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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

...to ask what happens when you die?

433 replies

TeaAndAMarmiteSandwhich · 11/12/2017 22:58

... or more accurately, what you think happens?

I really really don't want to die (a good thing I guess! As I wasn't too bothered either way as a moody teen, but now I love life most of the time and want to hang around).

It's comforting to think there's a heaven, but I don't believe there is (and I'd probably get bored if I had to stay there for EVER). But when u die - is that it? Game over ? I'm not too keen on that idea either.

What do you think happens? and what would you like to think happens? Hmm

OP posts:
Namow · 12/12/2017 20:21

It terrifies me.

I believe there is something more because I have to believe that. Anything else has me gibbering on the edge of lunacy.

I don't think anyone should be so quick to squash what anyone else believes. Too much scorn on this thread. Sometimes belief is just hope. It's just a hoping mechanism. Maybe it's ok to just let people have that.

Namow · 12/12/2017 20:22

I meant coping mechanism but I like hoping mechanism and am going to save that and use it sometime.

Frustrationqueen · 12/12/2017 20:22

Maybe the brain is just the tool that is used on this plane.
We might not need the brain in another realm

NooNooHead · 12/12/2017 20:25

It does make me think it is odd though how all our thoughts and experiences are just electrical currents firing between neurons in the brain... and that this literally is all it takes for consciousness to exist. Pretty mind blowing in a way...

MsHarry · 12/12/2017 20:25

Watched my DM die 2 years ago. She's been in a morphine induced sleep and her breathing became mechanical but then it just stopped. It was obvious she had gone and her body was like the shell she no longer needed. It was very clear and final and obvious to me that despite being brought up as Catholic, there was nothing left. She lives on in us(her children and grandchildren) little ways and sayings, an expression here or there and all the things she taught us. I think of her every day.

Vitalogy · 12/12/2017 20:26

If we actually existed externally to the brain then we wouldn't need a brain. We need the brain to help us experience this so called material world. The body and brain is the vehicle for the soul.

TakemedowntoPotatoCity · 12/12/2017 20:29

It frightens me if I think too much about it. If you fall seep, you wake up. If you have an anaesthetic, you wake up. If you die, you stay blacked out. For all eternity.
Right I am going to stop thinking about this now!

ApplesTheHare · 12/12/2017 20:34

I don't want to die but came close after having DD due to massive PPH. I'm less scared of dying now but more sad at the thought of being dead. The experience was like an accidental nap. It scared me how quickly you can go under. I'm sure pain/illness that often leads up to death is terrible but have no doubt that actual death itself is swift and final. Think about the corpses you've seen. There's something so fundamental missing. Whatever it is that animates us leaves when we die.

MsHarry · 12/12/2017 20:41

There's something so fundamental missing. Whatever it is that animates us leaves when we die.

Exactly this. I looked at my DM and knew that this was a body, not my wonderful mum. She lives on in me by all she left behind.

Madreputa · 12/12/2017 20:52

There must be some kind of an afterlife and reincarnation because all the people with NDEs and inexplicable experiences can't all make up a big fucking lie.
Take Dalia Lama. Do you think that he and all his Buddhist buddies are silly, deluded fools? He is a highly intelligent person who I don't think would try to spread some inane story about reincarnation and afterlife to millions of people out of sheer boredom for his own entertainment. Every time he dies his followers set out to find his reincarnation and when they find him in the body of a child, that child recognises them, and with chilling accuracy tells them details of his previous life. A little kid can't fake shit like that.

ApplesTheHare · 12/12/2017 20:58

Madreputa the explanation there lies in the fact the followers find the child first, not the other way round. Young children only know and/or believe what adults tell them. I could easily convince a small child they were a reincarnation.

Madreputa · 12/12/2017 21:04

ApplesTheHare
But his followers only find one kid out of possible hundreds and thousands. Why do they spot only that kid, and not the others? And it doesn't happen the way you imagine that they just choose a random kid who seems to know a lot about Dalia Lama. They are meticulous in their quest. I think you should read books about it..

liz70 · 12/12/2017 21:06

"We need the brain to help us experience this so called material world. The body and brain is the vehicle for the soul."

Thanks, you've phrased that better than I could. It's the same as I said previously about the person contacting proving they can see and hear without eyes and ears. The physical organs are part of the body our souls are housed in during our human experience, not necessary when we're in spirit form.

