Death

It is something that man has always feared and dreaded even though it is the only thing that is guaranteed to each one of us no matter who. Across race, country, religion, sex, no matter what the identity, it comes for all. Not limited to humans, all lifeforms in this existence experience it once, and only once. In most cultures it cannot even be addressed directly, and alternate names have been given to it in the hopes of blunting the impact of its mere mention. I am referring to the final event in our conscious life that we call death. Next to love, it is one of the most searched terms on the Internet and its frequency is consistent throughout the year. This is where that accumulation of the earth that we call the body and the pile of accumulated thoughts and memories we call the mind, both cease to exist for yourself and all others around you. Those who die suddenly and quickly are considered the lucky ones unless they are young, in which case it is considered a tragic loss. As people get older and the suffering of ageing grows, many begin to wish for death to escape the pain. For some, their life situation gets so bad that they willingly take their own life via suicide. Many who do not have any chronic disease or even think of death die anyway via the myriad of man-created situations such as murder or war. Some welcome death while others go in sadness, fear, anger, or a mixture of emotions. But no matter who a person is in any walk of life, go we all do.

Death is one of mankind’s greatest fears and almost every person has high levels of negativity associated with it. This is because no matter what we believe or what anybody tells us, nobody has irrefutable proof or experiential knowledge of what happens after death. This means that not only is death is the single greatest unknown we will have to face in life, but it is also one we must face alone. Never mind the fact that billions have died before us over the centuries, trillions if you count all life forms. Mortality is the basis of all fear and one that is present universally across humans and many animals. If we were not mortal, we would have no fear of death. But does death need to be feared? There is also another experience we have that is equally a mystery which is what or where we were before birth. Yet, we don’t think about it, much less fear it. The reality aspect of what we call life also dies every night when we go to bed, yet we don’t fear that. Our dreams, no matter how real they may seem, also die when you wake up. Still no fear there either. It is only when it comes to our body (and the mind) that fear becomes a factor. This is also not helped by many religions who frame life as a single chance to succeed or fail (whatever that means) and eternal and terrible punishment for the latter. This is made even worse by religions contradicting each other and stating they are the only path to success.

Mortality of the body is the basis of all the fear we have about death. Because we have become so identified with the body and mind, we are terrified of what happens when both go away. It is only when we see death or are threatened by it due to disease or illness do we begin to even think about it and its implications beyond the body. Some are lucky enough to get very close to death without dying and for a moment of time, are truly alive and bursting with consciousness for what life really is. Unfortunately. for most, the spiritual process begins only when confronted with death, either their own or that of a loved one. This happens as we get older as the body starts to lose its vibrancy and becomes weaker to support material desires. But older people also have a lifetime of experiences behind them, so much of what they may have desired has been accomplished anyway. Many become fearful or depressed as they do not know anything beyond the body but now must live with the realization that it is slowly breaking down and heading back to the earth from where it came. If you do not understand death, you will never know life because both, like inhalation and exhalation, are inseparable. This is why Yogic practices teach us to constantly remind ourselves and our bodies that we are mortal and one day the body is going to die. Consciously being aware of this will help experience life with a level of vibrancy and gratefulness that can make one a better human being. After all, if you are aware of your own mortality, would you get involved with half the drama that you take on and call life?

Scientific explanation of death

Science, through the ages, has been relatively stable in its explanation of death which is when the heart shuts down and causes the person to stop breathing. This is defined as the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. The cessation of biological function then causes the brain to shut down which causes all life processes to eventually stop. But as advances in medicine and diagnostic equipment has occurred, the nuances of when somebody has died has evolved. Today, it is the death or cessation of brain function that is used to declare a person dead. This is called brain death which refers to the complete and irreversible loss of all brain function, including the brainstem, which controls essential involuntary processes like breathing. Their heart could still be beating, or they are on a machine that mimics the heart’s function, but they are still declared dead. In recent times, science has discovered that cells in the body (including that of the brain itself) begin their own death process, only after the brain function has stopped. This process takes hours, if not days, before all the brain and organs are irreversibly damaged after brain function ends. But without brain function, there is no life or consciousness which is what is considered to be alive.

