Fear of death anyone?
Offline I have to admit that I have a hard time dealing with this!
So what's the big deal? When you finally pass you won't be suffering at all, but the desire to stay alive is immense! Do you fear death at all?
I'll say that I don't fear death all of the time, but on occassion I do, and when the fear is at it's peak I come up with all kinds of rationalizations to appease my emotions. Some of which are "well maybe I will go somewhere else?", etc. But looking at all of the evidence I should know better. After the fear dies down a bit, I am more comfortable with the fact that I'll simply cease to exist as I am.
I spent most of my life believing that I would enter the pearly gates, so as I put all of those irrational expectations aside I find myself dealing with the issue again. Even as a Christian I had a fear of death though, in fact, I often feared I could be the wrong type of Christian, or that maybe the muslims were right, etc.
I will share with you that I have an anxiety disorder(and have had one all my life, they say its a by-product of my ADHD), and when I get occasional panic attacks my fear of death can be so intense that I can only find peace with illogical ideas. Once the intense fear subsides I am again comfortable that when I go I'll go, and that I should just try to do my best here while I can.
How often do you fear death? Do you come up with irrational ideas too?
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I've come to seperate death from dying. Death is the state I was in before I was born.
Dying, on the other hand, does still scare me a good bit. I worry about pain, indignity, it coming "early", etc. It helps me to remember the fear stems from the instinct for self preservation, because most fear is really about what we don't know or understand.
"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray
Hey, we're all dying, slowly...
I get what you mean though, the actual parts of dying.. I have read that the last parts of dying can be very enjoyable. People supposedly release a shitload of DMT (a powerful hallucigen) while taking in their last breath.
But yeah, the whole coherent dying part. The "this is it" - I 'm not looking forward to it.
I am an Ex-Christian.
it's difficult to fear something that no one knows anything about. religion's view of death is just a childish fantasy, near death experiences are just misinterpreted neural misfirings, and paranormal studies argue that some small insignifigant part of us continues on at least for a short while, but nothing can be taken at face value and there's no definites or words of comfort for anyone about anything.
the truth is, neither you nor i will ever be able to factually state what death holds, ever. we'll both find out in the end, but we won't be able to share it with anyone. and though our actions in life may affect the time and cause of our death, i see absolutely no reason to believe that they will have any affect whatsoever on what happens after we die.
will all that in mind, why waste a single second of your life, that you do control and understand, worrying about what it will be like when it's over?
www.derekneibarger.com http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=djneibarger "all postures of submission and surrender should be part of our prehistory." -christopher hitchens
Indeed, we'll never be able to know. I'll go ahead and put my assumption down; I think that after we die, we are dead and that's it. No heaven, no hell, no afterlife, nothing. I lean towards that end the most. And sometimes, I just want to be able to just be me as I am for just a little bit longer... I just don't want to die! When I'm having a panic attack my fear of death is almost indescribable. If anything I can say that the fear of death itself is probably more scary then the real thing.
I am an Ex-Christian.
Actually it's not, it's very easy to fear what you do not understand, happens all the time, we fear the idea of it all, without actually having experienced it. I personally have over come this fear (a few very very close moments and one clinically dead for 2 or 3 minutes event). I have come to accept death and dying as part of life, however up until that point of acceptance I did fear death and dying. Now I fear dying a painful way, drowning, by fire, or some slow painful disease (which if it is terminal and no chance of a cure I will end the suffering will before that time). But the fear of being dead, naw doesn't bother me at all.
Well, speaking personally, I don't pay much mind to death. The death rate has never changed throughout history. We all get exactly one.
As far as anxiety goes, I would recommend Jello shots. I find that it is pretty hard to worry about stuff when I am silly drunk. Speaking of which, did you know that the Jello shot was invented by a mathematician at Los Alamos National Laboratories? It seems that the mirthless security force had some problem with mixing nuclear weapons and booze. Why, I don't really know but where there is a will, there is always a way.
Somehow, the guards managed to miss the fact that professor Lerher never brought in a box of Jello to make on his own but only whole trays of made product. And thanks to youtube, I can link you to his thoughts on nuclear war. If this does not help, nothing will:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frAEmhqdLFs
=
Dead is the state we were all in before we were born.
