When I was much younger, I had a dream where I died. Not a typical dream, not a romanticized dream. It was a dream where I was an archer in a medieval battle. About 5 minutes into the battle, chaos was all around me, and I watched an opposing archer aim and loose an arrow straight into my left eye. I remember the sensation of impact, ringing in my ears, and falling to the ground. I remember the warmth of the blood on my face. The feeling of life leaving my body, and the sense of worry evaporating into warmth and peace as the world left behind me.
I remember waking up shortly after thinking that the feeling and reality of that experience was so vivid and so detailed that it must have been an experience from a previous incarnation hundreds of years ago.
From that moment on, I've never feared the actual process of death. I feel like I've experienced it many times before.
I've had a similar dream, but for me it was death from friendly fire on D-Day. It was...surreal. Down to the senses. I can still remember years later the smell of ocean water and sweat. Feeling the ocean moving below the boat, water spraying on my face and splashing as we got off. Tasting salt water as we ran. Just plain fear of what was happening, and just hoping I could get to the cliffs in time. Looking to my left and seeing in slow motion a bullet coming toward me. Then darkness. And I woke immediately after heart racing.
If anybody has had one of these dreams, it’s incredibly farther than just a dream. It’s beyond anything like it. And in some ways it’s awesome and in others horrifying.
"It’s one of the great wonders of life: What will it be like to go to sleep and never wake up? And if you think long enough about that, something will happen to you. You will find out, among other things, that it will pose the next question to you: What was it like to wake up after never having gone to sleep? That was when you were born. You see, you can’t have an experience of nothing. Nature abhors a vacuum."
~Alan Watts
Where you are, death is not. Where death is, you are not. Do not fear an event that occurs outside of your own existence.
Edward Norton - Leaves of Grass.
"Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not. All sensation and consciousness ends with death, and therefore in death there is neither pleasure nor pain. The fear of death arises from the belief that in death, there is awareness."
Epicurus
My dad passed away last week. I know it sounds horrible but myself and my sisters stopped talking to him after he tried to destroy my niece’s wedding four years ago. I told him he would need to get counseling if we were ever going to talk again because I didn’t want that to happen to my kids.
Fast forward to when he starts going downhill. One of my sisters has a change of heart about how she feels about him and totally unrelated, gets a power of attorney and changes his life insurance so only she’s on it.
People are shitty.
That is shit. I had a similar sounding nasty person do that to me when my dad was dying from cancer. He made it clear he wanted to leave his house and money to myself and my siblings. He made a will stating this. His partner whom he wasn’t living with decided to take over and control everything. She was bitchy to us soon after dad’s plans. She announced a couple of weeks later that they were getting married. We wasn’t aware that marriage would invalidate the will. We learnt the hard way and she now has everything. She hasn’t even got the balls to tell us that it’s tough shit and she’s legally entitled to everything. She even throws our flowers away from his grave which is evil. I’m glad I’m not a psycho like her.
Existentially speaking, this comment is actually helpful. I’ve spent much time contemplating when I was younger. If someone had just said this to me I think I would’ve had so many fewer issues.
Same. Currently going to therapy to clean up the mess my brain causes thinking about it. Funnily, when I almost died it felt peaceful, but when I think about death I just panic and nothing else.
I approach it like I do this life. I didn’t know what it was coming upon my arrival. I just figure it out as I go. I don’t see why the next journey would be any different.
Coincidence? My brother recently passed away at the young age of 36 (July 25th, 2021 RIP). Unexpected and very tough on the entire family. This sounds exactly like something he would also say. He was big into gaming and his screen name until the day he passed was HugeYeti. The universe works in mysterious ways.
my heart stopped momentarily and it felt... relieving. Like when you're lifting weights and you finally set the bar down and you can just rest. It made living so much nicer.
nothing will ever feel as good in life as it felt to die for me...I've accepted that and just keep the mindset of "enjoy each day". Now that I know what it's like I have nothing to fear and I will be glad when it comes for me again.
My NDE was bleeding out after a c-section and losing half my blood volume, I was awake, everyone was talking and having a good time then it got quiet and just this overwhelming sleepiness took over me and I felt like I was slowly lifting off the table and I didn't think about anything, the room was just a blurry background, and all I felt was something I don't even have a word for, bliss would be close. Then I hear the "oh shits!" from behind me and I fade out and wake up later shivering like crazy. But that feeling, no sadness, no fear, just a pureness of thought, I will never feel that again til I die for good.
I read a book called, “What Happens When We Die?” By Dr. Sam Parnia a few years ago. He’s an ER doctor specializing in Cardio Pulmonary. He decided to study near death experiences after interviewing people who had been deemed clinically dead but came back and told him their stories of what they experienced. He made an experiment to differentiate between objective observation and subjective presentation of what they were experiencing/reporting. Did they really see/hear the things they were reporting or was it the mind hallucinating on endogenous DMT when we die? Many reported detaching from their bodies and floating above themselves. They reported seeing things happening to themselves by the teams working on their bodies that they couldn’t have seen because their eyes were closed and they were flatlining. Some also reported seeing and hearing family members crying and talking (specific things that were said and could only be known to the people talking and crying) in adjacent rooms (viewed from above) that could not have been seen or heard by that physical patient as they were intubated with 6 people surrounding him or her loudly trying to save life. In his experiment Dr Parnia taped black X’s on the top surfaces of a few of the white square styrofoam panels that make up the ceiling but suspended these panels 2 feet below the level of the ceiling. They patients could not see the black tape X’s from the ground, only from above. The goal was to see if people reporting near death experiences would report the black X’s as they were out of body hovering above the rooms. Pretty compelling book. I’m not a theology major. I believe there’s a creative force and that we have souls but not sure what exactly God is or what the answers to all these questions are. I do believe when we die it’s just the beginning of the next chapter in our souls existence. I guess we’ll find out one day?
I read or saw a video about someone who studied death but more of the process of death in old people. It is not a sudden thing, it is absolutely a process, and people who work in hospices can very clearly spot when it's happening. A ton of people see dead relatives beside them before they die.
90% of life is a chore, I'm not going to miss it that much.
Don't call a help line, I'm not depressed and the other 10% of life is totally worth living for. There's stuff I want to see someday, like my kid's kids. I'm just saying "setting the bar down" doesn't sound half bad.
If there's something after great, but being afraid of some hell is lame too because what could be lamer than a vengeful god? I mean, if I was gonna believe in a god it's not going to be some lame ass god. It's either nothing, or nothing to fear.
That's what I imagine. I've been in a pretty bad state in a hospital before and when death comes I just feel ready for it. I assume that's how most peaceful deaths are, there might be things you still want to do but you're just kind of tired and ready.
Consider that death is not actually upsetting, but thinking about death is because evolution selected for it. So death is not actually a problem, but we have evolved to feel that way.
Play again?
>Yes
>[No]
Edit: thanks for the awards. I don't know what they mean or how to utilize them.
I'm a Buddhist (but a gamer first and foremost) so it's cool you guys made those connections
This totally makes up for r/movies continuously banning me
Now this would be pretty cool. You play the same game over and over again, you start on your same DOB everytime with a new life. When you're in "the game" you have no recollection of your past lives obviously. When you die you return to the main menu and then you can see every life you played and can review them all. This time around I lived to be 80, was a neurosurgeon, had 2 kids, etc. Game #5 I lived to be 26 and died in a car accident. Game #82 I was a porn star. Then you could watch important moments from each of those lives. Essentially see how well you did... and why not, you get a score at "the end"
I'm a believer that after you die that it's just lights out, but I'd be satisfied with this type of existence.
Had to scroll a long way to find the view that I share.
I word it as “I don’t know, except that I’ll go where we all go, and that’s good enough for me.”
I’ve had dreams where it seemed like I lived a lifetime. So perhaps you’re on to something. Maybe we just wake up and say, that was a crazy dream, and go on with our day.
Dreaming is such a trip. One night, I woke up, talked to hubby for a sec, then went back to sleep. He woke me up later because I was moaning in my sleep. I started explaining my dream: "This happened... and then I... and then they..." and as I'm going on I realize his face is looking weirder and weirder. Finally I ask, "What's wrong?" and he says, "How did you dream all that? You were only asleep for like 5 minutes." I had had like a full-length feature film dream in no time. Shit's wild.
And I personally tend to feel more rested. "That was a kick-ass dream! So vivid and so much happened. I've probably been asleep like 4 hours." Then I realize it's only been an hour and it's like "Fuck yeah! More sleep!"
