Death

[vienna]

I'm going to be 68 in a couple of weeks and I've come very close to death several times; in 2004, I had major surgery after which the surgeon told me that when the ambulance brought me into the ER, I was circling the drain anf there was a fear I wouldn't survive the operation. I'm not religious and I'm still not. I had a couple of dreams in the past where I died and, both times, the moment of death was just a void, nothing to see, hear, feel, or connect with, just emptiness; at that point I would wake up. When I had that 2004 surgery, I do recall fleeting moments in the time leading up to the surgery; I recall being wheeled into the OR and the couple of minutes up to the doctor putting me under; what was interesting was, as I dutifully counted backwards, there was a sudden blackness, identical to my dreams, and I remember vividly thinking to myself how I'd been here before; after what seemed like or two or three minutes of ruminating over the void I was in, I finally lost consciousness. When I did come out from under, with the doctor slapping me in the face to try and revive me (oh, I would have pounded him, if I could have raised my arms ), I thought back to that void and realized I missed it now...

Life is a bit of an ongoing crap shoot: there's always something out there that might do you in; and the idea that a healthy lifestyle is an assurance of long life, as in a game of craps, its a fire bet, a long shot to hit. Look at James Fix, the guy who popularized running and jogging for fitness; he died at age 52, of a sudden heart attack, while on a run. Or look at John Ritter, the actor who was famed for his physical comedy; he did countless pratfalls, tumbles, and committed general mayhem to his body over the course of his career and was still considered to be in pretty god shape; he died of a tear in his aorta suffered while he was filming a sitcom. It all just a roll of the dice...

There was an actor from the Golden Era of Hollywood named George Sanders. Aside from his acting, he is know for how he died; he committed suicide:

Final years and death

Sanders suffered from dementia, worsened by waning health, and visibly teetered in his last films, owing to a loss of balance. According to Aherne's biography, he also had a minor stroke. Sanders could not bear the prospect of losing his health or needing help to carry out everyday tasks and became deeply depressed. At about this time he found that he could no longer play his grand piano, so he dragged it outside and smashed it with an axe. His last girlfriend persuaded him to sell his beloved house in Majorca, Spain, which he later bitterly regretted. From then on he drifted.

On 23 April 1972, Sanders checked into a hotel in Castelldefels, a coastal town near Barcelona. He died of a cardiac arrest two days later, after swallowing the contents of five bottles of the barbiturate Nembutal. He left behind three suicide notes, one of which read:


Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.


Sanders's body was returned to Britain for funeral services. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the English Channel.

David Niven wrote in Bring on the Empty Horses (1975), the second volume of his memoirs, that in 1937 his friend George Sanders had predicted that he would commit suicide from a barbiturate overdose when he was 65 and that in his 50s he had appeared to be depressed since his marriages had failed and several tragedies had befallen him.

I am not suicidal myself, but I can appreciate the desire to avoid boredom and incapacity. Myself, I have the position that there are still a lot of people I haven't pissed off yet, so I feel I still have a calling...

As for an afterlife, I feel, given the standards by which the Judaeo-Christian God and other sundry deities have imposed on mortal man, damned few, if any are going to make the cut for the upward path; I'm pretty certain if I did ,it would be cause for a call to review the selection process for possible deficiencies...

Who knows? Maybe, one day, I'll just get damned tired of it all, say the hell with it all and seek out that void...








<O>

[Rockstar]

A few years ago it occurred to me -- albeit with some shock to my scientific sensibilities -- that my two problems, that of a life‑breeding universe, and that of consciousness that can neither be identified nor located, might be brought together. That would be with the thought that mind, rather than being a late development in the evolution of organisms, had existed always: that this is a life‑breeding universe because the constant presence of mind made it so.
I have been in experimental science long enough to know that when you have done an experiment that comes out surprisingly well, the thing to do is enjoy it, because the next time you try it, it may not work. So when this idea struck me, I was elated, I enjoyed it immensely. But I was also embarrassed, because this idea violated all my scientific feelings. It took only a few weeks, however, for me to realize that I was in excellent company. That kind of thought is not only deeply embedded in millenia‑old Eastern philosophies; it is stated explicitly or strongly implied in the writings of a number of great and quite recent physicists. - George Wald


Now what happens to the state of ones mind, conscience or if you prefer to call it soul is only known by those who have shed the so called cocoon.

