• Thorny_Thicket@sopuli.xyz
        171·
        1 year ago

        People often think about death as some kind of positive non-existence when in reality death can’t by definition be experienced. If it feels like something then it’s the process of dying people are talking about. Not being dead. I believe the closest thing to death we can “experience” is general anesthesia and the people who have gone thru that know there’s nothing to experience. Just a teleportation from one moment to another.

        This actually makes me believe in some form of “rebirth”. Not in the sense most people think about it but since consciousness can only experience being but not “not being” then it seems very likely that death just means that your experience moves from one place to another. If there’s a break in between you can’t experience it. You just can’t help but keep having experiences.

        Really interesting stuff. Sam Harris made a fascinating podcast about this subject. As a subscriber I can give free links to the full episode if you’re interested. Just send me a PM.

          • myusernameblows@lemmy.world
            7·
            1 year ago

            Quantum suicide is really interesting, I’ve always thought something like this could be possible and this is the first time I’m learning that there’s a word for it. There’s something intuitive about it, I bet lots of people also feel the same way. I’ve been in a few potentially near-death situations and one specific thought always pops into my head afterwards, “I wonder how many versions of me just died from that.”

              • myusernameblows@lemmy.world
                5·
                1 year ago

                That’s a terrifying thought. But then what happens when you get very old? We don’t live forever. And even if some life extension technology is discovered before we die, what about everyone in the past who died? Did they all end up in a reality where some incredible technology figured out how to keep everyone conscious indefinitely? What about people who lived before we even knew what viruses were? As intuitive as it feels, it doesn’t seem to pass the smell test. I would guess that some of the “intuition” I’m feeling is actually just a fear of dying

                • Queen HawlSera@lemm.eeEnglish
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  There’s this hypothesis called Quantum Archaeology, I’m not a scientist and I don’t know how believable this is (If you think you understand Quantum Physics, it means you definitely don’t and all that), but there’s an idea that the universe may “remember” details about… well… everything, and this “memory” could be tapped into by a sufficiently advanced computer capable of datamining reality itself… Allowing you to bring anyone back from the dead, provided you have enough ink in your 3D Printer and all the 1’s and 0’s that make up what ancient people mistook for a soul.

                  I gave you how I understand it, it’s likely more complicated than that if it’s indeed real. (Never got a solid answer one way or another, a friend of mine talked about it once… He was very anti-mysticism and pro-rationalism, so I took it more seriously than I would have if some Spirit Science Hippie told me about it… He up and vanished one day, never found out what happened.)

                  If Quantum Archaeology AND Quantum Immortality/Quantum Suicide hold true, it’s possible that once you get old enough the only timelines left to “jump to” are societies in the far future where Quantum Archeaology is a puzzle that’s been cracked.

                  Heck, maybe Heaven & Hell and are merely some Dyson Swarm powered Alien Satellite somewhere that’s just been left to “Crunch the numbers” as it were. I don’t know, anything’s possible in an infinite and unknowable universe.

                • Queen HawlSera@lemm.eeEnglish
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  I may have misread or misunderstood, but it sounded like you said Sam Harris believed that somehow you experienced a form of “rebirth”, where you appear somewhere else after death, and talked about this on a podcast.

                  If that’s not what you meant, I apologize, that is how I understood what you wrote.

      • Adora 🏳️‍⚧️@beehaw.org
        5·
        1 year ago

        Incredible story. This is making me reflect on a lot of things. I’ve had the same feelings re: projection of the mind, and I feel much calmer hearing this. Thank you so much for sharing.

      • jochem@lemmy.ml
        21·
        1 year ago

        Check out the Law of One for some funky spiritual stuff. There might be something in there that makes sense of this reality for you.

  • BrooklynMan@lemmy.mlEnglish
    57·
    1 year ago

    I don’t want to discuss the incident in detail because it was very traumatic, but long story short, I had a near-drowning incident when I was 12 (technically not a drowning because I survived). I was technically dead for several minutes.

    I saw nothing. total blank. I remember flashes of struggling to get to the side of the pool one moment, and flashes of waking up in an ambulance the next. then it cuts out again, and then I woke up in a hospital room with tubes in all my holes (plus some tubes in new holes) and surrounded by my mom and brothers.

    • Today@lemmy.world
      6·
      1 year ago

      Glad you made it and are hopefully doing ok. I work with kids with disabilities and the near drowning kids or ‘choked on a pill’ kids are the hardest. I just imagine the range of emotions a family goes through in that short time.

  • gabe [he/him]@literature.cafe
    523·
    1 year ago

    My dad did. He’s never fully went into every detail, but he has talked about it in bits in pieces over the years and he said quite a bit as I was struggling with the passing of my mother. From what I know he had a major heart attack and there was a point where the chest pain just… stopped and one second he was there and the next second he just wasn’t. He described it as like, leaving his body in some way and being surrounded by light, warmth and peace. He apparently met and was hugged by family members and relatives he hadn’t seen in years. He’s always been pretty limited beyond that, but from what I gather it felt like they were there to greet him briefly but didn’t have the expectation for him to stay with them. Kind of like “hey, we’re here but it’s not time yet” in the way he’s talked about it.

