Death; An Inside Story: A book for all those who shall die

by Sadhguru

Death being preceded by excessive and often aggressive medical interventions has become the new norm.

Death—just as life—can be understood as having three components. There is a biological part, a psychological part and a metaphysical part that causes the biology and the psychology to happen.

Life and death live in me at once Never held one above the other When one stands far, life I offer In closeness, only death I deal In death of the limited Will the deathless be How to tell the fools Of my taintless evil.

Do you know that about 160,000 people in the world, who were alive yesterday, are not there today? Each second, two people die in the world. And one day, it is going to happen to you and me too.

‘Hundreds and thousands of living beings meet death at every moment, yet the foolish man thinks himself deathless and does not prepare for death. This is the biggest wonder of life.’

If you are aware, you will see both life and death are happening every moment. If you as much as breathe a little more consciously, you will notice that with every inhalation there is life, with every exhalation there is death. Upon birth, the first thing that a child does is to inhale, to take in a gasp of air. And the last thing that you will do in your life is an exhalation.

Fundamentally, this situation has come about because you have lost perspective as to who you are in this Universe. If this solar system, in which we are, evaporates tomorrow morning, no one will even notice it in this Cosmos. It is that small, just a speck. In this speck of a solar system, Planet Earth is a micro speck. In that micro speck, the city you live in is a super-micro speck. In that, you are a big man. This is a serious problem.

This is not becoming spiritual. It is only when you become conscious that you will also die, you will turn spiritual. Only when this awareness of mortality seeps into you, you will turn inwards. The moment you address the mortal nature of who you are, you will also want to know what the source of this life is. You will develop the longing to know what this is all about, and what is beyond this thing. It will become a natural quest. That is the spiritual process.

Once you come to terms with death, and you are conscious that you will die, you will want to make every moment of your life as beautiful as possible.

Death is the creation of the unaware, because if you are aware, it is life, life and life alone—moving from one dimension of Existence to another.

Life needs a certain amount of tension to keep it going, but in death, there is relaxation. In fact, death is the highest relaxation. However, if you also know the relaxation of death when you are alive, then life becomes an utterly effortless process.

In fact, whenever tension builds up in you, the natural mechanism in the body wants to exhale. This is what you call a sigh. It relaxes you a little bit. Life needs a certain tension. Otherwise, you cannot keep it going. Death is utter relaxation.

If you observe people around you right now, you will see that for almost 99 per cent of the people, their exhalation is never complete. Their mind has rejected death so their exhalation will not happen totally. They will inhale, but exhalation does not happen totally. This is one of the reasons why, over some time, you build up so much tension within the system that it is reaching a breaking point—both mentally and physiologically.

If you want to live as a full life, you should look at your mortal nature every day, not only when you are beyond a certain age. Every day of your life, you need to be aware that you are mortal. It is not that I want to die today, but if I do, it is all right with me. I will do everything to protect myself, to nurture myself, to take care of myself, but if I have to die today, it is okay with me. Only then can I step out and live. Otherwise, I cannot live.

The moment you think of security, you are assisting death. I want you to know: death does not need your assistance. Death is super-efficient. On the other hand, life needs your assistance.

Let new things happen to you. If you create this kind of nothing-should-happen-to-me situation within yourself, you will become stagnant. Stagnation is death. If life does not move on, if new possibilities don’t arise within you, you are living dead.

What you are calling as life, right now, is like soap bubbles being blown. The entire Yogic process or the entire spiritual process is to wear this bubble thin, so that one day when it bursts, there is absolutely nothing left and it moves from the bondage of existence to the freedom of non-existence, or Nirvana.

According to the Yogic system, memory is basically an accumulation of impressions.

Elemental Memory and Atomic Memory together constitute what can be called Inanimate Memory. This memory governs the inanimate aspect of life. The other types of memory relate to animate life and can be called Animate Memory.

This is why, once you are on the spiritual path, we want you to exhaust your energies allocated for physical activity very fast. Let us say, you have 500 units of energy allotted to your physical activity. We want to finish it off in ten years so that after that if you sit, the body will simply sit. It has no need to move. Without any physical urge to move, it will simply settle down. Most people cannot meditate without sufficient physical activity. So, when we allocate work to people at the Isha Yoga Center, we do it with a lot of care. Some people work four hours a day, some six hours a day, some ten hours a day, some fourteen hours a day, while there are some who work eighteen to twenty hours a day. The idea is to expend their physical energy.

Yogis want to develop their body and their mind because if they are born again, they don’t want to be born with small amounts of Prarabdha Karma and go on for many lifetimes. They don’t want to postpone it; they want to fast-forward everything. They want to enhance their mental capabilities, so that this time around, even if they were not able to end it, because they left with very great physical and mental capabilities, when they come next time, they will get a bigger software.

