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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To ask if you believe in the afterlife?

232 replies

recklessruby · 14/09/2018 13:08

My dm and I believe when you pass there is another better place you go to. Df disagrees and says when you are gone that's it.
I nearly died giving birth to ds (complications and pre eclampsia) and I know I was drifting somewhere lovely but was told I was too young and it was not my time and turned back. I awoke to chaos and pain and was very disappointed.
Some people will say it's the drugs you get in labour but I have had a few woo encounters over the years when I have been in a clear mind.
So what do you believe? Aibu there is something more after we die?
And that dearly loved pets will be there.
(Maybe not heaven but something).
Sorry this is long and weird.

OP posts:
PlantsArePeopleToo · 14/09/2018 14:28

I have also had a couple of what could be described as 'woo' experiences but I don't think that's what they were. There will be a rational explanation for them even if I don't know what it is yet.

bellinisurge · 14/09/2018 14:32

I don't but I take great comfort in becoming part of the dust of the universe.

LittleMissedTheSunshine · 14/09/2018 14:32

Yes, I do believe in an after life and it saved me from suicide. I thought I'd end up still alive somewhere and have to go through life's lessons again so better stay here and work it out in this time.

So whether there really is an after life or not, Its responsible for keeping me alive in this life, and I'm happy and content with life now so hallelujah to that.

PlantsArePeopleToo · 14/09/2018 14:33

@Spiderdemon plus what if you want to be with someone but they don't want to be with you? I might want to be with my best friend for instance who died nearly nine years ago but she might not necessarily want to spend time with me.

And of course we were teenagers when she died and I've grown up a lot since then and I'm not the same person any more so will she see me as I was back then or as I am now? What if she doesn't like the way I am now?

LusaCole · 14/09/2018 14:37

I do like that Brian Cox passage about remaining part of the universe.

But I don’t believe in any form of afterlife involving souls or consciousness. Basically we’re just dust IMO.

Perfectly1mperfect · 14/09/2018 14:39

LittleMissedTheSunshine

I am glad you are ok now. Flowers

Puzzledandpissedoff · 14/09/2018 15:21

LittleMissedTheSunshine so glad you're still with us and worked things out, and who knows, maybe in doing that you developed in ways which will bring an even better life next time? Flowers

For me, the issue of whether we'll "see" our loved ones as a child/adult/whatever is answered by remembering that our bodies are just a shell to hold the soul. No doubt we've all met a child who seems very wise for their age or conversely an adult who's very immature, and that's exactly the point ... while the soul and the body might not necessarily "match", I believe that on some instinctive level it's that soul we recognise, just as we'll know it again when it's no longer clothed in the familiar body

HermioneWeasley · 14/09/2018 15:26

No. This is what science tells us. We are meat coated skeletons. What we think of as “souls” are our personalities. These are housed in our brains. When the blood stops pumping and synapses stop firing, we are dead. The organic matter our brains are made of decay. The calorie value of our bodies either nurtures the earth or burns up on cremation - energy transformed into another form.

Enjoy your time on this planet with the people you love, because this it it.

Sparklesocks · 14/09/2018 15:30

I am a cynic and an atheist and unfortunately don't believe. I wish I did though, I'm afraid of dying and not seeing my loved ones again.

Sparklesocks · 14/09/2018 15:32

There is an episode of Black Mirror set in the future where they download people's consciousness into the cloud when their bodies fail, and they can live on forever in that reality. That would be lovely.

jellymaker · 14/09/2018 15:37

I'm a Christian so yes I believe in heaven. The Bible has a word of explanation:

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end".

which is from an old testament book called Ecclesiastes chapter 3.

Its basically saying God has made us with a desire for eternity.

I have heard stories of people coming to faith in Christ because they couldn't shake off the internal knowledge that there will be something more.

Maybe you are in that place OP. Maybe start reading the new testament and the gospels and see where it takes you.

feedmecoffee · 14/09/2018 15:41

Don't think anyone is unreasonable here, personally I'm with your dad, when you're gone you're gone and that's it. I'm not a religious or spiritual person though, don't believe in ghosts or signs from dead relatives or anything like that. I believe people hallucinate before death and I once watched a science documentary explaining near death experiences, hallucinations and the perceived 'light at the end of the tunnel' but I have friends who believe in heaven/an afterlife of some sort and who have told me that something happened and they just knew it was their nan who died six years ago... and I respect that ever try and convince them otherwise even though I do t believe it personally. I think the only unreasonable people are the ones who try and force their beliefs and opinions on other people who disagree. If it can be debated, it's an opinion... and that's a fact.

