The Most Intense Dying Experience I've Had

Beorn

Dagobah Resident
FOTCM Member
I was lying on my back meditating this afternoon as I normally do, repeating the POTS for a few repetitions before taking a nap.

In my dream I'm driving down a road when the accelerator got stuck and the brakes failed. Alarms were going off and two warning lights were on. One for oil and another one for something else with the word "Phillips" next to it but I didn't know what it meant. I knew in that instant that I was going to die and started screaming out to God. I felt that God saved me the pain of having to experience the crash in minute detail and I either zoned out or my spirit left my body before the crash. Either way I died and there was an energy buzzing all around me.

I woke up with that energy still buzzing around me and I guess I was in shock. I had to take a moment to figure out if I was alive or dead.

Once I had recovered a little my first thoughts were "I died. 360. It was the death I had to have." I'm not sure if this is an attempt at self-soothing or not because it could also be a premonition, past life or a warning about something very serious.

Earlier in the dream I was driving down the road fairly quickly with other cars and a man was running around the cars doing laps. He would overtake the cars and then run back again. The next time he'd be riding a bicycle or something else. It was quite peculiar.

Any thoughts about this dream?
 
That's interesting. I don't know what that means, but I'd like to know why sometimes we get dreams which are so 'cheap' in their production (as in a 'movie production' ;) ), while others (more rare) seem to be so much more detailed and realistic, with all sorts of sensations and deep emotions.

I once had one such dream in which I was a Sikh wearing a turban and died in a car crash along with my daughter and her boyfriend, who was driving (I am culturally far from a Sikh and I don't have any children). I remember floating away in anger because my daughter died because of his fault. I am tempted to think it was a past or parallel life, but then again it could be many other things, like psychically picking up somebody else's life, or simply a story that my unconscious made up for some reason. Interestingly, when I first started doing EE intensely I got much more of such 'quality' dreams.

Thanks for sharing.
 
Hi Beorn,
In my dream I'm driving down a road when the accelerator got stuck and the brakes failed. Alarms were going off and two warning lights were on. One for oil and another one for something else with the word "Phillips" next to it but I didn't know what it meant. I knew in that instant that I was going to die and started screaming out to God. I felt that God saved me the pain of having to experience the crash in minute detail and I either zoned out or my spirit left my body before the crash. Either way I died and there was an energy buzzing all around me
.

Phillips as a surname may mean "son of Philip"
I've googled about name Philip
Online Etymology Dictionary said:
masc. proper name, from Latin Philippus, from Greek Philippos "fond of horses," from philos "beloved, loving" (see philo-) + hippos "horse" (see equine). In 16c., Philip and Cheyney was a way to say "any two common men."

I find this part interesting even though I do not have any particular interpretation to it
Earlier in the dream I was driving down the road fairly quickly with other cars and a man was running around the cars doing laps. He would overtake the cars and then run back again. The next time he'd be riding a bicycle or something else. It was quite peculiar.
 
I am very sorry you had a nightmare like this, it seems at first not funny at all. But there is a theory that says that we remember nightmares, some more than others, for a reason, and the reason is to remember the nightmare. Write anything about the nightmare that comes to your mind, ideas, connections, images, and try not to analyse it but just listen it, like if someone was telling you this story. For me nightmares are not negative, it is just something that talks about me, about my fears, my indecision, my life and maybe with time this nightmare will be understood. I see also nightmares like a little fairy story that opens to me and give me the occasion to enter the story and be a character and learn something.

Thanks to share your nightmare with us. They say that death is not the end but the beginning of something. And when we have nightmares death is always there, to remind us that death is the realm of nightmares.
 
Beorn said:
Any thoughts about this dream?

Hi Beorn,

Here's my thoughts on your dream here, but remember it's just my opinion, not an definite answer. The dreams can only have true meanings to the dreamer. :)

Anyway, upon reading your dream, the imagery of "driving down a road" indicate a journey and a "crash" could be a "conflicting" direction of your life. The word "conflict" is similar to "clash" of two opposing things - which the "two warning signals" imagery came to my mind. And, the word "Phillips" immediately made me thought of a screw with a cross-shaped top for turning, the Phillips heads - so, something wasn't "turned" properly or tightly? If your screws got "loose", then maybe that's a warning signal?

