shojiwax.com<p><strong>Is there a before?</strong></p><p>I posted a video the other day that was a discussion about death and the possibility (reality IMHO) that consciousness in some form survives death.</p><p><a href="https://shojiwax.com/2025/06/21/the-big-d/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://shojiwax.com/2025/06/21/the-big-d/</a></p><p>Someone made an interesting comment on the vid, along the lines of: If you want to know what comes after death, remember what it was like before you were born. Thats what it’s like.</p><p>This is a common thought exercise, and I admit to agreeing with it for many years. There is absolutely no memory of what it was like before I was born, and there is nothing I can conceptualise it to be like before I was born. That’s what it’s like after you die…exactly the same.</p><p>Hang on a sec….I cannot remember what it was like to wake up on my first morning after being born. I cannot remember what I had for lunch on my 7th birthday. I cannot even remember that sketchy stretch of road I drove between Kiama and Bowral last month. </p><p>There are vast blanks in my recollection of my life.</p><p>Moreover, if you were to add up all the parts of your life that you <em>cannot</em> remember, that you have absolutely no recollection of….nothing… I think you would be shocked at the percentage.</p><p>But you know you were there at those times. You know you were fully awake and aware.</p><p>It is just that all those experiences are non-reportable. You do not have access to them.</p><p>There are plenty of other non-reportable experiences, like deep sleep, anaesthesia, and traumatic amnesia. But even during these times, there is a you there. A you that I would argue is experiencing something that it is like to be you (or qualia1, as it is called).</p><p>To get even more sticky, you really cannot have <em>nothing</em> without having <em>something</em> that you are claiming not to have. For true nothingness cannot even be nothingness. Because that would be something. <br>Lets not even go here OK?…my head hurts.</p><p>Before you were born? <br>Something to ponder.</p><p></p><ol><li>Qualia refer to the subjective, qualitative aspects of conscious experience. They are the individual instances of subjective, conscious experience, such as the way one perceives the color red, the taste of chocolate, or the feeling of pain. ↩︎</li></ol><p><a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://shojiwax.com/tag/consciousness/" target="_blank">#consciousness</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://shojiwax.com/tag/meditation/" target="_blank">#meditation</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://shojiwax.com/tag/nde/" target="_blank">#NDE</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://shojiwax.com/tag/philosophy/" target="_blank">#philosophy</a> <a rel="nofollow noopener" class="hashtag u-tag u-category" href="https://shojiwax.com/tag/science/" target="_blank">#science</a></p>