Sadguru’s book Death: An Inside Story was released just a month before the beginning of the COVID pandemic. While tragic, no other time would have been as appropriate to discuss a topic like death when the whole world faced its fragility and mortality.
I somehow got to get my hands on it from Amazon in the midst of that chaos and finished reading it through the pandemic.
Apart from the heart-breaking millions of deaths that occurred across the world, the lockdown, which cocooned and isolated the whole world inside their own homes made everyone think about the life they were leading, and even if they were not consumed by an existential crisis, many at least thought about their purpose more deeply than ever before.
Some even thought about life after death.
Where do we go? Do we reincarnate? What is Karma? Do we rest in peace or there is an eternal hell for our bad deeds?
Age-old questions no one was planning to contemplate on were brought to the forefront by the pandemic.
While there are many scattered guides on death, this book is a comprehensive education on most of its aspects.
Not a scientific guide but a spiritual one.
I know this because I had a deeply spiritually inclined upbringing and by the grace of all masters, I was made aware of a lot of such supernatural and super causal subjects.
Before reviewing such a book, I must confess my own spirituality and be guided by it to speak about it with commitment.
Having said that now let’s get into the review.
What is Covered in the Book Death: An Inside Story
While it covers all curious topics like what is death? The process of death? What happens after we die? What’s the outcome of a suicidal death? Life beyond a thousand moons, life after death, ghosts, can death be cheated, past lives, reincarnation, etc.
The most important topics it brings to light however, for everyone are, how to prepare for a good death, how to help the dying, what to do for the dead, why post-death rituals matter, their sanctity, and how to grieve gracefully, and how to die gracefully.
As you would read in the book a lot of misery in the world can be attributed to the ungraceful handling of death.
Skeptics will find many of the subjects discussed unscientific or fantasies and will easily disregard their reality.
However, I believe spirituality is simply a super science that material science is yet to reach and understand.
So, if you want a one-stop manual on death then this book is the closest it gets.
Everything in the book can be found across many spiritual and religious texts of Hinduism but not everything can be found in one single container.
Thanks to Sadguru, he has synthesized everything important about death in a single clear and easy-to-understand volume.
But again, there will be a lot of intricacies left undiscussed which I believe are not required to live a fulfilling human life.
Some of those details might come up in Sadguru’s book Karma, which I have just begun reading.
In today’s fast-paced world, many people lose awareness of their mortality and seldom wonder about death. On the other hand, some people are even petrified by this thought.
The thought of losing someone close to you and the thought of living this world behind one day yourself tears people down.
This brings us to the next important question of this review.
Who Should Read Death: An Inside Story
To begin with, as Sadguru himself said, this is a book for all those who shall die.
It is imperative for a human being to understand death to be inspired to live a meaningful life.
Only those who lose sight of death wander around life aimlessly.
Only those people continue merely fighting for one materialistic goal after the other.
As in Sadguru’s own words again, “Don’t be dead serious. Life is a brief sparkle, but you shall be dead for a very long time.”
Our human life is a great possibility for transcendence and death is the culmination and beginning of our soul’s upliftment.
How is that is answered in this book and I truly believe, everyone who shall die should know about it.
By understanding the nature of our mortality and what we truly take with us, we learn to better use our finite time on Earth in the form we are now and tread joyously with the people and life around us.
If you are a reader from the US you can purchase this book from Amazon by clicking here.
Conclusion
I strongly recommend that you should read this book if you are a person who is interested in the spiritual reality of our world.
If you are someone with a completely scientific temperament even then you should read this book because curious inquiry is the prerequisite of all scientific pursuits.
Sadguru says in the book that this generation has many means of living well but the same can’t be said about dying well.
Beyond that, this book answers the very important question of why we should prepare for death.
This book fills that void and teaches you how to prepare for death so that you transcend higher in each of your lives.
To build upon this book’s reading experience, you can follow it up with Inner Engineering a Yogi’s Guide to Joy and Autobiography of Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda.
I hope you get tons of value from these recommendations.
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Having said that, I will write to you soon with another such book recommendation.
