15. Death Is A Celebration

There is a nice story in Mahabharata, the great Hindu epic:

There was once a king by the name of Yayati. He lived extremely well for hundred years, enjoying his kingdom and all the physical and mental comforts of life. At the end of hundred years, Yama, the lord of death, came to take him away as it was time for him to leave the earth. The king was shocked to see Yama and started crying, 'Why have you come so fast and that too suddenly without any notice? I have not lived my life fully yet. Please give me some more time to live.'

Yama replied that there is no extension possible to one's life. But Yayati pleaded with him and begged for more time. Yama finally agreed that if any one of his sons was ready to give up his life for Yayati, then the king could live for that much more time.

Yayati called one of his sons. The son agreed, 'I will give up my life, let my father live.' He gave up his life. Yama extended Yayati's life by a hundred years.

Yayati continued to enjoy all the material comforts in the same way as before and lived another hundred years. At the end of this period Yama returned to take him. This time too Yayati was shocked to see Yama again so soon. He felt he had hardly lived his life and begged Yama saying that he was not prepared to die and wanted some more time.

Yama gave him another chance. Another of Yayati's sons gave up his life for his father, and Yayati got a lease of another hundred years of life.

Yayati enjoyed another hundred years and again Yama came back to take him. Again as before, Yayati asked for more time but this time Yama refused to play the same game again.

Instead of agreeing to the king's plea, this time Yama asked Yayati compassionately, 'O king! Do you think you can put a fire out by pouring oil into it? Do you think that you can fulfill your desires by living them out more and more?' In just a few beautiful words Yama explained the whole purpose life to Yayati. Yayati finally realized the

Truth, followed Yama and rested at the feet of the Divine.

You cannot feel fulfilled by offering sense pleasures to the senses. You cannot feel that you are ready for death if you never lived intensely. Trying to satisfy the senses, pouring pleasures into your senses, or living as you want does not mean living intensely. When you really live intensely, automatically you will be liberated.

The very word 'death' creates agony and fear. Even talking about it is considered inauspicious as we may invite it by even mentioning it!

Death is seen as an enemy. That is why in all the religions, in all the cultures, death is painted as black. In Hinduism, Yama is black. In Christianity* , Satan* is black. In Buddhism, Mara* is black. In all religions, death is painted as black. We paint death as a villain, never as a hero. The idea of death is always approached with negativity. We feel death takes away everything from us. Whatever we want, whatever we enjoy, whatever we have, everything is just taken by force from us. So most of us live either in denial of death or in fear of it. We think, 'Why should we think about it now? We will handle it when it arrives.' Or we consciously avoid even thinking about it.

Somehow we always want to escape from death. From time immemorial, all the traditions, all the civilizations are trying in all possible ways to conquer death. Scientists are trying through medicines, which gave birth to allopathy* . Siddhas* and ayurvaidyans* , the Eastern mystics, are trying through herbs, which gave birth to the whole siddha* tradition and kayakalpa* . The yogis are trying through mantras* , which gave birth to Mrutyunjaya mantra* and

Christianity - Religion based on teachings of Jesus Christ.

Satan - Representation of evil in the Christian tradition.

Mara - The demon of evil in Buddhist tradition.

Allopathy - Generally refers to western medicine.

Siddha - Practitioner of spiritual techniques.

Ayurvaidyans - Practitioners of the traditional Hindu medicinal system of ayurveda.

Siddha - Traditional Hindu system of medicine.

Kayakalpa - Body rejuvenation and anti ageing technique of ayurveda, traditional Hindu system of medicine.

Mantra - Literally means 'that which shows the way'. Sacred syllables having a positive vibrational effect.

Mrutyunjaya mantra - Chant for victory over death.

pranayama* techniques. The Buddhist Lamas* are trying it through meditation, which gave birth to techniques like Mahamantra* meditation. Almost all the traditions, all the cultures are trying to conquer death, to go beyond death.

Why is the whole of humanity struggling against one thing, the only thing that is a certainty in all our lives?

Can we make the whole earth flat? No, it is a proven fact that the earth is round. But if we struggle against this fact, then there is something wrong in our struggle, in our understanding. It is the same with death too. Why are we struggling to accept the truth? Because of the struggle, most people die unable to accept death when it comes - just as they have lived, unable to accept life as it is.

Why are we afraid of death?

We are afraid because instinctively we resist change and death is an abrupt change in life. The master Chuang Tzu says beautifully, 'Man's thirst for survival in the future makes him incapable of living in the present.'

We are afraid because we do not know who we are. We hold an We are afraid because instinctively we resist change and death is an abrupt change in life.

identity of ourselves inside us, based on our family, relationships, job, wealth, social image etc. Death removes this very foundation on which our identity is built, so we feel death snatches everything that is ours.

Our understanding about death, or rather our misunderstanding about death, makes death a fearful, frightening experience. The man who resists death dies even while he lives. He dies every moment because he is tortured by the very idea of death. When I say 'death', I don't mean only physical death. Losing anything is a form of death. Losing your comfortable life is one form of death, losing your relatives is another. Please understand that loss in any form is nothing but death.

There are two issues: the incident of death that happens at the end of our lives, and psychological death. Real death happens

Lamas - Buddhist monks.

Pranayama - Breath control, one of the eight limbs of the Ashtanga yoga of Patanjali.

Mahamantra - Humming meditation that energizes the anahata chakra and taught as part of THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM's Life Bliss Programs.

only once, but psychological death, the fear of death, permeates our life. The idea and fear of death decides our entire life structure.

You may ask why people are so depressed and disturbed when they lose their close relatives. Even if you are not emotionally attached to them and in a sense are waiting for them to die you will be deeply affected by their death! It is more so when you are close to them, attached to them emotionally. Whenever your mother dies your whole left side will suffer. Whenever your father dies, your whole right side will suffer. Whenever your brothers die your hands will suffer. There is a deep connection between you and your relatives.

Every part of your body is connected to someone or the other. Your being is not an individual being. It is not alone, separate, as you think. We are all interlinked. That is why we undergo terrible suffering when we lose someone or something. Every missing that you experience, no matter of whom or what is what I call death.

All that we understand of death is that it is anti-life. Again because of our fear we think too much about death. We project our fear and see it as a giant figure. If real death is six feet tall, because of our fear we see it as sixty feet tall! Fear of death is just the fear of continuity or discontinuity. We are afraid about the 'what next'.

Once, in USA, a young lady asked the great Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda , 'What is life?' Swami Vivekananda* said, 'Come with me to Bharat. I will teach you.' She asked, 'What will you teach me?'*

He said, 'I will teach you how to die.'

The question is about life but the answer is about death! It seems strange! What Swami Vivekananda* is saying is that if you know the secret of death, the quality of your life will be different. Your very understanding and attitude towards everything will change.

We can actually use our lives to prepare for death. We do not have to wait for the pain of seeing someone's death or the shock of being faced with a critical illness to force us to look into the meaning of life.

Swami Vivekananda - Primary disciple of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and founder of the Ramakrishna Order. 19th century Eastern mystic considered a key figure in spreading awareness of Hinduism and yoga in Europe and America.

Death is not a mere incident at the end of your life. It is a profound knowing. If you know how to die, you know how to live. Living and leaving are two sides of the same thing. Your life will be totally different once you understand death.

Almost all the traditions have tried to conquer death, to outlive death. But one group of really intelligent, intuitive people understood after much struggle that we were approaching death in a completely wrong direction. They decided to take a 180-degree turn. They started working with death in a different way.

They used meditation as a technique to take them where others had not dared to go before. Those few intelligent ones were the rishisof the Upanishad* age. The report they submitted on their research into the phenomenon of death is called the Kathopanishad* .

These rishis researched deeply on death and finally came to the conclusion that death cannot be understood or overcome by resistance. By resisting death you cannot go beyond death. The only way to break free from the vicious cycle The only way to break free from the vicious cycle of birth and death is by becoming enlightened.

of birth and death is by becoming enlightened, by entering into death, dropping the fear.

As long as you are afraid, you will never look death in the eye. Unless and until you do that, you will never know how much you are blessed with abundance. Only when you know that you will lose something will you realize the value of that thing.

Just meditate: suppose you are going to die in two days, what all would you want to do? How much is there to finish? It is only when you take stock of your life that you understand how much of goodness is showered on you. You have taken everything for granted because you believe that you are going to live forever. Only when you understand death you will understand the preciousness of life.

Upanishad - Scriptures that form the essence of the ancient texts of the Vedas. Literally means 'sitting with the master'. There are eleven main Upanishads that have been commented on by enlightened master Adi Shankara.

Kathopanishad - One of the major Upanishads or scriptures that features the interaction between Yama, Hindu god of death and a young boy Nachiketa.

Once when you face death without fear, you will understand that death is not the end of life but it is the climax. When this understanding dawns on you then you will stop praying for everlasting life.

Please understand that death has power over you because of your belief, your faith in it, that's all. It is just a matter of belief. When you believe that death is terrifying, it becomes terrifying. It is like a mirror that faithfully reflects whatever you project on it.

When a donkey sees itself in the mirror what will it see? It will see a donkey only, nothing else. In the same way if you are totally afraid of death then you will see only the fear reflected back to you. Then death will be truly death for you. If you take a little time and look into your fear of death you will see that it has the power to transform your life in the most positive way. You will realize that it is not contradictory to life but complementary to life.

The ultimate let-go

We are not able to face death because we are not able to face the ever-changing nature of life. We try to hold onto things, to people, to feelings, to situations and that is where the problem starts. We are terrified of letting go, we are wary of life. The irony of the situation is this. Not only is holding on to life impossible, but the very source of the pain we seek to avoid is holding on to life!

A small story:

Once a master was trying to teach his youngest disciple, a little boy. The little boy used to always hold onto things he liked and get very upset or depressed if he lost his favorite object or it was taken away from him.

One day, the master gave the boy a beautiful silver coin. The boy was thrilled and took the coin. Now the master told the boy, 'Son, hold it tightly in your fist and stretch your hand out.' The boy did as told. Now master said, 'Relax and open your fist.'

The boy was puzzled but did as the master said. He opened his fist and the coin fell down. The master said, 'Now take the coin and keep it in your hand.'

The boy did so. The master continued, 'Now make a fist and again stretch your hand out. But this time, keep your fist facing up towards the sky.' The boy obeyed. The master then said, 'Now let go and open your fist.' The boy opened the fist and there was the coin gleaming under the sun in his hands.

