What's it like to be dead?

Bucky, that's another great post. I would be better letting you guys deal with these "sceptics", I'm worn out frankly with their ludicrous assertions.
 
="tim, post: 58678, member: 244"]Thanks for the reply, Nassim

You're welcome , Tim . Thanks for yours .

The mistake you are making is a common one based on old fashioned ideas that no longer apply because the rules have changed. People are now being brought back from death after many hours. They have...REALLY DIED....and been REALLY brought back. These people would have been wheeled off into the mortuary years ago after being pronounced dead but the technology is so advanced now, it's difficult to know when resuscitation should be stopped.

My friend , you are the one who are making a mistake or a contradiction here : REALLY dead people do not come back to life, because they are REALLY dead ( how to be sure of that ? well, we have to know when exactly and how people are really dead = we should try to know the real boundary between life and death : we can't push that boundary either ) .No rules have changed .We do not know where the "boundary " between life and death exactly is ,so we can't say where that line is crossed beyond which there is no return ,and hence we can't say people were brought back to life ,even after many hours of their 'clinical death " : it;s just that the advances of science and technology on the subject are able to save those people before they really die , before they really cross the line between life and death ,a scientific capacity that was not available before .

I stick thus to my original premise ,in the sense that if one really dies , one really does not return to life .

If scientists would some day succeed in "reviving " dead people ,days after their "death" , then i might reconsider my position .

There is no reliable way to make the call, do we continue or do we stop, it's just down to the opinion of the doctors on call at the time.

We should try to understand more about how/when people really die before jumping to premature conclusions . We still do not understand the process of death yet ,so .

Look , let me put it this way then :

Say you get bitten by a deadly snake ( God forbids ) , if you do not get the proper treatment at time , you would die , but if you get treated , you would live . Does that mean that the process of death was reversed in your case ? No : you were just saved from certain death .

And since we do not know where does the line between life and death really lies , even if people would get saved from death after hours of their 'clinical death " , we can't say that the process of death was reversed ....I don't know .

All i know is that the only absolute certainty in life is death .
 
Guys :

The lethal mistake or thought error you have been making is the one that has been committed by materialists , in the sense that life and death are just biological processes .
Well, consciousness is not a biological process , and hence life and death are not just biological processes .
So, when one really dies , one's consciousness takes off to another destination beyond this world ,and once it leaves the body while surviving death , consciousness does not return to the dead body ,and hence really dead people do not return back to life .Simple.
 
All i know is that the only absolute certainty in life is death .

Or is it? You cant say that if you are also stating that death is not reversable since that would mean that no one came back from the dead and could say anything certain about it. Conclusion here is then that we dont know anything about death - including if it is certain or just some sort of transformation or whatever you can imagine. Heck even the parts our bodies are made of arent just phasing out of existence when that happens what we call death. Its not as easy as we are making it.
 
="Bertha Huse, post: 58768, member: 787"]Typoz is right here - this is a red herring that Skeptics often use, and even Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted a few months ago that NDE's were not actual death since everyone "returns".

I am not a skeptic in the above mentioned sense as you know , but nevertheless ,i think that the so-called NDE have nothing to do with death itself or they are rather not identical ,since life and death are not just biological processes .More about that here below .

What is being done here is a sleight of hand with defining "death". For example, suppose there is a fence with a gate, and two of us were walking toward that fence, and both of us went through the gate. One of us decided to keep going, and the other one decided to return back through the gate. Skeptics claim the person who returned, did not go through the gate because that person returned while the other did not.

I think that once one does cross the real boundary between life and death , one cannot return to life , since when one really dies , one's consciousness does take off to another destination beyond this world while surviving death ,and once consciousness leaves the body , it does not return to it .

For all we know, someone who has an NDE may actually have died. Just because they came back does not scientifically establish that they didn't actually die. For all we know right now scientifically, those who do come back, and those who don't - may have identical experiences which are indeed death or the process of dying without having taken the final step. That is to say, Skeptics currently have no scientific basis to assume that someone who doesn't come back, does not have the same experience as an NDE'r who does come back, so they cannot make the erroneous claim that death (or the process of death) is not involved in one case and not the other. It is an illogical red herring.

See above.

But besides the logical fallacy Skeptics make, there is actually some empirical evidence that does indicate to some degree that identical experiences do occur with NDE'rs and those who die and do not return. Moody recently wrote a book where he reported upon Shared Death Experiences where there are now some corroborated accounts where people present while a person is dying, have reported sharing well-known NDE like experiences with the person dying at the death-bed - and the person dies and does not come back. Which appears to preliminarily indicate that death experiences of those who do come back are identical with those who don't come back.


