Have I died, and now caught in a loop?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by sunnevershines, Jan 31, 2016.

  1. sunnevershines Registered Member

    Messages:
    96
    A few weeks back I purposely took an overdose of propanolol and other sedating prescription drugs (enough by any standard to end life) but much to my dismay, I woke the next morning conscience--could I have died and been caught in a loop or some kinda purgatory? My reality has not changed since this occured. So how does one ascertain if they are alive?
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,549
    Maybe ask that question to a psychiatrist?
     
    Yazata and Russ_Watters like this.
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. Kristoffer Giant Hyrax Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,364
    That sounds like a very good idea.
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. sunshaker Registered Member

    Messages:
    84
    What ever you may think, You are still here, "where ever here is", This life is not finished with you yet,
    You reached a very low point, which many have also reached, but some never again have a chance to ask this question.
    You have been given another chance, don't waste it, let this be a new chapter for you.
     
    ajanta likes this.
  8. wellwisher Banned Banned

    Messages:
    5,160
    You are sort of like an old time scientist, running an experiment, to see what was on the other side. When the experiment ended, you were back where you began. This suggests your approach is not how you get there.

    The concept of Purgatory is interesting. This is a place in tradition, where people go, who are not good enough to go to heaven, but not evil enough to go to hell. They are somewhere in the middle between the two. The energy they need, to go to the other side, is connected to other people thinking and praying for them, based on how your life has impacted others. Their connection to you will provides the activation energy over the hump, sometimes up or down.

    It appears those whom you have touched, don't want you to leave just yet. Some people do not see you are gone, but still see you as part of the living. You are not invisible, just people are not sure how to reach you. You need to meet half way.
     
  9. C C Consular Corps - "the backbone of diplomacy" Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,324
    Seek qualified help for personal problems should this be a true biographical account of recent events rather than a setup for a "situational philosophy" topic. The rest here is purely exploring the proposal in the context of the latter.

    Since life simply resumed as it normally does after sleep ("the next morning" instead of a leap back to last week or whenever), one might ask how a "loop" even enters the picture as an alternative. For instance: An anomalous temporal transition of consciousness back to the past wouldn't carry a current brain-state's information and memory along with it -- i.e., total amnesia of both the future and the transition would result. Consequently there would be neither validation of nor reason for inferring that one was caught in a temporal loop.

    There is the trope originating with Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" which could still be applicable at some point in its subjective future. But that's a single cycle return from an imaginary or hallucinated "tomorrow" to the otherwise expected and actual termination moment of death, which the fantasy had made it seem was evaded. It wouldn't be a matter of being caught in an endless repetition.

    The additional spin of it being a phase of "purification" in an afterlife that is mimicking a temporal loop concerning either the past or a "continuing into the future despite death" illusion, does not improve justification for such scenarios being the case.

    The governance or coherence of the reality needs to fail at times, minus any accompanying editing during its restoration / repair which removes the revelations from personal memory. From the standpoint of a specific consciousness encountering such a deceptive sequence of life which seems authentic but isn't, note that a deceptive life that goes uncontradicted can pragmatically amount to a legitimate life. Because minus any such inconsistencies disrupting the unfolding story, there would be no way to verify whether it's "real" or "not real" anyway.

    Constructive thinking warrants dismissing this solipsism-like possibility on the grounds that entertaining it serves little purpose. The surrounding human population in a ridiculously long-lived and highly regulated dream slash hallucination would still regard one as insane just as much as those in the logic of a genuine reality would. The legal and moral consequences (punishment) for harming other people on the grounds that "I considered them to be superficial phantoms" would be just as difficult to endure in a deceptive reality that goes uncontradicted. Along with psychological suffering from the guilt eventually induced from the condemnation of even an imaginary public. Oneirocosmism ("this world is a dream" -ism) is a purely private and "restricted to the lone individual" possibility; there's no fellowship or enduring cult available for socially, outwardly entertaining the idea with respect to it "being true or the case".
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2016
    sunnevershines likes this.
  10. sunnevershines Registered Member

    Messages:
    96
    ....single cycle return from an imaginary or hallucinated "tomorrow" to the otherwise expected and actual termination moment of death, which the fantasy had made it seem was evaded. It wouldn't be a matter of being caught in an endless repetition...
    Probably the best explanation. Thank you. I'd forgotten about that Ambrose story....
     
