After knowing about the Conscious and Unconscious entry to Absolute, Svetaketu is interested to know the difference between a person who has consciously attained realisation and another who is unconsciously slipped into the Absolute. Why is a person unable to attain realisation after death as some say casting off the body is the criterion of liberation?
Sage Uddalaka explains Svetaketu the events that takes place at the time of death. At the time of death of a person his relatives gather around him and ask him, “Can you recognise us?” If the senses of the person on death bed are active he will recognise them; but if the senses have been withdrawn into the mind, then he can only think but cannot speak as his sense of talking has failed. His mind can only have memory of his relations, but he cannot see them gathered around him nor can he hear them talking. At the time of death there is a steady pulling out of the functions of the various organs in the system. The first stage of withdrawal is the absorption of the senses into the mind. The second stage of withdrawal is the absorption of the mind into the pranas, wherein the breathing process continues but there is no thinking or sensation. Then after that breath also gets absorbed into the fire principle which is what the heat is in our system. If the heat also has gone, the whole body becomes cold and limbs are chill.
A person is confirmed to be dead if the body has become cold. So it is this procedure that when senses have left, mind is present; when the mind has left, the pranas are present; when the pranas have left, and body heat is present. Body heat is the last to depart from a person on the verge of leaving his body. When the heat also is withdrawn into the Absolute then the consciousness is also left and there is no life in the Gross body. The person who is on the verge of death enters like as he is slipped into deep sleep. He will not know what is happening to him. He will not know he is dying. Just like we cannot know that we have fallen asleep. However much every we try our best to keep a watch on the course of going to sleep, we will never succeed. We are suddenly in it. That is all. Either we are not sleeping or we have slept. We can never just be in the halfway between the two.
Likewise to a person this happens at the time of the merger of his Soul into the Supreme Soul in the process of Liberation, and as well as at the time of death. Hence from the point of view of the external incidences of the various event of withdrawal, Death and Liberation are identical. What happens to a person when dying happens also to a person in Liberation. But there is a great difference. The difference is obvious. For a person who had been unable to break the cycles of birth and death there is unconscious and compelled push of the functions into their sources at the time of death which is not transcendence. There is only habitual withdrawal.
On the other hand for a Liberated person when he enters the higher stages of conscious expansion there is transcendence, so that there is no coming back to struggle again in Samsara. When we have no desires left and no impression of any kind, we do not come back. But, if we have been forced to pull our self from particular wantons, the desire for fulfillment of the wanton still lingers in us and will pull us back to complete that desire. And again an opportunity is given to struggle in this Samsara. It is to that which is the cause of the world we all merge “TAT TVAM ASI” You are that, Svetaketu” Says Sage Uddalaka.
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