What Happens When You Die?

[godnotgod]

We are assembled.
As assemblies we can be taken apart.

We've been over this before. That we are 'assembled' is only your fantasy. We are not mechanical wind-up dolls, machines, or chemical factories, as some like to think. It is quite obvious that we are grown, not made. We are conscious, organic beings.

'Fear not anyone who would harm the flesh. Fear instead, He who can rend the soul'....
So I've read....somewhere.

You've 'read a lot of things'....somewhere. But have you experienced them directly?

 

[Nakosis]

You've 'read a lot of things'....somewhere. But have you experienced them directly?

I've experienced things directly which has caused me to question what others have written.

I suspect what some have written is a result of direct experience. The means of communication however, the Bible, has been translated and edited by vested interests of which there is no certainty that the authority of direct experienced was involved.

Without direct experience, what resource do we have available to us from which to question the "authority" of others? What resource do we have to question what we've ourselves have imagined the "truth" to be?

 

[godnotgod]

I've experienced things directly which has caused me to question what others have written.

I suspect what some have written is a result of direct experience. The means of communication however, the Bible, has been translated and edited by vested interests of which there is no certainty that the authority of direct experienced was involved.

Without direct experience, what resource do we have available to us from which to question the "authority" of others? What resource do we have to question what we've ourselves have imagined the "truth" to be?

Of course, direct experience can be misleading as well, if our view is not yet clear. This is the point of meditative practice, which can lead to such clarity. This clarity does not involve an observer of the observed. There is only pure observation itself. Subject and object have merged into one.

 

[Thief]

We've been over this before. That we are 'assembled' is only your fantasy. We are not mechanical wind-up dolls, machines, or chemical factories, as some like to think. It is quite obvious that we are grown, not made. We are conscious, organic beings.

You've 'read a lot of things'....somewhere. But have you experienced them directly?

I think...therefore I am.

We've been over any of this....a lot.
And yes we are chemical....mechanical....and assembled.

You can use the word grown if you care to.

And the flesh will disassemble.
Dust we are.

I shall continue in spirit.

You apparently have no such inclination.

 

[godnotgod]

I think...therefore I am.

We've been over any of this....a lot.
And yes we are chemical....mechanical....and assembled.

You can use the word grown if you care to.

And the flesh will disassemble.
Dust we are.

I shall continue in spirit.

You apparently have no such inclination.

Because you choose to continue in spirit, you cannot avoid to continue as dust, and round and round and round you go in the endless fatuity of The Wheel.

You see spirit and flesh as being in opposition, and because you do, to cling to one, is to cling to the other. Ewwwww! Sticky! Gooey!

Assembly/disassembly implies an assembler/dismantler. There is no such entity, except for the ones you fantasize on in your beliefs.

And NO, the flesh does NOT disassemble! That is ridiculous! It undergoes consumption/decomposition via organic and inorganic elements.

Goodbye, Thief. Good Luck with your little Dust Devil that will follow you into eternity.

 

[Thief]

Because you choose to continue in spirit, you cannot avoid to continue as dust, and round and round and round you go in the endless fatuity of The Wheel.

You see spirit and flesh as being in opposition, and because you do, to cling to one, is to cling to the other. Ewwwww! Sticky! Gooey!

Assembly/disassembly implies an assembler/dismantler. There is no such entity, except for the ones you fantasize on in your beliefs.

And NO, the flesh does NOT disassemble! That is ridiculous! It undergoes consumption/decomposition via organic and inorganic elements.

Goodbye, Thief. Good Luck with your little Dust Devil that will follow you into eternity.

Your lack of faith is noted.

 

[atanu]

16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh.
17 For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh;
for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please.
18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law.
Galatians 5

The problem here is that what is deemed 'spirit' is seen as distinct from 'flesh', where there is no such distinction in actual reality. This distinction is held only within the mind, but is further seen as being in conflict one with the other. It is this inner conflict, born of ignorance and fear of one's own nature, from which the outward projections of heaven and hell, Jesus and Satan, Good and Evil, emanate. People who are enlightened do not have this kind of conflict.

I think this is wrong. Without realising the distinction between Sprit and Flesh first, there cannot be a realisation that Consciousness is all.

 

[Nakosis]

Of course, direct experience can be misleading as well, if our view is not yet clear. This is the point of meditative practice, which can lead to such clarity. This clarity does not involve an observer of the observed. There is only pure observation itself. Subject and object have merged into one.

