Susma
I think that you’re playing loose and fast with the definition of death, equating it with lack of consciousness. Others have equated it to loss of cardiac function, both of which miss the mark.
Allow me to provide my own definition: Death is when all of the chemical reactions which constitue ‘life’ ( i.e. breathing, maintaining pH/ionic gradients, composing long, torpid posts) come to equilibrium. As rysad has so aptly expressed it, there ain’t no coming back.
bizz
Yes, that was me, waiting on Telford’s train station’s platform for the train to Wolverhampton.
forgive me for not having anything useful to say but Mangetout aced the question of the OP in the first reply.
DMT, the strongest known psychedelic drug ( yes, stronger than LSD ) is known to produce out-of-body experiences identical to clinical death.
Cite, please.
Waking up from a coma after years, what do people remember? Rip Van Winkle and Sleeping Beauty, we need you.
I guess it would be or it certainly is like waking up from sleep or from general anaesthesia or from a fainting spell. By the way how long is a fainting spell?
The last thing remembered would be that immediately prior to the loss of consciousness. I was in general anaesthesia twice for some surgical procedure. I was unconscious for some four to five hours or more. When I came to, I didn’t know nothing of what transpired except what I learned from my family of those hours during my unconscious state.
There was that news about a woman coming out of coma after some fourteen years. I would like to hear from her, what she was conscious of during her comatose state. But I guess it’s obvious she did not know nothing during that period; she was in some kind of a vegetative state at most – like hibernating. But we have to ask animals which hibernate, to be really sure.
So, if you want to experience death and come back, like Lazarus and even Jesus Christ – but He was busy during his death period, like arranging for guys to go to heaven who departed before His arrival and ministry – or to go to hell if they were not yet there… if you want to experience death, you will have experienced it already every time you come back from unconsciousness, as for example from a profound dreamless sleep, from a fainting spell, from general anaesthesia, and certainly from a comatose state.
Let’s count ourselves lucky when we wake up again tomorrow morning, and say a word or two of thanks to the Almighty Whoever He be.
A practical aspect of this experience of death I am talking about is that if you have to kill yourself – and I am not being macabre, but realistic and attuned to the facts of life or death, go in sleep or in a fainting spell or in general anaesthesia or something equivalent or go into a coma, and just don’t come back, make arrangement to not come back. Then death would not be an ordeal?
Susma Rio Sep
http://www.erowid.org/library/books/dmt_spirit_molecule.shtml
more specifically “DMT, a plant-derived chemical that is also manufactured by the human brain, consistently produced near-death and mystical experiences.”
for more information, you could either buy the book ( i have not read it myself ) or
Drugs do not cause spiritual experiences.
http://ndeweb.com/FAQz02.htm
A computer expert remarked that if our memories were stored in the brain, according to modern storage technology, we would need a brain about the size of a watermelon.
If we recorded our life experiences on VHS tapes, in 70 years we would need approx. 102,200 tapes. Pretty hard to stuff into a brain, so we could make the data smaller by a factor of 100. Then we would have 1,022 tapes. Maybe we could reduce the size of the tapes by a factor of 100, making them smaller than a fingernail. If we could do all of this, still a sizable storage facility would be needed. But guess what, science has never been able to find biologically memory stored in the brain. The reason is simple, it is not there. It exists separately from the body in the spirit of each of us. So before you can say we are only pieces of meat, find the brain memory.
I always thought there was “soul land”…a place with lots of souls and every once in awhile they save up enough money to buy a body on earth…sort of like a used car lot…and cruise through life until the old body just gives out. (Think 85 Chevy)
Some of them decide to buy another body (reincarnation) and others decide to hang out in “soul land” with their friends.
In this version, a dead body is nothing more than car scraps.
The driver simply has left the vehicle.
Ha-ha, ha-ha, a-ha, a-ha, a-… oh, I see you’re not joking.
I tell you what, find us a reputable cite to support any of the assertions you make, and we might have something to talk about, but you’re “cite” and post are nought but splurge.
This recent thread may well have some relevance on this particular topic.
Your link gives an alternate explanation, but no evidence to support that explanation. In the mean time, we have a chemical that exactly reproduces all known and proven effects of NDEs. Your link does claim that “true” NDEs can give information that the subject supposedly could not have known, but it neither proves that chemical-induced visions can not provide that information, nor are the examples of “gaining knowledge” from controlled environments where other factors can be known. Further, I recall from your first NDE thread, it was mentioned that when doctors have placed distinct objects in the room of a patient in a place where the patient could not physically see it at any point, but would be plainly visible if viewed from above the patient, no patient who claimed to have a NDE knew of that object.
Ten or fifteen years ago, I would have had to have about 20 hard drives just to have enough room to install some of the games I have now. In another 10 years, we’ll probably have hard drives that can hold dozens, if not hundreds of terrabites. That the human brain is more complex than current computers is so widely known that your point is as useless as describing the size of a clay tablet we’d need to store all our memories.
