[HN Gopher] Presence in Death
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Presence in Death
Author : tock
Score : 69 points
Date : 2026-01-23 12:16 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (rubinmuseum.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (rubinmuseum.org)
| lkos wrote:
| The research mentioned in the article (which indicates no EEG
| activity): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7876463/
| xattt wrote:
| One of the referenced articles is a wilder read, just even from
| the title: "Decapitation in Rats: Latency to Unconsciousness
| and the 'Wave of Death'" (1).
|
| This research is more than deserving of the Ig Nobel.
|
| (1) https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3029360/
| jadbox wrote:
| If TRUE and consciousness is eternal (using whatever framework
| you like), the idea of death becomes double sided. On one hand,
| physical death is sad as it's the end of this physical 'epic
| story' before our consciousness moves onto a new body/story. On
| the flip side, approaching body death is a sort of a temporary
| great relief as we are immortal and cannot actually die. I.e.
| After ten thousand years of being alive, a vampire looks forward
| to sleeping in their coffin at night.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| Don't vampires sleep in the day? I read the tech manual, no
| personal experience, ahem.
| tasuki wrote:
| Consciousness is eternal. If your ego is an illusion, who gets
| reborn?
| temp0826 wrote:
| I really like the metaphor of consciousness as a drop
| separated from the ocean during bodily life and returning to
| it (merging with it) after death. (This is what my strongest
| bufo/5-meo-dmt experiences showed me, but I guess one can't
| really say if the idea created that or the other way)
| jadbox wrote:
| Meditations:
|
| - If a drop separated from the ocean and returns to the
| ocean, is it not still existing in the ocean?
|
| - Are you fully identified with memories? What if you had a
| head wound and forget your past- are you still yourself?
|
| - After the drop is given back the ocean, is it possible
| that a new drop will become separated and hold all the same
| properties as the first droplet (minus its specific
| history/memory)?
| direwolf20 wrote:
| > using whatever framework you like
|
| Can I use SCP-2718?
| fpoling wrote:
| There are stories about bodies of Christian monks that did not
| decompose for a log time after the dearth. Modern take on it
| attributes it to the climate in caves where the body was put
| after the dearth. But another important part was diet. Often the
| well-preserved bodies were of those who had eaten only rough
| bread and water for months and years before the dearth.
|
| So I suspect both of the factors are at the play here as well.
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| I think you're referring to the phenomenon named
| "incorruptibility":
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorruptibility
|
| Recent case, died 2019, found not decomposed in 2023, had not
| been embalmed, unsealed wood coffin:
|
| https://www.ncregister.com/cna/incorrupt-body-of-sister-wilh...
| fpoling wrote:
| In "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky describes
| sort-of the opposite process. A body of monk who had been
| considered a living saint started to smell on the second day
| after his dearth. That made everybody to realize that he was
| the opposite of the saint. And then another monk mentioned
| that eating sweets and cakes could not lead to sainthood.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Assuming no supernatural forces, can this sweets adversion
| be explained by the fat vs muscle ratio in the body?
| hirvi74 wrote:
| The peasant child died and didn't stink though. So, I guess
| he didn't eat a lot sweets I suppose that aligns with his
| wretched upbringing...
| lkos wrote:
| Also related: Mystery of the Tibetan Mummy
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCkB9daCVZ0)
| snozolli wrote:
| I read an article about this years ago and came away with the
| impression that they were effectively mummifying themselves
| before death. From the Wikipedia page on sokushinbutsu:
|
| _In medieval Japan, this tradition developed a process for
| sokushinbutsu, which a monk completed over about 3,000 days. It
| involved a strict diet called mokujiki (literally, 'eating a
| tree'). The monk abstained from any cereals and relied on pine
| needles, resins, and seeds found in the mountains, which would
| eliminate all fat in the body. Increasing rates of fasting and
| meditation would lead to starvation. The monks would slowly
| reduce then stop liquid intake, thus dehydrating the body and
| shrinking all organs._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokushinbutsu
| virgil_disgr4ce wrote:
| Here's the documentary referred to:
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21945758/
|
| It's rentable at the usual places. I might check it out.
