80 Enlightening Quotes from Sadhguru’s Book, ‘Death: An Inside Story’
Last updated on May 2nd, 2024 at 09:52 am
Sadhguru’s captivating book, “Death: An Inside Story,” adorned with the tagline “A book for all those who shall die,” fearlessly delves into the realm of death, unraveling the complexities of the disembodied state, death rituals and the cycle of reincarnation. Within the pages of Sadhguru’s remarkable Death book, lies a treasure trove of thought-provoking quotes.
#1 One of the biggest human follies is to engage with death in the third person, as though it is an abstract event that happens to other people, not us. – Sadhguru
#2 Death is in fact life in a very intense form. – Sadhguru
#3 Most people in the world believe that if they die in their sleep, it is wonderful. What a horrible way to go! – Sadhguru
#4 Life needs a certain tension. Otherwise, you cannot keep it going. Death is utter relaxation. – Sadhguru
#5 In reality, death is not the end because there is no such thing as death. Death exists only to one who has no awareness of life. There is only life, life and life alone. – Sadhguru
#6 Death is the creation of the unaware. – Sadhguru
#7 As we have responsibilities for the living, we have responsibilities for the dead. – Sadhguru
#8 Don’t be dead serious. Life is a brief sparkle, but you shall be dead for a very long time. – Sadhguru
#9 Confronting your fear of death can bring tremendous clarity and transformation in one’s life. – Sadhguru
#10 Essentially, spirituality means putting your life on fast forward. You may suffer much more because everything happens at a fast pace. – Sadhguru
#11 Fear means your imagination is out of control. So it is a question of taking your faculties into your control rather than fighting fear. – Sadhguru
#12 Fundamentally, the problem is that we think there is a solution for anger, there is another solution for fear, there is another solution for depression. No. – Sadhguru
#13 If we look at life and death as a happening in terms of your experience, your inhalation is life and your exhalation is death. – Sadhguru
#14 In a way, everyone is a ghost. Whether you are a ghost with the body or without a body is the only question. – Sadhguru
#15 I want you to understand: however big one is in the world, tomorrow morning if I fall dead or you fall dead, the world will go on just fine—maybe better—without us! – Sadhguru
#16 Kalabhairava Karma is not a ritual to handle your grief, but because of what it does, it can handle grief also. – Sadhguru
#17 If one has mastery over one’s vyana, one can leave one’s body at will. – Sadhguru
#18 Depression, grief and joy are all infectious. You have to make up your mind as to what you want to infect the world with. – Sadhguru
#19 So at the moment of death, your many, many lifetimes play out in a few moments with great intensity. – Sadhguru
#20 The whole spiritual process is about raising the dead. In that sense, raising the dead is my work. – Sadhguru
#21 Once inside the dome, those who think they are possessed by some beings or who are impacted by the occult and such problems should sit either within the 15-degree angle in front of the Dhyanalinga or behind it. That space has been specially created to remove these influences. – Sadhguru
#22 If at the moment of death, a person can be 100 per cent aware, that person will not have to go through rebirth. They will not take another body—they are released. – Sadhguru
#23 As long as you are alive, it is important that you see how to contribute to the living because other than doing a few rituals within the stipulated time, there is nothing that you can do about the dead. – Sadhguru
#24 So from two meals a day, you brought it down to one meal for a few years. Then from one meal, you make it half a meal, and so on. This can greatly enhance one’s lifespan, or bring it down, depending upon one’s karmic and energy situations. – Sadhguru
#25 The violence of the death is not determined by what happened to the body; it depends on what happened within that person. – Sadhguru
#26 For most people, what happened yesterday is more real than what is happening right now. That is their experience of life. They live by memory. When you live by memory, you live with one foot in the land of death and another in the land of life. That is torture! – Sadhguru
#27 Tomorrow morning you may be dead, no matter how much security you create for yourself. I am not wishing you this, but it does not matter how healthy you are, how well you are right now, tomorrow you may be dead. It is a real possibility. So there is no such thing as security in this life. The moment you start seeking security, naturally, you become death-oriented. Unknowingly, you will seek death. – Sadhguru
#28 One major contribution to the multiple, complex ailments that you see on the planet these days is that people are trying to dodge life and, in the process, are inviting death. The body is only cooperating with this. The body is just fulfilling your desire to invite death. Ask, and it shall happen! – Sadhguru
#29 Always, people who believed that God is with them have done the most violent things on the planet. – Sadhguru
#30 ‘God is with me’ gives you a new confidence, which is very dangerous. If you think of God this way, you will not become spiritual—you could actually become very brazen and stupid. – Sadhguru
#31 Traditionally, people don’t cook in the house where death has occurred for a period of fourteen days. People bring food from outside, for the people there. But it is not good to eat there either. – Sadhguru
