To want to believe in life after death

[Jezebell]

Part of me really wants to believe in this. Part of me is cynical. I’m still grieving but comforted a little by hearing anecdotes where people’s lost loved ones visit somehow, in any form… Can anyone give any personal stories where they feel this might have happened?

@LibbyL92 that reminds me my grandad died suddenly this year from old age. A couple of nights after his death, I had the most vivid dream that I was in his kitchen with him, he was smiling and told me he loved me and I woke up with tears in my eyes . Also the night my nan died unexpectedly I had a similar vivid dream, woke up with tears to find out she had died. They are so comforting to me.

Thank you for sharing this. It sounds beautiful. :)

The Japanese have an obon festival. Major part if the calendar. Bit like the Mexicans as portrayed in Coco. All the relatives gather at one house and eat and drink under the portraits of the ancestors and speak of him/her 'being here tonight'. Its nice.

I have had a couple of experiences - first was just after my Grandmother died (unfortunately I was very ill at the time of her funeral, I couldn't go as was in hospital receiving treatment) It was a very scary time to 17 year old me. One night in hospital my Grandmother came to see me, sat at the end of my hospital bed, drinking a glass of water. I asked her why she was drinking water as she never did when alive, but she just smiled and told me I was going to be ok. Honestly in the morning I thought it was all a dream, until my parents came to see me and knocked over a glass of water under the hospital bed and a nurse asking why I was sat up talking to myself.

Second time is regarding my brother (I should start this to say my brother has been dead 9 years and I still struggle with his death -, so not sure if linked etc) Anyway I had a dream where my brother came to visit me but I was in an old house ( my brother died before I lived in the house) but he was sat on the windowsill in the lounge and i asked him why he was sat on the windowsill and not the sofa I was on. He told me he can't join us anymore but he watches me always, and is with me through everything. I asked if I could have a cuddle as I needed him, and he said he can't cuddle me but would blow kisses from now on to me and he then blew kisses at me. He then chatted about he saw my tears when I built my wardrobe as I thought of him and I shouldn't be upset as he was with me. It was all so strange, especially as he was wearing the clothes he was buried in etc. Something about the dream just felt so like my brother.

If I ever mention these experiences to anyone and they laugh them off my husband always says it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, if they mean something to me, and bring me comfort then that's all that matters.

What experiences have you had to believe this? Are you a psychic or medium?

Exactly that's my point.

Will I also be reunited with the wasp I killed too?

It's interesting that the prevalent belief here is that afterlife automatically = eternity. There is no logical reason to assume this at all. If one transition (flesh to energy) is possible, why not another? And another and on and on? Everything ends. All things change.

Or that eternity, (if that is the afterlife) is boring. Why should it be? There is, by definition, no time in eternity. No thraldom to the body. To assume that the experience of matter is the same as the experience of pure thought or energy is surely just plain wrong. It can't be.

As beings of matter, we live in time. Chained to the body. But if our consciousness were to be released... who knows what that would be like?

When my dad died last year me and DH were away from home for 3 days. When we got home our clock which sits on the sideboard was in the middle of the living room floor.

The clock had been there for over a year and never moved plus if it had just fallen it would have been close to the sideboard not as far as it was.

We thought it odd (never thought to look at what time it was showing). A couple of days later we had to go to nurse my mum and, again, when we got home a week later the clock was in the middle of the floor.

Mum was in hospital and we could not visit because of covid. She died a couple of days after we got home and for 3 days in a row we would get up and the clock was on the floor.

On the 4th day we were sitting on the sofa eating a takeaway and started talking about the clock. We were across the other side of the room from the sideboard. We suddenly heard a thud and there was the clock in the middle of the room again. It was like it had been thrown across the room.

Never happened before or since so what do the non believers think of that?

It's a comfort thing. You hope you will be reunited again with a loved one,but in reality there is no way you can be.

The night after my grandma died I saw her in the doorway. Have never had a dream like that since, I’m convinced she came to say goodbye.

The dead settle the living for approximately 6 months. Then they pass over.
I know this from long experience of working with elderly and talking to their loved ones afterwards. Also from reading as it's an area that fascinates me.
No one can prove a thing, but so many stories are the same.

I also believe that a complicated unresolved passing can result in the persons spirit staying on longer than 6 months. Nothing to prove this at all.

I want to believe in reincarnation. Eternal life and being reunited with the people who have gone before sounds awful to me. I do not want to spend an eternity being me, and there are a lot of people I would never want to see again.

It’s so amazing to read of these vivid ‘dreams’ . And weird things with clocks seem to crop up quite frequently too… fascinating.

But what if the living aren’t settled? Can the deceased stay longer? Is indeed time the same ‘on the other side’?

I have experienced one or two odd things that made me wonder.

Unlike others, however, I'm desperate to believe there ISN'T an afterlife. I really hope the materialists are right and that we're just a cloud of atoms that disperse at death. This existence has been more than painful enough, thankyou. The thought of it going on is horrific to me.

Why on earth do believers assume it will be nice? That has always baffled me. It is far more likely to be filled with horror and evil and pain, like this world. Why would it be any different? Maybe it's even worse!

