Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth

Publishers' Note

We are happy to bring to the reading public a seventh research work from the pen of Jugal Kishore Mukherjee who happens to be a senior faculty member of the Higher Course of Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry. We have already published six of his previous English works which are:

1.The Destiny of the Body (The Vision and Realisation in Sri Aurobindo's Yoga).

2.From Man Human to Man Divine (Sri Aurobindo's Vision of the Evolutionary Destiny of Man).

3.Sri Aurobindo Ashram: Its Role, Responsibility and Future Destiny.

4.Sri Aurobindo: The Smiling Master (Humour in Sri Aurobindo's Writings).

5.Sri Aurobindo's Poetry and Sanskrit Rhetoric.

6.The Practice of the Integral Yoga (with copious hints for the Pilgrims of the Path).

His readers are aware that Jugal Kishore selects a new non-conventional field of research for each one of his books and gives painstaking attention to its composition. All his books have found favour with his perceptive readers.

The present book is no exception to his general principle. Its very title is significant: Mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth. In this book the author seeks to explore a field which is of universal interest but about which little is known with certainty. "By Way of Explanation" following this "Note" clarifies the rationale of this new book.

We hope the Mysteries will not fail to interest all discerning readers.

By Way of Explanation

Death! Oh that ominous word and still more ominous fact of universal existence! And Fate and Karma! those two chilling ideas that fill the weak human heart with anxious thoughts! And finally Rebirth! and the trepidant query: Will I come back upon earth again in a new human body? Or, is all an eternal zero and silence after the dissolution of my present physical body? There is not a human being who never asks himself some such questions even for once in his lifetime.

Death is a constant phenomenon facing man with its grim ruthlessness. Who is there amongst us who has not encountered death in his family or amongst his friends and relatives or in the pages of daily newspapers? And accidents and sudden misfortunes throwing a pall of gloom on the smooth and happy flow of life! Do we not scream out then: Why, why? Why is this mishap? Am I bedevilled by a mysterious agency called Fate? Or, who knows, it is perhaps the inevitable consequence of my past misdeeds!

Past misdeeds? But I have no conscious recollection of having done any serious misdeed in my present life! Then have I to believe in the queer idea of past lives? And if past lives, why not accept the possibility of future lives? But many do not subscribe to that belief. The materialist thinkers and scientists will simply scoff at that "absurd" idea. Some religionists, while admitting the endlessness of the individual soul, will not believe in its successive returns to earth through the phenomenon of rebirth. Then? where do we stand? Who can answer our questions and remove our confusions to our heart's and mind's satisfaction? Surely not the physical scientists, for they have not the necessary data in their possession. And surely not the thinkers and philosophers, for they can only speculate and never arrive at the indubitable knowledge. Yet, the questions are insistent. We cannot shut our eyes to them like the sub-human brood without forfeiting at the same time our special dignified privilege of being questing rational creatures. Then, what is the solution, who can clear our doubts and confusions? Only a spiritual person, a Yogi, can do that. But any and every spiritual person cannot do that. We have to approach someone

who is not only highly advanced in the acquisition of suprahuman spiritual piety and love but is at the same time possessed of supramental spiritual knowledge. This Yogi should come to us not with his personal opinions or dogmatic assertions but with the assured evidence of his direct personal experiences.

Luckily for us, there are in this age two persons who fulfil these conditions in ample measure. We are, of course, referring to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

With their perfected method of "knowledge by identity" they have delved deeply into the mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth and brought to us their inestimable treasures. These treasures are scattered throughout their voluminous writings consisting of more than sixty bulky volumes. The present author has humbly tried to glean the essence of their revelations on these obscure subjects for the benefit of the general readers who have neither the time nor the patience to refer to the extensive original sources.

We fervently hope that some clarity will dawn on our readers' minds after they become acquainted with the occult-spiritual answers provided by Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

We shall not mind if some hypercritical negatively disposed readers find nothing worthwhile in this book. The author himself has derived a lot of inner benefit from his reflective meditation on the teachings of the two Masters of spirituality. And that is more than enough to compensate him for his labour of love.

J.K.M.

Sri Aurobindo Ashram

Pondicherry

24.1.04

I

The Fear of Death and the Ways of Conquering it

The consciousness of most men is always afflicted with many types of fears; and amongst these fears the most deadly one is that of death. Death! Cessation of bodily existence! O my God, the very evocation of the word 'death' whether uttered by someone else or evoked by self-imagination immediately rattles our heart and makes it lose its composure. And it is because of this that most of us try by all means to avoid the thought of death as far as possible, mimicking in this respect an ostrich bird which foolishly thinks that all dangers will spare it if it can only hide its face by plunging it in the desert sand.

Now, this fear of death is something universal; it does not leave anyone untouched, be he a child or an old man, an educated person or a man of no culture. Also, this fear has two sides to it: (i) the apprehension about one's own possible death; and (ii) the dread to face the demise of one's near and dear ones. The first one arises out of one's total unpreparedness to face calmly the extinction of his personal existence; while the second one has its origin in not being able to bear the pang of eternal separation from a beloved one through the latter's death and disappearance.

Of course, one cannot deny that some counter-examples of fearlessness are at times seen around us. For example, an ardent patriot or an idealist with a passion for his cause may be ready to face the worst disaster in life and smilingly court physical death if the love for his country or for his ideal so demands it. But how few are these exceptional cases when compared with the huge multitude of men who constantly suffer from the fear of impending or inevitable death? The present chapter deals with the psychological disposition of the majority of men.

Now, the fact is that all those who would sincerely seek to do spiritual sadhana and especially follow the path of the Integral Yoga, must reject in toto the nagging fear of death. Sri Aurobindo's

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direction in this regard is definite and unambiguous. He says:

"... the repulsion to the death of the body which is so strong and vehement an instinct of the vital man must... be thrown away. Thrown away it must be and entirely. The fear of death and the aversion to bodily cessation are the stigma left by his animal origin on the human being. That brand must be utterly effaced." (The Synthesis of Yoga, Cent. Ed., p. 334)

It is, of course, true that one essential element of the last Siddhi of the Integral Yoga will be the divine transformation of the physical body itself and a consequent conquest over physical mortality. For, in the case of a divinised body, there will be neither any illness, nor any decay and degeneration, nor even death: "Na tatra jarā, na mṛtyur na vyādhiḥ." But that is an attainment located far far into the future and pertaining to the most advanced state of sadhana. Besides, the important point to note is that even for achieving this conquest over physical mortality, the first essential victory the sadhaka has to win as a pre-condition, is the conquest over the fear of death. We should never forget in this connection what the Mother has pointed out:

"... the essential condition even to prepare for it [the earthly immortality] is to completely abolish all fear of death.

"You must neither fear it nor desire it.

"Stand above it, in an absolute tranquillity, neither fear it, nor desire it." (CWM, Vol. 3, p. 188)

Yes, such is the Mother's recommendation. Yet the fact is that this fear of death acts like a stubborn leech and does not spare even the inmates of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, who have consciously and deliberately resolved to follow the strenuous path of the Integral Yoga. Let us listen to the Mother's comment in this regard:

"There is one thing I have noticed, that every time somebody dies in the Ashram, many people are seized by panic. Now, I can-

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not say I appreciate this very much!... For truly it is high time we were free from these things - a sort of trembling." (CWM, Vol. 6, p. 46)

Yes, it is absolutely essential that every sadhaka of the Integral Yoga should liberate himself from all fear of death. But it is easier said than done. For the problem is almost intractable. And the reason is that the fear of bodily cessation has struck its roots deep into the recesses of man's consciousness, into the abyss of his dark subconscient. The result is that even if we succeed in chasing it out from the upper reaches of our consciousness, we shall find to our agonised surprise that it is stealthily lying in wait behind the opaque veils of our surface consciousness. In the words of the Mother:

"Even if the inner being is enlightened enough to be above all fear, the fear still remains hidden in the cells of the body, obscure, spontaneous, beyond the reach of reason, usually almost unconscious. It is in these obscure depths that one must find it out, seize hold of it and cast upon it the light of knowledge and certitude. (CWM, Vol. 12, p. 82)

The very first step on the way to the conquest of fear of death is for the sadhaka to take the firm resolution that he must achieve total mastery over this ignoble vital weakness, at whatever cost of effort and at the end of whatever length of time. He should not allow any compromise or dilution in this serious undertaking.

After this preliminary resolution is taken, the sadhaka has to be convinced that this tenacious fear of death has its real origin in the matrix of ignorance. For, it cannot be denied that we have no assured knowledge about what death is or why is there death at all or, again, what happens to the being after the physical event of death. In different ages and climes, poets, thinkers and mystics have deeply pondered over this mystery of death and expressed their uncertainty and misgivings in the matter in various characteristic ways.

Thus Tagore, the Nobel Laureate poet, sang:

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"Where is the journey's end and what is there beyond?

All our hopes and desires, and all our efforts,

Where do they peter out at last?

A deep darkness is looming in front,

Is there anything tangible beyond it?"

(Translated from Gita-Bitan, Bengali edition, p. 242)

And what about Timothy Findley? He bluntly confessed in his Inside Memory:

"After all that I have said and done I have come to know for certain that no sure answer will come to my query, not at all: I have given up expectation of any reply."

Another thinker has pinpointed the central mystery of death in these words:

"The fear of death is at bottom the fear of the unknown and that of losing the known."

But we have to remove by all means this utter ignorance about the true nature of the riddle of death; for, otherwise, it is impossible to gain any meaningful victory over the fear of death.

We may recall with profit in this connection what the Mother said about the interconnection between ignorance and fear, and about its reverse corollary, the interconnection between knowledge and courage. While addressing the Ashramites on March 10, 1954, the Mother said:

"Fear is a phenomenon of unconsciousness. It is a kind of anguish that comes from ignorance. One does not know the nature of a certain thing, does not know its effect or what will happen, does not know the consequences of one's acts, one does not know so many things; and this ignorance brings fear. One fears what one does not know....

"That which knows has no fear. That which is perfectly awake, which is fully conscious and which knows, has no fear. It is always

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something dark that is afraid." (CWM, Vol. 6, p. 50)

And this applies equally to the case of physical death and the fear attendant upon it. We shall surely come in its proper time to the discussion of the important issues of how to clarify the enigma of death and remove all ignorance as regards its nature and raison d'être. But first things first. As the present chapter primarily deals with the means of overcoming the fear of death, it would be appropriate here to make a brief mention of a few preliminary points concerning the matter.

The first point is that there is more than one procedure for tackling effectively the problem. These procedures vary with the state of consciousness of individual sadhakas and the modes of their nature. Thus the procedure which may help me to overcome my fear of death may not be applicable in the case of another sadhaka. Every sadhaka has to be clear about this matter and choose one or more particular procedures which may effectively help him in gaining his end. No unique procedure can be prescribed with its universal application irrespective of the different factors operative in the case of different sadhakas.

The second point we have to note is that these different procedures for the overcoming of the fear of death widely vary in their qualities and effectivity. For the sake of convenience, they can be hierarchically arranged in an ascending order. But even before we come to the elaboration of this point, let us succinctly mention a few gross methods that one can possibly adopt to distance oneself from the fear of death. These are as follows:

(i)To develop in oneself a firm sense of personal dignity which abhors as impermissible all nature's weaknesses, fears and anxieties, - in particular, the fear of physical death, for one strongly feels that these fears and foibles are incompatible with the self-respect of a sincere sadhaka.

(ii)To keep awake in one's consciousness the precise conviction that fear as a psychological movement does not belong to the sadhaka himself: it is not intrinsic to his true nature. It is something imposed upon him from outside through the malignant intervention of some adversary forces. Now, so long as one feels and

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considers something as an integral part of one's own being, it becomes psychologically difficult to give an effective fight against it; whereas one gains in fighting zeal and strength of will if one believes and feels that the manifestation of the present weakness is entirely due to a foreign intrusion which has the diabolical intent of sadhaka's sadhana.

(iii) To be entirely convinced without the slightest reservation that the fear of death is absolutely inimical to the progress on the spiritual path; and to indulge in it in any way is tantamount to the harbouring of a deadly enemy in the citadel of one's spiritual self-defence. This conviction, if made genuine and strong, will electrify the sadhaka in his fight against the fear of death as soon as it appears on the scene.

But we must know that the procedures for vanquishing the fear of death, based on the three above-mentioned psychological attitudes, are no more than convenient palliatives; they fail to produce any result when the fear is already ingrained in one's nature or, alternatively, suddenly comes upon him with an over-strong invading force. In such cases we have to take recourse to procedures far more deep and internal and therefore far more effective. These procedures are based on the following principles:

(i)a just application of a luminous common sense;

(ii)to resign everything to the care of the Divine and to have unreserved and unwavering faith in the love, justice and wisdom of the divine Dispenser of our destiny;

(iii)a judicious use of our enlightened rationality which can act as a hammer to break down all emotionally biased judgments and imaginations;

(iv)to establish oneself in the experience of one's immortal self within, through the sustained practice of yogic sadhana;

(v)the practical application of one's knowledge of occult science.

We shall discuss the methodology of all these five procedures, a little later, but before that it will be advisable to cast a penetrating look into the psychology of most men and observe carefully what sorts of thoughts and feelings and questions occupy and trouble the outer field of their consciousness when they fall prey to an

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insistent fear of death. If we can clearly recognise the physiognomy of these psychological movements and know their nature in their unclothed forms, it will be easier for us to unmask the fallacies involved in each of these disturbing thoughts and moods and bring an effective cure to them.

Let us then bring out one by one into the open all the vague, unpronounced and ill-formed queries and misgivings that agitate the subconscious terrain of our being when we succumb to the anxiety concerning physical death. These can be succinctly categorised as follows:

(1)Fear of the extinction of one's personal existence for all time to come: an unavoidable trepidation at the possible prospect of the total annulment of one's personal consciousness.

(2)An anxiety that death will lead to one's permanent separation from all those whom he loves so dearly and from all the objects of desire he cherishes.

(3)A sense of a terrible dread on the score that if I am suddenly snatched away by an untimely death, there will be none else to take charge of my responsibilities. Everything will then be in doldrums the very thought of which fills me with disturbing imagination.

(4)I thought of fulfilling so many of my dreams; I had planned to achieve so many of my tasks. Even before these are brought to a happy and successful conclusion, cruel death may suddenly appear and cut short my life. How can I equably contemplate this vicious prospect?

(5)A nagging anxiety about the total uncertainty concerning the time of the advent of death. To live constantly with the harassing thought of possibly meeting death at the very next moment is not a very pleasant experience. It is galling to live all the time under the threatening shadow of a total uncertainty of life.

(6)A sense of impotent rage before death, being poignantly aware of the fact that this implacable enemy may appear at any unforeseen and unexpected time and strike me down dumb at its arbitrary fiat and I can do absolutely nothing to avert it!

(7)Fear of the terrible physical agonies one may have to undergo at the time of the final dissolution of the body. The visualisation

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of these death-agonies whether directly seen in a dying man's case or evoked into vivid imagination by the narration of somebody else, is an important element in the process of creating an irrational fear of death.

(8)Fear of the dark and sombre face of ignorance: we mean, ignorance vis-à-vis what is going to happen to us on the other side of death. This is a disturbing question bringing with it all sorts of imaginary fears and anxieties.

(9)We are so much attached to the pleasures and enjoyments and to the variegated experiences of our present physical existence upon earth, and, at the same time, so much under the mistaken impression that there are no comparable compensatory experiences beyond the death of our body, that the very mention of death makes us shudder at the prospect of an utter Void beyond. This assumed nullity on the other side pitted against the richness of our physical life induces in us an intense urge to cling to life and avoid and postpone the experience of death as long as possible.

(10)For the religious-minded people there is another source of fear and worry. Lying on the sick-bed and apprehending the sure arrival of death, sooner or later, they suddenly become repentant about the past misdeeds of their life, bemoan the time they have uselessly wasted so far, and fearfully imagine that they may have to go to hell after death and expiate their sins there through an unimaginable variety and intensity of torture. But alas! - so they think - it is too late to repent now, with no hope of redemption. Fear of such post-mortem punishment makes them dread death itself.

(11)A different type of disabling fear haunts those who happen to believe in the Theory of Karma and in the doctrine of rebirth. At the thought of impending death, they become restless and worried about the possible nature of their next physical incarnation with all its daunting imponderables. The present life has been somewhat tolerable to them, because they have adjusted themselves to its known defects and imperfections and even calamities; but what about the next life which is bound to follow death? The ten thousand and one unknown sufferings, physical-vital-mental, that

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may befall them in the next life, cannot but unnerve them now, on this side of death.

We have tried to enumerate above eleven different causative factors that habitually operate in the psychology of a normal man and create in him almost a morbid apprehension vis-à-vis the sure prospect of physical death. But how to nullify the debilitating effects of these eleven commonly occurring factors? What are the counter-measures one should adopt in order to be free from all fear of death?

The very first means available to the rational man is the prompt and effective application of his robust common sense. Let us elucidate.

One of the axioms of occult science is that whatever you fear most is what will feel itself as if magnetically attracted towards you. To fear something is almost equivalent to being already a prey to its probable attack and invasion. Our emotionally charged vital being refuses to be convinced about the veracity of this occult principle. On the contrary, it almost believes that to maintain a constant trepidant anxiety about something is the best defence against its onset and is therefore, the right procedure to adopt to avoid it. But the truth is really otherwise. And this is applicable to all cases of fear, whatever may be the objects or situations one has dread for.

Thus, to take the specific case of the fear of death: if one is abnormally fearful about the advent of death, one is almost signalling to death: "Here am I; come, come to me."

And if such is the case, does not an unbiased practical common sense clearly dictate that it is nothing but utter foolishness to fear death, when one is genuinely seeking to avoid it? It is the lack of this common sense which makes one prone to nurture a mood of fear as regards the object or event one would like to avoid. Let us listen to what the Mother has to say in this connection:

"...there is a small remedy which is very very easy. For it is based on a simple personal question of one's common sense.... You must observe yourself a little and say that when you are afraid it is as though the fear was attracting the thing you are afraid of. If

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you are afraid of illness, it is as though you were attracting the illness. If you are afraid of an accident, it is as though you were attracting the accident. And if you look into yourself and around yourself a little, you will find it out, it is a persistent fact. So if you have just a little common sense, you say: It is stupid to be afraid of anything, for it is precisely as though I were making a sign to that thing to come to me." (CWM, Vol. 5, p. 318)

The same thing is applicable in the case of the fear of death which is the subject of our discussion. It is in one's own interest that one should by all means try to eliminate any fear vis-à-vis death. Also, one should know that fear is a thing which is very very contagious. It spreads easily from one person to another. It is much more catching than the most contagious of illnesses. You breathe an atmosphere of fear and instantly you feel frightened, without even knowing why or how, simply because there was an atmosphere of fear. (See CWM, Vol. 5, p. 319)

If such is the fact, we should be extremely vigilant so that we may not inadvertently expose ourselves to an attack of fear through the reading of the narration of fearful events or by listening to other people's discussion of threatening happenings. 'To nip fear in the bud' is the technique to be applied in the cases of all fears in general and, in particular, in the specific case of the fear of death.

But this too is no more than an external measure. There is a second method of conquering the fear of death which behoves a real sadhaka and falls in the domain of sadhana of love and devotion. The fundamental siddhi of this method is to establish in one's consciousness in an undeviating, unreserved way a basic attitude of which the constituent principles may be summed up as follows:

(i)a total resignation to the Will of the Divine;

(ii)an unfailing conviction, in all situations and circumstances, that all that the Divine Providence brings about in one's life, including one's physical suffering and death, is always for the good of the soul, for the sure necessity of its progress: there is no exception, not even a solitary one, to this universally valid truth.

And this is no mere hollow consolation we are offering here. It is based on an indubitable fundamental truth of existence. The

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Mother has formulated this truth in the following pithy sentence: "In truth, everything is for each one as good as it can be." (Notes on the Way, p. 196) She elaborated this point in her evening conversation of April 23, 1951: "... there is no arbitrary decision! On the contrary, for each one it is the best and most favourable conditions which are given." for the attainment of the maximum progress of the inner being. And such being the case, the Mother has preconised a sure method for the eradication of the fear of death:

"... as soon as one begins to feel afraid of something... [the best course] is to think of the Divine and then snuggle in his arms or at his feet and leave him entirely responsible for everything that happens, within, outside, everywhere - and immediately the fear disappears. That is the cure for the mystic. It is the easiest of all." (CWM, Vol. 5, p. 319)

The Mother has felicitously described in her book Education this state of entire and unreserved self-resignation to the Will of the Divine. We should get these words by heart and imprint them for all time in our deeper consciousness so that we may be able to translate into our life's daily practice the potent and luminous ideas embodied in these words:

"... those who have faith in a God, their God, and who have given themselves to him.... belong to him integrally; all the events of their lives are an expression of the divine will and they accept them not merely with calm submission but with gratitude, for they are convinced that whatever happens to them is always for their own good.... They have made an absolute surrender of their will to his and feel his unvarying love and protection, wholly independent of the accidents of life and death. They have the constant experience of lying at the feet of their Beloved in an absolute self-surrender or of being cradled in his arms and enjoying a perfect security. There is no longer any room in their consciousness for fear, anxiety or torment; all that has been replaced by a calm and delightful bliss." (CWM, Vol. 12, p. 84)

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That a perfect self-surrender to the Divine's Will may turn even the act of death, and of a grievous violent death, into something of a glorious experience has been testified by many instances abounding in the annals of the human race. We content ourselves with mentioning only three of them here.

The first example that comes to our mind is that of the death-scene of St. Stephen, a direct disciple of Jesus Christ. When he was taken out of the town by a howling mob and was being cruelly put to death by repeated hits with stones, he first prayed to the Divine, "O Lord, take my spirit," and then falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Lord, for my death do not lay the sin against them." And with these words he fell asleep. (New Testament, "Acts of the Apostles", VII. 54-60)

Let us now come to the classic instance of the famous martyr, Mansoor Al-Hallaj. This Sufi saint of the Middle Ages, after having attained spiritual self-knowledge, publicly declared, "Anal Haq, I am the Truth." Because of this so-called heresy, he was sentenced to death by the Calif of Baghdad. And was it a simple death? Not at all. His body was first tortured to an unbelievable extent, cut to pieces limb by limb and then finally put to a horrible death. The day was March 26 of A.D. 922. The last words Mansoor uttered before he breathed his last were:

"O Supreme Lord, you have made me know what other people do not know: accept my infinite gratitude for this act of Grace. You have revealed to me all the divine mysteries which are sealed to others. Please forgive those servitors of yours who are assembled here to kill me. Have compassion for them. For, I know they would not have done this if they too would have had the privilege of knowing the Truth which you have made accessible to me." (Idries Shah, The Sufis, p. 375)

What was most striking in the case of Mansoor was that all throughout the long period of grievous torture his body was subjected to, he did not wince even for a moment nor ever express the slightest fear. Such was the happy consequence of his loving resignation before divine Providence.

Let us now come down to a well-known instance in more recent time, which happened almost a hundred years ago. We are,

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ofcourse, referring to the case of a particular disciple of Bahaullah, the founder of the Bahai sect of Iran, This disciple was a great poet and he too had to meet death because of his unflinching adherence to his religious belief. As in the case of Mansoor cited above, his death also came as a sequel to unimaginably cruel torture to his body. He was tied and hundreds of burning candles were placed upon different parts of his whole body. The super-hot molten wax came into contact with his body in slow but continuous trickle and went on burning him to an apparently agonising death. The justness of this expression, "apparently", will be made clear from what follows.

