How to experience of death

Great Debates
1

No, this post is not about the best way of doing suicide, nor about the merit of suicide.

It is about experiencing death and coming back to life.

The way I see it, death is the end of consciousness, irreversible.

Of course a person can be without consciousness and yet continues to live biologically, until biological death sets in.

But that kind or biological existence is not life, not as conscious beings are concerned, like us humans.

When does that kind of death, the death of unconsciousness, occur?

In profound dreamless sleep, in a fainting spell, in a coma, and in general anaesthesia.

There must be other conditions when consciousness is absent.

I have experienced repeatedly profound dreamless sleep and twice general anaesthesia for some invasive surgery.

I have not experienced coma nor fainting spell.

My point is that if we want to know what death is, then the closest or even equivalent experience is that of profound dreamless sleep and general anaesthesia, so far for me.

Should I one day fall into a coma and then come out of the coma, then I would also have experienced death and come back to life by way of a coma.

Same with fainting.

Is that an experience of death, namely the conditions I described above?

How can that be an experience when in death there is no subject conscious to experience.

Let us then call that a transient stage of no experience whatsoever.

If and when we are lucky to come out of those four described conditions, then we shall have ‘resurrected’ from death.
No, this is not a ‘debate’, but a discussion.

I welcome your own observations to the contrary or in further elaborations of my so-called experience of death.

The key here is that death is the irreversible end of consciousness for a person.

But if a person should come back from a ‘suspension’ of consciousness, then that is an effectively and equivalently ‘resurrection’.

Death and resurrection, anyone?

Susma Rio Sep

2

I don’t know; it all depends on your definition of death (and there are plenty of them to choose from); I’m pretty sure though, that most medical definitions of death include the term ‘irreversible’ and thus by definition, death is not something from which you can recover.

That medical practice might occasionally misdiagnose some very severe condition as being a state of death does not actually make it the case that death has occurred.

3

Unconsciousness, yes, but there are myriad other functions still going on in your brain. You still breathe, your heart beats, etc–homeostasis is still maintained.

With death, nothing happens. Your cells no longer perform metabolism activities. Not just your brain, but your whole body stops.

Of the four conditions you mentioned above, I’d guess that fainting (vasovagal attack) might come the closest since, as you’re going out, you don’t really know if you’re coming back.

4

The way I can tell the difference between normal sleep and dreamless sleep (or anesthesia) is that I have no experience of dreamless sleep. To my memory, it is as if it did not happen. A stretch of time did not exist for me. Therefore, I can’t say that I have experienced death.

However, I suppose I can say I experienced resurrection. I expect that if I was declared medically dead, and then later awoke, my experience of lost time would be quite identical to sleep, either dreamless or with dreams. Either way, it would be nothing new.

Perhaps this is why it is so difficult for us to conceive of permanent death: since in our experience, we always awake afterwards.

I have fainted once, at about ten years of age. I had been repeatedly making blood rush to my head in order to make my face redden for the amusement of my friends. I stood up, walked out of the room, and fainted. I recall only a brief moment of confusion, then I found myself lying on the floor. The strongest memory is that, after I awoke, only one person had noticed. This one person wasn’t even myself, as I merely found myself mysteriously lying on the floor. If that’s not a good allegory, I don’t know what is.

Conclusion: the extinction of consciousness is the extinction of time, hence time and consciousness are equivalent.

5

Where is Lekat?

6

Yeah, I know several people who fit this profile.

7

I am here my friend.

Consciousness exist beyond the death of the body.
You will always be you, for all eternity.

Go to:

http://www.thelancet.com
Register and search “near death”, there you will find controlled scientific studies on near death experiences that support this view.

Near death experiences are really death experiences.

Here are a couple more links with more information.

http://www.near-death.com/evidence.html

http://ndeweb.com/wildcard

Please read at least some of them, they are very interesting and much can be learned.

Love
Leroy

8

Poor Mort Furd, trying to make a sweet little joke. :frowning: :smiley:

9

Susma, have you been watching too much .hack//dusk?

