It is natural to dwell on mortality after reflecting on the aging process. The following is a synopsis of my current writing project: a manuscript on the Art of Dying.

What Is Death?

Death can be defined in many ways: most relevant being the neurological and spiritual/religious definition. Neuroscience treats death as the permanent loss of the brain’s integrative functions—an irreversible loss of the brain’s ability to generate consciousness and maintain brainstem-driven life functions—or, alternatively, irreversible loss of circulation and breathing. Blood flow ceases, brain activity falters, electrical rhythms fade, synapses stop transmitting, and within minutes the brain can no longer sustain awareness. From this perspective, death is the extinction of mind. Consciousness is no more enduring than a flame: when fuel and oxygen are gone, it goes out.

This is the materialist view — persuasive, supported by data, but not without its limits. It tells us how consciousness ceases, but not what consciousness is. It does not dwell on the possibility of continuation of this mystical and unknown entity—the consciousness–in a different realm. It explains the mechanism but not the mystery.

For me, a beautiful definition of death came from the second law of thermodynamics which states that as the energy of the entities in the universe disperses, order gives way to disorder, and everything — from stars to galaxies to living beings — drift toward entropy. Ergo, in an isolated system, nature tends to move from more ordered states to more disordered states. Death is the ultimate in disordered state.  After death, local order can still be created, but only by exporting even greater disorder to the surroundings so the total disorder keeps going up. Thus, in closed systems, things naturally move from lower toward higher entropy states—like perfume spreading through a room or ice melting. That built-in drift toward “more possible arrangements” – where the stability of a system is lost and new states emerge–is a disorder that gives time its one-way feel.

For many, this sounds like a grim law of decline. Yet when I first encountered it, I provided a strange comfort. At last, death made logical sense that was in line with my Buddhist, and Hindu teachings—our bodies move towards disorder, and change state. Note that matter does not cease to exist, it just changes state. Thus, death is not an aberration or punishment, but as participation in the universal rhythm that governs all things – including far flung stars, galaxies, and the universe itself.

Carl Sagan once said: The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are stardust. Our bodies are made of molecules created by the big bang. The calcium in our bones, the iron in our blood, the oxygen in our lungs were all forged in the cores of stars that lived and died billions of years ago. Those stars burned through their fuel, collapsed, and exploded in supernovae, scattering their elements across the universe. Out of their ashes, new stars formed, new planets coalesced, and eventually, life appeared, and so did we. Our building blocks is simply recycled stardust–life has the same building blocks as those of the stars. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the renown physician expands on this: We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out — and we have only just begun. In his words, our very capacity to contemplate death is part of the cosmic story. The universe, through us, becomes aware of its own impermanence.

Stars, like humans, are born, live, and die. They begin as clouds of hydrogen, ignite under gravity’s pressure, blaze brilliantly for millions or billions of years, and then collapse. Some shrink into white dwarfs, faint embers of their former selves. Others explode as supernovae, their matter flung outward, seeding the cosmos. The most massive collapse into black holes, swallowing even light. How is this pattern different from our own lives? Our bodies obey the same law. Cells replicate, age, fail. Organs tire. Consciousness flickers. Just as stars collapse into themselves, so do we. Our lifespans are shorter, but the pattern is the same. We die, and mingle with the universe, changing state much like the galaxies collapsimng into themselves and forming black holes, much like ice changing into water and then steam. Entropy is impartial: it governs galaxies and mitochondria alike.

Stephen Hawking once remarked: Entropy measures the disorder of a system. The increase of disorder is what distinguishes the past from the future, giving us the arrow of time. Death is, in this sense, simply time’s arrow reaching its end for us. But remember, time is always relative. That same arrow gave us life. Without entropy, stars would never burn, galaxies would never form, and we would not exist. Alas, nothing lasts forever. Nor neither the stars and galaxies, nor us.

To see this is to reframe entropy not as enemy but as teacher. It tells us that endings are not failures. They are the very mechanism by which new beginnings arise. Without the death of stars, there would be no carbon in our bodies, no oxygen in our lungs. Without dissolution, there is no renewal.

