Death: What is it?
 

A genuine ending, a rebirth, or just another transition?

I grew up in the Church of England, and while there have been moments in my life that I had hoped for an afterlife to be with those I've lost, my instincts, overwhelming need for proof and an inability to believe in an imaginary man in the sky leads me to believe death is the ultimate end.

That is a solid perspective.

I attempted suicide in 2008 via massive Motrin OD (50,000 mg, or 50 grams), and was put on life support for several days. My heart had stopped. I recall being carried out of the building, barely conscious, and feeling absolutely euphoric. Then came a long period of blackness, and the slow, callous regain of consciousness in the ICU with a respirator in my esophagus. I was in the Marine Corps at the time, but my reasons were not related to being in the Corps; it was rather a frustration with the tediousness of life.

If I can truthfully say that I've felt anything since that day, it's that I've felt dead. The fact that I emerged from this experience with absolutely no long-term damage has led me to believe that my current existence is a complete fabrication of a brief and meaningless life. Thus, I have no perspective of death. I think death is as insignificant as anything else we experience. I am a little curious, though, as to how people feel about death.

I feel completely different. I have experienced many spiritual events in my life, including and not limited to communing with those I love that have died. For me, I have zero doubt that there is something much greater after we die. I do not believe in a strict heaven or hell, but perhaps a fabrication of your own design, possibly leading to one final destination for all of us. Some will go straight there, some will take detours. Many will come back for another trip. What any of that existence is, however, is a complete mystery to me. I have had OBEs that I recall vividly and have seen some place/plane that I cannot explain. To try define it, now, would be pointless.

I don't know what our limits are, or what defines us. Maybe you will blink out. Maybe I won't. In that thought process, maybe one defines what happens in death based on beliefs here. I honestly have no idea. Anyone that says they do know for sure is probably wrong.

But that's just my beliefs.

The cessation of living.

Could be all three...

An ending of your present material existence in bodily form in this universe...
A rebirth into a different bodily form or different material altogether...
A transition from one plane of existence to another...

Expect the worst and hope for the best. http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/3906/shrugh.gif

Your brain stops working. Your blood stops pumping. You decompose.

I think death is the doorway from this life into other lives; from this plane of existence into others. I believe in a cycle of rebirth, and an ultimate afterlife, wherein we are permitted to sometimes "rest" outside this universe in between our lives, sometimes to help select where we go next, sometimes for other reasons, and that after we have learned all we can-- we remember eveything from all our lives while we are "in-between,"-- and after we have taught to the limit we feel capable of, we are permitted to enter the World To Come. But without the death of the body, we would be trapped forever: it is death that ultimately sets us free, allows us to play the greater game of life.

That's what I think.

You stop living. You stop knowing that you exist, have ever existed, or stopped existing. It's actually an extremely hard concept to grasp -- that we will not exist, but not only that; our minds will simply evaporate like they never happened.

There is nothing after we die. I hate it but it's what I know.

the thing about death is that we don't know.
we speculate, we "feel," we hope, we try to apply science to it.
it's a question where the answer dissapears allong with the ones that discover it (or do they actually find out?)

Let's figure it out together. You first.

This isn't true. Shakespeare's mind is still rather lively and perpetual to this day, and it's now been 393 years since it "died."

Do you really want me to take this seriously???

I don't care whether you do.

To think Shakespeare's mind is as though it never happened as a result of his death is a falsehood.

To think that there has been nothing of Shakespeare after 1616 is as well.

Maybe you missed my point: Death may mean an end to your physical existence, the termination of your consciousness. But this doesn't mean the manifestations of your existence—your impact—dies along with it.

You make it sound as though we all die quietly alone while no one takes notice or even realizes we existed in the first place.

Am I wrong?

The only form of life I've seen so far is cell-based. Organisms that are cells or that are made of them.
Life after death would require a different type of life and consciousness. If there is such a thing as consciousness without a body, that might be what's after death.
I truly don't know what happens after death.
I'm inclined to think that everything stops, your thoughts, your awareness of your own existence, etc. "Je meurs donc je cesse de penser?" (I die therefore I cease to think?)
On one hand, it's scary. I'd like to think my views/thoughts, perspectives on the world are unique, and that the only thing I truly own (my consciousness) can continue once by body stops living.

