What might it be like, to be dead? To exist no more?

It occurred to me that anyone who has had surgery under a general anesthesia has already experience that, if their experience is anything like mine. I was aware as the anesthesiologist placed the mask over my nose and mouth for just an instant, and then the very next thing I was aware of, in what seemed to be no time at all, was waking up in the recovery room. During that hour or so of surgery I was aware of nothing. I was not dreaming. I simply did not have any awareness of existence. It was, I think, like being dead.

Or, as Mark Twain commented, he had not existed during the millions of years before he was born, and it had caused him no inconvenience at all.

What think ye?

I've thought the same thing. Even the simple act of going to sleep at night and waking with no remembrance of dreaming or time passing has had the same effect for me. Maybe that's why I have no memory of ever being afraid of dying.

Oh, I have the instinctual fear of death that comes when my car is sliding on the ice in winter or I look over the edge of a skyscraper. But I think that is more a fear of loss of control and fear of imminent physical pain rather than actual thoughts of death.

As a side note (bit off the subject) I've read that many people think they do not dream because they do not remember dreaming. Neurological studies show that everybody dreams but that we do not remember our dream unless we awake during that sleep cycle. I am a lite sleeper and wake during dreams often. My dog used to wake me up during my dreams because I talk in my sleep and she thought I was calling her. I have no idea if we dream when under anesthesia.

Also, some of the famous atheists claim that religion sucks us in because we are afraid of death and we want to be assured we will live in an afterlife. I didn't care that much about the afterlife but I assumed there would be one only because everyone I knew (parents, friends, teachers, all the adults I knew) told me that it was a fact. When I met my first atheist I was stunned that an adult actually did not believe in all the things I had been taught were absolute truths. This is why I agree with Christopher Hitchens when he said, "Believe what you want, just don't insist upon teaching your lies to my children!"

I wonder if we’ll ever get tired of being dead?

I always thought I'd get tired of eternal life.

I've long thought the same thing. And I'm ok with that.

I don't know if my personal memories are representative of what has happened to others. What happened to me may be different in kind from what commonly happens to others (or to me, perhaps, had I been in different circumstances when I was killed).

To me, I was instantly "floating" in a darkness which was somehow far darker than any I had known in real life, but the darkness I experienced was comforting, felt EXTREMELY safe, and was "not cold." [I wasn't so much experiencing "warmth" as I was experiencing an "absence of cold"--in my case, a bitter and biting cold which had been omnipresent in my immediately former experience.] It was also, in ways I cannot describe, "interesting": I was definitely "looking around" and was actively interested in what I was "seeing," which was "nothing," but it was an absorbing, and very interesting, "nothing" from my perspective.

And then I woke up, and I was in a warm and safe, but unknown to me, place--with friendly people who were very nice to me. I adapted pretty quickly to my new circumstances (which were absolutely wonderful from my perspective, and I got used to the new people who were, when I woke up, strangers to me), and here I am.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/13/2019 03:09PM by Tevai.

Tevai, your experience sounds a lot like my husband's. When he was sixteen years old, he was hanging out with his buddies, drinking beer. One of them had a Subaru Brat. As my husband was trying to get into the back of it, his pal started backing up the car, not realizing someone was trying to get in. The guy ended up backing the car over my husband's chest, and my husband had a near death experience. He said he was absolutely terrified as he realized what was happening, but then he was suddenly floating in nothingness that felt very safe and comforting. He knew he was about to cease to exist, but he was totally okay with it.

And then he came to with a collapsed lung, bloody eyes, and a stay in a hospital. He was lucky he was sixteen and not older, since he still had cartilage in his chest. He probably would have died otherwise. As it is now, he has arthritis in his chest due to that injury.

whenever ziller dies ~


ziller just lays down and rots until he feels better ~



that is what it is like OPie ~

The way I like to put it is this.

"So, what did you think of 1939?" (Or whatever year happened before you were born).

"Were you excited that after billions of years, it was getting close to the time that you got to be here?"

My parents were here. But they were children. They had no concept of me or my siblings. They didn't know each other yet.

