What I Have Learnt From The Mother

On Old Age and Death

Question : Are old age and death in human life inevitable? Will they continue forever?

Answer: How can I say that? Then the ideal of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo and Their sadhana will remain incomplete! What man has eternally dreamt, yearned for, thought of, has to one day become true. This has been true from age to age. As death has existed for ever so has the desire in human mind and heart to overcome and conquer it and gain immortality. This inner yearning in man, this dream itself is proof that one day man will conquer old age and death. Sri Aurobindo and Mother's Sadhana will one day bring its realisation. On this subject, I wrote an article called In Pursuit of Immortality for the eighth year commemorative volume of the Sri Aurobindo Medical Association in Cuttack. Here is the piece for your reading:

"Since time immemorial man has tried to conquer death. We read in the Puranas that the Rishis and even the asuras were doing great Tapasya to become immortal. In medieval Europe kings kept alchemists to find out the process by which man could prolong his youth and life, as well as other things like discovering formulae to make gold! The kings wanted to enjoy life to the fullest; so life had to be prolonged, youth had to be maintained and there had to be plenty of money. To pursue these objectives they employed alchemists. Many stories have been written where the author has built up his narration around the subject of immortality.

A similar motive has pushed man to go in for medical pursuits, including a hygienic way of life. The effort for overcoming sickness, disease and death through medical science is going on all over the world. Many eminent scientists are engaged in un raveling this mystery.

At our end, we have put ourselves in the hands of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo to help us in every sphere of life and to solve by their direct intervention all our material problems, including disease, old age and death.

We have learnt from them that there is a process by which we can reach our objective or at least make an effort to tackle this problem. They have told us that first of all we must discover our psychic being and around it we shall organise the rest of our being, that is, mind, life and body. If the material part of our life subjects itself to the leadership of the psychic, the psychic being will help us to reach our objective by conquering sickness, old age and death.

The soul is immortal. So why should it not guide the other parts of our being to achieve immortality ?

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