Question For Everybody About The Afterlife! Options

Hi folks,

I've been wondering a lot recently about the afterlife, specifically that I've found no real evidence of the survival of the human personality after death. Does anyone have, or know of, real, solid evidence of the survival of the human personality? Note I do NOT mean the core life-force or spark, which is not the personality, it's an impersonal blob of energy without memories or emotions.

As a pretty experienced occultist with twenty-odd years of serious practice, I've seen plenty of evidence for the existence of psychic forces and spirits of every kind; I've evoked them, invoked them, been helped, been harrassed, been attacked, seen heard and felt them.
But couldn't they, even after all this, just really be conceptualized strains of energy that the zeitgeist of collective humanity animates and draws from? Even if they are not and they're fully real and independent, does the HUMAN personality survive death? I've been to spiritualist churches etc etc and all that bumf too, and found no real evidence except either wholly fraudulent, ego-driven mediums or temporary "spirits" being animated by the emotional need of the medium and his audience, giving deceitful and misleading impressions, and not actual dead people communicating at all.

I've seen no evidence for survival after death, I'm afraid, and I'm saddened at what I've found. Whenever someone close or a loved one has died, all I pick up that's happened to them, using all my visionary and divinatory powers, is that they've gone into an eldritch darkness and been basically re-absorbed into the primeval chaos of dark inhuman energies. This is shown me in dream, in divination, in visions, in feelings.
I don't want this to be so. I want to think people can go on to higher planes and the loved one you knew is still self-aware and will remember you. But I've found no real evidence for it.

I hope you understand what I'm getting at here; I don't want someone spouting a load of theory at me, I've heard it all before, all the philosophies of every magical/new age/wiccan/buddhist/christian/hindu things, etc etc. I don't want to hear what you've been told to believe by your gurus or your books. I don't want to hear lies or fabrications, I'll probably see through them. I want to hear of EVIDENCE. Subjective evidence, even, but evidence from real experience.

Does the human personality REALLY survive death, then? Or are we, as a lot of chaos systems suggest, just temporary flowerings of humanity, and doomed to dissolve into the creative mass of the Void etc upon death?

i guess it doesn't matter, but i have some distinct ideas on the survival of the human personality between lives

first, like the reincarnation of the dali lama detecting his previous life' s hairbrush out of a load of old tat, and distinct fears, likes and memories that are out of place within this life, soulmates, etc ,all point to another existence as a immortal creature that temporarily incarnates into the physical, like that bird that sticks its tail into the water as a fish lure, and that is our true existence, not this supposed reality

second, human personality can change over time, and also can change completely through accident or ill health modifying the person's brains, so that gives the indication that the personality is housed in the physical, not the immortal

third, to continue to evolve, it is not the personality that must survive, but the life-lessons and memory (the evidence of which is the first point above), hence the myriad attempts to preserve it


es

oddly enough, i was just forced to watch a montel (shiver!) with the psychic sylvia brown doing a sorta john edwards thing, and you are quite right that the personality, said to be retained after death in the xtian afterlife, although everybody is supposedly 30-ish which doesn't make much sense if you died as a kid, anyway if someone did something that amounted to personailty on the other side as opposed to memory i didn't see it, only memory stuff

the edit i put on the other post disappeared somehow, that the 'personality that vanishes into the eldritch darkness' might be the ego which would normally dissolve at death

es

The personality and memory survive only as a reflection of memory and experience in the astral. To say that it is the actual personality is not accurate, because it no longer evolves or changes, it simply remains as it was at the person's passing. The ego dissolves at death.

I do believe that in the case of ascension the personality remains as a part of the cumulative personality of the Soul, embodying all of the individual's experiences through their lifetimes, but I do not think it would be recognizable as the personality of the individual person. I think that a sort of imprint of the experience of this life remains with the eternal part of us, the cumulative knowledge of our past lives which directs us towards our karmic lessons by having understood what we have learned, and what we need to learn. In that way, everything you do and experience in this life will carry over to the next.

However, the dissolution of the ego and the leaving behind of the personality is no reason to fear death. You are not your personality. Your 'me' is the personality, not your 'I'. Even before death, all that you are is temporary. Your perspective, when you die, will remain constant - it will simply change. The perspective is only temporarily individualized by it's context within the ego. There is no need to cling to personality - in this life or in the next - because it is such a changing, ephemeral thing in the first place.

But it's transience gives us great freedom. In accepting that the ego and personality are so temporary, we find that we have no need to cling to any kind of constancy in who we think we are. You are free to be whoever you want to be, have whatever likes and dislikes, whatever quirks, whatever opinions and experiences you want to have. While there are certainly consequences to your quality of thought, positive or negative, it is unnecessary to act as though we have only one life to live, or be overly concerned with the expectations of others, which are based on this impermanent part of us.

peace

Well, good points being made here; although I still don't see or hear of actual evidence.

The only theory to match the evidence I have discovered up to now, is the one that Existence is only created because the "All" wishes to experience itself, and Existence is its' image. It does not necessarily support the idea of "karma." It does support the retention of human experiences as records in, if you like, astral "vaults" to benefit the All.

This could be the only reason we exist; as a temporary conceptualized piece of existence, with a temporary personal consciousness, only here to experience things; and at death we dissolve back into the primeval soup. I've found not a shred of evidence for reincarnation, nor even of the evolving of the soul. Admittedly I haven't left very many occult avenues unexplored, [i.e. I've occasionally done necromancy too, and ritually contacted and sometimes called up dead people.] But all they seem to be, when properly cross-examined, are shades. An echo left from a used-up space-time corridor. A ghost; an imprint on the astral matter. The independent intelligence of the person seems not to be there. There has never been an indication that they've either reincarnated nor moved to another plane, either; just that their spirit has dissolved.

