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Go Back   Spiritual Forums > Spirituality & Beliefs > Death & The Afterlife

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  #1  
Old 11-08-2019, 03:27 AM
bribri98 bribri98 is offline
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Can anyone suggest some research papers/studies?

Hi, all!
I've been on a journey reading about consciousness and the afterlife. I'm really on-the-fence and can accept whether there's an afterlife or not. Unfortunately, during my personal research, I've seem to hit a wall and just coming across ridiculous articles for the sake of sensationalism. I love everyone's enthusiasm here regarding their beliefs, and was hoping someone could help me along my journey so I can help myself come to my own conclusions (and anyone else who comes across this).

Please feel free to include anything you deem necessary.

Thanks in advance and happy journey
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  #2  
Old 11-08-2019, 06:12 AM
Starman Starman is offline
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Location: U.S. Southwest
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In my opinion research papers on this subject are inadequate, and I feel that you have to make yourself the subject of any research you might want to do. Still that is not enough because research is objective and the spiritual experience is subjective. Research requires observation and measurement, it also requires being able to repeat what you are researching. All of the research which you have already done may be but a stepping stone for you to go beyond the kind of research you have been doing.

Objective research may give you some idea on different points of views from others regarding consciousness but it can never prove to you that there is and afterlife. If you really want to know you have to leave the arena of beliefs and enter into the arena of experience. Talk with and read about people who have had out-of-body experiences or near death experiences, and then attempt to have your own experience beyond this physical realm.

All I had were beliefs and non-beliefs before I had and actual out-of-body experience, and if nothing more that experience proved to me beyond any doubt that there is life beyond this physical existence. These experiences, and I have had several, came when I was sitting in quiet meditation, and they always came when I least expected them. Expectations can block us and blind us.

The ethereal realm closest to this physical realm is often called “the astral plane” and there are lots of people who attempt to astral project, but to become conscious of the greater spiritual planes of existence, most often it takes a very intimate transformational process on the part of the seeker. We have to make ourselves available to spirit without seeking anything in return. Humility definitely helps. You can only control it by not controlling it; letting go is key, what various religions call “surrender.“ I suggest a spiritual path because reading about it will only take you so far.

The experience can not be measured or observed, you have to become one with it. Any research you do in this regard will be trial and error, and you will come to know what works and what does not work in and enhanced consciousness development endeavor. Your experience will be as unique as you are. Choose a path that speaks to your heart, there are a number of them that are worthy of your attention. The journey is a journey of unfolding your very own consciousness, expanding your very own heart, and the path you choose are the tools which you have chosen to aide you in this. Time is irrelevant but in my opinion starting sooner is better than later.
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  #3  
Old 11-08-2019, 05:07 PM
summer26 summer26 is offline
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“The Spirits’ Book “- Allan Kardec
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  #4  
Old 11-08-2019, 09:21 PM
iamthat iamthat is offline
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Starman puts it very well, as usual. I don't bother with scientific studies. Instead, try reading about out-of-body experiences and near-death experiences written by people who have actually experienced and investigated these states. For example, Robert Monroe, William Buhlman and Robert Peterson. Then try to experience such states for yourself.

Even if you never succeed in having an out-of-body experience, such books provide very persuasive evidence that such states are possible and therefore consciousness can exist and function quite happily when separated from the physical body.

Peace.
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  #5  
Old 12-08-2019, 07:21 AM
Busby Busby is offline
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Once upon a time - many years ago in fact, I was sure that I'd turn into a very wise old man and would be able to explain the mystery this life brings.

I'm 81 now and I haven't a clue about anything.

I do however notice that my body is getting old and my mind is relaxing - now I think that in the near future there will be either blackness or light. I don't need to know anything else. There's nothing I can change.

There's not much I haven't read, heard, seen, listened to, partaken of, experienced or realised. I've spent 72 years looking for an answer, now and again I've thought 'Ahah at last' only to see the futility of that proffered. At the age of 9 I had my first experience of living in a false reality - the first 1/9th of my life. The rest, the other 8/9ths I have spent 'seeking' without finding. There is nothing that we think we know that doesn't at the end lead to utter confusion and complete paradoxes. The only way for some people to get out of this prison is to believe something, no matter how senseless or confusing - personally I believe nothing. We are, I think, eons away from any sort of understanding.

However, and this is for me personally a sort of anchor, I have experienced some extraordinary things. I've mentioned this before that 16 times in my life I have seen 'over the wall', although I prefer to call this over the wall bit a 'change of octave'. I think we are all dependent upon our 'owness' to even get near the immense truths with which we surround ourselves.

We have our five senses and if they all work they connect us to that thing we call mind. We are in our infancy and as children do we need stories to make us happy.

