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End-of-Life Dreams

commonwealmagazine.org

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Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#31

Post by mrelectric »

36933 wrote: post #11
hughw wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You experienced something different from these cases: "These dreams are distinguished from regular dreams by being especially vivid. When asked to rate the degree of realism of such dreams, most rate them ten out of ten—the highest degree of realism. Patients often report that they are “more real than real.” They occur both during periods of sleep and periods of wakefulness, and they are easily distinguished from hal…

You can easily experience this yourself by doing grounding exercises in a lucid dream. “more real than real” is always the first thing that comes to mind.

I compare the "more real than real" to watching cinematic scenes of nature, color corrected, high frame rate, high resolution recordings of unspoiled nature.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#32

Post by mrelectric »

zw123456 wrote: post #14

I am an atheist, a science-based person, but I have been in the presence of someone passing a couple of times. I can tell you that, I do not care how science based you are, there is something about this experience that you simply cannot dismiss. I was with a person who I loved deeply, the details are, personal and I am going to skip over. But when she passed... Her breathing moved from the rattle to just a quiet rhyt…

Wonderful wonderful comment.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#33

Post by clnq »

Whatever is happening, it is sad to hear about yet another case where doctors are too arrogant to listen to their patients and try to understand. It might not be a spiritual experience, it might be delirium. But perhaps it is important step in the human mind making peace with death. And it disappoints me greatly that the medical community shuns this phenomenon and anyone who tries to research it.

There is nothing worse than medical elitism. It is very unprofessional, yet still a very widely practiced problem. Having been both a medic and an engineer, I can say that it's very common in both disciplines to have incorrect intuitions but some people are just too blinded by arrogance to look beyond them. In engineering, it often comes out pretty clearly if you are a poor engineer due to arrogance. In medicine, survivorship bias usually works against that. And if we're talking about people who have made peace with death, I am sure they won't fight arrogant doctors who dismiss them.

Overall, it's a shame. It is clear there is abundant research and evidence about end of life dreams. And this can be very significant in understanding our fear of death, and how people make peace with it. We are naturally very predisposed to fear death, so this is very important to understand. ELDVs are also probably culturally and philosophically significant. And we don't have almost any wisdom about them because of medical arrogance.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#34

Post by tomohelix »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #27
tomohelix wrote: post #21

I am as irreverent as you can probably get, in fact, if I have to say what I really think about religions in general, I am probably a blasphemer in every sense of the word. Yet I believe this article. Because even I had a spiritual experience too real for me to discredit or brush aside, and I meant it not just mentally but physically too. It didn't completely change my views about religions, but it did soften my stan…

The phenomenon doesn't require a superstitious or spiritual explanation

Indeed. There are many ways you can explain away these things without resorting to superstition. Trust me I know, I tried and still am trying every time I see these things.

It is hard to explain, but it is something that even though you can find an explanation that answer most questions, it still can't account for everything. And within those gaps are where I have doubts about whether I was actually right and these are just my mind playing tricks on me, or there is something more. Unfortunately, there isn't any concrete answer yet. We can't even definitely say why all things with a mind need to sleep, much less what happens in their dreams.

In the end, like I said, I have come to understand that it doesn't matter if it is right or wrong, as long as it helps someone, it is ultimately good enough.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#35

Post by pazimzadeh »

zw123456 wrote: post #14

I am an atheist, a science-based person, but I have been in the presence of someone passing a couple of times. I can tell you that, I do not care how science based you are, there is something about this experience that you simply cannot dismiss. I was with a person who I loved deeply, the details are, personal and I am going to skip over. But when she passed... Her breathing moved from the rattle to just a quiet rhyt…

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 1-2 hour period after she died, when when she was surrounded by friends and family, her face gradually changed into the most angelic and peaceful smile. Even the guy from the cemetery commented on it, as most of the faces he's seen are contorted into painful visages. A naturalistic explanation would be that it was because of her positive personality and constant use of her smiling muscles led to those muscles being the strongest or first to contract during rigor mortis. I kind of like the idea that your death face is a reflection of who you were in life.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#36

Post by fnordpiglet »

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…

In Buddhism the inner voice is an illusion fronting the true experience of awareness that is your simple existence. It has no voice but is the entirety of you, so needs no voice. It is where the voice originates from, and the voice in fact distracts from being in a more true sense. I find this true for me. If I silence myself entirely but stay engaged and deeply aware, I can function in all ways - socially, intellectually, etc. Therefore the voice, feelings, etc, that drove me in most my life is neither sufficient nor necessary. I worried I’d lose my sense of self, or meaning, but instead found a quiet mind let myself as it is in the present emerge and my experience was more profound. I lost my rumination, anxiety, and depression, and gained control over my voice and feelings as auxiliary tools to my awareness rather than defining my life.

So, I agree entirely and thousands of years of Buddhist experience does too :-) maybe those without the voice are closer to themself than those with?

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#37

Post by pazimzadeh »

tomohelix wrote: post #34
pazimzadeh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The phenomenon doesn't require a superstitious or spiritual explanation

Indeed. There are many ways you can explain away these things without resorting to superstition. Trust me I know, I tried and still am trying every time I see these things. It is hard to explain, but it is something that even though you can find an explanation that answer most questions, it still can't account for everything. And within those gaps are where I have doubts about whether I was actually right and these a…

When I was about 5 years old I asked my mom what happens after we die. She thought for a second a said "no one has ever come back and told me."

There will always be gaps. While hypotheses, religious or naturalistic, are important, it's also important to be ok not having all the answers.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#38

Post by gfaure »

After my grandmother died, my aunt relayed to me that the night before, she had started calling for my grandfather, acting like he was around, despite having died a good thirty years before her. This article mentioned the comforting effect of such visions. I have to assume the body knows before the conscious mind does.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#39

Post by tomohelix »

pazimzadeh wrote: post #37
tomohelix wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. There are many ways you can explain away these things without resorting to superstition. Trust me I know, I tried and still am trying every time I see these things. It is hard to explain, but it is something that even though you can find an explanation that answer most questions, it still can't account for everything. And within those gaps are where I have doubts about whether I was actually right and these a…

When I was about 5 years old I asked my mom what happens after we die. She thought for a second a said "no one has ever come back and told me." There will always be gaps. While hypotheses, religious or naturalistic, are important, it's also important to be ok not having all the answers.

I work in biotech and as I am sure you know, it is the field where unknown phenomena are the expected norms. So yes, I made peace with not being able to know everything a long time ago.

But by the same virtue, it means I can't dismiss anything unless I have concrete evidence against it. It is better to leave rooms for doubts rather than settling with a half-answer and consider it a solved matter. To do so would mean I am either supremely confident in my ability to explain something or I am unable to admit there are things that prove me wrong.

Re: End-of-Life Dreams

#40

Post by phkahler »

tomohelix wrote: post #30
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…

Yeah, me too. Many of us have had dreams that were strangely prophetic, powerful, or both. I often try to think of it as the subconsciousness of the pattern matching brain managing to piece together something that the waking mind missed or too busy or afraid to dig deeper into. But of course, it cannot explain everything. Like you said, there are sometimes dreams preceding events that simply can't be expected or expl…

>> even though the analytical part of my brain consistently shouts this idea down every time I think about it.

"shouts it down" sounds like some rebeliousness or anger. Might want to figure out who that's for. ;-)

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