That's a little scary. Once the mind has become aware through direct experience I'm always worried that imagination will take over. It's not always easy to separate imagination and wishful thinking from actual experience.

I agree it takes a lot of practice and a lot of mistakes. Initially lots of mistakes.

 

[godnotgod]

I think this is wrong. Without realising the distinction between Sprit and Flesh first, there cannot be a realisation that Consciousness is all.

Consciousness precedes the mind, which is responsible for the discrimination between spirit and flesh. One does not realize consciousness with mind; one realizes mind with consciousness.

 

[godnotgod]

That's a little scary. Once the mind has become aware through direct experience I'm always worried that imagination will take over. It's not always easy to separate imagination and wishful thinking from actual experience.

Without the presence of mind, there can be no such imagination, but consciousness is present throughout. When I say 'direct experience', I mean via consciousness, which is direct experience without thought; without mind. When you suddenly fall into a cold mountain lake, your direct experience that the water is cold occurs without thought; without mind. Mind's thought then follows immediately afterward. The same is true of, say, burning one's finger on a hot stove. The immediate direct experience is only 'Ouch!', followed with the mind's thought that 'Oh! I burned my finger!'.

 

[atanu]

Consciousness precedes the mind, which is responsible for the discrimination between spirit and flesh. One does not realize consciousness with mind; one realizes mind with consciousness.

Yes. Mind devoid of concepts is consciousness. The route to realise that there is no real individual mind and real individual I is through realisation of the true nature of I. I let Shri Ramana speak:

Self-enquiry-theory

Since he upheld the notion that the Self is the only existing reality he regarded the ‘I’-thought as a mistaken assumption which has no real existence of its own. He explained its appearance by saying that it can only appear to exist by identifying with an object. When the thoughts arise the ‘I’-thought claims ownership of them- ‘I think’, ‘I believe’, ‘I want’, ‘I am acting’ – but there is no separate ‘I’-thought that exists independently of the objects that it is identifying with. It only appears to exist as a real continuous entity because of the incessant flow of identification which are continually taking place. Almost all of these identifications can be traced back to an initial assumption that the ‘I’ is limited to the body, either as an owner-occupant or co-extensive with its physical form. This ‘I am the body’ idea is the primary source of all subsequent wrong identifications and its dissolution is the principal aim of self-enquiry.


Sri Ramana Maharshi maintained that this tendency towards self-limiting identifications could be checked by trying to separate the subject ‘I’ from the objects of thought which it identified with. ......

 

[Thief]

Yes. Mind devoid of concepts is consciousness. The route to realise that there is no real individual mind and real individual I is through realisation of the true nature of I. I let Shri Ramana speak:

Not buying it.

I think.....therefore I am.

And God has made the same pronouncement.

'I' believe.....

I AM!...and.... 'Let there be light!....is synonymous and identical.

There is one Creator.
If He fails to say...I AM...the rest of us cannot do so.

but we do.....a lot.
The 7billion other individual on this planet appear to be evidence.

 

[atanu]

Not buying it.

I think.....therefore I am.

I am ... So I think variously.

(I would say that you have got it reverse. Without existence-consciousness there is no thought, no mind, and no individual self. But the existence-consciousness does not depend on individual's thinking. YMMV).

 

[atanu]

Originally posted by Godnotgod:

The problem here is that what is deemed 'spirit' is seen as distinct from 'flesh', where there is no such distinction in actual reality. This distinction is held only within the mind, but is further seen as being in conflict one with the other. It is this inner conflict, born of ignorance and fear of one's own nature, from which the outward projections of heaven and hell, Jesus and Satan, Good and Evil, emanate. People who are enlightened do not have this kind of conflict.

I think this is wrong. Without realising the distinction between Sprit and Flesh first, there cannot be a realisation that Consciousness is all.

To illustrate let me use two verses from Gita.

13.2 The Blessed Lord said: This body, O son of Kunti, is called the Field; that which takes cognisance of the Field is called the Knower of the Field by the sages.

13.35. They who with the eye of knowledge perceive this difference between the Field and the Knower of the Field and the liberation of beings from Prakriti, they attain to the Supreme.

........

So, discrimination between the field (flesh) and the knower of the field (soul) is an essential step, IMO.

 

[godnotgod]

To illustrate let me use two verses from Gita.

