A NOBLE LIFE, A NOBLE DEATH

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Everyone wants a noble life and a noble death. Regardless of how  financially rich we are in our everyday life, it doesn’t necessarily lead us to a noble life or to a noble death. Likewise, even if our material life is full of hardships, they do not necessarily be a fetter to a noble life or a noble death.

Valid higher knowledge about life and its continuous practice in life with higher awareness (expanded consciousness) alone can ennoble our life and death. Nobility does not abide in the circumstances of our life. The distinction between grace and   disgrace lies in our responses to our experiences in life. It is only our valid and rational knowledge about life and our constant application of that knowledge in our everyday life that is ultimately going to rescue us from our suffering. Our blind beliefs would not save us.  

None of these ancient teachings are in any way religious. They only reveal truths that can be verified through shastra, reason, observation, contemplation, and dispassionate analysis. Shastra is to be understood as an ancient corpus of technical knowledge with high practical value that explains standards and regulations regarding  various otherwise hidden aspects of life. The ancient sahstras of Bharat had told us all of these thousands of years ago. Owing to the phenomenal antiquity of these ancient sahstras, their extraordinary depth and breadth, as well as their intrinsic linguistic challenges, the core of these insights, remain elusive to most people even today.

A Noble Life

A noble life is a life with elevated inner alertness, total mindfulness, and complete discernment in  thoughts and actions. It is not enough that our   eyes and ears are open and active. We should be totally mindful internally, complete with fully discerning and conscious intellect.  Such a state of mindful awareness is known as, being fully ‘conscious’.  We are in a fully ‘conscious’ state when our body, mind, and intellect are alert, awake and full-blown all the time. 

As humans, we must see, cognize, and interact in a fully awakened, and ‘conscious’ state. We must be in a fully conscious awareness in wakeful state, in our sleep, and even in our death. This can only be achieved through wilful self-training and practice. No one else can do this for us; we have to do it ourselves. 

Animals cannot acquire, nurture or apply such states of “consciousness” on their own. They are bestowed with innate   “instincts” by nature.  In other words, animals are limited by their inbuilt instincts. Animal responses to their situations and experiences are driven by either of the two opposing forces, namely, attraction or repulsion. Animals are unable to use any discretionary intellect and respond to situations through conscious choices. 

As humans, we can consciously develop our awareness through our intention.  We have already evolved from the level of animal-consciousness. However, almost all of us are still in a state of sleep-walking, being ‘neither here nor there’.   We are consistently carrying thoughts in our minds and unconsciously remain engaged with our own self-generated thoughts. There are always self-talks going on in our heads. All our responses to situations in life are  manipulated by these self-talks. We must change that state and remain completely conscious, twenty-four by seven, regardless of our life-circumstances and experiences. This is the noble life. 

We have already left the animal phase of consciousness. Ours consciousness should not be clogged with the opposing forces powered by the vestigial “instincts”. Ours responses in life should be totally guided by our conscious and mindful choices, if our mind and intellect are in harmony. And, that is the noble life. Only when we respond to situations in life with higher consciousness   can we live a noble life. Likewise, only when we are well-trained to be in a full consciousness state, can we leave our body with nobility. That is possible only through constant practice of living consciously every day. 

Given below are some guidelines and recommendations that will help us lead our daily lives in a fully conscious state.  

