Someone asked: they had heard an interview with the widow of a well-known public figure who died suddenly in his early forties. On the day it happened, her husband had gone about his day entirely normally, until he collapsed on the street. He was rushed to hospital; his heart stopped and was restarted twice, but on the third attempt, resuscitation failed. The questioner wanted to know: during those first instances when his heart stopped, had the junction connecting the subtle body already detached, and did it reconnect each time he was revived?

A stopped heart is a physical matter. As long as true death has not occurred, the junction connecting the subtle body has no problem — even if the heart stops for many hours, a person can still revive normally. In some cases, after a long cardiac stoppage, a person revives but suffers brain damage; each case differs, depending on that person's own karmic results. The one exception is when the junction has genuinely detached — in that case, it can never be reconnected.

Three Heaves of Breath: The Mechanism That Frees the Subtle Body from the Physical One

For the coarse human body and the subtle human body to truly separate, three heaves of breath are required. The first wrenches the junction of the coarse body loose; the second pulls from the seventh base down to the sixth; and the third finally frees the subtle body completely from the coarse one. But true death is no simple matter — it is, in fact, very difficult to achieve — because it requires the sphere of death to appear first. If the sphere of death has not appeared, death cannot occur, no matter what happens to the body.

The Sphere of Demerit, the Sphere of Misfortune, and the Sphere of Death: Different Degrees of Darkness

Within the sphere of demerit — a dark sphere, a sphere of suffering — lies, at its very center, the sphere of misfortune, darker still than the sphere of demerit itself. This sphere of misfortune is what destroys one's assets — physical wealth, property, virtues, retinue, fame, honor, and happiness — according to each person's own life-plan. As long as the sphere of death has not appeared, one has not died. But once the sphere of death genuinely appears, it is darker even than the spheres of demerit and misfortune — a frightening darkness, of the kind that can absorb life-energy the instant it is seen. Whoever the sphere of death appears to has no way of escaping it.

Even Well-Practiced Elder Monks Recognize When the Sphere of Death Has Appeared

For this reason, some senior monks at temples, when they fall ill and are taken to hospital, gladly return to the temple once they recover. But when illness strikes again and disciples try to take them to hospital once more, some refuse to go — because they can tell that the sphere of death has already appeared, and that going would only mean dying there anyway, causing trouble for the doctors and nurses who would be blamed. Knowing that once the sphere of death has appeared, death cannot be avoided by any means, they choose not to go.

The Mechanism of Death Runs Automatically, Already Recorded in Yama's Ledger

Once the sphere of death has appeared, the process and mechanism of dying begins to operate automatically, separating the subtle human body from the coarse one. The exact date and time of each person's death is, in truth, already determined and recorded in advance in the ledger of the Lord of Death. Everything operates as one automatic system, working in concert like this.