It seems as though I answered this question just yesterday:
I believe that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon that arises out of organized matter—matter that has been organized by an unbroken continuum of evolution which predates what we commonly think of as “life.” Life is an emergent phenomenon that has its origins in the self-organizing properties of matter, which is itself governed by a deep mathematics based on the ratios of whole integers and expressible in infinite complexity (i.e, fractal geometry).
What we take to be our minds is not a purely individual phenomenon but collective one in which cultural patterns are encoded into populations of individual genomes, which are essentially biological computers that create a kind of simulacrum or holographic experience which defines the parameters of our reality. Our sense of individuality is an illusion on multiple levels. Language, for example, is a cultural artifact which evolves to support the evolution of the shared cultural metaorganism we call “mind.”
When we die, the computational machinery of our reality begins to break down and our consciousness begins to drift into neighboring quantum realities, until it reaches one in which there a kind of mathematical stability (e.g., an asymptote or equilibrium) where it remains until something disturbs it. Since cultural evolution is a moral enterprise, driven by choices based on emotional attachments and strivings, in death, these attachments exert a kind of “pull” or “drag” on where your consciousness drifts in the multiverse, determining whether you end up in a parallel universe similar to the one you just left, or spin wildly into some vastly different universe with a different set of cultural and moral problems.
Since the multiverse is infinite, and exists outside of time, “I” am also “you,” “he,” “she” and “it,” simultaneously occupying all possible points of view accessible to consciousness, each in its own timeline. When I die, I do not cease to exist, my existence continues on from another point of view (which is likely shaped by how I acted in my former incarnation). I should therefore strive to create the best possible world I can.
I man “parallel universe” in the sense of Quantum Many Worlds in
http://holtz.org/Library/Philosophy/Scientific%20American%20Parallel%20Universes%20-%20Tegmark%202003.htm
Most of what we take to be our minds lives on in others. Language, for example, is a kind of living organism—what they call a “metaorganism” in the new biology. Language is developed and supported by a population of individuals. Individuals may die but the language lives on in the mind of others. If we coin a word or an idea, those too live on, and they may shape our consciousness if we are born back into the same culture. If we don’t make a unique contribution, we still carry forward the existing structures and are shaped by them.
Our bodies are essentially biological computers that fix and orient us us in a quantum universe. I am speculating that when our bodies break down, there is a chance for our consciousness to become detached from our current universe and become re-established in a nearby parallel universe, which is largely determined by who we were and what we did.
In the multiverse, where everything has already happened, you do exist for all time.
In the universe you inhabit, every action you take creates chains of cause and effect that ripple outward, for all eternity, changing everything. In Quantum Theory, this is called a wave front. Theoretically, if you were sufficiently aware, you could direct the whole universe like an orchestra, by choosing to do one thing rather than another, allowing effects to magnify through the butterfly effect.
Alas, we are limited to our singular points of view.
Or are we? In Quantum Theory, there is a phenomenon known as “superposition” where an electron can be in two places or two spin states or two universes at the same time. According to the Many Worlds view of Quantum Theory, the universe we live in is constantly branching into alternative parallel universes. However, every time we make a decision, the wave front we set in motion collapses all the other possible branching parallel universes, locking us into a specific reality with it’s specific moral trajectory.
In death, we lose the ability to decide; so whatever consciousness is sustained by this process very likely stops; at which point, consciousness may very well occupy multiple points of view in multiple universes because we create no wave fronts that interfere with quantum superposition. In one universe, I am me and you are you; in another, you are me and I am you; and in another universe, we are both someone else. If you think about it, it becomes pretty clear that we should treat one another much better than we do
