The Destiny of the Body

Chapter XIII

Metaphysical Factors of Death

Although God made the world for his delight,

An ignorant Power took charge and seemed his Will

And Death's deep falsity has mastered Life.

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book X, Canto III, p. 629)

Death is the constant denial by the All of the ego's false self-limitation

in the individual frame of mind, life and body.

(Sri Aurobindo, Isha Upanishad, p. 103)

It was the conditions of matter upon earth that have made death indispensable. The whole sense of the evolution of Matter has been a growth from a first state of unconsciousness to an increasing consciousness.... A fixed form was needed in order that the organised individual consciousness might have a stable support. And yet it is this fixity of the form that made death inevitable.

(Conversations of the Mother, p. 58)

How could that escape death which lives by death?

(Paul Richard, The Scourge of Christ, p. 186)

A. First Factor: The Part against the Whole

The individual life, emerging as a finite and ephemeral wave in the bosom of the 'All-Force' that is governing the world, has constantly to bear the disrupting impact of the latter. In order to secure permanence for itself, it has perforce to contend with this All-Force and establish its harmony with it. But although it is a fact that Life is power, vāyuragni, and that the growth of the individual life brings in its wake a corresponding increase of the individual power, still, in the nature of things, "it is impossible for a divided and individualised consciousness with a divided, individualised and therefore limited power and will to be master of the All-Force; only the All-Will can be that and the individual only, if at all, by becoming again one with the All-Will and therefore with the

Page 400

All-Force. Otherwise, the individual life in the individual form must be always subject to the three badges of its limitation, Death, Desire and Incapacity."¹

B. Second Factor: The Part against All Other Parts

The divided and individualised life represents but one vortex amongst a countless number of similar vortices put forth by the All-Force, sarva-kratu, manifesting in the universe. It is no better than "a particular play of energy specialised to constitute, maintain, energise and finally to dissolve when its utility is over, one of the myriad forms which all serve, each in its own place, time and scope, the whole play of the universe."²

Now, in this welter of mutually jostling fragmented life-forces, the energy of life imprisoned in a particular individual frame has constantly to withstand the multipronged attacks coming from all around. Indeed, for each individual life it turns out to be a ruthless battle of one against all. And the cosmic movement seems to take the form of a Great Hunger, mahābubhukṣā, wherein each separate life is trying to prey upon the energy of other lives by feverishly seeking to devour and feed on them. But, in the occult dispensation of things, a limited existence cannot be an 'eater,' annāda, all the while, without at the same time serving as 'food', anna to others.³

Thus, "the life organised in the body is constantly exposed to the possibility of being broken up by the attack of the life external to it or, its devouring capacity being insufficient or not properly served or there being no right balance between the capacity of devouring and the capacity or necessity of providing food for the life outside, it is unable to protect itself and is devoured or is unable to renew itself and therefore wasted away or broken; it has to go through the process of death for a new construction or renewal."⁴

C. Third Factor: Action and Reaction

Life by its very nature is self-expansive and the individual life

^{1 2 4} The Life Divine, p. 192.

³ Cf. "Ahamannam! ahamannādah", "I am food! I am the eater of food!" (Taittiriya Upanishad, III. 10)

Page 401

forms no exception to this rule. Thus, even though limited in capacity and deficient in resources, it attempts, consciously or subconsciously, to extend its sway over the environment. But this environment is not a mere vacuum, nor is it a mass passively yielding to any pressure from outside. Occultly viewed, this looks like an arena swarming with innumerable entities and powers that too in their turn are constantly seeking to self-expand, and hence become "intolerant of, revolt against and attack the existence which seeks to master them".¹

In this way, a very adverse reaction is set up in the milieu against the encroaching and impacting individual life and "however strong the mastering life, unless either it is unlimited or else succeeds in establishing a new harmony with its environment, it cannot always resist and triumph but must one day be overcome and disintegrated."²

D. Fourth Factor: Life the Consumer

What is the relation between the substantial forms and the pervading life that creates and maintains them ? In the language of the Upanishad, the life-force acts as the anna, food, of the body, and at the same time it uses up the body as its own food.

