First off, for purposes of grokking this, I request you take the perspective, even if only for a moment, that everything in your human dream is 180 degrees off, a little like a reflection in a mirror. Allow for that possibility while you read the following.
When you appear to have been born into humanness, you died to your True Nature, to Truth. You were birthed into this human dream but it was actually a death from the perspective of Truth.
When you appear to die in the human dream, what is really happening is you are being born back into your True nature, Truth. When you are born you die and when you die you are born.
Imagine a night dream... the characters appear within a dream, they are birthed. Later that dream ends and the characters disappear (die). Where did they go? Nowhere, because there never existed. Yes, they appeared to have a variety of experiences within that night dream which might indicate they were 'real' characters.. seeing, hearing, feeling various experiences, but they were not 'real'. From their dream perspective they felt real, but upon awakening the dreaming human realizes they were just illusory.
In a lucid dream, which you have probably experienced, you wake up to your true nature as that of the human character having the night dream. You awaken inside the dream to the reality that the character in the night dream is the creation of a human. Said human is outside the dream. Where does the night dream character go? Nowhere, because he/she wasn't 'real' to start with. You might say he/she died and was absorbed back in the dreaming human. As above, so below.
Contemplate this, you are already dead. You couldn't be deader and some day you will die to this human dream and will become alive to your True Nature. Truth is the dreamer and, in your human format you are a dreamed character.
You might ask why your human character seems so real and believable. Your night dreams appear real while they are happening. If your dream of humanness did not appear real, with the validation of the senses and human drama, you would not stick around for the entertainment.
Could all this human dream be solely for entertainment? You can make up any reason you want for this human dream, I find entertainment works for me.
So I meant this in a slightly different way. An experience beyond death is no different than an experience of me waking up tomorrow morning and eating breakfast. They are both simply experiences at their core. What they both also share in common is that they are future tense and they are things I haven't yet experienced.
Waking up and eating breakfast tomorrow is a certainty as far as I know (assuming I don't randomly die tonight lol). This is because the routine and habits have become so entrenched that I am 99.99% certain I will wake up and eat tomorrow morning.
I say 99.99% because there is always a tiny, tiny chance that I will not experience that. As I said, I might accidentally die tonight or experience some other event that prevents me from eating breakfast or in the best case scenario I might end up in an epic 100 year lucid dream or something. And so until I experience tomorrow morning directly, I can never truly be sure if I will wake up and eat breakfast.
It is the same for an experience beyond death. As an example, let's say I think I will end up in a white room upon dying. I could believe that with all my heart, but as with the example above, there is always a tiny, tiny chance that I will not experience a white room and until I directly experience life beyond death, I won't 100% know if I'll end up in the white room.
Experience contains implication. A door implies a room beyond it. A view of a city implies a planet and a whole civilization to go with it. And so death (ending of this experience) implies a host of unknown things beyond this experience. And so ultimately I won't exactly know what the future holds until I experience it directly.
Fortunately though, intuition generally doesn't lie, and if your gut feeling says something, it's probably right. So I most likely will wake up tomorrow and eat breakfast. And my personal idea of life after death is most likely correct as well.
Originally commented by u/Green-Moon on 2017-11-07 00:27:01 (dpf8ytk)
I agree with everything you just said, but don't you realize that what I was pointing out is wildly different and more radical than everything you just said? You're talking about the flow of conventional meanings here. I'm talking about what exists beyond convention. Here I am using convention in two meanings:
a) Convention is what is widely agreed upon in society.
b) Convention is what you yourself adhere to as a matter of course, a habit.
I'm saying there is also something beyond convention. This doesn't contradict anything you just said, btw.
The point is, I experience typing on reddit now. But am I really typing on reddit? If I can doubt this experience, I can doubt any experience. If that's the case, then with regard to specifics death will not clarify anything.
Clarity ultimately doesn't come from appearances. It comes from will. But we don't have to die to understand this.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-11-07 00:45:28 (dpf9oum)
Yeah I agree with your comment about interpretations of experience but I can't deny that I'm in a conventional world right now. I can attempt to reject convention but habit will instantly contradict that. Old ways will kick in. The way I see it, I'm working within the boundaries of convention in an attempt to eventually skip convention altogether in one fell swoop.
Sure I can reject all appearances as they arrive but after spending a life adhering to convention, it isn't easy to drop it all at once.
Originally commented by u/Green-Moon on 2017-11-07 01:13:13 (dpfaujp)
You can. You just don't want to. :)
Habits are forged by something other than more habits.
It doesn't have to be all or nothing.
Originally commented by u/mindseal on 2017-11-07 01:25:58 (dpfbf28)
Maybe so. I've experimented and still continue to experiment with adopting different perspectives but it's mostly just that; experiments. It's not my primary go-to method when it comes to deconstructing the dream.
True
Originally commented by u/Green-Moon on 2017-11-07 14:59:33 (dpgk1mv)