# Sleep and Dreams > General Dream Discussion >  >  death in dreams leading to the dream afterlife...

## somniumrex

i had a dream in which i was shot several times. my vision faded as i fell to the floor but instead of waking up i floated out of my body and spent some time in a kind of spirit world, devoid of life and a twisted, dark and greenish version of the reality i was previously in. i floated around for a bit here and then awoke. it wasn't at all a negative experience, pretty cool actually and as you can see in my signature i want to do this again!

has anyone else had any dreams like this, lucid or not? anything at all where you have died but instead of waking up you experienced some kind of afterlife or something similar?


to clarify: death dreams where you wake up right as you die are cool and all but for this thread i'm asking about ones where you do not wake up after dying but experience other things and then wake up later. so please don't just post a bunch of things like: "i had a dream where i fell off of a building and woke up before i hit the ground." or "i dreamed i got eaten by a shark and woke up as he swallowed me." etc. i'm looking for things like: "i dreamed i was hit by a car and then AFTER dying i experienced *_insert cool experience_* and later i woke up." and similar things. thanks.

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## Hazel

Dying in dreams rarely ever results in me waking up. In the worst cases, I'm forced to repeat the dream over and over again until I manage to get away without dying. But a lot of times I become a ghost and have fun floating around and haunting people.

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## Burke

Every time I've died I've seen a bright white light for a few seconds, and then woke up. Not a long experience but one nonetheless.

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## somniumrex

> Dying in dreams rarely ever results in me waking up. In the worst cases, I'm forced to repeat the dream over and over again until I manage to get away without dying. But a lot of times I become a ghost and have fun floating around and haunting people.



wow! that's really cool. kind of like a video game in a way. figure out a way to beat a level without dying or you have to start over. cool stuff.

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## somniumrex

> Every time I've died I've seen a bright white light for a few seconds, and then woke up. Not a long experience but one nonetheless.



that's pretty cool. reminds me of what people say they see during near death experiences. maybe those stories in some way or another have been implanted on your subconscious?

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## Burke

I believe that i heard on the history channel that some scientists say that when you die, or have a "near death experience" the portion of your mind that conrols dreaming is turned on. They used an example of someone who had a heart attack at the same time as his father. The son died before the father and came to a field with a large oak tree and many of his family members there. He claimed that they said, "We aren't ready for you yet" and he woke up in the hospital. Before he woke up he said that he saw his father and that he told the son that it was o.k. and that it was his time.

I seems plausible, since 10 minutes dreams can take place in 1 minute of waking time, that when we die we dream and that is what people call, "heaven" or "hell." It seems to me that whetever you truly believed in, that's what your "afterlife dream" would be about. If you were christian, you would dream about heaven. If you were muslim, you would dream about whatever afterlife they believe in (sorry, i don't remember freshman year of highschool all to well).

That's just my two cents.

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## insideout

I just recently died in a dream and didn't wake up right away.
A bomb was dropped but the explosion didn't reach me until few seconds later, which gave me just enough time to realize I was going to die and there was nothing I could do about it (this is an occasionally recurring theme in my dreams).
So then everything around me was destroyed and I died. But I didn't wake up. I switched to a disembodied view of the dream, and started watching other people, the survivors, I guess.

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## mazillion

oh, this is kind of a relief. I was fearing what would happen when i get struck by lightning. (task of the month)

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## somniumrex

> I just recently died in a dream and didn't wake up right away.
> A bomb was dropped but the explosion didn't reach me until few seconds later, which gave me just enough time to realize I was going to die and there was nothing I could do about it (this is an occasionally recurring theme in my dreams).
> So then everything around me was destroyed and I died. But I didn't wake up. I switched to a disembodied view of the dream, and started watching other people, the survivors, I guess.



neat! so you had a similar experience to mine except mine left the people out and the environment changed to all faded, cold and empty. did your vision change at all or was everything the same but your viewpoint changed to a disembodied floating one?