Do I fear it ?absolutely despite suffering from depression I have a strong biological urge to be alive.
Does religion reduce the fear of death for some , probably (it increases for it for many). Does that make religious bullshit any more true? nope.
Life can be really shit, nature comes up with 1000's of ways to kill you and one will suceed in the end, pretending otherwise doesnt change anything
I'm not afraid of death, because there's nothing after death to be afraid of. It's just a return to the state of nonexistence that was before being born. I am afraid of actually dying and feeling my body shut down, while being completely aware of it.
The other day I was talking to a christian relative who was bragging (as christians sometimes do) that he wasn't worried about dying, because he knew exactly what was going to become of him. I replied that I wasn't afraid of death either, because I knew exactly what was to become of me, too. I pointed out that Mark Twain once said, "I was dead before I was alive without the slightest inconvenience." My relative laughed, and then after a brief pause, replied, "Yeah, but the thing is, now that you're alive, you'll never be dead."
*facepalm*
A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.
What the heck is this suposed to mean? I can't comprehend it, can someone explain?
I have performed experiments with my consciousness, random and planned, alone or with someone, and they suggested less or more eloquently, that the consciousness is not necessarily dependent on physical body, or better said, that solid matter is only one of many forms of matter capable of supporting the life. We got used to extend our senses by machines. There is one problem with machines - they're essentially dead. The most sophisticated detecting tool is a human tool, when it's finely tuned, of course. After years of living in cranial space of one such a tool, I can say, I have detected a few things and I know or knew a people who detected a few more things. Too fantastic to talk in detail, there's no scientific backup, no evidence, just me, my fellow men, my word and their word. This is why I am not afraid of death, you guys are free to desacrate your pants of fear if you need, but I'm not, I'm obliged to take into account what I've seen.
There are parts of us which can die. This body can die, my memory, emotions, personality, all the mind and thinking process as well. But these are an exchangeable modules. These can be shut down, there are moments when I don't use them, and there are people, who can shut down these things as they wish, so they have a bit of calmness in their life. But there is one thing, which can never be shut down, it can be only hidden behind the shuttable modules. But when they are shut down, this pure consciousness, this observation, is more present than ever. This is the real livingness, otherwise we are dead or sleeping. We wake up only for a while, when threatened by death and live every second, otherwise only a few individuals managed to stay awake permanently, and gained the Buddha title for that. According to some theories, during the life we are as dead as possible, only after death we're less or more released from a slavery of constantly gibbering mind and a brain throwing memories at you all the time.
Well, sorry if you don't like this rant, I just returned from a meditation. Meditation reputedly releases DMT into brain just like the death, so you can think that I'm training in advance. But the actual reason for my mood is a few of shared experiences, like thoughts and visions I had with my co-meditators this time. If these can transcend the barrier of skulls and space, then what can stop us? I'm afraid of many things except of death, but maybe my lack of a fear from death will inspire someone to fear less.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
The idea that we can never report what lies beyond dying is a little odd. People are resuscitated all the time; clinically dead is still dead. It's a pity that the experience leads many to the irrational conclusion that life persists after death in the absence of heroic medical measures.
Like others in this thread, I draw a distinction between the state of being dead and the event that leads to it. I am not at all bothered by the idea of personal extinction, but I have no desire to seek it out. I have wrestled from time to time with the fear of dying. I'm not entirely sure how to describe how I deal with it, aside from "crush it like a bug and peer at it until I don't feel afraid anymore." I'm not sure how useful that approach would be to someone who suffers from anxiety attacks.
Religion is a virus.
Fight the infection.
Bottom line is that you don't have to be religious to fear death. I fear the fuck out of it. Even our best thought processes on how to cope with it doesn't help because when it comes down to the wire, we'll all be afraid.
Life; boot camp for the phony tough and the crazy brave.
He is referring to the Christian idea that once you come into existence (i.e. once god "creates" you) your soul exists forever. So even when your physical body dies, your eternal soul will go to heaven or to hell for the rest of eternity. In other words, now that you're alive, you'll never be dead, according to christian thinking.