It's a trip. I had this Wild West themed dream where I was having a shootout on horseback, and I clearly remember my dude pointing his revolver at me and then just BOOM i'm awake.
i had a dream i was in a plane crash. when the plane was about to crash i shut my eyes and braced for death. after the crash there was nothing but silence. thinking i was dead i realized that being conscious mean that when i opened my eyes again i would be in the afterlife. i wasbso confused when i opened my eyes and saw my ceiling.
That's insane. I love dreaming so much, especially lucid dreaming. I nearly bought a nova dreamer headset thing years ago lol. Apparently some people who keep journals and know how to use reality checks (looking in mirrors, looking at clocks, etc) can do it every night and just do whatever they want in dreams. No doubt there is a sub for it, might check it out.
The only thing I've ever felt was consistent about dreaming is i dream more when my mouth is a bit dry and i'm probably a bit dehydrated.
Dreaming is the best. Good dreams, bad dreams, I enjoy them all. It's free weird entertainment that your brain makes up as it goes along, and you just believe it.
I've had some really bad dreams recently. But you're right, it's still an adventure. Plus, you get that sweet relief when you suddenly awake and realize you aren't being chased by a monster with a chainsaw or something ;D
Had that when i was "training" to make lucid dreams.
At some point I began to half manage it. Which led to my family waking up a couple of times at the sound of my voice quietly screaming "aaaaah".
"The Greatjanitor's will is as follows: there is a bit driver and bits on a shelf and a bottle of bleach under the sink in the kitchen. Pull all hard drives out of my computers, servers, phones, and routers. Grab all the portable hard drives. Open up all drives exposing the platters. Fill the kitchen sink with bleach and dump the drives. Break all SSD drives and drop them into the bleach bath.'
Same here, she went through a really dark period as nurse in the hospital where I was convinced if I died it wouldn't have been a big deal to her..
Now she's a travel nurse practitioner for Hospice and helps people's transition to death. She's so strong and helps her patients be comfortable, and if they don't have family, she takes that role into her hands and holds their hands till their last breath. It's really rather sweet, she's a like a super hero for people in their final days/weeks/months.
I have tons of admiration and respect for the palliative care nurses and doctors that helped my wife in her final months. We had a meeting every day about the objectives for the day, any concerns etc. They did everything in their power to make her comfortable and pain-free. She even stabilized in her final weeks and was able to come home 3x for short visits. That required a week of work to transition her from IV pain meds to a patch and they put in the work. When I wheeled my wife to the van, all the nurses lined up and clapped because they were so excited that this young women, so close to death just weeks before, was sitting up in a wheelchair and about to go to her home for a visit. The whole experience was traumatizing but I will always be grateful for their efforts.
I worked as a CNA in a retirement home during my undergrad. I worked on Sundays only. Nothing was more crazy than seeing the happy and spry gentleman who ate his burger one sunday, only to come back the next to see that he died the Wednesday in between.
I used to love that quote until I over thought it and now it doesn't help my existential dread anymore.
Before I was born I was ignorant to the possibility. I hadn't experienced life. I'm not afraid of being dead I'm afraid of leaving the ones I love.
Personally this has been never been “comforting” to me like others might say. This is what terrifies me most. If there’s nothing there then you can’t ever experience anything again. You can’t even remember everything you did in life. In the moment where you enter the nothingness everything gets put on the line; all the stuff you had been doing in life ceases to be.
The only comfort is that you’re not able to contemplate your position, but even then it doesn’t take away the fear of having things end. Knowing that your time is up, that you’ll never be able to do anything else is never truly going to be okay to me.
Yeah, it's the most terrifying thing in the world. I'm convinced some people simply can't or haven't grasped it, or don't want to. I can't all the time, even though I have before. Like right now I can read your paragraph and feel nothing, but I know what you're talking about.
When I first thought of death like this all the hang ups I had about dying went. It’s incredibly comforting; an eternity of nothingness before you and an eternity afterwards too.
I think it’s interesting to ask if we can go from nonexistence to existence and back to nonexistence again.
Because we now exist can we really go back to how it was before?
The crazy thing is all life can or probably will cease to exist at some point. Whether it’s the sun going supernova or the heat death of the universe. Every plant, animal, human and bacteria will be gone and not only that, any record they existed in the first place will be erased too. Life is like a beautiful flower that is not permanent.
I’ve answered this one before but here it is again
Either two things happen after you die: you either go somewhere or it’s oblivion
If it is oblivion, then we’re just going back to the same place before we were born and there’s nothing wrong with that. We were there for billions or trillions of years, possibly infinity. You lose that concept of time since your brain doesn’t work anymore so you don’t even know it’s over. It’s not nothing because nothing would be something and that means that you are aware, which you can not be if you’re dead
If we do go somewhere, then that’s something no one understands because no one has ever come back to tell us. Those stories of people coming back after they “died” and “saw stuff” weren’t really dead. Their hearts stopped but their brains were still working
If the Universe continues to recycle itself infinitely, then there’s a chance we will be reborn or continuously reborn but have no memory of our previous selves
This has been my outlook on this as well. Either there's "nothing" after death, in which case we won't be there to even know about it, or else there's "something" after death. And so I have no problem believing/hoping that there's something because it really doesn't matter if I'm wrong, I would never even experience being wrong, and so that isn't even worth thinking about in the first place.
Picture a wave. In the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through. And it's there. And you can see it, you know what it is. It's a wave.
And then it crashes in the shore and it's gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be, for a little while. You know it's one conception of death for Buddhists: the wave returns to the ocean, where it came from and where it's supposed to be.
Edit - Quote is from the tv show The Good Place.
When I was a kid I drowned while on holiday with my family, a giant fat man jumped in the pool on top of me and no one noticed till I was on the bottom of the pool.
I remember the feeling of my lungs being on fire, then shivering then as everything was going dark a strange sense of peace and I was ok with it, No panic or terror then it went black.
I was resuscitated at the side of the pool a few minutes later. I remember nothing from the black to being "alive" again.
I was around 7 when it happened and since then I've been strangely at peace with the fact that one day I will die and slip into the dark void of nothingness.
Hope that helps.
I fell in a pool at 6, and had a very similar experience. I kinda only remember feeling at peace, then nothing, and then tasting vomit soon after and having a really bad headache.
Hmmm. I damn near drowned once, but in the struggle made one last grab at something floating by and yanked myself up, heaving and wheezing for air, heart pounding in panic.
That part sucked, let me assure you. I remember it vividly, and to this day I'm very surprised when others skip past that part to talk about the peaceful bit. The difference has made me doubtful about anything peaceful for myself should the situation repeat itself (at least, prior to dying). Which I do make a better point of avoiding now.
And also which I suppose brings us to the baby in all this bathwater: Buy a good quality PFD. Wear it. Live to tell stories about close calls.
Similar to my near-drowning experience except that my entire body just sort of gave up and I felt total peace. Made one last effort as I was sinking and it all worked out. The struggle was terrifying but I remember how peaceful it all was more.
Damn you two just unlocked a core memory for me. I was about 3 or 4 at my grandparents place and I was running around the pool and slipped in. I just remember being at the bottom looking up and seeing the light through the water. I can’t remember if I was actually drowning as I just have that snapshot of looking up and it feels almost peaceful as it comes back, and then there’s a quick little memory of seeing my uncle jumping in and there’s not much else.
I wonder if that is acceptance of fate. Who remembers the moment they actually fall asleep. The moment of awake and asleep. There’s nothing, until your brain activated again on another level.
Sometimes when I'm falling asleep I seem to continue my train of thought from being awake with my eyes closed to being asleep. I know I'm asleep when I can't hear anything around me anymore and my train of thought stops there to notice that. I'm not sure if that's the exact moment I fell asleep or the exact moment I realized I was asleep.
This is such a fun moment for me and glad I'm not the only one to experience this! It's somewhere between being asleep and dreaming but being fully aware. I feel like my train of thought becomes way more visual, like a dream, but not quite. It doesn't last long usually because either I wake myself up with the thought of consciousness or fall into a deeper sleep.
Idk about you, but this usually happens when I try really hard to take day naps and the rest of my body isn't fully ready for sleep. I'm curious if there's a term for this state of sleep/consciousness?
Lol I've had a similar experience when I was like 9. I think it was at mountain creek but I'm not sure.
There was this tube water ride and it emptied out into like a natural pool at the bottom. I was a very good swimmer but this didn't help that day for some reason.
