You know, I froze for a long time on this one thought.

A certain subject...

I analyzed it.

Then I re-analyzed it.

After that came over-analysis.

Then I followed up with obsession.

Before I knew it, it had become an addiction.

And finally, just before I took the next step into full-blown madness—

I had an answer.

WHY THE HELL DO I WAKE UP WHEN I DIE IN A DREAM?

I tried studying this phenomenon. I failed. Not once. Not twice. Not thirty-three times. But so many times I lost count.

And every time I brought the question up, an unholy number of people spat the same, tired answer at me.

People online. People IRL. Bookstore philosophers. Weirdos who stopped me on the street “just to talk.”

Didn’t matter who. Didn’t matter where.

"Why do we wake up when we die in a dream?"

Their answer?

Because we don't know what's in the afterlife (or afterdeath - I felt like poiting this weird word choice from some, not many, but certainly a quantity of people used it.)

The brain, so they say, can't generate something it had yet to experience...

Ah yes.

The people that are "generated" in your dreams? - They are a fusion of the faces you unconsciously "download" when you're seeing them with the corner of your eye.

And you know what?

YOU KNOW FUCKING WHAT?!

I agreed.

I really did.

It sounds logical, right? A simple, digestible explanation.

Except… it's wrong!

Look around the world for one damn second.

Theories. Experiments. Hell, even human experimentation has taken a piss on that shitty theory and tossed it into the trash heap where it belongs!

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It’s nothing but a cheap coping mechanism!

Let’s take one example—the religious fanatics.

They exist. In all shapes and sizes. People so deep in their faith they’ve literally brainwashed themselves into believing knowing for a fact that the afterlife is a certainty. To them, the word probability is less than a foreign concept.

I’ve spoken to a handful of them. And when I ask the Golden Question—

"What do you believe awaits us after death?"

I watch.

I analyze.

Their body language.

Their fiddling.

Their shifting eyes.

The little nervous habits they don’t even notice.

I analyze, re-analyze, then over-analyze them.

Patterns emerge.

Patterns tell me exactly what kind of person I’m dealing with.

Their answers?

* Person Type 1: “I will be reborn as a dragon / a cockroach / a sheep.”

* Person Type 2: “I will enjoy a harem alongside God.”

* Person Type 3: “I will live next to Saint Alexander in the clouds of Heaven.”

* Person Type 4: “I will reincarnate into another world!”

And sure, there were plenty of other responses, but these stood out. The ones most popular replies to my interrogations - also most popular online.

The ones people cling to.

Then, after I receive my answer, I follow up with the same gestures as I always do:

I clear my throat.

I take a sip of water—it is always same temperature, same amount, same effect. Doesn't matter if I'm in The Desert, North Pole or fucking Narnia!

Then I ask my 'beloved' question.

"What happens when you die in a dream?"

And that’s when I mald.

Because they all say the same thing.

MY THING!

"I wake up. Why?"

Even in human experiments—there was one paper, a study of a child raised to see death as beautiful, conditioned to believe in an absolute afterlife. He'd participate in parties when his parents, one at a time... You get it... He was brainwashed into falling in love (YES, LITERAL LOVE) with death.

But even he woke up when he died in his dreams!!!

So, after all my research, all my failures, all my questioning and chasing and theorizing…

I could only come to one conclusion.

When you die in a dream—

If you don’t wake up fast enough—

You die for real.

Sigh…

It makes sense, doesn’t it?

No? Let me explain.

Dreams exist with the mind. And the mind—by almost every philosophical, scientific, and theological definition—is the soul.

So if your soul is killed in a dream…

Well.

It’s only natural that you die too.

YES. YOU DIE IF YOU ARE KILLED. NO SHIT, SHERLOCK.

And yet…

Even after all this studying, all this searching, all this truth-seeking—I’m left with one last question.

If a soul can create a reality of its own in a dream…

Then—

What the fuck is a dream?