Sadhguru: So, they were saying, they see angels, and there's a tunnel going...
If you have a certain amount of mastery, you can jump off and jump back quite effortlessly.
You can yo-yo this body a little bit, if you wish.
There are many, many things you can perceive right here.
Questioner: So, I want to hear about your thoughts on near-life-death experience.
A lot of people have, in surgery, said that, you know… middle of surgery, they could come out and see
what's happening, see the conversation, what the doctor is doing. So just a thought, you know, when…
Do people really die at that time, or they reach some moksha or heaven, come back?
Sadhguru: Near death… You mean near-death? You said "Near-life," so I was wondering what it is.
Questioner: So, when I saw you, I saw life… near-death experience. Sadhguru: Okay (Laughs)
Facilitator (Bala): I think Emery wants to add something to it, yeah.
Emery N. Brown: I think… I think you might be, sort of, maybe mixing two things.
So, there is people under anesthesia becoming aware,
and let's just say for the sake of this conversation, at some point in time,
they just didn't have enough anesthesia, so they became aware of what was going on around them.
Questioner: No, but at least lot of people are... can see from the top, what is happening down.
Emery N. Brown: Right, right. So, then there is near-death experiences, where let's say,
someone is about to die, very often… we've, you know, we've read these accounts,
like Dr. Sanjay Gupta's book talks about these, like cheating death,
in which case, they then have these experiences where they may see lights, or what have you…
So, I just want to distinguish because, there are two different cases.
Questioner: Yeah, that's what I want to know. Emery N. Brown: Ok, all right.
Questioner: There's more focus on out-of-body experiences. Emery N. Brown: Pardon me?
Questioner: Out-of-body experiences. Emery N. Brown: An out-of-body experiences. And we see this
sometimes where certain of the drugs we give patients, they report out-of-body experiences.
Sadhguru: Anyway, when we say death,
the definition of death on one level is you lost your body. That's what death is. (Laughs)
So, I mean, let's not go into other areas, they'll get you into very fuzzy places (Laughs).
About near-death experience – what...
what is being referred to as meditation,
we have a certain type of meditation called Shoonya. That means, Shoonya literally translates as emptiness.
That's not the right translation, but there is no appropriate word in English. So, it's emptiness or nothingness.
So, if you settle down into Shoonya meditation, it's not near-death, it's actually death,
but conscious death. You… See, if you have…
Suppose you are riding a bicycle, you are a new rider with little balance, so you'll go like this (Gestures).
Some other kid is riding, he will leave his hands free and whistle and look here, look there and ride,
and do all kinds of things, stand up on the handle bar and turn around, jump, all this. Why?
It's a certain mastery, certain balance and mastery.
Now you can jump off the cycle, and again jump back, and do all these things.
Similarly, with your body, if you have a certain amount of mastery, you can jump off and jump back quite effortlessly.
Now, it is happening accidentally because of some medication, or for many peoples
during sixties, seventies – the LSD time – there were whole lot of people talking about these things.
Sir, it's your time. It was your time (Laughs).
Emery N. Brown: Metaphorically (Laughter).
Sadhguru: So, a whole lot of people talking about this, and it really happened to them.
It's not that they were imagining things, it actually happened to many of them.
But it was also because it was hallucinatory, nobody knows whether it's this or that.
There is no way to for sure say it actually happened to them or not.
But I have met many people of those times,
who genuinely experienced things with which their lives got transformed, in many different ways.
In a crazy way, but suddenly everything about them changed simply because
somewhere they perceived this – you can yo-yo this body a little bit, if you wish. It's not a permanent thing.
Just that little awareness changed the way they perceive life, and they behave and they do things in their life.
So, this near-death... I've not really looked at any of the thing, but some people have told me,
some popular books, so they were saying, they see angels, and there's a tunnel going.
See, one thing is, you must understand, when somebody is going on the surgery table,
the doctors may be confident, the patient always fears that he may die. Hello?
Doctors may be confident, they know the case, they know what they are doing.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, they are confident what they are doing.
But the patient, once he closes his eyes and hands over his life to somebody,
he always fears what will happen. So, every small thing he thinks is death.
It happens to people, if you put a gun to somebody's head and just shoot and miss them or it's a blank...
They almost died. Near-death experience – they'll blank out for some time, and then they come back.
They really think they went away and they came back. And they saw the scene also from the top, because…
that's because of the Hollywood (Laughter).
So, human mind is capable of creating many dimensions of experiences.
It need not be construed as death – it's life. First of all…
Anyway, I am coming out with a book on death – An inside story (Laughter/Applause).
I am doing this for six-and-a-half years, it's not complete yet (Laughs).
Hopefully, in the next year or so, I will come out with this.
Why I am saying this is… in reality, there is no such thing as death.
It's life, life, and life alone, moving from one dimension to another, another dimension to another.
So, if I lose one dimension, it looks like that is death.
Right now, it is a medical fact that they say approximately every fortnight,
you are losing seven kilograms of your existing body, and something new has come in – in one fortnight.
Whatever your weight, you must just calculate in how many fortnights you are completely lost.
Everything that you have in your body is being lost continuously, and something else is coming in.
But you don't experience as death.
Every meal, and every day you empty your bowels, you must experience it as near-death.
But that doesn't happen to you. But this happens to you, because there is some disengagement
in your experience, particularly because of anesthetic impact.
The disengagement with various faculties that you're normally used to, suddenly makes you feel you are dead.
Nobody died, it's just… it's a completely wrong perception.
Yes, every moment of your life, if you are willing,
if you are not entangled with situations and your own thoughts and emotions,
there are many, many things you can perceive right here.
Right here, sitting here, you can look at your life from there. Okay? This is not near-death, this is life.
But, because as I said, loss of faculties works out well for a lot of people, unfortunately.
It's not a good thing. This happened...
A man met a close friend of his,
that he knew very well when when they were in the university together, after twenty-five years' break.
So, he invited home for dinner, he went.
And being an Indian household, the wife was serving, and these two men were eating.
And every time he wanted to ask for something from his wife, he said,
"My honey, my sweetie pie, my boo boo boo, my ku ku ku, my Bulbul" (Referring to Hindi – Nightingale), and whatever else.
You are Tamil, so "My thangam" (Referring to Tamil – gold) and "my chuchu" – all those things (Few laugh).
So, after the dinner was over, the friend was leaving, and he said,
"You are having an amazing life, aren't you?"
"I'm married with my wife for fifteen years; we can't even look at each other's face."
"The way... the endearments you are showering upon your wife, is truly fantastic."
He said, "What are you talking about?" He said, "You called her Bulbul, you called her thangam, you called her this..."
He said, "Oh man, I forgot her name seven years ago." (Laughter/Applause)
Loss of faculties, unfortunately, work very well for lot of people, because they are suffering their faculties.
The greatest faculties that have come to us after millions of years of evolution,
unfortunately, we suffer (Laughs), because we have not read the user's manual. (Applause)