The master said to the boy, 'Son, if you can just let go and relax trusting this Existence, the Divine who is taking care

of you every moment, you can simply enjoy life.'

Look at everything happening in life with the understanding that change is the nature of life, the very reason why life is so colorful and interesting. Then you can see the mysteries of life unfold beautifully, including the ultimate mystery of death.

Death is a deep relaxation. It is the ultimate 'letting go'. It is the dropping of the old and starting with the new. When your being recognizes that it cannot achieve what it wants to through this body it decides to move on. This 'moving on', this 'passing over' is what is called death.

When your brand new house becomes old after the passage of years, you either try to repair it or if that is too inconvenient and frustrating, you decide to sell the house and move into a new one. When you do this, do you feel that you are missing something? No!

In the same way when you feel that you have not lived your life totally in the way you wanted to, you leave this body to take a new one. You want to restart. Your choice to start all over again is what is called death.

A fresh start

When you die, all that happens is that you rejuvenate your body and your mind. You take a fresh set of memories, a new place, a different set of Your choice to start all over again is what is called death.

relatives, a new life. In other words you take up a new birth hoping to fulfill all your incomplete desires. Whatever you left unaccomplished you come down to finish. This choice given to you by god to start all over again is death.

But without understanding this simple truth you waste your whole life by doing everything possible to resist death. Once you add meditation to your life, you start understanding your fears. Facing the fear demystifies death. It is as if all the fog, all the snow, all the ice has been removed and you are able to see the sparkling water of understanding flowing so clearly, so beautifully. You start looking death in the eye, face to face.

When you face death you see that it is nothing but life. Because every moment you die, the next moment you are born. Death and birth are just cycles. If you die you will be born and if you are born you will die. When this understanding happens you lose all fears. You start living your life. You start enjoying every breath that you take on planet earth.

When you are forty you are not what you were when you were ten or when you were twenty or when you were thirty. But you do not feel you died, though you are

Death is the beginning of a new chapter of life.

completely different. You are different

physically, mentally, emotionally, and materially, yet you feel you are continuing the same life. Death is just like that, it is one more continuum.

Nothing dies and nothing discontinues. Everything continues in a manner that nature dictates. When you get the knowledge that you are never going to die, bliss blooms and you are in ecstasy. Your life is transformed from fear to fearlessness, from death to deathlessness.

The Bhagavad Gita, the profound truths delivered by Krishna to Arjuna* , says that death is just like changing of one's clothes. Just like how we change our shirt, we change our body. This changing of the body leads us to inner transformation. Death is the beginning of a new chapter of life.

There is a beautiful story in the great Hindu epic, Mahabharata:

The prince Yudhishtra was asked by a yaksha* , 'What is the most mysterious thing on planet earth?'*

Yudhishtra replied, 'Every day so many lives are going to the abode of Yama, the lord of death, yet the people who stay here think they are going to live forever.'*

We always think that it is someone else who will die, not us. Death is truly the mystery of all mysteries.

There are only two things that are certain about death. One is that we will die at some point in time. The other is that it is uncertain when or how we will die.

Everything that is born has to die. That is the nature of life.

A beautiful story from the life of enlightened master Buddha:

Once a woman came with her dead son to Buddha. She was mad with grief at the death of her only son. She cried to

Arjuna - Warrior prince and the third of the five brothers of the Pandava family in the great Hindu epic Mahabharata. He was a disciple of enlightened master Krishna and received the wisdom in the Bhagavad Gita from Krishna.

Yudhishtra - The eldest of the five princes of the Pandava family in the Hindu epic Mahabharata.

Yaksha - Demigod who according to Hindu mythology guards wealth.

Buddha, 'Master, please give me some medicine that will get my boy back to life.'

Buddha replied, 'Get me a handful of mustard seed.' The woman got up immediately and rushed to get a handful of mustard seed. Then Buddha added, 'The mustard seed must be from a house where no one has lost a dear one – child, husband, parent, friend.'

The woman went from house to house. Out of pity for the desperately crying woman, people gave her mustard seed from their house. But when she asked whether they had lost a dear one, they had someone or the other who had died in the house.

She went from house to house till sunset but found no house where a death had not happened. Slowly the truth started dawning on her – death is inevitable. She buried her son's body and returned to Buddha. She fell at the feet of Buddha and asked him, 'Master, please teach me the truth. What is death? What exists beyond death?'

She became Buddha's disciple and followed Buddha for the rest of her life.

There is a beautiful saying, 'Tomorrow or the next life, which comes first, we never know.'

Buddha says, 'This existence is as fleeting as the autumn

Tomorrow or the next life, which comes first, we never know.

clouds. To watch the birth and death of beings is like watching the movements of a dance.'

Religions that talk of only one life create a hurry, an anxiety, to take the maximum juice out of this life because you feel you cannot miss anything. The idea of only one birth gave rise to science, looking for maximum enjoyment.

All Eastern religions talk about many births. You come down again and again. You play the same drama of life. It is just the same setup, same relationships but at different times. You feel bored and fed up and wonder, 'How many times do I have to play the same drama?' You wish to get liberated and no more do you want to come back. You work towards moksha* , liberation. Your understanding about death changes your outlook of life.

The topic of rebirth is not popular because it cannot be proven by science. Of course, now Near Death Experience (NDE) has become a hot subject as many doctors and psychologists have recorded their experiences. There are many people who have recorded thousands of NDEs, almost

Moksha - Liberation through Self Realization.

This incident is from the days of my spiritual journey before enlightenment.

I was near a small village in North Bharat, a place near Varanasi, the spiritual headquarters of Hindus. Hindus traditionally visit Varanasi at least once in their lifetime. The city has a floating population of at least two hundred thousand people every day.

I was there with an old monk who had been hospitalized and was in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). According to the vedic tradition, young monks take care of the elderly monks and sannyasis. As a young monk staying in that village, I started taking care of the elderly monk.

One day, while I was attending to him, suddenly it became obvious that the man in the bed next to his was about to die. He started struggling for life. I was able to see very clearly what was happening inside him. By that time I had had my deep spiritual experience or satori but I had not become fully enlightened, the realization of the purpose of my life had not happened. I was still seeking and my body was getting prepared for the explosion of energy that was to happen after enlightenment.

Several doctors were trying to give the monk critical medical care and support. The man was gasping for breath. I could see very clearly how death was happening in him. I could see very clearly how the life source was moving away from the body.

That is the strongest experience that has happened in my life outside my body. Inside my body, the strongest experience that happened was realizing the mission!

I was able to see what was happening, but I was not able to bear it. An important thing you should know is, if you see somebody in physical pain, it will affect you only about thirty to forty percent. But if you see somebody in depression and you can relate to the person and feel the depression, it will affect you more, say around sixty percent. Further, if it is emotional pain and if you are able to connect and understand the pain, it will affect you much more, about eighty percent. The more subtle the pain, the more you will be affected.

I saw not only the physical, mental or emotional pains of the dying man, but I also saw the being level pain. It was almost like I was going through the pain myself. I wanted to just run away from there but the elderly monk got afraid and just held my hand begging me to stay. I had been taking care of him for two to three months, so he had got really attached to me.

Since a young age, I have loved serving monks. I used to take food and clothes from my house and give it away to the monks! Serving monks has always been my passion. I have always felt that this whole vedic tradition is alive even today only because of such monks. They have kept this science alive.

For doing research in any science, you need great support in many areas. For example, in the West, a lot of research happens in the outer world science because there are people and organizations to support it. If it is research on medicines, a pharmaceutical company may support the research. If it is some research related to space and astronomy, the government may sponsor and support it.

In the same way, in Bharat, the whole country supports and sponsors spiritual science research. The whole country has taken up the responsibility to support an inner world scientist by providing him food, shelter and clothes so that he can continue his research in the inner world without spending time for basic outer world requirements. So I have always felt that it is my responsibility to take care of the monks and inner world scientists.

The elderly monk who I was taking care of in the ICU did not want me to leave because he was afraid seeing the man next to him dying. The man was going through such a hard time. It was like the whole six feet of his body was being torn apart! Imagine the pain if you have a small cut in your finger. Now imagine how painful it would be if the skin on your whole body is literally being peeled. It is something like a thousand scorpions stinging at the same time! I could clearly see the pain the man was going through.

On one side, the individual soul associated with all the unfulfilled emotions like desire, greed and guilt was undergoing terrible suffering. The individual soul wanted to stay in the body and fulfill these, but the body was tired and wanted to relax! It was a fight between the body and individual soul. It was as if the body wanted to leave but the individual soul was trying to hold onto it. If the right hand was gone, the soul was trying to hold onto the left. If the right leg was dead and gone, the individual soul was trying to hold onto the left leg. Whichever part of the body it could hold on to, the individual soul was trying to hold onto it.

Part by part the body was dying. I saw that with the lower body there was not much struggle. But when it came to the upper body, the whole body was vibrating and pulsating with pain.

Slowly the individual soul started moving out of the physical body. Understand, when the breathing stops, that is the moment when the individual soul actually leaves the physical body. There are seven layers or bodies in you. The body of flesh, bones and blood that you see is the physical body. The energy moving in you as prana or life energy is the pranic body. There are five kinds of prana or air movements that happen in the body: air that enters into the body, air that circulates inside the body, air that spreads all over the body as life force, air that comes out of the body, and air that cleanses. These form the second body or the pranicbody.

The third body is the body where inner chatter continuously happens. Inner chatter is nothing but the continuous stream of words or thoughts that move within you.

The fourth body is made up of emotions like fear, anger and greed which spread as feelings all over the body without even words coming into play. An emotion by itself can simply shake you. This is the emotional layer.

The fifth layer is the body that you experience in deep sleep. This is where all the engraved memories or engrams are stored in the seed or causal level. The engrams are not active but they are not dead either. It is like a deep coma where you are neither living what you want nor are you dead. You are just stuck in this layer.

From the causal body, the individual soul moves to the cosmic body. The sixth layer is the cosmic body where you experience bliss. This is what continuously inspires you to be a seeker. If you are a seeker, understand that this layer is strong in you. If you enrich this layer, your life will be blissful. If you have any engram remaining in this layer, you will assume another body and come back.

