We all want to live well, and when it is time, die well too. This is the essence of most human aspirations. Within this, much, if not most, of human endeavour is dedicated to living well, and the outcome reflects it. Humans have achieved much in terms of living well. We have managed to acquire more comfort and convenience than any other generation in the past. However, when it comes to dying well, it cannot be said that we die in any way better than our ancestors. Many factors explain why humans were successful with living better but not dying better—the most significant of them being the disparity between the way we treat life and death in our societies.
Everywhere in the world, life is mostly considered a success that is to be sung and celebrated, but death is considered a failure that is to be shunned and mourned. Oddly enough, in the construed dichotomy of life and death, it is ‘life’ that is a four-letter word, not ‘death’. Yet, in the world, it is death that gets the bad press. Death is a word whose mere utterance can hush dinner conversations. Children are taught never to utter the word at home, unless the God of Death chooses to visit while the adults are on a quest to invent overly woke euphemisms that try to mask the bluntness of the event with vanity.
It is said that humans do not know much about death because they do not know much about life in the first place. Death is a brief occurrence at the end of a long life. But even after having lived a full lifetime, people are clueless about simple questions about life—like, where did we come from and where are we going. So confusion about death is understandable. However, it must be acknowledged that in recent times, humankind has indeed travelled far from its simplistic understanding that ‘Life is God’s gift and death is His wrath.’
Traditionally, it was only religion that people looked up to for the unravelling of this mystery. Adjudication of matters related to death and dying was mostly in the hands of shamans and priests of various kinds. It was only in the past couple of hundred years, when a slew of medical discoveries began making a considerable impact upon health and mortality on a global scale, that people began turning to modern science for answers on death and dying as well. The success of modern science in dealing with matters of death and dying can be seen in the phenomenal improvement in just two of the key global health parameters—life expectancy and infant mortality. No better testimony to the success of modern medicine is needed than the burgeoning global population of 7.75 billion people on the planet. With this development, modern medicine has firmly dislodged everything else as the final adjudicators of all matters of life and death.
Modern science, characterized by objectivity and universality, has now enabled people to look at death in ways that were not possible before. However, the blazing trail left behind by modern science is not without its blind spots, dangers and destruction. One major outcome of death being handled by modern science is what has come to be called the ‘medicalization’ of death. Death, especially in the more advanced countries, is no longer looked at as a natural phenomenon but as a medical condition, with even ordinary life events and conditions being treated as risks and diseases. Death being preceded by excessive and often aggressive medical interventions has become the new norm.
Moreover, humans have never been comfortable with their mortal nature. So the success of medical science has only breathed a fresh lease of life to the historic quest for immortality. Riding on the shoulders of modern science, people have now begun to speculate if deathlessness is not in fact the norm and death an aberration. It has emboldened people to wonder if death is not just one more disease that needs to be conquered—something that our super sleuths in white coats will surely do within our lifetime. Our growing capability to interfere with the fundamental life process has undoubtedly increased our propensity to overdo it.
One reason why scientists appear akin to the six blind men studying an elephant—getting parts right while missing the whole—is their keyhole vision of life. 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. In recent times, our understanding of the biology of death has greatly increased. Today, we have a much better understanding of the point where, biologically, life ends and death begins. In terms of psychology too much progress has been made. What makes a person? Is it Nature or nurture? What is the role of each? These aspects too are much better understood. But the more profound questions of why death or life happens, and how, are still largely not understood.
Unfortunately, today’s science has access to the being only from the point where the body begins to the point where it ends. Science does not even acknowledge the possibility that something could precede life or succeed death. The hypothesis that life is just a chance occurrence in this vast universe of infinite permutations and combinations of factors is riddled with many holes. The simple fact that an unseen force abruptly turns on the biology for a period of time, and then turns it off equally abruptly, begs a deeper investigation even by the standards of science. While science stops where the body drops, the religions of the world are full of speculation as to what happens after that, leaving one lost somewhere in the no man’s land in between. It is in such times that the presence of a yogi or a mystic like Sadhguru—who draws primarily from an inner experience rather than tradition or scriptures or academic learning—becomes invaluable.
Sadhguru is a modern mystic and a yogi who has touched and transformed the lives of millions of people around the world with his unique insight into life and the tools of self-transformation. One afternoon, almost four decades ago, Sadhguru, then a ‘young man at his cocky best’, had a deep spiritual experience that changed his world view and life entirely. ‘Suddenly, what I had thought all my life was me was all around. I did not know which was me and which was not me.’ It also made him deeply ecstatic. Over the next few months, the experience became more stabilized and a living reality. This spiritual realization also brought back a flood of memories of his past lives and a deep understanding of the process of life and death. This experience made Sadhguru set out with a plan to teach the whole world to live as joyfully and ecstatically as he does.
Over the past four decades, this has turned into a global movement aimed at self-transformation. But looking back it is unclear as to at what point did Sadhguru, who has been considered a foremost authority on joyful living, begin being regarded as an authority on death as well. Was it when he began recounting clearly his past lives? Or was it twenty-five years ago, when he articulated for the first time the purpose of his current life— to consecrate the Dhyanalinga, the dream of many accomplished yogis, which was entrusted to him by his Guru three lifetimes ago? Or was it when several people around him were able to recollect their association with him in their past lives spontaneously? It is not very clear when, but soon people began to turn to Sadhguru on matters of death and dying as well.
