by mysterio91 33 Replies latest jw friends
Mary.....I agree with you somewhat.
Tigerman just related something that is an example of weird-type things you speak of that happens on a regular basis to certain ones. I would be comforted to know their is life after death.....but sadly, we don't know for sure. I am also impressed by the honesty in many here in realising.....we truelly do not know.........yet.
Gumby
What happens to the programs running on your computer if your computer is destroyed?
they see this blinding white light and hear Bill Gates' voice saying "come into the liiiiight......"
I believe that there is a resurrection. I think we will go to heaven. The bible talks about Abraham looking forward to his heavenly reward etc. Jesus said that you will be with him and I'm pretty sure he is in heaven. I'm not sure if we go when we die or when we die we go somewhere and wait for the resurrection. The parable about the one guy going to a fiery place and the good guy going to the pleasant place where the was a chasm between them so that one could not go to the other. Makes me want to think it is the latter.
After hearing about the thousands of people that have Near Death Experiences, I think that there is something beyond this life.
Near death experiences is an explainable phenomenon. Just look it up.
Not everyone can be hallucinating about the same damn thing......
Actually they can, and do, and it's explainable. Also, it's not so much a "hallucination". More like a misinterpretation of what they are experiencing.
I remember my folks telling me (they are dubs) that the witness doctrine of soul sleep is comforting, while christendoms doctrine of afterlife can terrify the loved ones left behind. That they are disturbed, not knowing whether their loved one went to heaven or a place of torment.
The problem, is ive attended a dozen or more of "christendoms" funerals, and have never heard anyone preached into hell. No matter if they were a believer or not. The other thing is, ive never actually been comforted thinking that my body would lie in the ground for a number of years (or centuries) waiting some distant ressurection. I think contrary to JW doctrine, the belief of eternality of the soul (not immortality of the soul, as the JW's accuse christendom of, and what the Greeks actually believed) or basically life immediantly after death would be more comforting to the believer. Any thoughts?
Sangdigger,
Actually both immortality of the soul and resurrection were part of the Pharisees' and early Christians' set of beliefs. This has been discussed many times on this board, most recently at http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/11/81599/1.ashx (at the end of page 1 and the beginning of page 2 you will find a number of links to Leolaia's fully documented threads on this subject).
I posted this in another thread a few months ago, and offer it here hoping it will ease some of the grief you must feel. It is always saddening to be separted from those we love. When we believe the separation will be longer, or permanent, we are saddened even more. There are many, many different ideas about what happens after the body dies. The Watchtower Society taught that our body was all that there was of us, and that when the body died and decayed, we only exist "in Jehovahs memory". However, this teaching, like most of the rest of their dogma, was not based on any observation of the natural world, but rather on their own interpretation of their own translation of the writings of men who lived centuries ago. When we actually observe the natural world, we see that nothing goes to waste, ever. Matter breaks down, and is reconstructed into other forms of matter. The exact same atoms which make up your body today were forming part of the body of someone else last year, perhaps the cow which provided meat for a hamburger you ate, or the tree which used its own cellulose to form the apple you ate. The oxygen present in your body, both as a gas or as part of the structure of your tissues, was once part of someone else. The life force combines atoms into complex forms, which eventually break down, and those same atoms are recombined again into other forms. Over time, those forms tend to become more complex, so life forms today are more complex than those which were forming 4 billion years ago. The Watchtower Society used to teach us that evolution was "dishonoring to God". Perhaps this is what they believed, but Charles Darwin didn't think so. He wrote "There is a grandeur in this view of life...having originally been breathed by the Creator into a few forms, or into one; and that whilst the planet has gone cycling on...from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." On the topic of the 'soul', I tend to agree with Solomon, who prayed that he would be granted wisdom. Solomon wrote "Men and beasts have the same ending. One dies exactly like the other, as they have the same spirit, so that there is no superiority of one over the other. All end up the same, all are made from the earth, and all return to the earth. Who can say that the spirit of a man rises, or that the spirit of an animal descends?" Ecclesiastes 3:19-21. Solomon clearly distinguishes between the physical body and the "spirit" as two different things. If the material