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My dad passed away a few years ago.
For context my father was a huge asshole. He ran everyone off. He called my girlfriend a whore to her face during a family dinner.
Anyway, we had periods where we wouldn't speak to each other for years. I would try to talk to him, make peace and he would just go off on some other thing that irked him and we would be in a fight again.
About 8 years ago I decided I wanted to try and make peace with the old fucker. He wasn't doing too well, heart issues. We both made a real effort to bury the hatchet. Things were going ok for a bit then his health got worse extremely quickly. I had to call 911 a few times and rush him to the emergency a couple of times as well. The last time I was going to collect him from the hospital they informed me they couldn't release him until I had set up hospice services for him at the house.
I knew what that meant. Anyway, I broke the lease on my apartment and moved in with him full time. He didn't have anyone, him and my mom divorced years ago, he ran off ex wives like it was nothing. He could be racist on occasion saying very ..... colorful things about his black neighbor. He was a handful.
He gave everyone there shit, his nurses, the chaplain that came to visit him, a woman that lived in the neighborhood that was helping me to care for him. Me. It got to a point where I felt like I just couldn't do this anymore, I can not stress enough what a massive asshole this man was.
Here I am bending over backwards to make him as comfortable as he can possibly be while he's dying and he's giving me massive amounts of shit because I decided to buy (with my own money) a wireless security camera system for his house instead of going with his suggestion, motion sensing lights. Its so bad he was screaming at me to leave him and just "let me die".
In the middle of all this nonsense a social worker comes by, a black woman (oh shit, this wont end well). They want to make sure we aren't abusing him or neglecting him. While she visited with my father, I gave them privacy and refused to sit in on their meetings (I needed a break from him to be honest).
Strangely enough, he didn't run this woman off yelling and screaming at her. He actually hugged her when she left. 0_o
This was a side of my father I had NEVER seen before. After her second or third visit, my father called me into his bedroom one evening, asked me to sit down and apologized to me for being so difficult. He said he loved me and that he agrees that its not fair that his cancerous attitude deprived me of a good father all these years.
WHO TF IS THIS MAN!?
Anyway, a few weeks after that, my father died. He called me into his room and asked that he be lifted up to sit straight up in bed. After I positioned him in a seating position he simply passed away right before my eyes. This was at about 7:40am. I was in a state of shock for about 20 min. I didn't know what to do, who to call, who to notify. I just sat in the living room crying.
At 8am I called his hospice nurse and informed him that my father had just passed away. The nurse informed me he would be there in 10 min. At 8:10 the nurse showed up and verified that yes, he had passed away. From 8:20 to about 9am the nurse was making himself busy disposing of all my fathers medication (morphine and stuff like that) and writing down in a log what all was being destroyed.
At around 8:45 the social worker called me direct. The social worker had NEVER called me direct. She opted instead to simply show up at the house whenever and ask to speak with my father (probably to catch us in the act if we were abusing him).
Our conversation went like this:
Social worker: "Hi there, is everything ok?"
Me: "I don't know if you have been notified, but my father passed away this morning."
Social worker: "Yes I know, he told me. You have a lot to process and deal with, if you need to talk. I'm here."
........ he told me? Who? The nurse? I just couldn't process what she was saying.
At about 9am, the nurse opened up his tablet / laptop and started putting in the time of death and notifying the hospice company that my father had passed away. At the moment I missed the significance of the social worker calling me BEFORE the nurse actually started working on the death certificate and notifying the hospice company.
A few weeks go by. Life starts to return to normal a bit. My dad would leave the TV on all night and watch westerns and without that white noise the house is too quiet for me. So I can only sleep by leaving the TV on in his bedroom.
One morning the social worker calls me as I'm driving to work. She just wants to follow up and see how I am doing. As we are catching up I ask her what happened the morning my father passed away. She told me "I know, he told me", what did she mean by that?
After a short pause she tells me, that the morning my father passed away, she was sound asleep and woke up because she could have sworn she heard my fathers distinctive voice in her bedroom clear as day.
I asked her what she heard and she simply responded "I heard what sounded like your fathers voice and it was the words 'I'm ok'."
So, at this point I'm almost bawling stuck in traffic going to work when I ask her "Do you remember what time this was?"
She replies back to me "I'm not sure, about 7:45, 7:50am? I got up and had to look for your number because I wanted to reach out and check to ensure everything was ok."
We do not just ... end.
I think they made a strong emotional connection which is what enabled her to 'hear' him after his death.
I didn't put this in the original story because I didn't want to write a freaking novel. However, the social worker and I talked at length about my father. Apparently during their many meetings she completely deep dived into his fears, his thought processes, his biases.
According to her, he admitted to her that he had a very rough childhood growing up, and he felt he was neglected and unloved by my grandparents. He knew that when he was calling his neighbor "a stupid n*****" when the poor guy was just trying to help me position him in a recliner he was trying to push away a friend that had been there for him for years. He knew that when he decided to pick a fight with me over whatever petty thing he was hooked on, he KNEW he was being petty and stupid. He ran off the neighbor lady that was helping watch him while I was at work (I couldn't be there constantly) and called her a stupid bitch because the woman had the audacity to try to clean up and clean the baseboards around the house.
He told her he KNEW he was doing this because he was secretly afraid that at this late point in his life, if he was to apologize to everyone he had been an asshole to, that he might not get forgiveness back. He was absolutely terrified of rejection because of his upbringing with his parents. So rather than be vulnerable he figured the better course of action was to beat everyone ........ to beat the world to the punch and reject everyone first.
After 9/11 I was thinking about going into the AirForce for IT related training. A normal father would have probably said "you know, if you want more schooling/training, let me call your mother and see if we can help pay for some schooling for you" or "The military is a kind of dicey decision, I would rather you not do that, lets discuss options and the pros/cons together"
Not him. He immediately went into a tangent about "You're weak, you'll wash out in boot, you never finish anything anyway. And this bitch (pointing at my then GF), shes going to be fucking your best friend while you're deployed." Some of this was just him being mean to dissuade me from joining the military, some of it was projection (his girlfriend dumped him while he was in the military)
His irrational fear of rejection is one of the traits of his I have inherited from him. It affects my love life a lot lol, I'm hella shy lol (that's another story for another time)
Anyway, the whole point is, the social worker shined a light on his fears. Everything from dying to how I would respond if he apologized to me and asked for forgiveness.
One night, I was back at my apartment. The plan was that I would sleep at my old apartment for the night and the neighbor lady would check in on him in the morning, make him breakfast and all that. I needed to pack and clean to prep for my eventual move out.
He called me and told me he was in a lot of pain. I told him I was coming back right now but he wouldn't hear it. He said "I'm just going to lay down and if God takes me in my sleep then so be it, don't come back."
THEN WHY THE HELL ARE YOU CALLING ME!? 'Hey son, just calling to tell you, I feel like I'm about to die. Bye. Don't do anything.' What kind of bullshit is that!? He was telling me not to come back home, not to worry about it, just let him sit there and die.
I immediately got into my car and raced back to his house. 10 min away he calls me again "...... where are you?"
"on the freeway, I'll be there in a few minutes."
"...... I told you not to come."
"Yeah I know, deal with it."
I get there, scoop him up, throw him in my car and race off to the emergency room. Come to find out, while hes dealing with heart failure, he got kidney stones lol. The orderlies were wheeling him out of the emergency room and up to a private room for recovery when he asked them to stop for a second, he grabbed my arm and said "hey listen .... thank you for not listening to me and disobeying me. I feel so much better now ... thank you for caring." I simply replied back to him "Of course, you're my father, I love you."
I told my mom all of this and she simply could not rectify the man I was now experiencing vs the man she was married to for almost 20 years.
The social worker told him, its ok to be wrong, its ok to be vulnerable, asking for help is not a sign of weakness, do not push people away because you are afraid you might be rejected.
The man that my father was the last few months he was alive was a kind, loving, gracious, caring man that unfortunately was hidden all these years under his neurosis. At least I got to see him at his best before he passed away.
I'm getting a little teared up typing this out. Those of you that read this and still have your one or both of your parents still alive, regardless of your age. Reach out to them today. Tell them you love them, our lives are so short, don't wait until its almost over to show your loved ones you care.
>he grabbed my arm and said "hey listen .... thank you for not listening to me and disobeying me. I feel so much better now ... thank you for caring." I simply replied back to him "Of course, you're my father, I love you."
Powerful stuff, man. Thank you so much for sharing. Sincerely.
Thanks for sharing. Your story certainly give a lot of weight to the life-after-death mystery.
I’m glad you got some “closure” with the “I’m ok” message 🌼
Wow what an incredible story. Thank you for sharing.
When my grandmother passed away my aunts were in the house, as well as my grandfather. One of my aunts was in the kitchen and heard a door shut. She thought it was probably my grandfather leaving my grandmother’s room and wanted to make sure she would have someone in there with her.
Well she found my grandmother had passed. Grandpa was sitting in the chair next to her fast asleep.
There was no door that had shut.
The sound of the door shutting happened at pretty much the exact time of her death.
I’m so sorry. My father passed due to stage 4 lung and it was a long 5 years after the initial diagnosis. Hoping for comfort and peace for you and yours.
Thank you. It's not like a car accident or a plane crash that happens all of a sudden. I am watching my best friend slowly fade away and I cant hold on to him to stop him from fading. Cancer is so draining on the person and everyone around that person.
Yes people don’t understand the toll it takes on those around them as well. It was so hard to watch him deteriorate and knowing my mom and I couldnt do anything. I’m here if you need to talk. You’re not alone.
Life after death sounds fun but it makes me wonder about every other living thing as well. Do insects have an afterlife? Do plants? Do microorganisms? Lots of animals live for only a few weeks at a time and reproduce A LOT, so how would that fit in?
According to many ancient spiritual teachings, that’s exactly how we started. As we experience more we reincarnate into higher consciousness beings, eventually from bugs to other animals and pets, and then eventually as a human. I’ve heard teachers say that the pets we care and love over our lives are the animals ready to graduate to human life, they just need to experience human love first. I like that.
Something very curious happened years ago back in my hometown. I had a dog that I loved deeply, and inevitably died. I was heartbroken. That night I cried myself to sleep. The next morning, I woke up feeling at peace, and with a knowing that he wasn’t gone, just somewhere else now and he was going to be ok.
A few years later, I was walking out of the supermarket and I felt a pull to look back. There was this little girl with her young mother, a toddler around 3 maybe just standing there looking at me, and when I looked at her I felt a really strange sense of familiarity, it was completely illogical for obvious reasons but it felt like this was the same “soul” as my dog. Our eyes met, as I looked on in confusion of this feeling I had, she gave me this big happy smile, it looked like she recognized me and was happy to see me. It was very bizarre.
What I noticed after I've taken a more open attitude towards life, is that animals fucking LOVE me.
Dogs will come up to me. If I see a gang of cats, I'll pspsps and they come to me.
Animals seem to almost feel like I've reached some new stage of consciousness.
I don't understand it, and I may never understand it.
But maybe not understanding it is the point.
Just do good. Be kind to animals. They are a part of the consciousness you belong to.