I already knew that Christians believed this, so that's not why I found the comment ridiculous in this context. I found it ridiculous because it's not an argument situation. We're both simply explaining why we don't fear death. But then he MAKES it an argumentative situation (or I suppose he would condescend to think of it as a "teachable" one) so that he can clearly imply three things:
1) I'm wrong
2) I should be afraid
3) Unlike him who doesn't have to be because he's Christian
All this, mind you, while completing avoiding any refutation of my beliefs or any defense of his. In other words, it's a typical christian bald assertion that we could rephrase as:
"That's clever. Too bad you're going to burn in hell for believing that. Unlike me."
Hence, *facepalm*
A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.
One thought, many say "you never know what happens to you after you die" - yet we see people die all the time. They simply cease to exist! That's the most obvious, anything else is untestable and not worth entertaining. I suppose it would be better to focus on the now
I am an Ex-Christian.
What is the most scary aspect of death for you?
The corpse, the sight of bones, skull, exposed teeth, nose, dark eye pits, where once a familiar and living face was?
An inability to move, respond, perceive, well, pretty much everything?
The longing to meet the deceased person again, realizing that it's impossible? (or the realization that you won't see your loved ones again)
The smell?
Or... the necessity to clean up the corpse's apartment, wardrobes, personal property, heritage, and possible debts?
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
I don't fear dying, but I do fear non-existance. I'm sure that stems from my own sense of selfish preservation.
I also fear the zombie apocalypse.
"A proof is a proof. What kind of a proof? It's a proof. A proof is a proof. And when you have a good proof, it's because it's proven." -- former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien
So many things about death I don't like..... On one hand, I don't want to stop thinking and doing and being. I love life. Even worse, I don't want to die young, there's just so much I want to do, and I don't want to die until I'm old and ready. I'm not sure if I'll ever be ready, or if I'll ever feel "done" or "accomplished" - but I do feel that life is so precious and to die is to lose everything. It's the ultimate "game over" - and although my finite existance means nothing to the universe, it means a whole lot to me and I cherish the hell out of it! So as long as I'm alive, I try to focus on happiness and productivity. I only get one shot at it, so I am going to give it my all! I don't have any kids, and I suppose at the age of 30 I feel that I should have had a kid by now. You know, a kid is like an extension of yourself, in a way. Or if I could change the world I could live a little longer as a memory. Most likely my impact will be tiny, but if I can make any impact at all I suppose I'll feel accomplished.
A positive note: When I'm not alive, I won't worry about it! lol
I am an Ex-Christian.
I think we have an extremely good idea what happens to our mind when we die, the evidence is actually very strong.
Want to see what happens to the mind (or if christians prefer the soul) when the brain is damage by disease or injury. It decays, your personality is twisted the very concept of what being 'you' goes. One of the reaons Alzheimiers is such a nasty disease it destroys your mind before it kills your body.
So a damaged brain is a damaged personality hence a reasonably assumption would be no brain = no personality
Of course, we mean a death when we're old and we already did everything in life what we could. I don't want to die young neither, when I've done nothing yet, that's a common sense. The topic is, I guess a fear of the death itself.
I am furthermore afraid of dying unconsciously, for example, being narcotized or stunned. I would miss the last interesting thing to happen in my life!
So what exactly we're afraid of, when we speak of non-existence?
Losing the body? It will probably be old, weak, ugly and aching in that time, not quite a thing to grieve for.
Losing the emotions? Watch Venezuelan soap operas and gnash your teeth. (Oh, Adolfo, do you love me?)
Losing the memories? Well, then it's a fear from amnesia, not death.
Losing the thinking process? C'mon, our own thinking annoys us. Just try to sit and calm down for a while, try to NOT think. You'll see that it's impossible for more than a few seconds. People spends years, attempting to calm down the mind and enter a meditative states. Most of our thoughts is even too silly or meaningless to be said or written down. Cogito ergo sum is bullshit.
So, we have the existence itself left. The problem is, that we don't really exist in our lives. We think, remember, speculate, throw a meaningless thoughts around, but we're so submersed in our thinking, that the pure existence goes aside. Except for a rare moments. The extreme sports are not only about adrenaline, they're about the moments of pure, blissful existence, because only the extreme conditions manages to shut down the gibbering mind for a while. Extreme sportsmen and experienced meditators knows what they're living for, and they seek to repeat these moments. As far as I know, they wouldn't mind very much, if they would eventually die in that state of mind, so this could be a gateway to the fearless death. Eventually, that means in old age, but it's diffcult to do extreme sports when being old, so I'd advise to train a meditation.*
* Consult your mind doctor first and try to do some unselfish/charity work, besides the meditation. Alternatively, it may be a kind of meditation which by itself is a charity work. Not all kinds are.