making up the physical body are constantly being recycled, what about the "spirit"? Is there any reason to believe this would be different, especially since Solomon states that human "spirit" and animal "spirit" is the same? Personally, I view 'spirit' or 'soul' as something like a conscious fluid. It exists in a vast ocean which fills the Universe. Within the ocean, there is no 'you' and 'me' there is only 'us'. Within the ocean, all knowledge and memories are shared. Everything incarnate as a physical being has a portion of this conscious fluid inside it. However, when this fluid is 'in' an incarnated body, it is separted from the remainder of the ocean, just as you may go to the shore of a lake or sea, and fill a vessel with water. While contained in the vessel, the fluid is not in complete communication with the 'ocean' from which it came. It may still be aware of the ocean, and even have imperfect communication with the ocean, but as long as the vessel contains it, it is not 'at one' with the ocean. At the point of physical death, the fluid is 'poured out' of the vessel, and eventually flows back to the ocean, and becomes at one with it. If another vessel is dipped into the ocean, the chances of filling it with exactly the same droplets that made up your soul are vanishingly small. However, each droplet that was 'you' in a previous incarnation still carries your full set of memories. Think of a starfish. If it is cut into pieces, each piece remembers what the rest of the creature was like, and will grow into a complete starfish. Also think of a hologram which contains an image. If you cut a hologram in half, each piece will still contain the full image. Each droplet of soul is like a hologram of your entire set of memories. So the next incarnation may have a little bit of yourself, as well as many others. As I write this, some of the fluid forming 'my' soul has been in other vessels, which is why I may, at times, have memories of past lives, and why someone else might conceivably also have a memory of living as the same person for instance, it is possible that I could have some of the soul which was in the vessel we call Marco Polo, but someone else could also have some of Mr. Polo as well, and many people probably do. If I have even one drop of his 'soul', then I can possibly recall him as a past life, due to the holographic properties of the fluid. The ocean is very large, and some of the fluid which I contain may be experiencing it's first incarnation in my vessel this time around. Some believe that the soul ocean chooses to experience a physical incarnation as a learning experience. Perhaps we have 20% previously incarnated soul, and 80% soul which has never been incarnated. Perhaps the ratio is different in different people. People, animals, protista, plants, fungi, bacteria, even virus, ANYTHING alive contains a portion of this fluid, the amount depending on the size and complexity of their nervous system. The ocean is constantly being borrowed from, and fluid previously having been borrowed is constantly flowing back to rejoin and become one with the ocean. This is part of the significance of the tarot card 'The Star' in which water is poured back to join the 'ocean' of Universal Consciousness". By becoming 'at one' even in a limited sense with that ocean, spiritual illumination can be gained. Earth is said to be 4.6 billion years old, and to have had simple but recognizable life forms for 3.6 billion of those years. Humans have only been around for 2 million years or so, depending on how closely you define humans (some fundamentalists would say only 6000 years). So, into what bodies did 'soul' incarnate before there were humans? Are we to think that obviously intelligent creatures, with distinctive personalities such as gorillas, chimps, dogs, whales, porpoises, elephants, cats, etc, have no souls? I believe that soul incarnates into whatever is available, and will continue to do so for a long time. We are not the final word in the development of physical 'vessels' to contain soul, only one of the most recent. Bright Blessings gaiagirl
Well, if there are no such thing as ghost, I will be the first and I intend to come back and haunt anyone who has ever hurt my feelings. So, you better be good to me.
I tend to believe that consciousness and all body functions cease. No eternal soul, no afterlife, no rebirth.
If I was logical, I would have to agree with this.
But..............I am not always logical, so I choose to believe that after death, we join our loved ones, in a form of an afterlife. I sure hope I'm right.
Narkissos, thanks for the info. I'll check it out when i get a breather. What i meant by using the word immortality, as opposed to Eternality, is most practicing Christians say the word immortality when refering to the Soul, when they really should say Eternality. Immortality implies no beginning, no end, wich is what the Greeks taught. In other words, we existed as spirits before we took on a body. As far as i know, the only "Christian" group ( i use that word loosely) to teach Immortality would be the Mormans. Eternality implies life begins with the birth of the body on earth, and continues on throughout eternity with no end. So JW's are wrong when they accuse most churches of teaching Immortality of the Soul.
