The word ‘Ayus’ denoting life also implicates death. Ayurveda is the knowledge of both life and death. Ayurveda considers the human being to be an integrated whole comprising of body, mind and self. Life a journey in which the mind evolves to the point where it is able to manifest a higher consciousness.

The culmination of this journey is the result of many lives and Ayurveda explains that the mind survives the body after death. While the self is immovable and omnipresent, the mind is atomic, singular and gets displaced from one body to another, performing actions, until is attains the clarity to express consciousness in all its glory. From Ayurvedic perspective, the aspiration for the afterlife is one amongst the fundamental human pursuits. For this reason, there are detailed discussions about death and the passage into a new life in Ayurvedic texts, which we will explore in this lecture.