Questioner: I recently lost a friend who was suffering from cancer. Towards the end, she was in excruciating pain. The amount of narcotics needed to curb the pain and keep her comfortable was to the point of rendering her pretty much unresponsive. My question is, at the time of death, if we try and leave our bodies in full awareness, how does this work when one is rendered unresponsive from painkillers? Are we supposed to not take painkillers in a situation like this so we can leave in awareness?
Sadhguru: When someone is in extreme pain, not taking medicines could be very cruel, and anyway, being aware in pain may also become difficult. But I’m sure there’s an in-between way where pain can be considerably reduced without the person being knocked out. Above all, even if someone is unresponsive to the outside world, they may still be very much conscious. The medicine may be numbing the body, and the numbness of the body may not allow the person to respond to situations, but it may create an ideal situation within oneself to be conscious. Beyond a certain point, of course, depending on the doses, the person becomes completely unconscious. I think most doctors would calibrate it to numb the system only to the extent that the pain is taken away.
If someone is unfortunate where it is pain versus awareness, I would say lessen the pain first, because awareness is not something that you do. Awareness can happen in different ways because awareness is life. It has its own way of finding itself. It is not necessary to be aware. If one has at least lived a conscious life, if one has been initiated, if one has been infused with another dimension of energy, one could naturally become aware at the moment of death. Awareness is not an act that we perform — it is a state, a dimension of our existence. So it is not necessary to be concerned if someone has been numbed so that they do not go through pain. They may be unresponsive, but that does not mean they are incapable of being aware. If medicine is used only to numb the body, it could actually become very easy to be aware.
