What do you think happens when you die?

[True Dough]

I'm sure this has been discussed here before, but this wouldn't be the first repetitive thread.

Death is so fascinating because, despite all of our technological advances, we still know so little about what comes next. You will be diagnosed as dead at some point, that's for certain. Your cause of death will be recorded. Your physical remains will be disposed of in some manner, perhaps as you requested before you went belly up.

There are about 7.5 billion of us sharing the Earth right now. But since the dawn of homo sapiens, more than 100 billion people have died. That's a lot of deaths. Not one of them can tell us a thing. We're left to guess or have faith.

So what do you expect to happen after you take your last breath?

[mindem]

1. I am sure

as a final thought that a person will experience a great sense of relief knowing they are finally free of Donald Drumph and the repuke party. Then your bowels let loose and someone else gets to deal with the mess.

[Cartoonist]

2. Nothing

Enjoy life. There is no afterlife.

[mitch96]

33. Agree..

What was your life like before your birth??? nothing.. All we did was change form for a few decades and then went back to our elemental form.. stuff...
We always were, we are and always will be. just not the same content... the context is the same... YMMV..that's just me..
m

[Major Nikon]

43. Well, it started with an orgasm

I can only hope it ends with one.

[Rorey]

115. LOL

[Major Nikon]

42. Not true

When you die your body starts to stink soon after due to bacteria feeding off your remains. Provided your body isn't cremated or otherwise preserved, other organisms will feed on what's left. So there is life after death, just not the metaphysical type that some believe in because they are afraid of the dark.

[TexasBushwhacker]

50. Here's the way I look at it

We are made of atoms and the atoms in our air, water and land are constantly recycled. We have atoms in us that were once part of every living thing on Earth. I have atoms in me that were once part of my mother and she had atoms that were once part of me. When I die, my atoms won't cease to exist, they will just be transformed. I may only exist as atoms and memories, but I will not disappear.

[guillaumeb]

51. Are you afraid of the light?

[Major Nikon]

52. JESUS H. TAP-DANCING CHRIST... I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT!

[guillaumeb]

53. Did it frighten you? eom

[Major Nikon]

55. What light?

[guillaumeb]

70. The light that is there to be seen. eom

[Major Nikon]

73. The Band!

[in2herbs]

97. One of us is going to be surprised on judgment day!

[Cartoonist]

103. I'm OK

I have no fear of judgment day. I hope you can stand the pressure.

I've already passed judgement on the god of the Bible. He's a mass murderer that doesn't even spare children. I'm a better person than he is. So who's going to judge me?

[Tipperary]

100. You are an authority, eh?

And here we all are thinking no one knows what happens after death. But YOU do!

Dang, you should be famous.

[Cartoonist]

102. Wassup?

You got a problem with me having an opinion?

I'm not famous, but there are a lot of people who agree with me. And those that don't haven't got any proof for what they believe.

Lacking any proof, nothing is the default answer.

One last note, on this matter, there are no authorities.

[Tipperary]

106. Opinions are fine. You stated it like a fact. That is all.

My father would agree with you. I am on the fence.

[Cartoonist]

117. Everything is opinion

The universe is always in flux. Do you preface everything you say with IMHO?

[Cartoonist]

138. You did not notice the same thing

What you did was to apply the same prejudice against me as the other poster. You disagreed with my opinion, you had no facts to counter it, just your own opinions, therefore you had to create a false position of certainty on my behalf.

This is a discussion site. People ask for opinions. I gave mine. Now I've come under abuse by two people who clearly have doubts about their own beliefs. Neither of whom called out anyone else for their opinion.

You must be afraid of my opinion. Don't be. There is no hell in nothing.

[Cartoonist]

140. Read the OP title again

It says what do you think, not what do you know.

And you can shove that BS about my not wanting higher consciousness. Where the hell did that come from? I'll take whatever nature gives me and not wish for more, like you.

[Cartoonist]

143. I was right

You do fear nothingness. That's the #1 reason people cling to religion.

[vlyons]

3. I'm a Buddhist

We believe that at death, the mind goes through an inbetween state called the "bardo." It is a very confusing and scary state. One must remember that everything that is experienced is but a projection of one's own mind. Just like in life, everything that we experience is a projection of one's own mind. We carry a lot of mental formations that have karmic implications, which we carry forward into the next life. The karmic formations are, "I like," "I don't like," "I want," "I don't want." So we get reborn into one of 6 realms, to start the next cycle of samsaric existence. The most fortunate realm for rebirth is the human realm, because only humans have the very rare opportunity to achieve an enlightened mind.

Personally, I don't know if reincarnation is real or not. I have decided to keep an open mind to the possibility. And if true, I desire to be reborn as a human into a loving family with a close and early opportunity from childhood to hear Buddhist teachings. If you want to know more about Buddhist teach about reincarnation, you should learn about the Twelve Steps of Dependent Origination.

https://thubtenchodron.org/1993/01/pervading-compounded-suffering/

[Zoonart]

13. Buddhist also....

keeping an open mind and hoping for the opportunity for another auspicious human incarnation.

