The Afterlife

I interpret the "afterlife" as keeping someone alive the way you knew them. In that way I am the only living link to Laura (the way I knew her, as opposed to how her dad or sisters or boss knew her) and therefore feel compelled to continue in order to "keep her alive." Very simplistic I know, but that's how I manage to get through these days.

The psychological barrier of leaving Oxford has been overcome; now all I need to do is work out what happens from here on in.

Nothing ever really ceases to exist - a thought struck me this weekend as I pumped my car with gas. I was actually filling my tank with gazillion years old dinosaur sludge. If some reptile ends up doing the same to me a few aeons from now, that's poetic justice.

I just finished watching "Afterlife" on video, the lovely Japanese film. I'd first seen it at the theater a little more than a year ago, and remember walking out of the cinema in a minor but effective state of grace. Like a Julee Cruise song, "Floating", you know.
So, what memory would you choose to keep forever in the Afterlife?

Can anyone imagine anyone truly going to hell? Like, pretty much all of my loved ones would, by the rules, go to hell. I can't imagine it!

I can't really imagine eternity, either, or what you'd do with all your time.

I'm surprised this is the only thread on the topic. It's something I have thought about for many hours of my life and with great effort.

I haven't concluded ANYTHING.

If oblivion, I won't be around to contemplate. If eternity, I'll probably keep pondering.

So, what memory would you choose to keep forever in the Afterlife?

BAH, this suggests the afterlife will be like that time I got gas anesthesia at the dentist. They told me to imagine 'my favorite thing,' and I couldn't pinpoint what that was, so the idea of "making donuts" (my job) came to me and the whole time I imagined making donuts.

OR maybe it is like the end of Ghostbusters. Even if you choose a good happy memory like Stay-Puff mascot, it turns out all wrong. Maybe that is hell, like the time I was delirious with the flu and had the fucking alphabet song in my head.

BAH, this suggests the afterlife will be like that time I got gas anesthesia at the dentist. They told me to imagine 'my favorite thing,' and I couldn't pinpoint what that was, so the idea of "making donuts" (my job) came to me and the whole time I imagined making donuts.

big lols, Abbott, thanks.

I think that there's enough hellish situations in this life on earth that people are going through that the idea of hell after this life is not so far-fetched. I don't believe in the concept of an eternal hell, though. I do think that one could wind up in a hell that would be so horrible that it would seem to last forever.

But I don't think anything lasts forever.

Who sang that song anyway?

"My Favorite Thing"?

It was some band in the 90s from North Carolina that did this song called "The Afterlife", and it usually played at two in the morning after an evening on LSD.

I would say, what I believe is we go to a place where there is no pain, we need and want for nothing and we can see forever, perhaps like the peace and quiet before we are born. I think it is a place of dim light, and it's never completely dark.A a safe place to be.At least this is my humble opinion. Gale

Gale had her moments.

hmmm, dunno. When I took drugs and listened to the radio everything always sounded completely amazing. Like, everything, without exception.

Squirrel Nut Zippers! The song is called "Hell," tho maybe you are thinking of a different song? I thought that this song was fucking GOOD!

In the afterlife
You could be headed for the serious strife
Now you make the scene all day
But tomorrow therell be hell to pay

People listen attentively
I mean about future calamity
I used to think the idea was obsolete
Until I heard the old man stamping his feet.

This is a place where eternally
Fire is applied to the body
Teeth are extruded and bones are ground
Then baked into cakes which are passed around.

Beauty, talent, fame, money, refinement
Top skill and brain
But all the things you try to hide
Will be revealed on the other side.

Now the d and the a and the m
And the n and the a
And the t and the i-o-n
Lose your face, lose your name
Then get fitted for a suit of flame

"Now I am living, and so I do not know any thing about death at all." - Gudo Nishijima

i think the answer is "don't know"

Good people go to Heaven. Bad people go to Alabama.

Downer bomb that may well send this thread to hell: Last night I couldn't sleep and felt like death was around. I got up to look at the next door neighbor's house; thought I saw her standing in the window looking at me; was the curtains. She's got pancreatic cancer and I wondered if last night was the night cuz I had a feeling. Got a call today that my mom's ex-girlfriend (my stepmother, really, the woman who raised us with my mom from the time I was 2 until they broke up when I was 16) had died Saturday. A tortured woman she was. Ended up with a small dog and a meth problem in a trailer in Lolo Montana. Died of pneumonia. They found her yesterday with her dog shivering next to her. I can't say I'll miss her (emotionally abusive step-parent; Matos's posts about his mother's incredibly stupid ex-boyfriend reminded me of her) but I'm sad. I don't usually think about the afterlife, but I am tonight. Her life was hell. If there is afterlife, I hope that for her it is rest.

oops scott logged in to my computer. I am Maria D.

I am not scott. He believes in ghosts too though.

I have been thinking about this a lot, lately, too.

i'm sorry, maria, by the way.

Aw Maria that is pretty poignant, and I think your conclusion is a kind one.

Very kind.

I stole the "typical Ned approving reply."

I like to believe that we become what we envision as heaven in the afterlife. My afterlife would be a huge data transfer cable of beautiful light unconceivable and uncontainable, a river of blue light/water made up of particles of ideas, art and souls. My being would remain loosely connected like a computer network that can communicate with its parts, but my particles would also scatter and ripple down the river of light and join with other atoms/particles to become sentient leaves, plastic, sediment, space dust.....

I think we probably cease to be, though I have a fantasy of an afterlife in which you're a disembodied ghost that can travel instaneously through time and space, checking out historical events and the future. That would be fun.

Timelord afterlife! Rad.