Abdul Baha, son of Bahaullah, approached the dying poet, sympathised with his unfortunate state and asked him in a sad voice: "How intense must be the pain you have been suffering from at this moment!" The mystic devotee answered apace: "Pain? Where is pain? On the contrary, I am facing the most beautiful moment of great contentment of my life," To his greatest surprise Abdul Baha found the tortured poet "in an ecstasy of joy." (Vide CWM, Vol. 4, p. 317)

While speaking of the different possible means of scoring victory over the fear of death, we have so far mentioned two methods: (i) application of the temperament of a robust common sense; and (ii) unreserved surrender, at all times and under all situations, to the wise and loving dispensation of the Divine Beloved. Let us now refer to a third method: the method of putting to use the faculty of liberated reason with its chain of effective arguments. This method is especially congenial to those who are basically intellectual in their turn of nature and habitually live in the world of ideas.

If one deeply contemplates the following arguments and becomes convinced of the underlying truth of the situation, one cannot but be freed from all irrational-emotional fear of death.

The first argument is as follows: Physical death is the last ineluctable destiny of all bodies, without a single exception to the contrary. This has been so always in the past; this is universally valid even today; and, to all intents and purposes, this will be so even in the future. "Jātasya hi dhruvo mṛtyuḥ". - "All that is born is certain to die." And if this is so, it must be a vain and absurd act

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of stupidity to seek to avoid such an ineluctable eventuality in a mood of trepidant anxiety Rather, it would be wise on one's part to calmly accept this inevitability and apply all one's energy and effort and utilise the still remaining span of life to make the utmost progress possible and remain ever ready for the moment when death will at last knock at one's door. We should be psychologically so well prepared that at that long foreseen moment we can raise our head high and smilingly declare: "Yes, here 1 am; I am ready." Death should be turned into a convenient door of a glorious exit. This is surely a wise and dignified approach, and not the other state of trembling all the time and finally being forcefully dragged away through the dismal portal of physical dissolution.

The second argument against the futility of any fear of death follows a different line. The vital man is in passionate egoistic love with his physical life and is strongly attached to all its possibilities. To him death is altogether antithetical to life and is therefore evil in its very nature. But this way of looking at death is fallacious and has therefore to be discarded, the sooner the better. The truth is that the so-called death is a prelude to a greater and more glorious life beyond. Also, it serves the purpose and interest of life itself. It has an important function to fulfil for the further progress of the inner being of man. Its advent at a particular moment of an individual's life is neither accidental nor arbitrary. It has its meaning, necessity and proper time. Hence, to the clearsighted sadhaka, death is not something basically negative and therefore to be shunned, but rather something to be welcomed as a friend of life itself, making the latter's further advancement possible. We have no scope here for a greater and more cogent elaboration of this point. However, those amongst our readers who are eager to know more about it, may consult with profit the chapter "Death at the Service of Life" included in the present writer's book, The Destiny of the Body. Here, it will be sufficient to remember what Krishna has said in the Gita: "I am both in the form of death and in the form of immortality. It is I who manifests himself as death."

In her books Questions and Answers 1929 (CWM, Vol. 3, p. 37) and On Thoughts and Aphorisms (CWM, Vol. 10, p. 168), the Mother has explained how the presence of periodic death helps in

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the attainment of ultimate immortality. A careful perusal of the Mother's words is bound to change one's normal but erroneous outlook on life and death and help in the cancellation of one's natural fear of the dissolution of the physical body. Here are two passages from those writings which throw an altogether different light on the insistent problem of life and death:

(1)"... opposition and contraries are a stimulus to progress.... opposites are the quickest and most effective means of shaping Matter so that it can intensify its manifestation.

"As an experience, this is absolutely certain.... When one sees this, there is obviously a similar experience from the point of view of what we call life and death. It is this kind of constant 'brooding' or presence of Death and the possibility of death, as it is said in Savitri: we have a constant companion throughout the journey from cradle to grave; we are constantly accompanied by this threat or presence of Death. Well, along with this, in the cells, there is a call for a Power of Eternity, with an intensity which would not be there except for this constant threat. Then one understands, one begins to feel quite concretely that all these things are only ways of intensifying the manifestation, of making it progress, of making it more perfect." (CWM, Vol. 10, pp. 167-68)

Thus, the death of the body, instead of being a contradiction of life, is in fact a spur to immortality. But why are the physical forms periodically dissolved at all? What is the raison d'être of this dissolution whose other name is death? Let us listen to the Mother:

(2)"Death as a fact has been attached to all life upon earth.... It was the conditions of matter upon earth that made death indispensable. The whole sense of the evolution of matter has been a growth from a first state of unconsciousness to an increasing consciousness. And in this process of growth dissolution of forms became an inevitable necessity, as things actually took place. For a fixed form was needed in order that the organised individual consciousness might have a stable support. And yet it is the fixity of

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the form that made death inevitable. Matter had to assume forms; individualisation and the concrete embodiment of life-forces or consciousness-forces were impossible without it and without these there would have been lacking the first conditions of organised existence on the plane of matter. But a definite and concrete formation contracts the tendency to become at once rigid and hard and petrified. The individual form persisted as a too binding mould; it cannot follow the movements of the forces; it cannot change in harmony with the progressive change in the universal dynamism; it cannot meet continually Nature's demand or keep pace with her; it gets out of the current. At a certain point of this growing disparity and disharmony between the form and the force that presses upon it, a complete dissolution of the form is unavoidable. A new form must be created; a new harmony and parity made possible. This is the true significance of death and this is its use in Nature." (CWM, Vol. 3, pp. 36-37)

The two long passages from the Mother's writings make it abundantly clear why the occasional visit of death becomes a healthy necessity for the very progress of the consciousness of the individual. We feel tempted to quote in this connection three aphorisms of Sri Aurobindo which impart a touch of delectable wit to the whole affair of sombre death:

"O Death, our masked friend and maker of opportunities, when thou wouldst open the gate, hesitate not to tell us beforehand; for we are not of those who are shaken by its iron jarring."

"Death is sometimes a rude valet; but when he changes this robe of earth for that brighter raiment, his horseplay and impertinences can be pardoned."

"What is this thing thou callest death?... O thou who fearest death, it is Life that has come to thee sporting a death-head and wearing a mask of terror." (Sri Aurobindo, Thoughts and Aphorisms (2000 ed.), Nos. 282, 283, 374)

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The long discussion above coupled with the excerpts from the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's writings makes it clear that death is not something intrinsically evil and unnecessary; on the contrary, it makes a great contribution to the necessary progress of life and consciousness. Therefore, a truly rational man should not harbour in his heart any fear of death but rather welcome it with open arms when it appears in the course of life's earthly journey.

So far so good. But even when we accept that death is necessary for spurring life towards immortality or that the periodic dissolution of physical form-units has become unavoidable because of their lacking in sufficient plasticity, a nagging question still remains pricking the consciousness of normal men. It is as regards the inevitable annulment of an individual's personal consciousness at death. New forms may be constituted but what gain will that bring to me as a person if I vanish for ever from the scene of existence with the break-up of my body? - yes, such is the nature of the misgiving, and unless this point is satisfactorily cleared, fear about death is bound to linger on.

But is it really the fact that with the death of the physical body, the embodied being also dies at the same time? No, from the spiritual-occult point of view, the fact is otherwise. There is no such thing as death; it is no more than a necessary change undergone by the gross and visible physical frame. Is it not too patent a fact that our same body progressively passes through the successive stages of infancy, adolescence, youth and old age? While confronting changes, we do not indulge in any ado or lamentation. Then, why in the case of the last change death, we make so much row and give vent to sorrow and fear?

The other side may possibly promptly retort: "The answer is simple and obvious. While undergoing the changes of adolescence, youth and old age, the continuity of my personal consciousness is in no way compromised. I concretely feel that it is I and I alone who am undergoing these outer changes in my body while my personal existence remains the same and perfectly intact. Why should I fear then these changes? Whereas in the act of physical death, my personal consciousness itself gets disrupted. Where is the sense of continuity there? It is this sudden and definitive

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annulment of my personal existence that makes me anxious and fearful before the prospect of death."

Ah, this is the root cause of the fear of death. And once the cause has been laid bare, the remedy too is bound to be easily found. For, the whole thing is based on an utter misconception arising out of our original metaphysical ignorance. It is this universal ignorance shrouding our egoistic way of living which has made us erroneously identify our body and soul and concretely feel that the dissolution and disappearance of the physical body is tantamount to the dissolution of the soul itself. For, if the continuity of the body-form is lost, how can the soul retain its continuity? It is bound to be disrupted and disintegrated at the same time with the body.

It is this false identification of one's soul with one's concrete body-sense which makes physical death so frightful to the vital consciousness of ordinary men. And Arjuna of the Bhagavadgita was seized by a similar horror of physical death because of the same type of delusion vis-a-vis the phenomenon of death. Lord Krishna had to expound before the Hero of the Mahabharata the real truth of the matter so that the latter's rationality could assert itself in full strength and clear the heart and mind of Arjuna of all anxiety and misgiving about death. Here is a short synopsis of Krishna's exposition of the relationship between the body and the soul of man (deha and dehī):

"The soul is unborn, immutable, eternal and imperishable. These bodies which are the instruments of manifestation of the soul have a beginning and an end but not the One who embodies himself in the body. The soul is not born, nor does it die, nor is it a thing that comes into being only once and, passing away, will never come into being again. The embodied soul casts away old and takes up new bodies as a man changes worn-out raiment for new. As far as the body is concerned, certain is death for the born, and certain is rebirth for the dead. Therefore, what is inevitable ought not to be a cause of any sorrow or anxiety."

After all, what is a single life? It is, in Sri Aurobindo's words,

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"only [a] brief episode in a long history of spiritual evolution..." (Letters on Yoga, Cent. Ed., p. 461)

If so, does it behove a sane person to be so much excited and agitated at the thought of death, the inevitable ending of this present life which is a mere bubble in the ocean of the everlasting existence of the soul? Here is what Sri Aurobindo says about the truth behind the principle of death:

"One thing only is the truth in which we have to live, the Eternal manifesting itself as the soul of man in the great cycle of its pilgrimage with birth and death for milestones, with worlds beyond as resting-places, with all the circumstances of life happy or unhappy as the means of our progress and battle and victory and with immortality as the home to which the soul travels." (Essays on the Gita, Cent. Ed., p. 58)

Through our long discussion so far, we have come to know much about the mystery of life and death and the essential truth about them. This knowledge will help us to come to the right conclusion about whether the eleven psychological factors which we have mentioned in the beginning of this chapter (see pp. 7-9) and which generally create the mood of fear and anxiety in the consciousness of an ordinary average man, have any real validity behind them. If we find on scrutiny that they are without any real foundation and therefore entirely fallacious in nature, the irrational fear of physical death is bound to disappear at the dissolving touch of this light of knowledge. We, therefore, take now to this task of a careful scrutiny, and pick up one by one all the eleven factors of fear for a close analysis and disposal.

First Factor - That one fears death so much is primarily due to one's suspicion and belief that one's personal identity will be eternally ended along with the fall of the physical body. One is almost convinced that death is sure to bring about the total and permanent annulment of one's personal consciousness. Pātanjal-yogasūtra, the basic text of the Raja Yoga, has termed this universal fear as abhiniveśa. The word "abhinivesha" has not here the connotation of "deep and sustained attention". It has a technical

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sense: its derivative meaning is "the universal dread of the elimination of one's existence". It has come from "abhito na viśate", that is, "something which is universally present in every living creature."

Yes, indeed, every creature, be it an insect, a bird, an animal or a human being, is afflicted with this fear of death. The only difference in the case of a man is that he has made it sharp and enduring with the play of his memory and creative imagination. Of course, this is true that this "abhinivesha" or morbid fear of death is not active in every man all the time. It remains mostly subdued and in a tenuous form because of the individual's engaging preoccupation with a multitude of other absorbing interests. But this too is true that given the favourable occasion and circumstance this fear of death becomes in the case of every man acute and active, labdha-vṛttika, and disturbs his consciousness inordinately. Maharshi Patanjali has in Yogasūtra, his famous book of aphorisms, characterised this "abhinivesha" or "fear of self-extinction" as svarasavāhi and viduṣo'pi tathā rūḍha; that is to say, (i) without the need of any training, instruction or conditioning from outside, almost instinctively, this fear of death invades and occupies the heart of every creature; and (ii) none can escape its assault, be he so great a scholar.

Let us now probe this first causative factor operative behind the genesis of the fear of death and see how much the apprehended annulment of one's personal consciousness is at all based on fact.

The truth of the matter is that personal survival after the body's death is assured to every mental being. The basic consciousness of a man is in no way dependent on the existence or non-existence of his physical body. It is entirely separate and independent. Here is an adaptation from what the Mother said on March 10, 1954 regarding the issue we have been dealing with:

The consciousness that goes out of the body remains fully conscious outside. It has a separate independent existence of its own. It undergoes no change because of the accidental circumstance of whether it remains linked to the physical body or delinked from it. It continues to possess the same knowledge and the same power. In order to be conscious, one does not depend at all upon

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the body. One can have an altogether independent existence.

Sri Aurobindo also has referred to the same truth in a somewhat different way. Here is what he says in one of his aphorisms:

"Shall I accept death or shall I turn and wrestle with him and conquer? That shall be as God in me chooses. For whether I live or die, I am always," (Thoughts and Aphorisms, No. 373. Italics added.)

The issue is unambiguously settled by the following words of Sri Aurobindo which he wrote to two of his disciples when the latter grieved over the loss of two of their near and dear ones:

"For the spiritual seeker death is only a passage from one form of life to another, and none is dead but only departed....

"Of course, that is the real fact - death is only a shedding of the body, not a cessation of the personal existence. A man is not dead because he goes into another country and changes his clothes to suit that climate." (Letters on Yoga, Part One, p. 463)

So, it is abundantly clear that with the dissolution of the physical body, life and consciousness of a man do not come to an end at all. It is thus absurd to indulge in some unfounded imaginary fear that with death one's personal consciousness will come to a dead halt and the book of life will be closed for ever.

The upshot of all our discussion so far is that the first causative factor giving rise to the fear of death has no basis in fact; it arises out of one's sheer ignorance in the matter.

Second Factor - Let us now come to the consideration of the second causative factor giving rise to the fear of death. This fear, when analysed to its basic character, is as follows:

Death will inexorably separate me from all my near and dear ones, also from all the objects of my attachment in life. How can I then bear the pain of this terrible loss? It is no use denying that it is because of this I dread physical death so much.

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So, it is attachment which is the root cause of this second type of fear. Bellecius, a Catholic 'man of God' of the Middle Ages, wrote in this connection:

"That death, even the very thought of death, is so much full of sadness and bitterness is solely due to the fact that a man feels and believes that he has to lose contact and companionship with all those persons and objects with which he has tied himself so closely during his life. And with this he will be forced to give up all his love and affection and emotional satisfaction that he has invariably associated with them. This is too painful a prospect to contemplate for him. And it is because of this that he is so much afraid of physical death, becomes so agitated and melancholy at the approach of the physical dissolution of the body."

Well, this type of fear is beyond cure by any ordinary means or by the application of one's reason. For, this morbid fear is the fear of something which is inexistent in fact but appears concrete and living because of emotional delusion and involvement.

But we should not forget that love and attachment are two different things: they need not be, should not be, inseparably linked. We can love, we should love, universally, but without the intrusion of any darkening ego-attachment. And therein lies the solution to the second causative factor of the fear of death. As Sri Aurobindo has so trenchantly put it:

"... attachment and desire must be utterly cast out; there is nothing in the world to which we must be attached.... And this does not mean that there is nothing at all that we shall love, nothing in which we shall take delight; for attachment is egoism in love and not love itself.... A universal love we must have, calm and yet eternally intense beyond the brief vehemence of the most violent passion; a delight in things rooted in a delight in Cod that does not adhere to their forms but to that which they conceal in themselves..." (The Synthesis of Yoga, Cent. Ed., pp. 314-15)

So one has to learn in time how to love men and objects without

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out any inordinate attachment. The Baul mystics of India have a principle of sadhana which they significantly call "jyanté mora" "to die while still living": that is to say, to eliminate attachment in all its forms and from all objects and persons and situations and circumstances in the world. Psychologically' speaking, this is equivalent to "dying" with respect to them, As Bellecius said: "An aspirant while in robust health 'dies' daily to himself, that is to say he daily detaches his heart from ill-regulated earthly affections, and day by day accustoms his soul to separate itself from the body, so much so that when death actually arrives at last, far from fearing it he may even ardently desire its arrival, And as he has never been

the slave of an inordinate attachment to any creature, disengaged from all earthly bonds, he willingly parts with them following the indication of the Divine Will".

Conclusion: To be completely detached in one's love is the sure cure for the second cause of the fear of death.

Third Factor - The next causative factor behind one's feeling so apprehensive before the inescapable advent of death is a feeling of agonised helplessness which can be expressed as follows:

"Alas, death has come too soon to forcefully snatch me away from my field of activity. So many tasks I had thought of accomplishing which I have not yet been able to do. So many of my hopes and plans still remain to be fulfilled, and yet I have to quit life leaving the debris of my unrealised aspirations behind! Is it not a valid reason for feeling a legitimate fear of death?"

The answer is: No, there is no validity even behind this third sort of fear. For, one particular life is not all the life for an individual; there are many, many lives to follow. Death indicates the disruption only of a particular body but the consciousness maintains its continuity with its urge to progress and its possibility of achieving later on in other lives what could not be accomplished for whatever reasons in one particular life.

When Uma Bose. the talented young musician of Calcutta, whom Gandhiji used to address as "the nightingale of Bengal", died at the premature age of twenty-one years, her loving music-preceptor Dilip Kumar Roy wrote a long letter to his Guru Sri

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Aurobindo, bitterly complaining about the injustice of God who did not allow a flower to bloom and brought all its glorious potentialities to nought. This type of untimely frustration of unmanifested possibilities is surely something to be complained of and dreaded - so argued Dilip Kumar in his long letter.

Sri Aurobindo, in an equally long reply, explained to his beloved but confused disciple the whole mystery of life and death, and the nature and course of an individual's earthly existence, and finally consoled Dilip Kumar by saying:

"The non-fulfilment of her [Uma Bose's] capacities could have been a final tragedy if there were this life alone. As it is, she has passed towards the psychic sleep to prepare for her life to come." (D. K. Roy, Sri Aurobindo Came to Me, p. 521)

So, even here, it is not wise to bemoan death by putting forward the argument that the dissolution of the physical body shatters for all time to come all the unfulfilled potentialities of an individual man. But still a misgiving may possibly trouble the heart of the individual. He may argue back:

"Granted that another life may follow this present life of mine when it is ended by death. But how to know that my next life will be a better one with greater possibilities and opportunities; it may be, on the contrary, a life beset with many difficulties frustrating the fulfilment of my untapped talents. In that case, why should I not fear the annulment of my present life? For, is it not a fact that a known evil is far easier to confront than an unknown uncertain one?"

In appearance, this argument seems to be plausible, even convincing. But a deeper probe shows that the truth of the matter is different. For the Divine is conducting his world-play in such a supremely wise and ordered way that, from the point of view of the advancement of the consciousness of an individual,

"All life is fixed in an ascending scale

And adamantine is the evolving Law..."

(Sri Aurobindo, Savitri, Cent. Ed., p. 342)

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Even the Rishi of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad declared a few thousand years ago: "Anyat navataraṁ kalyānataraṁ rūpam kurute" - "A body discarded will be followed not only by a new one but by a better-adapted, more auspicious one." Therefore, one need not entertain any undue anxiety on this score. If by divine dispensation, death has to come to me at any time, I should rather happily welcome it and prepare to go to a newer and better situation.

Fourth Factor - This factor is occasioned by a fearful and unsettling imagination as regards the possible agonies attendant on the dissolution of the physical body. One visualises many types of disabilities of a dying man such as acute pain, distress due to breathlessness and suffocation, an unimaginably troubling unquenchable thirst, a total loss of control over the functioning of the limbs, progressive extinction of all sense-power, the terrible feeling of being dragged into a pit of impenetrable darkness, etc., and one shudders at the prospect of such a vicious death.

But why should one be bothered with these temporary problems of the physical body? The soul which is the real and eternal principle in the individual remains totally unaffected by these disabilities: these cannot touch it in any way. Did not Krishna try to console dejected Arjuna with these words? -

"Weapons cannot cleave the embodied soul, nor the fire burn, nor do the waters drench it, nor the wind dry. It is uncleavable, it is incombustible, it can neither be drenched nor dried. Eternally stable, it is for ever and for ever, acalo'yaṁ sanātanaḥ (Gita, II, 23, 24)

But this spiritual truth may not be able to rid an ordinary man's heart of its shrinking from the physical agonies of death. For he may retort:

"To talk about the soul and its immunity may be all right for a spiritually advanced person who has already 'realised' his soul, ātman, and consciously dwells in its bliss, cidānanda. But what about me, an ordinary mortal, and people of my genre who have

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not been able to separate their consciousness from its identification with the body? How can we not then fear the unbearable agonies of a dying physical body?"

No, even for the unspiritual ordinary people an assurance is there. For, medical science testifies that most patients die in a state of coma or semi-coma in which they have lapsed into physical unconsciousness. As the supply of oxygen to the brain becomes increasingly reduced, the patient's nervous sensibility goes on getting atrophied and his consciousness becomes dulled and unresponsive. The result is that, although to an onlooker the dying patient's body may appear to be racked with suffering and distress, his consciousness does not register that agony. So, even on this account one need not look upon death with fearful anxiety.

This is, of course, in the case of ordinary unspiritual men. When we come to consider the case of spiritual persons, the situation becomes altogether different. For a "realised" person (siddha puruṣa) the consciousness gets divided into two distinctly separate parts, one the outer superficial one constituting the mind, the vital and the body, the other the inner consciousness where one is in union with the Spirit. This inner one progressively transmits its divine quality even to the outer one, so much so that the surface instruments, including even the physical body, may have a double experience at the same time. It is the experience of "the rapture of torture" in Sri Aurobindo's words. The Mother too paradoxically remarks: "One does not suffer while yet suffering." We are reminded, in this connection, of the case of the mystic Suarez about whom it is written in a Latin book of the Middle Ages:

"The illustrious Suarez joyfully cried out amid the excruciating suffering which preceded his physical dissolution: 'I should never have thought that it was so sweet to die.' How many other holy personages have manifested the same sentiments of tasting celestial joys while confronting [an apparently painful] death." (Bellecius, Solid Virtue, p. 474)

Let us close this section on fear arising out of the imaginary agonies of death, by quoting two passages from the Mother's writings, the first one depicting the state of separation from outer suffering, and the second one the right attitude one should adopt in

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order to turn even suffering into joy:

(1) "These surface things have nothing dramatic about them. They seem to me more and more like soap-bubbles.... I have known suffering also, but there was always a part of myself which knew how to stand behind, apart." (Questions and Answers 1957-58, p. 282)

(2)"... when something extremely unpleasant happens to you, you may tell yourself, 'Well, this proves I am worth the trouble of being given this difficulty, this proves there is something in me which can resist the difficulty', and you will notice that instead of tormenting yourself, you rejoice - you will be so happy and so strong that even the most unpleasant things will seem to you quite charming." (Questions and Answers 1951, pp. 354-55)

Fifth Factor - But even this assurance from the Mother will not shield us from feeling a dreadful anxiety about death. For there are other psychological factors to contend with.

And one of the most potent reasons why man so much dreads death is that he is absolutely ignorant about what will actually befall him after he passes through the exit door of physical death. The existence beyond on the other side of death is a complete void to him: it is all a big point of interrogation. So many anxious questions trouble his mind: such as, Who will look after him there? Who will cater to his needs? Who will arrange his destiny on the other side? Will he have to suffer a lot there? Will the hostile vital forces make his life miserable after death? Is there any guidance there? Any helping hand?

