What causes death?

This is one of the articles in a book I have written on spirituality. The book is available on Amazon.com.


The Spirit Of Spirituality

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Warning: Those of you, who are afraid of the death word, please stop. Do not read further. At the same time, after reading this article, hopefully the fear of death will go away.

All of us are probably terrified and mystified about death at some point in life.  As a child, I was petrified about death. When we used to visit an uncle’s place, the route invariably took us past a crematorium. I used to close my eyes tight and just could not bear to look out. Gradually, the fear diminished, but never went away. Even as a teenager, I used to be very afraid of seeing dead bodies. When one of my immediate neighbors expired, I probably was the only one who did not go to their house, because of my fear of dead bodies.

Years later, I was studying engineering. I must have been about 20. We used to have breaks between lectures. On one of the days, our professor was not keeping well and he cancelled his class. This was a class just before another long break. Since there was about 3 hour gap till the next class, my classmate Ram opted to go home, have lunch and come. He had his lunch and as he was driving back, he was struck by a bus and died in the hospital. We all went to see him and it was the first time I was seeing a dead body.

Now, as I ponder about it, if my professor had not cancelled the class, would Ram have been alive? People always say that everybody’s time is fixed and when the time of death comes, it will happen. Assuming Ram expired around 2 pm, if he had not gone home for lunch on that day, would he have had a heart attack at 2 pm in the class? Was my professor indirectly a reason for his death?

Before even thinking of why or when death occurs, let us understand what death is spiritually. In simple terms, when the current gross or physical body can no longer help meet the existing demands of the subtle body, the subtle body just casts off its physical body and dons a new physical body which helps meet its desires. This casting off of the physical body is what death is. As a corollary, if the current physical body has helped meet the desires of the subtle body, when that trigger of the last desire fulfilled happens, then the subtle body leaves the physical body and death occurs.

Being an engineering student, I thought I should try and model the occurrence of death. My model is of a carom board which is say 8 feet in length and 6 feet in width giving a hypotenuse of 10 feet. This carom board is different. Assuming I am sitting north facing, there are series of holes on the northern side and a series of holes on the Eastern side along with the usual corner holes. The play is with an iron filing which is on the south-west corner. Assume there is a magnetic force which propels the iron filing in the northward direction at 1 ft/sec and another force which acts on the filing at 1 ft/sec in the Eastern direction. By the law of physics, now the iron filing will move along the hypotenuse at about 1.4 ft/sec.

Assume 5 seconds have elapsed. The iron filing has now traversed 7 ft along the hypotenuse. Applying trigonometric functions, the filing has traversed 7*sin 45 = 7*sin 45 = 5.96 feet in the vertical direction.  

At this point, assuming nothing changes, the iron filing will fall into the north east hole in slightly more than 2 seconds since it has to cover 3 feet at a speed of about 1.4 ft/sec. But, if at this stage, the eastern force stops and becomes zero, then we have only the northern force. Now, there is only 0.04 ft left to travel in northern direction before the filing falls into the hole on the sides. At a speed of 1 ft/sec, it now needs only 0.04 second to fall into the hole.

Let’s now replace the carom board with the board of life. We start traveling towards our eventual death propelled by a variety of desires. Depending on the type of desires, we may take different paths to death, but the final destination is death. The variety of desires in the form of force driving our lives acts on one another and we think our life is taking a particular trajectory. But, just as it happened with the iron filing when one of the forces stopped, it can happen that one of the main drivers or desires of our life are met or does not exist and no more contributes to maintaining our life’s trajectory. Just as, the iron filing which would have taken 2 seconds to fall into the hole, now took only a fraction of that time to fall into a hole, our life suddenly takes a turn.

My father was down with pneumonia and was hospitalized. At one point, the doctors told me that there was no hope and the end can happen anytime, that day, couple of days later or several years, since he was in a coma. I came out of the room and went down and was talking to my relatives on what next. After couple of hours, I felt like going up and seeing what was happening. As I neared my father, I saw him gasping. I called the doctor and held my dad’s hand. As I held him, he breathed his last. Maybe, this was the last desire that was propelling him that I should be next to him. Once that desire was fulfilled, his subtle body did not need the gross body anymore and it shed the gross body.

I had a colleague in one of my jobs. She had lung cancer. But she was a fighter and survived for several years. Then finally she took ill and stopped coming to work for couple of months. Then one day, she felt like seeing us all and she was brought in a wheel chair with oxygen tube etc. to the office. She spoke with all of us. It was just before Thanksgiving. Then on Thanksgiving, she met with all her near and dear ones and that night she passed away. Again, maybe the last set of desires she had were to meet us and all her near and dear ones. Once that propelling desire was met, the subtle body had no further use of the gross body and departed.

But in any of cases above, did death really occur? It was only the physical body that fell. The subtle body which was driven by other desires moved on to another environment. At a further deeper level, the core consciousness never died.

If in a dream, I see a near one dead, I will experience all the emotions of grief in my dream. But when I wake up and realize it is a dream, will the grief remain? Assuming someway, after waking up, I get a chance to go back to the same dream, will I get emotional? I know the person who died in the dream is nothing but me. Similarly, when I realize I am consciousness, I will realize that any death is not real. It is just an illusion.

As readers may be aware, 3 of my books on spirituality are available on Amazon.com.

I invite readers of my blog to try any of the books and give me feedback so that I can make changes in the next edition.


1. My Humble Understanding  Of Spirituality


My Humble Understanding Of Spirituality

2. Attain Infinite Bliss

Attain Infinite Bliss - A Spiritual Guide

3. The Spirit Of Spirituality

The Spirit Of Spirituality