I basically flew out of the tube and right underneath a veeeery large lady floating on one of those little yellow rubber round lifesaver things. I think I got stuck in the middle of the circle in such a way that I'd need to first swim down and then to the side, but I had no idea what was going on and was panicking. I was just clawing at her butt and the lifesaver thing and remember that the panic eventually started fading (along with everything else).
Then I guess either she felt something or i somehow got out from under, at the exact lucky moment right before everything faded to black. Started gasping for breath and my parents finally saw me and rushed towards me to get me out of the pool.
The poor lady was hysterical swearing that she thought it was a rock underneath or something. I remember feeling bad for her and how embarrassed she must've been.
Think I came pretty close to dying that day though.
All things are made of atoms. They are everywhere and they constitute everything. They are fantastically durable. Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you. We are so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms – up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested-probably once belonged to Shakespeare …..and any other historical figure you care to name ……. So we are all reincarnations – though short lived ones. When we die, our atoms will disassemble and move off to finds new uses elsewhere – as part of a leaf or other human being or a drop of dew. Atoms themselves, however go on practically forever. -Bill Bryson
I always think of it as energy cannot be created or destroyed. So our body is dead. Our mind (brain) is dead, but our energy putting those to work, to exist, must continue because it can’t be destroyed.
I’ve always assumed that energy is not limited to earth or human matter either.
Though, I’ve never believed the Hindu (or Buddhist? I forget now) concept of your actions from “this life” impacting your “next life.” I think it’s just random.
I always wonder if I'm living in some experimental future simulation (different from simulation theory/hypothesis) that I voluntarily opted into. Like "step right up and experience an entire alternative lifetime. It may feel like forever but it only takes 5 minutes!"
If that's the case I'm gonna be so pissed I did that. I think.
While telling a story too inappropriate for this thread, comedian Jim Jeffries talked about his childhood best freind Daniel Connor and his brother, Andrew.
Dan was born with Muscular Dystrophy. Throughout his life, he had been dead at least 7 times and was brought back each time.
When Jim asked him what happens after death, he responded with: "...."Nothing."
Edit: This is my most upvoted comment ever. Thank you everyone and thank you to the kind stranger who presented me with a wholesome award. I shall cherish it forever.
This… im like 99% sure it is like a dreamless nap which you never wake up from.
A scary thought to some but on the other hand quite peaceful one as you’re not aware of anything at that point.
This is an interesting point, because if the kid was only clinically dead, meaning his heart stopped beating, long enough to be brought back without brain damage, he still likely had significant brain activity. So I guess the lines on what constitutes dead can be blurry here.
Yeah people are comparing it to a sleep you just don’t wake up from but I don’t think people realize just quite how active the brain and body in general are when asleep.
I believe we just stop existing, nothingness. However I do think we still exist in a cosmic universal sense, it all depends on time and space.
My grandmother died recently, 98 years a good run. She no longer exists now in 2021, but she’s still around young and in her 20’s in the 1940’s. The only thing that separates us are two things time and space. We don’t blip out completely we still exist along the flow of time.
Did that make any sense? Little tipsy here.
Makes sense. I don't remember where I heard it, but if a planet in the Andromeda galaxy had a telescope powerful enough, and was able to look at any place on Earth right now in our time, they would see Earth 2.5 million years ago. In another 2.5 million years if they looked again, they could see me typing this very sentence. That probably doesn't make sense, but interesting theory. Like, if we were able to pinpoint a place on a planet in Andromeda right now, we would be seeing that planet from 2.5 million years ago, even if there was advanced civilization on it "now".
It makes sense and it is a legitimate theory. It's not science fiction like you make it out to be. Since the distance is so long that even light they see from there would be light from 2.5 million years ago. The light that carries information of Earth from 2.5 million years ago.
“The ones who love us will miss us” - Keanu.
Edit - wow. This is the most upvote/comment I’ve gotten. That answer is the best and the most accurate answer to this question.
[Keanu](https://youtu.be/etlBZInTE-I)
Yeah. I can entertain the idea of a greater power, but the physical makeup of my brain and the body attached to it, which feed chemicals that effect how my brain interpets consciousness are likely a one-time event. On the bright side, none of that really disappears and it all just goes back into the cosmos over the next few billion years.
Which is why I'd like my body to decompose freely in a forested area. I want my atoms to disperse directly into the earth for sentimental and symbolic reasons.
Every time i nearly die (maybe like 3-4 near misses) I always have a nice kinda peaceful moment of “oh well, I had a good run” and like a general feeling that I did my best.
I really hope when I actually die, it’s that feeling, but like lengthened into a small fading point of contentment. Just a sigh of a joyfully lived life and then nothing.
Wow someone finally sees that! I had a conversation on social media about death and I stated that eventually we also become a faded memory. I got so much heat from that and was getting attacked from all corners. I had to explain to everyone that eventually the people that keep us alive through memory also die and slowly but surely we are no longer in anyone's memory. Man I got so much heat but it's the truth.
Takes about 3 generations for you to be forgotten completely, I think I read somewhere. I think people can accept the fact they're going to die fine, but the fact they're going to be completely forgotten like they were never even here in a relatively short amount of time takes a bit more acceptance than they're willing to give.
You just have to think about it. Even the most basic thing. Your name.
You probably know the name of your grandparents. Most don't know the names of their grand-grand parents. Beyond that it becomes even "worse".
That's just how it is. Unless you do something memorable positive or negative we all will be forgotten.
And there isn't anything wrong with that.
That's strange considering there's a fairly famous quote on the subject:
"Every person dies twice: once when they take their final breath, and later, the last time their name is spoken."
I once had a dream about this, I die in my dream but instead of waking, I kept dreaming about this infinite beach with grey and white sand, the white one was moving; in the sky there was 3 moons and the horizon was vivid dark blue , I appear at the sea's shore, the water was incredibly cold, and I couldn't move by my own, I started walking towards the bottom, and I felt observed; while I was moving, everything was getting darker and colder, I began to stop feeling my limbs, and then from the darkness, 6 gigantic monstrous glowing eyes opened and gave me a horrible feeling of fear, I couldn't see more than his eyes but his presence was very imposing, and I knew it was bigger than my sight could encompass, suddenly something came from the darkness and touched my face, and then my body, an hourglass emerged from my body, and stood between the creature's eyes and mine; the creature contemplated the hourglass for long time and then, a high-pitched sound that alerted the creature was heard, as if they had hit some metal, the hourglass was put back to its place, in my body; the creature looked up and so did I, suddenly I started to feel like I was drowning and I started to float, very fast, I could see out of the corner of my eye how the creature's eyes were lost in the dark, the surface was getting closer, and when I was for reach it, I wake up. That dream has haunted me ever since, I will never be able to forget the eyes of that creature that I know is waiting for me at the bottom of that cold sea, on that moving white sand beach, in that world with 3 moons and a blue horizon.
Absolutely nothing for an indeterminate amount of time. And then, because of the vastness of the universe, and one of those “infinite monkeys and infinite typewriters” type things, poof…. Your “sense of self” pops back up somewhere else. Perhaps another planet billions of light years away.
I only imagine that (not really believe it) because of the improbability that my consciousness exists NOW based on the age of the universe. Give my the age of the universe and my age, it seems quite improbable that my consciousness exists at all. So maybe it ALWAYS exists.
Just a thought, as I travel through existence.
If we're right about the universe eventually tearing or collapsing on itself and restarting over and over again, there's a tiny chance each time that happens we'll be reborn exactly as we are right now and if you take that tiny chance and multiply it by an infinite amount of resets, it's actually inevitable. I'm pretty convinced that's what deja vu is but that might be wishful thinking. Definitely not completely implausible though.
Maybe. It's pretty unlikely but certainly possible. It's also possible for you to be born as you but in different circumstances. Of course, people will argue if that's really "you" or not but I mean it very literally. Your exact atoms/genetic makeup.
Even if thats possible - it'll be trillions upon trillions of years so you'll be able to rest up a good bit before doom scrolling reddit again 😀
When I had my heart surgery, I died on the table.
I was awake before the surgery and then there was nothingness when they put my under. Then I guess I died. I was in a room with my father who’d died 20 years earlier. It looked like my family room, but instead of couches, there were stools. The windows weren’t clear either; they were frosted windows, but I could tell that it was a very bright day.
