Philip Clayton - Is There Life After Death?

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Do we survive bodily death? Can our personal awareness transcend physical decay and dissolution? There are no bigger questions and there is no shortage of answers. Religions offer hope, with extravagant promises that are founded on the existence of God. For life after death, would God be required? If so, how would God do it?
Watch more interviews with Philip Clayton: bit.ly/2mkIV97
Watch more interviews on life after death: bit.ly/2m9yN3c

[@hugodesrosiers-plaisance3156]

It's almost like every Human Soul is a portion of "divine substance" casting a line into a pond, taking in whatever it can from the experience of Life, and bringing the line back, ending the connection, ending the life, but retaining everything about it, knowledge, personality - and even more, things we can't comprehend, concepts that emerge at higher planes/dimension/whatever you want to call it. I've watched many videos of Dr Clayton, on this channel and elsewhere. His ideas and his way of explaining them are so stimulating, I find. I love how he pokes and kicks at every idea to see if it's solid or not. He has a wonderful mind and seems like a very kind person. I'd love to have a discussion with him.

[@deixoembranco8681]

Live your life the best way you can, in a dignified manner . It is just a matter of time, you will know if there is an after life or not. Now if you are like me who wants to know before then, roll up your sleeve and do your own research. I've been practicing OBE (Out of body experience) for quite some time and I know that there is an after life. I cannot prove it to you. You have to prove it to yourself.

[@chucklombardo2114]

How do u practice it i really want to no bout this

[@eltoneagle8136]

No you don't know and nobody knows what happens after our passing.There have been various scientific great minds over the centuries and none of them could find any evidence of what is really happening

[@gj1695]

How does an OBE prove life after death?

[@michaeljacobs5342]

There can only be life after death if we are already in the state of death, otherwise it is life after life.

[@fumarate1]

Michael Newton's Journey of souls and Destiny of souls are a must read.

[@wissenschaftkraft5075]

That is a well-thought-out argument! I like when ontology is used like that in a novel way.

[@echo-trip-1]

Maybe some very powerful psychadelics like DMT or high dose psilocybin could help clarify this issue.

[@Dragonface013]

I have to say, I don't consider myself a religious person in any way, but I somehow find Clayton's notion of "panentheism" very compelling

[@billyoumans1784]

The Advaita -non-dual- idea is that there is one consciousness and we are that. Within that one appears all of this apparent diversity, just as in a dream all the different objects in your one mind. The separate self is an illusion, along with the entire universe and all objects of perception. What you really are is perception itself: the single unchanging subject which experiences all objects. After death, the sense of self remains, and travels on, until it finally realizes it is only the one existence consciousness that is the only reality. The need to retain the separate self is superfluous. You are already everything. At least, that’s the idea. And most genuine mysticism involves the dissolution of the separate self and its wants and perception of opposites.

[@rockitmorton]

Interesting content.

[@melgross]

While I find discussions on this topic interesting, I’ve never found any of them convincing. People have a strong desire to live forever, somehow, and they construct their religious beliefs around some concept that gives them that. None of them have any proof, yet most people believe it. It’s curious that while some scientific theories seem to be unprovable, such as string theory, and are heavily criticized for it, religion goes on without any proof.

[@Oceansideca1987]

Best stuff ever

[@joeroberts453]

Right. . I think that this is one of the better CTT interviews, for my way of thinking.

[@andersburchardt1427]

life exists after death, I know because i have been threw it, I am not in anyway religius, and i do not like to talk about it, because there is no way to describe it

[@chucklombardo2114]

How do u no

[@kreyvegas1]

"I would feel resentful" Robert says. Why Robert? Do you feel you own the atoms that make up your body? Do you feel responsible for the existence of consciousness?

[@TooLooze]

Every day, we learn new things about the intellect and abilities of animals. To suggest that we are special universally is arrogant and absurd.

[@reuven1961]

Immortality scares me. I didn't ask to be here in the first place, now they say that maybe I will exsist forever? :)

[@tesoracity]

I wish I had your fear about that.

