Practise mortality

Life is inclusive of death. They are organically a part of each other, indivisible, non-dual.  Like the spokes of a wagon wheel, there is no life without death. Contradictory to our common thought process, death is not the end, neither is it negative. What it is, is a process of renewal.

A breath is all that separates life from death. It is of benefit to become familiar with death instead of living in fear of it. It is the ego that lives in fear. And the ego is nothing but a superficial mechanism created by the mind to cope with life. Spiritual preparedness for death by practice and familiarisation will ensure that it is a blissful experience, which is why Osho calls it the ‘art of dying’. Many enlightened masters tell us that if you step into that moment of death with calmness and not with disbelief, the experience can be of utter beauty, transcendence and magnificence.

There are several yogic exercises that can be practiced,  ‘death meditation’ being one of the most powerful, where you visualise yourself leaving your body, dissolving into the five elements that you came from and then reversing the process. This practice will leave you not just revitalised, but also remove the fear of death. It will create vividness of perception, clarity of purpose and a sense of appreciation towards the creativity of life.

Using your imagination, you experience the eternal aspect of your existence. The body gets destroyed, and with it so do your successes and failures, dreams and regrets; what remains is the eternal ‘self’, ready to embark on its next journey. Given the unpredictable nature of life, we tend to have an affinity towards the passive and the perfunctory rather than embracing change.

That is why they often say to explore life to its fullest, step out of your comfort zone, step out of your safety net. Can you protect yourself from death? No one can, no one ever has, so it is futile to run away from it. To avoid death is to avoid breath, and in doing that, you are living in a bubble, without the ebb and flow of breath, of life.

If you ever had the opportunity to witness a dying patient, be it a loved one or a stranger, you would know it is neither shocking, nor painful, it is rather, just a cessation of life’s vital functions. In the Indian tradition, yogis are sent to cremation grounds and graveyards to become familiar with the process as an initiation into their ascetic life.

But as weekend warriors, it is easy said than done. Sadguru, a modern day mystic recommends that before going to sleep, every night, one should practice mortality. As you go to sleep, just imagine if you don’t wake up tomorrow. How do you feel? As morbid as it sounds, it will over time help you burst with aliveness and put you back in the driving seat of your life. We run around in our lives to control circumstances and outcomes, knowing fully well that we are never 100 per cent in control of our destiny.

Educate yourself with this powerful tool of mortality and revolutionise your life, let it burst at its seams, igniting your passions, sparkling your way through. The inevitability of life and death serve as powerful reminders of existence of life beyond the boundaries and dimensions we know of. Let Tecumseh’s words echo within you, “when your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.” be the master of rhythm.

— The writer is a Yoga alliance teacher