Vinaire's Blog

Reference: DEATH: An Inside Story

“What you are calling as life, right now, is like soap bubbles being blown. The entire Yogic process or the entire spiritual process is to wear this bubble thin, so that one day when it bursts, there is absolutely nothing left and it moves from the bondage of existence to the freedom of non-existence, or Nirvana.” ~ Sadhguru

2.1 What Makes Us Tick

TYPES OF MEMORY
According to Sadhguru, memory is any trace of influence that is retained from the past. The eight layers of memory are as follows:

1. Elemental Memory (postulates)
2. Atomic Memory (perceptual elements)
3. Evolutionary Memory (inanimate/animate memory)
4. Genetic Memory (impression passed through genes)
5. Karmic Memory (misconceptions)
6. Unconscious Memory (facsimiles)
7. Subconscious Memory (impressions)
8. Conscious Memory (fully assimilated sensory data)

MEMORY & LIFE
Sadhguru says, “All these eight types of memory will play out in your day-to-day life according to the impressions accumulated and the situations you are faced with. Broadly speaking, these are the layers of memories that make you the life you are.” 

KARMA
Each ‘being’ comes with a certain level of energy allotted to activity at birth itself. It is divided into physical, mental, voluntary, and involuntary activities. Memory is like a software that is a combination of time, energy and information.

PRARABDHA KARMA
The information that is carried forth through many lives is referred to as karma. Part of this karma, which has some extra urgency to it (called prarabdha), gets allocated to this birth to wear off in the form of different kinds of activity.

SPIRITUAL PATH
Once you are on the spiritual path, you want to exhaust your energies allocated for physical activity very fast, so that after that the body will simply sit. The idea of being on a spiritual path is to put life on fast forward so you can discharge as much karma as possible. Spiritual discipline helps you do that.

2.2 A Bubble of Life and Death

Life and death is not a binary situation. Someday, we shall find that there is a spectrum of aliveness and everything fits somewhere on this spectrum. If we give the “memory software” a certain amount of vibrancy, it will slowly gather an intelligence of its own. It is only a web of memory that creates an illusion of ‘this person’. It converts the food into who the person is. If the memory goes away, the whole person will collapse. As the person ages he loses his intent; then, gradually, action goes first, then the conscious memory will begin withdrawing and along with that the energies will go. People who have lost their memory will have different traits but no personality. If the Conscious, Subconscious and Unconscious Memories are gone, the Genetic Memory will come into play.

What you refer to as life, right now, is like soap bubbles being blown. The air inside is the life energy. The outside boundary is the memory. With sadhana, you blow a huge bubble. A big bubble means an evolved level of activity and intent that is very obvious and cannot be ignored. Enlarging a bubble means making the wall thinner and thinner. You stretch it so much that it will burst one day. The memory stretches itself so thin, that when it is broken, it is really gone. The entire Yogic process is to wear this bubble thin so that one day when it bursts, there is absolutely nothing left. It then moves from the bondage of existence to the freedom of non-existence, or Nirvana. 

When death occurs, your physical self—an accumulation of the Genetic, Evolutionary and other Memories—is gone but the deeper layer of Karmic Memory remains intact. In that sense, this long-term memory within you, will determine the nature of your future life and experience. It is this Karmic wall of the bubble that you still need to take care of. One way to handle this is to capture a larger piece of life. Now, even if you did not do anything much about dismantling your karma, the karmic wall becomes very thin simply because the ‘life size’ became more. 

Another way is by being in the right spaces, in communion with the right kind of people and the right kind of atmosphere, but it is not about oneself. The moment it is about me, karma will grow. So the whole spiritual path in India has been designed in such a way that the karmic wall does not gather substance. At the same time, you go on enhancing the volume of life that you gather. The karmic wall becomes increasingly irrelevant and, ultimately, dissolves completely. Then we would not call it death. It is the ultimate freedom.

2.3 Understanding Life and Death

This person is a composition of five sheaths (koshas) or bodies. 

1. Annamaya Kosha (the food body)
2. Manomaya Kosha (the mental body)
3. Pranamaya Kosha (the energy body)
4. Vignanamaya Kosha (the etheric body)
5. Anandamaya Kosha (the bliss body)

The outermost sheath of a human being is the Annamaya Kosha, or the physical body. It is just an accumulated heap of food. The second layer is the Manomaya Kosha or the mental body. It comprises your thoughts, emotions and all the mental processes, both conscious and unconscious. There is memory and intelligence in every cell in the body. The mind and body influence each other. The mind and body cannot do anything unless you plug into quality power. So there is a third layer of the self, called the Pranamaya Kosha or life energy. All these three—the physical body, the mental body and the energy body—are physical in nature. All these three physical dimensions of life carry the imprints of karma, or Karmic Memory. Karma is imprinted on the body, the mind and on the energy. It is this karmic structure that holds the being together.

The fourth layer of the self is called the Vignanamaya Kosha, or the knowledge body. It is beyond the sense perceptions. It links the physical to the non-physical. If you learn to find conscious access to this dimension, there will be a quantum leap in your ability to know the cosmic phenomenon. The fifth sheath is known as the Anandamaya Kosha, or the bliss body. It has nothing to do with the physical realms of life. It has no form of its own. Yoga talks about it only in terms of experience. When you access this indefinable dimension, it produces an overwhelming experience of bliss. 

