Contemplating Death To Live a Good Life

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Michael: Hello, everyone. I am Michael Sloyer, and I am here with my partners, Rasanath and Hari Prasad. And today, our topic is the importance of contemplating our death. And Hari and Rasanath, you both have spoken at many of our programs about death. We have also hosted multiple programs with our teacher and guide, Satchidananda Swami, called On the Brink of Death.

So clearly, we think of it as a very important topic to think about. And yet for most of us, we keep death at an arm's length. We might joke about it. We might talk very casually about it, but how many of us have really introspected about death and all of the many implications that come with it? So that is our task for today.

And Hari, I would love to kick it to you to get us started with this question. What is so important about contemplating death?

Hari Prasada: Yeah, thanks so much, Michael. So I first came in contact with the gravity of the subject. and the necessity of the subject when I was at New York University studying film. I was taking of my own volition and elective course in existentialism and phenomenology because I wanted to really have a grasp on what is this world?

What is this life? And how can I best live it and give meaningful messages back to people. And in that course, there was Martin Heidegger, one of the key existentialists. That really presented his understanding that if we want to have a meaningful life, then we must contemplate that in the face of death, that if we want to master our life, it would be a contradiction.

To not see it in connection with the inevitable truth of its finality, of its end. How can you deal with something while neglecting that peace? So if we master our death, then we can master our life. Now, these are my words, but that's what I took away from Heidegger, and he was certainly not the only one.

This is a very foundational subject for existentialists, starting with the founding father, Soren Kierkegaard, And it's critical because we then have the constraints that an artist needs to work within. We consider ourselves the artists or the architects of our lives. We need a canvas. We need the constraints to be able to understand, well, what fits on that?

And how do I orient? And what's the significance? What are the attributes of the canvas and the borders of that canvas?

Michael: So the inevitability of death, and also when we put constraints, our creativity actually expands

Hari Prasada: Yeah. And it brings with it, the implicit message here is that there's a sense of urgency,

And so great sages throughout the ages from all different cultures have kept death at the forefront. You even see the iconic image of like a hamlet with the skull contemplating death, keeping it close by. Many sages would do this. because it would remind them how precious each moment is. And there was a renowned sage in India, Shanakya Pandit, who would say that the most precious thing in all existence is a single moment.

It's every single moment. One thing that cannot be bought back for any price. So with that, it should be highly motivating to live the best life. And it's become a cliche in our modern culture that, you know, live each day like it's your last. But there's a place that that comes from, which is actually extremely important and has a context to it.

Rasanath: For me, death was an early companion in my life, not because I was surrounded by it in any way or form. Even growing up. When loved ones visited and left, it reminded me of some inevitability that I didn't have a vocabulary to like, name at that point in time. I'm only thinking about all those episodes as I grow up in my own life, but it created pain, the pain of separation, the pain of temporality.

And I sort of grew up with that sense, that innate sense. And it became even more pronounced as I recognized how my own pursuit of success has a shelf life. And then that really brought death to the fore in a much bigger way. And the fact that small debts are always around the corner in some ways, things that we like, things that we are attached to, people that we love, and how quickly Unexpectedly, we can lose those things was just to me a stark reminder of what Then losing everything all in one shot can look like so that was for me the beginning of my own spiritual journey when I was 19.

And I remember asking my mother that I wanted to know the meaning of my life. And she said, her response in her own affectionate way, was, well, you know, finish your education, get a job, get married and everything will be all right. And at that moment, I just felt not just the pain of not receiving an answer, but also the pain of how even the person that loved me very dearly really refused to contemplate on this topic in a way that would actually be more meaningful.

Michael: Why do you think that so many people keep death at arm's length, if it's such an important topic to talk about?

Rasanath: I think there are multiple reasons, but at the core of it all, I think it creates a certain kind of despair that cannot be solved by the faculties that we have, our physical body, our minds.

We experience a certain hopelessness in the light of death. And even when we talk about how to make the best out of the life that we have, there is a certain settling feeling to it. It's not this, okay, I feel so inspired to make the best out of what life has to offer more than well, there are these constraints.

