Do you think people die when it is their time?

[Greedy Toad]

I believe that when it's accidental or natural, people die because it was their time. When it's inflicted upon oneself, I don't think it was the time. But I also believe in limbo, so I think that those who inflict death upon themselves do not make it to the other side. At least not until their time comes.

 

I do not believe this in relation to people taking their own lives.

Whilst I do not believe in heaven or hell, I certainly do not believe that fear of "hell" has been used constructively by the religions.

 

There is a short essay that states, "if all religions believe the other goes to hell for not believing in the other, then as we cannot believe in more than one religion, we must all be hypothetically going to "hell".

 

I believe in energy and transference. When something dies, no matter what it is, it's energy (not voodoo talk, we are all made of nergy - fact) it is simply transferred into other things.

 

Hence the reason i placed my cat under his favourite tree. My cat will become part of that tree and hence live forever in one form or another.

[Bella20]

What is this other side you speak of? And what is "limbo"......what is it like?

 

Well, I am Jewish... so I believe in seven heavens up and seven heavens down, and the way you live your life determines where you end up.

 

Limbo is just... the middle. nothing.

[15 Storeys High]

Well, I am Jewish... so I believe in seven heavens up and seven heavens down, and the way you live your life determines where you end up.

 

Limbo is just... the middle. nothing.

 

So...if someone left the world of their own accord but had lived a good life before that, helping others ect........where would they go?...in your opinion?

[Bella20]

So...if someone left the world of their own accord but had lived a good life before that, helping others ect........where would they go?...in your opinion?

 

I don't want you to think that my way is the right way. This is by no means a universal truth and arguing over who has it right it's like arguing over who has the best imaginary friend. I know that you have lost somebody - from your other threads - and I do not know if it was by their own means, but I don't want my answer to cause you pain or distress. So please forgive me if in any way it has. And stay strong.

[15 Storeys High]

I wasn't planning on arguing or attacking you or anything like that......I just want to know what you think/believe....So I might be able to start making some sense of a few things....

[Bella20]

I wasn't planning on arguing or attacking you or anything like that......I just want to know what you think/believe....So I might be able to start making some sense of a few things....

 

No no, I know you weren't. I was just really afraid that I was going to hurt you with my answer and was really trying not to.

 

I believe that if it is not your time, you stay in limbo.

[15 Storeys High]

Yeah...but...what IS limbo? In your opinion? Can you describe it for me?

[waveseer]

I admit I didn't read this entire thread, but I do have an opinion! lol

 

I believe that people die, quite often in fact, as part of the circle of life. I believe that once you die you can be sure it was your time to go as hindsight not foresight.

[Bella20]

Yeah...but...what IS limbo? In your opinion? Can you describe it for me?

 

 

I feel like when a person takes his/her life, the soul has nowhere to go. It can go back because the body is destroyed, and it is not let in to any of the soul worlds because the time has not come. It is a painful state.

In my head, I picture it as a dark room with spirits roaming around. But this has been an image I've had since I was a girl.

[15 Storeys High]

Do you think maybe they can't leave the area where they died? That maybe they're trapped there?

[Bella20]

Do you think maybe they can't leave the area where they died? That maybe they're trapped there?

 

Mmmm no, I don't think I think that.

[15 Storeys High]

Do you think they're in a place where we can hear them?

[KG]

Do you think they're in a place where we can hear them?

 

I honestly don't know. But my opinion of the dead has changed, somewhat.

 

Before, I thought she was just gone. From everywhere. Sure, there were a few times when I'd get drunk and have conversations with her, but that was just me rambling.

 

Now, I feel as if she may have steered this new woman into my life, they are so much alike. That, perhaps, she knew I was ready to give in to accepting being lonely forever. Then, 4 days later, my G/F calls out of the blue.

 

So did she help, or was it kizmet? I'll never know until I die, I guess.

 

Just my 2 c's.

[15 Storeys High]

I don't know why but for some reason this thread has opened up a can of worms for me.....I don't consider myself a spiritual or religious person and yet, here I am.....looking for answers that I never considered could be. This morning I looked into a few concepts that jumped out to me last night and eventually I was led to Dante's Inferno......in particular the middle ring of the 7th layer.....and now.....I feel like I need to delve further into this stuff......into Dante.....into the notion of Limbo and so on....