The other warning signal is an oil - why we need an oil for our car? To run smoothly, to make anything "go". This brings me back to the "runner", who can outrun the cars and doing laps. He doesn't need any oils - he have his own "natural" energy, much better than the oils cars been running on. That may or may not be relevant. Anyway, an oil is an "resource" - something for your car to use. But, when one is low on oil or in a need of oil change, the engine (or "power") suffers.

Connecting the lack of oil (lack of will) with a "loose screw" (incoherent thinking), the car (a body or an ability to make decision) crashed. That death could represent a "change" - you're "moving on" from that particular journey.

Again, that's what I get from your dream, though it may not be accurate. Questions would be formulated to determine the subtle intensity of the situation or situations before the dream - meaning, did anything happened that could potentially change your "reality" or course of life? But, since you were doing the PotS before the nap, the power of prayer could be changing something within you to change or alter that "course" (road) from crashing?
 
Thanks for your thoughts and replies.

Windmill knight said:
That's interesting. I don't know what that means, but I'd like to know why sometimes we get dreams which are so 'cheap' in their production (as in a 'movie production' ;) ), while others (more rare) seem to be so much more detailed and realistic, with all sorts of sensations and deep emotions.

I once had one such dream in which I was a Sikh wearing a turban and died in a car crash along with my daughter and her boyfriend, who was driving (I am culturally far from a Sikh and I don't have any children). I remember floating away in anger because my daughter died because of his fault. I am tempted to think it was a past or parallel life, but then again it could be many other things, like psychically picking up somebody else's life, or simply a story that my unconscious made up for some reason. Interestingly, when I first started doing EE intensely I got much more of such 'quality' dreams.

At first I had all kinds of experiences with the EE as well. Now it's not so often. I guess it's part of the process and every now and again the Universe steps in to bring some shocks or a change of direction.

Zee Ley said:
Phillips as a surname may mean "son of Philip"
I've googled about name Philip
Online Etymology Dictionary said:
masc. proper name, from Latin Philippus, from Greek Philippos "fond of horses," from philos "beloved, loving" (see philo-) + hippos "horse" (see equine). In 16c., Philip and Cheyney was a way to say "any two common men."

Zadius Sky said:
And, the word "Phillips" immediately made me thought of a screw with a cross-shaped top for turning, the Phillips heads - so, something wasn't "turned" properly or tightly? If your screws got "loose", then maybe that's a warning signal?

Both of these meanings occurred to me but initially I couldn't see how they fit. During the dream the Phillips head screwdriver did pop into my mind so maybe there's something there. Over the last year or two I have been very, very confused so maybe something in my thinking does need to be turned properly or is a bit loose. It's always hard knowing what to share because everyone has their challenges and this world is such a crazy place right now.

loreta said:
I am very sorry you had a nightmare like this, it seems at first not funny at all. But there is a theory that says that we remember nightmares, some more than others, for a reason, and the reason is to remember the nightmare. Write anything about the nightmare that comes to your mind, ideas, connections, images, and try not to analyse it but just listen it, like if someone was telling you this story. For me nightmares are not negative, it is just something that talks about me, about my fears, my indecision, my life and maybe with time this nightmare will be understood. I see also nightmares like a little fairy story that opens to me and give me the occasion to enter the story and be a character and learn something.

Thanks to share your nightmare with us. They say that death is not the end but the beginning of something. And when we have nightmares death is always there, to remind us that death is the realm of nightmares.

Thanks Loreta. I guess there are all kinds of deaths and they can be viewed as either positive or negative. I spent some time praying and asking the Universe that if I were to die let it be the death of my personality and the birth of something real. This gives me hope.