When I think of my own dying, I see it now as akin to stellar collapse. Just as stars exhaust their fuel and fall inward, scattering what remains, so too will I. My consciousness will fade, my body will dissolve, my atoms will scatter. Yet nothing will be lost. Matter is neither created nor destroyed; it only changes form. My carbon will become soil. My oxygen will return to air. My water will cycle through rivers and clouds. And my consciousness will merge with the universal consciousness. The death of ego, is the death of separation, and the merging with the universal. The poet Rumi once wrote: Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form. Entropy proves him right.

Brian Cox, a famous British physicist, reflects: We are the cosmos made conscious, and life is the means by which the universe understands itself. This perspective does not deny death; it embraces it. My life is a fleeting expression of cosmic matter, arranged temporarily into a form called “me.” When entropy undoes that arrangement, nothing is truly lost. The universe continues. And in some small way, it continues through me.

This is the paradox of entropy: it assures us that everything ends, but also that nothing is wasted. We are stardust, and to stardust we return. Our deaths are collapses, but they are also continuities. When I breathe, I inhale atoms once breathed by ancient ancestors, perhaps even by my mother. Hence, my mother, and these ancestors are inside of me. The air fuels the blood, which maintains my organs. So the ancestral molecules are within me. When I walk, I step on ground touched by countless generations. The molecules left behind by them are absorbed by me.  When sunlight warms my face, it carries photons that have travelled millions of years from the heart of the sun, photons that also touched the eyes of those who came before me. Since photons travel at the speed of light, they do not experience time. For a photon, there is no past, or future – it remains in the present. So the photons that touched my mother are simultaneously touching me. The separation does not exist. Matter circulates, endlessly. Death does not sever us from the world; it joins us to world in a timeless manner, and returns us to the world in a timeless manner. Since we only understand one dimension of time, we are unable to see this juxtaposition and connection.

Seen this way, entropy is not annihilation but belonging. To die is to give ourselves back to the cycle — to scatter, to dissolve, to return.

The art of dying, through the lens of entropy, is the art of surrendering into vastness. My death is not an isolated event but part of a cosmic choreography that has unfolded for billions of years. Stars have burned, galaxies have collided, black holes have swallowed light, and through it all, matter has recycled itself into new forms. My life is one of those forms. My death will be just another transformation. And, there is no knowing how many times parts of me have experienced the separation, and the return before. As Carl Sagan reminded us: We are a way for the cosmos to know itself, to die, then, is simply for the cosmos to close one chapter and open another. And we are part of every chapter in some form or the other.

The Fear of Death & Dying

If we are stardust, and go thru these cycles over and over again, why fear “death”? For most majority, fear of death begins at the first flicker of “I.” The moment awareness says “I,” its opposite, the outline of “not-I” appears. It is a separation from the univsersal. This concept of Self—as being separate from the eternal–is linked to personal identity. Mediated by Freudian ego, it is a discrete entity, and separate from the ocean of “not-I” entities of the universe. This freudian ego is a sentinel necessary for protection of the body. It separates the self from the other, and with that distinction between the self and the other comes a guard at the border—fear—whose job is to keep the new territory of “me” intact. Nothing malicious here: fear is simply the echo of separation. In a universe imagined as one field of consciousness, the very thought “What am I?” generates a horizon, and horizons breed vigilance. The “I” listens for footsteps on the other side. Death frightens because it looks like the end of that border. To the “I,” death reads as erasure: the signature rubbed from the page. To the field itself (the ocean of consciousness) the ”I” is only a river returning to the ocean. Our nervous system sides, quite sensibly, with the signature. The body learns early that to lose form is to lose life; the amygdala does not distinguish ego-loss from cliff-edge. So when death approaches—our own or someone else’s—the border lights up: fear contracts the breath, narrows attention, stirs old stories. This is not a moral failure; it is the body keeping watch over a line it was trained to defend.

