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Are You Open-Minded?

posted by Deepak Chopra Apr 17, 2009 5:00 am
Are You Open-Minded?
18 comments

It should come as no surprise to discover that you are a believer, skeptic, or agnostic. Yet when you look at where other people fall, which could be very far outside your belief system, it may be disturbing to consider that you might all be right.

Believers may go to the heaven (or hell) that matches their religious background. In the afterlife they will meet their most cherished version of God–or gods. They will find themselves surrounded by angels or bodhisattvas. The emotional tone of that afterlife could be one of total bliss, if that is the tone they anticipate, or it could feel more ambiguous, even sad.

The experience could even feel like nothing. Skeptics may find that the afterlife is a blank, devoid of conscious sensation. For them, dying could lead to a long sleep without any perception of the self. The question is how long this state will last or what it might become.

For agnostic the afterlife is problematic. They may perceive that they remain themselves, occupying a kind of limbo where good and bad deeds form a hazy cloud that never resolves decisively. In this kind of afterlife the same worries and ambiguities that reside at the center of the agnostic worldview may persist.

And the undecided or open-minded people? They may be in for the biggest surprise, because someone who is truly open-minded dies without any expectations. If your approach to life is to take it one day at a time, the very last day won’t be any different.

In short, the ability of consciousness to shape our lives is the most permanent thing about us, the one aspect of the mind we can expect to continue.

Adapted from Life After Death: The Burden of Proof, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2006).

More on Deepak Chopra's Tips (523 articles available)
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18 comments

18 comments

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18 comments add your comment
Arild Warud

Good persons go to heaven, the rest of us can go wherever we like.
Have a nice day

Linda D.

All life is for the living not the dead. What you plant in your life is your heaven and the same for hell. I know that I am my own god and it makes me love all things and care for all things. Peace comes from within and hate is not of my life. I will always live in the life I live and what I leave when my body dies. Energy never goes away it just moves to new places. I love being free to think and not a puppet on a string waiting for life to happen. I want to always invite life to happen it gives me something to do trying to figure it out...

Mel Lockwood

i asked god how long do i have to live? and he replied "not any longer than me." i asked jesus if his mother was a virgin? he replied" i don't know." i asked god " how do i make people go away?" God replied "give them whatever they want." i tell god every morning " i love ya god. he replies" i love you too mel."

Dwight Baker

TRADITIONS FOUND IN TRIBAL COMMUNITIES

Since the advent of time for mankind
Tribes have been around that worked
To make better for others in that tribe

Thus is still today

The main goal for all of us
Is not so much to look inward?
But look out

For it is those that are in our tribe
That we must ascribed
Much of our attention

And dedication to doing the
Right and just things
And condemning the wrongs

That does not belong in
A sane and sanguine society of mankind

Uma Chernoff

Namaste Mel: Once when I was visiting Big Sur the people looked SO pure that I felt ashamed to be with them, having been very scarred in my quests for truth. That night,hiding myself from them, Spirit spoke to me saying"life and experience produce scars, regard them as medals from the battle you fight.After this life the scars are washed away with the light of victory. The purity and innocence you see are that of youth and inexperience, valuable because in life, like blossoms of spring, they are soon gone." I take great comfort from those words. The creation of inter-lives reality by personal beliefs is true.Reality on this level is created the same way. The density of the material plane slows down the process. That is why it's a good idea to advance as much as possible here and one of the reasons why being born human in this reality is such a gift and opportunity. When we are in a negative mind we are as leaves in a stream, without power to choose life as we desire, this is the "shit happens" mode. Choosing and acting constitute positive mentality,the creative mode is choosing between acting and allowing one's self to be acted upon; death leaves the habitually negatively minded whipped by the storm of emotional hallucinations until "rescued" by their divine selves;positive people have the freedom to sculpt reality, recognizing the hallucinations as changing weather patterns and not awed by them. Here is where we master the mentality to experiment and play later.

MEL ISSA

That's a completely Eastern thought...that what you think is what you will experience in the afterlife. Intuitively, I find it yo be true.

It may be difficult for us to have a completely open mind when life has a way of closing off certain avenues. All thoughts have an influence, so how can it be that those few meandering thoughts won't make it into the afterlife with us, no matter how open-minded we think we are at this point?