| vic_nyc wrote:
| And here it is online: https://vimeo.com/857320140
| JohnMakin wrote:
| I have been studying and practicing tibetan buddhism for a little
| over a year now, particularly dream yoga, but branched into some
| of the other practices. I'm always a skeptic but it is
| fascinating some of the stuff they can do. There is scientific
| evidence they can raise and lower their body temperatures through
| meditation, withstanding great heat/cold and deprivation
| conditions. I've played around with deprivation and what it has
| done for my mental health and body has surprised me. I'm but a
| novice, but I absolutely believe they are tapping into something
| scientific about the body/mind that is still unknown.
|
| There are reasons to be extremely skeptical about some of their
| claims, but, some of it is very interesting and credible.
| theptip wrote:
| Some of these esoteric states are really weird, and it seems
| crazy to me that we are only now investigating them. This isn't
| just "energy" woo that can't be measured, there are clear
| physical phenomena.
|
| Another good one is Niroda Samapatti (cessation) where advanced
| meditators can momentarily cease awareness
| https://awakeningdharma.org/havard-study-on-nirodha-samapatt...
| lkuty wrote:
| Made me think of "How to do the jhanas" by Nadia Asparouhova:
| https://nadia.xyz/jhanas Cessation is impressive and the rest
| too.
| ynac wrote:
| Since we're of a certain level of interest and openness, I'll
| throw a pop fiction title into the mix: Dan Brown's /Secret of
| Secrets/ for a tip toe through the non-local mind and soul topic.
| It's a 4 index card book for me - meaning I have 4 index cards of
| notes, references, and words worthy of reflection or research.
| Pretty good for a fiction best seller.
| niemandhier wrote:
| Interesting thing I learned: Once you die the biome in your
| intestines massively contributes to processes that breakdown your
| body. That's why decapitated heads are often in much better shape
| then the remaining body, especially if the surrounding
| environment is generally conserving the body, such as is the case
| in dry mountains or bogs.
| mrexcess wrote:
| From my understanding of the Buddhist process described here,
| the ritual often begins days or weeks before death, and
| includes exclusive consumption of substances like plant tars
| that dramatically reduce the presence of gut bacteria, and that
| this effect rather than anything supernatural is what most
| attribute to the most significant decay processes being
| temporarily inhibited - there's no gut bacteria left to
| decompose the body from the inside out.
| w10-1 wrote:
| The two phenomena in the article are incorruptibility and
| responsiveness after apparent death. Granting the evidence is
| weak, is it possible?
|
| Death for medical purposes is really the boundary when function
| is not at all expected to return. It's not when metabolic
| processes stop. It can vary with treatment (handling?).
|
| For incorruptibility, (as others have mentioned) diet could be a
| factor, especially for immunogenic foods. Lack of stress is
| another. Stress hormones have wide-ranging impacts and are key to
| sleep, wherein detoxification, esp. reduction of reactive oxygen
| species (ROS) by melatonin. A monk at peace for months or years
| before death could have a vastly altered hormonal and metabolic
| landscape.
|
| Therapeutic hypothermia is cooling the body after near-death
| trauma from heart attacks and drowning. In the last ~15 years, it
| has been instrumental in increasing survival, even for people
| e.g., under water for many minutes. The problem is reperfusion
| injury: after a bout of anoxic cellular respiration, there's a
| large build-up of ROS; re-introducing full metabolism quickly
| results in these molecules reacting with others, impeding
| metabolic processes and destroying some cellular structure. So
| cooling and only slowly reheating the body allows the ROS to be
| scavenged instead, and people survive as a result.
|
| If there's validity to incorruptibility in this context, my bet
| would be on some combination of coolness and processes that
| reduce ROS, coupled with a very low population of ROS from a
| stress-free history before death.
|
| But a mechanism of incorruptibility doesn't address the other
| phenomenon of responsiveness, holding collapse off until some
| signal.
|
| In my (limited) experience with people after stroke, long after
| any cognitive abilities are gone, the person maintains reactivity
| to the environment - touch, heat, light, sound, and (yes) voices.
| This reflects more autonomic processes. The cerebellum maintains
| body awareness and position with input from the midbrain, and
| spinal nerves for muscle groups can operate on their own to hold
| position and react. (Indeed, one of the signs of the absence of
| CNS suppression is painful, relentless muscle spasms.) So I can
| imagine nerves and muscles holding anoxic positions, and even
| some reduced nerve signaling from the cerebellum using ion
| reserves. The holding would have to be perfect, and the signal to
| release would be a one-time thing. This would not work repeatedly
| or for any signal to do something.
