Afterlife possible from secular POV

[trdsf]

Wild guesses are all we have though, when it comes to postmortem experience (Unless you accept anecdotal witnesses, such as near-death testimonies - which I do not).

My grandfather had a heart attack in 1990 and was technically dead twice in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.  He recovered and lived another 15 years -- and reported seeing nothing.  I recall particularly, because mom (who was and is a Christian) reported it to me with some surprise, and I (at the time a practicing Wiccan) was surprised that he'd seen nothing because, yaknow, I was pretty sure there was an afterlife myself.

That may have been the first moment I seriously considered the possibility that there was no afterlife, because my grandfather was the most naturally and fundamentally honest person I have ever known, and there was no question in my mind that if Grandpa said he saw nothing, he saw nothing.  Even if it didn't mesh with my (then-)worldview.

Brief digression: the hardest part of transitioning from being religious to not being religious was admitting to myself that no, I really wasn't ever going to see Grandpa again.

I can only imagine something that seems, to me, to describe the transfer process that would be necessary to accomplish any kind of continuity of consciousness, that is, life after death. I imagine that it cannot take place in a vacuum, without a brain to give it functional ability, and that it cannot go on forever. A temporary state is all I can find reasonable. And I will admit that I base it on my own memories and experiences.

This also opens up the question of how much of one's consciousness is dependent on the physical body it resides in.  So if my consciousness continues after brain death, I'm not entirely sure how much of what continues is actually me because it's no longer in its original housing, so to speak -- or at least how long it would remain definably me.

Paging Douglas Hofstadter... :)

[Solomon Zorn]

Here's a thought that has crossed my mind: what if not every transfer is successful? What if certain people have been doing it for a long time, and others are just hit and miss? This is where my personal memories (so called "schizophrenia") lead my speculation. What if you just reset from the beginning of your own experiential timeline? Start it all over, with every opportunity to create a new branch. I'm sure the idea doesn't appeal to everyone, but like I said, maybe not everyone is adept at it anyway. Whatever it might be, I would imagine it's intuitive, and not anything you can prepare yourself for.

But this is all subjective. I would never offer my experience as anything others should take heed of.