But there is an older witness than the “I.” If attention rests not in the signature but in the page, the work of fear begins to thin. The point is not to crush fear or out-argue it with metaphysics; it is to see that fear belongs to the project of separation. When the sense of “me versus world” softens—even briefly—death changes character. It is no longer an eviction; it is a homecoming.

To dodge fear then, perhaps it is best to think of the universe as a sea of consciousness not separate from us, but with us being a part of the whole. The non-duality bypasses the separation, an “I” does not exist in an undivided, undifferentiated world. When there is no separation, there is no isolated, separated self, and there is no fear of dissolution of the self.

Traditions say the same thing in different dialects: Buddhism names clinging as the root of suffering; non-dual teachings call the “I-thought” the first ripple on still water; psychology notes that identities harden under threat and soften in fields of safety. Each points to the same manoeuvre: when the border relaxes, fear has less work to do.

Perhaps the greatest fear of death is not pain, nor even loss, but an uncertainty, and lack of predictive validity. We do not know what lies beyond the final breath. Is there nothing? Is there continuation? Is there judgment, liberation, rebirth, or silence? Will I exist in some form, or is death the ultimate annhilation? The human mind is anxiously unsettled by questions it cannot answer. And yet, uncertainty is the condition of life itself. To face death, we must learn to hold the unknown without being undone by it.

Psychologists describe “intolerance of uncertainty” as a driver of anxiety. Philosophers like Sartre call it existential anxiety, or annhilation anxiety. Deeply embedded in the unconscious, it assuages us from the moment we are born, and continues thru life.  We fear not knowing more than we fear specific outcomes. The unknown is limitless, shapeless, a space where imagination spins its darkest stories. This is why cultures rush to fill the void with narratives of afterlife — not to prove truth, but to tame the terror of the mystery.

Yet uncertainty also opens possibility. If nothing is known, then everything remains possible. The unknown can be abyss, but it can also be vastness. It depends on how we frame it.

Philosophers have long wrestled with uncertainty. Socrates, facing execution, said: To fear death is to think we know what we do not know. For him, wisdom was to admit ignorance, to enter death without presumption. Montaigne echoed: Death is only the end of sensation. Why fear the loss of what we cannot feel? Both suggest humility as the way through — not the arrogance of certainty, but the peace of acceptance.

Existentialists went further. Camus argued that the very absurdity of life — that we cannot know its meaning or its end — frees us. If there is no answer, then the task is to live fully anyway. Heidegger urged that facing death without illusions makes us authentic: we live more honestly when we know that the end is uncertain.

Even religions that paint vivid afterlife pictures acknowledge mystery. The Christian mystics spoke of the “cloud of unknowing,” where God dwells beyond comprehension. Buddhists insist that enlightenment cannot be described in words; death’s passage is likewise ineffable. Sufis sing of returning to God as entering an ocean without shore. These traditions teach not certainty but trust — a surrender into what cannot be grasped.

How, then, can we hold uncertainty without panic? Psychology offers a few paths:

Mindfulness: Observing thoughts and fears without being consumed by them.

Cognitive reframing: Seeing uncertainty as possibility rather than threat.

Tolerating ambiguity: Practicing with small unknowns — unanswered questions, unfinished tasks — as training for the great unknown.

In each case, the goal is not to resolve uncertainty but to live within it, because there is beauty in not knowing. If we knew exactly what followed death, life might lose its urgency, its poignancy. The unknown keeps us tender, keeps us striving, and keeps morality and ethic alive. It allows us to love without guarantees, to create without permanence, to live as if each moment matters.

The poet Rilke wrote: Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Death is the greatest question. To love it — or at least to sit quietly beside it — is to live with courage.

Imagine uncertainty not as a void but as a night sky. We cannot see its edges, but we see its stars. We do not know its origin, but we marvel at its depth. Mystery, then, need not be terror. It can be wonder.

To face the unknown is not to conquer the unknown, but to soften before it. To say: I do not know, and that is enough. To live into the question without demanding an answer. To trust that whatever awaits, life has prepared us to meet it — with or without certainty.

