M.J. Rose

Let’s temper our beliefs with a little scepticism, shall we?

Never Say Die: Why We Can’t Imagine Death

Why so many of us think our minds continue on after we die

By Jesse Bering

• Almost everyone has a tendency to imagine the mind continuing to exist after the death of the body.
• Even people who believe the mind ceases to exist at death show this type of psychological-continuity reasoning in studies.
• Rather than being a by-product of religion or an emotional security blanket, such beliefs stem from the very nature of our consciousness.

Everybody’s wonderin’ what and where they all came from.
Everybody’s worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go when the whole thing’s done.
But no one knows for certain and so it’s all the same to me.
I think I’ll just let the mystery be.

It should strike us as odd that we feel inclined to nod our heads in agreement to the twangy, sweetly discordant folk vocals of Iris Dement in “Let the Mystery Be,” a humble paean about the hereafter. In fact, the only real mystery is why we’re so convinced that when it comes to where we’re going “when the whole thing’s done,” we’re dealing with a mystery at all. After all, the brain is like any other organ: a part of our physical body. And the mind is what the brain does—it’s more a verb than it is a noun. Why do we wonder where our mind goes when the body is dead? Shouldn’t it be obvious that the mind is dead, too?

And yet people in every culture believe in an afterlife of some kind or, at the very least, are unsure about what happens to the mind at death. My psychological research has led me to believe that these irrational beliefs, rather than resulting from religion or serving to protect us from the terror of inexistence, are an inevitable by-product of self-consciousness. Because we have never experienced a lack of consciousness, we cannot imagine what it will feel like to be dead. In fact, it won’t feel like anything—and therein lies the problem… (read the rest from Scientific American)

Prehistoric child is discovered buried with ‘toy hedgehog’ at Stonehenge

This toy hedgehog, found in a child’s grave at Stonehenge, is proof of what we have always known – children have always loved to play.

The chalk figurine was probably a favourite possession of the three year old, and placed next to the child when they died in the late Bronze Age or early Iron Age, around 3,000 years ago.

Archaeologists who discovered the grave, where the child was laying on his or her side, believe the toy – perhaps placed there by a doting father – is the earliest known depiction of a hedgehog in British history. [Read the rest at the DailyMail.]

We do all this work in a lifetime to discover who we are, to become enlightened, less selfish, more productive, thinner, nicer, cooler… And to what end exactly? If we don’t maintain our egos in the next life, what exactly is the point of all this self discovery over and over and over again? Why not just sit on a log for 75 years eating insects and twiddling our thumbs until the next life overtakes us? I think the answer exists somewhere within that mysterious bit of truth about how the self is not really just ourselves, but is a part of a vast self-knowing whole…

Here is a pleasant little article from The Times of India addressing this mystery.

The self is a projection from the unified source of consciousness.

by DEEPAK RANADE

Any attempts by the self to be enlightened are based on the premise that this projection has a unique identity. Like a bubble in the ocean. There is a fine distinction between the bubble and the surrounding water. But the bubble is within the water, it is made up of the same water. If the bubble were to make any attempt to understand itself, it would momentarily feel that it is separate with an identity of its own. But that remains only till the thin separating membrane exists. Once this assertive margin gives way, it is revealed that there has been no change in either the content or the nature of the water. It was water, and will remain water.

All creation is analogous to bubbles in the vast expanse of consciousness. Realisation involves loss of this separateness from the surrounding water, a sense of just merging into the water. It is dissolution of that membrane of separateness called the ego. If this dissolution occurs during the journey of life, it would be similar to the bubble losing the differentiating membrane on the way travelling from the bottom of the sea to the top. When the mind-body organism ends (death) it would be the equivalent of the bubble reaching the surface and then just popping. This bubble has a plethora of forms and shapes. But still just a transient identification of being separate.

This feeling of separateness motivates all our attempts and endeavours to embark on the path of understanding the Self. Like the bubble trying to understand itself as a separate entity when actually it is surrounded by and made up of the same water. The separateness that desires this enlightenment is the ego, the identification with the mind-body organism. The consciousness that animates this mind-body form is the true Self.

The true Self creates a projection which has great conviction of separateness and independent existence. It is a distortion induced by the perceptive apparatus. Religious orientation and beliefs are not congenital. They are a product of conditioning.

Many cultures believe in reincarnation or rebirth. Which entity takes rebirth? The identity that each of us has is an entirely man-made nomenclature of convenience. So what would reincarnate?… [Complete article here.]