** Alternatively, visit The Monroe Institute, Virginia.
The Monroe Institute serves as the core of a research affiliation investigating the evolution of human consciousness and making related information available to the public. The Monroe Institute also provides experiential education programs facilitating the personal exploration of human consciousness.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
I've had a couple of close calls, and I was scared each time, so yeah - I imagine that means I don't really want to die.
Even when it's bad, life's at least an interesting state of being. Reverting back to inert matter is hardly an appealing fate, but one we so happen to be tied to.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Which is the tragedy. The funny thing is that when I think about how I spend each moment of my life I am dissapointed at the use of time. I regret being hesitant to move at full speed, to live life as if it were going to be over at any moment. So I spend some time feeling bad about how I spend my time. Now THAT'S funny.
I am afraid of dying. Sure. All I know is being alive, ceasing to be alive is just shy of impossible for me to comprehend. I have to substitute this absence of existance with a "thing". It's related to the limited complexity of my mind. I can understand that there is nothing at the end, but I don't have a frame of reference from direct experience. I've always been alive, I've never experience non-existance because... well... I wasn't there for it.
For folks that are not afraid of dying at all... and I'm not talking about SAYING that they're not afraid of being dead... people that actually have zero fear or anxiety about the end of existance... well... that must be interesting.
Death is a curious subject. I don't really fear it. What I fear is the pai that we often associate with it. The idea of non-existence doesn't bother me too much because I can't remember most of my life so in a sense that is a state of non-existene. The thing that I am really curious about is the like 6-12 minutes of brain activity that occurs after you "die". (Yeah I kinda stole this from the waking life). It interests me how every night we basically die. We lose consciousness every night when we go to sleep. Dreaming occupies very little time usual onlya couple of minutes. So what happens with the rest of that time? the hours spent in nothingness? I don't know this is a very disorganized thought but i am tired and am going into unconsciousness.
Death is no excuse to get supernatural beliefs with clouds of sentimental protection.
DearLuminon, Are you a spiritualist?
I don't fear death, just prefer a painless one as late as possible thanks.
Bring on the Zombie Apocolypse, I will be a clone army of brains in networked war machines by then.
*Door Opens*
*Door Slams*
*Sound of footsteps running away*
Who would want to finish what they have said with the same thing everytime?
When I was young I used to be scared of everything involved with death/dying. I even remeber watching philidelphia when I was about 12 and being scared of AIDS. Kids! I think everyone has a fear of death of sorts....but is that the right right word?
I think most people have a fear of not being alive. Thats closer to what I feel about death.
This probably sounds stupid and I'm sure some people will point out that is exactly what death is (ie not living), yet I feel that death as a word conjours up very macabre feelings. (again this is obvious but bear with me).
What I'm trying to say is that I personally have a fear, no, more a dissapointment that I'm not going to see how things work out. I'm not going to see world peace (probably). I'm not going to see our solar system and the beyond properly explored and set foot on by man (definately).
But this view of death makes me even more determined to live this life the best way I can and not worry about the things I cannot change and try and make at least my tiny contribution to human existence slightly improve my society for my children and my childrens children by being a good and productive member of the human race.
If that fails I read a quote once, (I forget who by) which said "I was dead for billions of years before I was born and it never did me any harm" which helps me when my mind wanders!
I agree with this the most. I've often thought that it was a fear of the pain of dying. I don't think nobody wants to go out in a ton of pain. But the pain will be shortlived once the blood stops going to the brain and you experience an NDE. The NDE will probably be pretty fun, I hope. But the whole idea of not-existing sucks
Yeah man! I want to see so badly how the human race ends up 100 to 1000 years from now,
too bad I won't.
I am an Ex-Christian.