And so let us make do. So there is a way in which death brings us to our knees and this directly ties to our, you know, the topic that we ended up building. We so love to talk about is our egos, our temporary identities. The identities that we think we should be rather than who we are, the face of death doesn't have a solution.

And so it's comfortable. It's easy to keep it at an arm's length and go about life. But when we directly stand face to face with death, My experience is that we have to take our lives very seriously. And that's a despairing, agonizing and hard thing to do.

Hari Prasada: I think there's also a tremendous fear and existential dread at the core of every living being.

And that is what prevents us from wanting to go deep into the subject. Ross and I, you so nicely described about your childhood and I resonated a lot. I have those experiences also of just not knowing if I would ever see somebody again.

It's still very jarring to me that people that I grew up with who were family to me, I still think of them like family, but I don't ever see them now, and I don't have communication with them. You put it these little deaths that are happening all the time, and I was very aware of that. And I still continue to be shocked by it.

But at that time it was really raw for me. I was a very, I'm still like an outwardly, very sensitive person. I take my relationship so seriously. And it cuts so deep, even to the point where I had a good time with people at a gathering and I would feel so much connection and then it was like it's gone, it's done.

And that's so much how this life goes. It's described in sacred texts that we're like logs floating down a river. And sometimes they come together by some crazy chance. It's not actually a crazy chance, but the odds are so wild that they come together and then they can drift apart so easily. And it is natural.

It's more odds. That that will happen and then one day we'll all die and it will be over and what will it have been what we could say it was so meaningful we had these experiences, but deep down, there's a fear on top of that existential dread, which is very much related to it. Well, what if it's not meaningful?

What if it was just, we had a connection at a point in time, and that was all it was, and now it's all over, and that's it. We have to sort of ascribe more meaning to it, but we can't even substantiate. It's just, well, it felt good, it felt meaningful, but we can't anchor that to something that has a strong philosophical or intellectual basis.

It's a sentiment. I lived with a sort of debilitating fear of losing things, physical possessions, losing loved ones, losing my health, losing my own life. All through my life, I've faced that debilitating fear. And the only way to deal with it is basically to say, I'm not going to think about it. I'm going to escape.

I'm going to go have fun. I'm going to do great things in life. I'm going to make the most of this life. It's going to be awesome. Or, and these are not mutually exclusive. I'll entertain the subject, but I'll entertain it as like a curiosity or something that I'm dealing with in some way, but it doesn't touch the core of.

my fear and existential dread.

Michael: We're just a couple of minutes into speaking about this. And even though I was the one who wanted to talk about this, I'm already feeling some of that despair and a little bit of that hopelessness that you spoke about, because this is an intense topic.

If you really think about it, if you really let yourself go there, it's not for the faint hearted. And also it's very vulnerable. These are not normal conversations that we have with each other about, if I knew that I was going to die, how would I spend my time? Like, what's deeply, deeply meaningful? Even if I'm not thinking about that deep existential despair, but I'm thinking about how I would want to live my life.

These aren't things that we can express to one another so easily because it's so vulnerable. It's our deepest. Hopes and dreams and desires, and these are not normal conversations. So I just want to bring you all into my internal experience, because I imagine that I'm not the only one feeling that way right now.

Hari Prasada: Keep it light, Michael. Keep it light. Come on, we should be having more fun in life. I was recently watching Mick Jagger, and you guys saw this interview as well in some of our research. He was asked by an interviewer, is it difficult that you're losing so many friends and loved ones at this age? And he entertained the subject.

He gave it some fair attention. But then when the interviewer like really wanted to press on it more and like, how does that affect you? Mick Jagger was like, yeah, I mean, of course, I don't like it. It's an inevitability. I don't like these things. But then he was like. Let's talk about other things. Why do we have to talk about death?

It's uncomfortable. We want to keep things in a realm where it's comfortable. And it makes us feel good about ourselves and our lives, but death doesn't make us feel good about ourselves and our lives. It's meant to challenge our paradigms, and that's where the transformation happens. And so coming back to why is this so important, because death is meant to lead to a radical transformation.

