Disrupting Death’s Timing
People always lament when someone dies quickly, saying, “His life was cut short so suddenly.” But with such a death there is no pain, as the soul knows it’s coming. It’s really so much better than a slow, lingering death. The problem comes when doctors bring the dying back. Then a lot of pain is experienced. The doctors should let them die.
To make heroic medical attempts that interfere with the process of the patient’s departure is a grave responsibility, similar to not letting a traveler board a plane flight he has a reservation for, to keep him stranded in the airport with a profusion of tears and useless conversation. Prolonging the life of the individual body must be done by the individual himself. He needs no helping hands. Medical assistance, yes, is needed to cauterize wounds, give an injection of penicillin and provide the numerous helpful things that are available. But to prolong life in the debilitated physical body past the point that the natural will of the person has sustained is to incarcerate, to jail, to place that person in prison. The prison is the hospital. Prison is the sanitarium. The guards are the life-support machines and the tranquilizing drugs. Cellmates are others who have been imprisoned by well-meaning professionals who make their living from prolonging the flickering life in the physical body. The misery of the friends, relatives, business associates and the soul itself accumulates and is shared by all connected to this bitter experience to be reexperienced in another time, perhaps another lifetime, by those who have taken on the grave responsibility of delaying a person’s natural time of departure.
Āyurvedic medicine seeks to keep a person healthy and strong, but not to interfere with the process of death. Kandiah Chettiar, one of the foremost devotees of Satguru Yogaswami, explained to me fifty years ago that even to take the pulse of a dying person is considered a sin, inhibiting the dying process. In summary, we can see that the experience of dying and death is as natural as birth and life. There is little mystery there to be understood.
To perpetuate life, you perpetuate will, desire and the fruition of desire. The constant performing of this function brings the actinic energies of the soul body into physical bodies. To give up one’s own personal desires is the first desire to perpetuate. Then to help others to fulfill their highest aspirations is the next challenge. Then to seek for ultimate attainment and fulfill that lingering desire takes a tremendous will. Then to lay a foundation for the betterment of peoples everywhere, in spreading the Sanātana Dharma to those open and ready to receive it and make it available to those who are not, is the ultimate challenge. This perpetuates life within the physical body, which of itself renews itself every seven years.