How does this help at the bedside or in the late watches of the night? Begin by honoring fear as a faithful guard who has done its job for decades. Let it sit down. Widen the room of awareness so that fear is something happening within you, it is not happening to the whole of you. Feel the messages: “Here is tightening in the throat, here is heat in the chest.” Name them gently. Breathe as if breathing through a larger chest—the room, the dark, the garden beyond the window. If words help, trade possession for presence: go from thinking “my body is failing” to knowing “this body is breathing,” from lamenting “I am afraid” to reflecting “fear is moving here.” The language is not a trick; it’s a way to loosen the knuckles of “I”

Gratitude can also bridge the border. To thank a life—its work, its loves, its mistakes—allows release without denial. Gratitude says, “I have had this,” and with that sentence the “I” becomes porous; others flow in. Sometimes the simplest practice is to alternate two quiet questions: “What is here now?” and “What can I let go now?” The answers change, and that change itself teaches: the border has never been as solid as we feared. None of this asks you to believe in a doctrine. It offers a lens: fear as the shadow of separation. When separation eases, fear eases. When fear eases, dying and death becomes more intelligible—not an argument to win, but a gesture to complete. The wave of the Freudian ego that has spent a lifetime guarding the contour of the body and mind, can recognize, at last, that the ocean – the higher self–was never outside it. And then the guard—having done its work—can finally restyou to believe in a doctrine. It offers a lens: fear as the shadow of separation. When separation eases, fear eases. When fear eases, dying becomes more intelligible—not an argument to win, but a gesture to complete. A wave that has spent a lifetime guarding its contour can recognize, at last, that the ocean was never outside it. And then the guard—having done its work—can finally rest.

Accompanying Death

Death doesn’t always announce itself with sirens. Often it slips in between the kettle’s whistle and the phone lighting up with a doctor’s number you don’t want to call back. A neighbor’s heart stumbles; a headline steals your breath; a child asks where the goldfish went. You look up from the sink and understand, again, that the house you live in has a back door always standing slightly ajar. Mortality is that door. You can ignore it for years, yet every breeze in the corridor comes from there.

I used to think the exit door was a bully. Now I think of it as a teacher who refuses small talk. It asks direct questions: If time is a basket, what do you put in first? Who needs your apology? Which stories do you want your people to tell when they speak your name? This is not an academic essay. Think of it as a manual for ordinary days—how to live with the door ajar without becoming afraid of the hallway.

When children meet death, they usually meet it in pieces. A pet goes “missing.” A grandparent disappears from the Sunday call. The instinct is to soften the words, to say someone “went to sleep” or “went far away.” Don’t. Children take language seriously; they may fear sleep, or watch the door for weeks. Use plain words: the body stopped working; she does not breathe, eat, or feel pain anymore; we won’t see him again, but we will remember him together. Then make remembering a verb. Let the child choose a photo for the fridge, draw the lost one’s favorite things, plant a small tree. Keep bedtime steady. Grief for a child is a loop, not a line; the questions return as they grow and their mind gains new rooms. Each time, answer with the same honesty and the same lap.

For adolescents, mortality barges in alongside identity and speed. The first funeral. The midnight bike ride that almost went wrong. The sense that life is an exam you must ace before someone calls time. If you love a young person, give them projects that will outlast a season: teach a sibling guitar; interview an elder and archive the stories; volunteer where the work is visible and slow. Offer practices that convert adrenaline into awe: open-sky nights; a room full of music; the shock of a cold river. Encourage one sentence they can write on a wall: “What is worth my hours?” The gods of comparison will come; let meaning, not spectacle, be the counterspell.

By midlife, the calendar looks like a game of Tetris. Mortality shows up as restlessness, as an itch to buy, to scroll, to pretend you can outrun your own shadow. The antidote isn’t a jungle retreat so much as a drawer-cleaning. Finish what’s unfinished. Call the friend you left mid-sentence five years ago and end the sentence. Make an “ethical will” on one page—what you want to give that is not a thing: your values, a recipe, the story of the time your courage failed and what you learned. Choose who gets to keep your diaries, your passwords, your laughter. Put a small envelope in the back of a book labeled “Read at any time,” and fill it with the names of people you need to thank while you can still pronounce them.