This absence of any reliable knowledge regarding the post-death period, leading to a sense of absolute insecurity, makes man cling to the known field of physical life as much and as long as possible, and seek to keep at a distance the uncertain and obscure domain of post-mortem situation.

But this sort of fear also has no solid basis in fact. An attentive observation of the actual facts of life will help us be free from this unfounded fear. For, it is an indubitable principle of existence that

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everything in this world of manifestation, be it on this side or on the other side of death, is being governed and ordered by the infinite love and wisdom of the Supreme Divine.

Consider the case of an as yet unborn babe which is still lying in the mother's womb as a developed foetus. Hypothetically speaking, let us imagine for a moment that this foetus is endowed with the thinking and reasoning power of an adult human being. In that case will it not be seized with some strong feelings of fear and anxiety as regards its fate after it is delivered from its mother's womb? Without knowing anything whatsoever about the state of affairs in the post-delivery situation, it will start wondering:

"Alas, who knows what uncertainties will confront me when I am once out of the repose and security of the cosy atmosphere of my mother's womb! Who will feed me? Who will give me shelter? Who will attend to my needs and be by my side each time I cry out as a totally helpless babe faced with any difficulty? Strange! I have absolutely no knowledge about these things. Hence is my great fear and anxiety as regards my post-delivery situation. Better to remain in the mother's womb for an indefinite length of time and, if possible, for all time to come."

How do we feel about this train of reasoning? Do we judge it right and valid? For we know this supposed anxiety of the unborn babe is altogether baseless. Even before it is delivered, the supremely wise and loving Divine arranges for it nourishing food in its mother's breasts, instils great love and affection in its parents' heart so that they remain always keenly attentive to redress even the slightest discomfort of the babe.

And what is most striking and wonderful is that this provident situation prevails not only in the case of a human baby; the same principle applies in the case of the offsprings of all the other living creatures, be they birds or insects, animals or reptiles.

And if such is the way the Supreme arranges his manifestation, how can we absurdly think that after our physical death he will leave us to our helpless fate without offering any guidance or governance in the unknown supraphysical world beyond? That is simply impossible. Everything is well-organised in the matter of the proper dispensation in our post-mortem existence.

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After all, there is nothing to make us fear the death of the physical body. Fear of what? Fear of coming out of the rut? Fear of being free? Fear of no longer remaining a prisoner in the body? As the Mother once said:

"And after all, if one must for some reason or other leave one's body and take a new one, is it not better to make of one's death something magnificent, joyful, enthusiastic, than to make it a disgusting defeat?...

"After all, ... One can change this accident [physical death] into a means; if one is conscious one can make a beautiful thing of it, a very beautiful thing, as of everything. And note, those who do not fear it, who are not anxious, who can die without any sordidness are those who never think about it, who are not haunted all the time by this 'horror' facing them which they must escape and which they try to push as far away from them as they can. These, when the occasion comes, can lift their head, smile and say, 'Here I am.' " (CWM, Vol. 4, p. 355)

Sixth Factor — Most men mortally fear death because of another reason: it is as regards the total uncertainty about the moment of its arrival. A man is perhaps enjoying merrily all the pleasurable occupations of life, completely oblivious of his providential future. But all of a sudden death may appear, shatter his physical frame and most cruelly snatch him away from the field of his unfinished enjoyment. What adds poignancy to the situation is the deplorable fact that this dolorous forced departure may occur at any moment of one's life, the individual receiving no prior notice or warning. One has to live all the time under the overhanging shadow of death. How can we not get scared of such an uncertain situation? As one Western mystic has observed: "Death is always there, watching, watching." And do we not remember the chilling verse of Sri Aurobindo's Savitri?. - "Death prowls baying through the woods of life." In the fourteenth century, an unknown Christian mystic, the writer of the justly famous Latin treatise, The Imitation of Christ, elaborated the uncertainty of the moment of death in such words:

"O the stupidity and the hardening of man's heart, which

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thinketh only upon the present and doth not rather care for what is to come!

"To-morrow is uncertain, and how knowest thou that thou shall live till to-morrow?

"When it is morning, think thou mayst die before night; and when evening comes, dare not to promise thyself the next morning.

"Many die suddenly, when they look not for it; for the Son of Man will come at an hour when we think not.

"Ah! fool, why dost thou think to live long, when thou canst not promise thyself one day?

"How many have been deceived and suddenly snatched away?" (Translation by G. F. Maine)

Now, it is imaginable that this utter uncertainty and suddenness concerning the moment of the physical death fills man's heart with an undercurrent of vicious trepidation. But is this suddenness really so sudden and unexpected? A deeper study and perspicacious observation reveal to us that there is a divine plan behind every individual's death. Its arrival is neither arbitrary nor purely accidental. For, as the Mother has pointed out, in the end one dies when one has to die; therefore fear has no sense. Sri Aurobindo too wrote in connection with the death of a relative of one of his disciples:

"What has happened must now be accepted calmly as the thing decreed and best for his soul's progress from life to life, though not the best in human eyes which look only at the present and at outside appearance." (Letters on Yoga, Cent. Ed., pp. 462-63)

Sri Aurobindo goes so far as to say that all that happens in the progress of the soul, including an individual's death, has "its meaning, its necessity, its place". And "whatever happens in the Divine Providence is for the best". (Ibid., p. 462)

That death is never sudden and arbitrary in its arrival but comes at its own appointed time has been forcefully put forward by the Mother in course of one of her evening Class Talks. To clear away all our

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unfounded fears and place the whole problem in its proper perspective, it is worth pondering over the following words of the Mother:

"... according to experience, circumstances being the same, absolutely identical, in one case people die, in another they do not - why?... it must depend on something which is altogether outside your consciousness - and in the end one dies when one has to die. That is all. When one has to die one dies, and when one has not to die, one does not die. Even when you are in mortal danger, if it is not your hour to die, you will not die, and even if you are out of all danger, just a scratch on your feet will be enough to make you die..." (CWM, Vol. 5, p. 316)

Now, if such is the occult truth, it is obvious that fear has no sense, for, in either way fear has no determinative power to hasten or postpone the advent of death. About the right attitude one should adopt vis-à-vis one's death, the Mother has advised:

"What you can do is to rise to a state of consciousness where you can say, '... we accept the fact because it seems to be recognised as an inevitable fact. But I do not need to worry, for it will come only when it must come. So I don't need to feel afraid: when it is not to come, it will not come to me but when it must come to me, it will come. And as it will come to me inevitably, it is better I do not fear the thing; on the contrary, one must accept what is perfectly natural.' " (Ibid.)

Yes, "one must accept what is perfectly natural." But there is more to it than its naturalness. For, death comes to an individual not only when it must come, it comes with a great purpose, having a most beneficial end in view. Let us listen to Sri Aurobindo and meditate over what he has to say in this connection:

"Although Death walks beside us on Life's road,

A dim bystander at the body's start

And a last judgment on man's futile works,

Other is the riddle of its ambiguous face:

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Death is a stair, a door, a stumbling stride

The soul must take to cross from birth to birth,

A grey defeat pregnant with victory,

A whip to lash us towards our deathless state."

(Savitri, Book X, Canto 1, pp. 600-01)

Seventh Factor - There is another significant factor which makes an average man vehemently shrink away at the very thought of death. For, being totally ignorant about the shape and nature of the existence beyond death, he thinks and believes that the world on the other side of death is a blank or a drab affair shorn of any rich or happy experiences. To his concrete sensation, the material-physical world in which he is living now is a field of variegated experiences, enriching and enlivening his physical senses, meeting his heart's demands and his mental and aesthetic hungers and passions. The stroke of physical death brings an abrupt and cruel end to all these polychromous enjoyments, without offering any compensatory experiences on the other side of death's wicket gate. For what else can be there after all except, if at all, some bland and colourless neutrality? How can we then welcome death, when it comes, with open arms and equanimity?

The argument as given above seems to be a clinching one without having any possibility of refutation. But the fact is otherwise. For the basic assumptions implied in the above line of reasoning are altogether fallacious. For the physical world does not represent the only world where a conscious individual can hope to have multiform experiences. There are many, many other worlds which are supraphysical in nature and where the embodied soul can reasonably hope to go, after his physical body is dropped and dissolved at death. Let us start with a quotation from Sri Aurobindo affirming the existence of these supraphysical planes and worlds and giving some of their traits and characters:

"... these planes... [are not] extensions of subjective being and consciousness, but... [are] worlds; for the experiences there are organised as they are in our own [physical] world, but on a different plan, with a different process and law of action and in a

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substance which belongs to a supraphysical Nature. This organisation includes, as on our earth, the existence of beings who have or take forms, manifest themselves or are naturally manifested in an embodying substance, but a substance other than ours, a subtle substance tangible only to subtle sense, a supraphysical form-matter." (The Life Divine, Cent. Ed., p. 775)

Readers interested in knowing more about these almost infinitely varying supraphysical worlds may refer to the chapter "The Order of the Worlds" of Sri Aurobindo's magnum opus, The Life Divine. However, in order to dispel from common men's ill-instructed mind the false notion that life is rich and wonderful only on this side of physical death while the other side is bleak and poor, let us quote here a few passages from Sri Aurobindo's epic poem, Savitri. Significantly, these passages occur in Book Two of the epic which the Poet has entitled "The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds"; for, indeed, Savitri is the spiritual autobiography of Sri Aurobindo, and the passages quoted below represent his own experiences gathered during his actual "travel" through these supraphysical worlds. The extracts given here are no more than a few bubbles of the ocean; actually the experiences recorded in Savitri are legion.

(1)

"All could be seen that shuns the mortal eye,

All could be known the mind has never grasped;

All could be done no mortal will can dare."

(Book Two, Canto One)

(2)

"He saw a lone immense high-curved world-pile....

As if from Matter's plinth and viewless base

To a top as viewless, a curved sea of worlds

Climbing with foam-maned waves to the Supreme..."

(Ibid.)

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(3)

"No term was fixed to the high-pitched attempt;

World after world disclosed its guarded powers,

Heaven after heaven its deep beatitudes,

But still the invisible Magnet drew his soul."

(Ibid.)

(4)

"All that here seems has lovelier semblance there....

Whatever is here of visible charm and grace

Finds there its faultless and immortal lines;

All that is beautiful here is there divine.

Figures are there undreamt by mortal mind:

Bodies that have no earthly counterpart..."

(Book Two, Canto Two)

(5)

"Marvel and rapture wandered in the ways.

Only to be was a supreme delight,

Life was a happy laughter of the soul

And Joy was king with Love for minister.

The spirit's luminousness was bodied there.

Life's contraries were lovers or natural friends

And her extremes keen edges of harmony..."

(Book Two, Canto Three)

(6)

"But measureless to life its gain of joy;

All the untold Beyond is mirrored there.

A giant drop of the Bliss unknowable

Overwhelmed his limbs and round his soul became

A fiery ocean of felicity..."

(Book Two, Canto Nine)

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It should be noted that the sole purpose behind our quoting the above passages has been to bring home the point that the "Space" beyond death is not a forbidding blank void; it is, on the contrary, packed with worlds and worlds, each world presenting its own variegated experiences.

But all these experiences are not, of course, invariably sweet and pleasant. There are regions over there of pains and sufferings, of dangers and difficulties. These are due, in part, to the past Karma of the individual, but also due to other important factors. We shall revert to this point later on in a subsequent chapter of this book.

Eighth Factor - This is the last principal factor causative of the fear of death. This type of morbid fear manifests especially among those who are rather advanced in age and at the same time believe in the mythological-theological accounts of the after-death period of existence. They have a rooted belief in the concepts of Karma, Judgment, Purgatory and Hell. And with the advancement of age and the progressive wearing down of the physical body, the thought of impending death suddenly becomes acute in their consciousness and they awake to the fact that they have so far wasted all the golden opportunities offered to them by God during their long life-time. What is more distressing to them is the awareness that they have not only wasted their time but have committed many serious faults and errors amounting to so many theological sins and these are bound to draw upon them very painful punishment on the other side of death. This anxious thought makes them shudder and they attempt by all means to postpone the moment of "departure" so that they can avoid the day of inevitable reckoning for as long a period as possible.

But this cannot be the right solution to their problem, for it will be like an ostrich bird hiding its face in the desert sand to avoid possible risks and dangers. The real solution lies elsewhere. We are not now going to speak about that; for, two later chapters of this book will be devoted to this topic.

However, even now we can say that the best way of eliminating all fear of impending death is to use one's life well and devote all one's time and energy to the task of self-discovery and to

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consecrated service to the Divine. For, as it is well said, "death is the image of life", and if the life is righteously spent, one will not be afraid of approaching death but rather welcome it as a timely change and new opportunity for the soul's further adventure. As the Mother has so beautifully portrayed the situation:

"Those who cling on, who try by every possible means to delay the end even by a minute or two, who give you an example of frightful anguish, show that they are not conscious of their soul....

"And note, those who do not fear it, who are not anxious, who can die without any sordidness, are those.... who have the will to make the best possible use of their life, it is they who say, I shall remain here as long as it is necessary, to the last second, and I shall not lose one moment to realise my goal'; these, when the necessity comes, put up the best show. Why? - it is very simple, because they live in their ideal, the truth of their ideal; because that is the real thing for them, the very reason of their being, and in all things they can see this ideal, this reason of existence, and never do they come down into the sordidness of material life." (CWM, Vol. 4, pp. 355-56)

We have so far discussed eight principal psychological factors which create in a man's heart an undercurrent of fear and anxiety concerning the physical dissolution of their body. And we have attempted to show through elaborate analysis why these causative factors of vain apprehension have no rational basis behind them.

But the valid question remains: Will this sort of intellectual-rational understanding be able to cure a person of his possible fear of death? The answer is both a "Yes" and a "No". Yes for those who are still relatively young in age and in reasonably good health, without any immediate danger to their life. When everything is going on smoothly in their life, this sort of intellectual persuasion may perhaps help them to keep their fear at a distance, being naturally oblivious, in their active consciousness, of the fact of the inevitability of death, this death appearing to them to be something vague and indistinct belonging to the far-off future. But this mood of nonchalance cannot be sustained for long.

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When the prospect of near death looms large before one's vision, all the intellectual arguments will crumble to pieces, and rational conviction will be replaced by emotional persuasion. Then the fear of death will rise in all its fury, as in the analogy given by the saint Ramakrishna: You may teach your pet bird to chant all the holy names of the Lord and it may indeed do so with ease at normal times, but when a cat pounces upon it and tries to wring its neck, the only cry that will come out of its mouth is its natural "bird's cry" and not the names of God taught to it. So is the case of our carefully cultivated rational arguments which will totally fail to deliver the goods at the actual moment of crisis.

No, the really effective procedure we have to adopt is to leave the field of dry mental-rational arguments behind and enter instead into the domain of concrete spiritual experience which will render the clear distinction between the soul and the physical body self-evident. Only so can we defy the phenomenon of physical death and meet it with a calm smile of equanimity.

And it is because of this obvious truth that Sri Aurobindo, after having intellectually explained to one of his bereaved disciples all about the mystery of death, concluded in this doubtful note:

"That is all I can say, but I don't know that it will be of much help to her as these things are helpful usually only when one enters into the consciousness in which they become not mere ideas but realities. Then one grieves no longer because one has entered into the Truth and the Truth brings calm and peace." (Letters on Yoga, Cent. Ed., pp. 461-62)

Let us refer in this connection to the beautiful way the Mother once brought out the essential difference between a mere intellectual presentation and a genuine spiritual experience:

"As for me, I consider this the best remedy. The other is an intellectual, common-sense, rational remedy.... The other is like the prisoner finding good reasons for accepting his prison. This one is like a man for whom there's no longer any prison." (CWM, Vol. 5, p. 317)

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That the fear and grief concerning physical death gets completely removed when one attains genuine self-knowledge through the practice of spiritual sadhana, tarati śokam ātmavit (Chhandogya Upanishad, VII. 1.3), is due to the concrete fact that one no longer feels his physical body to be his true "I". One realises beyond any doubt that the jīvātmā or the Self is sempiternal, without any beginning or end, while the physical body is nothing more than a detachable robe, or a rejectable instrument that one holds in one's hand as long as one likes and drops it at will at any moment of one's choice. Why should then one be disconcerted in any way by the prospect of the loss of the body?

What is more, there can possibly be a far greater experience with respect to the physical body, which Sri Aurobindo has described in the following words:

"We may even come to feel that the body is in a certain sense non-existent except as a sort of partial expression of our vital force and of our mentality." (The Synthesis of Yoga, p. 330)

The Mother once spoke eloquently, in one of her Class Talks (October 14,1953), of how the conscious realisation of one's soul or psychic being becomes the most effective means of curing oneself of all fear of death. She said in effect:

The physical body is not the real "I". One has to try to find in oneself one's psychic being. And when one has found one's psychic being, immediately one has the sense of immortality. And one knows that what goes out or what comes in is just a matter of convenience. The psychic being has taken this body because it needed to use it for its work, but when the time comes to leave the body because it is no longer of any use, for some reason or other, one leaves the body without the least fear or regret. And the Mother concluded:

"The moment you are in contact with your psychic being, you have the feeling of... having always been, and being always, eternally. And then what comes and goes - these are life's accidents, they have no importance. Yes, this is the best remedy." (CWM, Vol. 5, p. 317)

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For scoring victory over the fear of death, the Mother has referred to another method, obviously very difficult and full of regers and risks, which pertains to the domain of occult science. In essece, this procedure consists in disconnecting the consciousness from its vehicle, the physical body, taking it out, leaving the body in a cataleptic state, and then entering the body again deliberately with full consciousness. Readers curious to know more about this occult procedure may consult pages 52 to 54 of the Mother's Questions and Answers 1954.

Such then are the common psychological factors prompting the arousal of the fear of death, and the probable methods that one can adopt to combat it.

For, it is wise and reasonable to admit that till now the final destiny of all bodies without a single exception has been their dissolution sooner or later, and this destiny is bound to confront the physical frame of man for many many years to come.

So it is good to know from the point of view of Sadhana what right attitude the sadhakas of Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga should adopt concerning the body's death, and that will bring our first chapter to a relevant conclusion. The Mother advises:

"One must never wish for death.

One must never will to die.

One must never be afraid to die.

And in all circumstances one must will to exceed oneself."

(CWM, Vol. 4, p. 356)

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II

WHAT IS DEATH? AND WHAT HAPPENS AT THE MOMENT OF DEATH?

"Jātasya hi dhruvo mṛtyuḥ", "death is sure to come one day to all that is born." Whoever undergoes the process of birth has to meet the contrary phenomenon of death; and this law is universally valid and applicable, whether the subject in question is humanly great and noble, or the gods Brahma or Vishnu, or a miniscule organisms like the amoeba. None can escape this sombre fate and, what is more, one has to experience death all by oneself, one cannot share the "experience" with any other person. No comrade will be able to accompany us when we will be pushed on our last journey along this dark and difficult and mysterious route.

What is still more disconcerting and nerve-racking is that there is no possibility of any previous rehearsal of the death-experience; when it comes to a particular individual it does so unexpectedly with all the horror and shock peculiar to something unknown and unexperienced before. This novel surprise imparts all the poignancy to the experience of death.

All of us know for certain that everyone of us will have to take leave of our dearly loved body, today or tomorrow, sooner or later, and that too at the end of the suffering of a chronic or acute illness, or due to a most unexpected sudden stroke of accident. But the really puzzling question is: What happens after this unavoidable death? Does anything substantial remain after that? Or, who knows, the sequel is only a sheer void, a dampening Silence through eternity!

It is, of course, true that very few men are actually occupied with these ultimate questions regarding death. Being wholly caught up in the hustle and bustle of daily life and greatly enamoured of its present occupations, the common run of men does not find time to be curious about the great mystery of physical death. But apart from this fact of utter absorption, there is another factor which

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induces men to try to forget the thought of death as far as and as long as possible. This factor is the most disturbing presence, in every man's subconscient, of a disposition of fear and anxiety and unease concering the sure-to-come shattering blow of death.

But even if one seeks to keep the thought of death shrouded in a thick veil of forgetfulness, one is not allowed to do so always. Oftentimes the drum of death makes a harsh chilling sound in one's ears. The occasion may be: perhaps one loses one of his near and dear ones for ever; may be, one has to unexpectedly bid adieu to one of his beloved friends; or, it may be, one falls grievously ill oneself and lies on his sickbed, hovering between life and death. In some such cases, one is forced to contemplate the strange and weird phenomenon of death. Death appears then in all its painful reality and man starts thinking about it in a sustained manner. Many nagging questions come crowding in his mind demanding satisfactory answers; such as,

(i) Granted that the physical body will be cremated or interred and, in any case, destroyed, but what about the consciousness of the individual? Does it survive the body's death, Yes or No? (ii) If Yes, what is it or who is it that survives? (iii) Will my personality remain intact even after my body dissolves? (iv) I am now in full possession of all my memories and emotions, my sympathies and antipathies, all the elements of my psychology; will all these vanish after death or will something remain? (v) If the answer is a Yes, does it imply that I shall continue to remain almost the same familiar person I was before death in my lifetime? (vi) Even if something of my personality survives, where will it stay and function, in which location? Will there be a new body there? And what about my mind and heart? my sensations and feelings? (vii) Will there be a new course of life on the other side of death, a new series of experiences with the flow of time? (viii) Shall I continue to stay in the other world for an eternity of time? Or will there be a dissolution of that new life too after a certain interval of time? (ix) Shall I continue to remain in a particular world or move from world to world? (x) If the second alternative is true, where and when will my journey end? (xi) Shall I come back once again to this familiar earthly world which I have cherished so much and so long? (xii) If

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I come back, when do I come back, after how much time? Immediately after death or after the lapse of a long period of time? (xiii) In my next return to earth, shall I be the same old person of my previous birth, in nature and temperament, however different may be the physical body and life-circumstances? (xiv) Those amongst my near and dear ones who have already died, can they see me even now? Do they still remember me? Or, has everything become a blank to them? (xv) Can we establish any conscious contact with those who have departed? (xvi) Another puzzling question that intrigues us: It is accepted that everybody has to pass through the death of the body, be he a virtuous man or a sinner, a scholar or an ignoramus, a yogi or an ordinary mortal; but what about the situation after death? Will all have the same fate on the other side? Or different courses await different men?

Such are the insistent questions that trouble our heart and mind concerning the problem of death. But where to find the right answers? Who can give us the satisfactory replies? For it is an undeniable fact that amongst all those who have till now died, not a single one has been able to come back so far to report to us about their death-experience or about the mysteries of the other worlds to which they have travelled after their bodily death. As a result, a very big question-mark looms large before the consciousness of any one who is eager to learn the truth behind these mysteries.

What has compounded the mystery of the issue is that all those in the past, thinkers and philosophers and scientists alike, who have sought to understand the mystery of death, have widely differed among themselves as regards their ultimate findings: "nāsau munir yasya mataṁ na bhinnam", "There are no two sages whose opinions are riot different." Therefore the riddle remains intact as ever, defying all solution. In ancient India, in the age of the Upanishads, the young aspirant Nachiketa put this very question before Yama, the Lord of Death:

"This debate that there is over the man who has passed and some say 'This he is not' and some that 'he is', that, taught by thee, I would know.":

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"Yeyaṁ prete vicikitsā manuṣye,

Astītyeke nāyam astīti caike

Etad vidyām anuśiṣṭas tvayā 'haṁ "

(Katha Upanishad, I. 1.20)

Yes, the puzzled and troubled adolescent of the Upanishad wanted to know directly from the presiding deity of death the real truth about the Ultimate Journey of man, about what happens beyond the portal of the physical dissolution of the body. And in our present time the great poet and Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore, being confronted with the sad fact of repeated deaths in his family, could not but be puzzled by the inscrutable mystery and raised similar questions in a more elaborate way:

"Has he who has passed through death departed for ever or is he waiting in the wings? Has he fallen asleep or is it for him a new awakening? Has the tiredness and fever of his earthly existence left him for ever? Shall I be able to meet him again and, on his part, will he talk to me again somewhere in some unknown world, some time in the future? Who will give me the answers to these questions?" (Sanchayita, "After Death", adapted.)

