The subject of whether or not we have an afterlife keeps coming up in various Q & A blogs. I generally answer that I don’t really believe there is such a thing, but I certainly would not object if it turned out to be true.
I would like it to be true. To put it another way, I really want it to be true. I want to meet all my friends, real and virtual as well as all my dogs, cats, and birds, too. My current collection of friends contains more ghosts than living people these days. It’s the function of age.
Everything and everyone dies. If you don’t die young, you will get old. Then, eventually, you die. To all the kids who think that age won’t ever happen to them, enjoy your sojourn through youth. Believe, if you like, that you are immortal.
That’s the wonder of belief, that you can believe anything you want. Reality, though, has an odd way of interfering with the fake stuff we believe and eternal life is one of those beliefs. There’s no getting that final door. You can’t dodge it, avoid it, or thwart it. You will walk through it and then, you’ll know what’s on the other other side. Please, if you can, come back and tell me.
The other night, Garry said “I was wondering how come I never see the performers I remember and love until I realized they are dead, many of them for years. But I see them in movies, so they feel alive somehow.” That might be one kind of life after death. Be a popular film presence. As long as those films are shown, you are alive. I don’t think consciousness comes as part of the package, though, but at least you are remembered.
I have spent a lot of time over the years trying to figure out what I believe. I conclude that I don’t anything, but I don’t not believe either. I want to believe. I yearn for it. I’ve never found it and it isn’t for want of trying.
For a non-believer, I’ve have spent more time than anyone else I know studying religions. Specifically, I want to know what make people believe. What is it that enables them to take that “leap of faith” that I seem unable to take?
In college I had enough credits for religion to be my major, but there was no religion major available at my college (I don’t think there is one even now). The heads of the Philosophy and Sociology Departments tried to invent one for me, but it was the 1960s. Schools were more rigid than now. Both the sociology and philosophy departments wanted me as a graduate student but the school wouldn’t allow it. It wasn’t in their “book” and they couldn’t make that minor leap of faith.
I studied in a yeshiva in Israel and at our local church. I spent time with Bernard Cardinal Law and any number of pastors, reverends, and rabbis. I always end up with more questions than answers. My last pastor said it was obvious I was waiting for Jesus to show up with a picture ID. I’m not even sure that would help.
This is why I need time travel. I need to go back (or forward) in time to really see what happened. I want to become a time travel historian.
Then I can really write about it!
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Categories: Anecdote, Movies, Religion, Sci Fi - Fantasy - Time Travel
ARE WE PLAYING EXTRA INNINGS? 
SERENDIPITY - SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
It would be nice if there was a place we go after we die where we could reunite with deceased loved ones. Nice, but not likely. I think that just as we didn’t exist before conception, we will cease to exist after death.
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That’s pretty much what I think, but I wouldn’t mind being wrong.
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At one time I never cared about past lives at all. I thought it was an interesting notion, but I didn’t see any need to put any attention upon. THEN .. I started to have interesting dreams. I dreamed I was a Chinese Soldier; then a retainer for an Egyptian Pharaoh; then a Celtic warrior standing on my own burial mound; a native in the American Southwest; a Roman aristocrat; a lawyer in New England in the time of Franklin; a pregnant woman standing in Mayan hut; an ancient Greek walking up the Sacred Way to the Acropolis; and more .. and more. Initially I thought this was all just interesting dream imagery. But I couldn’t figure out what they meant? THEN I realized that the other people in those dreams were people that knew today – in this lifetime. And most of dreams answered questions about my relationship with them. They weren’t dreams. They were recollections. Information given me to help me. I finally had to admit I had been around before and these recollections were important. I am not unique though. Lots of us recall our past in these worlds.
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I had a number of interesting past life sessions with a friend. Not dreams. More like hypnotism. Interesting, but I’m not really sure what it meant. But it certainly was interesting.
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What you described at the beginning is all I really want. A place where we see the people and pets that went before us again.
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I suspect, regardless of what we believe, that’s what we ALL want. Some people are convinced it will happen. The rest of us wish it would, but are not convinced. I certainly would like it to be true. I think I believe many things that are contradictory, often at the same time.
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When my best friend died, his wife and I were at his bedside when an almost palpable presence of warmth and peace and joy filed the room, and I heard a voice say, “Don’t you know this is how it really is?” His wife looked at me and asked, ‘Do you feel it?” I just nodded. Later, we talked about that moment and what it meant to us. I felt that presence again years later when my close woman friend, the actress Margo, died. Three days after she passed, I was enveloped by that feeling and heard her say, “You’re gong to love it here, darling.” These moments give me hope that there is something positive on the other side. Either that, or I’m totally goofy and it won’t matter.
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I am simultaneously convinced there’s nothing and there’s something. There IS something because I’ve had experiences that would be very hard to write off. I’m not sure what they mean, but they meant something. Maybe I’ll find out what. Someday.
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Time travel historian!
Noble and ambitious at the same time!
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It would probably greatly improve my authorship, too 😀
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