Questioner: Could you please elaborate more about what happens at the precise, exact moment of death? and what if I am not ready to die? Is there anything that can be done about that?
Sadhguru: Whether you’re ready or not, you’ll die when it comes. It doesn’t take any expertise. Many aspects of life demand expertise – death is not like that. If I shoot you in the head, you will die even if you don’t know anything about it, perfectly well, isn’t it? That’s the beauty of death. Life is not like that – whatever you do, you’ll always look back and say, “Oh, I could have done it better.” Isn’t it? Isn’t it so? Life is not like that, but death is, this is the advantage with it. You don’t have to have any knowledge about it, you can die perfectly well.
Now, what is it that is exactly happening at the moment of death? Either your life can be shocked out of your body – boom! – it’s shocked out of your body, because the body became suddenly unable to contain life, it spilled out. Or it can be squeezed out of the body, or it can be tortured out of the body.
Now, you drank yourself to a state where your liver is in tatters. Now, life still wants to be there, but body is squeezing life out, it’s torturing it out. It becomes – you will see people go into disease, and people beg, “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die.” Then the time comes when it becomes unbearable – then they say, “I want to die.” Have you seen this happening? Because now the body has become such a torture, you’re seeking death as a relief, not as a transcendence – it’s just a relief. When body, when life process becomes extremely painful, people will seek death because they see it as a relief. They are not seeing it as a possibility, they are just seeing it as a relief.
So, death – though it doesn’t need any expertise to die, but there is a whole lot of science as to how to die. To make use of that event in the best possible way, there is a whole lot of systems. I think quite some time ago I said, from the date I leave – whatever the date, even if I leave tomorrow morning, what’s the problem – because I promised that after this, for 80 years, people will feel my presence strongly. That is, I will ensure that all of you are dead before I’m done.
So, if you maintain that, if you just maintain that connection, if you hold on, you will die well. I don’t know whether you’ll live well or not – that takes some skill.
So, life is something everybody has to pay attention to. Death – for you I would take care, but you’re asking the question in general. So, how should one leave? With the same ease with which you exhale. Actually, whenever you feel little uptight within yourself, whenever you feel little trapped within yourself, you always sigh, isn’t it? That is okay, if you leave like that. If you simply leave like this, most wonderful. But if you leave with a little sigh, still okay. But if it has to be punched out of you, or squeezed out of you – that is not good.
Life should depart gently. It settled into the womb like a snowflake, without any effort. Many of you have been pregnant – there’s still somebody here? Yeah. One day after you conceived, one day suddenly something – boom! came into you – nothing like that happened. It settled into you – another life settled into you without even you being conscious about it, with such gentleness it settled in. Even a snowflake you would feel. It is much, much subtler than that. Like a gentle breeze it walked in, like a gentle breeze it should walk out, because that’s how life is – rest of the nonsense is created by you. Life comes in that way, goes out that way – if you’re here just as life.
If you have become the nonsense that you have gathered, the dirt bag that you are – it’s not my terminology this is the local terminology, they call you a dirt bag because this [body] is just earth. So, the piece of earth that you gathered, you started having nonsensical ideas about it, because of that, leaving is such a struggle. Otherwise, like a gentle breeze it came in, like a gentle breeze it should live, like a gentle breeze it should go – that’s the way, that’s the nature of life! That’s the way life is. You might have made yourself into something else – that’s different.
People have made themselves into such a struggle. So, death should happen like gentle breeze, like a gentle note out of a flute, ‘uuuu’ it must go. It will be wonderful that you left on a song. But don’t focus on death. It is only the reminder of your mortality which makes the small time span of life very precious, isn’t it? If you were immortal, you wouldn’t do anything right, I’m telling you. Yes! If you were immortal, you wouldn’t do anything right. Now, because time is ticking, you know you are going, just as you’re doing this, you are going, do you know? Yes, or no? Because it’s ticking away, if you become aware, suddenly, life becomes precious and valuable, not a moment to be missed!