I have to say though, that this current disaster in the country is very trying for my practice. I feel like I'm taking a shotgun to my merit field every day.

I try to meditate on what it must have been like for the Dali Lama when he was forced into exile by the Chinese, to experience the pain of his people.

At a teaching in NYC several years ago, his Holiness related a story about a young monk who had been recently been released from a long imprisonment relating to his stature as a lama. The young monk told the Dali Lama that he had been consumed by fear. The Dali Lama asked him what he had feared.... and the young monk answered that his greatest fear, and test of his faith, was that he would come to hate his captors.

[vlyons]

18. Welcome to KaluYuga, the Age of Degeneration

We live in degenerate times. Such times were predicted by Padmasambhava. Not yet as degenerate as at other times, but still very difficult for us. My lama said that in such times, it is easier to attain a more enlightened mind and to accrue great merit, because it's a target-rich field to practice compassion. I get great comfort by contemplating the Boddhisattva 6 perfections. I do not hate Trump and the ignorant people, who support him. I feel sorry for them, because they cannot see what they are doing and seem filled with negative emotions. As Buddhists, we're supposed to be here now and be open to dealing with what is.

If you are on the Boddhisattva path, there are some things that we can practice.

Pacifying: Calming people down. Helping people to calm down from fear, anger, and hate. We are much more effective in dealing with whatever comes our way, when we are calm, than when we are freaked out and agitated.

Enriching: Giving people confidence that we can deal with and overcome this darkness. We are not powerless. We already have Buddha nature and can access Buddha mind. Everyday, we can be a little ray of sunshine and encourage people to practice the virtues of generosity, patience, and enthusiastic perseverance.

Destroying: We can point out the lies, hypocracy, and logical fallacies that surround us. We can organize to elect competent, decent people as our elected official.

Enlightening: We can teach, through our speech and actions, the Buddhist ethics and discipline of the Hinayana, and the compassion and emptiness of the Mahayana.

Peace

[Zoonart]

21. Thank you so much.

[Taraman]

29. Trump's future is quite bleak because of his actions. I can feel sorry for him, the Preta King

He is so afraid.

[vlyons]

32. I see him as the parade of the kleshas

The kleshas are the 5 great negative emotions of ignorance, envy, anger, pride, and greed. I know that he is not a happy man. With his great wealth and advantages in life, he could have made good decisions that accumulated great merit that led to a life filled with happiness and joy. He is a great lesson for us that money can't buy happiness.

[left-of-center2012]

35. Trump is the 'hungry ghost'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_ghost

[vlyons]

104. I see him as more of an asura

Asuras are the demi-gods. Their level is above the human level and below the gods level. The pretas are the jealous gods and filled with envy. They are very aggressive and always at war with the gods and making trouble. The dominant characteristic of the demi-gods is paranoia and jealousy, so they spend all their time fighting and quarreling among themselves over possessions and territories.

[left-of-center2012]

36. Tibetan Book of the Dead

Great show on PBS recently.

https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-tibetan-book-of-the-dead/

[Tipperary]

99. Good post. I noticed the Thai boys that were rescued in the cave entrapment had their Buddhist

faith to keep them strong and calm. They are going to shave their heads and go into a monastery for a week in thankfulness. I found that interesting. Faith is scorned here on du usually. I am a questioner, but I scorn no one’s faith. Buddhism fascinates me.

[Arkansas Granny]

4. I think you're dead and that's that.

[hlthe2b]

5. ...

An amazing near infinite buffet is laid out with an array that nearly stuns all "comers"....

Unfortunately, amidst the flurry and variety of "attendees", you can only "lie" there and "serve"..

Yet your "multi-legged" and microscopic guests enjoy the feast day in and day out.

For them, you are long-remembered.....

[tirebiter]

6. I've got $500 in my benefits

For someone to dig a hole and put me in it.

[BlueTsunami2018]

7. It's like flipping a switch to the off position.

You’re alive and then you’re not. That’s it.

I would be pleasantly surprised to wake up in Valhalla but it’s not at all likely.

[Girard442]

8. I was present at the peaceful deaths of two people at different times.

Other than being very sad at our loss, I was struck by how ordinary death was. I saw life processes cease and that was all I saw.

[Iggo]

48. Relevant video.

[Rorey]

86. That was great!

Thanks for posting it.

[still_one]

9. Energy is neither created or destroyed

[vlyons]

19. and ditto for mind

[mucifer]

10. I don't know. But, from my experiences as a hospice nurse it seems that for some people

dead relatives bring them comfort while they are dying. Some people see and talk to people they love when they are in their final days. Yes, it could be their own brain comforting them. But, to me it seems more than that.

[Frustratedlady]

152. My husband went through that the last day...

My mil had visits from her husband and my grandmother (whom she'd only met twice).