I suggest we have the tools we need to understand the world/life through our physical existence (which has yet to be understood) and our mind which is nothing other than a shared tool which allows us to imagine.

We don't need anything else.

Just get on with life - that's the intention of being.

How you live is up to you.

Here's my kiss to the universe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7rVt6cT8qg
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  #6  
Old 12-08-2019, 07:40 AM
JosephineB JosephineB is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Busby
Once upon a time - many years ago in fact, I was sure that I'd turn into a very wise old man and would be able to explain the mystery this life brings.

I'm 81 now and I haven't a clue about anything.

I do however notice that my body is getting old and my mind is relaxing - now I think that in the near future there will be either blackness or light. I don't need to know anything else. There's nothing I can change.

There's not much I haven't read, heard, seen, listened to, partaken of, experienced or realised. I've spent 72 years looking for an answer, now and again I've thought 'Ahah at last' only to see the futility of that proffered. At the age of 9 I had my first experience of living in a false reality - the first 1/9th of my life. The rest, the other 8/9ths I have spent 'seeking' without finding. There is nothing that we think we know that doesn't at the end lead to utter confusion and complete paradoxes. The only way for some people to get out of this prison is to believe something, no matter how senseless or confusing - personally I believe nothing. We are, I think, eons away from any sort of understanding.

However, and this is for me personally a sort of anchor, I have experienced some extraordinary things. I've mentioned this before that 16 times in my life I have seen 'over the wall', although I prefer to call this over the wall bit a 'change of octave'. I think we are all dependent upon our 'owness' to even get near the immense truths with which we surround ourselves.

We have our five senses and if they all work they connect us to that thing we call mind. We are in our infancy and as children do we need stories to make us happy.

I suggest we have the tools we need to understand the world/life through our physical existence (which has yet to be understood) and our mind which is nothing other than a shared tool which allows us to imagine.

We don't need anything else.

Just get on with life - that's the intention of being.


The more I learn the less I know comes to mind for me anyway.

Busby, those times you saw 'over the wall', what do you think stopped you letting go.
__________________
I salute the Divinity in you.
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  #7  
Old 12-08-2019, 10:20 PM
utopiandreamchild utopiandreamchild is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bribri98
Hi, all!
I've been on a journey reading about consciousness and the afterlife. I'm really on-the-fence and can accept whether there's an afterlife or not. Unfortunately, during my personal research, I've seem to hit a wall and just coming across ridiculous articles for the sake of sensationalism. I love everyone's enthusiasm here regarding their beliefs, and was hoping someone could help me along my journey so I can help myself come to my own conclusions (and anyone else who comes across this).

Please feel free to include anything you deem necessary.

Thanks in advance and happy journey

Neale Donald Walsche. He's a best selling author and also has many videos on YouTube. Conversations with god are his most successful/famous works. Amen
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  #8  
Old 13-08-2019, 10:35 AM
Busby Busby is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2016
Posts: 1,741
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by JosephineBloggs
The more I learn the less I know comes to mind for me anyway.

Busby, those times you saw 'over the wall', what do you think stopped you letting go.

Well, JosephineBloggs, 'letting go' probably has many and various interpretations. So I cannot answer in any way that would make sense to you and also to me.
These are all my personal experiences and pertain directly to (I think) my readiness to keep an open mind about everything. I'd like to add that I find myself to be very fortunate to have had these 'moments', they have substantiated my suspicion that there is a sort of universal intelligence very near at hand. Nor do I think that I have 'been shown' these things but rather that I have been able to 'cross boundaries' according to my state of being - that's the only way I can put it.
I'd like to put it this way. We are all searching for what we commonly call 'the truth', assuming therefore that there is one. But I don't think there is. I think that the world in which each of us lives is reflected, if you like to call it that, by the way we live our lives. We, that is 8 billion of us are collected together in this part of the universe (the newest figures place the number of galaxies at two trillion) because of our similarities. Although these similarities are not at all obvious as we see no other kind. Birds of a feather so to speak. Our appearing in life is due to the melody we are playing in what is our most basic potential - our imagination(s). If you see a violin propped up against a chair on the stage there is no sound until it is picked up and played, then out of nothingness comes life, this 'life' accords to many, many, many varying factors which have no place for discussion here.
If we continue to look upon life as a sort of movement of violin strings then we quickly see that there are mathematical limits which in the case of music we call octaves.
I think that these experiences some of us have (mystical, OBEs, paranormal and so on) are simply those moments when the tune we are playing slips into another octave for a short moment.
Fundamentally we are not souls, spiritual beings in bodies or sons and daughters of a god but are part of an immense, unending, inconceivable and incredulous imagination - one which reflects upon itself.
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  #9  
Old 13-08-2019, 12:29 PM
JosephineB JosephineB is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2019
Location: The green & pleasant land
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Busby
Well, JosephineBloggs, 'letting go' probably has many and various interpretations. So I cannot answer in any way that would make sense to you and also to me.
These are all my personal experiences and pertain directly to (I think) my readiness to keep an open mind about everything. I'd like to add that I find myself to be very fortunate to have had these 'moments', they have substantiated my suspicion that there is a sort of universal intelligence very near at hand. Nor do I think that I have 'been shown' these things but rather that I have been able to 'cross boundaries' according to my state of being - that's the only way I can put it.
I'd like to put it this way. We are all searching for what we commonly call 'the truth', assuming therefore that there is one. But I don't think there is. I think that the world in which each of us lives is reflected, if you like to call it that, by the way we live our lives. We, that is 8 billion of us are collected together in this part of the universe (the newest figures place the number of galaxies at two trillion) because of our similarities. Although these similarities are not at all obvious as we see no other kind. Birds of a feather so to speak. Our appearing in life is due to the melody we are playing in what is our most basic potential - our imagination(s). If you see a violin propped up against a chair on the stage there is no sound until it is picked up and played, then out of nothingness comes life, this 'life' accords to many, many, many varying factors which have no place for discussion here.
If we continue to look upon life as a sort of movement of violin strings then we quickly see that there are mathematical limits which in the case of music we call octaves.
I think that these experiences some of us have (mystical, OBEs, paranormal and so on) are simply those moments when the tune we are playing slips into another octave for a short moment.
Fundamentally we are not souls, spiritual beings in bodies or sons and daughters of a god but are part of an immense, unending, inconceivable and incredulous imagination - one which reflects upon itself.

