The Death of the Universe

"...to leave this world, it does not suffice to die. One can die and remain in it forever. One must be living to leave it. Or rather, to be living is just this."

-Henry Corbin, Cyclical Time in Ismaili Gnosis, 58

"The path to immortality is hard, and only a few find it. The rest await the Great Day when the wheels of the universe shall be stopped and the immortal sparks shall escape from the sheaths of substance. Woe unto those who wait, for they must return again, unconscious and unknowing, to the seed-ground of stars, and await a new beginning. Those who are saved by the light of the mystery which I have revealed unto you, O Hermes, and which I now bid you to establish among men, shall return again to the Father who dwelleth in the White Light, and shall deliver themselves up to the Light and shall be absorbed into the Light, and in the Light they shall become Powers in God. This is the Way of Good and is revealed only to them that have wisdom."


-
Thoth Hermes Trismegistus
 
Yes, I will die and you will die.

We will all perish and perhaps our consciousness will be extinguished and perhaps not.

Perhaps it is joined in to a supreme consciousness, perhaps it survives individually.

But, the fact is, we will die and when we die we will experience something and something can be nothing or it can be much more.

It might be that we experience our last thoughts and then black out until our brain dies. It might be that we experience something of a dream-state or an actual experience of a next world.

If you want to involve death in a subject you cannot ignore the possibility that we don't know what the fuck is going on. People will claim to know but it is their opinion, basically. Neurosurgeons will say brain death ends with the physical brain; imagine yourself two years after your death in the coffin... the brain is dead and gone... so, where is the you? Gone, they would say.

The philosopher might say otherwise, the physicist might say otherwise, the believer might say otherwise but it is just opinion, there are even atheists who believe in survival. There are religious who do not believe in survival. So, if you want to bring your opinion to a forum then back it up. Why will "I" die? Has anyone's personality/self died before? Who knows. I don't.

And that's what is so intriguing about the subject. It is a true mystery and one of the ultimate mysteries.
 
As above, so below. As below, as above. I will die. You will die. This earth will die. The sun will die. This universe will die.
Probably, but I am now so sceptical about mainstream science, I somehow doubt they can predict anything several billions of years into the future. Remember Halton Arp, whose discoveries regarding red shifts could mean that the whole scale of the universe is wrong......

David
 
Yes, I will die and you will die.

We will all perish and perhaps our consciousness will be extinguished and perhaps not.

Perhaps it is joined in to a supreme consciousness, perhaps it survives individually.

But, the fact is, we will die and when we die we will experience something and something can be nothing or it can be much more.

It might be that we experience our last thoughts and then black out until our brain dies. It might be that we experience something of a dream-state or an actual experience of a next world.

If you want to involve death in a subject you cannot ignore the possibility that we don't know what the fuck is going on. People will claim to know but it is their opinion, basically. Neurosurgeons will say brain death ends with the physical brain; imagine yourself two years after your death in the coffin... the brain is dead and gone... so, where is the you? Gone, they would say.

The philosopher might say otherwise, the physicist might say otherwise, the believer might say otherwise but it is just opinion, there are even atheists who believe in survival. There are religious who do not believe in survival. So, if you want to bring your opinion to a forum then back it up. Why will "I" die? Has anyone's personality/self died before? Who knows. I don't.

And that's what is so intriguing about the subject. It is a true mystery and one of the ultimate mysteries.

I think this brings into question what we mean by "I". What is the self, the ego? What is it that makes us? I would say that it is memory. Remove your memory and where are "you?" Moreover, this "you" if we take for arguments sake that memories are stored in the brain, is rooted in a lump of matter that like all other lumps of matter is 99.9% empty space.
 
I think this brings into question what we mean by "I". What is the self, the ego? What is it that makes us? I would say that it is memory. Remove your memory and where are "you?" Moreover, this "you" if we take for arguments sake that memories are stored in the brain, is rooted in a lump of matter that like all other lumps of matter is 99.9% empty space.
If we take away memory, then we would experience every instant anew, we would greet every moment in wide-eyed surprise. It would not stop us from experiencing, the I would still be there. It night make it difficult to function here in this physical world. But if we base our ideas on the necessity to function in a physical world, inevitably that leads to a physical conclusion about what we are, it couldn't be otherwise. On the other hand, if we base our ideas on the ability to 'be', all that changes, in fact the physical contributes nothing at all. What is it, to be?
 
