The Afterlife... How Does it Work?

[ghostestwiththemostest]

Forgive my ignorance but I am thinking of believing in the afterlife and have a few questions about the logistics....

In my mind, the afterlife consists of a nicer version of life on Earth. No death, no having to go to work, sunny with a gentle breeze, verdant, relaxing, no housework, and surrounded by loved ones. In essence, my life now only better.

However, I realise that I have oversimplified things. Assuming that I reach (fingers crossed) old age, does this mean that I will be trapped in eternity in the mind and body of an 80+ year old? Does this mean that I could potentially be sat on a sofa with my elderly mother, my elderly grandmother and my elderly children all bickering and shouting "you what??" for all of eternity. Will Heaven turn out to be akin to one of those god awful retirement communities in Florida, all golf carts and incontinent pads?

So, my biggest question is will we be the age that we die with or do you think they will let us pick our own age?
If the latter, do you think that it will be full of idiotic 15-18 year olds at a perpetual disco? If so, who is going to clean up all their shite? Will they end up irresponsibly procreating and who will be stuck dealing with it all?

What would happen if my mother decided to come back as a baby and I ended up stuck looking after her. She would deliberately be as difficult as possible by way of revenge.

Can I choose my own house and plot do you think? If pets go to Heaven (which I've always believed that they do), will I suddenly be greeted by 7 cats, 8 dogs, 11 rabbits, 4 hamsters, 100+ fish and a horse, all elderly and incontinent! That's a big commitment, particularly for an 80+ something.

Even if we are ghosts without bodies (which would be a real shame as I'd miss the cuddles), surely our spirits/personalities would remain and we would largely be fairly world weary and cantankerous. Or could we chose our spiritual age?

What if I end up with crap neighbours? What if Jeremy Beadle or Paul Daniel's live next door? There's nothing to say that you can't be both sufficiently pious to get into heaven, but also seriously annoying. In fact, most pious people I know are exactly that!

The more that I think about this, the less heavenly the dream.

Can someone please help explain the logistics of all of this. No cynics please. I want to believe. I want it to be nice and fluffy, so please don't shatter my delusions. I just need help visualising the reality of it.

I simply can't believe you're all planning to give in so easily!

There is no scientific or rational basis for any of it which means you’re free to believe in whatever version of the afterlife you like. If it gives you comfort, embrace it.

Having watched (and loved) The Good Place (Netflix) and Ghosts (UK - Bbc), I think the most preferable afterlife is none at all.

I rest my case! 😂

Yes definitely check out The Good Place for an exploration of this idea. Spoiler - they get to heaven but are so bored and hate it there.

I don't mind the idea of reincarnation...provided that I come back as a cat. But I've often wondered if you get stuck in a rut if you come back as a Mayfly. You have just one day to live and have to spend most of it shagging and then also fit in a good deed in order to progress. How are you ever going to get promoted? That said, maybe being a Mayfly isn't such a bad thing. If you want to keep coming back as a cat, you would have to strike the exact balance of achieving a behavioural equilibrium (i.e. enduring hours of being stroked whilst purring, whilst occasionally shitting on the bed).

The Buffyverse version of the afterlife has plenty of plausible-deniability-type vagueness:

Buffy: I was happy... Wherever I was... I was happy... At peace. I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it. Time... didn't mean anything. Nothing had form. But I was still me, you know...? And I was warm. And I was loved. And I was finished. Complete... I-I don't understand theology or dimensions, any of it, really... But I think I was in heaven... ... How long was I gone?

Spike : Hundred and forty-seven days, yesterday. Uh... hundred and forty-eight today. 'Cept today doesn't count, does it...? How long was it for you... where you were?

Buffy: Longer.

PS. As a materialist and an atheist, I think "you" just stop when your brain processes stop. The end.

I have no idea about the afterlife OP but I suggest you write a novel because you are hilarious and that way you could live on forever in the pages of your book.

I often wondered what happens if say, your husband tragically dies fairly young, you later remarry, the second husband dies many years later and then you eventually die. What happens then? Which husband do you end up with in the afterlife because it could end up being quite a big problem.

@cmaalofshit according to Christianity, there's no marriage in Heaven so you don't end up with either!

I’m still working on what I think a possible afterlife would be like. At this point I don’t think I would call it an ‘afterlife’ really.

I think it’s probably all boils down to atomic levels of physics (which I am in no way qualified to even begin to understand).

To me, essentially, as we have yet to find a physical explanation or location for our consciousness, my best guess is that your consciousness is constrained by your physical form and upon death, just as your physical self returns to the earth and is therefore at one with the earth, iyswim, your consciousness is then released and becomes able to reconnect with the universe.