If you continuously enjoy pleasurable experiences, then you are said to be in heaven. If you are stuck in pain, then you are said to be in hell. Depending on how much pain you experienced in life, you will stay that long in the pain body or hell at the time of death. Depending on how much pleasure you experienced in life, you will stay that long in the cosmic body or heaven. Hell and heaven are purely psychological. This is the truth. Based on what engrams you have, you experience heaven and hell. That is why different cultures visualize heaven in their own way because heaven is not a place, it is an experience.

The seventh layer is the nirvanic layer which corresponds to enlightenment.

At the time of death, there is a powerful fight between the owner or the individual soul and the object or the body. The object says, 'I am tired, I can't function any more.' The owner says, 'No, I want to use you.'

When the object wins, the physical body dies and the individual soul moves to the next layer, the pranic body. This is the layer you are in when you normally dream. While dreaming, your logic loses its power over you but your desires remain active. The very definition of dream is, the state where logic has no power but desires and engrams remain active. Even when you are unconscious or in coma, your logic will not be active.

As long as you are in the physical body, you will have desires with the logic to analyze whether the desires are needed or not and which one of the desires should be fulfilled etc. Desires are under your control, there is a balancing mechanism. But when the desires exist without the supporting logic, the individual soul will be kicked around like a football by the desires. On one side there will be guilt and on the other side, desires that play on the individual soul.

When I saw the man dying, I could see that the individual soul was slowly moving out, layer by layer. I could see the soul suffering intensely when it went through the unfulfilled desires. The soul was literally being eaten by guilt when it realized, 'I did not fulfill the purpose and mission of my life.' Understand, you will remember the purpose of your birth only during death.

When you are born, your body travels through the birth canal of the mother, and because of the intense pain that you go through, you go into coma or the deepest unconscious state, and you forget the whole purpose of taking birth. It is like this: you booked the flight ticket and sat inside the aircraft also, but during the flight you were put in coma and so when you landed, you forgot all about why you came to that particular place! Only when you leave the place and board the flight again, you suddenly remember why you had come to that place!

In the same way, when you die, you feel the strong guilt of not fulfilling the purpose of your birth or what we call the prārabdha.

After passing through this guilt, next, all the pain experiences of your life will come up. So at the time of death, you first pass through physical pain, then through all desires, next through all guilt, then through all emotional pain and finally through all the pleasures that you experienced in this birth.

Normally, as soon as you reach the cosmic body or the sixth layer itself, you return to assume the next body, the next birth. The individual soul returns to assume the next body. Sometimes, rarely, you go beyond the sixth layer into the nirvanic body. Then you don't come back to assume another body.

When you travel through these various bodies and experience your unfulfilled desires, deep guilt and intense pain, you decide strongly, 'Let me take another body, another birth. When I do, I will not forget the purpose of my life and get caught in these illusive games. I will straightaway follow the path of Truth.' But when you actually take birth the next time, again because of the intense pain during birth, you drop into coma and forget all about your decision!

Finally, the man died. But the experience left a strong scar in me. It left a very strong impression in my mind. The fortunate thing was that the elderly monk became alright and he was discharged from the hospital. I continued my journey, and after a few months, I had my own death experience and I became enlightened, thus realizing the mission and purpose of my life. My life as a liberated being started at the age of twelve itself when I had my deep spiritual experience. But the clarity about the mission, and what was exactly going to happen through my body, dawned when I became enlightened.

After my enlightenment, I came back to South Bharat. I was in Bangalore in a devotee's house, healing people who sought me out. At that time, a devotee was admitted in the ICU and I was requested to heal him.

There again, while healing, the person in the bed next to the devotee started dying! The moment I saw that the person was about to die, the first thing I felt like doing was to move away from the suffering that was about to come! But the devotee was afraid and not ready to leave me!

Suddenly I saw that this person who was dying, was not going through any suffering like the earlier person. I was shocked, and I became very curious. Earlier, the movement of the individual soul from layer to layer was great suffering and torture for it. But this soul was moving so smoothly from layer to layer just like how a knife moves through butter, or how a snowball rolls down!

In the first layer or physical body, there was a little pain. Then suddenly the pain disappeared and the individual soul moved to the pranic layer. It moved from layer to layer like a royal guest! It was so empowered, that the desires, guilt and pain were not able to attack it at all. Even in the causal layer, it did not fall asleep. It was so energetic, and it finally entered the nirvaniclayer, relaxed and just disappeared!

I thought that this person must be an evolved being. I asked his relatives whether he was a spiritual person or a meditator. The family was surprised and replied that the man had never meditated or done any spiritual practice in all his life! He had lived a completely materialistic life.

I contemplated as to why the first death I had witnessed was terrible while the second one was so wonderful. What I am about to tell you now is the honest and straight truth, and I am saying it because I have the great responsibility of telling it to you. When I meditated to know the difference between the two deaths, the revelation happened: at the time of the second death I was an enlightened person. The second person had died in the presence of an enlightened being! In the case of the first death, my presence could not help, because I could not radiate the energy of enlightenment at that time. So the first person died an ordinary death, while the second person died a wonderful death in the presence of an enlightened being who had realized the Truth.

When this revelation happened, I saw a deep compassion coming out of my being. I felt that if at all I can give this as a gift to every individual, my mission will be accomplished. A peaceful death is such a powerful and wonderful gift which nobody but an enlightened being can give. I started meditating as to how I can give this gift to everyone. Obviously I can't be in the ICU of all the hospitals and wait for people to die! I contemplated on the science behind the whole thing, and understood what really happens at the time of death.

Let me explain:

As long as you hold onto your ordinary logic and remain in the physical layer, the master is just a simple faith for you. The material world appears more solid and real. But when you travel to the deeper layers, the master becomes reality while the material world becomes vague and blurred.

It is like how during your night dream, the dream world looks real and the waking world looks vague, whereas when you are awake, that is when you are with a higher consciousness, the dream world becomes imagination while the waking world becomes reality. In the dream state, the dream world that you see appears alive, like a 4D colour film! When you come out of the dream, the whole dream appears black and white.

In the same way, if you are raised to a still higher consciousness, this waking world will become dull, while things like spiritual truths and the master will become alive and real! When you disconnect from the body and rise into higher consciousness, the master and the superconscious energy will become a gross reality.

When the second death happened, the intense enlightened presence straightaway caused him to connect strongly to it.

Understand, as you sit now and here, what is stopping you from connecting with the enlightened energy of the master and merging with it? Only your own logic and reasons.

As you sit here, there are still doubts in your unconscious like, 'If I drop my possessions and surrender, the master may take it away!' The other problem is, presently, as of now all other things in this world also appear as reality, and you think the master is also real to that same depth. You experience me as the same frequency as the rest of the material world. In the case of the second dying person, all his outer world things became inaccessible to him at the time of death. He could not sign his checkbook or drive his car! Whatever was holding him back in the material world was automatically being taken away from him. When he looked around, only I, the enlightened energy was there! He saw the strong light energy and just held on to me! The surrender automatically happened to him because I was there at that moment. Even in his case, if he had seen me while he was alive, he may have struggled to surrender and connect to me! Only when everything was taken away from him, there was nothing to hold him back from connecting to me.

There is a beautiful story in the Bhagavatam :

There was once a rich devotee. He asked Krishna, 'I want more wealth and possessions.' Krishna granted him his wish. There was also a poor lady, who had a cow and a small house. Krishna once visited her house, ate the food she served, blessed her and left. That very same day, her cow died.

Somebody asked Krishna about the strange happening of how a rich person got more

wealth while the poor lady was deprived of her only source of income!

Krishna beautifully explains, 'The king was already in heavy illusion of the material world. So I gave him what he wanted so that he will ultimately get tired of material things and turn towards enlightenment. In the case of the poor lady, there was only one thing that she really wanted, and that was to connect to Me. And the only thing that was stopping her from that was the cow. I took away the cow so that she could completely merge into Me!'

In the same way, in the case of the second death, the 'cow' was taken away. In the physical layer, the man was not able to connect. But in the pranic layer, the consciousness entered a different space, and the man was able to clearly see me there. The master's presence is such an intense light. It is much stronger and of a higher frequency than this world, just like how this world is of a higher frequency than your dream world.

The man realized that there is something of a higher frequency and he completely surrendered to it. When he surrendered, all his other engraved memories lost their power over him. The individual consciousness became empowered. Desires, guilt, pain, pleasure, everything bowed down. Straightaway, the individual soul's frequency increased.

Understand, when the seer is strong, the seen has no power over you. This is the science of death.

In the case of the first death, the seen was stronger than the seer. In the second death, the seer was stronger than the seen.

I intensely meditated how to transmit this science to people. Suddenly, a revelation happened to me.

Understand, energy is not constrained by space and time. It is just like the satellite waves that are present in space. If you have a set-top box converter, you can see the channel that you tune into. An enlightened master's energy pervades the whole cosmos. I just need to place the settop box in people. It is like a pacemaker, just that this is a peacemaker! Once it is placed, the person can connect to it while leaving the body.

A master is a person who creates a formula to reproduce his inner world spiritual experiences in the inner world of others. Such a formula is the Life Bliss Program Level 2 also called the THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM Spurana Program. It is a program that inserts the peacemaker in individuals.

Along with placing the peacemaker it is my promise that, wherever you may be, in whatever situation you may be at the time of death, I will be there and see that you beautifully relax into the nirvanic body. Please understand, I am responsible for what I am talking here right now. Even if I leave the body, I am responsible, because it is a promise; it is my commitment to whoever hears these words directly from me.

When I started sharing this technology, I realized that the people I shared it with, not only experienced peace at the end of their lifetime, but their life itself became intense, joyful and ecstatic once I shared it with them.

Understand, both life and death become blissful when deeply engraved memories are removed from your being. Your health becomes better, you start attracting wealth and better relationships because the frequency of being itself is different.

You will be relaxed in the nirvanic body when this peacemaker is placed inside you. You then have the freedom: to take one more birth as a conscious being or get enlightened and never again assume a body.

There is a beautiful story in the Upanishads, the sacred vedic texts:

A rishi called Jadabharatha somehow became attached to a deer he had rescued. He was living the life of a

renunciate but he got attached to this deer.

From morning till night, he used to spend his time taking care of that deer. When he was dying, he was not able to forget the animal. He started worrying about the deer, 'Oh! Who will take care of the deer? What will happen to it after my death?'

When he died, in the next birth, he was born as a deer.

Beautifully the verse in the Upanishad says that whatever you think in your last moment, you become that!

