Death

Chapter 1

What Is Death?

Death is the most fundamental question. Yet, people can ignore it, avoid it, and just live on in their ignorance simply because all kinds of idiotic stories have been spread in the world in the name of religion.

Death: The Most Fundamental Question

Do you know you will die one day? Oh, I bless you with a long life, but anyway, you will die one day. We cannot be sure about other things in your life. We don’t know if you will get married or not, or if you will get a job or not, if you will be successful or not, but this one thing is guaranteed in your life: You will go straight to your grave! One of the biggest human follies is to engage with death in the third person, as though it is an abstract event that happens toother people, not us. Do you know that about one hundred and sixty thousand people who were alive in the world yesterday are not there today? Each second, two people die in the world. And oneday, it is going to happen to you and me too. It does not take enormous research or intelligence or even education to know this. This knowledge is built into every human being. Yet, we think we have an unlimited lease on life. This situation is best expressed in the Hinduepic Mahabharata.

The five Pandava princes, who are the protagonists, are lost in the forest. Severely starved and parched, they scour the nearby hills for water and food. They spot a lake, and as they try to drink from it, they are confronted by a yaksha (a celestial being) in the form of a white crane who insists they answer his questions first. Refusing to be stopped by a mere bird, one by one they try to drink from the lake and drop dead. Only Yudhishthira, the eldest of them, is left. Always the humble and righteous one, Yudhishthira ignores his thirst and engages with the yaksha, who fires a volley of questions about life at him. One of those questions being, “What is the biggest wonder of life?” Without hesitation, Yudhishthira famously answers, “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.” The yaksha is pleased with this answer, so he allows him to drink from the lake and also restores the lives of his dead brothers. This happened five thousand years ago, but the human psyche regarding death has changed very little since then.

Death is a very fundamental question. Actually, death is closer to us than the statistics we read about it. Each moment, death is happening in us at the organ and cellular levels. This is how, with just one look at your insides, your doctor knows how old you are. In fact, death began in us even before we were born. Only if you are ignorant and unaware does it seem like death will come to you someday later. If you are aware, you will see that both life and death are happening every moment. If you breathe just 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 inhale, take in a gasp of air. And the last thing that you will do in your life is an exhalation. You exhale now, and if you do not take the next inhalation, you will be dead. If you do not get this, just do an exhalation, hold your nose, and do not do the next inhalation. Within a few moments, every cell in your body will start screaming for life. Life and death are happening all the time. They exist together, inseparably, in the same breath. This relationship goes even beyond the breath. Breath is only a supporting actor; the real process is that of the life energy, or prana, that controls physical existence. With certain mastery over prana, one can exist beyond breath for substantial amounts of time. Breath is a bit more immediate in its requirement, but in the same category as food and water.

Death is such a fundamental concept, because if one small thing happens, you can be gone tomorrow morning. Forget about tomorrow morning — one small thing now and you could be off the next moment. If you were like any other creature, maybe you would be unable to think about all this, but once one is endowed with human intelligence, how can you just ignore such a significant aspect of your life? How can you avoid it and live on as if you were going to be here forever? How is it that after living here for millions of years, human beings still don’t know a damn thing about death? Well, they know nothing about life either. You know all about the trappings of life, but what do you know about life as such?

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. When you have completely lost perspective as to who you are, how do you think you will grasp anything about the nature of life or death?

One reason people can ignore death and continue to live on in their ignorance is simply that society and the religions of the world have spread all kinds of idiotic stories about life and death. They created some silly, childish explanations for everything. “How was I born?” “The stork brought you.” “Where am I going to go?” “To heaven.” This explanation is very simple but absurd. At least they could have chosen a more efficient mode of transport than a stork. Storks migrate only in a particular season, so all the children should have been born in that season alone, not during other times! Moreover, if people are so sure that they are going to heaven after they die, I ask them, “Why are you delaying your departure, then? Why not go right now?” All these silly stories have snuffed out the basic human curiosity about life and death. Otherwise, sheer curiosity— if not the pain and suffering of life— would have strongly propelled many people to seek answers to this fundamental question.