This is when everything becomes clear, as you finally see the way everything is connected and are able to grasp concepts that your human brain simply couldn’t cope with. I don’t think you then exist as an individual, but as part of a huge consciousness where the meaning of self is no longer important or relevant. Once you have returned ‘to the universe’ you finally feel connected and at peace, as that’s the bit of us that feels restless and suffers from existential angst while we are in our physical form.

Potentially people who have had near-death-experiences could have experienced some sort of transitional process that helps our consciousnesses move from the individual to being re-connected without experiencing trauma, so you (or the universe) kind of manifest your loved ones etc, to help you process your physical passing and reintegration to the universal energy.

That said, I have yet to understand the point of our physical existence. (I am going through a big ‘What’s the point of it all?’ phase at the moment.) Best guess I can manage is that we experience it as some form of learning process that supports the development of the wider consciousness. Problem with that is all the evil/darkness that exists on earth and within certain humans? What happens to them? Do they also return to the consciousness, but leave behind the human aspect of themselves that fed/caused/enabled that darkness? Kind of shedding it as they return to their purest form? I would hate to think that we retain our own personality ego as we reconnect with all the others within ‘the consciousness’ if it means we are forever linked to some of the darkest, most evil individuals that have ever existed.

Of course I could just be - in fact almost definitely am - talking completely out of my arse, but I find this perspective comforting and grounding. It reminds me that not one being on this earth is more important than another, we’re all just tiny specks in a huge universe and that actually, we don’t need to understand everything here and now, because eventually we will reconnect and will just ‘know’.

I am not scared of death at all though. Far more scared of being stuck here in an ancient broken body for years and years.

One of my dc has ASD and they see death as just the end. From death there is nothing, it is the absence of everything, including self. That terrifies them to the extent that they have developed mental health issues around it and it’s heartbreaking. Neither I or their mental health team have managed to find a way to reassure them and it actually negatively impacts them every single day.

Or there's the theory that there's a single consciousness that rockets around through time and space, successively inhabiting every human who has ever lived.

That solves the widower problem.
But that's a bit shit really if you lose your spouse and hope to be reunited with them in death and you aren't still married and dearly departed spouse has moved on to be with someone else.

You said in your original post that you think you’ve over simplified things. I think you’re right…

if there is such a thing as an afterlife it would be crowded. Think of the millions of your forebears going back thousands of years all together in one huge mass.

I decided a while back that when I die, Heaven will start off with being in a large and productive orchard where the trees are either all in flower or heavy with ripe fruit. A little beyond that will be allotments full of cheerful people tending plots and leaning on their forks while they chat together and drink tea. I'm not entirely clear on what comes after that but it'll be sunny and rural and my dog will be there. I'll turn off the country lane and head down a dirt track leading to a stone cottage and he'll spot me and come racing towards me, yipping and wagging his tail. That would be nice.

I hope there is absolutely nothing. I'm getting a little bored of this shit!

According to some Physicists, there's no such thing as time, which means that there's no such thing as past, present or future. Everything that has ever happened, and everything that will ever happen, is happening now.

The fact that we perceive time as linear is down to the computational limitations of the brain and the way that we try to make sense of things.

From this perspective, nobody is really dead. We exist at all ages, at all times.

It's mind blowing stuff, but the universe has far more complexity than human brains are capable of processing.

🤣🤣

I think if it existed at all it would be something like we finish up playing a very immersive virtual reality computer game and realize none of it was real.

But I don't think it exists.

That sounds very much like "The Good Place". 😈

People were more inclined to believe fairy tales when they were illiterate and had no knowledge of science.

Sorry OP. 😆

Although, I don't think it's cynical or negative to not believe in an afterlife. The beauty of existence if living things lies in their transience, like a flowers that bloom so beautifully and then die. That they die does not make their existence pointless or futile. Accepting the limits of our physical existence can actually make us more appreciative of the life we do have. Living that fully and enjoying its beauty is better than having life dictated and controlled by a fantasy which has led many people to waste it. Being free from such notions can enable you to create your own meaning for your life and focus on what matters.

The beauty of the afterlife is that we can believe what we want about it. I choose the version where we come back in perfect form, which was mentioned casually in passing by some vicar in a sermon ages ago. This means for the first time ever, my very dyspraxic body will be able to perform fantastic cartwheels and flips. I have plans to spend a huge amount of the afterlife perfecting Tom Daley-esque triple somersault high dives into an ocean from a high cliff. The water will be warm and there will be no risk of paralysis from hitting the eternal rocks, so win-win.

My fear is that the afterlife is a crowded cafeteria where seats are not obvious and I have a tray of poor quality sandwiches, a cooling coffee and a toddler.

I think only if you didn't repent your sins 🤣

It's not that funny. Spitting tea 🙄