[Bella20]

I don't know why but for some reason this thread has opened up a can of worms for me.....I don't consider myself a spiritual or religious person and yet, here I am.....looking for answers that I never considered could be. This morning I looked into a few concepts that jumped out to me last night and eventually I was led to Dante's Inferno......in particular the middle ring of the 7th layer.....and now.....I feel like I need to delve further into this stuff......into Dante.....into the notion of Limbo and so on....

 

I am very sorry, and somehow I feel a little responsible for that. If it means anything to you, as a Jew, I don't believe in Hell. And eventually those in limbo do make it to the other side, but only when their time comes.

[tiredofvampires]

In part, the trouble I have with the notion of someone's "time" is that it tries to impose a very human definition and some absolute value (and one propelled by our desires and colored by our emotions) onto something that is extremely arbitrary, in my view. Our idea of a "right time" for something happening should be able to be quantified, if this line of thinking is correct. And so if we try to quantify someone's "time", what would that be?

 

Is it 78 years? 52 years? 96 years?

 

Is it different for each person, this supposed "right time"?

 

And if so, why would my "right time" be shorter than your "right time"? How is that fair to me?

 

Shouldn't we all just get a standard number, then, to be fair? Let's just all say, "the right time to die is at 95 years of age." I pick 95, because I like the number 9. And I also like 5, because it's just right in the middle. I like a happy medium between the 00's. And this age is good because it gives everyone maximal opportunity to live a full life, doing good things and fixing the bad things if they can (let's just all put aside for now the fact that some really wicked people live to a ripe old age and many kind, just people die early in life, so some people's "right time" gives them a lot of time to continue doing rotten things -- is it ever possible that they "outlived" their quota and went over their "right time"?; and if you die from an accident or leukemia at 16, it's the "right" time" at 16? But taking your life at 16 because you were suffering from Major Depressive Disorder makes it the "wrong" time?).

 

So if we are going to talk about some abstract concept like a "right time", we have to also know what that would be, right? Otherwise it just falls apart. To say someone died at the wrong time or NOT THEIR TIME must mean there is some big calendar with the correct date earmarked in the cosmos, which was thwarted.

 

(And what was that, then? Life vs. The Cosmos? Do these ever disagree?)

 

The fact that people die at all ages then really does present a problem.

 

It would mean that either as I said, time allotments are being handed out pretty unequally and unfairly, or else everyone dies before their time if they haven't reached our idea of a specified, prepackaged old age.

 

I think that if we view this as humans being just animals in the world like others (having a large brain doesn't mean we have more of a correct time to die than a leopard, does it?), we can see that when a creature dies, it dies. Sometimes it perishes by being attacked and eaten. Sometimes it perishes because of a drought and it dies of thirst. Sometimes it perishes because it's injured and breaks away from the herd (this may be as close to taking its life into its own "hands" as it gets). Sometimes it just lives out a life span until it's so old, it dies of a disease or from lack of ability to keep up, but it's lived long. Are any of these scenarios better or worse? Too soon or premature? If so, by whose standards?

 

Nature has designed us to live as best we can in the bodies we inhabit. Sometimes, there are physiological phenomena that prevent one person from reaching someone else's age. Sometimes there are psychological phenomena that are reasons for this. And sometimes, events occur that are beyond one's control, or that are contributed to by a complex web of physiology and psychology that determine an individual's lifespan.

 

But in the end, that lifespan is that person's lifespan because it is no other's. Every individual lives and dies measured against its own "timeline" with the many variables at play in its own life. If we had some absolute lifespan indicating a "correct time" then this would box us into a very narrow idea of uniformity in what has been created, a very artificial superimposition. And the reason we do it, as I mentioned, is that it may be more comforting to create some framework to fit people's lives into, so the terrible losses we meet when someone dies can be put somewhere.

 

When in fact, the only evidence of a person's time is the exact time they went.

 

We can create artificial and conceptual constructs of better times to go. But reality has the upper hand. REALITY says, "This is your time."

 

As every person is completely unique and individual, and to be compared against no standard or mold.

 

This whole paradigm means though that we'd have to entertain the idea that when every person dies -- just as when an animal dies -- this life IS complete.

 

Completed and complete.