#32 Death is a fiction created by ignorant people. Death is the creation of the unaware, because if you are aware, it is life, life and life alone—moving from one dimension of Existence to another. – Sadhguru
#33 Death is not something that will happen suddenly; it builds up over time. Many a time, the body is setting forth the process. The person may not be fully conscious of it – the mind may not be alert enough to grasp it, but the body speaks it in many ways. – Sadhguru
#34 Death rituals are not just to assist the dead person in his or her journey, they are also for the benefit of those who are left behind, because if this person who dies leaves a lot of unsettled life around us, our lives will not be good. – Sadhguru
#35 Even on a daily basis, one can make this awareness a part of one’s life. 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. – Sadhguru
#36 Every fluctuation on the level of the mind has a chemical reaction in the body, and every chemical reaction in the body in turn generates a fluctuation on the level of the mind. – Sadhguru
#37 Existence is always a process. Existence is not a thing. – Sadhguru
#38 For me, living well is if you are able to sit here in such a way that nothing matters; whether you have something or not, even whether there is food to eat or not, it does not matter to you. You are just fine. – Sadhguru
#39 Fundamentally, death means you are shedding what you have gathered in this life in terms of physical content and psychological content. You may think many things about yourself as a person, but as far as the planet is concerned, it is just recycling itself. It pops you up and pulls you back. In that pop-up, you have an opportunity to transcend this whole cycle. – Sadhguru
#40 I always say, in life, one should have passion towards the highest, compassion for all and dispassion towards oneself. – Sadhguru
#41 I want you to understand that your grief is not because someone has died. One life going away does not mean anything to you. Thousands of people in the world die in a day. But it does not leave a vacuum in you. You are still partying. The problem is, this particular life going away leaves a hole in your life. – Sadhguru
#42 If this solar system, in which we are, evaporates tomorrow morning, no one will even notice it in this Cosmos. It is that small, just a speck. In this speck of a solar system, Planet Earth is a micro speck. In that micro speck, the city you live in is a super-micro speck. In that, you are a big man. – Sadhguru
#43 If you believe that the person you are grieving for has enriched your life, show that enrichment in how you live. If you are going to cry for the rest of your life, then it means this person is now the biggest problem in your life, isn’t it? – Sadhguru
#44 If you notice, whatever you do with life, no matter how much you do with life, there is still something more you can do with it. Life needs all your attention and efforts. Death does not need your support. It will anyway happen and it will happen with absolute efficiency. – Sadhguru
#45 If you understand there is nothing to lose, because anyway you came with nothing and there is nothing to lose, the fear of death will not be relevant. – Sadhguru
#46 In a way, death is a fiction created by ignorant people. Death is the creation of the unaware, because if you are aware, it is life, life and life alone – moving from one dimension of Existence to another. – Sadhguru
#47 Fundamentally, people want to commit suicide because in some way they don’t know how to handle life. It is like you want to find a permanent solution to a temporary situation in life. That is all it is. – Sadhguru
#48 It is unfortunate that we have moved from intuition to information. – Sadhguru
#49 Kulas were created mainly to maintain a clear genetic pathway through generations. Through this connection, they created runanubandha on the physical and genetic level as well. Kulas were maintained and sustained primarily by creating Kula Devatas, or the deity for the kula. – Sadhguru
#50 Moving from the physical to the non-physical is the greatest moment in your life. – Sadhguru
#51 Mukti means you want to become free from the process of life and death, not because you are suffering. People who are suffering cannot attain mukti. You are fine, you are joyful, but you have had enough of kindergarten, you want to move on. However beautiful your school life was, don’t you want to go to college? That is all. – Sadhguru
#52 Once a person is dead, in Indian culture, we always want to wipe out the runanubandha because we know yesterday has a power of its own. If you do not liberate yourself from it, yesterday will rule your tomorrow. – Sadhguru
#53 Once there is a deep acceptance of death, then life will happen to you in enormous proportions. It is only because you tried to keep death away, life has also stayed away from you. – Sadhguru
#54 If you are aware, you will see both life and death are happening every moment. If you as much as breathe a little more consciously, you will notice that with every inhalation there is life, with every exhalation there is death. – Sadhguru
#55 Our parents gave us just a seed and that became the body. But what the Source of Creation gave us was not a seed in that sense. It gave itself. This is the reason that all the possibilities that the Source of Creation holds are kind of encapsulated in us. Whether that possibility is realized in an individual life or not is questionable, but the possibility is always there. – Sadhguru
#56 People think nothing new should happen to them, but they want an exciting life. How is this possible? This is a no-win situation you are creating for yourself. – Sadhguru
