Quote from Katrina Johns:
you (wrongly) conclude that non-existence is impossible BUT your first premise assumes existence and non-existence to be contrasting, ie one cannot exist without the other. well then if there exists no non-existence, then this also negates the possibility of existence, the very thing you're attempting to prove is ubiquitous.
it's all a mess aphie but it was a nice effort.
Ahh, but you see, that is where you are wrong.
We can prove that existence exists. The fact that you are reading this very message that I am writing (by the time you read it, it will have been written) proves that you must exist to read this message, which also exists.
Now, if you propose that there exists a state called "non-existence" than it must come from a set of possibilities where "existence" also resides.
Let us pretend their is an object called "Cradula." Cradula is a made-up object that performs a specific task. However, we know that no object called Cradula exists. Ahh, but there is a problem -- since my very mention of Cradula has brought it into existence. This presents a problem.
a) If I had not mentioned or thought of an object called Cradula, Cradula would exist in a state of non-existence. However, by mentioning and imagining an object called Cradula, I have forced it from a state of non-existence (assuming nobody else has thought of something called Cradula) to a state of existence.
b) If Cradula now exists, how could it have ever existed in a state of non-existence? If it did not exist, there could be no way for me to bring it into existence.
Moving on -- we can apply this concept further to life.
I want you to stop reading for a moment and really ponder where you would be if you didn't exist. I want you to "imagine" what a state of non-existence would be like. You can't, can you? No matter how hard you try, you cannot envision a state of non-existence because any attempt to do so brings such a state into existence and therefore it never was non-existent.
I can't take an object like Cradula out of non-existence into existence because it exists -- I just happened to make reference to such an object in my own mind. However, I cannot take an object that surely exists and place it into a state of non-existence. The best I would be able to do is transform its state of existence into another state of existence.
The problem people have with death is that they assume that we go from a state of "existence" to a state of "non-existence."
Think of all of our lives like water drops. Where does rain come from? It comes from an ocean or large body of water. When it rains, these droplets "exist" in an isolated form away from all other droplets. Imagine our "egos" as water droplets. When one states dismay over death, they are really expressing dismay over losing control of their ego -- or their unique perception of reality.
As rain falls, it eventually joins another large body of water. The water droplet has seized to exist as a subset of a larger state of existence, but the larger state of existence (the large body of water) continues to exist. Eventually, it will rain again and new raindrops will be born, but the cycle of existence does not change -- only the subset of uniqueness which exists in a larger set of complete existence, for which we have already proved cannot ever "not exist."
The feeling of a cool summer breeze over my face and how it makes me feel is shared by many other humans. The feelings of having an orgasm is similar to all other humans. We are more connected than we realize, and yet we as humans are so worried about our egos dying thru death when, in actuality, we join the wholeness of life itself and get integrated into a much larger set of existence.
We cannot comprehend what it must be like to exist without ego in a larger set of existence, but this is the beauty of life and why we live. This is also why we see such complexity in simple processes here on Earth (rivers flowing to larger bodies of water, water evaporating to create clouds, clouds forming rain, rain rejoining other areas of water to continue to cycle).
It is not our "lifeforce" or "essence of living" that dies, because that is always reborn with each new person. Our egos die -- but who cares -- we rejoin the ocean of eternal existence from where we came and enjoy a flow through some rivers before the cycle repeats.
Don't sweat it.