Chapter 49Old Age and Death

Death and Rebirth Only those years that are passed uselessly make you grow old.

A year spent uselessly is a year during which no progress has been accomplished, no growth in consciousness has been achieved, no further step has been taken towards perfection.

Consecrate your life to the realisation of something higher and broader than yourself and you will never feel the weight of the passing years.

21 February 1958

* From birth to death, life is a dangerous thing.

The brave pass through it without care for the risks. The prudent take precautions. The cowardly are afraid of everything. But ultimately, what happens to each one is only what the Supreme Will has decided.

19 June 1966

* Some of the living are already half-dead. Many of the dead are very much alive.

* Dear friend,

Your letter came bringing me news I knew already, because often your thought comes bringing me your remembrance and keeps me in touch with your tribulations. Everyone, in truth, has his own and you know as well as I that it is only in the inner attitude that peace is found.

So long as we are in a body, whatever its age and difficulties, it is certain that we have something to do or learn in it, and this conviction gives the necessary strength to face all vicissitudes.

I had hoped, in putting you into touch with the Tibetan refugees, that among them there would be one who would be happy to consecrate his or her life to have the opportunity to develop intellectually and learn all that you would be able to teach him or her in exchange for this service.

Would this not be possible? For me the Grace is an active reality which guides our destiny through the ages.

One must not be in a hurry and hasten the departure, even if it is for the eternal repose or the beatitude of nothingness. As long as we are in a body, undoubtedly we have yet something to do or learn therein.

* This suggestion of death comes from the “ego” when it feels that soon it will have to abdicate. Keep quiet and fearless. Everything will be all right.

* You speak of absolute renunciation, but to give up the body is not the absolute renunciation. The true and total renunciation is to give up the ego which is a much more arduous endeavour. If you have not renounced your ego, to give up the body will not bring freedom to you.

*

(About the regions of night and sorrow described in Sri Aurobindo’s poem “Love and Death”)

The vital world is mostly like that and those who live exclusively in the physical and vital go there after death. But there is the Grace!...

* Death is not at all what you believe it to be. You expect from death the neutral quietness of an unconscious rest. But to obtain that rest you must prepare for it.

When you die you lose only your body and at the same time the possibilities of relation with and action on the material world. But all that belongs to the vital world does not disappear with the material substance; all your desires, attachments, crav-ings persist with the sense of frustration and disappointment, and all that prevents you from finding the expected peace. To enjoy a peaceful and eventless death you must prepare for it. And the only effective preparation is the abolition of desires.

So long as we have a body we have to act, to work, to do something: but if we do it simply because it has to be done, without seeking for the result or wanting it to be like this or like that, we get progressively detached and thus prepare ourselves for a restful death.

* If you wish to escape from death, you must not bind yourself to anything perishable.

One can conquer that alone which one fears not, and he who fears death has already been vanquished by death.

* In order to be able to conquer death and win immortality, one must neither fear death nor desire it.

* The target at which we are aiming is immortality.

And of all the habits, death is surely the most obstinate.

* From the viewpoint of spiritual knowledge, decrepitude and decay — disintegration — are quite simply and undoubtedly the result of a wrong attitude.

*

1. Why are men obliged to leave their bodies?

Because they do not know how to keep up with Nature in her progress towards the Divine.

2. Should one respect the body of a dead person? If so, how?

One should respect everything, living and dead, and know that everything lives in the Divine Consciousness.

The respect should be felt in the heart and the inner attitude.

3. Is the Divine there in the body of a dead person?

The Divine is everywhere; and I repeat that for the Divine there are no living or dead — everything lives eternally.

4. What should we do to make the soul happy, so that it reincarnates in good conditions, for example in a spiritual environment?

Have no sorrow and remain very peaceful and quiet, while keeping an affectionate remembrance of the one who has departed.

5. Do souls weep?

When something separates them from the Divine.

6. How can one stop someone from weeping?

Love him sincerely and deeply without trying to stop his tears.

* Normally the consciousness of the departed ought to feel no pain for what happens to the body after his or her departure.

But there is in the material body itself a consciousness called the “spirit of the form” which takes some time to get completely out of the aggregated cells; its departure is the starting point of a general decomposition, and before its departure it may have a kind of feeling of what happens to the body. That is why it is always better not to be in a hurry for the funeral.

13 November 1966

* You say that it is through a newspaper that the news came of your nephew’s death. So the child died a few days ago. Did X and Y find any difference in their atmosphere, their feelings, their thoughts, their sensations — a difference, an uneasiness or a sense of loss, which would give a real ground for their sorrow? I am pretty sure that they did not. So their sorrow, if they have any, is not true but the result of conventional thoughts and feelings; it is all illusion coming from the family idea, which is one of the most artificial and false of all conventions.

In truth the child was not in their atmosphere, otherwise they would have become aware of his death without needing to receive the news of it; he was no more in their atmosphere than any one of the two hundred thousand human beings who die every day — for the average death of human beings is two hundred thousand a day. Do they know that? Is not death the most common and everyday happening and can they reasonably expect that none of those they know will escape this general law?

* Your father died because it was his time to die. Circumstances can be an occasion but surely not a cause. The cause is in the Divine’s will and nothing can alter it.

So, grieve not and surrender your sorrow at the feet of the Divine. He will give you peace and freedom.

*

(To someone whose friend had died)