I'd like to believe the more optimistic points you make, I really would, but I'm not finding it.

My original question itself, you must see, has incredible weight, in all that we do. For example, if my evidence is correct, then there is no personal afterlife. Even though the group-soul of humanity will remain until the All has no use for it, the personal existence dissolves; so, in a personal sense, death is real. The end. Kaput.

If this is so, then all the threats and promises of heaven and hell, or going up or down planes depending on one's conduct in life, are utter bull. A cynical trick over millennia by those in power, to control and subjugate the peoples. And I have evoked the spirits of both heaven and hell, and they've largely done what effects I've asked them to in this world! But they may well have no objective reality- just aspects or forces from the human mind and the human group-soul's beliefs!

It follows from this that if this is true, then there is no reward for the good and no punishment for the evil after death. So there is no point in having any morals, beyond what one decides for one's self is pleasing. The immoral oafs and malicious power-freaks I've despised all my life, who've hurt decent people and messed up lives, will suffer nothing after death. They only get punished at all if I do it myself.

I'd still like to hear actual experiences and any evidence people have.

This post has been edited by redbreast: Jan 28 2008, 11:00 AM

Astral projection offers plenty of evidence - from exploring past lives, to learning to view yourself beyond just the physical. And I don't mean conceptualizing yourself here, I mean viewing the ongoing matrix of your own being that is beyond the body and mind. Only by exploring your own soul, your subconscious mind where relevant past experiences are connected to your present consciousness, and learning to step outside of the physical boundaries of the supposed self, can you get any kind of personal experience or evidence.

Asking for evidence of these things from other people is like asking others to prove that magick exists - all you can possibly hope for are anecdotes, and that should not be permissible evidence. As well you should be skeptical of your own experiences, but if you earnestly desire to find such evidence, and you are willing to do the work on yourself that it will require, then when you find it you won't be able to be skeptical about it, at least at first. If you willfully desire to pass of such experiences as fantasies of your own consciousness, then in the end you will maintain your own ignorance. Which isn't meant to be offensive, but ignorance in the sense of the maya, the illusion of being that afflicts us all.

In the end, at the very completion of all things, when all of existence is subsumed into the all, we all end up in the same place. In that sense, there is no heaven or hell, at least not in the long run. Of course, while bound in this construct of time and space, and in the levels of such subtle planes as those that separate the absolute from it's projection of creation, that can be a very long time. And, perhaps we are only expressed in order to live a material life and then are subsumed into the All, one cycle of creation completed. There are many interpretations, but the words of the illumined have said much the same things for ages and ages now, since nearly the dawn of mankind as we know it to be now. Since culture and spirituality have existed. While the new generation is always expected to rebel against the past, in order to procure a more effective future, the sages of millenia past were not blowing smoke out their collective asses, as it were.

I'm not sugesting that you should believe something simply because people have been saying it for a long time, but, if you take the perspective that you are looking for something that can be found, then you stand to find it. If you take the perspective that you are looking for something that doesn't exist, you will probably not find it. The best way is to have no expectations, no opinions on the matter at all. What you are looking for is the hardest thing of all to find, and there is no one anywhere you can just give you proof. But, my experience tells me that you can indeed find proof, as does the experience of many, many other people both contemporary and in the distant - and not so distant - past.

So, I say pursue astral projection. It will take a long time, probably many years, but if you don't even believe what you can learn from evoked entities, then it is the only way to procure proof for yourself. Meditation, of course, goes hand in hand with astral projection, so practice that as well. Then, in time, you'll have your evidence - and it will not be anecdotal, but personally experienced and irrefutable.

peace

Thanks for that, although I don't believe it'll help me, the theory and rational philosophy may stimulate others.
I'm afraid like I said, I've heard all the theory etc before.

Astral Projection, including into the inner planes, was part of my basic training.

I must say that I do think that magic can at least subjectively be proved.

Ideally, what I'm hoping for is to hear of others' experiences, hopefully some with a demonstrable method.

Has anyone genuinely been able to contact and converse with a dead person who has had a temporal life on Earth,
and who is more than just a shade?

I find, for example, that I feel it when a loved one has died suddenly, and they have appeared in dreams and visions [through astral projection too] very soon after death, i.e. a few days or a week at most; but they are fading, and what I see that swallows them is the Void; an inhuman primeval mess, that to be frank doesn't feel pleasant to me. I'm aware of the ancient Egyptian ideas of the Ba and Ka, that the higher soul leaves the Earth and the Ka stays and rots.

I'm hoping something like this is true, and all I'm picking up is just their Ka, the spiritual shell of baseness or equivalent, but I'd like to hear of anyone who's experienced a dead person animated and autonomous.

I'm not counting those people who have achieved a form of immortality by training their spirit-soul to acheive abnormal cohesiveness so they remain intact after death, as I know that is possible. I'm talking about the average person, untrained in any occutlism.

This post has been edited by redbreast: Jan 29 2008, 11:25 AM

one more thing:

i found myself thinking of what it is that still exists - that if i called up dead aunt sally and asked 'where'd you put the keys to your letterbox you crazy old bat', her memory would be able to supply that, although what vision i had of her is probably from my memory not her person which is rotting in the ground (which wouldn't know), nor her immortal creature which still exists elsewhere (which wouldn't care)

a really interesting topic, thanks!

es