Zadius Sky said:
Again, that's what I get from your dream, though it may not be accurate. Questions would be formulated to determine the subtle intensity of the situation or situations before the dream - meaning, did anything happened that could potentially change your "reality" or course of life? But, since you were doing the PotS before the nap, the power of prayer could be changing something within you to change or alter that "course" (road) from crashing?

I'm not sure. I've felt like I'm at a crossroads and that I'm supposed to step into a different life, one of abundance rather than poverty and that if I can't do it I will die. There's a lot of confusion because I see a lot of things in my mind or pick up on a lot of things but can't necessarily place them in physical reality. There's also enormous sadness and frustration but even now I hesitate to bring it up because I recognize the terrible state we are all in. I just try to remember to reach out for the Divine so that in some small way I can make a difference just by being here, even if it's not immediately obvious.
 
Beorn said:
In my dream I'm driving down a road when the accelerator got stuck and the brakes failed. Alarms were going off and two warning lights were on. One for oil and another one for something else with the word "Phillips" next to it but I didn't know what it meant. I knew in that instant that I was going to die and started screaming out to God. I felt that God saved me the pain of having to experience the crash in minute detail and I either zoned out or my spirit left my body before the crash. Either way I died and there was an energy buzzing all around me.

fwiw how quickly do you find your mind flee's from painful/scary experiences?
This may be of help :)

http://www.searchwithin.org/download/last_hour_life.pdf
The Last Hour of Life
by G. I. Gurdjieff

Imagine, that you have only a few minutes, maybe an hour left to live; somehow you have discovered exactly when you will die. What would you do with this precious hour of your stay on Earth? Would you be able to complete all your things in this last hour, do you have a conscious idea about how to do it?

And letting go your last breath would you feel satisfaction from knowing that you have done everything possible in this life to fulfill that you are constantly present, always vibrating, always waiting, like the son is waiting for the father-sailor? In the manifested world everything has its beginning and its end. In the Real World everything is always present and one beautiful day you will be allowed to forget everything and leave the world “forever”.

Freedom is worth a million times more than [political] liberation. The free man, even in slavery, remains a master of himself. For example, if I give you something, let’s say, a car, in which there is no fuel, the car cannot move. Your car needs a special fuel, but it is only you who is able to define what kind of fuel is needed and where to get it.

You have to define yourself how to digest my ideas to make them yours, so that they belong only to you. Your car cannot work on the same fuel my car is working on. I suggest to you only the primary material. You have to get from it what you can use. So, more bravely, sit down at the steering wheel.

The organic life is very fragile. The planetary body can die at any moment. It is always one step from death. And if you could manage to live one more day, it is only a chance accidentally given to you by nature. If you will be able to live even one more hour, you can consider yourself to be a lucky person. From the moment of conception we are living on borrowed time.

Living in this world you have to feel death each second, so settle all your life affairs, even in your last hour. But how can anyone know exactly his last hour? For the sense of security make up your things with nature and yourself in every hour given to you, then you will never be met unprepared. The man has to be taught this starting from the [esoteric] school: how to breath, to eat, to move and to die right. This has to become a part of an educational programme. In this programme it is necessary to include the teaching about how to realize the presence of “I” and also how to establish consciousness.

Question: How to act if you do not feel that there is something unfinished?

Gurdjieff answered after a pause. He took a deep breath and replied:

Ask yourself who will be in difficulty if you die like a dog. At the moment of death you have to be wholly aware of yourself and feel that you have done everything possible to use all, within your abilities, in this life which was given to you.

Now you do not know much about yourself. But with each day you dig deeper and deeper into this bag of bones and start knowing more and more details. Day by day you will be finding out what you should have done and what you have to re-do among the things you have done. A real man is one who could take from life everything that was valuable in it, and say: “And now I can die”. We have to try to live your lives so that we could say any day: “Today I can die and not be sorry about anything”.