  11. sunnevershines Registered Member

    Messages:
    96
    Not sure how a psychiatrist could help answer my question except by writing a script for psychotropics. I surely don't need this intervention. Thanks
     
  12. kx000 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,134
    You would have "capability."
     
  13. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    33,264
    Why try to end your life, you have many things that are out here in life and people that want to communicate with you.
     
  14. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    If you can ask that question, you are alive. Sorry.
     
  15. sunnevershines Registered Member

    Messages:
    96
    Not necessarily. Because of the fact that I ingested enough propanolol to end life, my astonishment and wonderment when I woke to find consciousness started me to think that I may be in another parallel inexhaustible timeline (my original question failed to mention this) but intead was wrongly expressed as a 'loop' Thanks to CC for informative posting.
    Difficult to explain all the ins and outs of my storied history but the night this occured it almost seemed that everything was aligned just enough to push me into the great unknown. Being all to human---with instinct to live beyond all cost--I naturally avoided any thought or action that ran countrary to this but on this particular evening, I did not find myself with one iota of caution or fear--it was as if the thought of death and the unknown had been ripped away and I was no longer beholden to any pain or anxiety. It was truely a marvelous occasion for me....until I woke and had a look around.
     
  16. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    No. No such thing.
     
  17. sunnevershines Registered Member

    Messages:
    96
    Its simple to say no something doesnt exist but do you have an explanation as to how I could still be wandering around, seemingly alive? Divine intervention? Something else?
     
    Last edited: Feb 3, 2016
  18. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    Yes. People survive attempts to kill themselves all the time. You just failed.
     
  19. sunnevershines Registered Member

    Messages:
    96
    Yeah, humans are resilient. I'll leave off! Thanks
     
  20. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    Maybe you were just meant to live.
     
  21. Beer w/Straw Transcendental Ignorance! Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,549
    There are medical breakthroughs. People do actually help others'.

    A psychiatrist is a doctor, just don't lie.
     
  22. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    33,264
    You should seek a doctor to try and help you. I have Bi Polar, Manic Depression and other mental health issues. I fortunately found a great doctor , after years of searching, that has prescribed to me a medicine that helps me keep my suicidal thoughts from hurting me. I take Seriqual to prevent the thoughts of suicide to a very bare minimum. Not everyone can use this medicine but many that do say it helps them too. Not everyone is the same so it is best you seek the doctor near you to get the right medicine that will do you good. Suicidal thoughts are not normal and should be dealt with quickly. If you don't have money a community hospital will many times give you help for free or reduced costs.
     
  23. sunnevershines Registered Member

    Messages:
    96
    Thank you for the concern. To be honest, I have sought help in the past but have never found much relief in what I was given and or prescribed---much of the time the whole litany of adverse side effects left me excess weight, lethargy, and impotent. I know what the common idea is: keep trying to something sticks but as F S Fitzgerald once wrote:
    "But I'm a slowthinking man, and it occurred to me simultaneously that of all natural forces, vitality is the incommunicable one. In days when juice came into one as an article without duty, one tried to distribute it but always without success; to further mix metaphors, vitality never “takes.” You have it or you haven’t it, like health or brown eyes or honor or a baritone voice. I might have asked some of it from her, neatly wrapped and ready for home
    cooking and digestion, but I could never have got it not if I’d waited around for a thousand hours
    with the tin cup of selfpity. I could walk from her door, holding myself very carefully like cracked crockery..."
    However, as recent events transpire, my personal crack up has subsided but questions still linger as to why I survived---physically, meta, and/or otherwise.
     

Share This Page