Some people think very cleverly, 'Let me live my whole life the way I want to live. In the last few moments, I will remember god and chant His name and enter heaven somehow.' Please be very clear, only that which you thought of in your whole life, will come up when you leave the body. Don't think that at that last moment you can play the game! No!

Actually, when you leave the body your whole system will be in such agony, because eighty or ninty years of your life will be run through in a fast-forward mode. All that will be seen are the scenes being fast-forwarded. Whatever experience you had intensely, only that will come up before you. Your spiritual experiences will come up in multicolor.

Please understand that 'thoughtless awareness' is the strongest experience you can have in your life. Even for a single moment, if you had that experience, it is enough. Naturally, when you leave the body that will come up. That will act as a light and you will be able to move into the Consciousness.

One more thing is important to understand about the time of death. If a person did not die naturally but had died prematurely or committed suicide, and if he did not have the conscious experience before his death, he has to wait for the remaining years he might have otherwise lived before he can assume a new birth. The spirit will live on without a body.

For example, if at the time of taking this body one had decided to live in this body for ninty years and then committed suicide at the age of sixty, then for the next thirty years the person has to struggle without a body waiting for the next body to be entered into. If the person commits suicide trying to escape the hell he was undergoing in the body, he will be forced to undergo the same hell without the body. Just imagine how much more suffering this would be. That is why one should never consider suicide as a solution to problems in this life.

Why do people normally contemplate suicide? Because they think this life is a torture, a suffering. But if they commit suicide, they will realize that what they are going to go through will be a much worse torture.

It will be like this: if you have sweets in front of you, but you don't have a tongue to taste or hand to take it and put it into your mouth, how much of suffering it will be! In the same way, the whole world will be in front of you, but you will not have the body to enjoy it when you float around waiting for your next body after having committed suicide.

Let me narrate to you my own conscious death experience in Varanasi.

I always used to think that I should have an experience of death, that I should face death directly. But somehow, that thought never became a priority. For any experience to happen, the related thought has to become the topmost priority. It should not just be in one corner of your mind.

Usually on our 'to do' lists, we have washing, cleaning, paying the rent and phone bill, and finally if time permits, enlightenment also! No! Enlightenment will not happen if it is this way. Only when it becomes a top priority, only

when the urge becomes urgent, everything around you will start aligning itself for the experience to happen in you. This is the case not just with enlightenment. With anything, it is true.

Understand, if at all you are complaining that what you wish to happen is not happening, it is because it has not become the topmost on your priority list, nothing else. Nothing else and no one else should be blamed for it. You will see that the moment it becomes the topmost priority, there will be an energy play that comes into being and it will simply happen. Until then, it will wait for you, that's all. The death experience was not my top priority and so somehow, it was getting postponed.

In my wandering days, I had been to Varanasi, the holy city for Hindus , which has an estimated 200,000 daily floating population. Further, every day around 100 dead bodies are estimated to be burnt in a place called Manikarnika Ghat on the banks of the sacred river Ganga* . It is traditionally believed that if somebody dies or somebody's body is burnt in that area,* they will be liberated. They will have direct enlightenment.

It is not just a traditional belief. The enlightened mystic Ramakrishna Paramahamsa confirms it with his own experience. He says, 'I saw very clearly Shiva himself going near every burning body, taking the soul, unclutching it from the body-mind and liberating it!' So, you can't say that it is a mythological belief. It is a solid experience of an enlightened master.*

I had the fortune of going to Manikarnika Ghat. Traditionally, it is not only believed, but it is true that for the last 2000 years, the fire that is used to light the pyres has never been put off.

Whether it rains or shines or floods, people never bring fire when they come with the dead body to Manikarnika Ghat. The fire will already be burning there and they will just take it to light the dead body, that's all. The fire just continuously burns the bodies as they arrive. Sometimes I would see that two to three bodies are burnt at the same time, so many bodies keep coming!

Especially in the evenings, the bodies will be more in number. From the place where the person dies they will walk carrying the dead body, with chants such as, 'Ram naam satya hai, Ram naam satya hai' (Lord Rama's name is the ultimate and eternal truth). By evening they will reach Manikarnika Ghat.

The scene there, the very experience of just being there, I cannot describe to you verbally. You have to be there to experience it!

To tell you honestly, by just being there, the fear of death just disappeared from my system. You see so many bodies continuously being burned every day. You feel, 'I am also going to go like this one day...all right', that's all! You feel there are so many people giving you company! It is like one more trip that you make, that's all. You don't feel lonely about death at all.

In your life, you may see one or two bodies being burnt, so you still have the fear of death. But at Manikarnika Ghat, there will be no ritual done. They will bring the body and straightaway dip it in the river Ganga three times while chanting, 'Ram naam satya hai, Ram naam satya hai, Ram naam satya hai'. By this time, the fire will be ready,* and the wood will be arranged. They will bring the body straight from the water and burn it, that's all!

One strange thing that you see there is that none of the relatives will stay there and do any further rituals. The moment they dip the body in the Ganga and place the body for burning, they will go away, that's all! The people who maintain the ghat will take care of the rest. You will not know how long it will take for the body that you brought to be burnt completely. There will be a queue and bodies will be burning continuously.*

I thought to myself, 'Let me try to sit here and see what goes on.' I sat at the Ghat. In just an hour's time, I felt that death is no more a strange incident which happens once in a while only for some relative or friend. I was sitting there watching bodies arriving one after another. It was like any other queue, that's all. Different sizes, genders, ages, and communities of people arrived to be consumed by the same burning flame.

When you continuously see dead bodies being burnt you actually lose respect for death! As of now, you have too much of respect, too many ideas about death. That is the problem. Death is actually

Ganga - The most celebrated river in Bharat, considered holy by all Hindus.

nothing but this. The breath that goes inside the body doesn't come out, that's all. Nothing much can be done about it. Neither can you rewind it nor fastforward it.

As I was watching this scene continuously, initially the little fear that I had about death also disappeared and slowly it actually became interesting to watch. I went near the people who maintain the fire and started helping them. As I was helping them, I was thinking to myself, 'After all, one day this body of mine is also going to become like this dead body that is burning now.'

When you remember that death is going to happen to you, the respect that you carry for your ego will come down. Because, whenever you think that something should not leave you, it is just the ego, nothing else. When you know for sure that everything is going to leave you, then the respect for the ego just drops drastically. The respect I had for my ego just dropped from me.

Then I decided, 'After all I am going to die. Either I should have a conscious death experience now itself and live the rest of my life without the death-fear, or really die, that's all.' I decided that I have to see death happening to me one way or the other.

There was a small Shiva temple around the corner and a small tower above the temple. I went and sat in that tower so that nobody would disturb me. I sat in that tower and from there I started seeing the dead bodies being burnt.

I still remember the strong click, the deep understanding and instant realization that triggered the whole experience that was to follow.

An elderly lady's body was being burnt. She had a big belly. Her clothes were being consumed by the fire and then the fat that was in the belly started melting and flowing. Sorry for describing this so vividly but I have to do it to explain the strong experience! I could see clearly that because of the fat flowing, the fire was burning with even more intensity. That gave a very strong click to me and I said, 'God! Yes, the very same thing is going to happen to this body also!'

That click opened up a deep fear of death inside me. The fear spread all over the body. But I faced the fear consciously. I could see very clearly the fear spreading all over the body, and when the fear hit my awareness, that became the experience of death. I went through a conscious experience of my own death and came out of it.

Understand, whenever your fear is suppressed, it stays inside you.

Whenever the fear comes out and you are not consciously facing it, it becomes a fear stroke, and shakes your whole nervous system and breaks it down.

When the fear is faced consciously, it becomes the death experience, that's all!

If you just escape from the death-fear, when the deep fear happens, it becomes death. When you face the deep fear consciously, it becomes death experience.

Death-fear plus unconsciousness is suppression or perversion.

Death-fear plus unconsciousness where you don't suppress but you don't face it either is a fear stroke or a nervous breakdown because you just get frightened and shaken.

Death-fear plus conscious awareness is a death experience.

I was able to see very clearly the fear that arose. When I faced it consciously with awareness, it became my death experience. The body was dead. It was not moving.

For two and a half days I had no food, no water, Death-fear plus conscious awareness is death experience.

no thought, no question, no doubt. The body alone was there. Only after the experience had passed, I realized that I had been like that for two and a half days! I could see with closed eyes that the body was dead and there was no movement. Suddenly, after two and a half days, the click happened again, 'God! The body is dead but I still exist! I am there!' That clarity, when it clicked, became such an intense ecstasy in me! The fear of death had left me once and for all.

I was in such deep ecstasy, such joy, and such bliss! I slowly opened my eyes and I was able to move the body. The first thing I felt was such a surge of ecstasy and gratitude. I went down to the Ganga, sprinkled a little Ganga water on myself, took the Ganga water in the kamandalu , took a little ash from the fire, and went straight to the Kashi Vishwanath temple. I went up to the Shiva linga* , offered the ash I had brought and did the puja* with such*

• Puja Hindu ritual worship. Kamandalu - Small water pot carried by Hindu monks.

Linga - Representation of Shiva as a symbol of rejuvenation combining male and female principles.

inexpressible gratitude. I saw that Vishwanath was simply alive there!

Understand, because I died Vishwanath became alive! Until the day before, because I was still alive, Vishwanath was always an ordinary stone. I used to feel that to touch this stone, thousands of people are coming everyday from so far away… what foolishness! I always felt that the Vishwanath deity was an ordinary stone. I felt that way because I was still alive. When I died, I saw clearly, He became alive!

Only one can be alive, either He or you. When you see the Truth, He will become alive. You will not be alive anymore as you now think. The fear of death left me once and for all. I can say that this is one of the very strong experiences that transformed me to search for the ultimate experience of enlightenment.

Only an enlightened being, a person who has gone through death consciously and come back anew, can exactly explain what happens during death.

I am going to reveal the mystery of death now. This may be surprising, even shocking to many of you. But this is the truth. Whether you believe it or not, accept it or not, this is what happens at the time of death.

We do not just have one body. The physical body is just one of the seven bodies we have. It is the only gross body that can be felt and seen in space-time. However, we actually have seven layers or bodies or planes of existence. Since these layers have a subtle existence they cannot be seen or felt by the ordinary eye.

A simple representation of the seven bodies is shown below.

What exactly happens at the time of leaving the body? This question cannot be answered by a living person as he has not experienced death. It cannot be answered by a dead person since he cannot come back to narrate the experience.

