Your theories what happens after you die? or the afterlife?

So what does everyone here believe/know after they die?

As for myself, I personally think that once you die, your spirit leaves your body to become a ghost which you'll be probably be wondering around in the spiritual plane of our world or some other strange realms. Or maybe perhaps you become recycled into another organism.

Nightmare Doom said:

As for myself, I personally think that once you die, your spirit leaves your body to become a ghost which you'll be probably be wondering around in the spiritual plane of our world or some other strange realms. Or maybe perhaps you become recycled into another organism.

Nope, no theories here, I don't have a soul, sorry.

when i die i go through episode 2

I don't think anything happens. Why should anything happen?

I think tha the rigor mortis sets in, they bury you (may possibly cremate you first), and then decomposition sets in. In other words, I think that when you die, you rot in the ground. But where does the energy go? You got me.

This came up in a book I was reading only today and should be quite fitting as a reply:

The Grave

For thee was a house built
Ere thou wast born,
For thee was a mould meant
Ere thou of mother camest.
But it is not made ready,
Nor its depth measured,
Nor is it seen
How long it shall be.
Now I bring thee
Where thou shalt be;
Now I shall measure thee,
And the mould afterwards.

Thy house is not
Highly timbered,
It is unhigh and low;
When thou art therein,
The heel-ways are low,
The side-ways unhigh.
The roof is built
Thy breast full nigh,
So thou shalt in mould
Dwell full cold,
Dimly and dark.

Doorless is that house,
And dark it is within;
There thou art fast detained,
And death hath the key.
Loathsome is that earth-house,
And grim within to dwell.
There thou shalt dwell,
And worms shall divide thee.

Thus thou art laid,
And leavest thy friends;
Thou hast no friend
Who will come to thee,
Who will ever see
How that house pleaseth thee;
Who will ever open
The door for thee
And descend after thee,
For soon thou art loathsome
And hateful to see.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (from a medieval Saxon poem)

One explanation I heard this week was, in my opinion, rather interesting:

One of my colleagues believes that, at the moment of death, the perception of time for that individual slows, and stops. As he explained it, it seemed that he didn't mean that the perception of one's surroundings would seem frozen, but rather one's state of mind. We all heard the "film of life flashing before your eyes" bit. According to my colleague, this would include regrets (if any), which would then be on the mind, and time would freeze for this person, always having these regrets (or, in case of no regrets, contentment), making this one's personal hell or bliss.

I would believe in something like reincarnation, I think. For me, and I think most human minds, there's something more than impulses received, processed and sent by the brain, that gives us our sense of self, and I believe that it's this something (soul, spirit, energy, call it what you will) that would be reused after death. I'm absolutely unsure whether it would ever be possible for this newborn to remember anything from its past life, this would only be possible if memories of events is carried by more than just nerve clusters formed in the brain. If the sense of self (which I believe to be indigenous to all life) isn't anything outside the realm of what we are already familiar with, it would probably open up loads of other interesting concepts. My PC might have a sense of self (albeit extremely confined), if that would be the case.

I don't really have any theories, but in a way reincarnation would be nice. But on the other hand, even if I am a reincarnation of someone else right now, I still don't have any recollections of the theoretical past lives, so reincarnation would be pointless no matter how you look at it.

Keeping on living, in a way or an other, has a point in it only if you will stay aware of it being you, not someone else.

I think our bodies are merely vehicles of our souls, and our minds the controls. So when your body dies, the soul merely lets go and finds a new body, or goes elsewhere...

Think of all the things you don't feel, see, smell, hear, and taste (and thus know) every instant, and how little what we do know is in the face of everything. Just take away that little spark of what we know every instant, and that is us, but dead.

Life is held valuable once its fragility in the face of time is felt, as what's boundless and everlasting is worthless, like anything that can be taken for granted.

I like to think that whatever you want to believe happens is what happens for you. Pretty boring, I know, but it always irks me when people try to tell you this is what happens to you in the afterlife. I don't think there's just one outcome, I think it is what you want it to be.

End of level tally and off you go to another mission, but you're off from a pistol start and suffer from absolute amnesia.

If you die, then you're dead.

That's it.

Lying there cold after a torturous death
Your life ended fast you took your last breath
Dead in a grave, your final place
The maggots infest your disfigured face
Pus through your veins takes the place of blood
Decay sets in, bones begin to crack
Thrown six feet down left to rot
Brains oozing black down the side of your broken neck

Skull full of maggots

They enter your tomb - maggots - beginning to feast - maggots
Crawling on you - maggots - now they eat you - maggots
Rotting maggots - maggots - infesting your corpse - maggots
Parasites of the dead - maggots - now dwell in your head

Lying there cold after a torturous death
Your life ended fast you took your last breath
Dead in a grave, your final place
The maggots infest your disfigured face
Pus through your veins takes the place of blood
Decay sets in, bones begin to crack
Thrown six feet down left to rot
Brains oozing black down the side of your broken neck


Cannibal Corpse - A Skull Full of Maggots

I hate to think of death = complete void. I mean after a proper life of balance I am still punished with nothingness?

