The afterlife is like a lucid dream

I just finished watching that movie “What Dreams May Come” which has an excellent portrayal of what life after death may be like.

When we die, we go to a realm similar to that of a lucid dream. Our thoughts will create reality so anything we imagine will happen in this realm. This realm can be your own personal heaven or hell depending on what your thinking about. It is much like a lucid dream, you create your own scenario/dream scenary (which you can change) and anything you think of will come into existence. You have all the powers of lucid dreaming such as flying, teleportation, manifestation, etc. you can make it your own personal heaven by thinking good thoughts, about things you desire, or you can make it your own personal hell by thinking of bad things you dont want - it is all up to you according to your thoughts. You can even cross over to other peoples realities much like a shared dream. The life we are living now is just warming us up for this next reality so that we know what we desire, so we can be a god in our own sanctuary living in peace and harmony.

I believe this to be true… does this resonate with anyone else? what are your thoughts and feelings about this?

hmmm…interesting
its a very neat concept, but i am catholic and believe in heaven,hell and purgatory.

i dont quite know what i believe heaven to be like, but when i was young, i pictured heaven to be whatever i wanted it to be, like an LD
how awesome

well to me it makes a lot of sense…

i dont think everyone would enjoy the same heaven as everyone else, it makes more sense for everyone’s heaven to be according to what they picture it as, not as a general consensus.

It also makes some sense of reason why we dream - perhaps to better prepare us for what thought manifestation is like?

i don’t really buy into the whole christian hell burning in a lake of fire for eternity thing. For one reason, i don’t think a god would be that evil. For a second reason, when your dead you can’t die again so therefore you can’t feel pain unless you choose to.

My belief system is very similar to yours, Eonnn. I think everybody’s version of the afterlife is their own creation, just like a lucid dream. This outlook on life makes the most sense to me, and has resonated with me for a long time.

If you liked the movie, I would suggest reading the book, What Dreams May Come. They took great liberty with the film and it just wasn’t as poignant or true-feeling as a result. I think you’d definitely get much more out of the book. :smile:

Yeh i feel the same way as you eonnn.
i am not christian myself. never really felt like that was what i really beleived in. no connection.

There are so many theories and etc to what is after death. but we may not ever truly know until we die.

If you like these kinds of movies and stuff, i think you should rent donnie darko. Its a amazing movie taht goes on alot of different topics.
it is my favorite movie.

Yes–I so totally agree with that, Eonnn. Actually, I’ve been thinking the whole afterlife thing over for awhile now. Pretty deep stuff to ponder–death, value of life, religion and science, the universe…the mystery of women :neutral:

:eek:

Yes, but…I really like the idea of an LD heaven (or even the Omega Point theory, as conceived by Tipler). I disbanded from my whole “Christian” existence long ago. I think I remained “Christian” in those last few years out of fear from the Christian Hell and high hopes of making it into a Christian Heaven that required many prerequisites to get in, but seemingly offered little to do (Yeah, let’s sit on puffy clouds and sing praises to God for all eternity :roll: After, of course, we live a “righteous” physical life by attending church service regularly, pay our tithes and offerings, and run as fast as we can in the opposite direction of all things deemed “unholy” and “sinful”… i.e. all the fun stuff :wink:). Hahaha :lol: Oh wow…but that’s another thread :content:

In a nutshell though, yeah–I like that idea of Heaven much more than the Christian one’s that absolutely no preacher has graced us with a substantial description (Really, what have you heard more about–Heaven? Or Hell :huh: ). So with the whole LD Heaven we’re not here to worship a god, but to become gods (and goddesses :razz:)?

:hmmm: I like it :yes:

How’d you guys come to this conclusion? Because I’ve just now really started to acknowledge it after my last ND. Anyway, yeah…it’s an awesome thing to think about as an afterlife possibility, but then problems with this “theory” arise when I really try to consider it…

  • Aren’t dreams just neurological functions in our brains?
  • Wouldn’t eternity get boring? Dreams or no dreams, even if we did have infinite possibilities it’s still possible people would get bored–and that would be Hell.
  • Why are we living this life, then?
  • Can you lose “lucidity?” If so, then what?
  • How clear is the LD Heaven? Is it like dreams in the physical existence where you’re pretty much limited as far as actualy knowledge goes and you must rely on subconscious assumptions based on related experiences? Or is it more like a collective, omniscient “encyclopedia” where infinite information is at our fingertips?
  • How exactly would this life benefit or teach us if it had seemingly no limits (not that I wouldn’t like this :wink:)?

