I hope someday that all consciousness in the universe will end.
Unfortunately, the universe is full of life, so it ain’t happenin’ any time soon
Life is not special. There an infinite amount of lifeforms (aliens) in the universe.
Westerns dont believe in reincarnation because they look at it backwards. I dont look at it backwards.
The way i see it, life is a curse, you are forced to exist, there an infinite amount of aliens in the universe. Death isn’t an event. Death isn’t an activity. Why would death be an activity? Why would death magically prevent consciousness from finding a new host?
What do souls, phlebotinum, and goobledegook have to do with anything? You need to remember past lives to prove reincarnation exists? What? Souls must exist? God must exist? None of that is required for reincarnation theory. All is Western strawman argument.
I know reincarnation exists because I exist and I am not you. If you claim you exist and you exist that is proof of Consciousness in another body that’s not my own. Therefore it shows Consciousness continues from body to body. There is no big sleep.
You say its 50/50, could be big sleep could be reincarnation. Im saying no its 99% odds of reincarnation. There is no evidence or support why big sleep.
What are you saying? That you big sleep forever while everybody’s elses consciousness goes on? That makes no sense whatsoever. Obviously consciousness will just teleport to the next host.
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Why would anyone choose this garbage world and existence when we could just big sleep forever. Obviously we didn’t choose it we were FORCED to exist.
Very good point. We can assume that after countless incarnations in Elysium, the chain of incarnations as sentient beings would restart. But each cycle would have a goal, the lives in Elysium.
If I exist, then it seems that I am not you and visa versa, however, some claim it’s possible that we are all “one” (however that works). People say all kinds of things and you not being me, doesn’t prove anything about the durability of consciousness after the demise of the body. For all we know, consciousness ends at bodily death just like our memories tell us that consciousness begins at bodily birth. There’s no evidence either way or the other as far as reincarnation is concerned.
sigma5. occams razor. What are the odds that of 100 billion humans you are the very beginning of consciousness. A consciousness that just appeared from thin air, and you had 0 other lives.
Reincarnation is proven by sigma5 and occams razor. If its sigma5 its science.
I had this conversation with @Bob, and he described consciousness as part of a network, perhaps similar to mycelium. Maybe our souls are part of such a network? It got all kinds of neurons firing:
So perhaps physical being is like being the fruit of the network? Like fungi are to the mycellium?
None of that invalidates the first three paragraphs you wrote, but again, the Elysium thing doesn’t fit into how the Universe provides its own balance at all times.
My belief in reincarnation is based on my view of the relationship between awareness and the universe of which we are aware. If we reflect on our awareness of anything, say a clock, if we attend to our experience, where can we draw the line between what is the clock and what is awareness? There is evidently a seamless whole, awareness-of-a-clock. All of our awareness of the universe is like this, a seamless whole we could call being-consciousness. This reality can only change perspectives from life to life
Water reaching paradise, the chain of reincarnation would’nt just restart over again by it’self, no. it needed renewable energy which could be gathered by movement, a modulation of the self with other(s). As the self matures and learns with each successive cycle of rebirth, it gains more recognition of the previous lives.
Not at that point, the point comes with the last stage of reincarnation, where perfection needs to include all past lives, and return to teach it too the Other(s).
What would make them happy, then? What makes one happy is a function of one’s unmet needs, one’s existential threats, etc. Living in Elysium, as you call it, would change us, would change what makes us happy, change our dangers and needs.
Elysium is like Buddhism’s God Realm. The goal is not to have the life of a God, but to have the life and death of the rare human being who transcends the cycle. The extreme happiness of the god realms and the extreme unhappiness of the hell realms render that impossible.
Your notion elegantly bridges teleology and cyclicality, combining linear spiritual development with eternal recurrence. What is missing is a clarification:
Do the cycles repeat identically, or evolve in each iteration?
Is Elysium’s perfection individual (for souls) or collective (for the cosmos)?
Is the metaphysical force prompting the restart karma, choice, cosmic law, or creative will?
As it stands, it outlines a dynamic eschatology and a vision of the afterlife not as cessation or stasis, but as a rhythmic movement through perfection and rebirth.
My idea of consciousness as a mycelial network aligns with emerging philosophical and scientific metaphors for interconnected awareness. This extends naturally to souls forming a vast web, where individual physical forms emerge similar to fungal fruiting bodies from a subterranean mycelium.
Mycelium consists of thread-like hyphae forming vast underground networks that connect plants, transfer nutrients, and enable communication across ecosystems. These networks exhibit fractal patterns, self-similarity at scales, and adaptive decision-making, akin to neural pathways in brains. Fungal fruiting bodies, like mushrooms, represent temporary manifestations above ground, sustained by the hidden mycelial structure.
