>>8306545Sorry for the delay, my Internet went down. On the contrary, I have been there, and am there, as are you. If you reach back far enough into yourself, you can find it. The dream I had was not one of death, but rather creation and pre-birth--and I remember next to none of it. I had to recall the feeling of pre-existence accidentally a week later during meditation, and it was one so beautiful I was driven to tears.
Now, I didn't say there was no afterlife. The collective consciousness of eternal peace qualifies, I think. After all--when the Catholics describe Eternity, they describe it as happening concurrently with life as we know it. It is forever and endless, and you are always with God, and with all the other souls. It exists without time or form. Could that not be oblivion? Could God himself not be oblivion? Oblivion/Eternity/Nirvana and the afterlife are not at all mutually exclusive concepts.
Nor did I say that reincarnation was discounted. It certainly isn't. The soul must journey, must learn, and we are, after all, one great cosmic infinity. But you must remember that because the soul of the present is forever being reincarnated as new presents, that every second is a new one and yet the exact same as the one that doesn't exist anymore because there is only now, then can you see that you may very well be interacting with yourself now--because you are? Time isn't a concept in the face of Eternity. Nor is separation. Death is not something that is truly experienced until you come to realize that the lines between you and I, my Anonymous friend, are nonexistent as anything else.
I still have much to learn, and fully conceptualize. I'm not comfortable with considering myself enlightened, I wouldn't dare fool myself into thinking I were near such peace. But where I am now, in that glowing ego post-mortem, that is where enlightenment begins.