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## somniumrex

> oh, this is kind of a relief. I was fearing what would happen when i get struck by lightning. (task of the month)



what are you worried about?

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## insideout

> neat! so you had a similar experience to mine except mine left the people out and the environment changed to all faded, cold and empty. did your vision change at all or was everything the same but your viewpoint changed to a disembodied floating one?



I'm pretty sure my vision was the same. Although the situation sort of changed. There wasn't any sign of the explosion or mention of it. But there was a lot of violence and destruction. Eventually I woke up because it was too much, and I didn't want to experience it anymore.

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## somniumrex

yeah i've thought about that a lot. since the brain uses implanted memories to bridge gaps of implied time anything along those lines is possible. one could be dead right now and just experiencing the last 6-12 minutes of life in the brain after the body dies. it's dream time so the brain is bridging the gaps in time created by making seconds look like days and months and minutes look like years. for example; one minute goes by and the brain gives all the necessary information to think one is sitting in the present moment and remembering yesterday and the day before and the years before and it gets foggier as time goes by because that's how memory is. one may actually be leaping from one moment to the next and spanning many years. like in three seconds one could be an old person and remember all the years and moments that led to being this age. these memories were just attached to this "moment" and since there is no difference between the present and the past other than memories, one would have no idea this is happening.

if you don't get this imagine you're dreaming that you are living in a new house, you remember moving in and selling your old house. then you wake up and realize, upon recalling the rest of the dream, that these parts of the dream never happened and couldn't have happened as they would have taken days or weeks for you to experience. our brains move us from moment to moment and insert memories so that we think it's logical for us to be in the middle of a certain situation when, without these implanted memories, we would always be lost in our dreams wondering what's happening and why we are where we are and doing what we're doing. it's a trick that works the same as a movie fading out after a scene where someone gets a new job and letters appear on the screen that say "five years later" then a quick montage of pictures plays to let you know a brief synopsis of what has happened in these five years. you didn't see the story that went along to bridge the gap but you accept that it happened. only what happens in dreams is so much more precise! you can instantly remember all kinds of details to explain situations that you don't have the time to dream.

all that being said, inside those 6 to 12 minutes it's possible that anything at all happens after we die in real life. you could be in another world for a thousand years and come back and be told you were only gone for a minute. your brain just gave you a memory created to tell you that all this time passed. or you could be in another life as someone else. what happens after that 6-12 minutes is the real mystery!

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## somniumrex

> I'm pretty sure my vision was the same. Although the situation sort of changed. There wasn't any sign of the explosion or mention of it. But there was a lot of violence and destruction. Eventually I woke up because it was too much, and I didn't want to experience it anymore.



that's interesting! almost like you switched to a parallel but slightly different universe in death. i like your signature by the way.

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## insideout

> that's interesting! almost like you switched to a parallel but slightly different universe in death. i like your signature by the way.



The way I saw it was that my mind doesn't know what not being conscious is like, so when I died in the dream, my consciousness just got displaced.
Also, thanks.

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## somniumrex

> The way I saw it was that my mind doesn't know what not being conscious is like, so when I died in the dream, my consciousness just got displaced.
> Also, thanks.



oh yes that's the most logical explanation. i've just been reading about parallel universes lately so my mind jumped to that. although if i dreamed something similar then that would be the reason lol!

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## EllisBell

The same thing happened to me. I was shot in this dream (normal dream, not a lucid one), and after a brief moment of me just looking down at my blood in surprise I was "transported" to this place. Whatever this place was, I don't know, but it was very peaceful. It was like I was floating on water and I hadn't a worry in the world. Then I woke up. It was a weird dream. For that moment after I was shot but hadn't yet died, I remember being really annoyed at the person that shot me. Then I felt cheerful and happy again. 

I'm not a religious person, so the dream was interesting for me.

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## L33tsaber

There are so few where I did anything other than wake up.