Each of the bodies holds a corresponding emotion. For example, the pranic body holds all the desires that arise in life. The mental body holds all the feelings of guilt experienced in life. The etheric body holds the experiences of mental pain felt in life.

When the spirit leaves the body it crosses all the seven body layers. The physical body dies. But, the remaining six bodies do not totally die. If you are holding a lot of desires in your life, all those unfulfilled desires are held in the pranic body. So even though the physical body dies, the pranic body does not die. When the life force leaves the pranic body, the being experiences tremendous suffering.

When you leave the physical body, your consciousness will be torn from the body and you will immediately fall into coma. According to doctors, coma is the automatic mechanism to make you not to feel the pain. It is automatic anesthesia. If the pain becomes too much, you can't bear and you automatically fall into coma.

When you move from the first body layer to the second body layer, all the unfulfilled desires, all the ways in which you wanted to live but did not live come up. When this happens, it is almost as if ten people are standing in a room kicking a football around. What will happen? Just like how the football is kicked from corner to corner, your consciousness will be kicked from all corners. In each corner, some desire will be standing and kicking it. At the time your consciousness Desire is about the future and guilt is about the past. Actually both are same.

is trying to leave the body, all your desires will be forcing you to re-enter the body so that you can enjoy them further and fulfill them.

On one side, the desires will be forcing you to enter the body again so that you can live and enjoy, while on the other side, the body will say, 'No! I am tired. I can't host you anymore, just leave!' That is what causes the pulling and pushing at the time of death. The pulling and pushing is nothing but the fight between your desires and your body.

Somehow, you manage to move away from the pranic body, and enter next into the mental body. When you enter into the mental body all your guilt rises. All the guilt about the way you felt you should have lived your life but never lived, all the mistakes committed, all the regrets, everything comes up.

Please understand, desire is about the future and guilt is about the past. But actually, both are one and the same. The way in which we want to live is desire, and the way in which we wanted to live but didn't, is guilt. Guilt is nothing but reviewing our past decisions with updated intelligence.

Like this, step by step, you move through different body layers.

The less the unfulfilled desires, the lighter is the pranic body and the easier it is to leave this body. Similarly, the less the guilt, the lighter is the mental body and the easier it is to leave this body.

One more thing, when the desires, guilt and pain are less intense, you not only have an easy death with less suffering but you also age gracefully. Ageing gracefully is what vanaprastha sannyas* is all about. Being able to live in fulfillment in the latter part of life is the tremendous gift of vanaprastha sannyas* .

All the guilt that we collect over our lives rises as we pass through the mental body. Then we come to the etheric body which is related to all our sufferings. All the suffering that we went through during our life is stored here.

Like this, each and every body layer has got its own samskaras or stored memories. Actually, traveling through these bodies is what is spoken about as hell. There is no other separate place called hell. Hell and heaven are not geographical locations but merely psychological spaces.

The first four bodies are related to the physical body-mind system. They store all the engrams related to desires, guilt and pain experienced during that lifetime. The fifth body is experienced during deep sleep and when leaving the body. The sixth body is associated with happy memories and the seventh body is beyond sorrows and happiness, the ultimate consciousness.

Please understand, even attachment to happy memories brings us back into the cycle of birth and death. The desire to experience more and more similar incidents that are happy and joyful pulls us back and we take more births.

Understand, there is a big difference between bliss and happiness. Happiness comes from an external object or reason. For example, you feel happy when you get to eat your favorite candy. You feel that the candy is the cause of your happiness. But just think about it, if the candy was indeed the cause of you being happy, shouldn't it give you happiness every time you eat it? Can you keep eating more and more of that candy? No! If you are forced to eat your favorite candy one after the other, what happens? You will get sick of it. You will start hating that candy and run at the sight of it!

Happiness is a temporary feeling created by the mind. Bliss, the seventh body, is the

Vanaprastha Sannyas - The third stage of life according to the vedic tradition, where the wife and husband lead the rest of their married life in spiritual activities in pursuit of the ultimate Truth.

true reality. It is the causeless, unending happening inside you of spontaneous energy, joy and auspiciousness. It is like a fountain that continuously happens inside you for no reason.

Actually, the reason your favorite candy gives you happiness is that it acts as a trigger to put you into this space of bliss that is your true nature. But you mistake the happiness to be because of the candy, the external object. The happiness is because for those few moments, you come in touch with your inner bliss.

The cleaner the bodies, the lighter they are and the easier it is for the life force to leave the body. Just like its peel comes off a ripe banana, the life force easily moves out of the body.

Death happens everyday

In the seven bodies, the first four bodies physical, pranic, mental and etheric, collapse into the causal body every time you go to sleep. The darkness of the causal body is associated with the deep sleep state, which is what rejuvenates you every day. So till you cross the fifth body, this 'death' happens every day. This is what happens when you fall into your daily sleep.

When the departing spirit moves beyond the fifth layer of causal body into the sixth layer, which is the cosmic body the process of death is complete.

If the life force does not have to take another body to fulfill its remaining desires it then enters the seventh layer of nirvanic body, which is enlightenment. If the life force has to come back assuming another body to fulfill its desires, it is death.

When you enter into the dream state and start dreaming, this whole world in which you live now becomes black and white because you are in the dream world. You forget this whole world of your waking state and the dream world becomes very real and seen in multicolor. If you come out of the dream, this whole world that you wake up to is again seen in four dimensions, 4D.

Now when you are in this physical body and in the waking state, you experience this world as 4D, in multi-color. When you are in the dream world, you experience that world as 4D. So, when you are here, the dream world becomes black and white, and this world becomes 4D, and when you are there, the dream becomes 4D, and this world becomes black and white.

In the same way, when you move away from the physical body to the pranicbody at the time of death, this whole physical world will become unreal and seen in black and white. All your achievements, your pride, your efforts, your sorrow, your happiness, everything will no longer have any meaning and will appear in black and white. You will wonder, 'Why did I do all this work? Why did I think of all this as a base for my life?'

Let me explain why this happens. When you are alive you invest in your personality. You build up your personality based upon a few pillars like money, name and fame, relationships, pride that you have a big community, support circle, and so on.

If somebody asks you, 'Who are you?' what will you say? Your response will be, 'I am an engineer', 'I am a doctor', 'I am a lawyer', or 'I am the owner of four houses', or 'I am her husband', or 'I am her daughter'. Our personality is built on these few pillars.

When you move from the physical body, all these pillars, all these foundations will be completely shaken. You can't sign your name on your checks any more. Your signature is not accepted. Your bank balance is no more related to you. You can't handle your bank account. Your car will not be useful to you. At the most, only the ambulance will be useful!

Your house will be filled with all your near and dear ones weeping at your death. But neither your house nor your near and dear ones will be useful to you. You can't even relate with your near and dear ones. None of them can come with you beyond the point of your death.

Only the conscious glimpse can come with you. Whatever has been the foundation for your being will be shaken. When the foundation is shaken, naturally you won't have anything to hold on to.

Understand this one thing. If we suddenly hear of some loss in our business, we will feel that our whole body is suffering. The suffering will not be just in one portion. The whole body will be suffering. It will be almost like our being is crushed.

So understand that when something moves away from us, our whole body suffers. When we move away from the physical body the same suffering starts happening in us. Whatever we thought was a foundation for our life is shaken.

As of now, this whole world will appear in 4D. All this talk about spirituality, meditation, growing the inner being, consciousness etc. will appear as black and white. That is why, when I call people for meditation, they tell me, 'I don't have time to meditate. Let me finish all my work and then come. I have a few more years to think about it.'

Be very clear, never say, 'I don't have time to meditate.' Be very clear to yourself and say, 'I don't feel that it is that important in my life right now.' If you are not ready to meditate and say, 'I don't think meditation is so important in my life,' then you are honest. But if you say, 'I don't have time,' then you are just fooling yourself. Everyone has got the same 24 hours on hand to do what they feel they should. It is not that the few who are meditating are jobless. It is just a question of priority, of what you really want in your life. If spirituality and meditation appear as black and white to you now, you will not divert your energy in that area, that's all.

But this is what happens when you move away from the physical body at the time of death. Whatever you thought of as real and 4D when you were living disappears totally. Everything material is totally shaken and appears as black and white! At that time, all these things that attract you now will not have any basis at all. That is the reason why death is always a suffering. But at that moment, if you have had a conscious glimpse of truth at least once in your life before, then you can enter into death with awareness and fully conscious!

You see, now we are in two dimensions, the material world and spirituality. Right now, what is happening is that however many pillars we build our personalities and life upon, all those pillars are based on the material world which appears to be 4D. Not a single pillar is based on consciousness or our inner space. Our whole personality is built only based on the outer space, our name and fame, what society speaks about us, etc. If everyone's opinion of us is that we are great, we think we are great. If everybody says, 'You are useless', we start getting depressed.

This happens because not even a single pillar of our building, our inner core or our being, is based on spirituality. The entire structure is based on the outer space. That is the reason that when those pillars are shaken by anybody, we start suffering terribly. If we have even one pillar based on consciousness, we can depend on that to stand straight without suffering.

One more thing: these outer world pillars are not in our control at all. Anyone passing by can easily shake them. Even if a small child comes up to us and says, 'You are a fool', we will get a little shaken, is it not? That child might have even said it only to try a few new words that he is learning! But you get shaken. So understand that these outer world pillars are that weak.

That is what the Bhagavad Gita, the ultimate teaching of Krishna, says, 'What comes and stands in your mind at the time of leaving the body will alone decide about your next birth or enlightenment.' If we have at least one pillar on consciousness, naturally we will not have suffering when we leave the body. All the other pillars will become black and white. But even if the

Our personality is based on outer space. There is nothing solid in our inner space.

other pillars become black and white, this one pillar will be there

in multicolor, 4D and will take us through.

As of now our problem is that we have no pillar to take us through. Our entire personality is based on the outer space. All our pillars are made up of what we think is 4D now. There is nothing solid in our inner space either. That is why, like a football, people can kick us from corner to corner in the outer space. Anybody can just throw one word towards us to make us depressed. If somebody says we are mad, we shout at them and prove that we are mad!

Please understand that if we build at least one pillar based on our inner space, this pillar will shine in 4D at the time of death and help us leave the body beautifully.

There is a beautiful Zen saying, 'Learning the art of dying is the real and the ultimate knowledge that we can learn in our life.'

