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Heaven?


Harpo Marx

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Some of you may or may not believe that this is the final place. Last sunday I was sitting and thinking... what if there was a heaven? I got kinda scared.. not because there would be god, but because when people talk about heaven they say 'there is no pain' 'its perfect'... the only way that it would be possible would be for us to not know pain, or grief, or envy... we would be giving up our very humanly characteristics to survive. It would utopia to some i suppose, but where do we draw the line of being happy, and being entiry blind to something? If there wasnt any pain or death... then how would there be happiness to distinguish the two, and why would there be a point to achieve anything? I dunno... any thoughts? and dont make the 'christians suck' comments either, im not asking for shallow opinions on people of a belief.

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I too have thought about "what if". I guess we would all remember our days here on earth. We would have that to compare thus realizing our new found paradise. I think we will still carry on our memories to wherever we go after death. Perhaps one might call that a soul. Perhaps it is something else. Maybe our soul dies too.

Good thing to contemplate and get gears of the mind thinking on some existence, future, life type stuff

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I suspend any call as to whether heaven exists. From a religious angle it's a bunch of nonsense. But the stories of near-death experiences, while not wholly credible, suggest to me that it would be a womblike place, where you just feel the warmth and the love and maybe relief that you're...home. Whatever the case, it's not a place or situation you could ever understand before you experience it, so I wouldn't worry about it.

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Guest imported_Tesseract

I tend to believe that heaven and hell exists on the same life.

To me there is no after-life.

Suffering or Being happy for eternity is so full of fear and so anthropocentric that i concider it a sadomazohistic though the less.

What more could hell be than living your only life in misery and you contributed in the same way in other peoples lifes?

I'm always very annoyed on the opinion religious people have about animals and death.

Do animals go to heaven? do they go to hell?

Why can we respect the circle of good and bad when it comes to animals and not to us?

Everyone has a role as an element.

Fuck it we just end.

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Guest BROWNer
Originally posted by Tesseract

Everyone has a role as an element.

Fuck it we just end.

 

as for the near death stuff.......there's a canadian neurologist thats replicated

these experiences, along with alien encounters and a bunch of other 'phenomena'...

brains. its all brains.

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when ive used up my body, it will decay and return to the earth and become something else weather it be rain, dirt, part of something else. it will be back as something else. and my mind/thoughts/soul/spirit will leave the body when its finished with it and go on to somewhere else, where i have no idea. theres just to much energy and thoughts in our minds that it cannnot just stop. we only use 10% of our brains potential power, how can we even begin to guess what ha[ppens, who know maybe were only using .00000001% we think were so smart when really were stupid.

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Just look at your human hand...... even with all the technology out there today, scientists cannot replicate it. Something has created a whole world.... every little thing is amazing. Like how our bodies function, and recreate more people by liquids and eggs..... its just way to complicated. I mean, look how perfectly the Photosynthesis system works, allowing everything to be on a cycle..... there is no way we just came here from nothing! No way at all!

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the only time i ever think about death is when someone that i know dies. that is when i sit there and think about death and how a life and soul can exist in the physical world but all of a sudden make its way up to heaven or if you have been horrible, make its way down to hell. i have never denied death. i have always been accepting it as a part of life and we all have to go through it sometime. what i can't accept is the beliefs behind death, i just don't believe it. maybe i dont want to believe it. growing up as a catholic, the church embeds in your head that death is something that we all go through and you have to be a good person in order to go to heaven. and if you are bad, you go to hell and live in an eternity of torture. but its certain that many of us think that when we go to heaven, pain is eliminated and that we are all happy. but what makes me think is what harpo said. how can you distinguish the line of being happy when it seems as you as a human being has been all erased? how can you feel any happiness when that is all you feel up in heaven? throughout history, heaven has been known for being utopia and even when people try to contact the dead, the "dead tells" them that they are happy and well. honestly, i dont believe in either of the two. but i still tell people to console them that their loved ones are up in heaven all happy. that is the only way to explain it. we will never know until we die. at one point in my life, i actually believed that when we die, we reincarnate into another body and starting the whole life circle again. you know how you sometimes let fate and destiny take its course? well i thought that god (or whoever made the decisions and what not) would be the judge as to what kind of life that you live. just like heaven and hell but in the physical world, you are going to live it instead of spending eternity in it. and the whole cycle keeps going and going.

