Can the human mind really fathom the discontinuation of consciousness?

Question

As an atheist, I believe in neither Heaven nor h**l, nor any of those other places that one is supposed to go to after death. Even still, I find the eternal discontinuation of consciousness impossible to imagine. When we are unconscious sleeping or in a coma, for example, all of the time during which this takes place is displaced from our subjective experience, and the next thing we experience is the first thing that we experience after we return to consciousness. On the other hand, when we die, we are supposed to be unconscious forever.

Is there anyone else who finds this notion untenable? If so, what are your thoughts on resolving this problem? For example, on theory is that the last thing which we are feeling at the moment of death "sticks" and that we experience it for all eternity. Not particularly appealing... other ideas?

Answer 1

This is just me, but I have come to accept there are some things in life that I will just never understand. The universe is simply too big and complex for me to even try to understand how it works. And why do we need to know everything? I like that there are still some things left in life that make us scratch our heards in wonder. Makes life more interesting, don't ya think?

Answer 2

I have often wondered this in my own simple way- you put it a lot more eloquently than I could ever hope to, however. For this I thank you.

I have come to the conclusion that the void after death, the end of the conscious, will stretch on for an eternity exactly the same as it were before the individual was born- and none of us seemed to have trouble coping with the nothingness before we were in the world....the nothingness afterwards ought not to be any different!

Answer 3

There is a difference between unconscious and having zero brain activity. If you don't believe in an afterlife then the notion of feeling anything for an eternity should be preposterous to you.

A lot of people believe in the afterlife because of the exact problem you state, they find cessation of the mind unfathomable, so they chose to believe in its immortal counterpart, the soul.

Answer 4

One possibility:  the experience of passing on is similar to going to sleep...and never waking up.

A second possibility:  the experience of passing on is similar to going to sleep...and dreaming, even lucidly, and more.

The latter is the "God Is" hypothesis.

The difficulty of dying is that good old you won't be up and about next day, enjoying that "next-day" picnic.

However, you may be dreaming for a thousand years, to quote the Spoonful.

Try "Psychoenergetic Science," Dr. William A. Tiller, http://www.tiller.org and http://www.quantumbrain.org for interesting science.

For a more personal view of what dreams may come,

"The Masters and Their Retreats," Mark Prophet,

"Testimony of Light," Helen Greaves,

"The Great Divorce," C. S. Lewis,

"The Reincarnation of Edgar Cayce?", Free and Wilcock, http://www.divinecosmos.com

"The Master of Lucid Dreams," Dr. Olga Kharitidi,

"Extraordinary Knowing," Dr. Elizabeth Mayer,

http://www.carolbowman.com

http://www.integralscience.org

Answer 5

Ever fallen asleep and woken up without dreaming? So that your head hit the pillow and the next thing you knew there was daylight on your face? The feeling in between was the feeling of pure unconsciousness. No dreaming, no feeling, no sensing. Pure nothing. This is a feeling we never experience. Even now your 'experience' of it is merely the recollection of its appending sensations. Of being conscious shortly before, and after, this unconsciousness.

That's, simply put. What death is like. Nothing. You can't comprehend it because the mere act of comprehension precludes the state of being obliviated. Dead. You don't fear closing your eyes at night, but then why do you fear your inevitable walk into the sunless lands? Yes, you can expect to dream tonight, and even if not to dream then to wake up tomorrow. But your annoyances will still be there, your pains and anguishes and sorrows. Sipping a hot cup of coffee is infinitely more discomforting and torturous and painful than the state of death. Terminally.

Answer 6

I think the simplest answer is the best.  Each of us is an assemblage of cells brought together for a brief time before they break down and fly apart, leaving no ripple.  I have no fear of death, only of the manner of it, and I think any theorising about some sort of further existence, no matter in what form, far fetched in the extreme.

Answer 7

I know death is like falling asleep..as soon as you die, you wake up (in a new life). There is no experience of time between lives, just like there is no experience of time between falling asleep and waking up (unless you dream). This timeless point between lives is the "nothingness" that many people say you will "experience" after death. But to say such a thing is absurd. Why? Because you can't experience nothing. You can only experience something. "Something" is the only thing that can ever exist! "Something" will exist forever! And that something is your "experience." It is the self! Our lives exist in a sequential order. Each one being lived by me one by one. I probably have and will live others lives (such as yours), each an infinite number of times, in my eternal past, and my eternal future. But it also remains a possibility that I will merely relive my own life an infinite number of times, never experiencing any other lives; other lives such as yours may never have existed, and may never exist (i'm sure you would argue with that). Whether I will live my own life again or someone elses life, one thing is for sure- I won't experience "a point of no time"!!!!!

Answer 8

You breech upon what is seemingly the "answer" to this age old question...allow me to expand the thought process a little further, especially in regards to your latter realization:

There ARE in fact multiple (infinite) "levels" of your given life, as well as with everyone's life...as well as the notion that time is NOT linear. Therefore, upon death, your energy, soul or whatever has the opportunity to "select" which embodiment to contain itself in with the proverbial "bird's eye view" from a state of being. Thus, given our current plane of history and time, if this soul chooses to embody that of Abraham Lincoln once it has completed my body's time line, then it jumps into that life cycle to EXPERIENCE that life...it is all about experiencing what the soul desires....