I think the rad of a rad afterlife is a rad that I would want to be beyond my comprehension. So, that's not reassuring, because I can't imagine it besides to say, "It's got to be SO GOOD I can't even imagine."

I think the most plausible description is that we return to where we were before we were born

For a few years I thought it would be good and poetic for there to be no afterlife, body all decompose and feed the skunk cabbage (a favorite plant and likely candidate to use the decomposed remnants of humans). But then I had this dream:

Me and my best bud were by the riverbottoms of where I grew up, wandering through the brush and rocks. I suddenly hear this shot and see a man with a hunting rifle, then see my friend fall down with blood streaming out of her head. Moments later, before I could react, I heard the sound of a second shot at the same time I felt an explosion of pain boring through my skull. All in slow motion, feeling the individual skull fragments tunneling through with the searing hot bullet, the bullet ripping my brain into melting oatmeal. I felt it exiting, the wetness of the blood and scraps of head/brain raining on my shoulders and torso, and my body crumpling to the earth. All I could see was red of pain inside my eyelids and blood when I opened my eyes.

It was all black. I was dead and nothing was happening. I thought, 'This is it so death is the end,' which was some reassurance and kind of satisfying to have the question answered finally. But then, 'Wait, if I can think, then death is not the end. Maybe this is hell, maybe I'm going to hell in a moment...' And I woke up.

So that kind of put me ill-at-ease to think 'death is the end' is a-okay.

I return to my dad's PENIS Shakey Mo?

HAHAHAHA good one abbott

I find it very hard to believe that anything resembling us could survive without our physical bodies, that there is a soul or self that can exist at all after death. That's bothersome for me now that I'm Christian, but it's not something I have to "figure out" (even the pope hasn't got it figured out!), so I believe in materialism but hope for miracles. Also, I don't believe in damnation, I think it's in no way compatible with any decent view of the universe.

haha it's a very serious answer given what i'm xposting after!

Yeah I just did a totally weird xpost...to myself.

Maybe this is hell, maybe I'm going to hell in a moment...' And I woke up.

ergo YOU ARE IN HELL RIGHT NOW

Yeah, Squirrel Nut Zippers. Thanks, abb.

I return to my dad's PENIS Shakey Mo?

no mom for you eh

I love that song. I always feel a tiny bit bad when I sing along to it too (same with "It's a Sin" by the Pet Shop boys - a Muslim friend of mine actually will not be in the room when that song's playing).

Haham, me too, and "Building a Religion" by Cake, which ironically is a favorite of the entire McCrack3n family (my family).

OMG, there's another family with that name.

There's a guy I know who has the worst name in Little Rock: P@t McCr@ck3n.

I'm unaware if he has a brother named Phil.

My brother heard that joke so much ('is yr name Phil?' even tho it is M3rrick) that he embraced the hell out of it and make his church basketball jersey say PHIL instead of his last name.

Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
To get through this thing called life

Electric word life
It means forever and that's a mighty long time
But I'm here to tell you
There's something else
The afterworld

A world of never ending happiness
You can always see the sun, day or night

So when you call up that shrink in Beverly Hills
You know the one - Dr Everything'll Be Alright
Instead of asking him how much of your time is left
Ask him how much of your mind, baby

'Cuz in this life
Things are much harder than in the afterworld
In this life
You're on your own

And if the elevator tries to bring you down
Go crazy

Ha! Was just watching [the film (same one mentioned above I think).

I wish people didn't make compliments that effaced themselves in the process. "You are very smart!" or its equivalent would have been nice for both parties.

Keepin' it positive in the oh-eight!

oops wrong thread

I'm a practicing Christian, I read the Bible and go to church. But I don't believe in an afterlife. Every time I attend church I feel a bit of fear I will be found out. I don't do stuff to, like, "go to heaven".

Like the church says you have to have purity in your heart when you do good for others. I don't think this is realistic in today's times. Isn't that stuff for the "afterlife", which I don't believe in? Can you do good for others without the purest of intentions?

What do you think Jesus is like? Should I quit my church?

If the presumed presence or absence of an afterlife is irrelevant to your idea of how best to live your current life, then I don't think you need to worry a bit about this. Jesus, as I understand his message, would not think that your unbelief was any kind of actual sin against god.

Can you do good for others without the purest of intentions?

This is just piety inflation. No matter how 'good' or pious you are, some one will say that it doesn't match some ideal of perfect purity. They'd be right, but again, it is irrelevant to whether you "can do good for others", because you can certainly do good without perfect purity.

Just be on the lookout for whether you are glossing over a selfish act with a show of piety, or a secret desire to impress the hell out of somebody and you'll be fine.

Those are good answers, that is how I feel. I was raised with that impression. But I had an argument in church about the "quality of someone's soul", and that is a measure of how "good" you are. I realized that maybe I shouldn't be in church because I don't worry enough about the condition of my "soul".

Worrying about your own soul's state of grace is one of those buckets people often put their foot into. Just think about others often enough that it is an unshakeable habit, and stay humble about how much good you can do even when you're doing your best.

Shit! Even Christ asked to have his responsibilities lifted from him after he'd spent a while on the cross and, according to most Christians, Jesus was goodness and perfection incarnate. Shows you just what will happen when you have a carnal body carping at you, doesn't it? The people you're talking to just want you to feel as bad and inadequate as they do. Misery loves company, y'know.

i'm unsaved, but from my perspective belief in the afterlife is way less important than belief in the messianic/resurrection of the dead

i think of the afterlife as the way people think about you after you're gone, i.e. the manner in which you "live on" in people's memories

an interesting what-if is how proof of an afterlife would affect life on Earth, apparently the premise of this upcoming film

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/netflix-takes-discovery-starring-rooney-902268

i suppose that cable series remixing the Rapture was similarly anchored, didn't see it