[@dogsbollox4335]

And me

[@reuven1961]

@@dogsbollox4335 I think now I understand better what scares me. If one is asked to continue his live without a leg, he would be afraid. Immortality looks like being asked to continue life without the whole body, which seems more terrifying than to continue life without hand or leg ...

[@dogsbollox4335]

Reuven 1961 ,is the thought of that less scary than the alternative of when you die that it could be nothingness for infinity ,eventually no one will remember you it would be like you never existed ,which is the worse ,hope you understand that either scenario is a bit frightening ,my head is mushed up ,take care kid.

[@peaceonearth351]

@@dogsbollox4335 I agree with you. I like meaning. Edit: It helps me understand suffering a little better. I also like the idea of punishments for people who've done evil and heinous acts upon others.

[@thetruthoutside8423]

The entire human argument was and still is about the first step, and unfortunately he couldn't gave us the reason to think that the first step argument has any merit. And the problem is head on with the question of the existence of the divine in the first place which he needs to establish first and move to next step which to show that the first step has any merit.

[@peaceonearth351]

A soul could be a particle and particles as we know them can be entangled. If that particle somehow retains life's experiences then can it evolve or transcend? Would a Creator allow that?

[@perttiheinikko3780]

I'm made of atoms that are - how much was it - 13 billion years old, and pretty soon the atoms that are me or form this weird structure that has a feeling of being a "me" will be part of new structures or just floating around (or do the atoms of my body actually change all the time? I've read all sorts of popular science books but don't remember...) So, if I am atoms, and they're what I'm made of then, in a sense, I am eternal! Pretty cool. Anyways, why isn't anyone concerned about the afterlife of other primate species, like our close family members the chimpanzees?

[@Zephyrus47]

If something is conscious, which everything in the universe is, then it is eternal and divine. It's all about how developed your consciousness is. Atoms are composed of quarks and electrons, which essentially have No mass. It is just energy. And that energy is vibrating, which is why nothing is really still. And that energy vibrates at a certain frequency. So what is solidity? Does it even exist? If you were to set an energy to any frequency, you could create anything: sound, light, and eventually "solid" matter.

[@brydonjesse]

The only thing that could be everywhere and everything is energy and consioussness so one is god

[@noseefood1943]

All CTT interviews end up answering nothing. None of these experts know.

[@Nico-zw9ud]

*No one in the entire world knows. Fixed that for you.

[@zoltanmatei424]

@@Nico-zw9ud i do know part of it, it is easy to figure out but lacking some details wich i should recite to myself

[@zoltanmatei424]

@@Nico-zw9ud others also figure it out, but they dont tell because religion has a stable standing

[@wagfinpis]

Pretty complicated. I feel like we are God at one level, soul's at another level, humans at another level. The human consciousness is a smaller division of the soul experiencing multiple lives. The soul is a lesser division of the whole, Source/God. We can temporarily experience higher or lower levels of experience.

[@chiruboy23]

Einstein block universe theory do preserves every aspect of our life's timeline.(past, present and future).

[@claudetaillefer1332]

It seems to me that "eschatological hope" is not a new idea. It amounts to saying that we are a part of the divine, that we are made of the same "stuff". According to this view, there is only one substance, God. Leibniz, by contrast, argued that there is not one substance (as Spinoza held), not two substances (as Descartes and most people believe, namely an extended substance and a thinking substance), but a plurality of substances. Clayton argues that if the eschatological hope is to make any sense, we are committed---on pain of inconsistency---to the thesis that these substances, assuming that there are several of them, must be separate from the divine. Leibniz, on the other hand, argued exactly the opposite, i.e. that God is the Monad of monads. I suggest that Clayton re-read Leibniz. I would argue that there are only three viable positions here as to how the concepts of God and substance can be reconciled: Spinoza (monisn, one substance, pantheism, God), Descartes and Cartesian rationalism (dualism, two distinct substances, but then how are they connected?) and Leibniz (pluralism, an infinity of monads, or spiritual building blocks, which are as many points of view on the world, God being the Monad of monads, integrating all these points of view, all these different perspectives). In a sense, according to Leibniz, and expressed in a more contemporary way, God is seen as an "emergent" property of monads. Although there are many problems with Leibniz's view, including some apparent inconsistencies, I am rather inclined to favour a position close to that of Leibniz. But this is pure speculation on my part!

