The Destiny of the Body

Part Five

THE PHYSICAL CONQUEST OF DEATH

Chapter I

The Age-Long Quest

(In Myths and Legends)

Place me in the deathless, undecaying world.

(Rig-Veda, IX. 113.7)

Make me immortal (mām amṛtam kṛdhi).

(Ibid., IX. 113.9)

Fire of God, I passioned for life ....

Life so that Death might die ...

(Sri Aurobindo, More Poems, p. 41)

And death prowls baying through the woods of life.

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book IX, Canto II, p. 587)

Our mortality is athirst for endless life.

(Pliny)

"...O grim cold death!

But 1 will not like ordinary men

Satiate thee with cries, and falsely woo thee,

And make my grief thy theatre...

O secrecy terrific, darkness vast,

At which we shudder! Somewhere, I know not where,

Somehow, I know not how, I shall confront

Thy gloom, tremendous spirit, and seize with hands

And prove what thou art and what man..."

(Sri Aurobindo, Love and Death)

The mystery of death on the psychological as well as on the physiological plane has haunted man ever through the ages. But,

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unfathomable and inscrutable. We are still seeking a satisfactory answer to the insistent query ringing through the ages: "Man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?"¹

But the heart of man has somehow felt that the death and dissolution of his body cannot be the ultimate reality or his definitive end. And this undying faith that he must be somehow existing even beyond death has found its justification to the consciousness of man through suggestions, intimations and foreshadowings that have been "darkly hinted in types, faintly gleaming in analogies, softly whispered in hopes, passionately expressed in desires, patiently confirmed in arguments [and] suddenly revealed in moments of inspiration."²

But the physical-vital consciousness of the representative man cannot nevertheless deny the ghastliness of death; for does it not come stealthily to effectuate a ruthless and most painful separation between us and our near and dear ones? The vague uneasy fears and the fond hopes that one feels about the lurking danger of death confronting one's loved ones was already expressed by an ancient Egyptian mother in the following challenge to the dark Doom:

"Thou flowing thing that cometh in darkness and entereth furtively in, hast thou come to kiss this child ? I will not let thee kiss him! Hast thou come to strike him dumb ? I will not let thee strike dumbness into him ! Hast thou come to injure him ? I will not let thee injure him! Hast thou come to carry him away? I will not let thee carry him away from me!"³

But still It comes, the hungry Beast of universal dissolution; and man's heart cries out in agonized distress as the Babylonian hero Gilgamesh once bewailed over the dead pale body of his brother-hero Enkidu:

"Enkidu, my friend, my younger brother — who with me in the foothills

hunted wild ass, and panther in the plains;

who with me could do all, who climbed the crags,

seized, killed the Bull of Heaven;

¹ The Book of Job, 14.10.

² Quoted on p. 13 of Immortality by A. W. Momerie.

³ Frankfort-Frankfort-Wilson-Jacobsen, Before Philosophy (Pelican Books, 1949), p. 79.

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flung down Huwawa, dwelling in the cedar forest.

Now — what sleep, what sleep is this that seizes you?

And why this lividness, this silence eternal?"

Gilgamesh touched his heart, it was not beating.

Then he covered his friend, as if he were a bride....

His voice roared out — a lion....

a lioness chased from her whelps.

Again and again he turned towards his friend,

tearing his hair and scattering the tufts,

stripping and flinging down the finery off his body.¹

But, alas, all in vain! Enkidu was stiff and silent like a statue; he would never again respond to the bemoanings of the hero. Then, stung by the poignancy of a desperate revelation, Gilgamesh cried out:

"Alas, what can assuage the pangs of my pain!

He whom I loved has turned into dust!

Enkidu, my brother, has turned into dust!"²

Is it then the ineluctable fate of all forms that come into manifestation to perish and disappear in time! Is death then the absolute and universal law extending its sway over all organisations in this material universe? Does the sobbing voice of ancient Babylon shedding its tears over all that is departed represent for ever the voice of man? —

Weep, weep over the body of thy child,...

Weep, weep over the mothers that are gone,

Shed your tears over the rivers that have dried up,

Over the pools in which the fish have perished,

Weep, weep over the marsh without reeds,

And over the forests that blossom no more

And over the plains where the heather does not grow

And over the orchard where honey no longer flows....³

^{1 2} The Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh composed around the beginning of the second millennium B.C. Vide: Frankfort-Frankfort-Wilson-Jacobsen, op. cit., p. 225; also, D. Mérejkovsky, Les Mystères de l'Orient, p. 305.

³ Quoted in French in D. Mérejkovsky, op. cit., p. 342. (English translation ours).

