Following is a collection of articles which are on death and afterlife in general. You can skip from one topic to the other as these are not inherently related. Topics are laid out in following order. These articles include personal experience and philosophical insights. Open for discussion.
Philosophy of near-death experience Immortality and afterlife.
Near Death experience - in an Airplane
Today I am going to share a story with you. It is hilarious now when I look back and think about it but nonetheless it is still a near death experience as it is. And the lessons learnt are still valid.
I had to travel in an airplane few weeks back. I had a little cold for a few days' prior with a mild frontal headache. I didn't mind that as I never had any problem travelling. 6-hour travel after busy day of working, on top of that I couldn't even sleep on the night before. As usual and as often happens, flight was delayed one a half hour! Well, that is for the background.
Flight was smooth, nothing abnormal, I was in good spirits. However, I could not sleep still.
At 40000 feet I was really fine, then the pilot announced we are about to descend. And slowly but steadily it started a down slide. Then I noticed a sharp headache on half of my forehead, which has never been there, like I was struck with a club. That's strange Sharp severe pain 9/10. My initial thoughts were maybe it is a sinusitis and blocked ear causing nerve irritation. (later happened to be what it is) Or a stroke. Latter was fearsome. A worst place to get a stroke! Am I going to die? Are these my last minutes on this life? And I panicked.
I palpated my pulse and felt its slowing down. I could feel my heartbeat slow down. For 15 seconds I believed I am going to die. I told the stranger nearby that I feel ill, and I lost my consciousness.
And I woke up. for 2 minutes I didn't know what happened. And a kind flight attendant helped me with some water, and I processed what happened. Pain was still there, and my heartbeat was fine. I had a Vasovagal attack!
There is more to the story. But I will not drag you on that lane as I really like to keep the post short and let you scroll through the cat stories in the web.
Lessons Learnt from near death experience.
Lesson one:
For 15 seconds that I believed I am going to die, I reflected my life. And I knew I have wasted it on unnecessary things. Family, money, my job, stress, work did not matter. I really did not know what is on the other side. And I regretted the way I have spent my life.
Lesson two:
The only one person that could help me was the one who sat next to me. That was the most important person.
I will end the story here. When I reflect It may be not a true near-death experience in an airplane, yet I did believe it was. Some of you may have near death experiences. True ones. Please feel free to share your lessons in comments. For rest of you I suggest imagining. Imagine before it happens.
Philosophical insights to the near-death experience.
Few questions arise from near death experience are,
Is it evidence to afterlife is prevailing?
How near-death experiences occur?
How near-death experiences changes life?
Imagine a typical scenario of near-death experience. Imagine someone in a hospital, with a medical condition and suddenly stopped heart function. After several hours of extensive effort his heart is reverted, and he is back to life. After waking up, he describes what he has undergone. He may explain the experience as an outer body experience, or travelling through lights and waiting to enter, sometimes they may explain bad experiences like going through darkness.
How can we explain above experiences during near death?
We will understand this as two scenarios. Imagine your life is like a room. And afterlife is next room. Near death experience may be that you have left your room, entered the next room and due to some reason came back to your room again. In this scenario, it is true it will represent afterlife.
In the second scenario, you never left the room and just bumped into the door, you didn't see the other side, but just saw the door. It doesn't prove that there is another room at all behind that door. Really speaking, most of scientists and philosophers believe this is the most likely explanation to near death experiences. It may be due to extreme chemical fluctuations they had during such episodes.
So we have some answers to first two questions.
Maybe near death experience is not evidence of after life
Maybe it is just because of chemical fluctuations, after all you are never "dead" as you wake up after near death.
More importantly how near-death experiences change life?
It is a common to see near death experiences changes the most of lives of such people who have experienced that. Markedly and so often. These transformative effects of near-death experiences are not explained by chemical fluctuations. However, if you followed my previous article you would know, there is no need to have gone through the process of dying or near-death for these transformative effects to occur. As even having a vasovagal attack and thinking I am in the process of dying, created some transformative thoughts in me. It seems they are merely psychological.
Looking through the window of the empty tower
I cannot see beyond the horizon,
Where water lilies flower
Crimes of the past when they haunt me an every hour.
