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One of the only things that’s true of all human beings is that none of us knows what happens after we pass away.
We might think we know, or believe we know, or even hope we know, but the fact of the matter is, none of us know until after we’re gone – and then we’re not talking a whole lot…
Here are some people’s ideas, though, so take a gander if you’re curious!
1. There is peace.
When I was much younger, I had a dream where I died.
Not a typical dream, not a romanticized dream. It was a dream where I was an archer in a medieval battle.
About 5 minutes into the battle, chaos was all around me, and I watched an opposing archer aim and loose an arrow straight into my left eye. I remember the sensation of impact, ringing in my ears, and falling to the ground.
I remember the warmth of the blood on my face. The feeling of life leaving my body, and the sense of worry evaporating into warmth and peace as the world left behind me.
I remember waking up shortly after thinking that the feeling and reality of that experience was so vivid and so detailed that it must have been an experience from a previous incarnation hundreds of years ago.
From that moment on, I’ve never feared the actual process of death. I feel like I’ve experienced it many times before.
2. It must not have been bad, since you can’t remember it.
Exactly the same as before you were born.
“I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.” -Mark Twain
3. If you would like some dread…
When we die, the whole world as seen by us, dies together with us.
4. No consciousness at all.
Nothingness. Not even darkness or void. Just nothing for all of eternity.
Somehow this is very comforting to me. Darkness and voids sound terrifying. Nothingness sounds like you’re just not there.
5. If you have nice stuff.
Your family fights for your belongings.
6. One of two things.
I’ve answered this one before but here it is again
Either two things happen after you die: you either go somewhere or it’s oblivion
If it is oblivion, then we’re just going back to the same place before we were born and there’s nothing wrong with that. We were there for billions or trillions of years, possibly infinity. You lose that concept of time since your brain doesn’t work anymore so you don’t even know it’s over. It’s not nothing because nothing would be something and that means that you are aware, which you can not be if you’re dead
If we do go somewhere, then that’s something no one understands because no one has ever come back to tell us. Those stories of people coming back after they “died” and “saw stuff” weren’t really dead. Their hearts stopped but their brains were still working
If the Universe continues to recycle itself infinitely, then there’s a chance we will be reborn or continuously reborn but have no memory of our previous selves
7. We’ll worry about that tomorrow.
Sounds like a problem for dead-me.
Currently going to therapy to clean up the mess my brain causes thinking about it. Funnily, when I almost died it felt peaceful, but when I think about death I just panic and nothing else.
8. That wouldn’t be so bad.
I don’t know about you but I am suppose to get a free ice cream sundae.
9. Hopefully not something lame.
90% of life is a chore, I’m not going to miss it that much.
Don’t call a help line, I’m not depressed and the other 10% of life is totally worth living for. There’s stuff I want to see someday, like my kid’s kids. I’m just saying “setting the bar down” doesn’t sound half bad.
If there’s something after great, but being afraid of some hell is lame too because what could be lamer than a vengeful god? I mean, if I was gonna believe in a god it’s not going to be some lame ass god. It’s either nothing, or nothing to fear.
10. One of my favorites.
Picture a wave. In the ocean. You can see it, measure it, its height, the way the sunlight refracts when it passes through. And it’s there. And you can see it, you know what it is. It’s a wave.
And then it crashes in the shore and it’s gone. But the water is still there. The wave was just a different way for the water to be, for a little while. You know it’s one conception of death for Buddhists: the wave returns to the ocean, where it came from and where it’s supposed to be.
Quote is from the tv show The Good Place.
11. Buddhist + Gamer.
Play again?
Yes
[No]
Edit: thanks for the awards. I don’t know what they mean or how to utilize them.I’m a Buddhist (but a gamer first and foremost) so it’s cool you guys made those connections
This totally makes up for r/movies continuously banning me
12. The void isn’t so bad.
When I was a kid I drowned while on holiday with my family, a giant fat man jumped in the pool on top of me and no one noticed till I was on the bottom of the pool.
I remember the feeling of my lungs being on fire, then shivering then as everything was going dark a strange sense of peace and I was ok with it, No panic or terror then it went black.
I was resuscitated at the side of the pool a few minutes later. I remember nothing from the black to being “alive” again.
