Hey all, just thought I'd get a topic and conversation started on death and what happens at the moment of no turning back...

I was driving last night and started having a meditation on the difference between individual consciousness and cosmic/universal consciousness and then out of nowhere a thought hit my like lightning - All death really is, is the individual consciousness' 100% actualisation of the universal infinite consciousness/Godhead

Obviously a speculation (all thoughts on death are) but the phrase had a certain ring to it, a certain kernel of truth within it's semantics. The analogy of a drop of water falling into the ocean and merging into one with the infinite expanse is a good way to picture this (you could even further the analogy and say that throwing a rock into the ocean and a drop of water that comes off that explosion is it's birth and when the drop comes back down and lands in the ocean is it's death - A nice analogy for the arc of life and death).

Once consciousness has complete 100% actualisation of cosmic consciousness there is no turning back, ie; death. (Though the outer limits of psychedelic experience ((5-meo DMT, ketamine etc)) may counter this when an individual experiences complete ego death and union with the godhead/cosmic consciousness - but it could be argued that remembering this state afterwards points to not having complete 100% union, a shred of the observing ego may still be in attendance, even if it's only 0.01% it still isn't 100% - probably as close as a human individual consciousness can get without actually dying).

I could go on further but I would love to know other peoples thoughts on this topic, factoring in peoples experience with either psychedelics or death.

All death is....is none of us have any idea

I really liked how you put it, Ive had this same epiphany many times on psychedelics and right now that's what I'm believing death is.

Agreed!.... But I find it fun to ponder

Ray of light, thanks, it makes the most sense to me like that too.

Hey Square, how come you be square regarding this thread.

Why not round yourself into the discussion?

Maybe you feel like you have.

In that case, pardon me for wanting to entertain my ego...

My name is not square, it is House.

I answered with my minimal opinion regarding the issue. I have nothing more to say because I do not even pretend to think I know what lies on the other side of our lifetimes. Enjoy discussing the unknowable.

That's perfectly fine House, a minimal opinion can be just as important as a long winded opinion. I hope my post didn't come across as pretending to think I know what happens beyond the veil of death, of course I don't but I have fun trying to entertain the idea and discussing the unknowable (even if it does amount to nothing more than speculation - you could say this about a lot of philosophy) and sharing it with other people

Peace and happy traveling

You might want to focus on the road instead of meditating or you'll find out sooner than you'd like.

That one made me laugh

I have two quotes relating to the topic.

The first is from the film “Solaris”, when the main character becomes unsure about the nature of his existence. He asks his wife (or a being who appears as his wife), “Am I alive or dead?” She answers “We don’t have to think like that any more.”

The second is from the deepest DMT experience I’ve ever had. I thought I had died, and wasn’t feeling ready yet. I was feeling distressed (understatement) and communicated this existential anxiety to an entity. The response was something like this: “Don’t be worried about dying – you were never actually alive in the first place.”

gibran2, I just laughed out loud. Thanks for that. That's hyperspacial humor at it's finest.

I've pondered this idea before and find it exhilarating and terrifying in equal measures - I guess that is the beauty of being human, we don't really know for certain that any version of reality that presents itself in front of us is what it really is... is it solid reality or just a solipsistic projection from my own minds eye? Or both? Or neither and so on and so forth

I don't subscribe to a cyclical universe (ala Nietzche or whoever), but it does unnerve me to a significant degree. What if you are reborn after you die, not in any profound sense, but literally reborn into the same body at the same moment with no accumulated progress, fated to live the same life all over again?

"throwing a rock into the ocean and a drop of water that comes off that explosion is it's birth and when the drop comes back down and lands in the ocean is it's death - A nice analogy for the arc of life and death"

I like this. The unit that is the drop ceases to be in any real sense, but the water molecules are still there. Another rock thrown into the ocean could at some future moment (ignoring any collapse in time) bring a fraction of your former self, even if it is just a molecule, back to life. Not that that means anything as it is first and foremost a part of the ocean.

This is a great analogy in terms of thinking of life and death this way.



That's what I was thinking? How were you meditating while operating a vehicle?



That's quite interesting, those words would make me wonder? If you have a thread to that experience I would be interested in reading it, if you could link it, at your convenience.



This sparked a thought process in me that I'd like to share for thought.

Imagine that reincarnation is true, as in we as a spiritual entity live many past and future lives through different physical vehicles. The talk about the the water molecule bringing a part of the former self back to life made me think of this:

What if after one of our former physical selves died many years ago and has decayed and after our spiritual entity has been reincarnated to inhabit a new physical body at some point. Then by chance, at some point over the duration of our new physical life, it's possible we could ingest the molecules of our former-self, or even breathe in the same molecules of air that our former-self once breathed. In a way, this would be our former-self being reborn/reanimated through... ourself?

Nice continuation of ideas on the water drop analogy! The last paragraph is a mind twister for sure

As for the meditating whilst driving - wrong choice of words, thinking would have been a better abjective, I wish I had my shit together enough to be able to meditate whilst operating heavy machinery!

Sure. These are some of the first posts I made here at the Nexus:

My Death, part I
My Death, part II
My Death, final thoughts

One other thought to throw out there is through the filter of relativity. In Einstein's vision of the universe all time and space is fixed; all past and present is built into the fabric of space-time. Of course we experience this universe episodically, but that may just be an illusion brought about by our consciousness.

If things are fixed, death has a very different meaning. If you are alive now (or have ever been) you will always be alive -- just in this place in space-time. What we call 'death' is just all the other places in the universe you are not alive. That applies to this moment, too. I am not alive on Mars, or in another galaxy. I am also not alive in 2099 (or so I assume).

We would think it incorrect to say, "I am dead on Mars." In the same way, it is inaccurate to say, "I am dead 500 years from now."

Nice one Nitegazer, definitely some other interpretations I wouldn't have thought of which gets the old cranium working! Gibran2's earlier post about his DMT journey where an entity told him not to worry because he was never really alive anyway has got me on a mad web search about the fact that our perceptions are all we have and all external matter might not be as it seems or even real, really thought provoking stuff. Here's a youtube link that goes into it in a neat fashion (the video seems kinda dated with 80's editing though and a funny voiceover).

Perception - The reality beyond matter

Thanks for the link-- interesting how similar the message of the video and of Buddhism seems to me.

Have you ever read Oliver Sacks? The level to which we depend on a simplified model of the universe really becomes apparent when studying minds that work differently than our own.

I think the universe is like an eternal etch a sketch. Death is like the universe shaking itself.