Fear of death.

"Full of shit" is not a phrase often directly associated with Zen masters. Points for originality. :)

http://nighttimethoughts.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/mountain20stream.jpg

Don't drink the water.

<I>even if you die the matter and energy in your body remains in the universe until it ends so you still exist

― The Cheerfull Turtle (Latham Green), Friday, June 29, 2012 4:37 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
</I>

Yeah well that ain't gonna catch me up on missed seasons of Adventure Time or Parks & Rec, so.

emil.y otm. the "matter and energy in your body remains in the universe" stuff is no antidote to the entirely rational fear of death.

To quote Ray Bradbury, "I'm not afraid of dying. I'm afraid of not living." That's what we should all be afraid of.

kinda the other way around for me and most ppl i suspect. dying sounds horrible. not living is not something u experience at all.

emil.y otm. the "matter and energy in your body remains in the universe" stuff is no antidote to the entirely rational fear of death.

Yeah but nothing is! I mean, maybe for some people. But there's not any one thing you can say that will cause 100% of people to not be afraid of death. I don't think anyone said there was, anyways...

May as well get depressed that the sun is going down, or that your friend is in another geographic location than you, or something.

Or what if we all got sad right before we go to sleep, because we know we won't be awake and experiencing the world.

we get it.

adam bruneau aren't you like 23 or something

I'm not actually afraid of death. But not because of some hippy nonsense. Because I know I won't regret being dead when I'm dead, because it's quite simply impossible to do so.

The process of dying, on the other hand... Ouch.

only 23 year olds are made of stars iirc

yeah i like living, not really looking forward to dying, seems like that particular transition is going to be lame.

Adam Bruneau OTM.

Defining Life, Reality, Being, Consciousness by strictly logical and rational terms is completely inadequate and I think it's super naive and blinkered to LOL at anything that recognizes that and attempts to transcend it. Like, HAHA 23 Year Olds and Star Stuffs, but that's not a new or stupid concept. The New Age movement (or at least the popular perception of it) has kind of sullied the name of a lot of worthwhile Eastern philosophy/teaching. Unfortunate.

I have no problem with "we are all star stuff". It recognises our place as an infinitesimal part of a mind-boggling vast universe, made up of matter that has existed for a mind-boggling amount of time. I *do* have a problem with someone who infers from that that they have existed for all eternity and will continue to do so. No, you haven't. Maybe you should consider what personal identity means more.

yeah consciousness is a very specific process. consciousness is what creates an "i" from the billions of parallel processes happening in your brain. therefore when your brain ceases to function, there is no "i." saying that we are all made of stars and will last forever etc. may be a weird kind of consolation to some but what terrifies me is an end to the experience of living, which amounts to being an "i" in the world.

really wish i just never read any cognitive neuroscience and could sustain some kind of irrational believe in the survival of human personality after death. it would probably mean i'd spend less of my day staring into space in existential dread, and just get on with things.

but knowing that personality is fundamentally embodied kinds of puts a damper on that.

I don't fear death, but I do get sad that I won't get to see far future technologies.

it's weird that people fear the eventual destruction of earth/the universe when we all face our personal apocalypse before that. lars von trier made a somewhat clever movie about this IIRC.

i dont!

i dunno... like i said above, the fact that not-being is a state i will be unaware of, takes away its sting. i just won't be there. there'll be no fear, no pain, no nothin'.

having said that, something you wrote above will probably click for me in the middle of the night tonight and i'll wake up screaming haha

people, people, just believe in an afterlife

Im 31.

lol

Maybe you should consider what personal identity means more.

I will consider it and i do consider it. The ego, birth-to-death consciousness is important. It's just not personally as important as it's place in the wider scope of existence, which stretches beyond generations. Do you believe in God? Cos I do. There is some irrational, deeply felt connection that transcends my life and my experience. I can't explain it, it's just there. And it really makes life and death of an individual not such a big deal.

Gotta say I agree with circa1916, New Age Movement has kind of spoiled importation of plenty of valid Eastern concepts to the West. LOL @ hippies.

Do you believe in God? Cos I do.