The world existed. People got up, went to work, came home and did whatever work they needed to do around the home. They listened to the radio. We still have a working radio that my Dad's family listened to when he was a child.

But there was no me. I simply did not exist yet.

The way I figure it, I will go back to this condition. People will get up, go to work, come home, do other stuff, etc. The world will be buzzing with activity. But there will be no me. I won't be here.

We lost my Dad two years ago and sometimes I think about that. Here I am, driving to work, but my Dad is not here. I could search the world over, but he would be nowhere to be found.

It's a weird feeling. The brain automatically thinks, "Well, where did he go?" It's difficult to comprehend, even though we do experience this state for most of every night when we sleep.

I read somewhere that we only dream for about an hour and a half every night. I'm not sure of the exact amount of time, but I think that's what it said. For the rest of the night, where are we? Not conscious, that's for sure.

I don't like it. I hate it. But there's not a doggone thing that I can do about it. I don't know if I could call it scary, but it definitely is upsetting, because I'm me, darn it.

I have a life. I have people I love and who love me. I don't want to be gone. I'm a very curious person. I want to know what happens next. But again, there's nothing that I can do about the reality of life - that at some point, it ends.

I sometimes think that Evolution did not do us any favours by making us so aware of ourselves.

strong post ~


thx Greyfort ~

Same deal with me....I’m curious, I want to know what happens, even if I’m not here.

Exactly.

We are presumably the only species whose members are intelligent enough to conceive of our own personal dissolution and hence to ask whether individual lives have any meaning. Nietzsche described this as looking into the abyss, a horrifying experience.

Likewise, myriad species have destroyed their environments and thereby extinguished themselves, but humans are presumably the only ones sentient enough to recognize that that is what we are doing. It would be a great and pathetic irony if we were sufficiently clever to see the need to change our ways but insufficiently clever actually to do so.

In such circumstances it would be nice to have a God whom we could curse for bestowing on us our Promethean nature. Yet if there is no sadistic deity to blame, the human dilemma becomes a mere cosmic curiosity, a light that blinked brightly in some dark corner of the universe but quickly burned out.

"He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.
And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee."

I was trying--unsuccessfully--to find the quote (sourced and accurate) for, "Choose your enemies carefully, for you will come to resemble them." This was the best I could find.

Getting back on thread, I much prefer C.S. Lewis, "You have never met a mere mortal."

Yes. One of the constants in Nietzsche is the idea that there is no guarantee that ultimate truth is pleasant. His superman is the person who can look into the intellectual abyss and confront reality no matter how ugly it is.

The Christian God was dead, he thought, in the late 19th century because he had lost his ability to inspire fear and obeisance. What was left? Who could look at life and death without any scruples or illusion and construct out of that abyss a new culture and a new meaning?

One can of course accept his diagnosis without embracing his prescription but there is no doubt that a rejection of traditional religious belief exposes people to existential questions that most would prefer not to address head-on. Some of those questions have arisen in this thread.

Well, I can report that I have "talked" with someone who has died.

My husband's father was a wonderful, kind, and smart man, and was also an atheist. He believed that dying "was it".

His wife, my mother-in law, used to speak to him in a demeaning manner after he had said something, with an "Oh, Sherwood".

However, after he died he came to me in a very real dream and told me that he was OK, and that he lived in a wonderful world with rolling green hills. His wife was off in a distance from him, and she let him known she wanted to be with him--but he shook his head said, 'no'.

----

One other instance of speaking to the dead: My husband's cousin, Beth, came to me--I was wide awake--and told me she wanted to let my husband know that she was OK, but that she "couldn't reach" him, so she had come to me, to let him know.

I have a couple of other instances of 'seeing the dead', but this is enough for how.

I hope this gives you an idea about what death is like.

Thank you.

It's so good to have the answers...

What would we do without them!!

It takes 'courage and/or anonymity (my reason)' or both to post 'spiritual experiences' here.

I have had numerous after death communications (ADCs), therefore, cannot believe that death is just like going under or falling asleep ---- never to awaken!!!

I agree 'experiences' made a big difference in what I believe.

