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Greek and Roman mythology have the ‘underworld’, derived from the Minoan concept of the ‘underworld’.
Hades… by any-other name, would still be as hot.
Hades, Greek Aïdes (“the Unseen”), in ancient Greek religion… also called Pluto or Pluton (“the Wealthy One” or “the Giver of Wealth”), in later Roman religion [god of their underworlds].
What are the 3 places in the Greek underworld?
According to myth, there were three judges of the dead, who would sentence the soul upon arrival. Tartarus was divided into three parts, The Fields of Punishment, Asphodel Meadows, and the Elysium.
Did the Romans have an underworld?
There were no fixed or enforced beliefs about life after death in ancient Rome. The general consensus was that the deceased lived on in the Underworld.
Still waiting for the Ehrman book. Today I tuned 80.
The problem with the heaven and/or hell beliefs are that they are just that–beliefs. Their in-mind or out of body existence remains controversial. Both places have been experienced during NDEs and during “trips” from psychedelic drugs. This points to the possibility that these places are simply phenomena in the mind caused by brain conditions such as lack of oxygen. The essential question is from where do these images of heaven and hell come? Are they products of religious indoctrination? Are they historical memes? Are they real places outside the mind?
Happy birthday! With regard to NDEs don’t we have the problem of why without oxygen to the brain a person would have any expereince at all let alone an experience that is meaningful in a life encompassing and often life-changing way. The people who experience these also admit that they cannot fully describe them and they fall back of the teaching and imagery of their cultural background for language within which to couch what they perceived. Those of us who have not experienced near death have the challenge of trying to imagine what it was like and we fall back on our cultural backgrounds again for the language and symbols. So heaven and hell are at once available cultural symbols. But they also seem to have archetypal of the collectivee unconscious. How do we sort out which is which? Has someone done a systematic categoriztion of these experiences that would help us sorting them out?
Since stories of reward or punishment in an afterlife appear in the oldest known human writings, they are certainly archetypes. Thus, they would naturally be the subject matter of NDEs, of stories which do not wander far from cultural traditions. In other words, the stories do not tell of unknowns. They are based on the folklore of a given culture. Whether or not they tell of real places is open to debate. I would compare NDEs to lucid dreams. These, too, can have profound effects on the dreamer long after the experience of the dream.
Double post , sorry
Happy Birthday Irrellus.
I bought this after my son raved about it. Have not had time to finish it. Have the first week of June I’d be willing to explore it together if you get it in time:
Near-Death Experiences as Evidence for the Existence of God and Heaven: A Brief Introduction in Plain Language amazon.com/dp/0988304856/re … FYC5GKNF02
Happy belated.
Thanks, Meno.
Thanks for the reference and the birthday wish. The title of the book sounds a bit presumptuous. “Evidence” indeed. I’ll not rule it out until I’ve had a look. If the author can deliver real evidence of the existence of God and of Heaven, I’d be surprised.
Let me know. Not a title I would have entertained before 9/22/05, for sure, so no worries.
If the reference you referred me to is merely a compilation of anecdotes, I can find all that on the web. I do believe NDEs are actual phenomena; I just am wary that they depict actual places because drugs can cause the same effects. But, do drugs reveal actual places or places in the mind only? Since the near death or drug visions are an experience, they can probably only be verified by those who had a similar experience. Still they may not be about actual places. I just don’t know. 
I haven’t read it, but am equally skeptical (despite having seen some … ) so let’s tear it apart & see what’s left standing, shall we?
This is not a modal realistic reality.
There’s an entire dimension just for simulation/imagination that is never manifested into form.
But they are related by similar modes of perception, on various levels, the ones which are not are below and above realization.
Meno.
We have a choice to manifest it into form or not.
Until we do. It’s not form.
Yes and another way to put it is : choose to realize it or not, that is if realization is contingent on forming a modality within which such choice can be made.
So our choice is contingent on a modal form that has not yet been realized ( or made perceptively conscious)
Therefore all forms of such realization have to be pre-conceived, therefore choices such as these are necessarily exclusive and inconceivable. Our choices are by definition exclusively predetermined. The choices are illusions as they are paradoxically necessary,and fallacious.
.
Then
Ec says :
"We have a choice to manifest it into form or not.
Until we do. It’s not form."
Yes, and then it becomes a form even if, a choice is not made, as a necessary illusion that is a form even prior to becoming one.
And finally, such necessary illusions have to reconnect with their assumed reality, to make sense out of their necessity, and de-differentiate reality with illusion (necessarily as a modal requirement.
Therefore the primal difference between reality and illusion is obfuscated.
The same goes as far as heaven and he’ll are concerned.
Doubt becomes dimunitive, the evil genius a necessary part toward realization, and Faust laughs all the way to the bank.
My philosophy chair/professor was beginning to go into categories in a way that made them sound very … I dunno … post hoc. I feel like we barely scratched the surface this semester with Kant (he wasn’t the instructor… not sure if that would have changed things) … except for Kant there are very few presentations. I need cognitive science & philosophy to get married gosh darnit. Or get undivorced. Prototype versus exemplar. And how that also shapes / is the structure of language. Yeah. The mawwiage of analytic and continental I dunno. There is not enough time to process everything.
understanding (yellow knowledge base) requires correct interpretation (red aesthetics)
might be some blue in correct
sorry brain esploded.
How about blue? and yellow 1st buddhic station contentious green( not envy greed etc,) red and transparent the third and who/what is on second but RED. Your brain is esplodin’ mine has been long gone ticket exploded .- but no ticker thanks you so far. AWAY it goes.
4give and 4gotten