Death…may be what we call God

[china]

When death comes, it does not ask your permission; it comes and takes you; it destroys you on the spot. In the same way, can you totally drop hate, envy, pride of possession, attachment to beliefs, to opinions, to ideas, to a particular way of thinking? Can you drop all that in an instant? There is no “how to drop it”, because that is only another form of continuity. To drop opinion, belief, attachment, greed, or envy is to die—to die every day, every moment. If there is the coming to an end of all ambition from moment to moment, then you will know the extraordinary state of being nothing, of coming to the abyss of an eternal movement, as it were, and dropping over the edge—which is death.
I want to know all about death, because death may be reality; it may be what we call God—that most extraordinary something that lives and moves and yet has no beginning and no end. :roll:

 

[MHz]

Without God we will certainly spend more time there than in the living world. Sleeping with no night visions.

 

[china]

Without God

What is God .....death ?

 

[Cliffy]

Is death any different than the dream state. Life, as we think of it, is only one small aspect of our greater whole. It is only in the "waking" hours that we question anything. But are we not just god dreaming of being human?

 

[JLM]

Is death any different than the dream state. Life, as we think of it, is only one small aspect of our greater whole. It is only in the "waking" hours that we question anything. But are we not just god dreaming of being human?

I'm inclined to think of "life" as just one step or stepping stone in a series of many. What we do here may have some bearing on our status in the next life- guess it's called Karma.

 

[L Gilbert]

On the other hand, life could be all there is. Like a light bulb; if you are switched off, but you have potential - you are sleeping; if you are switched on, you are alive and doing what you do best. If you are burnt out, it's into the recycling bin with you and you are replaced. No gods and gremlins involved, none needed.

 

[Cliffy]

Hmmm! Compost s good.

 

[L Gilbert]

Meat isn't really good in the compost bin, though. It can be a health hazard.

 

[Niflmir]

Accustom yourself to believing that death is nothing to us, for good and evil imply the capacity for sensation, and death is the privation of all sentience; therefore a correct understanding that death is nothing to us makes the mortality of life enjoyable, not by adding to life a limitless time, but by taking away the yearning after immortality. For life has no terrors for him who has thoroughly understood that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to live. Foolish, therefore, is the man who says that he fears death, not because it will pain when it comes, but because it pains in the prospect. Whatever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation. Death, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are, death is not come, and, when death is come, we are not. It is nothing, then, either to the living or to the dead, for with the living it is not and the dead exist no longer.

Epicurus

 

[lone wolf]

I can't explain the cold, or the flashy lights, or the feeling of levitation. I'm sure there's probably a medical explanation for all that ... like oxygen starvation, or loss of blood flow, or confused nervous responses. I can only explain what happened that day at Memorial in terms I can understand....

 

[Cliffy]

Meat isn't really good in the compost bin, though. It can be a health hazard.

That is why I would rather that my body be taken out into the forest for the wild animals to feed on. I would like to return to the food chain that sustained me in life. Better to recycle the old vehicle than to waste it in a fire or buried in a hermetically sealed casket.

I realize that this should not become a general practice as most people on the north American diet are mostly toxic waste. But if I have the where with all to do it, when I realize that death is near, I will try to drag my carcass out into the forest and give back to Momma, at least partially, what I took out in this life.

 

[Cliffy]

I can't explain the cold, or the flashy lights, or the feeling of levitation. I'm sure there's probably a medical explanation for all that ... like oxygen starvation, or loss of blood flow, or confused nervous responses. I can only explain what happened that day at Memorial in terms I can understand....

I distinctly remember leaping out of my body when I saw that logging truck bumper about to t-bone my snowmobile. I remember floating above the crumpled heap of my body lying on the ice. I watched as my neighbour shook my body and asking if I was alive. I crept back in my body to tell her to stop shaking me as it was doing more damage, then leaving again. I went to a dark, quiet place where I felt no fear or pain, just peace. A disembodied voice said I had a choice to continue on this course or to return to my body.

What can I say. I experienced it. Do I really want to know the hows or the whys? It just happened. To me it was just another vivid life experience.

 

[L Gilbert]

Perfectly inderstandable that you don't want to invesitgate the hows and whys of your "out-of-body" experience but then there is no reason to leap to some mystical and supernatural explanation either. lol Unfortunately, when people can't figure something out, they tend to leap to magical conclusions.

 

[darkbeaver]

That is why I would rather that my body be taken out into the forest for the wild animals to feed on. I would like to return to the food chain that sustained me in life. Better to recycle the old vehicle than to waste it in a fire or buried in a hermetically sealed casket.

I realize that this should not become a general practice as most people on the north American diet are mostly toxic waste. But if I have the where with all to do it, when I realize that death is near, I will try to drag my carcass out into the forest and give back to Momma, at least partially, what I took out in this life.

A long time ago I determined to do much the same thing Cliffy just find a bit of cool moss beside still waters and lie down and give myself back to it. I don't like the cold so being buried would bother even in death I think. Burning would be OK but being eaten by the creepies and crawlies I find compelling.

 

[MHz]

What is God .....death ?

Even taking your first pot into account I'm still a little lost as to your point. From my POV death is a dreamless sleep that ends at Christ's return or at the Great White Throne. For those that don't believe in the Bible they would call them dreams but those dreams that should start out as being one or the other of those two places. From my POV death is as long as a snap of the fingers for the one that experiences it even though 100's or 1,000's of earth years could have passed during that snap. In case I'm headed in the wrong direction there is no need to get into what forms of communication the dead can experience.