[Mynder]

Originally Posted by AuspiciousEight

Yes - strictly speaking, I have no rational way of knowing anything with 100% certainty. Any deduction I make could very well be self-deceit...But that's not going to stop me from striving to make deductions. Or perhaps that is the point? That I shouldn't strive for theoretical knowledge because it could be a delusion?

Not at all. What I was getting at is that you require a working model of your environment to stay sane and to "put things into place", but that you simply have no means to ultimately prove it correct. It depends on your point of view, on your current amount of knowledge, and probably some other factors as well.

So, the best you can do is accept that you will never have it "all figured out" (otherwise you'd be omniscient, and I consider omniscience unattainable in an infinite uni/multiverse). Accept that there is a margin for error. You will not be able to completely eliminate that.

What is truth?

I'd rather not go into this. I've been drawn into a discussion about "objective truth" before in another thread, and I don't want to take this thread that way for some ten pages. ;-)

I have tried to answers this question my entire life. Every time I take a step forward, the question itself changes because it no longer makes sense in the new context.

You revised your working model of the universe. Great! You're growing!

The current question is: what am I? Or, in other words, what is life? What is it that gives 'me' the capacity to experience existence?

There are lots of different takes on this (or only one, depending on how far out you "zoom" to see the "big picture"). I'd prefer to just answer the rest of your post below, because I feel that is where your pain originates, and what keeps you hovering in uncertainty and fear.

NDE. After experiencing the divine bliss for several weeks I started to hear a mental voice. Not a physical sound - like someone talking to me. Like mental chatter - only someone else's mental chatter. It said - "I am Jesus Christ". I got the feeling that Christ was there to help with something.

I woke up one night in an Infinite Void. Christ was there - along with two other entities that were not recognized. I rode an energy 'wave' where my spiritual 'frequency' suddenly increased tremendously. Parts of me began dying. I couldn't here my own thoughts. There was an infinite energy that I was being 'absorbed' into. I felt myself dying. It was terrifying - and "I" resisted it.

I woke up in bed sweating and terrified. For several weeks I woke up every night at 3 am. Terrified. I stopped pursuing 'truth', and sunk into depression.

I think this is the key point in your life that sits at the bottom of all your doubts. Why would "Jesus" want to harm you when we know him as the greatest benefactor to mankind ever born?

First of all, it might have been true, and it might have been just a lie by that other entity. So take anything you are told, be it here or on some astral level, or even in weird dreams, with a grain of salt, and check with your intuition whether you are reluctant to believe them for some reason.

Next, in my "model of the universe", we "merge back" into our higher self when we have accomplished what we split off for in the first place. I see this life as kind of a dream life that we eventually "wake up from".

How you describe this threatened "dissolution" into that one energy source does not sound all that voluntary, though, and I assume there are beings out there who'd prefer to "capture you" to gain the knowledge and experience you have gathered for themselves instead of letting you merge back with yourself. Does this make sense?

So, you've been disillusioned about everything being just peachy and bright white. I bet you've known that about our physical world down here for ages. But, as you've experienced, you can defend against this kind of thing, and you successfully did.

I suppose your question is not really whether there is something after death (because you probably know deep inside that there is) but that you're unwilling to go "there" again and face what you experienced before.

So one part of you hopes it isn't true (so you wouldn't have to go through this involuntary dissolution process), and another hopes it is, because there simply being nothing after death is equally uncomfortable.

This is my current interpretation of what you describe. Does some of it ring a bell inside you? Or do you feel this is all just esoteric jabbering?

I sincerely struggle with this and don't really know what to do about it. I have tried to forget about everything and bury my head back into the physical world - but this only leads to progressively deeper states of depression. It's like, once you go so far down the rabbit hole, there's no turning back.

A thought, once thought, can never be taken back.

I've heard knowledge described as "the fruit that never sates", and I find it somewhat fitting.

I find myself stuck at a cross road. If I go back, knowing what I know now, I would just be deluding myself. If I move forward, I'm afraid that I would have to experience that again - which terrifies me.

Ah, the first may be "true", but the latter is simply an assumption. What if you prepared and learned to protect yourself? What if you talked about these things with other gifted people (of whom there are quite a few here on these forums) and see who "connects" with you in a way that gets you better insight into what you now do not yet understand?

Who's to say there isn't anything you can do about what happens to you?

What do you do when you are stuck between an unstoppable force and an unmovable object?

1. Make sure unmovable object really IS unmovable
2. Try out whether the unstoppable force can be dodged
3. Try out whether the unstoppable force is truly unstoppable by my stubborn defiance
or
4. get some genius idea that turns my perspective upside down and makes me realize I'm trapping myself in some limited environment that it's easy to step out of once you make that mental leap. Then step out and avoid the confrontation with either the force or the object completely.

I guess that would be my general take on that situation.

The experience of life itself could cease to exist. A possibility that I still find terrifying, even today. Yet it seems that this must be experienced, if I want to move higher.

If there is life now, there was a point in "time" where all this didn't exist, yet. A point before the creation of our physical universe. And there will be a point in time after this universe collapses, and before something else appears. After life is before life.

Or would you rather live through the same single day for the rest of your life, instead of experiencing ever new things on new days? But, in the end it is you who choose when it's time for you to finish this marvelous game of life and move on to something else that catches your fancy.