Well...
I'm a Christian...
I've personally had a spiritual experience that the burning, euphoria, cleansing, overwhelming powerful happiness, love ... Could be felt from my toes, legs, torso, arms, fingers...

If heaven is like that, then any crap we go to on Earth probably is worth it.

The idea of reincarnation makes me think of the movie "Groundhog Day". That would be hell. Imagine having to do everything over and over until we get it right. I hope it is just over at the end.

Pooped Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The idea of reincarnation makes me think of the
> movie "Groundhog Day". That would be hell. Imagine
> having to do everything over and over until we get
> it right. I hope it is just over at the end.

This is an interesting thought. I grew up in a reincarnation-believing family (Advaita Vedanta Hinduism as a constant, plus twentieth-century New Age).

Then, as an adult, I finally (as an adult) was able to convert to Judaism (I had been trying to figure out how to do this for all my life up to that point)--and, like Hinduism, Judaism also believes in "gilgul," which is the Hebrew word for reincarnation.

I can't remember a moment in my life in which I did NOT believe in reincarnation.

I don't know anyone, who believes in or accepts reincarnation, who thinks we "have to do everything over and over until we get it right." Every life is new "chapter" in our individual Long Histories, and offers new learning opportunities, and new real life adventures, often of a positive type, to allow us to add to the wisdom we have previously acquired.

If there are lessons which need to be learned (Jack the Ripper "returns"), an appropriate life to learn them in is probable, but this is only one aspect of "living a life."

Mostly, as we go through different lives, we get the chance to experience new things, to create new bonds or strengthen prior bonds, and acquire wisdom which we can take with us in future lives.

I believe there is a large component of self-choice in this
for many people, but that there are also natural laws at work
(similar, on a daily level, to gravity always working),
which play out for our ultimate good (even if a particular life is not enjoyable or "good" as we would perceive it).

Sometimes the lives we choose are for us to learn things (could be qualities of personality, or factual studies like mathematics), which are preparing us for lives we are likely to find ourselves in down the line.

I believe that Einstein's life as we know it was based on development he had achieved in at least some of his past lives, and that Leonardo learned the basics of art before 1452 (his birth year as Leonardo).

I don't think genius springs out of "nowhere," but is the result of much prior work and maturation--and the same goes for people who contribute their prior achievements in humanity towards making the world a better place for everyone.

It is the opposite of "Groundhog Day," because in each life (at least ideally) the person who transitions into the "next" life is (ideally) fundamentally different--hopefully in good ways--than that person was when they were born into that [now dying, or dead] immediately prior body.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/13/2019 07:20PM by Tevai.

I’m a fairly new atheist. The one thing that was hard to lose was a real faith in an afterlife. I like to think there is something. On the other hand, living forever would be kind of like hell. It would be nice if it were a completely different kind of existence, ie not the mormon version of living forever as yourself, in this body, yikes! I say this because I’d like to know what happens in the future. Mind you, I’d prefer to time travel. (I wonder which is more likely/possible?)

I think being dead, if there is nothing, will be like a general anaesthetic. It’s a scary thought in a way. I always dream in my sleep and I always get sedated for the dentist. General anaesthesia is totally different. It would be hard to comprehend had I not experienced it. There was literally nothing. But then, we won’t know there is nothing, so beyond the fear of death we won’t suffer. Better than hell for sure.

The mormon idea of heaven, at whichever level, sounds like hell to me. I literally would rather there were nothing, than that.

death is a lot like priesthood meeting but not as painful.

They both go on forever.

I am waiting for someone to credibly "return and report" what the hereafter is like. In the meantime I believe when you're dead, you're dead.

It was my experience that my deceased father was able to "visit" me about 3 days after his death. I was a grief-stricken 15-year-old kid, devastated because his death had been a long, drawn-out and hideous one, and the thought of living the remainder of my legal not-yet-adulthood with my mother, who was an ambulatory nightmare.

Dad's body was still at the undertaker's, as the funeral had not yet taken place due to the Christmas/New year's holidays. Something wakened me out of sleep one night, and I tiptoed into what was now my mother's room, where she lay soundly asleep. We lived on top of a hill, so there was little danger of anyone snooping through our windows. There was brilliant moonlight streaming into what had been "their" room, in which my father had died.

