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 some basic awareness 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, 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 that 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. Eastern religions too, despite being raised Mormon. I feel a strong sense that everything in life is illusionary, just a projection of the mind. I don’t remember anything but the no sense of self and timelessness but I feel like there was something more to it.
The hardest part wasn’t being dead, but the absolute misery of the early dying process and then the long recovery. Death was peaceful.
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 it. 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:
Basically you find yourself in the reality where you somehow survive, because the one where you didn’t you don’t have consciousness. Both times incredibly unlikely circumstances saved me that also happened to occur at the exact moment needed.
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 beyond that.
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.
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 something he believes in per se but just an idea he entertained. I can link you the full episode if you’re interested.
EDIT: I explained this theory a little further in another thread:
I find the non-experience of general anesthesia to be quite comforting in two ways.
Assuming that from the first person perspective it’s indistinguishable from death then it confirms that death is not just some kind of positive non-existence. You’re not left floating in a black void. It’s not that there’s a gap in the movie that’s just a blank screen. That entire section is removed. You go from one moment to another entirely skipping what happened inbetween. From first person perspective that gap doesn’t exist. You never really went unconsciouss. You went from experiencing the drugs starting to take effect to waking up. Death is probably just like this except that there’s no jump from experience to another but experience just stops.
The another thing about this is that maybe death doesn’t stop experience. Since you cannot experience not existing then maybe death is no different from general anesthesia; you die here and then in an instant you’re (what ever that is) transported having some other experience somewhere else in a different body or into whatever that can have experiences. Perhaps this is what people mean by rebirth.
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.
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 some basic awareness 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, 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 that 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. Eastern religions too, despite being raised Mormon. I feel a strong sense that everything in life is illusionary, just a projection of the mind. I don’t remember anything but the no sense of self and timelessness but I feel like there was something more to it.
The hardest part wasn’t being dead, but the absolute misery of the early dying process and then the long recovery. Death was peaceful.
What a great post. Thank you for sharing it and all the best for you!
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 it. 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:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/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. Both times incredibly unlikely circumstances saved me that also happened to occur at the exact moment needed.
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.
More about time:
https://interestingengineering.com/science/what-einstein-meant-by-time-is-an-illusion
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 beyond that.
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!
Edit: I may have been too quick to say that
You 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 something he believes in per se but just an idea he entertained. I can link you the full episode if you’re interested.
EDIT: I explained this theory a little further in another thread:
Thanks for sharing
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.
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.