Do you believe in life after death? - If you post ...

It must be an odd sort of afterlife, though, if all we do is hang around waiting to speak to our great-great-grandsons or having the odd word with a relative now and then.

I was hoping for a more purposeful, or at least peaceful, afterlife!

Yes, I do think there is something after death.Wondering what exactly is just supposition/speculation, so I try not to do it......we will find out, all in good time.

I believe there is definitely something that lives on,when my mother died I was trying to decide what music to have for the funeral when I played a particular song sung by my DD a heave metal lamp fell on to the floor no way it could have moved itself.

As a Catholic child the priests and nuns made a good job of persuading me that it was the fiery furnace for me (even though I was pretty much a 'good girl').

Rationality intervened and for many decades I have been an atheist. I couldn't see the sense of a 'loving' God toasting an insignificant atom like me on the griddle for all eternity.

I am hoping for annihilation.

However, I loved the Wordsworth quotation even though I would view it more as a pleasure and consolation for this world rather than any serious 'intimation' of the existence of the next.

The Bible says those who have faith in God have a sure hope of eternal life after this life on earth has finished. It says Jesus Christ died, was buried and rose again so Christians believe there is life after our earthly bodies have died. Although this is a difficult concept to take in, I live in the hope of eternal life with God when my earthly life has finished.

I believe in it a few years ago my son was very ill with a condition he was 23 at the time, I was asleep in bed someone woke me by calling my name iwoke up very alert which is unlike me and the voice said Kyle needs you now, I bent down to find my slippers and the voice said hurry up hes very ill and needs you now , to cut a long story short I went into his bedroom was met with a horrific site , called an ambulance , another 10mins and he would have been dead, so yes I believe .

What a brilliant thread this has been to read. My Father in Law died just over 5 weeks ago just, we were all there with him at his and my Mother in Law's home when he passed away that morning, when we got home that evening our kitchen clock had stopped at exactly the time that he had died.

I believe there is something, I think this world will only understand things that qualify scientifically, and that misses lots of things. I am a committed Christian but the reason for my faith is to guide me in my life not to give me life after death, that is an insurance policy.
There have been too many very similar near death experiences to discount, like those above and many experiences like 'meeting' people who have died. My mum rented a cottage which was haunted, I've written about it elsewhere on here, & she's very strong minded and was anti life after death. She & her sis were in a medieval holiday cottage owned by the landmark trust in Devon. They had a strong feeling they weren't wanted there, whatever was there just wanted to be alone. They slept in the same twin bedded room, switched the light out to go to sleep. After a while aunt said to mum 'I wish you'd stop snoring,' mum said, 'I've been lying here listening to that.' They said 'if you stop we'll go tomorrow & never come back." And it stopped. It was Margells, Branscombe.

I agree strongly with Greenfinch. We attended a funeral some years ago where the lady conducting the service said that we have all had a life before birth,and if anyone had told us when we were in the womb that we would emerge into this world and have a completely different existence we could not have comprehended it. I hope to see my loved ones again although my ideas about this are quite confused at times. I just hope.

If you have to 'believe' in something where there's no firm evidence, it almost certainly isn't so. It's good to have an open mind, but not so open as to let the wind blow between your ears. Sorry.

When my DS was a baby he would chatter to someone/something we could not see. As he grew & started talking he would sit on the stairs talking to 'his man'.
Eventually a friend of ours asked who his man was. DS went to a group photo & said that was his man putting his finger on my father in the photo. He then told us that 'his man' was with us when we went swimming in the sea after Nursery.
We had always been sceptical but now do believe as this is something my DS at a very young age could not have made up.

I think that human beings have evolved to look for meaning in things. Its how our species became so successful and its part and parcel of having the big brains which allowed us to thrive. So we question what happens after people have passed away and almost all past civilisations have had rituals and beliefs around death and dying. Its one of the ways civilisation is defined and its a natural part of abstract thinking. Personally I dont believe in life after death, but I dont necessarily disbelieve it either. I just dont know. However for anyone who is bereaved and finds comfort in the notion of life after death I think it is a wonderful thing which can help those left behind enormously.

I do, for the few days before she died my Gran spent hours talking to my Gramp ywho passed a few years earlier

My (now very elderly) sister-in-law had a dream many years ago that DH's father -who had died not long after DH's brother had got married - had told her not to be sad that he had died. He told her that he had responsibilities where he was, because he was looking after a young 15-year-old boy.
My son, had he lived, would've been 15 at that time. He died of cot death when only 3 months old.
Due to family circumstances around that time, it would've been impossible for my sister-in-law to know the year my baby died.

