Trying to be comfortable with death.

Discussion of the nature of Ultimate Reality and the path to Enlightenment.
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Ryan Rudolph
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Trying to be comfortable with death.

Post by Ryan Rudolph »

I have attempted to find some peace with the reality of death, but sometimes the whole thing doesn't sit well with me.

Logically, there seems to be two possibilities at death. Either there is a total extinction of the self, that is - if consciousness is totally dependent on the existence of a material brain, then that is the end of it. Death comes, and "conscious experience' goes.

The other option is that there is some sort of metaphysical law, where conscious experience is transferred into another vehicle, perhaps in some hierarchical deeper reality that the human perceiving instrument is not aware of.

And Reincarnation doesn't seem like a logical option to me.

Moreover, the more I think about it, the more I'm mentally preparing myself for the first option, meaning a total ending or extinction of ones conscious experience. Now, for many years, I have gotten myself in the mindset where if ones consciousness totally ends at death, it won't be so bad because you will simply return to what you were before you were born, meaning nothing.

However, the problem with that logic is that before you were born, you had no knowledge or experience of consciousness, as you have never existed, but now that we all exist in the present, we do have experience and knowledge of existing, which gives us the impression that we are in fact losing something, upon death, and that something is conscious experience.

Conscious experience being the debates with others, the perception of beauty, the ugliness, the comedy, the tragedy, the absurdity of it all. All that could go with death, a total ending of it all, then a sort of sobering sadness sets in, a realization that something vital is lost upon death, especially with those who truly lived in an intellectual sense.

Other enlightened selves will surely emerge, but it will never be "this" self, the one that is experiences reality in this body, this brain, this configuration.

I used to believe that one should be unfeeling towards the whole thing, but when you face the fact of the possibility of the total ending of self upon death, sadness seems to be totally natural and appropriate in my opinion, any thoughts?
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Re: Trying to be comfortable with death.

Post by Nick »

I don't experience any strong emotions when I think about dying, definitely not strong enough to call them sadness or despair. Still I wish death was preventable and I could live on indefinitely. Especially when I think about the fact that I'm going to be spending my youngest and healthiest years just trying to make enough money to keep a roof over my head and put food on the table, and if I'm lucky I'll get to spend maybe 20 years at the end of my life relaxing, but in declining health. If I could turn that 20 years of declining health into 100 years of good health I would do it in a heartbeat.
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Re: Trying to be comfortable with death.

Post by mensa-maniac »

Ryan Rudolph wrote:I have attempted to find some peace with the reality of death, but sometimes the whole thing doesn't sit well with me.

Mensa says: Death is a scary thing for alot of people. The way I look at it upon the death bed, is people's vital organs shut down one by one, but the brain is usually still intact for this to happen, because it's the brain--the consciousness that is shutting the vital organs down. It's like the consciousness is always in control even upon death, and I have believed from childhood that our consciousness which I called energy then, continues on and connects up with the head consciousness which is God who is a pure energy consciousness. I believe all consciousness goes back to God and God becomes one consciousness again.

Logically, there seems to be two possibilities at death. Either there is a total extinction of the self, that is - if consciousness is totally dependent on the existence of a material brain, then that is the end of it. Death comes, and "conscious experience' goes.

Mensa says: I believe consciousness never dies it continues on and on after human death. I cannot see how consciousness can die, I don't believe it does.

The other option is that there is some sort of metaphysical law, where conscious experience is transferred into another vehicle, perhaps in some hierarchical deeper reality that the human perceiving instrument is not aware of.

Mensa says: Yes, the vehicle is the God consciousness, I have no doubt.

And Reincarnation doesn't seem like a logical option to me.

Moreover, the more I think about it, the more I'm mentally preparing myself for the first option, meaning a total ending or extinction of ones conscious experience. Now, for many years, I have gotten myself in the mindset where if ones consciousness totally ends at death, it won't be so bad because you will simply return to what you were before you were born, meaning nothing.

Mensa says: The horror of it all to think we die and that's it nothing more, well we wouldn't know anything, so what is there to worry about.

However, the problem with that logic is that before you were born, you had no knowledge or experience of consciousness, as you have never existed, but now that we all exist in the present, we do have experience and knowledge of existing, which gives us the impression that we are in fact losing something, upon death, and that something is conscious experience.

