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NaturalBornNEET

NaturalBornNEET

俺は絶対にセックスになるんだ
Feb 22, 2022
138
By death I mean the atheist cop-out idea of the cessation of consciousness, i.e. the void of nothingness

All concepts of the afterlife in every which religion can be interpreted as metaphors for life here on earth. Hell is the illusion of separation from God and its creations (God being you, the fundamental ground of reality that creates and unites all its creations/manifestations) which ultimately presents itself as negative feelings. Heaven is the experience of union with your fragmented pieces, which can be either the union of some of your pieces (e.g. intimacy with a loved one, enjoying good food) or union with all of your pieces (mystical experiences).

Reincarnation is real too, but it is not just something that happens when your human body dies, that's just one metaphor for a process that is constantly happening, infinite shapeshifting of the forms within your field of experience. Every passing thought, feeling, sensation, scene, experience into the next is a micro-reincarnation "Escaping samsara" is awakening to the non-dual nature of all these forms, that everything you experience is an incarnation of the unifying source which is the singularity of consciousness. Leading to an absence of all fear and desire (how can you yearn after what you never lacked?)

But it's pretty simple to talk about the metaphors within religions' interpretations of the afterlife, but to the main point of this thread. Will your consciousness cease when your physical body dies? I see no reason to believe so; it makes more sense to believe this consciousness, the one thing you've never not experienced within a lifetime of constant separation from the objects of consciousness, will suddenly extinguish the moment this brain shuts off for good, why would my brain be any different from the millions of other objects that can disappear in the presence of my consciousness and not cause that consciousness to die with it. Do you see how self centered such thinking is, I think belief in death is wholly an emotional thing, we're simply too attached to our human selves that we can't imagine reality without it.

Another thing I can appeal to other than the unshakeable AMness of consciousness is the magnitude of the universe. It intuitively makes more sense that a universe so full of potential experiences would make the conscious experiencer of itself able to experience it in its entirety through a system such as reincarnation. "No, your personal consciousness ends with your physical death, and the rest of the universe is experienced through the consciousness of all its other inhabitants until they too die" some believe. But this ignores the truth of all perceived dualities being illusions, that existence is fundamentally a single entity. This means even the distinction of different conscious observers is arbitrary and ultimately untenable. All that is happening is happening within consciousness and consciousness is right here right now, the you reading this and the whole field you're experiencing this in.

On the contrary: life doesn't exist, you have always and will always be dead in the same way your cup is dead. The category of living organism is a fabrication. You are an infinitely shaped fabric contorting itself into infinite self-referential configurations, playing a puppet show with itself to itself; embroidering itself with recondite patterns that all point back to itself.

tl;dr: death is just metamorphosis, with the single thing not changing being the witness consciousness of this eternal cycle of shape-shifting, which is both the witness and the witnessed.

I know this will be bitter to think of for many here, and in the end these are just the words of a young dumb human desperate for meaning and who wanted to make a provocative post. But I don't think it has to be a sad thing, ultimately why we're all here are because of conditions that torture us, not out of a dislike for existence itself, that's like mistaking the pollution for the sky. So I'm not discounting the decision to CTB (that would be hypocritical), but just affirming that through death will also come the death of the conditions that have blighted one their whole life (hopefully). I just don't think death is the final end.
 
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Cosmophobic

Cosmophobic

Student
Aug 10, 2025
112
"Will your consciousness cease when your physical body dies? I see no reason to believe so; it makes more sense to believe this consciousness, the one thing you've never not experienced within a lifetime of constant separation from the objects of consciousness, will suddenly extinguish the moment this brain shuts off for good, why would my brain be any different from the millions of other objects that can disappear in the presence of my consciousness and not cause that consciousness to die with it."

I'm not following you here. Are you saying individual consciousness does or does not die with the brain? I think that individual consciousness must die with the brain as that is the organ responsible for producing the phenomenon. This is in keeping with non-dualism and reincarnation. The survival of individual consciousness would not be. If you were not saying that individual consciousness survives but rather just consciousness then I read it wrong and that's my bad.
 
NaturalBornNEET

NaturalBornNEET

俺は絶対にセックスになるんだ
Feb 22, 2022
138
"Will your consciousness cease when your physical body dies? I see no reason to believe so; it makes more sense to believe this consciousness, the one thing you've never not experienced within a lifetime of constant separation from the objects of consciousness, will suddenly extinguish the moment this brain shuts off for good, why would my brain be any different from the millions of other objects that can disappear in the presence of my consciousness and not cause that consciousness to die with it."

