When the neck snaps.

Xrayman

Okay i'm going to really cop some s*** over this I'm sure, but let's just escape fromthe emotional and political bs for a moment.

A few weeks ago an Australian guy was hanged by the Singapore government for drug dealing.

Now I know this sounds morbid, but I don't know why, I just couldn't get it out of my head, what would have happened at that last moment.
For a while I seemed to have some vision or, Understanding or, clarification about it (I'm not going to refer to it as enlightenment).

But I felt that it would be like a sudden loss of electrical power, just silence and darkness-nothing there...

Has anyone else thought about this? okay it' is just me-yet again..

Nirvana

Xrayman:

I've thought about this a lot since June 24 of last year when my nephew, Matt H., age 19, hanged himself in his parents' garage. What a horror!

Coincidentally, just yesterday I ordered forty 39-cent Pitney-Bowes U.S. Postage stamps from Zazzle with his picture on them. (Gosh, has the world changed since that first British stamp of Queen Victoria ca. 1840 till now, when you can design your own stamps.)

We've often thought and talked about Matt's "decision" (That's what his father insists on calling it.) He was having girl problems with this terrible girl who was toying with him and another boy and running back and forth between them. There were some trumped-up charges and jail time due to the fighting between the boys that the girl brought on, but he was out and was only to serve 5 months in the county jail. She did him dirty, and the kid felt his life was "over."

Xrayman, if it happens to somebody you love it's something you can't help but think about. But I think of it more in terms of the pain beforehand that caused the act. The act of being hanged seems so utterly lonely and crushing --yes a crushing defeat. I certainly can't see "a sudden loss of electrical power, just silence and darkness-nothing there..." There may be silence and darkness after a time, but I see -deprivation of the light and permutation of something beautiful into something very frightening.

As for what happened at that "last moment," when life flies away, I presume you mean, I don't think any of us felt it was any different than any other horrible death.

I was grateful, though, that the new Catholic Catechism's statement about suicide was positive and was read at the Catholic service at the funeral home. It was seen as a temporary affliction of the mind, and not one that would entail eternal suffering, as was previously taught by the church for two milennia. Indeed, the sermon was very pastoral, both hard on Matt and loving, and calling the family and community to service.

Xrayman

I'm so sad to hear that Nirvy,

My intention as you have gathered was at the point of death-not the lead-up.

I certainly appreciate your candidness-as i do all of you that are reading this.

as I always write below my posts PEACE-and I really do mean that.

kind regards.

buddhafoot

I won't comment on the actual story behind this because, I'm not good at partaking of or commenting on such emotional stories like this... sorry

Now... as for the initial question - I've thought about it. Not that I wanted to do it, but what happens when it does - or even with beheading. I know - I think about weird stuff...

I think you would have to be alive until the brain actually decides it doesn't have enough oxygen anymore to survive and shuts down.

Which would suck.

That's my $0.02

-bf

harlan

My condolances, Nirvana. Thank you for sharing.

kowtaaia

Xrayman,

You need to get your hands on a copy of 'An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge'. It won the Oscar for best short film in 1964.

mujaku

Consciousness is not an epiphenomenon—at least in Buddhism it is not. Recent experiments demonstrate that it takes about eight-tenths of a second to energize the brain before voluntary action begins. This would seem to indicate that consciouseness is activating the brain which means that brains depend on consciousness. This also suggests that consciousness is outside of sensory-motor time & space.

I have shown my disciples (airyasavaka) the way whereby they call into being out of this [material] body [yet] another body of the mind’s creation (rûpim manomayam), complete in all its limbs and members and with transcendental faculties (abhinindriyam). — M.ii.17

termite

kowtaaia wrote:

Xrayman,

You need to get your hands on a copy of 'An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge'. It won the Oscar for best short film in 1964.

The complete short story, by Ambrose Bierce, can be found here.

hope

From a purely technical perspective (AFIAK) his conscious stream would have been interrupted at the point of death, from then on it would have proceeded to re-manifest itself as another life.