Mortal Nature

People always think that reminding themselves of God will make them spiritual. Not at all. If you keep thinking of or believing in God, you will not do your job properly, but you think you will produce good results. You will not study for your exam and yet think you will be first in class because of your prayer. Such people become more brazen than others about life because now they have God’s support. Always, people who believed that God is with them have done the most violent things on the planet. “God is with me” gives you a new confidence, which is very dangerous. If you think of God this way, you will not become spiritual— you could actually become very brazen and stupid.

Once it happened: There were two young boys— very energetic boys— in a neighborhood. Usually, when young boys are very energetic, they are in constant trouble. The same happened with these boys also. Their parents were very embarrassed by them because the entire community was discussing their children. So, not knowing what to do, they decided to take them to the local parish priest to correct them. Because the boys would be too strong to handle together, the parents decided to take them to the priest separately.They took the younger boy first, made him sit down in the priest’s office, and left. The priest walked in with his long robes and walked up and down the room a few times with a grave face. The boy sat there, his eyeballs doing a ping-pong act.

As he walked up and down, the priest worked out a strategy. He thought, “If I remind this boy that God is within him, all his mischief will go.” So he dramatically stopped mid-stride and, with a booming voice, asked the boy, “Where is God?” The boy looked bewildered. He started looking all around because he thought God must be somewhere in the priest’s office. The priest saw that the boy was not getting the point. Thinking that he should give him a little clue that God is within him, the priest leaned on the table and, pointing at the little boy, boomed again,“Where is God?” The boy appeared even more bewildered and looked under the table. The priest saw that the boy was still not getting it. So, he walked around, came close to him, and, tapping on the little boy’s chest, boomed again, “Where is God?” The boy now got up and bolted out of the room. He ran to where his elderbrother was and said, “We are in real trouble.” The elder brother asked, “Why? What happened?” He said, “They have lost their God and they think we did it.”

Thinking about God, you will believe that you can do idiotic things in your life, and with a prayer everything will be fixed. This is not becoming spiritual. When you become conscious that you will also die, only then will you turn spiritual. Only when this awareness of mortality seeps into you, will you turn inward. 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.

No one would seek spirituality if they did not know that they would die. When you are young, you think you are immortal. Slowly, as you get older, at least your body definitely reminds you that you are mortal. And when you are faced with death or the death of someone dear to you, you will surely begin to wonder what all this is about. If you are aware of the mortal nature of your life, where is the time to get angry with someone or to quarrel with someone or to do anything stupid in life? 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. Those who are constantly aware of the mortal and fragile nature of exis-tence do not want to miss even a single moment; they will naturally be aware. They cannot take anything for granted; they will live very purposefully. Only people who believe they are immortal can fight and fight to death.

The Hindu civilization, the oldest civilization on the planet, has always nurtured a deep awareness of our mortal nature. In Hindu tradition, cremation grounds are always held to be very sacred. When someone dies, even if it is someone that you do not know, it hits you somewhere. In any genuine spiritual practice, there is always the smell of death. If you go deep enough into it, it will remind you that you are mortal. Whatever sa dhana* we have been teaching, whether it is Shoonya or Shakti Chalana or Shambhavi Mahamudra— even more so with Samyama — essentially, there is a tinge of death in it. If there is no tinge of death in it, there is no spirituality; it is just entertainment. If someone taught you a superficial la- la practice, it might make you feel good, but there is nothing more to it. 

Traditionally, every yogi started their spiritual pursuit in the cremation grounds. In fact, many Masters have used this as a spiritual process. Gautama the Buddha made it compulsory for his monks. Before he initiated anyone who came to him, he asked them to go and sit in the busiest cremation ground for three months, just watching the corpses burn. Even today, if you go to Manikarnika Ghat in Varanasi, a minimum of a half dozen bodies will be burning there at any given time. And it is handled like a normal business,very casually. These days, there is not enough time for them to fully burn the body, because even before one body is fully burned, the next body has already come. So they throw this half-burned body into the river. It is actually very good for you to see that this is how people are going to treat you also one day.