 

good topic though harpo....i knew that u were always the smart one.

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yeah- I don't believe in a heaven, but I do believe in total contentment in the present moment. I think that if there was a heaven- all the things we could possible ever want at any given moment would be there, either that or we would have no desire for anything we did not already have- both result in utopia, but only one seems possible.

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Originally posted by Devilush

good topic though harpo....i knew that u were always the smart one.

 

haha. thanks

On the note of hell, how can there be a one? Whos judgement is it that seperates our eternal happiness from our eternal suffering? It would be based on someone's opinion. I can't believe that there is a heaven, or or that there's a hell. No one can decide what I'm going to do, or know myself better than me. I've got one hack at life, I won't depend on a better place where I won't know anything.. I can't.

 

I'm making myself think...

Heaven would be like 'The Giver'. People dont know grief or sorrow. They would be like blinded wind-up dolls. No prejudice, no judgement, no decisions, no colors, no distinction of anything. I talked to a friend about this yesterday, and he made the point of saying that without knowing grief or sorrow, that they can't know happiness, it just seems that they do. They all just follow a routine, and that's all they know.

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I gotta say it before I forget it...

I do go to church every sunday, and Im in a very religious family. Im told that god knows everything, and that he loves my parents more than I do. He doesnt. I would be willing to give up my one chance at life to die for them. To hell with heaven... I'll get out the bolt cutters like REVS said in the 12 oz interview... if there is one I'll get them out after Im gone, and I'll get in.

 

Im not too sure what I think of death. I think that suicide is stupid, not for anything religious, but because it's unfair to your loved ones who have to cope with your loss every day wishing that they could have done something to stop it.

 

1 life, 1 chance. Im going to take full advantage of it, and stand on top of the mountain as I look over the hills of the setting sun aflame in the purple and violet sky and say IM ALIVE DAMMIT!

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be warned. this is long.

 

Originally posted by BROWNer

brains. its all brains.

 

yeah, most people hear these stories and forget that at the point of time that these near death experiences occur, people tend to be either under heavy medication or have had severe trauma to their head. one way or another, the brain is almost always affected before it happens.

 

as for the using 10% of our brain idea.. that's bullshit. i believe the explanation of that phrase that i read was that somebody once said "IMAGINE IF we only used 10% of our brains.." or something like that. besides, we evolved big brains because we needed them, not because we needed just 10% of them.

 

as for heaven, i happen to not think there is one. my problem with it is i don't think that non-physical objects exist, and the idea of heaven pretty much hinges on that. that you are made up of two things: your physical body and your non-physical mind/soul/vital essence/etc. and when you die your body remains on earth to decompose while your non-physical whatever goes to a non-physical place for eternity. well, in that case, what does eternity mean in a non-physical realm? does time pass the same in both realms, is time a universal constant (in the most absolute sense of "universal"), or is time strictly a measurement for the physical universe? what does happiness or pain mean in a non-physical realm? does it mean the same thing as it does in the physical universe? if not, is heaven still a good thing? since god lives in the non-physical realm, and we were created in his likeness, how does that conversion from non-physical to physical likeness work out? is it exact, otherwise what is lost in the process? if god does causally interact with the physical universe, how can a causal interaction between physical and non-physical logically work since the two are foundationally different? why can the non-physical interact with the physical, but the reverse isn't true? or is it?

 

the difference between the physical and non-physical is so deeply fundamental that i think it's ridiculous to assume anything AT ALL about the non-physical, and to assume that the realms are completely parallel other than the fact that one is physical and the other is not seems to me really ignorant.

 

nobody knows whether there is a non-physical realm out there, i certainly don't claim to know for sure whether there is or isn't. and i know there are really strong arguments for that dualistic view. but there are also really strong arguments for a non-dualistic view of the world. both have serious flaws, but i just can't accept something that begs millions of questions and that places so much faith in the non-physical, something we know nothing about. i like it better anyways thinking that death is the end all. tell ya the truth, that comforts me a lot more than the idea of a heaven.

 

regarding arguments from design, i have an easier time accepting that everything in nature evolved out of primitive bio-goo, or even that aliens or something else came and designed everything on earth, than accepting that a non-physical entity created everything physical.

