Thread: Experiencing Death

I'm surprised this hasn't been discussed more. Have you tried the search button yet?

I've lost count how many times I've died in dreams. And it's exactly as you said - nothing you would ever want repeated again.

I think it's funny, though, because often the last thought in my mind is, "oh no, I really bought it this time... is the afterlife going to be anything like the dreamworld, or will it be unspeakably horrifying?" And then I wake up to the real world. And the life I just lost was a dream life.

Is what we call life actually death?

I don't mean to steer this into a philosophical discussion. Just thought that was the most interesting thing I could share.

I think it's funny, though, because often the last thought in my mind is, \"oh no, I really bought it this time... is the afterlife going to be anything like the dreamworld, or will it be unspeakably horrifying?\" And then I wake up to the real world. And the life I just lost was a dream life. [/b]

You seemed to have fairly rational last minute thoughts as you die. Especially funny sn that despite a exponential amount of things in my life, I managed to sum it up with Office Space.

I'd figured this has happened to other people, and was more or less rheotoric- yet seeking others thougths.

Has anyone pried their 'dying eye' open in reality whilst half way between the dream- to see you last image of the living world and to fall back into the dream to die?

Dear Classico,

You were dying and the best life review you could do was to borrow from a movie which ridiculed the meaninglessness of lives consumed in the pursuit of corporate careers? Yes, but it was only a Dream. Well, you should wonder what the Dream was trying to tell you, that, perhaps, your own life hasn't any meaning one way or another, and then, that the only meaning you can even imagine for yourself is essentially servile and meaningless.

Since Materialism has left you so flat, maybe you should reconsider your stance toward Spirituality.

I'm not actually really concerned with the Office Space part, I just thought it was funny- and I found it especially funny in that my life has had so many interesting occurences, and so many influential people, that out of everything I picked that movie (I think its funny, but nothing incrediable). Granted though I had been drinking with friends that evening.

My own views on god really cannot permit me to become spiritual, nor do I think it is required in this day and age. I am an Apathetic Agnostic, I hold the view that the whole question of God's existence or nonexistence cannot yet be properly answered, and therefore one shouldn't focus on finding, appeasing, or communing with 'God.'

There quite possibly is a God, in either the classical sense or even in the Scientific sense. Classically God is used to explain anything we as humans cannot. Scientifically God could exist metaphysically somewhere, however I doubt he even knows where Earth is.

"If you do things right, people won't know you've done anything at all."

We can never ever really hope to understand what the universe is or how it was created. Religion in part describes how you should live your life as a better man, I think that society on the whole needs that. However carrying on current organised religion this far into the 21st century has obviously killed so many for so little reason.

I do not really know, nor will I ever know until it happens, what happens when we die. Recently I have been getting into the Mckenna view, the whole next dimension thing. And If I am wrong, I don't worry about going to hell- because if I am wrong you merely cease to exist (Equally hard to contemplate).

I am in a hurry, and really am not explaining things the way I would like too. -Peace.

Dear Classico,

Whether or not there is an Actual God (and even in the higher revealed Religions, though we encounter enough Angels and Saints, 'God' always has remained beyond the Human ken), we DO have a Spiritual Infrastructure that approximates Heaven. We do have a Universe that divides between Good and Evil, between Community Love and Demonic Rapacity. The Angels and the Saints DO exist on the other side. They are accessible in our Dreams. And we certainly know that Evil exists.

One needs to take sides.

Perhaps the substantial question is whether there is survival after death. I can't be certain that all souls survive... indeed, in one of my most important dreams, where I met with the Very Angel of God (an Angel the size of a great Oak Tree who radiated as though with a multicolored Fire), It told me that "not all will live beyond the grave". Perhaps we can discern the Truth closer by what the Ancient Greeks believed, that Immortality was reserved only for the Heroic.

So, anyway, what would immortality entail? Well, it would seem obvious that one would have to be able to identify with some reality a bit less evenescent then the physical body. Consciousness and Identity would have to be attached to something that could outlast the physical body. What would this be? it has been the pursuit of the Holy Chalice, the Philosopher's Stone -- the whole Spiritual Pursuit is an attempt to transcend the Physical Identity into an Eternal Identity. It is an heroic quest. And the Higher Religions have had their successes and champions -- Catholicism, Hinduism, Sufism from Zoroastrianism and the similar Traditions fronm out of those Families. Not Protestantism, though, since it follows Paul exclusively, and every enlightened individual knows for an absolute certainty that Paul was the Antichrist and offered up a doctrine anathema to all True Spirituality.

