Sadhguru: On Death and Dying
Nov 01, 2025 06:00AM ● By Paul Chen and Diane Eaton
Sadhguru is an Indian yogi/mystic who founded the Isha Foundation, which is dedicated to human well-being through yoga, education and environmental initiatives. We interviewed him about his latest book, Death: Only for Those Who Shall Die—A Yogi’s Guide to Living, Dying, and Beyond. This is the first in a series of four articles on Death, Dying & Grief.
You cannot grasp the nature of life and death by doing experiments or thinking about it. You can grasp it only by experience. Whenever people ask me questions about death and what happens after death, I keep reminding them that it is best to know it by experience. I am not suggesting they should die. What I mean is, you must experience the life within you.
Until it becomes a reality in your experience, you should not believe this nonsense. Don’t believe or disbelieve anything, but if you pay attention to yourself, you can see the body that you carry is something that you slowly accumulated. It is a piece of this planet. The mind that you carry is a heap of impressions that you gathered. So what is it that accumulates this heap of food and heap of information as body and mind? That dimension is beyond birth and rebirth. You may once again accumulate another body and another mind, but essentially, life as such is the same thing.
If you have a lamp and a simple chant going, the choppiness of withdrawal can be taken away, and this should continue up to 14 days after one has been certified dead, because they may be medically dead but not existentially dead. The withdrawal of the life process from this lump of earth — the body — happens slowly, step by step. For all practical purposes, the lungs, heart and brain activity has stopped, so they will declare you dead, but it is not yet so. Even if the person’s body is burnt, he is still not dead because his movement into the other realm has not started.
When we met previously, I asked where you thought most Americans are when it comes to their thoughts about death. You chuckled and said, “Americans don’t believe they’re going to die.” What exactly do you mean by that?
A few years ago, I was in someone’s home in the United States. I was looking for the restroom and, because I generally know the layout of these homes, I usually find it without asking. But when I went looking for the restroom in this house, I opened a door and walked into a huge room full of footwear! I think there were around 700-800 pairs neatly arranged.
When I spoke to the lady who owned them, I said, “I can understand you want a pair of footwear to walk around your home, another to walk up the mountain, you want one to play golf, another to wear for the party, and you have a variety of clothes, so you need the whole spectrum of colors. So if we add all these up, you may need 20 to 30 pairs. But 800 pairs! You have obviously forgotten that you are mortal.”
Your life is just a certain amount of time and a certain amount of energy. Time is slipping away for all of us at the same pace. You may think, “I went to the movie,” “I went for dinner,” or whatever else, but as far as your body is concerned, it is going straight to the grave.
One thing every human being should keep in mind is that you are mortal. We want to plan and live a certain period of life, but there is no guarantee about how long we will live. You may be young or old, but you can fall dead right now. Please be conscious of this — not to create fear or paranoia, but to know the reality.
If you realize that your time is so limited and you don’t know when it will end, you will have no time for anger, frustration, jealousy or any negativity. You will have no time to do anything that doesn’t really matter to you. You will only do what you truly care for in your life. If every human being only did what truly mattered to them, this would be a fantastic world.
The following are the other three articles in our series on Death, Dying and Grief.
Finding Peace at the End of Life with Doulas and Coaches
This is the second in our three-part series on matters of conscious death and dying. Read the first article at bit.ly/sadhguru-1125. Read More »
Aromatherapy and the Sacredness of Death & Dying
Death, but make it sacred? 🌿 Discover how scent, touch, and simple rituals can ease fear, support the soul, and transform the final moments into something deeply peaceful. Read More »
The Other Side of Grief
What if grief isn’t something to “get over”? This powerful piece reframes loss as a lifelong relationship—one that can deepen meaning, connection, and even joy. Read More »
So when you get up in the morning, the first thing you should do is smile. At whom? No one. Because just the fact that you woke up is not a small thing. A quarter of a million people who slept last night did not wake up today, but you woke up. Isn’t that wonderful? Doesn’t that deserve a smile?
Then look around and if there is someone, smile at them. For millions of people, someone dear to them did not wake up this morning. Everyone who is dear to you woke up — Wow! It’s a great day, isn’t it? Then go out and take a look at the trees. They didn’t die last night either.
You may think this is ridiculous, but you will know the reality of it when someone dear to you does not wake up. Don’t wait till then to realize the value of it. It is not something ridiculous; this is the most valuable thing — that you are alive and everything that matters to you is alive. Appreciate it and smile at least. Learn to look at a few people lovingly.