 

At the face of it, that really is a very bitter pill to try to swallow, since certainly it does appear that life can be cut "short". But on the other hand, to me anyway, imagining that every life is complete, no matter how short or how that person went, is extremely liberating. Because this allows that we are all equal in the face of the universe -- and yet unique in what life was given to us to work with.

 

While it may sound absurd, what didn't happen, couldn't have.

 

The alternative is even more absurd in my opinion, though, (no offense to anyone), and that is to assert that something that didn't happen was supposed to happen.

 

And so what happened -- was "RIGHT." Right not in the sense that it makes us happy, but in the sense of "can be no other way."

 

And to me, if something can be no other way -- what am I fighting against?

[15 Storeys High]

It's that word again..."time".....almost the bain of my life. But of course, TOV, you're right....and I like the way you're able to just reach into a subject and pull out only the evidence that's there for us all to see. And my brain, the scientific part, totally agrees with everything you're saying.

 

But there's another part of me that starts to pick holes in relation to my situation. If logic were applied and everybody was given the same "right" time to die....say aged 95 like you said, then yes, most people would die "before their time". In which case, my girlfriend has a lot of years to wait wherever she is for that time....and if what Bella says is true...in that she can't move out of this limbo until it IS her time....well...that's hard to take.

 

But, on the other hand.....if reality has spoken and it was her time to go then a) she did an awesome job at knowing that, and b) What the hell is she doing now? And where the hell is she?

 

And if what Dante wrote is true....then time doesn't even really come into it for me or her. But, anyway, that's a different thread.

[raining.stars]

that this life IS complete.

 

Completed and complete.

 

 

And so what happened -- was "RIGHT." Right not in the sense that it makes us happy, but in the sense of "can be no other way."

Perfectly said TOV!

[EQD]

i think we are just fish in a sea. its life. its not something greater, sometimes i think we'd like it to be... that way we'd feel like we have more of an idea of when--an illusion of control. a sense in what we find senseless...

 

like "hey i cant die today because i still have to do this big thing tomorrow that i've been waiting on doing for years now!" but in reality you are just a fish swimming in an ocean.

 

your life is always and has always been available to be taken by a chance occurrence.

 

Like people who die the day before their birthday or holidays. They had plans for those days. They were looking forward to the future and working on getting there.

 

But a chance car crash or other misfortune doesnt recognize that. We are made of flesh and blood, skin and bone.... we die like any other animal.

[KG]

Very well put EQD!

[tiredofvampires]

If logic were applied and everybody was given the same "right" time to die....say aged 95 like you said, then yes, most people would die "before their time". In which case, my girlfriend has a lot of years to wait wherever she is for that time

 

And, by that token, MOST people would have to wait for a long time to reach that "right" time. And they'd all be stuck in limbo, too. And your girlfriend would be in lots of good company. In fact, some really great people would be hanging out with her, keeping her company. It'd probably be a packed house in there.

 

And...(hopefully no one will take this as mocking, I'm just dramatizing a bit here)...everyone might have a little ticket. And a voice would boom through the PA, "JOE SCHMOE!" And everyone would say, "Happy Birthday!! How does it feel to be 95?" And he'd say, "Fabulous! Couldn't be better! See you guys up there!" And he'd be led out to the elevator, up. And the people who are still just at 64 would all look ruefully at each other and talk about how lucky Mr. Shmoe's neighbor was -- he was 94 going on 95 when he died, and had to only wait here 5 months. Lucky fella. One of the RARE ones. The rare ones who didn't have to spend YEARS in limbo, just waiting.

 

I have a bit of trouble with the idea that when we die, there is a "holding place" where we go until the "real" time. That there is a timer, like on the microwave, and when it goes "ting!", a soul then has met some arbitrary "right" moment to really be rightfully considered properly exited from the earth, which it has already left in corporeal form. No, I don't have any evidence that this scenario DOESN'T exist, and you're right, I agree with you, Storeys, that just because there isn't hard evidence for something, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's very true that many, many things could and DO exist, but we just don't have the means to prove or understand them. So I'm right along with you that I can't prove that this situation is impossible. I'm willing to entertain just about anything being true, and am open to the possibility that I can even know something far ahead of science catching up with its limited instruments.