Well, i have to read that book then : what is it called exactly and what's the full name of its author ?

Nevertheless, I don't see how really dead people can tell us anything about their real death experiences .They do not come back to tell us about just that .

SDE's though have not been scientifically investigated as thoroughly as NDE's - so the evidence is still small, and will need more empirical work. But my guess is, additional studies will also confirm Moody's recent publication. There is also some older publications by the SPR regarding Death-Bed Visions (Barrett?) and Osis & Haraldsson's work "At the Hour of Death", which also provide some indications that those who actually die, have similar transpersonal experiences -witnessed by bedside friends, family or medical professionals.

I can't comment on the above ,since i am not familiar with it .I will have to check it out then .

Skeptics because of their a priori bias, do not really take any of the accounts seriously. They spend most of their time and intelligence attempting to come up with materialistic explanations for NDEs, or arguing methodologies used were wrong, none of which has proven to possess any reasonable scientific credibility to date.

Right : all materialist psychological and physiological explanations away of NDE do hold not much water indeed , but all i am saying is that NDE are not identical to real death experiences ,since the victims of the latter ( we will all really die some day ) do not come back to tell us about their real death experiences , so we can't compare those to NDE .

Cheers.
 
There is an interesting intersection between the NDE narrative of the passage to the other side, medium communications, reincarnation research and classic esoteric knowledge.

I am inclined to think that where there's smoke there's fire...
 
Some are prisoners of semantics: if "death" is defined as irreversible death (biologic death), then it is clear that humans who have been reanimated are not dead, but if "death" is defined as cardiac arrest and EEG plane (clinic death), then some humans have died and been resurrected.

Anyway, Bertha has been right: NDEs and SDEs allow us to extrapolate that biologically dead have similar experiences to clinically dead.

But biological death is the definition that matters, because it is biological death that controls the possibility of biology contributing (in whole or in part) to the experience.
 
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Or is it? You cant say that if you are also stating that death is not reversable since that would mean that no one came back from the dead and could say anything certain about it. Conclusion here is then that we dont know anything about death - including if it is certain or just some sort of transformation or whatever you can imagine. Heck even the parts our bodies are made of arent just phasing out of existence when that happens what we call death. Its not as easy as we are making it.

I don't get your point here .Beat me .
To deny the fact that the only absolute certainty in life is death is really an irrational thing to do, to say the least .

Real death is irreversible ,since death is not just a biological process ,once again , because consciousness is not a biological process .
When you will really die , your consciousness or soul will survive death and leave your body by taking off to another destination beyond this world , and once your soul does that , it does not return to your body .

The people who get saved from death hours after their 'clinical death " were /are not really dead , because if they were /are , they wouldn't come back to life : modern science or technology cannot make the soul return to the body when the former leaves the latter, period .

I can't prove the above to you scientifically , but there are plenty of empirical evidence that prove the fact that consciousness does survive real death ..........
 
Guys :

You're really victims of materialism in science , despite the fact that some of you are anti-materialism .
When you would acknowledge the fact that life and death are not just biological processes , since consciousness is not , then the whole picture would change for you to see : see above .
Once the immaterial consciousness leaves the physical body during real death , it does not return to it : all the science and technology of this world will not make it return to the body , no way .
 
I don't get your point here .Beat me .
To deny the fact that the only absolute certainty in life is death is really an irrational thing to do, to say the least .

Real death is irreversible ,since death is not just a biological process ,once again , because consciousness is not a biological process .
When you will really die , your consciousness or soul will survive death and leave your body by taking off to another destination beyond this world , and once your soul does that , it does not return to your body .

The people who get saved from death hours after their 'clinical death " were /are not really dead , because if they were /are , they wouldn't come back to life : modern science or technology cannot make the soul return to the body when the former leaves the latter, period .

I can't prove the above to you scientifically , but there are plenty of empirical evidence that prove the fact that consciousness does survive real death ..........

Irrational? Well, im not stating what im believing in. But you did state that you know that death is certain. So what is dying then? Our bodies? consciousness? What do you exactly know about that what happens when we die? Since you stated before that you believe that no one that can tell the tale about it died for real we cant say for sure if it is certain. Yep sure, you can poke a body, measure everything and whatever, but is that what used to be the human being dead?

