Marika Candelaria - Week 2
In this week’s readings, I was very interested in how we perceive our death. Professor Valverde’s story about her NDE (Near Death Experience) was an eye-opening introduction to the readings. It made me wonder about how other people view their death or if people who are supposedly dead are still in a conscious state of mind outside of their bodies. As I am pursuing psychology as my major, this topic is intriguing to learn and makes me think about Freud’s Psychoanalysis Theory of consciousness. We have three levels of consciousness: the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious. Between these levels, we are dealing with the conscious and unconscious in this week’s readings.
Usually, when we think of someone who has passed away, we believe that they are unconscious. However, in this sense, the second article states that we are still conscious even if we are dead (Academic Research International). They even provide some sort of evidence of other people’s different experiences and came up with several equations about the time duration of their death and when they come back. It is a different perspective of our afterlives, besides having a heaven or hell. As I grew up, I was always a Catholic who believed that if you did not sin, then you would go to heaven. However, reading these articles points my beliefs to dig deeper and understand what really happens when we are dead. This does not mean I do not believe in my religion anymore, but reading these articles allows me to have a broader sense of other people’s experiences.
When I was little, I remember a story my aunt told me once when she was having a near death experience. She told me that as she died, she saw her own body from above. This means that she was still conscious even though she was already dead. I never really considered believing what she told me until after I read these articles. I did not know that other people could have the same experience and now I am beginning to realize that there could be more after death--maybe there is a heaven or hell, or maybe we do turn into spirits. We will not know until it is our time, but reading about it has made me curious about how people die and if they are still in their conscious minds today. What if they could still see what is happening in the present? What if they are just reliving their memories in the past? Or what if they are living in the future? Time has also played a huge role in these concepts and it is a mind blowing topic to think about.
Overall, these readings gave me a sense of opening up to other people’s perspective about how they view death, rather than limiting my knowledge to the religion I grew up with, makes me think more about how our lives are built through time, and how we are passing through in the present.
Usually, when we think of someone who has passed away, we believe that they are unconscious. However, in this sense, the second article states that we are still conscious even if we are dead (Academic Research International). They even provide some sort of evidence of other people’s different experiences and came up with several equations about the time duration of their death and when they come back. It is a different perspective of our afterlives, besides having a heaven or hell. As I grew up, I was always a Catholic who believed that if you did not sin, then you would go to heaven. However, reading these articles points my beliefs to dig deeper and understand what really happens when we are dead. This does not mean I do not believe in my religion anymore, but reading these articles allows me to have a broader sense of other people’s experiences.
When I was little, I remember a story my aunt told me once when she was having a near death experience. She told me that as she died, she saw her own body from above. This means that she was still conscious even though she was already dead. I never really considered believing what she told me until after I read these articles. I did not know that other people could have the same experience and now I am beginning to realize that there could be more after death--maybe there is a heaven or hell, or maybe we do turn into spirits. We will not know until it is our time, but reading about it has made me curious about how people die and if they are still in their conscious minds today. What if they could still see what is happening in the present? What if they are just reliving their memories in the past? Or what if they are living in the future? Time has also played a huge role in these concepts and it is a mind blowing topic to think about.
Overall, these readings gave me a sense of opening up to other people’s perspective about how they view death, rather than limiting my knowledge to the religion I grew up with, makes me think more about how our lives are built through time, and how we are passing through in the present.
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