What happens when we die?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

A recurring late-stage question in The Guardian Q&A, with materially different answers on publisher-hosted pages.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Marina Abramović said elsewhere, not written here
Twenty-one grams of energy goes into the universe.

The Q&A, The Guardian, 5 October 2024 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 51 →
Earthly life is merely the infancy of our soul. What comes after physical death is, I imagine, like returning home.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 2 November 2024 source ↗
Oh, man. Well, I hope when we die, it’s the same as before we were born. No one’s really frightened of that enormous, infinite blackness before we were born. No one sits there thinking, “Oh, God, how awful. I was nothing.” So I don’t really see why we should be frightened of that after we die, as long as it is black. I really don’t want to be up there on a cloud playing a harp, meeting some of the people I’ve hated in my life. I can’t imagine a greater nightmare. That would be hell, in fact.
Recorded The Talks, 7 May 2025 source ↗
No. I mean, it depends on how you look at it. In the sense that we all have a piece of cosmic dust in us from the beginning – The Big Bang – then yes. But no, I don’t believe in heaven or hell.
Recorded The Talks, 10 October 2013 source ↗

More from Marina Abramović

View profile →
Question What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self, and what should they ignore? Time & hindsight
Spend your time on something meaningful. Not on parties, and not on taking it easy. That’s not good enough. […] When you’re young, you think: Let’s party, do drugs, drink, waste it all, right? But as you get older, you look at what you’ve accomplished. And when you get old, you’ve run out of time. You have to ask yourself: Why am I here? Can I contribute anything to humanity, to society, my work?
Recorded University Post, University of Copenhagen public talk, University Post (uniavisen.dk), University of Copenhagen source ↗

More on death & what remains

Also answered this

Justin Hawkins, Sam Ryder, Monica Dolan, Michelle Collins, Frank Bowling, Marcus Brigstocke

Search the directory for somebody in particular.

Explore further

Report this answer