Demonstration of existence after death:

Originally Posted by arive nan

Individual conscious awareness of things comes and goes and constantly changes...One minute you're annoyed by the car alarm that's going off, the next you spill coffee on yourself and though the car alarm is still going off it is no longer in your conscious awareness's focus because all your focus is on the pain in your skin.

You're describing "objects of awareness" rather than awareness itself. Sure, the objects of awareness change, i.e., what my awareness is focused on can change. Awareness itself does not change, except maybe at death.

Originally Posted by arive nan

We perceive having an individual, separate consciousness, but some come to realize that this separateness is an illusion.
It is possible to be aware on some level to some extent that this perception of separateness is an illusion of the ego while still perceiving the illusion it as we go through our daily lives. It is also possible to see from the perspective of not being separate.

Your using "perspective" as a synonym with philosophy, as in a philosophical world view. This is not what I mean by the term perspective. This is the confusion that I was hoping to avoid.

One can hold the philosophy that we are theoretically not separate. That's fine. I would agree. Fundamentally we are not separate, but in order for experience to occur, awareness must become individuated as a point-of-awareness.

The bottom line is this: experientially we are separate. You do not experience my awareness and I don't experience your awareness, whether that is an "illusion" or not, that is what happens. You can't experience being me and I can't experience being you no matter how hard we try. No matter how much we tell ourselves that we are oneness, your awareness will still experience from an individuated point-of-perspective.

For instance, when a person says that they experienced "infinite unlimited awareness", that experience, however they want to interpret it, was still experienced from an individuated point-of-perspective. This is obvious.

If awareness wasn't individuated in some way from that which it is conscious of, there would be absolutely no experience at all.

It's like one of my favorite authors tells to be people that say they want to experience oneness, "You want the experience of Oneness? Go to sleep and when you are in the deepest dreamless sleep, you'll have experienced oneness."

Originally Posted by arive nan

Contrast is not necessary, and is just an illusion.

Contrast is imperative. All awareness depends upon contrast. In the simplest of examples- how are you aware of white shapes on a static white background? This is axiomatic.

Originally Posted by arive nan

It is possible to be consciously aware of being one with the consciousness of the universe.

Philosophically/intellectually, yes. Experientially? No.

Feeling like you're "at one with the universe" is not what I am talking about here. This is a vague, cliche catch-phrase of pop spirituality and has nothing to do with an actual experience of some supposed state of unlimited infinite awareness. In this state there would be no contrast, no objects of awareness, and awareness wouldn't even be aware of itself. Thus, no awareness at all. The state of dreamless sleep...and possibly death.

Death may indeed be the dreamless sleep that never ends.

Someone who has had the experience will not be convinced that the experience is only philosophical/theoretical. That's like saying to someone who has had an NDE that such an experience is only theoretical. They had the experience. That's how they know it is possible to experience it.

And, yes, during that experience there is no contrast. Yet there is still consciousness. Lots of it. Everywhere.

Originally Posted by LIFE

You're describing "objects of awareness" rather than awareness itself. Sure, the objects of awareness change, i.e., what my awareness is focused on can change. Awareness itself does not change, except maybe at death.

My awareness changes dramatically when I go to sleep. It isn't just the contents that change, but the quality of the experience. It just isn't the same thing, and even seems to disappear entirely (or almost entirely) aside perhaps from dreaming.

One can hold the philosophy that we are theoretically not separate. That's fine. I would agree. Fundamentally we are not separate, but in order for experience to occur, awareness must become individuated as a point-of-awareness.

Agreed. If awareness exists after death, it isn't "my" awareness (from my individuated viewpoint), but only the newly arising awareness of others from their individuated viewpoints. So, perhaps there is life after death, but not necessarily one's own.

To put it another way, awareness may continue to arise for other individuals just as it arose for one's own body. Perhaps there is a continuation after death of a sort, but only in a sense that awareness simply continues to be generated for other vantagepoints. Nothing of one's personality or vantagepoint necessarily continues.


eudaimonia,

Mark

Originally Posted by Eudaimonist

If awareness exists after death, it isn't "my" awareness (from my individuated viewpoint), but only the newly arising awareness of others from their individuated viewpoints. So, perhaps there is life after death, but not necessarily one's own. To put it another way, awareness may continue to arise for other individuals just as it arose for one's own body. Perhaps there is a continuation after death of a sort, but only in a sense that awareness simply continues to be generated for other vantagepoints. Nothing of one's personality or vantagepoint necessarily continues.