Never spend fruitlessly the last hour of your life because it can become the most important hour for you. If you use it wrongly, you may be sorry about it later. This sincere excitement that you feel now can become for you a powerful source of the force that can prepare you for perfect death. Knowing that the next hour can become the last one for you, absorb the impressions which it will bring to you as a real gourmet. When lady death will call you, be prepared, always. The master knows how to take from each tasty piece the last bit of the most valuable. Learn to be the master of your life.

When I was young I learned to prepare fragrances. I learned to extract from life its essence, its most subtle qualities. Search in everything the most valuable, learn to separate the fine from the coarse. One who has learned how to extract the essence, the most important from each moment of life, has reached a sense on quality.

He is able to do with the world something that can not be done by an aboriginal.

It could be that in the last moments of your life you will not have the choice where and with whom to be, but you will have a choice to decide how fully you will live them. The ability to take the valuable from life—is the same as to take from the food, air and the impressions the substances needed to build up your higher bodies. If you want to take from your life the most valuable for yourself, it has to be for the good of the higher; for yourself it is enough to leave just a little. To work on yourself for the good of others is a smart way to receive the best from life for yourself. If you will not be satisfied with the last hour of your life, you will not be happy about the whole of your life. To die means to come through something which is impossible to repeat again. To spend your precious time in nothing means to deprive yourself the opportunity to extract from life the most valuable.

In this world, to live life through, from the beginning to the end – means another aspect of the Absolute. All greatest philosophers were carefully preparing for the last hour of their life. And now I will give you the exercise to prepare for the last hour on the Earth. Try not to misinterpret any word from the given exercise.

The Exercise

Look back at the hour that has passed, as if it was the last hour for you on the earth and that you have just acknowledged that you have died. Ask yourself, were you satisfied at that hour?

And now reanimate yourself again and set up the aim for yourself. In the next hour (if you are lucky to live one more) try to extract from life a little more than you did in the last hour. Define, where and when you should have been more aware, and where you should have put more inner fire.

And now open your eyes wider, and by this I mean—open more possibilities for yourself, be a little more brave, than you were in the previous hour. Since you know that this is your last hour and you have nothing to loose, try to gain some bravery—at least now. Of course, you don’t have to be silly about it.

Get to know yourself better, look at your machine as if from the outside. Now, when you are dying, there is no sense to keep your reputation and your prestige.

And now onwards, until the real last hour, aspire with persistence to receive the most you can from life that is of value, develop your intuition. Take just a few moments each hour to watch at the hour that passed, without judgment, and then tune yourself to extracting more from the following hour.

If we look at each hour like at a separate life unit, you can try to do as much as you can to use every unit totally. Force yourself and find the way to make the next hour much more than the one before, but also be aware that you have taken care of the debts you collected till now. Increase the self-sensing and self-knowledge of yourself, and also increase the ability to master yourself, this will change the work of your machine, which is always out of your control. And these abilities can become the indication of the real changes. And it is absolutely unimportant what the machine is thinking about this.

...To live the rest of your life rehearsing your death hour by hour—is not at all pathological. None can receive more from life than the cancer patient, who knows approximately when he will die. And since he already recognized how he wishes to spend the rest of his life, he will not have to make the total change in it, but he will be able to go somewhere, where he always wished to go, but would not do it in other circumstances.

The man who knows that he will die soon, will try to use to the maximum every hour of the rest of his life. This is exactly what Christ meant when he said that the last days will come soon—the days before the Last Judgment. We are all standing in front of the Judge, but it is not the others who are judging us, but we ourselves do the last estimation of our life. We do not have to fail the most important examination, where the most serious judge is ourself.

Each moment, taken alone, represents the particle of the eternal Creation. Therefore each moment we can extract the most subtle substances, that we can call “the essence of life”.

Imagine yourself the substance “air” or the substance “impressions”. Finally, draw in your mind the substance “moment”. Yes, even the moments of time are the substances.

If we will be able to extract the finest substances from the coarser, sooner or later we will have to pay for it. This law is called The Law of Balance. That is why we will learn how to pay immediately for those that we receive from life. Only then we will not have any debts. To pay immediately—this is what is called “real doing”. “To do”—is to think, to feel, to act, but “real doing”—is to pay immediately.

