What do you think happens to the soul when we die?

[Alexander]

Do you think there is a soul at all?

[Fire Walk With Me]

1. Many spiritual paths agree on some basic things. Try meditation and see.

Most will teach you to meditate, but will only mention that some things become clear as you progress.

Check it out. Continuous awareness of the body, -in- the body, brings up some interesting issues.

[idgiehkt]

2. we come back here.

Dammit. We do, I just know it. That's why I want to live a long damn time

Sylvia Browne says there is only about 90 years left for earth and people aren't coming back so much because they know there isn't time enough to live another lifetime.

I don't believe her...just because one person can't know everything, but I do think we are on a treadmill.

[Fire Walk With Me]

5. I can't say that I trust Sylvia Browne very much. She started a church.

Most of the spiritual teachers I know give you some instruction, support, and insight, and you have to work it out and depend upon yourself, for the most part.

I balk at those who gather followers. Your mileage may vary, and I don't know enough about her to have a firm opinion.

[idgiehkt]

7. if you ever watch her on Montel, she knows EVERYTHING

People stand up at the end and ask her all kinds of questions and she is omniscient. I don't believe in that ability although i do believe she can probably tell if the spirit in a person's house is a ghost or a guardian. Plus she is too Christian for me, really.

If I were an optimist I'd say our souls go somewhere really cool after death. Since I'm not I'm betting we come back here. :shrug:

your theory about gathering followers (I am so tired I started to type 'fathering gatherers', lol) I agree with %100. People are looking to give their power away and charismatic individuals with dubious motives can jump right in there and take advantage of that. I believe we all are capable of interacting with the great beyond and anyone who tries to act as a conduit for that for me is immediately suspect in my book. Plus those charismatic leaders always are found out to be sleeping with half the disciples, usually.

[Fire Walk With Me]

11. The Maharishi (Transcendental Meditation) is said to have hit on the Beatle's girlfriends

while they were all in India. Sheesh. However, he does describe the path of connecting with various levels of God consciousness. What he describes works. However, it doesn't seem to be a guarantee of virtue, if the stories are true. (It also shouldn't take away from what he's offered the world.)

According to several religions, there are practices to reduce the ego and raise your energy into harmony (and awareness) with God, the consciousness manifesting everything. This is where the so-called "powers" come from, and there is much literature about them (and also that they are nothing but distractions from God).

Having some access to these opens the door for vast temptation to abuse power, they say. A little bit of truth can be the spoonful of sugar to hide large amounts of poison.

If you have had any experience in raising your kundalini, you'll have a sense of the fact that there is indeed more than the material world. Materialism does not explain this energy. And also, of the vast dangers that are described. I tried it once and it amplifies your energy a great deal. They say that you should have taken many years of purification practice to clear yourself, as any residual negativity will be magnified into uncontrollable proportions, ala' addiction. If you then act upon it, you cause yourself similarly proportional spiritual damage (not to mention others).

I'm using the passive path of meditation.

[chknltl]

6. I do not believe her either

I do not know who Sylvia Browne is but I disagree with her notion. I do agree with you that we keep coming back. Did Ms Browne offer up further explanations on what is to happen to the earth in 90 years? bush has GOT to be out of office by then!

[idgiehkt]

8. whatever it is, it ain't good, that's for sure

meteor, nuclear war, something. Or maybe die off caused by environmental destruction. Accelerated global warming? The volcano in yellowstone finally goes? Not a day in the park, for sure. :shrug:

[chknltl]

12. I suspect in 90 years...

...we will be able to fend off meteorites. Perhaps we will be able to adjust our atmosphere in order to negate those things which cause global warming...(imagine a jet fuel which exhausts something which counters greenhouse gasses). Yellowstone IS a concern, I wonder if by tapping into it we couldn't let off a little pressure and create gobs of free clean energy as a byproduct!

This all surmises that technology will continue it's mad dash. I guess one could say that I am an optimist.

For what it is worth, I do believe in reincarnation. I am not so desirous of coming back in the next life to an overly polluted planet. With my apologies to the Christians for mangling this quote: "As Ye Reap So hall Ye Sew", has a slightly different impact for me.

[Fire Walk With Me]

13. I've read part of one of her books. A "channeled" spirit says that the Earth's magnetic field

will reverse, something about the planet tilting so that the southern hemisphere becomes the north, or something like that. And so much damage will occur that very few people will be left, reducing the opportunities to incarnate for learning.

I think that aspects of global warming have yet to show their capabilities for damage, but I don't know about their causing such astonishing disaster. I could be wrong. :shrug:

[idgiehkt]

49. wow

I hope somehow I'm not around when that happens. But I guess since there have been so many mass extinctions since the beginning of this planet another one isn't at all uncharacteristic.