For older adults, mortality is a daily companion, sometimes kind, sometimes sharp. Here the work is arranging your life into a story you can bless. Give your albums captions. Record voice notes telling the tale behind the chipped tea cup. Where it is possible, reconcile; where it is not, release yourself from courtroom duties. Draw up advance care plans—not because you are surrendering, but because choosing is a form of dignity. Decide who will sit by your bed, what music you want in the room, which poem you want read when the weather outside the window makes a last perfect sense.

How do we accompany the dying? First, by dropping our urge to fix what is not broken in the way we think. Offer three simple gifts: presence (“I’m here, and I will stay”), attention (“I can listen or be quiet—what would you like?”), and practical love (“May I bring water / oil your hands / read out your messages?”). The room will teach you what matters: a sip, a hymn, lotion on the feet, the relief of two pillows instead of one. Say the names of people they love. Open the window a little. When in doubt, let silence have a chair; it knows how to work. What not to say: anything that starts with “at least.” “At least” is a broom that sweeps real feeling under the bed. Let feeling be in the room.

And grief? Imagine the sea the day after a storm: long, slow waves you can’t command. You will be fine answering emails at ten and undone by a smell at noon. You are not failing a syllabus. There is no correct stage, no exam. You are learning to carry someone in a different way. Make the carrying visible. Keep a memory table for a month or a year: a photo, a flower, a favorite snack, a note. Invite friends to add to it when they visit. Speak the stories aloud. Grief hates secrecy; it eats it and grows.

Rituals help because they give the body something to do when the mind goes blank. In many Indian homes, we light a lamp at dusk. It is a small agreement with the night: we cannot lengthen the day, but we can witness it. Funerals, prayers, feeding the poor, fasting, singing the names—whether your ritual is religious or handmade, let it be less about convincing heaven and more about training your attention. Gratitude and sorrow can share a plate. If your family customs are complicated, start where you are. Bake their cake on their birthday. Take their favorite route and walk it slowly. Write a letter each year and keep it with the winter blankets.

Ritual, in Jung’s sense, is not a plea to heaven but a container—a shaped act that lets the ego meet the larger Self when language fails. When the mind goes blank, the psyche reaches for symbol; the hands make meaning the mouth cannot. Lighting a lamp at dusk is a small rite at a threshold (day to night, known to unknown). The flame constellates a center that can hold the dark. In grief, affects scatter unless they’re given form; ritual gathers them so they don’t slip into shadow. Let your rites be a dialogue with the unconscious, not a performance: repeatable, simple, sincere.

Funerals, prayers, feeding the poor, fasting, singing the names—each is a way to carry feeling into form. Gratitude and sorrow can share a plate; both belong to love. Write a letter each year and tuck it with the winter blankets. These humble repetitions carve a path through the thicket of grief; over time the rite changes you. What started as holding on becomes a living bond—less possession, more presence. This is mourning as individuation: the relationship with the dead moves inward and grows wiser, and the Self keeps watch while the world turns.

Living With A Door Ajar: Dying A Little Everyday

People say they fear death, but most of us fear two different things: pain and vanishing. Pain can be eased with help—medicine, nerve blocks, and the kindness of those who know how to turn you without hurting your ribs. Ask for palliative care early; it is not the opposite of hope, it is the opposite of unnecessary suffering.

Vanishing is harder. It is the ache of not getting to finish the book of yourself. The only balm I know is to keep writing good pages now. Pick five small acts that make a life feel complete when you lay your head down: water the plant, call one person, read six lines of a poem, step into daylight for ten minutes, put one thing back where it belongs. Repeat, even on bad days—especially on bad days.

Here are five other practices that cost little and change much.

