Proof There is an Afterlife

Terry, I agree completely with your devastating observation that the mind is affected by alzhiemers, drugs, trauma, etc.. Fortune's responses are totally inconsistent with all of our experience with "mind" as we know it. When we do something to the physical brain we will most likely alter its manifestations in consciousness. Both of you, however, ignore the point I've made about the ultimate nature of Reality . It is fundamentally something of the nature of Mind. Not mind as we experience it, but it is a kind of Intelligence and Consciousness, but not as we experience it. We are micro and culturally refracted expressions of universal Intelligence and Consciousness. We can't imagine that a rock is conscious or that Nature is intelligent when the rock just lies there and nature it generates gross mutations and Down Syndrome. I can't either. I DO feel, however, that at the most microlevel nature of the rock and all "things" there is (fundamentally as it were) a form of Mind. And the universal intelligence (manifested in part in the regularities of Nature, as we know it) goes beyond OUR conception of what is a rational organization of Nature. At the very least do keep in mind that this very discussion of the primacy of the physical, i.e., brain over consciousness, is a conscious experience. Our discussion about, even our belief in the primacy of the physical, is a form of Minding.
It took me years to understand Buddhism's principle that at bottom all is Mind. In order to grasp this principle I had to cease equating Mind with mind. Man is the measure of all things, but only within our human realm. There is a Universal Realm where our True Mind lives. We ARE the Cosmos, and our little human world is an expression of it, but we must not identify ourselves ONLY with that human world. To identify with the Cosmic Mind is the nature of true Religion, and it has nothing to do with beliefs, faith and Morality; it has to do with insight and joy.
I realize that my perspective is no more consistent with your experience tha is that of Fortune. That's unfortunate. But I'm sure Fortune would make the same lament. It's all a matter of perspective.

Lament you say? Ay, I lament. I lament the fact that neither you, JLN, nor Terry seem to remember what I said when I first posted on this topic (woe is me). I said, if you remember, that it all depends on what you mean by a soul.

JLN, you say that my responses were inconsistent with our experiences with 'mind' as we know it. You then went on to point out that mind as we know it is not at all the same as mind as you know it. We aren't all Buddhists ya know.

Personally, I wasn't even talking about the mind. I was talking about the soul. In my education (not my faith, just my background) the soul has always been presented as something apart from the physical body, even from the mind.

So, like I said, busting up yer 'ead aint gonna make a 'ell of a lota difference, if ya look at it that way.

Uh, yeah, which means that though Alzheimer patients brains may lose the information stored within, the soul is unnaffected. See? And no, I can't prove that, but you can't disprove it either (I dares ya ta try!).

(Apologies to all for the awful pirate lingo. Never mind this if you didn't notice it)

In my imagination, a soul unattached to a mind is pure sensation. A soul surviving the body would in that context know nothing, have no need to survive.

Hmmm, interesting viewpoint. So, in your imagination, is the soul susceptible to the ills of the body? Or is it immortal and invulnerable as my dear mama would like me to think?

Actually, I don't see that there is one at all - in my imagination.

Logically; just because every person ever born so far has died, is no proof that YOU will die. (although the odds are rather lopsided)

Let's say that someone dies from suffocation.

All their parts are still there (brain, heart, liver, etc. ) but still the person is dead. Even if we repair the damage: death. So the question is: what is missing? Soul? Life "force"?

There aint no soul. Its just a hot-air balloon, a hyper-inflation of the ego that doesn't want to die.

Not Too Swift is pretty swift (in his last post): "a hyper-inflation of the ego that doesn't want to die." That says it for me. It is the gasification of the self/ego/body/mind, a hopeful immortalization of the ego.

If the word, soul, does refer to anything in reality, it would be (for me) the Cosmic Mind, or as some people call it the World Soul. I might say that I do not HAVE a soul, but that I AM a soul (if I were accept the dualism of body and soul, I would say that I'm not a body WITH a soul, but a soul with a body--I can't say why). But if there is a soul we all have the same soul. It is our unified Reality--Cosmic or Universal Consciousness. But remember, this has nothing to do with our little mind, our ego-centered consciousness. That is only one of an infinity of manifestations of Cosmic/Universal Soul.
But as Fortune states, this is not something one can prove or falsify. It just feels right for me. I intuit that such is so. I hope you enjoy your intuitions as much. So long as we don't try to force our perspectives onto others.

