h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I start with a very famous quote from Gerard de Nerval. Where I have 'improved' it I have put [round my 'improvements'. The main difference I have made is to turn ‘the doors of horn or ivory’ to ‘the doors of perception’. There are many versions of the poem on the Web but I’m afraid I have lost the original of this.


The Dream is a second life. I could not penetrate without a shudder the doors [of perception] that separate us from the invisible world. The first moments of sleep are the image of death, [as an] unclear numbness [takes] our mind and we can not determine the precise moment when the [unconscious]ego, [] continues the work of life. It is a subterranean wave that gradually becomes clear, and which emerges from the shadows of the night and the pale grave faces still living in the residence of limbo. Then the [tableau] is formed, a new light illuminates and brings these strange apparitions and a [new day of apparitions] opens for some of us.

De Nerval – Aurelia (trans from the French)


The previous, humourous, entry in my diary has led me to a serious version. What do you think? Is there another world beyond our perception? A supersensory meaning to our lives? Is there a noumenal (invisible) world together with the phenomenal? Is there a religion you perceive as true? Are none true? Are there supernatural beings? Life after death? Are we really our Unconscous, our dreams?
Can we exchange ideas rationally or is it too deep for h2g2?
I'd be very interested to hear what you think. MUtual REspect please.

Thanks for reading this far.

Jabs

Hi Jabs, my friend, interesting subject! I happen to believe in an afterlife (a pleasant one); I think our souls do live on in some fashion. I also happen to think that with some special dreams we can make fleeting contact with this realm. On the other hand, some dreams are probably just a reflection of our thoughts, hopes, and worries. I don't happen to agree much with Freud's view, who seemed to think almost every dream had some sexual significance. In the immortal words of a joke I once heard, "Sometimes a banana is just a banana." Last but not least, I've had some amazing lucid dreams. Do you ever have those? Sometimes the detail in dreams is so very vivid and complete. It does make you wonder, eh? When I have time, I'll expound more on why I believe what I believe, but first I'll see what everyone else has to say.

Hi Ellen!

Yoiu get the prize for bravery, venturing into the subject alone

I don't have lucid dreams, unfortunately, in fact I can scarcely remember my dreams in the morning unless I'm stressed or something.

Freud's sexuality theory was soon abandoned for a general wish-fulfillment theory, the wishes coming from the Unconscious much as you describe. I wonder if he was right.

Where do our thoughts come from? also has a bearing on this seemingly inexhaustible subject, on which just about everyone must have their own views. In what sense are they 'our' thoughts? Apart from the obvious one that we're the only ones who think them - but that's not true all the time by any means.

Like you, I have views that I'd like to keep, until I see which way the discussion goes. Thanks for getting us going.

Jabs

Good to see you, Jabs. I'm headed to sleep right now, so maybe I'll have some interesting dreams I can relate!

I think that there's a deep-seated part of us that *needs* spiritual answers. I remember reading that W Somerset Maugham, a lifelong atheist, felt deep torment at the end of his very long life, because he worried about unforgiveable things he had done.

I have a problem, though, with the concept of following the light as death sets in. Suppose that person has been blind all his/her life. Does that person suddenly see? Would such a thing be extremely shocking? Is that a good way to enter the next life, if there is one?

Or how about the person who has been in a coma, or is in end-stage Alzheimer's? Does consciousness return to that person? I wonder about the nature of perception itself. There may be different ways of perceiving the spiritual realm, but we probably can't relate to them from our present life.

No one gives us clothing for our first appearance in this world, and when we leave it, we don't get to take any of our apparel with us. It's just the bare essentials.

Paul, all reports of near-death experiences have been from people who didn't die. On the supernationalist model to which I'm at least initially drawn, these are sightings of super-reality that you get once you're dead, (first subjective sign of death probably), but current thinking is that it results from oxygen starvation on the nearly-dead brain(but not dead). Sorry if I'm being a wet blanket here, but we have to be to separate out wishful thinking.

My tutor at College, a life-long atheist, (and a respected philosopher) had the full experience, (sightings/hallucinations of the room he lay dead in, the white light etc.) but he inclined towards the starvation-of-oxygen theory and remained an atheist for the rest of his life.