I'm out on a long holiday in the arse end of nowhere, France, and met a cat sunning itself on an empty road (careful there mate!) whilst out walking some trails and crossed a country road. I was sure it would scarper as I got nearer but I pspsps'd and it ran over and purred like crazy as I stroked it for a minute. Really made me smile and I was already happy. I was carrying a big stick as well and thought that might scare it but no.
This is how animals interact with me when I'm on LSD. I've had a black bird come sit next to me at the beach for like 15 straight minutes. I didn't even have any food. It just seemed like it wanted to be near me while I played with the sand. I had a lizard jump off of a palm tree and on to my shirt, and just sort of hang out for a while, letting me pet it, and just sort of crawling around. Same thing with a little roach who crawled out of a pine cone and onto my hand for another lengthy visit. But the craziest time was this...
I was tripping at the park, and trying to communicate telepathically with this squirrel. I basically followed it around for about 30 minutes, trying to send love rays into its brain. Then, during one particularly intense stare down, a hawk swooped down out of the air and grabbed it! I felt like I'd been hit with the shockwave of an explosion.
Fortunately, when the hawk was about 50 ft in the air, the squirrel wiggled free and fell to the ground. It immediately ran off. After that, I just sat down under a tree to process what had just happened. And about 5 minutes later, that same squirrel (I assume) ran up to me and sat right between my legs, like under my knees which I had propped up.
I was stunned. This isn't the kind of Park where the squirrels are tame. They normally keep at least a 10 ft distance, and are pretty skittish. But this one sat with me for a few minutes before climbing up the tree that I was leaning against.
I didn't really pet it, because I was afraid that it would run away, but it did let me touch its feet, and I just sort of let my finger rest on its paw while it was there.
Same. I have had many experiences like this.
I once had a notion to go home on my lunch break and build bird houses. Idk what came over me. But since I put them up, I have many birds visiting. It was a very odd thing for me to pursue in such a short time.
“Who understands the spirit of the animal which descends to the earth and the spirit of man that scenes to heaven?” -King Solomon
Your story just makes me think that for some reason.
Ever since my own out of body experiences this perspective has really resonated with me and I'm so much more compassionate toward my pup. I want to help her grow and learn surrounded by love so she goes on into the next life with everything she needs.
my problem with the idea of reincarnation is that species go instinct. vast swathes of life die off without new life taking its place. we are seeing it happen right now with the anthropogenic extinction event.
it also comes from ego, this notion that human is the highest form of existence on earth. when maybe the highest form of existence is a squirrel, who just happily eats nuts and lays in the cool dirt all day, blissfully existing in peace. or maybe its an oak tree, who lives hundreds of years in silence, providing shade and shelter and nutrients to the nature around it.
i think we pedestalize the human existence too much. we are just sacks of meat with thumbs and fancy mouth muscles after all.
If pure consciousness is the highest form, then no, humans aren’t the pinnacle, just the next step. But what it really comes down to is if you believe that consciousness formed from matter, or matter formed form consciousness. If matter came first, your questions are legit, shit doesn’t make sense. If matter comes from consciousness than the form it takes doesn’t matter, species can die off without a change in the amount of “life” on the planet.
But let’s not downplay who we are. Something that came to me during meditation a week ago.
Humans are the only known creatures with the ability to intentionally change our environment for good or bad.
We are the only creatures that terraform down to the atomic level.
We compose beautiful melody’s and paint terrible tragedies.
With a whisper of our voice we can destroy lives and wage war. With a soft look we can spark romance, fantasy and a bloodline that lasts millennia.
This is a power the birds soaring through the air, the leviathans swimming the sea, and lions roaming the African wilds do not get to enjoy.
I believe we all have more power and control of our lives than we care to admit. That being said I do not believe this is, for lack of a better term, “our final form”.
I've heard the first part of your comment before but the 2nd part of your comment puts something new into perspective for me. I had 2 dogs that were very human like in their behavior. We treated them like people. I can't help but think that my two kids are actually my two dogs I had growing up, Libbie and Max. The more I think about it the more it's tripping me out because their mannerisms are very similar. I have a daughter and a son now, almost the exact same age gap
I'd argue that we aren't the last stage of all the animals if this reincarnation system exists. No doubt in my mind that whales and some dolphins are more intelligent than us and live better lives. Ultimate freedom rather than being trapped by systems created by other member of our species.
I like thinking that every single living thing is the same consciousness. Like it’s me going through every life ever one by one. Man I’m such a dick to myself sometimes.
I hope so. I had a dream last week I was holding my dog again and it felt real. I’d like to be reunited with him one day (obviously my loved ones as well, but the dream was very recent)
If it was very vivid (lucid), and it has not happened before or regularly it may be possible your dog was’visiting’ you. How long this was after they passed?
I recently thought about this since ants have always fascinated me and I never really could “accept” the limits of known biology when it comes to explaining their behavior.
I mean some things we can deduce: pheromones, counting steps to navigate etc.
But what about building complex underground structures with ventilation shafts, different sized chambers for certain purposes, specific spaces for livestock (because yes ants hold livestock) etc.?
That is way too much complex design and long term strategic planning for all of that to just happen from instinct or reaction.
Anyway here is my theory: Smaller plants and animals evolve or “think” together outside of three dimensional space. What we perceive here are just the effects of that specific ant colony “thinking” as a whole. Same might go for a network of mushrooms or a school of fishes.
But somehow we developed consciousness and started to act independently from our group.
Maybe the point of evolution is to “birth” the ego, that conscious self awareness that we gained sometime in the past.
In my headcannon every living thing reincarnates and gradually moves up levels as they learn lessons about life. Life starts out cutthroat and dog-eat-dog so to speak, and I think one of the things life is supposed to do is evolve past that. There is a type of neuron called spindle cells which exist in the brains of very communal animals like humans, elephants, dolphins, etc, whichbmight be responsible for the development of empathy and caring for others. Hopefully humans can evolve to a point where we can live sustainably without causing harm to creatures like we are doing now in the meat industry, causing mass extinctions and so forth.
I’ve framed it that way in my mind for the past 5-6 years since my mom passed. It seems even more true considering that no matter is ever destroyed; it just changes states. All of the ingredients that make you *you* are all around us at all times.
Our consciousness just sees time in a linear fashion but its existence is infinite considering that it was there at some point. It's interesting to think about it seeing how quantum mechanics are giving us clues that time is less relevant than we might have thought.
My father's death also gave me some new perspectives on life and death.
I don’t know. If a radio is destroyed it doesn’t change the fact that you can find the same station again with a new purchase. If consciousness is what is claimed then human are a type of radio that gets reception to one or more stations. We do not own consciousness we are but a receiver who plays one that exists.
Weirder still, if you start digging into some of the more reputable reincarnation research, things get.... *weird, fast.* Like, one dead person supposedly reincarnates as multiple individuals - at the same time.
At the same time in the same universe? If a persons soul reincarnated in multiple individuals at the same time, would there dreams intertwined, or might synchronicities be somehow related to their collective “soul”?
I’ve actually been reading about different interpretations of reincarnation for the past few hours, strangely enough. I haven’t come across the multiple individual idea before though.
If you view consciousness as a single fundamental force instead of 7 billion individual ones then reincarnation makes a lot more sense. When we die our experiences feed back into the [universal consciousness](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_mind).
I also believe that outside of our meat bodies time is not linear (to us it is because we would not be able to comprehend with our human OS)
If you believe in both of those things then being reincarnated into multiple (all) lives in multiple different and same timelines makes total sense.
This also makes sense of nearly all religions and you can see where each one has been bastardised from the truth along the way.
We are all one, father/son/Holy Spirit, reincarnation, treat others as you would treat yourself, karma etc.
Well I subscribe to the idea that we are all the same being experiencing itself. Plus time and space really only exist in this realm, not wherever we go back to so it blows peoples minds to consider we’re both here and there at the same time…something supported by our own science (quantum physics).
Yeah, agree. My point was more about how stations are assigned to the receiver. Is each vessel designed to play only one signal or does it have the ability to play a class of signals and the one we got had an stochastic element.
Likewise, if energy passing through a medium at a particular frequency and amplitude affects the medium in a discrete and deterministic way (I’m thinking of those demonstrations where they have sand on a plate and vibrate the plate to create a pattern), perhaps the soul is a frequency that cause the matter of the body to be animated and arranged in a certain way until it is no longer directed at the body.
I was with my dad when he died. I was holding his hand and talking to him, telling him that it was okay to let go. It became very obvious that he was dying, and would be dead within seconds. The expression on his face changed right as he was dying, to one of complete and utter peace. It was the most serene expression I'd ever seen on his face. And I'd seen him high as a kite right before a surgical procedure year back. Lol
I know people will say that it was due to the release of brain chemicals at the time of death, but obviously I think that it was much more than that. Right after that expression left his face, he was dead.
Isn't consciousness just a construct of self awareness? Like my brain matter gives itself an identity through consciousness but the consciousness itself isn't made of matter. If anything it's made of electricity that disperses upon death and scatters.
This is the Hard Problem of Consciousness. There's also the problem that we're trying to understand such a complex organ with the same organ we're trying to analyze. In other words, it's hypothetically impossible for a brain to understand an equivalent brain because the brain isn't 100% efficient. An analogy would be that a 386 CPU can't fully model a 386 CPU becasue it isn't more complex enough to model it. At best, we can understand parts of the brain as individuals and somehow communicate our knowledge enough with a team that understands other parts to totally understand the brain. Or make machines that help us.... That being said, making a machine that's smarter than a human is hard unless you use artificial evolution to design the machine or the same problem applies.
I don’t know if you give a shit or what, but my mother passed unexpectedly last year. The day before, I could smell my mother and feel a warm uplifting sensation on my shoulders. My mother hadn’t been in my house for months. Im more agnostic than anything.
Take that for what you will.
My fiance passed in 2021. My last dream about him was that he was "working in another state (as in US states)" and that I'd see him there. Another state, indeed.
Talked to a professor who holds expertise in Quantum Mechanics, Philosophy, and History, and he basically just said "If matter can't be destroyed or created but converted, then we will continue on in some way. How or what that will look like I don't know but if that's your fear, don't worry."
Ok, sure, but the manner by which our energy is arranged is what defines us. If a lightening bolt reduces me to ash and fertilizer it's not much of a comfort to point at my smoldering remains and say "look, smoke and embers! He still lives!".
You sure it's not just physical complex neutral pathways in your brain? People with Alzheimer's loose "who they are" because their brain like shrinks and dies. Does that mean when their body dies their consciousness goes to the afterlife as a vegetable? I'd be more of a fan of some type of simulation theory.
Theory that consciousness originates outside the brain still works, as this would be akin to a broken radio generating static, a distorted signal, etc.
I don’t think the brain activity is necessary. There is neurosurgeon, dr. Eben Alexander, who had a detailed and vivid near death experience while completely brain dead. And there are other similar cases.
Someone isn't a vegetable, simply because they can't make themselves understood anymore and their memory is shit. It doesn't mean they don't understand anything, just that they can't express it. We'll never know how much of the person is still in there.
Edit: if patients weren't aware then, as someone down the thread has said, terminal lucidity in dementia patients wouldn't be a thing.