In other words, the life-energy in the individual creature continually provides the necessary stuff and materials with which the forms are being built up, maintained and renewed through a process of dynamic equilibrium. But at the same time, as a reverse operation, the self-imprisoned life-energy in the limited individual draws upon the substantial stuff of its own creation, in an attempt to replenish its own fund.

Thus, in the matrix of the individual body, there is a constant and continuous two-way flow of energy: life-force supporting the physical stability, and the material body supplying the needs of life. But this is not always done in harmony; rather, life and body often act as "co-wives", sapatnātivyādhino, battling against each other to the detriment of both. The aforesaid state of reciprocal maintenance constitutes therefore a highly unstable state of equilibrium, apt to be easily disturbed and broken because of this lack of inner harmony and also owing to the essential limitation of the life-energy in the ego-bound separative individual existence.

^{1 2} The Life Divine, p. 193.

Page 402

Now, "if the balance between these two operations is imperfect or is disturbed or if the ordered play of the different currents of life-force is thrown out of gear, then disease and decay intervene and commences the process of disintegration."¹

Over and above this, when mind appears on the scene and seeks to grow and develop in the individual frame, it creates an additional strain on the body and the maintenance of life becomes proportionately precarious. For, "there is an increasing demand of the life-energy on the form, a demand which is in excess of the original system of supply and disturbs the original balance of supply and demand, and before a new balance can be established, many disorders are introduced inimical to the harmony and to the length of maintenance of the life."²

E. Fifth Factor: War of the Members

To a superficial view of things, the individual man seems indeed to be a single whole, undivided in consciousness and integrated in will. But a deeper probe reveals the disconcerting fact that, in the present state of his evolutionary development, man's being and nature is not at all 'of one kind, of one piece', but rather a complex and heterogeneous amalgam of many elements, not all of them harmonised and co-ordinated in their urges and pulls.

Thus it is that in the compass of an individual existence, there exists an acute discord and disparity in the contrary self-drives of the three evolutionary formations, Matter, Life and Mind. Instead of being anyonyabaddhaādhu,³ each one offering the others its helping hands, and grhitakaṇthā⁴, all seized and governed by the divine Lord in the supremely harmonious cosmic Dance, rāsalīlā,⁵ they try to go their own separate ways, in total disregard of the stresses and strains they are apt to inflict upon the other parts, in their whimsical separate swirls.

In particular, — and this is very much pertinent to our discussion, — "the Life is at war with the body; it attempts to force it to satisfy life's desires, impulses, satisfactions and demands from its limited capacity what could only be possible to an immortal and divine body; and the body, enslaved and tyrannised over,

^{1 2} The Life Divine, p. 192.

^{3 4 5} Expressions taken from the section "Rāsalilā" of Vyasadeva's Bhāgavatam.

Page 403

suffers and is in constant dumb revolt against the demands made upon it by the Life."¹

The mind on its part is engaged in war both against the life and the body. And the consequences of this battle of the members, this internecine war of attrition in the being, cannot but be disastrous for the prolonged maintenance of the embodied life.

F. Sixth Factor: Imperfect Poise of Consciousness and Force

The individual self or being is in essence one with the Divine and is secretly aware of its divine potentialities. In manifestation it assumes the aspect of Purusha or conscious being supporting the Prakriti or Nature that is the executive side of Chit-Shakti.

This one and unique Being projects itself on each plane of nature, in the form of a representative Purusha or being that is proper to that particular plane. Thus, in man, there is a mental being corresponding to the mental nature, a vital being corresponding to the vital nature and a physical being answering to the physical nature.