Dad was standing, looking as substantial as you or me, as he often had, with an elbow leaning on the edge of his chest of drawers, near Mother's bed. I recognized the Ban-Lon (remember those??) tee shirt he wore, with regular weekend trousers. Even in the moonlight, I could see that his cheeks were no longer sunken, and his cheeks had taken on their customary rosy color rather than the greyish pallor with which he had died. He was filled out, so he didn't look skeletal any more.

He talked to me, but it was with a voice I heard only inside my mind. After all, Mother was only a few feet away, and he obviously did not want to disturb her.

I wanted to throw my arms around his neck, to reassure myself that this had all been a terrible nightmare, and Daddy was "back" again, but he held up his hands in a "Stop!" (palms out) gesture, so I held still.

He explained to me that he had been happily reunited with his own father, who died when I was just a baby, and that Grandpa sent love to us all.

He explained that he was very well, not sick and weak as he had been before his death. He was happy. And he emphasized that he wanted me to reassure both Mother and my grandma about this.

There was nothing bizarre about any of this. He behaved exactly as he had, prior to passing. The voice was the same, the facial expressions were the same, the quality of the message was the same. I had no reason to believe that this entity was not my father. After our "conversation," he told me, "Go on back to bed now, and be sure to talk to Mom and Grandma tomorrow." I promised that I would, and said, "Good night, Daddy," turning without question.

And, oddly enough, I quickly slipped right back into sleep. I wasn't overwhelmed with the unlikelihood of the encounter. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

When I recalled the encounter to my mother, the next day, expecting to see joy and relief in her face, I watched her expression darken first into anger, and then into rage, and she accused me of lying, and threatened me with physical punishment if I said another syllable. I was stunned.

When I went over to my grandmother's little cottage that Dad had built for her, next door to our house, I told her exactly what had happened. Tears, but happy ones, gathered in her gentle brown eyes. She dabbed at them with the hem of her apron.

"That is so like my sweet son," she whispered. "he wanted us to know."

Based on this long-ago experience, I believe that there is life beyond this one, especially where there has been great love between the people involved. My mother would later move on to become a nasty, sloppy alcoholic - perhaps she was not able to derive the blessing that came with Dad's visit. I don't know. She never referred to it again.

I have never been known to be the hallucinatory type, and I truly believe that this happened, exactly as I have described it. I have no reason to believe that it didn't happen this way.

Based on this, while I basically am no longer affiliated with any religion, I believe in reconnecting with my loved ones, both humans and furbabies, when my time comes. I fully expect to see my former college roommate and best friend since junior high days. We were like sisters.

And my Dad. I can't wait for him to meet the wonderful guy I have married. I expect that they will take to one another immediately. And one day, I will introduce Dad to the grandson he didn't live long enough to meet.

I bet they will "click." Dad had that effect on just about everybody.

As to what goes on after that, I expect that those who have gone before will show us the ropes.

It's not death per se I worry about. It's what the transitional stage will be: sudden and unexpected (car crash) or long and drawn out (horrible terminal illness.) Now, THAT scares me. But what's on the other side, no. From what I've seen, it's OK.

When my [paternal] grandfather was dying (he had "all three" kinds of leukemia), he was being kept alive with complete blood transfusions every few days.

One day, he told his doctor that enough was enough. No more blood transfusions....just let him die as he now wanted to, since complete blood transfusions were the only means to keep him alive.

My Grandpa's doctor (in Marysville, northern California) phoned my father and told him what my Grandpa had said.

My father answered: "Keep on with what you're doing for x amount of hours, because we have to drive from the San Fernando Valley to Yuba City," where my Grandpa and Grandma lived. "We want to be able to say 'Goodbye' to him, so time it so that we can get there before he can't talk any more." [In essence, my father was choosing my Grandpa's time of death.]

We raced north, and we did get to say "Goodbye" to him, and he did die a few hours later.

