Insights into the deepest secrets of life

Decode Life by Manoj Dwivedi is a compelling and thought-provoking exploration of life’s fundamental principles. It offers deep insight into a structured approach to self-discovery and personal growth. Across 125 pages, the book systematically unpacks six core attributes of life, four principles of happiness, five principles of death, ten principles on the spiral nature of life, five principles of freedom, three principles of knowing without judging, three principles of finding one’s true self, and the paradoxes of modern life. Each idea is illustrated through moral stories, insights, guiding principles, and practical applications. The author’s aim is to help readers unlock their true potential by understanding universal life principles and applying them to everyday challenges.

Through a blend of philosophy and scientific reasoning, the book explores profound questions about existence, happiness, and meaning. It encourages self-reflection and deeper contemplation, allowing readers to gradually internalize its teachings rather than rushing through prescriptive advice. The narrative avoids clichés and instead offers a fresh perspective on navigating life’s complexities with clarity and purpose.

One of the book’s strengths is its ability to break down deep concepts into digestible insights, making it accessible to a wide range of readers. By encouraging mindful engagement, Decode Life serves as a guide for anyone seeking balance, fulfilment, and a better understanding of their journey. It is designed to be read at a thoughtful pace, allowing its wisdom to resonate over time. Each concept comes with a micro-story, key insights, guiding principles, and practical applications to help readers unlock their potential.

With its blend of storytelling, analysis, and practical wisdom, Decode Life helps individuals align with their higher purpose and embrace a more meaningful existence.

Section One: The Six Universal Attributes of Life

This section frames life as a shared experience, inescapable, ever-evolving, and deeply personal, yet common across cultures, backgrounds, and beliefs. The chapter leans on philosophical inquiry, exploring existential questions about life, happiness, freedom, and death as universal themes.

According to the author, life is something we all navigate sometimes with joy, sometimes with struggle, but never with indifference. Humanity has always sought to understand life’s meaning and purpose. We define our lives through achievements, relationships, beliefs, and possessions, yet the core question remains: can life be decoded? The author’s answer is yes.

The Bhagavad Gita (5.18) states that life’s purpose is to realize the self and attain union with the divine: “Those who see with equal vision a learned and gentle Brahmin, a cow, an elephant, a dog, and a dog-eater are truly wise.” In this spirit, Decode Life acts as a handbook for readers to discover what is meant for them.

Another distinctive feature of the book is its use of rhetorical questions life and death being the biggest of all. I’ve read a fair amount about numerology, zodiac signs, and tarot cards, all of which claim to reveal hidden meaning and purpose. Everything seems interconnected when it comes to a person’s path, destiny, and the small signals or “vibes” that guide our choices. Many of us decide our course of action by weighing facts, instinct, and these vibes together.

This question of whether life can be decoded is one I pondered often during the COVID-19 lockdowns. I realized then that an existential or identity crisis isn’t only a mid-life phenomenon I felt it well before that age. I found myself caught between reality, expectations, and desires. Some of what we do, we do wholeheartedly, out of zeal and passion; the rest we do half-heartedly, out of necessity. Watching the immense loss of life and uncertainty around the world, I began questioning myself: What are we doing with our lives? Where are we headed? Am I treating myself and the people I care about the right way? Should I stay the course, or take a leap of faith and risk the outcome? What am I meant to do with the life I’ve been given? What does this entire thread of karma lead to? As the author notes, just as powerful computers arise from grains of sand, the code of life can be understood through basic observation.

To unravel this mystery, the author argues, we must first recognize life’s universal attributes experiences common to every human being.

The first is the pursuit of happiness. Every action we take is driven by a desire for joy, while we instinctively avoid pain, loss, and suffering. We attach ourselves to people, objects, or ideologies hoping they’ll bring happiness, while avoiding anything that causes discomfort. This pursuit is fundamental to every human being, regardless of background or circumstance.

The second is mortality. Despite differences in status, wealth, or intelligence, death is inevitable — a universal truth.

