danielsuperxxPeople who have died and came back, what was your experience?
I would really compare it to dying, but having had seizures, you can appear dead and then wake up really disoriented and scared.
I used to work with adults who had seizures and it was terrifying but I was always curious what it was like for the person experiencing the seizure. Like, what exactly do you remember? If you don’t mind going into detail, if not, I’m sorry I asked.
Do you remember falling to the ground and then your consciousness jumps to waking up and there’s nothing between?
I didn’t feel it coming on, the first thing I remember is someone helping me. They thought I was dead. I was unconscious on the ground with eyes open, hit my head on the floor and bit through my tongue so I was bleeding from the mouth. Everyone thought I was dead. When I woke up I had no idea where I was or what happened so I was very agitated. At least for the type of seizures I have, its like an on-off switch. There are other types though.
I witnessed this once years ago during the start of a class I was attending. Girl from the back gets up and starts walking towards the door, mumbling. She seemed off, so I stood up and asked if she was okay. She fell straight back and I tried to catch her but failed. She foamed at the mouth and started turning blue. I had no idea what to do. Medics show up and the class clears out, but I staid because she basically half fallen on me. When she woke up she looked straight at me and said “hi.”
I suffered a traumatic brain injury as a pedestrian who didn’t look both ways. My answer isn’t very fun but I technically qualify as I had to be resuscitated on scene.
I was in a coma for a few days and then–despite being conscious and over time regaining awareness, then vocalization, then even conversational speech–I wasn’t writing any new long term memories for a couple of months. My experience of that dark period, to the extent that it isn’t nothing, is pretty vague. The memories of months preceding injury are pretty blurry until the injury which I don’t remember and then the next I remember is being tied to a hospital bed and chewing on the Posey mitts. I remember some hallucinating in that period, one instance is an ordinary piece of a day interacting with nurses and therapists but perceiving everything as if drawn in the Family Guy cartoon. I post-hoc interpret that memory as a vague basically dream state that got mashed in with a Family Guy memory.
So no, no afterlife experience or memories of the other side.
This is a topic that fascinates me. I’ve read extensively about it. I am an atheist but sometimes I ponder after hearing these stories.
Same. I am between believing in souls or not, so this is a topic worth pondering.
Maybe you fall a bit more agnostic then?
I’m open to the idea. If the evidence supports it then I’d believe. So far I’ve seen nothing to convince me
Anti god or anti religion? I’m pretty ok saying, “i don’t know, nobody knows, i guess I’ll find out one day, or not.”
YOu can’t be anti-something you don’t believe is real. I have no issues with religion.
Not sure that atheism excludes belief in life after death, tbh. We’re all alive right now with no god, after all.
Well, i am, but I’m still not sure about the rest of you.
Actually, now you come to mention it…
This is exactly why I always wonder. I recall reading every single comment on a Reddit’s thread (at least 2000 comments)
You might be interested about reading experiences of general anesthesia and split brain experiments aswell then. It’s really weird how human consciousness works.
I have had my fair of surgeries. I don’t remember anything from when I go under to when I wake up. I always ponder, is that what death is like? It is hard to imagine there being nothing.
I don’t know if this counts. I had a stroke while I was sleeping. I had very vivid nightmares that night, almost the worst nightmares I’ve ever had. It’s made me terrified of dying in my sleep. If my final experiences are going to be like that I absolutely do not want to go out in my sleep.
“He died peacefully his sleep” is something people only say for catharsis.
Bri Guy You mind if I ask what those nightmares were about?
I don’t remember, I just remember it being horrible. Nothing religious or anything like that. Realizing I lost one of my eyes took over memories of the dreams.
Night terrors are still top of the list for nightmares though.
FYI, there is a community, [email protected], if anyone here is interested in this kind of thing.
