Not everything people say is true. I don't mean to imply that people are lying but people can talk themselves into something and actually believe it without it being true. I am aware that the human brain can't apparently conjure up most things on it's own. Like I read that the human brain can't make up faces, all the faces you dream or think off are actually people you have seen at some point in your life, stored in your brain. I've dreamt of things I have never seen before but I must have otherwise I wouldn't be dreaming/imagining things.

It's just illogical to me. If we had a soul and we could leave our body, float/move around, see with no eyes and process/think without a brain it would render our body completely useless. We could just ditch our bodies. But we can't so I just don't see how out of body experiences/projections work

I'd like to think so, but I'm not sure.


The only thing that keeps me believing in an afterlife or other world is the accounts people tell of seeing get spirits, ghosts, demons, etc.

It could all be explained by mental phenomenon I guess, but it's usually sane, trustworthy people who have these encounters.

True, we dream of things that we have seen at one point in our lives even if we had forgotten about it. That's what I said about hallucinations being about things that we have already seen. But in cases of OBEs I am talking about, people have perfectly described things to places they have never been. There have been a lot of reports about this if you do look into the matter. About your second paragraph, I wouldn't call the 'soul' or consciousness theory as illogical. We are still trying to figure out how some parts of the human brain or body works, let alone the mysteries of the universe and life. We know so little, so I don't think we can say things like 'souls cannot see without eyes' or question the importance of Body, without knowing its nature completely.

Religion, like philosophy, delves on questions of purpose and meaning, not of facts. It is one that gives meaning to the facts, and not one meant to be the source of facts. Religion has been like an offical and authoritative source of morality for most human civilizations. In fact, most of human moral constructs or at least those which formed the basis for social norms either directly came from or were influenced or derived from religion and are transmitted to every generation, again, by and through religion. Religious morality is important in maintaining coherence and harmony in a particular society. And I don't see any religion nowadays that give specific list of dos and don'ts but one. Christianity itself was created to liberate people from their strict adherance to a long list of outdated rules and laws in Judaism hence why Jesus summarized His Commandments to just two.

Perhaps. Maybe it's coincidence, maybe not. I guess i'm a person that needs hard proof before believing something like that. But I am open-minded and I'm willing to look into it more. Do you have any specific stories you can recommend me?

I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. I am not saying 'souls cannot see', what I mean is that if we had souls that could see, think and move without a body, why are we still in a body? If we had the chance to leave this decaying, limiting prison why don't we? That's illogical to me.

Since you said earlier that not everything people say is true, I won't bother you with other experiences but my own. Whether you believe me or not is up to you but this has happened to me. I have been experiencing sleep paralysis since I was a kid, and sometimes I would have experiences of OBEs, but rarely. One time, I OBE'd into my own house and saw my father drinking tea in a red mug in the living room, watching TV. The scariest part is that I didn't know I was OBE'ing until I returned to my room and saw my body there. Anyway, this is just one of my weirdest moments while having sleep experiences. The next morning when I woke up, I went to the living room, and indeed the red mug was there. We can argue that I know the existence of the red mug, but how do we explain the fact that I knew it would be in the living room? Or at the same spot where he was sitting? It's too much for me to think of it as coincidence, and I refuse to label my OBEs as hallucinations. They all felt very real to me.

Yeah I understood, I was just saying that we cannot question the logic of souls or body if we don't know their full nature.

That's an interesting experience. My little brother has sleep paralysis so I've looked into it and I know that hallucinating is a big part of it (like people see demons sitting on their chests and stuff). But yes, what you're saying is very detailed and sometimes things happen that aren't explainable. Like when I was a little girl I dreamed something and a couple of weeks later it actually happened. And I had this strange feeling all day long the day it happened and it felt like something was calling me to go to the place where I dreamed about and where the dream would play out. It was very scary for me. Maybe that's why I'm mostly rejecting things like these because they scare me so much

hard to say

but to people saying no, how do you explain the big bang? what was before the big bang? where is the matter coming from? It makes no sense

if you become a grim reaper, then yes

absolutely. There's way too many correlating stories of people returning from near death experiences, people who go through past life hypnosis, psychic tales, etc for it to only be a hoax.

Especially those inexplicable stories of 3-year-olds who can tell you the memories of people long since passed away.

+ Energy cannot be created or destroyed. As we die, yes our physical energy is converted and broken down, but what about our life essence?

I'm fortunate not to encounter things like 'demons'. Bad things have never occurred to me during my experiences, but they are scary just to experience. And there are many things I cannot explain, like smelling the hospital's smell after waking up from a dream about being at the hospital. I just experience a lot of these stuff during my sleep and I don't know why. I guess that's why I'm such a believer in a kind of consciousness existing apart of our physical selves. Even science believe in the formation, destruction and rejuvenation of atoms. And aren't we atoms in the universe ourselves? Our bodies age and perish, but what if this unexplainable consciousness (or soul) behave like those atoms? The spiritual term for this would be Reincarnation. We don't know, and I can imagine how it's hard for many people to grasp this concept. I guess we won't know till we die, so let's not sweat ourselves wondering about that

People want to believe.

I don't think that's the same as actually believing.

No.

How are we to know?

No one has returned to tell us the tale. There could be an after life, just as much as there could be no after life. We will all know the answer to this since we will all die some day. So until then make the most out of this life you have.

yes, energy can't stop existing, it's always transformed into something else.

you're right, let's leave it at that. if you're right, i'll buy you an ice cream on the other side

Absolutely not. There's no reason to believe there is.

Imagine an Atrl after life party if there is one