:hi:

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

39. A smart person, this Ms. Browne. 90 years. How convenient.

The more common, not-so-smart kooks tend to predict the end of the world for a date when they'll be still around to get egg on their face.

[idgiehkt]

46. lol

too true.

:rofl:

[WindRavenX]

3. I hope for a soul.

But I don't know if I believe there is such a thing.

[Alexander]

9. I feel the same way...

I'd probably consider myself agnostic.

While I hope for a soul and a life after physical death, I realize that I can't go through life expecting it, and concede that we could just as easily fade into nonexistence when we die.

The thought of nonexistence kind of frightens me, but it's not like I have any other plans for that time. ;-)

[Oeditpus Rex]

4. Well, according to George Carlin

it goes to a garage in Buffalo.

[Fire Walk With Me]

14. Carlin rocks. He stands beside Carl Sagan as my favorite agnostics.

[chknltl]

15. Now there's a deep thinker!

Did you know that mankind's sole purpose for existence on this planet is to create styrofoam?
Apparently the earth is so vain that it wants something no other planet can brag about! It has quite a plan to! It first created dinosaurs and stuff for dinosaurs to eat. Then it killed off most of that biosphere. Oil is a key ingredient in styrofoam. Next it created humans. Humans are needed to manufacture styrofoam. We are in fact great at manufacturing styrofoam. When the earth runs out of oil and humans have manufactured enough styrofoam...well according to George Carlin, humans will join the dinosaurs! (Kids: If you want to REALLY save our planet, stop making styrofoam!)

[chknltl]

27. Oops forgot to say that the dinosaurs were killed off to make oil.

This was an old bit of George Carlin's comedic genius from 15 years ago. I have been misquoting it ever since.

[pokerfan]

10. You don't have a soul

You have a highly developed central nervous system that can talk to itself.

[eridani]

20. That's what s soul, or personality, or mind, or whatever IS

An emergent property of sufficiently complex matter.

[Guava Jelly]

16. nothing.

Because i don't believe we have a soul.
We are biological machines and when we die thats it.
I think we kid ourselves into believing that we are special like we were created by some mystical force.
And I think if humans didn't believe in an afterlife or a do over there would be less killing and less suicide ,less war and people would do thier best to live a fuller life now instead of waiting for the payoff in the great beyond
But that is just me.

[krispos42]

17. Jesus and Satan fight over it

Steel cage match, product placement, lines of action figures... It's a pretty big event.

[LaurenG]

22. LOL

Ahh, great answer. :rofl:

[Fire Walk With Me]

18. Out on a limb, here...

I'm an alcoholic. We're not supposed to break anonymity, but I'm not entirely in love with the people in AA...

I've mentioned it in this sort of conversation before, and I'll likely do so again. It's a guaranteed fatal disease/mutation. A true alcoholic can do nothing to help themselves. It's really, really, horrific. The Book calls it "pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization".

The point being, per the AA guidelines, surrendering to a higher power can lift the problem, depended upon doing the work and dedicating yourself to internal change. An alcoholic knows when they are getting lax about the process, as the disease is always there. Doing the work, and surrendering, brings back the stability. You -know- when something has changed in yourself.

This is not a placebo. This is empiricism. It can be repeated, and measured by the individual.

To me, this is proof of God.

Remember, we're talking true, absolute helplessness in the face of certain death, negated.

Please understand this. I'm an incomplete person. I -need- this help in order to function, much less survive, on a daily basis. I don't want that to be the case. I want to control everything myself. I am self-obsessed and have the classic infantile ego. Working with a higher power does not automatically make me better than anyone else; it does not make me a good person incapable of causing trouble. It's not a get-out-of-jail-free card for my behaviour. I do not claim to be better than anyone, although I am doing work along a line of moral standards that are unfamiliar to my regular processes. I do believe that higher standards are very important if society is to survive the extremely low standards we are now enduring.

I do claim that God exists and that there are specific, empiric, quantifiable methods to seek. As someone who needs a moral lifestyle, I'm trying ever so slowly to get there. If I am to be forgiven for anything, it should be because I've made a genuine effort, not because I've played the God card. You have to do the work in this thing.

Because the God question is so big, I've willingly made myself vulnerable to attempt to provide some perspective. I hope that this has been more helpful than entertaining.

[chknltl]

19. Yes I think we have a soul

Science has shown that SOMETHING which has actual weight, leaves the body upon death. Most of you have heard of astral projection, a few of you may have actually done it. Then there are the near death stories, the ones where the person becomes spirit-like and floats away, sometimes looking back at the body, sometimes moving up to a bright light.Yes, I do think that we have a soul. I believe it is yet beyond science to measure this soul, except for it's weight.

If any here care, I think that the soul reincarnates. I believe that after many many reincarnations, we reunite with our fellow spirits to form a sort of uber spirit consisting of about a thousand individual spirits. These "creatures" sometimes offer up communications with us, while they too "evolve" over the eons into something even larger.