I do, however, remember this one involving a bizarre psychopomp (who looked like an anthropomorphic Pikachu).  After he had talked me through the dying part, I paused to kiss the forehead of the body I'd just left, and to say goodbye to my goldfish who was trying to jump out of his tank to join me.  The Pika-pomp told me another of his kind would bring my goldfish to me in the afterlife.  The dream pretty much ended around that point, though, so I didn't manage to go anywhere.

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## somniumrex

> The same thing happened to me. I was shot in this dream (normal dream, not a lucid one), and after a brief moment of me just looking down at my blood in surprise I was "transported" to this place. Whatever this place was, I don't know, but it was very peaceful. It was like I was floating on water and I hadn't a worry in the world. Then I woke up. It was a weird dream. For that moment after I was shot but hadn't yet died, I remember being really annoyed at the person that shot me. Then I felt cheerful and happy again. 
> 
> I'm not a religious person, so the dream was interesting for me.



that's hilarious! shot and annoyed and then cheerful and happy :smiley:  i like the floating on water thing. any more description of the "place" that you can remember?

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## somniumrex

> There are so few where I did anything other than wake up.
> 
> I do, however, remember this one involving a bizarre psychopomp (who looked like an anthropomorphic Pikachu).  After he had talked me through the dying part, I paused to kiss the forehead of the body I'd just left, and to say goodbye to my goldfish who was trying to jump out of his tank to join me.  The Pika-pomp told me another of his kind would bring my goldfish to me in the afterlife.  The dream pretty much ended around that point, though, so I didn't manage to go anywhere.



wow, that's freaking great! i had to look up "psychopomp" and now that i know what it is your post is that much cooler and hilarious! it's an interesting mix of deep spirituality and comedy. "kissing the forehead of the body i'd just left..." very deep and beautiful and then "the pika-pomp..." just picturing it makes me laugh! i love it!

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## EllisBell

> that's hilarious! shot and annoyed and then cheerful and happy i like the floating on water thing. any more description of the "place" that you can remember?



To be honest this was a while ago so the memory of it is a bit foggy. However, I do remember lying on my back and gazing up to a beautiful, bright blue sky with only a few small clouds floating slowly through it. I was distantly aware of something like a forest being not too far away, it wasn't that I could see it, it was more like I could hear the trees swaying with the breeze. I can't give you much more detail sadly. Mostly, it was more about the FEEL of the dream (if that makes sense). To this day, it remains as one of my favourite dreams (ignoring the part of me getting shot!). When I got to this "heaven" I no longer felt any of the confusion and fear I normally experience in the average dream, so getting to this "heaven" was a nice dream holiday for me!

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## Lynn

Well, i don't believe in ghosts, but when I died I saw my body on the floor. I was clear. My mom cried as she looked at my body. "Mom, I am RIGHT HERE!" I yelled. She couldn't hear me and it was frusterating. So, I walked to my school and tried to talk to them. Nobody saw me, and I was very upset. As a ghost, I felt the same. I just knew I was dead. I forget how I died, but I remember being alive in the beginning. "Hey, Mrs. Tomblin! Help, nobody can see me!" She just walked off, I got very angry and woke up.

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## somniumrex

> To be honest this was a while ago so the memory of it is a bit foggy. However, I do remember lying on my back and gazing up to a beautiful, bright blue sky with only a few small clouds floating slowly through it. I was distantly aware of something like a forest being not too far away, it wasn't that I could see it, it was more like I could hear the trees swaying with the breeze. I can't give you much more detail sadly. Mostly, it was more about the FEEL of the dream (if that makes sense). To this day, it remains as one of my favourite dreams (ignoring the part of me getting shot!). When I got to this "heaven" I no longer felt any of the confusion and fear I normally experience in the average dream, so getting to this "heaven" was a nice dream holiday for me!




