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Newbie
User of semicolons.


Registered: 07/18/04
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Afraid to die...
#5262818 - 02/04/06 02:32 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Ever since my terrifying experience with ego loss, I've been afraid to die. I have this idea that when I start to pass away, it will be just like ego loss; silent, confusing, fighting to stay alive...
I was never afraid of death before...to me, a confused atheist, I would go unconscious and that would be it, no nothing, no thought, idea, just plain nothing, and I was fine with that. Now I have this weird disposition that when I die I'm going to be terrified up to my last breath. Then I start thinking, how can consciousness just..disappear? Even during ego loss there's a sense of awareness of existence, though you can't respond to it or do anything about it. How can you die and not know anything afterward? How can everything you once had inside just...leave?
I realize that it all boils down to atoms, and even consciousness itself is just atoms. What will happen to my consciousness and my atoms? Lol if you understand at all what I'm saying I'm interested in everyone's input. What are you're views on what happens when you die?
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it stars saddam
Satan

Registered: 05/19/05
Posts: 15,571
Loc: Spahn Ranch
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Re: Afraid to die... [Re: Newbie]
#5262844 - 02/04/06 02:44 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
NewbieShroomie said: I've been afraid to die. I have this idea that when I start to pass away, it will be just like ego loss; silent, confusing, fighting to stay alive...
The notion that physical death will be anything like chemical intoxication has always baffled me.
Quote:
Then I start thinking, how can consciousness just..disappear? Even during ego loss there's a sense of awareness of existence, though you can't respond to it or do anything about it. How can you die and not know anything afterward? How can everything you once had inside just...leave?
If we can agree that consciousness is a product of the brain's functions, then it doesn't seem very hard to comprehend that once said organ ceases to function, consciousness would cease to exist (then again, we can always logically consider eternal recurrence, but that's nothing to be afraid of).
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Silversoul
Rhizome


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Re: Afraid to die... [Re: Newbie]
#5262845 - 02/04/06 02:45 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
NewbieShroomie said: Ever since my terrifying experience with ego loss, I've been afraid to die. I have this idea that when I start to pass away, it will be just like ego loss; silent, confusing, fighting to stay alive...
It sounds like you had a difficult experience because you are too attached to your ego. Ego loss is not such a horrible experience for those of us who are ready for it. Try to understand that you are not your ego. Once you understand that your true identity is our shared identity -- consciousness -- then you will be better prepared for ego loss, and likewise, for death. I too share your perception that death would be quite similar to ego loss. Yet that is precisely why I am not afraid of death.
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it stars saddam
Satan

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Re: Afraid to die... [Re: Silversoul]
#5262879 - 02/04/06 02:55 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
Paradigm said: Ego loss is not such a horrible experience for those of us who are ready for it.
Watching spiders crawl out of your hair while your face melts off on the other hand...
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Newbie
User of semicolons.


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Re: Afraid to die... [Re: Silversoul]
#5262880 - 02/04/06 02:55 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Very true...when it happened I knew nothing of ego loss or even that it happened. I used to be a naive "let's get fucked up and trip" kind of person. After it happened I immediately understood why people say respect the mushroom and to this day I'll preach to whoever treats mushrooms like they're crack. I still use them, and now that I know I'm not physically going to die when that happens but I'm hoping I can let go this time and actually venture further into that state of "uhhhhh" lol.
Edited by Newbie (02/04/06 02:56 PM)
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Dmonikal
Bareback up inthis neden


Registered: 09/06/04
Posts: 474
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Re: Afraid to die... [Re: Newbie]
#5262895 - 02/04/06 02:59 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Live your life how YOU think is right. Don't even bother trying to find out what the real answer is. If we were meant to know that answer, we would.
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Deviate
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Re: Afraid to die... [Re: Dmonikal]
#5262972 - 02/04/06 03:15 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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seek to know the present before worrying about about what happens when you die. when his disciples said to him "Tell us, how will our end come?"
Jesus said: "Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end? You see, the end will be where the beginning is.
Congratulations to the one who stands at the beginning: that one will know the end and will not taste death."
The notion that physical death will be anything like chemical intoxication has always baffled me.
why? both involve the brain ceasing to function in its normal manner.
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it stars saddam
Satan

