For those without a belief in the afterlife/reincarnation

How do you cope with your sense of mortality? Does the thought that this is all there will be sometimes scare or upset you?

I spent the first 21 years of my life floating along like I had an eternity, as I'm sure many young people do. My mother talked a lot of reincarnation, and stupidly, I accepted the idea without too much scepticism, and bought into warming but rather fanciful ideas about spirits transcending this realm and such. Death seemed like a distant concept...yes it would happen to me, but it was probably something mystical and magnificent, even beautiful. Over the last two years, the potential reality has finally hit me. My personality functions thanks to my brain. My brain will die.

At first the realisation delighted me (!) I saw what "seize the day" really meant. It freed me from unhealthy habits. Now when I think of just ceasing to be, it frightens me immensely. My past naivity makes me cringe. One of my college friends died earlier this year, and my mindset hasn't been the same since. She isn't here anymore.

Life is short, my existence is an accident as it is, and it can, and one day will, be taken.

How do you think of death?

 

Nothing real can be threatened.

Other than a story told about me by someone else, I am unaware of a time when I was not.

 

First, sorry about your friend.

From my point of view, if you think about it, there's not really any reason to be scared. If you REALLY believe that you have no soul, no afterlife, no future after this life, then you sure as hell won't mind when you die, because you wont exist, be consious, or be aware... so why would you be scared?

 

I've found that looking to nature can reveal the nature of death. In the fall leaves and grass die, but in the spring they become new again. Flowers die but their buds live on. You can uproot a flower or a blade of grass, killing it in the process, but more flowers and more grass will grow. I think there's more to all living things than their biological material. The body will not transcend death but the "rest" will perhaps.

Consciousness is at the core of every living thing. Consciousness can't be killed, destroyed or fall into nonexistence. It's all there really is that exists, probably eternally. You can't kill or destroy what isn't tangible.

 

This is a very good point and obviously one I've thought through. I suppose the only semi-rational response is that I just love life so much. I really treasure it. Here and now I can conceive of it being wiped out, and that is a scary thought, although yes, in practice I wouldn't be around to be sad about it after the fact.

 

This is a view I've considered, and one I have respect for. You can certainly form great theories from looking at the natural world, and I did used to have a kind of animistic view. Now I see examples like yours and just see reproduction rather than survival of one entity, and I think there's a good chance that reproduction will be the closest I personally get to "living on" in some form, too, by passing on genes.

The tree can form new leaves, part of its regular transformation during life, but if a tree is uprooted and burnt, it wont grow back. Its offspring might.

I suppose the difference lies in whether or not a collective spirit, or any spirits at all, are believed in.

 

I think so. To believe that that one tree is now dead and gone is to believe that everything is separate from what is. I personally don't believe this. I don't see how anything can be separated from the one whole, aside from our biological material. Although meta-physics has shown us that technically our biological material really is connected. That tree is every other tree. I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. Goo goo g'joob.

 

friends dieing can really put things in perspective


the thoughts of my own death usually make me feel sick but then i think of all the trouble ...paperwork/assets/bills/ etc that will have to be done to clear up the shit i leave behind and it makes me smile lol

religion seems to be the way most cope but i just change the channel in my brain when the shitty thoughts come in..it usually works

 

Recently I have been believing that we do not have souls/spirits/etc. Sure, we are conscious, we think, we act rationally according to our conditioning. I'm a bit of a pessimist, but I'm finding it hard to move away from. I do not cope with my mortality - because at times I don't care about it. I am young, have little experience, and all I know is going to school, sleeping, shitting - absolutely nothing. Even my emotions, from an evolutionary stand point, I cannot see the point of feeling when the premise of its existence is to 'survive' when there is little reasoning too.

I've also considered that I'm depressed and emotionally void for the majority of my time. If so, I've been that way my entire life. I seek risk and adventure - but I don't find it anywhere.