    There’s been claims in the family he has always been hesitant to talk about but apparently he saw relatives there that died long before he was even born and was able to recognize these dead relatives in extremely old family photos. I don’t know how true that is, but whenever anyone in the family tries to discuss it he actively avoids the conversation.

      • gabe [he/him]@literature.cafe
        16·
        1 year ago

        I think it might be a mixture of trauma related to the circumstances regarding his death and revival and any lingering feelings regarding it. I might ask him in detail what he experienced someday.

    • Today@lemm.ee
      6·
      1 year ago

      I lost my mom this year. She lost her mom as a child and was the last of her siblings to go. I hope they were there to greet her. She was really looking forward to that.

    • argv_minus_one@beehaw.org
      4·
      1 year ago

      This is the stuff religion is made of.

      Too bad religion always gets twisted into being about eternal suffering and killing unbelievers and whatnot.

      • gabe [he/him]@literature.cafe
        3·
        1 year ago

        I agree. Unfortunately people become very dogmatic with organized religion, and it’s often taken in a simplified way that humans can understand. It’s scary but truthfully, there are facts about the universe that humanity does not know nor understand, isn’t meant to know or understand, and likely will never know or understand.

        Seeing my own mothers passing and the unexplained events that occurred towards the end of her life, I do believe my dads story and what he experienced. I have my own woo woo beliefs beyond that though, specifically that the “light” people see might be the true incomprehensible form of whatever being made this universe.

  • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
    48·
    1 year ago

    I don’t know if this counts. I had a stroke while I was sleeping. I had very vivid nightmares that night, almost the worst nightmares I’ve ever had. It’s made me terrified of dying in my sleep. If my final experiences are going to be like that I absolutely do not want to go out in my sleep.

    “He died peacefully his sleep” is something people only say for catharsis.

      • WarmSoda@lemm.ee
        21·
        1 year ago

        I don’t remember, I just remember it being horrible. Nothing religious or anything like that. Realizing I lost one of my eyes took over memories of the dreams.

        Night terrors are still top of the list for nightmares though.

    • datendefekt@lemmy.ml
      9·
      1 year ago

      First time you got shot? Either where you live or where you work is not a place where I would want to be.

    • TheLemming@feddit.de
      4·
      1 year ago

      I didn’t plan on doing that, but thanks for your review nonetheless. If there was a button asking for if the review was helpful, I would press it

  • what@lemmy.world
    395·
    1 year ago

    Side note: I don’t know if I was clinically dead in any of these.

    I have three experiences. When I was 10 I was hit by an SUV travelling 50+ mph while walking across a highway. It knocked my shoes off and threw me dozens of feet. I still don’t remember anything. Apparently I was unconscious for awhile. First responder said they saved my life while waiting for an air lift to take me to the hospital. It was the kind of nothing when you sleep and wake up.

    The second I mixed a bunch of drugs. I think I was on 5 different ones. I took an absolutely massive rip of air duster and instantly my body was gone and so was anything resembling reality. I remember thinking ohhh I’m dead. My being and/or individuality was melting / merging into this infinitely recursuve fractal pattern. The sense I was an individual was an illusion. Then I snapped back into consciousness.

    The third I definitely don’t think I was dead, but it was a very relevant dream. The kind of dream that is so vivid it is indistinguishable from reality. I was completely sober at this point in my life (in part because of the experience above and another experience with hallucinogens where I saw the exact same thing the VFX artists made in the exorcism of emily rose, but I saw it before the movie was even made).

    The dream started with me at my own funeral. I was for lack of a better word a spirit. I’ve never had dreams like this before or after.

    The most fascinating thing was the sense of need and/or desire was completely gone. I felt the most free I had ever felt in my life. But I did have tasks. I had to visit my best friend Brant. He was in a very dark small place that I kind of transported to he was dead/ a spirit too. He apparently hasn’t had a source of light here and I apparently had a small bit of shine. Because the room lit up a bit when I entered. We laughed about how weird it was that there were shadows even though we were semi transparent. Then my dad (whom I never saw but apparently was guiding me through my tasks) said I don’t know how long you have left you need to go. So I left and I visited/transported to my mom who was also a spirit. We danced together. She was skinny and wearing a bright red dress. There was more light here but it was still nondescript. Then I woke up .

    I sobbed like a baby for probably 30 minutes when I woke up. The biggest change was that I had desires again. I desperately wanted to stay in that state I was in during the dream. The best I can describe it is if you had a good job, had great sex, ate an amazing meal, than sat in your most comfortable chair next to the people you love, for a brief moment you wouldn’t feel any base human level desire just a vague satisfaction. It was like that but times 100 and it was just the default state.