Ack…just a few thoughts of many…

But the idea is awesome :good:

I was baptised shortly after birth as a Catholic, and for a while there i was a christian until I came to the conclusion that there are just too many flaws in christianity and their whole belief system (apologies to anyone who is a christian). So now I am not religious but I am spiritual, believing in a higher power but not being confined by what dictates my beliefs or having to believe in certain things like an organised religion would have you do.

There is a good video on what a christian heaven and hell would look like by a guy called Ian McCormack who had a NDE:
video.google.com.au/videoplay?do … n+and+hell
but you are absolutely right, this type of heaven and hell is not entirely desirable for everyone… as you said before “who wants to sit on puffy white clouds praising god and singing bible songs for the rest of eternity?” so the idea of a LD heaven/hell is much more favourable.

good to hear :wink:

Well I pretty much came to this conclusion after watching the movie “What Dreams May Come” and from past dream experiences.

I will try to answer these problems because I really like this idea of an LD heaven when we die.

Quantum Physics suggests not. They propose that consciousness or the psyche is located outside and separate to the body so therefore when we die, our consciousness/psyche lives on. Not to mention that there is still no one who fully understands what dreams are, whether they exist in an astral plane or another realm, or if they simply exist in our brain, or in our consciousness.

In the movie they solved this problem by saying that you have the choice to re-incarnate again if you wish, they also had spirit guides to help you cross over to the afterlife. I propose that when you die you are able to do 2 things: explore the real-world realm or explore the dreamworld realm, so if you wanted you could go see your own funeral or if you didn’t feel like doing that you could go back to your dreamworld. And if you wanted to re-incarnate you could simply tell a spirit guide this is what you want to do.

We are living this life to experience life, to find out what our desires are so that when we cross over we will have experiences to reflect on, and to know what it is we desire so we can live eternity doing the things we love.

i dont think you could lose lucidity because your entire consciousness is now in this realm and not laying dormant in your body.

This is a good question which boggles me, have you ever had a dream where you find knowledge not known to you? as if it was picked out of the sea of collective consciousness and not from your own thinking? People do say that when you die you remember all your past lifes and you become all-knowing. But I think with the ability to go back and forth between the realms and with the help of guides and DC’s, with time and space not being a problem, we could attain any knowledge we desire.

I think I may have answered that in the last question. But perhaps it is simply a place to ‘retire’ or stay for a while to gather your thoughts.

I’m glad you like it as much as I do :happy:

p.s. sorry for the long post

I love that movie. If there is an accurate description of an “afterlife”, I think that movie is the odds on favorite. Much of waking life is just the same, actually. The nature of our experiences is much more about our thoughts, expectations, and what we put our attention on, than it is about anything objectively happening around us. Life or afterlife, I think it would be the same. This waking world, however, has limits, making it a good practicing ground for self-awareness, the key to awakening potential in waking life, a lucid dream, and maybe all other experiences.

:peek:

The Rev

I considered this a while ago, that if you were an atheist you would just die, but if you believed in christianity you would go to heaven or hell depending on whether you think you were good or bad. But I don’t know really.

i love the idea.

Although i don’t think i am ready to reject all christian ideas, or the ideas of any other religion for that matter.

I like it.

The thing that really hooks me on this theory is the spirit guide thing

Now, that totally ties in to spirit guys in our mortal life

Perhaps, these spirit guides we have now help us prepare for the life beyond.

And this doesn’t even go against christianity, either

Spirit guide, “guardian angel” eh? eh? nice…

Perhaps we ourselves could become spirit guides.

What an awesome idea.

I love the movie. And it would be really cool if that is what death is like. Not having the faith I fear death because I don’t like the idea of not even again having consciousness. It scares me more than the idea of a hellish existance. But if it’s a neverending dream there is nothing to fear. If it’s a bad dream it can change into a good dream.
Ofcourse in the movie it’s not quite a dream. And I was thinking just now about how they talk about god in the movie. And it seems he dosen’t just stroll around greeting everybody. He is “up there somewhere”. just like he would be now assuming he exists. So in heaven there could still be something above. Perhaps you can get there. And then you have something to strive for even there. it’s not the end of things. it’s not “you die and dream forever”. Considering how there your world is what you make it you could have a lot of fun with meditation.

im totally with you on this. 100%

Ah, quantum physics…the dreams stuff is made of :cloud9:
Yeah, I’ve been interested in quantum physics forever–that’s how I came across the Omega Point theory, quantum suicide/immortality, Many-Worlds Interpretation, M-theory, and other such things that may interest you or not :content: I actually find it more helpful than religion :yes: But as for consciousness and astral planes and dreams…it’s possible. I mean, I had a few OBEs and I guess that could somewhat vouch for the possibility of an LD afterlife :good:

Yeah. I actually thought about this whole afterlife thing and what exactly we would get in the end (i.e. who would be right :wink:). After reading up on the Omega Point theory it sparked a thought that perhaps we all ultimately get what afterlife we’re promised here in this world. That is, at the end of existence, we’re all resurrected at some infinite, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent singularity (conveniently called the “Omega Point”) and from there we are basically free to “cash in on paradise” and do whatever we want (pure omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence–infinity at our fingertips :woot: ). Yeah, now this is basically the same as the LD Heaven. I thought about eternity and what in the hell I would do for that amount of time–er–no time :neutral:
Well, I figured I’d start by reliving my life a countless amount of times via emulation (different from reincarnation in the sense that I’m reassimilated into the original life I died from to live again, so perfectly emulated–not simulated–that the emulation is indistinguishable from the original–artificial and organic become synonymous). So yeah, I’d relive it a countless amount of times (in a state of nescience until “death” again) doing things different just to see what happens–starting with little changes like answering “yes” to a question instead of “no,” then moving to HUGE ones like making the whole world like X-Men. After that, I’d traverse the dreamscape of all the dreams I had here on Earth and check out all of those places I never ventured–you know–the halls never walked down, the doors never went through, the windows never jumped out of, the tunnels never crawled in–all those places! I guess I’d want to use these two different things partly for entertainment, but mostly to obtain vast amounts of experiences not feasible in a mortal life. I’d also try to meet everybody who’s ever lived, plus the DCs–maybe even check out some other people’s dreamscapes and lives. I don’t think I’d ever reincarnate–just emulate and re-emulate. I can think of 12 totally different lives right now that I’d live:

  1. A “monobloc” where I’d help fabricate baby universes
  2. A Hippie-ruled America
  3. A computer-automaton video game world
  4. A land ruled by hot Playboy playmates
  5. A world where Chaos theory applies to everything
  6. A world of group personality (kinda like Crompton Divided)
  7. A world where “positive thought” causes results instantaneously
    :cool: Some other eighth life…
  8. A world where Sheldrake’s morphogenetic fields apply
  9. A “meme-world” where personality traits are contagious
  10. Nostalgic childhood past populated by Saturday morning cartoon characters
  11. The Omega Point where I’d traverse different celestial heavens and hells

Yeah well…I’ve rambled enough–sorry for the long post :grin:

Wow, you have a very interesting and intriging mind! So many weird and wonderful and very imaginative life’s you just listed there. I especially like number 4 :razz:

Personally, I’d love to think this true, but honestly… think about it:

When people are dead, they have no brain functions. No life inside them. They are just a physical object, like a chair. It’s just there, not living. We’ll decompose, everyone will continue their lives, and we will all be forgotten.

Maybe I’m just a pessimist.

no I agree with you HurricaneAK. But I’m a pessimist too. and an atheist.

That would be awesome!!! … So lucid dreaming could be a shortcut

Heh, ya think? :tongue:

I guess there’s nothing wrong with that. Although I see no point in taking a pessimistic view on life. You could argue that you’re more rational, and have less chance of being disappointed by viewing things in a negative light. But to me, that’s no way to live life.

Are we only our brains? Is that all that we are? Some are happy to believe so. I’m not one of them. To me, that’s one of the saddest realities I could conjure up: Having a tool with so much potential that is ultimately corrupted by chemicals and the destructive presence of the ego.

I like the quote, “Death is a stripping away of all that is not you”. I relish in knowing that (with my belief system), once I die, I truly will be free from the human traits that have bound my spirit. :content:

Well, maybe I’m an optimist, but I really think that something must be life after death.

Everything in life, it seems way too complex to be dumb luck.

The fact that i am here, right now, is a one in elevendy gagillion chance. That’s not even a number! O_o

Anyway, i was thinking about it, and the fact that we can even ask these questions baffles me.

We are the only species on the only planet in the known universe that has the mental complexity to ask these questions.

The fact that we are even alive. Everything had to be EXACTLY perfect for that to even happen.

If one person 2000 years ago did not have sex with another person 2000 years ago, then you or me might not even be here.

That blows my mind.

So the fact that everything is as it is, that makes me believe.

It also keeps me up at night

Personally, i enjoy the “lucid afterlife” idea more than the idea or Christian heaven.

But I would not want to be alone (in conciousness, anyway)

On the other hand, i believe in shared dreaming, so this is not a problem

Actually when a person dies, there brain continues functioning for 5 - 7 minutes… perhaps this is just consciousness preparing for its next journey.

and how do you know a chair isn’t living? LOL don’t answer that I was just kidding.