To do—may mean only one thing: to extract the essence from each moment of life and at the same moment to pay all the debts to the nature and yourself; but only when you have “I”, can you pay immediately.

Real life is not a change of activity, but a change of the quality of the activity. Destiny—is destiny. Each one of us has to find himself in the whole order of things. It is not too late yet to start doing it now, although you have spent the greater part of your life in sleep. Starting from today you can begin to prepare yourself for death and, at the same time, to increase the quality of your living. But do not delay with the start—maybe you really only have just one more hour of life.

Question: Can we share this with others? I think it is very important what we have heard about this evening.

- You can retell it word by word, but until you will [can?] do this [exercise] yourself, it would mean nothing for others. Existence is the means, or the instrument, for action. Think about this and you will find out why it is so.

Question: Therefore, we cannot pay the debts, if we do not exist, or if our “I” is absent?

- Why do you have such a need to pay? Pay for what? If life is only a coincidence, then there is no sense to go on. This does not mean that you have to end your life with a suicide. Opposite, you have to put all your effort into “to live”. Ordinary man always lives, just going with the flow. He is not just sleeping, he is absolutely dead. To really live, it is necessary
to support the efforts of nature, to take actively from life, and not to act passively—wherever it flows.

Extracting from life the most precious, you have to be able to operate your emotions. See how fairly you can estimate yourself. Look attentively at yourself and you will see many remarkable ways to be fair. Each time notice for yourself different moments when the desires appear. Act as before, but always be aware of their presence. Transport to the world the part of your blood, but one of the higher level.

At the end of each hour after you have estimated its usefulness, imagine that you just woke up in the absolutely unknown in comparison to the previous one gone by. It is important to note that the apparent continuation of the last hour is in reality changing with every hour, although things and people seem the same as before. With the time you will learn to see yourself as a spirit of a special substance, who is coming from one world to another, as an uninvited guest of nature.

Looking from this point of view evaluate everything you do in your life. Looking at the results of all your efforts of the past and think what sense they all have now, in the last hour of your life. Those who are engaged in the Work, are dead to this world and at the same time they are more alive in this world than anyone else. Work...something strange, imperceptible, but for many it is impossible to live without it.

The ordinary way of understanding life is vanity of vanities. However big the result is according to earthly measures, sooner or later it will fail. Even the sand is being rubbed into dust by time. Even the most significant people of history are being forgotten. To understand the real possibilities of this world, it is necessary to find what we can reach in this world that will be very useful in the Real World.

Attentively look at the lives of all the greatest people, those who were commanding armies, who had power over others. What is the benefit for them from all their great actions now, when they are dead? Even when they were alive, all these great actions were no more than empty dreams. We are not here to praise ourselves and to prove ourselves, the most disgusting in the ordinary man is the ability to quickly satisfy his flesh.

The majority of people find many excuses not to work on themselves. They are in a complete prison of their weaknesses. But right now we do not speak about them, but about you.

Understand me right, I do not need followers, I am rather interested in finding the good organizers, the real warriors of the new world. I understand the weakness of the organization, because right now we do not speak about the usual organisation which would consist of initiates.

I remind you once again, learn to live each of your hours with a bigger benefit. Create a detailed plan of the last hour of your life. To understand how one should die, you should grow deep roots into life, only then you will be able to die like a human being, not like a dog. Although, it is not given to everyone—to die. You can become manure for our planet, but it does not really mean do die. To die to this world forever—is an honour. For this honour you have to pay with Conscious Labour and Intentional Suffering. You have to earn this right.

Try to imagine yourself relatively clearly the last hour of your life on earth. Write a kind of a script of this last hour, as if you were writing the script for a film. Ask yourself: “Is this how I want to dispose my life”. If you are not satisfied with the answer, rewrite the script until you like it.

