The Destiny of the Body

Chapter X

Death at the Service of Life

I have given thee thy awful shape of dread

And thy sharp sword of terror and grief and pain

To force the soul of man to struggle for light

On the brevity of his half-conscious days.

Thou art his spur to greatness in his works,

The whip to his yearning for eternal bliss,

His poignant need of immortality.

Live, Death, awhile, be still my instrument.

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book X, Canto IV, p. 666)

This world was built by Death that he might live. Wilt thou abolish death ?

Then life too will perish. Thou canst not abolish death, but thou mayst

transform it into a greater living.

If Life alone were and not death, there could be no immortality...

Death transformed becomes Life that is Immortality...

(Sri Aurobindo, Thoughts and Aphorisms)

When the earth will not need to die in order to progress, there will be no more death.

(The Mother, Bulletin, Vol. XV, No. 3, p. 47)

I am Immortality as well as Death.

(Sri Krishna in Bhagavadgītā, IX. 19)

The body's death is a veritable instrument serving the interests of perpetually evolving life. Indeed, as we shall see in the course of our study, given the imperfect and limited self-cabined instrumental capacity and capability of man, the process of death has become necessary as a means and salutary in its effect, because "eternal change of form is the sole immortality to which the finite living substance can aspire and eternal change of experience the sole infinity to which the finite mind involved in living body can attain. This change of form cannot be allowed to remain merely a constant renewal of the same form-type such as constitutes

Page 379

---

our bodily life between birth and death; for unless the form-type is changed and the experiencing mind is thrown into new forms in new circumstances of time, place and environment, the necessary variation of experience which the very nature of existence in Time and Space demands, cannot be effectuated. And it is only the process of Death by dissolution and by the devouring of life by Life, it is only the absence of freedom, the compulsion, the struggle, the pain, the subjection to something that appears to be Not-Self which makes this necessary and salutary change appear terrible and undesirable to our mortal mentality".¹

So we see that the whole perspective of our discussion of the problem of death has changed, and we are led to the conclusion that in the as yet imperfect status of Life so far evolved and elaborated upon earth, death cannot be viewed as "a denial of Life, but as a process of Life".² Indeed, Life, in its still imperfect manifestation, requires the spur of death in order to evolve to progressively higher and higher forms of existence. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:

"Death is the question Nature puts continually to Life and her reminder to it that it has not yet found itself. If there were no siege of death, the creature would be bound for ever in the form of an imperfect living. Pursued by death he awakes to the idea of perfect life and seeks out its means and its possibility."³

As a matter of fact, death has proved to be highly salutary, certainly to the evolution of higher types of species, but also to the individuals constituting the species, thanks to the spiritual phenomenon of soul-rebirth.⁴

Death serves a beneficial role for the individual creature, because it is an indispensable means to awaken in the latter's consciousness the need of perfection and progression. Indeed, "without it, creatures would remain contented indefinitely in the condition where they are,"⁵ and it would have been well-nigh impossible to break the "dead resistance in the mortal's

¹ The Life Divine, p. 194.

² Ibid., p. 193.

³Thoughts and Glimpses, pp. 22-23.

⁴Readers wishing to know more about the rationale, the sense and the potentiality of the phenomenon of rebirth may consult the following works of Sri Aurobindo: (i) TheProblem of Rebirth; (ii) The Life Divine (Book Two, Chaps. XX-XXIII); (iii) Letters on Yoga, Part One, Section VIII.

⁵ Bulletin of Physical Education, Vol. IX, No. 2, p. 81.

Page 380

---

heart"¹ and "his slow inertia as of living stone."² In the luminous words of the Mother:

"Opposites are the quickest and the most effective means of fashioning Matter so that it may intensify its manifestation.... In view of this, there is evidently an analogous experience in respect of what one calls fife and death. It is this kind of 'overshadowing' or constant presence of Death and the possibility of death, as it is said in Savitri: you have a constant companion throughout your journey from cradle to grave; you are ceaselessly accompanied by the menace or presence of Death. And along with this there is in the cells an intensity of the call for a Power of Eternity which would not be there but for this constant menace. Then one understands, one begins to feel in quite a concrete manner that all these things are only ways of intensifying the Manifestation, making it progress, making it more and more perfect. And if the ways are crude, it is because the Manifestation itself is very crude. And as it perfects itself, as it becomes more fit to manifest that which is eternally progressive, cruder means will be left behind for subtler means and the world will progress, without the need of such brutal oppositions. This is so, simply because the world is still in its childhood and human consciousness also is altogether in its childhood".³

From a more practical point of view too, the dispensation of 'natural' death comes indeed as a boon to the life-weary individual in his present status of ego-bound ignorant consciousness. Did not the grandfather of Edison find life too long after a century and die because he wanted to ? It is only divinised consciousness and life that can find sources of perpetual interest to keep them going on. For the ordinary time-bound limited "I" of the individual, the very prospect of physical immortality would prove to be a damnable curse. In the picturesque words of A. W. Momerie:

"Think of the kind of life which these immortals would have to live. Century after century, millennium after millennium they would see the same everlasting faces, confront the same ever-recurring phenomena, engage in the same worn-out exercises, or lounge idly in the same unchanging stagnation. They have

^{1 2} Savitri, Book VI, Canto II.

³ Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Vol. XV, No. 3, pp. 45-47. (Italics ours)

Page 381

---

drained every spring of knowledge. They have exhausted every source of enjoyment. No dim marvels, no boundless hopes, beckon them towards the future. They have no future. They have nothing but never-ending now. The incessant repetition, the unmitigated sameness, the eternal monotony of things would grow horrible and appalling to them. The world would become a hateful dungeon, and life an awful doom. What would they not give to migrate to some untried existence! They would be thankful even to he down for ever in the attractive unconsciousness of the tomb."¹

The process of death has served the interests not merely of the individuals as individuals but of the species as well. Was it not Goethe who declared: "Death is Nature's expert contrivance to get plenty of life"? Indeed, the deathlessness of the constitutive individuals would prevent others of the same species from being alive at all. A simple calculation would show that the descendants of Adam, endowed with physical immortality, would have doubled every twenty-five years and in that process produced, in less than a hundred generations, many trillions of human beings so much so that their bodies, packed two or three deep, and conglomerated into one solid mass, would have covered the entire surface of the planet!²

As a matter of fact, the remarkable truth that "the natural individual³ is a minor term of being and exists by the universal"⁴ and that "the individual life is compelled, and used, to secure permanence rather for its species than for itself"⁵ is borne out by biological evidences that have been specific and manifold. The opinion has even been expressed that all living matter once possessed potential immortality and death as a condition, non-existent in the beginning, was eventually adopted for the simple reason that "just such a safety valve was necessary to permit of the perpetuation of the race".⁶ Instead of going into an unnecessary

¹ Immortality ( H. R. Allenson, London), p. 16.

² Ibid., pp. 14-15.

³As distinct from the essential individual in respect of whom Sri Aurobindo has remarked: "The individual is a centre of the whole universal consciousness; the universe is a form and definition which is occupied by the entire immanence of the Formless and Indefinable." (The Life Divine, p. 37)

⁴ Ibid., p. 200.

⁵The Life Divine, p. 200.

⁶Carrington and Meader, Death, p. 7.

Page 382

---

elaboration of the evolutionary evidences in support of this hypothesis, we may well quote from the writings of a few savants, thus bringing into focus the consensus of opinion held by contemporary men of science.

"Life was described by Bichat as 'the sum of the functions which resist death', but this is a one-sided emphasis. For, while it is characteristic of organisms that they are continually at work in securing the persistence of their specific organization, it is equally characteristic that they spend themselves in securing the continuance of their kind. Instead of seeking to avoid death, to speak metaphorically, they often rather invite it, sacrificing themselves in producing and providing for the next generation."¹

"From the standpoint of survival value of the species, it is desirable for the individuals of today to give place eventually to those of to-morrow, because environing conditions are never constant for extensive periods, and it is only by giving the reproductive variants a change that new fitness may be established and prolonged survival be made possible. Insurance of the welfare of the species is the all-important accomplishment."²

"If we could produce two societies or two groups of animals, one of them being formed of immortal individuals and the other of individuals growing old and being progressively replaced through death by new and younger ones, it is without a shadow of doubt that the second group would be the hardier and stronger of the two."³

"From the point of view of evolutionary history, death has not been the primary phenomenon; it is rather a late-comer on the scene, appearing not so much as an intrinsic and absolute necessity inhering in the very essence of living matter, as through a process of progressive 'selection' in adaptation to the welfare of the species. A hideous and dreadful evil for the individual, death has proved salutary for the species, since, thanks to its agency, the species can continually renovate and revitalize itself through the introduction

¹ J. A. Thomson, "Life and Death" in The Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. 8, p. 4.

²Michael F. Guyer, "Reproduction", in The Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. XIX, p. 171 B.

³S. Metalinkov, Immortalité et Rajeunissement dans la Biologie Moderne, p. 17.

Page 383

---

of younger and more robust individuals replacing the worn-out ones."¹

We are here discussing the benefit that accrues to the species through the general process of death of the constituting individuals. But modern biological thought has gone further to suggest the astonishing view that the 'specific potential life-span' of the individuals forming a particular species does not depend solely, or even primarily, upon the physiological factors arising in the individuals taken in isolation, but is rather governed by the global necessity of the species. Thus, in the view of Prof. J. Arthur Thomson, "natural death is not to be thought of as like the running down of a clock. It is more than an individual physiological problem; it is adjusted in reference to the welfare of the species.... There is good reason for regarding occurrence of death at a particular time as adaptive."²

Metalnikov expresses the same idea when he declares that "the individual cells are as a rule potentially immortal, but the limitation of this principle of immortality in the case of the higher forms of organisms apparently occurs not so much due to individual physiological exigencies as to some unspecified supra-individual causes (causes surindividuelles)."³

Dr. J.A.V. Butler seeks to specify this supra-individual cause of natural decay and death in the following terms:

"It would seem that the life span is determined by the interplay of two effects — the necessity of living long enough to start off the new generation and, having performed the task, the fact that a further lifetime is unnecessary and, in many respects, harmful to the well-being and development of the species. It is quite possible that mechanisms exist in organisms which bring about this limitation of the life period, when the biologically useful period is over, but we do not know what these mechanisms are."⁴

If these views represented the whole truth of things, there could be no possibility whatsoever of increasing the life-span of man, not

¹ Weissmann, quoted by S. Metalnikov, op.cit.