 

I don't believe I'm completely separate and an island unto myself so in that sense complete non-existence doesn't make sense to me.

 

Charlie Sheen is looking for an intern for the summer. Seriously.

 

I'd do that! But I think you need twitter... and I'm not willing to go that far

 

I'd like to think something like this... and I even once did believe exactly this. But I think that it looks at what consciousness is in a naive manner. What if consciousness is just a phenomenon that results from our physical anatomy. Basically, I think you imagining the idea of consciousness as a spirit or soul. But who knows for sure? We havn't proven either. And probably won't for a damn long while.

Me? I just don't dwell on the thought of death. I think anyone who does is unhealthy. You can't suffer post death. But fear of the unknown makes everything that has to do with death scary as shit. It's our most fundamental fear, the unknown is.

 

I believe this, but I believe this consciousness IS then reincarnated. Why would we be given the consciousness to then have it just disappear or stay put some where? I believe we come back and interact sometimes with the same spirits but in different ways mother/father/sister/brother/friends and sometimes we just don't interact with those spirits or maybe just in passing. I believe it's with those spirits that we have those "connections." You know when you just feel that connection with a stranger, but no more becomes of it. Or how we develop deeper relationships too. Hey maybe we come back in other forms too, I don't know...we will never know.

I know that is not what you asked, but it goes along with the above poster in a way.

Whatever death is/becomes, I just don't think we should fear it. We will either be gone or hopefully in a happier place. It's the people we leave that we will miss, but they should enjoy their time with us, remember us fondly (hopefully) and wonder where the heck are we, just as we are doing, LOL!

 

Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only changed to another form.

All life is energy. I don't have to believe in a God to believe that the life I am living now will not be destroyed after I die.

Death is just another experience in life. I try to embrace it as such.

I also plan to either donate my body to science when I die or find a "green" cemetary where I am not filled with formaldehyde and put into the ground inside of a concrete box, but instead buried in a biodegradable pine box and allowed to go back to the earth. The thought of either advancing scientific discovery or giving myself back to the earth and becoming part of the cyclical nature of life and death brings me comfort when I think about my mortality.

 

By telling yourself some things are impossible your shutting the doors of your mind. There your problem manifests. Besides energy cannot be destroyed. Are you not energy my friend..

 

I see death as an experience, though I do not want to reach this experience any sooner I imagine it will be quiet an interesting venture.

 

I feel the exact same way. Nicely said. I am always reminding my husband to donate any good part of me and burn the rest of me. There's no use wasting space!

 

What is beyond true death and whether or or not there really is a soul or god will never be known. I can say that with extreme certainty. Maybe it doesn't need to be known, same with the origin of man. Do you think that by not knowing where we came from, where we go when we die, and whether or not there is a soul and/or god gives more meaning to life itself? If we knew what came after death and where we've been, for what reason would we have to make the most of this life?

For the things we'll never know; this is why some measure of faith is necessary. If for nothing else but to provide a sense of purpose here and now.

There are Hindu teachings that claim that perhaps those closest to us in life (family, perhaps friends) are "tied" to us by some sort of metaphysical connection and that, just as we knew them in this life, we'll know them (their energy) in the world in between, and know them again in the next lifetime where we'll not recognize them as our one time mother, father, sister, brother. For whatever reason the connection is made, and made from one life to the next, sharing the journey.

Consciousness can't disappear. Nothing can. Even on some microscopic level, matter that has died has not disappeared. What is is, anything that exists cannot become nonexistent.

 

I've thought of this as well.

I learned about what Native Americans did for a long time (some still do). They take the ashes of their dead loved one, sometimes the remains, and dig a hole on protected land. They dump the ashes/remains in the hole and then plant a tree in the same hole.

The body goes back to the earth, doesn't hurt the environment, and there will always be a tree as a memorial to the person instead of a headstone.

I think this is a fantastic idea, one I will probably pursue myself one day.