Is there a difference between eternal sleep and death?

Ashok and Chandra are sitting in a bar. It is quite late and both had a few drinks. It is quite late there are only a few patrons in the bar.

Ashok: Do you think there is a difference between eternal sleep and death?

Chandra: Huh? What do you mean by eternal sleep?

Ashok: It is a sort of sleep from which you never wake up. Your heart continues to beat, you continue to breathe but you never wake up again, never start a day again, never perform any conscious activity.

Chandra: Do I get a choice?

Ashok: Say that you, you are forced to choose between eternal sleep and death. What would you choose?

Chandra: Let me first thresh these ideas of eternal sleep and death a bit bit then I will choose. I assume by death you the cessation of all my bodily functions – heart, brain the whole lot? If that is so, disregarding the idea of an afterlife, death would mean oblivion for me. Not only it would mean the cessation of all conscious activity, it would also mean the loss of accumulated experiences of my existence. I would cease being an entity and will be reduced to my constituent matter.

Ashok: As philosophers have said, you didn’t exist before you were born. It didn’t bother you. So why should it bother you when you will not exist after you die?

Chandra: The difference is that I didn’t have my memories nor was I aware of my non-existence. Now that I am aware of the possibility of non-existence, I dread it. I am inseparable from my memories and my experiences – they make me what I am. Death implies the ultimate loss of my existence.

Ashok: If you put it like that, wouldn’t any disease causing the loss of your memory will also mean the loss of you as  being?

Chandra: Yes, it will certainly mean so. If I lost all my memories, then I would not be able to recognize you as Ashok and neither will the ideas and experiences that have formed my personality, made me the person that I am will also cease to exist. It will be a different person with a blank slate, unrecognizable to you and even to myself.

Ashok: Well certainly there are conditions that change a person.

Chandra: Yes certainly. Coming back to your question, if we go on an eternal sleep, I will still have all my experiences and all my memories. I will be intact as a person. My memories will give rise to dreams and I will continue to exist in them and through them even though I may be unable to to exert any effect in the real world. In eternal sleep, I will still have a mental life even if I never wake up and I will cling to that. It is better than the non-existence of death.

Ashok: What if it is a dreamless eternal sleep?

Chandra: That will be too cruel and death in a sense.

At that time, the bartender said it is time to close and the two of them drank their last glasses for the night.