Death is the end.

Chemical processes cease, electrical activity ends, you go mushy and smell.

There's a difference between Shakespeare's brain and Shakespeare's brainchild.
His mind is definitely lost forever. What he wrote is merely something tailored to entertain the masses. Granted, the fact that his pieces were brilliant shows that he had a great mind, but the only person who had those great thoughts, and really understood where his work comes from is dead.
His mind is no longer lively. The fact that his work is still relevant to this day is because human nature changes little, and their interpersonal relationships still take place in the same way, for the most part.

Shakespeare's works are like an elaborate set of imprints of his mind and how it worked. To this day we still pour a great amount of time and energy into reflecting on and arguing about what he believed, commented on, and may have thought otherwise. We are enraptured by his mode of presenting this to us.

In many ways, we try to pick up what we have and actively try to "get into his mind." If it were obliterated upon his death....why would we even attempt this?

This goes against what Lasereth said about our minds simply vanishing upon death as though they never were. The works of Shakespeare act as a testament to the fact that we often exist in some form beyond the grave. Some of these forms are more permanent than others, but they are there nonetheless. I'm not saying that there is any actual spiritual or supernatural existence of the man, but Shakespeare is not dead in the way Lasereth describes. Not by a long shot.

As much as I'd like an afterlife, I'm with Halx

I think Baraka_Guru is talking about death on an entirely different level though, and on that level I agree with him as well.

@Baraka: You misunderstood me. The Shakespeare example has nothing to do with the question asked in the OP. What I mean is that once you die, your consciousness and self are gone like they never happened. You don't remember not existing, you won't experience anything after you existed, your existence itself from your point of view is totally erased when you die. There is no "well there goes my body, what now?"

i think its the end. i hate myself for thinking like that.

baraka, you know damn well what he meant. :P

Lasereth: fair enough. But I see the OP as being quite open to interpretation in its wording—that, and this is posted in philosophy.

But as for this:
From the dying's own perspective this might be true. (But will we ever know?) However, the effect of that death in what remains outside of the dying is what I'm more interested in. For the record, I voted "Other." I believe there is a transition of some remnants of the dead onto the living; much of this is done even while the dead was alive.

Otherwise we would not mourn the loss of loved ones.

The name of this thread is "Death: What is it?" ...not.... "Dying: What happens to you?"

Again...this is posted Tilted Philosophy, so I take some liberties in how I approach this question. So sue me. :)

Our "afterlife" is determined by the mark we leave on this world and how we are remembered after it. However, I don't think it has much to do with death. Our consciousness ceases, but our ideas will live on as long as people remember them.

In which case, I want you guys to remember the TFP when I'm dead. :p

I've almost died twice and actually died once. It was all the same.

There really is a tunnel and a light at the end of it... it feels so airy and warm, too.

For me, I kinda knew where I was going, but then again I didn't. It felt very familiar, but I didn't know why.

I wasn't moving towards the light, nor was I moving away from the light. I was staying perfectly still. And this makes me wonder if that was because I tried to kill myself and suicide causes you to return back to Earth immediately after death. That would make sense.

When I worked in a convalescent home, many of my patients died. They all seemed peaceful during their death.


One thing I know now about death is it's very, very peaceful and feels pretty nice. I didn't care about whether or not my family and friends cared about me. I didn't care about all the Earthly things. I didn't care about eating.. about sex... about having fun.. nor did I worry about dying. I didn't have to.

No drugs can ever make me feel as good as death can. God, that sounds emo. :P But, it's just... it's a very nice experience. haha

i consider myself lucky that i've never felt depressed enough to consider suicide as a solution.
i'm actually quite interested in the state of mind that prefers death over life.
i read a very short article on emo culture and ametc just prompted me to go and find some more lit on it.

i'm one of those that will drink from the goblet of imortality if someone mails it to me.

even if you go like that reporter that got beheaded in the middle east? that looked rather painful and unpleasant to me.