I was around 7 when it happened and since then I’ve been strangely at peace with the fact that one day I will die and slip into the dark void of nothingness.
Hope that helps.
13. There’s no exit ramp.
I have no idea, but we’re all going together.
14. An excellent quote.
“It’s one of the great wonders of life: What will it be like to go to sleep and never wake up? And if you think long enough about that, something will happen to you. You will find out, among other things, that it will pose the next question to you: What was it like to wake up after never having gone to sleep? That was when you were born. You see, you can’t have an experience of nothing. Nature abhors a vacuum.”
~Alan Watts
15. If you’ve got good friends.
I think one of your best friends delete’s your browsing history
“Take the hard drive out of my computer at home… Put it in the bath… And make sure it’s completely wiped.” -Tensai Slime
16. No need to fear.
“Death is nothing to us. When we exist, death is not; and when death exists, we are not. All sensation and consciousness ends with death, and therefore in death there is neither pleasure nor pain. The fear of death arises from the belief that in death, there is awareness.”
Epicurus
17. If you want to be practical.
We clean the bed and assign it to another patient.
Bag em’ and tag em’
18. This will make your head hurt.
I don’t remember where I heard it, but if a planet in the Andromeda galaxy had a telescope powerful enough, and was able to look at any place on Earth right now in our time, they would see Earth 2.5 million years ago.
In another 2.5 million years if they looked again, they could see me typing this very sentence. That probably doesn’t make sense, but interesting theory.
Like, if we were able to pinpoint a place on a planet in Andromeda right now, we would be seeing that planet from 2.5 million years ago, even if there was advanced civilization on it “now”.
19. A whole lot of nothing.
I fell in a pool at 6, and I kinda only remember feeling at peace, then nothing, and then tasting vomit soon after and having a really bad headache.
20. It’s just science.
Your body biodegrades and its atoms return to nature.
I can entertain the idea of a greater power, but the physical makeup of my brain and the body attached to it, which feed chemicals that effect how my brain interpets consciousness are likely a one-time event.
On the bright side, none of that really disappears and it all just goes back into the cosmos over the next few billion years.
Which is why I’d like my body to decompose freely in a forested area. I want my atoms to disperse directly into the earth for sentimental and symbolic reasons.
21. Just acceptance.
I wonder if that is acceptance of fate. Who remembers the moment they actually fall asleep. The moment of awake and asleep.
There’s nothing, until your brain activated again on another level.
22. He is wise.
“The ones who love us will miss us” – Keanu.
23. How awful.
when I was like 9. I think it was at mountain creek but I’m not sure.
There was this tube water ride and it emptied out into like a natural pool at the bottom. I was a very good swimmer but this didn’t help that day for some reason.
I basically flew out of the tube and right underneath a veeeery large lady floating on one of those little yellow rubber round lifesaver things. I think I got stuck in the middle of the circle in such a way that I’d need to first swim down and then to the side, but I had no idea what was going on and was panicking. I was just clawing at her butt and the lifesaver thing and remember that the panic eventually started fading (along with everything else).
Then I guess either she felt something or i somehow got out from under, at the exact lucky moment right before everything faded to black. Started gasping for breath and my parents finally saw me and rushed towards me to get me out of the pool.
The poor lady was hysterical swearing that she thought it was a rock underneath or something. I remember feeling bad for her and how embarrassed she must’ve been.
Think I came pretty close to dying that day though.
24. Dreams again.
I once had a dream about this, I die in my dream but instead of waking, I kept dreaming about this infinite beach with grey and white sand, the white one was moving; in the sky there was 3 moons and the horizon was vivid dark blue , I appear at the sea’s shore, the water was incredibly cold, and I couldn’t move by my own, I started walking towards the bottom, and I felt observed; while I was moving, everything was getting darker and colder.
I began to stop feeling my limbs, and then from the darkness, 6 gigantic monstrous glowing eyes opened and gave me a horrible feeling of fear, I couldn’t see more than his eyes but his presence was very imposing, and I knew it was bigger than my sight could encompass, suddenly something came from the darkness and touched my face, and then my body, an hourglass emerged from my body, and stood between the creature’s eyes and mine; the creature contemplated the hourglass for long time and then, a high-pitched sound that alerted the creature was heard, as if they had hit some metal, the hourglass was put back to its place, in my body; the creature looked up and so did I.