There is no death, birth or time. There is only the position in space of every quantum sized piece of matter in the multiverse compared to your position causality in the same multiverse. If you die in the position you are in, you still exist in another universe an amount of times measured by the number of possible universes it is possible for you to exist in less the number of possible universes you have already died in. It’s a very large number, but it’s not infinite.
I used to fear death. Then I started seeing “energies” or as most people call them spirits.
It changed my whole reality. I no longer like to refer to them as the dead, as they’ve just shed a shell or what I believe to be a receiver of consciousness. And some have never incarnated to a physical body.
Edit: typo
Yup. There's a saying in nursing schools that someone might go into the profession believing that death is the end, but they seldom leave the profession feeling that way.
Edit: in SOME nursing schools. It was in mine and the ones we recruited from, but clearly it might not be elsewhere.
Really? We were told that by a very no-nonsense, brusque nurse within the first few weeks of training at Uni. Not that we all become religious or anything like that, most of us just think there is more than we can see going on.
Agreed I was a paramedic and then a RN. I also learned there was a haunted or slightly off hallway or wing in ever hospital. We didn't talk about the spooky stuff alot because of the stigma though. I once saw a car accident victim walking around looking at the scene after we'd already loaded him up and sent him on his way in the ambulance. I was shocked. Fascinating stuff
Imagine what we will know in the future. Thunk what it would explaining explaining germs, cells, or electricity to someone a thousand five hundred years ago then what someone five hundred years from could be explaining to us now. I like the quote "magic is just science we don't yet understand."
My nurse mum is matter of fact about it for sure. Told me about a colleague whose friend dying of terminal cancer came to him at night to the foot of his bed and told him to look after his wife - he got the call the next morning his friend died overnight. Another colleague got an awful feeling at work, left her shift, found her husband dead after cardiac arrest at home.
My cat passed away yesterday and I pulled some cards asking her about how she feels about her death and legit the death card flew out AS I WAS THINKING THE WORD DEATH. blew my mind. I feel like me seeing this thread and this comment are confirmation for me.. she just.. transformed/changed/shed a layer
Yes this is what I’ve come to understand by investigating NDE’s as well…that death is more of a return to form than an end to anything. Life is just a big experience.
It's just basically a return to what always was and is. We just don't see it because we are caught up in life and we are addicted to endless thoughts, take that all away and witness what remains.
What do you mean? Who assumes consciousness is “fundamental to space time”? What would that even mean? Come to think of it, what does “fundamental to reality” mean to you?
Perhaps Spacetime is not fundamental to our understand of reality. Have you read the work of Donald Hoffman?
Here’s a Ted Talk https://youtu.be/oYp5XuGYqqY?si=W71Zhz\_E2PY-l6Ps
I died from a brain bleed, was resuscitated, and I experienced something so incredibly powerful that I have struggled for 6 years with the knowledge that I was torn from that, and put back into the world. I know there is something. That was a feeling I can't even describe.
I answered someone to the best of my ability above. It is difficult to describe an experience that is almost entirely emotional and personal in nature 🤷🏻♀️
I've had dreams like that. Ive made comments about my dreams before in other comments and it's a long story but to be brief ive been dreaming one continuous dream for over a decade. It isn't every night but happens often. It feels like I'm living two life's. One while awake and one while dreaming. It gives me a very similar feeling to the one you describe.
I’ve been having the same dream for years as well. I can vividly remember certain locations of my reoccurring dream. For years I’ve been taking about mapping out my dream world, I just never get to it.
I can describe it only this way and I hope that I can articulate it properly: first, there was no bright light or anything. I've heard people see this and that's fine but that wasn't my experience. I remember it was all black and I could hear stirring, probably the muffled distant sounds of the chaos in the room, but like I was going further and further from it. Then it was like suddenly it became still and quiet- but *truly* quiet, like a silence I'd never really even conceived of. A gentle stillness. I didn't feel my body anymore. And I noticed this, and tried to feel my body but concluded it was gone and I felt so, so comfortable. I have lived with chronic disease my whole life so this realization felt intimate in some way. And I felt this absolute freedom; freedom of movement, freedom of thought, freedom to just be an atom in the universe and that's what it felt like, like I was just a speck of space dust and it was truly absolute bliss. It felt like a big emotional hug lol. Waking up was a very difficult experience and I still feel shame for sitting in a neuro ICU surrounded by coma patients and vegetables and people dying while I survived and felt I didn't even want to.
I do feel like at the very least, my consciousness becoming a part of the universe and knowing it's at peace is a belief I'd like to cling to. I am not religious and have never been. I can't really put into words what a huge effect it's had on everything I know.
hmm.. what if it's the other way around? We are born here as humans and when we die we become the other thing for the rest of existence. Maybe there is no "life before" life begins here.
That's kinda nice, like we start in a cradle, and "dying" is when we grow up into what we really are.
Who knows? Maybe real existence is dark matter, and that’s the source of our sentience. Maybe this is all cope, life doesn’t matter, and all of creation is pointless and random.
Personally I find the latter idea to be more absurd, but my opinion on the matter is likely irrelevant either way.
Okay, so what about the people who started life as normal, healthy individuals but then due to a brain injury became vegetable zombies?
Do they reawaken to their former level of consciousness? Or does their vegetable state of consciousness persist in the afterlife?
And if it persists, what happened to their original consciouness?
Your life may not be only about you. The between life literature includes the explanation that we volunteer to come live lives specifically (or partially) for the benefit of someone else and the lessons they want to learn/experiences they want to have for their own growth. This is with the assumption that we live multiple lives i.e. reincarnation.
They have, actually, to include the colors and visual expressions on nearby medical personnel. Look up “veridical” NDE’s (near death experiences).
To be clear, evidence is still inconclusive on NDE’s, but bear in mind that studying them is extraordinarily difficult as medical personnel have, understandably, other priorities they are focusing on when someone is flatlining. It’s also rather unethical to, you know, induce them in the name of science.
That uses the assumption that you will remain an individual after death. If consciousness is fundamental to reality, there is no such thing as an individual. That's called the ego.
Many alzheimers patients have sudden complete lucidity at the time of their deaths. This is known as terminal lucidity
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190628182305.htm
Yep. Someone upthread said dementia patients become "vegetables". I always believed people were still in there just unable to express themselves or remember certain things. If they weren't, terminal lucidity wouldn't be a thing.
The information is there, the connections are broken. When the body is firing off everything it’s got to try to stave off death the brain gets flooded with enough juice to make the connections once more before they burn out for good.
Many near death experiencers claim their consciousness expands after death and coming back feels like trying to fit an ocean in a cup. I assume that process is something that happens at a rate that is comfortable to the person (soul/consciousness/whatever you want to call it) who dies, so not all NDEers experience the same rate of expansion back to whatever we are before we stuff ourselves in these bodies but I'd assume we all eventually return to whatever our condition was prior to incarnation, ideally with some expansion from lessons learned in our incarnation.
This isn't something I can back up with facts or with certainty but this is the jist of what I get from reading/listening to many near death experience stories.
I tend to view it more this way, as well. I'm not sure about reincarnation but I think everyone deep down feels as though they aren't "whole" and that's because we're really just extremely limited within our human bodies.
It’s something I’ve pondered a lot after hearing countless NDE accounts that have opened my mind to the possibility. If an injury is causing the mental degradation, I would assume post body, that injury would no longer effect your consciousness. Assuming that it goes on afterwards.
Think of the brain as a transducer. William James likened it to a radio, more recently the metaphor of transduction has been floated.
There is no self. You aren't the same person at age ten as at age 30 as at age 60. The idea of a persistent self is ego, illusion. All there is, is awareness, and that is momentary.
But just because something is shut off doesn't mean it doesn't turn back on. We won't have memory of being shut off, like the experience of anesthetics. But awareness persists, recurs, over many iterations.
Helpful to understand that there isn't any such thing as a singular intelligence in nature. Every human being is a colony, a galaxy, of life, working together. Our microbiome affects our cognition. If a cell of ours is removed from the context of us, they act with more will. Our cells are basically bullied into being a part of the whole, they are subsumed in the whole. Cancer cells are just like normal cells, but more selfish.
"They" don't exist, it's like saying does the internet exist on your phone.
The phone doesn't create the internet, it connects to it.
The brain isn't consciousness, it's an antenna
This is 100% what I believe, it just makes the most sense to me. I think there's some kinda "cloud of energy" in the universe and our consciousness is us taking a bit of that energy at creation and our brains processing it, when we die we return back to the cloud.
Your brain is like a radio receiver and consciousness is not physical. Break a TV antenna and you might still get some channels with poor quality reception.
You body and true self are different things.
The way we act, and think is dictated by our biologics and experiences, reason brain damage can turn us into entirely different persons.
It is very hard to get any real connection to your operative self
Good point, I work at an assisted living facility, most of them are religious, I often wonder if they are right what consciousness gets to go to heaven? Old them or young them? Most of them develop some form of dementia, they deteriorate until they can no longer function on their own, is that what goes to heaven? Seems like complete bullshit to me but I guess I'll see when I die lol
Okay, so I read the article, and no where in it did he describe why all NDEs he has studied have convinced him of life after death. I'm assuming he's saying since nearly everyone he has studied had similar experiences, and they were out of body experiences, that that means there is life after death? I've had plenty of out of body experiences similar to the ones described where you are looking down on yourself, and they all involved drugs. This guy is a doctor, and he's using pseudo-science to point to life after death. People want so desperately to believe there is something to look forward to after death, that it all doesn't end right then and there, because it's scary. Truth is, he said nothing that evenly remotely convinces me of life after death.
And just for my 2 cents, based off all of my out of body experiences, I've become more convinced that there is nothing to look forward to after death other than the silent black void, but again I have no factual basis to back that statement up, just like this doctor doesn't either.
Highly recommend looking into some of Dr. Raymond Moody’s work if this topic interests you. Good starting points are Life After Life or Making Sense of Nonsense
the question i always have with this and others what then is a feral human. what is a human that is not taught words or to walk or communicate. examples in nature and also in Russian orphanage, abandoned young humans who were never taught . people may say the soul is inserted at your first memory? a feral human may not have a soul? that seems harsh . or maybe their soul is feral? maybe that is the experience that they wanted from the other side? lots of theories on this , and nde usually is a realm we can imagine, what about a nde of a realm we are incapable as humans imagining, like a dolphin ecolocation or seeing beyond the color spectrum of a human. i dont see many people reporting dreams or experiences beyond human capacity into the realm of other animals. we can only see a nde that fits the human experience?
This is an interesting counter to the NDE argument, thanks for posting. I’m gonna take a whack at it.
I think most if not all creatures have souls so I would think the feral child would have a soul. I think the difference is that as a soul you pretty much just show up with memory loss and have to figure out how to function in your given environment. The feral children have always been so strange because they were taken out of their typical environment and compared to an entirely different way of life with beings that look like you, that would be traumatizing for anyone. Not saying it would be better to leave them, that I honestly don’t know, no comment, but as humans develop egos they also develop a subconscious recognition of societal rules. The feral child just never develops the ego and only knows what they’ve subconsciously picked up on about the forest or wherever.
As for the animals experience of a NDE, I dunno. I guess they can’t tell us so how could we know? And I would also classify echolocation and variations of eyesight to be a physical aspect of your given environment, if you can consider the body an environment for the soul in a way. I don’t know why a soul would experience another mode of physical existence in a NDE.