When I was young, I had no knowledge of all this. But from the age of eight to seventeen, I happened to spend an enormous amount of time in the cremation grounds. It simply intrigued me. Everyone talked about so many eerie things happening there; I had heard stories that spirits hang upside down from trees. I wanted to see these things for myself. So I spent many days and nights in the cremation grounds. There was one very close to our home and another in the foothills of Chamundi Hills. The one at Chamundi Hills was very busy. Anytime you went there, there would be at least four or five bodies burning. Whenever I went trekking, I spent the nights there because the hill would be cold, but here there was a fire burning all the time. So I would sit by the fire and simply watch the burning.

There was also a lot of drama that used to happen around the pyre. Usually, when people come with a body to the cremation ground, they are all crying like they have lost everything in life. Then they set fire to the body. They stay there for half an hour or forty-five minutes and then they leave. The fire is still burning, but they leave. Probably they have other business to attend to, but I would sit there, watching. If you have carefully observed a body being burned on a pyre, the first thing that burns up is the neck because it is narrow. When this happens, unless they have made a large and proper arrangement of firewood, the half- burned head invariably rolls off the pyre like a soccer ball. It looks a little eerie— a head rolling off the pyre! Probably because firewood is expensive, or because most people do not have sufficient experience in arrang-ing a proper pyre, this used to happen often. It would happen after three and a half to four hours of burning. By that time, no relatives would be present, so I would be the one to pick up the head and put it back on the pyre.

I spent many days and nights in the cremation grounds just sit-ting and looking and helping these bodies burn fully. It set forth a completely different kind of process in me. I know you would want to avoid this, but it is good to sit down and watch the bodies burning continuously. Living in the comfort of your house, it is very easy to think you are immortal. But when a body is burning in front of you, it is not very difficult to see that this could be you tomorrow. Mentally and emotionally, you may have different reactions, but the most important thing is that your body perceives life in its own way. The sight of another body burning deeply unsettles it. It raises a different kind of awareness and sense within you. Many things that you have imagined about yourself will all get burned in the cremation ground if you sit there and keep watching what happens.

When you are watching the bodies burn, you should not think about it. Simply look at it; just look at it and look at it and look at it. After some time, you will see, it is just you. It is not any different. It is your own body. Once you can replace that body with yours and still sit there, there is a deep acceptance of death. This is not a psychological process. When your very body perceives the fragility of its existence, there is a very profound relief and acceptance. Once there is a deep acceptance of death, then life will happen to you in enormous proportions. It is only because you tried to keep death away that life has also stayed away from you. This is why almost every yogi spent a significant amount of time in the cremation grounds at some point or the other in their life.

Exploring Death

An incident occurred when I was still in school that made me deeply intrigued by death. I was thirteen at that time. I was a fairly unusual child in school, but, usually, no one dared to tease me because I would beat them up. But there was this girl named Su charita, who was a little crazy, and for some reason, she would go on teasing me, “Jaggi the Great! Jaggi the Great!” I was irritated, but I ignored it. Once, after a school vacation, she did not come back toschool. Every day, when her name was called during attendance, some of us would squeak out a female voice and try to answer her attendance for fun. This happened for a few days. Then this girl’s brother, who was junior to us by two years in the same school, told us that his sister had died of pneumonia during the vacation. That really freaked me out. Not because someone had died, but because someone who was alive and here with us had vanished just like that.

I became deeply intrigued by this. This girl was my age, doing many things in class, and she was suddenly gone. They said she was dead, but I wanted to know where she could have gone. Until then, to me, it was only old people who died. But being of my age group, the girl had brought death to my doorstep. Now it was no longer a curiosity question, but a very existential one. I wanted to know where the hell people go when they die and what happens after death. I had already asked these questions to many people even before this incident occurred. I had also spent a lot of time in the cremation grounds in the town, but still I did not know what hap-pened after death. So, I thought I would undertake a journey to death myself and see what happened.