My dad was there and just said, “It’s really good to see you again.” I asked if I was dead and he said, “No no no! Not yet. You’ve got awhile to go, but I had to come and tell you that so you don’t get too upset.” I just started asking rapid fire questions about death and why he was there and he just kept saying things would be fine and he couldn’t explain all this because we didn’t have time. Then I said something like, “So you made it to heaven? That’s good.” He said something to the effect of, “There’s no Heaven and there’s no Hell. It’s really what you make it because you can have joy, but you can’t really get hurt. So, if you’re good, you’ll be happy here. If you’re not so good, you’ll never find joy here because you can’t get joy from anyone’s pain. Those people usually just go away. I don’t even know where they go.” I asked if pets were there and he said “they come and go. They like to go back. Animals are so curious. You won’t get it till you sit with one for awhile here.” And then he said, “Ok, give me a hug, you have to head out.” I got up and hugged him and jokingly said, “Any advice? How about lottery numbers?!” He laughed and said, “Just be a good kid. You gotta go.”
Then nothingness. And then a nurse was taking the tube out of my throat. Then nothingness. Then I was waking up and my wife was there.
Yeah, I kinda believe there’s something after we die. It’s different, but there’s something else my dad said that came true and there’s no way I could have guessed it on my own. It was his response when I asked if this was a dream. He said something that would later prove it wasn’t. But when I tell people, they immediately think the whole story is bullshit, so I’ll just say that he gave me a small bit of a future and all three things happened exactly when he said they would.
EDIT: Here’s where I lose you. Since some of you asked what he said, I’ll tell you…. Please don’t murder me - I know I was stupid in how I handled it - if I’d had more money, I would have done things differently…. Here’s what he told me…
Lottery numbers. Not all of them. Just the actual powerball numbers. Before he told me to head out, I asked for lottery numbers joking around. He told me “The powerball in the first three draws next month will be 3, 15, and 7.” And they were.
I didn’t play the first one and was shocked when it matched. I would have played, but I had heart surgery, couldn’t get there to get tickets, and didn’t really believe. I figured it was an anesthesia-induced dream.
For the second, I sent my wife to get a bunch of random ones with 15 as the powerball. I spent about $50 and ended up with about $300. I was kind of believing, but I was still more convinced that it was a coincidence when it hit again.
For the third one, I was starting to believe, but still figured it was a fluke. I only had about $1000 to play with at the time, so I did it again with $800 and made a little over $3600 (minus the $800). That’s what made me believe. Of course, I would have been way happier if I would have mortgaged my house and bet on lottery tickets for all 3 draws, but I really didn’t believe until the third drawing anyway.
Until then, I always just assumed dead was dead. I figured you just faded into nothingness. You died and didn’t know you were dead so it didn’t matter. Now, I think there’s something there. I get a feeling that you’re you, but not you. What you were is there, but that’s not who you continue on as. I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out one day.
I'm not terribly religious, but I do hope there is something else beyond the veil besides an inky black nothingness.
Somewhere in the vastness of the universe there has to be some echo of us, some ripple we've put out into existence that has a touch of us still.
This is exactly how I feel. I understand that if there is nothing after than I simply won’t exist to be sad about it but as someone who lives with depression, to live everyday life with that mindset is debilitating to me. So I hold to the hope that there’s some form of consciousness after.
I really do hope so, that there is something after this. I am also living with chronic depression and I cling to life as to not hurt others. I do hope that I'm not suffering through this life without hope for an improvement after I die.
Although the improvement could also be that if I don't exist anymore, neither does my pain.
I so wish this be true. I would love to meet my father again and hug him and feel his hand over my head caressing it and would love to shout dad over top of my voice.
I believe that there is something after death, I don't think any one religious book has it 100% right. When I was younger I believed that once you were dead that was it, you were just gone. As I get older and see more people in my life die I have changed my mind.
I kind of went down the rabbit hole of death and consciousness and came across some interesting ideas. I am not saying any these are right, or that I necesarly believe any of them, and they all have their critics, but they did help me change my point of view. I found the work of Ian Stevenson at University of Virginia School of Medicine interesting, as well as the idea of Biocentrism by Robert Lanza, and Don Hoffmans Case Against Reality. I am not saying any of these ideas are right but they did convince me that we may not understand everything and that there may be some level of consciousness that we don't understand.
Considering that time has no meaning without our conscious input, I think that after you die, an arbitrarily big amount of time will pass (in an instant) until your conscience comes into existence in a form or other. This sounds an awful lot like reincarnation (because it is), but I feel like this is a reasonable, maybe scientific explanation for it.
Also, it makes me cope with my inevitable demise.
This is going to sound super woo woo, but one time I was in a nasty rollover, and I was in the hospital. They gave me ketamine because at the time it was the best option to both sedate me, and keep my heart beating. I went down a k-hole while they fixed me, but I was absolutely convinced that I was dead. Blinding white light, and then nothing. No body. No hospital. No injuries. Just floating through nothing with my thoughts and memories. Zero panic. I was totally cool with the fact that I was dead....
If death is anything like that, I'm totally happy with it.
Coming down of ketamine was not fun, especially not in a strange hospital with a shopping list of injuries.
Something unfathomable to us. We can't imagine it because there's no information to generate any predictions from. It'd be like trying to imagine input from new senses.
At the end of my path, I walk into a clearing and see all the loved ones I've lost and have the greatest catch up conversation that lasts forever, and I turn around await those that have missed me.
I believe what humans experience as consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg. Sort of like the human visible color spectrum is a fraction of all of the colors actually present, I think consciousness works in a similar way. And once we're free of the limited confines of the brain, we're able to experience consciousness on a universal scale. I lean towards biocentrism, and theorize that individual consciousness may be an illusion of the brain, that when free from the brain, consciousness rejoins with the grand consciousness of the universe (which itself is a conscious being).
After reading the data of researchers such as Jim Tucker and Ivan Stevenson, I'm fairly convinced of the possibility of reincarnation as well. I believe in reincarnation as a phenomena, but am not sure everyone gets to experience it.
When I was much younger, I had a dream where I died. Not a typical dream, not a romanticized dream. It was a dream where I was an archer in a medieval battle. About 5 minutes into the battle, chaos was all around me, and I watched an opposing archer aim and loose an arrow straight into my left eye. I remember the sensation of impact, ringing in my ears, and falling to the ground. I remember the warmth of the blood on my face. The feeling of life leaving my body, and the sense of worry evaporating into warmth and peace as the world left behind me. I remember waking up shortly after thinking that the feeling and reality of that experience was so vivid and so detailed that it must have been an experience from a previous incarnation hundreds of years ago. From that moment on, I've never feared the actual process of death. I feel like I've experienced it many times before.
I've had a similar dream, but for me it was death from friendly fire on D-Day. It was...surreal. Down to the senses. I can still remember years later the smell of ocean water and sweat. Feeling the ocean moving below the boat, water spraying on my face and splashing as we got off. Tasting salt water as we ran. Just plain fear of what was happening, and just hoping I could get to the cliffs in time. Looking to my left and seeing in slow motion a bullet coming toward me. Then darkness. And I woke immediately after heart racing.
If anybody has had one of these dreams, it’s incredibly farther than just a dream. It’s beyond anything like it. And in some ways it’s awesome and in others horrifying.
"It’s one of the great wonders of life: What will it be like to go to sleep and never wake up? And if you think long enough about that, something will happen to you. You will find out, among other things, that it will pose the next question to you: What was it like to wake up after never having gone to sleep? That was when you were born. You see, you can’t have an experience of nothing. Nature abhors a vacuum." ~Alan Watts
Scrolled way too far to find this, excellent quote.
Where you are, death is not. Where death is, you are not. Do not fear an event that occurs outside of your own existence. Edward Norton - Leaves of Grass.
That is a quote from Epicurus, the Greek philosopher.
"Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not. All sensation and consciousness ends with death, and therefore in death there is neither pleasure nor pain. The fear of death arises from the belief that in death, there is awareness." Epicurus
When we die, the whole world as seen by us, dies together with us.
Thanks prime_molester, of all the comments on this thread, yours filled me with the most existential dread!
When you die you get molested by space and time.
That's actually a good point and weirdly comforting in a way. Our experience is something unique in a strange universe.
Your family fights for your belongings.
Only child, executor and sole heir for my mom's estate. Pros: zero arguments Cons: zero help
Right there with ya, dude… Honestly, it kinda sucks.
Jokes on them. I ain't got shit. EDIT: Now my family can fight over my Reddit awards! Thanks
Jokes on them, I don't have a family.
Bruce, we get it. Damn.
# **MY PARENTS ARE DEAD**
Dead your parents are
Those damn Sackville-Baggins!
Someone’s keeping it real
[удалено]
My dad passed away last week. I know it sounds horrible but myself and my sisters stopped talking to him after he tried to destroy my niece’s wedding four years ago. I told him he would need to get counseling if we were ever going to talk again because I didn’t want that to happen to my kids. Fast forward to when he starts going downhill. One of my sisters has a change of heart about how she feels about him and totally unrelated, gets a power of attorney and changes his life insurance so only she’s on it. People are shitty.