yeah it makes me think about how, since this was simply a mind state your brain created to give you a "heaven" feel, technically people should be able to make themselves worry free and happy whenever they want... i guess that's the whole goal of enlightenment and all that. the most i've achieved is being able to make myself very calm and stable in times of stress or sadness. in times of mild sadness/frustration or neutral feeling though i can frequently make myself feel very content using mental will alone. someday it would be nice to learn the trick our brains use to simulate things in dreams in waking life. i read a book called the tibetan yogas of dream and sleep by tenzin wangyal rinpoche, the methods for lucid didn't work for me but some of his ideas were fresh and intriguing. for example he said to practice changing emotions in dreams and after lots of practice there you should be able to do it in waking life. i think this is a very valid idea! for now i am only so good at this but if i can get a lot of dream practice under my belt i think it will get a lot better.

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## L33tsaber

> wow, that's freaking great! i had to look up "psychopomp" and now that i know what it is your post is that much cooler and hilarious! it's an interesting mix of deep spirituality and comedy. "kissing the forehead of the body i'd just left..." very deep and beautiful and then "the pika-pomp..." just picturing it makes me laugh! i love it!



The most amusing part is that because it was a dream, everything was taken very seriously.  Upon waking up, however, I had a bit of a giggle over the idea of a big furry yellow creature performing such a solemn task.

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## somniumrex

> The most amusing part is that because it was a dream, everything was taken very seriously.  Upon waking up, however, I had a bit of a giggle over the idea of a big furry yellow creature performing such a solemn task.



i know! that always happens to me, stuff in the dream is really serious but then upon awakening you notice the absurdity of it!

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## Dannon Oneironaut

I like to explore the afterlife in my dreams. I study myths of death of all the cultures I can and try to dream of them. I have dreamt of Tibetan death, Greek death, Celtic death, Christian death, and Egyptian death. I am working on Germanic and Norse Death. I want to be a psychopomp. I know of one dreamer who is a psychopomp and he is an author of books. His last name is Moss, I cannot recall his first name. He has very interesting ideas. He talks of creating a nice vacation house in the afterlife for yourself to stay in as you adjust to the afterlife. He speaks of using dreams to reach and help friends and family who have already or recently passed away. You should look into his works. I believe he has a book called The Dreamer's Book of the Dead.

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## somniumrex

> I like to explore the afterlife in my dreams. I study myths of death of all the cultures I can and try to dream of them. I have dreamt of Tibetan death, Greek death, Celtic death, Christian death, and Egyptian death. I am working on Germanic and Norse Death. I want to be a psychopomp. I know of one dreamer who is a psychopomp and he is an author of books. His last name is Moss, I cannot recall his first name. He has very interesting ideas. He talks of creating a nice vacation house in the afterlife for yourself to stay in as you adjust to the afterlife. He speaks of using dreams to reach and help friends and family who have already or recently passed away. You should look into his works. I believe he has a book called The Dreamer's Book of the Dead.



i envy your abilities! i'm still not to that point yet but this is exactly what i want to do! very cool stuff :smiley:  i'll look into that book, thank you. can you describe some of these experiences?

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## Dannon Oneironaut

My thread Waking Dreaming Sleeping Living Dying Rebirth is a description of one of my Tibetan style experiences.

Egyptian death I died and was put into a chamber. In the chamber I walked through the walls and I saw Isis. My body was vibrating. I had to reach a high frequency to continue. This may be related to how they judge you by weighing your heart against a feather. When I could continue I was on a boat with a strange animal headed God that floated through the sky.

Celtic death dreams come naturally to me, probably since I am so Celtic. One dream I ate something poisonous and I knocked on a door in a tree and it opened and little dwarfish elves opened the door and I descended into the tree down a staircase to their house. They offered me tea and cookies but I refused because I knew that if I ate then I couldn't come back (part of a Greek myth). I could see that the staircase kept going down and there was a whole world down there. They wanted to bring me but I decided to go back up. 