My husband, who was a skeptic, said they were floating and sailing. When I asked who they were, he said, "Everybody!" in total amazement. He kept watching the clock, that afternoon, and at 6:00, he began the process.

My father asked me to take him home. When I said I couldn't, he asked me to catch the bus. We did so, he went home, looked around and then told me it was OK, time to go back to the hospital. He died an hour later.

I believe there is definitely something that happens, before and after. We had many "visits" following my husband's death that could not, in any way, be explained away. I've never felt he was far away.

[samnsara]

11. i will finally get a good nights sleep!

[TreasonousBastard]

12. As usual, Shakespeare said it best...

To die, to sleep.
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.

Most religions give us a view of an afterlife because we all have this unnerving feeling that this can't just be it. There must be some divine punishment for the Stalins and Fisks of this world, and some reward for their victims.

Mustn't there? If not, then what is the point of it all?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

84. He also said this about sleep.......

the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore
labour's bath, Balm of hurt minds,
great nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast.

MacBeth, Act II, Scene II

[PJMcK]

14. I asked this question to one of the smartest people I know

He said, "It's simple. When I die, the universe will end."

Sounds good to me.

[LuckyCharms]

15. We will feel like we did before we were born...

in other words, nothing.

However, it is my belief that the living will feel our energy, in one form or another, throughout time.

[zanana1]

96. I feel the same way. nt

[Rorey]

16. I was embracing my previous husband when he died

He had been in a coma in the ICU for eight days. During that time, I only left the hospital to go home and shower and change. I talked to him constantly, telling him to fight because we loved him and needed him. The doctors had been saying there was no hope for days, but their explanation wasn't extensive enough for me to accept their prognosis. On that eighth evening, I went to the hospital chapel and completely fell apart for a long time. I begged God (I was sort of agnostic at the time....), tried to make deals, said I wasn't ready. He was 38 and we had young children. This couldn't be happening.

Then I pulled myself together, somewhat, and went to the nurses station and asked what was going on. Was he really dying? It didn't make sense because the numbers on the machines looked better. They explained everything to me that was going on physiologically. I took it all in and contemplated it for a long time. In the early dawn I went in and talked to my husband. I told him it was okay to go, that we'd be okay. His numbers started changing. In the afternoon his whole family arrived. I was embracing him when I got the strangest feeling I had ever had in my life. I was so stunned that I stood straight up. The only way to describe it was like an energy passed through me. He was gone.

That experience helped me immensely in accepting his death. I just knew that he was no longer there, and that the body laying there was no longer "him".

I've been with four other family members since then when they died. The experience with them wasn't at all like it was with my husband. So, I think it's just not the same with everyone. I don't know where we go, or if we go anywhere. We'll know when we go. Or we won't.

[True Dough]

24. Thank you for sharing that, Rorey

Grieving is such a trying experience. When my mom was dying of cancer almost five years ago, she attempted to brave the pain by relying on faith and prayer alone. She was a devout Catholic. She and I had many disagreements over religion as, much to her chagrin, I have become an atheist.

Anyway, her expectation was that God would hear her prayers and make her pain tolerable, but that was not realistic. She eventually, although reluctantly, gave in and started using morphine, as we had encouraged her to do. She came to appreciate its effects (other than the accompanying constipation).

On her final day, she passed peacefully. I was there holding her hand. What astonished me is that after she was gone, her hands remained warm. Why? I started to wonder if this was a sign from God after all. So I had the opportunity to ask the doctor about this phenomenon. He informed me that she likely had an internal infection and that was what maintained the warm temperature in her hands even shortly after her death.

I still like to think it was something spiritual/magical, but I don't indulge in that fantasy for long.

[Rorey]

85. My aunt was like your mom

She refused pain medication for quite awhile. She was worried about becoming addicted.

[mucifer]

108. It's very common in hospice for patients to fear addiction. Even parents refusing

morphine for their dying child isn't that uncommon at first. It takes time and a lot of teaching. I've been a hospice nurse for 12 years.

[Rorey]

109. Gratitude for hospice

I'm inclined to say that I couldn't have made it through my dad's last week without hospice, but I know that we CAN do a lot of things that we don't think we can do. Still, I'm so grateful for the hospice nurse that stayed with Dad and I for the whole day and after he died she stayed until the gentlemen from the funeral home left at about 10:30 p.m.. She then offered to spend the night with me, but it was just before Christmas - the next day was Christmas Eve Day - and I insisted she leave and spend her time with her own family. I packed up and left right after she did and started my drive home to Colorado. It was rough. Kind people like you and her make those rough things doable. A big thank you to all of you hospice workers.