After we returned south, in the first few weeks following my Grandpa's death, my Mom woke up one night because my Dad was talking, in a normal conversational way, in the direction of the bottom of the bed. My Mom heard all of my Dad's part of the conversation, but she couldn't see anything out of the ordinary.

My Grandpa told my father (who was VERY bothered that he had, in reality, called the time of my Grandpa's then impending death) that my father had done right, and that this is what Grandpa wanted, and he didn't want my Dad to feel guilty. My Mom heard every word my Dad said in this exchange.

I did then, and I do now, believe that my Grandpa DID appear at the end of my parents' bed, and that my Dad did talk with Grandpa. I'm very grateful that this happened, because my father had been feeling intensely guilty that he had manipulated the time of my Grandpa's death in accordance with our ability to get from Woodland Hills to Yuba City. (My Grandpa died at his home there.)

I have never once doubted that this conversational exchange between my Grandpa and my father DID occur, and I am very grateful to Grandpa that he put my father's mind at ease so my Dad wouldn't feel guilty any longer.

Wow, I’m grateful to be able to read these accounts. I don’t believe in god (and if there is one is sure hope he isn’t like anything in the bible) but I hope there is something.
I seem to remember brother claimed to see our grandfather in his bedroom after he died. They had been close, and it made sense to me.
I have felt my dads presence since he died. However, this could be my imagination. I’m reluctant to trust such feelings after the manipulation by the mormon church. I remain open minded but don’t want to dwell on it either. I used to talk to my dad in the cemetery. People would think I’m crazy if they saw that. In our ‘conversations’ I had impressions about things, but never go an answer about god from my dad.
Wow I sound crazy. I guess I hope he is there, as he was the closest person to me in the family, which has been since largely spoilt by mormonism.

When I was a small child, about 6 or 7 years old, I very briefly saw an apparition of some kind. It surprised me, but didn’t scare me at all. I think it seemed more like an Angel than a ‘ghost’. It was another little girl, walking past me, dressed in white, with her eyes closed and her palms together. My mother who is quite cynical, seemed to believe me.

Did I just shoot my previous post to pieces about death being like a general anaesthetic?! I just don’t know. I’m sceptically open minded these days...

Unlike what the Mormons believe, we ALL will be there, together, wherever and whatever Heaven is. No one escapes death. This knowledge binds us together.

Isn't it just like the Mormons to separate themselves into an exclusive, stratified heaven--better than anyone else's heaven, of course. The Mormon heaven has social climbing, travel and visitation restrictinons, Black slaves (as JS had sealed to him) and women in an eternally submissive position under the New and Everlasting Covenant of polygamy! I never believed in the Mormon idea of Heaven, fortunately, but my kids did, for a little while, when they were taught in Primary that because their father and I had not been married in the temple, our family would wander alone for eternity, and "pass by each other as strangers" in the afterlife. Threatening someone with bad stuff happening after they die--IMO, that's playing dirty! It's abusive!

I thought I was going to die a sudden, violent death, three times. The first time, I was 14, and in the Carribean, and my brother and I decided to slide down a steep, slanted sea cliff covered with slippery moss, and I went first. It was much slicker than I had anticipated, and I was falling down the drop very fast, towards the sharp rocks and crashing waves below. Suddenly, I felt an odd feeling of peace, like I was letting go of my life, and trusting that everything would be fine. Suddenly, at the very end, where the waves crashed against the cliff, there was thick seaweed growing, and it was thick and coarse enough to stop my fall.