The questions become still more insistent and full of interest in the case of the sadhakas of the Integral Yoga when they come to know that the Mother, the great occultist and Mahayogi of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, has clearly pronounced about what has happened to some of the sadhakas and sadhikas of the Ashram after their physical demise. To satisfy the curiosity of the readers let us cite below a few instances of this category:

(1)'A' was some sort of a dandy who cared a lot about his clothes and physical appearance during his lifetime. After he left his body, his room was cleaned and whitewashed and made ready for occupation by another Ashramite. But the Mother, through her power of occult vision, saw that the vital being of 'A' was still hovering in his deserted room and searching for his clothes.

(2)After leaving his body 'B' came to the Mother's chamber

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in his subtle body and sat there in quiet repose. But as soon as his mortal remains were placed on the pyre for the purpose of fiery cremation, his vital being shuddered and vanished.

(3)'C', a very senior Ashramite, was a perfect Karmayogi, totally dedicated to the Mother's service. One evening, while sitting in his easy chair, he suddenly passed away due to cardiac arrest. The Mother revealed to his sister, another Ashramite, that his soul had ascended to the 'solar world'.

(4)'D' and 'E' were two middle-aged sadhikas of the Ashram. They were knit together by a very close bond of friendship. When 'D' died in the Jipmer Hospital due to a perforation in her heart, 'E' broke down and complained to the Mother about her deep sorrow. But the Mother consoled her by saying: "Why are you grieving? 'D' is not dead but just departed. In fact, just now she is standing behind me and smiling at you."

(5)'F' was an advanced sadhaka - a great Yogi in his past life, according to the Mother's own evaluation. Before he passed away, he lay on his death-bed and consciously deliberately transferred to the Mother's consciousness all his mental, vital and physical powers and possibilities. This process took many hours, and only when it was completed, he breathed his last. It was on his part a marvellous sadhana through death.

(6)'G', an old devotee, entered his son's consciousness after breathing his last, and thus reached the Mother's chamber when the young man went to her to report about his father's demise. At the sight of the Mother the vital being of the 'dead' father left the son's body, took the form of a smiling babe and ran and jumped into the welcoming arms of the Mother.

(7)'H' was an early Ashramite, a great scholar and a developed sadhaka. He was very close to Sri Aurobindo. When he passed away in 1965, different parts of his being went to different destinations: his mind went to Sri Aurobindo, the psychic being merged in the Mother, and his vital being remained behind to help his near and dear ones whom he had left at death.

(8)'I' was a very advanced sadhaka. His being was completely integrated: all the parts of his nature were consciously centred around his psychic being. When he breathed his last because of an

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attack of coronary thrombosis, his soul was not held back in its post-death journey but ascended straight to the abode of Sri Aurobindo.

(9)'J' was a young sadhaka barely twenty years old. He was involved in a road accident: his motor-cycle was hit by a fast-moving truck. He was seriously injured in his head and immediately went into coma. He lay in the hospital in an unconscious state and in that state itself his vital being went to the Mother and expressed his wish not to die so soon, for that would hamper the continuity of his spiritual sadhana. The Mother assured him that she would bring him back soon to her proximity by placing his psychic being in the growing child in the womb of his sister. After receiving this assurance, the young wounded sadhaka calmly left his body.

(10)'K' was an aged inmate of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. The Mother considered her almost as her friend and sister. She was a great Orientalist and a practising Buddhist sadhika at that. Being afflicted with a serious malignant cancer she was admitted to the Vellore Hospital for a surgical operation. Even before she died there, her subtle being came to the Mother and apprised her that none would ever know what happened to her after her death.

Strange! After she left her body, the Mother sought for her soul here, there, everywhere, in all the supraphysical worlds of existence but could not find it. Being a Buddhist sadhika did 'K' disappear into the Nirvana?

(11)'L' was a very old Ashramite. Because of a painful chronic illness she had to remain on bed for months together. Her longstanding suffering and confinement to sick-bed made her progressively very bitter at heart and lose all her faith in higher spiritual values. Her consciousness became very much darkened. But the surprising fact is that after death came to her at last, the luminous symbol of Sri Aurobindo descended from above, touched her forehead, protected her vital being within its safe ambience, and carried it away along a perilous passage which every departed soul has to traverse after death.

These are only eleven accounts: there are many more recounted by the Mother. These various after-death situations facing the

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departed make us extremely eager to know more about the mystery of death and about the details concerning the supraphysical worlds. But where to find the requisite answers? Who can possibly satisfy our curiosity?

Of course, we are excluding from our purview the atheists and agnostics and the materialist scientists who are dead obsessed with the current tenets and pre-suppositions of science. For they will immediately answer without the least hesitation: "Such curiosity about the supraphysical worlds or about the possible fate of the departed souls is misplaced and meaningless; for, apart from this physical world, there is no other world existing. And the destiny of the departed? Who is 'departed'? None departs, and therefore the whole question is absurd. For, man's consciousness is nothing but an epiphenomenon; it is the external manifestation of the neuro-electrical vibrations of the brain-cells; and as a result it is bound to disappear with the death of the body and its brain. What subsists after that is an eternal 'nothingness', a contentless void."

Such being the expected answers of these materialists, we do not propose to approach them for meeting our curiosity. Of course, there are many fallacies in their postulates and pre-suppositions, also in their lines of argument. These can be easily countered by intellectual counter-arguments, but that will not serve any useful purpose for us. After all, to enter into polemics is not the object of this chapter of our book: that can be conveniently postponed to a chapter of a separate book.

So, leaving out for the moment these materialist-minded thinkers, let us turn to all those who have in some way or other believed in the existence of the supraphysical worlds and in the passage of the departed souls to these worlds beyond, after the dissolution of their physical body. Ignoring all differences in the details of their findings and observations, let us mention here in brief what their fundamental conclusions are:

In the ancient Vedic literature of India there is not much discussion about life after death. The ancient Jewish literature too is almost silent in the matter. Of course, the book of Job and the Book of Maccabees of the Old Testament are exceptions to this general trend. Christian theology affirms that the soul of an individual man

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is created at the moment of conception and that one single life upon earth is granted to it. After the termination of this life the soul has to wait till the Day of final Judgment when the All-mighty All-just God will call up the individual soul and allot to it eternal heaven or eternal hell depending upon its behaviour in the single human life lived by it. The virtuous believers will go to heaven, the unbelievers will go to hell, while sinnets amongst the believers will have to undergo first the purificatory sufferings of Purgatory before they are allowed access to heaven.

The ideas of the ancient Greeks regarding the "other worlds" and their denizens were not very clear or definite. They believed that the departed souls moved in the supraphysical worlds as so many somnambulists, in half sleep and in half wakefulness; and they were very much attached to the physical pleasures and comforts of the earthly physical world.

The ancient Gauls maintained a different idea altogether. According to them, the non-material part of man has come down directly from God but it has had to pass through many different existences before it could be embodied in a human being. After traversing the stages of plant-life and animal life, it gets caught in the prison-house of a nether world called 'Anufu'. After a sustained effort extending over a long period of time it gets freed from this prison and reaches the human field of 'Abred'. After passing many lives there, it will reach a world of happiness and joy, bearing the name of 'Gwynfid'. But its journey does not end even there. Much above 'Gwynfid' lies the world of divine infinity, 'Ceugant'. Quite a complex idea indeed!

Sage Vasistha teaches in his great Vedantic treatise, Yoga-Vashishtha-Maharamayanain, that after his physical death an individual man enters into a state of temporary death-swoon ("mṛtyu-mūrchā"). After his soul eventually comes out of this swoon, it is severely judged and put in one of six categories, depending upon the relative values of the merits and demerits of its actions done during its pre-death lifetime. These categories are interestingly designted as:

(1) Ordinary sinners (sāmānya-pāpī); (2) medium sinners (madhyama-pāpī); (3) extreme sinners (sthūla-pāpī); (4) ordinarily

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virtuous people (sāmānya-dhārmika); (5) medium-level virtuous men (madhyama-dhārmika); and (6) men of high-pitched genuine virtue (uttama-dhārmika). These six categories of people will have to face different destinies in the other world after their death. Vasistha has discussed this issue in sufficient detail in his justly famous book. Those amongst our readers who would tike to know more about this question may consult the 55th sarga of the "Utpatti-Prakarana" of Vashistha's book.

The Theosophists have very complex ideas about the structure of man's consciousness and the nature of his destiny after death. According to them, every man possesses five other bodies besides his gross physical frame which can be cognised by his physical senses. These bodies form a scale of hierarchy depending upon their more or less developed states and on their constituting substances more or less subtle in nature. The Theosophists have named these bodies as: (i) etheric body; (ii) astral body; (iii) mental body; (iv) causal body; and, finally, (v) buddhistic body. This last body is not, however, equally developed in all human beings. In most men it is still in an embryonic stage; only in the case of the great yogis it has attained its full stature.

According to the Theosophical doctrine, man's ethereal body too gets dissolved with the dissolution of his physical body. Then the departed soul takes its abode in the second body, the astral body. But how long will it dwell there? That depends on the Karmic factor. Anyway, man's soul passes after this into the other more developed bodies one after another.

We need not go here into the elaboration of the theological doctrine of eschatology. For, that has no relevance here. We alluded in brief to a few historical beliefs, only to bring home the point that there is wide divergence of opinion even amongst those who claim to have genuine interest in the matter and possess, at the same time, some knowledge about what happens after physical death. Does it mean that, in spite of a thousand speculations and creative imaginations, man has remained utterly ignorant about what death really is and about the after-death period? Did not the author Hereward Carrington finally conclude, even after five hundred pages of elaborate dissertation in his book significantly titled Death: Its Causes

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and Phenomena: "In spite of all his speculations, there is but one fact that man has been able to establish to his own satisfaction. He is here, but whence he came, and whither he is going, or why, are questions to which faith alone has made answer." (op. cit., p. 253) Let us listen to what the Mother once said about the same question: "...man knows nothing about death - he does not know what it is, he does not know what happens, he has built all kinds of hypotheses, but there is nothing certain." (Notes on the Way, CWM, Vol. 11, p. 61)

Yes, it has to be squarely admitted that the general run of humanity as well as the intellectual thinkers know next to nothing about death and the other worlds. But what about the Mother and Sri Aurobindo themselves? Readers will pardon us if we dare say that, through the application of the principle of "knowledge by identity", they have come to know about many of the inscrutable problems of this world of manifestation. Therefore, it is to them that we propose to turn with our insistent questions, meditate on their extensive writings and on all that they have pronounced on these and other related questions, and, thus, cull some relevant answers to the questions that trouble us; principally, what happens at the moment of death and what befalls the departed being after the dissolution of his body? For, it is not wise just to lead one's life and then lie on one's death-bed in total ignorance of these great mysteries.

Yes, what happens in the after-death period? We feel like repeating here what we mentioned a few pages earlier that once a man becomes genuinely and seriously inquisitive, there is no dearth of questions to puzzle him: to cite a few of them here:

(i)Where are our venerable seniors now, the close confidants of the Mother such as Nolini-da, Counoumaji and Dyuman-bhai?

(ii)And what about Champaklalji? - who stayed by the side of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother from the early twenties of the last century to 1973, but had to leave his body at a place far away from the Ashram and being surrounded by strangers?

(iii)And the universally respected Madhav Panditji who had to meet death unexpectedly in a far-off Chennai Hospital?

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(iv)And the great sadhaka Parichandji who, even when struck by a paralytic stroke, wrote with his able right hand: "The work that the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have been doing in this body of mine is not yet over, and till it is over, it will continue to remain alive." The question that intrigues us is: When, after two long years, Parichandji breathed his last, what happened to him? Where did his soul go?

(v)And the strange case of our friend, Prof. Arunendu? On a particular 'Darshan Day' he reached the Mother's chamber after having climbed many steps of a staircase, bowed down before the Mother's picture in a gesture of 'Pranam' and then dropped down dead there itself. We wonder, what happened to him after his death? Where is he now?

Have all these afore-mentioned sadhakas of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram permanently disappeared in the abyss of silence, leaving no trace anywhere behind? Is death equivalent to an eternal nullity?

No, how can that be? Death is not tantamount to a cessation of life. For the Mother has let us know:

"I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing which is really death.

"There is only an appearaance, an appearance based on a limited view. But there is no radical change in the vibration of the consciousness." (CWM, Vol. 11, p. 61)

And Sri Aurobindo? Has he not taught us that death does not signify the end of the personal existence; it is no more than the taking off of one's outer garment: "... death is only a shedding of the body, not a cessation of the personal existence. A man is not dead because he goes into another country and changes his clothes to suit that climate." (Letters on Yoga, p. 463)

Yes, a man is not dead, only departed. As Sri Aurobindo has so clearly stated: "...death is only a passage from one form of life to another, and none is dead but only departed." (Ibid.)

But departed where? to which worlds? Also, the question arises: "Is there only one supraphysical world or many are their numbers?

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If many, is there any qualitative and quantitative difference in them? And, are there permanent denizens dwelling there? or, perhaps, they are only stations of transition for those who have lived upon earth but now shed their bodies?

We propose now to enter into the discussion of these tricky questions, all, of course, in the light of the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. For the information of our readers let us state that Sri Aurobindo has discussed these issues in great depth and detail in the chapter "The Order of the Worlds" of his philosophical magnum opus The Life Divine. Besides that, in his great epic Savitri there is a wealth of descriptions about these various worlds and their particularities, couched in magnificent spiritual poetry. In fact, the whole Book Two of this epic poem is entitled "The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds".

The very first fact we have to take note of is that the visible physical world an average man takes cognizance of through the medium of his sense-organs and by the application of his rational judgment represents only an insignificant portion of the totality of innumerable worlds that exist in the world of manifestation. The Mother has made us understand this fact with the help of an interesting analogy. Here is what she says:

"For the human consciousness as it is, there are certainly infinitely more invisible things than visible things. What you know, the things which are visible to you and which you are conscious of - it's almost like the skin of an orange compared with the orange itself - and even an orange with a very thin skin, not a thick one! And so, if you know only the skin of the orange, you know nothing about the orange." (CWM, Vol. 8, p. 87)

But the important question is: How to know that these normally invisible worlds beyond the grasp of our normal senses do really exist? The Mother answered this question in one of her Class Talks of 1954. She said in effect:

Just as a man possesses a gross physical body perceptible by his senses of touch and sight, he has many other bodies relatively subtle and these bodies too are endowed with subtle senses. If by

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an appropriate sadhana we can raise our consciousness to higher and deeper levels and make it active and functional there, if we can awaken our latent potency of knowledge vis-à-vis objects which are beyond the grasp of our gross physical senses, we can have access to these subtle worlds depending on our individual capacities and development, and establish conscious communication with them. What is more, even while still living in our gross physical body, even before we have shed it at death, we can travel at will to these subtle supraphysical planes of existence.

In ancient times yogis and rishis and mystics of many countries and belonging to different religious traditions knew much about the existence of these supraphysical worlds. They knew too that just as these worlds had regions of light and happy enjoyment, there were also fields of pain and suffering and hideous darknesses. Depending on the traditions and their specific terminology, these two classes of pleasant and unpleasant regions were variously named as 'svarga' and 'naraka', 'heaven' and 'hell', 'jannat' and 'jahannam', 'behest' and 'doze', 'paradise' and 'purgatory', etc.

By the way, these regions ('loka', 'bhuvana') exist at the same time both subjectively and objectively; subjectively, as the planes of consciousness of an individual being, and objectively as independently existing worlds of manifestation.

There is one other essential point we have to note in this connection: these supraphysical worlds are not contentless voids; they have conscious beings of their own, habitually dwelling and functioning there. Just as these worlds are made of substances different from that of our physical world, the bodies of the beings of the supraphysical worlds are constituted of substances corresponding to the worlds of their own. There are hierarchies governing these supraphysical beings, depending on their relatively higher or lower status of development. Readers interested in knowing more about these things are advised to go through the illuminating essay "Lines of the Descent of Consciousness" written by Nolini Kanta Gupta and included in his Yoga of Sri Aurobindo, Part Two.

The names of these beings and creatures of the supraphysical worlds differ widely in different religious traditions. Some of these names are:

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deva, gana, upadeva, parsad, siddha, gandharva, vidyadhara, yaksha, raksha, daitya, asura, - all in the Indian tradition;

fresta, jin, pari, iblish, saitan, in the Islamic tradition;

and in the Christian tradition nine types of angels are grouped in three different classes; e.g., (i) seraphim, cherubim, thrones; (ii) dominions, virtues, powers; (iii) principalities, archangels, angels.

We may refer in this connection to the four 'lokapala'-s and eight 'dikpala'-s of ancient Indian tradition. But that is not all.

Apart from these principal supraphysical beings, there are numerous types of elemental beings swarming in the subtle-physical and the lower vital planes bordering the atmosphere of the earth itself. The list of their names is quite a long one: gnomes, sylphs, nymphs, undines, dryads, salamanders, brownies, elves, imps, and so many others.

The account of the supraphysical beings does not end even here. There are many more of them to speak about. For example, when men, particularly the evil-natured ones, die, their hungry and desire-driven vital beings may assume many forms and move about in the earth's atmosphere just beyond the gross physical plane, being made prisoners there because of their unsatisfied thirst. These are variously named as ghosts, ghouls, vampires, asebs, pretas, pisachas, etc. Let us listen to what the Mother has said about this point:

"... for you the air is empty, there is nothing in it - you see something blue or white, there are clouds, sunbeams, and all that is very pretty - but when you have the other sight, you see that it is filled with a multitude of small formations which are all residues of desires or of mental deformation and these swarm inside it, you see, in a mass, and this is not always very pretty. At times it is extremely ugly." (CWM, Vol. 6, p. 41)

Let us leave alone these dark beings of the other worlds. Let us revert to our earlier discussion and close the topic of whether the supraphysical worlds exist at all or not. We give below in this connection the summarised adaptation of what the Mother spoke in her evening class of July 11, 1956:

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I am asked for explanation or comments on the beings who live in the worlds invisible to ordinary physical eyes. I am even told that I speak very often of negative entities, of hostile formatons, of small beings, formed from the disintegration of human beings after their death - disintegration of the vital or mental beings on death - but that I have never or rarely spoken of the great beings, the positive entities which help the evolution.

Well, the occult world is not one single region where everything is mixed. The occult world is a gradation of regions, of more and more ethereal or subtle regions, farther and farther removed in their nature from the physical materiality we ordinarily see. And each one of these domains is a world in itself, having its forms and inhabited by beings with a density, one might say, analogous to that of the domain in which they live.

Just as in the physical world we are of the same materiality as the physical world, so in the vital world, in the mental world, in the overmind world and in the supramental world - and in many others, infinite others - there are beings which have a form whose substance is similar to the one of the world.

This means that if you are able to enter consciously into that world with the part of your being which corresponds to that domain, you can move there quite objectively, as in the material world.

And there, there are as many, and even many more things to see and observe than in our poor little material world, which belongs to only one zone of this infinite gradation. You meet all sorts of things in those domains, and you need to make a study as profound, perhaps still more profound than in the physical world, to be able to know what is happening there, to have relations with the beings who live there.

Another point: if you learn to leave the lower vital world in close proximity to the earthly physical world and make your progressive ascension, you will find that as you mount, you will encounter beings whose forms and consciousness are more and more pure and beautiful and perfect.

A third point: In these invisible worlds there are also regions which are the result of human mental formations. There are hells, there are paradises, there are purgatories. There are all sorts of things

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in accordance with the different religions and their conception -but these things have only a very relative existence and importance.

Thus there are worlds and worlds, many more than we can imagine. Human beings here are mostly convinced that the only reality is the physical reality - the reality of what one can touch, can see - and for them, all that cannot be seen, cannot be touched, cannot be felt, is after all problematical. But this is not true at all.

So it is difficult to speak of all these worlds, these innumerable worlds, in a few minutes. It is a knowledge which needs the lived experience of many years, thoroughly systematic, and which requires an inner preparation, to make it harmless. (based on the Mother's Questions and Answers 1956, pp. 217-19)

Such is the disconcerting complexity of the variegated worlds which exist beyond our well-known physical-material plane. But a question remains: Apart from the habitually dwelling denizens of these worlds, do human beings also have the ability to go to these worlds after they shed their physical bodies at death? If yes, to which of these worlds and up to what distance? And for how long do these disembodied beings stay there?

These and some other allied questions have troubled the human mind since the beginning of the recorded history of man. In our modern times these questions have acquired an added acuteness because of two factors.

The first factor may be formulated as follows: The scientific outlook with its totally materialistic basis and bias is at present almost sovereignly dominating the mind of man. According to this view, the possibility of the existence of any consciousness divorced from its material-physical vehicle is absurd, and a belief in such a possibility cannot be maintained even with the faintest shadow of rationality. So, the above-mentioned questions cannot have any basis in fact and, therefore, it is sheer waste of time and energy to make any attempt at answering them.

Such is the rational-materialistic proposition. But against this blatant assertion of the scientific mind of man, an average man's dissatisfied heart raises a voice of dissent and seeks to be somehow

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reassured that the materialistic hypothesis and its logical conclusions do not after all represent the whole truth. There must be something more there which modem science has not yet been able to grasp. Such being his innate belief, even a shred of "evidence" along this line is eagerly lapped up by the credulous heart of average man.

The second factor is more emotional and insistent. Whenever anyone in the circle of our near and dear ones falls, for whatever reason, a victim to death, and disappears from our view, apparently for all time to come, our bereaved heart refuses to accept this brute fact and likes to be assured that the dear departed whom we have physically lost is somehow maintaining his personal existence somewhere beyond the grave and that he is still bound to us with his former intimate relationship, and that, what is more, we may perhaps establish some communication with him by some non-scientific means.

In order to satisfy these two demands of the human heart, a new line of serious research has sprung up since the middle of the nineteenth century. This has been given the name of "Psychical Research"; and in its earlier phase even reputed orthodox scientists like Sir Oliver Lodge, Dr. Wallace and Dr. Crookes got associated with it, giving to this new research much credence and respectability.

Many bulky volumes embodying the findings of these "psychical" researchers have seen the light of day and reached the hands of eager people. As a result, words like "planchette" and "medium" have become quite familiar with most modem men. Of course, whether they repose any faith in their findings or not remains a separate open question. By the way, a "medium" is supposed to be an extraordinarily gifted human being who possesses the powers of clairaudience and clairvoyance and has acquired the surprising capacity of establishing a direct and conscious contact with disembodied souls, while plunged in a state of trance. It is claimed that once-living but now-dead departed beings can use these mediums as vehicles of transmission, give information through them, make requests and answer questions. Apart from these mediums, one can, it is said, use "planchettes" to establish communication

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with the disembodied souls through what is called "automatic writing".

Now the question is: How much truth is there in these claims of the "psychical" researchers? Do the "disembodied" beings really exist and come and communicate? Or, who knows, there is perhaps some as yet undiscovered natural explanation for these weird phenomena.

Much animated debate has been engaged in around these questions; many fat books have been written from both the sides, from those who believe in these things and also from those who do not believe.

The confirmed "non-believers" have taken a resolve not to repose any credence in these so-called "psychical" facts and pheomena, even if they are confronted with "direct" irrefutable proofs. For they advance the argument that, with the passage of time, surely a "natural" explanation will be forthcoming, although it is still beyond the access of the scientists of the present day.

This is the position of the cynics and the non-believers. The position of the "believers" is altogether different. They are by disposition rather credulous and catch at the slightest so-claimed "evidence" in order to receive some consolation that their near and dear "departed" ones are still in existence, although in the other worlds. To give an example of this category, we may cite here the following "true" story. This pertains to the years 1964-65.