Basically, my paradigm has a certain features, which allows me to come to a similar opinion as in the following quote:
The difference is, that a spiritualists consider their mediums and spirits to be a good advisors, which is usually not the case. Whatever comes out of medium's mouth or writing, must be first verified. I recall a case of a woman who tried the method of automatic writing. She unconsciously wrote two A4 pages of text, a lot of it. Then she used another, different method to determine which parts of the text are true and valuable. The result was, page two, line this and this, three words there.
'Trust only yourself.'
Well, that nicely sums up the reliability of mediumship. A spiritualists must think, that just because someone is dead, his spirit must be automatically more clever than Einstein. (sarcasm)
Thinking about that, mediumship may be useful when a medium in action would be medically observed with all kinds of brain sensors, which should help us understand this process better. This can be a good chance to improve psychiatry and psychology.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
I fear both the process of dying ( ie, that which results from severe trauma ) as well as the state of being dead ( ie, I've never been dead before. One can only speculate, mmmm ? )
These fears were with me when I was a sincere and dedicated Christian and have followed me into my present state of "weak atheism". I suppose the fear is primal in origin. Of course I wish that I could be nonchalant about my inevitable fate but I believe the fear of death / survival instinct is just another aspect of evolutionary development.
Even the so-called "lower animals" display some type of pain avoidance-self, preservation behaviour. Move a flame toward an insect and it will retreat.
I don't care for the the thought of being dead but I really don't think I'll know any better. What I really fear is a slow painful death, or living after I don't want to. There are fates worse than death.
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
This is SO true! Thanks, this actually helped me a bit. Death happens to everyone, indeed there are far worse things to worry about in the living world.
I am an Ex-Christian.
All living creatures have a reaction to imminent death. It is to do something to avoid being killed. Being self aware and social we "know" death is coming without being able to do something about it when it is not a predator. Usually this is also preceded by days, weeks, months and at times longer when something like cancer is the cause.
But it is the body reacting and our minds perceiving the reaction and knowing there is no response we can make.
After enough years you will in fact experience real life threatening situations and you will act and not have time to waste on fear.
Live long enough and you will have experiences which you will perceive as an imminent end coming unexpectedly. You will find yourself amazingly calm and thinking the most amusing thoughts like, won't it be funny when they find my body here? or, at least it isn't painful.
From the intellectual side consider all of the range of possibilities from no afterlife to all the possible ones and then the mix of god and no god into those possibilities. The one thing we can be certain of is none of the ideas in circulation make a lick of sense.
Consider if there is nothing, only oblivion. Then the afterlife will be exactly as it was before we were born and equally frightening.
Not a single afterlife concept suggests we will want to be remembered as in the Shinto, Jewish, Aztec and other ancestor worshiping religions. They all suggest we will have something better to do with our eternity.
But this does not address the animal reaction. The classic "three wishes" errors in wishing for eternal life and the reason vampires have to heal is that the fear is not of death but of the injury. By definition we cannot fear death as we have never experienced it. We can fear injury if for no other reason that it hurts. Death is just a worst case of that injury.
Our intellectual fear is in the false idea that we cannot imagine not being alive yet we all know what oblivion was like before we were born and the world was being set up for our grand entrance into it. I don't remember having a care in the world before I was born. Nor do I remember anything from my first year even though my parents assured me I was alive several years before I remember a thing. So death is also like my first year or three of life.
Keep in mind we are just a (modestly) self-aware layer on top of four billion years of evolution. We do not fear. We observe our bodies having a normal survival reaction from evolution and upset ourselves by thinking about it. That we call it fear is just our name for the body's reaction. Of course without our awareness and social knowledge we would mostly not know of impending death.
Simply, it is impossible to have evolved a response to impending death as there is no procreation after death. There is no way to pass on anything. The only thing which can be passed on is killing the other guy/animal/whatever. We can only pass on winning so the reaction is fear of not winning rather than of losing. That is a distinction the language is not equipped to handle.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
It's not the death that I fear, it's the suffering. It's simple. You're not even gonna know when you're dead so there isn't any fear that, at least not for me. I just don't want to linger in pain. I want someone to pull the plug, someone like Jack K to help me when it's time, if I ever come to that. My pain threshold is VERY VERY low. I am male, after all.
god -- I tried you on for size.... you were a little long in the crotch, loose in the waist, short in the length and you made my butt look extra flat. I had to take you back for an exchange.
