do our religious beliefs effect our experience after death?

[ellablue]

I agree that our personal belief system structures our experience in this life, but do wonder if the afterlife is the same for everyone.

Steve's recent blog post regarding his experiences with a departed friend have me wondering what happened to my uber-christian father when he died -

And I do welcome any and all thoughts on this matter, and thank you all for your time!

[Erin Pavlina]

I did a reading for a client whose mom was a fundamentalist christian. She believed she was probably going to hell. When she got to the afterlife she expected harsh judgement and harsher punishment. She got neither. She got love, understanding, and growth. It took her a little while to release the idea that she didn't have to spend eternity in hell. On some level she was appalled at how much pain and misery she had put herself through during her life, and she felt this certain desire and desperation to go back and tell her husband not to be so fearful and ashamed. But she couldn't, and he probably wouldn't listen if she did.

After reading for this same client several times over the course of a year, I found that his mother's energy changed each time I tuned in. She was releasing so much of that human religion and accepting and seeing what was truly out there: love, joy, and peace.

Now here's an important point... whatever beliefs you hold about the afterlife when you cross over do affect your initial experience of the afterlife. Some people's beliefs are even strong enough to put them in a sort of hell if they believe they deserve it. Then what happens is the angels come by and try to get you to slough off the expectation of fire and brimstone so they can bring you into the loving light of Source. This can take some time.

Now if someone's religious beliefs are that they are going to heaven and will sit at the right hand of God, then when they cross over they will initially experience a very similar version of heaven to what they expect. But again, the angels will come by and help you slough off your beliefs if they are not accurate. Some people can wallow in their beliefs for a long time, though, resisting the attempts of the angels to see the truth clearly. Sometimes this results in unnecessary soul pain, and sometimes feelings of exaltation have to be removed.

My best advice to anyone who is making their journey home is to be ready to forgive yourself for your trespasses. Be ready to ask for truth and clarity. Don't flog yourself for eternity, there is no need. Learn. Understand. Grow.

You might enjoy these two blog entries:
The Life Review
The After-Death

[fellowtraveler]

Thanks Erin.

[DayInTheLife]

It is easy for a living person to imagine all sorts of conceptions of the afterlife in their head, and very difficult to admit that we human beings just do not know what happens after we die. This uncertainty creates great anxiety in people, and all too often we succumb to the temptation to fabricate an answer that makes us comfortable.

Religions have always provided a ready-made theory about what happens after death, but they insist that it is a fact and not conjecture. It takes great courage to become comfortable not knowing. You may find out when you die, you may not. I also don't think there is any reason to believe that it is possible for people to suffer after they die. If you agree, that may ease your mind.

[SonoranBob]

Originally Posted by DayInTheLife

It is easy for a living person to imagine all sorts of conceptions of the afterlife in their head, and very difficult to admit that we human beings just do not know what happens after we die. This uncertainty creates great anxiety in people, and all too often we succumb to the temptation to fabricate an answer that makes us comfortable.

Agreed. The human capacity for self-deception appears nearly unlimited. We often believe what we want to believe, and pay attention to what is comfortable or comforting, beyond all evidence of senses or all absence of evidence.

Originally Posted by DayInTheLife

Religions have always provided a ready-made theory about what happens after death, but they insist that it is a fact and not conjecture. It takes great courage to become comfortable not knowing.

I don't know if it requires that much courage. That makes it seem unattainable or unthinkable to the average person. I think that we simply have to let go of the near-archetypal belief that it's intolerable not to know. It's quite tolerable; in fact, in many ways it's a tremendous relief. There is great cognitive dissonance in taking up a position about something you have insufficient data to really claim knowledge of, and then spend the rest of your life deflecting evidence (or lack of evidence) that doesn't seem to support your position. It is a tremendous burden to be a know-it-all, or even to claim to know what isn't within your scope to know. When you let go of that, a tremendous burden and a responsibility you are not designed to bear rolls off of you. Some things need to be left to whatever powers that be. We don't seem to have the equipment to properly apprehend or understand The Meaning Of Life (tm).

Originally Posted by DayInTheLife

I also don't think there is any reason to believe that it is possible for people to suffer after they die. If you agree, that may ease your mind.

I'm curious why you think that. I'm open to the idea but see no particular reason why any afterlife should necessarily be fundamentally different from or better than this or any other life. Or if you want to frame it in a cynical way, if this life is a crock, why should the next life suddenly be different? We seek for this life to be just or fair or to at least make sense, and to the extent we can't, we defuse that tension by deferring it to the next life. Seems kind of ... convenient to me.