The wife of a Bengali gentleman breathed her last in 1958. Their much-loved young son Abhay was then only nine years old. Just after six years, when Abhay was fifteen years old, he too suddenly passed away, leaving his forlorn father in utter distress. The gentleman was on the verge of losing his mental balance. Finally he decided to take recourse to the planchette-techniqe to invoke the departed "souls" of Abhay and his mother. The father claimed to have brought to him his wife and son many a time and acquired through them much interesting information regarding the other worlds and their affairs. After some time the gentleman contacted a few Sannyasis of a famous Math and, with their approval, brought out a medium-sized book in Bengali and gave it the name of Mayer Dak (The Call of the Mother). For satisfying the natural curiosity

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of our readers, we quote below two or three extracts from this book which are purported to be the record of the conversation of Abhay's soul with his father:

"Question: What were you doing? Answer: I was painting pictures. Q: Don't you wish to come back here? A: No. You too will come here to our place only after a few years. Mother speaks about you and weeps. Q: Do you sleep near your mother? A: I don't feel like sleeping. Q: What do you do then? A: I do painting; meditate some times. People here dub one as off-balance if he weeps. Q: Will I be able to see you when I come over there? A: Yes, surely. I shall stay here for a long time where I am now. Q: How are you keeping, Abhay? A: Very fine. There is great joy here. I have to go away soon today, for many are waiting for me. Q: Who were you in your last birth? A: Swami Brahmananda [the first President of the Ramakrishna Mission] whom Ramakrishna used to call 'Rakhal'. Q: What is your mother doing now? A: Mother wants to go out for a walk with me; therefore, she is calling me. Bye! Papa, see you another time." Etc.

Readers can easily realise how much inconsistency is present in this sort of planchette-account. It appears as if the other world beyond death is almost like a replica of our physical world, with all its ways and settings. We may easily conclude that it is surely not the "soul" of the adolescent boy Abhay who got attracted by the planchette and spoke all these things. But the question is: Who is it then who wrote these strange words through the agency of the planchette? We shall come back to this important question at its proper time in course of this chapter. For the moment, we would like to point out this much that the saddened heart of the deeply bereaved father of Abhay surely took all these answers to have actually come from his dead son and thus derived much consolation from this sort of intimate "conversation". And because of this strong belief he wrote inter alia in the Foreword to his above-mentioned book:

"Abhay, you have revealed to me that you were Swami

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Brahmanandaji in your last incarnation upon earth. What a glorious life it was! I feel myself highly blessed and privileged that you called me your father for nine years in this life. You have consoled me with your words from the beyond: "Papa, don't weep; I'm perfectly all right here." Abhay, the most consoling piece of information you have given me is that in a few years' time from now I shall go over there and meet you and your mother again. I have been counting the days and impatiently waiting for the destined day of transition and reunion." (op. cit., p. 8. Adapted.)

Strange are the ways of the human heart in its hopes and imaginations, once it turns irrational with blind expectations! No doubt that the supraphysical worlds exist beyond our physical plane, with their own characteristic beings. This too is true that a gifted human being can travel to these worlds and effectively function there after the dissolution of his body. But this is certain that cultured men of the present times brought up with a scientific temperament will vehemently contest these statements of Abhay's father and laugh them away as mere superstitions; for they will on no account admit anything which falls even slightly outside their rigidly held ambit of the materialistic doctrine, even if they are confronted with direct evidence to the contrary. With reference to this attitude of orthodox scientists the Mother once narrated a very interesting anecdote from her own life-experience. The full account is given in pages 415-16 of her book Entretiens 1957-58. Here is an abridged version of whatever is relevant to our present discussion:

The Mother knew a man of science, a person of real ability and acute intelligence. He had studied higher Science and held an important position.

He came in contact with a "medium" who had exceptional "psychic" attainments. The scientist used to attend all her "seances" with the idea of ascertaining if there was any tangible proof for the real existence of an invisible supraphysical world. He had seen in these seances all that could be seen, under the strictest scientific control and in the most fool-proof way possible: all the checks and

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balances asked for were provided down to the least detail.

One day, when the medium had gone into "trance", a "supraphysical" being appeared there dressed in a robe which looked somewhat like our present-day nylon. It was a case of genuine "materialisation". This visionary "woman" passed in front of the scientist and he, in spite of a previous warning not to do so, tore off a piece of her robe to prove or disprove its tangibility, and kept it with him.

The medium screamed and everything immediately disappeared. But the piece of robe remained in the scientist's hand, quite a concrete thing at that, and he gave it to the Mother. That was something really concrete and materially visible and tangible. The scientist could not assert in any way that it was a case of mere hallucination. But, in spite of all this, he did not believe anything! Of course, he could not explain how all this happened and he wondered who was after all mad, he himself or the others or... Well, even all this striking demonstration had not helped his knowedge of the supraphysical reality progress even half a step forward. (Adapted from CWM, Vol. 9, pp. 367-68)

Such is the state of mind and the biased attitude of the scientifically oriented men of our times. So, we need not get unduly bothered by their blatant opinion dogmatically asserted as regards the question of whether the supraphysical reality exists or not.

Just now we spoke about a particular medium referred to by the Mother and her strange peformance. We feel like citing here two or three other instances from amongst the host of striking phenomena which have been revealed to us by the careful researches of psychical science. Readers will surely enjoy these accounts and come to appreciate the truth of the oft-quoted saying "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy". There are, indeed, supraphysical worlds and supraphysical forces whose actions and influences upon our physical world are not at all ethereal and imaginary but quite concrete and verifiable. But that does not, of course, necessarily mean that a disembodied soul like that of the boy Abhay comes down from the other world and delivers messages to a living man.

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We shall discuss later on what the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have to say about the matter. But for the moment let us listen to the narration of some stories; oh no, not stories but real authentic events.

First Event. - Dr. Calderone and his friend were both of them confirmed disbelievers in the existence of other worlds beyond the body's death. They decided that if and when they would die, the first one to die - if he continued to maintain any post-mortem personal existence - would come to his friend's house and break the glass cover of his table lamp.

The contact between the two friends was somehow cut off for many months. Suddenly, one day Dr. Calderone heard some unaccountable sound on his lamp cover. This continued for a few days and then one day the cover was broken and fell down on the table below in two separate pieces. The doctor was puzzled, and he became still more puzzled when news came to him that his friend had died a few days back. (Vide B. Addy Collins, Death Is Not the End, p. 69)

Second Event. - There were two cousin sisters, Julia and Benja by name. Both of them were agnostics and did not have any perceptible belief in conscious existence after death.

One day they brought a rather long piece of brick, broke it into two unequal parts, and the two sisters took one piece each and hid the pieces separately in two rather inaccessible locations. Neither Julia nor Benja knew where the other sister had hidden her own brick-piece. Also, each one left, accompanying her brick-piece, a short message enclosed in a sealed envelope. It goes without saying that neither of the two cousin sisters was at all aware of the nature and content of the message the other one arbitrarily wrote.

After a considerable lapse of time Benja died. There was nothing particularly strange or unexpected in that. But what was surprising to the utmost degree was the fact that the so-claimed "spirit" of Benja took the help of a planchette to reveal the place where she had hidden her brick-piece; she indicated too that her message was "Julia, Do right and be happy. - Benja."

On search, the brick-piece was found exactly at the spot indicated through the planchette and the message too was confirmed.

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How to explain this phenomenon? (Ibid., p. 70)

Third Event. - One disembodied "spirit" who gave her name as Patience Worth often used to possess the consciousness of the famous American medium, Mrs. Curran, when the latter used to be in trance. Patience got many interesting things written through the agency of Curran. Thus, through her "dictation" Curran wrote quite a few novels of a high literary quality, also an epic of seventy thousand words bearing the title, Telka.

The "spirit" announced that she had migrated from the British Isles to U.S.A. in the seventeenth century A.D. and was eventually killed by the Red Indians. Obviously, the seventeenth century spoken English current in U.S.A. in those far-off days was the language of communication of the "Spirit", Patience Worth, and the Epic, Telka, was dictated to the medium in this uncanny language. But Mrs. Curran, the medium, was in no way in her personal life even remotely acquainted with the seventeenth century mixed dialect of U.S.A. The strangest fact of all is that expert linguists and philologists have thoroughly analysed the style and vocabulary of Telka and found them in perfect conformity with the seventeenth century American spoken English. How was it possible?

We cannot but recall in this connection the sadhana-opuscule, Yogic Sadhan, of Sri Aurobindo. The Mahayogi has publicly stated that he himself was not the author of this precious book; rather, he received the whole thing in "automatic writing".

There is no use multiplying instances here. But this is a well-attested fact that all those who seriously deal with psychical research have often found that a plank of their doors or windows suddenly opens or closes with a bang, or their writing table starts unaccountably shaking, or, what is still more striking, an object suddenly "materialises" and falls in front of them. Have we not heard or read about the mysterious stone-throwing incident in Sri Aurobindo's house, "Guest House", in the early twenties of the last century? These bricks appeared as if from nowhere, fell down on the ground, and were collected in a heap by the inmates of the house. Sri Aurobindo himself has described this event of "materialisation" in course of his long interview with Dilip Kumar Roy; the Mother too has narrated this particular event in one of her Class

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Talks to the Ashramites assembled in the "Playground"; and Nolini Kanta Gupta has written about it in great detail in one of the chapters of his Reminiscences.

Apart from this well-documented incident of brick-throwing in the "Guest House", behind which was the malevolent attitude and action of a local occultist, Sri Aurobindo has referred to another incident of this sort of "apport" ("sudden appearance of a material object in the visible world as if from nowhere"). This is till now known only to a handful of persons, for its description is still confined to the Diary pages of his manuscript, Record of Yoga. When the book sees the light of day in the near future, readers can read it there and be sure of its authenticity. The incident was somewhat like this:

One day Sri Aurobindo was standing on the long verandah of his house, of the same house which we have referred to above as the "Guest House". All of a sudden he saw a red-coloured Palash flower appearing in the air a few yards away from where he was standing, then slowly moving along a horizontal trajectory - and not parabolically as it normally should be according to the laws of Dynamics - and finally dropping down on the ground near his feet. There was no Palash tree near by nor was there visible any bird which might have possibly carried it in its beak. Then? What could be the explanation of this strange phenomenon?

The only purpose behind all this elaboration is to carry this message to our non-biased readers that there are indeed more things in the universe than are acknowledged to be possible by the materialistic scientists. Readers will not do anything abnormal and irrational if they accept that there are other worlds and other functioning forces than those that conventional orthodox science deals with. These various worlds and forces are, of course, beyond the cognisability of the normal undeveloped consciousness of man. Also, readers need not nurture any doubt even about the existence of many types of supraphysical beings in the world. And this too is true that a man, after his physical death, does not vanish into nothingness but can quite normally move in these supraphysical planes of existence.

But one critical question still remains to be answered: Who

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moves or what moves in the supraphysical worlds? And where does he go? And what is the final term of his supraphysical journey? These and some other related questions are very very relevant and we proceed to discuss them now.

Let us begin our discussion from the very start; that is to say, from what happens at the moment of death. Does the departing being's consciousness remain active and functional even at that critical moment of transition? How does the being depart from the physical body and what happens immediately after that? After we have adequately settled the answers to these questions, it will be the proper time to discuss the supraphysical itinerary and the final destiny of the departed soul.

First Question

Does the dying man remain conscious at the moment of

transition from the body?

Be it clearly noted that in our present discussion we are not observing the situation from outside; we are trying to see from within. But what does this queer statement mean? It means that it is quite possible that the attending physicians, after careful clinical investigation, may rightly declare that the patient has passed into coma or that he has already died. We are not contesting their observations and conclusions. But what we are now seeking to know is whether the dying person retains some sort of subjective consciousness even when there is no trace of its objective manifestation outside and the patient has totally lost all control over his limbs and organs and their physiological functionings. Has not the Mother spoken about the "body-spirit" which can continue to remain in the body for many hours even after the patient has been declared "clinically dead"? She says that a person cannot be rightly declared "dead" till definite signs of decomposition have appeared in the physical body.

Whatever that may be, we are going to recount here a very interesting true story which will indirectly prove that some sort of

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residual consciousness may remain in the "dead" body of someone who has lost all control over his physical frame and all its functionings. A very strange situation indeed, - totally unbelievable at first sight. Yet, Dr. Carrington, the author of Death: Its Causes and Phenomena, saw himself with his own eyes a case like this and has recounted it in this way:

A lady known to me was lying on her death-bed. She realized that her death was imminent. Hence, she was articulating her last wishes in a very faint voice to her relatives who were sitting close by. But she became progressively so weak that no audible voice could be heard coming from her mouth. But all that she wanted to communicate was not yet over. Therefore, through some barely perceptible gesture she made it known to her relatives that they should insert a pencil in between her fingers and a pad of paper just underneath. This instruction was duly carried out. But what next followed was beyond all expectation. The fingers of the dying lady went on writing on the paper meaningful sentences quite rational and consistent. Very soon all the orthodox signs of an impending death appeared. The rattling sound was there in the lady's throat; her hands and legs and other limbs went on losing their warmth and became more and more cold; the lips lost their sheen and became bluish-white; the pulse-beats became fainter and fainter and then stopped altogether. This was followed by the cessation of breathing.

Any one looking at the lady at that time from outside would have surely declared that the just-dead body of the lady was lying limp and still on her bed; but with one sole exception. And what an extraordinary exception it was! The fingers of the "dead" lady were still in movement, wrote for a few seconds more on the stretched paper underneath, even tried to make some necessary corrections, and then became motionless for ever. (op. cit., p. 308. Adapted with abridgment.)

Dr. Carrington concluded his narration with some pertinent questions like this; Was consciousness still active in the lady's body which was apparently dying or even already dead? If yes, where was it residing? In the brain of the lady? But her cerebral

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cells were then, to all intents and purposes, quite dead and nonfunctional. Then?

Now, our question is: Is this an exceptional case or a general one with universal application? In other words, does the consciousness in every dying man's case remain active although withdrawn, may be for a short while, even when the entire physical body is dead?

Leaving our readers to speculate on these tricky questions, let us pass on to the consideration of our second query.

Second Question

What is the process of the exit of the being from the dying

body?

We are quite aware of the fact that the orthodox physicians will laugh out at such a question and retort quite bluntly: "Only someone with an ill-balanced mind can ask such an absurd and meaningless question. For, exit of what? Nothing at all exits. The only reality is that all the organic functionings of the body come to a dead stop at death. This is all that one needs to know. Death does not admit of any further question concerning the 'Beyond'."

We know that most scientific-minded people of our day will answer in the same vein and try to taunt our query into silence. But in spite of that we shall still be insistent on raising our questions and seek for a satisfactory answer. For, our present chapter is not meant for the cynics and the disbelievers; it addresses itself to those spiritual seekers who are honestly eager to know more about the process of death and what follows thereafter in the occult world. And it is for them that we are recording here two narrations which are, at the same time, amusing, interesting, and instructive. The first account is based on the personal experience of a clairvoyant sadhaka of our own times, Andrew Jackson Davis by name. The second account derives from what is written in the pages of ancient spiritual literature of India.

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Andrew Jackson's Account

"I was sitting very close to the body of the dying man. Very soon, all the signs of an imminent death appeared, including what are commonly called the agonies of death. But to my clairvoyant vision these agonies bore an altogether different meaning.

"I 'saw' that the soul, for whatever reason, was trying to disrupt the close relationship it had built up with the body for so many years, and was seeking to become free from the physical vesture. But the organs and limbs of the body were resisting this disruption. And this violent resistance was being translated as physical 'agonies'.

"Suddenly did I see that the head of the dying man was covered over with a soft golden light and the interior of his brain got filled up with vital energy. In fact, I could observe that the cerebral cortex of the dying man was gradually drawing all the 'vital breath' from different limbs of the body and concentrating it in itself. I could see too that in the measure that the other parts of the body were becoming limp and cold, the brain itself was becoming brighter and brighter.

"I saw then to my utter surprise that a new and different resplendent head was slowly emerging out of the sphere of golden light that had covered the dying man's head. It was then followed by the emergence of other limbs like the shoulders, the hands, the legs, etc. Finally, there appeared before my eyes another full-fledged human body which resembled the dying man's body in many ways but was free from many of its defects and imperfections. This was, in fact, the 'subtle body' of the exiting soul. I saw this body tied to the physical body with a silvery thread. This subtle body was as if floating in the air just above the head of the dying man who was all the time lying on his sick bed. Next, I saw a strong current of bright electricity flowing in between the head of the dying man and the legs of the floating subtle body which was upright in position by now.

"After some time the binding thread was snapped, the electric current stopped, and the subtle body got freed from the prison of the physical body, and sped away." A very uncanny account, indeed!

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Scriptural Account

Let us now give in brief the scriptural account of the way in which the soul of a dying man leaves the physical body and makes its journey elsewhere. Many accounts have been detailed in books such as (i) Yoga-Vasistha Maharamayana, (ii) Garuda and Brahmavaivarta Puranas, (iii) Kausitaki Brahmana, (iv) Chhandogya Upanishad, (v) Aranyaka Shruti.

One Janaki Mukhopadhyaya wrote a book titled Mṛtyu-path or The Way of Death in the early part of the twentieth Century. He discussed in that book most lucidly and with great competence the scriptural speculations and conclusions, as prevalent in ancient India, concerning the process of dying and the post-mortem itinerary of the soul. If the readers can manage to procure a copy of the now defunct edition of this book, they are advised to go carefully through this book by Mr. Mukhopadhyaya. In that way they will come to know many unknown facts and the doors of many mysteries will be opened to them. The very titles of some of the chapters of the book make it clear how many recondite subjects the author has dealt with and all strictly based on scriptural quotations. Some of the representative titles of the chapters are:

(1) "The chamber in which a man dies"; (2) "The Way the subtle body is formed"; (3) "The process of exit of the subtle body"; (4) "The Ways along which the soul travels"; (5) "The Way of the Fathers" and "The Way of the gods"; (6) "The role of the nāḍis in determining the post-mortem course of the departing spirit"; (7) "The subtle body and the causal body"; (8) "The pañca-kośas or the Five Envelopes of the being"; (9) "Variations in the process of death"; (10) "Karma and its consequences"; (11) "The Way of judgment"; (12) "Different heavens and hells"; (13) "Value of funeral rites"; etc.

We refrain deliberately from discussing all these topics here; for, that will needlessly extend the scope and length of the chapter. The only point of importance we keep a note of here is that much of the nature of the path the departed spirit travels after death and its final destination, depends on the thoughts, imaginations and the state of consciousness of the dying man. For, this final

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attitude at the critical moment of transition lights up a subtle nāḍī in the body and the departing spirit receives a guiding clue from this light as regards the gateway through which to pass out of the body and the way to follow thereafter, and the destination of its journey. This will shape also the nature and quality of the experiences, positive or negative, pleasant or unpleasant, the disembodied being has to undergo in the supraphysical worlds after death.

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother also have referred many a time and on many different occasions to the capital importance of the psychological attitude of a dying man at the moment of his critical transition. For example, here is an adapted citation from the Mother:

What happens after death depends absolutely on the condition in which one dies and on his last wish, also on the resolution of his psychic being. (Entretiens 1955, p. 98)

Here is a second extract from the Mother's writings:

"The most important thing in this case is the last state of consciousness in which one was while both were joined together, when the vital being and the body were still united. So the last state of consciousness, one may say the last desire or the last hope or the last aspiration, has a colossal importance for the first impact the being has with the invisible world." (CWM, Vol. 6, p. 449)

But it goes without saying that much previous preparation is needed on the part of the patient if he would like to be able to maintain the right attitude at the time of passing. A simple mechanically formulated thought or wish occupying the surface zone of consciousness of the dying man will not deliver the goods. What is needed is that a persistent sadhana beforehand over a long period of time should have pushed the aspiration depthward to come into contact with the psychic part of the being. As Sri Aurobindo has pointed out:

"The dying wish of the man is only something on the surface - it may be determined by the psychic and so help to shape the future but it does not determine the psychic's choice. That is something behind the veil. It is not outer consciousness's action that

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determines the inner process, but the other way round," (Letters on Yoga, Cent. Ed., pp. 443-44)

There is something interesting associated with the last action and decision of the psychic part of a dying man. First we give a traditional account, to be followed by a quotation from Sri Aurobindo detailing his own experience.

It is written in the afore-mentioned book, The Way of Death, by Janaki Mukhopadhyaya that on some rare occasions a part of the decision of the psychic being as regards the pathway the departed jīvātmā will follow after exiting from the physical body, floats up in the consciousness of the dying man around the time of his death, and the person on his death-bed starts ruminating on this. This is what the author actually writes:

"A man may have done so many deeds in course of his long or short lifetime. He may have been especially interested in some of these activities. When the agonies of death rack the dying man with unbearable pains, he clean forgets all his past actions excepting those few which might have engaged his attention and interest with particular intensity. These particular past actions gain at the moment of passing an unusual luminosity and get reflected in the dying man's consciousness. It is through their influence and direction that the departing spirit finds its proper way of egress, and the supraphysical path to follow in the other world; it finally goes to its resting place according to its saṁskāras and conditionings shaped in the lifetime before death." (Translated.)

Well, all this relates to the outer cosciousness of the dying man. But what happens to his inner consciousness behind the veil when he is departing? Sri Aurobindo writes:

"Sometimes, however, there are signs or fragments of the inner action that come up on the surface, e.g. some people have a vision or remembrance of the circumstances of their past in a panoramic flash at the time of death, that is the psychic's review of the life before departing." (Letters on Yoga, Cent. Ed., p. 444)

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It has been, we hope, made clear by now that the final act of departure from the body should not be treated as a light affair; it should be taken with all the seriousness it deserves. For, much of the future course of the departing being and its post-mortem destination depends upon the state of consciousness of the man lying on his death-bed. To turn the physical death into a "glorious experience", as the Mother would say, to make it really auspicious and fruitful, from the point of view of the progress of the soul, a great preliminary preparation is necessary. It is not enough that the friends and relatives of the person in question make adequate arrangements for the proper nursing and medical treatment of the patient; we should never forget that the consciousness of the dying person who may be very dear to us, does not end with the dissolution of his physical body. It becomes, thus, necessary to attend to the inner preparation of the consciousness of the patient even before he actually dies, if we would like that his post-mortem journey in the other worlds becomes smooth and beneficial to his soul.

Now, this pre-death preparation has to come from two sides; from the side of the patient himself and from the side of his attending relatives who may be near him.

The patient, if he is conscious at all, should try to withdraw his mind and heart from all earthly desires and attachments and fix his consciousness solely upon his future spiritual progress and all that is eternal and infinite.

The friends and relatives should, on their side, try to create an atmosphere of quiet sanctity and peace around the dying patient; they should seek to raise the latter's consciousness to a higher level and help him fix it there.

In olden times, there was effective arrangement for this pre-death preparation. A medieval Christian religious writer, Laurent Scupoli by name, wrote an entire book with this laudable purpose in view. The significant French title of the book was: Méthode pour assister les malades et les aider à bien mourir. - "Method for attending sick men and helping them to die well."

In Tibet there was prevalent a very good custom not very long ago. The occultly trained Lamas used to sit near a dying person

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and recite in a cadenced voice the mantric verses from a religious text called "Bardo Thodal". Through their grave and meaningful sonorous recital the Lamas used to fix the dying man's consciousness on to a relatively higher level, far removed from the occupations and preoccupations of the fast-vanishing physical life of the person. They used to narrate within the hearing distance of the dying man the descriptions of the different supraphysical worlds and tell him where he would be on each successive day of the first week after death and all that he would see and experience there, also what he was expected to do there for his other-worldly welfare.

