The Destiny of the Body

Chapter XV

The Physical Conquest of Death

The dire universal Shadow disappeared

Vanishing into the Void from which it came.

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book X, Canto TV, p. 668)

The "yet unaccomplished journey" leading to the attainment of earthly immortality has already been undertaken and is being gradually worked out by the Divine Supermind, here in the very conditions of Matter itself. For in order to hasten the day of this glorious consummation of the destiny of embodied life, he about whom the Mother declared in far-off 1914 after her very first meeting with him —

"It matters not if there are hundreds of beings plunged in the densest ignorance. He whom we saw yesterday is on earth: his presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, when Thy reign shall be established upon earth"¹ —

he of whom, when in 1950 he accepted the process of death and left his material envelope in a gesture of supreme self-sacrifice for the fulfilment of the collective destiny of the race, the Mother announced:

"Sri Aurobindo incarnated in a human body the supramental consciousness and has not only revealed to us the nature of the path to follow and the method of following it so as to arrive at the goal, but has also by his own personal realisation given us the example; he has provided us with the proof that the thing can be done and the time is now to do it";² —

he who, in the pregnant words of the Mother, has always presided, since the beginning of earth history, over the great earthly transformations, under one form or another, one name or another,³ has plunged in the depths of the Night of Death in order to score a radical victory over this formidable Adversary of life;

¹ The Mother, Prayers and Meditations (Pondicherry, 1954), p. 91. (Italics ours).

² The Mother on Sri Aurobindo, p. 15.

³ Ibid., p. 7.

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for, has it not been pointed out that one has to seek and master the root and cause of Death in Death itself?

In his own inimitable prophetic notes we listen to his mission and self-ordained task as a world-redeemer:

"He too must grapple with the riddling Sphinx

And plunge into her long obscurity...

He must call light into its dark abysms,

Else never can Truth conquer Matter's sleep

And all earth look into the eyes of God ....

He must pass to the other shore of falsehood's sea,

He must enter the world's dark to bring there light.

The heart of evil must be bared to his eyes,

He must learn its cosmic dark Necessity,

Its right and its dire roots in Nature's soil....

He must enter the eternity of Night

And know God's darkness as he knows his Sun.

For this he must go down into the pit,

For this he must invade the dolorous Vasts.

Imperishable and wise and infinite,

He still must travel Hell the world to save."¹

But this descent into the realm of Death does not represent the final act of the drama. It is but the prelude to his conquest of Death — not, indeed, as a personal achievement, but as a realised possibility for the earth-consciousness. Thus a day shall surely come when

"Into the eternal Light he shall emerge

On borders of the meeting of all worlds"²

and as a sequel to that golden Emergence

"This mortal life shall house Eternity's bliss,

The body's self taste immortality.

Then shall the world-redeemer's task be done."³

Now the advent of this golden Dawn bringing into reality a

¹ Savitri, Book VI, Canto II, pp. 449-50.

^{2 3} Ibid., pp. 450-51.

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divinely transfigured physical existence transcending the law of Ignorance of Death, was— and, let us add, is still — being earnestly prepared here in our midst by one about whom Sri Aurobindo said as far back as 1933:

"Her embodiment is a chance for the earth-consciousness to receive the Supramental into it and to undergo first the transformation necessary for that to be possible."¹

And about the nature of her divine mission upon earth, Sri Aurobindo announced in absolutely the last piece of poetry he dictated in 1950 before leaving his earthly frame:

"A day may come when she must stand unhelped

On a dangerous brink of the world's doom and hers,

Carrying the world's future on her lonely breast,

Carrying the human hope in a heart left sole

To conquer or fall on a last desperate verge;

Alone with death and close to extinction's edge,

Her single greatness in that last dire scene,

She must cross alone a perilous bridge in Time

And reach an apex of world-destiny

Where all is won or all is lost for man.

In that tremendous silence lone and lost

Of a deciding hour in the world's fate,

In her soul's climbing beyond mortal time

When she stands sole with Death or sole with God

Apart upon a silent desperate brink

Alone with her self and death and destiny

As on some verge between Time and Timelessness

When being must end or life rebuild its base,

Alone she must conquer or alone must fall."²

As M.P. Pandit of Sri Aurobindo Ashram has so well pointed out, during the last few years of her physical existence upon earth, "the Mother was pre-occupied with the organisation of the New Consciousness-Force, the Dynamis of Knowledge-Will, the Supramental Shakti that has been brought down on earth by the concentrated Tapasya of Herself and Sri Aurobindo. She was ceaselessly engaged in extending its roots, furthering its blossoming in

¹ Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on the Mother, p. 434.

