DEATH
Dr. Robert E. Svoboda

Om Namah Sivaya!

Our subject tonight is death, from a yogic perspective. I would like to begin by reading something to you from a Kashmiri saint of some centuries ago:

I’m afraid of the divine sport, the boat carrying the river marches on the land. This is the nature of the river of life, Ganga. Rising with the rains it dries again at an eyelid’s blink. Forest blossoms adorn its waters. Fruits form unseen. And pervading all, the fish, the preserver of life, playfully floats in the river. Says Lalan: The fish too will go when the stream evaporates.

On the surface this sounds very poetical, with its amusing imagery. Under the surface, though, lie other meanings for river and fish.
From the yogic and tantric perspectives, everyone swims daily in two different rivers: the river of the left nostril, the Chandra nadi–the “channel of the moon”–also called the Yamuna; and the river of the right nostril, the Surya nadi–the “channel of the sun,” the Ganga. The breath shifts continually back and forth between these two, continually, for as long as you live. While the breath flows in your right nostril it activates you, makes you expansive and ambitious, as you extend yourself into the world. Extension into the external reality is called pravritti in Sanskrit. When the left nostril works there is a relative reduction of attention to the world, a retraction from the external into the internal world. This withdrawal, which we call in Sanskrit nivritti, is relative, usually. It becomes complete only when a person goes into an internalized samadhi.

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