SuckOnTHATRyan · 14/09/2018 15:45

Absolutely agree with what you say feedmeacoffee, about the only U people being those who force their beliefs on other people.

TheFaerieQueene · 14/09/2018 15:47

No. I don’t think there is an afterlife. It just doesn’t make sense. We didn’t exist before we were born and we don’t after we die.

What is the logic of an afterlife? If there was a creator, why is life hell for millions on earth? The children who are born to dying parents? What sort of god thinks this is appropriate?

Why is the afterlife only reached by dying, when death can be and regularly is painful and traumatic ? Why couldn’t a god make dying a fun painfree journey?

I try to make each day count because it is the here an now that matter.

Charmatt · 14/09/2018 15:47

I don't believe in an afterlife. I don't find it distressing - it makes life more important to me.

MTBMummy · 14/09/2018 15:50

I'd love to think there was, just so I could see my mom again, but I'm with the agnostics on here, and I sadly don't think there is.

Vitalogy · 14/09/2018 15:52

they can live on forever in that reality. That would be lovely. Living as the same person for eternity?

frogface69 · 14/09/2018 16:03

I do. I have my faith and it is a comfort to me. But it's a personal thing and I can't explain it to someone who doesn't believe. I don't have the words. Some of the comments have been lovely. Thankyou. I think God gave us life, a real life with the potential for great good and on the other hand great suffering. It is hard to square up I know.

marvellousnightforamooncup · 14/09/2018 16:03

My logical side says there's nothing.

I do know that lots of people experience the other side on their death beds or near death experiences. There are many descriptions of people talking to others who have passed before they die. My mother did. It may be natural hallucinations, a mental anaesthetic.

The odd stories of young children being able to talk about their previous lives intrigue me. Also my Brazilian SIL's sister had a near death experience. She could describe the house and area around the house SIL was staying in the day her heart stopped. She said she visited SIL to say goodbye. She'd never visited the UK and it was before Google. It's all very woo and unexplainable.

I find it comforting to think there's a possibility of an afterlife but logically I think there probably isn't.

Octavella · 14/09/2018 16:35

sparklesocks I saw that episode and couldn't think of another worse: A 'paradise' for people desperate to live in a fixed time and desperate for perfection/love that cannot exist for eternity.

The episode that rang true was the one where a woman couldn't tell what life was real vs simulation. It showed life can never be perfect because of the condition of humanity.

Octavella · 14/09/2018 16:39

Op you asked why it wouldn't be a comfort. Because without death there is never an escape. There is so much suffering on earth it would follow there would be suffering outside of this reality also, even worse suffering.

Octavella · 14/09/2018 16:42

TheFaerieQueene but it's humans who say God is good. Logically from you arguments you prove a creator isn't good not that there isn't a creator?

Storm4star · 14/09/2018 16:47

My son from a very young age would always tell me he "chose" me. Even before he was able to sit and have a conversation, that's what he'd say. As he started to talk more I asked him about it and he said "I was meant to go to a different mummy but I told them I wanted to be with you and they let me". As he got older he forgot all about it but I never have! I would love to know who "they" are and why he even knew about me to choose me! But it does leave me open minded as to what comes after death!

noego · 14/09/2018 16:49

The body ceases to exist and the human experience is complete, The consciousness then goes onto another universal experience.

The experience of consciousness can be realised in the human realm through enlightenment.

Padparadscha · 14/09/2018 16:51

No I don’t. I’ve given my personal logic before but no harm doing so again!

I believe the human mind is like a computer. It stores information, it goes into rest mode, it eventually slows down and doesn’t work so well. Once a computer is destroyed, there’s no getting it back - everything it was, the uniqueness of that information is gone. Yes bits of it carry on elsewhere, but eventually all marks of that information will be gone. We are merely carbon computers that will eventually shutdown for the last time.

That may feel a bit ‘cold’ as an explanation, however I much prefer that to the idea of ‘existing forever’ in some sanitised version of ‘living’ for eternity.

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