Do you remember how life was like before you were born? Chances are, the answer is no. But what does this mean?
Consciousness
Consciousness can be defined as an awareness of thought and the senses.
Nothingness
Before any of us are born we lack said consciousness. For many, the idea of nothingness can be difficult to conceptualize. But this is what many people believe in. In fact, it was what I adamantly believed in and sometimes struggle with today. Lack of consciousness before birth is one of the examples I use to imagine eternal oblivion or the lack of an afterlife. Nothingness. Another example I used was a dreamless sleep. Ever fell asleep and felt like you woke up instantly? That lack of awareness or consciousness of time, space or anything from the time you fell asleep to when you wake up might be similar to what eternal oblivion is like except you never wake up. Kind of scary right? Perhaps my spiritual memories were wiped before birth, or my birth was the birth of my soul that would transcend to an afterlife. A more scientific and morbid view is that my consciousness that is choosing to type these words is merely causality of my brain chemistry, environment, experience, and chance. Perhaps there is no meaning to life lest we choose to make arbitrary reasons for the actions we decide to make next.
Near Death Experiences
Near death studies have been of interest to me because it is related to my quest to find out if there exist some sort of spiritual world outside eternal oblivion. There are two scenarios that I find in conflict. The first are individuals who have near death experiences are not actually dead but are under physiological/psychological stress that can trigger certain mind states akin to highly religious and spiritual states through endorphin in the brain. Compare this to actual death and resuscitation experiences, where patients explain that there was nothingness in their deaths.
Conclusion
Death and the afterlife is something I questioned at a very young age. I had anxiety wondering what would happen after I died even though I was at the very beginning of my life. These days I have been revisiting these thoughts and Eternal Oblivion sounds like the only rational answer. Religion and faith are the anti-thesis to Eternal Oblivion and they can offer a great deal of spiritual value, I am not saying Eternal Oblivion is what we can expect for the after-life but it's a scary possibility outside the spiritual realm that I've explored.
Let me know what you guys think about Eternal Oblivion and the after-life.