Evidence: Life After Death

Yikes, it must have been a tough week - collective unconscious is indeed the right term. Warned you it wasn't my speciality subject!

Ok: Let's make one thing clear, science poorly understands all subjects even touching on this thread.  We don't understand death well.  We don't understand our own minds well, and the actual scientific investigation into life after death I do not believe has had any significant or even serious studies or experiments outside of Anthropologists doing studies on faith and superstition.

When science has a more or less working theory of  when or even how the non-physiological aspects of death take place, we should re-open this thread to further discussion.

A note: Our minds are at least partially energy.  Energy is neither created nor destroyed.  Is this the soul?  I do not know.

Summum Nec Metuam Diem Nec Optima

The link below is to a paper by psychologist Susan Blackmore who has more or less dedicated her career over the past ten years to research into life after death and Near Death Experiences. It's a brief overview, but lists some of the work and the current theories on this subject.

http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/Chapters/ShermerNDE.htm

Blackmore's work in this field, and her older stuff in the paranormal field is well worth a read. She tends to give an interesting insight into the paranormal from a psychological point of view.

Which non-physiological aspects are those, please?

i never use the word 'mind' because it is too vague to define. Look at how wikipedia struggles to define it. What is certain is that 'mind' is to do brain function rather than structure. While the brain's structure uses energy to produce the phenomenon of 'mind', it is not in itself energy, even in part. It is like the software of the brain - it requires the brain to run.

Can you clarify why you think 'mind' consists in any way of energy, please?

Because the frequency and pattern of the electrical energy generated by our brains changes with changes in consciousness and interpretation of outside stimuli.

Summum Nec Metuam Diem Nec Optima

Perhaps instead of referring to 'the mind', it would be more appropriate to use the term psyche, in a Jungian sense

"By psyche I understand the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious’, so we use the term ‘psyche’ rather than ‘mind’, since mind is used in common parlance to refer to the aspects of mental functioning which are conscious. Jung maintained that the psyche is a self-regulating system (like the body). " - Jung

Modern research is comprehensive. Please refer to the work of Kelly et. al. in "Irreducible Mind" for a good survey of the contributions particularly of neuroscience to this field. It is quite a bit more comprehesive than you might think. The current status is that neuroscientists are becoming more comfortable every day that we are closer to identifying the area within the brain where the nexus of consciousness and brain interactions are found. It has even been suggested that this may involve inter-dimensional communication and that such communication may be nothing more than an extension of the mechanisms of normal memories. What a kick that would be should it prove true.

I super-string, therefor I am?

Summum Nec Metuam Diem Nec Optima

 All this is based on faith and experience. Some people claim that they have actually seen deceased loved ones and communicated with them. Science cannot prove that they are lying; so they might be telling the truth. We cannot turn to science, philosophy, or religion for answers to all these things. We have to find the answers ourselves. 

More than likley not. It will be exactly like before you were born. Nothing! So enjoy your life to the max! Cos once its gone its gone.