Look at life like as business. Time is your money for life. When you came into this world, a definite amount of money was given to you and this you cannot exceed. Time is the only currency with which you pay for your life. Now you see, how you used the biggest part of it in a stupid way. You have not even reached the main goal of life—to have rest. You failed as a businessman, and as a user of life—you deceived yourself. All your life you thought that everything is given to you for free, and now suddenly you discovered that—it is not free. You pay for using the time, that is why each moment of your stay here costs something.

So how would it be possible for you to reimburse [recover] at least somehow these losses? Check, if the deficit on your bank account is only temporary or is it perhaps constant? Did you loose the time or could you invest it successfully? If you have spent all your money on vacations, then there is nothing to do but to be sorry about the past.

For many years you have been spending you life as if your parents gave you a bank account with unlimited credit. But now the amount is used and you see that you are all alone and that there is none to rely on. There is no more time on your bank account. Now you are forced to earn each hour of your life. All your life you behaved like a child and spent time just like a newly married couple on their honeymoon.

Our main enemy, which is hindering us from applying the necessary efforts—is hopelessness. I know, you will have many excuses not to prepare yourself for the last hour of your life. The habit is a big force, but starting once, you can learn to do each time more and more.

Do not fiddle all day, force yourself at least one hour a day to make an effort, otherwise you will loose everything. Think about the rehearsal of your last hour as if it was ballet exercises—you have to do it all your life.

I dedicate four hours a day for this exercise, but when I was young, I spent on it two times longer.
 
RedFox said:
fwiw how quickly do you find your mind flee's from painful/scary experiences?
This may be of help :)

http://www.searchwithin.org/download/last_hour_life.pdf

Thanks RedFox, I really needed to read that again.

My first thought was that I can't stop the pain so how can I be fleeing from it but then I remembered how I screamed in the dream so maybe I'm not as prepared as I think I am. The last hour exercise seemed like a great idea so I gave it a go and wanted to share it here.

This is my last hour.

Thinking quickly about the possibilities I decided to spend the last hour praying. I lit a cigarette and went outside under the stars. The first thing I noticed was how grateful I was to be allowed to participate in existence. I marveled at the shades of color in the sky and thanked the Universe for letting me be a part of it.

Not bothering how I would look if anyone saw me I lay down on the grass face down and gave Mother Earth a big hug. I thanked her for looking after me and for giving me a place to stay. I told her I loved her and felt her love back for me.

Thinking about how I only have 40 minutes left to live I'm afraid. "Are you afraid of living or dying?" I don't know... I think I'm afraid of living and I'm afraid of dying.

Next I feel a sense of urgency and frustration... I'm frantic to do something. There's someone I must find but I can't find her! I sat on the grass and told Mother Earth about it and talked to her for most of the remaining time. Having a connection with the earth soothed me quite a bit and I was fairly peaceful by the end.

One thing I noticed was that knowing you will die does give you a lot more courage to say and do the things you feel you should do. I'm looking forward to practicing this some more if given the hours.

What does Gurdjieff mean here by "Transport to the world the part of your blood, but one of the higher level."?

"Extracting from life the most precious, you have to be able to operate your emotions. See how fairly you can estimate yourself. Look attentively at yourself and you will see many remarkable ways to be fair. Each time notice for yourself different moments when the desires appear. Act as before, but always be aware of their presence. Transport to the world the part of your blood, but one of the higher level."
 
Beorn said:
What does Gurdjieff mean here by "Transport to the world the part of your blood, but one of the higher level."?

Taking the sentence as a whole my best guess (and it is just a guess), is they may be referring to 'finer substances'. I couldn't tell you what they are either.
This may be of help as it covers emotional regulation and the 'finer substances': Self-Observation, Inner Talking & Work Instrument
 
i remember one of the intensley vivid dreams i had after ee one night. The flavour of these kinds of dreams seem to be something one has been through. perhaps in another life. The one i had was about me and i was a woman i think in a victorian era house that had two babies that i was to give up because it was an embarrassment to the family. I said i just wanted yo say goodbye to them and when my mom came to get them i started crying and didnt want tolet go. I woke up bawling my eyes out. It was very intense.
 
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