Wow, that's weird 'cause I remember a particular day in 7'th grade wood shop. I was using a band saw, not paying attention to what I was doing and then, ooops ! Uh oh, I just sawed off the tip of my left index finger. That's not supposed to happen, is it ?
With little rivers of blood flowing down my arm and dripping off my elbow I calmly walked over to my shop class teacher and simply said "Mr. Green, I cut my finger off."
I didn't know that because I was a "dude" I was expected to have a more hysterical response to pain. I feel like such a failure, now.
@ Gene Really up
I love Lehrer, he's a great musician.
I think we're all afraid of dying to a point, its completely natural after all. It would be nice if there was an afterlife, religion uses the promise of a second life to attract the many weak-willed. Its a nice concept but if you think about it, if you get a second life, doesn't that cheapen the life you have here? I think we ought to live with the knowledge of death in our heads so we don't do stupid things that will consequencly ruin our few years.
I agree. If you believe that you have only one shot at life ( as I do ) then life becomes all the more precious. There are no do-overs, like it or not. Dead is dead.
But a believer in reincarnation tries to set his current life on the right track, because he thinks that all debts of various kinds will have to be paid. And for that payment, he will have to get born again, (literally) learn basic hygienic habits again, get through a phase of nobody taking him seriously (childhood + adolescence) and then somehow figure out what the hell the current tasks of his life are. (not remembering anything, of course) A non-believer in reincarnation at least knows that he will have an eternal peace from all that work.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
Luminon, if possible can you give a brief explanation regarding the process of "reincarnation" as you perceive it ? I am curious as to whether you believe all of humanity experiences this phenomenom or is it an experience only shared by those who at some point choose to believe that they have experienced past lives. More to the point that I am trying to address, do you believe that I, even as a former fundamentalist Christian and now presently atheist, have experienced past lives ? Thank You.
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
To answer your specific questions, a modern man of today with well developed thinking skills according to the theory had been incarnated several hundreds of thousands of times. Yes, according to the theory, all human life is subjected to this process of reincarnation, whether they believe in it or not. As for your other question, if I believe that you did also have a past lives, well, no. For that I have to use your personal perspective and you identify yourself with the vehicle, the body, emotions and mind. The human person is newly grown each time and thus it can't be from your view identified with any previous version of you, belonging under the same 'soul'.*) But if you mean it as a question that if there were any previous incarnations which you are a result of, then I'd say yes, and probably a lot of them Christianic and more recently some with atheistic influences probably as well. In every life there seems to be a repeating of major tendencies from previous lives. For example, a teenager may have a spontaneous period of religiosity during his growing up. (you see, this theory has some interesting implications in psychology and other sciences)
) I don't demand from anyone a belief in this theory or anything else. Belief is useless, it would only please me if someone would verify that on their own skin. If not, that's all right with me too, the most important thing for me is, that I had seen a sufficient evidence for this theory. Anyway, there are thousands of pages written on this theory (of which my brief description is just a tiny part) and a serious interest on a skeptic's side would have to lead this way, as it is with other, more common areas of knowledge.
So much for the theory, I hope your curiosity was satisfied. ( I guess you've got this look on your face right now
*) for example, if some previous incarnation of yours cold-bloodedly murdered someone, (which is almost certain with all of us) this doesn't mean that you can do it as well. Most probably not, because the bad consequences of murder sub-consciously acts against such a behavior, mostly succesfully. Thus, if you ask about persons, you're pretty much a different person. You see, the psychologic implications are fascinating.
Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.
The only recollections I have of feeling a fear of death were primal and intense experiences where death was a likely outcome of my activities or lack thereof. In short, simple talk, I only fear death when death is staring me in the face, as a clear and present threat(someone pointing a gun in my face, or I'm about to fall off a cliff, etc.). I tend to attribute this to an instinctive reaction, as I've accepted death on a level that's hard to describe intellectually, and I have no fear of death unless it is in my face.