Rasanath: this is something that I've experienced in a lot of coaching work. It's meant to that there are primarily two responses, I'm saying primarily two responses to death. One is you're just constantly in preparation mode and those small debts that we talked about, like I'm just going to prepare so hard, those small debts won't happen.

Michael: Can you give us an example of what it means to be in preparation mode?

Rasanath: The experience of anxiety where I'm constantly thinking of ways in which life can fall apart and I am no foreigner to that more now than in my life. And then ever before I'm actually experiencing how there's this relentless anxiety that lives because I feel around the corner something will strip me away from something that I very deeply like and I'm attached to.

The other way is taking risks. This is a very interesting way in which I feel how people play with the idea of death. It's almost like I want to create the experience of conquering death and bungee jumping, you know, whitewater rafting, just adventurous activities that give me what, what you call thrills, right?

Deep down, subconsciously, unconsciously, it's a way to contend with death, So it's like, even when we keep it at an arm's length, we can't actually keep it at an arm's length. It's present, very present in the way that we are actually living our lives. Because we know, deep down, it's impossible to escape.

Hari Prasada: It's running everything. I want to take that point and drive it home. It's not just present in our lives, it's actually governing our lives. And this takes us to also the work of the famed psychologist, Ernest Becker, who wrote The Denial of Death. And In The Denial of Death, he really makes so clear that we are all expert escape artists.

We're just doing everything as a reaction to death, as an escape from death. Our lives are a reaction to the fear of death. So if we don't start dealing with death now, we are actually pawns to it.

Michael: So, Rasanath, you said this thing about taking risk, and I want to examine that a little bit more, because what's the problem?

So, I know I'm going to die, and some of our message here is I should think about death so that I can actually do things that are meaningful to me. So I think about death. I realize I have limited time here. And so I want to make the most of it. So I do want to bungee jump. I do want to start a business that I never thought that I might start, or I do want to quit my job and go traveling for a couple of years.

What's wrong with that? You got to have your bucket list.

Rasanath: I don't think anything is wrong with that. It's just that even after we do those activities, we come back to the same.

It's many times fashionable to say, well, I lived a full life. I've had all of these experiences and I feel so rich. But when you pay close attention to the quality of that expression, and I've done this numerous times, but you play really close attention to the quality, the authenticity of that expression.

What I have picked up many times is the sadness in the expression itself, because I know, even as I'm saying it, that I have to convince myself that I have made the best out of life. But my heart doesn't feel it. My heart just doesn't feel it.

So yes, we can go about having all of those experiences. And while the experience of those experiences lives in our system, the shelf life is pretty short.

Hari Prasada: But people express their satisfaction with their lives. with such confidence and enthusiasm. It almost feels unassailable when I hear some people speaking about how pleased they are with the way their life has been and that, yeah, they're ready to die.

I'm good with death. That's one category of people is like, yeah, I'm totally good with death. The problem here is it's not addressing the root of the issue. It's not actually addressing what that death really means. And in our terms, the ego that has to go with it. So the ego has not died. And as long as the ego is alive, it's crushing the real us.

And there is a tragedy at the highest level when we die with our egos intact. Because we will have never known what we've been missing the real us which we have an inkling of is buried so deeply so perfectly in all of these experiences that conform to our paradigms that I am my ego I am my mind I am my body I am this present person who should be like this and who gets validation for being like this and who has these good qualities and these struggles and Who is a human being, but who is noble and we never know actually who we are at the core and nothing will let us rest.

We will never be able to rest as long as the ego is covering the self

Rasanath: When we really keep death at the core of our lives, we will begin to see the inconsistencies. with which we live our life. We have a certain attitude about death, where we say, well, everybody has to die anyway, so what's the big deal?

But when something goes wrong immediately in my life, it is a big deal. There are so many such inconsistencies that get brought up, that when we start to put all of that together, We will see. We haven't really reconciled with that. This goes back to it. We have kept it at an arm's length, but we haven't reconciled with it.

So to me, the reason why death is so critical is because death is the only thing that really brings us to the depth of emotional honesty, if we choose to actually be honest about it.

