Afterlife.
Last night, after enjoying a pleasant late happy hour with my girlfriend, we lay in bed discussing dreams and the afterlife. I had recently had a dream where my first dog was still alive, and had been hiding under a bed, waiting for me to come back. When I found her, she had chewed a good chunk of her leg up, out of stress (weirdly enough the wound looked like a graft, a solid square of missing seeping flesh.) I took her out from under the bed, pet her, and gave her attention. She didn't seem interested, angry that I had taken so many years to come back. I then took her (carried her, as she was skin and bones) to a train station, and sat with her. She wouldn't kiss me, and showed no interest in me, eventually turning into a statue.
I then recalled a dream where my second dog was still alive in this forest where dogs were sent to die, a peaceful back yard with lots of pleasant flowers. She was still alive, just alone in this place. I then recalled yet another dream where one of my grandma's cats, a pleasant black pudgy cat who I would pick up, as in his old age he couldn't move much, and hold him to the pleasant hum of a contented purr. In this dream, that cat was still alive, and protecting me against this black... thing, containing black cubes, strange tendrils, and amorphous bubbles that would assume the shape of whatever it was confronting. This cat stood guard, and I knew it was keeping that thing away. (Ironically, the back yard for dogs and the place with the black tendrils was in my grandparents house, a very common locale in my dreams.)
As we discussed concepts of the afterlife, I admitted, for all my Christian upbringing and spirituality, I don't really have a solid concept of the afterlife, and border on believing that once you bite it, you're gone. But the other half of me thinks that concepts such as reincarnation, heaven, hell, etc, are too linear, what lies beyond is much crazier than we could understand, and there are layers of reality beyond what we can even comprehend- and that's not necessarily a good thing.
I thought back on those dreams, and my concept of the self being neural activation. An individual, in my opinion, is composed of the neural activation occurring within their head, and within the heads of those they interact with. So, for example, I exist as a person due to all the brain activity in my head, but the neural circuits that exist within the heads of my mother, my girlfriend, my boss, etc. are also all part of myself. They are neural activations that create responses that become part of myself- my boss sees me and smiles, tells me to test something, and complains about some bugs he's trying to squash. In that moment, that neural activation in his head is part of my existence. (You could easily apply this to inanimate objects, etc, but I like to consider the self a neuronal experience only.)
I then thought of, in the context of late night conversation, where delirium and rationality collide, that what if by dreaming of my dogs and the cat, I was able to visit them somewhere in their afterlife. If that neural activation within the context of dreams allowed me to see them in the great beyond. That scared me, as in each case, they had been trapped in a world, unable to leave, alone, gradually going insane from solitude of an unchanging environment. These environments weren't awful, but they were static, and inescapable. I then wondering, what would become of myself when I die? Will I find myself stuck in my grandparents house, unable to leave until someone dreams of me and they can visit me in this dark place. What happens if nobody does? Do I become an evil wretch? Or something more surreal, like that black tendril creature, an alien intelligence devoid of humanity or kindness? To add to that, my girlfriend brought up my childhood psychic seeming experiences- where as a kid I would be able to recite recipes I had never seen before as my mom was making them, saying esoteric things just as my mom was remembering them, seeing spirits, or hearing whispering voices just beyond a wall. What if I had neglected these skills in all but sleep, and could see former pets in the place where their spirits had resided. I then remembered my attempts to communicate with God that I did in lieu of drugs in my teenage years, where I would leave the door open and meditate/pray with the focus of reaching god. I saw visions, likely hallucinations, of a great planet, ours, with strange wires and spheres spiraling down these wires to reach the planet. I saw two dragons fighting each other constantly. A great, never-ending elevator. That cemented the feeling that any afterlife that existed, and spiritual realm, was likely beyond our comprehension as a species, and likely not as pleasant as we would like to think.
Such delirious thoughts lulled me into slumber, and as I drifted, I wondered what other dark places awaited us.
Germboy, out/Peace.
I then recalled a dream where my second dog was still alive in this forest where dogs were sent to die, a peaceful back yard with lots of pleasant flowers. She was still alive, just alone in this place. I then recalled yet another dream where one of my grandma's cats, a pleasant black pudgy cat who I would pick up, as in his old age he couldn't move much, and hold him to the pleasant hum of a contented purr. In this dream, that cat was still alive, and protecting me against this black... thing, containing black cubes, strange tendrils, and amorphous bubbles that would assume the shape of whatever it was confronting. This cat stood guard, and I knew it was keeping that thing away. (Ironically, the back yard for dogs and the place with the black tendrils was in my grandparents house, a very common locale in my dreams.)
As we discussed concepts of the afterlife, I admitted, for all my Christian upbringing and spirituality, I don't really have a solid concept of the afterlife, and border on believing that once you bite it, you're gone. But the other half of me thinks that concepts such as reincarnation, heaven, hell, etc, are too linear, what lies beyond is much crazier than we could understand, and there are layers of reality beyond what we can even comprehend- and that's not necessarily a good thing.
I thought back on those dreams, and my concept of the self being neural activation. An individual, in my opinion, is composed of the neural activation occurring within their head, and within the heads of those they interact with. So, for example, I exist as a person due to all the brain activity in my head, but the neural circuits that exist within the heads of my mother, my girlfriend, my boss, etc. are also all part of myself. They are neural activations that create responses that become part of myself- my boss sees me and smiles, tells me to test something, and complains about some bugs he's trying to squash. In that moment, that neural activation in his head is part of my existence. (You could easily apply this to inanimate objects, etc, but I like to consider the self a neuronal experience only.)
I then thought of, in the context of late night conversation, where delirium and rationality collide, that what if by dreaming of my dogs and the cat, I was able to visit them somewhere in their afterlife. If that neural activation within the context of dreams allowed me to see them in the great beyond. That scared me, as in each case, they had been trapped in a world, unable to leave, alone, gradually going insane from solitude of an unchanging environment. These environments weren't awful, but they were static, and inescapable. I then wondering, what would become of myself when I die? Will I find myself stuck in my grandparents house, unable to leave until someone dreams of me and they can visit me in this dark place. What happens if nobody does? Do I become an evil wretch? Or something more surreal, like that black tendril creature, an alien intelligence devoid of humanity or kindness? To add to that, my girlfriend brought up my childhood psychic seeming experiences- where as a kid I would be able to recite recipes I had never seen before as my mom was making them, saying esoteric things just as my mom was remembering them, seeing spirits, or hearing whispering voices just beyond a wall. What if I had neglected these skills in all but sleep, and could see former pets in the place where their spirits had resided. I then remembered my attempts to communicate with God that I did in lieu of drugs in my teenage years, where I would leave the door open and meditate/pray with the focus of reaching god. I saw visions, likely hallucinations, of a great planet, ours, with strange wires and spheres spiraling down these wires to reach the planet. I saw two dragons fighting each other constantly. A great, never-ending elevator. That cemented the feeling that any afterlife that existed, and spiritual realm, was likely beyond our comprehension as a species, and likely not as pleasant as we would like to think.
Such delirious thoughts lulled me into slumber, and as I drifted, I wondered what other dark places awaited us.
Germboy, out/Peace.