Afterlife (Endings)

by dhw, Monday, February 04, 2013, 12:52 (4308 days ago) @ BBella

BBella's ideal form of afterlife has got me confused, and the problem hinges on what constitutes our identity. It's a very complex subject, and perhaps we're simply going round in circles. Again I shall cherrypick quotes to try and pinpoint my difficulties, but it may well be that your experiences are so very different from mine (e.g. I never dream that I am someone else) that what you see as a desirable identity really is beyond the range of my imagination.
 
In your previous post you wrote: "The body in which your consciousness resides is what changes over the years, but the conscious/observer/witness of those changes does not itself change." In your latest post to me, though, you write: "I, as you, think of the soul as ever learning by memories gained thru experience. I do see the soul changing and evolving, not like a body changes, but I do see it evolving in the sense of gaining memories thru experience."-I think this latest statement brings us closer together. However, you edited one of my replies as follows: dhw: "But... I am NOT the character I created, and you are NOT the other person you became in a dream", to which you replied: "I gave these examples (the character you created and the person I am in my dreams) as a way to express how I would like to see the soul and the IBT. Of course, the character is not you, altho you created it, and my dreams aren't me, altho I created them."-Unfortunately, that misses my point, which was that the soul in the IBT will not be dhw ... it will be the observer that preceded dhw, entered dhw, and will live on after dhw. I wrote "just as I am NOT the character[/i]..." ... i.e. the parallel is between me inventing but not being the invention, and the observer observing but not being the thing observed. According to you, dhw is the thing observed, and so the observer is not dhw. Therefore the soul which you acknowledge changes and evolves is not MY soul, but the soul of the observer, which leaves "me" behind when I die.-BBELLA: Only the observer or witness aspect of my consciousness is the same in my current life as in my dream life.-But it is not your dream life that makes up the bulk of your soul/identity in your current life. What I see as the soul is that part of you that is now thinking, feeling, taking decisions, remembering, inventing, reasoning etc. as well as observing (= self-awareness). And that is what evolves through experience. You seem to be saying that the only survivor from physical death will be the level of consciousness that has observed you thinking, feeling etc. It doesn't think, feel etc. as you do. The only activities it is capable of are observing and remembering, and that detaches it from the person it remembers, i.e. my person.-BBELLA: We cannot think a thought, have an identity or give orders to the brain/body without the soul giving us life. -Again your soul seems to be neutral. No, we can't do these things without being alive, but I'm suggesting that the soul is more than the breath of life: it IS the character/mind/identity, the thoughts, emotions, reasonings. (I mean, that's how I interpret it, and that's why I can't link up with your ideal.)-BBELLA: One thing we can both agree on, if we did awaken into another life, it won't be a continuation of this life since we will no longer be in the body we lived this life in and won't be here in this earthly plane of existence.-Definitely agreed. Our difference lies in what it is that moves into the other life if there is one! "Awaken" suggests from a dream, but what I would envisage is the SAME soul (dhw) moving onto a different plane of existence, not a soul that remembers dhw plus all its other identities as if each one of them had been a dream.-Apologies again for what may seem to you to be my blinkered vision! 
 
****-Many thanks for that excellent NDE article.