William Burroughs, when asked about death, said, ......
"I believe that what happens when you die is what you believe happens when you die."
What are your thoughts ??

Personally, I think that everything just ceases to be. This illusion of existence is revealed for what it is, a dream ?

Do you remember anything before you were born ? No.....

Will you experience anything after you are dead ? No ....

What the fuck is this life thing ???

This life is such a delicious experience.

I am, whatever I am, so lucky to have been given this opportunity to be whatever I want to be!!! There ain't no rehearsals girls !!

Always so deep and fascinating topics from you Nicky xD

My own existence is the only thing I am sure of. I do not even remember much of my life. I have memories of course, but I know that sometimes even these are wrong. Death means complete destruction of previous memories to me. A blank state, no obvious memory of previous. What comes next is unknown.

There is nothing special about physical body of a human being. It is biomechanical machine - there is no place for consciousness. All senses can be emulated on a computer. Given sufficient time so can all logical derivations that human mind is capable of. There is no place for consciousness in material world or else I've created at least a few of these and destroyed them subsequently. Therefore I doubt that what comes after death it is void. But I join with the sentiment nevertheless - time to be what one wishes is always now.

Janice, some interesting thoughts.
We exist as real only because of the memories we have of ourselves. It's like every day, every second and every experience we have is immediately a memory, it is gone, ephemeral, the "now" keeps pushing us forward into the next moment.

We create the next moment. Nothing is preset.

My consciousness overrides all my soft machine of a human body. It seems to reside in my head and through my eyes and ears and mouth and skin, through my brain?

But I can imagine and create and make beautiful things and be beautiful ! I am not a human being ! I am God !!!

Nicky XXXxxxOOOxxxXXX

Very interesting xD What if we didn't have memories of ourselves? Do we really always remember ourselves?

I am not sure whether everything always exists and we pick the next moment based on our conscious experience or whether we create the next moment. For practical purposes both feel equivalent. It is not possible to differentiate between them. The same problem seems to arise with consciousness overriding the soft machine of a human body. Is it overriding or is it the same?

Given time it is possible to imagine, change, create and be everything, but are the changes persistent? And is there more than one God/Goddessor is there only one talking to him/herself at different times?

I have been spending some time recently with a Eritrean man in a lock down Altziemers ward.

His memories are all he has, but they are all confused.He was multi lingual when he was a man. But now he just gobbledegooks ?

It is frightening to think that my being lives in my head. ? Maybe it is just chemicals interacting and synapses snapping ?

It is again, a question of belief ? Or, at least, attitude. If we are just puppets of the chemicals that make up our bodies, then I want my maker to make me dance !!

Nicky xxxXXX

As the majority of the members here have grown up in societies based on Christianity or Judeo Christian beliefs our views of death are rather skewed. Many of us are taught to believe in life after death - and have little knowledge of re-incarnation or other beliefs. Do we create our views of the God or Goddess in our own image?

My personal view is that all fundamentalists of any religious persuasion (those types that have a direct line to God ...so they can tell him what to do) are responsible for more misery and more wars than you can count. I for one am glad that I am living today in a world that is more tolerant than it was 20 years ago, let alone 70 years ago.

One of those tolerances allows me to practise my own beliefs (whatever they are or aren't). I am not forced to be part of a theocracy like in Iran; nor am I forced to be a Protestant Christian like in 17C England. With freedom of religious beliefs there has also come other freedoms for which we should be grateful and keep fighting for.

To answer Nicky's question... what is death? Is it merely the end of this existence? Is there an after life or do we come back here to try again? No one knows....all the middle east based religions are based on faith and belief....not proof.
Most religions inculcate a set of values and rules, by which most of us live if they are fair. That's about the only plus I can see, and even that is tempered with reality and my own observations of religious, political and gender intolerance.

Am I frightened of death? No. But I do realize that being here now is not la la land existence as a fantasy tranny; so I try my best to enjoy the time I have here and to help people when I can. I hope I don't end up as a crazy old tranny in some badly run hospital, but that is outwith my control....so I don't worry about it.
Thanks Nicky for another provocative subject.

Pauline xxx

Life and consciousness are a result of Homo sap's evolving a highly complex brain in which the development of language enables us to hold a constant internal narrative whioch is fundamental to the mechanics of self awareness and create the sensation and experience of self. Our consiouscness is the brain construing the world that it exists in, which in itself is bloody amazing but death is probably very undramatic and is just an absence of life. Whenever I have experienced death it has been very dull, if that makes sense, not as in the films with dramatic moments of last words etc! that's all a myth. Death is everyday, dull, sad, and an ending for millions of us lifeforms, the trouble is the way our brains work means that we have an intense experience of being in life which animals dont have and that makes the difference between life and death the more extreme for us to contemplate, in all honesty 'not being' is probably fiine as we wont know anything about it! so relax we all die in the end and before we were born we weren't here either! so full cycle really!

p.s. re: "whenever I have experienced death" as per last posting does not mean I go around killing people or that I have died myself (although a couple of boyfriends may disagree!) Over the years sadly I have because of work come across situations where people died with me present!

