What happens after death if you believe in Jediism?

The Last Question by Isaac Asimov © 1956


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Br. John wrote: The Last Question by Isaac Asimov © 1956


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One of my favorite, it's breathtaking.

den385 wrote: Really, I embrace scientific explanation and all. But I believe that it will never prove anything crucial in spiritual matters. That is my personal definition of spiritual matters. Either you have an experience or you do not. What we should do is to discover spirituality that does not contradict with knowledge and stand in the way of science.

If science is secondary in spiritual matters, perhaps it might be better then to not try and employ it primarily. Depending on what you mean by the way of science, pseudoscience is almost always in the way. However, I agree that science will never prove anything crucial in spiritual matters. The list of things science ever has proven is completely empty, as is the list of things it is either able or trying to prove.

Whatever psychology, physics, biology can tell us about human and the universe will immediately become profane and will be consumed by materialistic view. However, this same materialists I see all too often without inspiration, health, happiness, nobility or any vital sense in their life.

I'm not very versed in matters of philosophy, so I have no way of identifying a materialist as such if I see one. I do however see enough people claiming to be spiritual to be just as miserable as the rest of us, but maybe that's different where you live.

And this [sic] same materialists have no sound explanation of human will to live, which overcomes any predefined set of limitations.

So you are saying they are consuming all kinds of different explanations from psychology and biology, but for some reason they overlook all of the perfectly sound and testable explanations for why people want to live? Seems like some awfully inconsistenf folks, those materialists...

This [sic] physicists I know long for some meaning that was eradicated from their mind when they *believed* that they know everything.

Again, maybe physics works differently where you come from but in the physics department at the university I visit I have yet to meet anybody, from freshman to dean, who believes they have exhaustive knowledge of even their own field of expertise. I have yet to meet a nihilist among them, too, although I reckon there probably are a few. I have met the occasional person being miserable for one reason or another but I haven't heard anybody moan about how utterly pointless their lives were.

As for the rest of your post, I say this: Knowledge does not limit you. It frees you. I'm not saying everybody should seek to embrace as much of it as they can. It would be a much better world if they did, in my opinion, but I'm in no place to be telling people what to do with their time.
I have said my part on this thread early enough, I am only chiming back in at my discretion because I felt that findings of genuine importance as well as the camp of people whence those came - of which I now am slowly becoming a part - was being mischaracterized, albeit it a mostly benign way.
If you think that accuracy or knowledge are limiting, why do you find that they are good things anyway? If you think that whose science folks are fundamentally depressed, cartoonishly arrogant, miserable, nihilistic philosophical materialists with no feeling of meaning in life because of their education of choice, how can you be still in favour of that education? Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate a nuanced position. It just surprises me to read how you find a thing good or how you embrace it while the entire rest of the post reeks of just the contrary.

Perhaps, all confusion in my statements comes from my experience, I am very subjective in this. Physicists i met really are close to being nihilists, as I see it. And that's really a negative outlook on life. Surely, I know that there are optimistic people among physicists - but not from my experience. As little as I know about Einstein, his quotes give me an utter respect for his integrity. The explanation perhaps lies not in physics whatsoever, but in social crisis in Russia which still goes after USSR decayed and in spiritual crisis in global society which still goes since the beginning of industrialization. Such "vague" humane phenomena affect the way people think - even physicists.

I don't think that knowledge limits us. But I see some people just tired of life and they employ their good knowledge to give them excuse not to move forward. This is a misuse of knowledge, as I see it.

So, my point is that knowledge is good. But people use it stupidly, in many cases. Not quite original point, you see

What I tried to say about human will to live is that I find that it is not explainable in it's wholeness: biology, sociology, psychology and philosophy say much about it. And yet there is no guarantee that at the "leading edge" some modern theories of it are to be trusted. For an uneducated person, science can easily be falsified. And education never ends. And on the timeline of our life the point of gaining specific knowledge can be beyond the deadline. So that, one may have to take an "educated guess" based on something he trusts rather than knows for sure. In my experience, such extrapolations go well for balanced and integral individuals, who use their *whole* experience & knowledge to make a choice.

Falsification of science is what alerts me. AFAIK, Karl Popper deals with it in his epistemology works. I have seen that there were even talks that laws of physics are a social agreement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair). The degree of ignorance in society and in myself alerts me.

I deeply respect those scientists who keep responsible and optimistic outlook on life, who adhere to clear knowledge, who have serenity and peace in them - whatever they work on, whatever they discover. Responsibility and optimism is always up to a man himself. Among them, with my little knowledge, I see Karl Popper, Albert Einstein, Alan Turing, Johann Gauss. I suspect many more but I'd like to read more about them. I seek to know more good examples. And I trust that my journey with science has just begun.

The scientists I love most are those who had the spirit of a fighter, a good heart and a clear mind.

Gisteron wrote: If science is secondary in spiritual matters, perhaps it might be better then to not try and employ it primarily.

Personally, it is the balance I primarily seek. Sometimes I lack spirit and sometimes science. As of our whole Jedi way endeavor, it is primarily spiritual, by our own definition. However, we all are human and we need to set up bridges.

Gisteron wrote: I'm not very versed in matters of philosophy, so I have no way of identifying a materialist as such if I see one. I do however see enough people claiming to be spiritual to be just as miserable as the rest of us, but maybe that's different where you live.

