What Do You Expect to Happen When You Die? And why?

[FlyersFan]

I did this thread at ATS a while back.  
Let's give it a try  here.

What do you expect to happen when you die and why do you expect it?

Are you expecting to go to Heaven or Hell or Purgatory?
Reward by being with God in perfect paradise, or the exact opposite in Hell with loss of God and all is wrong?
Or is it the Muslim version of 'paradise'?  Lots of food banquets and sex. 
Or the nirvana version ... losing yourself and melding back with the perfect 'one'.
(Hope I got that right)
Are you expecting to be reincarnated?  
Are you expecting to pop out of your body and wander around as a spirit?
Are you expecting obliteration?  Nothingness?  
Do you not expect anything and you just take it as it comes?
What do you think is going to happen ... and why do you think it?

I've experienced spirits, both good and bad, so I know they exist.
I've experienced ghosts which means that either at least some people have an afterlife, or that means the evil spirits are pretending to be dead people to get you to interact with them.  I don't know which.
I've experienced supernatural things and seen amazing things in Medjugorje on pilgrimage.
I also believe I've had prayers answered so I believe God exists.
But belief in those doesn't necessarily mean that you have to believe in an afterlife.

My religious background tells me to expect Heaven, Hell or Purgatory.   However, some of the stories of reincarnation are very convincing, so I do have an open mind that sometimes God may allow/send people back to do it again.  That's His business and I wouldn't argue with someone if they think they are reincarnated.  It's a depressing thought .. having to come back and do it all again and not even remembering anything about what you have lived before.  

But then we come to the stories of Near Death Experiences.   Everyone has probably read some of them.   I've read that MOST people who have Near Death Experiences .. experience NOTHING.  Yep.  90% of people who have cardiac arrest, die, and then are revived say they experienced nothing.  The void.  Obliteration.  It's only 10% that have the classic meetings with dead people or the tunnel and the loving bright light .. etc etc.   And scientists are studying to see if those 10% who have those classic NDE experiences are having hallucinations from a dying brain or from chemicals the body is releasing as it dies ... they have found that parts of the brain remain active for six minutes after the heart stops.  The brain could be producing all sorts of fanciful events for the dead/dying person to experience during that time.  

Anyways ... what do you expect to happen and why do you expect it?

[midicon]

Edit to remove post.

[Tecate]

I will be reunited with friends, and pets. After a time I will agree to return and live in a different, perhaps opposite state in which I lived this life. Perhaps an unstable country with crushing poverty and violence.

I believe that the people we have around us are souls that we have joined together with and continue our journeys with throughout our reincarnations. One life they may be a parent, family, lover or coworker…

I believe that we continue until our souls achieve different levels of enlightenment. I know that this sounds very new-age and out there, but you asked…

I believe that this is essentially Hell. Yes, you do get tempted and tested but resistance is not futile (ha!).

All of the learning we do as reincarnated souls is to eventually bring us all closer and together with “The ONE” or G-D.


Just my two pesos


Tecate

[sahgwa]

I will be reunited with friends, and pets. After a time I will agree to return and live in a different, perhaps opposite state in which I lived this life. Perhaps an unstable country with crushing poverty and violence.

I believe that the people we have around us are souls that we have joined together with and continue our journeys with throughout our reincarnations. One life they may be a parent, family, lover or coworker…

I believe that we continue until our souls achieve different levels of enlightenment. I know that this sounds very new-age and out there, but you asked…

I believe that this is essentially Hell. Yes, you do get tempted and tested but resistance is not futile (ha!).

All of the learning we do as reincarnated souls is to eventually bring us all closer and together with “The ONE” or G-D.


Just my two pesos


Tecate

I mostly think as you do.
I also am open to the option of reincarnating on other planets or in a nonphysical form. Or in a completely different universe.
The ego me will be totally gone. A bare memory to be dredged up as a past life.
Like old clothes.
But a question to you, what do you think about the idea of a choice for your next incarnation whether conscious or subconscious. does it exist? 
Is it dictated by karma and one's actions? 

What about our souls being food for other entities? 
What about Earth being a trap and quarantined?

[FlyersFan]

What about our souls being food for other entities? 

Archons ... entities eating our energy ... that's why all the wars and fighting and hate, eating all that energy given off ... and eating the energy of prayer, that's why all the religions ...  I've heard that theory before.

[Maxmars]

I have a problem with this exercise....

Looking specifically in what I cannot perceive stops me cold...  I have questions I cannot answer.

I wonder about the common suppositions about dying and I can't help but get lost in uncomfortable ignorance.

When we die, do we continue to exists as a "person?"  Is what would make me "a person" now gone?

Could it be that we not only cease to exist in this reality?  Or does this reality persist for us, even in death?

If it does, what of my own desires and observations?  Will I remember the people I love, or hate, and does that have human meaning anymore?

Will my mind simply melt into a separate and distinct consciousness, will it merge into a collective hive-mind, or will I retain my worries and concerns about this life (of which I am no longer an active part?)  Will I "remember" my life, despite being utterly separated from it?  Would everything I embrace "no longer matter?"  Could I be in a hellish whirlwind of what I 'lost?'  Or will I be propelled into a wonderous beauty of exploration, joy, and disassociated bliss?