I view death as the end to existance. There's nothing afterwards. This doesn't scare me because I've come to the conclusion that noone really dies. As long as our species exists anyway, and even if it doesn't, you still exist to an extent as long as there is life out there somewhere. One cannot exist without affecting that which is around them. Those effects can and usually do have wide reaching effects. Someone somewhere came up with the slang word "cool". Noone knows who, when, where, why, etc. But the term continues. The person who first came up with it(or the group of people who came up with it at nearly simultaneous times) have obtained a measure of immortality. This is merely a mild example of an effect that everyone on the planet is subject to. There are ways to increase or decrease your influences on those around you. The more contact with children you have, the more you travel, the longer you live, the more friends you have, even the more enemies you have. Everything you have ever done has had some effect on someone. Even those things that only affect yourself have changed you, which changes all future contact with other people.
I take solace in my immortality. While I may not personally be around to see how things are in a couple hundred years, all that I did in my life has been absorbed by others of my species and continue on regardless of my personal condition. When at this level of acceptance, the only remaining obstacle to a lack of fear is the letting go of your ego. And you become good at recognizing moments when people add to themselves a piece of you. Each time it happens, the fear lessens until it no longer exists.
Of course, just because it works for me doesn't mean it will also work for others.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
I should've added something there. Looking into teleportation, ftl speeds, cloning, etc. has given me another weapon. I've come to the conclusion that I have already died. Multiple times even. With every major change in ones life, biological or psychological, your previous self is effectively killed by your new self. At 80, not a single particle in your body remains from when you were 20. Your 20 year old self is long dead when you are 80. Your brain is not only different, but it also works differently. Everything is different. With change comes death. It is inevitable. Perhaps that is why people fear change so much.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Personally I think death if fully consciousness during the event will be like one great big drug trip. I read a little on DMT a while back and it sounds like heavy stuff. Maybe if I find some I can find out what dying will be like. Hopefully I die peacefully in a warm bed surrounded by beautiful women. If not that then doing something I love. Here is a hypothetical question though, if it comes off sounding stupid please forgive me. If you died overdosing on DMT what would happen to your brain in the final moments? Would that supposed light at the end of the tunnel be a little bit brighter? Would you see all the animals you met along with all the people. By the way this is my first post so yay for me.
Has anyone here read A Strange Occurrence at Owl creek Bridge?
After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring. He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
MySpace
Just wanted to add a bit into this interesting conversation.
We all have questions, that is what humans do, they question, get answers and then use that information to make their lives better...or not
Ask the wrong questions and you get mislead, then that misinformation makes life more difficult.
So have we been asking the right questions so we can get the answers we need? Take a look at your life. Is it everything you want it to be, have you found a reason for your life, have you found any answers to the mysteries of the universe?
If you can honestly answer 'yes' to yourself then you have the answers to many of the questions or points of conjecture that have been brought up. If not answers, at least you are on the path to find them.
If you answer 'no' then take a hard look at you, your actions, emotions, thoughts etc. Then start asking questions again once you have begun to see and then to understand those things.
If you answer 'whatever' or something to that effect then you already have all that you will ever have.
There is a difference between belief and knowledge. Belief is to accept something as true without evidence, without direct observation. It is very possible to get answers to all of these questions, without falling into belief, and not from a book or a well written blog post, but through direct and objective observation.
I'm not trying to give any answers but maybe just give a clue about where to start. Someone once did that for me.
This isn't about religion, or belief, or worship or anything like that. It is just about Truth. Not my truth or her truth or his truth but real authentic Truth.
I don't mean to sound preachy so forgive me if I do. I do not have all the answers but I do have some of them and I'm looking for the rest. Fortunately I know where to look.
There is just so much information out there that it is like finding a needle in a hay stack to find what is really needed.
I'm going to suggest a book, its is freely available all over the internet, and it doesn't give the answers, it just explains how to ask the right questions and where to begin looking for the answers. Revolutionary Psychology by Samael Aun Weor
Just something to think about.
Chris
I read your post and I think me and you are on the same thinking pattern. I just can't imagine my conscience being nonexistant. Please explain to me your expericences in detail if you can find the time. Thank you,
marshall
"Take all the heads of the people
and hang them up before the Lord
against the sun.” -- Numbers 25:4
I think it can be explained in an evolutionary perspective. your will to survive is extremely high and that fear is apart of the mechanism. although, this fear appears to decrease as you tend to age. i know a lot of people who age and gradually realize that it's ok to die. it happens to all of us. to me, the idea of living forever is dreadful!
“I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.”
"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."