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.

And where did your consciousness come from, in the purely physiological process of developing from conception?

I am not trying to goad or persuade you in any way. But I just want to point out that I personally find the human experience mysterious and astounding. Why would so many of us even ask questions about and wish for an afterlife, if we were purely physical beings who just reproduce and enjoy life's pleasures? Where would a desire for an afterlife even come from?

In my opinion a desire for an after life is because of fear of nothing after death and not existing at all in a lot of cases.
Yes my consciousness comes from having a functioning brain made in utero
I can't say there isn't an afterlife but it just makes no sense to me is all to believe in one

I'm sorry. I didn't really intend to be mean, but after I posted I did wince a bit. It's no excuse, but my brother is very long-winded and technical (but clever) and we all pretend to fall asleep.

Get well soon 🍇

You believe that people who have suffered immensely, been persecuted or abused or tortured or brutally murdered planned this before they were born? Or people who have to watch their children die of starvation or from terrible diseases?

Ego: the difficulty of accepting one's own mortality. It's the "there has to be something more" line of thought because some people find it unimaginable that the universe will continue oblivious to whether they exist in it or not, just as it did before they existed. The universe we live in is wondrous already regardless of our insignificant presence in it being impermanent.

😅

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

You had me at Bolton.

Yes. Would also recommend you read Your Soul's Plan by Robert Schwartz in addition to Michael Newton's books. They can explain better than I can in a paragraph. They make more sense, to me, than believing in a cruel god, or a life packed with random misery for no reason, etc etc.

If there is a heaven your post is probably a good indication of why us mortals have no say in it's design or implementation.

Yes. Would also recommend you read Your Soul's Plan by Robert Schwartz in addition to Michael Newton's books. They can explain better than I can in a paragraph. They make more sense, to me, than believing in a cruel god, or a life packed with random misery for no reason, etc etc.

That's an horrendous hypothesis, quite evil in fact. And no, it definitely doesn't "make more sense". Fortunately there is zero evidence for it so likely just the product of very disturbed minds.

@LylaLee

I don't think that I like the sound of being a chicken in ancient Rome. Is there any chance of skipping that bit?

Newthingsahead · Today 17:38

So how do we get there?
It just makes no logical sense to me.

To be fair, that really is the least concerning question to me, unless of course I had to fly as I'm not a fan. And I have an aversion to buses, particularly on rainy days. But I don't mind whether I get there by ferry, train, chauffeur driven car, teleportation, via a worm hole (I could do with a bit of Spaghettification as I've always aspired to be thinner and taller), or on the wings of a dove. There are so many options, another being that we are already there, albeit in another dimension. I'm more concerned about being trapped with the wrong people in a decrepit body for all of eternity.

I believe our souls persist after we die but not in a way we can conceive of with our earthly minds. Much in the way we cannot understand why we are here in the first place. I like to believe it will be peaceful though.

There are more people alive on the planet right now than have ever lived in the history of human civilisation, so no, Earth is actually more crowded than theoretical heaven.

How do we get there, assuming there is a there to get to? For me, the far more interesting question is how did we get here. We do not know, nor have even a hint of any evidence, that there is a there. We do know we are here though. What we don't know is what exactly leads a sundry collection of chemical elements to become life, or even intelligent life. That is the thing that really fascinated me personally, not all sorts of supernatural fantasy involving gods, heavens or whatever.

It is not helpful to play along with a person's delusions in any context...

From Google: demographers estimate that 109 billion people have lived and died over the course of 192,000 years. If we add the number of people alive today, we get 117 billion humans that have ever lived.

It's personal to each person. It changes over life. Mine has. Don't try and turn it into a thought pattern. It's an experience. The inner life. Not thought

It baffles me that people hope for an afterlife. This life is so full of horror and pain that the possibility of another life, a mysterious beyond we don’t understand, terrifies me. Why on earth do people assume it will be nice? If there is an afterlife, it will be full of suffering, just like this one. I really, really hope the materialists are right and there is nothing.

A bit of an atheistic in joke.

"Civilisation" is 5-6000 years old, not 192,000. It would be exceptionally odd for all those billions to turn up in heaven considering it was invented two bleedin' minutes ago, relatively speaking 😛

Yes, it's a common myth, but nonsense. The number of 'ever-lived' passed the current population at least 2 millenia ago. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16870579

I hate the idea of an afterlife. I do not want to be me for all of eternity. I want to be someone else.

My mum believes in this stuff and she is insufferable. She's had a pretty easy life and gets about telling people as their children are dying with cancer that hey chose this path.
Nowadays she complains that she is lonely (as people now avoid her) but doesn't appear to appreciate me telling her that she must have chose that experience.

I like this. Thank you.

That book was so moving!