[Skybird]

Usually the existence and operation of a brain is seen as precondition for a "mind". I once puzzled one of my profs at university when claiming it is the other way around, maybe, that mind is the reason why there is a brain.

However, I think one needs to separate two things here. Cosmic/universal mind/divinity, and individual consciousness. I have no doubt that when i die, all what characterises me as an individual entitity, my own mind, my self-awareness, comes to an end, to a state of non-existence like before.

However, there might be "mind" in the meaning of a higher order. The divine sparkle. The eros that brings cosmos into life - and cosmos being the precondition for the logos of individuality.

Buddha once was asked whether there is an individual soul surviving death, and he denied it, very clearly. The Buddhist teaching of Athman and Anathman - self and non-self - is about this difference: that our individual self is not our real self, but only a passing entity of limited durability, an illusion, and when it dies, what remains is the real, bigger self that is all and always has been and always will be: the face we had before our birth, to lend a Zen wording. Jesus talked of the wheat grain that has to die if it wants to bring rich harvest. Christian mystics talked of the "mystical death" (of the ego) as precondition to win the everlasting life (realisation of the real own divine nature). Luke wrote: "The kingdom of God does not come with signs to be observed. Nor can one say "Look, here!" or "There it is!", for behold, the kingdom of God is within your. (Luke 17:20-21). Meister Eckhart wrote: "If God is to be seen, it must be in the light that is God himself. The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me: my eye and God'S eye are one eye, one seeing, one knowing and one love."

That all gives "incarnation" a whole new twist. The common, generally used understanding of it, imo is a simplification that does more harm than good and is not just simplified, but indeed misleading.

Best expressed it all is maybe in the Japanese Enso:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ens%C5%8D


In the end, the greatest mystery of all still lasts: Why is there anythign at all, why is there not just - Nothing? Why is all this show and drama taking place, where does it come from? And most important and relevant for all of us: Who is it who watches all this, reads this text, thunks of himself as "This is me"? Just to say "BANG!" is a bit too infantile, for my taste. The Big Bang theory describes the How, not the Why, so do all other cosmological theories.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by vienna

I am not suicidal myself, but I can appreciate the desire to avoid boredom and incapacity. Myself, I have the position that there are still a lot of people I haven't pissed off yet, so I feel I still have a calling...

As for an afterlife, I feel, given the standards by which the Judaeo-Christian God and other sundry deities have imposed on mortal man, damned few, if any are going to make the cut for the upward path; I'm pretty certain if I did ,it would be cause for a call to review the selection process for possible deficiencies...

Who knows? Maybe, one day, I'll just get damned tired of it all, say the hell with it all and seek out that void...

When I was 21 some circumstances in my life caused me to contemplate suicide. When I say "contemplate" I don't mean I planned on doing it, but that I thought about it long and hard, considering all the possibilities and likelihoods from every angle I could think of. My conclusion then was that there were still possibilities I hadn't thought of - tomorrow I might find my dream job, my dream girl, or any number of other good things that might be waiting around the corner.