1. Dharmic views, dharmic thoughts, and dharmic decisions should be brought into our daily life. We should be conscious enough to ensure that our words, actions, character, lifestyle, work, and efforts are always dharmic. Actions that are contrary to dharmic regulations are called ‘unconscious’, adharmic actions. We should never act against our own ‘conscience’. Our ‘dharmic’conduct as human beings, is essential not only for a noble life, but also for the sustainability of our planet earth itself. A balanced relationship between ourselves and everything around us is absolutely vital for those who desire a noble life and a noble death.
2. Know that we ourselves are the only ones responsible for whatever happens in our lives. We must understand that none of our experiences in our life are there to punish us for our past faults or deficiencies, regardless of their origin from those times. They are there as valuable lessons to drive home the imperativeness of Dharmic conduct in life. Experiences in life are the repeated opportunities given to us to practice and learn ‘dharma’, until we get it absolutely right.  Until we learn it, similar experiences will keep visiting us. This is the underlying mechanism of Karma. They are not there to punish us, but to gradually train us to ‘respond’ to life situations dharmically.  ‘Responsibility’ is our   ability to respond dharmically to any life situations.   No one else is ‘responsible’ for our life-experiences, we alone are ‘responsible’, as they are tailor-made for us.  We need to remain‘conscious’ and act in the power of that moment from a completely high state of awareness.  This is possible only through daily practice. Therefore, we need to accept all experiences in our life without any internal commotions, and respond to all situations with complete awareness, totally aiming at the highest possible ‘dharmic’ good of all involved.
3. We must be alert and fully aware at every moment. No matter how many provocations come, we should not emotionally ‘react’ to anything. We should only ‘respond’ consciously by carrying out what needs to be carried out.   ‘Reaction’ and ‘response’ are two different things. In the act of ‘reaction’, animalistic instincts are at work. In the act of ‘response’, our mind and our discerning intellect work together. We should pay attention and understand the difference between the two carefully. We should not ‘react’ in any situation, however grave that may be. Not only that,   we should surely ‘respond’ with full dharmic awareness   in whatever way we can, in a given situation.  
4. We should stand aside and observe every thought that unfolds in our mind, as a neutral witness. We should not allow any of our thoughts, words, or actions escape from us without our watching it. This is a powerful practice for developing and growing awareness and expanding our consciousness.
5. Never compare ourselves or our life circumstances to others. Universal Intelligence provides each of us individually tailor-made life lessons. Our unique lessons are our specific circumstances of birth, our specific family, our life-context, our health, our illness, our talents, and our disabilities. They are training materials given for our training. They are intended for our highest good, regardless of how it may look otherwise now. Because we do not fully comprehend the laws of nature at work in life, we mistakenly consider our life-circumstances as our good fortune or bad fortune. In reality, there is no such thing as ‘luck’ or ‘fortune’. We simply interpret the workings of laws that we do not yet know, using our limited understanding.
6. We should always remember that we are not this body or this mind. We are ‘life’ – that is, ‘consciousness’. The body and mind are just two useful tools that   ‘life’ or ‘consciousness’  temporarily holds and uses. Everything that we think of as ‘others’ or ‘other things’ are, in fact,  another units of the same ‘life’/‘consciousness’.  Know that there are no ‘others’ here. Never forget that everything in the universe, including ourselves, is just a unit of ‘life’/‘consciousness’  in disguise. Everything is consciousness, existing in consciousness. All that there is, is ‘consciousness’.
7. Develop a motherly compassion towards all living beings, animals, birds, etc. When was the last time we fed a bird or animal without expecting anything in return? Birds and animals do not expect anything from us. We do not receive anything in return from birds and animals either. Even then, performing such random dharmic acts of feeding birds and animals will help in the development of our awareness/consciousness. We can do such acts only if we are aware enough / conscious enough about their existence and plights. We can make it a habit. 
8. We cannot influence all the events that  unfold in our lives. But, we can consciously regulate our ‘response’ to them. We must examine whether we are being forced internally to speak and act in ways that are ‘unconscious’ without our knowledge. We must always be careful to make sure we are speaking and acting with a fully awakened consciousness. No words or actions should ever slip out of us unconsciously.
9. There are many exercises that we can do to expand our awareness. One of them is to reduce the number of words we use per day by half. If we use 360 ​​words per hour, reduce it to 180 words. We should consciously try to say the same things using fewer words, without diluting the essence of it. By doing so, we are training ourselves to be fully aware and mindful.
10. Before we start eating, even if we are famished and  starving, sit still for three minutes, looking at the food in front of us. If we put off what we deeply desire for three minutes, our awareness will become stronger. If these three minutes feel like an unbearably long time to us, it means that we are still slaves to our ‘old’ instincts. This technique is a very effective practice for strengthening our awareness of who we really are.
11. We should be mindful of all our actions in our everyday life. Some examples: When parking our car, walking across a busy street, or entering a store, we should always consider the comfort and convenience of others. We should always appreciate and respect the personal boundaries, privacy, and freewill of others. We should keep our freewill within our own boundaries. Where our free will ends, freewill of others begins.
12. Whatever place we go to and make use of, regardless of whether it is our own place or not, should always be kept clean and tidy. We should ensure that this Earth does not have to suffer more because we were born on this earth. Developing such a tendency in us will help in the expansion of awareness.
13. There are approximately eight billion people on our planet today, whereas there are only about a thousand potential employment categories.  It is, therefore, obvious that   it is not practically possible for everyone to get a job that is exactly suited to their natural inclinations, or aptitudes.  Therefore, whatever job one gets, one should do it at the highest possible quality and commitment, with complete awareness, and score full marks in doing that job. One should have the willpower to exert efforts to acquire all the necessary additional knowledge and skills to excel in the job one has been given. Let us not forget that all jobs are one or other form of service. No job is inferior or superior. All jobs are opportunities to  develop oneself and excel in it.

