I'm not religious, I don't believe in the paranormal or that we can contact the dead, but something in me finds it very hard to accept that when we die, that's it, like a machine with an off switch. This could be nothing more than fear of dying, but I've always been fascinated by the fact - 'back from the dead' accounts aside - that we'll never ever know what happens to us, mentally or spiritually, at the point of death. We so often hear doctors say to relatives of the deceased, "He died peacefully in his sleep." But how do they know dying in your sleep is peaceful? Is it really possible to simply fall asleep and never wake up, with absolutely no knowledge you've passed on?
This is something I tend to question a lot, as well. I don't think I have an obsession with death or anything, I just don't believe that the mind stops. My manuscript deals with this topic, as well, wondering what will happen after death, so I've put some thought into it. I think it's something that you can believe whatever you want with, in all honesty. If you want to believe in heaven, you can. If you want to believe that it's just, as you said, an off switch, you can. If you want to believe you'll be reincarnated, you can. There is no wrong answer, because no one really knows the right answer. Anything you want can happen after you leave the earth. If that's not actually how it is, then at least you had that to keep you at bay through life.
Perhaps you keep living as yourself but in a new life as it where in a new plan of existence. or return to the fold, entity, where the data is collected and then you become someone else on this world or some where else in the universe, and every time you pass, you get to review the stuff you learned. Hell could be fire or brimstone, or nothing.
Who wants to live forever? Worse still, live forever on your knees worshipping a fucking God. It's the one nice mercy about the gift of life; you get to return it when you die.
What difference does it make? Nobody who ever died has been able to tell us about it, so no matter what happens, there will be no feedback.
"...there in darkness you will dwell, unti all the world has changed, as the long years of your life are utterly spent..." - Elrond "... you will return through the Dream Circle into the Spirit Circle, to join with all those who came before you and all those who come after..." - Pi'e Kei
Maybe ask for ketamine therapy. Consciousness surviving death can't happen by chance. If your philosophy is that the universe came about by chance then there is nothing more for the individual once the brain switches completely off.
Ooo, deep. @OurJud Pre the Youtube I, being a ponderer, did much existential investigation by the more cumbersome way of the leather-bound, the hard and the paperback, many a manner of mag with scienco/philosopho/religo bent, and even some wise graffiti spotted (dabbed/daubed) on a cubicle door. Using the full might of my seven+ neurons for more than a few moments thereafter I concluded and inwardly enshrined... Spoiler: the big answer I am the emergent property of the physical structure and the environment I inhabit—that's all As Descarte's epiphany was his solipsism, mine, hmm; a grand humanified theory I almost possessed the wits to be proud of. Considered too it would stand up to external scrutiny (and I still do). It'd count for everyone I'd confidently posit. Aye, surely there can be no before for us, nor no after, without a carbon copy (yes, quite actually a carbon copy) of the machinery to support/uphold our being? < For within are the parts that make us whole. Evidentially when those parts are nascent, as in the baby's brain, the person built from them is but a bairn full of babble with little cogency/agency. When the those parts are primed, in working order and active then the person's a walking, talking, functioning, thinking individual. The id's been overlayed with personality. When the parts malfunction (mental illness/senescence) then we witness the degradation/the departure of their product. In answering the sleep question, I figure going peacefully within it, if we're lucky enough, will be painless, a non-experience. If' we're unlucky enough, it'll be in the midst of an/a horrific nightmare—much screaming as our mortal coil's unwound and wrenched from our life's bosom.
Even though I was raised in the Bible Belt, I wasn't raised explicitly Christian and somehow avoided absorbing it passively. I've never had any belief in any sort of heaven / hell / other afterlife, and the need that I've seen in other people to believe in one completely baffles me. It's an odd one. I'm not romantic about the nature of life -- I know I'm just a piece of meat with electricity running through it, and when the electricity stops, it's good night izzybot. That seems straightforward to me and I'm not particularly bothered by it. The fact that (eventually, well after I've winked out) the universe itself will end is much more existentially troubling to me, for some reason. Us, though? Nah. Just meat.
We'll all take that trip one day. If its an end to everything - cool, life isn't all that grand to begin with. If not and there is some other realm of existence beyond this one? Cool, time for another journey.
The afterlife was developed in all religions to get their warriors to sacrifice their young lives. That was why Russia couldn't defeat the Afghans because the jihadist wanted to go to heaven and the Russians wanted to live one more day. I remember a special on the Russian Afghan war and some of the jihadist rushed a Russian tank and the Russians jumped out of the tank and ran for their lives.