    Since they dream I’ve only told it to strangers and Brant. Brant had since died via suicide at age 25. My mom who has been obese most of my life, has lost significant amounts of weight and now owns a strikingly similar dress. Honestly I don’t know what to make of it. It still spooks me. It changed my life.

    • ryan3150@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      1 year ago

      I know I’m stating the obvious here but it’s insane that you almost died three times

    • Random_Character_A@lemmy.world
      4·
      1 year ago

      My being and/or individuality was melting / merging into this infinitely recursuve fractal pattern. The sense I was an individual was an illusion. Then I snapped back into consciousness.

      You disconnected from quantium decoherence and momentarily experienced superposition?

    • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.ml
      45·
      1 year ago

      So your experiences are:

      “I was unconscious as a kid” (At least this one kind of fits)

      “Took a lot of drugs.”

      And “I dreamt it”

      Cool.

  • heartlessevil@lemmy.oneEnglish
    29·
    1 year ago

    I would not really compare it to dying, but having had seizures, you can appear dead and then wake up really disoriented and scared. Your brain basically shuts off for a moment.

    • OceanSoap@lemmy.ml
      15·
      1 year ago

      I witnessed this once years ago during the start of a class I was attending. Girl from the back gets up and starts walking towards the door, mumbling. She seemed off, so I stood up and asked if she was okay. She fell straight back and I tried to catch her but failed. She foamed at the mouth and started turning blue. I had no idea what to do. Medics show up and the class clears out, but I stayed because she basically half fallen on me. When she woke up she looked straight at me and said “hi.”

      • heartlessevil@lemmy.oneEnglish
        13·
        1 year ago

        I didn’t feel it coming on, the first thing I remember is someone helping me. They thought I was dead. I was unconscious on the ground with eyes open, hit my head on the floor and bit through my tongue so I was bleeding from the mouth. When I woke up I had no idea where I was or what happened so I was very agitated. At least for the type of seizures I have, its like an on-off switch. There are other types though.

  • UnexampledSalt@lemmy.ko4abp.com
    22·
    1 year ago

    I didnt actually die, but I came pretty close. I lost a ton of blood, started tk get tunnel vision, blacked out, then there was nothing, then I regained consciousness after getting a transfusion. Not sure how long I was out, but they said I was white as a sheet.

    • phorq@lemmy.ml
      51·
      1 year ago

      Don’t forget to make sure you’re buried with your alarm clock, most people oversleep after they die.

  • AlexWIWA@lemmy.mlEnglish
    187·
    1 year ago

    There’s just a gap in my memory like going to sleep and not dreaming. The waking up was brutal though. I had zero context of anything around me but my brain was still fully functioning. It was weird. For context I was dead for half an hour and in a medical coma for a week or so.

    I imagine that’s how the first true ai will feel. It still will “know” information, how to speak, etc, but it will have no idea wtf is going on

    Edit: apparently people haven’t heard of CPR and doubt my claims.

    Here’s your evidence

    https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/hero-teacher-helps-save-teens-struck-lightning/story?id=11829631

      • genuineparts@feddit.de
        14·
        1 year ago

        Technically it is possible if the reason for cardiac arrest was hypothermia. The longest documented time between cardiac arrest and resuscitation is almost 7 hours. That’s where the old adage “No one is dead until they are warm and dead.” comes from.

        Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24882104/

          • AlexWIWA@lemmy.mlEnglish
            3·
            1 year ago

            I didn’t want to include the cause of death because it seems even more outlandish and unbelievable than the duration of death, and the cause of death essentially deanonymizes my account. But I guess this username is already toasted from being used too much so I added evidence to my op.

              • AlexWIWA@lemmy.mlEnglish
                2·
                1 year ago

                No worries bro. I got way more upset than I needed to. We’re good, my friend.

                I really should start lying and say I saw the matrix or something. Give the woo-woos an aneurysm.

        • AlexWIWA@lemmy.mlEnglish
          61·
          1 year ago

          It’s also possible if you get cpr the entire time like we did.

      • AlexWIWA@lemmy.mlEnglish
        51·
        1 year ago

        I can assure you I was. I was getting CPR the entire time. Maybe don’t run your mouth without knowing the full story?

        I wasn’t the only one that went down in this accident either, the other kid was out for 38 minutes. Again, CPR the entire time

        And if you’re wondering why they kept trying cpr for so long, it was because they were our teachers and the SRO who all knew us.

  • mke@lemm.ee
    101·
    1 year ago

    Can you define “death” in the context of your question? I feel you might have referred to some forms of reversible coma.

    • heartlessevil@lemmy.oneEnglish
      8·
      1 year ago

      They are. People colloquially refer to a stopped heart as “coming back from the dead.” Obviously you cannot truly come back from the dead if its your brain that’s dead.