[@mobiustrip1400]

I've pulled wire too many times to want that to be a memory of the whatever-it-is-forever

[@delq]

The question of an "Aferlife" as it is portrayed culturally and in society is quite silly because obviously you wouldn't have a physical existence at least just immediately after your death. So you wouldn't be like you were before in the normal life with your job, hobbies, likes and dislikes etc as is the notion in hell and heaven where much of who you were is carried on. Yet it is very unlikely that death is the end or more precisely there is no start and end in an abstract sense because it (your conciousness) has always existed invariant with time. Here are my arguments : 1. Right now your brain is undergoing changes that result in endless states yet you as an observer remains invariant and invariant enough so that you can relatively observe the changes that happen. No matter what happens to your brain - a stroke, a car accident, alzheimers or any severe brain damage you as an observer remains invariant and experiences them as they are, which shows that there has to be a property that is different from anything we have seen before embedded deeply into existence itself. It is not a dualistic entity but is merely a property which is either not yet discovered or is fundamentally irreducible because it cannot be objectively understood. Since science is entirely objective, the formalism of science have ignored the existence of such entities as they can never be proven. They are like the axioms of mathematics which cannot be proven but is obvious enough to be taken true. 2. Hence you can see that conciousness has immense tolerance in the amount of change the physical body undergoes. Changes to the physical body can cause huge difference in the conscious experience you have but not in conciousness itself. This invariance coupled with the continuity of conscious experience suggests that even death (which is also a form of physical change) would likely be an experience which continues forever instead of an abrupt discontinuous end to conciousness. What that experience would be like is highly speculative but is plausible to mention a few: a. Our conciousness may expand to a higher order in the sense that it would be a large non localised form whose experiences may include that of a larger organised system such as of nature or the planet. b. Thoughts and emotions would lose meaning in such a system because of the increased complexity of the system in whole, making the activity of its smaller parts "senseless" until viewed from the perspective of the system as a whole.

[@dogsbollox4335]

Terminal lucidity.

[@MrJamesdryable]

3:44 I don't understand what he thinks he's being resentful towards. The idea doesn't suggest a consciously thinking mind.

[@edwardrussell7168]

Brilliant.. he should read the book Human Self and Allah by G A Parwez... non religious book..

[@theophilus749]

I think that Clayton crucially mischaracterises the options within what is being labelled 'Classical Theism' (CT). Under CT some aspect only (selective awareness?) of the soul, not the whole human being or person, survives material death. In some sense this is 'with God'. (At least, this is one option within CT.) The return to full humanity takes bodily resurrection (itself not mere reconstruction). Nonetheless what _does_ survive death is, in some sense, still part of what one _is_ in the 'here and now' and is required for the resurrected body to constitute the original person. Given this, it is unclear what panentheism can offer that CT is supposed to lack. I suspect that Clayton is influenced too much by the Cartesian conception of the self (a not uncommon failing). But CT predates that conception. All that said, it would be fair to point out that views what, if anything, survives between bodily death and bodily resurrection, or even whether there is a temporal gap between the stages at all, varies within CT itself.

[@rileyhoffman6629]

Reincarnation's offspring. Enjoyed it.

[@ingenuity168]

No. We will be nothing and new lives will come after us who will do more things than we have done.

[@dheerajmalhotra7245]

We don't die our material body is mortal but our conciousness is immortal. We always exist .we are eternal beings.

[@b.g.5869]

Nope.

[@paulrichards6894]

when we die thats the end.....get over it

[@shekishral6570]

He sounds a lot like Ibn Arabi!