Philosophers and researchers liken human consciousness to mycelium, portraying thoughts and perceptions as interwoven nodes in a dynamic web rather than isolated sparks. Neural networks in the brain mirror this connectivity, with psychedelics from fungi enhancing links, suggesting evolutionary echoes. This fractal evolution implies collective awareness emerges from individual contributions, much like ecosystem intelligence.
Extending to souls, this model posits individual spirits as “fruiting bodies” of a cosmic mycelium—a unified divine essence linking all beings. Physical bodies then serve as transient expressions, drawing vitality from the eternal network, resonating with your past explorations of quantum entanglement and spiritual unity. Myths of world trees or spirit webs reinforce this interconnected ontology across cultures.
I think if alien intelligence has ever visited, or even colonised this planet, it is probably not in the form we would expect, AI output:
Yes, fungal spores can survive in space, particularly under the conditions of near-Earth orbit and in shielded environments.
Survival in Space Conditions: Experiments, including those on the International Space Station (ISS) and in space exposure facilities like EXPOSE, have demonstrated that fungal spores can survive prolonged exposure to the vacuum and radiation of space. The species Aureobasidium pullulans and Aspergillus niger have been shown to survive after being exposed to open space for two years.
Extreme Radiation Resistance: Fungal spores exhibit remarkable resistance to ionizing radiation. Spores of Aspergillus and Penicillium can survive X-ray doses 200 times higher than the lethal dose for humans. This resilience is attributed to their protective spore coats and low core water content, which minimizes DNA damage.
Survival Mechanisms: The primary factors enabling survival are dehydration and partial lyophilization (freeze-drying) in the vacuum of space, which protects the spores from extreme temperatures and radiation. Even after long exposure, spores retain viability and can resume growth upon return to Earth.
Potential for Adaptation: Some studies indicate that after space exposure, a portion of surviving fungal strains (up to 30% of A. pullulans strains) may develop increased resistance to gamma radiation and reduced sensitivity to chemicals like hydrogen peroxide and chlorine.
Implications: This survival capability poses challenges for planetary protection (preventing Earth contamination of other planets) and raises concerns about mold growth on spacecraft. However, it also opens potential for using fungi in space, such as for biological production of food, medicine, and building materials.
Maybe that’s what the psychedelic effect is for when certain species are consumed, to share or provide access to a new form of consciousness? Maybe the Universe is trying to tell us something?
I did a lot of reading on this when I was writing a sci-fi story (which I didn’t finish) and from my notes, taken from various sources:
Panspermia theory posits that life’s basic units, akin to soil microbes’ resilient spores, drift through space encased in meteorites or ice grains, dormant until habitable worlds provide the right chemistry—volcanic vents, hydrothermal fields, or irradiated pools. Earth’s own fossil record hints at this: 3.7-billion-year-old microbial mats in Greenland suggest rapid emergence post-cooling, implying precursors arrived pre-tuned for replication.
These spacefarers await not just water but the precise electrochemical niches soil microbes still exploit, evolving from prokaryotic simplicity to fungal-plant alliances and beyond.
Soil’s hidden genesis mirrors potential extraterrestrial biospheres: thin interfacial zones where microbes cycle elements, fix energy, and spawn macro-life under extreme fluxes of heat, radiation, or pressure. On Enceladus or Europa, subsurface brines could host analogous communities, greening icy moons into fungal-like networks if phosphorus and nitrogen align—just as they did here aeons ago.
Additionally, the idea that fungi acted as the fulcrum for the evolution of life from the ocean to land is strongly supported by multiple lines of evidence from paleobiology, genetics, and modern experimental studies. It truly is incredible what role fungi have played and continue to play in the universe, let alone on our planet.
I think it’s a theory that doesn’t take a huge leap of the imagination to accept as very plausible. Bombardments have happened throughout Earth’s history; we have been bombarded by rocks and ice that could literally have come from anywhere. If the bombardment happens at around the right time, then bingo.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if this is what really happened? We would all get to be Earthlings, and aliens at the same time.
Yes. This must have happened somewhere else too, maybe it is a relatively common occurrence for hospitable planets to be seeded?
In the story I nearly finished, it was, but where I had difficulty was in describing how the space travellers from earth discovered that they were antibodies to the life forms on that planet and were fended off. After I read Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky in which spiders were the dominant species because a nanovirus accidentally accelerates the evolution of jumping spiders, who become the dominant intelligent species, I was so in awe of his imagination that I put the story to one side.
