Poll Of The Month: What happens to your consciousness when death occurs?
August, 2024's poll in the Mirrors For The Mind, Heart and Soul series
Just to clarify, when I say consciousness, I mean the eternal essence that makes you a unique being, as in your spirit.
Just to be clear (as the poll option framework on Substack limits character count) here is some elaboration on each option:
1. You go to heaven or hell:
What I mean by this is the quintessential mainstream Christian story of the big (stereotypically portrayed and/or imagined as a white) dude in the clouds with a beard that renders judgement on your soul after death, either rewarding you for following the rules with eternal bliss in a four seasons cloud resort (“heaven”) or punishing you eternally with a nasty fiery torture chamber (“hell”).
2. Nothing, your existence ends:
What I mean by this is the typical Atheist dogmatic belief system that sees our consciousness and everything that makes us a unique being as nothing more than bio-chemical electromagnetic dynamics which are produced by the human brain (seeing consciousness as a purely physiological phenomenon) and when the brain ceases to function, the essence of that unique being ceases to exist in all ways as well.
3. You go home to the spirit realm:
By this I mean, you exit the human body which has ceased to function, return to a place in another realm beyond time and 3 dimensional space. That place is close to the Creator of all things. In that place, you take stock of the life you have just lived on the Earth, looking back over the highs and lows, and taking note of how the choices you made in that life made other beings feel. You then work (in concert with the guidance of ancient beings of light that work closely with the Creator of all things to choose what life you will choose to embark in next in the physical universe that will help you to gain further depth of understanding, find greater depths of peace, Self-awareness and unfold your spirit to grow like a redwood seed breathing in the morning light to reach out her first leaves and reach her roots into the rich earth.
4. karma = instant reincarnation
This option refers to the conventional Buddhist type dogma that says you accrue points (or suffer demerits) on your “spiritual credit score” each choice you make and then when you die you get rewarded or punished by the circumstances you are born into in your next life accordingly. Some variations on this option include seeing non-human beings on Earth as lesser than, and so when you misbehave as a human, you might get “demoted” to coming back as a tree, or a goat or a frog in the next life etc.
5. none of the above (plz explain)
Choosing this option indicates that you feel that none of the options I have provided accurately describe what happens after you die and I encourage you to explain what you feel to be the correct description of that process/chain of events in a comment.
Thank you in advance to those who are taking the time to vote and comment to promote constructive discussion and hold up a candle to the mirror.
I voted none of the above because I don’t know, and that’s okay.
I voted none of the above. I have a Christian faith, and won’t start waxing lyrical - but my firmly held and strongly rooted belief system does not coalesce with the traditional ideas of heaven and hell even a tiny bit. For these, I believe there is no Biblical or truly human basis. When read properly and in context, that hell isn’t mentioned in the Bible. Neither can I possibly buy into the idea that we float away to some unembodied realm. How quintessentially bleak and frankly, boring. Karma is in and of itself a detestably bleak concept (I could elaborate if pushed, but the “do good get good” idea of energy reduced to its most disrespectfully shallow representation is simply neither true nor edifying, and in the end oppressive). I think we consistently fail to grasp what the reality of heaven might be, but suffice to say I am sure it is solid, true, breathtakingly like coming home and so far removed from “good people playing harps on clouds” as to be unrecognisable to the peddlars of that image. We shall see clearly, we shall be free - but I think the idea of death as portal is also a misrepresentation - we focus too much on the death. What about the power of life and defeat of death, in the end rendering the latter almost useless in the conversation? What about a continuum of beauty that has already begun, and to which we can contribute meaningfully in this life, in a way that reverberates in heaven now and will make lasting connections to that realm so that something feels familiar yet completely unexpected once we get to inhabit it?
It is 4.40 am and I have to feed the baby. Please excuse the ramblings. Abi