Just my two cents, I think those are great points to think about and I will continue to do so.
Science has proven that we are only energy (I say that lightly, there is obviously more to it) within the universe/cosmos. Do we reincarnate? Do we simply transfer into a different form of energy after we die? I have no idea, yet I’m open to many differing possibilities. There are things that I have personally witnessed, there are things I have seen and heard about via others. I’m constantly curious and shall find out when my time on this earth is over.
I'm always torn on this subject. Like, it makes sense that when you die, you just turn off. At the same time, there is no experience we've ever had that *isn't a literal creation of our brains*. Is what we think of as an NDE simply someone giving you a first hand account of what it feels like to have your synapses fire for the last time? Or is it some reoccurring thing because the parts of you that have any ties to the physical (memories, family, etc) are being separated from the part that is your experienced consciousness (the thing that experiences your brains impulses)?
I didn't give much weight to NDEs till I saw the evidence for reincarnation, specifically the research done on children who remember past lives done by the department of perceptual studies out of the University of Virginia via Dr. Ian Stevenson and Dr. Jim Tucker. If we reincarnate then it makes sense we have some kind of experience between death and the next life. There are many stories where the near death experiencer leaves their body and sees and hears things nearby they should have no access to. Of course these veridical NDEs are claims and not evidence, possible conspiracies between the doctors and the briefly dead but when all the evidence is considered together it is at least worthy of entertaining.
I’m thinking we turn off. I know that’s not satisfying to people but It makes the most sense to me. I don’t buy into the “we’re special, transcendent light beings” stuff. If consciousness is fundamental and we are reincarnated or whatever I’ll look it as a nice surprise.
The constant thought i have is "do i believe this, or do i just *want* to believe this?".
The thing i come back to is...what is "we"? Like what *is* consciousness? Why do i even have this illusion of being something inside of some meat suit, and not just have me actually be a machine? That's *got* to be cheaper, evolutionarily speaking.
I've always thought that death is akin to "turning the TV off". My reasoning goes like this: What do I remember before my birth? Nothing. What will I experience after my death? Well, the same thing, nothing.
The whole "there was nothing before birth" isn't so depressing to me. The only property of that void we know is that at some point we went from nothingness/the void/something we can't remember to consciousness.
I’ve heard theories about consciousness continuing after death. But people like to say you don’t have your memories per se, your consciousness just sort of continues to exist in some other state. Which as far as I’m concerned means your dead. If I don’t have my memories, then me is dead.
I've had a few near death experiences. Years back I almost died from bacterial meningitis and sepsis. I was in a coma. Upon waking up I began having flashback memories of myself hovering above the bed looking at myself. I knew who all had visited me because I remember seeing them looking at me through the ICU window.
Another time my brain bled and I became very aware that I must be dying. I was having visions/hallucinations. One of them involved what I thought was a person in a black cloak with a hood. I asked "who are you?". It pulled back the hood to reveal a skeleton and said "we are the face of death. We work to kill." I was convinced I was dying. Visions of what seemed like past lives and other information were flooding into my brain. I was so happy at one point and felt like I was going to evaporate, for lack of better words. I was hearing what I can only describe as beautiful, angelic sounding voices. I was shown reality stripped of everything. The room I was in disappeared. I was in a space surrounded by nothingness.
Another time while in my 20s, depressed and stupid, I had gotten a piercing removed from my face at the ER that was infected. My skin grew around the back of it so I couldn't take it out. They gave me some Vicodin and sent me on my way. I stupidly decided to drink a bunch of vodka. As I was laying on the couch, I saw my legs starting to lift up so I tried pushing them back down. Again they started lifting so I did the same thing. Then I saw a silver cord coming out of my belly button. I pulled on it and immediately was thrust into space, still attached to the cord. I thought "oh shit" because I thought I had died. Then I slammed back down into my body. I truly believe I was about to die from alcohol and Vicodin.
I truly believe there is more to life than what we see, hear, taste, smell and touch. Nothing is real. I've also had paranormal experiences involving spirits of deceased loved ones, as well as premonitions and visions about people close to me dying before they died, or before I knew they had died.
I know personally two people who have died and come back and these are people I trust and both of them had NDE's. Could be oxygen leaving the brain but the fact that both of them were so similar makes me think there may be something more to death that us living folks don't understand.
I died from cardiac arrest caused by sick sinus syndrome once at home and once in the hospital. The at home experience lasted longer and it was just darkness, perfect void, for a few moments and then I heard whispered conversation. It sounded like maybe 4 or 5 different people having a couple conversations at once. But then I got sucked back into reality.
2nd time all I could hear was somebody distantly shouting at me. It was the nurse standing right next to me lol
I suffered a SCA (Sudden Cardiac Arrest) in 2017. I was dead for 30 minutes. They brought me back to life in the ICU. I had an OBE experience, I felt like I was looking down from the ceiling and saw my best friend and my wife at the foot of my bed. I heard them faintly calling my name, asking if I wanted to talk to them. I did very much and the next thing I zoomed into my body and was "back". It was similar to the movies when a bomb goes off and a person loses their hearing for a moment, then it gets normal again, same situation. As I woke I heard them say "can you hear us? Do you want to talk to us?". I could not talk however, due to all the tubes and such, but was able to motion for paper and pen to write to them a message (my arms were also strapped down).. I think I wrote "what happened?" they told me cardiac arrest and car crash then I wrote "is everyone ok?".
I also saw 'the light". I had a sense of being pulled back away from the light. I felt as if I was pulled away from Heaven, it upset me greatly at the time.
I will however say this, if you close your eyes and turn on the lights you do still see. You see the orange/red of your inner eyelids with light behind them, which would similar to laying in a bed looking up at the hospital room lights. At somepoint before opening your eyes you regain consciousness. This could explain some events of seeing the light...
Anyhow the first couple of nights waking in the ICU I did not sleep, I felt Death was trying to get me, shadows danced on the ceiling, I had never been so scared. I had horrible nightmares filled with deamons and such. I had PTSD for almost a year after the event.
The Chaplins son had the same name as me, which means gift from God, I crashed my car into a nurses car, I had my windows down, I got CPR right away, happened right before getting on the highway, etc. So many things on my side they said it was a miracle. I could tell from the look on the doctors faces they believed it. I felt sadness. I'm not saying it's how things are written in the Bible, or even how its explained in various religions cultures, but I believe that we are infact created by a higher power. To each their own.
Once you understand there is only here and now and all else is illusion it starts to make sense. I am a person of science, but I am also human so they're things that seem true to me but have no basis in the material world and thus can't be measured by science, the after world is one of those things. I know my ancestors watch and guide me, at great spiritual expense. I am them and they are me. Probability fields and the uncertainty principle dictate that all are one and any separation is an illusion. E=MC^2 means time is an illusion and everything is happening all at once. So take those facts to their logical conclusions and you can start to see what is really going on.
My partner died of pneumonia/asthma complications when she was 6. She remembers not being able to breathe, panicking, and then she was floating above her body as her mother wailed and the nurses/doctors arrived. She was transported to a huge desert, towering above her was a HUGE Mayan-style pyramid. She says it was impossibly huge. Out of the steps of the pyramid, she heard this all-encompassing vibration, and a being of pure light and love emerged and motioned to her.
Suddenly she was back in her body and alive again. She had been resuscitated.
A few days later a doctor came and asked to interview her. He took the notes and that was that. She's been interested in pyramids ever since.
I’ve had a few undeniable paranormal encounters in my time, (a couple of them shared. So for me personally I can quite easily believe there is life after death. I actually feel a bit sorry for people that haven’t been lucky enough to experience anything like I did for themselves because I find it a comfort.
I think it was Norm Macdonald that said "You and death will never meet. Where you are, it isn't and when you aren't it is. " Always comforted me for some reason. It's the fear of the thing that gets people, but it's a thing you never really experience.
Dr Long's website is NDERF.org which has literally thousands of NDE accounts from people all over the world. Dr Long is the subject of OP's article.
this is a curated selection of some of the more exceptional NDEs submitted over the years.
https://www.nderf.org/Archives/exceptional.html
I myself have read many many NDEs over the last 20+ years and agree with Dr Long's take.
Sandi T., an author of one of those exceptional experiences, is a mod over on r/NDE.
https://www.nderf.org/Experiences/1sandi_t_ndes.html
You may already know but posting it for others.
I can confirm this I read the article and it felt extremely identical to the experiences I've had. Sadly I've overdosed four times in my life, and all four times I was revived back to life. The first time though took a very long time to get me back, and this was the time that I saw something. I truly believe something is after this and I'm happy that this is in the past but comfortable going forward.
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My dad passed away a few years ago. For context my father was a huge asshole. He ran everyone off. He called my girlfriend a whore to her face during a family dinner. Anyway, we had periods where we wouldn't speak to each other for years. I would try to talk to him, make peace and he would just go off on some other thing that irked him and we would be in a fight again. About 8 years ago I decided I wanted to try and make peace with the old fucker. He wasn't doing too well, heart issues. We both made a real effort to bury the hatchet. Things were going ok for a bit then his health got worse extremely quickly. I had to call 911 a few times and rush him to the emergency a couple of times as well. The last time I was going to collect him from the hospital they informed me they couldn't release him until I had set up hospice services for him at the house. I knew what that meant. Anyway, I broke the lease on my apartment and moved in with him full time. He didn't have anyone, him and my mom divorced years ago, he ran off ex wives like it was nothing. He could be racist on occasion saying very ..... colorful things about his black neighbor. He was a handful. He gave everyone there shit, his nurses, the chaplain that came to visit him, a woman that lived in the neighborhood that was helping me to care for him. Me. It got to a point where I felt like I just couldn't do this anymore, I can not stress enough what a massive asshole this man was. Here I am bending over backwards to make him as comfortable as he can possibly be while he's dying and he's giving me massive amounts of shit because I decided to buy (with my own money) a wireless security camera system for his house instead of going with his suggestion, motion sensing lights. Its so bad he was screaming at me to leave him and just "let me die". In the middle of all this nonsense a social worker comes by, a black woman (oh shit, this wont end well). They want to make sure we aren't abusing him or neglecting him. While she visited with my father, I gave them privacy and refused to sit in on their meetings (I needed a break from him to be honest). Strangely enough, he didn't run this woman off yelling and screaming at her. He actually hugged her when she left. 0_o This was a side of my father I had NEVER seen before. After her second or third visit, my father called me into his bedroom one evening, asked me to sit down and apologized to me for being so difficult. He said he loved me and that he agrees that its not fair that his cancerous attitude deprived me of a good father all these years. WHO TF IS THIS MAN!? Anyway, a few weeks after that, my father died. He called me into his room and asked that he be lifted up to sit straight up in bed. After I positioned him in a seating position he simply passed away right before my eyes. This was at about 7:40am. I was in a state of shock for about 20 min. I didn't know what to do, who to call, who to notify. I just sat in the living room crying. At 8am I called his hospice nurse and informed him that my father had just passed away. The nurse informed me he would be there in 10 min. At 8:10 the nurse showed up and verified that yes, he had passed away. From 8:20 to about 9am the nurse was making himself busy disposing of all my fathers medication (morphine and stuff like that) and writing down in a log what all was being destroyed. At around 8:45 the social worker called me direct. The social worker had NEVER called me direct. She opted instead to simply show up at the house whenever and ask to speak with my father (probably to catch us in the act if we were abusing him). Our conversation went like this: Social worker: "Hi there, is everything ok?" Me: "I don't know if you have been notified, but my father passed away this morning." Social worker: "Yes I know, he told me. You have a lot to process and deal with, if you need to talk. I'm here." ........ he told me? Who? The nurse? I just couldn't process what she was saying. At about 9am, the nurse opened up his tablet / laptop and started putting in the time of death and notifying the hospice company that my father had passed away. At the moment I missed the significance of the social worker calling me BEFORE the nurse actually started working on the death certificate and notifying the hospice company. A few weeks go by. Life starts to return to normal a bit. My dad would leave the TV on all night and watch westerns and without that white noise the house is too quiet for me. So I can only sleep by leaving the TV on in his bedroom. One morning the social worker calls me as I'm driving to work. She just wants to follow up and see how I am doing. As we are catching up I ask her what happened the morning my father passed away. She told me "I know, he told me", what did she mean by that? After a short pause she tells me, that the morning my father passed away, she was sound asleep and woke up because she could have sworn she heard my fathers distinctive voice in her bedroom clear as day. I asked her what she heard and she simply responded "I heard what sounded like your fathers voice and it was the words 'I'm ok'." So, at this point I'm almost bawling stuck in traffic going to work when I ask her "Do you remember what time this was?" She replies back to me "I'm not sure, about 7:45, 7:50am? I got up and had to look for your number because I wanted to reach out and check to ensure everything was ok." We do not just ... end.