Greek Death dreams I had a black dog with wings come get me. I knew that he was Hermes. He took me through huge caverns. He turned into a humanoid Hermes and he was kind of golden. The three headed wolfCerebrus obeyed him. I went to a land that was like pastures and forests with people hanging out and there were tents.

Christian death I floated up along a golden stairway for a long time. It was kind of like a golden spiral escalator. The higher I went the higher I got and the lighter it was. I came to the pearly gates. There were golden eagle statues that were alive guarding the place. I passed through the gates and it was like a marble city with happy healthy people. 

I have also had Hell experiences but I couldn't tell from which tradition they were from since they are all so similar. Except I don't know if Egyptian has a hell myth. I never saw Jesus or Satan, although once I looked in a mirror and I looked like both of them.

These are just very short descriptions of some of my dreams.

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## somniumrex

> My thread Waking Dreaming Sleeping Living Dying Rebirth is a description of one of my Tibetan style experiences.
> 
> Egyptian death I died and was put into a chamber. In the chamber I walked through the walls and I saw Isis. My body was vibrating. I had to reach a high frequency to continue. This may be related to how they judge you by weighing your heart against a feather. When I could continue I was on a boat with a strange animal headed God that floated through the sky.
> 
> Celtic death dreams come naturally to me, probably since I am so Celtic. One dream I ate something poisonous and I knocked on a door in a tree and it opened and little dwarfish elves opened the door and I descended into the tree down a staircase to their house. They offered me tea and cookies but I refused because I knew that if I ate then I couldn't come back (part of a Greek myth). I could see that the staircase kept going down and there was a whole world down there. They wanted to bring me but I decided to go back up. 
> 
> Greek Death dreams I had a black dog with wings come get me. I knew that he was Hermes. He took me through huge caverns. He turned into a humanoid Hermes and he was kind of golden. The three headed wolfCerebrus obeyed him. I went to a land that was like pastures and forests with people hanging out and there were tents.
> 
> Christian death I floated up along a golden stairway for a long time. It was kind of like a golden spiral escalator. The higher I went the higher I got and the lighter it was. I came to the pearly gates. There were golden eagle statues that were alive guarding the place. I passed through the gates and it was like a marble city with happy healthy people. 
> ...



very neat. i like the egyptian one, what do you mean vibration? i keep hearing about vibrations and stuff with meditation but have no idea...

ah the elves in the tree on is like persephone and the pomegranate seeds! cool!

the greek one sounds like you made it to the elysian fields!

very cool stuff man!

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## Dannon Oneironaut

The vibrations of the dream body. Feeling like energy that tickles and tingles. No longer material. Bright and lucid.

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## somniumrex

> The vibrations of the dream body. Feeling like energy that tickles and tingles. No longer material. Bright and lucid.



oh okay thanks.

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## Slinger

To be honest i haven't died in a dream in a long long time, the last time was when i was little but i don't really remember it, but now I seem to be in situations where I would be flying plane, then the plane would crash and explode and i would still be alive with no pain at all, things like that has happened recently

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## DreamHacker

I had a dream where I fell off a cliff in a car and then smashed into rocks then I was a different 
Person talking to my own family about my own death

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## somniumrex

> To be honest i haven't died in a dream in a long long time, the last time was when i was little but i don't really remember it, but now I seem to be in situations where I would be flying plane, then the plane would crash and explode and i would still be alive with no pain at all, things like that has happened recently



interesting, sounds almost like your brain isn't accepting the scenes as death. do you play a lot of video games? sometimes i have dreams that are similar when i've played a game where after death the character remains in place with a free camera.

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## somniumrex

> I had a dream where I fell off a cliff in a car and then smashed into rocks then I was a different 
> Person talking to my own family about my own death



wow, so you switched bodies, did you switch memory too? like did you feel like you were this new person?