But science is unsure about other states of life which don’t fall into cessation of all brain function. For example, what about somebody who is in a coma where their body is alive, but their consciousness is absent? The brain still carries on its autonomous functions like breathing or heart beating, but the person is unable to live life as we know it. But science also has a hard time defining life other than stating that it is “matter that shows certain attributes that include responsiveness, growth, metabolism, energy transformation, and reproduction.” There have been many instances where science/medicine has declared somebody dead only to have them wake up some time later. Advances in technology now allow us to preserve brain function for almost half a day as evidenced by an experiment by Dr. Nenad Sestan, a neuroscientist at Yale. His team took 32 pig brains (after they had been slaughtered) and they exposed them to a cocktail of drugs that have brain-preserving properties. They were given these drugs over 6-10 hours and in every case, they were able to restore brain function in those pig brains. What if the same was done to a human who was declared brain-dead, but their body continued to work, either via machines or naturally. Could that person be revived and restored to life? Questions like these are also causing science to look at consciousness and try to determine its source. But, with few scientists wanting to tread beyond what they can measure or see, it will be a long time before they can conclusively prove the source of human consciousness.

Yogic explanation of death

Yoga, and most eastern philosophies, look at death in a very different way and as a part of life itself. Each moment death is happening within us at the organ and cellular levels, but we are just not aware of it. We get a new lung, kidney, and other organs over periods of time throughout the life of the body where old cells die and are replaced by new ones. In fact, breath itself is a process of life and death; we start our life with an inhalation, and we end our life with an exhalation. While life is a process of drawing energy in which creates a slight tension, death is the dissipation of that tension. You can experience this when you take a deep breath and hold it. While the intake provides your body with the needed oxygen and nitrogen, it creates tension in your lungs and after a while, there is a growing demand for relief via exhalation. If you really focus on your breath, you can experience this right now. Because the two are so tightly bound and crucial to life experience, Yoga does not differentiate between them as positive or negative. In fact, death (of the body) is considered the ultimate form of relaxation as it frees us completely from all the trappings and sufferings of the physical existence, all at once. Death is the baseline of life and what adds context and meaning to life experience. If we were to live forever and unable to die, that would be the ultimate curse. There would be no meaning to anything as you are not timebound, thus dropping the value of all experiences. And the weight of the memory of ages would crush you as watching everything around you die away while you continued. Nor do we have any memory or recollection of where we were before we were born. So, in that sense, we came from a great unknown and we go back to the same.

The fundamental process of life (and death) is completely based on Karma as per Yoga. That is, karma is the memory of life itself and the only reason we are here in this existence. As I explained during the deep discussion of karma, it is a bundle of experiences that is allocated to you in this lifetime. Known as Prarabdha karma, it is what we came here to do in this incarnation. Think of the body and mind (loans from the planet) as hardware and Prarabdha karma as the software that drives it. That energy seeks expression in a form that is best suited to dissolving this allocation of karma. From when and where we are born, the environment we are born into, and who our parents are, to the mannerisms and intent that governs our lifetime, all of it is determined based on the drivers of this incarnation. Those born into lives that are generally good or easy may have come for spiritual progress. Those in challenging or adverse circumstances have the conditions for learning or dissolution. But no matter what purpose a soul gains expression via life, it is always with a timer. When the body and mind are born, it is a journey toward death and return to the planet. When the body and/or mind become too feeble to hold the karmic software, it leaves to find expression elsewhere and the body and mind go back to the earth.

You cannot use the intellect (based on memory accumulated since birth) to try to understand life or death. The actual Sanskrit word that describes this practice is Pragna, which is loosely translated as awareness in English. It is a way of knowing things without having to think about them or getting information about them. This type of awareness addresses even mundane things we take for granted like breathing or the beating of a heart, both without thought or conscious action. Awareness is the key to death (and life) but most of us are quite far away from it. It is only via practices that allow you to move beyond the body and mind can you truly experience death, which is a dimension beyond both. Life is also an experience beyond both, but we become so enamored with the trappings of life (spouse, job, house, holiday, etc.) that we never experience life either. Those dimensions are not something that is somewhere else (up there or down below) but right inside each of us, right here and now. Pragna is beyond thought or the abilities of the intellect and something that allows you to access the source of creation. If you can do this, it becomes very easy to experience life and death as the same thing and that there is no separation or boundary.

Because Yoga does not distinguish life and death as separate things, it is possible to prepare for death of the body with yogic practices. Death of the body is regarded as a natural ending of the lease we signed with the earth when we were born. Many of us, especially the rich, want to try to cheat death or at least delay the inevitable. So many in their 80s and beyond spend months or years in a hospital bed with tubes and sensors needed for machines to keep the body alive. This is not a pleasant life for them or the people around who must perform all the maintenance duties. In nature, many creatures such as snakes or crows know when death approaches. They withdraw to a safe place and stop eating or doing anything for many days until they die quietly. In ancient times in India, men around the age of 60 (strangely, not women) would bid goodbye to their families and start a pilgrimage towards the holy city of Kashi (modern day Varanasi). Most realized they would die along the way, eaten by an animal in the forest or killed by a bandit. But they accepted this and went on the journey in peace. Yoga says it’s ok to die a few years early, but it is very important to die with peace and grace. Towards this ending, there are practices offered to enable not only a peaceful death of the body but also one that is done in awareness. Many Yogis have mastered this ability to un-entangle their life energies from the physical body and are able to choose their time of death (of the body). This is usually when they are still healthy and have no chronic illnesses. While this may seem absurd to many, they choose not to suffer in a hospital, connected to machines that try to keep the body alive for a bit longer. Instead, they leave with joy and willingness, which is a graceful if not a beautiful way to exit the body. All of this is predicted by knowing and experiencing that dimension of life which is beyond the physical. Once you realize that you are neither the body nor the mind, leaving becomes easy and even graceful.

