Our Natural Eternal Consciousness: A Timeless Remnant in the Disembodied Mind
Posted: Thu Nov 07, 2019 9:37 pm
Warning: Due to the terminology used above, this post may be readily dismissed as dealing with the paranormal. It does not! It does, however, require an open mind.
A Dec 2002/Jan 2003 article in Philosophy Now , “Life After Death” by Steve Stewart-Williams, presents an argument FOR and AGAINST life after death. It identifies one kind of afterlife as that in which “survival takes place outside the body … as a disembodied mind” and argues in “The Case Against Survival” that “The Dependence of Mind on Brain” is “the strongest argument against survival” after death. Not taken into account by the article, however, is our natural eternal consciousness (NEC), which does not depend on a functioning brain and makes a natural afterlife possible.
This non-supernatural, disembodied consciousness and possible afterlife are timeless and, admittedly, survival is illusory. From the perspective of the dying person, however, these phenomena are not timeless, only eternal, and the experience provided is very real. The brief treatise given below gives an inkling into the psychological basis for the NEC and the referenced article formally defines it and argues for its reality.
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An Overview of the Psychological Basis for the Natural Eternal Consciousness
From basic psychology, two opposing hypotheses can be deduced for what we will experience upon death. The first is based on the definitions of mind and consciousness like those given in many introductory psychology textbooks. The second delves just a bit deeper and is based on human experience and established cognitive principles in time and conscious perception.
Hypothesis 1: Quoting from a © 2014 psychology textbook by Zimbardo: “The mind is the product of the brain,” consciousness is “the brain process that creates our mental representation of the world and our current thoughts” and “as a process … is dynamic and continual rather than static.” Therefore, when the brain dies, the mind as its product and consciousness as a brain process must totally cease to exist and we will “experience” a before-life kind of nothingness.
Hypothesis 2: We perceive time as a sequence of events evolving one discrete conscious moment at a time. Outside of these present moments, e.g., dreamless sleep, we perceive of nothing. Before death a still functioning brain produces one last present moment of a perceived event within some experience, perhaps a dream, and then is forever incapable of producing another one that would cognitively supplant the last one from our consciousness. Therefore, we never perceive, and thus are never aware, that our last experience is over, and so a remnant of consciousness, an experience paused in a moment at a point in time, will become imperceptibly timeless, i.e., static, and deceptively eternal relative to our perspective. (Here experience is not in quotes as it is indeed experienced before death.)
Hypothesis 1, despite lacking empirical verification, has been accepted as orthodoxy by many. It can only be verified after death, which is impossible. In contrast, Hypothesis 2 has hitherto been overlooked, likely because of the orthodoxies of 1 and religion and the difficulty for the living to view death strictly from the dying person's frame of reference, i.e., only that which is perceived by the dying. Moreover, 2 can be verified before death and is so to some degree with each everyday human encounter with timelessness, e.g., dreamless sleep, each being perceptively like death. Especially relevant are those encounters after which we awaken instantly startled when our first conscious moment is inconsistent with our last—e.g., when waking up after having an intense dream. One need only ask: “Suppose I had never woke up?”
For much more detail on hypothesis 2, read The Theory of a Natural Eternal Consciousness: The Psychological Basis for a Natural Afterlife.
A Dec 2002/Jan 2003 article in Philosophy Now , “Life After Death” by Steve Stewart-Williams, presents an argument FOR and AGAINST life after death. It identifies one kind of afterlife as that in which “survival takes place outside the body … as a disembodied mind” and argues in “The Case Against Survival” that “The Dependence of Mind on Brain” is “the strongest argument against survival” after death. Not taken into account by the article, however, is our natural eternal consciousness (NEC), which does not depend on a functioning brain and makes a natural afterlife possible.
This non-supernatural, disembodied consciousness and possible afterlife are timeless and, admittedly, survival is illusory. From the perspective of the dying person, however, these phenomena are not timeless, only eternal, and the experience provided is very real. The brief treatise given below gives an inkling into the psychological basis for the NEC and the referenced article formally defines it and argues for its reality.
-------------------------------------
An Overview of the Psychological Basis for the Natural Eternal Consciousness
From basic psychology, two opposing hypotheses can be deduced for what we will experience upon death. The first is based on the definitions of mind and consciousness like those given in many introductory psychology textbooks. The second delves just a bit deeper and is based on human experience and established cognitive principles in time and conscious perception.
Hypothesis 1: Quoting from a © 2014 psychology textbook by Zimbardo: “The mind is the product of the brain,” consciousness is “the brain process that creates our mental representation of the world and our current thoughts” and “as a process … is dynamic and continual rather than static.” Therefore, when the brain dies, the mind as its product and consciousness as a brain process must totally cease to exist and we will “experience” a before-life kind of nothingness.
Hypothesis 2: We perceive time as a sequence of events evolving one discrete conscious moment at a time. Outside of these present moments, e.g., dreamless sleep, we perceive of nothing. Before death a still functioning brain produces one last present moment of a perceived event within some experience, perhaps a dream, and then is forever incapable of producing another one that would cognitively supplant the last one from our consciousness. Therefore, we never perceive, and thus are never aware, that our last experience is over, and so a remnant of consciousness, an experience paused in a moment at a point in time, will become imperceptibly timeless, i.e., static, and deceptively eternal relative to our perspective. (Here experience is not in quotes as it is indeed experienced before death.)
Hypothesis 1, despite lacking empirical verification, has been accepted as orthodoxy by many. It can only be verified after death, which is impossible. In contrast, Hypothesis 2 has hitherto been overlooked, likely because of the orthodoxies of 1 and religion and the difficulty for the living to view death strictly from the dying person's frame of reference, i.e., only that which is perceived by the dying. Moreover, 2 can be verified before death and is so to some degree with each everyday human encounter with timelessness, e.g., dreamless sleep, each being perceptively like death. Especially relevant are those encounters after which we awaken instantly startled when our first conscious moment is inconsistent with our last—e.g., when waking up after having an intense dream. One need only ask: “Suppose I had never woke up?”
For much more detail on hypothesis 2, read The Theory of a Natural Eternal Consciousness: The Psychological Basis for a Natural Afterlife.