I voted other.

I don't believe that we survive intact through death. Physically, the body becomes a corpse and returns to the cycle of the earth, if it is allowed. For this reason, I'm against putting my body in a box inside a vault inside a concrete slab. I want to feed some grass and trees when I die dammit. I also believe there is some energy associated with the body, but in my mind it is closer to a magnetic field than what people would call a soul. This dissipates and finds its way into the energy of the earth. These bits, both matter and energy, go on to become parts of other things.

Do they retain anything more than their molecular structures and waveforms? who knows.

Well.. it hurts at first. I slit my wrist pretty bad and it hurt like a mother, but the pain quickly subsided and I forgot about it completely. I imagine a more gruesome death wouldn't take away from the peaceful contentment at the end in any way at all.

ah, true.

We cannot separate what we have created from what we are/were/will be.

Our bodies "die" in that the cells no longer work together to form the meaningful unit of "me."

The cells one by one will die and be consumed by another organism.

The steps we have taken, the thoughts we have spread out into the world, these ripples all continue even when the heart stops beating. You cannot undo what you've done.

The matter which made our bodies is consumed and used by other organisms. The matter that made us was comprised of organisms consumed before.

Life after death? Death is only the end of ego. Everything else keeps going.

I've never experienced clinical death, but I know exactly what you mean, by other means. No weed or sex or any adrenalin rush has ever come close to dropping every fear, every worry, every concern. It's much more than that. Not euphoria, not a heightening of anything, just a new level of reality that causes this to be an afterthought. Everything here is an afterthought. It's even beyond happy, because a state of "peaceful contentment" is seemingly what the universe is made of, not an experience. All matter glows with it. I know no other way to put it. I still do that experience no justice in explanation.

I had more to add, but I already flopped in bed and didn't have the will to get back up just to say it. Naturally, I forgot the profound words I put together last night.

Having an experience like this is saddening. You see, once you see this other side, as it were, this place becomes so insignificant that it's hard to describe. In essence, I walk around with one foot in the door to another realm. Now that doesn't mean suicidal, it just means that you learn a new kind of patience. I have a long life in front of me, with a high chance of pain in later years because of my spine. Yet having seen something greater, I have had to learn that it may take 40 years to get there. For now I have to ride the wave, live my life, embrace ideals that I feel best accepting, and not think about what awaits with anticipation. For a while it was difficult thinking of even being a part of society, but some events happened that leveled me emotionally and made me realize that I am here whether I want to be, or not. Basically a cosmic bucket of ice water in the face.

I know this may seem odd to some and this is fairly personal for me, but it is what it is. It's been my experience.

edit: Damn, meant for this to add to the previous post. Guess it had been too long.

All good things have a beginning and an end. Death the end of life.

Death is the opposite of life. So then death is nonexistence.

So is the nonliving is nonexistent?

I shouldn't have opened this thread. I hate this subject so much

So, if you're looking at a human being as an isolated entity (perhaps soul) within a reality defined solely by that individuality and no higher context, then death as we commonly talk about it (the irrevocable shut down of a prescribed set of neurological functions) really does seem like 'The End'. From my point of view in this frame of reference, i think you have to go with 'Unknown'... There's no-one made it back after a substantial period of 'death'.

Another sort of framework for defining your humanity, your mind or soul perhaps, could be as some sort of agent which acts as a node within a knowledge-and-understanding-seeking network. This 'agent' collects and imperfectly passes on some of the information that it is exposed to at the very least and can 'consciously' or 'subconsciously' (whatever those terms might mean in this context - and i really want to go Germanic and use 'mindfully' or 'unmindfully' but, i suppose that's a bit too out of the norm for this sort of stuff) act upon and transform the information at its disposal and pass this 'new' information on to other members of the network.

I think this might be something towards what Baraka_Guru (to my eternal shame, I only recently realised the reference in your/his name... :rolleyes: ) was referring to with regard to Mr Shakespeare or Newton, Hunter S Thompson? Something towards a memetic/pragmatic network of culture?

