Sadhguru on the approaching hour of Death

Sadhguru : One more aspect is, if you have a certain thought at the moment of death, it becomes the quality of your future birth. We must create an atmosphere of peacefulness and wellbeing for people during the dying process because whatever is the dominant factor in their mind and emotions in the last moment will become the quality of their future lives. That is the reason why in this culture, we always said you should not die among your family. People used to go to the forest to die – this is Vanaprastha. Even emperor Dhritarashtra, his queen Gandhari, and Kunti went into the forest after the Kurukshetra war, with just Sanjaya as an assistant. They had all become old, so they went to the forest to die there, rather than in the palace. Though Dhritarashtra was blind and stupid in many ways, that much awareness was there, which is missing in the world today. Now that her children had become emperors, Kunti, who had suffered all kinds of hardship in her life, could have enjoyed the palace, but she also decided to go and die in the forest.


So they went into the forest and climbed up a very steep hill. There was a forest fire. Since they were old, they could not run or fight the forest fire, so they just decided to offer themselves to the fire. So Dhritarashtra told Sanjaya, “You have served me very well till now, but you are still a young man – go away. The three of us will give ourselves to the fire.” Sanjaya refused to leave them, and all four got burnt in the forest fire.


If you die among the family, you will die with a huge sense of attachment, which, in the future, will not bring wellbeing. You know that in India, even today, people go to Kashi to die, because it is a holy place. They want to die in the grace of Shiva. They don’t want to die with their family throwing their emotions at them.
http://blog.ishafoundation.org/lifestyle/dying-process-moment-of-death/

Do we get paranoid, when death is near ?

 

Ram Dass : I sit with a lot of people who are dying these days because I am very interested in seeing whether we can develop a metaphor for dying that isn’t quite as horrendous as the one we have going in the West. Because our metaphor for dying comes out of philosophical materialism where a person that is dying is surrounded by people who are saying “you got to be up and around tomorrow. Don’t talk nonsense about death.” Then they walk out into the corridor and say “she won’t last the night.” I mean, just total hypocrisy.

While you can’t kill anybody you can’t prolong life. You only know whether or not life is to go on or not when you are yourself not afraid of death. Otherwise your fear totally distorts your perception all the time and you just panic when somebody is near death. Recently Wavy Gravy called me up, he is a very beautiful guy. Wavy said there was a boy who was dying here in San Francisco, and asked if I would visit him. And I said sure, so I went over and visited with him. He was about 23 years old and he was dying of Hodgkin’s disease. It was last August. We met at Tom Wolf’s house, and I went over to the kid and I said to him “I hear your going to die soon.” He says “yeah.” I said “you want to talk about it?” He says “ok.” So we started to talk about dying. After a while he went to light a cigarette and I noticed that his hand was shaking, he was very thin and weak. And I suddenly got totally paranoid and I felt like “gee what right have I got to be coming onto to him? After all, he’s the one that’s dying.” So I said “hey if I am coming onto you, you know, just tell me to go away. I don’t have to do this.” And he says “well, being with you is getting me nervous, but the reason is because as death is approaching I’ve been looking for the strength to die and you are the first person I’ve met who doesn’t seem to be afraid of dying. And that’s just what I am looking for.”

And I feel like a child in this scene, and I’m just so excited by it that I am shaking. He was giving me the license – he was giving me the license to be with him. And we went on being together for quite a while and then he died later on. And what I recognize now – there’s a woman that just died in New York last year, her name was Debbie Matheson – she’s a beautiful woman. She was in her forties, she had two children and she was married to an author by the name of Peter Matheson. She was connected with the Zen Center in New York City, and when she was dying she was put in Mount Sinai Hospital to die. So the Zen students all came to her room every night and meditated and they turned the room into a Zen temple. And what happened was the first night they did this the doctors, the three young residents came to visit her room making their rounds, which usually consists of pushing open the door with that kind of hearty hail good fellow well-met type, you know, “how we doing today? Did we eat well today? Let’s look at that chart.” You know, that type of thing. They walked in and they faced all these beings sitting like this with candles and incense and the room was darkened and it freaked them out completely. And the second night they came in a little more gently, and by the third they would open the door very quietly and come in and stand in awe for a little while and then go away.

There, right in the middle of Mount Sinai they redefined a whole new metaphor, a metaphor that can be created through the strength of mind because you can create your universe anywhere you are. Once you recognize that, a hospital is merely a collectivity of minds who share a certain model about what it is all about. And the problem is that this society is one where the medicine men are knowledgeable, but not wise. And with the recognition of that, we are now seeking wisdom not just knowledge in our healers. And wisdom has in it compassion. And compassion understands about life and death.

