What do you think happens when we die, and why do you think it?

[FlyersFan]

For those who want to answer ... a question for discussion ....

What do you think happens when we die, and why do you think that?

Do you think we cease to exist and we are extinguished forever?
Do you think we are reincarnated as a human or animal again, or perhaps someone on another planet?
Do you think we become ethereal spirits and there is a whole new world?
Do you think we do the 'stereotypical NDE' thing of popping out of our bodies, going down the tunnel, seeing God at the end, with happy dead people greeting us?
Heaven, Hell, Purgatory?   Sheol?  Nirvana?  
etc etc etc

What do you think and why do you think it?
What has led you to believe that is what happens?

For me, it changes.   I think that probably upon death we pop out of our bodies and are greeted by people and angels who can now see because we are like them in the afterlife, and they escort you into the afterlife, showing the way.   You go either to Heaven, Hell or a purgatory (Catholics and (and I think Jews) believe in a place of purgation in the afterlife before moving on).  And purgatory can be time spent as a ghost, unsettled and coming to terms with unfinished business and other things.   One time through ... although I think that if God wants he can send people back for a re-do.  He's God and can do what he wants and anecodotal evidence suggests that it does happen at least sometimes.

Why do I think that?  Yes I was raised Catholic, but I've looked at everyones beliefs and from what I experience I think this is probably true.

[Anna]

Nobody really knows what happens after death. I'm a Catholic but my beliefs are a little bit peculiar. For sure, I don't believe in the resurrection of the body. Unless by resurrection we mean being nicely recycled to feed the worms, it's an outlandish idea.

But I believe in the afterlife. Not sure how it looks like but heaven to me is the union with God and with all his creatures that have ever existed. I believe all plants and animals have souls because why should only humans have them? Death is when the soul, that little spark of Divinity, comes back to the Source, the state where all of God's creation was undivided One.

My thoughts are based on my dreams, prayers and meditation. It's more speculation than some firm belief. But there's a motif of return in our lives. We get formed in and leave our mothers' wombs only to come back to the womb of the Earth where we fall apart. So perhaps, our souls also return to that state of oneness when the whole universe was unified.

[Tecate]

Well, I believe in an afterlife. I believe in a reincarnation in which our souls continue to learn and grow until we essentially become learned beings that with a certain amount of knowledge and experience we ascend until we no longer are required to reincarnate.

I have read a lot of books, articles and stories of personal experiences that have led me to believe this way.

I don’t believe in hell except for the one we put ourselves through by distancing ourselves from the source, be it God, creator, love, healing energy, spirit etc… when we are in darkness, we are away from light.. and light is source, light is love , light is energy, light is creation.

These are my beliefs, and I could be wrong, I guess we’ll only know for sure when we leave this plane of existence. If I’m right then I guess I’ll try to go see about trying a different planet next time, perhaps see what new things there are to learn and experience there…

As always, my 2 pesos…

Tecate

[IdeomotorPrisoner]

I believe in legacy.

Karma as something cumulative you work a lifetime at and that gets reborn. I ripped that off from Buddhism, but I like to think I lens it through a more reform Judaism filter.

Well, I'll leave the contrast/compare up to others, I'm somewhere in here though. Why use one religion when you can just mash them all together into something that works for you?

The Saṃsāra doctrine of Buddhism asserts that while beings undergo endless cycles of rebirth, there is no changeless soul that transmigrates from one lifetime to another - a view that distinguishes its Saṃsāra doctrine from that in Hinduism and Jainism. This no-soul (no-self) doctrine is called the Anatta or Anatman in Buddhist texts. 

And

Reform Jews generally believe in an afterlife, but unlike some Orthodox Jews, they tend to focus on the immortality of the soul rather than a physical resurrection of the body, emphasizing the importance of living a good life in this world and contributing to "tikkun olam" (repairing the world) as the primary focus, rather than dwelling on detailed concepts of heaven and hell; they often interpret the afterlife metaphorically and believe the righteous of all faiths have a place in the "world to come."

I also believe in a "divine form" which doesn't have to be all that special. Like something as simple as a thermodynamic directive to increase in disorder. What is formation of a our solar system or the carbon based evolution on our planet but an increase in disorder?

For God said, "in this universe the entropy of an isolated system will always increase over time." And it was so. It's hard to explain, but the universe has very minimal divine input and as a closed system regulates within. It is completely ambivalent, indifferent, and lacks any real time will for the chaotic system it encodes.