Death is the end of biological functions.

What's interesting is that one can ever know that they are dead. It requires an entity outside of oneself to acknowledge such a thing. Furthermore, the death of a life form invariably leads to the possibility of life in other forms. Does this mean that one can never truly die alone?

So when I finish emptying my bowels, is that a kind of death?

No, that's life my friend.

So the end of biological functions is a part of life too?

Are you being facetious to tease? It's not easy to tell on the internet.

Death is the end of all biological functions that define a living organism.

That's better. But it's still only half of the equation: What about the non-physical matter? :thumbsup:

So we're talking about two different things so far, I think.

One is the strict biological idea of 'death', as in the negation of biological 'life' which is fairly easy to define within the confines of an organism dominated by one variety of dna. You can be really picky with regard to the death of most 'animal' organisms, at least on a scale of normal human awareness, in that biological 'life' activity never really stops, it simply moves from domination/regulation by one variety of dna to one or multiple others.

Humans create an environment for and are pretty symbiotic with a huge range of fauna which help us to control pathological microbes as well as break down nutrients and... well, thousands, more, functions until we stop supplying them with a conducive environment and a good number of these species help to break the human form down and recycle the nutrients. (In a natural context)

The other thing that we're talking about is what it means to be a living and sapient being and what we understand as 'death' for that or those entities might be, i think (baraka?).

So, I understand what we commonly define as biological 'death' as the negation of 'life'. "I am alive" becomes "I am not alive", or "The 'I' that was is now no more."; The functions of biological life (respiration, reproduction, etc) break down.

In this second idea of what the death of sapience may be and what it might 'mean' (death as a symbol? o_O come to think of it, life as a symbol?) would necessarily be based on the negation of a positive statement of what that sapience, the, potentially, wise 'mind' or 'soul' or 'self-consciousness would be and how it might only exist in reference to other entities would be.

Seeing as baraka brought up the idea, maybe he'd like to take first stab (my stab earlier wasn't too good i think) at the positive idea?

If I knew, I wouldn't be mortal.

Bodily functions cease, sure. What do I believe happens? I don't spend much time thinking about it but I'm open to all possibilities.

Wow, I'm surprised how many people think death is the ultimate end. I can't say for certain that we retain our personality when we die but I know deep within my being that we do not end. I don't believe in any one afterlife, but just looking around at the miracle of life and existence in general and I can't help but believe that there is no true end. There are only beginnings.

Exist something that isn't Physics? :paranoid:


What is Death... The answer is fairly simple once you know what is life. :paranoid:

Defining Death in general could be impossible, like defining life in general.
Defining death for a human being is simple. When the brain stop working, yours e-m current vanishes, the hearts stop beating then you're death. There are a scientific and a juridic definition, both viable for their sake.

If death is the end or a door to other worlds? I'm pragmatic, I don't need unnecessary entities (Occam's Razor calling) to sleep tight. Someone does, good for him.

I'm not a religious guy, but my own fear of death leads me to fully understand why people want to make myths about an after life. The thought of non-existence is beyond most of us to grasp

I believed death is the end. there is no more. you become non existent. and as a result i both love and hate the idea. when i was very depressed there was nothing i wanted more then a way out and just to stop experiencing anything. however it also scares me. I quite like living this week.

Haha yeah, "this week". I have those slow days where I wouldn't mind just switching everything off, but dying is just way too painful to bother with. :)

I look at death as an equivalent to drinking too much at that one party.
Minus the waking up part.

Edit: I'm not saying an afterlife wouldn't be nice though, but seriously, that's something that's too convenient to believe. So I choose to not even humor the idea beyond "that would be be cool."

Few months ago I was thinking hard about life and death and purpose of life. I have read famous philosophers and books about anthropology, about brain mostly. The conclusion of that research wasn't so original: We live this life without any purpose, except the purpose we give to ourselves. Unfortunately, our brain is nothing but a complex processor that gathers information trough our senses and creates an image of the world, I can hardly believe there is anything similar to soul that can continue "living" after dead body.
At the other hand, I really want to believe in something that is eternal, right and good, perfectly good in all ways. But it seems so unbelivable that I think knowing truth is the burden very hard to wear.