A doctor is committed by the Hippocratic Oath to save life, but she or he does not have to be attached to that. They merely do that in the same way a bus driver drives a bus. It is the emotional attachment that they have to it that comes out of their own fear of death that is the problem in medicine at this moment in the West. And hopefully within a few years we will have an 800 number telephone number like you do for getting a motel reservation where if you are going to die in the next few months you can call that number and somebody will come and hang out with you and provide help for you in defining a new metaphor for how you’re going to die. And we’ll have some cassette tapes that you can play when you are in pain that will help you figure out what the pain is about, and how to use it to become more conscious. Because it’s obvious that the way to die is to learn how to live, and the answer to dying is to be present at the moment.
Ram Dass
Berkley Comm. Theater
March 7^th 1973

Source Link : http://www.ramdass.org/a-metaphor-for-dying/

That moment of transendence from wakefullness to sleep - Sadhguru

Sadhguru:

You need to understand this: everything that you can experience is life. What you call as death also is life. So, are there choices about death? There are definitely. What you are referring to as death is just the last moment of life. That final moment when you transcend the limitations of your physical body happens only once in your lifetime. Almost everything in your life may happen many times over. But this one thing happens only once in your lifetime and it’s the last thing that you do. I want you to understand death as life, not something else. This is the last act of your life. Is it not very important that you choose to make it happen gracefully and wonderfully? If you are fearful of it, if you are ignorant of the ways of life and you create resistance towards it, naturally you will miss that possibility.

People on the spiritual path choose the time, date and place of their death. The yogi always wants to know the time and date of death ahead of time. He fixes it. Many years ahead he says, “On this date, at this time I will leave,” and he leaves, because he has created the necessary awareness within himself to leave consciously. Leaving this body consciously without damaging this body, like you take off your clothes and walk away, you take off your body and walk away, if you can do that, that is the ultimate possibility in your life. If your awareness has grown to such a point that you know where you as a being and this physical body which you gathered are connected, then you can disentangle yourself whenever the moment is right for you.
Is this suicide? Definitely not. Suicide happens out of frustration, out of anger, out of fear, out of inability to bear with suffering. This is neither suicide nor euthanasia. This is about being so aware that you know when life has completed its cycle, and you walk out of it. And this is not death either. This is known as samadhi, where a human being has developed sufficient awareness within himself to separate himself from the physicality that he has gathered. In that level of awareness, one can leave. If you do not attain such a level of awareness, at least you can make that last moment very graceful, pleasant, joyful and blissful for yourself if you manage certain things.

Just practice this tonight … maintain your awareness and see. It will change your life phenomenally.

If you want to exercise this choice, a certain amount of preparation is needed. You cannot waste life and try to make use of death. If you maintain a certain level of awareness right through your life, the moment of passing also can happen in awareness. You live a life of unawareness and you expect that moment to be aware, such things don’t happen to people.

Just practice this tonight, the last moment of passing – I call it passing because you are passing off from wakefulness to sleep that last moment – maintain your awareness and see. It will change your life phenomenally. Just use this as a method every day. Go at it with total perseverance. You will see in a few days, you will get there where the final moment, you are aware. Suddenly, everything about your life, the fundamental quality of your life will change just by doing this one simple thing. If you manage to move from wakefulness to sleep in awareness, this last moment of passing from life to death will happen absolutely gracefully for you. There are other methods also.

In India, traditionally people choose not to die with their loved ones, because if you die among your family, so many emotions will come. Naturally you will try to cling to life. You will not allow it to happen gracefully. So people travel to faraway places which are considered spiritually vibrant and they want to shed their body in that space. Even today, people still do this. This may be completely unthinkable in the West because people there want to die in the comfort of their family. That is not a wise thing. It is truly wise for a person to choose a space which is spiritually conducive, which is vibrant in a certain way and to leave with as much grace as possible. If you have lived your life with grace, it becomes extremely important that you die with grace.

Source Link :  http://blog.ishafoundation.org/yoga-meditation/demystifying-yoga/are-there-choices-about-death/

Nirbhaya's letter to her mom

Before I could share my experience, We could read Nirbhaya's letter to her mom, which i came across in the social media.

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As you are all aware that Nirbhaya could not speak due to breathing problems and constant organ failures. So she communicated by writing notes. These have been put together by her mother on her tragic death and released. They go like this.........