Now, along with the memory and energy, there is a third dimension—time—that determines the duration and nature of one’s life and death. Both life and death happen within the ambit of time. Time ticks away all the time. You can neither slow it down nor hasten it. You can conserve your energy, you can throw it around, you can develop it, you can make it phenomenally big or insipid, but time, it just keeps slipping away. It has its own intelligence, and it flows according to certain parameters of karmic information and the energy allotment that is available in one’s system.

One who has mastery over one’s information, or mastery over the tendencies caused by the information, has mastery over the quality of one’s life. He or she can determine whether the self becomes pleasant or unpleasant. One who has mastery over one’s energies will determine the nature of one’s activity and how one lives. They have absolute mastery over their life, but not over their death. But one who has mastery over time will determine the nature of one’s life and death. They can determine whether they want to live or die. This is how the three dimensions that constitute your life are connected to your death.

Today, science proclaims that water has its own memory and intelligence. Someday, when science goes far enough, they will find that there is nothing in the Cosmos that is not alive. The important question is, are you alive enough to perceive it?

Right now, our idea of death is like this: when people say something has died, it only means that something just relapsed from a dynamic to a more inert form of Existence. We recognize life as a certain level of dynamism, intent and capability of action in a human being. If this dynamism sinks below a certain level, then we say they are dead

Moreover, biologically also, a certain level of dynamism of memory is needed to bind all organs, cells and atoms together to our intention of living. Right now, you have trillions of cells in your body that are functioning the way you want because there is a strong intent that is holding them together. But if you lose this intent, which is your ability to make all these atoms and cells function the way you want, we say you have died. The deterioration of the body begins to happen.

If you want an analogy, consider this: in a way, what you refer to as life, right now, is like soap bubbles being blown. A rock, a plant and a human being are all like soap bubbles of different kinds. The layer of covering of the soap bubble is the complex amalgamation of memory—various kinds of memory. In that sense, the nine avatars6 that they talk about in the Hindu tradition are just different levels of Evolutionary, Genetic, Karmic, Unconscious, Subconscious and Conscious Memory.

Of the eight types of memory that you carry, all the seven types of memory will go when you fall dead. Evolutionary Memory, which is instrumental in you taking the shape of the human form, is gone. Genetic Memory, which decides the colour of your skin, the shape of your nose and such things, is also gone. The Conscious, Subconscious and Unconscious Memories are also gone. Once you become disembodied, it is largely only the Karmic Memory which holds you together. In the process of death or disembodiment and the continuation of life process, we must understand that only one memory—the Karmic Memory—remains. Within this, you may categorize something as Sanchita Karma and something else as Prarabdha Karma, but, essentially, it is karma which remains.

So the whole spiritual path in India has been designed in such a way that the karmic wall does not gather substance. At the same time, you go on enhancing the volume of life that you gather. It does not matter how much brains you have, it does not matter how much knowledge you have, the significance of your life is always determined by the volume of life you captured. So the idea is to increase the real substance of life, so that the cover or package becomes irrelevant. When it becomes irrelevant, it will dissolve. When it dissolves, this substance that was captured, which does not belong to you and which is anyway there everywhere, you become part of it.

It is the ultimate end of life. To do this, if it was a big bubble, you simply touch it and it would be completely gone. It does not need much action. Simply of its own nature, it can burst. Even with a soap bubble, if you try to poke it when it is small, it will only stick to your hand. It will not blow up. It will take a lot more action to burst it, but big bubbles just burst upon contact or on their own. This is why many spiritual paths try to do just this: they try to blow the life bubble bigger and bigger with each lifetime so that one day it will burst on its own. But even when the bubble is small and the walls are thick, if people acquire the necessary wisdom and the intention, or if they are on to very powerful spiritual processes, they can crush it in the present lifetime itself. They don’t have to wait for lifetimes to grow it very big.

This body is a composition of five sheaths. These five sheaths, or koshas, as they are known, are Annamaya Kosha, Manomaya Kosha, Pranamaya Kosha, Vignanamaya Kosha and Anandamaya Kosha. Each sheath has a distinct purpose and properties.

This Samana Vayu is in charge of maintaining the temperature of your body. By activating the Samana Vayu, you can activate your energies in such a way that you become less and less available to the external elements in Nature.

Prana Vayu is related to the Earth. It is earthy in nature. This is the only planet in the solar system to have a breathable atmosphere and therefore the possibility of respiration. So this is the only planet where there is an active intellect or thought process.

The next aspect of the prana is called Udana Vayu. Udana means to fly. You may weigh 70 or 80 kilograms on the weighing scale, but you don’t feel the 70 or 80 kilograms on you because Udana Vayu creates buoyancy and makes you less available to gravity.

They connected me with fourteen electrodes and asked me to meditate. I said, ‘I don’t know how to meditate.’ They were a little taken aback. They said, ‘But you teach everyone meditation.’ ‘Yes, I do. But I teach meditation to people because they don’t know how to sit still.’ In reality, there is no such thing as meditation. There is only stillness—many levels of stillness. Because it is very difficult to teach people stillness, the term ‘meditation’ is used as an intermediary. So I said, ‘If you want, I will sit still.