Mensa says: We lose our consciousness while God gains it back! But, who really knows, other than what the Bible speaks, that we go back to the dust of the ground, then awakened on the arrival of Christ. If there's any truth to that.

Conscious experience being the debates with others, the perception of beauty, the ugliness, the comedy, the tragedy, the absurdity of it all. All that could go with death, a total ending of it all, then a sort of sobering sadness sets in, a realization that something vital is lost upon death, especially with those who truly lived in an intellectual sense.

Mensa says: There are things man will never understand according to the Bible, but all things will be revealed. That's if the Bible is truth.

Other enlightened selves will surely emerge, but it will never be "this" self, the one that is experiences reality in this body, this brain, this configuration.

Mensa says: Who knows?

I used to believe that one should be unfeeling towards the whole thing, but when you face the fact of the possibility of the total ending of self upon death, sadness seems to be totally natural and appropriate in my opinion, any thoughts?
Mensa says: I can see sadness affecting people on this subject absolutely, death has always been a concern for me. I welcome death today however I'll likely live to old ladyhood.
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Re: Trying to be comfortable with death.

Post by Dragonspirit »

I experienced nine near death experiences, each over the line and back.. It's a rush... It's fun...

A good attitude to maintain in the topic "death", is "Death is a friend I've yet to meet".. but only if you have solved the path into the rest of life...

I met "the grim reaper" face to face.. I tossed a rock at it...

Those who fear death are those who fear life...
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Very comfortable in my Death-themed Snuggie

Post by DHodges »

Ryan Rudolph wrote:The other option is that there is some sort of metaphysical law, where conscious experience is transferred into another vehicle, perhaps in some hierarchical deeper reality that the human perceiving instrument is not aware of.
There's not really any reason to think that might be so, other than you really want it to be so.

I used to believe that one should be unfeeling towards the whole thing, but when you face the fact of the possibility of the total ending of self upon death, sadness seems to be totally natural and appropriate in my opinion, any thoughts?
Without death, there could be no life. All things are impermanent. A thing that was permanent could not change and be alive. Every moment is a death and a birth (you stop being what you were and become something new).

Your reaction is not 'bad', it's not that you 'should' feel a certain way. But I think you might be less sad if you understand that death is an essential part of life; there could be no life without it.
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Ryan Rudolph
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Re: Trying to be comfortable with death.

Post by Ryan Rudolph »

Dhodges,
Your reaction is not 'bad', it's not that you 'should' feel a certain way. But I think you might be less sad if you understand that death is an essential part of life; there could be no life without it.
yes I understand, death is inevitable, it is part of the biological package. The organism degrades, gets old, stops working, falls apart, indeed. However, that doesn't change my preference for existing, over not existing. It is almost as if we just get our consciousness sorting out, get financially stable, and then our bodies start to fall apart, we go through all sorts of age related hardships and suffering, and then like dust in the wind, gone, extinction.

It is really quite hellish when you think about it, If this life is all there is, and death is a total ending of the self, then life is quite heinous indeed. It would be much more comforting if the self did go through a never-ending hierarchical journey, you know - like the ultimate rpg.

anti-aging science could be the answer, combined with cyborg like technology, but that is very far off, maybe 300 years, if the species survives, overall, I see the religions temptation to create fantasies of an afterlife.

Nick,
I don't experience any strong emotions when I think about dying, definitely not strong enough to call them sadness or despair.
I wouldn't call them strong, I'm not suggesting that I'm home weeping and sobbing uncontrollably while griping my pillow...: ) but there is a subtle sort of sadness, when I think about everything I worked for in this life, all the hard mental and psychological work and insight, all the knowledge, experience, and "conscious experience" in general. It all vaporizes so quickly. Sometimes when I look at it through a grand sort of lens, it feels like a waste. It seems like life is so short, impermanent, and brutish that it all the effort to perfect the self as best as possible is not worth the effort. I'm not advocating suicide, but I'm just suggesting the reward of rationality is far too short lived.
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Re: Trying to be comfortable with death.

