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Could any sentient being actually live with its same consciousness for eternity? A billion years maybe but 10 to the tenth years I can not see it. You would go insane with the sheer monotony of having done everything. Maybe reincarnation would work by allowing you to continue to exist, but starting over each time thus creating a new reality. Or maybe we are just better off only existing for a brief moment. Eternity seems like such a long time to be the same being. This is just supposition, not doctrine or any official teaching of anyone. Please see it as what it is, and it is simply thinking out loud. Could it be that part of eternal progression is that our own consciousness, our own sentientness (I know that’s not a word), expands and evolves to a state that is beyond our current comprehension as well? In other words how do you know we’ll be the same a billion years from now? I think our “intelligences” that eventually became “spirit children” and eventually us (if indeed such a thing ever did occur) were probably quite different from what we now are. Although I cannot comprehend it, I’m not sure there is an end state to eternal progression.
It’s better to me than the alternative. Also, what DJ said. Eternal progression, as a concept, is one of my favorite things about our theology.
Cadence, I agree. There were a few nights when I was a kid that I couldn’t sleep because I was so weirded-out by the idea of never-ending… never… ever… ever…
I suspect that even among believers, it’s probably better just to leave the next life to itself and concentrate on this one.
One Atheist’s view:
Quote:There is nothing frightening about an eternal dreamless sleep. Surely it is better than eternal torment in Hell and eternal boredom in Heaven. — Isaac Asimov
I think it’s possible that the way we experience the passage of time would be qualitatively different once we reach a certain level of progression. St. Thomas Aquinas thought that time itself was an illusion, a limited way of experiencing life in mortality. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Daeruin wrote:I think it’s possible that the way we experience the passage of time would be qualitatively different once we reach a certain level of progression. St. Thomas Aquinas thought that time itself was an illusion, a limited way of experiencing life in mortality.
I do agree that time is not necessarily eternal. I don’t think we can understand it because our understanding is limited. As far as I can tell time is a human invention, perhaps nothing more than a myth.
The Mormon afterlife is probably the most interesting of any religion that I know of – creating planets and worlds and populating them with one’s own children. Protestant heaven sounds pretty boring – sitting on a cloud strumming your harp and eating all the junk food you want. Muslim heaven sounds a little better. The Mormon CK is the most grandiose of any afterlife I’ve heard of, but I guess that some people might not want that afterlife. We do release our consciousness every day during our sleep. So we do need a daily break from consciousness.
In a trillion or more years every star in the universe will burn out. There will be no more light. I think when we think of eternity we think in terms that a human can comprehend. But the knowen universe is only 14 billion years old or so. Multiply that by 1000 and you still have not touched eternity. It seems inconceivable that anything even God can endure forever. When we say we will live forever we have no idea what we are talking about. I used to have a fascination with concept of infinite and eternity and realized, I just can’t comprehend them. (Granted my fascination was more in a mathematical real.) This subject has been known to cause people to lose their minds and not just speaking in a religious sense. (For a good mathematical interesting read on the subject that can be understood, I recommend reading the book “mystery of the Alph” (It is supposed to be the infinity symbol but I couldn’t find it in any of the options.)) Basically, what it comes down to for me in both mathematics and here, I don’t comprehend it. I can use it for some important conclusions but I don’t completely understand. Cadence wrote:In a trillion or more years every star in the universe will burn out. There will be no more light. I think when we think of eternity we think in terms that a human can comprehend. But the knowen universe is only 14 billion years old or so. Multiply that by 1000 and you still have not touched eternity. It seems inconceivable that anything even God can endure forever. When we say we will live forever we have no idea what we are talking about.
Forever may be a relative term. I know we’re getting abstract here, but consider how we use words. We say thinks like “We’ve always done it this way” or “We’ve always had a cat” or “The church has always taught that we’re eternal.” But in those case always is relative to some starting point and will eventually have an end point that we are currently unaware of. Because time is an invention to help people try to understand the world around us, perhaps we also use “forever” or “eternal” as relative terms without really understanding that they have a finite nature.
