The Destiny of the Body

Chapter V

The Misgiving and the Frown

All that is born must taste death too ...

(Gita, II, 27)

Life, indeed, ends in death.

( Dhammapada, 148)

Will all beings die ? Buddha said: "Short, O monks, is

the life of man ... it is impossible that what is born

should not die."

(Abhidharmakoṣavyākhyā)

Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

(Genesis, III. 19)

The impossible is the hint of what shall be,

Mortal the door to immortality.

(Sri Aurobindo, More Poems, p. 78)

ODeath, thou speakest truth but Truth that slays,

Ianswer to Thee with the Truth that saves.

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, p. 621)

Not to feel content with the essential soul-immortality alone but to immortalise even the bodily mansion, the mutable material robe of the Spirit, has been a dream persistently held by the human race. But it may pertinently be asked: "Sadhaka or not, is it really possible or at all feasible to wage a successful battle against the inexorable phenomena of senescence and death ?" This vain attempt on the part of man to secure for himself earthly immortality, is it not altogether absurd and futile, faced as it is by insuperable odds? Does it not look like a sheer act of folly even to contemplate this prospect in thought?

To answer adequately these and allied questions, we have to discuss the necessity of death, biological as well as metaphysical. But even before we proceed to this task of study and exploration, we

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would like to repeat, as a counter-reply to this charge of folly, what the Mother said in one of her class-talks on this subject to the young inmates of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram:

"That seems a madness. But all new things have appeared as madness until they became realities. The hour is come for this madness to be realised. And since we are all here for reasons perhaps unknown to most of you, but reasons that are yet very conscious, we can propose to ourselves to fulfil this madness. At least, that would be worth the trouble of having lived." ¹

Now, what is the nature of the problem at its base and how is it to be solved fundamentally?

To quote the Mother again: "Why has the body the need to sit down as soon as it has made a progress? It is weary and asks 'Wait! Give me time to rest.' That takes it towards death. If it had within itself this ardour to do always better, to be always more clear, more beautiful, more luminous, eternally young, one could escape this gruesome process of Nature.

"For her [Nature] nothing of all that has any importance. She looks at the whole, she sees that nothing is lost, and that it is only a shuffling of innumerable microscopic and insignificant elements to pull out of them a new object. But this game is not amusing to everybody, and if one could attain a consciousness as vast as hers, and more powerful, why should not the same thing be done in a better way?

"That is the problem which is now set before us. With the addition, the new help of the supramental force which is now at work, why should not one take up the tremendous game of making it more beautiful, more harmonious, more true — in a word, more divine ?

"It is sufficient if there are some brains powerful enough to receive this force and formulate the necessary action for its realisation. Consciousnesses are needed powerful enough to convince Nature that there are other means than hers." ²

And thus, since the 'accomplishment of this act of madness' is in the nature of things going to be attempted through the action, upon body and matter, of a progressively growing consciousness acquired through the agency of Yoga and rising higher and higher in the scale of its luminous potency till we reach the absolute potency of Supramental Gnosis, we must at once meet and dispose

^{1 2} Bulletin of Physical Education, Vol. IX, No. 2, p. 85.

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of another prevalent misconception that the practice of Yoga, having for its result the amassing of spiritual experiences, far from helping the health of the body — not to speak of accomplishing the conquest of death — is rather "inimical to the health of the body and tends to have a bad effect of one kind or another and even finally leads to a premature or an early dropping of the body." ¹ Not only this, but according to the traditional belief held by many minds, progress in spirituality ought to lead to the undermining of bodily health, a result — they declare — rather to be desired and valued, since it helps in the "liberation and release from life in this world, Mukti".²

To illustrate this attitude, we may be allowed to cite here the view held by so great a personality as Sri Ramakrishna, an acknowledged master of Yoga and spirituality. On the occasion of his last visit to Keshav Chandra Sen who was then suffering from a fatal illness, Ramakrishna addressed Keshav and said:

"Why is it that you are ill ? There is a reason for it. Many spiritual feelings have passed through your body; therefore it has fallen ill. At the time an emotion is aroused, one understands very little about it. The blow that it delivers to the body is felt only after a long while. I have seen big steamers going by on the Ganges, at the time hardly noticing their passing. But oh, my! What a terrific noise is heard after a while, when the waves splash against the banks. Perhaps a piece of the bank breaks loose and falls into the water.