Now in the evolutionary emergence so far effectuated here upon earth, the dual aspect of Chit-Shakti — the aspect of consciousness and the aspect of force — have not quite marched in step, thus creating a deleterious division between the demands of the conscious being, Purusha, and the capacities of the force of nature, Prakriti-Shakti. In man, for example, there is not only a division and conflict between the diverse demands and pulls of the mental, the vital and the physical beings, but what is worse, each of them is also divided against itself.

Thus, "the capacity of the body is less than the capacity of the instinctive soul or conscious being, the physical Purusha within it, the capacity of the vital force less than the capacity of the impulsive soul, the vital conscious being or Purusha within it, the capacity of the mental energy less than the capacity of the intellectual and emotional soul, the mental Purusha within it. For the soul is the inner consciousness which aspires to its own complete self-realisation and therefore always exceeds the individual formation of the moment, and the Force which has taken its poise in the formation is always pushed by its soul to that which is abnormal to the poise, transcendent of it; thus constantly pushed it has much

¹ The Life Divine, p. 214.

Page 404

trouble in answering, more in evolving from the present to a greater capacity."¹

Now the question is: how to solve this problem of division between consciousness and force ? Mind, as it grows, tries in its own limited way to resolve the resultant conflicts, mostly through a process of makeshift compromise. But this ad hoc solution is no solution at all, and mind fails miserably in the end. As a matter of fact, the problem cannot be solved on the plane of the mind, for essentially this is a question of satisfying in full the infinite aspiration of an immortal being, — the secret godhead, the embodied Divine, — lodged in the confines of a mortal life and body. Hence, the mind of man, baffled by the immensity of the task, gives up the attempt in a mood of desperation "either by submission with the materialist to the mortality of our apparent being or with the ascetic and the religionist by the rejection and condemnation of the earthly life and withdrawal to happier and easier fields of existence".²

G. Seventh Factor: The Infinite as a Summation of the Finite

Now we come to the last factor, — indeed, the most crucial and fundamental of all, —that necessitates and justifies the presence of Death in the actual state of evolutionary progression. For, it arises from the basic "necessity of the nature and object of embodied life itself, which is to seek infinite experience on a finite basis."³

Indeed, this stupendous cosmic Becoming has for its secret purpose and goal the discovery and enjoyment, in Space and Time, of all that already exists beyond Time and Space. And in this cosmic Drama, viśva-līlā,

The soul is a figure of the Unmanifest,

The mind labours to think the Unthinkable,

The life to call the Immortal into birth,

The body to enshrine the Illimitable.⁴

But, in the as yet imperfect elaboration of evolutionary possibilities,

¹ The Life Divine, p. 215.

² Ibid., p. 195.

³ Ibid., p. 193.

⁴ Savitri, Book X, Canto IV, p. 648.

Page 405

the form and the basis through which and upon which the individual soul spurred by its secret sense of divine infinitude seeks to build up its infinite experience, is by its very organization limited and rigid, thus circumscribing the possibility of experience. In the conditions of existence as at present prevailing, this infinite experience on a finite basis becomes at all feasible only through the successive assumption and dissolution of an infinite series of forms. In the words of Sri Aurobindo:

"The soul, having once limited itself by concentrating on the moment and the field, is driven to seek its infinity again by the principle of succession, by adding moment to moment and thus storing up a Time-experience which it calls its past; in that Time it moves through successive fields, successive experiences or lives, successive accumulations of knowledge, capacity, enjoyment, and all this it holds in subconscious or superconscious memory as its fund of past acquisition in Time. To this process change of form is essential, and for the soul involved in individual body change of form means dissolution of the body."¹

We have completed our study of the metaphysics of Death; we have seen the necessity and justification for this process of Nature, not indeed as a denial of Life, but as the process of Life itself. For to repeat in part what we have quoted before, "death is necessary 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."²

Such is then the problem of death; and once the problem is known in its fundamental nature, the solution must be forthcoming in the march of the spirit. Indeed, the italicised portions of the above citation already suggest the possible clues to it.

¹ The Life Divine, p. 193.

² Ibid., p. 193. (Italics ours)

Page 406