Ok so through my constant pondering about religon, ive come up a philosophy. I don't exactly beleive in it myself, it's interesting however. Ok so i was thinking, during a person's life, they devote their thoughts, virtues, time to religon. Perhaps all this energy pushing towards an idea could prove true to the individual when he dies? It's kind of hard to put into words, im not sure if anyone else has posted about this. There you have it. Lemme know what you think!
Can you explain it a little more? Are you saying that when we die what we believe to be true becomes true?
What I'm getting from that is that things can be true to an individual who firmly believes in them. Who is to say whether or not they are *actually* true? If some absolute truth exists, it is far beyond our capacity to perceive, so rather truth (I assume this is largely about spiritual truths, e.g. God or enlightenment or whatever) lies solely within the individual. Thus as far as the existence of your life is "true," so is everything you believe. It may not be true in the lives, the realities, of anyone else, but we all just live in our own realities, full of our own perceptions and beliefs, so what does that matter? Correct me if that was way off base... But as I interpret it, it's a pretty cool idea, although not one I completely agree with.
i read a book once where the person's own perception of themselves craft where they go after death. for instance, if they feel that they should go to hell, they go to hell, or are re-incarnated, or whatever. the only problem i have with that theory is that sociopaths are the only people who will enter heaven because only they have clean consciences.
While your beliefs in the afterlife have some effect on where you go, your higher self is more in touch with how your "afterlife" will be.
i wonder why everyone is so busy pondering the afterlife (if there is one at all) that they miss the present life unfolding each moment...:love:
I believe what you're thinking of is relativity... but of course, you're considering it in more abstract terms. It's an interesting idea, and not an altogether implausible one-- I mean, people are always trying to define themselves and what they believe in a coherent fashion, but ultimately a lot of belief systems are self-contradictory, and oftentimes too complex to actually coherently hold true to at all times... though they can be bound to the individual through a series of thoughts, images or symbols-- our unifying mental elements. For us, 'truth' exists in a relative way, not an absolute way... I guess they call it subjectivity, but I think that because 'subjectivity' is often used to ruin any chance of argument or discredit or devalue the individual's perspective as being right or wrong, I don't think it's a good term to use-- 'relative truth' and 'absolute truth' as terms are equal but different. And that's how I see truth-- as having many different forms, though none of the forms are higher or lower than any of the other forms, they simply ARE. So anyway, 'absolute truth' is something that none of us understand, something that can't really be understood. It is the sum collection of all available 'elements'-- what we use to construct our realities, and 'truths'. 'Realtive truth' is how we interpret the universe-- basically, we all exist within parallel realities, or parallel collections of psychic, mental, moral, and intellectual 'elements'. These collections obey our own personal aesthetic sensibilities... certain things belong, and certain things do not. We arrive at our own 'relative' truths through selectivity-- we design our own truths using whatever is available to us, because the actual truth is always beyond our mental, imaginative and psychic capacities... our realities express both our desire and inability to know the absolute truth. But what draws us to these elements as opposed to others?? I suppose it's nature versus nurture again... though ultimately, we lose our selectivity when we lose ourselves... and come to know how all things are absolutely true-- when we die! Anyway, I think that's the best way to deal with the world-- by recognizing that all truths, perspectives, etc... are simultaneously of great aesthetic value and perfectly equal and justified.
^ Agreed. But I think what the original post was trying to say was something simpler, not completely related to subjectivity. Our view of reality is based on what we have experienced and what we currently experience (context). I think his afterlife idea is based on the notion that an external, objective reality is an extension of the mind - something similar to solipsism - and that when we die, subjective reality and objective reality (the "after-life") conflate. I've had this idea before, but I think there is only a subjective reality as long as we inhabit the body and perceive the world through our senses (sight, sound, smell, feeling). After the body dies and we sense/interpret nothing, who knows what happens. That relates to the soul as an entity, but not necessarily a self-aware being.