What happens when you die?

[Robb]

That's the question. What happens?

[ClintonTyree]

1. Are you aware of anything...............

from before the moment of your birth? Then I seriously doubt that you'll be aware of anything after the moment of your death.

[terrya]

2. Nothingness.

Although, how can that really be described?

Terry

[spotbird]

3. I died once, not for good of coarse.

Normally it's a once in a lifetime experience.

Anyway, it was very peaceful despite the chaos surrounding me. I don't know where the journey would have taken me but it is no longer a worry.

[terrya]

5. Forgive a stupid question, spotbird.

But...the much talked about "blue tunnel or blue light". People who have had a near death experience have talked about seeing it.

Did you experience that?

Again, an idiotic question.

Thanks,
Terry

[spotbird]

9. Nothing idiotic at all.

In my experience there was a white light. I thought my eyes were open but they must have been closed. It didn't scare me although I knew what it was, it was in no way a religious revelation either. I felt fine and at peace.

[Shakespeare]

11. I had that experience, too, but "saw" something different than the light

...no tunnel, but I had a very, very, VERY strange experience--which was also rather peaceful and pleasant.

I was in a nasty car accident several years ago (drunk driver t-boned me on my side of the car at the drivers' door--I took the full force of impact) and stopped breathing (and blacked out) seconds after impact. Being consciously aware that I couldn't breathe was the single most terrifying experience of my entire life.

But once consciousness went away, I had what I can only describe as a kind of "humming" or electric sensation, and I simultaneously saw many friends and family--as an observer, and saw them doing mundane things. Here's the strange part: soon after, I called a couple of friends (specifically ones I hadn't seen in awhile) and asked what they were doing on that day/time. Both of them described exactly what I'd seen (one was giving a speech, one was having lunch with his brother). These were things I knew nothing about, and would have had no way of knowing. Yes, I was thoroughly freaked out.

I also felt a very pleasant warmth and "letting go" feeling. I distinctly remember feeling reluctance as I was being resuscitated.

I'm still not sure what's on "the other side," but I do believe whatever energy or spark of life we contain rejoins the universe in some way, and I think I had some awareness of that.

[spotbird]

14. Our experiences are similar in that it was peaceful.

Mine gave me insight about life, and the passing, but not death. Yours helped you in both directions it sounds.

[put out]

10. What you say interests me. Please explain.

I was going to say, I know what happens when other people die. They look a mess.

When I die, I will also look a mess. Then I will cease to smell good. In that time, I won't care. But, maybe from the somewhere, I will be grinning at how silly it all is.

[spotbird]

12. The one thing I was sure of is there was nothing on earth to worry

about. But in reality there was so much to worry about, it would have been a total disaster if I had died at that point.

My remains were nowhere in my thoughts.

What happened is that I hemorrhaged and several times during an eight hour period I had no pulse or blood pressure, only once was I aware that I was dying.

[Guaranteed]

38. I like that...

I think everyone goes to heaven...most people don't understand what I mean by that, but I think you put it right as "grinning at how silly it all is."

[TrogL]

4. You say...

oh, KEWL, what a great video game!

Can I play again?

[mvd]

6. Afterlife or reincarnation

Would be my best guess. I picked afterlife because I believe that's what happens most times. What kind of afterlife is hard to say. I'm not sure it would be like Heaven, but we could all be part of a spirit community where we are united again with loved ones. I personally feel better believing that I'll exist in some sentient form forever. As for not being aware of things before your birth, that could be part of the whole plan.

[GURUving]

7. You stop sneezing and hiccuping

and burping. No more indigestion!

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

8. I wouldn't know..I'd be dead

[Cooley Hurd]

13. The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out...

'Rest in Peace.' What could be more peaceful than nothingness?

The "soul," in the physical sense, hasn't really been proven by science. I tend to agree.

[no_hypocrisy]

15. You return to wherever you were before you were born. You "rented"

your body while on Earth.

[alwynsw]

16. My kid gets my money

[guitar man]

17. An afterlife or reincarnation possibly

But the best part,my creiditors will not be able to reach me!

[FreeperSlayer]

18. Uh, you die?

[Pobeka]

19. I know for certain there is existence beyond this illusion.

The fallacy is that we think that even our thoughts come from ourselves, that our body is somehow all there is. But even all the atoms in your body are replaced many times over a lifetime. The key question for me is, who is the observer of my thoughts?

No, don't ask how I know for certain, I will only tell you I have had several significant spiritual experiences. I live with the awareness that I am not my body. I'm not looking for a debate, just telling you where I'm at.

Great question to ask!

[GURUving]

21. Why should this, as it is all we know, be an illusion?

I don't believe in a veil of tears any more than I believe what makes me "me" currently, will stay. We die. The atoms dissipate into a thousand other living and non-living energies.

We are created, we die, and by death create new life.

We are "me" only so long as we draw another breath.

Any other belief is simple hope.

[Pobeka]

22. I'm not asking you to believe in anything.

Just telling you my perspective. It's not up for debate in this thread. Maybe another time...

[Lostmessage]

20. My Cats become orphans

I worry about them and I wouldn't want them to have to go back to their birth mothers.

[davsand]

23. It doesn't end.

You are free from an aching poison laden body, but YOU are there. You see the paths laid out for everyone, and you can appreciate both the positives and the negative influences you had on the people you came in contact with.