So, then, what is missing?

What do you mean, John. It's late and I'm dense.

Borg Technology!

fresco:
I totally agree.....the existence of an afterlife would not change our life in the slightest....
even the very religious believers in a heaven do
not show any anxiety to get where they think they are going.
To add to your statement, the existence of a God would not change our life either.....our life would be the same because obviously if there was a God up there now, our life would still be the same as it is this very moment.
(Just an existential reminder from Sartre)

I'm not 100% sure on this...lets say somehow you received a "vistitation" that "convinced" you that there is an afterlife, and the quality of your afterlife is based on your actions from this point forward. Lets say this visitation included the idea that your afterlife was based on your good works in this life. (I'm just supposing here...I am not a religious fanatic).

I realize this is a lot of assumptions. Anyway, assuming all of the above was true, I think it would change the behavior of some humans. It wouldn't necessarily "change their lives," but it might change their choices and actions. ?

JLN :
It is difficult to follow your argument that unless you stop equating 'mind with Mind' one will
not understand the cosmic M(m)ind. A mind is a mind is a mind.....and a Mind is a Mind is a Mind..
and if the latter is different than the former then we are talking about something we know nothing about. Unless , ofcourse, we believe that this all
encompassing entity you refer to as the Mind contains all the minds in our world, in our Cosmos.
My argument is obviously an attempt at
returning your idealistic perspective to a materialistic one, which ofcourse represents nothing new in our continuing interchange on the
key difference in our approach to our subjective
realities.
As you can see I fully support edgarblythe's approach to our completely "soulless"
existence,comprising of a body of matter (which
includes our brain matter ), all of which terminates
without further ado at its death on this planet earth,
after its natural evolvement thereon.
I do not see the necessity of adopting the Buddhist principle that "at the bottom of all this"
is the Universal Mind, or Cosmic Mind....which
somehow makes it appear that a working "Awareness" of our natural laws is somehow wanting , without the insight available by
this adoption.
I am of the opinion that we arrive at the same destination with our respective mental journeys , wether we arrive there materialistically
or idealistically. As we said in an other post on this
thread, the existence of a God, or the existence of
an afterlife would not change our lives one iota. The same applies to the existence ov a Cosmic or
Universal Mind or Universal Intelligence.
Would you not agree?

Death through suffication means that the brian got too little oxygen, and 'shut down'. What's missing is brian function, or at least the function you need to react, to act etc. However, what is the point of saying those organs are 'still there'? When you get a heartattack and die, these parts will also be there (right?). I mean for me, being a rational person, this is just plain biology. I don't believe in a 'soul', though it is a nice idea - it would mean you can't 'die', because your 'soul' lives on. It's just another way to avoid the truth that on one point, you will DEAD, totally, and only 'alive' in memories.

Fortune, I realize that some people expect their soul to take on a perfect form after they die, but my point is that if the soul can retain memories though the trauma of death (or have them magically restored), how does Alzheimer's and injury cause it to forget things just as the mind does?

If the soul is subject to the physical changes in the brain while we are alive, how can anyone logically expect it to function independently when we are dead? If the soul cannot preserve our sense of self and memories, there is no point to eternal life.

And if you did not want to get into a religious debate, why are you responding to a question about the afterlife?

JLN, if by Mind you mean the fundamental interconnection between rocks, people and everything else, atoms of which are indistinguishable on a quantum level, I agree. But participation in the cosmic dance does not necessarily equate with awareness, and I do not think that nature/Mind/Cosmos/Brahman is intelligent in the sense of being able to reason and make decisions. I suspect that intelligence and joy are attributes that Atman projects onto it and sees reflected, rather than inherent qualities.

What do you think happens to your memories and personality when you die? Are they retained in the Cosmic Consciousness, or lost forever?