Curled on the floor when they bleed.
sweet memories
I savored.
What is there great beyond? Afterlife. Sausage Party
I was watching Sausage Party the other day. An animation film with dark humor, if you haven't already watched. For those who haven't watched I have to give a summary to explain one scene which made me think.
Film is about food in the supermarket, living their own lives thinking that they have a life filled with happiness and joy beyond supermarket doors. The humans or their "Gods" choose them to go beyond and give them a life of their imagination.
There is a scene in the film where the sausage meets some wise items who are "non expiring", and they discuss the "great beyond " is a lie that they themselves generated to reduce the sadness and chaos otherwise would prevail if food understood the truth.
This let me think about life and death. It seems whoever wrote the plot of the Sausage Party did think about it as well.
We generally think the life beyond death is Either good or evil. Yet if we stick to facts, there is no absolute evidence for either of them. So, we have to imagine each one is equally possible. We ourselves have to think individually. Otherwise, we will be singing all the old songs our ancestors sang. There is a chance they created those songs, so they feel better when we face the death beyond.
Let's think about each in turn, consider following scenarios,
Possible outcomes of after death.
Everyone gets a happy ending after death.
Everyone gets a sad ending after death.
Death is the end of everything as we know it.
What comes after death is consequence of what we do today.
External force will help us to become great after death.
You can be creative and add more. I will stick to these simple thoughts and discuss what we should be doing. Please drop all your prejudices if you wish to read beyond this point. Trust me I have my own believes, yet I like to forget all this and be rational and rational only.
Scenario 1,2,3
If first second and third are true, there is nothing to worry. Whatever we do today the outcome for each of our action is fixed no matter what. It is good right? Yes of course, it is good only if we know one of them is true. Trust me I have not come across such evidence to say so. If I would ever find out, the search would end, and I will write it here so you don't have to look for it and we all can be happy or sad.
Scenario 4
Imagine the fourth one is true. Our actions determine what happens to us after death. This is an equally possible scenario. If this is possible, we really have to be careful what we do in this life. Otherwise, we are doomed. What we should do and avoid you already know. Our ancestors taught us. But if we look at the world, you will see different ancestors taught us different good and bad things. One action which is correct in one part of the world is wrong in the other part.
Scenario 5
If this is true it is great news. All we have to do is do whatever we like and get that external help on the specific way. But if you are rational, this is an equally possible scenario. There is a chance this could be wrong as well, as all of the others. More importantly if you believe in this too much it can clash with scenario 4. You will see this as a loophole to escape consequences of your actions.
So, how are you going to decide what to do? You may ask. Think about each scenario and give equal weight to each one of them. Then think about yourself and you will have the answer. Unfortunately, I am not capable of deciding for yourself.
What is a life well spent? - Minimalist, Achiever, Seeker.
I will try to answer the question what is a life, well spent in a philosophical point of view.
Story of happiness:
I knew a boy who lived in our village, he was a cheerful boy. He wasn't a genius, average in everything. The quality I liked about him most is his manner with other people. I never saw him unhappy. Always smile on his lips. Have you known someone like that? I always wonder where their happiness comes from. Maybe there is a fountain of happiness inside their brains which always overflow them with Joy.
As he spent his ever-happy life, with his friends and family he was just around 17 or 18 years old when he started to drive a van. People used to hire his van for picnics. So, they can go around the country visiting places and he is being a cheerful boy this was a great life for him as well.
As it happened one day, he went out with a group on one such trip. And we heard the story that the group went on swimming in a river. Few of them got caught in fast current and were washed away. The boy, he jumped into the water to save them, and I am not sure what happened, yet he drowned in the process of trying to save others. He died a teenager.
Now, I have outlived his life (he was only one or two years younger than me). Yet, I cannot think about the cheerful short life that he had. Why are such beautiful souls taken away?
This also brings back the question. What is a life well spent? Was his life well spent?
Of course, we have to think about how spend our lives as the life is limited as we see. It is limited by death, inevitable for all of us. Any vacation would end one day. What is the answer?
One way to think about it is we have to achieve valuable things in life. Materialistic or memories which gives us a certain form of accomplishment. We can aim for higher or lower at variable risk.
What is a life well spent? - Minimalist, Achiever, Seeker.