Near-Death Experience (NDE)

While it is true that nobody has fully died and then returned to provide irrefutable proof of what lies beyond, we do have people who have seen the preview, and their stories are all remarkably almost the same. I am talking about what is known as Near-Death Experiences whereby somebody who is usually terminally ill is declared medically (scientifically) dead, only to return sometime later, usually with a profound (to them) experience. Almost everyone who has experienced an NDE changes radically after the experience and report being a completely different person afterwards. These experiences also occur when the brain is impaired or inactive, drawing into serious doubt that consciousness is tied to the mind and brain activity. Perhaps the most fascinating thing about NDEs is that they are remarkably consistent across age, cultures, religions, and sexes. All have the following experiences in common.

• A sense of leaving the physical body and floating.

• Passing through a tunnel and encountering a bright light.

• A profound sense of peace and being in the presence of unconditional and limitless love.

• A life review as in ‘life flashing before their eyes’.

• A choice between staying and permanently leaving their physical body or returning to it.

After-effects, for those that come back, also are common and include the following.

• Loss of the fear of death.

• Increased compassion and empathy for all life, not just human.

• Decreased materialism and attachment to physical things.

• New or stronger life purpose.

• A feeling of connectedness to everything.

They all describe their experiences as being more real than waking life and their memories of the experiences stay stable over time. Brain scans on test subjects show recalling NDEs activates the same areas of the brain as real events.

The connectedness aspect of NDEs is something beautiful and remarkable at the same time. Many say they feel connected at an energy level to all beings and that everything has its place in this creation. Murderers, rapists, and everything between all have a place and part of a universal fabric that connects everything. People who have had terrible experiences such as being raped or abused come back with no resentment and all their bottled-up trauma simply gone. Many have come back feeling love and utter forgiveness for their abuser. That sentiment seems to come from a realization that the entirety of this existence is like a play and that we all are simply playing roles that we agreed to before coming here. Much like a murder-mystery dinner, every participant is assigned a role and then go act it out in the stage of what we call reality. NDEs are also able to see past the duality that causes human suffering, as we think we are individuals, which leads to selfishness and lack of empathy. They also were able to see that the intent behind our thoughts and actions carried incredible weight. These intents created ripples of healing and love that touched lives they never knew they impacted. But love for ones close to an NDE person also seems to persist and most experienced meeting loved ones and that their connections stretched across multiple lifetimes. The presence of a guide, something like a soul mentor for lack of a better term, was experienced by almost all NDEs. They have been there throughout our lives helping to guide us but in an NDE, they manifest in a form that is recognizable. Finally, many recall meeting souls who reincarnate together across multiple lifetimes and playing a different role in each.

The reality aspect of NDEs is what makes them fascinating. Many describe their experiences as more real than normal life. All these experiences point to the fact that consciousness is not merely a byproduct of brain function. Rather, the brain acts as a filter to limit our perception of the infinite experience that is pure consciousness. Another vivid example of this is found in probably one of the best books I have ready on NDE which is Anita Moorjani’s Dying to be Me. As her organs failed due to a very aggressive form of cancer, she left her body but could hear all there was going on in the hospital, including her death being told to her husband by the doctor at the far end of the hallway. She also was given a choice to stay in the ultra-bliss death state or go back. She chose to go back only to have all trace of cancer gone within a few weeks. She is now a massive evangelist for connectedness and how everything in this existence has a reason to be here.

Dr. Sam Parnia did a comprehensive study called AWARE (AWAreness during Resuscitation) where he concluded that NDEs are real and distinct from hallucinations. Through examination of multiple people who went through clinical death, through cardiac arrest for extended periods of time, he says there is clear evidence of consciousness even though there is no brain activity. He also concludes that consciousness is separate to the brain and that maybe the brain is needed to “tune” consciousness into this reality, much like a TV does with an electromagnetic signal. All the learnings from NDE point to the fact that our consciousness is independent of our bodies and brain (which is part of the body anyway). The Yogic sciences have always maintained this and some of the early practices of Yoga are simply stating ‘I am not the body’ with each inhalation, and ‘I am not even this mind’ with every exhalation. NDEs seem to be an experiential means of showing this independence of our consciousness from the body.