Yes, definitely. We are too complex. How can we simply cease to exist? I have been contacted by people who have died and they told me things I couldn't possibly have known, so I am in no doubt that it is only the body which dies.

No experiences as others have stated but I do believe in God. Life after death, yes in some form, something I can't explain to anyone else. Just a feeling that I have had since a young child.

I do believe something survives after death and have had several experiences. When my grandmother was very ill I visited her and she said she knew she would die soon. I asked how she knew, she said because my grandfather and my uncle had come to show her the way (they had both died many years before)

I underwent an operation for cancer and on my first night back home I was in bed and clearly saw my late father standing by my bedside, watching me and smiling.

I was on holiday when I had a dream of a dear friend who was seriously ill. She was confined to a wheelchair but in my dream she was running along the street. I grabbed her arm and asked what she was doing and she just said "It's OK I alright now" When I returned home from holiday I was told she had died the same day I had the dream

My late husband was a great joker and one evening shortly after his death I put on a DVD of a television programme we both liked to watch. When I watch something like that I like to click on the individual episodes whereas he would just click on "play all", the DVD would only "play all" rather than individual episodes - until I spoke to him and told him to stop messing around! If I can't find something or am concerned about anything I ask him to help and always whatever I am looking for turns up and the solution to the problem presents itself.

When my mother died it was just after midnight and my father said she got up from her chair and started to walk to the door and said ' I see you, I'm coming now' and fell to the floor - her heart just gave out. He was adamant that she could see someone and was not talking to him - he was far from being a fanciful man.

My SIL is also very level headed and not prone to fanciful things - his mother died when he was about 12 - he told me that at her funeral he could not understand why his brothers and sisters and everyone else was so upset when his mother was standing right behind him and telling him she was fine. He told me she often visited him and gave some instances - the last one being in the morning of the day he married my DD - he was driving his car to collect something and almost crashed the car because he became aware of her in the car talking to him.

I think there are many things in this life we just do not understand.

There is so much that we can't know, simply because our brains are not adapted. I watched an interesting programme recently about our brains being evolved for us to make sense of our world, and that 'reality' (whatever that is) might perhaps be very different. I am a firm believer in there being lots beyond our comprehension. (Not that it takes much to be beyond my comprehension )

My mum literally dropped dead at her home when she was 69, we rushed round but she was gone.
The next night I had a very vivid dream that she was standing talking to lots of people in a large room, whilst I was in an adjoining room watching her (slightly nervously as I knew she had died).
She was wearing her normal clothes and turned round and said "Don't worry, I'm quite all right."
It made me feel a bit better and I have never forgotten it.
I think part of us lives on.

Imperfect27 the one that really spooked me was when she started to talk to her "policeman" who she said knew us all very well ,there were no policemen that I knew of in my family but when I told my mother she informed me her great grandfather was a police lieutenant who had died in action when he was only 28 ,before her granny was born .I'd never heard of him only that he died young as did MY Ggrandfather ,also before my GF was born,very weird indeed .

paddyann the daughter I lost used to spend hours talking to people we could not see - long, long conversations with them in what she called 'Littleland'. It used to spook me a little bit. I became aware of this when she was about 3 and it continued until she was 7 and we moved house. She told us 'The people stayed there.'

She was a very intelligent child and I used to think she would be a natural writer in later life -reminded me of the stories of the Bronte sisters and their childhood 'make-believes'.

valeriej thank you - I guess that is what I took from those experiences.

When my DD1 was expecting her first child 18 months ago, 2 days before he was born she had a dream that her sister came and sat on the end of her bed. She could only describe what happened as waking to be aware a 'presence' and just knowing it was her sister.

We think of ourselves as grounded, sensible people ...

Yes

Thank you Leesa.

Rigby46 it is interesting that you refer to 'not needing to' believe in life after death. I don't feel that I do either. Of course it would potentially be a source of comfort to us all, but even as a committed Christian of some years I always felt that I didn't need to believe - like a prop. That was never a motivation or a reason to aspire to a life of faith. I was always more pragmatically concerned with trying to live a good life in the here and now. Also, after my daughter died, I had little appreciation of well-meaning people who told me 'One day you will see her in heaven.' That had no meaning other than passing some kind of sentence upon me when, at 43 I could reasonably anticipate living another 40 years myself.

After we lost my daughter, a close family member went to see a medium and apparently received a 'message' from my daughter which she was then very eager to impart. I said I did not want to hear it and to this day do not know what it was. I don't consciously seek any assurances and I don't look for any signs - that was why I was so surprised by what I have recorded above.