Ah. Okay. Then I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

I was a pretty committed atheist, rationalist, "the immediately tangible, quantifiable is all there is" type of person for years. There's been a slow but definite change recently. One: Don't laugh. I had a pretty intense experience with psychedelic mushrooms. Very profound if hard to articulate, obviously. Total shift in perception. I'd count it as a significant step in annihilating that fear of death that was always looming. There's a lot of study into the connection between psychedelics and overcoming the fear of death. Heard an ad on NPR asking for terminally ill folks interested in undergoing tests with psilocybin just a few weeks ago. Two: I've been meditating regularly and reading into a variety of Eastern teaching (totally a tourist in this area at the moment, so I'd be embarrassed to make suggestions). Also have been illuminated by some of Huxley's writing about the visionary experience, the Perennial Philosophy, etc.

Anyway, this is obviously not a path that will work for everyone, but I've never felt more "aware" and at peace in my life. I was totally a skeptic of anything even brushing against "mystical", but I've found significant, edifying worth in all of this.

Neither taking mushrooms nor meditating are irrational unless you decide to interpret them as such. Awe-inspiring phenomenology is a perfectly cool thing separate from belief in the mystical.

It's just not personally as important as it's place in the wider scope of existence,

no, your "identity" is a construction of your mind and ceases when your mind ceases to function.

Do you believe in God? Cos I do. There is some irrational, deeply felt connection that transcends my life and my experience. I can't explain it, it's just there. And it really makes life and death of an individual not such a big deal.

adam, THIS is the reason you're not afraid of death. congrats and all but your comforting talk about how death isn't any different from birth etc etc is coming from a totally different place from ppl who think that death means the permanent irreversible loss of everything you know and love.

i can only understand "faith" (in a higher/transcendent power and order) as a kind of way of getting through life rather than some kind of access to another realm (we are trapped in our minds, so that "other realm" many claim to see/feel is likewise in their heads).

i have this argument w/ my girlfriend a lot, but i find it hard to believe that many people, who don't have a few screws loose, can have absolute faith. i imagine most people's "faith" more as a kind of mental dam against existential doubt and dread. but i've never known anyone who claimed to have, much less had, absolute faith in this sense.

i often kind of wish someone would talk me into believing in god, an afterlife, etc.

Personal identity is not the end-all be-all of existence imho. My faith isn't in any life-like afterlife or anthropomorphic deity. God is by nature incomprehensible, so there's really no way to talk anyone into believing in it. Just like there's no way to talk anyone into quitting smoking. It's a personal journey.

I'm not saying I'm 100% unafraid of death tho. Most of my FOD moments have been contemplating the loss of family members, loved ones, etc.

Personal identity is not the end-all be-all of existence imho.

it is the only existence that one can _experience_.

i often kind of wish someone would talk me into believing in god, an afterlife, etc.

we did this, 9 years ago:

I'll give all my cash to anyone on ILX who can convert me to Christianity without the aid of drugs, reeducation seminars, or threats of physical force.

death means the permanent irreversible loss of everything you know and love

I agree with this, btw!

But also, this happens every day, constantly, throughout life.

from that thread: Some theology begins to sound like the sort of dog-chasing-tail intellectual activity that goes on in English departments everywhere. It's interesting I'll admit, very interesting, but when it boils down to it I don't want Emil Brunner's faith but Al Green's faith.

rings true for me.

i dont!

i dunno... like i said above, the fact that not-being is a state i will be unaware of, takes away its sting. i just won't be there. there'll be no fear, no pain, no nothin'.

having said that, something you wrote above will probably click for me in the middle of the night tonight and i'll wake up screaming haha

― funny-skrillex-bee_132455836669.gif (s1ocki), Friday, June 29, 2012 7:37 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Slocki otm. Sometimes I worry about dying before I get to do all the things I'd like to but then I remind myself that I'll be dead so I won't be aware of the fact that I didn't do those things and that it won't matter and I feel better. I'm way more concerned with friends/family dying then I am with my own death.

Neither taking mushrooms nor meditating are irrational unless you decide to interpret them as such. Awe-inspiring phenomenology is a perfectly cool thing separate from belief in the mystical.

i never interpreted them as irrational or worthless. i just underestimated their usefulness. some sort of deeper, primordial understanding can be gained from this kind of probing. "awe-inspiring phenomenology" is too vast a thing and will unravel differently depending on the person/state of mind.

