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Malperdy
Guest
After I die I will have no eyes to see with, I will have no ears to hear with, and I will have no brain to remember anything with. How can I experience anything? How will I know anything?
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Benedictus
Guest
The fact of the matter is we don’t know what happens after we die. Nobody has ever come back…
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Tim_Kirchoff
Guest
Besides Jesus, and He didn’t talk much about it.
When you die, your soul remains intact. Your immaterial soul will experience. Your memories- your good deeds as well as mistakes- are imprinted on your soul as much as your mind.
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Rolltide
Guest
Don’t forget Lazarus! (Not that he said anything either…)
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Joe_Kelley
Guest
I speculate that infused knowledge from God will make you more awake and more aware than you have ever been before.
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mschrank
Guest
Pretty much. One weird thing to look at is zero-brain activity out of body experiences. They are pretty well documented (and replete with incredibly speculative attempts at debunking by dogmatic materialists) and strangely enough, people who did not have brain activity in the right places to for example, see, did report seeing things and describing what the doctors were doing.
One big case involved a woman who had to be put into a temporary ‘brain sleep’ during an operation, by cooling her down to a point where brain activity stopped.
That being said, NDEs are incredibly contradictory so I don’t know what to make of them personally. I think however its not too much of a stretch though to say they are not mere delusion as some might like to believe.
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BlaineTog
Guest
How do you know anything now, even with your senses? They lie to you all the time (TV isn’t really moving pictures, and many people need glasses lest their eyes tell them everything is blurry), and may not be accurate at all (after all, you don’t have any way of supporting them that isn’t them).
But to answer your question instead of jerking you around epistemologically, perhaps you’ll be given new senses. We don’t really know what life after death is like, other than that it’s either the best, the worst, or will be almost the worst followed by the best.
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Malperdy
Guest
You say the soul will experience, and I go along with that, but I’m interested to learn if any wise person can say how this happens. I’m interested in the mechanism.
You say memories are imprinted on the soul. Where does this notion come from? I can understand imprinting on some material substance, like brain cells, but on immaterial substance - I don’t know.
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mschrank
Guest
And there’s the whole pickle.
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Malperdy
Guest
Because our bodily senses can deceive us with perceptual illusions, etc., suggests that (after death) without these material mechanisms we won’t be deceived any more - but ‘receive’ only truth. Perhaps we will be given new senses, as you suggest, but I guess you mean senses metaphorically or analogically, and nothing like what we have when we are alive. Although we do not know what life after death is like, can’t we infer something from theories about the nature of the soul, or maybe revelations about the soul? I’m looking for something like these.
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DanteAlighieri
Guest
I like the observation you made about “receiving only truth” – I think that’s probably true. As far as your question goes, though, I just don’t know that an answer is possible. We know the soul is immortal and immaterial, and that it is damaged by our sin and sanctified by grace. We know that the Communion of Saints is enlightened by God in His presence, and that it has His ear.Because our bodily senses can deceive us with perceptual illusions, etc., suggests that (after death) without these material mechanisms we won’t be deceived any more - but ‘receive’ only truth. Perhaps we will be given new senses, as you suggest, but I guess you mean senses metaphorically or analogically, and nothing like what we have when we are alive. Although we do not know what life after death is like, can’t we infer something from theories about the nature of the soul, or maybe revelations about the soul? I’m looking for something like these.
What we don’t know, however, is how any of that works. I’m not familiar with any revelation that has to do with the mechanism that enables any of this.
Peace,
Dante
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jdmayer
Guest
I’m pretty sure that St. Thomas says something somewhere in the Summa about God sustaining our memories, knowledge, etc in in a special way while we are without our bodies… any Thomists here remember this? I could be wrong
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jdmayer
Guest
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rwoehmke
Guest
Would it be true to say that the physical body is only a transducer for the soul? Memory etc. is seated in the soul and not the brain. The brain and senses serve only to transmit messages back and fourth to and from the soul. When a person dies and the soul leaves the body, the body is as useless as a dead battery. No memory, no senses, no responses. The “engine” is gone.
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Malperdy
Guest
This is the sort of theory I am interested in, though to understand ST is not at all easy without years of study. Where I asked “How can I experience anything? How will I know anything?” St Thomas discusses whether the ‘separated soul’ *understands *anything. That’s OK. I’m not one to quibble, though I’m not sure ‘experience’ is quite covered in Q89, but I’m sure it is in ST somewhere.
What is curious is St Tom rather formally or detachedly writing of the soul, and never once saying I will know this, or **You **will understand this. Surely he does not mean the separated soul lacks its former unique identity?
Also, considering the passage of time since St Tom’s day, I wonder if there are any more recent theories about how the soul might experience or understand things after death. Maybe there have been some changes in thinking since St Tom’s formulations.
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Malperdy
Guest
I’m very interested in exactly what knowledge or memory the soul has. I started this enquiry by trying to consider what the soul after death might experience (attain new knowledge of). But, a corollary will be to say that what the soul does after death, it must also be able to do during life. [Unless I’m drastically in error!]
Out of all this we might well come to some significant things to say about the necessary activity of the soul in everyday experience - and I don’t just mean on the moral level. Some say that the soul is the seat of the Intellect. Now, depending what we mean by Intellect, that’s worth exploring!
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simonwhitney
Guest
Perhaps one way to approach this is to consider that the soul is not a natural thing but rather a supernatural thing. Catechism para 366 says that the soul is “created immediately by God”.
If our soul is a spiritual thing and God is spirit perhaps the soul “sees” or perceives things in much the same way that God sees and perceives things.
Now, how that happens I have no idea!
If our soul is a spiritual thing and God is spirit perhaps the soul “sees” or perceives things in much the same way that God sees and perceives things.
Now, how that happens I have no idea!
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rwoehmke
Guest
Would you accept that there is some evidence that the human being may possess a certain level of extra-sensory perception. I know several people, for example, that are visited from time to time with un-bidden “visions” of future events that have come to pass. I have no idea how common this might be. The people that I have known to experience this were God fearing, faithful Catholics, who did not exploit or attempt to cultivate such an ability. This possibly would indicate that the soul/intellect/mind can know or perceive things without the senses and brain of the physical body.
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DanteAlighieri
Guest
No, what this indicates is that God is able to reveal whatever He pleases to whomever He pleases – it has nothing whatsoever to do with any innate qualities of the soul.
Assuming, of course, that your friends’ experiences were authentic.
Peace,
Dante
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Neithan
Guest
St. Thomas also discusses the habit and act of knowledge in the separated soul. We can glean from this that he certainly doesn’t mean that the soul lacks its former unique identity, given that it will retain some knowledge of its life that does not depend on the sensitive powers (i.e. memory, imagination, cogitation), or what he calls the ‘phantasms’ which require the brain.
So you won’t have any memories from your life, but you will have some knowledge in an abstract way. There won’t be any ‘experience’ without senses, but you will gain new knowledge through purely intelligible means. Anything else necessary to your judgment will be infused by God I imagine.
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