--Bob

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by SonoranBob

Agreed. The human capacity for self-deception appears nearly unlimited. We often believe what we want to believe, and pay attention to what is comfortable or comforting, beyond all evidence of senses or all absence of evidence.

There is another kind of self-deception.

It is when we like to believe that we are "scientific" or "rational" or "logical", and then we proceed to believe things which we think are things that a "scientific" or "rational" or "logical" person ought to believe. In addition we proceed to reject things which we think are things that a "scientific" or "rational" or "logical" person ought not to believe.

For example, I know many people who would consider themselves "scientific" or "rational" or "logical", and who think that it must follow that they should dismiss the possibility of an afterlife ... and therefore they do.

In truth, they have never really explored or studied the possibility of an afterlife, and therefore their dismissal of that possibility is in fact unscientific, irrational and illogical.

In contrast, I do not know anyone who has actually bothered to seriously consider, let's say, the available scientific literature on near-death experiences, and still come away fully convinced that an afterlife cannot possibly exist.

Sample links:

Peter Fenwick Lecture
Google Answers: Emergency Room test of patients reporting out-of-body, near-death experiences?

[SonoranBob]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

For example, I know many people who would consider themselves "scientific" or "rational" or "logical", and who think that it must follow that they should dismiss the possibility of an afterlife ... and therefore they do.

I have little faith in science or the scientific method, actually, but I am blessed, or cursed, depending on your point of view, with a very small right brain.

I don't dismiss the possibility of an afterlife at all. I simply can't prove it, even to myself. So I remain open to it. I will not pitch a fit if I find myself someday in an afterlife. I just don't consider it terribly relevant or comforting in the here and now.

I have looked at Fenwick's lectures ... in fact I may even have done so at your prompting elsewhere in this space. I've even read Weiss. At the end of the day I can't get past that the afterlife seems to be whatever the person experiencing the NDE or ADE thinks or has heard it should be. Christians see Jesus and a linear afterlife, Buddhists see Buddha and a cyclic afterlife ... and on occasion, people who think they are going to hell see that. My guess is that you take your illusions with you.

Granted, there are a lot of similarities ... but some very huge and incompatible differences. Unless you accept that the afterlife is an infinitude of self-created realities, that makes no sense. And if everyone has their own personal afterlife then the evidence of other people's afterlives is useless.

I have come to the conclusion that while there is nothing wrong with being curious about such things, perhaps it is not the best path. In my experience the more detailed and specific things people come to believe about the spirit world and / or the afterlife, the weirder they become.

Besides, if we were supposed to have such knowledge, it seems to me there would be a unified testimony about it. As children, we wonder about things that are hidden from us ... seemingly mysterious and exotic experiences such as sex. But eventually, when we are sufficiently advanced in understanding, we find out about it, and our experience is not very different from everyone else's. Yet with the afterlife you have pretty much a random grab bag of stories. My working theory is that the afterlife is one of those things we just don't have the equipment to grasp and probably shouldn't spend too much energy on it until we do.

At the end of the day I think questions about the afterlife are really asking one question: will I survive after death, or will there just be some form of oblivion or loss of identity? To be honest, oblivion holds no terror for me, and survival holds very little terror other than, sheesh, I hope we at least won't continue to struggle for eternity, or, god forbid, keep coming back here. But even if those things are true, it will be as it is. So, I'm cool either way.

--Bob

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by SonoranBob

Unless you accept that the afterlife is an infinitude of self-created realities, that makes no sense.

LOL .... I guess I am the wrong person to talk to you about this.

I do not merely see the afterlife as a self-created reality. I see this life as a self-created reality too.

How could it be otherwise? Everything you know about this universe; every bit of data processed by any of your five senses; every memory you have; every idea; every belief; every conclusion you ever draw about anything; even every voluntary bodily movement (and many involuntary ones)...

... is merely a process of your consciousness. Your mind creates your entire reality.

[SonoranBob]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

LOL .... I guess I am the wrong person to talk to you about this.

I do not merely see the afterlife as a self-created reality. I see this life as a self-created reality too.

How could it be otherwise? Everything you know about this universe; every bit of data processed by any of your five senses; every memory you have; every idea; every belief; every conclusion you ever draw about anything; even every voluntary bodily movement (and many involuntary ones)...

... is merely a process of your consciousness. Your mind creates your entire reality.

[smile] My dear Godot, I am acquainted with that concept as well, and am increasingly convinced of it. My point is that if the afterlife is also a figment of my imagination, than my dead Uncle Joe's experience of the afterlife is of no import to what mine will be. So I do not see any point in consulting a medium for information from dear Uncle Joe, or reading Uncle Joe's testimony of his momentary sojurn in *his* afterlife.