Of the six attributes the author identifies, my personal favourite is the fourth: the desire for freedom. History shows that across cultures and civilizations, humans consistently seek liberation and reject bondage in any form. By understanding these fundamental truths, the author suggests, we move closer to uncovering life’s deeper code — one that can guide us toward greater clarity, purpose, and fulfilment.

Section Two: Understanding Happiness

Here, the author examines happiness at a granular level. People find it in wealth, success, relationships, or spiritual pursuits — but regardless of the source, he argues, happiness follows three universal attributes: it is self-diminishing, relative, and confined to the properties of its source.

Happiness is self-diminishing. A small indulgence a piece of cake, say brings joy, but too much of it leads to dissatisfaction. What once brought happiness eventually loses its appeal. The author frames this as a key insight into the fleeting nature of pleasure.

Happiness is relative. Our sense of joy depends on comparison. Holding a cake may feel delightful until we see someone with a bigger one. A hundred-dollar bill means little to a millionaire but everything to someone in need. This relativity shapes how we perceive happiness. But the author suggests it shouldn’t have to be this way. The Bhagavad Gita teaches that all action should be performed selflessly, without attachment to results: “You have the right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions.” (Gita 2.47) We must take ownership of our life and actions in line with what the present moment demands, since that shapes the days ahead.

The Bible offers a similar path to happiness through gratitude and contentment: “Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:18) The Quran, too, teaches that gratitude leads to contentment and joy (Surah Ibrahim 14:7).

The author links happiness to time, space, and energy, the fundamental coordinates of our existence. Each of us is born with inherent tendencies (Pravriti), shaped by both unconscious conditioning and conscious learning. These tendencies form our Prakriti (nature) and, in turn, shape our character (Sanskara).

The Gita echoes this idea: “That which seems like nectar in the beginning and poison in the end, this happiness is born of the contact of the senses with their objects.” (Gita 18.38) Pleasures born from the senses are temporary and ultimately lead to suffering. Gita 5.24 adds: “One whose happiness is within, who is active and rejoices within, and whose aim is inward that person is a perfect mystic, liberated in the Supreme.” True happiness, in other words, is internal and independent of external circumstances.

As the author puts it: “We exist in a realm of time, space, and energy. These three together define the coordinates of our existence from the point when we are born into this world. As we are born with a physical body (defined through genetics), we are also born with certain inherent tendencies (pravriti) unique to every individual. Just as our bodies grow with time, we also expand our inherent tendencies through unconscious conditioning and conscious learning. These tendencies together define our nature (prakriti). The sum of all such tendencies (sanskara) is reflected in our response to everything. In social terms, this is understood as character.”

Desires, the author explains, emerge when our tendencies meet an object, person, or thought. Fulfilled desires reinforce our pursuit of happiness; unfulfilled ones create a latent force that drives future action. This cycle of desire and fulfilment fuels human behaviour and decision-making.

Ultimately, the author argues, our thoughts and actions set off a spiral of cause and effect within this realm of time, space, and energy — one that shapes our life’s trajectory. By recognizing the transient, conditioned nature of happiness, we can move through life with greater awareness and emotional balance. Through this framework, the author offers a structured way of “Understanding Happiness” that goes beyond fleeting pleasure.

The Micro-Stories

The author uses micro-stories as a device to illustrate his ideas a method I found especially effective for connecting with readers.

To explain the spiral of cause and effect, he tells the story “The Three Friends and the Beautiful Woman.” The three friends serve as symbolic representations of the three Gunas Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas from Vedantic philosophy, each reflecting a different aspect of human nature. The story becomes a metaphor for how these innate tendencies shape our desires, actions, and their consequences.

Characterization is central to the story. The Monk embodies the Sattvic quality: wisdom, selflessness, spiritual fulfilment. The Businessman reflects the Rajasic quality ambition, attachment, and material desire. The Thief represents the Tamasic nature: impulsiveness, destructiveness, selfishness. Each character’s reaction to the woman reveals his inner qualities.