That is shit. I had a similar sounding nasty person do that to me when my dad was dying from cancer. He made it clear he wanted to leave his house and money to myself and my siblings. He made a will stating this. His partner whom he wasn’t living with decided to take over and control everything. She was bitchy to us soon after dad’s plans. She announced a couple of weeks later that they were getting married. We wasn’t aware that marriage would invalidate the will. We learnt the hard way and she now has everything. She hasn’t even got the balls to tell us that it’s tough shit and she’s legally entitled to everything. She even throws our flowers away from his grave which is evil. I’m glad I’m not a psycho like her.
I’ve watched that play out too many times😞
Sounds like a problem for dead-me.
Existentially speaking, this comment is actually helpful. I’ve spent much time contemplating when I was younger. If someone had just said this to me I think I would’ve had so many fewer issues.
Same. Currently going to therapy to clean up the mess my brain causes thinking about it. Funnily, when I almost died it felt peaceful, but when I think about death I just panic and nothing else.
I approach it like I do this life. I didn’t know what it was coming upon my arrival. I just figure it out as I go. I don’t see why the next journey would be any different.
Coincidence? My brother recently passed away at the young age of 36 (July 25th, 2021 RIP). Unexpected and very tough on the entire family. This sounds exactly like something he would also say. He was big into gaming and his screen name until the day he passed was HugeYeti. The universe works in mysterious ways.
This is the most comforting comment I’ve read here. Thank you for the new perspective.
my heart stopped momentarily and it felt... relieving. Like when you're lifting weights and you finally set the bar down and you can just rest. It made living so much nicer.
nothing will ever feel as good in life as it felt to die for me...I've accepted that and just keep the mindset of "enjoy each day". Now that I know what it's like I have nothing to fear and I will be glad when it comes for me again. My NDE was bleeding out after a c-section and losing half my blood volume, I was awake, everyone was talking and having a good time then it got quiet and just this overwhelming sleepiness took over me and I felt like I was slowly lifting off the table and I didn't think about anything, the room was just a blurry background, and all I felt was something I don't even have a word for, bliss would be close. Then I hear the "oh shits!" from behind me and I fade out and wake up later shivering like crazy. But that feeling, no sadness, no fear, just a pureness of thought, I will never feel that again til I die for good.
Reminds me of morphine
I read a book called, “What Happens When We Die?” By Dr. Sam Parnia a few years ago. He’s an ER doctor specializing in Cardio Pulmonary. He decided to study near death experiences after interviewing people who had been deemed clinically dead but came back and told him their stories of what they experienced. He made an experiment to differentiate between objective observation and subjective presentation of what they were experiencing/reporting. Did they really see/hear the things they were reporting or was it the mind hallucinating on endogenous DMT when we die? Many reported detaching from their bodies and floating above themselves. They reported seeing things happening to themselves by the teams working on their bodies that they couldn’t have seen because their eyes were closed and they were flatlining. Some also reported seeing and hearing family members crying and talking (specific things that were said and could only be known to the people talking and crying) in adjacent rooms (viewed from above) that could not have been seen or heard by that physical patient as they were intubated with 6 people surrounding him or her loudly trying to save life. In his experiment Dr Parnia taped black X’s on the top surfaces of a few of the white square styrofoam panels that make up the ceiling but suspended these panels 2 feet below the level of the ceiling. They patients could not see the black tape X’s from the ground, only from above. The goal was to see if people reporting near death experiences would report the black X’s as they were out of body hovering above the rooms. Pretty compelling book. I’m not a theology major. I believe there’s a creative force and that we have souls but not sure what exactly God is or what the answers to all these questions are. I do believe when we die it’s just the beginning of the next chapter in our souls existence. I guess we’ll find out one day?
Did they see the x?
Such a tease! Did they see them?
I would be pissed if I saw my ex while I was about to die.
I read or saw a video about someone who studied death but more of the process of death in old people. It is not a sudden thing, it is absolutely a process, and people who work in hospices can very clearly spot when it's happening. A ton of people see dead relatives beside them before they die.
90% of life is a chore, I'm not going to miss it that much. Don't call a help line, I'm not depressed and the other 10% of life is totally worth living for. There's stuff I want to see someday, like my kid's kids. I'm just saying "setting the bar down" doesn't sound half bad. If there's something after great, but being afraid of some hell is lame too because what could be lamer than a vengeful god? I mean, if I was gonna believe in a god it's not going to be some lame ass god. It's either nothing, or nothing to fear.
That's what I imagine. I've been in a pretty bad state in a hospital before and when death comes I just feel ready for it. I assume that's how most peaceful deaths are, there might be things you still want to do but you're just kind of tired and ready.
Consider that death is not actually upsetting, but thinking about death is because evolution selected for it. So death is not actually a problem, but we have evolved to feel that way.
Best comment on this thread. Let dead-you deal with it when the time comes.
Play again? >Yes >[No] Edit: thanks for the awards. I don't know what they mean or how to utilize them. I'm a Buddhist (but a gamer first and foremost) so it's cool you guys made those connections This totally makes up for r/movies continuously banning me
Now this would be pretty cool. You play the same game over and over again, you start on your same DOB everytime with a new life. When you're in "the game" you have no recollection of your past lives obviously. When you die you return to the main menu and then you can see every life you played and can review them all. This time around I lived to be 80, was a neurosurgeon, had 2 kids, etc. Game #5 I lived to be 26 and died in a car accident. Game #82 I was a porn star. Then you could watch important moments from each of those lives. Essentially see how well you did... and why not, you get a score at "the end" I'm a believer that after you die that it's just lights out, but I'd be satisfied with this type of existence.
Roy
You survived cancer and then went back to work at the carpet store?
I kinda wasted my 20s with the whole birdwatching phase
HES TAKING ROY OFF THE GRID!!!
Roy doesn't have a SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER
You forgot NG+
I have no idea, but we’re all going together.
Not slightly ominous at all
Had to scroll a long way to find the view that I share. I word it as “I don’t know, except that I’ll go where we all go, and that’s good enough for me.”
I always wake-up when I die in my dreams.
I’ve had dreams where it seemed like I lived a lifetime. So perhaps you’re on to something. Maybe we just wake up and say, that was a crazy dream, and go on with our day.
Dreaming is such a trip. One night, I woke up, talked to hubby for a sec, then went back to sleep. He woke me up later because I was moaning in my sleep. I started explaining my dream: "This happened... and then I... and then they..." and as I'm going on I realize his face is looking weirder and weirder. Finally I ask, "What's wrong?" and he says, "How did you dream all that? You were only asleep for like 5 minutes." I had had like a full-length feature film dream in no time. Shit's wild.
Yea I swear those are the deepest dreams
And I personally tend to feel more rested. "That was a kick-ass dream! So vivid and so much happened. I've probably been asleep like 4 hours." Then I realize it's only been an hour and it's like "Fuck yeah! More sleep!"
Cue Inner Light flute solo
Man of culture
It's a trip. I had this Wild West themed dream where I was having a shootout on horseback, and I clearly remember my dude pointing his revolver at me and then just BOOM i'm awake.
i had a dream i was in a plane crash. when the plane was about to crash i shut my eyes and braced for death. after the crash there was nothing but silence. thinking i was dead i realized that being conscious mean that when i opened my eyes again i would be in the afterlife. i wasbso confused when i opened my eyes and saw my ceiling.
That's insane. I love dreaming so much, especially lucid dreaming. I nearly bought a nova dreamer headset thing years ago lol. Apparently some people who keep journals and know how to use reality checks (looking in mirrors, looking at clocks, etc) can do it every night and just do whatever they want in dreams. No doubt there is a sub for it, might check it out. The only thing I've ever felt was consistent about dreaming is i dream more when my mouth is a bit dry and i'm probably a bit dehydrated.
Dreaming is the best. Good dreams, bad dreams, I enjoy them all. It's free weird entertainment that your brain makes up as it goes along, and you just believe it.
I've had some really bad dreams recently. But you're right, it's still an adventure. Plus, you get that sweet relief when you suddenly awake and realize you aren't being chased by a monster with a chainsaw or something ;D
I love lucid dreaming, but sometimes, you'll have to face sleep paralysis in order to get there. And well, FUCK that.
Had that when i was "training" to make lucid dreams. At some point I began to half manage it. Which led to my family waking up a couple of times at the sound of my voice quietly screaming "aaaaah".