|
| My overall takeaway is that we don't realize the extent to which
| we are a product of our bodies.
| Nevermark wrote:
| I think it pays off to treat unexplained widely perceived
| mystical things as real phenomena, I.e. genuine experiences, and
| go from there scientifically.
|
| The conflict between subjective and objective phenomena is
| alleviated simply by recognizing subjective experience as
| objective phenomena. Not as necessarily accurate interpretations
| of reality, but also as not devoid of an objective connection to
| reality.
|
| History is full of psychological effects thought to be purely
| subjective for which we now have an objective understanding much
| more interesting than "those experiences are just made up".
|
| The brain processes information along many pathways and in
| complex ways. This creates all kinds of interesting effects of
| perception, many not experienced by everyone.
|
| A really good example is people who "see vibrations and colorful
| auras". We now know there is a large class of effects given the
| umbrella name of "synesthesia". In these cases, pre-awareness or
| sub-awareness information is combined in the brain, in a way not
| common to most people, and encoded into a directly perceived
| form.
|
| For the person with one of these effects, the perception is very
| real.
|
| But the effect is often more interesting than a different
| sensory/conscious encoding of reality.
|
| For instance, many people, due to early childhood trauma or
| divergent development, innately process social information very
| early in their perception pathways. They pick up on micro-
| gestures, perceived intentions, hints of people's characters in a
| pre-conscious way that they experience as direct perception.
|
| Often this came about due to basic psychological function being
| tuned for an uncommon level of social negotiation demands and
| social threat preparedness, from birth.
|
| I am very close with a "highly sensitive person" (psychological
| technical term) who also has color-social synesthesia.
|
| She absolutely "sees" auras and vibrations around people and has
| since her earliest memory. This is as real to her as the
| emotional responses most of us have mixed into our perceptions of
| music.
|
| She can't unsee these effects any more than most people could go-
| music-affect blind at will. But she spent her childhood being
| bullied for her "strange", "weird", "stupid", processing and
| reactions, to a level and form of information people around her
| couldn't see.
|
| But her differences are not just a curiosity, they are very
| adaptive for her. She sees a visual representation of information
| generated by her hyper alert pre-conscious social mind directly.
| Essentially she has an unusually effective social co-
| processor/pre-processor most of us do not have.
|
| I have been simply amazed on too many occasions to count, at how
| quickly she picks up on people's intentions, character traits, or
| current situational psychology. Such as stress about something
| unrelated to the moment, and any behavior I could see.
|
| She is not always right in interpretation. And the fact that to
| her, she perceives many of these subtleties encoded as something
| clearly seen can make it hard for her to accept a different
| interpretation without some good alternate evidence.
|
| But generally speaking she is a wonder at low latency high
| bandwidth personal interpretation.
|
| I feel absolutely blind compared to her, even in situations where
| I am paying close attention to behavior and cues.
|
| Since I respected her experiences from the time we first met
| (even though I initially assumed there was a lot of "pure"
| subjectivity and wishful thinking going on), and brought up the
| scientific view of understanding phenomena as complementary to
| perception, not anti-mystical, we got along well. We routinely
| talk about many things back and forth in mystical vs. scientific
| forms, with the assumption there is only temporary, never
| inherent, inherent conflict.
|
| Which is really fun. Her mystical mind and her perception of the
| world is beautiful and functional in ways I would never have
| imagined without our rapport.
|
| I think scientists make a big mistake when they approach mystical
| views from a science competitive stance. Especially perceptions
| that are common to many. There is likely it or only a scientific
| explanation, for those subjective perceptions, but interesting
| benefits associated with the value that people with these
| perceptions place on them.
|
| Recognizing when there is value makes a dual but consistent
| mystical/scientific view more accurate and more palatable to
| people who otherwise have seen science practiced as a selective
| reality ideology.
|
| The internal mind, relative to our physical processing machinery,
| is a first class world, for exploration, discovery, and
| surprising explanations. That it can operate by very different
| rules from non-psychological artifacts just makes it more
| important to take seriously as a first class realm.
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