[@ronjohnson4566]

storytelling, imagination, mythology, what if. That is what makes humans. If all other animals and non animals had storytelling, imagination, mythology and what if we would know if by its existence, but alas they don't. So it isn't true.

[@Mastermindyoung14]

@Mr Guminsky bullshit.

[@camerontaylor7471]

Exactly, humans cannot step outside of the projected ego.. “the all seeing eye” from ancient the Egyptian mystery schools of thought is the “mind” “i am” “me” “self” god is THE EGO... the NAME is the mark of THE BEAST of the apocalypse , the fictional character/entity whom we claim to be as the identity is a phantom DEMON which POSSESSES the body and acts as an agent for “the system” it’s only job is to project itself over the conscious and sensory experience of the real living man who only exist In presence sense... alphabet thoughts and images are non-sense they having nothing to do with the bigger picture of life/nature

[@maydaymemer4660]

actually elephants and apes have religious practices

[@MrMemer]

I love how atheist make fun of religious people for being crazy but then sound just as crazy when explaining how the world was made.

[@MrJamesdryable]

So you admit you're crazy?

[@MrMemer]

@@MrJamesdryable Everyone is crazy in their own way

[@MrJamesdryable]

@@MrMemer Ok.

[@bebeezra]

When the answer begins with _"imagine".._ everything that follows is mental masturbation.

[@No2AI]

Why higher ‘Devine’ why not advanced ET ?

[@peaceonearth351]

Where did the ET's come from then?

[@No2AI]

@@peaceonearth351 look around at the universe - we cannot be the only despots in this vast expanse ... what makes us so special - judging by our history and the ‘American Election’ we clearly have no clue what is going on! There must be other technologically more advanced beings of sorts. If not then science and what you think you see is all a lie and you cannot trust your senses!

[@peaceonearth351]

@@No2AI Oh, I agree. I meant there has to be a creator of the ET's just as we think that there is a higher power.

[@tmariepi1472]

6:10

[@MrSpacejase]

Beatific vision

[@bluewidow1302]

Yet to be anyone that has survived brain death . Emotions & wishful thinking doesn’t constitute evidence.

[@bluewidow1302]

Gerald Decaire You have no evidence to support a life after death existence. As I stated, wishful thinking isn’t evidence.

[@bluewidow1302]

Gerald Decaire I base my info on facts. I’ll leave the emotional components to you. As I have an open mind any verifiable evidence to the contrary that comes along I’ll celebrate as favorably as any other new discovery. Since I base decisions on facts instead of emotions fear is not something I have to entertain. When you posses any verifiable evidence then I’m sure you you can thank whichever god you believe in.

[@bluewidow1302]

Gerald Decaire thank god lol

[@maydaymemer4660]

@@bluewidow1302 have you ever read ian stevenson's past life studies?

[@jasongann8535]

Heaven is a state of being not a place.

[@peaceonearth351]

It may be both. Why would we stay in one place, though? I wouldn't. lol

[@williampercival7662]

I'll tell you right now there is life after death. There is no day and no night no typical housewife no typical life. Everyone goes to a state of consciousness they have created for themselves by the life they lead on Earth. Everyone develops and progresses. Life for everyone changes in heaven as it does on Earth. The moment you die you leave your body and you are greeted by loved ones who have passed on for you they will take you to the other side. We wear clothes eat drink work and have fun, we also unite with our pets. There is no money no rent no bills as such. You travel by thought you sleep when you want to. You even look younger.and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes and there shall be no more death neither sorrow nor crying neither shall be any more pain for the former things are passed away. W Percival from New Zealand 🇳🇿 Gardenia🌺 Band

[@keithgreenan1850]

You don't know anything.

[@williampercival7662]

That's ok you will find out for yourself. Man immediately after death is no different to what he was 5 minutes before. That is in regard to his Outlook and his character and his personality.

[@86645ut]

Another claim without evidence. SMH

[@peaceonearth351]

That's why we need to support studies and experiments on metaphysics more.