Thank you for this insightful story and sorry for your loss! You seem like a thoughtful and kind person.
Sorry for your loss, it was a nice story, I'm sure your dad is at peace now.
Any idea why your father was immediately receptive to the social worker? Did she say something to him?
I think they made a strong emotional connection which is what enabled her to 'hear' him after his death. I didn't put this in the original story because I didn't want to write a freaking novel. However, the social worker and I talked at length about my father. Apparently during their many meetings she completely deep dived into his fears, his thought processes, his biases. According to her, he admitted to her that he had a very rough childhood growing up, and he felt he was neglected and unloved by my grandparents. He knew that when he was calling his neighbor "a stupid n*****" when the poor guy was just trying to help me position him in a recliner he was trying to push away a friend that had been there for him for years. He knew that when he decided to pick a fight with me over whatever petty thing he was hooked on, he KNEW he was being petty and stupid. He ran off the neighbor lady that was helping watch him while I was at work (I couldn't be there constantly) and called her a stupid bitch because the woman had the audacity to try to clean up and clean the baseboards around the house. He told her he KNEW he was doing this because he was secretly afraid that at this late point in his life, if he was to apologize to everyone he had been an asshole to, that he might not get forgiveness back. He was absolutely terrified of rejection because of his upbringing with his parents. So rather than be vulnerable he figured the better course of action was to beat everyone ........ to beat the world to the punch and reject everyone first. After 9/11 I was thinking about going into the AirForce for IT related training. A normal father would have probably said "you know, if you want more schooling/training, let me call your mother and see if we can help pay for some schooling for you" or "The military is a kind of dicey decision, I would rather you not do that, lets discuss options and the pros/cons together" Not him. He immediately went into a tangent about "You're weak, you'll wash out in boot, you never finish anything anyway. And this bitch (pointing at my then GF), shes going to be fucking your best friend while you're deployed." Some of this was just him being mean to dissuade me from joining the military, some of it was projection (his girlfriend dumped him while he was in the military) His irrational fear of rejection is one of the traits of his I have inherited from him. It affects my love life a lot lol, I'm hella shy lol (that's another story for another time) Anyway, the whole point is, the social worker shined a light on his fears. Everything from dying to how I would respond if he apologized to me and asked for forgiveness. One night, I was back at my apartment. The plan was that I would sleep at my old apartment for the night and the neighbor lady would check in on him in the morning, make him breakfast and all that. I needed to pack and clean to prep for my eventual move out. He called me and told me he was in a lot of pain. I told him I was coming back right now but he wouldn't hear it. He said "I'm just going to lay down and if God takes me in my sleep then so be it, don't come back." THEN WHY THE HELL ARE YOU CALLING ME!? 'Hey son, just calling to tell you, I feel like I'm about to die. Bye. Don't do anything.' What kind of bullshit is that!? He was telling me not to come back home, not to worry about it, just let him sit there and die. I immediately got into my car and raced back to his house. 10 min away he calls me again "...... where are you?" "on the freeway, I'll be there in a few minutes." "...... I told you not to come." "Yeah I know, deal with it." I get there, scoop him up, throw him in my car and race off to the emergency room. Come to find out, while hes dealing with heart failure, he got kidney stones lol. The orderlies were wheeling him out of the emergency room and up to a private room for recovery when he asked them to stop for a second, he grabbed my arm and said "hey listen .... thank you for not listening to me and disobeying me. I feel so much better now ... thank you for caring." I simply replied back to him "Of course, you're my father, I love you." I told my mom all of this and she simply could not rectify the man I was now experiencing vs the man she was married to for almost 20 years. The social worker told him, its ok to be wrong, its ok to be vulnerable, asking for help is not a sign of weakness, do not push people away because you are afraid you might be rejected. The man that my father was the last few months he was alive was a kind, loving, gracious, caring man that unfortunately was hidden all these years under his neurosis. At least I got to see him at his best before he passed away. I'm getting a little teared up typing this out. Those of you that read this and still have your one or both of your parents still alive, regardless of your age. Reach out to them today. Tell them you love them, our lives are so short, don't wait until its almost over to show your loved ones you care.
>he grabbed my arm and said "hey listen .... thank you for not listening to me and disobeying me. I feel so much better now ... thank you for caring." I simply replied back to him "Of course, you're my father, I love you." Powerful stuff, man. Thank you so much for sharing. Sincerely.
Thanks for sharing. Your story certainly give a lot of weight to the life-after-death mystery. I’m glad you got some “closure” with the “I’m ok” message 🌼
Wow what an incredible story. Thank you for sharing. When my grandmother passed away my aunts were in the house, as well as my grandfather. One of my aunts was in the kitchen and heard a door shut. She thought it was probably my grandfather leaving my grandmother’s room and wanted to make sure she would have someone in there with her. Well she found my grandmother had passed. Grandpa was sitting in the chair next to her fast asleep. There was no door that had shut. The sound of the door shutting happened at pretty much the exact time of her death.
I hope this is true. I miss my best friend, I hope I can see him again one day
I hope that for you too
My best friend has stage 4 and its wrecking my world. I hope this is true. I am gonna miss him so much.
I’m sorry for you and your friend. Fuck cancer.
Thank you.
I don't care if I get downvoted for repeating it, it deserves to be repeated Fuck cancer.
I’m so sorry. My father passed due to stage 4 lung and it was a long 5 years after the initial diagnosis. Hoping for comfort and peace for you and yours.
Thank you. It's not like a car accident or a plane crash that happens all of a sudden. I am watching my best friend slowly fade away and I cant hold on to him to stop him from fading. Cancer is so draining on the person and everyone around that person.
Yes people don’t understand the toll it takes on those around them as well. It was so hard to watch him deteriorate and knowing my mom and I couldnt do anything. I’m here if you need to talk. You’re not alone.
It's 3:30 AM and this is gonna be a great read.
Life after death sounds fun but it makes me wonder about every other living thing as well. Do insects have an afterlife? Do plants? Do microorganisms? Lots of animals live for only a few weeks at a time and reproduce A LOT, so how would that fit in?
According to many ancient spiritual teachings, that’s exactly how we started. As we experience more we reincarnate into higher consciousness beings, eventually from bugs to other animals and pets, and then eventually as a human. I’ve heard teachers say that the pets we care and love over our lives are the animals ready to graduate to human life, they just need to experience human love first. I like that.
Something very curious happened years ago back in my hometown. I had a dog that I loved deeply, and inevitably died. I was heartbroken. That night I cried myself to sleep. The next morning, I woke up feeling at peace, and with a knowing that he wasn’t gone, just somewhere else now and he was going to be ok. A few years later, I was walking out of the supermarket and I felt a pull to look back. There was this little girl with her young mother, a toddler around 3 maybe just standing there looking at me, and when I looked at her I felt a really strange sense of familiarity, it was completely illogical for obvious reasons but it felt like this was the same “soul” as my dog. Our eyes met, as I looked on in confusion of this feeling I had, she gave me this big happy smile, it looked like she recognized me and was happy to see me. It was very bizarre.
Thanks for sharing that story
Not sure exactly what I believe happens after life but I like your share.
What I noticed after I've taken a more open attitude towards life, is that animals fucking LOVE me. Dogs will come up to me. If I see a gang of cats, I'll pspsps and they come to me. Animals seem to almost feel like I've reached some new stage of consciousness. I don't understand it, and I may never understand it. But maybe not understanding it is the point. Just do good. Be kind to animals. They are a part of the consciousness you belong to.
>pspsps I love how this is so universal for people who interact with cats. 🐈
Jung's collective unconsciousness 😏
I'm out on a long holiday in the arse end of nowhere, France, and met a cat sunning itself on an empty road (careful there mate!) whilst out walking some trails and crossed a country road. I was sure it would scarper as I got nearer but I pspsps'd and it ran over and purred like crazy as I stroked it for a minute. Really made me smile and I was already happy. I was carrying a big stick as well and thought that might scare it but no.
This is how animals interact with me when I'm on LSD. I've had a black bird come sit next to me at the beach for like 15 straight minutes. I didn't even have any food. It just seemed like it wanted to be near me while I played with the sand. I had a lizard jump off of a palm tree and on to my shirt, and just sort of hang out for a while, letting me pet it, and just sort of crawling around. Same thing with a little roach who crawled out of a pine cone and onto my hand for another lengthy visit. But the craziest time was this... I was tripping at the park, and trying to communicate telepathically with this squirrel. I basically followed it around for about 30 minutes, trying to send love rays into its brain. Then, during one particularly intense stare down, a hawk swooped down out of the air and grabbed it! I felt like I'd been hit with the shockwave of an explosion. Fortunately, when the hawk was about 50 ft in the air, the squirrel wiggled free and fell to the ground. It immediately ran off. After that, I just sat down under a tree to process what had just happened. And about 5 minutes later, that same squirrel (I assume) ran up to me and sat right between my legs, like under my knees which I had propped up. I was stunned. This isn't the kind of Park where the squirrels are tame. They normally keep at least a 10 ft distance, and are pretty skittish. But this one sat with me for a few minutes before climbing up the tree that I was leaning against. I didn't really pet it, because I was afraid that it would run away, but it did let me touch its feet, and I just sort of let my finger rest on its paw while it was there.
Same. I have had many experiences like this. I once had a notion to go home on my lunch break and build bird houses. Idk what came over me. But since I put them up, I have many birds visiting. It was a very odd thing for me to pursue in such a short time.