Near Death Experiences - Lemmy.world
Near death experiences, or NDEs, are when a person’s physical body is dead (cardiopulmonary arrest) or extremely close to being dead, but the consciousness of the person continues to exist in what we today can only define as an occult, spiritual, or mystical framework. Here, we share experiences, insights, scientific research, and engage in thoughtful discussions about NDEs. Everyone is welcome, as long as they follow the guidelines. Community Guidelines 1. Respect: Please respect all members and their experiences. Open-mindedness is key in our discussions. 2. Relevance: Keep posts and discussions related to NDEs and associated topics. 3. Safety: Do not promote dangerous or harmful practices. NDEs are a personal and often sensitive topic, and discussions should be handled with care. 4. Learning: We’re all here to learn. Be open to asking questions, sharing insights, and engaging in thoughtful discussions.
Thank you!
Is there a community or hub similar to /r/creepyaskreddit?
I need my spooky fix!
I never came across that subreddit! On a quick search I found there is a direct equivalent in the form of [email protected] . It’s not very active but there’s only one way to change that! There might be another community that’s more active and basically the same thing, but, like I said, I only did a very quick search, just to see if there was a community with a directly corresponding name.
Here’s some other communities you might be interested in, though, that I grabbed from my subscriptions list:
PARANORMAL / MISC.
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
CRYPTID
UFO / UAP
mkeCan you define “death” in the context of your question? I feel you might have referred to some forms of reversible coma.
They are. People colloquially refer to a stopped heart as “coming back from the dead.” Obviously you cannot truly come back from the dead if its your brain that’s dead.
BrooklynManI don’t want to discuss the incident in detail because it was very traumatic, but long story short, I had a near-drowning incident when I was 12 (technically not a drowning because I survived). I was technically dead for several minutes.
I saw nothing. total blank. I remember flashes of struggling to get to the side of the pool one moment, and flashes of waking up in an ambulance the next. then it cuts out again, and then I woke up in a hospital room with tubes in all my holes (plus some tubes in new holes) and surrounded by my mom and brothers.
Glad you made it and are hopefully doing ok. I work with kids with disabilities and the near drowning kids or ‘choked on a pill’ kids are the hardest. I just imagine the range of emotions a family goes through in that short time.
I have been clinically dead on two occasions. Once from meningitis, 108 F fever, seizures and heart stopped for 4 minutes.
The second time was severe blood loss, requiring 4 transfusions, surgeries, cpr, oxygen and defibrillator after my heart stopped.
The first time I remember getting tunnel vision, then kind of floating from the ceiling watching the room. I was a child then and my brain definitely wasn’t working, but I was too young to know about out of body experiences.
The second time was in my 20’s with no head injury. Everything just started whiting out and seeming far away. I sunk back while attempting to explain to the nurse and then that was it. She looked really concerned and ran out, but I had no cares or pain at all. Just a fading into the distance.
It was like I didn’t exist, time didn’t exist. Totally different than sleeping or anesthesia. Slowly became aware of a noise. It went on until I slowly started to see as well. Then thoughts started again. I noticed the loud noise was the air being forced out of my lungs from CPR. It went on a bit, I was aware of it but not concerned or thinking anything.
The doctor doing it was telling them to ready the defibrillator again, and in that pause I said I was awake and/or attempted to move. That was about the time I even realized what was happening. Somehow the room had filled with at least 8 concerned people and all that time had passed instantaneously for me.
They said I had no heartbeat for several minutes and had been clinically dead. Spent 3 days in ICU listening to my neighbors die, then two weeks in rehab center, followed by 6 months of recovery. I didn’t eat, drink or go to the bathroom for a week besides IV and catheter. Even trying a single sip of broth after 3 days of nothing was so difficult. I had no hunger.
Also to add a follow up. I had ptsd and my only serious interests are meditation, philosophy and spirituality since this occurred. I feel a strong sense that everything in life is illusionary, just a projection of the mind. I don’t remember anything but the nothingness and timelessness but I feel like there was something more to it.
I do not want to be brought back again the next time this happens. That would mean at least two more deaths to experience instead of one more. 3 times is enough. The hardest part wasn’t being dead, but the dying process and then the long recovery.
