that there is really no such thing as death.
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| I have reached
the conclusion that there is really no such thing as death. |
Mankind gives an enormous importance to life and to death. There is a great difference between them and death is regarded as a rather crucial event!
But I am being shown how the loss of equilibrium that translates in circumstances called "death" by mankind is, in fact, ever present, as it were, with the all-encompassing harmony, which is the essence of Life.
Both exist side by side in such a way that we can go from one to the other at any time and in any circumstance. It doesn't require something "serious," as people usually think. On the contrary, it can be triggered by the most trivial thing!
It's simply a slight tipping of the scales from one side to the other.
Being on one side makes a life of suffering, troubles, and all sorts of misery. While on the other side are perpetual Life, absolute Power, and unassailable Peace.
Both states exist together, as it were, and humanity makes a rather clumsy amalgam of the two.
But a few moments of the true state in its purity conceal a formidable power.
I can remember a time when one or two minutes of that state were enough to scare the body — not actually "scare," but the body was anxious. There has been progress, because now the opposite is true: That state is the one that feels "normal" to this body.
What is death? What happens at death?
To that Consciousness, it is evidently what could be called an "accident" — but an accident that has taken root.
I am being shown how one dies, how the body suddenly breaks down when it could have continued.
Why this habit of breaking down?
It is not new with the advent of mankind, because it was there long before: Life was formed, grew, and then dissolved. It was the same for everything, including the plants. Human beings made a whole drama out of it, and that's why they struggle to understand and adjust themselves.
Yet, in a certain consciousness, it seems totally ridiculous.
But why is it?
There are moments when the body feels it has escaped that law of death. It comes in like a breeze, but it does not last, and everything reverts to the way it was.
But the consciousness of the body is beginning to wonder why it is like that, why life isn't an unending growth in light and consciousness.
The body itself is wondering why.
And then there are the people with all their thoughts. Some come and sit in front of me, thinking, "Maybe this is the last time I am seeing her!" Things of that sort keep pouring in.
Curiously, that Consciousness keeps putting the body in touch with many desires wishing its death! They are everywhere! The body sees them exactly as they are, but isn't in the least affected by them. Most of the time, it even laughs them away.
But there are quite a number of them!
In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if all the aches and pain this body feels everywhere, constantly, did not stem from all those ill wills. For they are all over the earth, and most of the time barely conscious.
At times, it's a bit difficult.
The quantity of formations in the earth's atmosphere one might call "defeatist" is truly amazing! One wonders how everything is not pulverized. Everyone is always calling up catastrophes, expecting the worst, seeing the worst, emphasizing the worst.
But why is it like that? Why?
Why has this exteriorization on earth begun with this almost total unconsciousness? This almost total inertia? Why did it have to begin like that?
The mind has contrived all sorts of wonderful reasons and constructions. All childishness.
There is the Buddhist, nihilist explanation: It's the Supreme Lord who made a mistake! He got it all wrong. So we're going to help Him get it right!
Then there is the other extreme: It's your mistake to feel these things the way you do.
Yes, but how come this mistake is in me in the first place?
The impression remains that we do not comprehend because we are too small.
I have had a revelation.
I was absolutely silent, and suddenly something came, insisting until I note it down. It followed the question: "What is death?"
The answer was not at all on the ordinary level.
It came all at once, imperatively:
"Death is the consequence of
the decentralization of the
consciousness
involved in the cells that
constitute the body."
It came along with a world of perceptions, a sort of general terrestrial awareness, together with examples showing that only when the consciousness involved in the cells is "decentralized" does death occur. Otherwise there is nothing; even cardiac arrest cannot cause death.
That decentralization can be brought about by countless natural causes, but these causes are of a psychological nature, so to speak. The cells that constitute the body are held in a form by a principle of centralization of the consciousness involved in them. As long as this power of concentration is there, the body cannot die. Only when this power of concentration is dissolved do the cells scatter. Death occurs. And the body dies.
Then came this:
"The very first step toward
immortality
is to replace Nature's mechanical
centralization
by a willed centralization."
The usual centralization produced by Nature is mechanical, subject to all sorts of mechanical laws, while the inner Presence, the divine Presence can willfully concentrate the cells.
Yesterday, apropos an aphorism of Sri Aurobindo's in which he uses the word image to describe the physical body, I had asked the Lord the following question: "Lord, what do You do when you want to change the 'image' to Your likeness?" And I received the answer last night, through two activities in the subtle physical.
In the first one, I was shooting down somebody point blank!
It made me understand that the body, the physical consciousness, is chock-full of falsehoods, illusions and preconceived ideas, and only when they are all eliminated can the Lord manifest there.
This was lived and experienced as an astounding realization.
I was physically miserable, with nausea and this constant feeling of overall disintegration, and suddenly a total inversion: Bliss in the body.
Actually, this body was doing what all bodies are doing: disintegrating, falling apart. And it seems to have been checked. It isn't yet perfect, but it's better.
I understood — the body understood. It actually had the experience.
How will it translate in material terms? We'll see.
In the dream, I was killing someone I liked very much! I am not sure I knew who it was. Furthermore, there was no reason for my action! I killed this person with what looked like a revolver, and it did not matter at all because he did not seem affected in the least!
What was important was the gesture, the act itself. I had feelings of love and affection toward this person, yet I was killing him. I don't know who he was, but he was a young man, maybe a symbolic figure.
