Ernya.com

I'm going with the Daoist inspired answer.

What I think will happen is that I will forget me. I will forget the self. I will no longer have an ego to feed. As such, me as I know it (or me as I believe to be me) will cease to exist.

Instead, that which was me will become part of the greater whole of reality and would not have a separate sense of identity from it. My body may rot but there will no longer be a self to conceptualize on such a subject. As far as any part of (me) that remains will be concerned, I just will be.

I won't have a name. I won't have a specific form. I won't have a self identity. As such I certainly wouldn't have a soul in the conventional sense nor attend any sort of specific afterlife. I'd still be an active participant in the reality that is and wouldn't leave it, I just wouldn't be the human being sitting here that think's she's some such person or another.

If any of that makes sense, I'm sure it doesn't if you choose to follow a rational course of thought and it's a hard idea to describe.

Cereal wrote:It's quite hard to imagine yourself as similar as when you weren't born. I was just wondering if there was such things as dying and then going back to life as someone else afterwards some time.

I think what you're after here is reincarnation.

Other then the natural effects done to a body? Dunno, but I seriously doubt anything happens to us after we die and we decompose. There have been some reports of reincarnation but from what I've heard, the reports were few and far between.

Honestly? I couldn't give you a straight answer without offending half of the site.

I don't believe in reincarnation. I'll tell you exactly what I believe, and if it offends anyone, don't bitch me out for my own opinion. ;D Got it?

When we are born, we get a 'blank slate personality', one that is shaped as we grow up. We learn things, our personality is stored in our brain, we act in impulse through our brain, not through a 'soul' or any crap like that.

So, our personality is in our brain. We die. When we die, our personality is gone because our brain (along with all other organs, pretty much the rest of us) is no longer functioning. And our personality was housed in the brain. There is no 'soul' or 'essence' or anything left, we're just dead, gone, and there's no 'spirits', either.

I dont know, but really does anyone?

I believe that when you die, you take on a sort of... sleeping state until 'judgement day' (Some might say your judged as you die) Then everyone is judged at the same time.
But honestly other then my religious view, I have no clue. I would say that you go 'dormant' until a new life but it sounds to much like reincarnation

lateralus es helica wrote:I'm going with the Daoist inspired answer.

What I think will happen is that I will forget me. I will forget the self. I will no longer have an ego to feed. As such, me as I know it (or me as I believe to be me) will cease to exist.

Instead, that which was me will become part of the greater whole of reality and would not have a separate sense of identity from it. My body may rot but there will no longer be a self to conceptualize on such a subject. As far as any part of (me) that remains will be concerned, I just will be.

I won't have a name. I won't have a specific form. I won't have a self identity. As such I certainly wouldn't have a soul in the conventional sense nor attend any sort of specific afterlife. I'd still be an active participant in the reality that is and wouldn't leave it, I just wouldn't be the human being sitting here that think's she's some such person or another.

If any of that makes sense, I'm sure it doesn't if you choose to follow a rational course of thought and it's a hard idea to describe.

I like this take on it. Reads like a poetic explanation of the simple, rational theory that, since scientific inquiry has all but dismissed dualism, when the body goes, the person ceases to be. That's how I see it, anyway.

It's hard thing to come to terms with, but that doesn't mean it makes any less sense. Anyhow, it's less depressing than the way desperate people deceive themselves, or make their own and others' lives miserable because they're banking on some better next life. That's when our short lives become sad and meaningless.