kudo's to all involved in the conversation in this thread, very intelligent, thoughtful, and good reading.. very true that a believer should not believe just because they are afraid of hell, these too miss the point.. anyone see Beyond and Back? these types of ppl would be the only ones qualified to answer 'what is after death?' some of their testimonies are very compelling..the rest of us can only speculate.. and in all honesty, we cannot know whether we would still have this form or not, I would believe that we would be balls of energy (or as close as it as a human can describe) i can also imagine that we would still think we had bodies only because that is what we were used too.. so in this scenario "is there sex in heaven?", the answer is both Yes and No.
How does it make sense to tell me all this when I'm not the one making claims about what the afterlife is. Confused indeed.
Doesn't it make more sense to propose that it is us who will be fundamentally different; that our memories and our personalities will be wiped clean and "reformatted" for heavenly compatibility? Some kind of fundamental adjustment like that would be necessary if we take a standard Christian view of the afterlife, since otherwise our eternal bliss would be compromised by the knowledge that there are others who are eternally suffering. In order to deal with this problem alone, either our knowledge of or our capacity to give a shit about such things would have to be purged. Of course even if one rejects the idea of eternal suffering, you still have a situation where you might miss your loved ones, or occasionally remember a tragic earthly experience, or entertain a tricky philosophical consideration. If the capacity to do such things is no longer present, then it would require us to be fundamentally different.
Good points. Yes, some theists (of various denominations, actually), do propose the line of reasoning that it is us who will be fundamentally different in heaven /the spiritual world. Such a line of reasoning, however, brings along many problems and questionable demands, such as the demand that one blindly believe "now I am conditioned, I am wrong, I don't have spiritual vision, I am fundamentally flawed; therefore, I should just accept and do what I am told." It is horrible to live that way, but apparently doesn't stop some people from preaching it, and many others from living it. ... The term depersonalization has originally been used in psychiatry to describe loss of identity or of the sense of reality of one’s self. In a broader sense, ”to depersonalize” means to negate another person by ignoring his autonomy and his feelings or by treating him as an object, a thing. In an extreme form, inmates of the concentration camps in the Second World War experienced depersonalization. As Subhananda dasa points out, depersonalization can occur in a spiritual context (even in the context of such a decidedly personalistic theology as Vaishnavism), when in the name of spirituality, followers are led to discard their self-trust along with the capacity for self-determination and self-evaluation. In other words, one becomes spiritually depersonalized by granting to a spiritual guide (which can be a person but can be a belief system as well) an absolute power to decide what one is, what one should think, feel, and want. ”To this someone may counter with ’But if the guru is qualified then one may blindly follow him.’ No. If the guru is qualified, he will not encourage blind following in the first place. A guru is not one who dictates to us what to think. A guru teaches us how to think.” [xiv] A spiritually depersonalizing belief system implicates the follower in logical vicious circles in which one is never right unless the wielders of authority say so. Challenging the official authority is explicitly defined as wrong, so that the content of the challenge does not deserve to be even examined. An individual who has accepted such a logically closed thought system forgets that all of this is only valid if his initial decision to trust this particular person or teaching was right – and if it was, this means that he does have an independent capacity for judgment. Depersonalized devotees see their doubts as possessing a separate existence (”demons”) and disown unaccepted desires by seeing them as implanted in their mind by fearsome outside forces (Maya or other devotees acting as her agents). What this sort of ”disowning tactics” does is it gradually destroys the sense of personal participation, with one’s thoughts, emotions and volition, in anything at all -- even in acts of worship and prayer. The devotee pushes away his unaccepted experiences and so much pushes himself to feel what the authority says he should feel that by doing so, he destroys his capacity for any spontaneous, profound experience – including love for Krishna. All that is left to him is a hope that if he grits his teeth and perseveres against all odds, at the moment of death his present personality will be destroyed and he will wake up in the spiritual world with a brand new identity, no connection whatsoever between the two. *
An older thread that discusses this topic: Material v. Spiritual Pleasures http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=1133156#post1133156
thats what i'm thinking..our attention will be on other things, our earthly concerns will not be an issue.. according to Beyond and Back, alot of ppl who have died and come back have testified that they have seen loved ones on the other side..(i think it was the ones that were dead already) not sure if i want to see my mom.. defiantly want to see my grandma and grandpa(dads mom/moms dad) well said both of you.. its easier.. just wanted to read this again..Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