[@86645ut]

@@peaceonearth351, you don't think that it HAS been studied enough already?

[@peaceonearth351]

@@86645ut Hell no. There's no money to be made until they have a eureka moment. Tesla even said that when we start learning in this area that we would gain more knowledge and advancement in one decade than in all previous history.

[@86645ut]

@@peaceonearth351 , horsepucky. Do your experiments that may support it. Until then, be honest: we don’t know.

[@peaceonearth351]

@@86645ut Ye with little faith.

[@totalfreedom45]

_The word ‘God’ is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions._ -Albert Einstein, on letter written to Jewish philosopher Eric Gutkind, 3 January 1954 (a year before Einstein's death) *_Fear_* of death makes us cling to religion and holy books; that fear creates (1) God, (2) the terror of being nothing, and (3) the many spiritual vampires and exploiters throughout millennia that suck the money and the energy out of gullible people. How gullible are we human beings! The self creates fear. The end of the self brings *_total freedom._* Waiting for all living beings when they die is something utterly impersonal: the unknowable, *_nothingness._* 💕 ☮ 🌎 🌌

[@tedbishop]

"life after death" is an oxymoron. "Death" is the end of "life". The will to survive is so strong that humans cannot accept the end of life. They invented a way to live after the brain cells die. They named it religion.

[@cosmob.4895]

Maybe the phrase "life after death" isn't perfect but I think the phrase is referring to if there is experience after death in some way, not if life as we know it in the living, continues uninterrupted. Maybe think of it as the question if experience ends absolutely at death or if it continues on in any way

[@thepretendraver312]

No one really knows, it’s all just waffle!

[@keithgreenan1850]

This series answers nothing

[@xspotbox4400]

Actually this series is so good they could create am encyclopedia of contemporary philosophical ideas out of them.

[@peaceonearth351]

Think outside the box.

[@xspotbox4400]

God created us after his own image, so this life might be some sort of a school for gods. We live in a multiverse, so we live in God's presence to learn how to spawn universe of our own and deal with similar problems after, bringing to life and teaching more gods in a process. Somehow i feel all those inter dimensional ideas about after life are doomed to fail, lol :) But hey, i would rather became my own God in my own universe than some toy for rich god's kids in their divine Pantheon.

[@Zephyrus47]

Where did this idea come from???

[@xspotbox4400]

@@Zephyrus47 I have no idea, just came to my mind, but for sure there must be old scriptures and stories talking about similar idea. People have probably already thought of anything that can be described by words, it's what makes us human, since the invention of symbolic language, it would all fall apart in split second if suddenly nobody could remember any word.

[@Zephyrus47]

@@xspotbox4400 I believe we come here to increase our vibrational frequency. We do this by focusing on hope, joy and love.

[@xspotbox4400]

@@Zephyrus47 We better be sure what are hope, joy and love than, don't want to focus on fake and complex emotions.

[@danielgustavsson1232]

There is life after death 100% but not for u !

[@uremove]

This seems a more logical approach than trad Theism, with its delimited individualistic God (who IMO resembles gods like Zeus or Odin ie. existent as an individual). This type of Panentheism is even a bit like the “Simulation Universe” idea which I like. I’m not sure why such a God would want to conjure long dead individuals back into existence at the end of time, but hey, who says He/She/It needs a good reason. If you believe the book of Revelations, it’s so He can enjoy throwing all the non-Christians into the Lake of Fire! If you imagine the diversity of individuals from all eras throughout history, existing together, with such differences in belief, in core values and in technological advancement - trying to live together in the “New Jerusalem”... War, or oppression would very soon erupt everywhere. Can’t we just accept our flawed individual human natures are finite, temporal and of a time and place - and be very grateful for that! What we have in common (as a universal) is our sentience.

[@jordanwhisson5407]

Nonsense

[@rickwyant]

No.

[@johnbrowne8744]

I'm sorry, how useless are philosophers?