[woodsprite]

77. Rorey, I know exactly the feeling you experienced.

I've never met anyone else who experienced that. With me, I experienced that with my Mom. I'm so sorry my brother wasn't there with me when it happened. I had been with her all evening and had to go home to check of our new baby and my husband. When I left my Mom, she was talking to her brother who had passed 2 years before. She kept asking me if I saw him. I told her "Mom, I don't see Uncle Harry, but I'm not going to say you don't see him. I have to leave now. I'll be back in tomorrow morning at 7:30." When I arrived the next morning, she was refusing food and the nurse was saying that she was waiting for me. I was talking to her and holding her hand. I was telling her how much I loved her, what a wonderful mom and friend she had been and how Dad and her brothers were waiting for her. It was OK to go with them. I would help take care of my brother and our families. I was holding her hand, and she died quietly at 8:14. She breathed out and never took another breath in. It felt like energy going through me, almost like a hug around my heart, then a sense of serenity and calmness like I have never felt before. It sounds strange, but I felt that rather than the permanency of losing my mother, I had instead just sent my mother off on a holiday that she had been anticipating.

I fully believe our spirits, our "spark of life", is the energy that is within us. When we die, that energy is who we are, not our bodies. Our bodies are the vessels for that spark while we are here on this plane. In death, I believe that energy is released to go to another plane. I've believed that since I was little. Not exactly the belief system I was brought up with (fundamentalist evangelical) and maybe the reason I was scared to death to go to church when I was a kid.

Thank you for sharing.

[Rorey]

83. What a beautiful description

I'm sure some would find my calling it "beautiful" a bit odd, but I know you know what i mean.

I felt very honored to have experienced that, and though I didn't have the same experience with the others I was with when they died, it was still an honor to be there with them.

[smirkymonkey]

92. Thank you for sharing that.

I am sorry to hear of your mother's passing, but it sounds like something very meaningful happened to you at that moment.

For some reason, lately, I have been obsessing about death. Fearing that someone in my family will die or my own death (not that I won't mind being here, but that it will be frightening or painful). I don't know why. Maybe it's because I feel like we have escaped misfortune so far and we are due or something. I also think it may be partly a control thing for me.

[Ron Obvious]

17. Everything that makes us "us" resides in our biodegradable brains

Personality, our sense of "self", memories, everything.

If that wasn't the case, damage to the brain through stroke or, say, intoxication wouldn't be able to radically alter our memories or even change our personalities.

Once the brain stops working and decays, there's nothing left. Anything else is wishful thinking.

[True Dough]

25. I don't like to think it's so simple

but then I also like to believe there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I've never found the pot of gold, and something tells me you're right about the "great hereafter," Ron.

[vlyons]

20. Someone asked Trungpa Rimpoche why he believed in reincarnation

He replied, "Because it's always now." Somehow that made great sense to me, and I truly "got it." I bought a wall clock that said "Now" at all 12 hour positions. When I studied Buddhist psychology and its description of how the mind works, the 5 skandas, I finally understood how we fabricate our sense of self, which actually is an illusiion. There is no anatomy book in the world that has an illustration of "Self." Yet we each hold on to it as some sold independent self-existent thing.

[dalton99a]

22. You exist, and then you don't exist anymore, just like before you ever existed

All you can do is leave a good memory

[Floyd R. Turbo]

23. A brief moment of total enlightenment, then peace.

[True Dough]

26. Peace sounds good, Floyd

We can all embrace peace.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

27. Several years ago I had a near death experience. Since then I have had no fear of dying.

[True Dough]

34. Glad you're still among us, Floyd

[Floyd R. Turbo]

40. Thank you! Me too!

[smirkymonkey]

93. What happened? What was it like?

Can you share your experience with us? For some reason lately I have been so fearful of it, even though I am not all that attached to this life. I think it has something to do with a lack of control about the whole thing.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

145. Without going into a lot of detail, I was bleeding out. I was in a lot of pain and knew I was dying.

Suddenly it was as if I was in a vacuum, dark with no sound. I was then enveloped in a comforting warmth and a calmness came over me. There was a sensation of rapid movement and I felt a connection with everything and everyone past, present, and future. I knew and understood how and why things were as they were. The next thing I knew I was waking up in the emergency room.

[smirkymonkey]

147. Wow, what an experience!

Thank you for sharing that with us!

[Floyd R. Turbo]

150. NP. Don't fear the unknown.

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

28. Our bodies are powered by energy...

When that energy leaves the body we are dead.

But energy cannot be destroyed, but it can change. We enter into the universe from which we were conceived. In time, our matter will join the universe (when the sun goes nova) and the process will begin again. We are made of star stuff, we will return to star stuff.

A poem that may describe it better than I...

Eternal

I’m here to share a secret;

I am not who I’ve always been,

The world that lies outstretched before me,

Is not the only one I’ve seen,

I’ve travelled on the tails of comets,

I’ve burned up in the hearts of stars,

I’ve been spat out of supernovas,

That left me scattered near and far,

I have dined in distant galaxies,

And taught the birds to sing,

I’ve danced for a whole lifetime,

Upon Saturn’s dusty rings,

I’ve been here for long enough,

To learn what makes the willow weep,

I’ve sung celestial lullabies,

That sent the moon to sleep,

I’ve been both the flowing water,

And the stone that blocks its way,

I’ve been frozen, I’ve been molten,

And I’ll be again someday,

Though I’ve been a billion things,

This is the first one that can smile,

I’m pieces of the universe,

Living as human for a while.