Malik- So you don't believe in convenience? Guess cars and cellphones don't really exist :)

Tesla- The problem with that theory, and really most people's perception is that it assumes we know everything or nearly everything about how we work and how the universe works when nothing could be farther from the truth.

Energy, matter, space, time, etc. all have underlying mathematical equations. Math is like the language of the gods. It can describe everything in a precise matter. We may not know the entirety of the language or have all the translations down but from all our experience we know it exists.

Now, taking that into consideration complex beings are like information. Our biological information is recorded through genetics, our experience through neuron pathways and connections. That said, when you erase that information does it really go away? Are you destroying it? If we erase an equation, does that suddenly render it inert? Of course not, it goes on being true whether we know about or have it written down or not.

We may not be able to understand how information exists without perception, but that doesn't mean it doesn't go right on existing.

Very interesting. I've never thought about the universe in that way.
"Math is like the language of the gods."

That math is the language of the gods is onthological demodè even between we physicist... :O

Ex falso sequitur quodlibet, amicus. :thumbsup:

Why would you think that way? Everything can be shown trough math formulas(3D models are the most obvious example). The sentence itself is a little poetical, but it's impressive :)

Death can't simply be "the end" because that is disproven by ghosts of people who once lived.

If a person has never experienced death or ghosts, they can't really say anything meaningful about either, imho.

Like I said before, death involves something after physical death. What that something truly is, I don't know. But, I know there is much more to death than simply "not existing anymore".

Math shouldn't be considered the language of the gods, but instead, the language of the universe since it helps to explain the universe.. and not the gods.

Anyways, I know for a fact that death is not the end of existence for a person. So many things can disprove the idea completely.

For the former, people will say that ghosts have not been proven either. I know, we see them. It's plainly obvious for people like you and me, but they do not see what we see, or have forgotten that they did in earlier years, or have simply passed it off as "imagination". One day maybe we will find someone the general population finds trustworthy enough to take video evidence as real. Maybe they will even see for themselves without a camera. I doubt it, though. We all have our purposes and our beliefs to coincide with those purposes. For many, that means no contact. So be it. Let the atheists be atheists, let the crazed southern baptists be crazed southern baptists.

One day we will all know the universal truth. We may all be surprised.

Ghosts are illusions that our mind has made, false interpretations of normal occurrences mixed with imagination.

What are "normal occurrences"?

Instead of normal, a better word would be "natural", and natural occurrences are events that happen because of the actions preceding that event, and which(actions and the event) can be explained by physical laws. Before anyone starts grumbling about physical laws, I want to say that existing laws explain approximately, but not exactly what's going on in this world.

Exactly my point :)

You believe yours, I believe mine.

Haha maybe it isn't that easy, but I am glad you agreed ^^

I wasn't agreeing with you, actually. In fact I completely disagree with you. I was referencing my post above my last reply.

To each their own. I agree, to disagree :)

I thought it was strange anyways...As a matter of fact, I think universal truth by all means cannot exist.

Again, I politely agree to disagree.

You won't goad me into a debate over your absolute rules so easily :)

Haha, you don't need to debate if you don't want to, I just say that your opinions lack of solid support.

Of course they don't. That is not my goal. Nothing I have seen or experienced can be scientifically proven as of yet. If it could be, I still would probably not be inclined to show it. Just like evolution, where the proof is so obvious it cannot be denied, yet millions of people still deny it. For me it has been made plainly, undeniably apparent that we are not just lipids and organelles, or the sum of those parts. Yet to try explain this to you would mean nothing. That does not bother me, but you insist that I must argue my point. I have no argument, and I laugh as I type this.

I know my truth, you know yours. We are both probably wrong in some respect. Again, I agree to disagree :)

One day you'll catch on. Maybe :lol:

I caught it already, you said it brilliantly clear.