I knew this was a night activity, and I even wondered, "Well, I wouldn't do something like this in my waking state!" Whereupon I distinctly heard Sri Aurobindo's voice say: "That won't be necessary!"
The whole episode could have been totally comical.
How can I explain this? I had the same sense of objectivity as in the waking state. I was not "dreaming." I could see what was happening and was able to apply reason to it — in other words, a completely new consciousness. I now know what that consciousness is. I mean, the body knows it. And its attitude is: "Now I know, and it's up to You to decide if I am capable of having it, or if it's just a trial run."
The body, not just the psychic being or the higher beings, had the true Consciousness.
Indeed, something must change in a material way, namely, in the consciousness of the body. Something must change in the very makeup, so the Consciousness can manifest without distortion.
Can it be done? I don't know.
In the second vision, I was walking about naked, purposely naked, and purposely showing myself to certain people. I was with someone whose appearance in dreams always represents or symbolizes the physical Mother.
The portion of my body that was uncovered was asexual, neither male nor female. The figure was very pretty and slender, and it had a sort of orange, vibrant, self-luminous hue to it. And the Mother was wearing a large cape of the same color, like a veil over her entire being, as if to say, "You see, I am wearing it because I have accepted it — to tell you I have accepted it."
The nakedness was intentional. It was a very meaningful and important act. The two persons to whom I was showing it, although I don't know who they are in the waking state, were familiar and looked like two men. And it was to tell them, "Here, this is how it is. Look how it is." They were taking it quite scientifically.
Then there was this particular person, slightly taller than me, whom for years I have seen at night and associated with Nature. She is not exactly a "relation" of mine, but rather my mother who could be my sister, or my sister who could be my mother. She is a beautiful, tall woman, very, very simple and quite formidable. She is ageless, with a rather long face revealing extraordinary power. With me, she is like a little child.
She was walking alongside, saying, "You see, I am wearing your dress to tell you that it is accepted." It was the same color as my skin, self-luminous.
It means that material Nature has adopted the new creation.
These two "dreams" are evidently the representation of the two greatest difficulties in the human consciousness, which were completely overcome, to a point where they no longer existed. All the human feelings of horror, fear and so on were absolutely nonexistent. There was only bliss.
The first dream had to do with all the conventional human feelings about death and the second with the body of the new creation.
These are the two things that must be brought under control.
Indeed, what we call death does not really exist. In fact, in the first "dream," even after I killed that person, he kept moving as if nothing had happened! It was the representation of the unreality and falsity of all these human principles.
As to the second, I had always asked, "How is the supramental body? I'd like to see it."
Well, I saw it. I saw how my body will be.
It's good, very good! It's not very different, but so much more refined — with none of the gross or the simply normal human movement.
This is why the physical body must be clarified, purified, and emptied of everything, except divine bliss.
The body is becoming conscious of what in it prevents it from being immortal, and at the same time of what can be immortal in it.
It has had moments of such agony — in connection with death — as never before in its whole life. And it has understood that its very constitution was causing it, and what had to change.
I feel as if I were on the threshold of an extraordinary discovery.
I could put it this way: the why of death has become clear and the how of immortality feels like something one could touch — the impression of touching something that keeps . . . eluding.
More and more I am convinced that we have a way of receiving things and reacting to them that creates difficulties.
For example, I have rather unpleasant physical experiences with food.
For a very long time now, I have completely stopped being hungry. I eat only to be reasonable, because "one must" eat, and I have difficulty swallowing or breathing, small troubles like that. But everything depends on whether I pay attention to them or not.
There is an attitude where I watch myself living, an attitude where I flow with things, with life; and a third attitude where I pay attention only to the Divine.
If I succeed in being in that last attitude all the time, there are no difficulties whatsoever. Yet the circumstances are exactly the same. This is a concrete experience: The things in themselves are as they are, but it is our reaction to them that matters.
There are three categories: things in themselves, our attitude toward things (those two always give trouble), and a third one where absolutely everything is viewed with respect to the Divine, in the Consciousness of the Divine — then all becomes marvelous and easy!
I am speaking of material, physical events, such as little discomforts of the body, feeling pain, circumstances going awry, incapacity to swallow the food - the most banal of circumstances we never pay attention to when we're young and in good health.
When we live in the consciousness of the body and its ways of reacting and receiving things as they happen — oh, what a misery! When we live in the consciousness of others, their want, their need, their relationship with us — what a misery! But when we live in the Divine Presence, and the Divine does everything, sees everything, is everything — then there is Peace, time has no weight, and everything is easy.
The day before yesterday, I was sick as a dog. Yesterday the circumstances were exactly the same, my body was in the same state — yet all was at peace.
The world is the same, but it is seen and felt in a totally opposite way.
Everything is a phenomenon of consciousness.
The crux of the problem is our human way of being conscious versus the divine way of being conscious. That's the whole question.
It's the difference between an object and its projection. Things essentially are, but we see them projected as if on a screen, one after another.
In that divine Consciousness, things become almost instantaneous, as it were. There is the exact sense of what we are supposed to do, what we are supposed to be, and why we have been created. All these terms together, complementing one another without any contradiction.
It's like something that exists as a whole and is also successively projected onto a screen.
Death, for instance, is a transitional phenomenon, but to us it appears to have existed forever (because our consciousness only sees one little compartment at the time).
In truth, I have the feeling of being on my way to discovering the illusion that must be destroyed so that physical life can go on uninterrupted — discovering that death is the result of a . . . distortion of consciousness.
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