Dear Mom,

I AM SORRY, MOM, I CAN'T FIGHT ANY MORE !!

I still remember, mom when once you and dad asked me what I need to do in my life. I replied I will reduce the pain of other people and became a physiotherapist so that I can try my level best to reduce the pain of others. But today I am not able to resist my own pain. Doctors are slashing my body parts for the fifth time like they were never the parts of my body… it is paining a lot, mom.

I am not able to breathe properly and they attached an oxygen cap. please tell the doctors not to give me the anesthesia, mom.

I am scared.
I don’t want to close my eyes.
If I close my eyes it takes me to that scary phase of my life where I was being cut into pieces.

I was just a bunch of flesh which was being continuously chopped by those animals.
Those faces were very scary, mom
They were like those hungry animals who were biting at every part of my body.

I don’t have the courage to look at myself in the mirror.
Mom, please break all the mirrors near me.

Please take me to the bath. I want to bathe. I want to sit under the shower for years mom so that I can wash the inhuman touch which has made me hate my own body. I tried to go towards bathroom but my stomach pain didn’t allow me to move myself.

I can’t raise my head to see you standing outside the door.
When someone enters in my room I feel very scared, mom.
My heartbeats gets faster and my eyes search for you.
Please be around me. I don’t want to be alone.

Mom these medical instrument beeps are haunting my brain.
They sound like those unhelping traffic sounds which muted my cry and pleads which I was doing at that time, mom.

The silence of this room reminds me of that silence when I was thrown on the deserted road.
I don’t know what happened but I was feeling very cold the same way like a person shivering with very high temperature.

Mom, do you remember once when dad slapped me in childhood, how much you fought with him
until dad brought my favorite chocolate…
Where is dad, mom?? I can’t see him... is he ok mom ???
Please don’t let him cry, mom.

Do you remember once how dad got angry on you when you used to shout at me for anything?

They have beaten me and my dearest friend with some metal rod.
It was paining a lot, mom.
I saw how he was bleeding to save me but they were cowards.
They kept on beating him till he collapsed and then they scratched every part of my body repeatedly, mom.

You always taught me to fight with difficult situations but I am very weak in this situation.
please hold my hand, mom, I want to sleep, mom, please put my head in your lap.

Please wash my body.
Give me some pain killers, my stomach is paining.

Please tell the doctor not to cut more parts of my body. its paining a lot.
I am sorry, mom, I can’t fight any more..!!!

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Lot of discussions are going on, in the social media, whether this letter is Genuine or Fake. But it doesn't matter to me, even if its a fake one because I see the element of truth. It was a difficult time I had in office, while I was going through this letter...............

Its the truth that Nirbhaya had to go through lot of physical pain, when she underwent surgery for 5 times. Today, I was not seized by the anger against those rapists but I wished and wished it again and again, if at the moment of her death, she was not surrounded by those surgical instruments but was surrounded by the loving energy, which was the very need of the hour.

Had we hanged those rapists, at the time when Nirbhaya was on her hospital bed, would that given her relief from the pain she was experiencing? I wish people would look more closely at people who are nearing death and understand what they need really.

If you still don't feel what i am saying, please go through this blogpost of a doctor's sharing :  http://life-after-joining-ishayoga.blogspot.in/2012/04/how-doctors-choose-to-die.html

A sannyasin said her father has cancer and her family keep asking her to go home, but she is undecided as she also wants to stay here. Osho says that as the father is old, it is better she go....

Osho - One should Die celebrating

[A sannyasin said her father has cancer and her family keep asking her to go home, but she is undecided as she also wants to stay here. Osho says that as the father is old, it is better she go.... ]

Osho - And this is a significant time. Go, and be as loving to him as possible. Be very meditative while you are around him. Just sit silently by his side and become completely silent, hold his hand. If you become silent, he will start falling into silence, and he needs that. If he can die joyously that will be a great gift to him.

Everybody has to die – cancer or no cancer, that is not very important. The most important thing is that one should die celebrating. And if he can celebrate, if he can be silent and happy, maybe he can live a little longer too. This is the paradox: if you are too much afraid of death, death comes sooner; if you accept it, it may not come so soon.

Sometimes it happens that the day a person accepts death, death becomes afraid, because with the very accepting you become very strong – fear is our weakness! Now he must be scared... and in the West particularly, people are so much afraid of death. In the east things are a little different – at least, they used to be different: people accept death, it is part of the game.