What a great post. Thank you for sharing it and all the best for you!
Thanks for sharing
Adora 🏳️⚧️Incredible story. This is making me reflect on a lot of things. I’ve had the same feelings re: projection of the mind, and I feel much calmer hearing this. Thank you so much for sharing.
People often think about death as some kind of positive non-existence when in reality death can’t by definition be experienced. If it feels like something then it’s the process of dying people are talking about. Not being dead. I believe the closest thing to death we can “experience” is general anesthesia and the people who have gone thru that know there’s nothing to experience. Just a teleportation from one moment to another.
This actually makes me believe in some form of “rebirth”. Not in the sense most people think about it but since consciousness can only experience being but not “not being” then it seems very likely that death just means that your experience moves from one place to another. If there’s a break in between you can’t experience. You just can’t help but keep having experiences.
Really interesting stuff. Sam Harris made a fascinating podcast about this subject. As a subscriber I can give free links to the full episode if you’re interested. Just send me a PM.
Since I was dead and did not experience self, time or consciousness while this happened the closest I can explain it is that I just didn’t exist during that period of reference. It was like time travel, and did not feel like anesthesia, the time completely felt like it did not happen. It was minutes but might as well have been thousands of years, there was no concept of time at all.
My personal theory is that whatever death is, it exists outside of the concept of time. It seems that your consciousness resets and you find yourself alive again. In my case back in the same body but if reincarnation is possible then in a new life.
The perceived time doesn’t seem to need to be in any time frame or chronological order. Maybe you instantly skip over many years, or even transfer to the past.
Here is a theory I came up with entirely based on my own experiences, only to find out it is a real quantum physics theory:
…wikipedia.org/…/Quantum_suicide_and_immortality
Basically you find yourself in the reality where you somehow survive, because the one where you didn’t you don’t have consciousness.
I’m not sure how to pm on here but maybe if you send me one I can see it to check out your links.
Quantum suicide is really interesting, I’ve always thought something like this could be possible and this is the first time I’m learning that there’s a word for it. There’s something intuitive about it, I bet lots of people also feel the same way. I’ve been in a few potentially near-death situations and one specific thought always pops into my head afterwards, “I wonder how many versions of me just died from that.”
Yes and it is also important to point out that if this is true, there is even more reason to be careful with your life and health.
You would have a situation where your family experiences your death in one reality, but you might continue on disabled in another. It only requires you to be conscious, but your physical condition doesn’t matter.
That’s a terrifying thought. But then what happens when you get very old? We don’t live forever. And even if some life extension technology is discovered before we die, what about everyone in the past who died? Did they all end up in a reality where some incredible technology figured out how to keep everyone conscious indefinitely? What about people who lived before we even knew what viruses were? As intuitive as it feels, it doesn’t seem to pass the smell test. I would guess that some of the “intuition” I’m feeling is actually just a fear of dying
I would imagine it could continue on until it absolutely can’t anymore. At which point it either ends, or some kind of ascension or rebirth.
Hopefully your soul, higher power, the universe, etc would have choice or mercy at some point. Maybe you eventually accomplish what you needed from this life.
If it is purely physics without choice then you would eventually find yourself as one of the world’s longest living people. It would keep branching until the very last reality where there are no more where you can possibly survive. At least you would have a good answer when people ask your secret to long life lol.
There’s this hypothesis called Quantum Archaeology, I’m not a scientist and I don’t know how believable this is (If you think you understand Quantum Physics, it means you definitely don’t and all that), but there’s an idea that the universe may “remember” details about… well… everything, and this “memory” could be tapped into by a sufficiently advanced computer capable of datamining reality itself… Allowing you to bring anyone back from the dead, provided you have enough ink in your 3D Printer and all the 1’s and 0’s that make up what ancient people mistook for a soul.
