Death : a peaceful escape

 

I recently watched a video that explained how the brain can exhibit dream-like activity for 30 seconds to a minute after death, followed by more chaotic, noise-like brain activity that may persist for several hours postmortem.

That initial 30-second window has been shown to activate the same brain regions involved in visual imagery, memory recall, and dreaming.

Because of this, people have drawn parallels between it and what gets described in near-death experiences — things like seeing your life flash before your eyes, witnessing a bright light, feeling a sense of “going home,” or entering a lucid, dreamlike state where you feel yourself leaving your body.

Some say they could see or hear what was happening around them. Others didn’t really understand what was going on, but were somehow aware that they were dying.

These experiences, often dismissed as hallucinations, might actually come from the brain’s final attempt to process its own shutdown — a strange mix of memory, emotion, and neural noise that feels just as real as waking life.

That got me thinking — maybe Heaven, Hell, or rebirth isn’t somewhere else, but a state the brain enters.

That moment after death, when the brain kicks into a dreamlike mode, could be the beginning of it. And as more parts of the brain shut down, what’s left is just an echo — an impression of whatever that final mental state was, stretching out for hours as the rest fades away.

We all know how dreams distort time — a single minute in real life can feel like hours inside a dream or a nightmare.

Imagine slipping into a nightmare that feels like an eternity, all crammed into that first minute after death. Then imagine the brain continuing to echo that impression for ten more hours. That’s 600 eternities, back to back. A single moment of horror, looping endlessly in a dying mind.

But it could just as easily be a dream where your wildest dream, peace or joy comes to life — and it lasts forever.

Maybe this is what people meant by Heaven or Hell. Not as destinations, but states of mind that feel eternal, shaped by whatever we were holding inside when the body finally let go.

Maybe it’s true in a way — maybe we’re either rewarded or punished forever, but only by the weight of our own mind.

From what little I understand, it seems possible that what someone experiences at the time of death depends on what was most present in their mind beforehand, similar to dreams — where the strange, vivid imagery is often rooted in whatever thoughts or emotions were prominent in the near past. The thoughts and emotions that left an impression for the mind to build it's own reality.

The experience of death could be similar - weird, familiar, emotional, or even symbolic. We couldn't know for sure, but the idea feels grounded based on what little we know.

If the dying brain behaves anything like the dreaming brain, then maybe those last moments are shaped by the thought and emotional patterns we carry around the time of death — the memories, the mood, the unresolved stuff that never really got worked through.

A mind overwhelmed by regret, fear, or shame might fall into something dark. A never ending torture.

A more peaceful mind might experience something lighter. A never ending bliss.

It’s not a certainty — but it makes intuitive sense.

Even though I am all for suicide and have my own plans of checking out, this thought has caused a concern in executing the plan.

Suicide, by its very nature, usually comes from depression, regret, guilt, or shame. Mine is guilt and shame. If the final experience is shaped by these thoughts and emotions, then I might end stuck facing exactly what I wanted to escape — because it is a prominent thought and emotion currently in my mind.

Even though I don't have nightmares about the incident anymore, death may not be identical and may force these experiences out.

I could end up condemning myself to the very thing I couldn’t live with.

That’s why it seems important to resolve those feelings before I end my life. I need to face my guilt and shame and resolve them in my mind, make have more peaceful thoughts that is more important than what I did once many years ago. To have something else that defines me.

But it’s also important to realize that doing good things isn’t the same as being free from suffering. I could build a paradise for people who have nothing, but if  I still linger to my guilt, or create a new fear like  being afraid of losing that paradise I have built, it can still lead to the same hell we discussed earlier.

It’s not about what you doing good things, its about not generating new negative feelings while making the old ones less prominent. If you need to do good things to do that, you should. 

So maybe it’s important to reflect on death.

On losing everything you’ve built, acquired, or lost and even who you are. To see it all as temporary — as something an old version of you once valued, but which doesn’t define your new self anymore.

When thinking  on how to meditate on death,  I remembered a scary experience I had with meditation/

I closed my eyes and focused on my breath. I tried to ground myself in the present — feeling the seat I was sitting on, the breath I was taking, the sounds I was hearing, the sight which was infront of me.

Then I closed my eyes. Sight was gone, but my mind generated visuals. 

I painted those visuals black and the visual that my mind generated was also gone.

I focused on the nothingness that the mind was showing and the sounds became  less prominent.

Then I imagined what it would feel like if I had no weight or the sense of touch. 

Imagine that you are without your body.

And suddenly, I felt nothing. an eerie silence.

There was no sight, no audio, no touch. I was just a soul, breathing and thinking with a beating heart.

Imagine a man who cannot speak, hear, see or touch. All he can hear is his heartbeat and see the vast emptiness.

There was still a concept of self and the thoughts. Nothing grounding to life.

And I panicked opened my eyes and never shared my experience with anyone. 

It scared me enough that I never went back to that state again.

But maybe now, since I plan on dying, Maybe I should start practicing it to desensitize myself with death, reflect the effect of death on me and imagine the effect it has on the people around me.

But this alone wouldn't suffice as I would also need to resolve the shame and guilt of what I had done earlier, and so I need to reflect on what I did with objectivity, to say "its okay", you are no longer the person who committed those crimes.

One for working through the negative thoughts I still hold onto.

The other, to practice letting go. To rehearse death in the mind before it happens in real.

I just hope I don’t get stuck in that nightmare that I want to escape.
I hope, if it comes… it’s would be a dream.

I hope this is not my mind trying a find a way to live.