(Erin Hanson) #poem

[woodsprite]

79. Absolutely gorgeous poem, and so meaningful! Thank you for sharing! n/t

[NightWatcher]

30. The time after you die will be just like the time before you were born.

Just as you cannot recall where your soul was in the year 598 BC, you won't be aware of the year 2598.

[Moostache]

31. The equal and opposite reaction to the moment you were conceived...

The circle is closed and the end is the end. Your individual experience ends and the cells and atoms that compose you in that state return to entropy until they are recycled to a new purpose.

Your life, the sum total of everything you do, lives on in the ripples of human society and lives you impacted - positively and negatively. Some people are remembered fondly and touched many lives in a positive way. Others are reviled and remembered as cautionary tales of what to avoid. But we all are conceived from the union of a sperm cell and egg cell and in between we experience many things- some forced on us by genetics, some chosen through experience and desire - but all utterly unique to ourselves, our place and time in the history of life. No one else in the history of the universe will read these word in the exact same way and situation that you are RIGHT NOW...and just like THAT...the moment is past and then another unique event occurs...and on and on, until the final unique moment for "you".

Life is not an individual event, it is a part of a shared, universal experience. ALL life - from the inconsequential worms to the mighty human - is part of a single super-organism that just exists. Your contributions to that, when taken in proper context , are the equivalent of a deep sigh or exhalation of the universal lungs.

If you need "a reason", "a purpose", or "a higher calling", then you may be disappointed by this view of reality...but in truth, it is empowering in a way that religions based on myths, lies and control mechanisms can never be...YOU are ultimately the responsible party for what your life's impact will be...how you will impact others, what ripples you will leave behind. In the beginning, the middle and up until the end, it really is all about YOU and what choices you will make along the way.

[Polly Hennessey]

37. Cartoonist and Nightwatcher

are correct. We were nothing before; we will be nothing after. Enjoy your stay. It is the only one you will have. Remember, your moments of happiness are the most important you will have.

[nancy1942]

38. I do not know.

None of us know.

[True Dough]

39. Darn it, nancy

I was counting on you to supply the answer!

[Tikki]

41. My body goes to the crematory....

My ashes go into an urn, which will sit in a built~in until my grandchildren
feel it is time (any time, their choice) to place my ashes into the Pacific Ocean or where ever.
I have had a wonderful adult life.

Tikki

[IrishEyes]

44. I believe in reincarnation

Honestly, I'm not worried about what happens when I die. I'm not an atheist. I believe that something will happen. I will find out when it happens. Until then I will try to enjoy myself.

[True Dough]

45. What if you come back English in the next life?

That poses no conflict for you, IrishEyes?

[IrishEyes]

89. That's okay. I will always have an Irish soul, an Irish wit and an Irish stubbornness.

For instance, I will know that Irish breakfast tea tastes better then English breakfast tea.

[Solly Mack]

46. Times goes forward without me.

Same as it did for all the dead before me.

Time goes forward with me alive as well so, really, no change there.

The only impact will be for those who love me and will miss me.

I'll be dead and dead is done. That's it. That's all.

If I get buried there will come a day when I get plowed under to make room for something else.

If they turn me to ashes, I'll dissipate with the rains or sink to the bottom of some ocean.

Worse case, be one more thing collecting dust on some shelf. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust if you bottle me up you create housework. Why let my death cause you even more to clean? or not. But don't blame me for the guilt you'll feel for not dusting my dust. 'Cause, that's just silly. Don't build a shrine either - 'cause that's kind of creepy.

I'm still alive so my time is now and in that time I'll live my life not with an eye toward the grave but with both eyes on living.

Or not.

[saidsimplesimon]

65. I agree.

[Iggo]

47. That's it.

[csziggy]

49. My body will rot and provide nutrients to other organisms

Part of the cycle of life.

That is why I will try to have a green burial - no chemicals, no box, the most I want is a cotton shroud and put me in a hole in the ground. The only marker I want would be a tree, if anyone wants to plant it and take care of while it gets established.

On the other hand, lots of humanity's dead have told us a lot with what they left behind, whether it was art, artifacts, or the remains of their bodies. Just look at the archeological records!

[Turbineguy]

54. All your problems go away.

And those who created them for you to solve will have to deal with them.

[LuvLoogie]

56. I'm a Frisbyterian...

We believe that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof, and you can't get it down.

[True Dough]

57. You never know what you'll find up there, LuvLoogie...

[Rorey]

87. LOL

[BeyondGeography]

58. The Rangers win the Stanley Cup

[Freethinker65]

59. Worm dirt

[beachbum bob]

60. All my problems cease to be problems no matter what happens

[DBoon]

61. You meet a 3 headed dog guarding a subterranean river...

nt

[True Dough]

105. I'll try to remember

to pack lots of dog treats.