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## Str8mario321

I had a dream that I was in the main atrium of my school, which is where all the hallways meet in this giant room. Next thing I know I see my friend Nathan walking by on crutches. When I asked him what happened he looked at my and said " everything " then he pulled a gun out. I began to run back towards other hallways but everyone in the school was in this giant atrium. All of a sudden I heard Nathan tell everyone to get down and so everyone did. Then he told us all to stand up and he said " now when I tell all of you to get down i want all of you to drop and the last one on the floor will die". So he said the words and everyone dropped, at this time he said " oh Josh you weren't quick enough". I said " woah Nathan don't do this" and he shot me once in the right side of my chest. I remember the pain so well. Then I decided my best chance for survival was to play dead. So I laid on the ground still as possible until he said " I can see you breathing " and he shot me again. I opened my eyes and laid there as I died. I saw everything going black from the outside to the inside of my eyes. After that everything was black and silent for about five seconds. Then I was back in the atrium with everyone and had assumed I was just daydreaming. But then I heard people asking what happens next and knew it was reality. I quickly found my friends and asked what happened. They said " Nathan shot you then after that he shot everyone else". As they fInished talking an announcment came on telling everyone to go to the bus area. We all went outside and saw it was dark but glowing like the northern lights. We saw our assisstant principal, she told us to think of a car, any car we wanted. I chose a 1967 Shelby GT500 fastback. Then suddenly I was inside the car. My principal so go on the main road and drive south until you see a white light. I drove to the road and stopped. I waited until all my friends pulled up beside me. We all looked at each other and began to race down the road as fast as possible. Suddenly my vision blurred and I saw nothing but white. I sat here for about a minute, then awoke from my dream.

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## h1nchm4n

One of my most recent dreams I had, I died in.

I was on a battleship that got hit with a torpedo. I jumped in the water and went down with the ship.

The next thing I knew I was back on the ship, and the same exact scene happened again. But this time, I jumped off before the torpedo hit. Underwater I saw the boat sink, and I swam to the surface and woke up.

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## GeekInDreamLand

> Every time I've died I've seen a bright white light for a few seconds, and then woke up. Not a long experience but one nonetheless.



That is how my dream was the other night.... 

I was laying next to my husband in bed. He was where he always sleeps and I was where I always sleep. When a dark shadow figure of a person walked into our bedroom with a bow and arrow...I sat up and quickly grabbed my pillow and put it in front of me when he shot my chest through the pillow. I sank back on my bed and died. I seen a white light right before I darted up in bed waking my husband gasping for air...I can still feel where I was shot in my dream....The weirdest thing is...IT HURT! It hurt in my dream to be shot in the chest and it hurt when I woke up. That same night I had 3 dreams total where I died and seen this white light.

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## DreamscapeGoat

Hm, interesting.

I never 'died' in my dreams, but I have had the illusion of going into the afterlife once.  It was more limbo than one side or the other - still interesting, nonetheless.

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## LouaiB

> I believe that i heard on the history channel that some scientists say that when you die, or have a "near death experience" the portion of your mind that conrols dreaming is turned on. They used an example of someone who had a heart attack at the same time as his father. The son died before the father and came to a field with a large oak tree and many of his family members there. He claimed that they said, "We aren't ready for you yet" and he woke up in the hospital. Before he woke up he said that he saw his father and that he told the son that it was o.k. and that it was his time.
> 
> I seems plausible, since 10 minutes dreams can take place in 1 minute of waking time, that when we die we dream and that is what people call, "heaven" or "hell." It seems to me that whetever you truly believed in, that's what your "afterlife dream" would be about. If you were christian, you would dream about heaven. If you were muslim, you would dream about whatever afterlife they believe in (sorry, i don't remember freshman year of highschool all to well).
> 
> That's just my two cents.



That is very true, but dreams have the same time as waking life. If you're talking about near death dreams's time, I don'y know.
Also, muslims believe in a "sub-heaven or hell"(don't know if I translated it correct) where you spend time until Armageddon, then you go to heaven or hell.
I'm not religious but am an arab, so I might have missed something

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