among all the thread, i find great relief that yours is a
relevance to my experience. i would like to elaborate more on this
issue. firstly, i know about those advices of "accepting the
death". i have to say that this fear has happen to me a few times
and i know how to get over the fear. i am mainly talking abt the
specific experience of fear of death when you think of it in
certain way.
i have a analogy which i think is useful. the fear of death happens
in a particular fashion. its like a combination of locks where it
require a certain combination then you will unlock the door. if you
did not have the particular combination, you just will not open the
door. imagine a many layers of metals with a small section of hole
in each layer. to see through the whole metal thing, each layer has
to shift so that at a particular combi, all the holes are align.
when it happens, like gears of lock clicking, the correct alignment
of holes will produce a distinct click, which represents the
trigger of fear of cessation of self/soul.
this means in this issue is that, most of the time, if you ask
people abt it, or if people think about this issue of death, and
more importantly self death, they tend to feel no fear because the
combination thoughts and state of their emotions is not in a
combination that will trigger this fear. however, when your
thoughts align themselves in one day and certain events happen in
your life that further align everyday, it will trigger what i call
the
fear of the cessation of self forever.
the period of this fear is impulsive in nature. its not long, but
its a very sharp fear and it leaves a deep impression, especially
for the first time. after the fear, your feeling recovers and the
combination of lock is changed again such that it not possible to
trigger the fear at least in the near future.
usually, we go back to a normal life and if ask about death of self
again. we are not fearful about it. this is because the combination
of thoughts is in certain pattern that will trigger this
again.
For example, people read about deaths in newspaper, internet and
television everyday. statiscially, death is so rampant that ten
people must have died in the world now as i typed the sentence.
this shows that hearing the word death itself does not trigger this
type of fear that i am talking about.
however, after some time of living in our world of work and study
and relationship, the fear can still come again.
the fear of the thought of the end of self after death is perfectly
understandable. look at it this way, people fear exam, people fear
what others will think about them, people fear a angry boss, people
fear that they fail in the work, and fear the end of relationship.
i do feel fear over small things in life as well.
in terms of seriousness and severity, i think the loss of self is
the worst case among the loss of relationship, a business deal,
money.
some people don't experience this type of fear becaue they have
different perspective of death, just as i say it requires a certain
combination of locks to unlock and trigger this fear.
as the person has mentioned, some people do not have this a clear
notion of what it meant by their sense of self and end of self when
death. the second reason is because our brain automatically veered
from the thoughts of death of self in subconsious level because it
is like stepping into the unknown and thus risking experience of
fear. the third reason is that we prefer to go and watch movie or
have sex rather than to touch such a taboo subject. because we
seldom experience situation of our own possible death, we tend do
not have to think about this topic.
Also, another main reason for not being able to experience
this fear is becaues we are so used to the notion of
having a soul that it natural to believe that the soul persist
beyond the death of the body. the body can die, but the soul will
float to somewhere somehow. that is the logic. the belief in ghost
also leads to beliefs that our soul persist.
This reason therefore explains why some people first experience
this type of fear. when people starts to question whether their
soul will always exist and doubt it, it will then trigger this fear
very easily. for the first time, they have to imagine what is it
like what i mean not to exist as a soul. this should produce a
impulsive fear as i said. as i have said, what i realize about this
fear is that it seems to require numerous factors to be occuring to
trigger it off.
the universal case is that when people do talk about death, they
are able to say logical advice regarding it. but when come to
experiencing it, almost everyone will feel fearful and heart feels
painful.
lastly, i would dare to hypothesize that the most of you who have
not experienced this particular type of fear before will experience
this one day. maybe in your 30s or 40s. the key factor is what i
say above is the questioning of "what is meant by my sense of soul"
and leading to the imagination of eternal cessation of self.
my post will inevitably cause people to experience it sooner, if
they ever do get the particular combination of thoughts. but
overall, this fear , if experienced is , actually very useful for
living a better life. you will tend to live your life more
meaningful, and you will tend not to complain and fret small stuff,
because you know there are worst things in life.
the downside is that it crush our hope that there is a afterlife
and you have to accept it 
. it a very very bad news indeed.
of course, singapore and the world consist of many religious
people. therefore, people will still be convinced that "self will
not be extinct and it will go somewhere".
i hope that there is a afterlife for me and i guess the chance for
that with all the evidence, even with ghost theory, i see is
0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 %. ok you
get what i mean by the chance.