² Savitri, Book VI, Canto II, p. 461.

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the earth consciousness. She exposed Her own physical body representing the Earth-principle in evolution to the workings of this transforming Force.... She examined the reactions of the very cells in Her body to the influx of the Supramental Power and described the manner in which the fusion was steadily taking place."¹

In the words of the Mother herself: "By slow degrees the Supramental is exerting its influence, now one part of the being and now another feels the embrace or the touch of its divinity; but when it comes in all its self-existent power, a supreme radical change will seize the whole nature. We are moving nearer and nearer the hour of its complete triumph."²

Be it noted that this supramental change will involve not only human nature but the body-structure and its organ-systems as well. For, as the Mother has recently pointed out, the state of spontaneous immortality for the body cannot come unless and until its structure changes into something other than what it is now.³ Sri Aurobindo is very much explicit on this point when he speaks of the emergence of the New Body, the Divine Body, as a fit vehicle for the untrammelled manifestation of Sachchidananda upon earth itself. Inter alia he says:

"The evolutionary urge would proceed to change the organs themselves in their material working and use and diminish greatly the need of their instrumentation and even of their existence. ... This might go so far that these organs might cease to be indispensable and even be felt as too obstructive: the central force might use them less and less and finally throw aside their use altogether: If that happened they might waste by atrophy, be reduced to an insignificant minimum or even disappear. The central force might substitute for them subtle organs of a very different character or, if anything material was needed, instruments that would be forms of dynamism or plastic transmitters rather than what we know as organs."⁴

It is not that the body-structure and the organ-systems alone will undergo the necessary supramental transfiguration: the very

¹ Readers wishing to know more about the results of the supramental transformation, as they were being progressively worked out, are invited to go through the last writings of the Mother, that were being serialized in the issues of Bulletin of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education.

² Towards February 29, 1960, p. 2.

³ See Bulletin, February 1967, p. 75.

⁴ The Supramental Manifestation upon Earth, pp. 69-70.

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substantial stuff of the body, although still remaining material, will be of an altogether different sort. For corresponding to the supramental consciousness of the gnostic being there exists what Sri Aurobindo has called "supramental substance". This supramental substance alone can confer on the body the status of a worthy mansion of the self-manifesting Spirit, "in the sense not of attachment or of restriction to our present corporeal frame but an exceeding of the law of the physical body, — the conquest of death, an earthly immortality".¹

Now, what are the attributes of this supramental substance that will render it immune to the ravages of decay and death? In the prophetic words of the Mother:

"One of the greatest victories ... will be the transformation of Matter which is apparently the most undivine. Supramental plasticity is an attribute of finally transformed Matter. The supramental body which has to be brought into being here has four main attributes: lightness, adaptability, plasticity and luminosity. When the physical body is thoroughly divinised, it will feel as if it were always walking on air, there will be no heaviness or Tamas or unconsciousness in it. There will also be no end to its power of adaptability: in whatever conditions it is placed it will immediately be equal to the demands made upon it because its full consciousness will drive out all that inertia and incapacity which usually make Matter a drag on the Spirit, Supramental plasticity will enable it to stand the attack of every hostile force which strives to pierce it: it will present no dull resistance to the attack but will be, on the contrary, so pliant as to nullify the force by giving way to it to pass off. Thus it will suffer no harmful consequence and the most deadly attacks will leave it unscathed. Lastly, it will be turned into the stuff of light, each cell will radiate the supramental glory. Not only those who are developed enough to have their subtle sight open but the ordinary man too will be able to perceive this luminosity. It will be an evident fact to each and all, a permanent proof of the transformation which will convince even the most sceptical."²

Yes, a transformation that will be ultimately convincing even to "the most sceptical". For even now, before the very presence of all

¹ The Life Divine,

² Towards February 29, 1960, p. 2; also Words of the Mother (Third Series), pp. 84-85.

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those who are awake, before the very eyes of all those who can see, the Superman, the divine Child, is growing up on earth, and will surely annihilate in the Hour of God the twin demons of Ignorance and Death. For,

"...in the march of all-fulfilling Time

The hour must come of the Transcendent's will...

All turns and winds towards his predestined ends

In Nature's fixed inevitable course,

Decreed since the beginning of the worlds

In the deep essence of created things:

Even there shall come as a high crown of all

The end of Death, the death of Ignorance."¹

End of Part Five

¹ Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Book XI, Canto 1, p. 708.

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