In fact, if I want to know what *my* afterlife will be like, the best way is probably to make my life *now* more to my liking.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by SonoranBob

My point is that if the afterlife is also a figment of my imagination, than my dead Uncle Joe's experience of the afterlife is of no import to what mine will be. So I do not see any point in consulting a medium for information from dear Uncle Joe, or reading Uncle Joe's testimony of his momentary sojurn in *his* afterlife.

True, from a certain perspective. On the other hand, if you have created a reality with some stability and predictability in its operations, you might logically predict that what happens to the other humans that you have created, when they die, might not be all that dissimilar from what you'll experience, when you die.

Also, if you read the Seth materials, you'll see an interesting explanation why some people, upon death, will see Jesus, and some people, upon death, will see Buddha, and some people, upon death, will see [insert generic god of those people].

[Acting Like Godot]

And actually the explanation is quite similar to Erin's.

Which tells us that (1) either Erin and Seth have been to the same places, or (2) Erin has read the Seth Material.

[SonoranBob]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

And actually the explanation is quite similar to Erin's.

Which tells us that (1) either Erin and Seth have been to the same places, or (2) Erin has read the Seth Material.

I am content with discovering the nature of my afterlife when I am there and can experience it firsthand.

I hope that it is as respectful and kindly an experience as Erin says it is. That would be refreshing change.

--Bob

[Acting Like Godot]

Still miss your wife, huh. How's the therapy coming along.

[SonoranBob]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

Still miss your wife, huh. How's the therapy coming along.

It's been a dark night of the soul, and I have no clue where this is all going and no great inspiration about it, but I have learned to accept the unacceptable. Just came back from a long weekend visiting her folks. Nice people. She was their only child and they seem to have adopted me as a half-assed substitute. They're in their 80's so I am making a point to fly up and see them once a year, while they are still around. They keep in daily touch by email. It's been a grace. Meanwhile business has been insanely good and that has kept me from pointless brooding. I have good friends. So life goes on.

Thanks for remembering ;-)

[Maguru]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

There is another kind of self-deception.

It is when we like to believe that we are "scientific" or "rational" or "logical", and then we proceed to believe things which we think are things that a "scientific" or "rational" or "logical" person ought to believe. In addition we proceed to reject things which we think are things that a "scientific" or "rational" or "logical" person ought not to believe.

For example, I know many people who would consider themselves "scientific" or "rational" or "logical", and who think that it must follow that they should dismiss the possibility of an afterlife ... and therefore they do.

In truth, they have never really explored or studied the possibility of an afterlife, and therefore their dismissal of that possibility is in fact unscientific, irrational and illogical.



In contrast, I do not know anyone who has actually bothered to seriously consider, let's say, the available scientific literature on near-death experiences, and still come away fully convinced that an afterlife cannot possibly exist.

Sample links:

Peter Fenwick Lecture
Google Answers: Emergency Room test of patients reporting out-of-body, near-death experiences?

Don't you think that belief in past lives, afterlives, heaven and hell are all just distractions from humanities true reality here on earth?

[SonoranBob]

Originally Posted by Maguru

Don't you think that belief in past lives, afterlives, heaven and hell are all just distractions from humanities true reality here on earth?

Personally, I think for the most part the answer is yes -- although your use of the word "true" implies that afterlives are a "false" reality and I don't know that I'd make that assumption.

I will say this. When I opened my eyes this morning I had a wealth of detailed and unambiguous information about my world in the present, and knew pretty much what needed to be done and how to proceed. Any other observer would have corroborated this info: sun shining, birds singing, clock says 6 am, parrot demanding to be fed, email from a client that needs to be answered, etc.

By contrast, the information I have about the afterlife this morning is vague, conflicting, and totally unverifiable, even IMO by personal experience. Subjective personal experiences can be notorious sources of deception.

What to do, what to do? Well, speaking for myself, I fed the parrot.

--Bob

[Acting Like Godot]

I'd say that it depends. Most of the time, most people do not think much about death anyway. This is regardless of whether they believe in an afterlife (and regardless of what they believe an afterlife to be, if they did believe that there was an afterlife).

On the other hand, the belief or non-belief in an afterlife does affect your current life, because the fact of death, and how to deal with it, definitely does have an effect on your current life.

If you did not believe in an afterlife, for example, then your values in this life will not stem from, say, Christianity or Buddhism or Islam or Hinduism, but must stem from something else. The nature of your belief or non-belief in an afterlife must necessarily also affect your reaction to the deaths of people whom you personally know.

Most days, of course, it will be just as Bob said. Your mind will be on things like feeding the parrot (or in my case, gouramis, tetras, guppies and two very fat plecos).

