What Is It Like After You Die?
Last edited Sat Nov 3, 2012, 05:02 PM - Edit history (1)
The question, "What is it like after you die?" can make you wonder about taking the time to ponder such philosophical babble. You might reply, "The only way to know is when you die." Not so. You won't know any more than you do now. Increasingly, scientists are beginning to realize that an infinite number of realities may exist outside our old classical way of thinking.
Our instinctual understanding of reality is the same as most other animals. This came into focus the other day as I strolled though a nearby field, stirring up butterflies and creatures of all shapes and colors. There were wildflowers that were brilliant yellow, some that were red and others that were iridescent purple. This colorful world of up-and-down was the extent of my reality. Of course, to a mouse or a dog, that world of reds, greens and blues didn't exist anymore than the ultraviolet and infrared world (experienced by bees and snakes) did for me. In fact, some animals, including birds, possess magnetoreceptors that allow them to perceive information on the quantum level (indeed, some have even speculated that bees perceive a 6-dimensional reality to encode location information).
But regardless of these differences, we genome-based creatures all share a common biological (spatio-temporal) information-processing ability. I've previously written how reality isn't a hard, cold thing, but rather an active process that involves our consciousness. According to biocentrism, space and time are simply the tools our mind uses to weave information together into a coherent experience -- they are the language of consciousness (in fact, in dreams your mind uses the same algorithms to create a spatio-temporal reality that is as real, 3-D and flesh-and-blood as the one you're experiencing now). "It will remain remarkable," said Nobel physicist Eugene Wigner, referring to a long list of scientific experiments, "that the very study of the external world led to the conclusion that the content of the consciousness is an ultimate reality."
At death there's a break in our linear stream of consciousness, and thus a break in the linear connection of times and places. Indeed, biocentrism suggests it's a manifold that leads to all physical possibilities. More and more physicists are beginning to accept the "many-worlds" interpretation of quantum physics, which states that there are an infinite number of universes. Everything that can possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death doesn't exist in these scenarios, since all of them exist simultaneously regardless of what happens in any of them. The "me" feeling is just energy operating in the brain. But energy never dies; it cannot be destroyed.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanza/biocentrism-and-death_b_908045.html
Author's own link here :
Does Death Exist? New Theory Says No
Many of us fear death. We believe in death because we have been told we will die. We associate ourselves with the body, and we know that bodies die. But a new scientific theory suggests that death is not the terminal event we think.
One well-known aspect of quantum physics is that certain observations cannot be predicted absolutely. Instead, there is a range of possible observations each with a different probability. One mainstream explanation, the many-worlds interpretation, states that each of these possible observations corresponds to a different universe (the multiverse). A new scientific theory called biocentrism refines these ideas. There are an infinite number of universes, and everything that could possibly happen occurs in some universe. Death does not exist in any real sense in these scenarios. All possible universes exist simultaneously, regardless of what happens in any of them. Although individual bodies are destined to self-destruct, the alive feeling the Who am I?- is just a 20-watt fountain of energy operating in the brain. But this energy doesnt go away at death. One of the surest axioms of science is that energy never dies; it can neither be created nor destroyed. But does this energy transcend from one world to the other?
Consider an experiment that was recently published in the journal Science showing that scientists could retroactively change something that had happened in the past. Particles had to decide how to behave when they hit a beam splitter. Later on, the experimenter could turn a second switch on or off. It turns out that what the observer decided at that point, determined what the particle did in the past. Regardless of the choice you, the observer, make, it is you who will experience the outcomes that will result. The linkages between these various histories and universes transcend our ordinary classical ideas of space and time. Think of the 20-watts of energy as simply holo-projecting either this or that result onto a screen. Whether you turn the second beam splitter on or off, its still the same battery or agent responsible for the projection.
According to Biocentrism, space and time are not the hard objects we think. Wave your hand through the air if you take everything away, whats left? Nothing. The same thing applies for time. You cant see anything through the bone that surrounds your brain. Everything you see and experience right now is a whirl of information occurring in your mind. Space and time are simply the tools for putting everything together.
http://www.robertlanza.com/does-death-exist-new-theory-says-no-2/
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Speck Tater
(10,618 posts)rock
(13,218 posts)Speck Tater
(10,618 posts)Mostly I just hang out with friends and plan what we're going to do in out next incarnation.
rock
(13,218 posts)bjobotts
(9,141 posts)The consciousness that you are can be experienced like this. Wherever you are (forest or walking in nature is best) just take in everything before you without labeling, naming, judging good or bad or defining in any way...just observe...take it in. Then stop and note who it is that is observing and you will find it has no age race, gender, or anything that defines it...it just is...and that is who you are...that consciousness which is indefinable but can be experienced...that is the Source of what you are.