I like the idea of humans ascending and becoming energy beings, or reincarnated, but other than that, logically I'm guessing when your puckered your puckered, so to speak.

According to DR Sam Parnia its been proven that while the body obviously dies but the conscience never does. He reported on patients who had clinically died and were revived. They were able repeat exactly the conversations tat was had in the room (while they were dead). Make of that what you will. I'm not here to force my beliefs on anyone (proven or not) However for me
I think its harder to believe that when we die there's nothing. A persons whole existence and memories just gone that to me is far stranger than the concept of an after life.

Never happened before or since so what do the non believers think of that?

Common human error of mistaking coincidence for cause and effect. Nobody would doubt your clock moving if it was witnessed by multiple people, but the question of what moved it is entirely open-ended, and there's no reason whatsoever to conclude that it must be connected in some way to a death in the family. It could easily be any one of a multitude of things. Nobody knows, that's a perfectly satisfactory answer. What isn't satisfactory is to go attributing it to 'woo', because there's absolutely nothing to suggest any such thing exists, but we know for certainty that wind gusts exist, earthquakes exist, heavy machinery causes vibrations and ornaments to leap around, people play practical jokes, people make things up, etc etc

This is the fundamental problem with 'believers'. They have an innate need to ascribe anything unexplained to the 'paranormal', when there is not a single shred of tangible evidence that suggests any such thing exists. 'We don't know what caused it' is a perfectly rational and reasonable answer. 'Ghosts caused it' is not.

And again, anyone with an imagination is capable of totally fabricating 'woo' events in order to lend 'credence' to claims of belief in 'woo'. The telling thing is, not one single event that suggests the existence of woo has been recorded or substantiated in meaningful way despite the abundance of claims. If you take people on face value, we're surrounded by it and it's as common as chips, yet it totally evades all attempts to record or document it. How convenient.

Thanks for sharing this. Amazing stories too.

When my nan died I knew she'd gone as she'd "phoned me" to say goodbye. This was around 3am. My mum phoned around 7 to say she had gone in the early hours.
I went to visit her in the chapel of rest
I wore a glass angel necklace
When I left the angel had gone but the chain was still round my neck. Around 5 weeks later on Christmas Day I had a present delivered that she'd got me. It was a heart necklace.
Miss my nan so much

😘

No windows open as it was winter and even though the clock is smallish it is pretty heavy so could never be blown off by wind. There was certainly no earthquake. I think if an earthquake had happened each time the clock moved we and our neighbours would have noticed it.

No one was playing a practical joke. When we came home to the clock on the floor no one had been in the house and me and my husband left at exactly the same time and came home and walked in the room together.

No reason for me to make it up. I was not sure if I believed in an afterlife before but now I definitely do.

No way can you explain the clock. Me and my husband were in the room when it literally flew across the room. We were both sitting on the sofa nowhere near the sideboard the clock was on. We had been sitting there for at least 15 minutes without moving.

You don't believe and that is fine but don't try and belittle my story. As I said, it never happened before and has not happened since but did happen more than once. The clock wasn't close to the sideboard as though it had fallen but quite a distance from it.

There was also a strange incident with our outside meter cupboard but I am not going to tell the story so that you can scoff and claim I am fabricating or imagining it

I believe that no one really knows and that science people can be extraordinarily arrogant and cynical. I think that peace and oblivion is the likeliest thing. I believe energy is real and that it lingers (think of the atmosphere in a church, for example - years of prayer and song) - I can’t quite convince myself that consciousness lingers beyond death though. But, I don’t know and neither does anyone else.

He reported on patients who had clinically died and were revived. They were able repeat exactly the conversations tat was had in the room (while they were dead). Make of that what you will

There's a fundamental difference between being 'clinically dead', no heartbeat, no pulse, and being 'brain dead'. The brain continues to function for a wee while after heartbeat and pulse stops. This is a quirk of physiology and nothing whatsoever to do with a 'conscience' or a 'spirit'. It's why doctors can stop your heart and restart it without you killing you, because provided the brain is still receiving oxygen brain function carries on and you are not in any danger of dying.

What point he thinks he's making is beyond me, because it stands to reason that if your brain is functional you will have some cognitive ability even while on the operating table. You don't 'die' when you go to sleep every night. You are still capable of hearing conversations being conducted in the same room, but in most cases you don't recall them because your brain is in a sleep state. Sometimes you will, or they will be sufficient to prompt your brain to wake you from a sleep state.

Nothing this doctor is reporting is in any way a revelation, and it does not suggest anything at all about 'the conscience never dying'. It reads very much like yet another believer attributing something to 'woo' purely because it marries with their belief, but in reality it's a nonsense. As a doctor you'd assume he believes in science, yet the way you've reported it, it seems that here he is attributing a known physiological phenomenon, that is not even unique to humans, to some sort of ill-defined 'conscience' or 'spirit', when it's nothing more than well understood and documented biology and chemistry. That's not a doctor I'd want anywhere near any human being I cared about.