The story’s central theme is the nature of happiness and suffering: unchecked desire often leads to pain, and each character’s fading joy illustrates the impermanence of happiness. It’s rich with moral and philosophical reflection on how personal tendencies shape one’s destiny.

Symbolically, the woman represents desire, attraction, and attachment, triggering different responses depending on each man’s inner nature. The monk’s blessing and departure symbolize the path to spiritual peace, while the thief’s imprisonment represents karmic justice.

Conflict appears both internally and externally: the businessman’s struggle with rejection and the thief’s later regret show internal turmoil, while the kidnapping, rejection, and abuse depict the external clashes born of competing desires. The story also uses foreshadowing the friends’ early reactions to the woman hint at how they’ll behave later. The monk’s initial detachment, for instance, foreshadows his eventual imperviousness to worldly temptation.

The moral lesson is that happiness built on external things is temporary, while lasting contentment comes from spiritual peace, connection, and the right choices. Altogether, the story blends philosophy, symbolism, and character to reflect on human nature and the pursuit of happiness.

Practising Happiness

The author doesn’t stop at theory he encourages readers to build the right habits into daily life. A few of his practices for long-lasting happiness:

1. Before sleeping each night, review your major actions from the day. Identify any impulsive ones, and trace the tendencies behind them. Gradually learn to respond to desire with awareness rather than impulse.

2. Choose a few selfless activities and pursue them regularly. Sit with how they make you feel, and acknowledge yourself for them.

3. Before acquiring anything beyond what you need, ask if it’s truly necessary. If not, redirect that energy toward something larger than yourself.

4. Accept pain as part of happiness. Practice it through exercise, fasting, austerity, or detachment.

5. Remember that you are more than a perishable body as an eternal soul, you have existed for ages and will continue beyond this life. Regular meditation on this belief brings clarity.

Between sections, the author inserts brief “ideals” single paragraphs that distill a chapter’s core thought. One example:

“If the sole desire is to discover the eternal self, and every action is wholly dedicated to the eternal self, and acceptance of pleasure and pain is equal, then happiness is blissful eternal, self-sustaining, and free from sorrows.”

Each of these ideals occupies its own page. It’s a clever editorial choice by isolating a single thought, it narrows the reader’s focus and lets that idea sink in before moving on.

Section Three: Knowing Death

This section confronts the most feared certainty of life death. Whether we call it Yama Raj, Azrael, Yan Wang, the Angel of Death, Shinigami, or Hades, no one wants to meet it.

The Bhagavad Gita teaches that understanding death removes fear and sorrow: “The wise lament neither for the living nor the dead.” (Gita 2.11) Is death simply an end, or a transition that keeps time’s wheel turning?

This section explores the universal, inescapable reality of death and how the certainty of it has historically been used by leaders and institutions through promises of heaven and threats of hell to control societies. The author surveys diverse cultural and religious beliefs about death, from Egyptian mummification to burial and cremation practices, showing how civilizations across history have tried to come to terms with mortality.

Death, the text reminds us, spares no one regardless of wealth, power, or status. The body dies, but the soul moves on: “Just as a person discards worn-out clothes and puts on new ones, so the soul leaves the worn-out body and enters a new one.” (Gita 2.22) The Quran affirms the same certainty: “Every soul shall taste death.” (Surah Al-Imran 3:185) Life, in this view, is a test, and death a passage to the eternal: “We have made some of you a trial for others: will you have patience?” (Surah Al-Furqan 25:20)

This equality in death  regardless of what we’ve accumulated in life reinforces the idea that nothing material carries over. It quietly questions our obsession with wealth and status, urging readers to focus instead on what is certain and meaningful.

The author encourages an acceptance of mortality and a more conscious, value-driven way of living, rather than one led by fear or illusion. He also offers tips for easing one’s fear of death:

1. Before sleeping each night, review your major actions and thoughts. Identify anything violent, and commit to avoiding it going forward.