I mean, in the end im just messing with you right now since i obviously never died myself so you propably shouldnt take that too seriously.
 
Irrational? Well, im not stating what im believing in. But you did state that you know that death is certain. So what is dying then? Our bodies? consciousness? What do you exactly know about that what happens when we die? Since you stated before that you believe that no one that can tell the tale about it died for real we cant say for sure if it is certain. Yep sure, you can poke a dead body, measure everything and whatever, but is that what used to be the human being dead?

I mean, in the end im just messing with you right now since i obviously never died myself so you propably shouldnt take that too seriously.

Are you some kind of immortal comedian, DasMurmeltier ?
We are mortal in this world but immortal in the next .
Everybody dies in this world to join the next : that's for sure .
Our suffering in this life comes from our separation from Home to which we long to return , Home which is both within and without ,beyond space and time .

You have to try to know the self , by letting go of the illusory false ego, to get in touch with the divine within , with heaven within ,which is also without , beyond space and time .

You have to try to die before death though ,if you wanna know what i am talking about . Cheers.
 
Are you some kind of immortal comedian, DasMurmeltier ?
We are mortal in this world but immortal in the next .
Everybody dies in this world to join the next : that's for sure .You have to try to die before death though ,if you wanna know what i am talking about . Cheers.

Am i immortal? Well, who knows? A comedian? Im always dead serious.
 
Am i immortal? Well, who knows? A comedian? Im always dead serious.

Your immortal soul does contain the whole universe within ,including a comedian lol
"...and i say that as the holy and the righteous cannot rise beyond the highest which is in each one of you,
So, the wicked and the weak cannot fall below the lowest which is in you also ..." By the great US-Lebanese poet/philosopher Gibran Khalil Gibran is his " The Prophet " book .
Heaven and hell are also within as well as without , beyond space and time .

"Live in this world as if you have never set foot in here before , and in the next as if you have never left it ." By a famous Sufi .


Oh, poor pathetic bombastic man's science of this world , you are just trying to get just a tiny glimpse of the lowest level of reality , the physical one , while there are many higher levels of reality that can be approached only by higher levels of consciousness .

Know the self , by getting rid of the false illusory ego and you will know God within .

"I searched for God and found only myself, i searched for myself and found only God " Rumi.
 
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"The ultimate nature of reality ?: It is hidden , it is hidden and it is hidden ..." Rumi

...within as well as without ...that is .
 
Right : all materialist psychological and physiological explanations away of NDE do hold not much water indeed , but all i am saying is that NDE are not identical to real death experiences ,since the victims of the latter ( we will all really die some day ) do not come back to tell us about their real death experiences , so we can't compare those to NDE .
I understand what you are saying, and if we strictly define "death" as someone who never returns from what is considered a "clinical death" then I agree with you. Note that NDE actually is Near Death Experience: so really, it can be argued that NDE's really are not about actual death but near death events.

I do recommend the Shared Death book by Moody if you're interested. The book is called "Glimpses of Eternity", and was co-authored with Paul Perry. Published 2010. It is not as scientific as other work in NDEs (such as Sabom or Van Lommel) but it has some of the same ground breaking ideas similar to what Moody brought forth in his first bestseller, Life after Life.

I guess what I'm trying to get at however, is that those who have an NDE and those who actually die, for all we know right now, may have identical experiences that represent the passage of dying and death - with the very last step, not being taken by the NDE'rs. Given what are the very well known common experiences of NDEs, such as conscious awareness outside of the body, relief of all pain and often overwhelming feelings of love and peace, sometimes a passage through a tunnel and bright light, sometimes a panoramic life review, often meeting with loved ones or family, and then very often: a critical point where the NDEr is told it is not their time, that they must go back and finish their life, all do seem indicative of a kind of dying process, or passage of death that lies within a realm of psychological consciousness independent of brain activity - of which scientists can only conjecture about at this time. Is consciousness some kind of quantum reality that is a priori to physical reality, much like electrons exist in a schrodinger's universal quantum wave function coming into actual existence upon observation? What are the rules of this process? There is still a lot of scientific unknowns here, waiting to be explored/studied.

