How do some people unwittingly invite death? Where is the only safe place on the planet? Why should you postpone your meals by 10 minutes?
Someday, you’re going to die. This is an obvious, unavoidable fact of life—yet almost everyone in modern society has implicitly agreed to ignore it. According to spiritual teacher Sadhguru, this reluctance to acknowledge death leads to enormous and unnecessary suffering.
Read on for several Death: An Inside Story quotes that will give you a good sense of the book’s ideas.
Death: An Inside Story Quotes
Sadhguru argues that, if you form a peaceful relationship to your own death, you’ll be empowered to live a more balanced, joyful life. More than that, it’ll help you prepare for your death—and what comes afterward.
We’ve collected several Death: An Inside Story quotes and provided them along with some context and explanation to help you understand where Sadhguru is coming from.
“Avoiding death is avoiding life. Dodging life is inviting death.”
Sadhguru asserts that, for some people, ignoring death causes suffering because it prevents them from appreciating the time they have. Unless someone recognizes that every second of their life is one they’ll never get back, they’ll frequently waste time and energy on things that don’t matter. For example, they might get into petty fights with others and worry about parts of life they can’t change. Such time-wasting only makes life less enjoyable.
Other people go to the opposite extreme: Instead of ignoring death completely, they try to avoid death at all costs. They want to live a comfortable, predictable, and unchanging life with as little risk and danger as possible. However, Sadhguru maintains that this kind of life is practically the same as being dead already, and it leaves these people depressed and aimless.
“The only safe place on the planet is your grave.”
Once you realize that there’s no reason to be afraid of death, you’ll have an easier time accepting it. According to Sadhguru, people who fear death are actually afraid of two types of pain: First, they fear the pain associated with death itself. Luckily, he says, death itself isn’t painful—on the contrary, you can only feel pain if you’re still alive. If you’re sick, the moment you die is the moment the pain stops.
Sadhguru states that people fear death because they’re afraid of the pain of losing something important to them. However, the only losses you suffer in death are those that can’t hurt you. You’re not really losing anything at all.
“When you lose the body, your ability to discriminate is gone. All the memory and other mind-stuff are still there; only the discriminatory process is lost.”
Sadhguru explains that dead people not only lose their bodies—they also lose the ability of the rational mind to discriminate between what’s desirable and undesirable. Thus, they can no longer make decisions to control or change their lived experience. Instead, the only things they experience are uncontrolled impulses. Specifically, whatever interior experience they had at the moment of death will continue for as long as they remain disembodied. Dead people will feel this internal experience to an extremely intense degree, since they lack the control to rein in their impulses.
“When you are hungry and want to eat, just postpone it by ten minutes. Be conscious of your hunger; do not get busy with some other activity. Consciously postpone your meal and wait.”
According to Sadhguru, one way to practice mindfulness is to intentionally focus on the experience of hunger. Just before you’re about to prepare or eat a meal, sit and wait for a short time. Pay attention to the experience of hunger and notice that although food is something that your physical body needs, it’s not something that your consciousness—your true self—needs. This will help you become aware that your body isn’t really part of you. The ego-reducing effect of this experience is why fasting is such a common tradition in many world religions.
“Death means the end of the physical body; everything else continues and finds another body soon.”
When you die, Sadhguru says, almost all of the karma that makes up your identity is destroyed. Your body, mind, and memories of past experiences no longer exist. However, your life energy—the part of you reading these words right now—lives on everywhere else in the universe. Because of this, Sadhguru goes as far as to say that death doesn’t really exist; it’s just a transition to a different form of life.
The only reason you fear death is because you mistakenly believe that “you” are karma rather than life energy. You believe that your body is “you,” your emotions are “you,” and your memories are “you.” Once you realize that these are all things that occur outside of “you,” you’ll understand that losing them won’t be painful, and you’ll no longer be afraid.
