I've been rereading this famous book, possibly for the first time actually, never having read it in as much detail as now because Dorothy's passing has changed my entire feel for life's brevity. I knew it was brief, intellectually, but now I have a visceral fuller awareness of dying processes, and termination of this existence, for me, including what to do about my stuff, as George Carlin once joked about famously.
As I went through the first few chapters in detail, Kubler-ross raises and expresses important points but I was on alert watching for her view of afterlife, since I now think that belief and insight into afterlife is a determining factor in how smooth or rough the transition of "taking off the goggles", as an avatar in this quantum-hologdeck, will be. On page 41, Kubler-Ross delivers shocking blows to the belief in an afterlife that made me put the book down and save the rest of the chapter for later. I believe she's wrong on both counts. Afterlife can be proven to exist, empirically and rationally and afterlife belief is essential to sanity and smooth transition or passing and actually gives us, as we cease full functioning, something to look forward to. It's evidenced by death-bed-visions, death-reach and death-stare which I personally witnesses Dorothy having and never knew about previously... and was never told about... but now can see many examples on youtube indluding through youtuber Nurse Julie among others.
REFERENCE
**4. Dying and Removing the "Goggles":**
* Here's where the "goggles" analogy comes in. The physical world, as we perceive it, is the "goggles" that filter our experience. Our brains, according to Hoffman, are not creating consciousness, but rather are interfaces that channel a particular stream of conscious experience within this larger network of conscious agents.
* **Death, in Hoffman's theory, is essentially removing the "goggles."** It's the termination of the specific interface that creates our individual perception of the physical world. Our individual stream of consciousness, however, doesn't necessarily cease to exist. It rejoins the larger network of conscious agents.
* What happens after death is speculative. Hoffman suggests that we might have access to a broader range of experiences and possibilities, unfiltered by the constraints of the physical interface. It could be like waking up from a dream and realizing the dream world was just a limited perspective.
Responses