Post by Bobo »

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death. If this is true, and they have actually been looking forward to death all their lives, it would of course be absurd to be troubled when the thing comes for which they have so long been preparing and looking forward.
—Socrates, Phaedo
Ryan Rudolph wrote: Moreover, the more I think about it, the more I'm mentally preparing myself for the first option, meaning a total ending or extinction of ones conscious experience.
Wait, how do you prepare yourself to 'a total extinction of the self'? It's a once in a life time kind of thing.
The student Doko came to a Zen master, and said: “I am seeking the truth. In what state of mind should I train myself, so as to find it?”
Said the master, “There is no mind, so you cannot put it in any state. There is no truth, so you cannot train yourself for it.”
“If there is no mind to train, and no truth to find, why do you have these monks gather before you every day to study Zen and train themselves for this study?”
“But I haven’t an inch of room here,” said the master, “so how could the monks gather? I have no tongue, so how could I call them together or teach them?”
“Oh, how can you lie like this?” asked Doko.
“But if I have no tongue to talk to others, how can I lie to you?” asked the master.
Then Doko said sadly, “I cannot follow you. I cannot understand you.”
“I cannot understand myself,” said the master.
—Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach, 250-251.
Ryan Rudolph wrote:Now, for many years, I have gotten myself in the mindset where if ones consciousness totally ends at death, it won't be so bad because you will simply return to what you were before you were born, meaning nothing. However, the problem with that logic is that before you were born, you had no knowledge or experience of consciousness, as you have never existed, but now that we all exist in the present, we do have experience and knowledge of existing, which gives us the impression that we are in fact losing something, upon death, and that something is conscious experience.
No return, the logic being, there was no self, there will be no self.
All the things we see when awake are death, even as all we see in slumber are sleep.
—Heraclitus.
Ryan Rudolph wrote:Conscious experience being the debates with others, the perception of beauty, the ugliness, the comedy, the tragedy, the absurdity of it all. All that could go with death, a total ending of it all, then a sort of sobering sadness sets in, a realization that something vital is lost upon death, especially with those who truly lived in an intellectual sense.

Other enlightened selves will surely emerge, but it will never be "this" self, the one that is experiences reality in this body, this brain, this configuration.
Things change."This" self experience things. Things which never are the same. It is the same for other selfs.
Self-existence, or the suicide that terminates it, is not the central question of philosophy. The hypothalamic-limbic complex automatically denies such logical reduction by countering it with feelings of guilt and altruism. In this one way the philosopher’s own emotional control centers are wiser than his solipsist consciousness, “knowing” that in evolutionary time the individual organism counts for almost nothing.
—E. O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975)
Ryan Rudolph wrote:I used to believe that one should be unfeeling towards the whole thing, but when you face the fact of the possibility of the total ending of self upon death, sadness seems to be totally natural and appropriate in my opinion, any thoughts?
Natural like a response in tune with natural selection on your suicide-thought-experiment.
Months later, on the most terrible night of my life, though not ill, I was literally wrestling with death - because there is for greater men no spiritual death without physical death, since for them life and death are the possibilities which confront each other most powerfully and intensively. Just as I was thinking of succumbing, a dog barked three times in just the same way as that time in Munich. This dog barked the whole night, but those three times were different. I noticed that at this moment I was biting fast at the bedsheet, like a dying man.
Otto Weininger - The dog.
On a suicide-thought-experiment one overcomes the physical, and strugle for spiritual death. But what comes next? The mind can't overthrow itself that easy, and in a way it enters into a state of opposition to cause and effect. For what comes next if conscious experience is overthrow? However a strong stimuli is enough to bring the physical back to the mind, with a seemingly causation beetween the attempt of spiritual death and the stimuli, like a dog barking in Weininger's experience (which I think he misunderstood if I get his meaning). Now, I don't know precisely a solution for the suicide-thought-experiment, but for the time being I would go with change and cause and effect.
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Re: Trying to be comfortable with death.

Post by Blair »

Pass the genes and the memes Ryan, problem solved.

Aha, ahaha, Ahahahaha!
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Re: Trying to be comfortable with death.

Post by Bobo »

On a second thought maybe Weininger meant that before physical (brain) death there's no spiritual death. Anyway the suicide-thought-experiment being then overcoming spiritual death by understanding cause and effect, again if I get his meaning right.

Question mark:
"Natural like a response in tune with natural selection on your suicide-thought-experiment?"
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Re: Trying to be comfortable with death.

Post by Bobo »

prince wrote:Pass the genes and the memes Ryan, problem solved.