1. Keep a memento mori in your pocket: a pebble from a beach you love, a pressed leaf. Touch it in the morning and ask, “If today were enough, how would I live it?”
2. Write thank-you postcards before you owe them. Record the names behind the objects in your home so stories don’t die with you.
3. Forgive three small debts—to yourself, to others; feel how lightness tastes.
4. Choose a song for your last party; tell your people where to find it. They will smile when they hear it someday, and the room will tilt toward joy.
5. Be kind to your body. This sounds basic because it is. Stand up more slowly; eat the peach while it is still warm from the sun; sleep when your eyes ask; stop treating illness as failure. Health is not a moral grade; it is a weather system. Carry an umbrella, share a shawl. Ask for help without a preface. Accept help without a speech. None of this means giving up; it means tending the life that remains with the care you once saved for other people.

If a diagnosis arrives, notice how quickly your days clean themselves. The to-do list that once sprawled across a month now fits on a sticky note: call my sister; watch the rain; set the passwords in order; say out loud what I love. That clarity is a gift no productivity app can deliver. Let it rearrange your home. Put the chair where the light is best. Move the tea tray within reach. Choose laughter whenever it comes to the door; it is not a betrayal. It is the way the soul stretches its legs.

I think often of a neighbor who died last winter. The evening before he left us, the power went out on our lane. Someone lit a diya; someone else brought dal on a portable stove; children ran between shadows with wet hair and loud stories. We sat on the steps and talked about him without using the past tense. When the lights came back, there was a tenderness in the air that felt like a coat we had shrugged on without thinking. The next day the house was quieter, but the coat remained. We hadn’t conquered death; we had prepared a seat for it and in doing so, we had prepared a seat for each other.

What does it mean to live with the door ajar? It means living a little more deliberately, not dramatically. Learn the names of your neighbors and at least one tree on your street. Keep an extra packet of biscuits for unexpected visitors.

The thought of dying is depressive to most. But why? Be excited about the merger with the divine. Of new travels, new journeys. Of entering the newer realms. Anticipate a better world, for quantum theory suggests that the world we live in, is created by our own minds. Why would you want to set foot on a depressive, fearful journey ? Expect more.

Make a folder called “When I’m not here” and put your love in it, translated into instructions. Practice not hurrying. Practice saying what you mean while the listener is still in the room. Practice sitting with someone who is crying and not opening your mouth for a full minute. Practice forgiving before the apology arrives.

Death is not a lesson to master. It is a landscape to learn. Some mornings you will walk it briskly; some evenings you will barely leave the porch. But if you let it, the landscape will teach you how to see: that time is a gift that tastes best when shared; that meaning gathers around simple acts; that love does not end, it changes verb. And when the wind from the back door moves through the corridor, you will not panic. You will do what humans have always done at dusk. You will cup your hands around the small flame you can carry. Not to defeat the night—no one has—but to mark the life that, for this moment, still warms your palms.

We often think of death as an event — a final moment, a rupture at the end of life. But if we look closely, we see that dying is already woven into every day we live. Each breath, each night’s sleep, each ending of a season is a rehearsal for the final letting go. To practice dying daily is not morbid; it is a way of living more awake.

From the time we were born, we have been inching towards death, painstakingly learning how to die a little everyday. Also, every goodbye is a small death. Every lost opportunity, every shifting friendship, every wrinkle in the mirror is a reminder that nothing lasts. We shed identities like old skins. We leave behind homes, jobs, cities, and even versions of ourselves. Most of the time, we resist — clinging to what was. So, we die a little everyday, and if we pay attention, these small deaths teach us how to meet the larger one.

The Japanese have a word, mono no aware: the gentle sadness of things passing. The cherry blossoms fall, the tea grows cold, the summer fades. Instead of despair, there is poignancy.

Conclusion

To notice impermanence is to feel life more acutely. To practice acceptance of these daily deaths is to prepare for the final one with tenderness instead of terror. In this way, death becomes not the end of meaning but its source. Without it, life would sprawl endlessly, drained of urgency. With it, every moment counts.

Death, the teacher, whispers: Do not waste your days. Live now. Love now. Forgive now. For you, too, will die. And that is the gift.