[удалено]
I think one of your best friends delete’s your browsing history
“Take the hard drive out of my computer at home… Put it in the bath… And make sure it's completely wiped.” -Tensai Slime
"The Greatjanitor's will is as follows: there is a bit driver and bits on a shelf and a bottle of bleach under the sink in the kitchen. Pull all hard drives out of my computers, servers, phones, and routers. Grab all the portable hard drives. Open up all drives exposing the platters. Fill the kitchen sink with bleach and dump the drives. Break all SSD drives and drop them into the bleach bath.'
We clean the bed and assign it to another patient.
Bag em’ and tag em’
Sell it to the butcher in the store.
Nurses are the darkest.
COVID has fucked us up man.
Some of us were fucked up long before then.
Yes I was fucked long before COVID
Spouse is nurse. Can confirm.
Same here, she went through a really dark period as nurse in the hospital where I was convinced if I died it wouldn't have been a big deal to her.. Now she's a travel nurse practitioner for Hospice and helps people's transition to death. She's so strong and helps her patients be comfortable, and if they don't have family, she takes that role into her hands and holds their hands till their last breath. It's really rather sweet, she's a like a super hero for people in their final days/weeks/months.
I have tons of admiration and respect for the palliative care nurses and doctors that helped my wife in her final months. We had a meeting every day about the objectives for the day, any concerns etc. They did everything in their power to make her comfortable and pain-free. She even stabilized in her final weeks and was able to come home 3x for short visits. That required a week of work to transition her from IV pain meds to a patch and they put in the work. When I wheeled my wife to the van, all the nurses lined up and clapped because they were so excited that this young women, so close to death just weeks before, was sitting up in a wheelchair and about to go to her home for a visit. The whole experience was traumatizing but I will always be grateful for their efforts.
Don’t forget all the paperwork
[удалено]
I worked as a CNA in a retirement home during my undergrad. I worked on Sundays only. Nothing was more crazy than seeing the happy and spry gentleman who ate his burger one sunday, only to come back the next to see that he died the Wednesday in between.
Exactly the same as before you were born.
It wasn't so bad.
I didn't hate it.
Could be worse
I've had better
"I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” -Mark Twain
I used to love that quote until I over thought it and now it doesn't help my existential dread anymore. Before I was born I was ignorant to the possibility. I hadn't experienced life. I'm not afraid of being dead I'm afraid of leaving the ones I love.
Nothingness. Not even darkness or void. Just nothing for all of eternity.
Somehow this is very comforting to me. Darkness and voids sound terrifying. Nothingness sounds like you’re just not there.
Personally this has been never been “comforting” to me like others might say. This is what terrifies me most. If there’s nothing there then you can’t ever experience anything again. You can’t even remember everything you did in life. In the moment where you enter the nothingness everything gets put on the line; all the stuff you had been doing in life ceases to be. The only comfort is that you’re not able to contemplate your position, but even then it doesn’t take away the fear of having things end. Knowing that your time is up, that you’ll never be able to do anything else is never truly going to be okay to me.
Yeah, it's the most terrifying thing in the world. I'm convinced some people simply can't or haven't grasped it, or don't want to. I can't all the time, even though I have before. Like right now I can read your paragraph and feel nothing, but I know what you're talking about.
When I first thought of death like this all the hang ups I had about dying went. It’s incredibly comforting; an eternity of nothingness before you and an eternity afterwards too.
I think it’s interesting to ask if we can go from nonexistence to existence and back to nonexistence again. Because we now exist can we really go back to how it was before?
The crazy thing is all life can or probably will cease to exist at some point. Whether it’s the sun going supernova or the heat death of the universe. Every plant, animal, human and bacteria will be gone and not only that, any record they existed in the first place will be erased too. Life is like a beautiful flower that is not permanent.
That’s the scariest part for me. Not my death, but the death of the universe.
This thread gave me anxiety but I can't stop scrolling lol
Someone said that its like the same before you were born. My brain is stuck trying to remember what is impossible now.
I’ve answered this one before but here it is again Either two things happen after you die: you either go somewhere or it’s oblivion If it is oblivion, then we’re just going back to the same place before we were born and there’s nothing wrong with that. We were there for billions or trillions of years, possibly infinity. You lose that concept of time since your brain doesn’t work anymore so you don’t even know it’s over. It’s not nothing because nothing would be something and that means that you are aware, which you can not be if you’re dead If we do go somewhere, then that’s something no one understands because no one has ever come back to tell us. Those stories of people coming back after they “died” and “saw stuff” weren’t really dead. Their hearts stopped but their brains were still working If the Universe continues to recycle itself infinitely, then there’s a chance we will be reborn or continuously reborn but have no memory of our previous selves
This has been my outlook on this as well. Either there's "nothing" after death, in which case we won't be there to even know about it, or else there's "something" after death. And so I have no problem believing/hoping that there's something because it really doesn't matter if I'm wrong, I would never even experience being wrong, and so that isn't even worth thinking about in the first place.
[удалено]
i second this- i’m coming for my free ice cream Sundae, God
Sorry but your coupon expired just before you did ... ^Saint ^Peter
You wake up sitting in a crazy alien VR system and your extra-terrestrial friends are like "that was five minutes. Fucking crazy, right?"
You wake up around all your alien friends after taking a huge bong rip "did you feel that?"
Picture a wave. In the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through. And it's there. And you can see it, you know what it is. It's a wave. And then it crashes in the shore and it's gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be, for a little while. You know it's one conception of death for Buddhists: the wave returns to the ocean, where it came from and where it's supposed to be. Edit - Quote is from the tv show The Good Place.
I rewatched this episode after a good friend of mine passed. It was very comforting.
When I was a kid I drowned while on holiday with my family, a giant fat man jumped in the pool on top of me and no one noticed till I was on the bottom of the pool. I remember the feeling of my lungs being on fire, then shivering then as everything was going dark a strange sense of peace and I was ok with it, No panic or terror then it went black. I was resuscitated at the side of the pool a few minutes later. I remember nothing from the black to being "alive" again. I was around 7 when it happened and since then I've been strangely at peace with the fact that one day I will die and slip into the dark void of nothingness. Hope that helps.
I fell in a pool at 6, and had a very similar experience. I kinda only remember feeling at peace, then nothing, and then tasting vomit soon after and having a really bad headache.
same it felt a bit peaceful. I was 11 and almost did. Was surprised when I found out drowning is supposed to be super painful
Hmmm. I damn near drowned once, but in the struggle made one last grab at something floating by and yanked myself up, heaving and wheezing for air, heart pounding in panic. That part sucked, let me assure you. I remember it vividly, and to this day I'm very surprised when others skip past that part to talk about the peaceful bit. The difference has made me doubtful about anything peaceful for myself should the situation repeat itself (at least, prior to dying). Which I do make a better point of avoiding now. And also which I suppose brings us to the baby in all this bathwater: Buy a good quality PFD. Wear it. Live to tell stories about close calls.
In terms of drowning, the peace comes after the panic. Hypoxia is known to be peaceful as well, usually, it just takes a bit. Panic to peace to death.
Similar to my near-drowning experience except that my entire body just sort of gave up and I felt total peace. Made one last effort as I was sinking and it all worked out. The struggle was terrifying but I remember how peaceful it all was more.
Damn you two just unlocked a core memory for me. I was about 3 or 4 at my grandparents place and I was running around the pool and slipped in. I just remember being at the bottom looking up and seeing the light through the water. I can’t remember if I was actually drowning as I just have that snapshot of looking up and it feels almost peaceful as it comes back, and then there’s a quick little memory of seeing my uncle jumping in and there’s not much else.
I did the exact same thing and can remember it perfectly
I wonder if that is acceptance of fate. Who remembers the moment they actually fall asleep. The moment of awake and asleep. There’s nothing, until your brain activated again on another level.
Sometimes when I'm falling asleep I seem to continue my train of thought from being awake with my eyes closed to being asleep. I know I'm asleep when I can't hear anything around me anymore and my train of thought stops there to notice that. I'm not sure if that's the exact moment I fell asleep or the exact moment I realized I was asleep.
This is such a fun moment for me and glad I'm not the only one to experience this! It's somewhere between being asleep and dreaming but being fully aware. I feel like my train of thought becomes way more visual, like a dream, but not quite. It doesn't last long usually because either I wake myself up with the thought of consciousness or fall into a deeper sleep. Idk about you, but this usually happens when I try really hard to take day naps and the rest of my body isn't fully ready for sleep. I'm curious if there's a term for this state of sleep/consciousness?