Aha, ahaha, Ahahahaha!
When they are born, they wish to live and to meet with their dooms -- or rather to rest -- and they leave children behind them to meet with their dooms in turn.
Heraclitus
Solved?
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Trying to be comfortable with death.

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Ryan Rudolph wrote:...a total ending or extinction of ones conscious experience.
What appears to you as some unified conscious experience...a self...but what if there's not really anything to end? Even your most private notions arise in some form elsewhere.

God is death. Or the only true notion of death is god. As they say : "return to your maker" - a maker which is essentialy causality. Which was never left but in some idea!
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Death of life is not possible

Post by Pam Seeback »

One of the erroneous ideas of the separate self sense is that conscious awareness begins with the appearance of the physical brain. Wisdom reveals that this is not possible, for there must be a conscious vision of 'brain appearing' in order for 'brain' to appear. Matter does not create matter, appearance does not create appearance. This means there is an unknown [veiled to the intellect of self] Something that thinks 'matter', 'brain', but of Itself, does not become 'matter' or 'brain.' This Something that is the original thinker of 'brain' can never be nothing, or the something that is 'brain' would not appear/exist.

It is my comprehension that both Jesus and Gautama came into the world of 'brain' to awaken the world caught in the illusory fear of death or annihilation of conscious awareness, came to awaken it to the reality that conscious awareness IS, whether invisible to Itself or visible to Itself. This is why Jesus said that God is not a man that he should lie, meaning that the Something that gives man conscious awareness of his belief in the absoluteness of death of awareness is Itself, not of this belief.

To summarize, your invisible, individual conscious awareness of Self does not die. A biblical metaphor that expresses this wisdom is "I and the Father are One." What does die, when its death is consciously embraced, is your visible conscious awareness of having or being an individual self. A biblical metaphor that expresses this wisdom is "I and the appearance of the Lord God of the Father are One."
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Re: Trying to be comfortable with death.

Post by cousinbasil »

The thought of death is comforting on many levels. First, nobody wins. Whatever one has stuck in one's craw was put there by someone else. That person is either dead or will die. You want to live long enough to see that happen - so right there's at least one meaning your own life has. Secondly, you get to see some people you love die. This is an entirely natural experience, if nothing else. Many times the deceased was elderly and afflicted with the physical discomforts that come with age - you won't say it out loud because you are old enough to know better, but you are relieved when this person finally takes the dirt nap. Your love for this person has caused you to feel some of his or her pain. When he or she goes, that pain goes, but the love need not depart as well.

Unlike Dragonspirit who claims to have had nine near-death experiences, I have had but one, if I do not count experimentation with drugs. Every fiber in my being tells me death is merely a transition. To what, I do not know. But it simply does not make sense to me to think that I will never find out.

I understand if one experiences sadness at the prospect of dying, but I can't share that sadness. If life itself seems pointless, how much more so is it to spend undue time being sad that it must surely end?
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Re: Trying to be comfortable with death.

Post by Ryan Rudolph »

Diebert,
God is death. Or the only true notion of death is god. As they say : "return to your maker" - a maker which is essentialy causality. Which was never left but in some idea!
returning to your maker meaning, abandon notions of individual self, and other attachments. The problem arises is that as humans we are able to think in the abstract, and we can plan in the future. For instance: I can plan for 50 years for now, but I cannot plan for 150 years from now, because the body will not survive that long. So abstract planning gives rise to an awareness of death, an awareness that the body will die. Are you suggesting that enlightened consciousness is eternal? meaning, not dependent on the material brain for continuity? If so, there would need to be some metaphysical law established in order to transition consciousness from one form to another....however, It seems to be that we can never really know for certain what happens at death, that is why I entertain both possibilities from time to time.


Movingaways,
To summarize, your invisible, individual conscious awareness of Self does not die. A biblical metaphor that expresses this wisdom is "I and the Father are One." What does die, when its death is consciously embraced, is your visible conscious awareness of having or being an individual self. A biblical metaphor that expresses this wisdom is "I and the appearance of the Lord God of the Father are One."
This position seems very similar to Cosinbasil, in the sense that you suspect that death is a transition of some sort? And this transition would only be available for the enlightened mind, one that is not clinging to ideals, beliefs, or notions of individual self?

