/feels/ - personal experiences

Personally I'm of the opinion that every living being has some amount of consciousness, or a "soul". Humans obviously have a good deal, animals like pets have some, water ticks may have significantly less; I can't say for certain. I also believe that everyone's soul is a splinter of the same soul, there is a single interplanetary interdimensional conscioussness.

I believe when we die we simply exist in higher dimensions for a while before choosing to assimilate back into the mother conscioussness or go for another round on earth.

I believe this because I've felt and expierienced things that have led to these beliefs; this is not me listening to the words of parents / teachers and taking them as truth. I also do not believe I am correct, though I think I'm on the right track, and I believe there is existence after death. I'm also somewhat of a nihilist though in the exact opposite way that you would expect. Instead of nothing matters because at the end there is nothing, I believe nothing matters because in the end we are everything. I see nihilism not as the belief that the path leads nowhere but the belief that the path is irrelevant in the face of the destination.

For all I know though, my definition of nihilism is incorrect. shrugs

I dislike these kinds of threads because OP usually doesn't specify his background (what if anything he though on the matter before), and because people who reply are quite eager to assume what everyone else in the thread believes or used to believe. I hope this doesn't happen here. There also seems to be a prevalent assumption that death causes, or equals the (final) loss of consciousness, which may or may not be the case. (We do not have solid, tested facts on this matter (reasons obvious), and whoever claims otherwise probably has much to learn in his own field of expertise or basic epistemology).

So, who is this "eternal oblivion" eternal for?
I've ran through the page you linked, probably the Clarke guy is the only one addressing it. It could be eternal as in "permanent" in its finality, but that bears no relevance to time. (eg. A shop that is permanently closed doesn't need to remain there for eternity to signal its closed state. It can be demolished tomorrow all the same.)
It could mean eternal for the deceased person (or his consciousness). It could be eternal from other people's perspectives. It could be eternal from some supposed absolute frame of reference, be it time, the universe, whatever.

Some people tend to imagine this Eternal Oblivion as black; this seems like a misconception to me.
People experience a complete blackness when there is a sudden change in lighting. The eyes were accustomed to an interval of light levels and now need to adjust to the new one; to show the radical change, it is all just a depth-less black. The pupil widens and the retina becomes more sensitive to pick up light but eventually reaches its limits - if there is still nothing, a perception of blackness remains for a while. Notice that the blackness signifies a relative lack of light, not the absolute lack of it. After a lack of light becomes the norm, it will cease being relatively darker than what was before, so visual hallucinations happen. People have assumed that an extended or permanent lack of light looks black, even though it actually looks 'hallucinations'. Further than that, they assumed that death (or a lack of consciousness, or both) is like the lack of light, which based on their previous assumption is black.

If we establish that 'brain life' is necessary but not sufficient for consciousness, we may wonder whether the lack of consciousness during sleep, fainting, coma, etc are equivalent to that during death.

I saw a thread here which argued that death means the end of consciousness; but since for the consciousness it itself is all it knows, the perception of time slows down in the last moments, and the last moment 'freezes', whatever it is. While the brain obviously keeps decomposing, the consciousness has already ended in that last specific state; its state does not change by the decomposition of the brain as it has already ended some time ago. I'm not sure if this holds.

Some argue that this discussion is pointless or just semantic games, or just an extension of the experience of sleeping, and that any claim to what it is or isn't like is wrong, and not claiming or assuming anything about it is the only non-wrong approach.

What was it like before you were born? It's the same after your life, as it was before your life.
What matters in life is having fun. There's no purpose. But as you are alive, you may as well make it a great as you can.
>How can anyone be anything other than an existential nihilist?
By letting themselves be conquered by spooks.
>>221
>Personally I'm of the opinion that every living being has some amount of consciousness, or a "soul". Humans obviously have a good deal, animals like pets have some, water ticks may have significantly less; I can't say for certain. I also believe that everyone's soul is a splinter of the same soul, there is a single interplanetary interdimensional conscioussness.
You call it an opinion because you know you have no proof for it. It's not an opinion: it's an incorrect fact. If you truly thought it was true, you'd call it a fact. But you call it an opinion.

Can't one be an absurdist?

>>219
>How can anyone be anything other than an existential nihilist?

By having faith,
whether in some higher purpose or a higher power.

Am a Catholic, I believe in the immortality of the soul
and all that jazz.

Find something you want to be true and have faith in it
Even if that thing is impossible, you will become a stronger person because of it.

>>329
>this
>mothafuckin
>meme
>again

Konbanwa, Kasorikku-san. I see you're spreading the age-old "pretend to believe in something nonsensical and you'll feel better" meme. Welcome to the real world. Lying to yourself will, at the very least, help you make a fool of yourself. At worst, it has driven some to suicide and mass murder. Please pull your head from the Roman sand and take a look at the world around you. It might not be pleasing or agreeable, but it's real. You can't become a stronger person until you face the soykafty, pointless world and accept that it is exactly as it seems.

Really, the most insulting thing is that you don't seem to actually defend your belief. An honorable, if naive, Christian would actually hold their belief to be true. You actually know your belief is impossible, and you have the audacity to say that it's a good thing. This is the acme of shamefulness,

>>348
>Really, the most insulting thing is that you don't seem to actually defend your belief. An honorable, if naive, Christian would actually hold their belief to be true. You actually know your belief is impossible, and you have the audacity to say that it's a good thing. This is the acme of shamefulness,

I said it was impossible, what i didn't say was that it was not true,
, yes i know it's a paradox.
I have faith in Christianity anyway .

Only a person who can believe in something against all reason can be free,
i know the world is pointless and full of suffering, but i refuse to accept this world.
If the the world is unjust, fight the world, if reality is unjust fight reality .

>>349

Don't fight, you will lose. Instead, you should just accept.

>>350
That would mean giving up my dignity and i could not go on living if i did that.

>>349
>>351
You're not fighting anything. If you were fighting, you would be acknowledging problems and trying to fix them. What you are doing is alled lying and ignoring.

>>352
What you are doing is thinking like a slave.

>do not resist
>comply
>bend over with me and
>receive jesus from the bottom of your soul