 

But I do feel such a world -- a world of waiting for a "better/righter" time, because you've chosen the "wrong" one -- currently has LESS evidence going for it than the one that we know and see here. The world we know and see shows us that Life hands us circumstances on a regular basis that are non-negotiable.

 

There are a lot of problems here, and one is that the theories are getting mixed up. We'd have to pick a theory and stick to it: either, as Bella says, people all die at their "right", designated time, (except for people who take their lives), and that means some people just get the short end of the stick, making this appear arbitrary and unfair (since reality shows there IS no uniform age of death); OR, there are loads of spirits hanging out in limbo because we have a standard number for all (which has to be the oldest anyone has lived, which I think is 130, as I'm assuming no one lives LONGER than their "right" time, and thus this can't possibly be a place of punishment, because most of humankind is there. Just waiting.

 

I know I'm sounding painfully caught up in logic and scientific reasoning, but I wouldn't be if precise numbers and levels and numeric figures and calculated "times" weren't being brought up. If that's the case, a scientist's hat has to be put on, you see. If we are talking about phenomena that can be quantified, and talked about in that language, than we'd better be prepared to continue in that technical vein.

 

b) What the hell is she doing now? And where the hell is she?

 

This is something you won't be able to know until you get there yourself. Until then, all we have is faith. And generally speaking, I have respect for people of faith. They can believe things without the proof. I'm a person who needs more -- I need proof to believe something. That proof doesn't have to be anything other than my own lived experience and observation. It doesn't have to be in a textbook or in a lab. I fully embrace that kind of arrived-at belief. But it does have to involve what I can perceive. If I can't perceive it, I can't begin to believe it.

 

There are some things I believe, and consider proven, because the perceiving them was sufficient; and other things where it's necessary but not sufficient just to perceive. In the case of the afterlife, I don't feel I have enough information to determine things to the point of certainty. I have some perceptions...and now you are having some, too. But more is needed in the way of proof for a situation where I am not the one having a direct experience. I can't directly experience someone else's own experience, and that's why my own sense perceptions fall short in the case of the afterlife. The only one having that direct experience is the one who is deceased. Mine is incomplete.

 

What is needed for full certainty then (short of going there, too), is an element of faith thrown in as well. Blind faith.

 

And that I don't have.

 

In the meantime, masterful works like the Inferno were written to try to explain on a moralistic basis where people go. And this is the basis of religion. So Dante was working from a template of his religion, and the beliefs in Hell (and Limbo) it contains. You would have to believe in Hell first (and in a very literal way) to believe in Dante's organization of the afterlife.

 

And to believe in Hell for someone who took their life, you would have to believe that a higher power would not have mercy on someone who was so mentally distraught and wounded, that they resorted to this.

 

I have my own beliefs about that.

 

But I don't want to veer in the direction of religious debate, and plus I realize I'm going far off the beaten path.....so I'll just leave it there.

[KG]

Storeys,

I believe she and my wife, and Dags Lisa, are placed somewhere on high, where they deserve to be. With the Nobel's, Einsteins, and ML King. To think less would be an insult to the intelligence of a loving god.

[Perfect Dark]

I don't believe in a limbo. I believe in Heaven and Hell but that's just my opinion. I believe good people go to a good place.

[tiredofvampires]

I believe good people go to a good place.

 

I believe that, too.

 

In fact, I believe everyone goes (returns) to the same place. Because I believe that everything in the universe is energy made manifest in the form of matter.

 

The matter may change or disintegrate, but energy is never lost. This is actually the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

 

So energy is a force that is not concerned anymore with "timely" or "untimely." As soon as energy changes form, it's "time" for it to do so. It's just a POTENT FORCE. And we all house it, we all harness it, we are a manifestation of it in the vehicle of our body, but we don't "own" it, and when we die, it is liberated into what I think of as an expansive sea. I would say it is our essence, and it's a shared essence that merely appears as separate forms. Energy itself doesn't stop and start anywhere, it just condenses into matter for a short while. And when it's in that mode (like us sharing our energy as two living beings who love eachother), the imprint, the effect, of that energetic interchange and relationship is ineradicable.

 

So we are never truly separated from the energy that appeared as them, nor they from us. There is a continuous connection and interwoveness that is the very matrix of all that exists.

 

But that's more along the lines of the subject, "What happens in the afterlife", not "Is it our time"....