The Shutdown Sequence

Both science and Yoga agree on one thing, which is that things shut down in a specific sequence once a person dies. Death for science is cessation of brain function and for Yoga, it is when the main Karmic energy leaves the body. Many doctors and end-of-life caregivers have studied people who are on the landing path to death and have found the following ways in which the body begins the shutdown sequence. This is the scientific order of the sequence of shutdown of our senses.

• Decline in appetite and thirst- It is almost as if the body and mind sense the end approaching and they begin to de-prioritize nourishment and growth. This causes people to feel tired and sleep far more than normal. This also has an effect of bowel and bladder movements becoming less frequent. This phase starts weeks before death.

• Speech is next to go with a slowing of conversation and the desire to be quiet. The person will have far less desire to talk and when they do, they will not be able to hold a normal conversation. Breathing also starts to become more shallow which makes talking difficult.

• Vision starts to decline, and the person prefers to keep their eyes closed. When open, they may only be able to see nearby objects clearly. Towards the end, hallucinations start where they may see people or pets from their life who died before them.

• Hearing and Touch are the last two senses to go and people around will notice them being unresponsive. Though the dying person still has awareness from these two senses, they are less likely to want to react to them.

• In the final hours before death, the person may become peaceful or agitated and restless. Many lose consciousness hours or a few days before.

• The ending is death where typically the heart fails which then causes the brain to fail and the body to begin shutting down.

Like with science, Yoga also states that death occurs in stages as prana, or life energies, exit the body in a specific sequence over time. There are five pranas and only when all have exited the body is death fully complete. The exit sequence is as follows.

• The first prana to exit the body is called Samana and this regulates temperature. After exit, somewhere around 21-24 minutes after death, the body begins to cool.

• The second prana to exist is actually called Prana and is responsible for the functions of the heart, lungs, and circulation. At this stage, the other pranas have not left and there is chance to reverse death according to Yoga.

• Next is Udhana which lingers for 6-12 hours before exiting. This prana governs many of the ‘updard’ functions of the body such as digestion, breathing, blinking, etc.

• Upana is next and starts to leave anywhere between 8-18 hours after death. This controls all of the ‘downward’ functions of the body like urination, menstruation, defecation, childbirth, etc.

• Vyana is the final prana to depart and is called the preserver. It regulates bodily processes like perspiration, blood, and overall coordination of the physiological system. It takes 11-14 days to exit.

It was striking to be that both science and Yoga explain death as a sequence rather than an event thought they differ in the order. But, if you look at the details, both are remarkably similar, which suggests they are not so far apart after all. The biggest difference is life, which science has no real explanation for and one that Yoga says is completely due to Karma finding expression. For an in-depth and easy-to-understand exploration of death, I would highly recommended Sadhguru’s book, simply called Death.

The Final Symphony

A 2013 study at the University of Michigan attempted to try to answer the question as to what happens with the neurophysiological state of a dying brain. As with NDEs, the debate was over if and how a dying brain can generate conscious activity. They monitored the brain activity of dying laboratory mice, expecting to see a gradual shutdown of neural function. Instead, they discovered something unexpected and remarkable; “Within the first 30 seconds after cardiac arrest, all of the rats displayed a widespread, transient surge of highly synchronized brain activity that had features associated with a highly aroused brain.” This is the same type of brain activity that is associated with conscious perception in living beings. Even more surprising, these waves were more synchronized than during normal waking consciousness. This finding completely contradicted the assumption that dead was an irreversible slide into unconsciousness. Instead, there appears to be a final burst of consciousness, more intense and coherent than ordinary waking consciousness.

In 2018, researchers from the Imperial College of London conducted a study that compared two seemingly unrelated things; NDEs and DMT. The latter is a naturally occurring, powerful psychedelic compound that has been called ‘the Spirit Molecule’. It is also the primary psychoactive ingredient in ayahuasca which has been used by south American shamans for spiritual experiences. DMT is known to induce hallucinations or dreamlike states, but the experiences are short but very intense. The results from the study were stunning, with both subjects reporting transcending space and time, experiencing unity will everything, and encountering what they called the ultimate reality. But why would a dying brain produce an experience that is like the most powerful psychedelic known to us? Could it be because as it shuts down, it finally breaks free of being in this body and back to being part of the united whole? From a particle in a collapsed reality back to a wave in superposition, to use Quantum terms. Many who have experienced NDEs report seeing their entire lives flash before their eyes. Brain scans show unusual activity in regions associated with time perception which may suggest that our experience of linear time completely breaks down. What we think of as past, present, and future could just be temporary constructs used by our consciousness to navigate physical experience. In the dying process, this dissolves and our consciousness once again goes back to the infinite whole. The same union that Yoga provides a path toward while we are alive.