A small Zen story:

One day, an enlightened master suddenly declared that he was going to die the next day morning around 6 o'clock. Of course, enlightened people always know about their death. They can declare before hand when they are going to die. He declared that he was going to die around 6 o'clock in the morning.

His disciples said, 'No, no, please wait for 2-3 hours. It will be too cold early in the morning. Why don't you wait for a few hours so that we can prepare for the last rites?' The master agreed and told the disciples that he would pass away around 12 o'clock. Exactly at 12 noon, he greeted them all and left the body!

One more important historical incident:

When the British started colonizing Bharat, in Central Bharat there was a small tribal village. That village no longer exists, it is gone! The British were trying to bring that village under their control. The whole village had only about hundred people but they were highly mystical people, totally into devotion and meditation. They were experts in the ancient mystic rites. It is said that in that village people never fell ill.

Even if they dreamt that they had hurt somebody in their dreams, the next morning they would go and apologize to that person. Unless you have subtle vengeance, unless you have a subconscious idea to hurt a person, you will not hurt him even in your dreams. So, these people used to apologize for hurting someone even in the dream so that even the unconscious idea of hurting someone was not developed. They were such a highly mature spiritual group. They had nothing of the outer world but they had everything of the inner world.

When the British tried to bring the village under their rule, the villagers were not ready to surrender and lose their freedom to anyone else. But the British said, 'Either you surrender or we will kill you.'

You will be surprised, these villagers said, 'You don't have to kill us. Don't bother, we know how to die. We will die by ourselves.' The British thought that the villagers would commit suicide by taking some poison or by some method like that.

The whole village gathered in one room as a group. The whole group stood in one place and in front of the eyes of the British soldiers they just chanted some mantra, prayed and all the hundred villagers just fell. They just dropped their bodies and died.

The incident is recorded by the British soldiers and they say that for the first time they felt the guilt of killing somebody. They say, 'We people are trained to kill. We never felt guilt when we kill masses of Destruction can be looked at as rejuvenation.

people. But here, we felt deep guilt because we killed innocent people, such simple but great people!'

In the vedic tradition, Shiva, the lord of destruction, is considered auspicious. The very name 'Shiva' means 'causeless auspiciousness'. You will be surprised to know that in Sanskrit if you literally translate the word for destruction, 'samhara', it does not mean destruction, it means rejuvenation. The word that we use commonly for destruction actually means creating space for new things to happen. Even destruction can be looked at from a different dimension of rejuvenating or creating a new space for better things to happen.

Even the disease which happens to your body just creates a new space so that you can start having a new body and so that you can get ready to live a new life. You can just restart the whole process. See, actually restarting the whole process can heal many of your wounds. There are some wounds that can be healed by falling asleep and coming back. You will forget them when you wake up.

Just be in the present, allow time to flow through you.

There are some wounds that can't be healed by falling asleep

and coming back. At that point you decide, 'Let me restart the whole process, let me just start afresh.' Then you allow the body to have some disease so that the rejuvenation process can start.

According to the vedic tradition no experience goes waste. Every time when you move from one moment to the next moment you are expanding, you are growing, and you are learning. If you look from this angle even your death is auspicious because you are going to the next step. Only if you are not clear about the next step you will feel the fear of death.

Understand, the future becoming the past is the present. Present moment is the point where the future is slowly becoming past. Present moment is the possibility of rejuvenation.

When you are in the present, you will see very clearly that the future coming inside you to become the past leaves so much energy in you. Every moment you are just overflowing with energy.

If you are caught by future you are in the world of fantasies, building castles in the air. You are left with no energy to live in the real world. So long as you are caught in the future, you will feel insecure, afraid.

If you are caught in the past, you will feel things are inauspicious, that life is dull and dead. You will be just like a rock which can't be moved, which is dead with no energy.

If you are established in the present, you will feel whatever is happening is auspicious. You will become like Shiva, who is the rejuvenator, who is constantly creating space for new things to happen.

You will be fearless. The moment you are fearless about the things happening, you will feel everything happening around you is causeless auspiciousness. You will be just like a flowing river, flowing energy. You will be just radiating the causeless auspiciousness.

When you are in the present moment, through you the future moves and becomes the past and you are there like a hollow bamboo, untouched by time, beyond death.

Conquering death is a simple technique. Just be in the present, allow time to flow through you, allow time to penetrate you, and allow time to do its activity through you.

When the future comes inside, you don't be greedy and just catch it. Let it pass through you, let it become past, and let it have its own course. Just be in the present and you will see you are living in eternity.

Every day your energy frequency increases. Every moment, your life only expands. Even your death is one more expansion. It is expansion in a dimension that your logic may not be able to relate with. But it is still an expansion nevertheless.

What needs to be taken away from you is taken away, what needs to be added to you is added. Constantly the auspiciousness is expressing itself through you. Your mind which is saying 'no' to this change is the most inauspicious thing. Your mind that is trying to give you the false promise of security is the most inauspicious thing.

Look into your life. Have you ever said a complete 'yes' to anything even once? Saying a complete 'yes' to life even once is what I call enlightenment.

Decide this very moment that you will say a complete yes to life. Then so many insecurities will come upon your mind. What if something happens? Decide that you will take the next half an hour to say a complete 'yes'. Your mind might say, 'No no. Then what will happen to my life? I may die. I may not get food'. These are all the tricks your mind plays to

Just like if you go through life with a complete yes, death also leads you to higher frequency.

keep you under its control, under the control of the ego, which is the root cause of all misery.

When you keep on strengthening the mind that keeps saying 'no' by its very nature, the mind becomes so strong that it starts saying 'no' to anything and everything. By and by, the 'no' gets engraved even in your breathing. 'No' getting engraved in your energy flow is the first reason for cancer.

Just like life if you go through it with a complete yes, death also leads you to a higher frequency. On the other hand, even life can lead you to a lower frequency if you go through with a big 'no'. Whether you are going to enter into the higher frequency, higher consciousness, or lower consciousness is going to be decided only by your 'yes' or 'no'.

A true story:

The great master from Bharat,

Paramahamsa Yogananda , had moved to USA in 1920 and settled there. How he left the body is very interesting. Till the last moment he was doing his routine of giving discourses and attending programs.*

On the day of his passing away, he was attending a banquet in honor of the then visiting Hindu Ambassador to USA, Binay Ranjan Sen, in Los Angeles. At the conclusion of his speech, he just relaxed from his body and died.

His body did not deteriorate for more than twenty days. No odor of decay came from his dead body at any time. There is a beautiful write-up about his death in his autobiography as an appendix. It was such a beautiful experience. Even his death was auspicious for him.

You are not the eyes. The eyes are just an instrument. Many times you can see, your eyes may be open but you are not seeing, not registering the scene you are seeing.

Just remember you are seeing through the eyes. If you look through the eyes, suddenly you will see you are witnessing everything. You are not the two 'holes' called the eyes. You are only seeing through the two holes called eyes.

If you feel you are the two eyes, you are caught in ego. In your dream, as long as the attention is on the objects, you will continue to dream. When your attention is turned towards yourself, that is from the seen to the seer, you will be awakened.

The moment you realize you are something beyond the eyes, your attention is turned to the seer. Then you realize that this world is made of the same stuff of which your dream is made.

As long as you think you are seeing, the whole attention is on the seen. That is what I call ego. When you step back and realize you are seeing through the eyes, the whole attention is on the seer. That is what I call innocence. Innocence means having a clear understanding that whatever you see in the outer world is made of the same stuff out of which your dreams are made.

These are the steps: the first is getting the idea that what you see is a dream. The next is having the shakti, the energy, to change the dream. The third is the buddhi, the intelligence to know it is a dream and so there is no need to change it!

Paramahamsa Yogananda - An enlightened master from Bharat, well known for his book 'Autobiography of a Yogi'.

An important truth you should know is that dreams are made of the same stuff of which this waking world is made. If you think dreams are ordinary, this world is also ordinary. If you think this world is some kind of reality for you, dreams are also reality.

Understanding this will give you the energy to make your dreams into reality and it will give you the intelligence to understand that whatever you think as reality is nothing but one more dream.

Air and Prana

To understand this powerful, lifetransforming truth, we need to understand about this stuff of which the dream world and this world are made of. We need to know about prana, the life energy that sustains us.

Understand, the air you breathe is just a vehicle in which the prana comes in and goes out. Prana is the life force, the energy itself. Understand this one example. If a truck comes inside this campus and leaves something and goes out, the truck is like the air, the breath. The product that is delivered is prana.

Constantly, the air is going in and leaving the prana inside and the air is coming

Dreams are made of the same stuff of which this waking world is made.

out. Constantly, we are taking prana through air.

In Bharat, if you attended Kumbh Mela, the largest spiritual gathering in the world attended by millions of people, you may have seen the yogis bury their heads totally in the earth for three days. They are able to do this because they know how to take the prana into their body directly from the cosmos without the help of air. As long as you take prana through air, you need to breathe through your nose. You need to inhale and exhale. But, when you can take the prana directly without the help of air, you don't need to inhale or exhale through the nose. Your body can directly take the prana through the cosmos.

Life or death depends on the direction of prana

One more thing: as long as the incoming breath is bringing in more prana and going out as an empty vehicle, your life will be strengthened.

If the reverse starts happening, if the air comes with less pranaand goes out with more prana, it means death is nearing or the life energy is going towards death. When death nears, just the empty air will enter but when it goes out, it will go with the prana.

That is the reason all the great masters, such as Buddha, Shankara, Guru Nanak*, and Mahavira* , knew or could sense the prana and they could predict their death. Six months before their passing away, they were able to see very clearly the prana moving out of their body.

There is a beautiful concept in Ayurveda* called as the 'peak age' which is based on this science of prana. Till a particular age, the person will be receiving more prana through the incoming breath and less prana will be going out through the outgoing breath. The moment the outgoing breath starts carrying more prana than the incoming breath, they know now the person is moving towards death.

Prana in the states of waking, dream and deep Sleep

The prana moves, functions, and stays in the ajna chakra* when you are in the waking state. When you are in the dream state, it moves around the neck, around the vishuddhi chakra. When you are in deep sleep, it moves around the anahata chakra* , heart center.

That is why you can never fall asleep if your head is erect. You cannot fall asleep unless you relax the head, unless you allow the prana movement to move from the forehead to the heart region. That is the reason why you can't sleep unless you relax your head. Even if you are lying on the bed, if you keep your head straight and tense, you will never be able to fall asleep.