Michael: And Hari, you were saying earlier that death is really the, you didn't use these words, but what I got was the fear that drives all other fears.

And Satyanandaswamy said during one of our programs that death is really the cause of all of our insecurities and neuroses, that everything springs from that.

Hari Prasada: Absolutely. And therefore, it is not a cheap thing to be reconciled with our death. I cannot emphasize this enough. For those of us who are casual, like, yeah, I'm good with death or who are not casual about it, who are really very strong, like I am so deeply reconciled with my death, we should really examine that.

We must examine that because that is something which takes. A lifetime of extraordinary self work and a spiritual basis that is really profound. One that I am endeavoring with all of my heart and soul for the last 18 years. to realize and which I feel I'm such a far cry from.

Rasanath: This is the inconsistency.

Like, yeah, I have made my peace with death. I can't fail in my board meeting tomorrow. That is highly inconsistent. If you have genuinely reconciled death, that failure of the board meeting won't make a difference.

Michael: I was laughing earlier, Razanov, and you were talking about the bucket list, and I was thinking, and I've done this too, but people do their bucket list things, and as they're on them, or experiencing them, they're getting more bucket list items, so they're traveling around the world, and they're just asking everyone that they meet, where have you been, and where should I go, and that list is just getting longer and longer and longer, even as they're ticking things off.

Hari Prasada: One day that bucket is going to be kicked and there ain't going to be no more things that could go on that list.

Rasanath: Also that becomes the immortality project is keep an endless bucket list so that I can keep myself sufficiently distracted from having to contend with. Death.

Michael: Okay, so I think we've, we've made the case that none of us have sufficiently contended with this topic.

What is sincerely contending with it look like?

Rasanath: This is the beginning of Kierkegaard's book, the book entitled The Sickness Unto Death. And the experience of contending with death is despair. and if you look at wisdom traditions, if you look at any genuine spiritual path, I'm not talking about feel good spirituality.

I'm talking about spirituality that actually contends with the topic of the spirit. Who are we deep down? The beginning is always some sort of existential crisis that brings death to the fore. The experience of that is an inescapable despair, which is, again, the reason why death is kept at an arm's length, is we have to be willing to contend with that despair, day in and day out.

So, to me, the only way we are going to find meaning in the face of death is when we have actually willingly walked through the desert of hopelessness. as we contend with it. And sometimes we make the argument for the meaningfulness of life without actually having fully looked at the meaninglessness of life in the face of that.

And to me, the experience of living with death very close is that the way we are engaged with the temporality, you could give it many different shapes and forms.

success, money, relationships, the temporality of all of that comes to the fore in a way like nothing else does, which means suddenly I have to question, well, how am I utilizing my time? Why am I engaging in these activities? Then ultimately all of these will eventually come to an end. And the honest contention with that, to me, there is only one way in which this goes, if you honestly are willing to walk the full path.

And that is, you have to look at a spiritual paradigm. There is no other way.

Hari Prasada: Well, that touches on something that I think is highly relevant, because if I'm listening to this, I'm thinking, but that sounds so unattractive. Why would I want to walk through a desert of despair and hopelessness? That's the last thing I want to do.

That's why I'm avoiding the subject in the first place. You're not giving me impetus to actually go into it if that's the purpose. So I think what you just said is really the answer to that, but it bears some expanding on so that we feel the invitation here.

Rasanath: And the reason why I bring this topic is people who have reached a place of genuine spiritual inquiry, seeking and finding.

Many times, spirituality has been seen as escapism from practicality, and while there are shades of that that can exist, again, qualitatively, when you see people escaping into spirituality, you don't experience the depth of it. You don't experience the gravitas of it.

Hari Prasada: Or it's a wishfulness. It's a wishfulness is how people look at it.

Yeah, it'd be really nice. So human beings need a spiritual idea or need a god or something.

Rasanath: But when one has willingly walked through the despair of facing death, they actually can understand how you come to the crossroads of something within you wanting to live forever, but has to contend with the inevitability of death.

And to me, the contrast of those two things, because if death was so natural, why are we so afraid of it?