Food is Medicine, Medicine is Food

Our physical and mental health, no doubt, plays an indispensable  role in building a noble life.  A conscious and vigilant lifestyle with excellent food habits are, therefore, inevitable. An intense, unconscious lifestyle bursting with all sorts of emotions, reckless eating, and drinking will derail us completely.  The food we eat, the thoughts we think, and the emotions we are engaged with are crucial in building or not building a noble life.   Our brain, liver, kidneys, stomach, heart, various hormones, and hundreds of neural pathways work together harmoniously day and night to give us a comfortable and stable  body and mind. We shall be conscious enough to do nothing that will upset this fine balance.  

Today, most of us eat primarily for pleasing our taste buds. Many of the foods we consume lately are momentarily pleasing to our tongue, but they have grave consequences on our health and wellbeing.   We are already facing a serious crisis due to eating toxic food that is contaminated with various pollutants. In addition, we consume countless other chemicals that go into processed foods made in factories.  Factory-made processed foods are becoming the order of the day. They contain preservatives, thickeners, colouring agents, flavours, and the likes.  Most of us are innocently ignorant that all these chemical additives in our popular fake-foods disrupt the balance of our complex internal systems. Consequently, we fall sick, often irreversibly.  

We need to be ‘aware’ of all these, and should exercise discretion in deciding what we should eat and what we should not eat, based on valid knowledge.   When we go after fast and tasty fake-foods, we severely risk our health and a noble life.  We need to realize this unpleasant fact.

Of course, medical help is available abundantly today. When our lifestyle is moderate and well-balanced, less aggressive treatments like Homeopathy and Ayurveda will be immensely helpful. Even far more benign alternative treatment protocols like frequency therapy and electro-medicines are available.  Using these alternative treatment protocols, it is possible to penetrate the quantum depths of cells and stimulate the stem cells to self-correct the defects in them. Nonetheless, once the structural integrity of our internal organs and systems are lost for whatever reason, then Allopathy treatments or surgical interventions are the only way forward.  

There is no doubt that Allopathy medicines can intervene very effectively when emergency recovery from ill health is needed. In extreme cases, surgical intervention will be the only solution, for which allopathy protocols are the only method available today.     Allopathy medicines are fundamentally designed to manage the symptoms, and not to rectify the underlying causative mechanisms.   

This is not a criticism of Allopathy treatments.  All treatments do have their relative advantages and disadvantages. We should be aware / conscious enough to grasp them all and consciously choose the right system of treatment to recover from ill health. The right way is to live a well-balanced and moderate life with full-blown awareness in the first place. If this is achieved, we seldom end up in such a dire situation. If it still does, we should accept it gracefully, without mental commotion, and do whatever is required to address the same. This is an indication of a noble life.

The limitation of Allopathy medicine can be illustrated with the example of Type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes occurs for many reasons. It varies from genetic factors to insulin resistance and beta cell defects in the pancreas, which prevent the pancreas from producing enough insulin. Metformin is the first-line drug commonly used in Allopathy treatment for type 2 diabetes.

One of our liver’s jobs is to store the sugar produced in the body and release it as required for energy production. However, Metformin reduces the amount of glucose released by the liver. Instead of identifying and correcting the specific defect in biochemical processes that causes the failure of insulin production in the pancreas, Metformin reduces blood sugar levels by stopping the process of releasing sugar stored in the liver’s storage!

Furthermore, Metformin slows down the movement of food from the stomach to the small intestine. This means that it slows down the speed of digestion. Above all, Metformin suppresses appetite! It appears to be a negative way to handle a health problem.

Insulin production in the pancreas is initiated by the flow of signals from the brain. The biochemical process for the pancreas to produce insulin involves many steps. First, the beta cells in the pancreas must detect that the blood sugar level is high. The appropriate messages must be sent to the brain via neurotransmitters to receive the required enzymes and proteins to handle the detected high sugar. Seven types of enzymes and proteins are required for this. The resulting biochemicals must then be manufactured into insulin beta granules through a complex chemical processes. Thereafter, it should be packaged, stored, and then released into the bloodstream through a process called exocytosis. Once insulin is in the blood, glucose absorption and the resultant metabolism can only be facilitated when insulin beta granules are attached to the insulin receptors in the cells. Look at the beauty and marvel behind the design of our body.

Diabetes condition can occur due to a failure anywhere in the above series of several steps. The permanent solution to this health issue is to identify and correct the precise defect in these biochemical processes.  Until this is done, all Metformin is doing is only managing symptoms.

In short, the reason for saying all this is to point out that we are fully responsible for the health of our body and mind. We must take responsibility for what to eat, what not to eat, how to eat, how much to eat, how not to eat, what to think, what not to think, how to handle emotions, so on and so forth.  We surely need to expand our awareness and knowledge and upgrade ourselves to a higher version. This is an integral part of noble living.  