Yes, that is what I am wondering. If this is the case, then death is very much real for the one that dies. If you do not experience the next arising of that awareness, just as you don't experience your neighbor's awareness, then all of the suppositions that death is truly the permanent and irrevocable end of experience/awareness are founded. It would make no difference whether awareness was obliterated outright with death or whether it was transferred to another vantage point that you wouldn't experience. Either way, death would be eternal nothingness.

Originally Posted by LIFE

Yes, that is what I am wondering. If this is the case, then death is very much real for the one that dies. If you do not experience the next arising of that awareness, just as you don't experience your neighbor's awareness, then all of the suppositions that death is truly the permanent and irrevocable end of experience/awareness are founded.

Right, though now we get into the tricky question of just what "you" means in this context. "You" seems to include everything associated with your individual psyche, such as your memories, personality, character, etc. However, does "you" include awareness? Do we "own" our awareness like personal property, or like an eternal soul? Certainly, we are aware, but awareness arises in us while we live, and in others after we are dead.

If we are not asking if our personalities survive death, but if awareness survives death, it may be that awareness does "continue" in the sense that it continues to be generated elsewhere.

It would make no difference whether awareness was obliterated outright with death or whether it was transferred to another vantage point that you wouldn't experience. Either way, death would be eternal nothingness.

For one's individuated vantagepoint, yes. The really tricky question is whether or not the existence of awareness in others means that awareness might in some sense contunue. And I'm assuming here that awareness is not an entity like a soul, but is created in every new moment.


eudaimonia,

Mark

Originally Posted by Eudaimonist

Right, though now we get into the tricky question of just what "you" means in this context. "You" seems to include everything associated with your individual psyche, such as your memories, personality, character, etc. However, does "you" include awareness? Do we "own" our awareness like personal property, or like an eternal soul? Certainly, we are aware, but awareness arises in us while we live, and in others after we are dead.

Like I said in an earlier post, I am not speaking about a point-of-awareness in terms of anything like a personality, character, memories, etc. These are all mutable. These can all radically transform while the "I" remains rather static. There is clearly no fixed personality. For instance, earlier in life you may have been very negative and had a bitter personality. Later in life, you may have had an experience that changed your personality. The old personality is gone (dead) yet you have lived on. The sense of "I" as point-of-awareness (distinct from others' awarenesses) has remained intact regardless of how one's personality, character, emotion, body, opinions, etc dissolve away and become something different.

Originally Posted by Eudaimonist

If we are not asking if our personalities survive death, but if awareness survives death, it may be that awareness does "continue" in the sense that it continues to be generated elsewhere.

As I've said, you can still have a sense of "I" even if your personality changes radically. If you decide to completely turn your life around in terms of how you interact with people, the old "you" is gone. That personality is dead, yet you continue to live on. It all happened quite seamlessly for you. Awareness did not temporarily drop off from that loss of the old personality and remain suspended, waiting to arise when the new personality was fully formed. The sense of "I", of a continuation of awareness, remained intact.

If awareness is generated elsewhere after death and is not experienced, just as you don't experience another's awareness, then the results are the same as utter annihilation. In practice, whether your awareness is obliterated or becomes something that is not experienced, the end of experience is the end result. Nothingness would be each of our ends. Not an experience of nothingness, as though that is some sort of experience. Just nothingness, period.

Originally Posted by Eudaimonist

And I'm assuming here that awareness is not an entity like a soul, but is created in every new moment.

If it is created in every moment, then you are dying and being reborn in every moment. Yet, what is reborn is not something you don't experience, like another person's awareness. It remains "your" awareness, so to speak.

Originally Posted by arive nan

Someone who has had the experience will not be convinced that the experience is only philosophical/theoretical...during that experience there is no contrast. Yet there is still consciousness. Lots of it. Everywhere.

At the moment this experience happens to someone, does it also happen to everyone? Does every being in ever possible universe simultaneously experience the same thing that this person experiences?

No?

So this is experienced by this someone, without it happening to everyone else at the same time?

So they experienced it from an individuated point-of-awareness.

Originally Posted by LIFE

The sense of "I" as point-of-awareness (distinct from others' awarenesses) has remained intact regardless of how one's personality, character, emotion, body, opinions, etc dissolve away and become something different.