Michael: I heard two things. The first is we need to be willing to go into the discomfort and tolerate that discomfort long enough to actually learn something from it and get to the other side of it. And then secondly, be willing to ask ourselves the questions around if we're spending our time in the right way, given death is inevitable.

And I think that's where we can shift from Feeling like this isn't so exciting to actually, this is really exciting because we get to question how we're living our life rather than it being, oh, man, I don't want to do that because I actually don't want to change anything deep down. I actually do want to change.

And so, If I can go through that, then I can get to this place where, wow, all of a sudden I have this opportunity to start looking at my life and doing some inventory on how I'm spending my time, who I'm interacting with, what my goals are, what's important to me, and think about, do I want to change any of those things?

Are they really serving what's truly important?

Hari Prasada: And what's my underlying paradigm that accommodates and guides all of that, right? That is the biggest thing we have to examine. And that's the biggest thing that death challenges us to look at, which has implications of course, on everything else, our paradigm, our worldview, our values, our understanding of existence is what guides everything.

And right now it's an unconscious. escape of death. What do we want to replace that with? And what are we being called towards that is flying in the face of our present paradigm? And how are we going to step by step shift into that as we learn and grow more? Everybody is excited about the idea of transformation, and indeed it is exciting.

That is where the excitement is on this subject of death. We can transform our lives. If we really understand what we're dealing with here in the face of death, we can master life.

There's a great, great saint named Bhakti Tirtha Swami, who we often speak about at an African American from Cleveland, Ohio, who grew up in the ghetto and had nothing but he made it to the most important pinnacle of existence and he wrote a book. The subtitle is Die Before Dying. Die before dying. If you let your ego die before your body has to die, that is true freedom.

There was a member of our community, an incredibly thoughtful person who was really thinking about death he invited me to be a part of a production of a play,

And the title of the play was Be the Death of Me.

And one of the final pieces was that, of course, these are all true stories, a person who had drowned on a ship. He was on a ship and somehow had fell into the sea and drowned. And he had this experience where he saw himself leaving his body and going towards a light in the sky.

and he was floating, floating, floating, and it started to become very serene. And as he was getting closer to the light, he was happier and happier. And when he came really close, he was looking at his body in a kind of awe, and then he heard, it is not your time yet. And many people with near death experiences, has had that same Voice that says it's not your time yet.

We're we're the equivalent. So he then starts being propelled in the opposite direction. He's in reverse going back towards his body. Now, the understanding here is what is it that is going back towards the body? We have to, we have to think about that. And he says, wait a minute, you're sending me back towards that.

How am I going to fit in that? In other words, who we really are is so monumental. How are we going to fit in this covering that we take as our life and as us?

Rasanath: The gift of the agony in terms of like dealing with death and as Kierkegaard would say, despair is the surpassing excellence. He describes it many times as a gift. And the reason why it's a gift. is because we won't experience despair if our birthright wasn't that freedom.

And to me, the opportunity of delving into death is starting to unlock that eternality that we feel. And it's because of that push towards eternality, that push towards that freedom, that we experience the agony, because it is the birthright of the true self.

Michael: Thank you both for what you shared and Hari for that story. And I can honestly say, I think if I heard that story, even a couple of years ago, I would have really thought it was just the parable But as I've taken up a spiritual practice myself and have had my own experiences and also have heard.

A lot of other people speak about their near death experiences, both within the programs that we have had at UpBuild and also outside of them. It's a common, a very common description of what happens. this seeing of a light, this feeling like I'm at home, like I've found the right place. It gives me a lot of hope and also a lot of excitement of what that would be like. It's also confronting because I know I have a lot of work to be done between now and there to be able to have a full experience of that

Hari Prasada: there is a documentary series called surviving death.

And one of the episodes, it's three parts. They're all fascinating. And the first part. is about near death experiences and just how pervasive and how common the features are.

And there's even science that backs. I'm thinking of how such in London, a Swami, he presented his near death experience at a scientific conference in Germany. And he was sharing how he could tell you which golf move his surgeon was talking about while he had cut.

