Death and the Fear of Dying

Fear of death is the mother of all fears. It is the sea of fear from which all other fears surface as waves. The panic from a distant shadow, the fright of a crawling creature on your back, the anxiety of hitting the sales target, and the angst of getting cheated by your partner; are all deeply rooted in death and the fear of dying. It doesn’t stop at fear. All your cravings, aversions, and in short your emotional as well as psychological state of being have their origin in this deep-seated seed. The fear of annihilation dictates varying levels of greed, lust, attachment, anger, and envy in humans. 

Freedom from pain and suffering requires emancipation from the fear of dying from within. Liberation and realization of absolute freedom necessitate the elimination of this seed from the deep psyche. Usually, this principle may not be apparent and directly cognizable to everyone unless the mind gets refined and subtle. However, epistemological tools like perception and logical analysis can help us grasp the validity of such a claim from an intellectual perspective. It only serves the purpose of stimulating your mind to cognize the underlying cause to some extent. However, complete illumination and eradication of that fear requires dedicated practice.

Cause of Suffering according to Yoga Sutras

Sutra 3: Chapter 2 — Yoga Sutra

Avidyaasmitaaraagadvesaabhinivesaah klesaah

Meaning: Ignorance, I-feeling, liking, disliking, and fear of death are the afflictions of life that sustain existence. 

Existence is painful and suffering is ingrained within it. For those who have developed discrimination, even so-called happiness such as success, power, fame, etc. is also painful. Arrival of any good or bad situation in life requires change, and change accompanies some degree of pain. There is an acute anxiety associated with achievement, success, failure, and heartbreak which also causes pain. Lastly, pain is caused by the development of habits and the fear of losing pleasant things in life. Buddha also stated the same in his 1st Noble Truth i.e. Dukkha or Suffering is the truth of life.

Yoga Sutra declares that ignorance is the root cause of all pain. From ignorance borns I-feeling; from I-feeling comes liking; liking results in disliking and finally disliking gives birth to fear of death. This is an involutionary process where it starts from the top and goes to the bottom. Interestingly, the evolutionary process can be conceived of as the fear of death alone that gave rise to aversions; aversions to cravings, which in turn gave birth to I-feeling and finally ignorance. In the Yogic path, either of the processes can be used for emancipation. 

Fear of Dying: The Mother of all Fears

The fear of dying is ingrained in our existence and affects scholars as well as fools. On the surface, it is not evident to us but occasionally when an adverse situation arises we get a glimpse of it. For example, when you encounter a near miss on the road with a speeding vehicle or an experience of drowning. When it arises, it sways you completely with the accompanying overwhelming feeling. The intensity of that fear is of the highest order and when it strikes, you experience absolute terror. You cling on with desperation to somehow escape from the mouth of death. The horrible feeling stays with you perhaps forever.

Irrespective of encountering any such experience, the seed of that fear already exists in all beings. It is the source of all other fear. When you are afraid you might fail in your exam, then the deep-rooted fear of death manifests as anxiety on the surface. If you inquire about a direct correspondence of this fact then you might be able to deduce it but it would just be an intellectual exercise to be able to reason it logically. For example, anxiety about failing an exam may be linked to fear of not getting a job. This may be linked to insecurity in income and health thus leading to an insecurity of life. 

All Aversions and Cravings arise from it

However, such an intellectual activity is just superficial and may or may not bear agreement in all cases. The truth is revealed when the mind gets subtler and more intuitive through yogic/spiritual practices. It can be understood better by an example of waves on a water body. Fear of death is the center of a disturbance that gives rise to a strong aversion towards it in the form of a wave. This center wave then leads to several other waves of different kinds of aversions/ disliking just like the single wave on water results in many. 

When there is an aversion there is a craving as both of them are two sides of a coin or in other terms, one is a crest and the other is a trough of the wave. The degree of fear of dying establishes all other forms of liking and disliking in our lives that depict our existence. Greed, lust, anger, and attachment are all different forms of reactions to these aversions/ cravings. These bundle together to generate an I-feeling and all actions performed thus with an I-feeling, including compassionate or philanthropic actions, result in bondage and suffering. 

Fear of Death of Others

Apart from the fear of one’s own death, fear is also developed for the death of others. If someone in your family gets sick or has a terrible accident, the fright spreads within you. You intellectually understand that everything is impermanent and everyone has to leave this world sooner or later, but your mind gets the shock. You suffer in pain from the fear and later from the grief. Grieving is natural and important for sentient beings to cope with the change. This fear is not only restricted to near and dear ones but even to a stranger, who might be lying in the bed of a hospital adjacent to your ward.

The deeply rooted shock and pain of death in the subconscious mind don’t differentiate “I” and “others”. The degree varies between self, near and dear ones, and outsiders but the fear exists. The differing degrees are subject to the strength of attachment and I-feeling. Beyond enmity and anger, you can even feel the pain of the death of your enemy. This one principle binds everyone together. The interconnectedness of consciousness can be seen as evident through the fear of death. 

The Path to Freedom from Suffering

There are innumerable paths to emancipation. You can read more about it here. This article expounds upon the yogic path and principles of Patanjali Yoga. Dhyana is the way to eradicate the root of suffering i.e. Avinivesha, the fear of death. Dhyana(meditation) has two stages: the first stage is the ability to observe the inner workings of the mind, where you are able to observe and identify the active modifications of all the causes of afflictions. By close observation, they go back to the latent state. Once they have reached dormancy, the complete scorching of those seeds has to be achieved through Viveka(discrimination).

Viveka is a rational approach to finding the cause of afflictions from the deepest corners of the mind. The cause is then removed by dwelling upon it. The earnest aspirant should retire into seclusion for some time to be able to observe the seeds of afflictions in manifested form. the second stage of Dhyana is one-pointedness. Unless the first stage of Dhyana is passed and afflictions are burnt, one-pointed meditation is impossible to achieve. The objective of the second stage of Dhyana and Samadhi is to transcend the phenomenal existence and merge into the absolute consciousness.

Dhyana is not easy to accomplish. It demands unflinching determination and dedicated practice through the systematic approach of 8 stages of ascension. Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, and Dharana have to be successively mastered to get into the stage of Dhyana. Usually, the yoga practice begins with physical asanas. When one begins to understand the underlying philosophy of Yoga, then they start to inculcate Yama and Niyama into their lives. It’s a gradual process and needs to be practiced with patience. Perfecting Yamas and Niyamas alone would take about a year or even more. As it is said Yoga is a way of life that needs to be observed throughout.

May you get inspiration and strength in your journey towards absolute freedom!

Bonus Reading…

Time is an Expression of the Fear of Death

It would be almost rhetoric to state the obvious that time is not an absolute phenomenon, rather it is relative. Science also has proven it long back. In your own experience, time is subjective to varying emotions. If you are sad, angry, and fearful then time is slow for you. However, if you are jolly then time runs faster. When you are rested time flies by but when you are restless and alert then it seems to have stopped. Time as a unit measured in a clock is not in question here, it is just a mechanical man-made denomination for human convenience.

When you want to avert something, the intended direction of I-feeling and the direction of happening are in opposite directions. In case of cravings, these directions are aligned. The central wave of life that has originated has a strong repulsion to getting annihilated and being one with the water body again. All peripheral waves that seem to drag it toward annihilation stretch the time horizon. And those that uplift it towards establishment contract the time horizon. Ultimately, the fear of death tries to slow down or fasten things up depending on whether the movement is towards annihilation or establishment.