Well the human is a very complex machine. With this logic, I suspect that even VERY (incredibly) advanced robots, with feelings and learning, may have selves.

I shouldn't despair...

Anyone here believe in ghosts? I myself see them as hints that there may indeed be an afterlife.

The way I see it, we have some sort of energy that makes us alive. Like all other forms of energy, it's neither created nor destroyed, it only changes forms. So my belief is that when you die, the energy is released back into the universe, some of which may redeposit itself in other beings, some of which may not. I guess it's sort of like reincarnation, but not quite.

SamBeckett94 said:

I think tha the rigor mortis sets in, they bury you (may possibly cremate you first), and then decomposition sets in. In other words, I think that when you die, you rot in the ground. But where does the energy go? You got me.

The energy is consumed by the bacteria and insects that are also consuming your corpse.

printz said:
I mean after a proper life of balance I am still punished with nothingness?

"You" disappear, but the varying values of energy that have been used in making "you" don't (at least if we can assume a balance of energy in existence in a broad and general sense). To be precise, you change with time in such a way that parts of you constantly disappear or are added. At one point the core of your system will break down, and your system will not manage the energy values it once did, anymore. That's often moved people to attempt positions of renown, power, popularity, or infamy; they've attempted to leave a mark so as to continue to "be" in some way after being gone in the sense of life. Being a parent is of course the most direct way of somehow continuing to be. Metaphors of "reincarnation" are perhaps linked to the process of (genetic) reproduction.

The self is man's first big abstraction, from where he or she draws all others in his or her mental associations to the world.

After all we develop and grow early on, and then more of less stop developing to start deteriorating, so there's no reason conclude we will remain forever or anything of the sort. From what we can perceive nothing that we know is bound to last forever, not the Earth, not the sun, not the galaxy...

How vain of us, to accept coming to be and developing, and not accept eventually terminating.

If you see the hearse go by,
you may be the next to die.
They wrap you in a clean white sheet
and put you under six feet deep.
The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out,
the worms play pinochle on your scalp.
Your stomach turns a slimy green
and pus comes out like shaving cream.
You put this on a piece of bread
and that's what YOU eat when you are DEAD!

Jim Rainer said:

The energy is consumed by the bacteria and insects that are also consuming your corpse.

No, they consume inert flesh and material, not the heat or electrical signals the body created.

I don't know. When you die, you're dead. Afterlife? who knows. I'll just wait and see. But the idea of a soul is improbable. Nietzsche says it best: "The soul is something about the body"

Necros20 said:

Anyone here believe in ghosts? I myself see them as hints that there may indeed be an afterlife.

Well I happen to be one of them.

Also, whats everyones opinion about the Near Death Experience Phenomena?

Never had one, and I haven't really researched them at all, so I don't really have an opinion on NDEs.

Nothing happens "after" you die. You're dead. What happens is that the rest of the world continues on without you.

I find it interesting that the human mind seems to have a difficult time understanding this concept. I guess it's probably because we only ever see the world from our own perspective, so the idea of the world existing without us doesn't make any intuitive sense. Hence all these ideas about reincarnation, "souls", ghosts, afterlives, etc. People refuse to accept what they cannot intuitively conceive, so they would rather believe in these ideas, even though there is no logical reason for them to do so.

I used to think the same way, then I realised there are far too many things in this universe that just defy logic. Like existence itself.

fraggle said:

I find it interesting that the human mind seems to have a difficult time understanding this concept. I guess it's probably because we only ever see the world from our own perspective, so the idea of the world existing without us doesn't make any intuitive sense. Hence all these ideas about reincarnation, "souls", ghosts, afterlives, etc. People refuse to accept what they cannot intuitively conceive, so they would rather believe in these ideas, even though there is no logical reason for them to do so.

Maybe there is a logical reason, namely comfort. It's easier to cope with these hilarious ideas that you or somebody else just pulled out of their ass than the obvious truth.

But I do envy them.

scorpion said:

One of my colleagues believes that, at the moment of death, the perception of time for that individual slows, and stops.

Weird! I had that exact same idea when I was a teenager. I wouldn't say I believed it, but it made sense at the time.

Danarchy said:

I used to think the same way, then I realised there are far too many things in this universe that just defy logic. Like existence itself.

Yeah, because if we don't understand stuff or stuff doesn't fit with our understanding, that means whatever we feel like believing about it is automatically valid! Good thing all the scientists who have made our lives as good as they are didn't think like this.

Deadside

After I die, they bury my festering carcass, or perhaps just dump it on a landfill. Depends on how much they like me I suppose.

Danarchy said:

I used to think the same way, then I realised there are far too many things in this universe that just defy logic. Like existence itself.

Most likely it defies human logic because human logic itself is far from perfect. If humans and their knowledge will continue to steadily evolve in the future, we'll likely develop a better logic model that can explain more and more of the mysteries in this universe.

And on the actual subject, I'd say fraggle expressed it the best. You just die and that's it - game over (for good).