Sadhguru dwells extensively upon his inner experience as he expounds on the more profound aspects of death that are rarely spoken about. From a practical standpoint, he elaborates on what preparations one can make for one's death, how best we can assist someone who is dying and how we can continue to support their journey even after death.
After having read the book page by page, I, hereby, list down 28 deft lessons from this awesome book.
These are the examples that stuck with me.
I know that I need to keep practicing this learning day in and day out.
These learning are worded and appended in a way that makes it easier for most of us to understand and absorb.
If you are interested in reading about such learning from other all-time best-selling books, you may click here.
For now, if you wish to know about Death, and what I learned from it, here you go...
1/ Death is a creation of the unaware. Because if you are aware, it is life, life, and life alone - moving from one form of existence to the other.
2/ Death is not a tragedy. People spending their entire lives without experiencing life is a tragedy. If you are afraid of death, you will fail to live, and still wont escape death anyways.
3/ Life is a joy if you are able to control your mind and health. Death is compassion because it relieves you. Life needs a certain amount of tension to continue. Death is the highest relaxation. If death doesn't come to you at the right time, you will have a miserable life. You will long for death.
4/ Inhalation is life. Exhalation is like Death. Exhalation is most relaxing. Inhalation creates an optimal tension.
5/ Don't try to avoid anything in life. Let life happen to you. Did we come here to "experience" life, or "avoid" life. The moment we try to avoid life, death starts to come closer - because that is what we are asking.
6/ There are a total of 114 chakras, 112 inside the body and 2 outside the body. Those 112 inside are categorized into 7 groups. The level of activation of chakras greatly determines the quality of life. Same way, the quality of death is characterized not just by how pranas have exited the body, but through which chakras they have exited.
7/ One of the ways to regularly cleanse yourself is to take bath in flowing water like a river. If not river, a bath every day even in your own house does a lot of good to you - makes you feel better by removing negativity.
8/ There are more rich people that commit suicide than poor. A poor person lives in hope of a better life. For the rich, there is hopelessness. And hopelessness arises because we have not learnt how to handle life and its various aspects. If life is not making enough sense to you, then it is obvious that you do not have enough sense.
9/ Nothing gives you the right to take your life, because you are not capable of creating a new life.
10/ Grief and joy are both infectious. You have to make up your mind as to what you want to infect the world with.
11/ Time for you is measured by the number of breaths and not by the clock or the number of calendar years. If we slow down our metabolism and breathe fewer times, we will live longer as per the calendar years.
12/ Its a misconception that miserable people want to die. In fact they want to cling on to life more than others. Happy people are loosely attached to life. The more miserable they are, the more they cling to everything in life.
13/ When we have to go on a long journey, we always prepare ourselves well. The journey after death is a pretty long one, especially if we compare it with our life span. Therefore preparing to die well is vital. So, ideally, we should know how to live blissfully and then leave the body in the best possible manner - without fear.
14/ Why are people afraid of dead bodies - whom they don't even know? Living bodies can be dangerous but dead bodies are absolutely safe. The fear of death is because we are ignoring the reality called as death.
15/ We get so attached to the body and talk about it as of we came with it. We did not. We gathered it starting from mothers womb and naturally, we will lose it as well. This may be my body but this is not me. I am more than the body. There are many other dimensions that our soul needs to experience other than this body.
16/ Living in this body is like a bank loan. You can take a 10 year loan, but you have to pay it back for sure. With smartness and knowledge, you can extend it to 15 or 20 years, but you have to return it in any case.
17/ Getting anxious about death will bring you closer to death anyways.
18/ Fear only means that your imagination is out of your control. In reality, there is nothing called as fear. Its just imagination, cooked up.
19/ Constantly reminding yourself that you are mortal, and you may die today can take away your fear of death. If you religiously practice this consciously, and when the time to actually die comes close, it will not be a very big deal for you.
20/ After a certain age, when one is done with responsibilities in life, one should move out of the house and get close to nature (Vanaprastha in ancient India). That is a wonderful way to live the remainder of the life and accept death, rather than continuing to live with the loved ones in hospital beds.
21/ Living your life is like a flowing river - moving with a particular goal in a direction. We decide where we want to go, what we want to do. Even if we are hungry and the food is in front of us, we may decide not to eat it at our discretion. Once you leave the body, you are like an evaporated form of water or clouds - you will flow where the wind takes you. There is no purpose, no mission, no goal. Angels, as they say, are looked up in the skies. When we die, we lose our discretion powers.
22/ In the absence of discretionary powers, the last state while dying is vital. This last state can multiply manifolds after our death since we will not have discretionary powers. While alive, we can get angry and then control it. Post-death, we have no control. Thus dying well, dying in peace and happiness and satisfaction is vital, since this decides the quality of path ahead.
23/ Any experience of grief shows our own incompleteness. Otherwise, the world is perfectly complete.
24/ Letting people die gracefully is needed. We cannot latch on to people. Dying completes their cycle. Imagine the poor state of the world if we don't let people die.
25/ Life is complicated only if you are hell bent on moving the world in a particular direction. For everyone else who accept things as is, what's complicated in life?
26/ Nature is not thinking in terms of punishment or reward for your next birth. Whatever is unfulfilled within you at the time of your death, you get the kind of body that is suited to best fulfil those tendencies. Ex- if a money hoarder dies with unfulfilled desires about hoarding enough money, he may end up becoming an ant or a bee - just so that his hoarding tendencies are fulfilled.
27/ Don't waste your time and effort digging into the past lives. Make good use of the life that you have in hand right now. If you can do just that, it is more than enough.
28/ It is only the master-disciple relationship that can transcend lifetimes because this relationship is based on energy and not on needs. All other relationships come together in a lifetime for the convenience of need fulfillment like social, emotional, physical, financial, psychological needs etc.
Hope these 28 deft lessons will help shape up your thought process to some extent and help you manage your life, and death, better.
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Very well summarized.Thank you.
ReplyDeleteNot many people want to read about it, and definitely not many like it. Thank you for reading it through:)
DeleteThanks Manoj for sharing the gist. Each and every point has his own depths... 🙏
ReplyDeleteCheers Rahul
DeleteGreat Lessons sir
ReplyDeleteThank you !
DeleteVery helpful thanks!
ReplyDelete