Now, almost fifty years later, I never got that job, never had that life, and I'm suffering from depression more and more each year. I still laugh every time I visit the VA hospital and the first thing they ask is "Have you had any thoughts of harming yourself?" I always answer "No", and it's true. I haven't. One day I started contemplating the whole thing over again, and finally came to realize the awful truth: I'm a coward. No matter how bad things get I won't give up, not because I believe something good might happen tomorrow - I'm far beyond that - but because after years of being a believer, and years of trying to prove my beliefs, I came to the conclusion that I don't have any answers and nobody else has convinced me that they do. I don't know what's on the other side, if anything, and I'm in no hurry to find out.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

When I was 21 some circumstances in my life caused me to contemplate suicide. When I say "contemplate" I don't mean I planned on doing it, but that I thought about it long and hard, considering all the possibilities and likelihoods from every angle I could think of. My conclusion then was that there were still possibilities I hadn't thought of - tomorrow I might find my dream job, my dream girl, or any number of other good things that might be waiting around the corner.

Now, almost fifty years later, I never got that job, never had that life, and I'm suffering from depression more and more each year. I still laugh every time I visit the VA hospital and the first thing they ask is "Have you had any thoughts of harming yourself?" I always answer "No", and it's true. I haven't. One day I started contemplating the whole thing over again, and finally came to realize the awful truth: I'm a coward. No matter how bad things get I won't give up, not because I believe something good might happen tomorrow - I'm far beyond that - but because after years of being a believer, and years of trying to prove my beliefs, I came to the conclusion that I don't have any answers and nobody else has convinced me that they do. I don't know what's on the other side, if anything, and I'm in no hurry to find out.

Plain, sober reasoning there, Steve. Cowardice, that you implied, has little to do with it, me thinks. You are more a stoic, or a Vulcan, than a coward.

[AVGWarhawk]

It is not so much death that concerns me, it is those that continue on. Specifically my wife. Leaving enough money she will not need to worry about anything.

[Sharkstooth]

What if......

The light that people who have touched death see, is the lights of a hospital delivery room as you are being born.
The reason babies are crying is because of the life, loves, etc that they just lost.
They cannot talk while they remember and gradually lose their memories, and by the time we can talk, memories are gone...cept for once in a while....and those are called Deja vu.

Not necessarily my beliefs, merely a ‘what if’

[Rockstar]

There's going to come a time when the light of neighboring galaxies will dip below the horizon never to be seen from earth again. All our descendants will have is our writings which described a once grand and expansive universe filled with energy, movement and light.

Considering the amount of time which has already passed how much information have we missed or will never know firsthand? The way I see it from Beresheit to the Epic of Gilgamesh to the teachings of Buddha I think all draw their material from a common source. They simply diverge in the retelling. Its all the information we have from time past. I tend see a certain degree of truth in all of them.

[ExFishermanBob]

Life's tough, then you die.



You never remember falling asleep until you wake up, nor did you know that you were asleep until you woke. Death will be like that, but you will not wake up. There will be no 'you' to know that you are dead, nor that you even died.


As for religions, gods, goddesses, fairies, whatever: anything that might happen after death (including decomposition) will be entirely natural and entirely unaffected by anything you have or have not done while alive. It will apply equally to all - that is only logical. Life and thought require energy and physical presence: you will have neither. There will be nothing: fear of the process is logical, not wanting to cease existence is logical, fear of *being* dead is not.


And yes, as you get older, you think about death more: to me, it is what I will miss out on: settlements on the Moon and Mars, grandchildren and so on. But that's yearning, not fear.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Sharkstooth

What if......

Hey, Sharks, long time. I've missed you.

[Mr Quatro]

Come on man! Don't you people believe in ghost busters?

[Sharkstooth]

Hey Sailor!!

I come in every so often...just making sure...
I’ve been great, how bout you?
Good to see your smilin’ face!

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by Sharkstooth

What if......

The light that people who have touched death see, is the lights of a hospital delivery room as you are being born.
The reason babies are crying is because of the life, loves, etc that they just lost.
They cannot talk while they remember and gradually lose their memories, and by the time we can talk, memories are gone...cept for once in a while....and those are called Deja vu.

Not necessarily my beliefs, merely a ‘what if’

Interesting take...plausible?

[Rockstar]

Originally Posted by Sharkstooth

What if......