Beauty is devised by us lowly secondary rule bound organisms to endure the indifferent chaos. Though a true north moral compass is ultimately an idea, it benefits you specifically because the universe is so hostile by default. You wouldn't need a way if the increase in disorder was always personalized for you. This could be called the, "I am not special doctrine of self."

You live after death by making the chaos note your influence for better or worse, like Jesus did. And he's brought both peace and death to millions upon millions, so it's all a hodge podge how that legacy ages. Moreso from those he influenced and how their legacy carried on. And on and on in that manner, ad infinitum.

The goal with the afterlife being to leave the best legacy and influence possible by your living actions. When its done that way it has a more positive impact because it focuses on cause/effect actions that have observable results before you turn to dust.

In my mind the Atheist that works the soup kitchen for the reward of helping others in no name has a better afterlife legacy (and impact) than the zealot that judges the wicked and blows up the women's health clinic in God's name.

Keep rereading this for likely vain reasons and thinking of things to add.. Last one though.

Like the greatest example of DOING THE AFTERLIFE WRONG I can't think of is the one where flying a fully fueled aircraft into a building will serve the will of almighty Allah and be rewarded with rape toys upon death.

[Maxmars]

For those who want to answer ... a question for discussion ....

Your question is especially challenging from my perspective.  From it, I might segue into personal feelings and all the emotional baggage with which they come laced.  I will make an effort to avoid punishing you like that.

That thing that makes you you and me me is not simply the stuff of cells and atoms... the human experience is not a simple mechanical function cross-sectioned over random circumstance. 

I think, the entire saga of human existence serves well to fuel the argument that human beings, while alive and vital, subject to nature and time, are nevertheless something "more" than science alone can explain.  Sprit, ghost, ka, essence, core, qi...  these are all attempts to describe whatever it is that "we" are, behind the functionality of the flesh.

Since we are arguably more than just matter... and we exist as creatures with minds, I would suggest its not unreasonable to think that we might return to wherever we came from.  
But the options are endless, left to the imagination alone.

Like many, I believe (generally) in a continuation of spirit.  A translation of existence, if you will... details are few, but a tantalizing hint of continuing 'as a person' is mercifully implied.  Lot's of upsides 'promised'... and, as in all stuff of such promises, 'faith' is the currency of the realm.

[UltraBudgie]

This is indeed a challenging question. It enters the realm of Plato's Cave. In this mortal realm, we are chained to mortality, our communication bound to tangible sensory perception. We have no mutual language of consensus beyond that which is anchored in our material experience. If anything exists beyond that veil, we must discuss it using analogy, which does not satisfy empirical science or objective rationality.

It is as though all our experience in this world is the 2D flickering of shadows on a cave wall. All our language and the referents we have in common are in terms of those 2D outlines. That is our mortal life, and everything in it. Perhaps there is more, a 3D source for those shadows, a larger existence, and indeed many claim that as being inhabiting these bodies, they perceived and experienced beyond those chains, seen the larger realm, and this reality is not the be-all and end-all, but merely the illusion of such, māyā. Such experiences are anchored not in the 2D shadows of language and logic, but in personal 3D spiritual experience, as it were, and are thus inherently non-communicable. We can only talk about them, and it becomes a matter of "if you know, you know."

I'll leave this with a quote from the Bodhicaryāvatāra, from the chapter "The Perfection of Understanding":

1. It is for the sake of understanding that the Sage taught this entire collection of preparations. Therefore, in the desire to put an end to suffering, one should develop understanding.
   
2. It is agreed that there are these two truths: the conventional and the ultimate. Reality is beyond the scope of intellec­tion. Intellection is said to be the conventional.
   
3. In the light of this, people are seen to be of two types: namely, the spiritually developed and the spiritually unde­veloped. Of these, the world-view of the undeveloped is invalidated by the world-view of the spiritually developed.
   
4. Even the views of the spiritually developed are invalidated by the superior understanding of those at successively higher levels, by means of an analogy which is accepted by both parties, irrespective of what they intend to prove.
   
5. Ordinary people see existent things and also imagine them to be real, that is to say, not as an illusion. It is in this regard that there is disagreement between the ordinary person and the spiritually developed.
   
6. Even the objects of direct perception, such as visible form, are only established by popular consensus and not by a valid means of knowledge. That consensus is wrong, like, for example, the popular view that impure things are pure.
   
7. The Protector taught in terms of existent things in order to guide people. If it is objected on the basis of conventional usage that in reality these entities are not momentary,
   
8. The fact is that there is no fault in the use of conventional truth by the spiritually developed. They understand reality better than ordinary people do.