A Strange Question

I thought of a strange question and I asked some friends what their answers would be. The question was; you are 80 years of age with terminal cancer, you only have a few months to live. This is only a few decades in the future; the doctor gives you the patient a choice, you can let the cancer take you and die, or you can have your consciousness, mind memories, all of you, placed into a virtual world. Where you never died, you just constantly lived out many lives, one after the other.

They all said they would accept the latter offer, and carry on living in a virtual world unaware you are actually dead. Living life after life, never realising your situation as a consciousness, never knowing you are trapped inside a machine.

I said to them what if part of our evolutionary development; we need to die in our physical form, so the consciousness can move on to another realm of reality. They looked puzzled at me; I did not mean my soul going to heaven or any such thing, I just creatively imagined that it is probable for a conscious mind and energy from a body, to have the ability to progress to another level. I think they looked even more confused after that explanation, but it did get me thinking, are we meant to use our minds to evolve ways to keep our memories, mind and consciousness, in the now, in the moment, even if the moment in a false reality. Or do we have minds as a consequence of evolution, and that they naturally move on after the host they inhabit dies, and they would prefer to not be locked up and a electronic box, or when we die is that it the mind dies with you, and you would have been better taking option B, like my friends suggested. To me, it is a big puzzle, hence the strange question.