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End-of-Life Dreams

commonwealmagazine.org

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Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#161

Post by csomar »

ggm wrote: post #3

Since I have a rich interior dialogue with myselves "inside" it comes as no surprise that close to end-of-life minds come up with comforting thoughts to Shepard the close. Thats what your friends would do. If you are one of the smaller cohort without an interior dialogue, I suspect you will have the same outcome because even if unvoiced, I am confident you have more than one brain process at work. Not just the propri…

This is also my thinking. I didn't continue reading the article because he went to discuss the doctor's persona at ridiculous length instead of just giving me the important conclusions.

Your brain is regulating every part of your body and has tons of info but only divulges a few of them (ie: pain, fatigue, etc...). One possibility (in my opinion) is that your brain is sending you a message "This is it buddy". I am not sure how natural selection will prefer that outcome though.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#162

Post by cjohnson318 »

d3ckard wrote: post #118
cjohnson318 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I concluded that the question of an afterlife is irrelevant... If there's something good on the other side of death, great... I agree, I think you just cease to be, and that's it. Frankly, I find that terrifying; I'm not sang-froid about it at all. I totally see why people come up with buy into the idea of an afterlife.

Quite the opposite here. I was raised catholic and as a child nothing scared me more than concept of eternal life. I am much more comfortable as an atheist, just assuming that game over means game over. Dying and being hurt is still scary, but death itself? Hopefully it comes when I am old, but I am getting ready to embrace it when time comes.

Ha, yeah, atheism is a much different perspective. I think that in many ways it's more intentional and positive, but that's my bias.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#163

Post by pazimzadeh »

mistermann wrote: post #153
pazimzadeh wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phenomenon described in the article does not require any non-naturalistic explanations. This is pretty much the role that people ascribe to DMT all the time, which is supposedly secreted during our final moments. I was in the presence of my mother during her final night and it was the most harrowing and traumatic experience I've ever had. It was obvious that she was in pain towards the end, but interestingly over…

> The phenomenon described in the article does not require any non-naturalistic explanations. That would depend on: - the true metaphysical nature of reality, which is not known (though it typically seems otherwise, human consciousness & culture, 2023, being what it is) - whether you want your explanation to be consistent with the true nature of metaphysical reality

Why wouldn't the true nature of reality be included within a naturalistic explanation, if it was known?

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#164

Post by superb-owl »

gspencley wrote: post #158

> I have spent a lot of time since my wife’s death trying to make sense of this paradox. In the high-tech, evidence-driven world of contemporary medicine, it was a dream that led a physician to conclude that my wife was dying. How was that possible? Here's a sobering hypothesis: it is not unheard of for nurses and physicians to be murderers and to target their patients. I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but this c…

Did you read the article? Kerr has published several papers with data supporting his hypothesis. Your single anecdote doesn't invalidate a statistical pattern.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#165

Post by gspencley »

superb-owl wrote: post #164
gspencley wrote: post #158

> I have spent a lot of time since my wife’s death trying to make sense of this paradox. In the high-tech, evidence-driven world of contemporary medicine, it was a dream that led a physician to conclude that my wife was dying. How was that possible? Here's a sobering hypothesis: it is not unheard of for nurses and physicians to be murderers and to target their patients. I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but this c…

Did you read the article? Kerr has published several papers with data supporting his hypothesis. Your single anecdote doesn't invalidate a statistical pattern.

No. I stopped at the quote and commented, also noticing the "religion" link in the header of the website so started to think that this was some woo woo pseudo-science nonsense. Thanks for the additional information. But also, on that note, I comment to socialize and share my opinions and thoughts. I'm not interested in using an online forum to engage in serious academic study and statistical analysis nor am I going to not take what I read in an "article" with more than one grain of salt.

RTFM? Are you for real ? ... :P

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#166

Post by UncleOxidant »

globular-toast wrote: post #156
UncleOxidant wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet I believe this article. Because even I had a spiritual experience too real for me to discredit or brush aside, I've had dreams about things that happened prior to them happening too many times for me to discredit this. For example: Early on the morning of 9/11/01 I had a dream that I was in some kind of large, room-sized elevator (probably some kind of service elevator) in a very tall building. Suddenly the ele…

The lift dream seems to be a common recurring dream, like no trousers or teeth falling out dreams. I've had it many times. It usually centres around a skyscraper and a lift shaft and the lift going higher or lower than it is supposed to. My dreams have never coincided with any real-world events that I'm aware of. My dad has several stories about his dreams "coming true", though. I don't completely write it off as non…