When we leave aside those olden days and their wise traditional practices and come down to our present times and consider the situation prevailing around a dying patient, we cannot but be aggrieved and dumbfounded at the colossal amount of ignorance and foolishness manifested by modem men who are obsessed with the materialistic-scientific world-view that dominates their mind and heart.

What a sordid and forlorn setting in which a man of sufficient means dies nowadays! To lie on the sick-bed of a Government Hospital or of a private Nursing Home; being encumbered with a battery of medical tubes and gadgets; and far away from the anxiously sought-after faces of one's relatives: Is that the ideal situation to breathe one's last?

And a thousand shames on his near and dear ones! They meet the expenses of a proper medical treatment, pay off the fees due to the attending physicians, and, at times, engage paid nurses to cater to the needs of the grievously sick man. And they think that they have done all that was expected of them. For, what other responsibility could they possibly have! What a foolish idea. Let us listen to what the Mother has to say in this connection:

"...the most important thing in this case is the last state of consciousness [of the dying man].... And here the responsibility of the people around the dying man is much greater than they think. If they can help him to enter his highest consciousness, they will do him the greatest service they can. But usually what they do is to cling to him as much as they can, and to pull him towards them

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with a fierce selfishness; the result, you see, is that instead of being able to withdraw in a slightly higher consciousness which will protect him in his exit, he is gripped by material things and it is a terrible inner battle to free himself from both his body and his attachments." (CWM, Vol. 6, pp. 449-50)

Let us now examine more closely in our next chapter where the disembodied being finds himself just after he has left his physical body. In other words, what is the first step in his beyond-death journey? It is obvious that what will be said here in answer to this question is entirely based upon the published writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother.

But before we pass on to the actual consideration of this important theme, we feel like uttering a note of caution to our sympathetic readers and a word of humble request to those others who are by disposition agnostics, atheists and hypercritical. First to the second category of readers:

From now on, in course of our entire present book, we shall be forced to refer more and more to the supraphysical other worlds and their modalities and functions. We know very well that you do not believe in these things. For your basic position is as follows:

The belief in the existence of other worlds and in the possibility of communication between their powers and beings and the human race is an age-long superstition. All so-called evidence or intimations of its truth are fundamentally false and undeserving of inquiry because incompatible with the axiomatic truth that only Matter and the material world and its experiences are real; all other experience purporting to be real must be either a hallucination or an imposture or a subjective result of superstitious credulity and imagination or else, if a fact, then explicable by a physical cause; no evidence could be accepted of such a fact unless it is objective and physical in its character; even if the fact be very apparently supraphysical, it cannot be accepted as such unless it is totally unexplainable by any other imaginable hypothesis or conceivable conjecture. (Vide Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, pp. 771-72)

Such being your confirmed position, we do not expect you to accept a priori any of the statements or conclusions of this book as true. But yet we invite you to go carefully through the pages of

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this book. You will surely find much of interest here, if not a "truth" of your supposition.

Now to the first category of readers who are rather believers and spiritually oriented. We tell them:

Well, it may be that you are at times confronted, nay overwhelmed, with critical observations as those which have been stated above in the preceding paragraphs. You may then become confused and be almost on the point of losing your faith in the supraphysical. But remember at those critical moments of doubt and misgivings that all the postulates, presuppositions and arguments of the materialistic thinkers are not foolproof but fallacious at their bottom and therefore lacking in convincing truth. Space and time do not permit us to pinpoint these fallacies here. But know for certain that "all our spiritual and psychic experience bears affirmative witness, brings us always a constant and, in its main principles, an invariable evidence of the existence of higher worlds, freer planes of existence." (The Life Divine, p. 787)

"...the experiences there are organised as they are in our own physical world, but on a different plan, with a different process and law of action and in a substance which belongs to a supraphysical Nature. This organisation includes, as on our earth, the existence of beings who have or take forms, manifest themselves or are naturally manifested in an embodying substance, but a substance other than ours, a subtle substance tangible only to subtle sense, a supraphysical form-matter." (Ibid., p. 775)

So, readers, you need not feel embarrassed, because of your conviction, before the sneering look of the orthodox materialist scientists. You may rather boldly declare with Sri Aurobindo:

"Not having bound ourselves down, like so much of modern thought, to the dogma that only physical experience or experience based upon the physical sense is true, the analysis of physical experience by the reason alone verifiable, and all else only result of physical experience and physical existence and anything beyond this an error, self-delusion and hallucination, we are free to accept this evidence and to admit the reality of these [supraphysical] planes." (The Life Divine, pp. 787-88)

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After these separate messages to the two classes of our readers, we may now conveniently pass on to the consideration of this tricky question: "Where does the Jiva go after death?"

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III

WHERE DOES THE "JIVA" GO AFTER DEATH?

After exiting from the physical body at death, the departing "jiva" does not understand for some time where he actually is. He goes on moving about in a state of confusion; he wonders if he is really dead or is still alive. This is especially so if he has had to quit his body suddenly, passing all his apprehension. And there is no end to his troubles if he has foolishly ended his life through an act of suicide, while in a state of intense emotion or passion. Many departed "jivas" linger for a short or a long period of time in a state of half sleep and half wakefulness. Some of them may hover near their just-dead bodies for some time in their subtle vital bodies. And, for this reason, it is not advisable to cremate a body very soon after it has become clinically nonfunctional.

In olden times people used to recite sacred mantras or adopt some other occult rituals in order to hasten the separation of the subtle body from the 'dead' gross physical body. Even after this separation the vital being of the dead person may continue for some days to move around his accustomed room or house or the place of his work. And this period may be indefinitely lengthened if the bereaved relatives left behind indulge in sorrowful weeping or try to keep the departed person tied to them with strong bonds of attachment.

However, sooner or later a time comes when this link of bondage snaps and the 'dead' man begins his journey proper in the other worlds. The very first region he enters into is an unpleasant one which the Mother has named "domaine de la Mort", "the domain of death". This region lies on the border between the subtle physical plane and the lower vital world. The Mother has spoken extensively about this "Death-domain" in two of her evening conversations, those of March 10, 1954 and December 29,1954. Readers are advised to go through the relevant portions of these two conversations as recorded in her Questions and Answers 1954. We

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content ourselves with quoting here two short passages from these conversations.

"...once one has left his body, whether he is conscious or unconscious,... one always goes out into the same domain to begin with - unless one is a yogi who can do what he likes with himself.... All men when they leave their body are flung into a domain of the lower vital which has nothing particularly pleasant about it." (CWM, Vol. 6, p. 449)

"Generally, 'domain of death' is the name given to a certain region of the most material vital into which one is projected at the moment one leaves one's body.... Well, that region, that material vital world is very dark, it is full of adverse formations having desires at their centre or even adverse wills, and these are very, very elemental entities which have a very fragmentary life and are like vampires, in the sense that they feed on all that is thrown out from human beings. And so, at that moment, from the shock of death - for very few die without a shock... well, at that shock of death, those entities rush in upon this, upon this vitality that goes out, and feed upon it." (Ibid., p. 55)

And this is not surely a happy experience. But this general rule is applicable to the case of ordinary human beings. The situation becomes different for those who have done some serious sadhana during their lifetime and have brought about some development in their consciousness. For them there are, as it were, some "bridges", some "protected passages" built in the vital world so that they can use them to cross over all possible dangers and discomforts of the domain of death.

But what is of great consolation is the fact that even for the run of ordinary men, - and these form the majority of human beings who die, - there are circumstances which can very much alleviate their pain and suffering when they fall into the domain of death after the dissolution of their physical body. Here is what the Mother has to say about these special circumstances:

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"... when a person is much loved by others who are yet alive; if at that moment these people who love him concentrate their thought and love on the departed one, he finds a refuge therein, and this protects him completely against those entities; but one who passes away,... surrounded... by people who are in a terribly unconscious state - he is like a prey delivered to these forces." (Ibid. pp. 55-56)

Anyway, a time comes when this very first phase of unpleasant experiences ends for the departed "jiva". And he sets on his real other-worldly journey. But to which destination? Is there any specific world to which he is guided?

These questions cannot be satisfactorily answered in brief; for to answer adequately will require much space and a very complex discussion. We shall surely attempt this answer in its proper place, but a very important issue has to be settled first. The issue is:

Is there any special purpose which necessitates this journey of the departed being through a succession of supraphysical worlds? Or, who knows, perhaps the departed being immediately after his physical death, takes hold of a new physical body and is "reborn"? Yes, there are thinkers who subscribe to this second view. According to their line of thinking, there is no time gap between the moment of death and that at which the next rebirth occurs. They cite the analogy of a leech in this connection. They affirm that just as a leech climbs to the tip of a twig of a creeper, goes on searching from there for a second twig of a neighbouring creeper, and as soon as it succeeds in this attempt, leaves the first creeper-tip and moves on to the second creeper, the "jivatma", in an analogous manner, even before it leaves the first body, looks out for a suitable new body, and when it is found, decides to quit the previous body, and this is what appears to other men as "death". And this is invariably followed by a new embodiment.

But there is a snag here. For, this view implies that the "jivatma" is entirely dependent upon a physical-material body for its existence: it can never independently subsist outside of a physical body.

Another puzzle too is created by this second hypothesis. If there are no supraphysical other worlds where the departed "jiva"

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can stay and function, where should he undergo the consequences of the "karma" incurred by him during his lifetime? Is it only in a succession of physical-terrestrial rebirths? But in that case, what happens to the widely-held ideas of heavens and hells in the other world? Is it not generally believed that a departed jiva is judged in the supraphysical worlds beyond death for all his karmas and is then allotted a certain period of sojourn amongst the pleasures and happinesses of a "heaven" or in the torments and sufferings of a "hell", all depending on the relative quality of the karmas done in a terrestrial body? Is it not also held that after the effects of the karmas are exhausted through the quota of enjoyments and sufferings in the other worlds, the departed jivatma is sent back to the earth again in a new physical body for pursuing a new cycle of karmas?

Now, if these latter views have any basis in fact, there has to be a time-interval between one death and the next rebirth. But even in this theory there is no suggestion of any progressive movement of the departed "jiva" from one supraphysical world to a still higher world. This hypothesis is silent on this point. And this cannot but be so. For, those who adhere to this view have no clear idea about the purpose and goal of human life upon earth. It is often stated by them that the only possible goal of an individual human existence is to bring about a permanent cessation of the cosmic wheel of birth-death-rebirth-redeath, through the attainment of "Moksha" or "Liberation", and this Moksha can come only when all the accumulated karmas are exhausted to the last vestige by their annulment in a human body itself.

We, the sadhakas of the Integral Yoga, hold a view completely different from the one elaborated above. According to our integral theory of world-manifestation, the perfect and final goal set before the terrestrial being called "man" is to establish a divine life in a human body on the terrestrial plane itself. And that surely necessitates the perfect manifestation of divine knowledge-power-bliss here upon earth itself and not elsewhere in some supraphysical world.

But surely this is not possible in the short span of a single human life. And it is for this reason that our soul or psychic being

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has been passing from life to life through a succession of rebirths. It is going to its final destination through a process of progressive development and evolution. And in the fulfilment of this great task both the spheres of existence, the earthly-physical world and the supraphysical worlds, bring their own separate significant contributions.

Now, just as in the case of an individual human being there are planes of consciousness like the physical, the vital, the mental and others, so also in the cosmic field there exist beyond the physical-material world other worlds like the vital, mental, etc. And what is of great relevance and significance is the fact that there is close connection, communication, and co-operation between the functioning "vital plane" in an earthly human body and the corresponding vital world of the supraphysical cosmos. And the same principle holds good for the other parts of the being and other planes of the world.

It is because of this correspondence and interconnection that the "jivatma" feels an irresistible pull from the higher worlds after it has shed its earthly-physical body, and it makes it enter those other worlds successively one after another. Also, all that it has left undone during its lifetime in the physical body upon earth, it tries to complete, albeit partially, in the corresponding supraphysical worlds beyond. For, we should remember that the departed being does not begin his next life exactly at that state and stage of his evolutionary development where it had to leave them at the time of the dissolution of the previous body. It undergoes in the meantime much refinement, rejects many undesirable things, and imbibes certain others which will be helpful; and all this operation is usually gone through in the fields of other-worldly existence and in the period of time separating death and the next rebirth. For, as we have already pointed out, our physical-terrestrial world is not the only possible world of dwelling for the human soul nor is it a fact that, even if other supraphysical worlds exist, they exist independently on their own, completely cut off from all connection with the physical world. It is not incumbent upon a departed being that it must, of necessity, pass to a new physical body immediately after the dropping of the earlier one.

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Enough of this sort of metaphysical discussion: we need not extend it any further. Sri Aurobindo has written at length and exhaustively on these difficult though important issues in his magnum opus, The Life Divine. Interested readers may in this connection go through the three following chapters of the book: (i) "The Order of the Worlds"; (ii) "Rebirth and Other Worlds"; and (iii) "The Philosophy of Rebirth". On our part, let us revert to what we were discussing about. Well, some of the relevant questions we had raised are:

What happens to the "jiva" after the death of his physical body? Does he go anywhere else? If yes, where? in which worlds? And how long does he stay there? And if he has a journey to make, when and how does this itinerary end for the soul?

The Mother was once asked similar questions by the children of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. She started answering these questions but with the following witty introduction:

'Oh, you are asking me to write an entire Mahabharata! For the same destiny does not lie before every departed being. There is infinite variation in this matter, depending on his state of consciousness, stage of development, his psychological disposition at the moment of death and the necessity of further spiritual progress.' (adapted)

Sri Aurobindo, on his part, has laconically expressed the same view in the following words.

"Universal statements cannot be easily made about these things - there is a general line, but individual cases vary in an almost indefinite extent." (Letters on Yoga, p. 436)

In our present chapter we shall confine ourselves mainly to the discussion of this general line; but at the same time we shall refer to some special cases too. It goes without saying that all this is taken from the writings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother: there is nothing concocted by the present author's imagination.

But before we start our actual elaboration, it would be advisable

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to make one point sufficiently clear; otherwise confusion is bound to be created in the proper comprehension of all that is going to follow hereafter. The point at issue is this:

We are investigating the nature and the final destination of the other-worldly journey of the departed being. But what do we exactly mean by this "departed being"? Is it the well-known personality of our near and dear one who is now "dead"? Or is it his immortal soul? Or, who knows, it is perhaps his ego-consciousness whose fate and fortune we are enquiring about! Or, in the alternative, we are perhaps interested in knowing what happens after death to the special qualities and aptitudes the person in question developed and possessed while he was in his living physical body. What fate overtakes his musical dexterity, mathematical skills, literary creativity, scientific acumen, etc.?

The answer to these questions will vary depending on who or what is specially referred to when we raise our question as regards the post-mortem destiny of the departed being. Thus, there is no single and simple straightforward answer to the omnibus question: "What happens after death?" One can answer only part by part, taking different categories in turn; and that is what we propose to do here. Our task will be made easier if we first say a few words as regards the complex constitution of the planes and parts of a human being. For, this constitution is neither simple nor homogeneous or harmonious. Of course, we are not referring here to the anatomy and physiology of his physical body. We are speaking about the highly complex constitution of his psychological consciousness. With these few words of introduction let us start our inquiry.

Whenever we evoke in our mind the memory of a particular person or talk about him with somebody, we spontaneously think about his "ego". What prominently occupies our consciousness at that time is that he is a particular person, a separate being, with definite and discernible traits and characteristics. In other words, he is "unique" in our view.

But that is not the real truth of the matter. Behind the apparent unicity of his personality lie hidden many different beings with separate trends and functions of their own, such as, his physical

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being, vital being, mental being and others.

Also, he has not only his gross physical body, visible and sensible to us, but has other bodies too; such as, a subtle physical body, a vital body, a mental body and others. His total being is constituted of five "Koshas" or sheaths and envelopes, such as, "Annamaya Kosha" (material envelope), "Prạnamaya Kosha" (vital envelope), "Manomaya Kosha" (mental envelope), "Vijnanamaya Kosha" (Knowledge sheath), and "Anandamaya Kosha" (Bliss sheath).

He possesses also for his self-expression and manifestation many instruments and vehicles; such as, his body, his life, his mind, etc. And these instruments have many different modalities so far as their active functioning is concerned; such as, desires, aspirations, imaginations, memories, reason-power, discriminations, etc. There is no end to this delineation; for the constitution of a man's consciousness is indeed highly complex and an intermingled amalgam.

But at the centre of all this complex psychological structure lies man's soul or psychic being. And it is this psychic which is indeed the real "traveller of the worlds", and moves after the physical body's dissolution, into different supraphysical realms, and, then, comes back into an almost unending series of successive rebirths upon earth. And all this with only one single aim in view, to ultimately bring about the full manifestation of a divine life upon earth itself and in a material-physical human or superhuman body.

But what is the role and function of the mind, the vital and the physical in this affair? - They are the channels of manifestation of the psychic being in its progressive self-unfolding.

Now, one important point. Just as, while still remaining confined in the physical body we erroneously consider ourselves as separate and unique ego-persons, totally oblivious of the constantly active presence of our psychic being, just as, again, our mind and vital and physical parts undergo varieties of experiences, pleasant or unpleasant, independent of the psychic being, our psychic being too continues, in a parallel way and movement, to develop all the time by the assimilation of the essences of the variegated experiences of its instruments. Now, after the dissolution of the physical

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body, our ego-person and our mind, vital and physical beings continue for some time, short or long depending on many factors, to have their own independent experiences in the supraphysical worlds but remaining unaware of the indwelling psychic being. But what about the psychic at that time? It continues to grow and develop independently in a line of its own but all the time governing and controlling the developments of the outer instruments with a masterly grip over them.

We must not forget that just as our psychic being is essentially immortal, its own central line of development too is immune from any abrupt disruption and discontinuation. The development maintains its uninterrupted continuity all through the long passage from a physical body to the other-worldly habitats after death and, then, to a succession of rebirths in physical embodiments upon earth.

But it is only the psychic being which possesses this continuity. All the other constituent elements of man's being, his mind and life and body, are not only mutable but also perishable. They have no essential continuity of their own. During the period following the body's death they continue to fulfil the need of the soul for some time and when this task is over, they get normally dissolved, and disappear as disjointed fragments in their corresponding cosmic domains. When the psychic being comes back again upon earth for continuing its journey forward, it assumes not only a new physical body but a new vital and a new mind also, all in conformity with its basic needs of progress in the new incarnation. How much of the contribution of the mind and the vital of the previous life will be integrated and assimilated in the new ones, will be determined by the psychic being alone. The situation, as we can see, is rather complex and defies all easy generalisation.

And if such is indeed the state of affairs, we have to speak along at least three different lines, when we propose to discuss the question of the itinerary of a departed being following its discarding of its physical body:

First Line of Inquiry. - Always dwelling at the centre of an individual being, what does the psychic being or the real "jiva" do, stage after stage, after the body's death? Where does it proceed to? And when and after how much time does it decide to reincarnate

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in a new body upon earth?

Second Line of Inquiry. - Continuing to remain all the time oblivious of the presence of the psychic being even in the "postmortem" supraphysical worlds, what do the ego-being and the subtle physical-vital-mental constituents of a departed person do and where do they travel to?

Third Line of Inquiry. - What happens to the discarded residues of the "envelopes" of the "dead" man, of his mind and vital, once these have been finally rejected by the psychic being in the other world as useless stuff?

Along with these three lines of inquiry we shall also discuss in brief what changes are brought about in the other-worldly destiny and destination of the departed being if its consciousness has progressively developed in the earthly body. We shall also succinctly touch upon the process of "passing away" of the Yogis and Jivanmuktas and their final destination after the dropping of their bodies. Such is the programme of our proposed discussion.

Let us remind our readers once again that all that follows is entirely based upon the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother: the present writer has not tried to smuggle in any of his own concocted ideas or speculations.

First Line of Movement

(The Movement of the Soul or the Psychic Being)

It goes without saying that there is great variety and difference in this particular line of movement. In fact, a separate course is arranged in the case of each departed being, depending upon many factors, the principal one being the stage and quality of development of the consciousness. Still, one can venture to say that in most of the cases there is a common line of progression. While describing this common line, Sri Aurobindo has said:

After the death of the physical body, the psychic successively passes through the kingdoms of the subtle physical, the vital and the mental, and finally reaches its own domain, the psychic world.

While passing through a particular kingdom the psychic being

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discards the no-more-necessary elements of the superficial and temporary personality of the individual in his preceding embodiment. The physical elements acquired and functioning in the physical part of a man's being are left behind in the physical world; the vital elements in the corresponding vital world; and the mental elements in the mental world. Just as the soul first drops its physical sheath at the moment of so-called "death", it discards too its vital and mental sheaths after some time, short or long, depending on many variable circumstances. But that does not mean that nothing will accompany the psychic being in its journey to the psychic world. The essence of all the experiences of the physical, vital and mental parts of the being in its preceding incarnation will be gathered by the psychic and carried with it: this will act in time as the seed and constituent of the new body, vital and mind in its next embodiment upon earth.

The psychic being will at last go to the psychic world and rest there in a profound "pregnant trance". It will await its new embodiment under the guidance of those great Beings whom Sri Aurobindo has called "guardians of the psychic world". There, in the psychic world, will take place the proper assimilation of the past experiences of the individual being and the preparation for its next earthly life.

Such, then, is the general line of movement. But in the case of those individuals whose consciousness has not yet been sufficiently developed, who are tied down to the pleasures and enjoyments of the physical world, or whose principal preoccupation has been with their vital life, and who did not want to leave the previous earthly life and were almost forcibly dragged away from there, in their case the psychic being may possibly take a different decision. It may not want to retire to the psychic world and unduly waste time there. Instead, it may provide these undeveloped individuals with new physical bodies as soon as possible, may be at times immediately after the dissolution of the just preceding body, so that they may continue their needed development.

Such is the case with the undeveloped beings. But the general line may be infringed and another line followed even in the case of those individuals whose consciousness is sufficiently evolved.

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For example, in the case of those who have been able to centre their whole being around their soul, through a process of advanced sadhana, the psychic being may adopt many different courses after the dropping of the physical body at death:

(i)Instead of spending time in the other worlds, the psychic being may assume a new physical body on the terrestrial plane as soon as possible in order to maintain its spiritual adventure uninterrupted there.

(ii)There is also an alternative course of action: instead of creating a new body for itself, the psychic being of the "departed" person may integrate itself with a second psychic being in another physical body and continue its forward journey through this combined action.

(iii)Or, the psychic may retire to the psychic world and remain immersed there for many many years in a supremely delightful preparatory repose.

We may very well imagine that our readers may have had a shock of surprise to know of the second alternative course just now mentioned above. But because of lack of space and time we cannot discuss this exceptional procedure in more detail here. However, the interested readers may refer to the Mother's evening conversation of 24-10-56 for greater information about this occult phenomenon.

Second Line of Movement

(The Movement of the Ego-centred External Being)

The consciousness and nature of most human beings is not at all integrated and homogeneous. It presents the picture of an ill-assorted amalgam of many independently functioning elements and tendencies. Real individuality has not yet developed there.

Yet, that a particular person, during his stay in a physical body, thinks and feels himself to be a separate and unique individual, is due to the fact of his false self-identification with a fictitiously centralising device of ego-sense and ego-idea.

Now, after the dissolution of the physical body at death, these

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different constituent elements of the being, his physical, vital and mental beings, get disbundled and separated and start dwelling in different worlds of their choice and seek there to satisfy their own separate desires and impulses in some way or other.