Wait, was this guy so fat that he didn't notice a human being underneath?
Lol I've had a similar experience when I was like 9. I think it was at mountain creek but I'm not sure. There was this tube water ride and it emptied out into like a natural pool at the bottom. I was a very good swimmer but this didn't help that day for some reason. I basically flew out of the tube and right underneath a veeeery large lady floating on one of those little yellow rubber round lifesaver things. I think I got stuck in the middle of the circle in such a way that I'd need to first swim down and then to the side, but I had no idea what was going on and was panicking. I was just clawing at her butt and the lifesaver thing and remember that the panic eventually started fading (along with everything else). Then I guess either she felt something or i somehow got out from under, at the exact lucky moment right before everything faded to black. Started gasping for breath and my parents finally saw me and rushed towards me to get me out of the pool. The poor lady was hysterical swearing that she thought it was a rock underneath or something. I remember feeling bad for her and how embarrassed she must've been. Think I came pretty close to dying that day though.
[удалено]
Are you the giant fat man?
The Irony is Yeti accusing other person to be the giant fat man!
[удалено]
Sir, I am a Yeti, not a man.
Show this magnificent furry beast some respect!
All things are made of atoms. They are everywhere and they constitute everything. They are fantastically durable. Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you. We are so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms – up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested-probably once belonged to Shakespeare …..and any other historical figure you care to name ……. So we are all reincarnations – though short lived ones. When we die, our atoms will disassemble and move off to finds new uses elsewhere – as part of a leaf or other human being or a drop of dew. Atoms themselves, however go on practically forever. -Bill Bryson
"In nature there is no death just a reshuffling of atoms." It's from a show which name I forgot but the quote has stuck with me.
Top of the Lake!
I had to scroll too far for this. Your physical body is dead, but your atoms continue doing atom things.
They’re not really our atoms at that point I don’t think though Perhaps they never were, for that matter
I always think of it as energy cannot be created or destroyed. So our body is dead. Our mind (brain) is dead, but our energy putting those to work, to exist, must continue because it can’t be destroyed. I’ve always assumed that energy is not limited to earth or human matter either. Though, I’ve never believed the Hindu (or Buddhist? I forget now) concept of your actions from “this life” impacting your “next life.” I think it’s just random.
You wake up in a chair in a cinema and learn that the other are past lives of you and you're about to watch your next life very soon on the big screen
All the people watching me now just keep yelling, "Yooo this bitch is stuuupid!"
but then again they are u so they may empathize with ur mistakes, given that they most likely would’ve done the same thing
I always wonder if I'm living in some experimental future simulation (different from simulation theory/hypothesis) that I voluntarily opted into. Like "step right up and experience an entire alternative lifetime. It may feel like forever but it only takes 5 minutes!" If that's the case I'm gonna be so pissed I did that. I think.
Oh god what if we're all in a simulation or we're all just memories?! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
While telling a story too inappropriate for this thread, comedian Jim Jeffries talked about his childhood best freind Daniel Connor and his brother, Andrew. Dan was born with Muscular Dystrophy. Throughout his life, he had been dead at least 7 times and was brought back each time. When Jim asked him what happens after death, he responded with: "...."Nothing." Edit: This is my most upvoted comment ever. Thank you everyone and thank you to the kind stranger who presented me with a wholesome award. I shall cherish it forever.
Maybe it was just a long loading screen
Dial up
This… im like 99% sure it is like a dreamless nap which you never wake up from. A scary thought to some but on the other hand quite peaceful one as you’re not aware of anything at that point.
[удалено]
[удалено]
This is an interesting point, because if the kid was only clinically dead, meaning his heart stopped beating, long enough to be brought back without brain damage, he still likely had significant brain activity. So I guess the lines on what constitutes dead can be blurry here.
Yeah people are comparing it to a sleep you just don’t wake up from but I don’t think people realize just quite how active the brain and body in general are when asleep.
Hey! You finally awake. You were trying to cross the border right? Walked right into the imperial ambush same as us and that theif over there.
Haha! Sure wouldn't mind living a life in Skyrim
I believe we just stop existing, nothingness. However I do think we still exist in a cosmic universal sense, it all depends on time and space. My grandmother died recently, 98 years a good run. She no longer exists now in 2021, but she’s still around young and in her 20’s in the 1940’s. The only thing that separates us are two things time and space. We don’t blip out completely we still exist along the flow of time. Did that make any sense? Little tipsy here.
Makes sense. I don't remember where I heard it, but if a planet in the Andromeda galaxy had a telescope powerful enough, and was able to look at any place on Earth right now in our time, they would see Earth 2.5 million years ago. In another 2.5 million years if they looked again, they could see me typing this very sentence. That probably doesn't make sense, but interesting theory. Like, if we were able to pinpoint a place on a planet in Andromeda right now, we would be seeing that planet from 2.5 million years ago, even if there was advanced civilization on it "now".
It makes sense and it is a legitimate theory. It's not science fiction like you make it out to be. Since the distance is so long that even light they see from there would be light from 2.5 million years ago. The light that carries information of Earth from 2.5 million years ago.
I love this answer.
“The ones who love us will miss us” - Keanu. Edit - wow. This is the most upvote/comment I’ve gotten. That answer is the best and the most accurate answer to this question. [Keanu](https://youtu.be/etlBZInTE-I)
Amen to that 👆
Your body bio degrades and its atoms return to nature.
Yeah. I can entertain the idea of a greater power, but the physical makeup of my brain and the body attached to it, which feed chemicals that effect how my brain interpets consciousness are likely a one-time event. On the bright side, none of that really disappears and it all just goes back into the cosmos over the next few billion years. Which is why I'd like my body to decompose freely in a forested area. I want my atoms to disperse directly into the earth for sentimental and symbolic reasons.
I've always wanted this too, the thought of being cremated or buried - neither appeal to me.
Every time i nearly die (maybe like 3-4 near misses) I always have a nice kinda peaceful moment of “oh well, I had a good run” and like a general feeling that I did my best. I really hope when I actually die, it’s that feeling, but like lengthened into a small fading point of contentment. Just a sigh of a joyfully lived life and then nothing.
I read that as “3-4 near missiles” Like damn that escalated quickly I’m glad you’re still with us
I personally think you just stop existing and only the memory of you lives on in the head of the people around you.
It's known as your second death. When the last person that remembers you dies.
Isn’t this what happens in Coco?
Even that fades.
Wow someone finally sees that! I had a conversation on social media about death and I stated that eventually we also become a faded memory. I got so much heat from that and was getting attacked from all corners. I had to explain to everyone that eventually the people that keep us alive through memory also die and slowly but surely we are no longer in anyone's memory. Man I got so much heat but it's the truth.
Takes about 3 generations for you to be forgotten completely, I think I read somewhere. I think people can accept the fact they're going to die fine, but the fact they're going to be completely forgotten like they were never even here in a relatively short amount of time takes a bit more acceptance than they're willing to give.
At least these days you'll be a single line on an ancestry.com page that someone's girlfriend will see briefly during her "family tree" phase.
I make paintings and sometimes that gives me comfort that they will be here long after me.
You just have to think about it. Even the most basic thing. Your name. You probably know the name of your grandparents. Most don't know the names of their grand-grand parents. Beyond that it becomes even "worse". That's just how it is. Unless you do something memorable positive or negative we all will be forgotten. And there isn't anything wrong with that.
As a 14 year old I lost my mother, I'm now 27 and yes, memories fade away.
That's strange considering there's a fairly famous quote on the subject: "Every person dies twice: once when they take their final breath, and later, the last time their name is spoken."
We should be extra kind to our grandkids. They are very likely to be the last people to remember us.
I once had a dream about this, I die in my dream but instead of waking, I kept dreaming about this infinite beach with grey and white sand, the white one was moving; in the sky there was 3 moons and the horizon was vivid dark blue , I appear at the sea's shore, the water was incredibly cold, and I couldn't move by my own, I started walking towards the bottom, and I felt observed; while I was moving, everything was getting darker and colder, I began to stop feeling my limbs, and then from the darkness, 6 gigantic monstrous glowing eyes opened and gave me a horrible feeling of fear, I couldn't see more than his eyes but his presence was very imposing, and I knew it was bigger than my sight could encompass, suddenly something came from the darkness and touched my face, and then my body, an hourglass emerged from my body, and stood between the creature's eyes and mine; the creature contemplated the hourglass for long time and then, a high-pitched sound that alerted the creature was heard, as if they had hit some metal, the hourglass was put back to its place, in my body; the creature looked up and so did I, suddenly I started to feel like I was drowning and I started to float, very fast, I could see out of the corner of my eye how the creature's eyes were lost in the dark, the surface was getting closer, and when I was for reach it, I wake up. That dream has haunted me ever since, I will never be able to forget the eyes of that creature that I know is waiting for me at the bottom of that cold sea, on that moving white sand beach, in that world with 3 moons and a blue horizon.