Try it...don't just think about it...do it and you will see.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)Anyone who has done it will nod in agreement. Anyone who hasn't may wonder WTF you're talking about.
Nods in agreement...
leveymg
(36,418 posts)Sorry. Couldn't resist. I'll probably go to a warm climate for that, I know.
Viva_Daddy
(785 posts)Try to find this one you say was born. Once you see that you were never born, you'll never fear death again.
NCarolinawoman
(2,825 posts)Agnosticsherbet
(11,619 posts)It seems to me the only evidence we have is that consciousness is an emergent property from life.
It's nice to experience, but once its gone, evidence seems to show its gone.
However, I intend to order this book and read it.
bjobotts
(9,141 posts)The opposite of death is not life...it is birth. Life has no opposite and it is not something you "have" but rather something you "are".
You can lose something you have but not something you are.
Agnosticsherbet
(11,619 posts)And what will I be when I'm not?
Response to Agnosticsherbet (Reply #7)
Agnosticsherbet This message was self-deleted by its author.
Warren Stupidity
(48,181 posts)Lights out. Camera off. Pull the power on your computer. That is how dead is.
Multiverse doesn't explain away death. Even if every possible outcome exists is some segment of the multiverse, that does not alter your local reality, the one where you live, you die.
lastlib
(23,309 posts)They'll eat your eyes,
They'll eat your nose,
They'll eat the stuff
betweeen your toes.
freshwest
(53,661 posts)Also brings me back to what it is to live... Which is likely not what most of us have been taught or believe.
zwyziec
(173 posts)TIME
fingrinn
(81 posts)They're afraid of living.
Dan
(3,580 posts)Tikki
(14,559 posts)Tikki
FreedomFighter98201
(5 posts)Einstein said they are the same thing...
No wonder I get Space and Time confused
pscot
(21,024 posts)Really quiet.
Kablooie
(18,641 posts)Most people would say no. All the material that comprised the chair remains but the organization is different so that we would not consider the pile of wood shards to be a chair.
The same with death. In one sense we won't die. All the material and energy that made us up as a person still remains in the universe. Only the organization of the elements is different.
But we consider a particular arrangement of energies and elements to be a person. The physical material can change, we shed cells which are replaced by different but identical cells all our lives. It's the organization of those cells that we call a person.
Also with the energies that power our thinking and movements, when they flow in a particular way within a specific organization of cells we consider it a conscious, living human. Once the flow of energy is disrupted to a certain extent we no longer consider it living person. All the energy still exists but flows in a different pattern so the thing that we considered to be a person, the organization of the body's elements, is gone and therefore the person and his consciousness is gone.
Death destroys everything that we consider to be ourselves even though nothing but the re-organization of our elements has occurred.
caraher
(6,279 posts)Even granting his dodgy understanding of what an at-best controversial interpretation of quantum theory implies, the leap to assertions of what the experience of what comes "after" death is nothing more that his personal speculation, no more valid than traditional religious claims on the subject or the numerous first-person tales of near-death experiences.
Lanza is a brilliant biologist, but a terrible physicist. In fact, based on what he's written, he seems to be the very worst kind - one who not only doesn't know what he's talking about, but doesn't recognize his own failure to understand.
bemildred
(90,061 posts)Dash87
(3,220 posts)"Knowing" is a function of a living brain. You can't know anything when not alive.
DiverDave
(4,887 posts)or maybe there is something.
Nobody knows as nobody has been there and back.
Near death is another issue entirely.
But my take is, dead is dead.
I hope I see my granny and ma again, but who knows?
randr
(12,417 posts)Agnosticsherbet
(11,619 posts)The implications are stunning...
I assume the universe is separate and distinct form consciousness.
Perhaps that is a faulty assumption.
Thinking.
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)the BBC's Horizon documentary on Reality and what that may or may not be.
I think this is it :