Thanks Pauline for some intriguing thoughts.

I know I am surrounded by people of all sorts of madness. The political world and our economic world is governed by men, and I repeat, men, who have the emotional capacity and intellectual acuity of a six year old child.

Anyway, blah fucking blah....

What I was trying to illicit from other girls was a sense of the realization of mortality.

I heard some bigwig say recently that the best invention of life is death.

I just wonder ....

Nicky xxxxxxxx

Life & death exist as part of each other, according to Daoist philosophy one cannot exist without the other. Birth & death occurs within our physical being and our concious & sub concious beings all the time, as one happens the other happens. So even as we are being born we begin the process of dying.

The main problem we have is the attachment we have to living & the fear of dying or basically the fear of the unknown. Most people are afraid of the unknown, so they create systems such as religion to give them a belief that they know what happens after death, someone tells them what to believe and that if they act in a certain way this will happen ie: heaven & hell. The basis of all religion is what happens to you after death, they try to tell you they know and all you have to do is believe them and act as they tell you and everything will be peachy.

That I feel is were philosophy & religion part company, religion expects unshaken belief in the dogma of the particular religion, whereas philosophy requires a questioning open mind.

As far as "the best invention of life is death" qoute I have heard that before also, check out the series "Torchwood" were a world wide event occurs where nobody can die. The problem then is that the population expands expotentialy at a horrific rate causing starvation, pain, misery & much worse and even then they cant die.

Living can be worse than the unknown of death.

I have to absorb all that Andrea and Kimmy have said.
My brain hurts !!! Back soon !

Have to get some cigarettes ! Life !
What a bitch !

Nicky XXX

<blockquote><strong><a href="/se4/profile/nickyminiskirt">Nicky Miniskirt</a> said:</strong><br />This life is such a delicious experience.

I am, whatever I am, so lucky to have been given this opportunity to be whatever I want to be!!! There ain't no rehearsals girls !!
</blockquote><br />



I agree Nicky, life is what you make of it, and all us girls should make the most of it, as for "death", I have seen my grandad slowly pass away, he was just over 100 years old in a home for the last 2 years of his life, he always did his home cooking, baking, never smoked or drunk alcohol, had 2 allotments and a large garden full of fruit and veg and he lived well.

I have also had to deal with a very close friend of mine who had passd away in a motorcycle accident, I had heard about it and went round his house, then the police turned up and then his partner and kids, the police officer who was not "family support trained" asked me to tell his partner and kids, it still puts a tear in my eye now, ever year I put flowers on his grave, and go and have a chat with him now and then.

But as I was alos diagnosed with MS few year ago, "death" hasnt really croosed my mind, I will go when its my time to go, as long as I dont suffer in pain etc and go quietly in my sleep, I have signed a living will in case of a accident and the hospitals decide to keep me going even if I am living by machines, if I cant live on my own means of my body then why should I be kept alive by a machine.

Samantha xx

Samantha, I watched my father breath his last breathes after agreeing as a family that the machines should be turned off. I don't think I will ever come to terms with it ?

I am crying now ....

I was not close to my father and when I tried to engage him in intimate conversation he was virtually mute. I can remember one instance, towards the end of his life, he was obviously depressed and seemed so alone, I sat down with him and asked him what was wrong ?
He couldn't even utter a word !??

Please remember to express yourself !!

nicky XXXX

when the time comes, then i kick the bucket, i still enjoy life, especially on my good days full of morphine lol, well you have to laugh at it, life as well as death, i like to beleive there is something after the bio-chemical machine conks out, as for computers they are only man-made machines/switching devices, and religion is only there for control/power over ones fellow species.so girls we should take everyday as it comes and do our best to enjoy it, because life is to short being miserable, and there is plenty of miserable sods out there, like politicians, next door neighbours [ who keep saying turn down the music] obviously they do not like music lol,in the end, who know's? love collette XXX.

death - the host of all our golden dreams

How do we know for sure what life and realty are or mean? I can't answer that. Pain reminds us we're alive and pleasure feels like a dream... In the words of Immanuel Kant, we cannot know what reality is in itself. Though brought up in a very catholic family, my beliefs now are more philosophically agnostic / humanistic. In one sense we don't die as we live on through memories of others, stories and history. To refer to one of the greatest of the modern sociologists; C Wright-Mills, each of us is a part of history-making. History and biography are a part of one and other. Ok, that's a bit deep thanks to a few wines and some social theory homework! Good question Nicky!