[Historic NY]

62. People try to figure out what they are getting?

[aikoaiko]

63. If we are fortunate, we are remembered well.

[mr_lebowski]

64. I highly doubt you live on in any way other than in peoples hearts and things you leave behind...

But I tell ya this ... I'm hoping to either be having great sex, or in comfy hospital bed, beloved family around me, and being made comfortable on a ton of IV Dilaudid at the time I go.

[Glamrock]

66. World keeps on spinning...

[True Dough]

72. The best I could do...

Last edited Sat Jul 21, 2018, 09:13 AM - Edit history (1)

[Snackshack]

67. Nothing

It will be just like it was before I took my first breath.

[gtar100]

68. There is no death, only change.

There are actually a lot of studies about death and the so-called "near-death experience". So we aren't lacking information if you're willing to look into it. If you think there's nothing but the material world and all else some figment of our brain's mechanisms, then you'll likely consider it "woo". But you don't have to believe it to find it interesting and worth looking into if you're curious about what people have experienced. Who better to ask then the people who died and came back to find out what they say they experienced. I've heard enough of these stories from people who have clinically died and came back as well as the researchers who have devoted their time to the subject to at least give them the benefit of the doubt that in general they are sincere. But to me personally, they are only stories. I'm sure we'll all know beyond a shadow of a doubt at some point...or the point will be moot. Even if it's just a recycling of matter and energy....how fascinating!

[Coventina]

69. We play saxophone for an all-girl cabaret in New Orleans

(stolen from Calvin and Hobbes)

[DeadLetterOffice]

110. Pittsburgh!

[link:https://www.reddit.com/r/Browns/comments/5tpe9l/calvin_and_hobbes_on_death/|

[Coventina]

111. LOL!

I considered using that one!

[DeadLetterOffice]

112. I grew up there, so I'm especially fond of it.

[Coventina]

113. My earliest memories are of Pittsburgh.

We lived there while my dad went to graduate school.
(I was a toddler).

So, I have a fondness for it as well.

[Botany]

71. Odyssey by Aldo Leopold

https://www.audubon.org/magazine/may-june-1942/from-archives-aldo-leopolds-odyssey

Aldo Leopold’s “Odyssey” first ran in the May-June 1942 issue of Audubon. The essay later appeared in Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac.

X had marked time in the limestone ledge since the Paleozoic seas covered the land. Time, to an atom locked in a rock, does not pass.

The break came when a bur-oak root nosed down a crack and began prying and sucking. In the flush of a century the rock decayed, and X was pulled out and up into the world of living things. He helped build a flower, which became an acorn, which fattened a deer, which fed an Indian, all in a single year.

From his berth in the Indian’s bones, X joined again in chase and flight, feast and famine, hope and fear. He felt these things as changes in the little chemical pushes and pulls that tug timelessly at every atom. When the Indian took his leave of the prairie, X moldered briefly underground, only to embark on a second trip through the bloodstream of the land.

This time it was a rootlet of bluestem that sucked him up and lodged him in a leaf that rode the green billows of the prairie June, sharing the common task of hoarding sunlight. To this leaf also fell an uncommon task: flicking shadows across a plover's eggs. The ecstatic plover, hovering overhead, poured praises on something perfect: perhaps the eggs, perhaps the shadows, or perhaps the haze of pink phlox that lay on the prairie.

When the departing plovers set wing for the Argentine, all the bluestems waved farewell with tall new tassels. When the first geese came out of the north and all the bluestems glowed wine-red, a forehanded deermouse cut the leaf in which X lay, and buried it in an underground nest, as if to hide a bit of Indian summer from the thieving frosts. But a fox detained the mouse, molds and fungi took the nest apart, and X lay in the soil again, foot-loose and fancy-free.

Next he entered a tuft of side-oats grama, a buffalo, a buffalo chip, and again the soil. Next a spiderwort, a rabbit, and an owl. Thence a tuft of sporobolus.

All routines come to an end. This one ended with a prairie fire, which reduced the prairie plants to smoke, gas, and ashes. Phosphorus and potash atoms stayed in the ash, but the nitrogen atoms were gone with the wind. A spectator might, at this point, have predicted an early end of the biotic drama, for with fires exhausting the nitrogen, the soil might well have lost its plants and blown away.

But the prairie had two strings to its bow. Fires thinned its grasses, but they thickened its stand of leguminous herbs; prairie clover, bush clover, wild bean, vetch, lead-plant, trefoil, and Baptisia, each carrying its own bacteria housed in nodules on its rootlets. Each nodule pumped nitrogen out of the air into the plant, and then ultimately into the soil. Thus the prairie savings bank took in more nitrogen from its legumes than it paid out to its fires. That the prairie is rich is known to the humblest deermouse; why the prairie is rich is a question seldom asked in all the still lapse of ages.

