When we are born, we have no knowledge of previous lives [if they occurred].
When we die, we have no knowledge of previous lives [our life].
= if anything continues or previously existed outside of our material existence, it contains no knowledge of who we are. That thing may thus be an whole entity, undivided beingness or whathaveyou. Equally, self recognition is probably a fallacy [if above is true], we are not the authors of what arrives within the sphere of consciousness either internally [from brain, genes] nor externally [nurture, senses, situational spatial positioning]. The person or self if anything is the aforementioned beingness, our consciousness most likely does not create information in the brain, although there is probably a relationship between it and info from the brain and back into it. Further, it is plausible that ones beingness, if continued beyond our life, possibly grows as it interacts with the body and brain developing somewhat into a reflection or expression of what that means [what the whole entity means/is].
Edit; we probably all hear the same ‘inner voice’ and have the same entity or emotion of conscience but the message has cultural religious and individual expression; there probably is no universal basis for truths.
Please add your own ‘facts’ about the afterlife, and what they potentially mean.
Everything that actually exists existed potentially since the first nanosecond of the Big Bang. So, treehood and personhood were there at the beginning of the universe even though no actual trees and humans existed. You always existed potentially or you could not actually exist. When you cease to exist actually, wouldn’t you continue to exist potentially? And, if so, couldn’t you exist actually again?
Nothing really exists, including the big bang, because time doesent exist. Existence is only an illusion. All events are contemporaneous , because at the event horizon of the big bang,- if in fact it is a reaction to a black hole event , - there is no 0 time. So the event could not have happened.
Events are probably arise as some kinds of space time distortions, due to the incredible forces generated at the time of a reversal of polarity between possible and probable states, and these distortions probably generate the illusions of existence. The forces generate space time as the reaction between possible and probable worlds.
This is just a possible scenario, and if this is what happens, then since all events are contemporaneous, the illusionary nature of existence and within that - the self, go on in a timeless continuum.
The self, yours and mine, go through eternal changes. The self realization of this may alter the perception of who we really are, and the remedy lies in looking at ourselves as eternally flowing, what for a better word, souls or spirits. Consciousness is when these reify and become aware of their reality in a specific context of what we call existence.
I think Bishop Berkeley was right, after all!
The way I see is something like that, but I think the universe is information and it is there to manifest beingness and to provide an environment for communications between souls [beingnessess].
Isn’t it the distance between changing particles or as I see it the duration of communications. We have beingness and so assumedly that nature is part of reality, ~ perhaps time is a spiritual [qualia] thing?
Yea I would agree that ‘consciousness’ is as I would put it; an expression of beingness [which is as you say, the eternal aspect of the equation]. Eternity is a different kind of time because beingness is stateless there, hence there are no degrees of separation and hence no time and all-time at once.
Yes I agree. The difference of changing particles [of communication] is probably primal. Time is that sequencing being apprehended. But that is all there ever is. The relative measurement of changes compared to another. This is why definitions of time are primarily sequential. Sequencing is basically seeing one thing followed by another. It is a spatially constructed matrix. Time is only another construct built on that, vis.nseeing one thing and then another thing succeeding it in the sequence: we say it is before it. If something is before some other thing, it could mean both, it stands before it, or it came before it. Why do we have one word to express both: temporal and spatial sequencing? For a good reason, we do not differentiate between them, and we assume that if something is spatially standing before something else, it must also have been there before it time vise. That is paradoxically false.
I agree with all of that, spatial things only exist in past/present/future scenarios according to the position of the observer, which logically must mean that they are simply in different places and not necessarily in different times. Perhaps we could take it further still; once we mentally enter that metaphysical perspective [I visualise it like a mesh with particles at every corner [still]], one particle is only spatially different due to the given observational view giving distance [not a mathematical one]. Not forgetting that information is manifest as particles on the physical plane, so we could ask if observation is the qualia or spiritual side of things. Every particle observes doesn’t it!
Can we see the quality of ‘observation’ within the physical context of a particle?
You guys have a fundamental disagreement because Obe says “Nothing really exists, including the big bang” and you say “spatial things only exist”.
Even a qualified existence is an existence. Obe’s proposition is a self-contradicting tautology. It’s absurd to deny one’s own existence.
So, then whatever that was needed to exist in potentia, needed something Before it, which seems to lead to an eternal universe not one that began at the Big Bang.
What if we are bits of information for a natural computer. You can delete the physical body but as the information that is stored in our brains is energy based. It would change as it is flowing into a new unit.
What if those that claim to remember a past life did not live it but, received the loose energy flow from a deceased unit/ human or animal. Yea animal…not too many humans will admit to really odd shit flowing in their brains. Dreams can get screwy at times. And yea this all sounds impossible but, so does all the other theories to someone some where. A probable mega computer utilizing biology for information storage is just as probable.
What do we mean by, ‘exists’? ~ I am not saying that ‘only spatial things exist’, because I feel they have no definite location and mostly I question the term; ‘physics’, because nothing is entire [except nothing] and so we dont have ‘objects’ on both counts. So there is an agreement of sorts going on, but between philosophers that’s possibly the best we can do.
Moreno
I think that eventually we have to arrive at that for sure. Otherwise we would have to keep adding onto what we’ve already discovered, and that process would be infinite ~ thus we always end up at the eternal, stateless and limitless.
Kriswest
Could be like a zip file perhaps and all the info is gradually getting read. I don’t like that though ~ i’d prefer it if the universe is the zip file being created. Perhaps even that each of our lives mimic that!
then you end up with a world at the end of that process [universe] ~ a somewhat complete one. It would be interesting if all memories are deleted and that kinda is what death is, then something which has the essentiality of ones whole life [the soul?] would not carry the burdens of individual memories.
I suppose that some kind of imprint would be made upon the fabric of the ether, such that one could indeed remember other lives ~ and as you say maybe ones that are not their own.
Right. Some scientists talk about an eternal megaverse of subatomic particles that flicker in and out of existence except when conditions are right for cosmic inflation as in the case of our local universe. But, in any case, the potential for whatever exists must be there before it becomes actual. To exist is to stand out from relative non-being where whatever is possible is potentially present. Traditionally pure actuality is identified with God… en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actus_purus