However, Sadhguru has not always been the most communicative about death. In fact, one would think he was being evasive. Too many people who thought they could extract the deepest secrets of life through a single innocuous question—‘What happens after death, Sadhguru?’—have been disappointed. To their dismay, they were usually teased by responses like, ‘Some things are known only by experience!’ Others who wanted to know how to communicate with the dead were told to worry about communicating with the living first. People who asked about the existence of souls were told they had two of them— one under each foot. Yet all his teachings and practices have not been without a tinge of death or more.
Sadhguru is probably the only person on the planet who would, in a deadpan tone, talk about death to a hall full of people, first thing in the morning during certain residential programmes. He would then lead them through a guided meditation on experiencing death first-hand. He is probably the only one who would teach the ‘The Way of Effortless Living’ by initiating people into a deathlike experience of meditation, to be practised twice a day. He is also the ambitious person who sets out to teach everyone in the world the ways to live joyously; but on finding that he is falling short, pragmatically embarks on teaching them methods to die peacefully at least. He is also the person who assures people, ‘If you have been initiated by me, or have made the mistake of sitting in front of me totally, even for one moment, there is no rebirth for you.’ And the list goes on.
Once when we were filming Sadhguru for a DVD, somebody asked him, ‘Why is it that in most Eastern traditions, a very high level of sanctity is accorded to the moment of death? Why is it that the moment of death is granted a sort of a quasi-spiritual status?’ Speaking outside his usual script of deterrence, Sadhguru said that if the moment of death is handled properly— if there was proper preparation, proper guidance and perhaps some outside help as well— then, in spiritual terms, even that which probably did not happen in life could happen in death. This was a revelation to me. I had never heard of anyone speak of death as a spiritual possibility.
Some discussion followed this, but since it was mostly outside the scope of the video being filmed, Sadhguru did not elaborate further. I was very intrigued. Did Sadhguru just say that there is a big spiritual possibility hiding in plain sight in the much-feared, much-abhorred aspect of life— death? Was there a huge free ride waiting to be taken at the moment of death, and we were oblivious to it? If so, why haven’t we heard of this before? Why is it not being spoken about more? Why are we not alerting people to it? Could Sadhguru offer the necessary guidance for the preparation, could he give the required ‘help’? Of course, he could. But would he? Could he be coaxed into opening another front in his engagement with the world? Sadhguru was certainly willing, but the task of compiling the book was not as easy as I had imagined. I had assumed it would be a simple task because, after all, if one knew something, how difficult would articulating it be? Well, that assumption turned out to be somewhat premature, because explanations can only traverse from the known to the unknown, and in this case, the gap turned out to be rather formidable.
The grand phenomenon of life cannot be constrained to the period between birth and death, as seen by modern science. It goes back all the way to the beginning of Creation and extends all the way to wherever the Creation is heading. Hence, any understanding of death that does not take this fact into account is bound to be incomplete and incorrect. In the first part of the book— Life and Death in One Breath— Sadhguru describes the essential mechanism of life and death using several approaches. He describes the Yogic understanding and further simplifies this using the example of the familiar soap bubble. Taking the discourse beyond the usual boundaries, Sadhguru traces the origins of life from the beginning of Creation to the cycle of birth and death that we all undergo. He also talks about the different kinds of deaths and what choices we have in death. He concludes the first part by describing the highest form of death— the dissolution of the Self— which is the goal of all spiritual seekers.
In addition to explaining the underlying mechanics of birth and death, one of the objectives of the book is also to help one achieve a ‘good’ death. In the second part of the book—The Gracefulness of Death— Sadhguru clarifies what a ‘good’ death is and what preparations we can make for it. Moreover, when a person is dying, he is in the most vulnerable situation, unable to help himself. Sadhguru explains what assistance one can provide in such situations and the difference that can make for the dying person. He talks about how the person’s journey after death could be assisted by doing some simple acts. He also shares some precious insights into grief and how we can deal with it in a meaningful manner.
The afterlife is strictly not a part of the process of death and dying, but a by-product of it. In the third part of the book— Life after Death— Sadhguru offers us insights into this much- misunderstood and maligned aspect of life. Here, Sadhguru talks about ghosts and spirits, their origins and their lives, what they can and cannot do to us and how we can protect ourselves. He also talks about the process of reincarnation, what passes on from one birth to another and what is lost. He also examines if our previous lives are of any relevance to our present lives at all. In this context, Sadhguru talks about his own past lives and answers the question people frequently ask him—will he be coming back?
The book is in no way complete in presenting all that we seek to know about death and dying. Nor is it the sum total of all that Sadhguru has to offer. But we hope it will be an active force to dispel the gamut of misconceptions about death in the world. The most significant aspect of the book, however, is how the tools offered by Sadhguru and his presence in our midst can help us make our own death more graceful and spiritually significant. In all the ensuing chatter about death and dying, it is hoped that this primary purpose of the book is not lost on the reader.
Swami Nisarga