Death According to Non-dualism vs. Materialism

[WildeChilde]

Under materialism, conscious awareness is a product of the brain.  When the brain goes, conscious awareness in turns goes.  

Under idealism/non-dualism, the brain regulates appearances within a mind-at-large while itself being an appearance.  When the brain dies, appearances/sensory data are no longer available, and only pure awareness remains.  

Is there a real difference here?  What distinguishes an entire absence of consciousness and a consciousness lacking in all appearances (including thoughts, images, feelings, memories.etc)?  The former could be described as nothing, and the latter could be described as nothing.  

From my vantage point at least, materialism and non-dualism disagree on the fundamental ground substance of reality, but they seem to imply the same thing with regard to death.  

I’m probably (most definitely) missing something here, so I'm ready for the smackdown.  

Edited February 8, 2018 by WildeChilde
Didn't type the title in correctly

[Leo Gura]

@WildeChilde The difference is what you're identified as.

If you identify with being a tree in the forest, when that tree dies, that's the end. But when you identify with being the entire forest, you never die.

Materialism says you are the little self.

Nonduality means you are the Infinite Self.

It's a very different paradigm. Yes, the little self will die. In fact, it never really existed. But the Infinite Self is Absolute.

[Joseph Maynor]

After Awakening you will stop identifying with the Body, Mind, and the Ego.  So, from the perspective of awareness, Meta perspective, or Atman — it is not persuasive that just because there are changes in form that that alters the formless.  So, death is a hypothesis that cannot be confirmed by anyone here basically.  It’s a problematic hypothesis too — wanting in proof that it cannot deliver on.  Death is a belief, conceptual truth.  And conceptual truth is always suspect — inherently so.  So, the hypothesis that we die is suspect on that basis.  The proof is just not there.  It cannot be proved.  So, death is a highly-problematic hypothesis that cannot be proved basically.

Edited February 8, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[Nahm]

@Mighty Mouse The absolute (forest), what you are, doesn’t change. That’s why we refer to it as absolute. It has to be experienced though. I would never in a million years have believed it no matter who told me. Of course you will not believe this. “It’s to good to be true” is a paradigm.  It’s a lot like how someone experiences the change from the materialism paradigm. There’s no undoing the experience and going back to materialism once you’ve seen the illusion. Same with the absolute. After experiencing what you are, you could not undo it, because you are it.   It can’t be experienced without being open minded. Just holding an assumption is enough to prevent the experience. Experience is beyond the wit, even for the most clever and learned of us. 

[WildeChilde]

@Nahm I remember watching a video where Leo described his experience of the Absolute using some kind of psychedelic.

I never did drugs or alcohol for the longest time (family has a long history of suicides/organ failures due to addiction), but Leo inspired me to explore this territory with careful consideration of safety and the potential for abuse.  So, I decided to take a moderate dose of mescaline last month. 

I don’t know if I experienced the Absolute during that time, but there was a period about 4 hours in where I didn’t have any self-referential thoughts.  It wasn’t scary or frightening; actually, it was a long time before I even recognized what had happened.  

I went back in the house up into the bonus home and used the opportunity to do some basic self-enquiry.  I asked “Who am I?”.  I waited quietly, and soon after, the image of my body seemed to steadily drop out of my field of vision, and all that was left with was the room and its contents.  There was “nobody” there if you will.  Below is the best picture I could find to showcase what the perspective kind of looked/felt like.  

Like I said, other than the mescaline I took a month ago, I haven't had any other experience with a mind-altering substance (not counting caffeine, theobromine from chocolate, anesthetics, etc.).  Is this a pretty common experience with drugs and I’m just reading too much into it?  I'm not quite sure what to make of it to be honest.

[Nahm]

@WildeChilde Awesome! Very happy for your breakthrough, in freeing your mind from your past experience of witnessing drugs as used by others, and psychadelics used by you. That’s a big one man.    I have not experienced masculine. Given that, to your questions, it sounds like you approached the experience of oneness, but were not in the vicinity of absolute. Very happy for you!

[Patang]

actually it's a middleweight fight. you never really existed, it is all but just a dream, life and death are one and Inseparable. ahhh and not real and has no meaning, of course...