CB,
Every fiber in my being tells me death is merely a transition. To what, I do not know. But it simply does not make sense to me to think that I will never find out.
A transition? but would this only be available to the enlighened? it wouldn't make sense to me that someone totally lost in delusion, notions of individual self, mental anguish, and so on would be open enough for the death experience.
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Re: Trying to be comfortable with death.

Post by jufa »

I have attempted to find some peace with the reality of death, but sometimes the whole thing doesn't sit well with me.

Logically, there seems to be two possibilities at death. Either there is a total extinction of the self, that is - if consciousness is totally dependent on the existence of a material brain, then that is the end of it. Death comes, and "conscious experience' goes.

The other option is that there is some sort of metaphysical law, where conscious experience is transferred into another vehicle, perhaps in some hierarchical deeper reality that the human perceiving instrument is not aware of.

And Reincarnation doesn't seem like a logical option to me.

Moreover, the more I think about it, the more I'm mentally preparing myself for the first option, meaning a total ending or extinction of ones conscious experience. Now, for many years, I have gotten myself in the mindset where if ones consciousness totally ends at death, it won't be so bad because you will simply return to what you were before you were born, meaning nothing.

However, the problem with that logic is that before you were born, you had no knowledge or experience of consciousness, as you have never existed, but now that we all exist in the present, we do have experience and knowledge of existing, which gives us the impression that we are in fact losing something, upon death, and that something is conscious experience.
And how have you attempted to find some peace with death if you have not found the logic of life?

If there is a total extinction of self at death, how could that which, as you say have no remembrance of their beginning from extinction come to exist as a conscious entity?

And why does it have to be a loss of conscious experience upon death, and not just a loss of physicality?

And to speak of reincarnate one has to exist before their present experience of living, die, loose conscious awareness of that parenthesis of living in the flesh, then return to the parenthesis of flesh where conscious awareness begins anew.

Never give power to anything a person believes is their source of strength - jufa
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Re: Trying to be comfortable with death.

Post by Pam Seeback »

movingalways: To summarize, your invisible, individual conscious awareness of Self does not die. A biblical metaphor that expresses this wisdom is "I and the Father are One." What does die, when its death is consciously embraced, is your visible conscious awareness of having or being an individual self. A biblical metaphor that expresses this wisdom is "I and the appearance of the Lord God of the Father are One."
Ryan Randolph: This position seems very similar to Cosinbasil, in the sense that you suspect that death is a transition of some sort? And this transition would only be available for the enlightened mind, one that is not clinging to ideals, beliefs, or notions of individual self?
To me, the enlightened mind is the mind whose intellect has been 'used up.' Used up by wisdom, which is but a metaphor to describe the Unseen and Unknown That which fulfills principles, laws and patterns of thought which it put into motion, the intellect being an example of a pattern of thought that is fulfilled or 'used up.'

This Unknown That or Something is the Light of Pure Awareness, wherein every omnipresent, invisible thought that is made present and visible, resides. And yes, when a man has attained enough discipline of stillness of his intellectual thoughts of 'what matters to him', his sense of being a thing called self, at some moment unknown to his conscious sense [visible] awareness, he will be of matter, of appearance no more and will Know Himself of his Light of Pure Awareness of omnipresent spirit [invisible] life forms.

I say life forms, for most people erroneously ascribe the opposite of life to be death, but this is not so. The opposite of death is birth, both thoughts of which are thoughts emanating of Life Itself, within Life Itself, for Life Itself. Which means that when you no longer think the thoughts 'birth' and 'death', oppositional thoughts which gives rise to all the opposites of interpreted physicality, including male and female, you are the Light of your awareness of your [omnipresent] Life and only of your [omnipresent] Life. What this conscious awareness of omnipresent Life is, no man can say, for as long as he sees images and uses words, which you and I are doing now, he has not yet plucked the 'mote [matter] out of his eye [of light].' This is why Wisdom is, so that we can 'know thyself', know the path we must take to be rid of that 'matter' mote.

Wisdom uses the intellect for Self Realization, but is not of the intellect of self analysis of the opposites. In other words, it is necessary to go through the mind to go beyond the mind.
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Re: Trying to be comfortable with death.

Post by cousinbasil »

Ryan wrote:A transition? but would this only be available to the enlighened? it wouldn't make sense to me that someone totally lost in delusion, notions of individual self, mental anguish, and so on would be open enough for the death experience.
You will agree that it cannot matter how open one is; when one's time comes, it comes. It sounds almost as if you are saying "open enough for the death experience to properly appreciate it." If that was your thought, I don't think one could gainsay it. Might not one look upon one's life as a preparation for this transition? Everything does lead up to it for every single person.