² J. Arthur Thomson, "Age", in The Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. I, p. 4. (Italics ours) ³ S. Metalnikov, op. cit.

⁴ J. A. V. Buter, Inside the Living Cell, p. 153.

Page 384

---

to speak of indefinitely prolonging his life. But although the aforesaid biological conclusion is probably valid in the case of all infra-human species, it is not at all so in the case of man. For, as has been noted and commented upon by some observers, man is unique among living beings in having a disproportionately long, and from one point of view biologically useless, post-reproductive phase in the life-cycle. The implication is obvious: the individual man is not there solely to fulfil the interests of the race. Indeed, with the appearance of man upon the earth-scene the evolution has decisively changed its process and course. Up till the advent of man the organic evolution was effected through the automatic operation of Nature without the conscious participation of any living being, in the form of its self-aware will or seeking, aspiration or endeavour. But in man the living creature has for the first time become awake and aware of himself; he has felt that there can be a higher status of consciousness than his own; the aspiration to exceed and transcend himself is 'delivered and articulate' in him. It has thus become a practical proposition that in man a conscious evolution may replace the subconscious and subliminal evolution so far adopted by Nature.

The appearance of man on the earth-scene has been indeed a unique event in the great process of cosmic Becoming, and his role in the universe is verily capital. For, "to the Life-Spirit, the individual in whom its potentialities centre is pre-eminently Man, the Purusha. It is the Son of Man who is supremely capable of incarnating God. This Man is the Manu, the thinker, the Mano-maya Purusha, mental person or soul in mind of the ancient sages. No mere superior mammal is he, but a conceptive soul basing itself on the animal body in Matter. He is conscious Name or Numen accepting and utilising form as a medium through which Person can deal with substance."¹

Also, "the ascent to the divine Life is the human journey, the Work of works, the acceptable Sacrifice. This alone is man's real business in the world and the justification of his existence, without which he would be only an insect crawling among other ephemeral insects on a speck of surface mud and water which has managed to form itself amid the appalling immensities of the physical universe."²

¹The Life Divine, p. 46. (Italics ours)

²Ibid., pp. 42-43.

Page 385

---

And this adds for man a new dimension to the problem of death and earthly immortality. For, although we have seen that the natural opposition we are apt to make between life and death is an error of the habitual myopic consciousness of man, an opposition "false to inner truth though valid in surface practical experience"¹, and also that "death has no reality except as a process of life"², yet, the question remains: if death is not the fundamental truth of experience, if it is to be regarded as a process of life itself in the latter's still imperfect status of self-unfolding, does not man, so far the highest embodiment of evolving life, possess the capacity and capability of outgrowing that imperfect status, and thus rendering the process of death no longer a practical necessity and hence eliminable from his individual life ?

After all, a movement of progress that needs to be accomplished through repeated and radical shuffling of mortal forms, thus necessitating the appearance of death, is not a 'game' that is fundamentally constructive or intrinsically desirable. As the Mother has observed while discussing the question of the necessity of death:

"She [Nature] loves her meanderings, her successive trials, her defeats, her recommencements, her new inventions. She loves the caprices of the way, the unexpectedness of the experience. One might almost say that for her the longer the time it takes, the more it is amusing.

"But you get tired even with the best of games. There comes a time when one has need to change.

"And you dream of a game in which it will no longer be necessary to destroy in order to progress."³

And since we are assured by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother that, given the fulfilment of a certain set of conditions, death can be done away with in the life of the individual, and cosmic Life can fulfil itself in a continuously progressive way, we seek to find out the basic metaphysical factors that render the advent of death inevitable in the life of a human being. And for that we may very well start with the suggestive conclusions arrived at by contemporary scientific researches in this field, not indeed as probative but only as illustrative of the nature and process of Life and Death. This approach is not altogether unjustified; for as Sri Aurobindo has so clearly pointed out:

^{1 2} The Life Divine, p. 176. (Italics ours)

³ Bulletin of Physical Education, Vol. IX, No. 2, p. 83. (Italics ours)

Page 386

---

"Science and metaphysics (whether founded on pure intellectual speculation or, as in India, ultimately on a spiritual vision of things and spiritual experience) have each its own province and method of inquiry. Science cannot dictate its conclusions to metaphysics any more than metaphysics can impose its conclusions on Science. Still if we accept the reasonable belief that Being and Nature in all their states have a system of correspondences expressive of a common Truth underlying them, it is permissible to suppose that truths of the physical universe can throw some light on the nature as well as the process of the Force that is active in the universe — not a complete light, for physical Science is necessarily incomplete in the range of its inquiry and has no clue to the occult movements of the Force."¹

¹ The Life Divine, p. 178 fn.

Page 380