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. Whenever the fear comes out and you I still are not consciously remember facing it, it the strong becomes a fear click, the deep unde-stroke. rstanding 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! Shiva - Enlightened master from India. The word shiva literally means causeless auspiciousness. 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, 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 (worship) with such inexpressible gratitude. I saw that Vishwanath was simply alive there! Understand, because I died Vishwanath became alive! Until the day before that, because I was still alive, Vishwanath was always an ordinary stone. I used to feel that to touch this stone, thousands of people are Kamandalu - Water pot carried by Hindu monks. 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 Him 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. What happens at the time of Death 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 only the 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 Shiva - Enlightened master from India. The word shiva literally means causeless auspiciousness. Linga - Representation of enlightened master Shiva as a symbol of rejuvenation combining male and female principles. existence they cannot be seen or felt by the ordinary eye. A simple representation of the seven bodies is shown below. 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 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. All the guilt that we collect over our Please lives rises as we understand, pass through the desire is about mental body. 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. 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.

Happiness is a temporary feeling created by the mind. Bliss, the seventh body, is the 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.

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. 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 One more thing: 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 pranic body at the time of death, this whole physical world will become unreal and be 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 - money, name and fame, relationships, pride that you have a big community, support circle, and so on. 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! 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.

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. 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. 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 oclock. 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 oclock 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 oclock.