The Components of Life & Death: Time, Energy, Information

“Time determines the nature or the duration of one’s life and death. Both life and death are within the ambit of time. One who has mastery over time has mastery over life and death.”

—Sadhguru

Sadhguru looks at how life and death are essentially a play of time, information and energy, and how we can become absolutely free if we conduct these three consciously.

Sadhguru: When a human being is born, a certain software is set within him, which is a combination of time, energy and the information that he carries with him. These three together will determine various aspects of life. These three together will even determine how long a human being lives and how he lives. If this is so, is it all predetermined? The information is definitely predetermined. This does not mean you cannot take in new information. It is just that depending upon what sort of information you have, it kind of pushes or pulls you towards certain type of things. But this does not stop you from taking in fresh information today, this moment.

This whole heap of information is referred to as sanchita karma. According to the nature of the information, energy is allotted for different aspects of life. If the karmic information is veering towards physicality, you will see energies naturally allot themselves into the physical structure of who you are. If the information is leaning towards your intellectual process, accordingly the energy allots itself to that activity. If the information is very emotional, energy allots itself to that dimension. If it is inclining towards a spiritual dimension, then energy allots itself in that direction.

This allotment is happening by natural tendencies, but this does not mean one cannot reallocate. One can reallocate but if you simply go by your tendencies, yes, life is predetermined. If you are 100% a slave of your tendencies, life is predetermined. We can very easily predict what will happen.

Time Waits For No One

Reallocation of energy, how we manage our energies, in which direction we focus energies, do we enhance it or do we deplete it – these things are very much in our hands. But the third dimension – which is an important component of one’s life – is time. Time is ticking away all the time. You can’t slow it down, you can’t hasten it. You can conserve your energy, you can throw your energy around, you can develop it, you can make it phenomenally big or insipid, but time is always going away.

Time has its own intelligence and flows according to certain parameters of karmic information and energy allotment that is available in one’s system. Can’t we do anything about it? We can, but that is a much more elusive dimension of life than the other two. The other two are much easier to manage and manifest in one’s life. Generating energy and using it the way you want, and not allowing your tendencies to determine the nature of your thought, emotion and activity, is much easier than taking charge of time. Even Adiyogi took charge of time only when he was in certain states. When he was in such states we refer to him as Kala Bhairava.

Time determines the nature or the duration of one’s life and death. Both life and death are within the ambit of time. One who has mastery over time has mastery over life and death. He can determine whether he wants to live or die. One who has mastery over his energies, will determine the nature of his activity and how he lives. He has absolute mastery over his life but not over his death. One who has mastery over his information, or one who has mastery over the tendencies caused by the information, or one who is free from the tendencies caused by the karmic information one carries, has mastery over the quality of his life – whether he is pleasant or unpleasant within.

These three components together is the making of life. These three components together is what you are right now. If one grasps these three dimensions within, that you are a combination of time, energies and information, if you can conduct all these three things consciously, you are free in every way – 100% free. That’s liberation. That’s mukti.