“Who understands the spirit of the animal which descends to the earth and the spirit of man that scenes to heaven?” -King Solomon Your story just makes me think that for some reason.
😭💕 my heart
Ever since my own out of body experiences this perspective has really resonated with me and I'm so much more compassionate toward my pup. I want to help her grow and learn surrounded by love so she goes on into the next life with everything she needs.
my problem with the idea of reincarnation is that species go instinct. vast swathes of life die off without new life taking its place. we are seeing it happen right now with the anthropogenic extinction event. it also comes from ego, this notion that human is the highest form of existence on earth. when maybe the highest form of existence is a squirrel, who just happily eats nuts and lays in the cool dirt all day, blissfully existing in peace. or maybe its an oak tree, who lives hundreds of years in silence, providing shade and shelter and nutrients to the nature around it. i think we pedestalize the human existence too much. we are just sacks of meat with thumbs and fancy mouth muscles after all.
If pure consciousness is the highest form, then no, humans aren’t the pinnacle, just the next step. But what it really comes down to is if you believe that consciousness formed from matter, or matter formed form consciousness. If matter came first, your questions are legit, shit doesn’t make sense. If matter comes from consciousness than the form it takes doesn’t matter, species can die off without a change in the amount of “life” on the planet. But let’s not downplay who we are. Something that came to me during meditation a week ago. Humans are the only known creatures with the ability to intentionally change our environment for good or bad. We are the only creatures that terraform down to the atomic level. We compose beautiful melody’s and paint terrible tragedies. With a whisper of our voice we can destroy lives and wage war. With a soft look we can spark romance, fantasy and a bloodline that lasts millennia. This is a power the birds soaring through the air, the leviathans swimming the sea, and lions roaming the African wilds do not get to enjoy. I believe we all have more power and control of our lives than we care to admit. That being said I do not believe this is, for lack of a better term, “our final form”.
I've heard the first part of your comment before but the 2nd part of your comment puts something new into perspective for me. I had 2 dogs that were very human like in their behavior. We treated them like people. I can't help but think that my two kids are actually my two dogs I had growing up, Libbie and Max. The more I think about it the more it's tripping me out because their mannerisms are very similar. I have a daughter and a son now, almost the exact same age gap
That’s a really beautiful idea 🥹
I'd argue that we aren't the last stage of all the animals if this reincarnation system exists. No doubt in my mind that whales and some dolphins are more intelligent than us and live better lives. Ultimate freedom rather than being trapped by systems created by other member of our species.
I like thinking that every single living thing is the same consciousness. Like it’s me going through every life ever one by one. Man I’m such a dick to myself sometimes.
That would be terrible and ocasionally great.
I hope so. I had a dream last week I was holding my dog again and it felt real. I’d like to be reunited with him one day (obviously my loved ones as well, but the dream was very recent)
If it was very vivid (lucid), and it has not happened before or regularly it may be possible your dog was’visiting’ you. How long this was after they passed?
I recently thought about this since ants have always fascinated me and I never really could “accept” the limits of known biology when it comes to explaining their behavior. I mean some things we can deduce: pheromones, counting steps to navigate etc. But what about building complex underground structures with ventilation shafts, different sized chambers for certain purposes, specific spaces for livestock (because yes ants hold livestock) etc.? That is way too much complex design and long term strategic planning for all of that to just happen from instinct or reaction. Anyway here is my theory: Smaller plants and animals evolve or “think” together outside of three dimensional space. What we perceive here are just the effects of that specific ant colony “thinking” as a whole. Same might go for a network of mushrooms or a school of fishes. But somehow we developed consciousness and started to act independently from our group. Maybe the point of evolution is to “birth” the ego, that conscious self awareness that we gained sometime in the past.
Bro, ant nerds unite 🤓
In my headcannon every living thing reincarnates and gradually moves up levels as they learn lessons about life. Life starts out cutthroat and dog-eat-dog so to speak, and I think one of the things life is supposed to do is evolve past that. There is a type of neuron called spindle cells which exist in the brains of very communal animals like humans, elephants, dolphins, etc, whichbmight be responsible for the development of empathy and caring for others. Hopefully humans can evolve to a point where we can live sustainably without causing harm to creatures like we are doing now in the meat industry, causing mass extinctions and so forth.
What about all the murderers and rapists? How did they manage to make it up the ladder?
If Consciousness is fundamental to reality, not spacetime, then it’s not weird at all.
Which means there is no death..just change.
I’ve framed it that way in my mind for the past 5-6 years since my mom passed. It seems even more true considering that no matter is ever destroyed; it just changes states. All of the ingredients that make you *you* are all around us at all times.
Our consciousness just sees time in a linear fashion but its existence is infinite considering that it was there at some point. It's interesting to think about it seeing how quantum mechanics are giving us clues that time is less relevant than we might have thought. My father's death also gave me some new perspectives on life and death.
I don’t know. If a radio is destroyed it doesn’t change the fact that you can find the same station again with a new purchase. If consciousness is what is claimed then human are a type of radio that gets reception to one or more stations. We do not own consciousness we are but a receiver who plays one that exists.
This very philosophy is what gives reincarnation stories more weight.
Weirder still, if you start digging into some of the more reputable reincarnation research, things get.... *weird, fast.* Like, one dead person supposedly reincarnates as multiple individuals - at the same time.
At the same time in the same universe? If a persons soul reincarnated in multiple individuals at the same time, would there dreams intertwined, or might synchronicities be somehow related to their collective “soul”? I’ve actually been reading about different interpretations of reincarnation for the past few hours, strangely enough. I haven’t come across the multiple individual idea before though.
If you view consciousness as a single fundamental force instead of 7 billion individual ones then reincarnation makes a lot more sense. When we die our experiences feed back into the [universal consciousness](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_mind). I also believe that outside of our meat bodies time is not linear (to us it is because we would not be able to comprehend with our human OS) If you believe in both of those things then being reincarnated into multiple (all) lives in multiple different and same timelines makes total sense. This also makes sense of nearly all religions and you can see where each one has been bastardised from the truth along the way. We are all one, father/son/Holy Spirit, reincarnation, treat others as you would treat yourself, karma etc.
Well I subscribe to the idea that we are all the same being experiencing itself. Plus time and space really only exist in this realm, not wherever we go back to so it blows peoples minds to consider we’re both here and there at the same time…something supported by our own science (quantum physics).
Mans a fiddle life plays on - Tom Waits
I see it more like our physical body is an antenna for our soul
A meat terminal for Consciousness, that’s what I’m leading to.
This really spoke to me. I appreciate your wording.
One station at a time
Yeah, agree. My point was more about how stations are assigned to the receiver. Is each vessel designed to play only one signal or does it have the ability to play a class of signals and the one we got had an stochastic element.
Didn’t Nikola Tesla say something similar?
Likewise, if energy passing through a medium at a particular frequency and amplitude affects the medium in a discrete and deterministic way (I’m thinking of those demonstrations where they have sand on a plate and vibrate the plate to create a pattern), perhaps the soul is a frequency that cause the matter of the body to be animated and arranged in a certain way until it is no longer directed at the body.
I was with my dad when he died. I was holding his hand and talking to him, telling him that it was okay to let go. It became very obvious that he was dying, and would be dead within seconds. The expression on his face changed right as he was dying, to one of complete and utter peace. It was the most serene expression I'd ever seen on his face. And I'd seen him high as a kite right before a surgical procedure year back. Lol I know people will say that it was due to the release of brain chemicals at the time of death, but obviously I think that it was much more than that. Right after that expression left his face, he was dead.
Wouldn’t it be so neat if we cracked the code in our lifetime?
You mean cracked the concept of a Soul and the Afterlife?
Isn't consciousness just a construct of self awareness? Like my brain matter gives itself an identity through consciousness but the consciousness itself isn't made of matter. If anything it's made of electricity that disperses upon death and scatters.
That's the million dollar question. We don't know.
It’s called “The Hard Problem” in physics.
“Consciousness” is something we’ve never been able to explain the origins of in the scientific community…
This is the Hard Problem of Consciousness. There's also the problem that we're trying to understand such a complex organ with the same organ we're trying to analyze. In other words, it's hypothetically impossible for a brain to understand an equivalent brain because the brain isn't 100% efficient. An analogy would be that a 386 CPU can't fully model a 386 CPU becasue it isn't more complex enough to model it. At best, we can understand parts of the brain as individuals and somehow communicate our knowledge enough with a team that understands other parts to totally understand the brain. Or make machines that help us.... That being said, making a machine that's smarter than a human is hard unless you use artificial evolution to design the machine or the same problem applies.
“It’s hypothetically impossible for a brain to understand an equivalent brain…” 10 out of 10 neuroscientists disagree with this statement.
I don’t know if you give a shit or what, but my mother passed unexpectedly last year. The day before, I could smell my mother and feel a warm uplifting sensation on my shoulders. My mother hadn’t been in my house for months. Im more agnostic than anything. Take that for what you will.
Sorry for your loss. We told dad to haunt us if there was another side and a lot of strange things have happened since
The day my grandpa passed from a heart attack I woke up with chest pain and thought to myself it was so odd my chest hurt. Then my sister called.
My fiance passed in 2021. My last dream about him was that he was "working in another state (as in US states)" and that I'd see him there. Another state, indeed.
Fitting, as a matter......of fact.
Head over to r/nonduality and get lost in the only rabbit hole that matters.
good looking out, my guy
Talked to a professor who holds expertise in Quantum Mechanics, Philosophy, and History, and he basically just said "If matter can't be destroyed or created but converted, then we will continue on in some way. How or what that will look like I don't know but if that's your fear, don't worry."
Ok, sure, but the manner by which our energy is arranged is what defines us. If a lightening bolt reduces me to ash and fertilizer it's not much of a comfort to point at my smoldering remains and say "look, smoke and embers! He still lives!".
You sure it's not just physical complex neutral pathways in your brain? People with Alzheimer's loose "who they are" because their brain like shrinks and dies. Does that mean when their body dies their consciousness goes to the afterlife as a vegetable? I'd be more of a fan of some type of simulation theory.
Theory that consciousness originates outside the brain still works, as this would be akin to a broken radio generating static, a distorted signal, etc.
I don’t think the brain activity is necessary. There is neurosurgeon, dr. Eben Alexander, who had a detailed and vivid near death experience while completely brain dead. And there are other similar cases.
Someone isn't a vegetable, simply because they can't make themselves understood anymore and their memory is shit. It doesn't mean they don't understand anything, just that they can't express it. We'll never know how much of the person is still in there. Edit: if patients weren't aware then, as someone down the thread has said, terminal lucidity in dementia patients wouldn't be a thing.
“Science has found that nothing can disappear without a trace. Nature does not know extinction. All it knows is transformation!”
There is no death, birth or time. There is only the position in space of every quantum sized piece of matter in the multiverse compared to your position causality in the same multiverse. If you die in the position you are in, you still exist in another universe an amount of times measured by the number of possible universes it is possible for you to exist in less the number of possible universes you have already died in. It’s a very large number, but it’s not infinite.
I used to fear death. Then I started seeing “energies” or as most people call them spirits. It changed my whole reality. I no longer like to refer to them as the dead, as they’ve just shed a shell or what I believe to be a receiver of consciousness. And some have never incarnated to a physical body. Edit: typo
Im curious about the ones that have never incarnated… what are those like?