In your book, you write: “It is said that humans do not know much about death because they do not know much about life in the first place.” What do you mean by that?
Most people think their “life” is their career or love affair or wealth. No. Life is not in our activity, not in our possessions and not even in what we touch, taste, see, hear and smell. These are all just accessories of life or ingredients of life. You are life. And if you are aware, there is no such thing as death.
Let’s look at the whole idea of death as it has been spread around in the world today. Did you ever die? No, so you have no experience of death. Have you ever seen a dead person? No. You might have seen dead bodies, but did you meet anyone who actually died and came back and told you, “I had died like this?” No. There are people who have had near-death experiences. “Near” is not good enough. “I nearly lived.” Is it good enough? No.
So you haven’t experienced it; you haven’t seen it, nor have you gotten first-hand information from anyone. So, where did you get this idea that there is something called death? Death is a fiction created by ignorant people.
There are many dimensions to the life process. Once the life process passes the dimension of being embodied in a physical frame, we generally label this as death. But it is just life, life and life alone, moving from one dimension to another.
You write: “If you want to live a full life, you should look at your mortal nature every day, not only when you are beyond a certain age. Every day of your life, you need to be aware that you are mortal. It is not that I want to die today, but if I do, it is all right with me.” What can we Americans do to help us adopt this perspective?
If you ask someone, “What is the most important thing in your life?” they will most likely say, “My husband, wife, child, property” or something like that. But if you just hold their nose for a few seconds, they will say, “My breath.” Everything else disappears. Breath is most fundamental. It is because of breath that everything else is happening.
I want you to check — Are you breathing right now? Don’t simply say “Yes.” Check and see. This inhalation, exhalation, inhalation, exhalation — if the next inhalation does not happen, you may be a big man or woman, but poof, you will be gone.
You are yoyo-ing with your life every moment, in and out, in and out. Just see how fragile it is. At the same time, it is so sturdy. How many things a human being can do! But poof, and you will be gone.
People always think somebody else will die. No. You and I will die. If you do not understand, accept and celebrate your mortal nature, you can never live totally. The value of our life is only because we are mortal, because there is something called death. If you had a limitless amount of life, nothing in your life would be valuable. Let us appreciate this dimension that life and death are one package. You cannot separate them. By embracing both as one, we will live and live totally!
One thing everyone should do is this: Every night, before you go to bed, sit on your bed and think this is your deathbed, that you have just one more minute to live. Just look back and see whether what you have done today is worthwhile. Just do this simple exercise. “The way I have handled these 24 hours — is it worthwhile?” If you do this, you will live a worthwhile life.
Teachings from both Buddhism and yoga say that one’s state of mind before death is key to what happens after death. Why is that?
People ask me, “If death is inevitable, why should I spend time and energy preparing for it?” What you refer to as death is a unique happening. Almost everything else in your life may happen many times over, but the final moment when you transcend the limitations of your physical body will happen only once in your lifetime. Moving from the physical to the non-physical is the greatest moment in your life, so it is very important that you make it happen gracefully and wonderfully.
It is like this: If you want to go to a neighboring city, you typically just hop onto some bus and go. You don’t book a seat on the bus ten days in advance and pack a huge suitcase, meals and provisions. But if you were making a long journey through unfamiliar terrain, you might do all this and more. In the same way, when compared to the journey after death, the journey from your birth to death is just a short one. The time a being spends in an embodied state is nothing compared to the time spent in a disembodied state. Yet you have made a disproportionate level of preparation for this. You have bought enough clothes for three lifetimes, footwear for eight lifetimes and much more! It is time to start making adequate preparations for the journey after death, too.
Preparing for death is not about gathering a lot of information or satisfying one’s curiosity about it. If you can manage the last moment of your life properly, you will at least go through the disembodied phase well. You will not make it hellish. If you want to make use of the opportunity that death presents, you must not approach it with fear. Unfortunately, most people create fear at that moment. This is not a good way to go.
With just a little bit of preparation, guidance and help, what is now considered a catastrophe can become a huge spiritual possibility. From a spiritual perspective, what perhaps did not happen in life can be accomplished at the moment of death, if handled properly. This is because at that final moment, it is very easy to untie the knots of everything that you have accumulated. But if you are unprepared or ignorant, or turn fearful, you will create resistance and miss that possibility altogether.