Considering, upon reunification with the source of Creation, whatever you want to call it, it is the source of ALL things, it is the cosmic yin-yang...thus, there is nothing that it lacks, save one thing. If it is the source of all things, then it lacks REFERENCE...therefore, it continually sends out parts of itself (the soul) to gain reference through consciousness and the FORGETTING of what it once knew.



Therefore, the EXPERIENCE becomes the joy It seeks, both in the experience of "forgetting" what that body will encounter, as well as the end product. However, there are also infinite variations of every life, such that, using our example, Lincoln never becomes president, he dies in a accidental horse and buggy mishap and thus, that life, that experience ends...

Your "decisions" are predestined on a cosmic road map and so, therefore, are your end points. Surely, there are times in your life that you can recall that you "skated death" on a car accident, or health problem or were in the "wrong place/wrong time" scenario and you survived those...however, in an alternate plane, THAT experience was the last and that soul rejoined...

You have to remember, infinite is exactly that, there are endless variations in how this all ends up...who you encounter, who you effect/affect, you effects/affects you. Nothing is by chance and it is all good, we are under the guise that there are actually "bad" things that happen, when in the end, when you look back at it, nothing is really "bad", not even the death of a loved one, or a divorce, or cancer, car accidents, rape, murder, starvation...none of it is "bad", it only provides the opportunity for the soul to experience life and it is our outlook that creates the "good" or "bad" reaction we give that experience.

For instance, would the mom who created MADD, have created the program if her daughter was killed in a drunk driving accident? And there are endless examples of this, all depending on our conscious reaction to this life's timeline and how we (forgive the pun) make lemonade out of lemons...

peace,

Baldy

Answer 9

If the mind is merely material, consciousness ends definitively with the cessation of biological existence.  If the mind is not merely material, then perhaps some manner of immortality might be possible-- but I do not know if this could be determined or proven simply on empirical grounds.  Empirical investigations rule out this possibility from the get go and even if such a spiritual "mind" were to manifest itself, an empirical investigation would not likely be able to quantify or measure its existence.  I find the idea of quantum immortality to be the empirical equivalent of asking and answering the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.      

Answer 10

There is a pretty good reason why it's difficult to wrap your brain around what it's like to be dead:  it's not what your brain is designed to do.  It's function is to receive, filter, and then act upon things from the real world.  If you take the real world out of the picture, you are left with nothing to go on.

Plato, interestingly, argues (in 'The Republic') that if annihilation is all that awaits us after death, this can only be a good thing.  He likens the sensation of no sensation to that of a dreamless sleep.  And perhaps that's an apt comparison... it's pretty much disconnected from reality and absent even of thought.  Since most of us find such a doze actually a very pleasant thing, then perhaps annihilation is equally pleasant.

Certainly nobody has verifiably come back to set the record straight.

Quantum immortality never seemed particularly plausible to me because unless there are an infinite number of universes eventually every life will end when continuing reaches too far a point of implausibility.  And there are, of course, circumstances which don't have an almost-zero chance of living but an entirely zero chance.

A better bet, if you're interested in such things, would be a simulated afterlife.  If the universe is entirely deterministic, it is possible that a sufficiently advanced culture might simulate the entire thing.  Reward or fast-forward to any point or time they liked.  Everything that once lived would continue living, in a way that would be indistinguishable to the simulated being.  Some even argue that our current experience might be a simulation of that nature (the old brain-in-a-jar chestnut, I suppose... link below).

Answer 11

The simple answer to your question is No. Everything the human mind can fathom and understand has to at one point be percieved and experienced. John Locke and the British Empiricists laid the path for the argument that we have only a posteriori knowledge (from experience). Nowadays it has taken AJ Ayer, Quine and Wittgenstein to argue how even a priori (abstract and logical truths) eventually buckle down to language and experience in kind.

What relevance does this all have? Ultimately, if we have no experiences of the "discontinuation of consciousness" then we cannot ever hope to fathom it. This is why there are countless problems with those who claim to have "mystical experiences" articulating their feelings to everyone else.

However, this is not an argument for athiesm. There is no reason why something cannot exist even though I (we) cannot fathom/understand it.

Answer 12

A profound concept with no known answer. I can't help wondering if perhaps the answer is as simple as 2+2 but our minds are incapable of comprehending it. I sometimes toy with the idea of rebirth; not in a the sense of reincarnation or a conscious decision, but simply death and then life again with no correlation between the two. I guess we'll have to die to know.

Answer 13

You are wise to consider the end of life to be the end of only this life.  The spirit goes on, within the spirit realm.  We return from the spirit realm, rather reluctantly apparently, when it's time to endure another session on this, or another, planet.  We come here to learn something, so our spirit can develop.  Many well publicized events indicate that there is indeed far more than we are led to believe exists; for example Near Death Experiences, all of which confirm that the body and spirit are not one.  I too simply cannot believe the religious explanations for anything.  Though I very strongly believe that there is an overseer figure within the spirit realm, whom probably deserves the title God.