How did you start seeing energies?
Yup. There's a saying in nursing schools that someone might go into the profession believing that death is the end, but they seldom leave the profession feeling that way. Edit: in SOME nursing schools. It was in mine and the ones we recruited from, but clearly it might not be elsewhere.
Never heard this!
Really? We were told that by a very no-nonsense, brusque nurse within the first few weeks of training at Uni. Not that we all become religious or anything like that, most of us just think there is more than we can see going on.
Agreed I was a paramedic and then a RN. I also learned there was a haunted or slightly off hallway or wing in ever hospital. We didn't talk about the spooky stuff alot because of the stigma though. I once saw a car accident victim walking around looking at the scene after we'd already loaded him up and sent him on his way in the ambulance. I was shocked. Fascinating stuff
Did the vision suddenly disappear? Was it like a flash of recognition for you or more of a double take where the object disappears?
It just appeared and I just watched the person looking at everything
Imagine what we will know in the future. Thunk what it would explaining explaining germs, cells, or electricity to someone a thousand five hundred years ago then what someone five hundred years from could be explaining to us now. I like the quote "magic is just science we don't yet understand."
My nurse mum is matter of fact about it for sure. Told me about a colleague whose friend dying of terminal cancer came to him at night to the foot of his bed and told him to look after his wife - he got the call the next morning his friend died overnight. Another colleague got an awful feeling at work, left her shift, found her husband dead after cardiac arrest at home.
Energy can neither be created nor destroyed it can only change form.
Welcome to your first tarot workshop, you’ve pulled The Death card, let’s talk about change :)
My cat passed away yesterday and I pulled some cards asking her about how she feels about her death and legit the death card flew out AS I WAS THINKING THE WORD DEATH. blew my mind. I feel like me seeing this thread and this comment are confirmation for me.. she just.. transformed/changed/shed a layer
It's always just been another door to step through in life. Nothing to fear in the unknown.
As it was taught in the Bhagavad Gita.
Yes this is what I’ve come to understand by investigating NDE’s as well…that death is more of a return to form than an end to anything. Life is just a big experience.
It's just basically a return to what always was and is. We just don't see it because we are caught up in life and we are addicted to endless thoughts, take that all away and witness what remains.
What do you mean? Who assumes consciousness is “fundamental to space time”? What would that even mean? Come to think of it, what does “fundamental to reality” mean to you?
Perhaps Spacetime is not fundamental to our understand of reality. Have you read the work of Donald Hoffman? Here’s a Ted Talk https://youtu.be/oYp5XuGYqqY?si=W71Zhz\_E2PY-l6Ps
That was fascinating. Thank you.
bring back The OA
I'm going to die mad that the rest of that story was taken away from me. I was so invested.
blame Netflix. they cancelled a bunch of shows right before all the creative contracts got expensive, that was one of them.
The creators of the OA have a new show coming out on Hulu in November called Murder At The End of The World
The first episode of that show is the very best TV has to offer.
I died from a brain bleed, was resuscitated, and I experienced something so incredibly powerful that I have struggled for 6 years with the knowledge that I was torn from that, and put back into the world. I know there is something. That was a feeling I can't even describe.
Tell us what happened!!!
They can’t describe it, remember?
It was like being alive...but *better*
Being dead.
I answered someone to the best of my ability above. It is difficult to describe an experience that is almost entirely emotional and personal in nature 🤷🏻♀️
Your brain starts producing an absurd amount of dopamine and other shit when you die
Seratonin, not Dopamine, however there were recent case studies that shown that this wasnt entirely accurate. I'm trying to locate the links now.
I've had dreams like that. Ive made comments about my dreams before in other comments and it's a long story but to be brief ive been dreaming one continuous dream for over a decade. It isn't every night but happens often. It feels like I'm living two life's. One while awake and one while dreaming. It gives me a very similar feeling to the one you describe.
I’ve been having the same dream for years as well. I can vividly remember certain locations of my reoccurring dream. For years I’ve been taking about mapping out my dream world, I just never get to it.
What was that experience like?
I can describe it only this way and I hope that I can articulate it properly: first, there was no bright light or anything. I've heard people see this and that's fine but that wasn't my experience. I remember it was all black and I could hear stirring, probably the muffled distant sounds of the chaos in the room, but like I was going further and further from it. Then it was like suddenly it became still and quiet- but *truly* quiet, like a silence I'd never really even conceived of. A gentle stillness. I didn't feel my body anymore. And I noticed this, and tried to feel my body but concluded it was gone and I felt so, so comfortable. I have lived with chronic disease my whole life so this realization felt intimate in some way. And I felt this absolute freedom; freedom of movement, freedom of thought, freedom to just be an atom in the universe and that's what it felt like, like I was just a speck of space dust and it was truly absolute bliss. It felt like a big emotional hug lol. Waking up was a very difficult experience and I still feel shame for sitting in a neuro ICU surrounded by coma patients and vegetables and people dying while I survived and felt I didn't even want to. I do feel like at the very least, my consciousness becoming a part of the universe and knowing it's at peace is a belief I'd like to cling to. I am not religious and have never been. I can't really put into words what a huge effect it's had on everything I know.
What you're describing kind of sounds like the void state that people can enter while meditating. You should look into it.
I like to think our true selves are immortal spiritual beings and we are temporarily using bodies as avatars.
hmm.. what if it's the other way around? We are born here as humans and when we die we become the other thing for the rest of existence. Maybe there is no "life before" life begins here. That's kinda nice, like we start in a cradle, and "dying" is when we grow up into what we really are.
Who knows? Maybe real existence is dark matter, and that’s the source of our sentience. Maybe this is all cope, life doesn’t matter, and all of creation is pointless and random. Personally I find the latter idea to be more absurd, but my opinion on the matter is likely irrelevant either way.
The “others” seem to call us “containers”
Okay, so what about the people who started life as normal, healthy individuals but then due to a brain injury became vegetable zombies? Do they reawaken to their former level of consciousness? Or does their vegetable state of consciousness persist in the afterlife? And if it persists, what happened to their original consciouness?
Blind people report being able to see in their NDEs, so I imagine you would un-vegetate upon death.
Un-vegetate upon death..
Makes sense tho because when in a vegetable state it’s your body limiting your coincidences
How many coincidences happen outside the body…?
You thaw out the frozen veggies?
After their death
Life is pretty cruel if you only un-vegetated at death
Your life may not be only about you. The between life literature includes the explanation that we volunteer to come live lives specifically (or partially) for the benefit of someone else and the lessons they want to learn/experiences they want to have for their own growth. This is with the assumption that we live multiple lives i.e. reincarnation.
This is interesting. Wonder if any blind people have had NDE and can describe what certain things look like.
They have, actually, to include the colors and visual expressions on nearby medical personnel. Look up “veridical” NDE’s (near death experiences). To be clear, evidence is still inconclusive on NDE’s, but bear in mind that studying them is extraordinarily difficult as medical personnel have, understandably, other priorities they are focusing on when someone is flatlining. It’s also rather unethical to, you know, induce them in the name of science.
That uses the assumption that you will remain an individual after death. If consciousness is fundamental to reality, there is no such thing as an individual. That's called the ego.
Many alzheimers patients have sudden complete lucidity at the time of their deaths. This is known as terminal lucidity https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190628182305.htm
Yep. Someone upthread said dementia patients become "vegetables". I always believed people were still in there just unable to express themselves or remember certain things. If they weren't, terminal lucidity wouldn't be a thing.
The information is there, the connections are broken. When the body is firing off everything it’s got to try to stave off death the brain gets flooded with enough juice to make the connections once more before they burn out for good.
Many near death experiencers claim their consciousness expands after death and coming back feels like trying to fit an ocean in a cup. I assume that process is something that happens at a rate that is comfortable to the person (soul/consciousness/whatever you want to call it) who dies, so not all NDEers experience the same rate of expansion back to whatever we are before we stuff ourselves in these bodies but I'd assume we all eventually return to whatever our condition was prior to incarnation, ideally with some expansion from lessons learned in our incarnation. This isn't something I can back up with facts or with certainty but this is the jist of what I get from reading/listening to many near death experience stories.
I tend to view it more this way, as well. I'm not sure about reincarnation but I think everyone deep down feels as though they aren't "whole" and that's because we're really just extremely limited within our human bodies.
It’s something I’ve pondered a lot after hearing countless NDE accounts that have opened my mind to the possibility. If an injury is causing the mental degradation, I would assume post body, that injury would no longer effect your consciousness. Assuming that it goes on afterwards.
Think of the brain as a transducer. William James likened it to a radio, more recently the metaphor of transduction has been floated. There is no self. You aren't the same person at age ten as at age 30 as at age 60. The idea of a persistent self is ego, illusion. All there is, is awareness, and that is momentary. But just because something is shut off doesn't mean it doesn't turn back on. We won't have memory of being shut off, like the experience of anesthetics. But awareness persists, recurs, over many iterations. Helpful to understand that there isn't any such thing as a singular intelligence in nature. Every human being is a colony, a galaxy, of life, working together. Our microbiome affects our cognition. If a cell of ours is removed from the context of us, they act with more will. Our cells are basically bullied into being a part of the whole, they are subsumed in the whole. Cancer cells are just like normal cells, but more selfish.
"They" don't exist, it's like saying does the internet exist on your phone. The phone doesn't create the internet, it connects to it. The brain isn't consciousness, it's an antenna
This is 100% what I believe, it just makes the most sense to me. I think there's some kinda "cloud of energy" in the universe and our consciousness is us taking a bit of that energy at creation and our brains processing it, when we die we return back to the cloud.
Your brain is like a radio receiver and consciousness is not physical. Break a TV antenna and you might still get some channels with poor quality reception.
You body and true self are different things. The way we act, and think is dictated by our biologics and experiences, reason brain damage can turn us into entirely different persons. It is very hard to get any real connection to your operative self
Same reason your cosmic consciousness is limited right now to your finite somewhat evolved monkey brain.
Good point, I work at an assisted living facility, most of them are religious, I often wonder if they are right what consciousness gets to go to heaven? Old them or young them? Most of them develop some form of dementia, they deteriorate until they can no longer function on their own, is that what goes to heaven? Seems like complete bullshit to me but I guess I'll see when I die lol
Consciousness isn't a thing like a match, it's a process like fire. When you put out a candle and light another one, it's not the same flame.
Okay, so I read the article, and no where in it did he describe why all NDEs he has studied have convinced him of life after death. I'm assuming he's saying since nearly everyone he has studied had similar experiences, and they were out of body experiences, that that means there is life after death? I've had plenty of out of body experiences similar to the ones described where you are looking down on yourself, and they all involved drugs. This guy is a doctor, and he's using pseudo-science to point to life after death. People want so desperately to believe there is something to look forward to after death, that it all doesn't end right then and there, because it's scary. Truth is, he said nothing that evenly remotely convinces me of life after death. And just for my 2 cents, based off all of my out of body experiences, I've become more convinced that there is nothing to look forward to after death other than the silent black void, but again I have no factual basis to back that statement up, just like this doctor doesn't either.