If you think constantly, your head will be erect and your shoulder will be under stress. The stress in the shoulder and the head being erect are very closely associated. You can see this in your life. When you reach your office in the morning you don't have to do any work. Just sitting in your chair

Guru Nanak - Founder of Sikh religion.

Mahavira - Vardhamana Mahavira was the 24th and last Jain tirthankara or enlightened one, and established the tenets of the religion of Jainism, founded in Bharat and now practiced by millions worldwide.

Ayurveda - Traditional Hindu medicine, meaning Knowledge of Life.

Ajna chakra - The sixth energy center located between the eyebrows. Means 'command' or 'will' in Sanskrit. This chakra is blocked by one's own ego.

Anahata chakra- Subtle energy center in the heart region related to love.

and thinking about the problems will stress you and you will have shoulder pain!

Actually all the pain and the stress you experience first in the shoulder only. When your shoulder is under stress, the head will never bend, the head will never relax. That is why people who think constantly can neither relax their head nor will they be able to fall asleep.

Controlling life through awareness

Constantly, life is slipping and entering into death. Life slipping into death is what we usually call living. Please understand, actually we don't live. We are just waiting for death to happen. Ordinary human beings don't live. Life is just slipping into death, disappearing into death. That is the reason however many years you may live, you don't feel satisfied, and you don't feel you have lived your life because you don't even know what life is.

When you become conscious of life, when you start thinking, contemplating about your life, when you bring awareness into your life, you create a new center in your being. Between this life and death, when you bring more awareness into the life, you create a new center, a new space in your life - that is what I call consciousness.

Whenever you are conscious, you start deciding about your life. For example, the more you become aware, If you are consciously thinking, it is life. If your consciousness can't think, it is death.

the more you start designing or choosing what type of car you should drive, what type of house you should live in, and what type of life you want. You start deciding every inch. You become conscious about everything: how you should talk, how you should behave, how you should think, every inch you start becoming aware.

The moment you start becoming aware, you start deciding, and you start controlling your life. When you become completely aware you will start controlling your death also.

These two events of life and death then happen at the conscious level. If you are consciously thinking, it is life. If your consciousness can't think, it is death.

In the unconscious level, two things happen as well, dream and deep sleep. In the unconscious level, if you are aware, it is dream. If you are able to see anything, if you are able to sense anything, if you are able to feel anything, if you are able to experience any movement, then it is called dream. If you are not aware of anything, if you are not able to feel anything, if you are not able to understand any movement, it is deep sleep.

In the waking state, when you are aware or you are in what psychology calls as conscious state, it is life. If you are not aware, it is death.

When you bring more awareness into your life, you take charge of your life. In the same way, in the dream, if you start bringing in more awareness, you will take charge of your dreams and deep sleep.

Controlling life and death and controlling dream and deep sleep both require one important condition, awareness. Awareness is the main requirement to control life and death and to control dream and deep sleep.

Bringing awareness into your dreams can not only help you control the dream and deep sleep, it can also help you control life and death.

Reality and dream both made of prana

When you start experiencing prana in the forehead, you will understand that not only is prana supplied from air, but it is the prana that creates both your reality and dreams.

Whatever you call as reality and whatever you call as dream are both made of prana. This is what Shankara means when he says this entire world is maya* , an illusion.

When you understand this, you will have the tremendous energy to control both dreams and life. As of now, you are just a victim. You can't even control your dreams. Can you dream what you want? You can't! You can't control a single incident in your dream. As of now, either you go through the whole dream or you can get out of the dream, you can just wake up. You can't control the dream itself.

If you can bring more awareness to the dream state, the awareness in the waking state will increase. The awareness in the life, awareness in the living state will multiply. If the awareness in the living state multiplies, naturally you will be able to control death.

Maya - Literally 'That which is not'. It is the concept that life is but a dream, however real it may seem while being experienced.

Dreams and life

If you bring more and more awareness into your dream state, if you can bring more and more consciousness into your dreams, suddenly the quality of consciousness in your life will increase. If the quality of your dreams changes, if the quality of your deep sleep changes, the quality of your life will also change. The quality of your dream and the quality of your life are both directly connected with each other.

Understand, life is nothing but daydreaming and dream is nothing but nightlife. Night-life is dream and day-dream is life.

A small story:

A poor man came back home with a full sack of rice after a hard day's work. He hung the sack from the roof of his home to protect it from rats and thieves. To protect it further, he lay down right under it. Lying down, he looked up at the sack of rice and started dreaming, 'If I can sell this rice in small quantities, I can make a lot of money. Then with that money I will grow some more rice, sell that and soon I will become rich. Then I can marry a beautiful woman and we will have a beautiful child.'

By this time, a rat had found its way up to the sack of rice and had started chewing the rope. As the man was thinking about his yet-to-be child, the rat had chewed on the rope and the bag fell on him killing him instantly.

Of course, the wealth, wife, and child in the dream also disappeared.

In the day, whatever you do, you call it as life. In the night, whatever you do, you call it as a dream. In the day, if you are not able to do anything, you call it as death. In the night, if you are not able to do anything, you call it as deep sleep.

In the day, if you have three things: experiencer, experienced and the experience, it is called life. We can take the example of drinking coffee in which there are three elements: the coffee one drinks, the person who drinks the coffee and the experience of the state of drinking coffee. If you experience all these three elements in the daytime, it is called life and if you don't experience all these three, it is called death. In the night time, if you experience all these three, it is called dream and if you don't experience all these three, it is called deep sleep.

Prana movement in sleep and death

The moment you start moving towards the dream state, the prana starts coming towards the vishuddhi, throat center. The more you move towards the deep sleep state, it moves towards the anahata* , heart center.

It is the same in the case of life and death as well. The more you are alive and energetic, the more the prana accumulates and gets centered in the forehead.

When the incoming breath is bringing more prana and the outgoing breath is going empty, your prana will be centered on the forehead. If the incoming breath is getting less prana and the outgoing breath is taking more prana, slowly the prana will slip into vishuddhi, throat center. If the incoming breath is not bringing prana at all and only the outgoing breath is taking the prana, you will fall completely into the heart center.

Actually, falling from life to death, falling from the waking state to the deep sleep state, are both directly related to prana movement. If the prana movements of inhalation and exhalation are handled properly, you can handle life and death as well as dream and deep sleep. Dream and sleep, life and death can all be handled by this single key, single thread called prana.

Stopping the cycle of life and death

If you can be aware when you fall into the dream state, when your consciousness is slowly fading away, when you are falling asleep, you will be able to change the dream itself.

If you are able to change the dream, let you be very clear, the first thing you will do is you will stop dreaming. You will stop dreaming because you know the uselessness of dreams. You know you are wasting time and energy in dreams.

The person who can be aware of dreams will never dream. The person who is aware of life will never take one more birth. That is why, in the East, all the spiritual scriptures, whether the Vedas* or Dhammapada* or Jain sutras* or Guru Granth Sahib* , are all aimed only at the goal of not taking one more birth. They all have only one goal, moksha* , liberation, from the cycle of birth and death.

Anahata chakra- Subtle energy center in the heart region related to love.

Vedas - Ancient scriptural texts explaining the deep spiritual Truths. There are four main Vedas: Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda and Atharvaveda. These texts explain about the performance of sacrifice and consist of stories and chants. The Vedas are considered to be revelations of the Truths that happened to the mystics and seers.

Dhammapada - Buddhist scripture of enlightened master Buddha's teachings.

Jain Sutras - Scriptures of Jainism, mainly teachings of enlightened master Mahavira.

Guru Granth Sahib - Scripture of the Sikh religion.

Moksha - Liberation through Self Realization.

Person who is aware of dreams will never dream. He will simply stop dreaming. Person who is aware of life will simply stop the cycle of birth and death. He will not take one more body.

When I use the word 'death', I don't mean you will commit suicide. When I say that when you become aware of life you enter into death, it does not mean that you will commit suicide. You will stop living in the normal way. You will stop living with identity. You won't give importance to identity. You will be reborn.

That is why enlightened masters are called dead people. Actually, the enlightened people are called people who are already dead as far as the world is concerned. They don't have identity or they don't have life as you understand. Their life cannot be called any more as life. Practically, if you want to give any term to their life, the only term which you can give is death! They are not alive as you think. That is the reason, again and again, all the scriptures say, the spiritual people are 'reborn'. In this state, you can never be tortured by the things of life. Life will look just vague or like a film. It won't penetrate you and disturb your inner space.

If you can be aware when the prana falls into the heart center every day, you can stop, alter and manage your dreams and deep sleep. If you are aware of prana slipping from ajna* to anahata each time you go to sleep, it means that at the end of the life you will be able to change your life and death. If you want, you can bring it a little early. If you want, you can postpone. You can play in whatever way you want.

Vedic technology - product of thousands of years of R&D in human consciousness

Be very clear, these are not theories. These are all the truths of thousands of years of research and development by our rishis on the human consciousness.

Let you be very clear, this technology, these techniques can directly develop the quality of your life from today. You don't have to think, 'Oh! If I practice this technique for ten years, maybe in the eleventh year, it will give results.' No!

Let you be very clear, because we do not know this technology, we started suspecting the science itself. For example, in some way if the theory of gravity is useful, applicable in your life, you will not suspect the science of the theory of gravity. But if it doesn't have any direct

Ajna chakra - The sixth energy center located between the eyebrows. Means 'command' or 'will' in Sanskrit. This chakra is blocked by one's own ego.

application in your life, if you don't have any direct benefit in your life from the theory, naturally, you tend to forget, you tend to question, and you tend to suspect it. Finally, you tend to completely throw out the whole science itself.

Just because we have not practiced this technology, this kind of truths and techniques in our life, we started suspecting the whole spirituality itself, 'Is it going to really work for me? Is it going to really help me?'

Changing the prana flow to heal and rejuvenate

Understand two things: now, whatever I have said is not only going to help you for your death, it will also help you in every moment of your life. You may think, 'How can it help me every moment?'

Actually, the dream state means the lower energy state of prana, that of prana moving towards the heart center. If you can be aware at that time, naturally you will be able to control your dreams. Not only will you be able to control your dreams, you can bring yourself up in energy at any moment.

Whenever you are aware of the low prana, you can increase the percentage of prana in your body. The awareness that the prana is becoming low is enough to bring more prana into your body. Same way, when you are dying, relaxing from the body, when the prana falls to the lower level, you can stop and bring it up.