I gave you how I understand it, it’s likely more complicated than that if it’s indeed real. (Never got a solid answer one way or another, a friend of mine talked about it once… He was very anti-mysticism and pro-rationalism, so I took it more seriously than I would have if some Spirit Science Hippie told me about it… He up and vanished one day, never found out what happened.)
If Quantum Archaeology AND Quantum Immortality/Quantum Suicide hold true, it’s possible that once you get old enough the only timelines left to “jump to” are societies in the far future where Quantum Archeaology is a puzzle that’s been cracked.
Heck, maybe Heaven & Hell and are merely some Dyson Swarm powered Alien Satellite somewhere that’s just been left to “Crunch the numbers” as it were. I don’t know, anything’s possible in an infinite and unknowable universe.
Sam Harris believes in life after death?
No and even if so then not in the way any religion describes it.
You literally just said he did!
Mind showing me the quote where I said that?
I may have misread or misunderstood, but it sounded like you said Sam Harris believed that somehow you experienced a form of “rebirth”, where you appear somewhere else after death, and talked about this on a podcast.
If that’s not what you meant, I apologize, that is how I understood what you wrote.
The podcast was about death in general and what I was talking about is just one thing he talked about. It’s not aomething he believes in per se but just an idea he entertained. I can link you the full episode if you’re interested.
Ah I see, sorry these days it’s very easy to equate talking about something to giving support for it, terrible habit.
Yeah no worries. I added a little more detailed explanation of the theory to my previous post.
Check out the Law of One for some funky spiritual stuff. There might be something in there that makes sense of this reality for you.
There’s just a gap in my memory like going to sleep and not dreaming. The waking up was brutal though. I had zero context of anything around me but my brain was still fully functioning. It was weird.
I imagine that’s how the first true ai will feel. It still will “know” information, how to speak, etc, but it will have no idea wtf is going on
Oh, I can assure you with the utmost confidence that you were not dead for half a hour. If you’re going to make something up, at least do a little googling beforehand.
genuinepartsTechnically it is possible if the reason for cardiac arrest was hypothermia. The longest documented time between cardiac arrest and resuscitation is almost 7 hours. That’s where the old adage “No one is dead until they are warm and dead.” comes from.
“Most survivors had a favourable neurological outcome.” Fascinating. I suppose I stand corrected on many points here. Thanks for the link!
For the record, I still roundly call bullshit on OP’s claim here :) Feels like dying in a snow drift or something would be a detail they’d include.
I didn’t want to include the cause of death because it seems even more outlandish and unbelievable than the duration of death, and the cause of death essentially deanonymizes my account. But I guess this username is already toasted from being used too much so I added evidence to my op.
Dude. I stand corrected and I apologize. I am generally incredulous on the internet as a rule, and I figure my defenses were particularly high given the sort of woo-woo shit that comes with a post like this.
Sorry. If it counts for anything I learned a metric fuckton from this exchange.
No worries bro. I got way more upset than I needed to. We’re good, my friend.
It’s also possible if you get cpr the entire time like we did.
I can assure you I was. I was getting CPR the entire time. Maybe don’t run your mouth without knowing the full story?
gabe [he/him]My dad did. He’s never fully went into every detail, but he has talked about it in bits in pieces over the years and he said quite a bit as I was struggling with the passing of my mother. From what I know he had a major heart attack and there was a point where the chest pain just… stopped and one second he was there and the next second he just wasn’t. He described it as like, leaving his body in some way and being surrounded by light, warmth and peace. He apparently met and was hugged by family members and relatives he hadn’t seen in years. He’s always been pretty limited beyond that, but from what I gather it felt like they were there to greet him briefly but didn’t have the expectation for him to stay with them. Kind of like “hey, we’re here but it’s not time yet” in the way he’s talked about it.
There’s been claims in the family he has always been hesitant to talk about but apparently he saw relatives there that died long before he was even born and was able to recognize these dead relatives in extremely old family photos.
Thank you for your post!
Has anyone asked why he avoids the topic?
Has anyone asked why he avoids the topic?