40. My own death experience

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!

Hindus - Followers of Hindu religion, estimated at over a billion people.

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

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa - Enlightened mystic from India.

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 India, 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 happens at the time of death

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.

Waking world Vs Dream world

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.

The art of dying

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 India, in Central India 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!'

Space for the new

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.

Conquer death – be in the present

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.

Complete 'yes'

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'.

Auspicious Death

A true story:

The great master from India,

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 Indian 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.

Reality is a dream

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 India, 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.

Life and Death Vs Waking and Sleep

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 India, 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 India and now practiced by millions worldwide.

Ayurveda - Traditional Indian 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.

Awareness - control dreams and deep sleep, life and 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.

Control life, health… and death

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.