2. Give up violence start by cutting back on non-vegetarian food, even if only a day or two a week at first. Gradually reduce use of other products tied to violence, such as leather or silk.

The idea of death still frightens me it’s hard to imagine it happening to anyone I love. The author, though, explains it well through another micro-story.

Section Four: Life Is a Full Circle

In “The Story of God and a Man,” a man prays to God with deep devotion. Moved by his sincerity, God grants him a wish, and the man asks for eternal life. But as the years pass, he grows old and frail, unable to perform even basic tasks — and comes to regret his wish, realizing that endless life in a failing body is its own kind of suffering.

He prays again, and this time asks to remain young forever. God grants this too — but over the years, everyone he loves grows old and dies. Though physically young, he becomes increasingly isolated, unable to relate to each new generation.

The story foreshadows, through the very first wish, that immortality carries unintended consequences. Its central theme is the impermanence of relationships and the illusion of eternal happiness — a reminder that life’s value lies in its natural cycle.

This idea gives the section its name: Life Is a Full Circle. It lays out ten principles explaining the circularity of life. The author explores immortality through the soul’s endless journey, driven by cause and effect: the body perishes, but the life force — the soul — persists, taking new forms shaped by karma, the law by which every cause leads to a precise, non-arbitrary effect. Existence, in this view, never truly ends; it only transforms.

Among the practices offered in this section, two stood out to me:

a) Sit comfortably, and imagine yourself floating just above your body, observing it from outside. Picture the energy within you rising from the base of your spine to the crown of your head, then spreading outward to fill the room, and eventually your surroundings. Treat this expanding energy as yourself. Practice this over several days, extending it further each time, and hold the belief that you are infinite — not limited to the body or mind.

b) List everything that binds you, and everything that gives you freedom. Then expand the activities in your life that bring the latter.

I’ll close this review with the ideal that resonated with me most:

“I am the creator, preserver, and destroyer of the web of my life. When I know this, my journey from unreal to real, from darkness to light, from ignorance to enlightenment, and from death to immortality begins.”

This ideal is a call to take charge of your own life — to reclaim your power and recognize that it’s ultimately our thoughts and actions that make or break our life’s meaning. Read the book to find out where this passage belongs, and what it means in context.

Final Thoughts

Decode Life is not just a book — it’s an introspective journey into the deeper questions of existence, happiness, and life itself. Across its eleven sections, it works to uncover insights that can guide readers toward a truer sense of self. What makes it compelling is its rare ability to simplify complex philosophical ideas through relatable stories and practical exercises readers can genuinely apply. By weaving together karma, happiness, mortality, and self-realization, the author invites us to pause and reflect on the patterns and choices shaping our lives.

Reading Decode Life alongside the Bhagavad Gita, the Quran, and the Bible, I found a striking convergence — especially around happiness, death, and the soul — across traditions that otherwise differ widely. The author’s use of allegory, symbolism, characterization, conflict, foreshadowing, and moral storytelling makes each micro-story memorable as well as meaningful.

The book is written by Manoj Dwivedi, an IPS officer currently serving as Additional Secretary in the Government of India. He has received the State Award for outstanding integrity and public service, and is an alumnus of IIT Delhi, IIM Bangalore, and Cambridge University, UK.

Published by White Falcon Publishing, Decode Life is dedicated to the author’s late father, Dr. Ram Avtar Dwivedi, whose simple, high-principled life inspired the book.

For anyone who has pondered their life’s purpose, questioned the inevitability of death, or sought peace amid chaos, this book is a guide, a companion, and a mirror. It encourages readers to take responsibility for their actions, embrace freedom, and understand life’s cyclical nature. I highly recommend Decode Life — not just for the ideas it presents, but for what it reveals about yourself along the way. It’s a thoughtful, empowering read that stays with you long after the last page.

— From the Book Reviewer’s Desk