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Re: Afraid to die... [Re: Deviate]
#5262989 - 02/04/06 03:17 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
Deviate said: The notion that physical death will be anything like chemical intoxication has always baffled me.
why? both involve the brain ceasing to function in its normal manner.
Chemical intoxication involves the brain ceasing to function in its normal manner. Death is the brain ceasing to function at all.
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Silversoul
Rhizome


Registered: 01/01/05
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Loc: The Barricades
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Quote:
itstarssaddam said:
Quote:
Deviate said: The notion that physical death will be anything like chemical intoxication has always baffled me.
why? both involve the brain ceasing to function in its normal manner.
Chemical intoxication involves the brain ceasing to function in its normal manner. Death is the brain ceasing to function at all.
However, ego death is a part of the brain(ego) ceasing to function at all. The ego is fundamental to our conception of ourself, so experiencing ego death does give some insight into what the non-existence of the self would entail. The hallucinations are simply incidental to this insight.
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Deviate
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Chemical intoxication involves the brain ceasing to function in its normal manner. Death is the brain ceasing to function at all.
but in order for it to cease to function at all, it must first begin to function abnormally.
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it stars saddam
Satan

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Posts: 15,571
Loc: Spahn Ranch
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Re: Afraid to die... [Re: Silversoul]
#5263019 - 02/04/06 03:24 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
Paradigm said: However, ego death is a part of the brain(ego) ceasing to function at all.
Yes, PART of the brain. In death, the brain as a whole ceases to function.
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Silversoul
Rhizome


Registered: 01/01/05
Posts: 23,576
Loc: The Barricades
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Quote:
itstarssaddam said:
Quote:
Paradigm said: However, ego death is a part of the brain(ego) ceasing to function at all.
Yes, PART of the brain. In death, the brain as a whole ceases to function.
So that makes it like ego loss plus loss of the senses. I imagine that if someone was missing all five senses and you fed them a large dose of mushrooms, they would experience something very much like actual death.
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it stars saddam
Satan

Registered: 05/19/05
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Re: Afraid to die... [Re: Silversoul]
#5263037 - 02/04/06 03:29 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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I personally feel that nonexistence is completely incomprehensible to any living creature, regardless of any chemical ingestion.
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Darkcloud
tiwkcuFtsilihiN


Registered: 04/06/03
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It seems like you really didn't experience "ego loss" per se. Fear is the main controlling emotion of Ego, so to still be afraid, it means your Ego wasn't shut down all the way. I find true Ego-loss to an ultimate liberation.
But I do understand what you are talking ahout.
Edited by Lunatik (02/06/06 09:11 AM)
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Animals
Just Danson inthe Dark


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Re: Afraid to die... [Re: Silversoul]
#5268848 - 02/06/06 09:11 AM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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I imagine that if someone was missing all five senses and you fed them a large dose of mushrooms, they would experience something very much like actual death.
How could anyone missing all their senses even develope an ego?
Edited by Animals (02/06/06 09:11 AM)
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Darkcloud
tiwkcuFtsilihiN


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Re: Afraid to die... [Re: Animals]
#5268853 - 02/06/06 09:13 AM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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^ Good point. Sensory deprivation devices tend to promote Ego loss.
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Leonardo_R
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Re: Afraid to die... [Re: Newbie]
#5269016 - 02/06/06 11:05 AM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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You can lay in a casket, or you can be disentegrated to ashes to be put in a bottle. Your choice.
But once your ashes are spread into the ocean perhaps you will be consumed by the earth, the earth will always recreate. So in fact we do not die but will return as something else. Like plankton are consumed by fish and turn into it's body fat. Becoming the fish is a longer tale.
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Gomp
¡(Bound to·(O))be free!