13.2 The Blessed Lord said: This body, O son of Kunti, is called the Field; that which takes cognisance of the Field is called the Knower of the Field by the sages.

13.35. They who with the eye of knowledge perceive this difference between the Field and the Knower of the Field and the liberation of beings from Prakriti, they attain to the Supreme.

........

So, discrimination between the field (flesh) and the knower of the field (soul) is an essential step, IMO.

OK, but the discrimination is not made by thought through mind, but by seeing through consciousness. Your Gita reference 13.35 specifically points to 'the eye of knowledge', not the mind of knowledge.

 

[godnotgod]

Not buying it.

I think.....therefore I am.

And God has made the same pronouncement.

'I' believe.....

I AM!...and.... 'Let there be light!....is synonymous and identical.

There is one Creator.
If He fails to say...I AM...the rest of us cannot do so.

but we do.....a lot.
The 7billion other individual on this planet appear to be evidence.

NO! You're making up more crap to make the tail wag the dog!

First of all, 'I Am', and 'Let there be light' have nothing to do with one another. Where do you get this zany notion from?

Secondly, Descartes' 'I think, therefore I am' is NOT the same statement as Yeshu's 'I Am'. The former refers to temporal existence in time and space; the latter to eternal being transcendent of time and space.

Thirdly, it has already been pointed out to you by Kierkegaard that Descartes began his statement with the erroneous assumption that 'I' already existed, to wit:

Søren Kierkegaard's critique The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard provided a critical response to the cogito.Kierkegaard argues that the cogito already presupposes the existence of "I", and therefore concluding with existence is logically trivial. Kierkegaard's argument can be made clearer if one extracts the premise "I think" into two further premises:

"x" thinks
I am that "x"
Therefore I think
Therefore I am
​

Where "x" is used as a placeholder in order to disambiguate the "I" from the thinking thing.
Here, the cogito has already assumed the "I"'s existence as that which thinks. For Kierkegaard, Descartes is merely "developing the content of a concept", namely that the "I", which already exists, thinks.
Kierkegaard argues that the value of the cogito is not its logical argument, but its psychological appeal: a thought must have something that exists to think the thought. It is psychologically difficult to think "I do not exist". But as Kierkegaard argues, the proper logical flow of argument is that existence is already assumed or presupposed in order for thinking to occur, not that existence is concluded from that thinking.

Fourthly, the Carpenter pointed to the Kingdom of God that is within everyone, and that is the same Kingdom as 'I Am' to which he alluded to about himself. What you are failing to understand is that the gifts of the Incarnation are not exclusive to the historical Jesus alone, but freely available to all of mankind. Vive la diference between St. Paul's warped Christianity and Buddhism.

STOP MAKING UP CRAP TO FIT YOUR WARM FUZZY BELIEFS!:slap:

 

[atanu]

OK, but the discrimination is not made by thought through mind, but by seeing through consciousness. Your Gita reference 13.35 specifically points to 'the eye of knowledge', not the mind of knowledge.

Yes, sure. Discrimination between the Field and the its Knower cannot happen at thinking mind level.

The point is that the Knower of the Field must be known to be distinct from the Field.

 

[godnotgod]

Yes, sure. Discrimination between the Field and the its Knower cannot happen at thinking mind level.

The point is that the Knower of the Field must be known to be distinct from the Field.

In a way, that is not unlike saying that Brahman and maya are, in reality, one, is it not?
The Buddhists say: 'Nirvana and Samsara are one'.

The body is only distinct as a temporal manifestation of the Knower. (?)...but in reality, the body is a manifestation of the Knower (?) and so are actually one. (?)

What say you?

 

[atanu]

In a way, that is not unlike saying that Brahman and maya are, in reality, one, is it not?
The Buddhists say: 'Nirvana and Samsara are one'.

The body is only distinct as a temporal manifestation of the Knower. (?)...but in reality, the body is a manifestation of the Knower (?) and so are actually one. (?)

What say you?

Not really, IMO. Brahman does not depend on mAyA, which however, comes into play solely because of Brahman.

It is like shadow which happens due to light.

 

[Muffled]

The resurrection of Jesus is not a proven fact. To be honest the existence of Jesus alone is sketchy.

I believe there are very few proven facts including evolution which is still a theory and probably not factual except in someone's fantasy but the Resurrection is the word of God and one either believes God or one doesn't.