I'm not following you here. Are you saying individual consciousness does or does not die with the brain? I think that individual consciousness must die with the brain as that is the organ responsible for producing the phenomenon. This is in keeping with non-dualism and reincarnation. The survival of individual consciousness would not be. If you were not saying that individual consciousness survives but rather just consciousness then I read it wrong and that's my bad.
I think Individual consciousness, the awareness lying behind all the phenomena you're experiencing right now does not disappear when your brain dies. And yes just calling it consciousness works too, I use the qualifier individual to stress to anyone reading how this consciousness is right here with them.

I have no idea what would happen after my brain death, I couldn't guess what attributes consciousness would choose to take on or if it would even choose to manifest as anything at all. But I intuit that the present awareness that has underlay all my experience thus far will persist.
 
Cosmophobic

Cosmophobic

Student
Aug 10, 2025
112
I think Individual consciousness, the awareness lying behind all the phenomena you're experiencing right now does not disappear when your brain dies. And yes just calling it consciousness works too, I use the qualifier individual to stress to anyone reading how this consciousness is right here with them.

I have no idea what would happen after my brain death, I couldn't guess what attributes consciousness would choose to take on or if it would even choose to manifest as anything at all. But I intuit that the present awareness that has underlay all my experience thus far will persist.
We're probably just working with different definitions of consciousness here, it's not like it's easy to define so that's understandable.

When I say individual consciousness I mean the person with all their thought patterns, memories and quirks of character. As I understand it that has to perish in order for reincarnation to be possible. And also because all of that is housed in the brain. (so is consciousness as far as we know bet lets leave that alone)

I guess you're defining consciousness as the pure subject of awareness without any 'baggage' that would differentiate them as a person among persons? Just the present moment which is all that ever exists? Hot or cold?

Edit: The champagne bottle analogy explains the way I think of it: Consciousness as a field or universal consciousness is all the liquid in the bottle. Individual consciousness is the bubbles that arise out of and dissipate back into that field.
 
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NaturalBornNEET

NaturalBornNEET

俺は絶対にセックスになるんだ
Feb 22, 2022
138
I guess you're defining consciousness as the pure subject of awareness without any 'baggage' that would differentiate them as a person among persons? Just the present moment which is all that ever exists? Hot or cold?
Ye that definition fits, consciousness in its absolute form has no attributes (nothingness) which paradoxically allows it to take on any attribute/phenomena it chooses. Consciousness is nothing which allows it to be everything. With these attributes/phenomena all being an undifferentiated flow of experience, like the tao, but consciousness can also choose to create distinctions within this unified field of phenomena but all these distinctions eventually collapse into each other to reveal oneness.

When I say individual consciousness I mean the person with all their thought patterns, memories and quirks of character. As I understand it that has to perish in order for reincarnation to be possible. And also because all of that is housed in the brain. (so is consciousness as far as we know bet lets leave that alone)
Thought patterns, memories and personality are all impermanent attributes of consciousness, they are not of the permanent absolute aspect of consciousness, the absolute aspect being your observation of these things: thought patterns, life and self narratives. So I believe the observer will still remain when the brain dies but I do not know what it will observe after death.

The brain-consciousness question is necessary to tackle to get to the truth of the matter. I don't believe consciousness emerges from the brain but that consciousness created the brain and all of material and mental reality, and it uses the brain as an instrument to express itself, just as it uses the entire nervous system and the rest of the body and its organs and functions as instruments to express itself, in turn it uses the immediate perceivable environment as an instrument, and even the entire universe as an instrument.

Edit: The champagne bottle analogy explains the way I think of it: Consciousness as a field or universal consciousness is all the liquid in the bottle. Individual consciousness is the bubbles that arise out of and dissipate back into that field.
Good analogy, but I would say consciousness, as in absolute universal consciousness, is exactly whatever state it's currently in. So if consciousness is experiencing a human in its bedroom then that is what the universe is. So right now as a human the universe is just that bubbles POV, maybe it will encounter other bubbles, or get a sense that there's something larger its contained in, and when it pops maybe the bubble's POV does expand to being the whole bottle, or maybe its POV turns to that of another bubble, or maybe it turns to that of the person bursting open the bottle. What if the bubble is able to expand its POV to that of the whole bottle before it disappears. What if its POV could expand to beyond the bottle to the whole universe that contains it. And what if its POV could even transcend that until it arrives back to its most primordial center of complete emptiness.
 
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Cosmophobic

Cosmophobic

Student
Aug 10, 2025
112
Yes I understand you now. I can't say I believe it in a religious sense but it does feel intuitive and it doesn't butt heads with science. Even a materialist view of the universe admits that only forms change and not essence (matter).
 
Pluto

Pluto

Cat Extremist
Dec 27, 2020
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rustcohle4life

rustcohle4life

I'm bad at parties
Mar 16, 2025
250
i don't think our individual consciousnesses is so special that it goes on forever. It takes a lot of hubris to think that way imo.
 
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