If we take away memory, then we would experience every instant anew, we would greet every moment in wide-eyed surprise. It would not stop us from experiencing, the I would still be there. It night make it difficult to function here in this physical world. But if we base our ideas on the necessity to function in a physical world, inevitably that leads to a physical conclusion about what we are, it couldn't be otherwise. On the other hand, if we base our ideas on the ability to 'be', all that changes, in fact the physical contributes nothing at all. What is it, to be?

Still, it wouldn't be "you" as you are now. If you lost all your memories, you'd essentially have forgotten who you were. It would effectively be the same as dying and losing all your memory.
 
Probably, but I am now so sceptical about mainstream science, I somehow doubt they can predict anything several billions of years into the future. Remember Halton Arp, whose discoveries regarding red shifts could mean that the whole scale of the universe is wrong......David

Good point, David. For those who might not know, scientists assert that quasars (with strong red shifts) are very distant and very bright (maybe a hundred times the total luminosity of an average galaxy), but Halton Arp accumulated very good photographic evidence that they exist within galaxies--and so can't be considered separate from them, or anywhere near as distant or bright.

If so, then explaining cosmic red shift as due to the Doppler effect, i.e. down to their receding from us at near light speed, is wrong. For some reason (as yet unknown because people aren't looking for it--why should they when they "know" quasars are very distant objects?), quasars must have a red shift that is intrinsic to their composition rather than to their distance and velocity. And if that's so, the whole idea of cosmic expansion is suspect; i,e, the Big Bang theory goes out the window and for all we know, the universe could be eternal.
 
Still, it wouldn't be "you" as you are now. If you lost all your memories, you'd essentially have forgotten who you were. It would effectively be the same as dying and losing all your memory.
I see your point. But in a sense, what you say is true only because that's how you choose to define the concept of "you". What I personally find more interesting is what it is which continues from one incarnation to the next, where the continuity of memory may be lost during the current life - but during an NDE there are some reports of being able to remember once more some or many previous incarnations. In that sense, the idea of memory seems flexible. It may switch on or off, but there is still something which remains part of a unique identity, even in the absence of memory.
 
Nothingness...I have not actually listened to this but maybe it's interesting ? I personally think "nothingness" is an absurd standpoint, and that what physics calls nothingness is not truly nothingness, it is something even if it is simply a "potential" for something...

 
Nothingness...I have not actually listened to this but maybe it's interesting ? I personally think "nothingness" is an absurd standpoint, and that what physics calls nothingness is not truly nothingness, it is something even if it is simply a "potential" for something...


Precisely, if one came from nothingness once, then why not again. And again. "It is no more surprising to be born twice than once" - Voltaire
 
Precisely, if one came from nothingness once, then why not again. And again. "It is no more surprising to be born twice than once" - Voltaire

But there is a relationship between this and the OP and my question: die into where? The notion that something comes from nothing (truly nothing) is absurd to me, simply on the face of it. The answer to the question, "why is there something instead of nothing?", is simply "because there has always been something and there will always be something." Things never go away, they simply transform. Nothing is ever lost, things simply transform. I think we should be able to recast the statement, "the universe is dying" to "the universe is transforming". Likewise we should be able to recast the statement, "We are dying" to "We are transforming". The "Who I am" does not go away, the "who I am" is on a path of transformation to "who that I am becoming." It never ends, and it certainly never began. It just always is.

Edit: in an unintended round about way, I think I've finally found my position on reincarnation.
 
...The sun turns black, earth sinks in the sea,
The hot stars down from heaven are whirled;
Fierce grows the steam and the life-feeding flame,
Till fire leaps high about heaven itself.

Now Garm howls loud before Gnipahellir,
The fetters will burst, and the wolf run free;
Much do I know, and more can see
Of the fate of the gods, the mighty in fight.

Now do I see the earth anew
Rise all green from the waves again;
The cataracts fall, and the eagle flies.
And fish he catches beneath the cliffs...

The Poetic Edda
 
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