00:00Good evening, sir. Myself Skantra Parthi. And my question to you is that, in the recent
00:07past, I have experienced around me and with my friends as well, that the people whom we
00:14have very close and loving relationships with, and whom we spend our time on a daily basis,
00:21are suddenly not there with us, among us anymore. So that makes me wonder, where do we really
00:28go after we die? So that makes me wonder, where do we really go after we die? So, sir,
00:36can you please throw some light on this? Thank you, sir.
00:55You just disintegrate. You don't really go anywhere. You arose from the soil. You go
01:04back to the soil. You go back to the air, the water, the soil. That's all. And then,
01:20one day, randomly, those things, those atoms, they again combine and the self rises again.
01:38There is hardly any difference in the body in the moment before and after death. The
01:53body is exactly as it was when you called it alive. Exactly. It's just that a particular
02:07configuration is gone. You see, what is it that you call as life? When the male cell meets the
02:19female cell in the womb, it's not immediately that you say that the embryo is alive. It takes
02:36a few months before you can ascribe life to the fetus. And that's the reason why in the debates
02:48over abortion, you often talk of the month of pregnancy till which it is ethically sound to
03:02terminate the pregnancy. Someone says second month, someone says fourth month. The Hindu
03:14books say it is in the seventh month that the lump of flesh attains the ego agency,
03:31Atmabhav. Before the seventh month, there is the thing, but the thing has no self. So,
03:43the self arises from the body, from the development of the body. So, the self is a thing of the body.
03:53The self is a thing of the body. And the self appears when the body attains a certain
04:04configuration, a certain maturity. When that configuration is gone, the self is gone.
04:13But where does it go to? It does not really go to anywhere. You have burned the body down. The
04:27body is ashes. The ashes are the soil. The soil will definitely give birth to another body.
04:43Krishna talks of this very beautifully in the Gita. He says what you consider as living and
05:06what you talk of as not living, animate and inanimate, they are really one. So,
05:14consciousness and material, mind and matter are really not two. And the moment you say
05:27that, the entire discussion over where does consciousness come from disappears. Consciousness
05:37does not come from anywhere. Consciousness is material. It arises from matter. But does it
05:47want to remain confined to matter? That's a totally different question. No, it does not
05:52want to remain confined to matter. But its genesis is definitely material. But the very
06:02strange thing about consciousness is birthed by the body. It does not want to remain confined
06:18to the body. And that urge is desire. That urge seen in the purest sense is the urge to be
06:35liberated. The spiritual quest towards liberation. So, what happens? Nothing. It was a thing from
06:51the body. It could exist only when the body had a certain shape. Only when the body had
07:00processes happening within it. Chemical processes. No spiritual processes. Nothing out of the world.
07:06Those processes are no more possible for purely material reasons. It just cannot happen now. So,
07:15the life is no more. And if science in material ways can make those processes happen for a longer
07:29period of time, you will find yourself alive for a longer period. Is that not already happening?
07:34So, if certain medicines are not there, you will find you are not alive anymore. A person is
07:52provided ventilator support. If the ventilator is not there, the person will be no more. What
07:58is the ventilator doing? The ventilator is obviously not providing life. The ventilator
08:03is doing something very material, right? And if you can sustain the material, you have sustained
08:09life. If you can sustain the material basis of the body, you have sustained life. And therefore,
08:18the kind of life most people lead is just material. That's what Shri Krishna says,
08:26what you call as Jada and Chetan are hardly different. One you could call as Aparaprakriti,
08:36the other as Paraprakriti. If life is about you breathing in and out, about you blinking eyelids
08:50and your heart pumping blood through your veins, all that can be taken care of by machines. So,
09:05what you call as life is really something very mechanical and very material. And advances in
09:12science and technology will enable this kind of material life to be extended beyond imagination.
09:18It's another matter that even 400 years of such life will be no good. Just as today 80 years of
09:29life prove to be insufficient. Similarly, even those 400 years will prove to be insufficient
09:37because it is not material that consciousness strives for. It's a tricky thing to understand.
09:46Consciousness arises from material but does not want to remain confined to material. So,
09:58you can extend the material basis of consciousness for long. That will not
10:03satisfy consciousness. Men will beg to be killed. Euthanasia will become a sought-after service.
10:18Is it possible for science to give birth? Is not science already doing that? Is it possible
10:40for science to give liberation? No. So, science being the study of the material can definitely
10:49give birth. You do not require a metaphysical agency to give birth. You do not require some
10:57God to give life. Life can be provided even by science. Not too far is the day when you will
11:06have life being produced in factories. You will have raw material coming in and living things
11:14coming out. All that is possible. But if there is one thing that science and factories cannot
11:25provide or produce that is liberation. You can create consciousness but you cannot satiate
11:33consciousness. Consciousness is material. It can be created. Not too difficult. But
11:41consciousness cannot be satiated by science. So, where did people come from? They came from
11:55the body. The person is the body. People are so body identified. And where has the person gone?
12:05The person is still there in a very dormant way. You could say the body was breathing the last
12:19moment. Consciousness was expressed. The body lost its configuration due to age or disease or
12:28accident. Consciousness went back to all the atoms it came from. If consciousness arises from the
12:38body surely it was pre-existing in all the atoms in the body. Correct? Because it comes from the
12:47body so it is already there in the body which means it was pre-existing in all the atoms in
12:50the body. So, what happens in the moment of death? Nothing goes out of the body. On the
12:57contrary, consciousness returns to the building blocks of the body. Consciousness returns to the
13:09very atoms it came from. Now life is contained in those atoms in a latent way. All these atoms
13:18they carry life. Every atom carries life in a potential way. In a dead man, life has returned
13:25to the cells and cell is a big entity, to the atoms. In a dead man, life has gone back to the
13:36atoms. Now it is no more manifest. It is still there but it is not manifest anymore. It is not
13:44expressed anymore. Gone in the sense of returned. And the body will become soil and all those
14:00things are, each of them are carrying life within them. It is not without reason that the Upanishads
14:08say Annam Brahm. Food itself is Brahm. That's a very curious thing to say, no? Food is Brahm. How?
14:16How? Because every atom is carrying consciousness within it. And if atom is carrying consciousness
14:25within it, that very consciousness in its purest form is Brahm. So in the flow of time, and we are
14:36all talking in the stream of time, we are talking of persons, their life, their death, all that is
14:40in the stream of time. So in the stream of time a day will come when those atoms will again combine
14:46in a favorable way. And that which is latent within them will again sprout, just as a seed
14:55sprouts given the right conditions. So again that thing will come. You can call that as reincarnation,
15:04rebirth or whatever, if you want to. So nothing flies out of the body. What happens is life
15:16returns to the very atoms it comes from. That's what happens. So you will not find visible signs
15:26of life anymore. The fellow will not speak or move or breathe. So all those signs are no more
15:32because life has gone back to its foundations, the atom. So why does consciousness want to be
15:46liberated? That's its nature. This question is coming out of consciousness, no? Just as you want
15:54this question to be answered, consciousness wants to be liberated. In some sense you want to be
16:02liberated of your ignorance towards the answer of this question. So you are asking this question,
16:08right? This is the attempt of consciousness, a small, minor, feeble attempt of consciousness
16:14to be liberated. So in your question lies the answer. Consciousness wants to be liberated,
16:21you want the answer to your question. These two are the same thing.
16:24Yes. Thank you, sir.
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