I look at it simply this way. I don't know if death is the end on everything or if there is a life after death. All I do know is that whatever you believe about it you have a 50/50 chance of being right.

A little while ago I had a very interesting, if spooky, experience. We had a friend visiting one evening and after dinner she asked if anyone believed that we had lived in the past and would anyone like to explore their past. I must admit that we hadn't thought about anything like that but I decided to have a go. That is when things started to get very interesting. I should point out here that this friend has absolutely no idea that Kirsti exists.

She got a small onyx stone on a chain out her bag and held it steady. three times it started to swing and each time she stopped the swing and started again. Finally she said that it was most odd because the stone was telling her I should be a female and not male!! She also said it was highly unusually to be re-born in a different sex!!

I decided to go on with it and started asking questions and the answers were interesting,. I was born in London in 1864 and died in 1927. I was the nanny to a wealthy farming family. I was told where I died and where I was buried. It seemed all good fun and for a laugh I used google earth to try and find the farm house. No house, no farm just a big sprawl of housing but the church was there but when I searched old victorian maps there was the farm and there was the house where our friend said it would be.

The only regret I have about that evening was that I didn't ask really deep questions but it seems only some light hearted fun to begin with.

Very interesting Kirsti xD From a mathematicians point of view having the same result 3 times in a row when flipping a coin has the probability of 1/8. The probability 3 times same result by the same person, when consistence of results affects her believability, even though it is likely unconscious, may be much higher. The rest is interesting, but could also be written off as having quite high probability. Plenty of churches and houses around from that time. We could find out the probability for hitting one at some radius quite easily, if you are curious. I am a natural sceptic, so don't hurt me :hides:

Anyway, I am only trying to explain it rationally, there are no guarantees for what is truly going on in the background of our world xD plus I have also had some unusual experiences.

At a time my godmother had been ill for a while and was in a hospital. One night I woke up being terrified. Completely paralysed by fear of nothing in particular - I don't ever remember being so scared, especially when there was nothing to be scared of. I was maybe 22 and honestly, I didn't even remember the last time I had been afraid of the dark xD. However, I didn't even dare to get up to turn the lights on for at least an hour.

When I finally managed to get up and put the lights on, it still took half an hour before I calmed down and got to sleep again. In the morning I had no idea why I had been so scared at night. A few hours after getting up I got a call saying that my godmother had died at night... :chill:

Alas, it's much longer story why I even have godparents with neither me nor my family being religious xD
This post was edited by Deleted Member at October 20, 2011 9:03 PM BST

OMG death that olde thing, hard to think about really but having seen a few dead people its very final, we r so fortunate not to experience the true horror of death in wars........my god 20000 dead englishmen in the 1st hour of the somme june 1916 thats a reality check

I think our energy is very powerful. I think we leave energy impressions which could possibly contain just a little bit of our thoughts and personalities. Happiness and sadness are so powerful of emotion that they have to GO somewhere.

Unfortunately I think as for us, being who we are piloting our bodies, it all stops at death. No matter what little morsels of personality are left over in energy and molecules ... it's still not a living thinking us.

It took a very long time for me to be OK with the thought of being dead and finished.I love being me so much that it's devastating to think the ride will end and I'll have to exit the space ship.

I think you have hit on the big thing about death! Artist!....life is so all encompassing and vital and bright that death seems to just rob us of that ongoing state and its hard not to see that as a huge loss and a sort of personal trajedy! thats what comes from having such a personal experience of life as we can only know it from inside our heads, the loss in truth is probably not ours but those who are left behind! The frightening thing is that at the end, all the importance we give to ourselves and others matters not a lot when it comes to being dead! as Mr Gaddafi just found out!

In my male mode I worked for an Indian chemical company for almost 10 years, and spent some time in the parts of India tourists don't ever visit. The owner was a Zoroastrian and most of the senior executives were high caste Hindus. Here is not the place to talk about the core values and beliefs of either religion - you can check Wikipedia for details.
However when I told them that my son had decided to become a vegetarian at 4 years old the Hindus all said he must be on a very high plane in this life. For sure he is a vibrant and engaging person, but if he is on a higher plane who knows?
What has any of this to do with death? Well if we do come back and keep trying to get better each time we are here; or we have had a previous existence as a woman (a la Kirsti) then maybe there are issues in our existence that we don't understand...and death and re-incarnation are part of those areas we don't fully comprehend.

By the way I find Kirsti's story intriguing - its one where my affinity for things that are feminine has an explanation. It would tie into reincarnation too.

I suppose that the realization of our end, even though I still can't believe it because I am alive !! ... so many possibilities, so many ideas, so much I could be and do !!! ....

To suddenly go into nothingness seems such a waste of my love ?? Is my love just a cerebral fucking impulse of chemical synapses, set by evolution to make me feel 'happy'?

Consciousness is the ability to create Gods !!!

nicky xxx