The light that people who have touched death see, is the lights of a hospital delivery room as you are being born.
The reason babies are crying is because of the life, loves, etc that they just lost.
They cannot talk while they remember and gradually lose their memories, and by the time we can talk, memories are gone...cept for once in a while....and those are called Deja vu.

Not necessarily my beliefs, merely a ‘what if’

Many of those who have claimed to experince the so called 'NDE' have recognized family members greeting them. Others, like Vienna, experienced a void before going further.


Its all a mystery man, just one big mystery. ' shrooms might help

[Skybird]

Near-Death-Experiences are not for no reason called not Death-Experiences, but merely Near-Death-Experiences.

There now is a huge empirical observation database of , or literature on, NDEs, what they look like in different cultures. There is a general pattern: the experiences of levitating over one's own body, travelling through a tunnel, sometimes the tunnel already being of light, or a light waiting at the end of the tunnel. There is a culture-specific component: people in india tend to see visualizations of religious gods and symbols common in India, Westerners tend to see visualizations of Jesus and have associations with Western cultural elements. That is the main pattern. This main pattern does not point at anything beyond culture-specific contexts, or general physical conditions of being near to death, although they include sometimes perplexing events like beign able to quote days later what people have said in another room since one levitating alter ego was flying into the other oomand overheard that conversation, and witnesses in reality later indeed confirm it. The levitating phenomenon in itself attracts great interest, of course. The quality of the soothign effect of the light does as well. But both may be two very different things, maybe. The levitation thing may hint at unknown skills the human mind is capable of (there are rumours ab out Lamas in Tibet who were able to walk through solid walls, now compare that with views of modern nuclear and quantum physics: empty space and all that...), the soothing light may be comptrabale to the tranqulization effect that blocks the recognition of pain in the brain in case of beign seriously injured in case of a shockingly quick happening accident.

That any of that, incuding the light at the end of the tunnel, is an objective description of the state of being dead, is pure, unneeded speculation. We know however, that dying is a process, and its true stadiums and duration is not fully understood in mdedicine, the alteraiton of the death criterion in the pasdt deacdes is not owed to insight into death, but progresses made in tranbsplantaiton medicine that demanded people whose organs are to be taken are not as dead anymore as they before were allowed to be in order to call them "dead" indeed. Last years however showed medicine that dying may be more complex than we have once thought in Western tradition (remember I brought this arument already in the tghread about organs donating ? , remember also that other cultures and traditions often do not share the former simplified modern Western view on death ) The Bardo Thödol however describes, if I recall it correctly (I am not certain anymore) 49 phases of dying, phases of passing through death. Shamans sometimes see death as a voyage.

My guts feeling tells me that in the West we see it quite wrong, simplified, and subordinated to the needs and demands of modern medicine. But that is just my believing. I will not base a serious argument on that belief.

Lets keep speculation and observation separate. And I say that as somebody who has had strange, NDE-like experiences twice himself, during meditation. Yes, it was reassuring, yes it was not unpleasant, yes it was extraordinary. Still I forbid myself to take them beyond the point where one indeed is fully "dead". What have they done for me? A soothing on my fear of life as well as my fear of dying, else it is the same life with its same problems that waited for me once I was done with those experiences, and them were done with me. A gain for me, yes, but nothing that shakes the Earth or changed everything right down to the fundaments. Observation is this, speculation is that. Two different things. Keep it separate. Quite some researchers would argue for example that the body may have its neural and chemical tricks to make the in principle terrifying expoerience of dying a more relaxed one. I know pro-NDE-speakers have some arguments, some cases that contradict this medical view (yes, I mentioned that - indirectly at last - as well in that organ-donation thread). Again: observation, speculation. We do not know for sure. Believing is not knowing.

I think being sober and as rational as possible when thinking on all this, is like a lifeline. Its easy to get lost in all those dwelling fantasies and tempting, colourful images. Be Vulcan!