Acharya Prashant responds to a question about a student who committed suicide out of curiosity about what happens after death. He begins by questioning the inquirer's own relationship with this question, asking what he is curious about. The inquirer states he wants to know the basis of his existence, life, and death. Acharya Prashant then deconstructs the query, stating that to die, one must first be alive. He establishes that curiosity belongs to a living man, not a dead one. He then probes deeper into the definition of life. When the inquirer suggests life is what is happening right now, Acharya Prashant asks with whom it is happening, leading to the question, "Who are you?" He explains that knowing oneself is the key to understanding death. The defining characteristic of a dead person, he points out, is not the cessation of physical movement or sound, but the inability to respond. Response, he clarifies, comes from understanding and thinking. Therefore, life is fundamentally about understanding. One is truly alive only when one understands. Conversely, death is defined as the state of not understanding while continuing to physically exist—ingesting, inhaling, and moving about. This is a death that one carries moment to moment. The physical death at the end of a mortal life is an insignificant event compared to the ongoing tragedy of living without understanding. Life, therefore, is not something given at birth but is an opportunity to continuously rise from the dead by choosing to understand. A living person can learn and grow, whereas a dead person cannot. This, he concludes, is the real difference and the death that should be of primary concern.