^What happens after we die? by Kenneth Udut June 9, 2014
Warning: There's lots more questions than answers following but
I do give my current belief (as of June 9, 2014) at the bottom
Alexander Holgate Monahan showed me an article about the idea
that our consciousness lives on in another Universe, basing it
on the idea of Multiple Universes, first conceived in its modern
form in the 1950s, but which is gaining popularity as a theory
of Quantum Mechanics in the 2010s.
This was my reply.
Well, it's certainly possible. I personally go back and forth on
the idea of Multiple Universes, as its trying to justify
problems with making Quantum Mechanics and Einstein's ideas
about Gravity work together by having new universes spawn
infinitely, for if it's true, it means there's no need for
string theory, etc.
The article does have some factual errors; its more
inspirational than actual. And the theory of multiple universes
goes back to the 50s; so its not a new idea; and there's
evidence of the idea going back even further in the ages of the
philosophers, Eastern religions and such.
This doesn't take away from the basic idea - just that some of
the puzzle pieces aren't quite right.
My personal beliefs? Well, its been shown that bacteria have a
sense of "me" and "not me", since they count the amount of their
own kind and compare it to a count of the "not me" and they wait
until they reach a certain number before acting.
So, just putting it out there, it seems that simply to be alive,
no matter the lifeform, means: a) that we are part of a social
system, whether we realize it or not and b) all life is
conscious.
Now, one of the important idea of physics - one of the greatest
assumptions - is that energy cannot be created or destroyed,
just changes form.
Does our consciousness survive after the neurons stop firing in
our little ball of fat on top of our heads?
Honestly, I don't know.
If in some future date, we manage to build a machine that can go
through all of the quantum states that ever were, it should be
possible to recreate any time in the past.
We would be born again.
Would it be 'us'?
Would you be there to see it?
If the identical layout of the pulses in the brain was recreated
in the center of a Star - or at the edge of a black hole, spread
across like a hologram in that case... would that be "you"?
Would that be "me"? Or another who just happened to resemble you
or me?
Even the most anti-social of us, if we can speak or understand
language, we are or have been social; Pieces of us exist in the
minds of other people.
If three people get together and talk about you, are you there?
Well, to the people who are talking, its as if you are there.
You are very "real" to them, even if you are elsewhere, thinking
about something else.
It's a big question.
Are you "you"? Are "you" the roles you play? Who is reading this
right now - behind those eyes, inside of that brain? In that
body?
If a computer could effectively mimic all of your brainwave
patterns, would THAT also be you? It would think so.
That's why multiple universes are appealing; it eliminates all
of these conundrums and says, "Yes. You're here and also
elsewhere."
In the end, does consciousness survive the death of your body?
I believe versions of your conscious exist, whenever anybody
thinks like you - even if they don't know you, even if it was
thousands of years ago or in a foreign language or thousands of
years in the future.
I don't think similar means the same though. If you replace all
of the parts of a ship while it is at sea until nothing of the
original is left is it the same ship?
It has the same name. You just replaced parts.
Yet if you replace all of the parts, does that suddenly change
it from being a repaired ship to a brand new ship?
Welcome to one of the oldest philosophical questions out there.
It's all about perspective.
Both are true.
You DO live on in the Jesus sort of way, where he says "Wherever
three of you are gathered in my name, I am there." - just like
how we can imagine what its like to be someone else when we see
a movie about them, even if they themselves are long passed on.
When we listen to music, even if its hundreds of years old, if
we get immersed in it, our brainwave states are likely the same
as the composer hundreds of years ago; the composer lives in our
brain because that is the composers brainwave patterns put on
paper, decoded and performed and put in the form of music.
Does Mozart know he lives on?
If enough people believe something is true, does it become true?
Why do we have the urge to convince other people to agree with
us? Why is agreement so pleasurable, besides the brain chemicals
squirting around making us feel happy like a drug?
It's because we see a mirror of ourselves in another.
A part of us lives on within somebody else.
So, whether or not there are multiple universes, we never die.
You will never die.
I will never die.
But will we KNOW it?
Or has time stopped for us at that point?
I don't know.
I believe that all things are true; both that there's nothing
after death and that there is everything after death.
I believe as long as wavelengths are vibrating somewhere that is
similar to our own, we live on.
We may exist in the center of stars, we may reincarnate, we may
pop off to an alternate reality, perhaps a sideways dimension
existing simulataneously with our own but just out of sight. It
may be a form of Heaven. It may be a form of Limbo. It may be a
form or Hell. We may be ghosts! But our body will, at that
moment, cease to function. Future DNA cloning techniques that
perhaps can take into account the patterns that exist in our
axions in the brain MIGHT restore us to body and consciousness;
certainly a science-fictiony plauasability for bodily
resurrection through imagined future technology.
I believe when we die, our consciosuness is spread to different
places, a little bit here, a little bit there, but over the
entirety of the course of Universal Time, we were never born and
we never die.
For we are all one. Once. And we still are.
We became splintered and have been trying to find our way home,
making due with whatever pleasures and distractions there are in
this life.
Just prior to the Big Bang - that moment when the first
imbalance occurred, you and me were both there. So was Earth. So
was all of everything in Time... before there was even such a
dimension as Time.
Our eternalness is right there in every creation story, whether
Christian or Buddhist or Big Bang.
Whether we can REMEMBER our past, however, or anticipate our
future... that's a tricky part.
But I believe, on a subatomic, quantum level, we carry on...
aware, with certainly more than enough space down there to hold
every being that ever lived, in all of the richness and fullness
and awareness that we have ever had.
Will we have senses that give us input? Well, as long as there
are little bucket shapes and little things to fill and move
those bucket in the tiniest gears of continuous universal
movement, yes. I believe there is awareness in all things, all
matter, all energy and even the things we haven't discovered
yet.
We may forget our human past as we carry on.
But we may become aware of much much more.
In our new forms, not tied down by our current nervous systems.
We may see God, we may be reincarnated in a kind of conservation
of complexity (which is not a rule, just something I made up
that sounds good) - we may exist with a body made up of photons
travelling through a star.
But I don't think we ever die.
We can't. We were never really born in the first place.^