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But man, the rebel child of Nature, has refused in his heart of hearts to believe in the inevitability of death as a cardinal condition of existence. The desire for eternal life felt by every son of man has been almost an instinct with mankind. 'Why must a man suffer death when he has committed no wrong?' — this has been his insistent query. Thus has man risen in revolt against death in a gesture of protest against the prospect of extinction. A smouldering resentment, a deep-seated feeling of wrong done to him has occupied his consciousness ever since the earliest dawn of his history. He has sought to believe with all the strength of his conviction that death as death has not been always an inseparable companion of life: it must have been a later arrival upon the scene, its intervention having been occasioned either by some hostile will or by some acts of omission or commission on the part of early man himself. Myths as to the accidental origin of death are galore in the traditions of various peoples of the earth.

And if death has not been an inevitable attribute of life since the very beginning, cannot mankind reasonably expect that somehow or other death may be annulled again and everlasting life gained, if not for all men, at least for some privileged few? Man's mythical consciousness has always believed that for this to happen some particular and specific conditions have only to be fulfilled. Thus in ancient Babylonian myths,¹ Gilgamesh sets out on the quest after Du-zi or Lib-lib-bu ('the Plant of Life'), Etana asks of Samas the Sun-god sammu sa alladi or the 'Herb of Life,' and Adapa seeks after the life-giving Water and Aliment.' But, alas, due to some fortuitous circumstances they are deprived of their gains at the very last moment. Thus a serpent robs Gilgamesh of the plant of life, Etana fumbles and loses his herb at the penultimate stage of his quest, and Adapa misunderstands the instructions of Ea his God.²

But even if they have failed in their universal mission, have there not been some sons of man who have conquered death for all time ? Thus Utnapishtim of the Babylonian legends and Ashwa-thama, Vali, Vyasa, Hanuman, Vibhishana, Kripa and Parashu-

¹ Vide D. Mérejkovsky, op. cit., chapter entitled "Gilgamesh et l'arbre de vie."

² Mérejkovsky, op. cit., section II: Babylone.

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rama of Indian mythology¹ are considered to be eternally immortal and living somewhere even to this day!

Be that as it may, for the common run of humanity, does the departure in death mean always an irrevocable departure? Surely not! One has only to descend into the land of the dead or intercede with the gods for the restoration of life to the person one has loved. Thus Savitri engages in a debate with Yama, the Lord of Death, and skilfully manoeuvres to have her husband Satyavan restored to life for a further lease of four hundred years.² Behula intercedes with Lord Shiva to resuscitate her snake-bitten husband Lakhindar,³ Istar descends into Aralu or Hades and rescues from there her only son Tammuz,⁴ Dionysos goes down into the land of the dead and brings back to life his mother Semele,⁵ and Nachiketas returns to the realm of the living, learning from Yama the secret of death.⁶

In some mythical accounts this restoration to life has been conditional and partial; thus Alcestis⁷ sacrifices her life so that her husband Admetus may be spared from the jaws of death; immortal Pollux⁸ spends half his time in Hades in order that his twin Castor who was dead might return to life; Ruru⁹ sacrifices half of the life-span allotted to him and his wife Pramadvura revives with this half.

Mythical man has sometimes pondered that if the life upon earth is indeed brief and one has to pass willy-nilly to the other world, cannot one possibly circumvent the experience of death and make the great transition with his body intact? King Trishanku of Indian mythology attempted to do so with the occult power of the sage Vishwamitra but failed in the end. Yudhisthira, the eldest of the Pandavas, is reputed to have bodily ascended to heaven. In the Babylonian mythology, the apotheosis of Xisuthros, the hero of the Deluge, was of the same character. In Jewish literature, Enoch and Elijah stand out as the two figures who are held

¹ Aśvathāmā valirvyāso hanumāṁśca vibhīṣanaḥ krpaḥ paraśurāmśca saptaite cirajivīnaḥ. ² Mahābhārata, vanaparva, sarga 295.

³Manasāmaṅgal.

⁴Babylonian myth.

⁵Greek legend.

⁶Katha Upanishad.

^{7 8} Greek mythology.

⁹ Mahābhārata, ādiparva.

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to have escaped death and been bodily assumed to heaven.¹

But, alas, all these are only myths and legends expressing perhaps the wish-fulfilment of the human race but bringing no definite succour or message of hope to death-stricken man. Where can be found the Indian soma or the Iranian haoma or the Greek nectar that would confer the boon of immortality on man? Paracelsus, the great alchemist, claimed to have discovered the elixir of life that would indefinitely prolong one's earthly existence; but, lo! he died before his fiftieth year! The Babylonian King Asurbanipal addressed his importunate prayer to Istar the goddess who "resuscitates the dead" (mubali-tat-miti):

"I implore thee to grant me everlasting life."

The boon has not been granted even to this day. A physical conquest of death has ever eluded the grasp of man. But will it continue to do so even in the future?

¹ J. H. Bernard, "Assumption and Ascension" in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics (Ed. Hastings), Vol. 2, p. 152.

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