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Guest got tha feva

The question you have to ask yourself is:

 

If our body is a vessel for a soul, how could our brain ever comprehend even the slightest glimpse of what it is (a direct link to divinity) and what it's connected to (an all knowing utopia)?

 

Think about it, everything we know that is reality is based on 5 senses. Sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. If we lose one sense, our other senses compensate. But no matter what, everything we have in our memory is stored based on the comprehension of something we've seen, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted. So, if you can't see, hear, touch, smell, or taste your own soul then how do you know it exsists? And if for one split second you connect and know everything there is to know, it's going to be in a way that isn't in words, or senses, so how will you be able to store it into your memory and know it exsists? Furthermore, we are so wrapped up in finding answers to all of our day to day problems that we rarely question what it all really means. But Once you figure out the right questions, you'll figure out the answers have been there all along. The answers are in the blackness you pay no mind to everytime you blink.. the subconcious guidance you can't hear, but somehow you just seem to know. It's all there, it's just a matter of shedding reality as you know it, opening your mind, and letting your soul connect.. When you do that, you're mind and body become directly linked to god.

 

 

As for heaven and hell, I can't picture either. I tend to agree with what was said earlie in the thread though about heaven being a feeling of home. Like we've been trying our whole life to get somewhere, and heaven would be the final destination. Like a shocked and amazed warm 'this is what i've been waiting for' feeling.

 

 

Honestly though, everything I'm saying here is just words.

Meditate, fast, cleanse your body, cleanse your mind.. Find the truth for yourself and don't pay attention to religion or words (good, evil, heaven, hell, god, satan, angel), just focus on the subconcious energy you ignore in everyday life.

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wow- this got good...how about this:

 

The non-physical 'realm' is absolutely dependant on the physical. Because you are alive you can imagine in your head a goldfish in a goldfish bowl. The goldfish exists in your mind, the non-physical realm. If you now try to imagine a big hairy ape on top of a red volkswagon- chances are the non-physical goldfish is gone. Some people have suggested that god and the universe are like this, only in reverse. God (non-physical) is holding the thought of the universe (physical) in mind, and we exist in absolute dependance of god's thoughts.

Now when we look at a dead person's body we see no life in that physical body- something is obviously missing otherwise the person would be alive right? The only way those in the physical world can practically keep the deceased with them- is by remembering them- in the non-physical realm. How the dead lived their life most definately affects how they are remembered by those who are alive. If the person lived as we believed to be good, then why shouldn't we tell our children, who ask about that dead good person, that there is a place of ultimate contentment and that dead good person is there right now (embellish embellish embellish). It even makes us feel a little bit better about death doesn't it? I say heaven and hell exist subjectively in the minds of the living.

 

(as far as time and heaven go... it only takes a second to remeber someone who died 50 years ago, so no- there is no time until there is no one to remember the dead forever.)

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Guest imported_El Mamerro

Eh, actually, the single most fantastic thing the human brain can do is actually formulate information without any data coming from the senses. So while it is true that most of what we know has been derived from the senses, the brain IS capable of creating information on its own. Now matter how much you look, smell, hear, touch, or taste, none of these senses will lead you to formulate a question such as "Why are we here?", without the brain jumping in with it's own input. If our brain strictly relied on input from the senses, we would have never begun to practice philosophy, much less come about to realize the existence of black holes and quantum mechanics.

 

Anyways, my view of heaven and hell is simple. When you die, in those last few seconds, everything becomes clear, and if you've lived a rightful life, your last memory will be one of pure peace and happiness, and you'll "rest in peace", with no consciousness. If you're ashamed of your life, your last thought will be one of despair and desperation to go back and fix it, but you can't, so you will "rest in turmoil", without consciousness. It's hard to imagine how a heaven could consist of a single moment of good memories, but I can definitely imagine it looking like eternity to a dying person. And think about it... there is no suffering when you're not conscious.

 

On a totally unrelated note, there's a hell of a party happening tonight at my place, and I gotta get shit started. We traveled 200 miles to find a strange bar in the montains that sells a strange concoction called "Caldo de Oso" (literally, "Bear Stew"), and BOY does it fuck you up good. Beer,

 

El Mamerro

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