Then we have a different model of awareness. For me, awareness is not something that continues like a solid line on a piece of paper. It's more like a dotted line. In other words, awareness arises in "flickers", not as something strictly continuous. It may seem continuous, but this is an illusion.

If awareness is not (IMV) like a continuous "thing", this opens up the theoretical possibility of distinguishing between personality and awareness, and considering that while personality may cease in death, awareness might not.

If awareness is generated elsewhere after death and is not experienced

But awareness is always experienced, by definition.

just as you don't experience another's awareness, then the results are the same as utter annihilation.

I do see what you are saying, and I actually lean in your direction on this issue in terms of what I find fully convincing (in my gut). I realize that I'm being speculative. However, I don't think that it is an airtight conclusion that just because we don't experience another person's POV from our own, that awareness for us ceases at death. Yes, it ceases for our POV, but our POV becomes "undefined" at death ("you" become undefined), and not necessarily nonexistent, which I think requires the view that awareness is continuous like a line, or a "thing", or a "soul". There seems to be a soul-premise in the usual death-as-permanent view, even if one is a naturalistic atheist who does not believe in supernatural souls.

If it is created in every moment, then you are dying and being reborn in every moment.

Yes! Precisely my point. And it precisely because of that curious feature of that model of consciousness that awareness doesn't necessarily end at death. If we consider ourselves to continue through our lives, even though we are in a sense dying and being reborn in every moment, such that we are constituted not by one POV, but by millions of POVs, then why is this dotted line of POVs absolutely distinct from other POVs?

Yet, what is reborn is not something you don't experience

But then who or what is "you" in this model? It's not quite the same thing as in the "continuous line" model.

I'm not suggesting, btw, that in death we become one specific other POV, or that "we" experience all POVs simultaneously, but that we become "undefined", and awareness continues, as before, in all distinct POVs. It's a mind-blowing concept, but I can't quite rule it out. It's the only model of an afterlife that I find even remotely plausible.


eudaimonia,

Mark

Originally Posted by LIFE

At the moment this experience happens to someone, does it also happen to everyone? Does every being in ever possible universe simultaneously experience the same thing that this person experiences?

Everyone is the same consciousness all the time. That doesn't change. But awareness does change. Awareness as humans or egos that buy into the illusion of separateness experience it is something that constantly changes. Sometimes our egos have no awareness at all. But in spite of that, when we wake up again it seems that our conscious awareness is a continuation of the same one that was there before.

If an ego becomes aware that it is an illusion, and breaks past this illusion, that is when such an experience takes place. But during that it becomes obvious that there is just one consciousnesses that everything is a part of and that this is true whether those perspectives that perceive the illusion of separateness are aware of it or not. This one consciousness is conscious of itself while being itself. There doesn't have to be something separate from itself for this to happen.

Originally Posted by arive nan

Everyone is the same consciousness all the time.

I would agree all existence in interconnected and interdependent. Yet, we clearly have distinct awarenesses.

You can't experience my experience, first hand, and I can't experience yours.

Do you deny this?

I find that in religion/spirituality, people tend to gravitate to "either/or" ends of the spectrum, when in fact, usually things are "both/and."

We are one and we are also separate. Seems like a paradox, huh? Welcome to the language of the mystics.

It is precisely this separation within oneness that allows the "one" to experience itself.

From another post of mine:

There are certainly two "I"s [in each person]

"i" in terms of my body, personality, memories, collection of personal experiences, etc. This "i" will eventually dissolve. Identity is impermament and we put on and take off identities like clothing.

and...

"I" in terms of an individual perceiver. The fundamental "I". This has nothing to do with identity, which is fleeting.

The only way infinite, undifferentiated consciousness can possibly experience itself is through its expression as a finite and differentiated perceiver. Differentiated in the sense that "I" am a particular, and therefore limited, point-of-awareness. Limitation is what makes perception, and thus experience, possible.

That is what often hangs people up. They think that once they die or achieve nirvana, they will achieve some sort of unlimited perception. There can be no experience of infinite, unlimited perception.

Try to pick out the white dot on a white piece of paper. You can't. You can't perceive the dot. It is contrast (i.e., differentiation) the makes perception possible. Likewise, if there is no differentiation between a point-of-perception and that which is perceived, there will be no perception. There would be no movement in the dance that is existence.

And there is the irony- even though Everything is your unlimited Self, it can only be experienced from and through limitation.