At any rate, i think to be more in fear of a family member's death than your own shows that we have a deep compassion for other people.

"The wider scope of existence" can get fucked tbqh. I like doing and experiencing and learning stuff and would, given the choice, do so for another 500 years at least.

(500 years is the point at which you get bored enough to step in front of a train, is my understanding.)

there's no comfort in the fact that it happens every day to other people, that it's a part of life, etc. other people were probably afraid of dying too. for all the people that go off peacefully there's just as many that don't. death itself is not an advertisement for 'it's cool, nbd'.

I want to explain this but I will try to do it in a way that doesn't rip the bandaid and leave me in the fetal position later tonight....but my personal experience with this fear is this:
the thought of *the moment* of dying scares me because of the follow-on thought of 'why was I here in the first place'. The minutiae of my own day to day life occasionally lulls me into a feeling of purpose. But if I close my eyes and don't wake up tomorrow...what was all that for? this stuff that I'm typing here. that meal I just cooked. the coffee that i drank. they all go with me. sure there's parts of me left behind but ME, thinking wondering dreaming all stops. Maybe with no warning. I don't think it's narcissism that makes that thought terrifying to me. Maybe it's some kind of existential dilemma I dunno.

There's a physical terror that comes it. I can tell you exactly how it feels everytime that fear comes over me. It feels like the sensation of falling, or those weird jolts you get when you drop too fast into REM sleep...that's what the fear of dying feels like to me. It feels like helplessness.

Man, you and me, VG, separated at birth on this one.

join me in my sad little lifeboat

We're gonna live forever. We're gonna learn how to fly.

HIIIGH

Science may find a way in our lifetimes or that of another generation, to sustain our bodies for hundreds of year. Maybe eventually forever.

I think consciousness attaches to matter, rather than matter creating consciousness. I am conscious, other people are conscious, animals are conscious, even one-celled organisms display some kind of creative intuition. Plants are conscious *. They are all conscious in a different way than me, quantifiable on different levels of sensory awareness, brain activity, etc. Rocks and Earth may be conscious in some as-yet undetectable way. Maybe in the future we find out the differences in blue ray shift and the complexity of background radiation are other, cosmic forms of consciousness.

The thing is, each experience is unique. In one way it is our bodies that are creating the experience: of having an individual, human/animal/etc life cycle. It is scientifically proven that we exchange all the cells in our body every 7 to 10 years**. That includes the brain - the entire seat of consciousness to mainstream science. So given this, consciousness cannot derive itself entirely from the physical matter. The DNA and other genetic codes contained in our cells - the pattern, the information - that is the real root of consciousness.

This pattern is informed by our environment (at the grossest stage, Survival of the Fittest) and our subjective experiences through psychological processes affecting chemical processes at the cellular level. Death would be a drastic change in consciousness, to be sure. But given these facts and a gut feeling, I really don't see it as being the complete and total annihilation of the pattern.

But yes, the human experience (which is cut off at birth and death) is something special and unique, as are all experiences.

*http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=researcher-argues-that-plants-see-12-06-26

**http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/science/02cell.html?pagewanted=all

those weird jolts you get when you drop too fast into REM sleep...that's what the fear of dying feels like to me. It feels like helplessness

I know exactly what you mean, I've had some weird dreams that physically felt like precursors to out of body experiences. Death is most certainly a loss of control. However, there is plenty of that in life too!

i do believe drugs can help

I think consciousness attaches to matter, rather than matter creating consciousness.

??? "consciousness" as we understand it is a product of processes in the brain. there is nothing problematic about positing that certain cells that make up part of that process die and duplicate and are replaced etc, because consciousness does not reside in any given cell.

besides which, if consciousness is "the root of consciousness," i should point out that (a) the root is not the thing; individual stem cells are not "conscious" in any meaningful sense---- (b) DNA is matter, just very very very small matter.

i think you are leaping from science to mystical speculation. and i think you are entirely wrong. but if it makes you feel better....

i meant to write

if DNA is "the root of consciousness"

DNA is no more consciousness than a marigold seed is a fully-blossomed marigold.