But in the west death seems to be anti-life, it is not part of the game. It seems to be inimical, it is not the friend. So if you can bring this understanding to him it will be a great gift. And now you can share with him – you can share me with him! Go, take a few tapes, let him feel, tell him to meditate – he can start chanting, chant with him. Create some kind of new atmosphere around him. Prepare him to receive death, and that may become his most valuable experience in life.

In fact, it has to be so, because death is the crescendo of life – it is the last flame – it is not against life! It has nothing to do with the devil, it is not evil. It is just that nature wants us back, that our journey is over, our station has come! Those whose journey is not over will continue in the train, and those whose journey is over get down... and there is nothing to be sorry about.

So go there, but don’t go crying and weeping. If you want to cry and weep, cry and weep here before you go – be finished with it! Cry and weep and get into it – completely clean yourself. Go absolutely joyous, with total acceptance, almost with reverence for death – only then can you share something with him.

An old man was dying – he was one of my friend’s grandfather – and he was always against god, against prayer, against meditation, but in the last days he remembered me and he asked me to come. I enquired as to why. He said ’Now I feel that I have missed something and if you can come and be with me, at least for a few days.... And I am going, I am going fast.’

So I went and stayed with the old man. After three days he died, but those three days were a beautiful experience. Because of death he became very receptive, he dropped his argumentativeness – he was an argumentator. He was not in the mood, not in a situation, to argue. Mm? – death was coming so there was no point; he wanted to learn. I have never found such a disciple! He was really keen to learn meditation – naturally so because the doctors had said that at the most he would survive for one week, not more than that.

He also had a sort of cancer, a very fast-growing cancer: you detect it and within a week you are gone. Nothing can be done about it – it spreads so fast that there is no way to do anything. So I remained with him.... I would just sit by his side and would tell him to just be silent, to feel me, and I would hold his hand. He had terrible pain, each moment was of great pain He couldn’t sleep without tranquillisers – even with tranquillisers it was difficult – and death was closing in.

But the second day, in the morning I was holding his hand almost for four, five hours, and then he suddenly said, ’But this is unbelievable – I am falling silent! It is incredible! The pain is there and I am feeling separate from it.’ I said, ’Keep quiet – this is the moment of meditation. Keep quiet and feel it!’ And the day he died, he died utterly a new man.

The third day he was completely aloof from the body – he was crying with joy! He died a religious man, almost a saint! And when he died, not only he felt – his whole family felt a sudden change. Just before he died, near around two hours before, he was in utter pain but yet not in pain at all. He stopped all medication.... So you just go, mm? And when will you be able to come back? How long will you take?

Source: from Osho Book "This is It"

Seeing this world through the eyes of LOVE - Osho

Ramakrishna Paramhansa Dying (leaving body) from Cancer-Osho;

Ramakrishna was dying. He had cancer of the throat, and in his last days it became impossible for him even to drink water.

Vivekananda said to him, ”Bhagwan, can’t you ask God to do you just a little favor? If you simply ask God that at least you should be allowed to eat and drink it is bound to happen. It is becoming too great a suffering for your body – and not only for your body but for us all. We cannot eat because we know you cannot eat. It has become impossible for us to drink because we know you cannot drink. How can we drink? So if you don’t care about yourself, okay, but think of us – we are also suffering. Just for our sake close your eyes and say to God, ’Do me just a small favor.’”

Ramakrishna closed his eyes, opened them and started laughing. He said, ”You fool! If I listen to your advice God will laugh at me. I asked him....”

That was his way. He had not asked – there is nobody to ask – that was his way. He would not hurt Vivekananda. He closed his eyes, he may have even moved his lips to show Vivekananda that he was praying to God. And then he opened his eyes and he said, ”God laughed at me and he said, ’Ramakrishna, you are listening to these fools? You follow their advice? Are they your disciples or are you their disciple? Who is who? You have eaten with this throat for so many years – can’t you now eat and drink with the throats of your disciples?’

” And Ramakrishna said, ”Vivekananda, his argument appeals to me. So stop torturing yourself, suffering, because now that I have lost my throat, I have to depend on your throats. Eat as much as you can – a little more than usual, because a part of it has to go to me. Drink a little more than usual because there will be my share, too. So eat, drink and rejoice, because God has said, ’Ramakrishna, you can eat through your disciples’ bodies. Why depend on this body? And this body is gone and rotten!’ ” There is a certain invisible unity, an organic unity, between the Master and the disciple.

Kalabhairava Karma - A must read process, if we care for people who are about to die or who are dead

http://www.ishafoundation.org/sadhguru-spot/kalabhairava-karma-death-process-at-ashram