If you have lived a life of awareness, it is very much possible that you will stay aware even in your last moments. Irrespective of how death comes to you, you have the ability to die well. For those on the spiritual path, leaving this body consciously and walking away without damaging it — just like shedding your clothes — is the ultimate aspiration. If you know how to disentangle your being from the physical body, you can exit whenever the moment is right for you. This is the ultimate preparation you can make for your death.
Ideally, I would like to teach the whole population a way where they can live beautifully and blissfully, every moment of their lives. Then they would naturally leave in the best possible manner. But as I get older, I realize that it is taking a lot of time and effort. So, I would like at least to teach them how to die well. This possibility is available not only for accomplished yogis but for any sensible person who is willing to take instructions that are beyond one’s logical understanding. Yes, it is certainly possible to die in style.
About two-thirds of Americans don’t believe in reincarnation. Is there anything that can cause them to question their assumptions about what happens after death?
If I tell someone, “There is reincarnation,” what options do they have? They can either believe it or disbelieve it. If you believe what I say, you just have a fancy story going for yourself. If you disbelieve it, you have something to deny. Either way, only entertainment happens, nothing else.If you really want to know, if you are willing to apply yourself, there is a way to know. It is a living reality in my life that the last three lifetimes for me have been in the same place, the same work, and to some extent, the same people.
When it comes to life, there is something called my body and your body, there is something called my mind and your mind, but there is no such thing as my life and your life. Life is just a cosmic happening. This is a living cosmos. How much of life you captured will determine how large a life you live. The scope and spread of your life will simply depend on how much life you captured within yourself. The entire science of yoga is just about this: how to make this life super-enhanced so that the scope and spread of this life is as much as it can be.
In your book, you offer a lot of suggestions for what we can do to help those who are dying and those who have just died. Of those, what are the top three to five things we can do for them?
Everywhere in the world, people talk about dying “peacefully.” All they are talking about is that they do not want to die in a choppy manner. They want to recede gently. To take away the choppiness of death, one simple thing you can do is to have a lamp — preferably with ghee [clarified butter] — but you can also use butter — burning constantly, 24 hours of the day, next to that person. This creates a certain aura so that the choppy nature of withdrawal can be regulated to some extent.
Another thing you can do, if the person is willing, you can set up some kind of a universal chant — something like Brahmananda Swaroopa, a consecrated chant we have created — at a very mild volume. A consecrated sound like that in the background will also make sure that the choppy withdrawal can be avoided.
It is based on this that up to 14 days after somebody dies, there are various kinds of rituals in India. Unless one leaves so absolutely consciously that he is instantly off — for such a person we do not do any kriyas and karmas after death — but for all others, these things are done because you have to show them the way, otherwise they will hang around. If they lived all their lives in ignorance, enlightenment will not come with death. They still hang around and are still attached to things around them.
So the first thing that is done when somebody dies is that anything that has been intimately in touch with their body, such as underclothes, is burnt. Other clothes are distributed — not just to one person — but among many people. All these things are done within the first three days so that they get confused. They will not know where to hang around anymore. If you were to give a bundle of their belongings to someone, they would go there because they are still attached to the smell of their own body — the energy of their own body exists in the clothes.
Another thing that can be done, depending upon who the dying person is and if you know what their essential quality is, if you apply vibhuthi [a sacred ash made from burnt dried wood] on just that one [heart] chakra, you will facilitate that he focuses around that. Let us say somebody was a very loving person. As life is withdrawing from the physical system, vibhuthi, mixed with a little water and made pasty so that it sticks, can be applied on his anahatha [heart chakra]. Now his energies tend to gather there. If it all gathers there, there is a possibility that he will leave through that chakra, which is very good for him.
Generally, in every culture, it is said, “Even if it is your enemy who is dying right now, you must create a peaceful atmosphere for him.” For any human being, when you see that even the dead are not treated with respect, something within you shakes. Not because you have to treat a body with respect, but because he is exiting slowly — it doesn’t matter how he lived — at least that must happen well. Every human being must have that much intention. ❧
Note: This is the first of a three-part series on death and grief. Part II will be published in January. — Ed.
Publisher of Natural Awakenings Atlanta since 2017, Paul Chen’s professional background includes strategic planning, marketing management and qualitative research. He practices Mahayana Buddhism and kriya yoga. Contact him at [email protected].
