The Afterlife, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, NDEs and VR

 One of the things that people find difficult to envisage about the Afterlife is how and reports csn claim that 'anything is possible' in the Afterlife. Classic communicators from the last century reported experiences of cities, libraries and universities, natural wonders, meeting dead people and animals, hellish situations, darkness and despair, utter loneliness, utter joy.  

The Tibetan Book of the Dead describes meeting monsters and demons on the early stages of passing over, spirits that can damage you if you can't maintain a perspective.

NDE reports cover a wide range of scenarios from splendid to horrific, from meeting guardians and Helpers and the Loving Light to evil spirits and the malignity of the dead who have not learnt and revised themselves following the Life Review opportunity

What can we make of this ? Not only are we supposed to be able to meet our favourite gurus and deities but unicorns and the Flying Spaghetti Monster if we wish

Is this all nonsense ? And what does 'nonsense' actually mean in the light of the emerging paradigm that provides a theoretical model of a Mind universe ( building blocks are information and emotion on a plank of primordial awareness) in which Matter and Spacetime are pixilated projections of Mind ( see the works of Kastrup and Hoffman and compare with Vedānta metaphysics) and a consciousness model in which the brain, though exactly synchronised with the material world in order to render material experience coherent, is not the source of consciousness at all; on the contrary, consciousness is the ontological primitive ( basic reality) in the Universe and brain perceptions snd indeed the brain itself are all pixilated projections of primordial Mind

I got a clue to joining up the dots while speaking to American friends last night in Fuengirola. Although they don't believe in any condciousness 'hocus pocus' they do appreciate technology. They gave vivid descriptions of VR entertainment experiences including one of 'participating' in a classical music recording in which there literally 'inside ' the space in which the musicians were performing on a 3D sound and sight basis. The suspension of 'reality' was absolutely startling. Of course, I want to experience this for myself to confirm a hunch I have.

After we pass away and our organised consciousness ( an organised collection of remembered experiences and thoughts built up over a lifetime) persists into the bodies Afterlife in order to build up more experiences and thoughts ....

The bodies perceptions of the Afterlife could resemble a much more advanced version of VR because ALL SIX PLUS SENSES OF PERCEPTION have recorded experience in the personality superprogramme

This complex can experience, reflect, assess, and emote on an ongoing learning basis like a kind of super AI with real consciousness instead of yhr dead simulated consciousness of an AI programme

In a bodies world of pure thought unregulated by material laws, you can make or meet anything - including the Flying Spaghetti Monster if you so wish, a unicorn, a character from a book of myths, whatever

In the bodiless conscious state,  creativity becomes UNRESTRICTED and the boundary between 'myth' and 'fact' disappears

The implications of this are interesting to contemplate. If true ( which I think the evidence build up since 1975 supports) then we have to reassess out ideas about what is possible and what is not.

In case all this sounds too far fetched, consider this point frequently raised by top mathematicians and scientists:

More than 80 per cent of pure mathematics is NOT found applicable in the known universe. (Negative quantities, for instance, are mathematical buy not physical facts).

Yet all known phenomenon are assessable or partly assessable through mathematics.

And paradoxically, Gödel's Theorem says that any mathematical model is inherently unproblematic on its own terms - which means that no measurement or mathematical description of spacetime phenomena is truly reliable. There is always something we don't know and will never know to literally everything 'down here.'

So...let's go back to that old chestnut, the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It says that the monsters you meet are 'not real', they are 'mental projections' but they look and feel real ( remember VR?) If you recognise them for what they are they vanish and can't harm you.

Vedānta says that all experience is illusory including the sense of ego and self.  By that it means that the sense that Matter is real and Mind is secondary is false. It doesn't mean that you don't feel or suffer but you dont know THAT GROUND REALITY is that material experience. It is not. Suffering, on that sense, is illusory only in that sense, but the illusion is nevertheless 'real' just as VR is a 'real experience.' The lesson here is that in idealist philosophical terms the distinction between 'real' and 'not real' is a fundamental error and paradoxically, it is also correct if the true nature of Reality is grasped.

In this context, ontologically speaking, the Afterlife is not only a possibility but a banal fact.

21 September 2024