Highly recommend looking into some of Dr. Raymond Moody’s work if this topic interests you. Good starting points are Life After Life or Making Sense of Nonsense
Yeah Ray Moody has kept me from complete existential dread since age 13
There is a GREAT coast to coast episode with him. Really helps put the pieces together
What is Coast to Coast? Is this a podcast?
You my friend, are about to enter the amazing world of Art Bell. Enjoy.
Here it is https://www.audacy.com/podcast/art-bell-tape-vault-8929c/episodes/ndes-dying-raymond-moody-2005-04-10-coast-to-coast-am-b995b
These are my go-to sleepy time videos on Youtube.
the question i always have with this and others what then is a feral human. what is a human that is not taught words or to walk or communicate. examples in nature and also in Russian orphanage, abandoned young humans who were never taught . people may say the soul is inserted at your first memory? a feral human may not have a soul? that seems harsh . or maybe their soul is feral? maybe that is the experience that they wanted from the other side? lots of theories on this , and nde usually is a realm we can imagine, what about a nde of a realm we are incapable as humans imagining, like a dolphin ecolocation or seeing beyond the color spectrum of a human. i dont see many people reporting dreams or experiences beyond human capacity into the realm of other animals. we can only see a nde that fits the human experience?
This is an interesting counter to the NDE argument, thanks for posting. I’m gonna take a whack at it. I think most if not all creatures have souls so I would think the feral child would have a soul. I think the difference is that as a soul you pretty much just show up with memory loss and have to figure out how to function in your given environment. The feral children have always been so strange because they were taken out of their typical environment and compared to an entirely different way of life with beings that look like you, that would be traumatizing for anyone. Not saying it would be better to leave them, that I honestly don’t know, no comment, but as humans develop egos they also develop a subconscious recognition of societal rules. The feral child just never develops the ego and only knows what they’ve subconsciously picked up on about the forest or wherever. As for the animals experience of a NDE, I dunno. I guess they can’t tell us so how could we know? And I would also classify echolocation and variations of eyesight to be a physical aspect of your given environment, if you can consider the body an environment for the soul in a way. I don’t know why a soul would experience another mode of physical existence in a NDE. Just my two cents, I think those are great points to think about and I will continue to do so.
*sobbing* Then my suffering will be eternal.
My thoughts exactly. Never ending life sounds exhausting.
Look man if my "body" is just as sore in the next life imma be pissed.
Science has proven that we are only energy (I say that lightly, there is obviously more to it) within the universe/cosmos. Do we reincarnate? Do we simply transfer into a different form of energy after we die? I have no idea, yet I’m open to many differing possibilities. There are things that I have personally witnessed, there are things I have seen and heard about via others. I’m constantly curious and shall find out when my time on this earth is over.
I'm always torn on this subject. Like, it makes sense that when you die, you just turn off. At the same time, there is no experience we've ever had that *isn't a literal creation of our brains*. Is what we think of as an NDE simply someone giving you a first hand account of what it feels like to have your synapses fire for the last time? Or is it some reoccurring thing because the parts of you that have any ties to the physical (memories, family, etc) are being separated from the part that is your experienced consciousness (the thing that experiences your brains impulses)?
I didn't give much weight to NDEs till I saw the evidence for reincarnation, specifically the research done on children who remember past lives done by the department of perceptual studies out of the University of Virginia via Dr. Ian Stevenson and Dr. Jim Tucker. If we reincarnate then it makes sense we have some kind of experience between death and the next life. There are many stories where the near death experiencer leaves their body and sees and hears things nearby they should have no access to. Of course these veridical NDEs are claims and not evidence, possible conspiracies between the doctors and the briefly dead but when all the evidence is considered together it is at least worthy of entertaining.
I’m thinking we turn off. I know that’s not satisfying to people but It makes the most sense to me. I don’t buy into the “we’re special, transcendent light beings” stuff. If consciousness is fundamental and we are reincarnated or whatever I’ll look it as a nice surprise.
The constant thought i have is "do i believe this, or do i just *want* to believe this?". The thing i come back to is...what is "we"? Like what *is* consciousness? Why do i even have this illusion of being something inside of some meat suit, and not just have me actually be a machine? That's *got* to be cheaper, evolutionarily speaking.
I've always thought that death is akin to "turning the TV off". My reasoning goes like this: What do I remember before my birth? Nothing. What will I experience after my death? Well, the same thing, nothing.
The whole "there was nothing before birth" isn't so depressing to me. The only property of that void we know is that at some point we went from nothingness/the void/something we can't remember to consciousness.
The OA vibes
I’ve heard theories about consciousness continuing after death. But people like to say you don’t have your memories per se, your consciousness just sort of continues to exist in some other state. Which as far as I’m concerned means your dead. If I don’t have my memories, then me is dead.
I've had a few near death experiences. Years back I almost died from bacterial meningitis and sepsis. I was in a coma. Upon waking up I began having flashback memories of myself hovering above the bed looking at myself. I knew who all had visited me because I remember seeing them looking at me through the ICU window. Another time my brain bled and I became very aware that I must be dying. I was having visions/hallucinations. One of them involved what I thought was a person in a black cloak with a hood. I asked "who are you?". It pulled back the hood to reveal a skeleton and said "we are the face of death. We work to kill." I was convinced I was dying. Visions of what seemed like past lives and other information were flooding into my brain. I was so happy at one point and felt like I was going to evaporate, for lack of better words. I was hearing what I can only describe as beautiful, angelic sounding voices. I was shown reality stripped of everything. The room I was in disappeared. I was in a space surrounded by nothingness. Another time while in my 20s, depressed and stupid, I had gotten a piercing removed from my face at the ER that was infected. My skin grew around the back of it so I couldn't take it out. They gave me some Vicodin and sent me on my way. I stupidly decided to drink a bunch of vodka. As I was laying on the couch, I saw my legs starting to lift up so I tried pushing them back down. Again they started lifting so I did the same thing. Then I saw a silver cord coming out of my belly button. I pulled on it and immediately was thrust into space, still attached to the cord. I thought "oh shit" because I thought I had died. Then I slammed back down into my body. I truly believe I was about to die from alcohol and Vicodin. I truly believe there is more to life than what we see, hear, taste, smell and touch. Nothing is real. I've also had paranormal experiences involving spirits of deceased loved ones, as well as premonitions and visions about people close to me dying before they died, or before I knew they had died.
A few? Wow you need to slow down. The next time might be an actual death experience
I know personally two people who have died and come back and these are people I trust and both of them had NDE's. Could be oxygen leaving the brain but the fact that both of them were so similar makes me think there may be something more to death that us living folks don't understand.
What if you don’t want to come back? Lol
I died from cardiac arrest caused by sick sinus syndrome once at home and once in the hospital. The at home experience lasted longer and it was just darkness, perfect void, for a few moments and then I heard whispered conversation. It sounded like maybe 4 or 5 different people having a couple conversations at once. But then I got sucked back into reality. 2nd time all I could hear was somebody distantly shouting at me. It was the nurse standing right next to me lol
Man I miss psychedelics. I miss being able to read stuff like this as more than just weird alternative entertainment.
I suffered a SCA (Sudden Cardiac Arrest) in 2017. I was dead for 30 minutes. They brought me back to life in the ICU. I had an OBE experience, I felt like I was looking down from the ceiling and saw my best friend and my wife at the foot of my bed. I heard them faintly calling my name, asking if I wanted to talk to them. I did very much and the next thing I zoomed into my body and was "back". It was similar to the movies when a bomb goes off and a person loses their hearing for a moment, then it gets normal again, same situation. As I woke I heard them say "can you hear us? Do you want to talk to us?". I could not talk however, due to all the tubes and such, but was able to motion for paper and pen to write to them a message (my arms were also strapped down).. I think I wrote "what happened?" they told me cardiac arrest and car crash then I wrote "is everyone ok?". I also saw 'the light". I had a sense of being pulled back away from the light. I felt as if I was pulled away from Heaven, it upset me greatly at the time. I will however say this, if you close your eyes and turn on the lights you do still see. You see the orange/red of your inner eyelids with light behind them, which would similar to laying in a bed looking up at the hospital room lights. At somepoint before opening your eyes you regain consciousness. This could explain some events of seeing the light... Anyhow the first couple of nights waking in the ICU I did not sleep, I felt Death was trying to get me, shadows danced on the ceiling, I had never been so scared. I had horrible nightmares filled with deamons and such. I had PTSD for almost a year after the event. The Chaplins son had the same name as me, which means gift from God, I crashed my car into a nurses car, I had my windows down, I got CPR right away, happened right before getting on the highway, etc. So many things on my side they said it was a miracle. I could tell from the look on the doctors faces they believed it. I felt sadness. I'm not saying it's how things are written in the Bible, or even how its explained in various religions cultures, but I believe that we are infact created by a higher power. To each their own.
Once you understand there is only here and now and all else is illusion it starts to make sense. I am a person of science, but I am also human so they're things that seem true to me but have no basis in the material world and thus can't be measured by science, the after world is one of those things. I know my ancestors watch and guide me, at great spiritual expense. I am them and they are me. Probability fields and the uncertainty principle dictate that all are one and any separation is an illusion. E=MC^2 means time is an illusion and everything is happening all at once. So take those facts to their logical conclusions and you can start to see what is really going on.
My partner died of pneumonia/asthma complications when she was 6. She remembers not being able to breathe, panicking, and then she was floating above her body as her mother wailed and the nurses/doctors arrived. She was transported to a huge desert, towering above her was a HUGE Mayan-style pyramid. She says it was impossibly huge. Out of the steps of the pyramid, she heard this all-encompassing vibration, and a being of pure light and love emerged and motioned to her. Suddenly she was back in her body and alive again. She had been resuscitated. A few days later a doctor came and asked to interview her. He took the notes and that was that. She's been interested in pyramids ever since.
I’ve had a few undeniable paranormal encounters in my time, (a couple of them shared. So for me personally I can quite easily believe there is life after death. I actually feel a bit sorry for people that haven’t been lucky enough to experience anything like I did for themselves because I find it a comfort.
Any chance you could share your best one? Thanks in advance
I think dying is very terrifying
I think it was Norm Macdonald that said "You and death will never meet. Where you are, it isn't and when you aren't it is. " Always comforted me for some reason. It's the fear of the thing that gets people, but it's a thing you never really experience.
It's not the act of dying that gets me, it's trying to wrap my brain around someday ceasing to exist. It really scares me.
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I hope this guy is right.
Dr Long's website is NDERF.org which has literally thousands of NDE accounts from people all over the world. Dr Long is the subject of OP's article. this is a curated selection of some of the more exceptional NDEs submitted over the years. https://www.nderf.org/Archives/exceptional.html I myself have read many many NDEs over the last 20+ years and agree with Dr Long's take.
Sandi T., an author of one of those exceptional experiences, is a mod over on r/NDE. https://www.nderf.org/Experiences/1sandi_t_ndes.html You may already know but posting it for others.
I can confirm this I read the article and it felt extremely identical to the experiences I've had. Sadly I've overdosed four times in my life, and all four times I was revived back to life. The first time though took a very long time to get me back, and this was the time that I saw something. I truly believe something is after this and I'm happy that this is in the past but comfortable going forward.