Between each of his excursions through the biota, X lay in the soil and was carried by the rains, inch by inch, downhill. Living plants retarded the wash by impounding atoms; dead plants by locking them to their decayed tissues. Animals ate the plants and carried them briefly uphill or downhill, depending on whether they died or defecated higher or lower than they fed. No animal was aware that the altitude of his death was more important than his manner of dying. Thus a fox caught a gopher in a meadow, carrying X uphill to his bed on the brow of a ledge, where an eagle laid him low. The dying fox sensed the end of his chapter in foxdom, but not the new beginning in the odyssey of an atom.

An Indian eventually inherited the eagle’s plumes, and with them propitiated the Fates, whom he assumed had a special interest in Indians. It did not occur to him that they might be busy casting dice against gravity; that mice and men, soils and songs, might be merely ways to retard the march of atoms to the sea.

One year, while X lay in a cottonwood by the river, he was eaten by a beaver, an animal that always feeds higher than he dies. The beaver starved when his pond dried up during a bitter frost. X rode the carcass down the spring freshet, losing more altitude each hour than heretofore in a century. He ended up in the silt of a backwater bayou, where he fed a crayfish, a coon, and then an Indian, who laid him down to his last sleep in a mound on the riverbank. One spring an oxbow caved the bank, and after one short week of freshet X lay again in his ancient prison, the sea.

An atom at large in the biota is too free to know freedom; an atom back in the sea has forgotten it. For every atom lost to the sea, the prairie pulls another out of the decaying rocks. The only certain truth is that its creatures must suck hard, live fast, and die often, lest its losses exceed its gains.

[Ahpook]

74. Blink out

And that will scare a few.

Although, energy is forever?! I don't know and nobody knows, but we will find out eventually

[littlemissmartypants]

75. Someone

Is going to have a big mess to clean up and it won't be me.

[applegrove]

76. I love this poem:

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/437994-i-thought-the-earth-remembered-me-she-took-me-back


"SNIP.....

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.


.......SNIP"

Mary Oliver

We used it for a reading at my mom's funeral. She was such a nature person. It fit her perfectly.

[Kashkakat v.2.0]

120. thats nice - do you know what name of poem is it comes from ? tia

[applegrove]

122. Here is the author:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Oliver

[defacto7]

78. You are assuming there's a "next".

I don’t have that assumption. The human brain has evolved self-awareness which causes wonder and lots of questions. Our brain refuses to accept chaos so we seek symmetry even if we have to manufacture it. Chaos is universal. Losing awareness is chaos to our self-aware mind.

If we embrace the inevitable existance of chaos and lose the concept of a "what's next" the simple fact of our impermanence is easier to grasp.

[suston96]

80. The last thing I see is this guy coming out of the restaurant bathroom, and then.......

Dark nothingness.........

[Eko]

81. We go back to exactly where we came from.

And its more beautiful than any belief.

[NoMoreRepugs]

82. Hopefully I go to a place without ANY Republicans.

[smirkymonkey]

95. That would be a place called "Heaven".

[Jack-o-Lantern]

88. I was dead for billions of years before I was alive,

and it did not inconvenience me in the least.

- Mark Twain

[Xolodno]

90. The real question...

...can energy have consciousness?

...is there other dimensions outside of what we perceive and can our consciousness dwell in them when no longer hindered by current limitations?

...if so, why can't we perceive/measure/etc. it? Or are we like ants, pursuing our routine and incapable of understanding what's going on two blocks down?

...or is this all just a giant computer simulation?

[Basic LA]

91. Remember before you were born?

It's like that.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

94. The first thing - my wife gets rid of the motorbike that does not run.

Next, my family ships me to a mortuary. Admonition #1 comes from the late Richard Pryor - "If you think we're gonna bury you with them diamonds and shit on, you've got another thing coming. #2 - they have specific instructions on this point: do not spend big money on an urn. Instead, go to Target; with any luck, Maxwell House is on sale in the big metal cans. Get one of those. Have my massive volume of ashes placed into the coffee can. Drive to California. See who you can find to go beyond the three mile limit, and accidentally dump me overboard.

Then go get lunch and some drinks. That's what happens.

[Kashkakat v.2.0]

98. I think the energy forcefield that was "me" disengages from the physical body and melds into the

larger cosmos aka "great spirit". Where it goes from there, or what happens long term - I have no idea

This sorta resembles pagan/animist/native american spiritual beliefs ... but I don't really feel any need to label or define it, or proseletyze it.... and I don't really care what anyone else thinks about it either.

My belief is based on logic and a felt sense of having been here before and some interesting dreams and experiences over the years ... which yeah does include an acid trip or 2. I do not have any "faith" or any belief based only on someone else telling me something.

Actually the science about this is quite interesting. They are bringing back people from clinical death from longer and longer periods - many hours - and what people report often does have some similarity and fits in with ancient spiritual belief systems - many which have people hanging around here for a certain period of time ( ~ 3 days) before moving on to whatever happens next.... or maybe your energy field just dissipates over time, who knows.