Spirituality is vast, as is science. On it's own it has no power to make a person happy. Only a good system of values and corresponding choices do.

Gisteron wrote:

And this [sic] same materialists have no sound explanation of human will to live, which overcomes any predefined set of limitations.

So you are saying they are consuming all kinds of different explanations from psychology and biology, but for some reason they overlook all of the perfectly sound and testable explanations for why people want to live? Seems like some awfully inconsistenf folks, those materialists...

IMO. Materialism is a limited world view denying person an opportunity to access spiritual things, which are important for human life. Spirituality is inherent in humans and denying it is a very sad bias.

Gisteron wrote:

This [sic] physicists I know long for some meaning that was eradicated from their mind when they *believed* that they know everything.

Again, maybe physics works differently where you come from but in the physics department at the university I visit I have yet to meet anybody, from freshman to dean, who believes they have exhaustive knowledge of even their own field of expertise. I have yet to meet a nihilist among them, too, although I reckon there probably are a few. I have met the occasional person being miserable for one reason or another but I haven't heard anybody moan about how utterly pointless their lives were.

Where I live, people minds work differently, apparently. Physics is just a single example of social/spiritual crisis.

Gisteron wrote: As for the rest of your post, I say this: Knowledge does not limit you. It frees you. I'm not saying everybody should seek to embrace as much of it as they can. It would be a much better world if they did, in my opinion, but I'm in no place to be telling people what to do with their time.

I agree. I just have subjective issues with it's application by some people where I live in.

Gisteron wrote: I have said my part on this thread early enough, I am only chiming back in at my discretion because I felt that findings of genuine importance as well as the camp of people whence those came - of which I now am slowly becoming a part - was being mischaracterized, albeit it a mostly benign way.

We are totally not perfect here and I'm glad your focus was ~ skeptics and scientific view. It is hard for me to encounter skeptics from my personal history, yet I trust that's a good thing for our community.

Gisteron wrote: If you think that accuracy or knowledge are limiting, why do you find that they are good things anyway? If you think that whose science folks are fundamentally depressed, cartoonishly arrogant, miserable, nihilistic philosophical materialists with no feeling of meaning in life because of their education of choice, how can you be still in favour of that education? Don't get me wrong, I can appreciate a nuanced position. It just surprises me to read how you find a thing good or how you embrace it while the entire rest of the post reeks of just the contrary.

I sincerely accept "Ignorance, yet Knowledge" line of code. I value knowledge. I appreciate science. They do not limit me. What depresses me is my experience with people around my time and around my place who have good brains and poor hearts. Traumatic experience. And until I overcome it, it limits me. I see it as a part of local social crisis, not as something which devalues knowledge and science on the large scale. To overcome this local darkness, I had to use some criteria. It was, metaphorically, akin to this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_search_(optimization). I call this criteria sound sense, and I heavily use it. Luckily, I am stubborn.

Gisteron wrote: So, as with any other question of doctrine, no clear answer. Nothing in Jediism offers one answer to this over all others and for almost every answer you hear one Jedi believe, there is another one out there who believes the contrary...

IMO. Criteria for correct answer is that it has good history. Jedi community is about 20 years old. We don't have enough history to give a single good answer to some questions, yet. However, questions are already here and so we work on them, seek pieces of answers. I *believe* that improvement of our answers is a converging process.

Questions are what moves us forward. I accept that any person and any community, at any point, is either dead or a work in progress. To have some good answers to show, we have to do much work - we learn by exemplifying the Jedi values.

@Kitsu Tails here has a good signature:
"I am a Jedi because I SAY that I am. I BELIEVE that I am. I ACT that I am. And I DO that I am."

Ultimately, our challenge here is to "be the Jedi our signature says we are", to match our own values. It is equally much following values and creation of values, intuition and logical construct. We are theorems proving themselves with our own life.

I'm recalling, with a sense of whimsy, the response an old friend once gave to whether there is a life after this Earthly one.

His perspective is that the nature of our existence in the afterlife depends upon our beliefs in this life. A good Christian, then, might wind up in a place with golden roads and beautiful pearled gates. A devout Muslim male gets his 72 virgins. A committed Buddhist enters a realm of pure consciousness, undisturbed by struggle or lack. A pagan goes to the Summerland, to rest for awhile before another experience on Earth.

This of course leaves open the issue of what happens to the many people who have no faith. For them, my friend said, there is a default location, which is ...

Downtown Los Angeles.

For me, we become one with the force again. If we believe that there is an energy which we call the soul or living Force, then it is subject to the laws of physics and chemistry, unless this is an exception, otherwise there is lavoisier law

"Dans la nature rien ne se crée, rien ne se perd, tout change.
In nature nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything changes. "

:laugh:

There is no Death, there is the Force.
As some others have pointed out, there is no "coming and going". It is my personal belief that the Force is all-encompassing and that all things are expressions of the Force, the first-person perspective of living being one such expression. Being an all-encompassing and eternal (to the extent that the word may be used), it doesn't really matter in which way it expresses itself. It is, in my opinion, a singular entity which, while indivisible, is capable of producing an apparent (illusory) world of phenomenon which we may understand as living. I am in general suspicious of the things perceived by the senses, and I hold that the information gathered by them may very well be illusory in nature entirely. So I am concerned with death (or the qualities of the events following death) very little.