"An elephant entering into a hut creates havoc within and ultimately shakes it down. The elephant of divine emotion enters the hut of this body and shatters it to pieces.

"Do you know what actually happens? When a house is on fire, at first a few things inside burn. Then comes the great commotion. Just so, the fire of knowledge at first destroys such enemies of spiritual life as passion, anger, and so forth. Then comes the turn of ego. And lastly a violent commotion is seen in the

frame." ³

Whatever may be the validity of Sri Ramakrishna's utterance in the particular case of Keshav Chandra, one cannot put forward solely on that basis a general and absolute proposition correlating

^{1 2} Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga p. 1561.

³ The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Ramakrishna Math, Madras, 1947, p. 266.

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the illness of a Yogi with his spiritual endeavour. For, as Sri Aurobindo has made abundantly clear in course of his refutal¹ of a disciple's contention that the illness of a lady devotee was due to her trances, "illness and deterioration of the body" witnessed in the case of some spiritual seekers is not "the natural and general result of the practice of Yoga" nor is this practice "the cause of an inevitable breakdown of health or of the final illnesses which bring about their departure from the body". As a matter of fact, through the proper use of Yogic consciousness and Yoga-Shakti, "illness can be repelled from one's body or cured, even chronic or deep-seated illnesses and long-established constitutional defects remedied or expelled and even a predestined death delayed for a long period." And as an instance Sri Aurobindo cites his own personal case: "I have got rid by yogic pressure of a number of chronic maladies that had got settled in my body."

Thus we see that a deterioration of health leading to the premature disintegration of the body is not the natural and inevitable result of the practice of Yoga. However, this appears to be a fact of common observation that people undertaking the pursuit of Yoga happen to suffer from some disabilities of body, which in normal circumstances would not perhaps have befallen them. How to account for this strange phenomenon?

Fortunately for us, the Mother has thrown a flood of light on this obscure point, analysed the phenomenon in great detail and prescribed the appropriate remedy for arresting this undesirable, and in no way necessary and obligatory, trend. Incidentally, she has also explained the basic psycho-physical factor that ordinarily produces the progressive degeneration of the bodily system leading ultimately to its dissolution in death. At the same time she suggests a way out of the difficulty, following which we may expect to annul the nemesis of death.

In the light of the analysis given by the Mother we may say that the whole world is in a process of progressive transformation; everything is perpetually growing and progressing; the whole creation is evolving towards a perfection. Now the force that becomes operative in one who takes up the discipline of Yoga helps him to speed up in his being this process of transformation. "But it is your inner consciousness that obeys this accelerating

¹ Letters on Yoga, pp. 1561-63.

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impulse; for the higher parts of your being readily follow the swift and concentrated movement of Yoga and lend themselves more easily to the continuous adjustment and adaptation that it necessitates. The body, on the other hand, is ordinarily dense, inert and apathetic...incapable of moving as quickly as the rest of the being."¹ This divergence between the rapid progress in the inner being and the inertia of the body produces a disharmony in the nature and a dislocation in the system, and wherever and whenever this dislocation occurs, it can translate into an illness. "This is why people who take up Yoga frequently begin by suffering from some physical discomfort or disorder. That need not happen if they are on their guard and careful. Or if there is a great and unusual receptivity in the body, then too they escape ...

"In the ordinary life of man a progressive dislocation is the rule. ...After some years, ... the dislocation is so serious that the outer being falls to pieces.... The divergence between the demand and the answer, the increasing inability and irresponsiveness of the body, brings about the phenomenon of death. By Yoga the inner transformation that is in slow constant process in the creation is rendered more intense and rapid, but the pace of the outer transformation remains almost the same as in ordinary life. As a result, the disharmony between the inner and the outer being in one who is doing Yoga tends to be all the greater, unless precautions are taken and a protection secured that will help the body to follow the inner march as closely as possible." ²

What is then the remedy for this ugly state of affairs? Let us listen to the Mother: "If the whole being could simultaneously advance in its progressive transformation, keeping pace with the inner march of the universe, there would be no illnesses, there would be no death. But it would have to be literally the whole being integrally from the highest planes, where it is more plastic and yields in the required measure to transforming forces, down to the most material, which is by nature rigid, stationary, refractory to any rapid remoulding change." ³

More recently the Mother has said the same thing again in one of her class-talks: "The subtler the states are, the nearer their rhythm of advance approaches that of the divine growth. But the

¹The Mother, Conversations, p. 128.

