Death Is Sleep?

[AzariaC7]

Hey guys, I just wanted to ask that if you believe that death is sleep. I also wanted to ask for your opinion on this. http://myth-one.com/chapter_4.htm

I am following some Christians on Yahoo! Answers (not a very good site though) and most of them believe that death is sleep. No conscious, nothing. Dark, silent, etc. Really much like going to bed but no dreaming and not waking up. 

 

Do you ever read people's experiences where they "died" and experienced nothing? It does comfort me that death is sleep. 

Sorry if I got this in the wrong category. 

[Burt_Lemur]

Remember what it was like the billions of years the universe existed before the moment you were born? I bet death is just like that. It's probably pretty safe to think of it as not being alive.

[MerryG]

I have a non-Christian friend who died for five minutes before being brought back. He said he not only never saw the bright light and all that, but that death was a completely different experience than sleep. He kept saying, "For those minutes, I didn't exist. There was no me."

 

It terrified him.

 

I agree that death is likely to be more like plain non-existence than like sleep.

 

Also, on a purely practical level (don't know how to put this delicately) we don't turn to carrion when we're asleep.

[mymistake]

We were all dead for billions of years before we were born.  As long as you accept it there should be nothing to fear.  For a Christian who built his or her whole life around the idea that they would exist forever I could see why that is upsetting.

[Jesususedpeyote]

Several years ago I was in a psych ward in the hospital. I'd been there  a few times, and met a few people that successfully committed suicide but were saved in time. One of them has OD'd and legitimately died for a few minutes. He remembered there was no bright light, it was just "nothing." Like one of the above posters have said it was just like he had never existed until he was brought back. 

 

So, no, I don't view death as sleep. It will be as if you were never born.

[LivingLife]

Dreams you remember occur in the transition state of waking. Deep sleep you have no recall of b/c that part of your brain switches off.

[pratt]

besides the bullshit bible claims that jesus raised from the dead, what we have isnear dead experience, and nthing about coming back from the dead, maybe except those reincarnation buddhists,,,,,,

 

all the dead that i know remains dead,,,,, so is death sleep,,,,, i dont think any dead person would reply that because if they can, they are not dead,,,,,,,

[ExXex]

Maybe death is so ODD that our concious minds can't process it and so people don't remember anything!

 

Our lives are way to short to comprehend all the delicious oddness in the universe around us so I'm hoping there'll be an extra big dose of odd when we're dead to make up for it.

 

Buuut, whether it's sleep or we all glob together into a giant glowing bumhole to poop out new universes I doubt it's particularly relevant to our lives now so I'm not going to worry too much about not knowing.

[florduh]

Do you ever read people's experiences where they "died" and experienced nothing?

 

That comprises the majority of experience. Remember, "near death" is not death. The perceptions of a stressed brain offer us no clues about death.

 

After death the brain can't function, so I don't see how dead tissue could experience anything. Some will argue that we, and our perceptions, exist independently of our body. Yet, all everyday and even "other worldly" experiences can be easily created in the brain by neuroscientists. You have to make your own call on that one and follow the evidence or follow the faith.

[RankStranger]

I've passed out several times for one reason or another... alcohol, heat exhaustion, head injury, traumatic shock. This probably doesn't apply to the first cause I listed - but with the latter three, the brain more or less quits working. And during those times, best I can tell there was no 'me'. So the idea of dying doesn't particularly bother me - I've seen no reason to believe it'll be all that different than when my brain has shut down at other times (though less completely and permanently of course). Now the PROCESS of dying - that could very well suck and I'm not looking forward to it. But the idea that at some point there will no longer be a 'me'... that's kind of a relief.

[RaLeah]

I used to get a kick out of reading Near Death Experiences (NDEs) and seeing if there was any sort of consistency in those experiences. 

But Florduh is exactly right--all kind of weird stresses on the brain can create a bunch of brain activity that produce a sort of trippy state (that can be reproduced in a lab with neurological stimulation with electricity.) So the bright light and other hallucinations can be induced, and that means the brain wasn't dead--mostly dead means slightly alive.

 

(Princess Bride reference.) 

 

I think when it shuts off, it shuts off. Like being asleep with no dreams. I got put under for a surgery, and it was like time vanished. No dreams. Just out. So one minute I was on the operating table getting put under, the next I was in a hallway getting wheeled into the recovery room. Being dead is probably just like those missing hours. Just nothing or oblivion. No fear, no anything. Just nothingness. I feel just fine about that. 

[Jedah]

I believe that if there is an afterlife, we are not supposed to know about it. Even in the event that there is something after death I would not be surprised if NDEs are all nonsense.

[amateur]

In the past I read a few books on near death experiences, one written by a doctor who had patients with NDEs.  Anyway, from what I read, the majority of people who died in the hospital or during operations had no experience of anything.  In the minority of those who had an experience, it was generally the bright light, but sometimes other things that were happy and full of love.  The book that the doctor had written had one sentence about how a very few people came back with bad, scary experiences -- but that's all he said -- one sentence!  Then the last chapter of the book dealt with how doctors had figured out how they could medically induce near death experiences (RaLeah above explained that better than I just did!) and rich people out in California were paying for it to try to experience that really cool love thing.  That's when I decided it was strictly some final brain function.  I think when everything in the body finishes dying, we die.  Dead.  Gone.  Not aware we are not here.

[Ravenstar]

The experience of being anesthetized is pretty blank, you are there, you feel momentarily dizzy... then nothing, absolutely nothing... then you wake up groggy in recovery. There is no 'memory' or sense of being like there is in regular sleep. Just 'there', and then 'not there'.

 

Is that what death is like? I don't know, but if it is then it's nothing to fear.