I actually did die, in my second experience. My wife-beater ex-husband had been beating me, and he had broken my jaw and injured my back, but the fear was worse than the pain. I tried to stop him, but he kept at it, and threw me onto the floor, and strangled me. As I stopped breathing, I honestly thought I was being murdered, right then and there. I saw his horrible face above me, and thought, "This is death. I would rather die than live with this monster." Like that other time, I peacefully let go of my life, and the pain stopped, and everything went black. This time, I felt more like I welcomed death. I felt my soul leaving my body, when I was unconscious. Even while unconscious, I looked down and saw myself as I floated away. Was that perhaps a dream? Can one dream while unconscious? One can hear, when in a coma.... I wanted to live, but I felt that being removed from my self like that was so traumatic, that I would never recover from that. Now, years later, I sometimes feel that part of me did die. I don't know how long I was unconscious, and I wasn't aware of my breath returning. I woke up on the floor, alone, and all I could think about was getting out the door. I had to walk slowly, because of my back, and I was barefoot. I knew that if he caught me, I would be beaten again, so I hid in the bushes, along people's yards, away from the streets, and went to the house of some friends, who my husband didn't know about, and who lived far enough away, that we would all be fairly safe. I did not feel safe going to the local Provo police, because they didn't care about battered women. My husband would have tracked me down at a hospital or at my relatives' house, and I didn't want to endanger anyone. My friends bought me an airplane ticket home, loaned me a coat and some shoes, and drove me to the airport, and stayed with me until the plane took off. (I paid them back, and returned the clothes, after I got home.) My jaw was so badly shattered, that I had to have many surgeries over the years. The ringing in my ears never went away, and I have bouts of vertigo.

The problem is, that I re-live that moment over and over again in a recurring nightmare, as part of the PTSD I have. It's like dying a hundred deaths. Therapy has helped a great deal!

I think the process of dying makes us more willing to let go, and leave this life. Death can be a welcome end to pain.

Nothing makes death less sad. Nothing--not even believing in Heaven--makes you miss our beloved dead any less. I miss my parents every day. They exist only in my thoughts and memories, in my world. I don't know what place they have in my TBM siblings' worlds.

I am so sorry for what you have lived through, Bereaved.

I am glad you were able to save your life, and I understand the "peaceful" feelings--which I don't think anyone who has not lived through something similar can deeply understand because those feelings seem so counter-intuitive.

I am glad you made it through.

I’m very sorry for what you’ve been through.
What you said about nothing makes death less sad, is so true. When my dad died, it didn’t comfort me that much that I believed he was in heaven. He was still gone. My first step towards the mormon exit was when members I knew who I thought were my friends, basically told me it was all ok because he was now in a better place. I’ve seen mormons almost happy when people die, because of the blessings of the afterlife, or whatever. It’s not normal. It’s sick.

The cog dis of grief and Mormon piety. Mormonism wins.

RPackham Wrote:
------------------------------------------------------
> Or, as Mark Twain commented, he had not existed
> during the millions of years before he was born,
> and it had caused him no inconvenience at all.

But Mark Twain did exist physically in all of those millions of years. Nothing in him was new. In fact, Mark Twain still exists today, as parts of plants, animals, worms and particles of air and Earth. He also exists in his writing and present day influence.

It would have been extremely inconvenient for him if none of him had existed for millions of years before his birth. If just one of his thousands of forebears were not to exist, then Mark Twain would never have existed either.

Chain of Existence Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> RPackham Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> ----
> > Or, as Mark Twain commented, he had not existed
> > during the millions of years before he was
> born,
> > and it had caused him no inconvenience at all.
>
> But Mark Twain did exist physically in all of
> those millions of years.

Yes, the elements that later became Mark Twain existed, but "Mark Twain" (or Samuel Clemens) did NOT exist. I cannot claim that a bowl of flour and some butter and eggs are "cake" until it actually becomes cake.

Of course we return physically to the elements from which we grew - that's one of the themes of Bryant's beautiful poem "Thanatopsis":

".... Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock
And to the sluggish clod..."

(complete text at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanatopsis )

RPackham Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What might it be like, to be dead? To exist no
> more?

> What think ye?

Think of all the people you've met in your life. You can't. There is no human capacity for retaining so as to be easily recalled memories of all the human beings you have experienced in your life.

I personally divide my own human experience into my self concept and my self as a creature. And as such I have to consider two deaths. One is the perception of a person that I've created for myself (concept) and included in that what others have me as conceptually. The other is the one as a creature.

Will I die as a creature with my concept melted by age and/or disease? Will my final moments be free of my self concept? Or will it be like you said. All your self in full force and then nothing.

A better question I think is how do you want to go? I don't know. There are upsides to both.