There’s also the Joseph Smith explanation of eternity being like a ring, “one eternal round.” I’ve heard this being compared to an old video game as well – when you go off the edge of the right side of the screen, you reappear on the left side. This explanation does not make it any easier to understand.
Eternity, hmm. Pandora’s box. As best as can be found is that “forever” is a unique concept that doesn’t have any basis in the universe. The earth? Nope. The sun 4.5 billion years of fusion is a long time but 4.5 billion years isn’t forever. Since no stars or planets last forever and starts die faster then they are being born with progress less as matter turns to energy with less matter and more energy over time in the universe. What is “forever”?
Well E=MC2. That’s about the best example of forever that I have heard. Matter or energy cannot be created or destroyed only changed from one to the other. But it seems no matter holds it’s form forever. Which brings into the question of, if when we die, what shape do the souls take over time since matter doesn’t last without changing form or converting to energy over time. What dies that mean for us as far as eternity goes?
If we do gain mass+energy bodies, who do they change over time? Back to mass? Back to energy back to mass again then mass and energy?
We are star dust, then organic matter, then possibly star dust and organic matter, then what form faster that?
At least we know matter and energy aren’t created or destroyed:-) only forever changing from one to the other,
Forever though, seeing as how long the universe took to form and change and still is, might’ve assume the same with ourselves? Why not the multi-verse? To create humanity seems to have taken billions of years. As guess time is slow from our earthly experience where time appears to be much more vastly rushed for progress compared with the development if the universe.
For me it is what it is. Neither Mormonism nor any other established orthodoxy has given much reason to celebrate eternity.
So I feel inclined to make my own “eternity” and heaven to give life and eternity meaning and happiness, if there is one it would be very different from the church system in order to provide happiness that most my peers crave. More integrated, less demanding, less conforming. More exploring, more freedom to think and explore, less central control, more equality. Etc. is how I would describe eternity as bring worthwhile.
No hierarchy society and more egalitarian society if eternity is to be remotely worth while.
During my faith crisis I spent a whole lot of time contemplating mortality. I concluded that our consciousness probably ends when we die. Since my reawakening I’ve realized that no one really knows what happens after we die. It seems absurd that something as marvelous as human consciousness is finite. But eternal life is absurd in its own ways. In math calculations, infinity is not a number. Infinity is a direction. We’ll say things like “as x gets arbitrarily large.”
Perhaps eternity is just existing outside the dimension of time. That is the way I try to look at it. Interestingly, the following posted on my personal blog today – dealing with eternity: “
Charity Suffereth (Allows) Long and Is Kind: How ‘God Is Love’” ( http://thingsofmysoul.blogspot.com/2014/05/charity-suffereth-allows-long-and-is.html I personally believe the entire universe as we can see it is only the mortal aspect of creation, and that there is an entire spiritual, higher realm that we simply cannot see with our eyes or any scientific instruments at this point. Perhaps the universe is just the training ground for eternity and there is a whole other eternal universe that we cannot see. Who knows. As far as being happy for eternity, I have learned an important truth through personal experience: happiness comes from learning how to find joy in the things you already have. My happiest moments are being able to look at the same tree with new eyes, the same lover with new eyes, etc. Any other happiness is based on things that will change and ultimately burn out. We must learn to find joy in things as they are and not expect eternal joy to come from new experiences. We create new experiences through our perspectives and faith, not by new stimulus. God cannot have new stimulus, as far as we know. Yet if he is happy, it must be in knowing how to love what he has already created and learned.
In fact, I think that is what true love really is: loving things because they are what they are. Evil is the absence of the way things really are…a great lie that blocks us from seeing reality and creates a fantasy that exists only in our own minds.
God’s love enables him/her to be happy forever. Every new child, every existing creation…these are joyful because God knows how to find joy in everything. Sure, gaining knowledge and experience is a part of joy, but I think even that is a fruitless pursuit if you cannot also keep finding joy in the experiences and knowledge you already have. In essence, addiction is the problem of only knowing how to find happiness in new experiences, while believing your existing experiences aren’t good enough. It is chasing the end of the rainbow, it is always drinking but never feeling quenched.
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