Indeed, the Anti-Religious sentiment common among many Western individuals sources from no other condition but that they have intuited the inherent Evil of Pauline Christianity, and then accidentally infer that every Religion must be equally tainted. Some are. As the Zoroastrians knew some 3500 years ago, that Evil is always ready to contend with Goodness, even in the Religious Sphere. It requires the Individual to go into Religion with a sense of Humility and yet with some Keen Discernment which requires not much more than a sense for Morality. Well, if one is morally deficient, or confused, that at least one could examine the History of Religion for its Saints -- individuals who have proven through Miracle that they obviously had Transcended the Physical and had attained some Survival of Death.

unfortunatly I don't have time to truly respond to this. Because of my current location, and because no matter how hard I try I can never truly express my views. They are things of the conscience, and dreams- something only I can truly understand.

you thought of office space because it brought joy and happiness to your life, which is the meaning of life after all. dont let anyone try and make you think this is somehow a bad sign. some people cant help but be negative towards others and their experiences. anyway, congratulations

While in the middle of Leo's post, I was thinking the same thing you just said, Jay. lol.

I find it a pretty positive note that, while ready to die, he was in a state with an appreciation for comedy. That goes a long long way.

Anyway, back to the death issue. I've had many different experiences with death in my dreams. I've been cut up by a chainsaw in a dream when I was a kid, which I still remember pretty vividly, and saw my dying body from the outside. (I've only left my body twice in my life, in dreams, and they were both after dream-death. After all other deaths, except the last situation I'll talk about, I woke up.)
The second time I left my dead body, I had to watch my parents come into my room and find my body on the bed, having died in my dream-sleep, and see them mourn and hold my body while I could only watch from right beside them as a spirit. In the dream directly before that one, I was on a plane and the person next to me told me that I was on a plane to heaven, everyone around me was dead, and I had died in my sleep...which I felt So ripped off for (I mean who wants to die in their sleep in the healthiest shape they've ever been in?........THEN....I had the false awakening, where I woke up in my room, only to look beside me and see...ME laying on my pillow, dead in my sleep.
..A dream char telling you you're dead, and having it confirmed by a false awakening in which you saw your dead body.. Talk about Traumatizing. O.o! I was shaking when I finally woke up after it was all over.

However, I've had a much more....entertaining experience with dream-death not long ago.
Some friends and I found ourselves in a hub connecting a bunch of chamber/dungeon rooms. Making our way through one room, we found it was boobytrapped. Various razors, spikes and solid surfaces protruded out of the walls while the walls came in, themselves, slowly crushing and impaling every one of us. Yeah, that sucked too, but there is a twist to this one. When we died, we all manifsted in the hub-corridor again, looking around at each other like...."Huh?" It turns out the doors to each of these rooms led to different dream scenes, like teleporting to different deadly scenarios, where the object was simply to die and rematerialize in the hub-corridor! lol. So over and over we all ran around this area like cracked-out kids at Six Flags dying in God knows how many ways, just to get brought back to the central hub like we were playing Unreal Tournament. Lol. The only one of those deaths I can really remember was one where stepping through a door dropped me on the top of the front of a speeding train, and there was another train coming toward us on the parallel track. So, when the second train got close enough, I leapt forward off of the train I was on, just a little to the side, and smacked head first into the oncoming train.

Unscathed, I just rematerialized in the corridor and swapped death-stories with my friends. Rofl. Good Times.

Had another dream of dying last night, so I thought I might try to revive this thread a lil bit.

01/24/2006
"Fragged"