Then, a day arrives when the energy behind their functioning existence gets used up and they disintegrate and disappear for all time to come. There remains nothing left of the "ego-being" that was operative in the living physical body during the individual's life-time. For, we have already indicated that what travels in an uninterrupted way, from birth to birth, from body to body, is the psychic being of the individual, and not at all his "ego". The physical-vital-mental personalities of this "ego-being" are created for a single life to serve some temporary purpose of the evolving soul. At the termination of that life, these separate constituent 'beings' wander about for some time in the supraphysical other-worlds and then vanish into thin air. And such is their normal destiny.

But this need not be their invariable destiny. For, if a person has been able to integrate his vital being completely around his psychic being and if this vital being comes to be always governed by the psychic without the slightest reservation or resistance coming from it, this vital being need not be discarded after the body's death: it may be left intact in the universal vital world while the psychic travels to its own world, the psychic world. On its return journey to the earth for its next embodiment, the psychic may pick up this surviving vital being and carry it along to integrate it in the next physical body. For, as this developed vital being will remain always plastic to the touch or influence of the psychic being, it need not be rejected as something inert and ossified and therefore serving no further useful purpose for the progress of the individual being.

The same principle applies to the case of the mental being of a person. And if any one wants to preserve his personal identity through the succession of rebirths he has no other go except to fulfil this essential, indispensable pre-condition; that is to say, he has to centre his entire personality in all its parts around his psychic being and put it under the psychic's governance as a most pliable vehicle of soul-manifestation.

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We forgot to mention another characteristic of these vital and physical beings of a human being. During the time they continue to remain, after death, divorced from any concrete awareness of the deeply hidden psychic being, they may at times indulge in creative imagination and fictitiously "produce" subjective heavens and hells in the other worlds, all patterned on their own wishes and hopes and fears and other previously established personal saṅskāras. These heavens or hells have, of course, no ojective reality, but the experiences the disembodied being actually undergoes there after death are very very "concrete" and tangible for his consciousness. We have something more to say on this point later on.

Third Line of Movement

(The Movement of the Sheaths and their Residues)

After the dissolution of the body at death, the three instruments of self-expression of the Spirit, the physical, the vital and the mental, generally get broken up into different fragments. It is obvious that when an individual physical body is cremated, a part of the body-matter may mingle with a nearby pool of water; another part may get absorbed in the soil underneath, and a third part may get converted into carbon dioxide gas, pass on to the leaves of the trees in the cremation ground or mount up to vanish in the atmosphere. And such is the destiny of the first instrument called the material body.

The same rule holds good in the case of the other two instruments, the vital and the mental. After the death and dissolution of the physical frame, they too get disintegrated in time into many fragments and these different constituent elements (such as desires, impulses, passions, etc.) follow their separate independent courses and seek to fulfil their own propensities as and when suitable opportunities present themselves. They may get into the consciousness of other living men or even into congenial animal bodies to satisfy their characteristic appetites. A single extract from Sri Aurobindo's writings will suffice to make the point clear:

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"It is when the vital gets broken up, some strong movements of it, desires, greeds, may precipitate themselves into animal forms, e.g., sexual desire with the part of the vital consciousness under its control into a dog or some habitual movement of excessive greed may carry part of the vital consciousness into a pig....

"The fragments [of a dead person] are not of the inner being [which goes on its way to the psychic world] but of his vital sheath which falls away after death." (Letters on Yoga, p. 446)

Let us now mention what happens after the mental sheath, in its turn, gets broken up. If during the lifetime of the individual he has been able to develop a special mental capacity and aptitude such as the ability for creative writing or musical talent, these elements may move about for some time in the invisible realms of the earthly atmosphere after the physical death of the person concerned, and try to seek out appropriate vehicles of self-expression. And when they find out a living human being who has the possibility of fulfilling this purpose, they enter into that being and try to maintain the continuity of their creativity through the talent and aptitude of that other person.

The Mother has discussed this point in sufficient detail and given some striking examples derived from her own personal experiences. The case of the French musical composer, Berlioz, and the celebrated German musician, Beethoven, falls in this category. Readers will come to know many interesting things if they go through the records of the Mother's conversation of September 16, 1953. (Vide CWM, Vol. 5)

Here ends our discussion of the nature of death and of the movement, the destiny and the destination of the departed being after his physical death, - of course, in the case of the general run of not-so-developed human beings. Let us now mention in brief what happens in the special case of advanced Yogis and mystics. It needs no saying that the Jivanmuktas and other liberated souls enjoy complete freedom of choice and are in no way bound by any particular rule or procedure. They can, after the shedding of their physical body, travel to any particular supraphysical world of their choice, may come back to the terrestrial plane in another human

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embodiment, or may not do so but stay permanently in any desired supernal world such as Brahmaloka, Vishnuloka, Sivaloka, etc., or crossing the bounds of all cosmic manifestation may pass beyond time and space and merge in the Transcendent Absolute. To quote Sri Aurobindo:

"[The Jivanmukta] can go wherever his aim was fixed, into a state of Nirvana or one of the divine worlds and stay there or remain, wherever he may go, in contact with the earth-movement and return to it if his will is to help that movement. (Letters on Yoga, p. 441)

This is as regards the "post-mortem" destination of the Mahayogis. But how do these Yogis "exit" from their earthly-physical embodiment when the time comes for that?

Sri Aurobindo has mentioned at one place that the Jivatma passes out of the body at the time of death through the "Brahmarandhra". The statement is rather obscure and puzzling for the proper comprehension of most of our readers. The scriptural accounts about the process of death of the Mahayogis is not less obscure. After all, they pertain to the domain of occult practices and experiences. Still, we cite these accounts here for all they are worth:

When a spiritually wise man dies, his life-energy (prana-shakti) pierces the Brahmarandhra and passes out of the body following the Murdhanya or Sushumna Nadi. Thus, we read in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (IV. 4. 2):

"Hṛdayasyagraṁ dyotate, tena pradyotena eṣa ātmā niṣkramati cakṣustho va mūrdhṇo vā..."

"The heart centre gets illuminated at the moment of death and the Atma takes help of that light to pass out of the body mostly through the eyes ."

Some other scriptures state that at the time of death the Sushumna Nadi of the Yogin, which is his gateway of liberation (Moksha-Dwara), gets developed. The Yogi, by the application of his Yoga-Shakti, finds the path of his Brahmarandhra unusually

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illuminated, exits from the body through that way, supports himself upon the solar rays, and moves away along the "Archimarga".

The second chapter of the Second Book of the Bhagavata states: "While leaving his body, the Yogi withdraws his life-breath (Prana-Vayu) from different limbs of the body, concentrates it first in the six 'Centres' (Chakras) and finally raises it to the Sahasrara. He then controls the other seven 'holes' (two eyes, two ears, two nostrils and the mouth) and leaves the body through the Brahmarandhra.''

In order to bring out the characteristic difference between the death of ordinary unspiritual persons and that of a spiritually "realised" Yogi, one scripture has this to say:

"An ordinary death and extinction of the body-consciousness culminates in an atmosphere of blind darkness. Now, when a great Yogi approaches his moment of departure from the body, he puts out all the lights of normal consciousness and takes a plunge in that blind darkness. Coming from light to 'darkness', the realised soul employs his inner power of vision (dṛk-śakti) which has no dependance upon outer light, and discovers a new ineffable luminosity to which light and darkness, knowledge and ignorance, vidyā and avidyā are both outer veils or coverings. This plunge signifies a new way of dying which has no kindredness to ordinary death. It is the 'vaivasvata mṛtyu', the 'solar death', of the ' āvṛttacakṣu dhīra' of the sage who has turned his eyes inward."

Let us now terminate our long discussion of the issues of death and the other-worldly journey of the soul. But one small question remains which demands some answer here. The question is: How long does the "departed being" remain in the supraphysical worlds after the death and dissolution of a body and before it assumes a new physical body at rebirth? According to Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, there is no invariably fixed rule in this matter. There may be wide variation in this intervening interval of time, depending on many factors, of which one important one is the state of development of the consciousness of the departed being. In some cases rebirth may take place almost immediately after the dropping of the preceding body. In some other cases it may take a few months,

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or a few years, or even a few centuries, before the soul decides to come back in a new body. As the psychic develops more and more this interval too lengthens in proportion. And when the psychic being attains to its full development, it escapes all rules of imposition from outside and becomes completely free as regards the choice of the moment for its re-embodiment.

And, if it so wishes, it may not come back again to an earthly embodiment. For the Mother's discussion of this topic, readers may consult her evening conversation of 16-3-55. (CWM, Vol. 7)

Before putting a finis to our chapter let us come back once again to the uncanny field of "psychical research". It must have been made clear to our readers by this time that it cannot be a fact that the soul or "jivatma" of a dead person with all its human personality and its attributes and mannerisms remains bound to its old accustomed habitat for an indefinite length of time. Therefore, it is a sheer superstition to believe that a little tinkering with a planchette or taking recourse to the so-claimed extraordinary power of a "medium", will force the soul to appear as if from nowhere and tell all sorts of consoling words or furnish the required information to the seance-sitters. This is simply an absurd idea. For, as we have already indicated, the psychic being of a departed person retires to the psychic world after death, and the physical-vital-mental sheaths disintegrate after some time. Then, who or what is there left behind to claim to be the soul of the dead man and appear before the planchette or the "medium"? But still the question remains: What is, then, the explanation for this well attested phenomenon of planchette "communication"?

The real fact is that these so-claimed "voices" and "messages" and "communications" arise from the subconscient of the "medium" and of those who attend a planchette seance.

Besides, as we have had occasion to point out before, many small vital entities of dubious intentions are swarming in the lower vital world of the supraphysical regions. These entities may grab at times the fragments and residues of the discarded mind and vital of the dead person, and covering themselves up with these instrumental residues, pose as the soul of the person concerned and try to deceive the credulous relatives and friends.

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Instead of going any further with this discussion of the strange and striking "psychical" phenomenon of "seance communication", let us quote here a part of an important letter of Sri Aurobindo, which will shed ample light on this tricky issue. Sri Aurobindo says that what is actually "contacted" may be, depending on the case,

"1. An actual contact with the soul of a human being in its subtle body ...

2.A mental formation stamped by the thoughts and feelings of a departed human being...

3.A being of the lower vital planes who has assumed the discarded vital sheath of a departed human being or a fragment of his vital personality...;

4.... formations of one's own mind... [taking] to the senses an objective appearance.

5.Temporary possession of people by vital beings....

6.Thought-images of themselves projected often by people at the moment of death..." (Letters on Yoga, pp. 459-60)

It is thus clear that the whole thing is a jumbled-up affair. Of course, it cannot be gainsaid that a contact and communication can sometimes be established with the departed beings themselves but that belongs to a much higher stage of occult-spiritual development on the part of the seance-guide: only great "realised" yogis can do that. For a person of ordinary consciousness, to be unduly curious about and engaged in "planchette" and "medium" communications is not a healthy affair. It may even bring positive harm to the person who does that.

Now a last question and we come to the end of our chapter on death. The question is:

Almost every religion speaks of heavens and hells. Do these heavens and hells really exist anywhere in the worlds beyond death? And is every departed being bound to go to these heavens and hells to enjoy or suffer the consequences of his meritorious or demeritorious deeds done in a living human body upon earth? Both the Mother and Sri Aurobindo have discussed this issue in great

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detail, A very brief summary of their observations in this regard is given below:

In the vital and the subtle-physical worlds on the other side of our physical realm, there are regions of happy and pleasant experiences but there are regions too which offer very unpleasant and painful experiences to the wandering being. An individual, discarding his gross physical sheath at death and then pursuing his course of other-worldly journey, may have to come at some stage to these so-called "heavens" and "hells" and be acquainted with their corresponding delightful or painful experiences. But these will come about solely in the interest of the soul's progress in its spiritual journey and surely not as "rewards" and "punishments" for the being's so-judged "merits" and "demerits". We shall have occasion to discuss this question in more detail in our next chapter.

But... Yes, there is a big 'but' here which we have to mention in this connection. The departed being may at times come across some sort of imaginary 'heavens' and 'hells' which lie outside of the main itinerary of the other-world. Sri Aurobindo has named these regions "annexes of the supraphysical worlds".

But these are not actually existing objective worlds: these are rather created by the "dead" person himself according to his accustomed ideas and beliefs and hopes and desires. But, although these so-called "heavens" and "hells" are the products of imagination of the departed being himself, the experiences, negative as well as positive, that he undergoes there are very much concrete and intense for the subjective consciousness of the being. But, hopefully, the departed being has not to stay there for long. Because of the constantly exercised spiritual pressure coming from the central psychic being, these imaginary, subjectively fabricated "heavens" and "hells" evaporate after some time and the departed being comes out of this self-created prison-house and begins pursuing its real other-worldly journey.

It must have become by now quite clear to our readers that the whole thing about the post-mortem supraphysical other-worldly movement and the ultimate destination of a "dead" person is not at all a simple affair which can be easily comprehended. One should not entertain the illusion that one somehow "dies" one day and

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that that critical moment of transition is invariably followed by an eternal silence and peace and repose.

No, not at all. The other-worlds too have their own organisation: there is scope there of an infinite variety of feelings and experiences, not all of which are, of course, happy and pleasant. And what is of greater relevance and importance is the fact that many of these experiences of the supraphysical other-worlds are shaped and determined by the quality of the consciousness the departed being possessed and the deeds he did while he was still in his earthly physical body.

It is thus incumbent upon every living person to prepare himself properly even from now if he expects to have a really auspicious death and a spiritually fruitful other-worldly journey.

And the best preparation in this regard is to organise and harmonise all the parts of one's consciousness around the central psychic being so that they can be pliably moulded and governed at all times and in every way by one's divine centre. If one can do that, he will find after "death" that all that is required for his spiritual progression and all the other-worlds he should visit for this purpose will all be arranged for him by the luminous guidance of the divine powers of light.

Here is one last but not the least important point we should always remember while living our life upon earth. The obstacles and difficulties we seek to avoid and bypass in our earthly physical existence, will confront us once again in the other-worlds for their proper settlement and solution and that in more intractable situations. So, it is not at all wise to shove our weaknesses and difficulties under a hiding carpet, thinking that the act of physical death will automatically lead to their painless elimination. This is no more than an illusory false hope; and sooner we give it up, the. better for us, better for the present life itself and for the life hereafter.

Let us conclude this long chapter on the mystery of death by quoting a significant passage from the Mother's writings wherein she recommends the right attitude that a sadhaka of the Integral Yoga should always adopt vis-à-vis the body's death:

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'Never want that death should arrive nor should you fear death even in the slightest degree. Do not try to cling on to your life egoistically by every possible means, only to delay the inevitable end by a minute or two. Do not give vent to the mood of a frightful anguish and turn death into a disgusting defeat.

'Rather, never think of death: never be haunted by the fear of death. Instead, make the best possible use of every moment of your life: never lose even a moment in your effort at realising your spiritual goal. Always live in your ideal, in the truth of your ideal. Make that the only real thing in your life, the raison d'être of your being, and in all things see this spiritual ideal and never come down into the sordidities of the material life.

'If you can do so, you will find that whenever and in whichever way death comes to you, you will be able to keep your head high and smile and say, "Here I am."

'In that case you will not find death sordid and terrible or as something of the nature of an ignoble defeat but as a very beautiful welcome experience.' (Adapted from the record of the Mother's talk of April 23, 1951)

Such should be the nature of death befitting a sadhaka of the Integral Path. It will come then at its proper time as a very necessary step in the unending journey of the "Jivatman" towards its destined goal, the perfect and permanent union with the Divine.

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IV

The Mystery of Karma

At times, events and accidents occur in our lives or in the lives of our friends and relatives, which seem apparently totally unexpected. At these moments we become utterly confused at the turn of circumstances and cry out in a mood of despairing helplessness: "Alas! such was the ordainment of the ineluctable Fate, such was the unseen writing of Niyati! And who does not know that "Niyati kena bādhyate" - "None can prevent the Niyati from being realised."

Others may perhaps offer an alternative hypothesis and affirm: "No, there is no such thing as Adṛṣṭa or Fate. It is an absurdity to imagine that events occur according to the motions of a previously fixed Fate or the arbitrary whims of any Providence. In reality, all that happens does happen as an inexorable consequence of one's past Karma or deeds. It is, of course, quite possible that the person concerned may not remember any longer his past misdeeds. For, any particular misdeed may have been done not in the present life of the person but some time in one of his now-forgotten past lives." There is a popular Bengali saying which epitomises this Karma-hypothesis: "Śubha karmé śubha, mandé manda phal; é dharāy rodhé, nāhi kāro boll" - "A good deed engenders good consequence, and a bad deed leads to bad results: none in this world can thwart this law!"

There is a passage in the Garuḍa Purāṇa which expresses the same idea:

"Sukhasya duḥkhasya na ko 'pi dātā,

Paro dadātu kubuddhireṣā!

Svayaṁ kṛtaṁ svena phalena yujyate

Śarīra, he! nistāra yat tvayā kṛtam."

"Nobody is there to dispense happiness or sorrow to us. It is irrational to imagine that others are at the root of our happy or

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unhappy experiences. One has to suffer the consequences of one's own actions, today or tomorrow, in this very life or in lives to come, in this physical world or in the worlds beyond death. Every action is bound to produce its corresponding fruit, and there is no exception to this universally valid Law."

Yes, that strange and unexpected events and accidents happen in men's lives cannot be denied as a fact and everyone may be painfully aware of such happenings if he looks around with an observant eye. We cite below a few instances which are personally known to the present writer.

(1)'A' is a man of sattwic nature - a perfect gentleman and generous to the fingertips. A man of universal goodwill and love, he considers nobody as his enemy. He is an academic by profession and is quite popular amongst his students.

For years 'A' had no problems in his life, neither in his body nor in his mind and heart. His days were rolling by in perfect ease and delight.

But suddenly there is a bolt from the blue. He develops mild fever without remission and starts losing weight. On medical investigation, the startling report comes that he has developed malignancy in his stomach. In a moment, the whole course of his life gets disastrously derailed and a big agonising question-mark looms large before his eyes. He asks himself ceaselessly: "Why, why, why such a thing in my case?"

(2)'B' and 'C' are two lady passengers in a night bus which runs along a National Highway of long distance. They are totally unknown to each other. 'B' is seated near a window which allows her to have a full view of the charming landscape outside. 'C' happens to have her seat allotted in the interior portion of the vehicle, cut off from the view outside.

Suddenly 'C' felt an impulse to request 'B' to exchange their seats so that she could enjoy the beauty of the rapidly changing landscapes as the night bus would speed along. The generous-minded 'B' readily agreed and the seats were exchanged. 'C' was highly pleased to have her wish fulfilled. The night bus sped at a lightning speed and 'C' went on feasting her eyes and heart on all

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the variegated scenes and sceneries that appeared for a while and then vanished in the opposite direction.

But all this was for ten minutes or so. After that, the ill-fated bus was involved in a serious road-accident: it collided against a running truck and 'C' died on the spot. 'B' who had moved to an interior seat only ten minutes before at C's earnest request escaped unhurt with some minor injuries. What is the explanation of this bizarre anomaly? What was the real causative factor behind C's death? Her fate? God's inscrutable Providence? Or, perhaps, the consequence of her past Karma? Is it at all easy to answer these questions?

(3)'D' is a young physician of religious temperament and the father of two minor children. The children were studying in a school in a near-by town and were staying in the boys' hostel there.

Once the loving father paid a visit to his two sons and was coming back to his work-place after a couple of days. He had to travel by train. He reached the near-by rail-station and his sons had come to see him off.

At the appointed time the guard blew his whistle and the train started moving. After a few seconds the physician-father jumped to get inside the compartment but missed his step and fell down under the moving train. The rolling wheels crushed his skull and he died then and there before the agonised eyes of his two sons. All the golden dreams of the young doctor and the future of the two minor sons was completely shattered in a moment's turn of events. But why? Is it all a mere chance phenomenon? Or occasioned by their already-settled fate?

(4)'E' is an idealist youngman. By profession, he is a teacher in a Secondary School. He decides not to marry and encumber himself with added personal responsibilities. Instead, he takes a vow to spend all his time and energy in moulding the moral character of his pupils and engaging himself in philanthropic work. He hoped to pass his days in peace and happiness and everything was passing according to his plan.

But it so happened that the young idealist teacher married after a couple of years and what added to his cup of contentment was that the young bride was his own sweetheart.

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The young couple's life was full of happiness and there was no obvious trouble to mar their joy. But then a sudden blow struck them.

When their first child was born, - it was a bonny girl, - it was soon discovered to her parents' horror that the child was completely deaf and dumb.

In time, a second child was born and she too was found to be bereft of the powers of hearing and speech. We can easily imagine the state of anxiety of the idealist school teacher. Before his helpless eyes the two deaf and mute girls went on growing up in age and reached their adolescence attended with all its serious psychological and physiological problems, compounded with a sense of social insecurity.

The teacher ponders: "Why did all the sweet dreams of my early youth rudely founder in the morass of desert sand? Is it due to my own past Karma? Is it caused by my ineluctable fate?"

(5)'F' is a sprightly youngman in his late teens, possessing high abilities in sports. In particular, he shows great talent in middle distance running. The speed at which he runs 5000 metres and 10000 metres sprints makes him dream that in the very near future he will find a place in the All-India Athletic Squad. But alas! on one pitch-dark moonless night, when the streetlights were off, he accidentally fell into a roadside pit and seriously injured both his knees. It was an accident which totally incapacitated him.

After a thoroughgoing surgical treatment extending over a few months, he regained some limping mobility but his dream of a successful athletic career was shattered for all time. Why? why this unexpected eventuality for this unlucky youngman?

(6)'G' was another youngman, handsome and brilliant, with the prospect of a very good academic career before him. One afternoon he climbed to the top branch of a mango tree in their family orchard. The intention was to pluck some ripe fruits. But somehow he lost his grip, fell down to the ground below with a heavy thud, injured his spinal chord and became instantly a paraplegic for the rest of his life.

Here too the perplexing question is: Why such a grievous

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mishap in this youngman's case? Was all a mere accident requiring no further explanation?

(7) 'H' is an active enterprising person full of grit and energy. He has many a high dream and hopes to achieve many great things in many fields of life. And it is true he moves very far along many of his chosen tracks. But strangely he fails to reach the successful end in any of his enterprises. Somehow everything gets bogged down before the final goal is reached. His boat sinks before the shore is reached. He has to remain permanently thirsty like King Tantalus of Greek mythology: his parched lips cannot touch the level of the drink in his cup. The question is: Why so? Who or what frustrates all his efforts at final fulfilment?

Enough is enough: let us stop multiplying any further instances. These seven have been gathered from the present author's personal field of experiences. The readers too may have come across many instances of unapprehended events and accidents which have radically altered the course of lives of the people concerned.

And such is not the case unique to our times. Men have met such saddening events and accidents throughout the recorded history of humanity in all times and climes and have anxiously sought for their satisfactory explanations and from this attempt have arisen many alternative theories and hypotheses.

Thus, man has sometimes speculated that all this is due to an invisible but ineluctable "lalāṭa-lipi" ("writing on the forehead") which is totally arbitrary having no causative justifying reason behind. He has variously named this phenomenon as "Fate", "Kismet" and "Niyati", which offers no explanation and can by no means be avoided, "Niyati kena bādhyate"? Did not Omar Khayyam utter the blood-chilling warning?—

"The Moving Finger writes; and having writ

Moves on: nor all thy piety or wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,

Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it."