We carry our experiences with us...that's what shapes our soul. Don't you agree?

When someone special, told me that I have been forgiven...and I walk with that knowing...that I am loved, no matter my scars or anything ugly that has happened to me. I am loved, therefore I CAN love and I will be welcomed back into the light, in spite of my past actions.

The prodigal child returns home. Rejoice! For the consciousness of love & peace awakens in us all! We are children of the greatest creative force upon the Earth,or in existence. It's important to acknowledge our divine birthright.

1st John 4:18

There is no fear in love, and perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. He who fears has not been made perfect in love.

1st John 5:4

For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory, by our faith.

Namaste, & Peace be unto you all.

Uma Chernoff

Dixon I think that the people who do not regain consciousness from coma are ( not to forget the sleepers who stay that way, those who firmly believe in nothingness sleep very deeply until some part of their divine self requires further interaction) awake and living other lives in other realities. Those who return do so because of their own decision. I really don't understand why you're compelled to relate to D.C. as if you were a disparaging critic, a Rush Limbo, a David Letterman, of the blog.If you had contributed only once and made your snide remarks never returning well then;but you do return and inspire some of my most creative writing. Your continuing presence here tells me that this material is very interesting to you yet your constant disparaging attitude towards D.C. suggests that it's the only way you can give yourself permission to participate. What is going on with you? In all friendliness you are driving me mad trying to figure out "WAS UP?" If you will and can, put it in words for us. I know I'm not the only one trying to figure this out. Have you seen the Robin Williams film about inter-lives experiences? It might be called "What Dreams Will Come" or something like that. You might enjoy it and find yourself interested relating it to this material. When you try to mock D.C. you're like a little boy dressed up in a smelly old man's suit pretending to be this very harsh critic, bored sick. Come on Be young, excited, read Quantum you don't need math to get it.

Suzy F.
  • Suzy F. says
  • Apr 17, 2009 7:37 PM

Out of my 9-year-old self came the realization that the OLD old man walking laboriously across the street from me...might once have been me!

That was my awakening to realities not readily available on our time plane?!

Uma Chernoff

in continuation: upon hearing those words I observed my self rushing forward exclaiming " I do ", bowing my head Master loped it right off. On rising I observed that Master was no longer wrathful and knew he would never be so for me again. I have forgotten the details of what followed that experience, this was more than fifty years ago, except that I was then able to shape- shift and found myself working with various fairy,elemental type creatures. I really enjoyed that. At some point there was a compulsion to move forward, a river of some sort and before waking being swallowed by a fish. How interesting since both my parents were Pisces! There are different levels of sleep experience. Aside from the drama of the dream where one may experience different realities and choose what will become physical reality: it is possible to awaken within the dream to different degrees and control the experience, this is lucid dreaming; it is possible to use that level as a spring-board into astral projection to explore the planes just adjacent to this reality. The physical plane is the flower of the inner world's constant creativity. This is where we co-create our daily reality with our higher(more permanent) self according to what we wish to experience in this life. Whether or not we are conscious of the process when awake doesn't matter , we still make our choices from the inner planes. We spend most of our time there, we are born from there, going there when we sleep and when we die.

Uma Chernoff

On occasions in my life I have had dreams where I died and after exploring realities woke again in this life as if it was another dream.Despite conjecture to the contrary you don't have to die physically if you dream it.Obviously this is true. If you do dream so, and can manage to stay in the dream through the death without waking yourself, you might both learn from and enjoy it.At a time when I was practicing intense yogic meditation, living around HotSprings/Essalon BigSur, I was focused on the prime question of my spiritual practice: the "who am I" and looking at the smoke from the cigarette I had , my mind flicking back and forth from it being and then not being there. I fell asleep and dreamed I died and watched my body cremated, feeling disappointed that it was so fast.After some adventure I died again into a simpler reality and then after some time dying again found myself in a garden with one other being who was my essence twin, my beloved: each after death reality was simpler, yet harder to remember: upon dying in that reality I found myself in the tent where I had dozed off and it seemed no more AND no less real than the others. When I first started practicing I dreamed that I was in this ashram cleaning items. When I wiped them they would glow with a white light. Someone said "no working when Master is here, come!" Master was that blue/black Tibetan wrathful deity who said:"Who wants me to cut off their head?"

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