An artery that nearly killed him but then he survived, he was floating above watching everything and he confirmed it with the doctor and the doctor was able to say yes, very sheepishly embarrassed and afraid. Yes, that's what I was saying. How could you have possibly known that you were out cold.

Michael: Thank you, Hari. You also must not be a golfer if you're calling it a golf move.

I believe that's

Hari Prasada: Sachinandan Maraj's words, isn't it?

Michael: Okay. Well, if you haven't done him the service of putting that in a golf parlance,

Hari Prasada: well, I will, I will confess that golf has never been on my bucket list.

Michael: You have more important things to think about. I guess so. I mean, we have to be honest, golf is one of those distractions that people get to later in their life.

And it takes a lot of time and a lot of investment and a lot of energy. And, uh, it's one of those things that can distract us from thinking about the truly important things. I

Hari Prasada: wasn't going to say this because it's actually, I think it's too confronting, but because you mentioned it, Michael, I do want to put it out there for everyone to be a bit more provoked.

Srila Prabhupada, who Rasnath mentioned, our guru's guru, he actually was seeing some golfers who were playing very happily, elder men, and he started shedding tears as he watched them because he thought they're in the last stage of their life. They don't have time. None of us have time because none of us know when we're going to die.

But when you're a certain age, you can't avoid this. We will try, but you can't avoid this. And he was looking at the age and how little time they have left.

And he just began crying. This is how they're using their time. And they think that they're happy,

Michael: One of the things that I'm taking away from this conversation is that death is essential for having a meaningful life. And it's not an easy path to get there.

We really have to be willing to tolerate discomfort, but it's an opportunity for us to evaluate what we're doing and choose a different way of being in this life. What else do you guys want to add before we close? Then

Rasanath: we have chosen to face It's the problem of death. That's when we are actually saying yes to, yes to life, really.

The more we run away from it, the more we trap ourselves and not really truly learning how to live. death presents that paradox. And it's crucial that we, in order to live, we actually learn how to die before we actually physically die,

Hari Prasada: in a very sacred text that actually houses the Bhagavad Gita, which we study and teach as core to everything we do.

that larger work is called the Mahabharata, an incredible epic. And in it, One of the main characters, who is a self realized hero, he goes, and he's a warrior also, he's a fascinating, dynamic person. He goes to a mystical being, and he is questioned by him.

On all of these different deep truths about life, and he has to the stakes are very high. If he wants to save his brothers, he has to get all of the questions right. And one of those questions is. What is the most amazing thing in existence? What is the most amazing thing in existence? What's the most surprising thing?

And this character, this hero, his name is Yudhishthira Maharaj. Yudhishthira Maharaj, he says, the fact that everyone is going to die, and yet everyone lives as if they are not going to die. That is the most amazing thing. And he saved his brothers. He was spot on. This is how a sage thinks. And when we see, it doesn't take so much, just scratch a little bit beneath the surface.

As Ernest Becker is urging us, see how all of our life is just an immortality project that's futile. It's absurd, actually. The existentialists knew this. They knew this. Some of them chose to commit suicide, like Camus, because they saw the absurdity and they didn't have something else, but the absurdity is right.

So when you see all the ways, I want to pass this on to my children. I want to have this benefit to the world. I want to do this. I want to do that. Nice. These are nice sentiments, but what about the real us? What about the actual reality? What about who we are? These things are settling and they're immortality projects as we know, and there are some authors who will even tell you David Brooks was writing about a book that claims that even when we're trying to do good for the world, it's really to convince ourselves that we're good people.

That's the ego. Now, it's not only that. But that's a major driving force until the ego is dead, that is always there. So let us really fearlessly question ourselves and our paradigms and see our immortality projects that our life is made of and let's stop it. Let's one step at a time, examine and stop, shift the paradigm towards one.

Where we're curious and excited about the transformation towards being who we really are. Letting the ego go, seeing it for what it is. and moving towards the real self.

Michael: Thank you both for this conversation, for sharing your own experiences. For your wisdom, as always, and really your own sincere willingness to look at death for yourselves,

Hari Prasada: A beautiful thank you, Michael. Thank you, each of you and to everyone listening.

our heartfelt gratitude for your considering our plea to go to the self.