[Maguru]

Originally Posted by SonoranBob

Personally, I think for the most part the answer is yes -- although your use of the word "true" implies that afterlives are a "false" reality and I don't know that I'd make that assumption.

I will say this. When I opened my eyes this morning I had a wealth of detailed and unambiguous information about my world in the present, and knew pretty much what needed to be done and how to proceed. Any other observer would have corroborated this info: sun shining, birds singing, clock says 6 am, parrot demanding to be fed, email from a client that needs to be answered, etc.

By contrast, the information I have about the afterlife this morning is vague, conflicting, and totally unverifiable, even IMO by personal experience. Subjective personal experiences can be notorious sources of deception.

What to do, what to do? Well, speaking for myself, I fed the parrot.

--Bob

Sorry for my late reply. I've been in the black hole for a visit. That is where I receive my 'detailed and objective information'. This is very interesting. I won't ask about the information but are you saying that during unconscious sleep somehow you 'go' somewhere and come back with a wealth of knowledge?

[SonoranBob]

Originally Posted by Maguru

Sorry for my late reply. I've been in the black hole for a visit. That is where I receive my 'detailed and objective information'. This is very interesting. I won't ask about the information but are you saying that during unconscious sleep somehow you 'go' somewhere and come back with a wealth of knowledge?

Nope. Just that information about this life is plentiful and relatively consistent and undisputed. Information about the afterlife is generally scarce, obtuse, and varies from reporter to reporter. This causes me to conclude that such info is not meant for us and therefore unimportant. I then focus on what I know and can influence. I'm curious as anyone is about the afterlife, suspect there is one, but that it will pretty much take care of itself. However, I note with interest that my bills and taxes do not pay themselves, my work doesn't get done automagically, etc., so that is where I focus my attention.

--Bob

[Maguru]

Originally Posted by SonoranBob

Nope. Just that information about this life is plentiful and relatively consistent and undisputed. Information about the afterlife is generally scarce, obtuse, and varies from reporter to reporter. This causes me to conclude that such info is not meant for us and therefore unimportant. I then focus on what I know and can influence. I'm curious as anyone is about the afterlife, suspect there is one, but that it will pretty much take care of itself. However, I note with interest that my bills and taxes do not pay themselves, my work doesn't get done automagically, etc., so that is where I focus my attention.

--Bob

Thanks. I think I completely misunderstood you. It's where my head has been for a few days. It seems you are very down to earth and I agree that this life is the one we have more reliable information to work from.
Life is happening as we are thinking of other things. I believe most [if not all]of the 'mystical' meanderings block us from embracing our own humanity.

[Chris Cade]

Originally Posted by ellablue

I agree that our personal belief system structures our experience in this life, but do wonder if the afterlife is the same for everyone.

According to Bob Monroe, where we go in the afterlife is a direct result of our belief systems while here on Earth. He talks about this in his book trilogy, which I found to be particularly interesting.

As for me, I have no idea... I haven't died, had near-death experiences, nor connected personally with somebody who has died.

Originally Posted by Maguru

Don't you think that belief in past lives, afterlives, heaven and hell are all just distractions from humanities true reality here on earth?

That's an interesting question because it assumes that the same answer is true for everybody. To ask that question though, one would have to take it a step further and ask:

"Don't you think that belief in any past or future are all just distractions from humanities true reality here on earth?"

So as long as you have a belief (i.e. something you think, but don't know from experience) then you're no different than the person who believes in an afterlife. You're both being distracted from the present. Food for thought...

Originally Posted by Maguru

are you saying that during unconscious sleep somehow you 'go' somewhere and come back with a wealth of knowledge?

Again, Bob Monroe talks about this in his books and firmly believes we undergo spiritual evolution and transformation while we sleep.

Whether or not that is true, I don't know. But I can attest to the fact that sometimes when I have a problem and go to sleep, I wake up with an answer. Maybe it was a dream that gave me the answer, or sometimes it's just 'there' when I wake up.

Many self improvement gurus talk about using techniques to access the subconscious while we sleep. One could argue that we do come back with a wealth of knowledge, even if the only place we 'go' is our subconscious.

[torilink]

hi, I'll chime in with my view on death and what part of us moves on.

suppose you have a cup of water, it is in a cup but the cup isn't water - only that which is contained within the cup is water. Now imagine taking that cup of water and pouring it into the ocean - you can no longer tell what was your "cup of water" and what was the ocean, because they merge together and become one. the water doesn't retain the shape of the cup and stay together in that compilation without the separation brought about by the container.

I think what we are is the ocean and each of us as individuals are in containers of identity (ego's), but when its time to leave the container we merge again and are one without any separation or distance. The cup (body & ego) end they cannot merge.