²Ibid., pp. 129-30.

³Ibid., pp. 133-34. (Italics ours)

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material world is rigid by nature, there transformation is slow, very slow, almost imperceptible for the measure of time as human consciousness perceives it, so that there is a constant lack of balance between the outer and the inner movement. It is this lack of balance, this incapacity of the outer form to follow the movement of progress that has made the disintegration and change of form a necessity."¹

But this necessity is not an abiding one, nor is it in its nature intrinsic and irrevocable. In fact, it is wholly fortuitous and can thus be very well remedied. What is needed is, in the words of the Mother, to "infuse into this matter sufficient consciousness so that its rhythm of growth falls in line with that of the subtler parts of the being and ... it becomes plastic enough to follow the inner progress."² In that eventuality "the rupture of the equilibrium would not occur and death would no longer be a necessity."³

And this is so because, as Sri Aurobindo has so emphatically asserted, "it [death] has no separate existence by itself, it is only a result of the principle of decay in the body and that principle is there already — it is part of the physical nature. At the same time it is not inevitable; if one could have the necessary consciousness and force, decay and death is not inevitable."⁴ No doubt, life as it is lived at present upon earth has death attached to it as its ineluctable end, but "it does not in the least convey the idea that it can never be otherwise or that this is the unalterable law of all existence. It is at present a fact for certain reasons ... if these are changed, death is not inevitable any longer."⁵

It may not be altogether out of place to mention here that the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have not contented themselves merely with a theoretical analysis of the problem of death and its solution. The Mother has actually enjoined on her children, the Sadhakas of the Integral Yoga, to translate in their lives what is theoretically valid and justified into truths of manifested reality. For, she has declared:

"It is for us then at present — for us who know a little more about it — to bring about the necessary transformation, as far as it lies within our means, by calling the Force, the Consciousness,

^{1 2} Bulletin of Physical Education, Vol. IX, No. 2, p. 85.

³ Ibid. (Italics ours)

⁴ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 1230. (Italics ours)

⁵ Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 1230.

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the new Power¹ that is capable of infusing into the material substance the vibration that has the capacity to transform it, make it plastic, supple, progressive."²

Buoyed up with this supreme assurance and divine command coming from the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, we now proceed to the task of gleaning biological evidences for and against the prospect of earthly immortality.

But why biological ? Because there is almost a scientific axiom that the existence of an organ presupposes the existence of a field for its operation. Thus fins imply the prior existence of a watery medium to swim in and wings that of a gaseous fluid like air to fly in, and so on. As Mr.A.W. Momeric has so pertinently pointed out:

"Important discoveries have frequently been made by following up this simple clue. I will give you an example. An explorer, while traversing a desert, came across a little saurian with a swim-bladder. He took the hint and continued his explorations, until he found the shores of a dried-up lake, where ages before the little saurian had found a home."³

Thus, it can be safely assumed that the unquenchable thirst for physical immortality woven into the inmost fibres of man's being must correspond to some basic supporting facts scattered throughout the realm of evolutionary life.

¹This new Power is the Supermind or the Truth-Consciousness of Sachchidananda whose manifestation in the earth-consciousness occurred on February 29,1956. About this momentous spiritual event "for which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had luminously laboured for decades and for whose swifter advent Sri Aurobindo sacrificed his body in 1950" (Towards February 29, 1956, p. 1), the Mother has remarked: "The greatest thing that can ever be, the most marvellous thing since the beginning of creation, the miracle has happened. And that is the only thing that concerns us most intimately and the only thing we should be concerned with. A new world, yes, a completely new world, is born and is here." (op. cit. p. 18.)

² Bulletin of Physical Education, Vol. IX, No. 2, p. 83.

³ A. W. Momerie, Immortality, pp. 19-20.

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