One such, who calls itself Michael, has been in constant communication with folks since the mid '70s. The folks in communication with the Michael spirit wrote a few books. Their first book, "Messages From Michael" is one of my treasures because it answered many questions in my own life, questions neither science or religion could answer.

Here are two links to sites about the Michael Spirit

http://www.messagesfrommichael.com/

http://www.michaelteachings.com/welcome.html

[kay1864]

33. Actually, modern science has not shown "the soul's weight"

From Wikipedia:

During the late 19th and first half 20th century, researchers attempted to weigh people who were known to be dying, and record their weight accurately at the time of death. As an example, Dr. Duncan MacDougall, in the early 1900s, sought to measure the weight purportedly lost by a human body when the soul departed the body upon death. MacDougall weighed dying patients in an attempt to prove that the soul was material and measurable. These experiments are widely considered to have had little if any scientific merit. Although MacDougall's results varied considerably from 21 grams, for some people this figure has become synonymous with the measure of a soul's weight.

Out of six tests, two had to be discarded, one showed an immediate drop in weight (and nothing more), two showed an immediate drop in weight which increased with the passage of time, and one showed an immediate drop in weight which reversed itself but later recurred. And even these results cannot be accepted at face value as the potential for experimental error was extremely high, especially since MacDougall and his colleagues often had difficulty in determining the precise moment of death, one of the key factors in their experiments.

MacDougall's results were flawed because the methodology used to harvest them was suspect, the sample size far too small, and the ability to measure changes in weight imprecise. For this reason, credence should not be given to the idea his experiments proved something, let alone that they measured the weight of the soul as 21 grams. His postulations on this topic are a curiosity, but nothing more.

Source and details: http://www.snopes.com/religion/soulweight.asp

[chknltl]

41. Well I'll be...

It looks as though I repeated a sort of urban legend, one which does come from actual scientific efforts, albeit, flawed and quite dated efforts. Now I wonder, has modern science done anything to revisit this? Thanks for links and for updating...

[eridani]

21. What happens to enlightened ones after the illusion of death?

A student asked this of a Zen master.

Master: How should I know?
Student: Because you are an enlightened man.
Master: That, maybe. But not a dead one.

[xchrom]

24. lol -- but not a dead one -- that's good.

[stuntcat]

23. I think it mixes into the rest of the loose souls

I think it doesn't disappear totally but what's left will loose it's individuality.
That's what I decided to believe :D

[xchrom]

25. i will be in paradise with my dog and my family and the saints.

[Tyler Durden]

26. It goes to a garage in Bakersfield.

Robing Williams said so.

[conscious evolution]

28. Depends

If you have rid yourself of all karma then you graduate from the buddha earth school.
If not you are born again and again and again until you do get rid of it all.

However,those that commit suicide bring on total extinction of their soul.It is the ultimate expulsion from buddha school.

[riona]

29. No clue

If you need to believe in something, and it gets you through the hard times, go for it.

[av8rdave]

30. If you're a Frisbeterian, it goes up on the roof and you can't get it down

[Akoto]

31. It returns to the Force, and you become a blue-glowy ghost guy.

[rug]

32. Don takes it on the train.

[cobalt1999]

34. To quote from a Douglas Adams book...

"Arthur hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife."

No soul, no afterlife, what you see is what you get, come to terms with it and be happy.

[wildhorses]

35. perhaps it looks something like this~

http://www.kahlil.org/artwork010pf

[idgiehkt]

47. very beautiful!

I hope so. :hi:

[BarenakedLady]

36. No

I don't believe in a soul. When we are dead and buried we are reabsorbed into the Earth. I'm cool with that.

[El Fuego]

37. I sold my soul.

To work in corporate America. So it's a moot point.

[LaraMN]

38. It gets reincarnated into a body with bigger boobs.

:thumbsup:

[purr]

44. YES!!

Are they at least proportional to each other? :)

[DeposeTheBoyKing]

40. It hovers over Bush homes and defecates on their family members

And urinates, and vomits - you get the idea.

[caty]

42. Our energy force

goes to outer space and energizes the stars for eternity.





Well, that's as good an explanation as any other!

[Critters2]

43. I think there is a soul, something that animates us

but I have no idea what happens to it after death. Neither do any of the people who claim they do. I have hopes, but I don't have knowledge.

[Fire Walk With Me]

45. A "Life in Hell" stated that you find yourself in an empty, black infinity

and there is a dripping sound that you can't find.

[Taverner]

48. There is no soul

"I" and "me" are merely constructs we've created to run as a kind of operating system. Much like a computer.

Since these are virtual, and not physical - the same thing happens to you that happens to a computer when you shut it down.

You clear your memory and stop functioning.