One who exits through the Swadhishthana Chakra, located in and above the genital organ, can be reborn with extraordinary creative prowess. One who exits through the Manipura Chakra, located just below the navel, can be capable of a very organized sense of action. One may become a great business person or a great general.

If you want that moment of death to happen in full awareness, you have to live a life of awareness. Otherwise, at that moment, there is no way you are going to be aware. One who is conscious can leave whichever way one wants, but one who is unconscious simply goes in a fixed way—because their life was a bondage, so death is also a bondage. If at the moment of death, a person can be 100 per cent aware, that person will not have to go through rebirth. They will not take another body—they are released.

No two people in the world live their lives the same way. Similarly, no two people die the same way. People may die in the same situation, of the same cause, but still they don’t die the same way.

This is the reason why you might have noticed that sometimes even a person who has lived a gross life seems to carry an ethereal peace about them during the last few days preceding their death. Such a person, you will see, suddenly becomes wise. This usually happens for people whose awareness becomes acute.

One’s death is usually set in relation to one’s solar cycles, which are approximately twelve years each. In other words, the phase or segment of the solar cycle in which you will die is largely set. The day and time are not very relevant because it need not necessarily happen exactly like that. You can take a few more breaths, or some medic may pump something into you, and you may live a little longer. All these things can happen. But if you have the necessary perception and look at a person, it could be easily determined as to which segment of the solar cycle he or she will go in. It has happened that it looks like the person is going to die by such and such time, even their medical parameters indicate death, but still I have said they are not going to die now. That is because they are in the wrong segment of their solar cycle to die. Even in their designated segment, if they pass just that ailment or situation, they may not die because the death may get pushed for some more rounds.

This is why it is said that you must be ready for death every moment of your life. You should live your life in such a way that if you were to drop dead the next moment, you still have ended it reasonably well. You trying to deal with it at the last moment is not the way. Moreover, if you understand that you are mortal, you look at it all the time. And if you are looking at it all the time, you will notice it. When it is time, you will know how to sit in a conducive place and die. That is the best way.

A Linga Bhairavi Yantra12 can also definitely take care of it. If one has such a powerful energy form in one’s house, there is no worry. But the Linga Bhairavi Yantra has a limited range that is effective for only around 2000–2500 square feet. Even that depends on the layout of the house.

They said Shiva always slept in the cremation ground to convey that it does not matter where the hell one is, when, internally, one is fully fired up. But for regular people who are constantly influenced by what is around them, periodic purifications are needed. Otherwise, slowly, inertia will set in.

Traditionally, there were systems in this society where people periodically went through some cleansing. This is also the significance of people taking a dip in the river in all the holy places in India. You go and dip yourself three times in the river—in flowing water—it becomes a big cleansing. This is one reason why people bathed in rivers. It is a simple way to cleanse yourself from these influences.

Rainwater can do wonders to one’s energy. These are simple ways by which one can protect oneself from the little bits of negative influences that one may have gathered unconsciously.

For a majority of people, they feel suicidal because life isn’t happening the way they want. Except for medical reasons, the rest is largely because of unrealistic expectations. You are just a tiny speck in this Creation. If you look at yourself in the context of Creation as a whole, you are nothing. If you understand that you are nothing, you will be only too glad that things are happening to whatever extent they are. You will be too glad that when you are a bloody nothing—when you don’t know one thing from another, when you are sitting on this planet, in the middle of nowhere, in this vast existence—at least you are breathing, your heart is beating, you are living and everything is working out well. You don’t know anything, nor can you control it, nor can you manage it, but still it is happening well. So if you understand the real context of life, you would only be too glad to be alive.

There are many people for whom life is not happening the way they want it to, but they don’t turn suicidal because they have hope that tomorrow things will be better.

Fundamentally, people want to commit suicide because in some way they don’t know how to handle life. It is like you want to find a permanent solution to a temporary situation in life. That is all it is. Either they don’t know how to handle their emotions, thoughts, physical ailment, financial or family situation—there is something they don’t know how to handle. When you are trapped in that situation, it may look like it is the end of the world in your understanding. Essentially, you do not know how to handle a specific aspect of your life. So you think the best thing is to end life. It is ignorance, ignorance about the nature of life.

Usually, people who are struggling hard in difficult situations will never commit suicide. Even though a thousand things don’t happen the way they want, they will work harder, but they will not commit suicide.

However, for the majority of people, this thing about them wanting to end their life is just a lot of drama. Please see, whenever you feel suicidal, it is only because life is not happening the way you want it to happen. Today, if life is not going the way you want it to go, you want to end your life. But if things get a little better tomorrow morning, you will start making plans for the future. By tomorrow morning, if something is going right, you want to live, and you want to live long enough to have your third baby. You even want to have grandchildren. But when everything looks bleak, you think of suicide. This is a self-destructive game that you are playing in your mind; there is no existential basis to it.