To me, these discoveries indicate something profound about the nature of consciousness and something that Yogic sciences have always espoused. What if consciousness is non-local to the brain and is infinite and our brains just tune into it? This would be like the infinite number of frequencies in the ether that can be tuned into a specific one using a radio antenna. What is death is simply like the radio failing but the signal itself continues or like a wave falling back into the ocean beneath? This would answer many questions about the dual existence between the individual and a universal, infinite consciousness. During life, consciousness is limited by the brains tuning mechanisms, creating the feeling of an individual experience, with thoughts, memories, feelings, etc. And during death, the burst of highly synchronized brain activity could be consciousness escaping the shackles of the mind’s limited boundary. In that sense, death isn’t the end of consciousness but its liberation, a return to the infinite, unified state that we call divine or God.

Reflections

I used to be one of those people that had random thoughts about death which sometimes ended in mild panic as my imagination raced around what lay beyond. These episodes were few and far between, but each one was a vivid experience that left me not wanting to think about it any further. My attitude and feelings towards death has radically changed in the past few years, especially after I have walked a bit further down the Yogic path. For almost all of humanity, death is the ultimate fear for two reasons. One is that what lies beyond is the greatest unknown, an experience about which nobody has really been able to articulate or prove to any measurable degree. The second reason is that our mind is part of the body and when it begins to realize that the body is going to die, it panics knowing that it too will die. But I don’t believe death is an ending with any finality for a multitude of reasons. The fact that we have no knowledge or memory of anything prior to birth tells me that if we came from somewhere, we must also be going somewhere after death. Since our soul, consciousness, or whatever you want to call it is energy, based on Einstein’s irrefutable postulate of ‘energy can neither be created or destroyed’, we are not destroyed at death. He also once wrote about his recently departed friend Michele Besso, “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us know that the distinction between past, present, and the future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.” The body, which is just an accumulation of the earth, most definitely dies and goes back to the earth to be recycled into something or someone else. The mind, an accumulation of memories, is also destroyed, much like the contents of a computer’s RAM, which is erased when power is turned off. But whatever it is that we are made of, the energy that powers us and leaves the body at death, it is not (or can be) destroyed.

An analogy I will use here is that of water. We take a hard, cold ice cube out of the freezer and put it on a plate and leave it outside. After some time, the ice cube no longer exists and instead there is a small pool of water. We now take the water and boil it, and it too “dies” and disappears into a fine steam mist. But, through it all, the water that makes up each state is not destroyed. It simply moves from one energy state to another, always being water. So too with life, moving between infinite energy states to take forms that lend themselves most towards dissolution of Karma. Many spiritual techniques such as meditation, prayer, or total involvement in something allow us to experience the energy state that is beyond the body and the mind. Death of the body and mind is the ultimate experience of relaxation and bliss, as you are completely released of all your physical and mental entanglements all at once. When you accept this reality and finally lose the fear of death, you truly begin to live life as it is meant to be, with full involvement and abandon but with no entanglement. To this end, we can begin to train ourselves to approach death with acceptance and even grace. While our lives may have been a drama-infused mess, death does not need to be. This is why those who have experienced NDE come back with no fear whatsoever of death.

If we can accept that death leads to utter bliss and unentanglement from everything, what’s not to be happy about? I get this is very easy to say and I suppose the true test will only happen when we confront death. But, at least in my experience with yogic practices so far, I can say my own fear has diminished significantly. I recently experienced Atrial fibrillation (AFib) which started randomly while I was out at dinner with some friends. Being doctors, they recognized it for what it was and took me to the emergency room and they fixed it. But the entire time (around an hour) that it was happening, I was utterly calm. There was zero fear in me even though the thought I may die did cross my mind. In fact, I can’t remember a time outside of meditation when I was so calm and aware of everything. Realization that there is only life, life, and life no matter which energy state it exists in becomes the first and major step towards enlightenment and joy. Putting a small distance between your body and your mind is another step. This is also why most who have had a near-death experience, all come back more loving, joyful, connected, and empathetic towards all things. And most importantly, they come back with no fear of death. It is my hope and wish that all of you reading this touch the energy state of your true being once in this lifetime so that you too may begin the journey towards liberation from fear and living life as it is meant to be lived.