We're dealing in probable/improbable theories here, but I agree it's part of human Being to need answers.

Jabs

What an interesting topic jabs!

I kinda beleive in an afterlife, but not the Hell-Fire and Damnation preached by some Churches...

As I have written elsewhere. I refuse to beleive in an all forgiving God who has a private torture chamber.

As to dreams... Some I remember are really wierd, some are to do with books I am writing.


GT

A great deal of sense crammed in to 3/4 sentences there Gandy!

There is an enormous contradiction betwen Hell and compassion, isn't there? Could they be from earlier (hell- obviously primitive) and later conceptions of what a God might be like, the later, compassionate version maybe influenced by Buddhism? Even though Buddhism has a hell - (the realm of the Hungry Ghosts and so forth) leading from one's karma.

Jabs

A friend who happens to be Jewish told me a funny story about an evangelistic Christian who tried to argue that not embracing Christianity meant that the friend would go to hell.

"But Jews don't believe in Hell," my friend retorted.

I'm not as familiar with what Christians call the Old Testament as I should be. I can't remember if Hell is mentioned at all in it. maybe it's not, though the Devil is mentioned as early as the Garden of Eden. Does the Devil not have a place to live until Christ descends to Hell, thereby establishing it as a place that exists? Just wondering. I should probably go back and reread Genesis to see how much the Devil gets fleshed out in it. In general, God seems to be more of an avenger and punisher early in the game, and later He seems to become more forgiving...

I have been through a near death experience while recovering from an operation.

I was floating about 6 feet above my body. On looking down on my body I realised that I must get back into it or I would die.

I have also gone through a short period of severe depression and know that Hell can be right here on earth for some people.

Both Heaven and Hell, can exist in this life right here on earth.

all reports of near-death experiences have been from people who didn't die.

after the car smash I was in, I was on a life support machine for 1 and half days, I couldn't keep myself alive. I was told I was as near to kicking the bucket as blowing a candle out - I didn't see any tunnel/lights, anyone saying go back it ain't your turn etc

Gehenna, paul. Derivation - from the pit just outside the walls of the holy City of Jerusalem, where bodies were left to burn for days in a smouldering pit of fire.

worlds beyond perception....2 infra red and ultra violet

near death.....had one....zonked of my gourd on entanox gas when i broke my leg

devil in eden...no that was the serpent, and god punished him by taking away his legs and cursing his line to be killed by man out of hand

satan didn't show up in the bible untill after the exile in babylon when the jews picked up the idea of an evil entity, before that evil came from man, and bad things were caused by god as a punishment

gehenna, is a diamond mine outside hydrabad in pakistan

after life....no thanks

i find oblivion a comforting thought

I don't want to die. I want to carry on, gaining knowledge as I go...



GT

I'm with you, gandalfstwin. Nevertheless, that might not be an option over the long term. I'll take as much as they'll let me have. Plus, as I watch my mother waste away, I figure that I may someday not *want* to live much longer....

Getting back to dreams, the Small Miracles books have some amazing accounts of dreams that seem to be precognitive. In one case two daughters dreamed (on the same night) that their mother's house burned down. So concerned were they, that they went and got her and her most valuable possessions that very day. The next night? The mother's house burned down in a freak accident. Then there was an account of a woman who escaped from a concentration camp in WW2. She had a dream the night before the escape, where her mother told her to hide in a certain village in a certain barn. She went to that barn, and found her brother! He had escaped several months before, and chosen to hide in the same place.

I had a dream in which I was at the bedside of a woman a few streets over, who was dying. Later I found out that she really had died. The thing is, I didn't know she was even sick. The dream was the first hint I had that she was about to die.

Sleep and death are brothers according to the old Greek proverb. Nightly we sleep, and therefore nightly we partially die.

http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/death/de-gdp5.htm

I'm skeptical that anyone has ever known enough about death to be so sure about what it is like. It could be very different from sleep. only those who have died would know for sure, *if* there was any consciousness capable of such knowledge after death.

conciouness is a result of brain activity not a cause of it, so no brain activity, no conciousness, acording to the scientific method if there is no evidence of something, the default position is, it does not exist, so any dreams of life after death are just that dreams