Here is a link to an article that might be of interest to some of the participants on this thread:

https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/phenomena-relating-danger-death-bereavement

I think so much about what we believe depends on the experiences that we've had.

Although I appreciate and even envy the people who have seen loved ones, I spent many years begging and pleading with my deceased loved ones to find some way, if possible, to let me know that they were still out there somewhere and that they were okay.

The people I've known and lost have been a couple of grandmothers, a great-grandmother, a best friend at 16, a few other friends, many aunts and uncles and most recently, my beloved father.

I've even read many accounts of people who have witnessed pets who've passed away. When my last cat died, I was still holding out some hope when it came to my faith. I not only believed, but downright expected to feel her still jump up on my bed after I'd gotten into bed the night that I lost her. But, nothing happened. I was actually shocked.

If anyone ever would have let me know that they were still out there, it would have been my Dad. His ashes rest in an urn on a little cabinet beside my bed. I've tried so hard to connect with him, out of desperate hope. Again, I've felt nothing after two years.

I gave up.

And if I do contemplate that someone actually did have a loved one visit them, then I'm left wondering why my loved ones didn't love me enough to give me the same gift and that's hard to deal with.

So maybe it's understandable that I don't believe, while someone else does. It's all about the experiences we've had or haven't had.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/14/2019 06:48PM by Greyfort.

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died
By Emily Dickinson

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air -
Between the Heaves of Storm -

The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset - when the King
Be witnessed - in the Room -

I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away
What portion of me be
Assignable - and then it was
There interposed a Fly -

With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -
Between the light - and me -
And then the Windows failed - and then
I could not see to see -

Beautiful.

Death = victory over life.

My only concern is that I won't do it right; that I will be "that guy" out of the billions who have ever lived and died to screw it up.

But I figure if my Uncle Jimbo (who had sawed off the tree branch he was sitting on) could do it, how hard could it be?

Being self aware suggests to me that there is an essence that survives death and moves on to something else. Reincarnation makes sense to me.

Leaving Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Being self aware suggests to me that there is an
> essence that survives death and moves on to
> something else. Reincarnation makes sense to me.

The claims of reincarnation have been debated in the past on this forum. But, Leaving, since you say that it makes sense to you, I thought you might enjoy reading this comprehensive article about it:

https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/reincarnation

Mom was pretty sure death was a moot point. We were all (except me, of course, a point she brought up as often as she though did not exceed the bounds of good taste) were going to be twinkled when Jeebus returned to western Missouri in the year 2000, give or take.

Now there are only two of us left to be twinkled. The rest shuffled off this mortal coil in the customary fashion. I wonder if they were disappointed?

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Now there are only two of us left to be twinkled.
> The rest shuffled off this mortal coil in the
> customary fashion. I wonder if they were
> disappointed?

If they were it probably didn't last long.

One thing nice about death is that you don't need an appointment; it's first come, first served and there's hardly ever a line.

"I was aware as the anesthesiologist placed the mask over my nose and mouth for just an instant, and then the very next thing I was aware of, in what seemed to be no time at all, was waking up in the recovery room. During that hour or so of surgery I was aware of nothing. I was not dreaming. I simply did not have any awareness of existence. It was, I think, like being dead."

The same happened to me. It was not a bad thing. When people talk about death, this is how I tend to think of it. For me, the idea of living forever seems like more of a hell than anything. Never being able to get off the merry-go-round would be miserable. I recall there was a Star Trek Voyager episode that dealt with this. An omnipotent being (Q), having done everything there was to do, wanted to die.

eternal1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
An
> omnipotent being (Q), having done everything there
> was to do, wanted to die.

While one could possibly conceive of an omnipotent being having done everything there was to do, it is hard for me to conceive that us non-omnipotent types would come to a point where we had done everything there was to do. The creativity in the world and universe seems to be contantly generating new things to comprehend, explore, and appreciate.

I sometimes hear people say that they don't want to live beyond age 70, or age 80, or age 90, etc. I usually ask them how they would feel if they came to that age and were still in excellent health, had great relationships, and had more that they wanted to learn, experience, and accomplish. Would they still say that was the right time to die?