I dunno, it just makes me curious is all. Not in a rush to get there, but Im not exactly fearing it either.

[Rorey]

114. " Not in a rush to get there, but I'm not exactly fearing it either."

That's about the way I feel. I'm not ready to go, mostly because there are some people who need me and depend on me. I'm not really fearful about death itself, but what might happen beforehand most definitely concerns me. Not a fan of pain. Not a fan of humiliation either. I hope nobody ever needs to take care of me.

[Renew Deal]

101. Your soul haunts your relatives and enemies

Just kidding. Check this out.

[DeadLetterOffice]

107. I think...

I will finally get to stop worrying about politics.

[SCantiGOP]

116. It's just like going to sleep

But you don't have to get up to pee.

[raccoon]

118. Nothing. Your consciousness ceases to exist. nt

[Snellius]

119. Before he died, E. E. Cummings wrote this. After, he didn't write any more.

It's about as consoling as one can expect if you believe nature is mothering and renewing and not indifferent and merciless. But we really can't know so why bother thinking about it. Whoever tells you differently is making it up.


When God Lets My Body Be

when god lets my body be

from each brave eye shall sprout a tree
fruit that dangles therefrom

the purpled world will dance upon
between my lips which did sing

a rose shall beget the spring
that maidens whom passion wastes

will lay between their little breasts
my strong fingers beneath the snow

into strenuous birds shall go
my love walking in the grass

their wings will touch with her face
and all the while shall my heart be
with the bulge and nuzzle of the sea

[Laffy Kat]

121. Decomposition. nt

[RKP5637]

123. Here today, gone tomorrow, soon forgotten. My remains will exist as dust! My DU posts

will live on for eternity! LOL!

[True Dough]

125. Well, if you were to be reincarnated

it might be as Laffy Kat, above.

[RKP5637]

134. Also, imagine if being reincarnated as a deplorable!

[Mr.Bill]

124. The exact same thing that happens when a fly is swatted.

Nothing. The. End.

We are just organisms who through a series of nature's coincidences grew a brain that's much too large for our own good. We are nothing special. I envy the lower forms of animals and I do not fear death at all. If we have any afterlife at all I see it in the form of influence we have had over others that will alter some things in their lives after we are gone. Hopefully for the better.

[RandySF]

126. My kid gets my shit.

[Marthe48]

127. I don't think I'll care about the past

I think that as I transform to the next step, that is what will have my attention.

I'm hoping to see my loved ones, but I don't know if that'll happen.

I read a couple of books awhile back, titled Waiting for the Galactic Bus and the sequel Snake Oil Wars. Also another book titled towing Jehovah. Between those and teachings of The Society of Friends, I'm good with life and death.

[gtar100]

128. I expect to wake up in a slimy pod and shot down a water slide.

Then the real death.

[exboyfil]

129. Roy Batty said it best

All those moments will be lost in time like tears in the rain.

I worship in a Christian church. I read the Bible. I do this because it expected of me by my family. I can't say that I know, but I don't see any physical evidence for life after death. I also have a difficult time matching the specific claims of the Christian church over any other faith.

[Kaleva]

130. You are placed on "Flagged for review" status and never heard from again.

[True Dough]

131. I alerted on this post!

Don't interfere with the moderation process!

Just kidding, Kaleva!

[Kaleva]

148. "Flagged for review" ought to be on the headstone of every DUer

[qazplm135]

132. you're own personal armageddon

with no Bruce Willis to save you.

[Doodley]

133. Lightning strikes and the miracle of life happens. But if it can strike once, it can strike again.

We are information and our story cannot be destroyed. Information cannot be destroyed. The past never changes. The movie ends, but it can be played again. We are both here for a brief time and for eternity.

[scarytomcat]

146. I am not sure what happens but I want to know what we are going to do with all

the dead bodies when climate change starts killing food production and the waters rise. What if 7 billion people die in a few decades because of global warming?

[onlyadream]

149. I think you shed your body and then join the universe.

I’ve actually had two very real things happen with my deceased father that definitely tells me that he’s around. Undeniable.

[Kali]

151. some bloating and decay

--- do not leave body behind sofa, hard to get rid of the stench

[underpants]

153. I'm part Irish

Which means 1/2 the family will get drunk and the other 1/2 will argue about the furniture

[Va Lefty]

154. Sounds like when my Grandfather died! 1/5 Scotish 1/2 Irish

Hope all is well with you and yours!

[phylny]

155. I think our spirits leave our bodies behind and we go to

a better, perfect place, and we have complete happiness in the presence of God. I'm Christian, so I believe in another life. I also believe there is not one "right" path to that life, that we all go to heaven or wherever spirits go.

When my grandmother had a stroke, she saw my deceased mother and her sister praying above her. She was conscious at the time.

And I'm hoping to see our dogs Kelly, Abby, Jack (all already there), Chloe, and Blake. Oh, and my childhood dog, Scamp.

If I'm right, it'll be delightful. If I'm wrong, I'll never know.