Years ago I lost a dear Friend suddenly and I grieved for her. One night a few months after her passing she came to me (in a dream) and laid it all out for me. Typical of her, she told me not to worry--that she'd known I loved her. She also told me that out of love, her gift to me was the knowledge that we DO go on, and that there is more after this one.

I woke feeling that some window had been opened. Can I prove it--no. Do I believe it? Absolutely and without question.

Laura

[salinen]

24. Boy this isn't freeperville Toto

No god or Jesus mentioned once. Wait'll St.Peter hears about this.

[INTELBYTES]

44. What would the use be of speaking of either?

Anyone giving their point of view from that perspective would be instant flame bait.

[jokerman93]

25. Depends on the person's expectations

Depends on the person's expectations and ability to remain coherent.

I think if the person has developed a strong sense of their own purpose and will in life, regardless of how they accomplish it, they stand a better chance of surviving the obliteration of their sense of self that is constituted by the body.

If they survive, they will experience their interior psychological states as complete environments in a dreamlike manner.

After that, life just rolls on with new purpose and will. Of course such personal psychic environments intersect metaphorically with those of others' and so community and relationship continue, but in new highly complex ways.

Those who don't make it through the transition (Tibetans call it the Bardo I think) just get recycled back into the energy/matter hopper.

That's the fantasy that comforts me these days.

[Robb]

41. I like the idea...

...but I love even more the image of the Tibetan monks using the term "energy/matter hopper". :D Made me smile to think about it. :thumbsup:

Yeah, I'm between the hopper, and "that's all, folks".

[nuxvomica]

26. Reincarnation if you refuse the afterlife

I think you literally choose heaven or earth, right after you die. I think someone actually asks you if you want to go to heaven or return to earth. I suspect, however, that it's "that's all folks."

[Lostmessage]

27. Your body dies but your soul leaves and stays on earth

I posted a message thread on here for a friend about a week ago. Please read that thread.

[SOteric]

28. You see very bright lights, and hear the voices of people

around you as though distant, from the far end of a tunnel. You feel yourself floating, dissipating.

[Lostmessage]

29. You get on an elevator

When you get in there is either an up or a down button to push or you end up stuck in the middle between floors.

[Skittles]

30. it's the same as before you were born

you simply do not exist. A great majority of people cannot accept this; hence the need for religion.

[Guaranteed]

39. What's not existing?

I've never experienced that. ;) Jus playin'

[Wapsie B]

31. All I know is

that if there is an afterlife, I sure as heck don't want to be sitting around playing a damned harp.

[AlienGirl]

32. Reincarnation, as far as I can tell

http://www.reincarnationforum.com

As comforting as it is to imagine being relieved of the loneliness inherent in selfhood, everything in my own experience tells me the answer's more like, "Same stuff, different lifetime."

Tucker

[toddzilla]

33. you can pick your nose forever, and it will never bleed..

and other such nirvana-like states..


actually i think it's probably much like sleeping w/0 dreaming..


bzzt!! ---

[AlienGirl]

35. You reincarnate...

Find people who pissed you off (or killed you, or whatever) in your last lifetime, and move in with them so you can pester them frorever! :evilgrin:

Uh, at least that's what *I* do.

Tucker

[Robb]

42. Aha!

So you become all-powerful, and wreak bloody vengeance upon your enemies!!

Alll-riiight!!! Let the smiting begin! :silly:

[Edge]

34. Afterlife all the way.

Heaven...Hell...Limbo...I believe there's an afterlife of some sorts.

[peterh]

36. I get 72 virgins……

..............

[Dogmudgeon]

37. Speaking from the Authority of Experience (sic)

I've had a lot of "mystical" experiences. However, many of them were pathology-induced, like the time the two angels carried me up through twelve layers of clouds to a Swedenborgian heaven -- my temperature was above 104F.

When I was a kid, I had very vivid dreams of being a sad old man, and the dreams always ended with me looking at my charred body in a room that had been destroyed by fire. Tell that to a working psychic, and you'll get a free reading.

I like Frank Tipler's version of the Pannenbergian afterlife: That when you die, that's it, but after several quintillion years, intelligent mahcines (our "offspring") will fill the entire universe, and have enough computational power to resurrect everything that ever lived or could have lived. (Buy it cheap on Amazon-dot-com.)

So put me down for "who the heck knows?"

--bkl

[BritishHuman]

40. Going Away

Spiralling into harmonies of darkness, the child feels only a
passing regret for what must always be left behind. Memories,
both poignant and disturbing, are stripped one by one from a
mind that can no longer maintain a grip upon the years where
necessity took over from joy. Set free of the whispering crawl
of time divided by sharp hands, ever downwards floating, things
become clearer as they fade.

It is always Summer, there. Streaming days segueing into beguiling
twilight, laughter and flowers drifting on the omnipresent breeze.
The fields of forever can still be found there, rich with all our
blurred remembrances of a moment when nothing would ever end.

Somewhere, the excited barking of a small, everbright companion can
be heard once more. All the dross, the rust of adulthood, slides
away as the sun eternally sinks towards a horizon it will never
reach. The merest hint of a sigh, and then small feet run towards
all the possibilities the stream holds.

In a moment, mischief will be afoot.

[arwalden]

43. Game Over, Man... Game Over.