July 7, 2009

Death

What would it be like to be a dead man? : Death is one of the things that captured my imagination a lot since my high school. I was always fascinated by death. When we are alive, we associate ourselves with our brain/body. But when we die, we no longer are thinking anything. There is nothing. I always wondered at this scenario: I died and the world goes on.... I am not there...There is no more me....It gives me goosebumps, if it is the right word I need to use. It also shows how trivial our life is in this vast universe.

soul : I think even our ancients also saw this inevitable thing called death and they cannot believe it. They were so much attached to worldly feelings and importantly they loved themselves so much that they created this concept of soul or existence of life after death to convince themselves that all we do in our life span has some effect in this universe. If really there is a soul in every living thing, how do you explain the increasing population of all living things(not necessarily human)?

Doubt : People say our brain works(neurons keep firing signals) for 20 minutes even after one dies. What do they mean by this? Doesn't dying imply brain stopped working? Maybe, they mean that our heart stopped beating. But I guess we can give electric shock and make the heart beat again even it stopped for a few seconds,right? You do not say the person is dead those seconds and then came back to life. Then shouldn't we declare the person dead only after the neurons stopped firing?

6 comments:

  1. How can u prove population of living things is increasing?? thousands and thousands of living species are being extinct these days!!! I dont think world population is increasing and I like 'soul' concept!!

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  2. @pradeep: Just because we like something we shouldn't believe in it right? Atleast we when we are looking at it scientifically...

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  3. Similar thoughts have struck me several times too, esp. after experiencing death from very close quarters (in an incident that I have never shared with anyone yet)!

    Good that you're penning down all these thoughts!

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  4. you are not alone dude.. i have had this perspective sometimes too... i just think that the human brain is so developed an organ compared to the rest of the species that it does not want to accept that its gonna stop functioning some day

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  5. As they say, Death and Sleep are brothers. I think when we die, we just wake up from a 'dream' somewhere else, with no or very few memories of this life, just like we dont remember our dreams.

    Or it will just be nothingness. Its creepy, but reduces stress when we see how much unecessary importance we put on trivial daily events.

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  6. Hi Mani, I just watched this movie "The Man from the earth" very recently which I think is quiet interesting especially the whole elucidation of idea of time and age- if one particular person remains as a witness to the continuous evolution of humanity for the past 14000 years what would have he witnessed.. After watching it one particular thought has baffled my understanding which is loosely based on a scene in the movie when the protagonist was asked "What does this circle of the birth death cycle mean to you" to which he replies that he is tired of watching them (people around him) do the same mistakes over and over again.. which has prompted me to inquire in-spite of our vast understanding of the world and human nature yet I do feel somehow that there is something very primitive about our deep unconscious inner nature that has been inherited from our ancestors as it is which I think might be responsible for our emotions. I think these emotions and the so called typical psychological egoistic behavior which we share with most animals as well hasn't undergone much change through time and space even though we have developed and acquired/inherited new languages thoughts reasoning in the process but I don't think we have acquired/inherited new emotions or rather developed any such ... I know that the hypothesis that I made is highly subjective or opinionated but I would like to know your perspective on this thought...

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