Just as youth is usually wasted on the young, death might be all too often wasted on the living. Only a brief consideration reveals the truth, which is that the entirety of what we observe to be the effect of death is exclusively the effect it seems to have on the still living. Most often this appears to be decidedly negative: wailing, gnashing of teeth, rending of garments, and so forth. A little thought should suffice to translate this outward impression into understanding: those left behind will now need to find a new source of income, sexual gratification, companionship, material support of all kinds... None of which tells us anything about the death experience itself or what it might mean.

You are quite right. If one is in the throes of mental anguish brought on by the delusions which false notions of the individual self create, how can one possibly appreciate the moment when the true nature of the individual self becomes manifest? It seems we are hell-bent on getting our external affairs in order, while at the same time neglecting our inner affairs.
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Re: Trying to be comfortable with death.

Post by Ryan Rudolph »

I think what is important to take away from many posters, and my own position is that if you die to life, meaning die to notions of an individual self, belief systems, delusions, and so on, then your being is metaphorically a sort of "walking death" And a being that is in a state of "walking death" is ready for physical death at any moment, whatever that death entails, which cannot be known or imagined.

That is what I'm getting out of this thread. This is what I have also suspected, but sometimes one has a period of doubts, a period of uncertainty, and one starts the questioning process over to reaffirm what one previously suspected.
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Re: Trying to be comfortable with death.

Post by Pam Seeback »

To die to self while seeking wisdom is to seek for wisdom's sake, which is to seek for the sake of love, for the sake of righteousness and for the sake of compassion. Whatever wisdom comes of unselfish wisdom-seeking is given while in the physical, but it points always to The Whole of Self, which is the Whole Self of every man, which is also then, the truth of every man. To die physically while of this mindset of Wholeness of Wisdom-Truth, is to be prepared for one's conscious awareness of this Wholeness of Himself, which when not of the physical/visible, is of the spiritual/invisible.

"I will never leave or forsake you." [Thought].
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Re: Trying to be comfortable with death.

Post by Russell Parr »

Ryan Rudolph wrote:That is what I'm getting out of this thread. This is what I have also suspected, but sometimes one has a period of doubts, a period of uncertainty, and one starts the questioning process over to reaffirm what one previously suspected.
Remember that it is attachment to delusional views of what "life" is that cause the doubts and uncertainty. Then it is only a matter of weeding out these delusions.
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Re: Trying to be comfortable with death.

Post by Beingof1 »

Ryan my friend,
When the realization transpires; " I am the receiver of life."
I do not contain life nor am I the source. I am the conduit of the expression of life.

It is a constant state of rushing momentum - allow it to flow bro. Do not restrict the flow of consciousness, allow it to rush through your unconditioned state of mind and heart. You will see, it just keeps giving freely, making no judgments.

It gives a greater information flow in the brain kinda experience. How can that be stopped?

Namaste and maranatha truth seeker.
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Diebert van Rhijn
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Re: Trying to be comfortable with death.

Post by Diebert van Rhijn »

Ryan Rudolph wrote:
Diebert wrote:God is death. Or the only true notion of death is god. As they say : "return to your maker" - a maker which is essentially causality. Which was never left but in some idea!
returning to your maker meaning, abandon notions of individual self, and other attachments. The problem arises is that as humans we are able to think in the abstract, and we can plan in the future. For instance: I can plan for 50 years for now, but I cannot plan for 150 years from now, because the body will not survive that long. So abstract planning gives rise to an awareness of death, an awareness that the body will die. Are you suggesting that enlightened consciousness is eternal? meaning, not dependent on the material brain for continuity? If so, there would need to be some metaphysical law established in order to transition consciousness from one form to another....however, It seems to be that we can never really know for certain what happens at death, that is why I entertain both possibilities from time to time.
Eternal in the sense that it's happening all the time, even now, including all returning to its maker. You are right in saying planning gives rise to awareness of death. A lot of things arise out of a planning mind, but remain part of that plan, its confines, origins, abstracting symbols, the conditions, goal, assumptions and expectations. The awareness of death could have its role and place within that plan, Plan the Man. Just act accordingly.
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