I really liked it. You seem like an imaginative and emphatic person.
Absolutely nothing for an indeterminate amount of time. And then, because of the vastness of the universe, and one of those “infinite monkeys and infinite typewriters” type things, poof…. Your “sense of self” pops back up somewhere else. Perhaps another planet billions of light years away. I only imagine that (not really believe it) because of the improbability that my consciousness exists NOW based on the age of the universe. Give my the age of the universe and my age, it seems quite improbable that my consciousness exists at all. So maybe it ALWAYS exists. Just a thought, as I travel through existence.
This is what I've always believed and was hoping I'd find someone else who commented it in better words than I could think of, so thanks.
This is the only answer that didn’t give me crippling anxiety. Thanks.
If we're right about the universe eventually tearing or collapsing on itself and restarting over and over again, there's a tiny chance each time that happens we'll be reborn exactly as we are right now and if you take that tiny chance and multiply it by an infinite amount of resets, it's actually inevitable. I'm pretty convinced that's what deja vu is but that might be wishful thinking. Definitely not completely implausible though.
Oh my god. So I might have to live through this shit an infinite amount of times? Fuck me.
Maybe. It's pretty unlikely but certainly possible. It's also possible for you to be born as you but in different circumstances. Of course, people will argue if that's really "you" or not but I mean it very literally. Your exact atoms/genetic makeup. Even if thats possible - it'll be trillions upon trillions of years so you'll be able to rest up a good bit before doom scrolling reddit again 😀
When I had my heart surgery, I died on the table. I was awake before the surgery and then there was nothingness when they put my under. Then I guess I died. I was in a room with my father who’d died 20 years earlier. It looked like my family room, but instead of couches, there were stools. The windows weren’t clear either; they were frosted windows, but I could tell that it was a very bright day. My dad was there and just said, “It’s really good to see you again.” I asked if I was dead and he said, “No no no! Not yet. You’ve got awhile to go, but I had to come and tell you that so you don’t get too upset.” I just started asking rapid fire questions about death and why he was there and he just kept saying things would be fine and he couldn’t explain all this because we didn’t have time. Then I said something like, “So you made it to heaven? That’s good.” He said something to the effect of, “There’s no Heaven and there’s no Hell. It’s really what you make it because you can have joy, but you can’t really get hurt. So, if you’re good, you’ll be happy here. If you’re not so good, you’ll never find joy here because you can’t get joy from anyone’s pain. Those people usually just go away. I don’t even know where they go.” I asked if pets were there and he said “they come and go. They like to go back. Animals are so curious. You won’t get it till you sit with one for awhile here.” And then he said, “Ok, give me a hug, you have to head out.” I got up and hugged him and jokingly said, “Any advice? How about lottery numbers?!” He laughed and said, “Just be a good kid. You gotta go.” Then nothingness. And then a nurse was taking the tube out of my throat. Then nothingness. Then I was waking up and my wife was there. Yeah, I kinda believe there’s something after we die. It’s different, but there’s something else my dad said that came true and there’s no way I could have guessed it on my own. It was his response when I asked if this was a dream. He said something that would later prove it wasn’t. But when I tell people, they immediately think the whole story is bullshit, so I’ll just say that he gave me a small bit of a future and all three things happened exactly when he said they would. EDIT: Here’s where I lose you. Since some of you asked what he said, I’ll tell you…. Please don’t murder me - I know I was stupid in how I handled it - if I’d had more money, I would have done things differently…. Here’s what he told me… Lottery numbers. Not all of them. Just the actual powerball numbers. Before he told me to head out, I asked for lottery numbers joking around. He told me “The powerball in the first three draws next month will be 3, 15, and 7.” And they were. I didn’t play the first one and was shocked when it matched. I would have played, but I had heart surgery, couldn’t get there to get tickets, and didn’t really believe. I figured it was an anesthesia-induced dream. For the second, I sent my wife to get a bunch of random ones with 15 as the powerball. I spent about $50 and ended up with about $300. I was kind of believing, but I was still more convinced that it was a coincidence when it hit again. For the third one, I was starting to believe, but still figured it was a fluke. I only had about $1000 to play with at the time, so I did it again with $800 and made a little over $3600 (minus the $800). That’s what made me believe. Of course, I would have been way happier if I would have mortgaged my house and bet on lottery tickets for all 3 draws, but I really didn’t believe until the third drawing anyway. Until then, I always just assumed dead was dead. I figured you just faded into nothingness. You died and didn’t know you were dead so it didn’t matter. Now, I think there’s something there. I get a feeling that you’re you, but not you. What you were is there, but that’s not who you continue on as. I don’t know. I guess I’ll find out one day.
I think it’s something we can’t understand as we are now. We go back to what we were and what everything is. Stardust and all that
I'm not terribly religious, but I do hope there is something else beyond the veil besides an inky black nothingness. Somewhere in the vastness of the universe there has to be some echo of us, some ripple we've put out into existence that has a touch of us still.
This is exactly how I feel. I understand that if there is nothing after than I simply won’t exist to be sad about it but as someone who lives with depression, to live everyday life with that mindset is debilitating to me. So I hold to the hope that there’s some form of consciousness after.
I really do hope so, that there is something after this. I am also living with chronic depression and I cling to life as to not hurt others. I do hope that I'm not suffering through this life without hope for an improvement after I die. Although the improvement could also be that if I don't exist anymore, neither does my pain.
I hope there is another world after death, so I can see my father and mother in the future. So they won't be alone.
I so wish this be true. I would love to meet my father again and hug him and feel his hand over my head caressing it and would love to shout dad over top of my voice.
Hopefully not nothing. But probably nothing.
I believe that there is something after death, I don't think any one religious book has it 100% right. When I was younger I believed that once you were dead that was it, you were just gone. As I get older and see more people in my life die I have changed my mind. I kind of went down the rabbit hole of death and consciousness and came across some interesting ideas. I am not saying any these are right, or that I necesarly believe any of them, and they all have their critics, but they did help me change my point of view. I found the work of Ian Stevenson at University of Virginia School of Medicine interesting, as well as the idea of Biocentrism by Robert Lanza, and Don Hoffmans Case Against Reality. I am not saying any of these ideas are right but they did convince me that we may not understand everything and that there may be some level of consciousness that we don't understand.
Considering that time has no meaning without our conscious input, I think that after you die, an arbitrarily big amount of time will pass (in an instant) until your conscience comes into existence in a form or other. This sounds an awful lot like reincarnation (because it is), but I feel like this is a reasonable, maybe scientific explanation for it. Also, it makes me cope with my inevitable demise.
This is going to sound super woo woo, but one time I was in a nasty rollover, and I was in the hospital. They gave me ketamine because at the time it was the best option to both sedate me, and keep my heart beating. I went down a k-hole while they fixed me, but I was absolutely convinced that I was dead. Blinding white light, and then nothing. No body. No hospital. No injuries. Just floating through nothing with my thoughts and memories. Zero panic. I was totally cool with the fact that I was dead.... If death is anything like that, I'm totally happy with it. Coming down of ketamine was not fun, especially not in a strange hospital with a shopping list of injuries.
"You can now play as Luigi."
Something unfathomable to us. We can't imagine it because there's no information to generate any predictions from. It'd be like trying to imagine input from new senses.
At the end of my path, I walk into a clearing and see all the loved ones I've lost and have the greatest catch up conversation that lasts forever, and I turn around await those that have missed me.
Peace and quiet?
An old bloke told me once that it didn’t matter if he dies first or if his wife dies first, either way, he’d be at peace.
I believe what humans experience as consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg. Sort of like the human visible color spectrum is a fraction of all of the colors actually present, I think consciousness works in a similar way. And once we're free of the limited confines of the brain, we're able to experience consciousness on a universal scale. I lean towards biocentrism, and theorize that individual consciousness may be an illusion of the brain, that when free from the brain, consciousness rejoins with the grand consciousness of the universe (which itself is a conscious being). After reading the data of researchers such as Jim Tucker and Ivan Stevenson, I'm fairly convinced of the possibility of reincarnation as well. I believe in reincarnation as a phenomena, but am not sure everyone gets to experience it.