ApplesTheHare · 12/12/2017 21:20

Madreputa apparently they have sometimes found more than one boy during the search and the criteria used to make the final decision is secret. Unfortunately I don't think one such exceptional and questionable example of reincarnation can be taken to mean there is life after death. When I came close to death I had what you could call visions and an experience of feeling like I had to 'choose' whether to stay or to go. This seems to be a common theme in NDEs but having experienced it I'm sure it's just the brain running out of oxygen.

Lucisky · 12/12/2017 21:21

Heaven and hell are here on earth.
Death is nothing at all.

BonnieF · 12/12/2017 21:22

You stop breathing, your heart stops beating, blood stops circulating around your body and starts coagulating, electrical activity in the brain and central nervous system ceases, metabolic activity ends, body heat disperses until equilibrium with its surroundings.

Your brain is no longer functioning, your personality ceases to exist, you are 'brain dead' and your body is a piece of cold meat.

The process of physical decomposition starts almost immediately after death and continues until only your skeleton remains.

nong45 · 12/12/2017 21:34

We’re all made of stars and on death revert to our constituent elements. I actually find that comforting, a feeling of always belonging to the universe.

WeirdAndPissedOff · 12/12/2017 21:49

I don't really believe that there's anything after death - if anything a perpetual existence terrifies me.
But I would never disparage anyone who believes different ly, especially with topics like these where people take hope and comfort from their beliefs.

For me, I used to find the concept of nothingness after death a little scary, and very difficult to comprehend. But now it seems like it would be quite peaceful - like falling asleep one last time. No more stress, difficulties etc - just let go and "fall asleep", and if there's nothing there you'll never know anything after that. And if there is, then all well and good! (Unless of course that something is being roasted for eternity for a pre-determined "crime").

Eolian · 12/12/2017 21:55

There's so many inconsistencies in a lot of the religions though, things have been changed to suit whoever wanted to control. A lot of it just doesn't make sense to people.

Well yes, that's why I don't believe in any of it. But I understand why people crave the structure and seeming certainty that organised religion peddles.

"Vague spiritual beliefs" So you'd consider that following a religion is better than truly knowing and using yourself as the measure.

I don't think either is better, as such. I can simply understand the motivation for the former. As for 'knowing and using yourself as the measure', I have no idea what you actually mean by that. I use my eyes and my (basic) understanding of the rational and scientific explanations of the world around me. I think that people who claim to have other-wordly experiences are either being untruthful or are misguided.

buttercupmeadow · 12/12/2017 21:56

But I really, really don't want to know I am dying, thank you very much. My Mum knows she is, and she is frightened and it's awful to see.
I'm sorry to hear that. My mum believed in God right till the end, she didn't have that fear. Even for that reason alone, having faith can't be a bad thing, what is there to lose, but everything to gain.

Vitalogy · 12/12/2017 22:39

I use my eyes and my (basic) understanding of the rational and scientific explanations of the world around me. That's the thing though, it's so very limited and limiting to confine oneself to this.
Us/the world/universe is empty space. Have you ever thought about what that empty space is.
Compared to a lot of animals/birds our eyesight is very poor. They can also sense things that we can't. Our own bodily senses have limits. Surely it's not a great stretch to consider something outside of them.

malmi · 12/12/2017 22:43

If the brain was merely a vehicle for the soul then it wouldn't need to be so complex. Does it continually replicate our personality and memories to the soul? What about brain damage?

What about all the other animals? They evolved just like us. Do they have souls? How did they evolve? For what purpose?

It's all just so outlandish and completely unprovable. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Asserting things doesn't make them true, no matter how nice they may sound.

TheHungryDonkey · 12/12/2017 22:55

I have this fear that when we die it’s going to be a bit like going to the post office. Taking a ticket and trying to navigate the right queues to fill in forms before the next stage. Dying and being put on hold like when I phone the tax credit helpline. We all die and turn it into an eternal form filling hell.

MsPotatoHead2 · 12/12/2017 22:55

I agree with pp. Having witnessed the slow death of a parent to cancer, watching the decline of the body and then breathing before death I lost all belief that there was anything after death. There was nothing left at death, no person to save, just a withered shell. Sorry to be depressing. My Christian friends cope better with death though as they are calm and content.

Vitalogy · 12/12/2017 23:02

What about all the other animals? They evolved just like us. Do they have souls? How did they evolve? For what purpose? The life force is in everything. The life force obviously likes to create, look at all the creations.

The brain is like a computer. If the brain is damaged the body can still be alive to carry the soul/life force.