My father was a physician, so he had a medicine cabinet at home. I knew there were lots of medicines in it. Among them, I found a bottle of Gardenal. It is a kind of barbiturate that can put you to sleep. The bottle was supposed to contain a hundred tablets, but when I took them out and counted, there were only ninety-eight. Someone had opened it and used up two. I thought ninety-eight tablets should be a dose strong enough to cause death. Next, I went through my cupboard. I had some money and lots of personal property like marbles, catapults, and a few pet birds, which are of great value for a young boy. I decided to give them all away because I was going to die anyway. Some things I gave to my brother, the rest I distributed among my close friends. I told them I was leaving. They all thought it was a big joke. Then one day I decided that I would do it that night. I did not eat my dinner that night because I knew if there was food in the stomach these things might not work very well. I told my family I was not hungry and went to the terrace with the tablets. I popped in all the ninety- eight pills and just went to sleep, hoping that I would know where all the dead people go.

In the morning, they did everything to wake me up, but I would not wake up. Usually, it was a little hard to wake me up in the mornings, but this time I just did not wake up at all. Then my father saw that I was limp. Everyone became terrified and took me to a hospital. They did a stomach pump, put me on oxygen, and all that, but I did not wake up. For three days, I was lifeless and in a deep sleep. On the third day, I slowly came awake. Still lying down on the bed, I slowly opened my eyes. The first thing I saw were the rafters in the ceiling above the bed. Immediately, I recognized where I was. I had seen those rafters many times before when I had visited my father at the railway hospital, where he worked. There I was, lying in a bed in his hospital with all kinds of tubes sticking out of me. It was very frustrating, because I had gone through all this trouble hoping to see where one goes after death, and all I see are the damn rafters at the railway hospital!

That was a desperate attempt to know what happens after death, but I had learned nothing about it. The only consolation was that I learned that this was not the way to know. Later, I managed to bully my friends into returning most of the stuff I had distributed to them, and life carried on! Many years later, when I was a young man living life at my cocky best, a deep experience came unasked that changed my perspective about life and death completely.

One warm September afternoon, I was just sitting alone on a rock in Chamundi Hills. I had my eyes open— not even closed— when something began to happen to me. Suddenly, what I had thought all my life was me was all around — my inside had become the outside. I did not know which was me and which was not me.The air that I was breathing, the rock on which I was sitting, the atmosphere around me— everything had become me. It was crazy because what was happening was indescribable. What was me had become so enormous, it was everywhere. I thought this lasted a few minutes, but when I came back to my normal senses, the sun had set and it was dark. My eyes were open. I was fully aware, but what I had considered as myself until that moment had disappeared. From the time I was eight years of age, I had not shed a single tear. But now, as I was sitting, tears were flowing to the point where my shirt was wet. I have always been peaceful and happy— that has never been an issue. But here I was, drenched with a completely new kind of blissfulness. It was about seven- thirty in the evening. About four and a half hours had passed like this.

When I went back home, this sort of experience became recurring. It became more and more frequent. For a period of time, it was a bit of a war between a phenomenal experience with a flood of memory and my “super impressive” intellect. The intellect struggled; it would not give in. The only thing that my mind could tell me was that I was losing my balance. But the experience was so beautiful that I did not want to lose that either. It was absolutely fantastic, but at the same time, somewhere I was thinking this could be some kind of madness going on because it was too good to be real.

Questions about death did not even come into the picture because life was happening in such proportions. But this experience made me realize that people don’t die. They may disappear from your perception, but they don’t die. They live on. I was flooded with lifetimes of memories and experiences that made me realize that the past few lifetimes for me were about the same work, in the same place, and to some extent with the same people! It is this understanding of life (and death) that has shaped my life since then. In a way, death is a fiction created by ignorant people. 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.