When someone drops dead, only their outermost sheaths—the Annamaya Kosha and the conscious parts of the Manomaya Kosha—are lost. The rest of the structure is still intact; it will seek another womb and manifest itself once again in the physical plane. This is why death is not dissolution. But if the energy body, the mental body and the physical body are taken away, the bliss body will become a part of the Cosmos. Now, they are completely no more. This is the whole story of life, death and dissolution

2.4 Pancha Pranas: The Five Vital Energies

PRANMAYA KOSHA (Prana)
Pranmaya Kosha are the vital energies that govern life.

PANCHA VAYUS (Pancha Pranas)
Pancha Vayus are the five basic dimensions of Prana. At the moment of death, each of these pranas recedes differently and affects the dead differently.

SAMANA VAYU (Samat Prana)
Samana Vayu is in charge of maintaining the temperature of your body. By activating it, you can activate your energies in such a way that you become less and less vulnerable to the external elements in Nature. It is also very healing in nature. Samana Vayu is also in charge of your digestive process. It helps you burn up the food as quickly as possible.

PRANA VAYU
Prana Vayu is in charge of your respiratory and thought process. For every kind of thought that you get, your breath changes in a subtle way.

UDANA VAYU
Udana Vayu creates buoyancy and makes you less available to gravity. On the weighing scale, you are still the same, but in your experience, you will feel as if the body has become so light that it is like floating around. Udana Vayu is also in charge of your ability to communicate.

APANA VAYU
Apana Vayu is in charge of your excretory system and the sensory function. Only when the excretory system is efficient at the cellular level will you have the necessary sensitivity for sensory perception. When there is food in the stomach and digestion is in progress, the excretory system slows down.

VYANA VAYU
Vyana Vayu is that which knits all these billions of cells into one organism. It preserves the body for a long time. If one has mastery over one’s vyana, one can leave one’s body at will. Vyana Vayu is also in charge of your ability to move. It is a very important aspect of spiritual growth. It also enhances your intuitive nature.

2.5 The Sequence of Death

MOMENT OF DEATH
Your breath stopping, heart stopping or your brain going flat on the monitors is not death. Only when the Pancha Pranas exit the physical body completely it is death. The withdrawal of the pranas happens over a period of time. All the pranas do not exit the body at the same time. There is a definite pattern in which they exit.

PATTERN OF DEATH

1. The first thing that happens after death is that the body starts cooling down. Within twenty-one to twenty-four minutes from the breath stopping, Samana Vayu exits the body completely.
2. Prana Vayu exits the body completely within forty-eight to ninety minutes after the breath stops, depending upon the nature of death. The respiratory action and thought process begins to recede along with the withdrawal of Prana Vayu.
3. Udana Vayu exits between six and twelve hours after the breath stops. Once Udana Vayu goes away, then the buoyancy in the body is also gone.
4. Apana Vayu exits the body somewhere between eight to eighteen hours after the breath has stopped. A dead body retains sensations until the Apana Vayu has totally left. 
5. Vyana Vayu, which is the preservative nature of prana, is the slowest to exit. It will continue to do so for up to eleven to fourteen days if the death is because of old age and life became feeble.

2.6 Chakras: The Gateways of Exit

CHAKRA
Chakras are points of intersection of various energy channels of the pranic system in the body. There are a total of 114 such chakras, 112 of them in the body and two outside the body. The levels of activation of these chakras greatly determine the quality of life led by the person. See Kundalini and the Chakras. Correspondingly, how energy moves through these chakras in death determines the quality of the death too.

LEAVING THE BODY
Each death is characterized not just by how the pranas have exited the body but also through which chakra or chakras they exited. Ideally, one should leave the body consciously.

(1) Muladhara Chakra: A very gross person, or a person in fear, end up leaving through the Muladhara Chakra, located at the perineum. Such a person will pass urine and feces with a certain force at the time of death. He is resisting death and struggling with fear. This is not a good way to die.

(2) Swadhishthana Chakra: One who exits through the Swadhishthana Chakra, located in and above the genital organ, can be reborn with extraordinary creative prowess.

(3) Manipura Chakra: One who exits through the Manipura Chakra, located just below the navel, can be capable of a very organized sense of action. One may become a genius of organization in his or her next life.

(4) Anahata Chakra: One who exits through the Anahata Chakra, where the ribcage meets, can become a prodigy in music or the arts who can inspire many. One could be a potential polymath.

(5) Vishuddhi Chakra: For someone to exit through the Vishuddhi Chakra, situated at the pit of the throat, is very rare. But if that happens, one will possess an incredible perception of this world and the beyond. Such a person will also exist in an absolute sense of dispassion and fearless involvement in all aspects of life. A phenomenal sense of clarity will be predominant in them.

(6) Agna Chakra: The Agna Chakra, located between the eyebrows, is of a higher order, it is more common for people to exit through the Agna Chakra than the Vishuddhi Chakra.

(7) Sahasrara Chakra: A person who is fully conscious will leave through their Sahasrara Chakra, from the top of their head. It may actually leave a physical hole there. That is the best way to leave. If you want that moment of death to happen in full awareness, you have to live a life of awareness.

BRAHMARANDHRA
Brahmarandhra is the bit of the skull at the top of the head that is not yet formed in infants for quite some time. 

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