A plant-based diet that is easily digested is the most ideal food for us. The food that is available for purchase from factories and bakeries will contain various additives that will interfere with the metabolic activities in our body. All of such food should be avoided. Do not eat any food in excess, thinking that it is good. Even nectar is poison in excess. Sweet foods should be avoided consciously using willpower.

Role of Mind in Wellbeing

The origin and abode of all pleasures, pains, and diseases is our mind. It is the mind that develops diseases. It is the same mind that overcomes the diseases, too. There is an inextricable connection between our mind and our body. Everyone experiences the experience of not being able to eat when the mind is disturbed. Similarly, we may have noticed that heavy thoughts and emotions in our minds often result in our rapid breathing. The speed of breathing increases or balances blood circulation and heart function. The amount or lack of blood reaching the cells affects cell function and metabolic functions. The mind is in charge of the body. Therefore, it is important that we should have a healthy mind to have a healthy body.

Ashtanga Yoga, a Roadmap for Noble Life 

Ashtanga Yoga is a brilliant  tool for total human evolutionary transformation, allowing us to live a noble life and die a noble death, here and now. Ashtanga Yoga is not a religious practice at all. It is, instead, a scientific process.  Although Yoga is popular   worldwide today, its full depth and grandeur is not recognized and utilised by the majority of the Yoga practitioners. It is largely practiced today, only for its physical and health benefits.  Yoga, on the contrary, is an eight-fold practice consisting of Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Dharana, Dhyanam, Samadhi.  It is far more than a standalone physical exercise regime. 

We become firmly established in Dharma by the constant practice of Yama and Nayama. This is the primary requirement for a noble life. A healthy body and healthy mind are bestowed on us by Asana and Pranayama practices. Endowed with a healthy body, healthy mind and a dharmic worldview, the practitioner moves into Dharana, Dhyanam, Samadhi processes to ultimately become a fully ‘conscious’ human. This is the exceptional value of Ashtanga Yoga for anyone aspiring for a noble life and a noble death. 

A Noble Death

First, we must understand that a noble death does not necessarily mean that we should die peacefully in our sleep. There is, likewise, necessarily any lack of nobility in a death in the ICU or in a road accident. The time, place, and manner in which each person leaves the body will happen according to their specific destiny and Karma. We cannot exert any influence on these aspects of our existence. They all happen according to the Karmic syllabus of our life that we brought with us when we arrived on the scene.

There are only two factors that make death noble or ignoble. They are, (1) what our inner state of ‘consciousness’ was at the time of our leaving the body. (2)  what our mental activities were at that time. What matters, ultimately, is what we have become as a result of living this specific life, with this specific set of circumstances and experiences. Have we become a better edition of ourselves, or a worse one?  Did we expand our consciousness? Did we learn to handle our emotions and bring them  to a neutral level?  In a way, our state of being at the time of death is a progress card of our life that we just finished. We wrote this progress card ourselves. This very progress card is what our future opportunity in our evolutionary ladder depends on. 

A person who has consciously practiced a noble life and has understood what and why of life can leave the body with a high level of awareness and inner peace. The importance of the last moments of our life is very substantial. When we were holding the  body and mind, we had the intellect and the power of discrimination. If we do not leave the body ‘consciously’ with high awareness, the moment the body is dropped, we will lose the ‘intellect and the power of discrimination’, which we had until then. 

Losing the power of discrimination is not a small matter when we are in a disembodied state. What then remains is only the ‘tendencies’ from our karmic memories. The rest of our disembodied existence will simply be floating like a dry leaf blown by the wind in accordance with those tendencies. The memory and the mind are still there; only our power of discrimination of the mind is lost. This suspended animation will continue until we become ready for another round of embodied experiences, which will be strictly in accordance with our progress card we wrote ourselves.  

Furthermore, with whatever emotion we discard our body, that same emotion will continue to exist with several folds increased strength. If the body was discarded with joy, that same joy would continue to exist in many folds, even after it was discarded.  If the body is discarded with fear, the same fear will linger, but in many fold strength. This means that if we create even a little unpleasantness at the time of death, that emotion will then increase many times over.

In Indian culture, a devotional atmosphere is always provided at the time of death. The environment for leaving the body should be prepared in the right place, in the right atmosphere, in a way that gives the right kind of feelings and thoughts for the departing existence. We should never make a fuss about it. Allow them to leave the body by creating an atmosphere that gives the highest peace and happiness. This is a significant dharmic process. We should clearly understand that death is not an emotional process.  At the time of death or after death, never hold any enmity with the dead personality. The drama of life is over for them, and the curtain has fallen. There is no more a friend or foe. There is only ‘existence’. 

This is the noble death. Conscious living leads to a noble life. A constantly practiced noble life leads to a conscious and noble death. Let us start our training for a ‘conscious living’ from today. Life is infinite. It is immortal.  Nothing is ever too late.