Thank you for your reply.
__________________
I salute the Divinity in you.
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  #10  
Old 15-08-2019, 04:37 AM
bribri98 bribri98 is offline
Newbie ;)
Join Date: Jun 2019
Posts: 6
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Starman
In my opinion research papers on this subject are inadequate, and I feel that you have to make yourself the subject of any research you might want to do. Still that is not enough because research is objective and the spiritual experience is subjective. Research requires observation and measurement, it also requires being able to repeat what you are researching. All of the research which you have already done may be but a stepping stone for you to go beyond the kind of research you have been doing.

Objective research may give you some idea on different points of views from others regarding consciousness but it can never prove to you that there is and afterlife. If you really want to know you have to leave the arena of beliefs and enter into the arena of experience. Talk with and read about people who have had out-of-body experiences or near death experiences, and then attempt to have your own experience beyond this physical realm.

All I had were beliefs and non-beliefs before I had and actual out-of-body experience, and if nothing more that experience proved to me beyond any doubt that there is life beyond this physical existence. These experiences, and I have had several, came when I was sitting in quiet meditation, and they always came when I least expected them. Expectations can block us and blind us.

The ethereal realm closest to this physical realm is often called “the astral plane” and there are lots of people who attempt to astral project, but to become conscious of the greater spiritual planes of existence, most often it takes a very intimate transformational process on the part of the seeker. We have to make ourselves available to spirit without seeking anything in return. Humility definitely helps. You can only control it by not controlling it; letting go is key, what various religions call “surrender.“ I suggest a spiritual path because reading about it will only take you so far.

The experience can not be measured or observed, you have to become one with it. Any research you do in this regard will be trial and error, and you will come to know what works and what does not work in and enhanced consciousness development endeavor. Your experience will be as unique as you are. Choose a path that speaks to your heart, there are a number of them that are worthy of your attention. The journey is a journey of unfolding your very own consciousness, expanding your very own heart, and the path you choose are the tools which you have chosen to aide you in this. Time is irrelevant but in my opinion starting sooner is better than later.

Well, first, thanks for response. Sorry for formatting as I'm on mobile. Coming from a scientific AND spiritual background, something as simple as NDEs & OBEs can easily be chalked up to just brain stuff. They're not verifiable, can be easily reproduced, and your brain does wonky things, we can even implant fake memories. They're not reliable, so basing my beliefs off of that, for myself, wouldn't make sense.

In terms of everything else and spirituality, I've had my own experiences in life. I don't deny the possibility of an existence outside of ours. There absolutely could be more dimensions than our brain can even comprehend. The universe is a strange place. Science can not test the metaphysical. It's impossible. But you can absolutely use your scientific knowledge and apply it to something such as religion, spirituality or the afterlife. It's interesting really. I'll touch on that later in another post! Consciousness is extremely important in terms of an afterlife, and as we learn more about consciousness and if it truly originates in the brain, or if our brains are just receivers, is just as, if not more, important.

Either way, as humans, we're all on our own in terms of spirituality. It's a path you have to discover yourself. In the end, we could all be right, we could all be wrong. I'm not too worried or focused on it, but food for thought is always nice.
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