How did you feel in, say, the year 1810? Whatever your answer, that’s exactly what it feels like to be dead. There, I’ve solved the mystery of the afterlife.
I hate to break it to you, dear reader, but you have been dead for the past 13.5 billion years. It was only very recently that you became alive. Throughout the vast majority of all time, throughout all of the vast history of the universe, all of us, you, I, everyone, has been dead.
Other than “What is the meaning of life?”, the mystery of death is considered to be the greatest unknown question. In fact, a lot of people assume that this question simply can never be answered because nobody can come back from the dead. But people come back from the dead all the time!
I submit to you that “dead before life” is the same as “dead after life”. Why shouldn’t it be? Every time someone is born, they go from being dead to being alive. All of us know exactly what it’s like to be dead, because we each have experienced it.
It feels like nothing.
It feels the same as being unconscious, or being asleep, or being put under the gas to have your tonsils removed. Without consciousness, you cannot feel. The eight hours you spend sleeping at night passes in an instant, just like the previous 13.5 billion years, and just like the billions of years that will come after you die. It’s all the same; it’s all nothing.
Now, on the sliding scale of certainty, I am far from being 100% certain, but it makes a lot of sense. I just don’t like how people treat death as this evidence-less void of unknowability, and that we are each free to make up whatever we want to believe about the afterlife. Surely, there is a plethora of evidence as mentioned above that death really is “nothing”, certainly more evidence than there is for it being filled with 72 virgins, or for Heaven up in the white clouds.
I’m about 95% certain that death is “nothing”, but let’s entertain the possibility that there is “something” after death: what would that something be? In my opinion, it would in all probability be reincarnation. There is one key bit of evidence that really brings reincarnation into the realm of possibility: incarnation!
That is, we were all obviously incarnated or we wouldn’t be here. Birth = incarnation. This is known as, “If it happened before, it can happen again,” and is the opposite of, “Lightning never strikes twice.” I find this argument to be very compelling, and it can be applied to many other questions. For example:
- Are there aliens out there? I wouldn’t rule it out, because clearly the creation of life is possible and has happened before here on Earth billions of years ago. It seems reasonable that life could happen again on some alien world.
- Is time travel possible? Well, time traveling forward is certainly possible, and at different speeds, so I wouldn’t completely rule out the possibility of making time go backwards.
In much the same vein, my incarnation has happened before, so it seems at least possible that it could happen again. Contrast the evidence for reincarnation with the evidence for ghosts, Heaven, etc., of which there is none.
Obviously, this is a weak argument for reincarnation, I’m not saying otherwise, I’m just saying that it brings it within the realm of possibility. To reiterate: we KNOW that incarnation is possible, at least the first time, and is the first time so much easier to understand than the second? Imagine trying to explain some of the other “firsts”:
- There was nothing, then there was a big bang, and then there was a universe! Um, what?
- There was nothing, then there was abiogenesis, then there was life! Um, what?
- (There was nothing, then God, who existed even though there was nothing, created stuff! Um, what?)
My point is, we accept things like the Big Bang and abiogenesis not because they make sense or are easily explained, but because they obviously HAPPENED. The whole “but it happened” argument is mother nature’s way of slapping you in the face with ultimate evidence that cannot be denied. Incarnation, the idea that a new life can be born, sounds ridiculously unlikely to me, but it happens. So, why not reincarnation?
Why not, indeed. Reincarnation raises a boatload of problems. First, where does the “soul” go in the interim between death and reincarnation? How does it get from one body to the next? What is a soul, anyway? Are there “new” souls, or is everyone reincarnated from “old” souls, and in that case where did the original souls come from? If I was reincarnated, why don’t I remember my previous life, and if we don’t remember, in what sense were we reincarnated at all?
It’s because of all these unanswered questions that I feel reincarnation is extremely unlikely. My other theory, the theory that death is “nothing” and that there is no soul, easily avoids all of these questions and explains everything. To sum it up, I’d give “nothing” a 95% chance of being what really happens, reincarnation a 1% chance, and the other 4% to various other possibilities I haven’t discussed or thought about.
Tags: afterlife, death, nothing, reincarnation
That is exactly how I imagine death. Its like staring somewhere and trying to figure out what you “see” behind you. I guess it’s kind of the same nothingness we “feel” when we are dead, only the stuff we feel and see is gone.
wow…I’ve never considered the prospect that we were essentially dead before we were born. This is the truth, unless someone comes up with evidence for something else. It is fascinating to consider that: After we are dead, the atoms of which we are made stay on earth, becoming parts of soil, sea, air, plants and other animals. In the same way, what we are made of came from the atoms that were parts of nature before we were born.
There’s actually a group called Aware, that tracks people that die and are brought back to life. They will put an image in the room during the “death period.” Eyes closed, no possible vision, and then the person will invariably remember that image when brought back to life, although the image has been removed. One way or another, there is cognition after we die. So, if we have evidence of life after death, why not assume life before we’re born?
It’s nice to find out I’m not the only one who thinks this is how it works. I figure being dead is the same state as before birth.