#57 People think that death is a tragedy. It is not. People living their entire lives without experiencing life is a tragedy. – Sadhguru
#58 People who want to commit suicide need sympathy sometimes, but mostly they need a little treatment and very cautious levels of disdain. – Sadhguru
#59 Death means the physical body is completely lost. There is no contact with the physical body. Samadhi means that the physical body is intact, but the contact with the physical body has become very minimal. – Sadhguru
#60 Moving into Vanaprastha Ashrama is not about going to die; it is to live your life with a certain kind of awareness and preparation, so that death can happen in the best possible manner. This is not an invitation to death but a profound acceptance of the human condition. – Sadhguru
#61 So the whole spiritual path in India has been designed in such a way that the karmic wall does not gather substance. – Sadhguru
#62 You did not create life, so you have no business to take it either—whether it is yours or someone else’s. – Sadhguru
#63 The air is alive, a rock is alive, a tree is alive, an animal is alive, a bird is alive and a human being is also alive. It is just that they have different levels of intent, different levels of intelligence and, above all, different dimensions of memory. The Creation and the Creator, life and death – are all packed one inside the other. It takes attention – a lot of attention – to see it. Otherwise, one just lives on the surface, half alive. – Sadhguru
#64 The moment of death is a tremendous possibility for someone to intervene. – Sadhguru
#65 The power of ignorance is never to be underestimated. It is very powerful and the world is ruled by it most of the time. You think your knowledge, your fire, your Enlightenment will do things, but the Enlightened are always an individual, the ignorant are in masses. There is a huge power to that. – Sadhguru
#66 The significance of being a human is that you have the ability to discriminate and choose the course of your life. If you don’t employ that, then you are not much of a human being. – Sadhguru
#67 There is nothing wrong in enjoying a story, but believing a story is stupidity. How long will you tell yourself fairy tales? It is time as human beings we show some evolution. You must stop the bloody stories and start looking at the truth about your existence. – Sadhguru
#68 Those who are constantly aware of the mortal and fragile nature of Existence do not want to miss even a single moment; they will naturally be aware. They cannot take anything for granted; they will live very purposefully. – Sadhguru
#69 We all want to live well, and when it is time, die well too. This is the essence of most human aspirations. – Sadhguru
#70 What is the biggest wonder of life?’ Without hesitation, Yudhishthira famously answers, ‘Hundreds and thousands of living beings meet death at every moment, yet the foolish man thinks himself deathless and does not prepare for death. This is the biggest wonder of life. – Sadhguru
#71 What you are calling as life, right now, is like soap bubbles being blown. The entire Yogic process or the entire spiritual process is to wear this bubble thin, so that one day when it bursts, there is absolutely nothing left and it moves from the bondage of existence to the freedom of non-existence, or Nirvana. – Sadhguru
#72 Now, mukti means you have broken all laws and they can be broken only when you cease to exist. That is the ultimate freedom. – Sadhguru
#73 Whatever sadhana we have been teaching you, whether it is Shoonya, or Shakti Chalana, or Shambhavi Mahamudra—even more so with Samyama —essentially, there is a tinge of death in it. If there is no tinge of death in it, there is no spirituality; it is just entertainment. – Sadhguru
#74 When death knocks on your door, your life will be focused, and naturally, you turn inward, because outward is of no use anymore. – Sadhguru
#75 When you are very happy, all gods are forgotten. God is the creation of miserable people. Because there are lots of miserable people in the world, God has thrived. – Sadhguru
#76 The moment of death is a significant factor because whatever is the content of one’s mind at that moment—pleasantness or unpleasantness— it could multiply manifold because of the lack of discriminatory mind. This is why, it does not matter which part of the world you come from, which culture you come from, every culture holds that when a person is dying you must allow them to die peacefully. – Sadhguru
#77 Why put the head towards the north? Traditionally, in India, they tell you not to sleep with your head to the north. This is valid only when you are in the northern hemisphere. If you go to the southern hemisphere, say Australia, you should not put your head towards the south. – Sadhguru
#78 There are life situations; some are okay, some are not okay, some are horrible. Still, it does not give you the right to take a life because you are incapable of creating one. – Sadhguru
#79 You must be ready for death every moment of your life. You should live your life in such a way that if you were to drop dead the next moment, you still have ended it reasonably well. You trying to deal with it at the last moment is not the way. – Sadhguru
#80 Whenever I leave—whenever that is—for eighty years after that, my presence will be stronger, much stronger than the way it is right now. – Sadhguru
“Death: An Inside Story” by Sadhguru is a profound exploration of the spiritual dimensions of death. It offers deep insights and perspectives on the nature of life, mortality, and the transformative potential of death.