This dream was in Canterbury again, at G's house, but she wasn't there. T was with there and we were sitting around shooting the shit. After a while, I remember hearing something in one of the back rooms. The house was very small with a hollow floor, so every noise was always heard through the whole house, and we could tell, in the dream, that there was someone there with us.
I'm not quite sure where we had them hid, but we both pulled out large handguns, like Desert Eagles, and I threw in a magazine, cocking the slide back once. We opened the door and went in the room. For a room that is a modest size, in real life, this room seemed to stretch on into another house; a dark labyrinth of old wooden columns and floorboards that seemed more like a massive horror movie attic than the suburban duplex that it represented in waking life.
Slowly, we crept around the area, hearing subtle noises and knowing that there was something hidden among the shadows. We ascended a small flight of stairs (that didn't exist in the real house) and into another dark level, weapons still drawn. Passing an assortment of pipes and wooden beams that were, themselves, shrouded by the lack of light reaching our position, I heard a sound right beside me.
The second I turned to wheel my gun in that direction, the wall exploded out toward me, the electrical wiring connected to it breaking and strobing the, once-blackened, area with white hot sparks. I could see a bright red flash of metal towering in the chaotic light before me, a large robotic arm whirring as it instantly shot up in my direction. In what seemed like less than a second, a metallic tentacle had launched out of the end of the arm, encircled my body once or twice, and held me in place. My right arm raised, as did T's and we both started busting off rounds into the face (and I use that term loosely) of this huge f'kin robot that has me in the grip of one arm. It was all happening so fast that I have no problem admitting I was scared shitless.
The firing was short-lived, however, as the robot's head focused in on me. A number of bladed and spear-headed weapons rotated outward from behind the robot's back, all aimed ominously in my direction as my finger squeezed over and over on the trigger. I only had a good one or two seconds to process what was about to happen, staring death in the face in the form of about 3 robotic-arm saws and 2-3 other nasty-looking sci-fi weaponry. The arms lurched toward me simultaneously, and I was splattered beyond all identification, my perspective changing momentarily, into a disembodied view of my remains splashing all over the wall behind me, and hearing T screaming something, even though his words were muffled by the fading of my senses as everything faded to black.
Suddenly, I woke up on the wooden floor, hearing the sound of T shooting. Panicked, and wondering what the hell happened, I turned over on my back to hear what the hell the noise was. That robot was standing RIGHT OVER ME and starting to attack again. Jumping to my feet I rolled out of the way and stood up again. Terrified, after having just been crushed like a grapefruit, I panicked, stil having no clue what in the hell was going on. Having a bit of a breakdown, I sprinted for the stairs. T was right on my heels, calling after me and wondering what I was up with me. I didn't stop running until I was out of the house, and almost collapsed to my knees because I was freaking out. (I've never lost my mind to fear like that, before, dreaming or awake. It was a strange experience.)
He was trying to calm me down, and I can just remember shouting something like "oh my god I fuckin Died! I just Died! What the hell is going on?!" Bear in mind that we were standing in the middle of my neighborhood at dusk waving guns around and I'm losing it.
T said something like "It's alright, man. You can just resurrect wherever you are. No need to freak out."
I stopped for a moment and was like. "....huh?" (Well if This wouldn't have been a good time to realize I was dreaming oh well.)
I didn't even have time to focus on his words. There was a loud noise seeming to rise from all directions at once. A sound, subtle at first, like a jet engine or something. "Is that...a plane?" T asked. We searched the sky and found nothing. Our eyes were then drawn to the house just as the side door flew open.
We didn't even wait for anything to come out of the house, breaking into a synchronized sprint as soon as we saw the door open. Rounding the side of the house, we took up hiding places in the open carports of the two houses next to each other, behind the house we were originally in and took aim at the corner of the building, waiting for this big ass robot to come 'round the corner. Instead, it was an 11 year old boy name Brian that used to live in the neighborhood.

In short, he came around the corner and we walked out to meet him, glad as hell that it was him and not the robot thing. He wondered why we had guns and told us that everyone was still waiting for us, inside. Going back around the house, we lookd in the window and saw all our friends sitting on the couches watching tv and waiting for us to come in. >.> Weird, embarassing, shit.

I also remember a false awakening where I woke up in a mix between G's room and my own and I still had the gun from the first dream under my pillow. After lying in bed and playing with the weapon for a while, I woke up for real.

I've also died countless times in dreams. The most vivid dream from my childhood, and I still remember this although I was about eight years old, was a quite devastating one for me. It was somewhat like a portal between worlds, a black portal with shimmering lights. A guy from my class, whom I didn't know very well and whom I didn't particularly like, stood there. For some ludicrous reason I ran up to him, embraced him, and told him I loved him and that I was so happy to see him again. He responded in the same way. However, he stabbed me in the back. It felt so incredibly real and all I could do was scream and see myself screaming.

I've had numerous dreams as such, mostly where I've been beheaded. I remember being excecuted in front of a priest who worked at the church next to my house. I think it's pretty self evident exactly what I thought of him, as I was being killed in front of him on his whim. It was a strange sensation, and I actually felt the weight of my head leave me as the axe decapitated me.

It's really quite amazing the way the mind makes pain and other sensations seem so real.

Whoa. Being executed has got to be terrifying.
And yeah, it’s almost scary how realistic things like pain and death can be. The few seconds leading up to dream death are some of the most intense experiences I think it is possible for us to have.

It was funny as it didn't really scare me as I would've expected it to. Prolly because I'd been reading too many fantasy stories about heroes who never regret death. XD

But you can thwart death in dreams with lucidity, which is nice. I did that just the other day. This guy pointed a gun at my head and said "I'm going to kill you." to which I responded "You can't do that, I'm sleeping."

My friend said it was a nutter's dream, but I found it awesome.

Heh. I feel extremely sorry for whoever/whatever's trying to kill me while I'm lucid.