10

Good Lord, man, you have summonsed up the Devil. Quick, someone bring me a cruciifix.

11

Would that be the 9mm cruciifix, or .45 caliber cruciifix? Oh, who am I kidding, take 'em both…

Anyway… Clinical death is simply the stopping of the heart, so that’s plenty easy to come back from. Usually, the experience is a lot of pain (Hey, there’s usually SOME reason why your heart stops, after all!). Plus whatever you “experience” while unconcious (More on that in just a bit)

Brain death is another matter, and one we don’t have too much of a clear picture on. However, there are some things we know. Durring brain-death, your brain is not functioning. It does not percieve anything. There’s lots of debate as to wether the mind and the brain are the same thing, but all the solid evidence seems to point to them being the same. In that case, you don’t really “experience” anything when you’re dead. In fact, you don’t even experience the lack of experience.

Regardless of wether the mind and brain are one and the same, however, you will experience anything up to the point where your brain “stops” in some form (And if you’re lucky enough to recover, probably meaning this was induced brain-death instead of unintentional). You will still experience events while unconcious… It would be dreaming, pretty much. Then again, you might not dream at all. The brain is kinda weird like that.

There are lots of other things that could also happen durring all this, but as of yet, no solid evidence for any of it. So the most accurate statement is that the above is what we know will happen, but might not be all.

12

To Phoenix Dragon

but might not be all…

Good start.

13

To Lekatt:

Witty reply :rolleyes:

Before you go patting yourself on the back, I should point out that this is evidence you haven’t read my replies to your posts very thoroughly. This is the view I’ve had the entire time of those NDE debates, ever since the first post last year (And actually, well before that). Your presentations of stories without any solid evidence have contributed absolutely no part in forming the thought that I had well before I saw your first post. And don’t make the mistake of assuming this means I buy into even one piece of your anecdotal evidence, as I don’t.

Somehow, I knew you would take that one individual piece of my post, and try to show it as a breaking-down of rational thought, and buying into your unsupported opinions. That little line you decided to single out is what skepticism is about. Open to ideas, but requiring solid evidence before believing them. This has been pointed out to you time and time again when you criticize skepticism as being completely close minded, and now you’re complimenting someone for the open-mindedness of their skepticism. Somehow, I doubt you’ll learn any lesson from this encounter. Again.

14

Sorry you took it that way.

This is the same kind of stuff as always.

Bye

15

Oh, and just what way did you mean it, then?

16

I guess it’s time to wrap up this thread. For researchers who want to find out what is it to experience the state of death, consider my observation and opinion:

You don’t experience the state of death, because you are not there to experience it anymore. Any so-called near-death experience is exactly that, near death but not-death.

However, there is in a manner the closest thing to the experience of death, insofar as you come back to recall of the point of beginning and the point of ending of the death state, for your own ‘death’.

Here: when you are in profound dreamless sleep, when you are in general anaesthesia, when you are in a fainting spell, and when you are in a comatose state, then you are for all practical purposes for yourself, you are dead. If you don’t come back from those states, then you are definitively dead. If you come back, then you were in transient death.

The moral here is that everytime you wake up from sleep, you come out of general anaesthesia, you recover from your fainting spell, or if luckily you come out from your coma, then you have been privileged with a resurrection. So value your conscious state and treasure it obsessively; because if you don’t come back, then you won’t even know you are dead.

Susma Rio Sep

17

I haven’t even been “me” for my whole life. :stuck_out_tongue: Your notion would be quite displeasing to any number of people who do believe in an eternity of some sort, which I don’t. Though little competes with your presumptuousness anyway.
Why am I bothering? :stuck_out_tongue:

18

Has anyone ever come out of a long-term coma (of many years)? What do these people report as teir experience? I recall reading that there was such a case (a man who had been in a coma for more than 5 years)…one day he regained consciousness. I just don’t recall if he experienced anything while in that state.

19

How to experience of death:

Spend a year in Telford, West Midlands, England one weekend.

20

Well, I certainly value my consciousness. But hell, if I lose it and never regain it, not only will I never know I’m dead, I won’t care.

In other words, I’m over it.