I recently saw the movie, Midsommar, in which the pagan cult members were required to commit suicide at age 72 -- the age at which one's life was considered to be complete. That seemed absurd and tragic to me.

Requiring suicide is absurd, allowing suicide is not.

How do you know we won't become omnipotent if we live forever?

eternal1 Wrote:
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> Requiring suicide is absurd, allowing suicide is
> not.
>
> How do you know we won't become omnipotent if we
> live forever?


eternal1,

I was only commenting on *requiring* suicide and made no comment on whether or not it should be allowed.

I don't know that we won't become omnipotent if we live forever. I was not commenting on what we might eventually become if we live forever. My point is that it is hard for me, assuming I would continue on as a non-omnipotent being, to ever reach a point where I had done and experienced everything there is to do (assuming the world and universe continues to generate creativity).

It's a lot of assuming, but, to each their own. We can only guess what death would be like. Personally, I'm okay with the OP's version. I don't need to live forever. Our relatively short, unique existence is one of the things that makes life so precious.

Why do you (and others) keep insisting that the alternatives in this scenario are on the one hand the extreme of final non-existence, and on the other hand living "forever." There is logical and ontological space for a whole range of possibilities here.

The better evaluation is between non-existence and living a "bit longer," however long that "bit" might turn out to be. Suppose in a hypothetical afterlife you can pull the final plug of your existence whenever you want. A forced or necessary immortality is just religious dogma.

Moreover, "non-existence" (the lack of both physical life *and* the dissolution of mind) over some period of time does not necessarily entail permanent non-existence, just as the presumption of non-existence before birth does NOT entail the impossibility of future existence, physical or mental. This is true for all physical systems, and presumably mental systems as well. The universe is far too complex to make any assumptions about the nature of mind and consciousness, and the stability or instability of personal identity over time.

(Read, for example, "The Physics of Immortality" by Frank J. Tipler, as well as any number of "multiverse" physicists, like Sean Carroll, who insist that the multiverse contains many versions of each of us existing in actual, alternative universes.)

LOL! Because death is absurd to hominids with overdeveloped self concepts.

"When laughter is born of ignorance, tis only the fool who is amused."

You should keep that in mind.

Your guesses about death are as good as any. As I said, I'm okay with the OP's version, if you're not, that's okay too.

eternal1 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Requiring suicide is absurd, allowing suicide is
> not.

Nihilism = Rejecting suicide is absurd, assisting suicide is not.

Theism = Recognizing suicide is absurd, attempting suicide is not.

Mormonism = Attempting suicide is absurd, rejecting suicide is not.

"A social milieu organized to help people find adequate housing and life goals of learning, loving, and working provides genuine choices between life and death. It is the position of the Church that when there are such choices, the majority of people, including those who are suicidal, will choose life. This is not to deny inequity, unfairness, conflict, instability, evil, aging, and illness of loved ones, but to provide a basis for behavior so that when crises occur, they will be seen as resolvable."
https://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Suicide

In my TBM days, I thought I knew what happens when we die. Now I freely admit that I don't know, and that lack of knowledge is far more peaceful to me than any "knowledge" I once had.

A decade or so ago, I had a heart attack and had a stent implanted. A few weeks later, I was again having chest pain, so I was taken to the hospital. I knew that about 30% of people with a failed stent don't make it to the hospital alive, so I knew there was a chance I was going to die. I was panicked for a moment, and then I relaxed. The thought that relaxed me had nothing to do with religion or spirituality. I just thought about the fact that everybody dies. I knew that if I was about to die, I would just be having an experience that everyone has.

Mortality has a 100% fatality rate. That fact makes death not so scary.

CrispingPin Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Mortality has a 100% fatality rate. That fact
> makes death not so scary.

Mortality has a 100% fantasy reality rate. That fact makes death not so scary.

I have to remind me that the import I give to my life is inflated, full of fear and escapism. In my flight from my own morality I often forget to notice the people around me. In their eyes I can see more of reality than I can ever with my own.

Absolutely Nothing ...say it again




https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX7V6FAoTLc

Did you consult the dead before posting that?

No! I am pissed off at the dead!

They are dead to me!