What is Death and What happens to our consciousness during sleep?

Question

What is death?. How different it is from sleep? What happens to our consciousness during sleep

Answer 1

Scientifically, death is when the heart does not work, the brain does not work, the lungs do not work, the stomach doesn't work... you get the idea.

Religiously, death is when the soul leaves it's body.

Sleep is when the processing parts (consciousness) of the brain take a rest. They still work, but on a lesser level. The vital part of your brain is ever awake, though. The heart still goes beat beat, the lungs still expand and deflate, and the stomach keeps on churning food.

Answer 2

Our consciousness goes into a save mode while sleeping. Everything we learned during the day gets moved from temporary memory into permanent memory. This is why it is so important to sleep for eight hours during the night, or at least under night time conditions, especially for those under the age of 24. It is also the time when the immune system regenerates and lactic acid gets washed out of the muscles and is replaced by oxygen.

None of this happens with death. Everything stops, the muscles, the heart, and the brain. The data there begins breaking down as the chemical bounds between synaptic connectors begins to break down. It should be noted that the brain has enough space to create synaptic connectors for over 10,000 years.

As for what happens now is up to God. Depending on what he finds in your heart, all that you were is written in the Book of Life. Depending on whether you are Born Again or not, you will be a part of the first or second resurrection, though only Revelations talks about the Second Resurrection. Everyone gets resurrected, either to life or to a declaration of judgment. If to life, you will be downloaded into a new body.

Answer 3

Death is when you're dead. Sleep is when you're alive, but not awake. I'm concerned that you need this explained.

We are just at the beginning of understanding the human brain. Even the term "consciousness" isn't really scientific and practically impossible to consistently define. Freud did a good job of breaking it down into different parts (id, ego, etc.) that make it easier to talk about, but we still don't understand it enough to talk about it with much confidence.

Answer 4

Death is like a deep sleep when you do not know anything that happened around you.

5 For the living know that they will die,
but the dead know nothing;
they have no further reward,
and even the memory of them is forgotten.

6 Their love, their hate
and their jealousy have long since vanished;
never again will they have a part
in anything that happens under the sun.

Answer 5

Death is eternal sleeping where the sleeping has a dead brain and no (voluntary) activity in the body .

Look up the last part to your question anywhere in books or the 'net. Maybe start at wikipedia?

Answer 6

Jesus Christ spoke about the condition of the dead. He did so with regard to Lazarus, a man whom he knew well and who had died. Jesus told his disciples: “Lazarus our friend has gone to rest.” The disciples thought that Jesus meant that Lazarus was resting in sleep, recovering from an illness. They were wrong. Jesus explained: “Lazarus has died.” (John 11:11-14) Notice that Jesus compared death to rest and sleep. Lazarus was neither in heaven nor in a burning hell. He was not meeting angels or ancestors. Lazarus was not being reborn as another human. He was at rest in death, as though in a deep sleep without dreams. Other scriptures also compare death to sleep. For example, when the disciple Stephen was stoned to death, the Bible says that he “fell asleep.” (Acts 7:60) Similarly, the apostle Paul wrote about some in his day who had “fallen asleep” in death.


The Bible teaches that the dead “are conscious of nothing at all.” They are not alive and have no conscious existence anywhere. The account of Lazarus confirms this. Upon returning to life, did Lazarus thrill people with descriptions of heaven? Or did he terrify them with horrible tales about a burning hell? No. The Bible contains no such words from Lazarus. During the four days that he was dead, he had been “conscious of nothing at all.” (Ecclesiastes 9:5) Lazarus had simply been sleeping in death. John 11:11.
The account of Lazarus also teaches us that the resurrection is a reality, not a mere myth. Jesus raised Lazarus in front of a crowd of eyewitnesses. Even the religious leaders, who hated Jesus, did not deny this miracle.

Think about this too: If Lazarus had been in heaven for those four days, would he not have said something about it? And if he had been in heaven, would Jesus have made him come back to earth from that wonderful place? Of course not!

Yet, many people say that we have a soul, and they say that the soul lives on after the body dies. They say that Lazarus’ soul was alive somewhere. But the Bible does not say that. It says that God made the first man Adam “a living soul.” Gen. 2:7, Adam was a soul. The Bible also says that when Adam sinned, he died. He became a “dead soul,” and he returned to the dust from which he had been made. The Bible also says that all Adam’s offspring inherited sin and death too.

The Scriptural teaching of the resurrection, however, is not compatible with the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. If an immortal soul survived death, no one would need to be resurrected, or brought back to life. Indeed, Martha expressed no thought about an immortal soul that was living on elsewhere after death. She did not believe that Lazarus had already gone to some spirit realm to continue his existence. On the contrary, she showed her faith in God’s purpose to reverse the effects of death. She said: “I know he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.” (John 11:23, 24) Likewise, Lazarus himself related no experiences of some afterlife. There was nothing to report.

Clearly, according to the Bible, the soul dies and the remedy for death is the resurrection. You enjoy the best sleep ever, until Jesus resurrects you, sometime in the future.

Answer 7

Death is NOt the darkness of sleep. or the existence of a coma.
however there is one verse that says death is darkness and there are many verses that say death is the separation of the spirit from the body. and that the spirit can have life even if it is in hell and can even be saved from Hell though he were dead and call upon the LORDs name. \
http://scriptures.lds.org/en/acts/2/21#21
http://scriptures.lds.org/en/luke/20/38a

Answer 8

There are two deaths. The first is the seperation of the material and non-material parts of you. That is physical death. There will be a resurrection and final judgement of the wicked who will be cast into the lake of fire which is the second death.

As for the sleep thing, I dunno.

Answer 9

Death is nature's way of telling you to slow down.

Seriously - the only people who would have any idea about death are, well, dead. Us live folks are just guessing.

Answer 10

42, 47 if you adjust for inflation