Yeah man ! I made exactly the same conclusion several years ago ! This is so true.
i believe in the christian beleif of life after death. i dont care about this philosiphy. although it makes me think. i know that heaven exists and it’s there for us to live with God and his angels. period.
cool article, found upon a search for “nothingness after life.” (incase you were wondering.)
one thing for sure about death… we will all find out, won’t we? (the leading cause of death is being born.)
as for the deities… one would hope “it, he, she, they” are as advanced as we believe them to be and take into account how limited they have created us. so much for wrongs and forgiveness. this is a no-brainer for a real god.
anyway, on this particular (or only) journey, it’s nice to have made your acquaintence via our “series of tubes”… best wishes. ron
I’ve seen two of your videos and it seems to me that you consider yourself very smart. You’re a bit more arrogant than smart and your talking points never seem to dive below the surface of the same old crap that any child can spew. You do not have any original thoughts or new evidence to back your claims. You are a rather unimpressive individual, much like some kid that thinks he’s a hot shot because he can play a few chords of “Stairway to Heaven” on the guitar and after all it’s really more annoying than entertaining. I say that just in case that you are trying to be an entertainer.
It seems more likely that you are struggling with the very questions and answers that you are denouncing and your childish rants are actually a cry for help. A wise man who is content in his beliefs would be at peace, however, you seem to be quite the “chatter box”. Do you think the world needs your “wisdom”? Are you out to save the world? Are you out to impress the world? What? What is the point of your videos?
If what you believe is true, then live and die in it. Trying to persuade others to your way of thinking will not make it any more true. Truth is not created in a consensus; it just is and what ever it is, everyone will find it in the end or perhaps sooner if one is determined, yourself included. I know I did.
Do you think, perhaps that you are afraid of that truth?
For someone who doesn’t believe in God, you sure seem to be upset with him. Where I come from, we call people who rage against imaginary entities a lunatic.
I offer this advice: Until you can actually answer such questions as “Where did this all come from?”, “Why am I here?” and “Where am I going?”, without offering the same old lame, lazy and unoriginal proposal that these questions are not valid in the first place, turn your camera off, lest you continue to make yourself a babbling fool. I’m just trying to help.
Mike-N-TN
If you don´t wish to be entertained or informed by Philip, then stop reading this site… Easy as that. If Philip wishes to express his thoughts (though they may not be entirely new thoughts) then that´s his choice, and his blog. Unless you have the answers to all your questions, don´t expect him to have them just because he has a blog.
A wise man who is content in his beliefs would be at peace, however, you seem to be quite the “chatter box”.
How is it that you know what all “wise” men do, and don´t do. You are saying that because Philip is quite the “chatter box” he can´t really be wise. That´s quite an assumption. It seems more like you are the one who is arrogant.
Eh, I’ve always leaned towards Reincarnation myself, although not how people usually define it, as your soul entering a new body. The only reason I believe in it, or at least a variation of it, is that when we die we lose what gives our consciousness. Without that, we can’t experience anything, not even nothingness. Nothingness cannot exist as anything more than a mere idea due to that.
So as a result of that, we must assume some other form with consciousness. Our previous self no longer exists, as all the memories and what not belonged to that bodies brain. Thereafter, we just live our lives as something else with a conscious, and it doesn’t even necessarily have to be human. Whatever we get reborn as could even be on another planet for all we know.
Anyways, that’s the general gist of what I believe.
My take on this is: If my individual consciousness is unique to myslef (as it appears to be: I can’t merge my mind with anyone else’s), and I cease to exist FOR ETERNITY after I die,
then
as far as I as an individual am concerned, everything that ever was, and everything that will ever be — ALL OF CREATION AND ALL OF EXISTENCE — is contained in the span of my lifetime and my awareness.
If I will never share my consciousness with another being, or return as another being — if what I experience is all I will EVER experience, then all the rest of “existence”, including the beings that lived, and the events that transpired in the time before I was born and those that will transpire in the time after I die, all of it has no impact, no relevance, no “existence” TO ME at all.
From my point of view, all of time and space and matter and energy exists while I am here. To consider what happens after that is meaningless. We only know of the past from messages preserved from those who came before, not directly. We can only infer the future from the events we see taking place around us.
But as ME, inside MY head, all of eternity, all of time, all of space, is contained in my life. To me, I am all that ever was, or will be, or can be.
Does it happen again? Is it continually happening? If my existence is all of existence (to me at least) then to me it is eternal. I have typed these letters “before” and will “again” but more likely is that I’m typing these letters forever.
Thanks for your patience with this.
Affinity
the theory that death is “nothing”…explains everything.
Errrrm, don’t mean to be contrary but I can’t really find a lot of explanatory power in this theory. It doesn’t explain consciousness, the sense of self, the (imaginary or otherwise) experience of being alive, how it is that a pile of carbon and other materials can be not-alive now but alive two minutes earlier, it doesn’t explain why humanity has for millennia believed in spirits etc. I’m not saying you don’t have explanations for any of those things, I’m saying that your theory doesn’t.
As for your assertions that being dead is the same as being unborn and that death \feels like nothing\. They are just that — assertions — and nothing more.
Apart from being non-explanatory and unsubstantiated it’s a good theory.
I’m going to quote my Very Jewish Grandmother on this one…(oh and feel free to throw in a Very Boston/Brooklyn accent in…oh and for good measure, throw in a bit of Woody Allen theatrics into the mix.
When you’re dead…You’re DEAD.