I can say what I would like to believe, what others might 'prefer' to believe.  But belief is the active component that separates it from knowledge. 
There is ancient thought that refers to this, and some of it is alternately frightening and exhilarating.

I am very inclined to want to be reunited with people I love, to learn the elusive mysteries that persisted in my life, to enjoy a new freedom I cannot achieve now.  I wouldn't care to undergo a "do-over" or some version of 'waiting for it all to end.'  Does anything like a life ever really "end?"

Ultimately it is going to happen to me, regardless of how I feel, or what I believe... And my 'not knowing' only occupies a place in my mind that represents an 'endless' puzzle... with a promise to get to a revelation point that I can't yet fully imagine.

[IdeomotorPrisoner]

What I remember from before I was born?

I've tried to do an afterlife, but am stuck pre-Christ as far as a western view goes. Mainly the "reform jews" which might as well be Hebrew Therevada Buddhists on the afterlife.

According to current understanding, Reform Jews generally do not hold a literal belief in an afterlife, often interpreting the concept of "Olam Ha-Ba" (the world to come) as a metaphor for the legacy one leaves behind through their actions in this life, rather than a physical place after death;

Change Olam Ha-Ba to Samsara and there you go. Therevada Buddhist holding a similar afterlife conception as Jews. And I'm in that school of thought. Your afterlife is determined by your life's work/karma. Your accumulated impact either contributes towards a heaven, takes the world a step closer to hell, or cancels out.

Just a different interpretation.

But it doesn't mean life isn't still a type of gift. Especially to be a first world human and not somewhere with a 15% child mortality rate, or an animal with a 90% mortality rate.

On that, here's a fun song to torture angry people that want to be depressing and fatalist about life in debate. If you roll your eyes at unhappy permanent contrarians that say, "Life doesn't matter and heaven/hell is a lie to control you!" Just start singing the chorus to this and it will diffuse their depressing contribution.

[Tecate]

Interesting that while driving to work today I was listening to a podcast with a fellow who apparently died and came back after 30 minutes. Of course he had some severe brain damage that he was able to relearn most things again.

He said that he experienced going both to Hell and then Heaven. Hell was a place of infinite pain and misery (lake of fire) where he in fact met Satan himself but had no real interaction.

Heaven he said, was where he was met by his dog whom he had had to put down within the previous year, and with whom he had an actual conversation. He then met Jesus who told him that he was being sent back here to tell the people about heaven and that they need to have a relationship with him to come to heaven…

One thing that struck me odd was that he said that there was beautiful music and singing throughout the heavens and that it was in every language imaginable back to the beginning of time.

Well obviously anyone who had lived and died before Jesus would not possibly be Christian, so I have some confusion regarding having to be Christian to get in.

Anyhow, my belief is that you choose to come back/reincarnate, whether to earth or elsewhere consciously. We are all interconnected and some souls are much older and have attained a higher consciousness or level of learning.

Obviously this is just my personal belief and neither I nor anyone else can prove anything.

Oh! Another thing that I stumbled upon is called “A Wanderer in the Spirit Lands” by Franchezzo. Give it a try.

My 2 pesos

Tecate

[argentus]

I think when I die, my energies will have an opportunity to unite with a greater conglomerate of energies, of which there will be people and creatures known to me, and that will make me less afraid and welcome me into the whole to be absorbed.   I believe that if I have been a good enough spirit, I will finally be a welcomed part of the whole, and thrive in that power.   If I have yet again fallen short, I think I will be reincarnated into yet another creature, to try again to learn the lessons.

[CCoburn]

I haven't really considered the expectations much, but I do know that it's possible for the consciousness to separate from the physical body for somewhat brief periods as this has happened to me on several occasions. This has only occurred while either going to sleep or waking up though, the hypnagogic and hypnopompic states, respectively, and yes, I'm absolutely certain I wasn't dreaming. I do know the difference between dreams, lucid dreams, and being fully awake and aware.

Can't say exactly what the implications of the above might be or how it relates to being dead though as I was still quite alive. Maybe the consciousness might/could exist as disembodied for some unknown duration prior some other event taking place in which many may consider reincarnation.

Sometimes I feel that the physical vessel is not given the consideration it deserves in defining of consciousness but can't really say either way how relevant/irrelevant it is. DNA does define specific individuality, so if consciousness does emanate from the DNA, or the DNA is at least a contributing factor then that would seem to be leaning more towards the physical, but even the physical is just an alternate manifestation of energy.

Perhaps some of the beings (if any) that evolved in the nine billion years prior the creation of the Earth knows, maybe they don't. Maybe only the primordial God knows, but I wouldn't be so quick as to assign any such attribute of "knowing" (as it is defined or experienced anthropomorphically) to a primordial god. It is true though that since we emerge from the primordial that we might resemble it microcosmically, but figuratively, if the primordial were to be represented as only the finest crystal vase, and that vase were to be shattered to countless pieces, then our individual existences would be like the smallest slivers/remnants of the original vase – from but not exactly the same (most is missing).