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Re: Afraid to die... [Re: Newbie]
#5269312 - 02/06/06 12:39 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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You die now. :P
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MushmanTheManic
Stranger

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Re: Afraid to die... [Re: Darkcloud]
#5269399 - 02/06/06 01:06 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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I find true Ego-loss to an ultimate liberation.
I find it to be the exact opposite. Without my 'ego', I feel like an insect or similar simple robotic creature.... no volition, purely a product of the surrounding environment.
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MushmanTheManic
Stranger

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Re: Afraid to die... [Re: Newbie]
#5269418 - 02/06/06 01:13 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Quote:
Robert Anton Wilson said: But as for death, and what -- if anything --comes after death, I see no cause for apprehension whatsoever.
To consider the alternatives in order:
Most people through most of history have believed that after death comes rebirth (reincarnation). I think most people, planetwide, still believe that. It fails to terrify me. If I get reborn as a cockroach, I intend to hide in the vicinity of somebody's computer and write poems on the keyboard at night, like archy, the famous roach who left his verse in the typewriter of Don Marquis. If I get reborn as a human, I might meet my wife Arlen again and love her again and marry her again. That sounds great to me.
Other rebirths, as a tree, say, or a blue whale, also seem more entertaining (and educational) than frightening.
Unfortunately, I have no good reasons to believe in reincaration, although I'd sort of like to. I include it only for the sake of completeness.
A sinister rumor, widely believed in the Occident, holds that after death we go to a place called Heaven. From all the descriptions I've read, it sounds dreadful to me. It seems to have a population made up entirely of some gang of Christians; the experts on Heaven disagree about which conglomeration of Christians will qualify, but they always seem to think that they personally belong to that elite group. An eternity with people that conceited seems intolerable to me,but fortunately I am not a Christian so I won't be consigned to such a boring place.
An even more nefarious report appears in the United States Marine Corps hymn:
If the Army and the Navy ever looked on Heaven's scenes they would find the streets were guarded by the United States Marines
A place where every street is guarded by Marines sounds like a particularly vicious police state, especially if Christians run it, and I definitely don't want to go there, even for a visit. I wouldn't even wish it on my worst enemy, if I had any enemies. (Some people hate me for the books I write, but I refuse to hate them back, so they don't count as enemies.)
Fortunately, as noted, I don't qualify for Heaven, with all its harps and fanatic Christians and martial law by Marines. A worse idea, which has terrified millions, claims that some of us will go to a place called Hell, where we will suffer eternal torture. This does not scare me because, when I try to imagine a Mind behind this universe, I cannot conceive that Mind, usually called "God," as totally mad.
I mean, guys, compare that "God" with the worst monsters you can think of - - Adolph Hitler, Joe Stalin, that sort of guy. None of them ever inflicted more than finite pain on their victims. Even de Sade, in his sado-maso fantasy novels, never devised an unlimited torture. The idea that the Mind of Creation (if such exists) wants to torture some of its critters for endless infinities of infinities seems too absurd to take seriously.
Such a derranged Mind could not create a mud hut, much less the exquisitely mathematical universe around us.
If such a monster-God did exist, the sane attitude would consist of practising the Buddhist virtue of compassion. He seems very sick in His head, so don't give way to hatred: try to understand and forgive him. Maybe He will recover his wits some day. (I wrote "He" instead of the fashionable "He or She" because only male Gods appear to have invented Hells. I can't think of a single Goddess who ever created a Hell for people who displeased Her .)
A fourth alternative after-death scenario involves merger with "God" or with "the Godhead" (the latter term seems more popular.) This idea, which seems Hindic in origin, currently enjoys vast popularity with New Agers. I see nothing terrifying here; in fact, I suspect I would enjoy it, based on my previous experiences in which this merging/melting seemed to take place on LSD. An infinite Acid Trip in which the whole universe seems like your body: who could fear that (except Republicans)?
The fifth and, as far as I know, the last thinkable alternative holds that after death comes total oblivion. This has either terrorized or angered many intelligent writers (e.g. Bertrand Russell and Jean Paul Sartre, who seem to have hated "life after death" for not existing, just as they remained permanently pissed off at "God" for not existing. ) Sorry: it doesn't seem terrible to me at all. If I become totally oblivious, I won't know about it (by definition of oblivion.) How can you feel terrified of something you can't experience?
Besides oblivion means freedom from "all the ills the flesh is heir to," from bleeding piles to cancer, including even bad reviews of my books.
Living in New York or Los Angeles seem much worse than not living in Oblivion.
Although I have a few opinions, or hunches, I have no dogma about what happens after death. But none of the above alternatives seem really unpleasant, except the ones that seem too absurd to take seriously.
As some Roman wrote:
Nothing to clutch in life. Nothing to fear in death.
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