Minimalist
We can spend a minimalist's life settling for smaller things and aiming low. We have less chance of failure if we do not try.
Example: someone would settle for a life with minimal pay and spend it on eating and drinking, just enjoying few things.
An Achiever
We can aim for higher at risk of failure, and if we are successful, we will be more happy, more accomplished.
Example: someone would not settle for life but will raise a family, to keep the legend of him go beyond the life, build a company, write a novel or a book to feel accomplished.
Most of us are limited to these two variations of each materialistic/ mental accomplishment views about life. The core idea behind both of those views is that our life is inherently valuable and have a meaning, at death we are going to lose it.
A Seeker
And also, there is another school of thoughts. What if our lives are not inherently valuable? If so, at death we would lose nothing, gain nothing. What would be such a life would be like? The life would be to understand the null value of life rather than chase the values of life.
Some philosophers identify these two ideologies, former as western, and later as eastern patterns of thinking.
What would you choose for your life to spent with?
Atoms and dust - Poem
I was walking on the sidewalk,
And stepped on leaves and dirt.
Stopped for a while to harvest some sunlight,
When mind continued the walk
Those dirt and leaves which I stepped on,
I hear them scream in silence.
They carry the atoms and molecules of my bloodline.
Just a few hundred years into the past.
Can't wait to be a leaf, can't wait to be some dust.
I will stick in the boots of my future children.
Mixed with your atoms and dust.
In summary
You can either be a minimalist and be happy, or chase success with risk of failure.
Less known third option is to chase the meaning of life, in search of 'Truth.'
What will happen if I am immortal? (Immortality) - A life in a black hole.
Let us discuss immortality. To make it interesting let's imagine you are already immortal. We will go through simple scenarios to understand this.
First of all, it is clear that nothing we have seen so far around us seem to last forever, everything seems to be changing at least over billions of years, although difficult to see in our eyes or during our lifetime. Even the mighty Sun and moon.
Immortal life in a black hole
If we are immortal, we will have to live through the lifetime of earth and beyond. When the earth is destroyed, we will be swung into the atmosphere. There is no need to eat, as even if we do not, we wouldn't die. There would be no need of water or oxygen to sustain the life, as immortal life is sustained by itself. We can drift in the atmosphere until eventually the sun also at the end of its life and collapse into a black hole.
If the sun collapses, we will be in a complete darkness. After some billions of years in darkness we will forget we have seen light. There would be no difference of living and not living as there is no change. Both living and non-living will overlap each other if there are no conscious thoughts. It is not difficult to understand as our thoughts are always linked to the stimulations that we get, when there are no stimulations, thoughts will cease.
Immoral life on earth
Now, let's imagine you are not sucked into the black hole. You stay on earth doing ordinary things. Would you? There would be no need to do a job. There would be no need to create more and more immortal people (birth) as nobody is going to die. There would be no need to do anything. Even you don't have to travel. At least there is no rush. You have time. When you are immortal outcome for you is fixed. So, whatever you are going to do is not going to change the outcome for you. There would be no need to measure the time as even time would be valueless, when it is present in abundance. Really speaking there is no value in anything in such a world. As nothing is going to change your outcome.
In such a world what would you do?
When there is no death, there would be no need of thinking about it. So, nobody would think about it. You would no longer depend on physical laws, gravity and magnetic forces cannot have effect on you, otherwise you would not be immortal.
Let's stop our thought process in here, for a while and discuss why we should discuss about immortality.
You may have different ideas about immortality. Kindly let me know if you do. Yet if above is true you would understand that immortality when taken as itself reduces the boundary between life and death.
Immortality is not itself aversion of death.
Immortality is aversion of life as well.
Immortality is not itself aversion of pain.
Immortality is aversion of happiness.
There is no immortality without sacrificing what we are already attached to, either pain or sadness, thoughts or silence.
In summary:
Near death experiences allow us to think about life to change it for better.
Afterlife can have several outcomes.
Life can be spent as a minimalist achiever or a seeker.
Immortality can be equally non attractive concept. (Age of Adline)
Thank you for reading: Philosophy of near-death experience Immortality and afterlife.
You may also like to read : Everything you need to know about mindfulness
Comments