Questioner(Q): Hello Sir, I am Saurav, PhD student at IIT-Patna. Sir, a couple of years ago I met with a bike accident. At that moment, I felt like time was moving very slowly. I don’t know if it was just my feelings, but I searched on the internet and I got to know that when people are near death, they experience something unusual or see other worldly elements or beings which they can’t explain.
I got to know from the media that some years back you also had a near-death experience. So, did you feel something like that or is it just our imagination?
Acharya Prashant (AP): You don’t just randomly die, there is a reason one dies. You know what happens before death? The blood supply to brain starts becoming irregular and diminished, therefore the brain cannot work properly; so you go half mad. Isn’t that obvious?
One does not just abruptly, suddenly die; in most cases, it’s brain death. Or if you get a heart attack or cardiac arrest, then also the blood supply to the brain, that reduces, and the brain takes not more than five minutes to get severely damaged when the blood supply becomes constrained. So, what will happen to the brain? The blood is not there due to disease, or accident, or impending death; the blood itself is not there, so the brain will start hallucinating. That’s all that there is, nothing more than that.
What kind of otherworldly experience or what? Even when the brain had enough blood, it was unable to make sense of even this world. When the brain was healthy, even then it was unable to make sense of even this world; now that the brain is about to finish off, it will become so powerful that it will start making sense of the other world? Can that happen?
It is like saying, “You know, when my car was new, the maximum speed it could take was 120 (kmph); but now that the car is about to crumble—it is forty years old, and it’s crumbling in all directions—it is now taking the speed of 400 (kmph).” “And how do you know it is taking 400 kmph?” “The speedometer is showing 400.”
You know how the speedometer of a forty-year-old car will be? That’s your brain. And that’s why the brain is showing the speed of 400 because it has gone bonkers. So, it is nothing but a result of a malfunction that you start seeing things, and imagining, and all that, and all that.
Yes, I got hit on my head and I could see that my memory was receding, and that’s a purely physical thing, right? There is a part of the brain that is responsible for memory, and it must have been impacted and I could see I was progressively having trouble remembering names, events and stuff. So, the part of my consciousness that was still active, that told me that I better make some arrangements before I totally lose it. So, I called people and sat down, and I said, "If I am gone this is how the foundation should be run, this is how the books and the publishings should continue, this is how the people of the foundation must be financially supported."
So that’s what I got written down, not because I was seeing Yamraj or some other world, but because I was seeing something very physical, material, tangible; and that was loss of memory. And I was indeed losing memory. I could not remember when was it I took the last session, I had started losing sense of names, I could not remember who drove me to Rishikesh—it was in Rishikesh that I had the accident, I could not remember how I fell down and how I then walked back to my place, and all that was out.
And some part of me was seeing that all this was happening, and so it was responding with due caution and trying to take some preventing steps. And I was just lucky that all that lasted only for a few hours. By the next day, the memory was back, and I had been imparted a nice lesson about the impermanence of life. And I am grateful that since that event, I have become even more eager and unrelenting; because I see even more clearly how quickly, and how suddenly everything can be lost, and how vulnerable my mission is.
So, I am rushing through with things at double the speed, and there is no mysticism or metaphysical stuff involved in this. There is a work to do, there is a mission to accomplish, and time is limited, therefore, one better be concentrated. That’s all that there is.
Q: Okay sir, thank you. Thank you for your illuminating answer.
