I've been thinking a lot about death lately. I thought about death in the context of convention, but that didn't seem too relevant to this subreddit. I also thought about death in the context of freedom, which seemed totally relevant. Here's my mostly unedited thoughts. I welcome other thoughts and criticisms of my ideas.
What is it that dies? The body dies. What is it for a body to die? It is a change in state, from motion to non-motion, from sentient utility to uselessness. The conditions that are necessary to keep the body alive and able to move are no longer fulfilled.
Death is something that happens to bodies. A mind is not a body. Minds cognize bodies. Minds experience bodies. A body dying is an experience and cognition that a mind can have.
People worry that their mind is tied to their body, and that when their body dies, their mind will also die. Specifically, this is rooted today in a belief in the brain being the origin of the mind.
This belief arises largely from the fact that, in the conventional world, affecting a brain is related to changes in that person's mind. So, for example, brain damage is associated with changes in mental state. Similarly, chemical drugs that are believed to interact with the brain are associated with changes in mental state.
There are two reasons why this does not mean that the brain is the origin of the mind.
First, the eye is related to changes in a person's mind. If one or both eyes experience any sort of change of state or damage, then there will be an associated change in that person's mental state. Their visual experience and beliefs will be different. Similarly for the ears, the skin, the tongue, the nose. None of these are the origin of a person's mind although altering them can affect a person's way of cognizing.
They are all sense organs. They are objects which are believed to affect cognition, and thus they do. The brain is the same. It is another organ which is believed to affect cognition, and thus it does.
Secondly, in a dream it is possible for there to be a relationship between a dream brain and dream cognition. A person can have dreams where certain dream drugs affect their perception, for example. Thus, the ability of drugs to affect one's state of mind in the dream is rooted in one's state of mind. So it can also be during waking.
So, when the brain is thoroughly damaged and the body dies, what happens?
Despite the demonstrations above, one response might be, 'when the body dies, the mind stops manifesting and experiencing altogether. The mind will stop existing.' However, upon further consideration, this idea is nonsensical. The mind doesn't start existing or stop existing. The mind is the infinite capacity of possible experiences and manifestations. Experiencing nothing is one possible state of mind. Even when the perspective of nothingness is what is experienced and made manifest, there is always the potential for experiencing another perspective (a perspective of something).
So, a person might then say that when the brain and body die, a person's mind forever experiences nothingness. Since the mind believes that a brain and body in a physical world are necessary for perception of things, the absence of a functioning brain and body would result in the manifestation of nothingness.
There is a problem with this way of thinking.
An individual dreams every night and the dreamer can know that in this particular dreamworld their dream cognition depends upon the survival of their dream brain and body. And the dreamer will either create a new dream or wake up if their dream brain or body are destroyed. Similarly, when living and waking we believe that our living cognition depends upon the survival of our living brain and body. Thus, we cannot conclude that simply believing, in the context of the living, waking world, that our brains and bodies are necessary for living, waking cognition means that this living, waking brain and body are necessary for non-living, non-waking cognition. After all, there's no way to discern the difference between a dreaming experience and a waking experience using evidence – the only difference is in what you believe about experience. Similarly between living experience and dead experience.
So, we have no reason to conclude that our minds will manifest nothingness after our bodies die. At this point, we are left wondering what we might experience when we die. It is unclear. This is where we can start looking at intent and commitments.
What a mind believes and experiences is intentional. A mind's reality is a mind's will manifesting. So, having a given set of interests is intentional. Having a certain sort of personality is intentional. Having a specific job and living in a specific country is intentional. Having a human body and living among humans according to their norms is intentional. Living on Earth in this universe is intentional. The laws of physics in the universe are intentional.
Most humans are laser-focused on their ordinary human lives with their ordinary human concerns. They believe their experience definitely takes the form of waking and dreaming cycles (with specifics varying from individual to individual), and don't think about the broader nature of these things at all and are instead concerned with controlling events taking place within these states of mind.
As such, they habitually think about controlling the details and never look at the bigger picture. They don't pay attention to and have forgotten about the bigger picture. It may even feel totally outside of their control (even though it isn't). These people are deeply committed to the general intentional structures that make up a world like this that allow them to interact with the specific details of this world they like. Because of this, most people's dreams reflect these intentions as well.
We might consider an individual who is so focused on being successful in their career that they never think about the optionality of their career. Their career is voluntary and intentional and they are always free to disengage. Their identity is so caught up in living a lifestyle to impress their peers, sucking up to the boss, learning the things necessary to succeed in their industry, that they basically never think outside of this commitment.
Let's imagine that this person then loses their job. This person is now confronted with their freedom more directly. Here they are, unemployed, free to find a new career or remain unemployed and learn to live a whole new lifestyle. Assuming that this person maintains the same motivations that got them and kept them in the old career, and assuming that this person never considered or prepared for unemployment or other careers, it is probable that being unemployed is terrifying and embarrassing. This person will want to get a new career as soon as possible to continue pursuing their visions of wealth and success.
Depending on this person's skill and know-how regarding finding a new place of employment, they may end up in a terrible line of work like fast food (if they don't know what they're doing and are really scared and their last career was just luck), something moderate like low-level office work (if they at least remember or can discover the basics of job-finding and be patient), or maybe with skill and some nepotism they will end up in the same industry with another good career.
If we imagine that the living world is intentional in the same way as a career, only more abstract, then we can draw certain parallels. The more attached and focused a person is to the specifics of the living, material world of convention (with little thought of its unreality and intentionality and consideration of options), the more we can expect that person to in some way desperately seek to re-enter a living, waking, material world of convention – that is, to re-manifest a life in a world.
When a person dies, their entire perception is ripped out of its ordinary and conventional material context. Suddenly, such a person finds themselves confronted with the world of the dead – not a place where ghosts reside necessarily, but a world where manifestation and experience are wholly free of ordinary constraints. This is very similar to an individual losing their job and becoming unemployed. Yes, you can live this way and don't need to return to your old lifestyle, but it is probable that the individual had a reason to live within the constraints of the old lifestyle – something they were seeking, and thus a motivation to return to the life of working or a motivation to return to the life of living, waking, material convention.
It would make sense to conclude that individuals who enter this state (death) thoughtlessly and accidentally after being wholly focused on the living, waking world will be so panicked and confused that they may not make the best decision or use the most skill in selecting/manifesting a new life. Similarly, individuals who are more aware and have prepared and practiced are more likely to be able to deal with the situation and make a skillful and controlled decision. This is not a discrete situation, but is rather a continuum.
I find it hard to say much more specifically about the intermediate state between lives, the state of being dead.
What do you think?