I’d like to introduce you to the concept of lossy compression. There are two types of compression used on computers, loss-less, and lossy. In loss-less compression, files are compacted without loosing data. In lossy compression, the files can be compacted even further, but they loose quality. VHS tapes do not use compression. The human brain, however, does something akin to lossy compression. Human memories have that annoying tendancy to get fuzzy, even moments after an event. Data gets stored to varying degrees of accuracy. If you think back to sometime when you were 2 or 3, it’s very hazy. If you try and remember what you had for dinner 38 days ago, you’d probably be challenged to remember exactly. Listen to a song on the radio once, and even if you hear every single word, you’re probably not going to be able to repeat it back word-for-word.
Where am I going with this? Well, if we assume that those 102,200 tapes are 120-minute tapes, that’s 12264000 minutes. Considering that my friend has a LARGE number of movies ripped onto CDs, many of which are over 2 hours, and still quite high quality, we could compress those 12264000 minutes of video/audio into about 60 gigabites, without very noticable loss of audio or video quality, and still at a high enough resolution to run full-screen without it looking odd. If we assume those 102,200 tapes are 240-minute tapes, then it’d make it 120 gigabites. I think a drive that size will run you about $2-300 at Circuit City. And that’s assuming you want full-quality memories of every moment of your life. If we start skimping on some of those memories you don’t remember anyway (Like, say, most of your first three years), or drop the quality of all those memories you hardly remember, then we reduce the size even more. Fact is, the human brain does both, which is why we don’t remember everything that happened to us, and most of the details of what we do remember is fuzzy to some degree.
And all this assuming that the people you say claimed this even have one clue what the hell they’re talking about. And that the way the human brain stores information is analogous to the way a computer stores it, which is questionable at best.
You’ve had evidence for the physical nature of memory already cited for you in this thread. When someone tries to remember something, there is activity in the brain in identifiable locations immediatly before the person remembers. Then there’s the fact that damage to the brain can, and often does, cause loss of memories, something that seems unlikely to occur if those memories are stored outside of the brain. That’s more evidence for memory being stored in a physical brain than you’ve presented for it being stored spiritually.
You can’t prove your theory simply by saying another theory doesn’t work. You can’t just say “your idea is wrong, so mine must be right!”
Damn, I wish I’d said what Phoenix Dragon said.
You know, I think that’s about the nicest thing anyone’s said to me here on the SDMB 
That’s very good, Vasy; thanks for the reference. I’ll look it up, might come in handy when I want to turn myself in.
Great Debates participants, not everything here has to be debated endlessly; follow Vasy, consider contributing something instructive to all of us here; a discussion mode is needed, instead of arguing endlessly to no purpose except more stubbornness.
Susma Rio Sep
Now, lekatt, isn’t that an illicit transit, bringing in the spirit? Shouldn’t we just if you are right stop at memory not located (yet)?
Susma Rio Sep
The reincarnation belief, it’s very consoling.
The Hindu and Buddhist version is much better than the Christian one. In the former you keep coming back until you finally reach some kind of fusion with the eternal consciousness at which time you don’t come back anymore, and you are perfectly happy(?).
In the Christian version, there is only one, the first and last, i.e., the resurrection of the dead. At which time the blessed or saved ones will be with Jesus and the Father and the Holy Spirit, singing their praise for eternity; while the damned will suffer, now not only in their soul state but also in their body state, forever and ever and ever.
So, take your pick, Hindu-Buddhist version or Christian. Incidentally, in the Christian version even the damned will get everything back of their body, to suffer more exquisitely. For guys without teeth, they will get them back, of course.
Susma Rio Sep
We might, but we are talking about death. Death of the body, doesn’t mean you are dead. So how can we know death?
There is enough evidence in existence right now to show the existence of spirit. But many are in denial, or haven’t read about it. There are scientific studies, scientific documented cases, hundreds of them, and thousands of personal experiences.
These researchers are doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, etc. It is real, not just something made up.
I think it directly impacts this thread to know that death is an illusion.
All this research should gladden the heart of everyone. But instead it seems to be fearful to many.
It will have a negative impact on science as we know it now.
So much of their work depends on the human being as just meat.
No cloning has ever been done (exact copy) and never will be if I am right. No pills will ever cure depression or mental problems.
Gene manipulation will not built smarter humans. I can see why they hate it, but it doesn’t mean science is not important.
Spiritual understanding will come to the forefront eventually after they have exhausted every other explanation.
Love
Leroy
Again I ask, lekatt, outside of dreams(oxygen deprived or otherwise) where are the cites for your incredible claims? Where are the scientific studies that have proven the existence of a spirit or soul? What computer expert made the claim about needing the brain the size of a watermelon to store memories?
Clones don’t have copied memories, because memories are not genetic. The process of growing up greatly affects who we are, something that seems unlikely if a person’s mind is simply an eternal spirit.
Medication already provides great relief from some forms of depression or mental problems. My father suffered from chronic depression, and the medication he was on did a good enough of a job, that he no longer needs the medication.
We’ve also created more intelligent animals through selective breeding, one of the most simple forms of genetic manipulation (Eugenics).
Your “evidence” for the spirit is continually debunked every time you present it, and yet you ignore this and claim it’s still proven (For example, I note that you completely skipped over my post in reply to your most recent claims). If your evidence is so solid, you should have an easy time countering posts such as mine. So try it, already.
A beginning:
http://www.ndeweb.com/cgi-bin/discus/show.cgi?tpc=65&post=730#POST730
If you are interested, there is a ton more.