the existance of our universe is positively absurd. I know atheists will want to argue this, and I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint them by refusing to do so, but when I consider the complexity of life -- human life in particular, but even the most unsophisticated forms of life -- it's impossible for me to believe that they could have come into existance independently of a creator. I just don't see all of the necessary requirements as coming together so perfectly as they obviously did as a result of chance. Now, just to clarify, I do not take a creationist view of the beginnings of the universe. I can see the universe and life on earth as having evolved over billions of years. I just believe someone had to be at the controls, so to speak.

Okay, so now you're wondering why the tangent. Your concern is not about how you came to exist but that you will suddenly cease to exist at death. Well, if I didn't believe in a God who created life, it would be ridiculous for me to believe in life beyond the grave. The two beliefs are so closely meshed that they can't be separated. So, believing in God, I have to believe in life after death. There would be no point whatsoever to God having created me only to destroy me after a mere 100 years. I have to believe that I'm here for a purpose and that it's a good one, and I have to believe that the way I live my life matters. It would be absolutely crazy for me to believe in a God without believing in an afterlife. I can't give you a failproof way of convincing yourself that God exists, but if you ever get to that point, believing that you have an immortal soul won't be such a stretch.

 

[.lava]

Hey all

My biggest fear of all is that Death is the ultimate end. I am constantly seeking for some confirmation that there is life after death. I have read a lot of texts from established religions to spiritual books and none of them has convinced me that there is life after death no matter how much i want to believe it.

I spoke to a friend who is a devout christian about this matter and he laughed and told me I am to logical and analytical and the answer will only be found through faith. While I agree that I am very logical in my approach to a lot of things I do not see this as a fault. I think faith is a great thing but I feel it is a matter of being blidnly lead and accepting the beliefs of someone else. I need to find the answer within myself and as yet have not been able to do so.

I suppose I am hoping that some people can tell me why the believe of not believe in life after death and what lead them to this belief. I mean if there is no life after death then what is the point. The best I can hope for is 100 years on this planet and after that everything is wiped away....and the worst part is I will not be around to remember it. The concept is scaring me as I write this.

I hope someone can help me overcome this fear

Yours peacefully
Cubjo

hi,

lovely post Cubjo.

i think you'd get answers if you have faith. cos if you seek answers without having faith would be like refusing to take that train but you still want to reach next station. how is that gonna be?

i often meet people ask similiar questions. in my opinion, however it is necessary (& nice) to exchange thoughts, it is absurd to ask other people for answers about death and anything related to God. i believe you should ask God -if you really wanna know then you have sincerety that you'd need.

this universe is millions years old, so is our planet. our life times on earth is like a wink of an eye, very very very short time comparing to earth and galaxies. why is that? that makes me feel like this isnot the exact place we're belong to. we dont have memory of before our births, we donot know what comes after death. we are just here, here for a moment of this universe.

death is loss of everything if you truely own them. if you see things in your life as things you borrowed for a life time, death takes nothing from you, my lovely friend. that's what religon is about. in the religion of God, you surrender yourself, literally. once you surrender what's there to lose?

only those hearts with no love, dies.

 

[YmirGF]

My biggest fear of all is that Death is the ultimate end. I am constantly seeking for some confirmation that there is life after death. I have read a lot of texts from established religions to spiritual books and none of them has convinced me that there is life after death no matter how much i want to believe it.

Hiya Cubjo. Given that you have spent a fair amount of time reading up on the subject leads me to ask this. Why do you want so desperately to believe in something you are not convinced exists in the first place? That does not strike me as being a particularly logical position to take.

I spoke to a friend who is a devout christian about this matter and he laughed and told me I am too logical, analytical and the answer will only be found through faith. While I agree that I am very logical in my approach to a lot of things I do not see this as a fault. I think faith is a great thing but I feel it is a matter of being blindly lead and accepting the beliefs of someone else. I need to find the answer within myself and as yet have not been able to do so.

That, of course, begs the question as to what methods you have employed to achieve any satisfactory "answers". Although so-called faith is much vaunted, making the believer feel all warm and fuzzy, it is not an indulgence that I allow myself to invoke. Frankly, I don't need faith in what I already perceive. Who needs to pretend when you have the Big Kahuna right in front of you, eh? (Metaphorically speaking, of course.)

I suppose I am hoping that some people can tell me why the believe of not believe in life after death and what lead them to this belief. I mean if there is no life after death then what is the point. The best I can hope for is 100 years on this planet and after that everything is wiped away....and the worst part is I will not be around to remember it. The concept is scaring me as I write this.

Haha. Yeah, that is reasonable. Your own physical mortality should not worry you. You are hardly the first person to be in this position. IF there is no life after death, then you are not going to know anyway, so the question is moot. Simply enjoy your life to the fullest, doing exactly what you would love to do. Pay the rent, pay attention to your obligations but DO NOT forget about yourself. If you only go around once then I would suggest you greedily grab as much of the life experience as you can... and make every moment count... because each moment COULD be your very last.

Now: IF you are wrong about death being a complete end of existence the one thing I will tell you is forget god, forget everything you have heard or thought about your imagined death and simply keep an open mind. The neat thing about death is that no one has ever come back to tell us about it and so what is written on the subject isn't worth the paper it is printed on, imho, at least.

Beside this, if you survive to the crusty old age of 100+ you will not be so keen on prolonging life much further. It just seems to be the way of things. Why worry about it or fear it? Why fear something you do not know? Logic dictates that you save your fear for the Here and Now, if you must feel fear at all. Does your fear help you or does it simply sap your volition? I choose to live without fear, but hey, that's just me.

I hope someone can help me overcome this fear

Sadly, no one can help you overcome your fear. You MUST want to overcome your fears on your own terms. You say you are logical, so ask yourself this, "How does my fear of death help me while I am alive?" Does it help at all or is it somewhat debilitating? Does it rob you of the sweetness to act but for no other reason to do something -- to do anything -- to let your fellow human animals realize "hey, that Cubjo was pretty cool!" If death is an end, then you can always live on in the memories and hearts of those you leave behind. If death is NOT an end, simply wait till it happens and then decide what to do. And for god's sake, don't get hung up on religious trappings, lol. Have a GREAT life and worry about what is all around you, rather than something you have no control over. To me... that would be -- being logical.

The afterlife is just that: a Life. Karma and Reincarnation explain this most adequately.

Hmmmm. The troubling part is that they do NOT describe the way things are, imho, adequately or even very well, my friend.

To my warped view, both the concept of "karma" and the concept of "reincarnation" are simply incorrect as they are both based on an illusory understanding of the nature of time being a single-line progression. This is "off topic" but if you wanted to start a thread, I'd be there with bells on. :drool:

 

[Papersock]

I think what bothers me more than my own death is the thought of other people dying.

Also, I'm more afraid of terrible diseases and accidents, pain, suffering... all those nasty things that can happen while you're still alive.

 

[Wandered Off]

No. I decide my own limitations through my deterministic relationship with the Universe. Your thoughts about "me" concern yourself, even if you project them out.

How much control do you speculate you have over the decision? That is, if I "decide" to have no limitations and effectively become God, I'm still delusional, right?

The afterlife is just that: a Life. Karma and Reincarnation explain this most adequately.

I don't know how they address the idea that you can will yourself out of existence and opt out of the cycle ("not become anything lifelike again" as you put it). How would that part work?