It is very clear from three decades now of NDE research, that NDE experiences do and have often occurred when the body itself and most importantly the brain is considered clinically inactive or in medical terminology, clinically dead. The heart is no longer providing blood flow to the brain. All EEG activity of the brain has ceased. The patient is profoundly unconscious if not actually biologically dead. Given all the medical science we know today, there should be absolutely no possible way a person experiencing an NDE should have any kind of complex, vivid, organized psychological experiences occurring the way NDEs have been reported, and even more astonishing, reported consistently from accounts around the world from people who have never met each other, many of whom were very young children, similar in detail and scope. In addition there is the attribute of veridical knowledge that some NDE accounts provide that one would have to resort to some extremely unreasonable explanations to dismiss (which Skeptics regularly resort to).

My Best,
Bertha
 
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.Another problem is the complexity and anomaly of most NDE narratives which is baffling on so many levels. The "life review" that comes with a 360° perspective which includes the experiences of the other people involved is not just fascinating but opens so many questions. Where does the brain got that from? What the hell kind of "biological reason" would there be for a dying brain to setup such a profound experience while badly damaged and shutting down? Why generating an experience in the first place, thus wasting precious energy that should be diverted to critical life functions?

I've stated before this same thing and how that is the single most baffling aspect of NDEs to me: why?

It's been dismissed as a "side effect" which "skeptics" claim as an explanation, but it isn't. No matter which way you look at it, there just is no single biological or evolutionary reason why on earth a in a "cold, dead universe without direction or feeling" a phenomenon such as the NDE should exist. Just...none.
 
I've stated before this same thing and how that is the single most baffling aspect of NDEs to me: why?

It's been dismissed as a "side effect" which "skeptics" claim as an explanation, but it isn't. No matter which way you look at it, there just is no single biological or evolutionary reason why on earth a in a "cold, dead universe without direction or feeling" a phenomenon such as the NDE should exist. Just...none.

I often find it remarkable that a good percentage of NDE'rs report having ineffable experiences of well-being and love. Almost all of them describe these intense emotions as something they have never ever felt in life, and many of them say no words can actually describe what they felt. You repeatedly read this in the accounts provided, one after another.

Perhaps death is the end as we know it, but it sure is going to be one hell of a send off if it is full of indescribable love! I mean, if I were to go, that wouldn't be too bad a way to go.

It does seem like an absurd paradox though. When you're supposedly about to be extinguished forever, in a cold, randomly generated universe - you feel ineffable love. It would be almost like an ultimate absurd joke.

My Best,
Bertha
 
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The death of Leonard Nimoy brings to a head for me, again, all the issues with a supposed continuation of life after death.

I adored Star Trek as a kid, and it was probably signal in my life process of seeking out the exotic and the extraordinary. Real life seemed too ordinary. That life in the stars held out the possibility that it was less ordinary. For a long time in my teens and early twenties, I was deeply fascinated with UFOs, thinking this was the path, the way through the thicket, that led to a real extraordinary.

All Star Trek quotes aside (that he has "boldly gone" or that "he is, and always shall be, your friend") does Leonard really live on in the "stars" somewhere, or is that just our sentiment speaking?

A lot of people seem to think that they know the answer, but their arguments are shaky, to put it mildly.

Overall, I think it pretty unlikely. I can't see that the universe would have a plausible reason for an open-ended encore of Leonard Nimoy, or any of us. I mean what would he *actually* do? Spend eternity in endless appearances as Spock? Come on.

This is our wish not to confront death talking. The universe remembers itself only in fragments, and poorly. It invented this structure called life to remember itself just a little better. Even then, after billions of years, the winnings gained in the process are sketchy at best. Life-flesh remembers itself through genes. Then early hominids invented mythology and the universe had a slightly better way of remembering itself. Mythology flowered into culture, a better method with its own media, and now arguably extended again with the digital era, the *most* efficient method yet that the universe has developed for trying to hold itself in "mind."

Yet there is no evidence that it remembers individuals. If it could, why on earth would nature even need these other costly, lossy, and fragile processes with which to try to wrest a skerrick of memory from the onrush of mere event? Think about it.

Moreover, all of these methods, all of these ways in which existence has struggled to remember itself...life, genes, mythology, culture, the digital age....they all have one feature above all others that unites them. The information must "replicate" before it "dies." In no case does the "instance" survive.

It would be nice to believe that Leonard is still out there, "trekking among the stars" or whatever metaphor one wants to use. But making sense of that claim is almost impossible, I think. If things survive it's in some timeless sense, not as an "encore"...and what that even means, if indeed it means anything worth pondering at all, is every bit as dark and obscure as it is deep.
 
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