Suddenly I started to feel like I was drowning and I started to float, very fast, I could see out of the corner of my eye how the creature’s eyes were lost in the dark, the surface was getting closer, and when I was for reach it, I wake up. That dream has haunted me ever since, I will never be able to forget the eyes of that creature that I know is waiting for me at the bottom of that cold sea, on that moving white sand beach, in that world with 3 moons and a blue horizon.
25. This doesn’t sound so bad…until it does.
You wake up in a chair in a cinema and learn that the other are past lives of you and you’re about to watch your next life very soon on the big screen.
All the people watching me now just keep yelling, “Yooo this b**ch is stuuupid!”
26. This makes me feel better.
Every time i nearly die (maybe like 3-4 near misses) I always have a nice kinda peaceful moment of “oh well, I had a good run” and like a general feeling that I did my best.
I really hope when I actually die, it’s that feeling, but like lengthened into a small fading point of contentment. Just a sigh of a joyfully lived life and then nothing.
27. We all live forever. Technically.
All things are made of atoms. They are everywhere and they constitute everything. They are fantastically durable. Every atom you possess has almost certainly passed through several stars and been part of millions of organisms on its way to becoming you.
We are so atomically numerous and so vigorously recycled at death that a significant number of our atoms – up to a billion for each of us, it has been suggested-probably once belonged to Shakespeare …..and any other historical figure you care to name …….
So we are all reincarnations – though short lived ones. When we die, our atoms will disassemble and move off to finds new uses elsewhere – as part of a leaf or other human being or a drop of dew. Atoms themselves, however go on practically forever. -Bill Bryson
28. It happens to the best of us.
I personally think you just stop existing and only the memory of you lives on in the head of the people around you.
29. Sounds relaxing.
While telling a story too inappropriate for this thread, comedian Jim Jeffries talked about his childhood best freind Daniel Connor and his brother, Andrew.
Dan was born with Muscular Dystrophy. Throughout his life, he had been dead at least 7 times and was brought back each time.
When Jim asked him what happens after death, he responded with: “….”Nothing.”
30. Time has no meaning.
Considering that time has no meaning without our conscious input, I think that after you die, an arbitrarily big amount of time will pass (in an instant) until your conscience comes into existence in a form or other.
This sounds an awful lot like reincarnation (because it is), but I feel like this is a reasonable, maybe scientific explanation for it.
Also, it makes me cope with my inevitable demise.
31. Sounds like an adventure.
Hey! You finally awake.
You were trying to cross the border right?
Walked right into the imperial ambush same as us and that thief over there.
32. Alone with his thoughts.
This is going to sound super woo woo, but one time I was in a nasty rollover, and I was in the hospital. They gave me ketamine because at the time it was the best option to both sedate me, and keep my heart beating. I went down a k-hole while they fixed me, but I was absolutely convinced that I was dead. Blinding white light, and then nothing. No body. No hospital. No injuries. Just floating through nothing with my thoughts and memories. Zero panic. I was totally cool with the fact that I was dead….
If death is anything like that, I’m totally happy with it.
Coming down of ketamine was not fun, especially not in a strange hospital with a shopping list of injuries.
33. It depends on time and space.
I believe we just stop existing, nothingness. However I do think we still exist in a cosmic universal sense, it all depends on time and space. My grandmother died recently, 98 years a good run. She no longer exists now in 2021, but she’s still around young and in her 20’s in the 1940’s. The only thing that separates us are two things time and space. We don’t blip out completely we still exist along the flow of time.
Did that make any sense? Little tipsy here.
34. Traveling through existence.
Absolutely nothing for an indeterminate amount of time. And then, because of the vastness of the universe, and one of those “infinite monkeys and infinite typewriters” type things, poof…. Your “sense of self” pops back up somewhere else. Perhaps another planet billions of light years away.
I only imagine that (not really believe it) because of the improbability that my consciousness exists NOW based on the age of the universe. Give my the age of the universe and my age, it seems quite improbable that my consciousness exists at all. So maybe it ALWAYS exists.
Just a thought, as I travel through existence.
Do you have a real opinion on what you think happens?
Tell us what and how you formed this belief in the comments!
