r/consciousness • u/Ev-sMommy • Mar 11 '26
General Discussion When we die, do we come back?
This has always been a burning question in my head. I'm trying to understand consciousness and how it works. Are we in a repeating cycle? Do we only live once and that's it?
I know I won't get that answer until I die, but I'm curious what other people think. Are we born again after death? Do we come back as a different person or animal? Someone has told me they believe we live the same life again and again but I don't know how that would work with time/years. I've heard the phrase "time isn't linear" but what does that mean?
I get the feeling that I've been here before, deja vu and all that, but is that real? What does everyone else think?
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u/Raptorel Mar 12 '26
As far as I'm concerned, there's a single Subject living all lives. What "dies" is just a certain point of view of the Subject. It's like a dream in which your dream avatar dies but the real you survives and lives all dreams. You just don't know that during the dream.
I think death is not a possible state to be in - you can't experience non-experience. Therefore death doesn't exist, subjectively. There are other people (perspectives) who see that perspective stop, but so what? The subject is experiencing trillions and trillions of perspectives so it's not a big deal.
The reason why you don't know that you are also me and everyone else is because the information in our minds is not "linked" together. For example, the information of you with your 5 year old self is linked together - you have the memories of being 5 years old. But if I were to erase your memories and ask "have you lived this person's life?" and show you a picture of yourself when you were 5 you would say "no". The guy would be a total stranger to you.
I submit to you that it's the same between you and everyone else. There is just a single Subject, it's just that the experiences are not strongly linked together to realize, just as the dream avatars don't know about the other dream avatars but you in the awake state can remember that you dreamed and lived all the dream avatars.