Your prana slowly falls into the anahata chakra not only at the time of death, but also when you are sick. The more your prana falls towards the anahata, the more you start falling sick. If you can stop the prana movement and bring it up, you will naturally heal yourself. It is the ultimate technique to heal your body and rejuvenate your body.

Courage to face life and death

Actually when you master the prana, you understand that death as you think doesn't exist. As of now, you are afraid of death mainly because of the uncertainty. It is not even fear of death, it is the uncertainty. That only creates more and more fear.

See, everyone knows that one is going to die and nothing can be done about it. But we don't know when, how and after that, what. These questions and the uncertainty create a big problem in our being. The psychological suffering which we go through when we remember the idea of death is more related to uncertainty and is not directly related to death itself. Once this uncertainty is cleared the very idea of death is totally demystified. The negative impact the idea of death has in our being will be completely cleared.

You will have more freedom not only to choose, but you will also have freedom to postpone or predict, to know death itself. This is the ultimate gift you can have from any spiritual technique.

Above all, even when you fall sick, the prana directly may not go completely into the anahata but it will start traveling towards anahata. You know you are falling sick and you can bring it back.

You can try this: be aware of the forehead, third eye when you are falling asleep. When you lie down in the bed, when you decide, 'Yes, now I am going to fall asleep', just be aware when your consciousness is getting diffused, when you are just disappearing into the darkness, into the deep sleep.

Next, the whole day, whenever you remember, remember and think this whole life is maya* , you are just dreaming even when you are awake. Just try to think again and again, 'Whatever I am seeing is just a dream.'

Do not look at this logically. Do not bother whether it is fact or not. Immediately then you will wonder, 'How can I think that? It is not a fact. This world is a reality.'

Please be very clear, fact and truth are two different things. When I say that the whole world is a dream, it may not be a fact according to you because the reference that you have to measure whether something is a fact or not, is itself not a fact.

Once you practice this over a few days, you will understand the truth behind these words. It will lead you to the truth.

You will see it just gets diffused and you will see the screen on which this whole dream is played. When you start seeing the screen on which you are projecting this whole dream, you will also start seeing the same screen with awareness when you are dreaming. The screen on which you project this whole dream and see is what I call consciousness.

The next question your mind will ask, 'If I am dreaming in the waking state, why should I act? Why should I do anything?' Why should you not act? If you are dreaming, why should you not do anything?

Understand, you don't want to act because you take the action seriously. You relate your action with something you need to

Maya - Literally 'That which is not'. It is the concept that life is but a dream, however real it may seem while being experienced.

attain. You become attached to that action because of the result you expect. If you remember you are dreaming, you become aware that dreaming or non-dreaming is in no way going to change anything. Whatever happens will happen. You will let it happen.

Just be very clear that life is a dream. Suddenly your intelligence will be awakened. You will be awakened to the truth that the whole drama of life is your projection.

Death is not merely an event that happens at the end of your life, it also means the death that happens during your life. For example, if your money is taken away from you, the identity that you are a millionaire dies in you. If your brother dies, the identity that you are brother of somebody dies. If your father dies, the identity that you are son of somebody dies. In all those moments, some part of your being dies.

Please be very clear, 'complete' death happens at the end of your life. Even during your life, the 'part death' happens as some parts of your being die. With this understanding of death, even in those moments, you will not go through the pain and suffering. You will be able to work, manipulate, postpone, move or even stop those deaths.

Suppose you take an empty pot. Inside the pot there is space. Outside the pot also there is space. Now suppose you break the pot. The pot may be destroyed but the space that is inside the pot will not be destroyed. It will just disappear into the space that is outside the pot.

The space that was caught inside the pot will disappear into the space that was outside the pot, over. Even the pot can't be destroyed. It will exist in a different shape. You may change the shape, but you can't destroy it.

In the same way, during death, the consciousness that is caught in your body relaxes into the consciousness that is outside your body. See, there is a space that is outside your skin and there is a space that is caught inside your skin. When your boundary is destroyed at some point, the space that is caught inside the body will simply relax into the space that is outside the body. Understanding this truth will liberate you from the fear of death. There is nothing in you that can be destroyed.

There is a beautiful incident in the life of Socrates* :

Socrates - Greek philosopher.

Socrates was killed by being made to drink the poison hemlock. When the poison was taken to him, he was asked, 'Don't you feel the fear of death?'*

He says beautifully, 'Why should I be afraid? After death only two things can happen. Either I will cease to exist or I will exist in some form in some place, that's all. Only these two can happen. If I cease to exist, then there is anyways no problem, because there is nothing to be afraid of, I am not going to even know anything. If I exist in some form somewhere, then again there is no need to bother. I am anyways going to exist. I am not going to die.'

These words of Socrates* are a great mantra* .

Just look back at your life. You may say life was either more joy or more pain. These are the only two possibilities. If you say life was more pain, then why are you afraid of death? If you have already had enough suffering then why don't you try something new?

If you say life is more joy then again since you have lived so joyfully you must be ready for new things, new experiments. If your life was joyful at this level, naturally any further steps will lead to more joy, better experiences. So, from whichever side you argue, your fear has no base.

Understanding that the energy space caught inside your skin will merge into the energy space that is outside your skin when your body is destroyed and understanding that you are going to exist even if your body or mind disappears are the basis of the truth of what we call 'transcendental reality'. A person who is established in transcendental reality constantly radiates joy and fearlessness. He radiates so much of bliss, so much of energy that he is in paramasthiti, the supreme state.

The same energy which manifested itself as the cosmic explosion constantly keeps exploding and manifesting within your body. Merge your awareness with the meeting point of inhaling and exhaling breaths, the confluence of the powerful and the powerless.

When the inhaled air goes out, it will be full of energy, and your awareness as a whole will vibrate. One can touch and feel life energy. The place where the exhaled air returns will be totally vacant. One can

Socrates - Greek philosopher.

Mantra - Literally means 'that which shows the way'. Sacred syllables that have a powerful positive vibrational effect.

touch and feel death. When the inhaled air comes in, one can touch and feel life direct. When the exhaled air returns one can touch death. If we merge our awareness with both these meeting points, we can experience within ourselves both the cosmic explosion and cosmic dissolution. The moment you experience the cosmic explosion and cosmic dissolution happening within you, you transform yourself as the universal energy.

This technique has two parts: one that you do when you fall asleep, when you are lying in the bed and the second one that you do whenever you can remember during the whole day.

The first one will create more energy to do the second part and vice versa. They are complementary to each other.

First part: when you lie down, before falling asleep, just remember the area near the ajna chakra* or the third eye, the center of the forehead. Do not concentrate. If you force yourself, if you start concentrating, your sleep will be disturbed and you will have a headache. Just remember that area in a relaxed way, the way you look at a flower, just casually. Slowly, you will see that you are relaxing, you are slowly dropping into the deep sleep state.

Just be aware of this movement into deep sleep, that is enough. First day, you may feel that you are not falling asleep at all and that your sleep is getting delayed by ten or fifteen minutes. Don't bother about it. Just be aware of the prana movement in the ajna chakra.

You will be aware that you are dreaming. If you want to continue the dream, you will continue. If you don't feel like it, you will come out. But you will not have nightmares. There will be no intensity to the dream.

As of now, your dreams can shake not only your mind, but even your body. If you have a nightmare and get up you will see that your heart is beating fast and your pulse rate is high. Your body will feel the impact of the dream. You will not have that effect if you are aware of dreaming. This is the first effect of this meditation.

The next step, you will start having the dreamless sleep. That is the deeper level. Once you start having the dreamless sleep you will also start having the dreamless day. Dreamless day means that your energy will be conserved without day-dreaming.

Ajna chakra - The sixth energy center located between the eyebrows. Means 'command' or 'will' in Sanskrit. This chakra is blocked by one's own ego.

If you are aware of the prana, that is enough. It will automatically come back to the higher energy and your body will heal itself, as the flow of prana is directly related to all your diseases. Above all, when you are able to change your dream, when you are able to handle your dream, you will have the intense power and energy to handle the incidents of your life.

As of now, you are just a victim of your life, victim of your dream. You can't handle anything. You can't even stop a small sneeze. You can't stop anything not only in the waking state, but even in the dream state. Things just happen to you, that's all.

At the most, you can have the illusion that you are doing things. If you can be aware of the dream state, you will have true freedom and your consciousness will become more expanded.

Life Bliss Program Level 2 – THE SUPREME PONTIFF OF HINDUISM BHAGAWAN SRI NITHYANANDA PARAMASHIVAM Spurana Program (LBP Level 2 - NSP)

Our second level meditation program, LBP Level 2-NSP journeys you through your own life, simultaneously revealing the secrets of death. It makes your inner space pure and clean by unloading the baggage of emotions that you usually carry with you. It teaches you to live blissfully and leave peacefully. It puts death in the right perspective so that your life becomes more joyful and meaningful.

The Healing effect oF LBP Level 2 - NSP

LBP Level 2- NSP has a complete healing effect at the physical, mental and spiritual levels. People come and ask me how I heal through meditation. Please understand, I do not heal through my physical body. It is my presence that heals. When the sun rises, the lotus blooms by itself. The sun does not go and open the petals of the lotus. Similarly, in the presence of the master, healing happens. Be very clear that healing is not done. It happens.

I can heal your body since it is in my presence. In the same way, if you open your mind too, it can be healed. In LBP Level 2-NSP, that's what we do - opening of minds. You are asked to write down about yourself, about your pains, desires, guilt and pleasures. You will not be showing these to anyone else. It is for you to know clearly what your deeply embedded samskarasor engraved memories are.

People ask me why I have them write down all this since they are neither expected to show them to me nor to each other. Understand, by writing it all down you are opening your mind in my presence. You are opening your mind and hence I can heal your mind. If you open your wounds the sun can heal them. Similarly, if you can open your mind the energy will heal all the wounds.

LBP Level 2-NSP is opening up your energy layers one by one. Your pains, pleasures, guilt and desires are opened up. Once these open up and get healed, you experience a glimpse of god within you.

To be free from the fear of death, which is really the fear of losing our identity, we need to be aware that we are something more than this body and mind. We need intelligence to understand this. We then come to these questions:

What exactly is intelligence?

Are some of us more intelligent than others?

Can we increase the level of our intelligence?