...well...except for this one old, blind, asian dude who kung-fu'd the living hell out of me, even while I was completely lucid....but thats an old wound that I'd rather not bring up at the moment. -cough-

But I WILL have my revenge!
Mark my words.

sweet, oneironaut!

anyway
never and never died in a normal dream, I even thought it was impossible for a while, so I tried in a LD (flyed from a skyscraper and just stopped flying in the middle of the air). But it didn't work at all. A wind-like angry thing lifted me from a pair of inches from the floor and knocked me badly back on the roof
The feeling was all but nice, like being rudely scold by a sumo fighter, so I decided not to try anymor that night, and since then I never repeated the try

a friend of mine tried the same thing and he just passed in a witness of the scene in the moment of the impact .

maybe my brain can't consider death because when you'r twenty you feel eternal?

Originally posted by italianmonkey
maybe my brain can't consider death because when you'r twenty you feel eternal?

Maybe just not suicide?

My only experience with death in a dream was very odd, starting like a classic falling dream. I could see the black rocks of a cliff whizzing past beneath my feet, like i was falling face first. Then I looked forward just intime to take in the dark grass hitting me straight in the face.

But here is the odd part. I felt dead, but I was still aware. It was as if my body had been stopped by the grass, but whatever awareness I had (I don't believe in a soul, but anyone who does would call it such) simply fell through the ground into a slowed down state.

Certainly made me rethink thoughts on an afterlife.

I wonder if anyone has tried ressurecting themselves after a dream death? I'm sure it can be done, if you're lucid or otherwise willing.

sounds pretty useless... I mean, everybody is normally alive...

That depends on how you experience dream death. It can be pretty inconvenient.

true

my biggest nightmare was a dream in which i died in..it wasnt a lucid or anything like that..just a really vivid dream..

i was standing in line with my family, getting ready to be executed(weird i know)

everyone went before me so i was the last one to get shot.
i remember hearing the gun shot then my whole body got all tingly and i remember falling to the ground as everything turned black.
then i started rising out of my body(in my dream of course) and i was just floating around as if i was a spirit and i can see my self dead on the ground. then i remember when i was waking up, i started falling fast toward my dead body..but woke up before i hit it. for a good 3-4 seconds i saw my actual body in my bed as if i did die in realty.. i duno what it was scary and i still get chills just talking about it.

Same with me, Tallguy.

I think seeing myself dead in my own bed was probably the must unnerving thing I've ever seen. I'll never forget that.

Mines was an accidental suicide death. I was in a shopping center and I got the feeling that these two girls were following me and spying on me so I tried to ditch them. I looked down an opening in the ground on the second floor of this shopping center and instead of seeing the first floor of the shopping center I saw a crowd of people partying as if at a concert. They were crowded around a hexagonal or polygon shaped altar with four pillars surrounding it. the pilliars were not round but rectangular like tall bricks. So I jump down onto one of the pillars.

Then I realized that there was no way to get down from this thing as I was about 100 feet from the ground below and I couldn't jump 30 feet back up to where I came from. So I tried to pull a spider man by climbing down but as I was doing this the crowd noticed me and a spot light was directed at me and I felt like a theif that had been caught. I could hear the exclamations like cheering from below so I just kinda let go in order to drop down faster. I fell down back first looking back up and when I hit everything went black. It was painless. I saw a red sky like Mars, with these lug nut shaped metal looking objects in a grid like formation hovering completely still above me. Like the entire sky was filled with them, and I could hear an electrical buzzing in the background vibrating though my being.... I woke up.

Originally posted by Grey Dragon
I wonder if anyone has tried ressurecting themselves after a dream death? I'm sure it can be done, if you're lucid or otherwise willing.

After dying, I usually am on the ground inable to move for several seconds, then stand back up. It does it automatically for me.

I posted somewhere else about a dream where foreign people took over our community and I got shot in the head. It felt more numb than anything, but I did hear a high pitch, and sat "dead" for about 10 seconds before waking up.

Originally posted by tallguy600
my biggest nightmare was a dream in which i died in..it wasnt a lucid or anything like that..just a really vivid dream..

i was standing in line with my family, getting ready to be executed(weird i know)

everyone went before me so i was the last one to get shot.
i remember hearing the gun shot then my whole body got all tingly and i remember falling to the ground as everything turned black.
then i started rising out of my body(in my dream of course) and i was just floating around as if i was a spirit and i can see my self dead on the ground. then i remember when i was waking up, i started falling fast toward my dead body..but woke up before i hit it. for a good 3-4 seconds i saw my actual body in my bed as if i did die in realty.. i duno what it was scary and i still get chills just talking about it.