Afterlife (Endings)

by dhw, Thursday, February 07, 2013, 12:01 (4090 days ago) @ BBella

BBella and I are discussing her ideal form of afterlife, the nature of the soul (if it exists) and of identity.-Your latest posts have made the whole scenario much, much clearer for me ... and possibly for you too?! For the sake of brevity, I shan't reproduce all that you wrote, but will try to summarize it, and then you can correct me if I've got it wrong.-The soul is that part of us that consciously thinks, feels, invents etc., but it is also the subconscious, which contains experiences from our past as well as our present lives, and these have helped to shape our current identity. When we die, it is this same soul that moves onto a different plane of existence, but the subconscious becomes part of our consciousness, and we remember our past identities. It may even be that we link up with people from our past lives, and ideally we may also be able to choose to live again on earth, taking on a new identity incorporating our earlier identities within the subconscious. Or we may have all kinds of new experiences in the non-physical domain.-If I've got this right, it's certainly a much more coherent concept of identity than we had before, and your view of the subconscious could explain your unusual (by my standards) dreams and some of my own fictional fantasies, not to mention all kinds of seemingly irrational thoughts and feelings and phobias that so many people have. You think there may be a difference between us, because I "do not like the idea of a soul having past lives". I certainly didn't like the idea of my having suffered what some of my fictional characters have suffered! And I did have difficulty understanding the nature of identity if all that remained of dhw were the memories of a detached observer. But what you have now described seems far more feasible to me, especially with your concession on continuity.-I'd be interested in how your ideal version would tackle the question of choice. Again with my limited vision, I can't imagine that a past me chose to be the present me. That almost smacks of predestination. Wouldn't there have to be a degree of unpredictability involved? -Your linking of the subconscious with past lives sets me off at a tangent, but it's an idea that I find intriguing. In the highly revealing article David referred us to concerning the complexity of life, the author said that one gram of DNA contains enough information to fill 100 billion DVDs. Could it be that your past lives and subconscious memories are in fact the lives and memories of your ancestors, passed down genetically through the generations? In much the same way, the intelligent corvids and other highly intelligent birds, animals, insects "inherit" information which their current selves then apply according to their own degrees of consciousness. -I'm not saying this gets rid of the soul, because it doesn't offer an explanation of consciousness itself. The argument has to go the other way: IF consciousness were indeed the product of our material selves (a big IF), this would offer us a coherent alternative to your past lives scenario: the subconscious would be the memories of earlier generations locked in the genes. But I'm just thinking aloud...-As for the ideal afterlife, which is our starting point, yes I can see the attractions of your vision. Heaven alone knows how it would all work ... if there's a heaven in the first (second?) place! ... but then we don't even know how this life works, do we?