> The lift dream seems to be a common recurring dream

Sure, I've had falling dreams before as most everyone has - for me those are usually lacking in context, I'm just falling - often I find those transform into flying dreams. This one was quite unique in that I was in an elevator in a very tall building (I live in suburbia, I'm very rarely in high rise buildings, maybe once every 5 years). Also the physics seemed correct: elevator starts free falling, I push off the floor and appear to float in relation to the elevator, elevator crashes and I hit the floor. This is one of the things that really struck me about the dream when I woke from it - that the physics were correct.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#167

Post by mistermann »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #163
mistermann wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The phenomenon described in the article does not require any non-naturalistic explanations. That would depend on: - the true metaphysical nature of reality, which is not known (though it typically seems otherwise, human consciousness & culture, 2023, being what it is) - whether you want your explanation to be consistent with the true nature of metaphysical reality

Why wouldn't the true nature of reality be included within a naturalistic explanation, if it was known?

If it was known, it could be error, deceit, laziness, etc.

But the true nature of reality isn't known it is only believed, but human belief tends to be considered (appears as) knowledge once an adequate amount of people in a society believe something to be true - 100 years ago religious beliefs were the dominant truths, now science is the top dog.

Specific object level beliefs change over time, but human nature seems to be much more immutable.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#168

Post by JPLeRouzic »

jgilias wrote: post #108
rmason wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My late father had a dream where he said his brother had appeared before him beckoning him to come with him. He said I told him that I needed more time and he nodded. A few days later with all his relatives around him who flew in from all over the country we had an amazing day and he was in really good spirits. The nurses finally told us that evening we had to leave for the day so he could sleep. I was the last to le…

My late grandmother used to see dreams of passed away relatives long before she died, as in decades. She told that she enjoyed having a good chat with them, and that the important part is to politely decline if they want you to follow them for whatever reason, as that would mean passing away. To her all of this was just common sense. Crazy to see it validated in actual research! Thanks for sharing your beautiful stor…

> "My late grandmother used to see dreams of passed away relatives long before she died, as in decades."

I am not a religious person but I can understand that. I am 66 yo and my father and mother are diseased since a long time. Yet sometimes I can feel a presence during day time and I had a few dreams where I discussed briefly with my mother.

It's easy to say that as I am shaking that this could be Parkinson's disease hallucinations but I am not so sure. Anyway I am not diagnosed with Parkinson's diseases and I take no drugs.

My pet explanation is that there are multiple universes and there are leaks between them.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#169

Post by Animatronio »

spirit557 wrote: post #93
monero-xmr wrote: post #13

One reason I love mystery so much, is that rooted in the human experience is the ultimate mystery, one we will all get to know for sure - what happens when you die. Even if we extend life by thousands of years with technology, eventually we will all experience this mystery. What happens upon death is unprovable, and one of faith or logic or whatever. It’s really about gut feeling. But we will all find out, one day.

I have pondered this too and lately I think a certain way about it. It may not really answer the question but I dunno. You say "But we will all find out, one day." I think... maybe we already know? Before I was born, I did not exist. When I die, I will again no longer exist. If Earth is ~4.5 billion years old, what was it like waiting for all the things to happen before I could be born to crawl upon its surface with…

Have you considered that you might have existed for a long time before your birth, just that your memories were erased at that point in time (or you simply were not equipped with a brain to store them)?

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#170

Post by tpoacher »

wishfish wrote: post #10

When my father died, he had a waking dream of this. Saw a river with all his dead family across the water. Smiling and waving. Coming to the banks. Waiting for him to cross. His last words were “Cover me in a blanket of sunshine.” He died two hours later. What’s a little remarkable to me is that he had these visions in this detail despite being lifelong blind. As I was reading the article, I kept wondering which came…

I don't know if an update of N=1 will alter your posterior or not, but I have an uncle (not a particularly religious man himself) who had a 'dream' while undergoing risky surgery, that he had 'left', but saw his grandchildren praying to the Virgin Mary and the Virgin Mary interceded and sent him back. This is already weird, since, technically people don't dream while under the knife, unless the anesthetic has worn off. In any case, at recovery he was told there was a moment during the operation where he briefly 'died' on the table (whatever that means) but then spontaneously awoke and the surgery was smooth sailing after that. And it was indeed true that the grandchildren were praying to the Virgin Mary specifically at the time of the operation. I'm a bit fuzzy with the details because my information is second hand (my uncle's wife related the story to my mom, rather than me directly), but it is true that he had a terminal condition (I visited him in the hospital back when we thought he was close to going), the operation was not meant to be curative, only palliative, and yet somehow he's now completely cured and a changed man since that event.

In any case, not claiming this proves anything, of course; obviously there could be lots of explanations; but I remembered it because it does disprove the "people don't see religious figures in these visions" claim (albeit with an N=1). That's not to say I haven't heard of many similar accounts, but those had all been 3rd party accounts; this is the first time it came from a family member.

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