Hi,

We probably do have to "realize" that we're "dead" and that means many things. From getting "used to" being "dead" up to "learning" what you can do "out there"... thats one of the things i think.

Cheers,
Carlos.

Wayoutwhere,

  Probably the nearest similar thing that could make it easier to understand an answner to your question,

"When we die will we know that were dead?"

is to ask, when we are dreaming will we know that we are dreaming?  For many who die, at first these two states of consciousness are very similar.  This is often the reason people get stuck after they die, it never even occurs to them to question whether or not they are dead.  They just continue reacting to the elements of their environment as if they are physically alive, when they are not.

"What should we look for?"

What would you look for as a way of knowing whether or not you are dreaming?  Many of the same things apply.

"Do we have to totally accept death to be dead?"

Do you have to totally accept that you are dreaming to  be dreaming?

Bruce

That incident on the highway was about 5 years ago. It was after that incident (or around that time) that my nice, comfortable mechanistic worldview started to fray...
And I've noted in that time that my thinking has become "spacier" over the last few years.
I look exactly the same at 36, that I did at 30...
So people tell me.
Anyway.
Maybe I WAS killed back there on the highway..?
Isn't it a bit weird, that somebody I've never seen before, would follow me for two miles just to tell me...
"Do you know how close you came to DYING back there???"
Or maybe it was the time I ran off the highway in eastern Montana and sailed through a field of two-foot-high boulders and came to a rest without so much as a paint scratch?
Or how about the the time in Colorado, when I went out of control on the ice at 60-65 mph and spun 5 brodies across a BRIDGE over a RAVINE??? Once again, none the worse for the experience?
(All of which has happened since 1996..!)
Is all of this real? Who knows...

B-man

Well, I KNOW I just read your post, W.O.W.
So, there's at least ONE other independent thinking
entity in your reality, I can GUARANTEE you that!
But... what if we're in Hell together? (Maybe the
"Hell for careless drivers" where MOST (but not all) of the people we interact with are mere constructs of our minds?)
Now THERE'S a freaky thought for ya...
Is THIS Hell???
(And it could be... look at Baby George getting re-elected, New Orleans, the war
in Iraq, and the kids rampaging around my town
beating up people (badly enough to make "one for
the buzzards" cases out of a couple of them, all
in the past six months...)

B-man

Well, I KNOW I'm dreaming.  I'm just a daydreaming kind of girl it seems...
(Are we having fun yet?)

Some interesting comments on this thread.  My lucid dream experiences are mostly positive.  A few not so good ones.  However, I haven't trained myself to explore this "lucidity" factor as well as some others have.  From what I've read it seems that as individuals we need to develop a system for "noticing" it, and then we will have more occurrences of that kind.  

Many people use a repetition technique.  They will ask themselves a question, "Am I dreaming?" or some such repetitious act during the day.  This can go on for a long time before it gets into the subconscious mind.  After a while it will appear in their dreams and be the cue for becoming lucid.  

One person I read about carried a ball of paper in his pocket during the day for weeks.  He checked it regularly during the day. Then, sure enough, he found himself doing it in his dream.  But the paper wasn't in his pocket.  There was the cue. Bingo--lucid.

It seems that people have to have an ongoing interest in lucidity for it to occur regularly. There needs to be an underlying motivation, doesn't there, for just about anything?  And practice, of course.

As for the ultimate question, are we dreaming now?  
I think so!  Dreams happen.  Don't they?

As for how to know when we're dead?  Well, I suppose if you're in the habit of asking yourself that all the time you'll ask it wherever you are, won't you?    What does it mean to you?  I would guess that we are as alive as we think we are, wherever we end up in the end...  

If I had 2-3 car crashes or incidences and didn't have a scratch I'd have a hard time believing I was alive too.  Or maybe I would almost feel...well, invincible...

nadia

Reading all this makes one think if life isn't just a dream or some sort of a setup? What is life anyways if we live beyond death...?