But another idea grew up in the old Greek mentality. The ancient Greeks surmised that it must have been the gods of the

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Upper World who were responsible for all the sufferings and mishaps and disasters of the human beings. They were perhaps jealous of the happiness and well-being of men and were all the time scheming to disrupt the smooth flow of their lives. A few of the Greek Gods had specially bad repute in this matter: these were Zeus, Themis, Nemesis and Ananke. While speaking about a special trait of the consciousness of the ancient Greeks the Mother once observed:

"The Greeks had a keen and exceptional sense of beauty , of eurythmy, of harmony in forms and things. But at the same time they had an equally keen sense of men's impotence in face of an implacable Fate which none could escape. They were haunted by the inflexibility of this Fate, and even their gods seem to have been subject to it. In their mythology and in their legends, one finds little trace of the divine compassion and grace." (CWM, Vol. 15, p. 247)

However, with the progressive development of his consciousness, man started thinking along a different line. He became convinced that it is improper to blame others for one's sorrows and sufferings. There must have been some right and justifiable reasons behind it. The world-affairs cannot be those of an irrational mad-house. There must be behind and above this world-play a supremely wise guiding and governing Spirit who was called in ancient India "Vidhātā puruṣa", "the Dispenser of the Destiny of Man". This Vidhata does nothing out of his arbitrary, capricious whim. His every single action and decision is invariably a dispensation of justice. It is this Vidhata who is the sole Judge of men and after every act of judgment decrees appropriate rewards and punishments to a human being.

But the question remains: What is the standard of judgment of this Vidhata-Purusha? Men thought and thought over this question, speculated, and finally came to the conclusion that it must be their own deeds which form the basis of Vidhata's judgment.

Men started believing that the Vidhata's unblinking Eye is all the time watching their actions, judging them appropriately, and

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prescribing "śāsti-puraskār", rewards and punishments, to them according to the quality and nature of these actions. These prescriptions may perhaps take time to be realised in the actual experience of the agent of the deed but they will surely bear fruits to-day or tomorrow, here or elsewhere. We recall in this connection the stern statement of Sage Vashishtha:

"Na sa śailo na tad vyoma,

na so'abdhiśca na viṣṭapam.

Asti yatra phalaṁ nāsti

kṛtānām ātmakarmanām."

(Yogavasishtha, III; 95; 3)

Meaning thereby: "There is no hill, no sky, no sea nor any heaven where you can take refuge and escape the consequences of your actions."

Sri Ramakrishna, the sage of Dakshineshwara, also referred to this inexorable law of reaping the consequences of one's actions (karmaphala-bhoga) in his own inimitable style. Let us listen to his narration:

Duryodhan had affirmed, "tvayā hṛṣikeśa hṛdisthitena yathā niyukto'smi tathā karomi" - "O Divine, as thou appointest me, being seated in my heart, so I do." Yes, but that is the truth of one side; but there is also at the same time what is called "karmaphala", consequences of one's actions. If you chew a chilli, how can you avoid feeling its hot taste? It is God who has ordained that the taking of too much of chilli or pepper cannot but lead to the burning of the stomach. Every sinful deed will bear its corresponding fruit, and none can digest a sin to ineffectivity. Look at "Sejobabu" [the zemindar Mathur Biswas]: he indulged in many types of sinful acts in his youth; the result was that he had to suffer a lot before his death due to the attack of many virulent illnesses. (Vide Kumar Nandy, Ramakrishna-Kathasara)

Nor should one seek false consolation from an illusory hope that if one commits a misdeed in secrecy outside the possible knowledge of other persons, one can perhaps escape the consequences of one's actions. No, the Vidhata-Purusha, the eternal Judge, never

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sleeps and his ever-wakeful eyes scan everything in the universe. Moreover, he is seated in every sentient creature's heart and observes from there all that that creature does and then judges and decrees its proper rewards and punishments, "hṛdisthito karmasākṣī'.

Now a point of clarification. According to the theory of "Karmavāda", every action or karma is bound to drag in its sequel its inevitable "phala" or fruit. But we have not yet defined what a "karma" is. Surely, it is not merely a deed done by the exercise of one's organs of action, karmendriyāni. No; every activation of energy, be it objective or subjective, is deemed to be a karma and is bound to produce its effect which will boomerang on its doer.

Thus, if I indulge in a mood of anger or irritation against somebody and wish him evil, or even merely subjectively dwell in some sinful imagination and thought, these too will not allow me to escape unscathed but chase me inexorably and confront me one day with their unpleasant consequential experiences.

Besides, we should not forget that before a deed is objectivised in the outside field, its first sprouting is in the subjective consciousness of the doer, "karmabījaṁ manaḥ-spandaḥ." (Yogavasistha, III. 6.11)

The writer Humphreys has given us a significant quotation in his book, Buddhism, which indicates the succession of steps through which a budding thought in the mind of a man passes, in order to finally shape the destiny of the doer:

"Sow a thought, reap an act;

Sow an act, reap a habit;

Sow a habit, reap a character;

Sow a character, reap a destiny.

(Christmas Humphreys, Buddhism, p. 106)

An important but rather obscure point needs some elucidation here. When we speak of a karma and its 'phala', fruit, what is exactly connoted by this technical term phala which the agent of the action cannot escape? Let us take a concrete example and try to clarify the point with its help.

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Suppose a man 'A', in a sudden frenzy of anger, picks up a brick and throws it, aiming at the head of a second person 'B'. B's skull is hit sustains a fracture, and there results there from profuse bleeding. Is it what is meant by the "karmaphala" of brick-throwing? The answer is an emphatic "No".

Suppose now that a policeman appears on the scene, arrests the culprit "A" and sends him to the Court of Justice for his trial. The judge, after due processes of law. sentences him to one month's imprisonment and imposes on him a fine of one thousand rupees. Are these, then, the 'karmaphala' of brick-throwing? The answer is again a "No".

At this stage we may perhaps retort in surprise: "What are you saying? Are not B's being confined in a prison for one long month and his paying a fine of one thousand rupees already sufficient to wash away his bad karma of brick-throwing?"

The answer comes for the third time: No, they do not annul the aforesaid karma of "B': he has to undergo another more fundamental 'karmaphal'. For, these are nothing but phenomena of the outside world. Karma is a subtle thing pertaining to the movement of consciousness of the doer, and unless and until it is properly judged in the inner way and the agent suffers its consequence in the corresponding way, it remains unrequited.

Let us now consider the reverse case and take the hypothetical situation of a so-called good deed, and investigate its 'karmaphal'. To make the point clear let us refer to the example cited by the writer George Feuerstein in his book Yoga: Technology of Ecstasy.

Suppose a kind-hearted gentleman, a philanthropist by disposition, donates a few lacs of rupees to build a charitable dispensary to cater to the needs of children. Poor parents surely benefit from this generous act. And this is one sort of visible fruit of the action.

People start heaping praises on the generous gentleman: this is a second fruit of the philanthropic deed which the doer happily enjoys.

Suppose, again, that the Government of the land, being impressed by the bounty of the gentleman, deduct a sizable portion of the Income Tax due to him. This is the third visible result of his

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good action and is of the nature of a reward, puraskār, to him.

Now the pertinent question is: Do these different types of fruits accruing to the gentleman make up what is called his karmaphal? and does the consequence of the deed end there?

The traditional Karmavadi's answer will be a forceful "No". According to him, these outward fruits and consequences do not touch the kernel of the matter. For, the essence of any 'karma' done is the inner disposition of the consciousness, and the suffering by the doer of its appropriate consequence has to be in the same consciousness. Till that is done, maybe in an inscrutable way, 'karma' will remain stored for the agent. (Vide Feuerstein, op. cit., p. 55)

And if such is the case in its inner reality, what is the exact shape and nature of the "phala-bhoga" as understood in the theory of Karma?

An answer to this question is at times attempted which is, to say the least, utterly funny and does not satisfy our rational consciousness. Some Karma-proponents affirm that any action done must produce its fruit following the Law of Similitude and in exact mathematical proportion. For example, if I hurt someone's feelings, he himself or somebody else will surely hurt my feelings today or tomorrow or at some indefinite time of the future. Or, if I borrow some money from a person and do not pay it back to him, a day is bound to come when someone else will borrow the same amount of money from me and deceive me by not paying it back to me. And if such a thing does not happen in this present life of mine, I have to bear the same consequence in one of my future lives upon earth.

Sri Aurobindo himself has referred to a very amusing 'story' purporting to prove the truth of this Karma-hypothesis. He does not say that he subscribes to this view; he has merely cited the viewpoint of some extremely orthodox Karmavadis. This he had read in the pages of a newspaper during his stay in Baroda. The story is somewhat like this:

A tyrant landlord adopted some devious means to dispossess a poor peasant of his paltry landed property. After the death of this poor man, he was reborn in the tyrant's family as his darling son.

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When he grew up to a certain age, he mysteriously fell a victim to a virulent disease and suffered a lot which, of course, immensely saddened the heart of his present 'father'. The tyrant 'father' consulted the best physicians of the land and spent money lavishly for the medical expenses. But the disease of his son defied all attempt at cure. His condition worsened day by day. One day his body-temperature shot up to a high degree and he went into a fit of delirium. Strangely, in that delirious condition, he addressed these queer words to his sorrowing 'father':

"Have you forgotten that in my past life you grabbed my property worth so many thousands of rupees (and he mentioned a specific amount); I have been reborn as your son only to avenge the past injustice done to me and make you lose the same amount of money. Hence is my strange illness and your consequent spending of money over my medical treatment. I have calculated that almost the entire amount of money has been accounted for except for two or three thousand rupees."

The sick boy fell silent and the tyrant father was astounded to hear all this. To his startling surprise he discovered that as soon as those two or three thousand rupees were spent in his vain effort at curing his son, the young boy expired.

Sri Aurobindo has concluded the narration of this story with these witty remarks:

"... the debt is absolved and as the last pice is expended, the reborn soul departs, for its sole object in taking birth is satisfied, accounts squared and the spirit of Karma content." (The Problem of Rebirth, 1978 ed., p. 108)

Another tricky question engages our attention here: that too requires some clarification. It is generally affirmed that every deed done will have its own fruit and the doer of the action will be suitably rewarded or punished for his deed after due judgment. But the question is: Where, in which field, does the agent of the action enjoy or suffer the reward or punishment as the case may be?

The answers come along two different lines depending on which of the two categories of "Karmavadi"s one belongs to.

Some say that a man is privileged to have only one single terrestrial life. Therefore, he has to undergo "karmaphala" in the form

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of rewards and punishments not in this life itself but after death in some supraphysical supraterrestrial realms. And that not immediately after the dissolution of the body. The departed being has to wait for an indefinite length of time for that to happen. On the "Day of final Judgment" every single individual will be called up to present himself before the Supreme Judge, God, and every single piece of his actions done during his single lifetime upon earth will be scrupulously judged according to some specific rules of dispensation and he will be sent either to the abode of heavenly joys or to the world of hellish sufferings, both for an eternity of time, or, perhaps, to the tortures of Purgatory for a painful purging and purification. There is no exception to this procedure of Judgment, for, as it is said, "God will render to everyone according to his deeds", and "whatever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

In order to dissuade men from doing misdeeds and encourage and persuade them to do only "good deeds", the leaders of religions in the past went to great length to describe with blood-chilling concrete images the rigours of the judgment of the Last Day and the severity of the ensuing punishment. Readers interested in knowing more of the affair are advised to go through the indicated portions of the two following books written in Europe in the Middle Ages:

(1)Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book One, chapter XXIV;

(2)Bellecius, Solid Virtue, Part III, chapter 2; some of the subject-titles of this second book are:

(i)"The Anguish which Precedes Judgment";

(ii)"The Rigorous Examination which Our Judge will Make";

(iii)"The Severity of the Sentence"; etc.

And here are three warnings administered by Kempis: "You will have to stand one day before that severe Judge to whom nothing is hid, who is not pacified with gifts, nor admits any excuses, but will judge according to right and equity." "There the suffering of one hour will be more intense than that of a hundred years of earthly life. Beware, therefore, of what is in store for you." "And there is no sin but shall have its proper torment."

But all this will come to pass, according to the proponents of

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this particular theory, not today nor tomorrow, nor even a billion years hence, but only after the "Great Resurrection", on the "Day of final Judgment", perhaps after the lapse of an eternity of time from now.

Now, many people cannot reconcile themselves to this view of waiting for such an inordinately long time to reap the fruits of one's actions. Therefore, they have put forward the alternative theory of rebirth in an attempt to explain many of the obvious anomalies of human life. For they are puzzled at many of the strange facts of earthly existence and wonder:

"Why do some good people suffer so much in life? Why are they confronted with so many difficulties and troubles? For, they have not done in this life anything palpably wrong so far as their conscious intentions are concerned. Does it then mean that they are reaping in this life the unpleasant fruits of misdeeds done in their previous lives?

"On the other hand, we often see that some people manifestly wicked are passing their days easily and happily without being troubled by any serious mishaps. Why so? How are they being able to circumvent the consequences of their 'bad' deeds? And this is still more puzzling that they manage to escape the scrutinising Eye of the unsleeping Judge. No, that is hardly possible. Therefore, it can perhaps be plausibly surmised that their accounts will be squared and they will have to bear suitable punishment in some future life."

Such a train of thought with its corresponding conclusion may surely bring some consolation to the puzzled mind and heart of men and the good name of the Eternal Judge is thereby somewhat salvaged.

But the funniest part of the whole affair is that it becomes a case of "over-kill": the rewards and punishments are decreed twice for the same deed, which is a bit of too much of justice on the part of the divine Judge!

For, it is asserted by these theorists that a man, after his death, has to go to the supraphysical worlds where a series of heavens and hells are arranged to receive him. All his actions in his past terrestrial life will be judged on two counts: their qualities and

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their quantities. And according to the decree of this judgment, the departed being will be sent to some of these heavens and hells to enjoy or suffer the pleasures or pains, deservedly according as the case may be. But, the matter does not end there.

For, after the quota of merits and demerits is exhausted through the experiences in the heavens and the hells beyond, the departed being has to leave the supraphysical other-worlds and come back to the earth to assume there a new body in an act of rebirth. But he will not be allowed to start his new life on a clean slate. His past life's karmas, good deeds and bad deeds alike, will follow him there and heap upon him a succession of pleasant and unpleasant experiences. And this is what will constitute his "karmaphala-bhoga".

But the individual will sow new karmas in this second lifetime and a time will come when he will have to drop this second body also, whose other name is "dying". After this death he will go again to the heavens and hells to square accounts for his accumulated deeds in the second lifetime.

After the lapse of a certain interval of time spent in these heavens and hells, he will come back again upon earth to continue his life-journey in another new body. And the series will continue apparently ad infinitum.

But is it really ad infinitum? Cannot the "janma-cakra", the "Wheel of Birth-death-rebirth-redeath...", be made to stop at some time?

The answer from the Karma-theorists is that this chain can indeed be broken and brought to a termination but only under certain conditions. What these necessary conditions are will be the subject of our next discussion. But before that let us digress a little and regale our readers with the recounting of an amusing "true story" that occurs in Prof. Ernest Wood's book, Yoga, in the Penguin Series:

"I personally knew a middle-aged blind man of poor means. He did yoga-sadhana for many years under the able guidance of a Guru who was known to both of us.

"One day this blind yogi addressed me and said that, while plunged in deep meditation he had been able to be acquainted with the events of one of his past lives which he had lived seven

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hundred years back. In that life he was some sort of a village zemindar and was rather cruel-hearted towards his poor peasant-subjects and tormented them in many ways.

"The blind yogi recounted to me that his supraphysical occult vision had revealed to him that because of these misdeeds of the past, he has been born blind and poor this time in the present life. But he has no regrets for that, for this has done him immense good in this new embodiment. Because of his occult memory of the past, he has been really repentant for his old misdeeds and this has brought about a sea-change in his character and manners. He has, as a result, deliberately built his 'Ashram' among the depressed poor peasants of an interior village and consciously cultivated a relationship of kindness and compassion towards these downtrodden people. And in this way he hopes to expiate his misdeeds of a past life and earnestly believes that, when he dies this time, he will be privileged to be reborn into a new life characterised by peace and happiness and he will surely have a nature nobler and of a spiritual dimension."

Prof. Wood concluded his recounting of the above life-story of the blind sadhaka with these remarks:

"I had, of course, no means of verifying the accuracy of his vision or memory of the past, but I did find that in ordinary matters he had remarkable clairvoyance and telepathic powers." (op. cit., p. 49)

Whatever be the veracity of the above story, we can draw an important lesson from it, which throws a new deeper light on the "theory of Karmavada". We can understand now that an impersonally operative mechanical awarding of "Shasti-puraskara", of rewards and punishments, is not the real pith of the matter. "Karma-phala" has an ethical educative side to it and that is its real contribution. That the blind sadhak could adopt a higher attitude to his present state of indigence and blindness and resolve to lead a better and nobler life in future, is indeed the intended purpose behind his "karma-phala-bhoga": his present punishment of blindness and poverty is altogether a secondary element. And this is the message

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conveyed by a significant statement in the Confucian scripture, Shu King:

"The ultimate goal of punishment is to annul the need for punishment through the awakening of the right consciousness."

By the way, the story of the blind yogi recounted above should not lead to the conclusion that one has necessarily to wait for a future life to reap the fruits of one's actions done in any lifetime. The applied Astrology of ancient India affirms that, of the totality of the deeds done by a particular person in a particular life, roughly thirty-five per cent bears fruit in that very life itself while sixty-five per cent remains stored in a non-germinated seed-form to be effective in future lives. If the deeds done are of an extreme character, they generally produce fruit in the same life, so it is claimed. Thus, the Mahabharata declares: "Atyugra-puṇya-pāpānām ihaiva phalam aśnute." Have we not seen in our own times how the Nemesis of Karma has violently overtaken the fates of Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo and their compeers in misdeeds, in their present life itself. If we rummage through the pages of history books, we can come across many examples of this type. Here is one from the late Mughal period of Indian history:

During the reign of Emperor Shah Alam (1759-1806), one Rohila chieftain named Golam Kader came one day to the Red Fort of the emperor, ostensibly to act as his bodyguard, but in reality to do him serious harm. For, being obsessed with an inordinate greed for money, he started conspiring from the very first day to do mischief to the Badshah.

One day, being blind with rage, Golam Kader knocked the emperor down to the ground, sat upon his chest, and scooped out both his eyes with a red-hot knife. He then addressed the king in a jeering tone: "What, Emperor, what do you see now?" Shah Alam, just then blinded and racked with excruciating pain, merely uttered: "Nothing else except that one copy of the Holy Koran is interposed between you and me."

Such was the apakarma done by Golam Kader. But did he or could he escape the consequences of his misdeed? No, in a few

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years' time the thunderbolt of heavenly justice struck him hard. Madhav Sindhia, a devoted subject of the emperor managed to capture Golam Kader and threw him into a prison. After some days, by the order of Madhav Sindhia all the parts of Golam Kader's body were torn off limb by limb and he was done to a most grievous death.

Be that as it may, the truth that is purported to come out of this story and similar others is that everyone has to pay for his past deeds, in the present life itself or in a future life to come.

Now, following the same logic and going backward we may say that all that is happening to me in this life is not at all an unexpected accident defying all explanation. If my inner eyes open, I can very well discover that behind every event and circumstance of my present life there lies as a causative factor some deed done by me in one of my previous lives. We recall in this connection what Sri Aurobindo wrote to one of his aggrieved disciples puzzled at the turn of events in his life: "...the meaning and necessity of what happens in a particular life cannot be understood except in the light of the whole course of many lives." (Letters on Yoga, Part One, p. 460)

But it would be a serious mistake and miscalculation on our part if we interpret the events of our life merely as the result of a distribution of rewards and punishments for our past good deeds and misdeeds. But before we embark upon a thorough discussion of this issue, it will be good to make precise to our readers the basic postulates and presuppositions of the traditional Theory of Karma. For then and then only we shall be in a position to clearly understand wherein lies the difference between the vision and the views of the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the traditional Karma-vada in their essential aspects. And this will be the subject-matter of our next chapter.

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V

The Law of Karma and the Integral View

"Karma-vāda" or the "Theory of the Universal Chain of Karma" is one of the basic constituent elements of all the religions and philosophical systems that have sprung up in India. Whether we consider Buddhism or Jainism, post-Buddha Puranic Hinduism or Sikhism, or the orthodox philosophies like Vedanta, Mimansa, Patanjal, etc., we shall find Karmavada occupying everywhere a central position in these doctrines and viewpoints. The Buddhist philosophy has gone so far as to assert that everything in the universe is mutable and transitory with one sole exception which is eternal and true and that exception is this "Karma-cakra", the "Wheel of Karma". Before going further in our discussion let us recapitulate here once again the basic positions of this Karmavada in their traditional forms:

The world is the field of action of a great Shakti which is one and indivisible. This Shakti or universal Power has many different lines of activity. Every single energy loosed forth in action, technically called a "Karma", has its own fruit or consequence known as "karma-pariṇāma": Now, every action and its 'parinama' leads to a second action which after germination or "vipāka" produces a second parinama or result and this in its turn will produce a new karma or action and in its sequel a new parinama, and the chain continues as an uninterrupted series which has no beginning and no end, "anādi-ananta-karma-paramparā' .

The other tenet of Karmavada is that in this world of manifestation every individual is always in action, being impelled by his nature and its desires. And no action will go in vain. Each one will have its own 'vipaka' and 'parinama' which is bound to affect in time the person who is the doer of this action. Those actions which do not sprout or have any 'parinama' in this life will remain stored in the "karmāśaya", the "receptable of karmas" of the doer for a future life.

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Every individual human being has a particular line of development. And every action done by the individual, every quantum of energy released by him in some deed is sure to sprout and have its 'parinama' at some stage or other of that line of development and the doer will have to bear the consequences thereof.

The nature and the circumstances of an individual life are the products of his chain of karmas, both inner and outer. There is nothing there accidental or incomprehensible. An individual is thus the architect of his own destiny: there is no other external agency such as Fate or Niyati which can be made responsible for the happenings of his life. A man's past actions have built up his present state and the actions done now in the present life will shape his future. None can escape the consequences of his deeds and the major part of his happiness and sufferings is due to the belated termination (vipaka) of his own past deeds.

Sri Aurobindo has summed up the principle of the Universal Law of Karma in these words:

"...a man's past and present Karma must determine his future birth and its happenings and circumstances; for these too must be the fruit of his energies: all that he was and did in the past must be the creator of all that he now is and experiences in his present, and all that he is and is doing in the present must be the creator of what he will be and experience in the future. Man is the creator of himself; he is the creator also of his fate. All this is perfectly rational and unexceptionable so far as it goes and the law of Karma may be accepted as a fact, as part of the cosmic machinery..." (The Life Divine, pp. 806-07) (Author's emphasis)

Such is the essence of Karmavada. Readers must have noted in the citation above that Sri Aurobindo has added two riders, two significant clauses and expressions: "so far as it goes" and "cosmic machinery". There lies a great meaning behind this purposeful addition. Indeed, the key to the difference between the traditional ideas of Karmavada and the views propounded by the synthetic yogic Vision of Sri Aurobindo lies hidden behind the above

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mentioned expressions. Let us point out one by one the essential differences and divergences between the two sets of views: the views held by the orthodox Karmavada and the positions adumbrated by the Integral Yoga-philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. The indications given below cannot but be very brief; for, both time and space forbid a detailed discussion here. Readers interested in a more elaborate exposition are advised to consult various books of the Mother and Sri Aurobindo, notably The Life Divine and The Problem of Rebirth.

1. Traditional View. One of the fundamental principles of "karma-vipāka" or the "maturing of Karma" is that "Like produces like". For example, a "good" deed invariably produces "good" result, and a "bad" deed cannot but lead to a "bad" consequence. And the connotations of "good" and "bad" fruits are respectively happiness and good fortune, wealth and good health, etc., or sufferings and misfortunes, indigence and ill health, etc.

The application of this principle leads to the inference that if I love somebody, he will, on his part, surely love me. If I do good to others, it cannot but be that others also will do good to me. And the same rule holds in the case of evil deeds and conduct on my part.

Our View: We agree that the traditional assertion, "Like begets like", may prove to be true partly and at some times in the actual circumstances of an individual's life but surely not always and in every man's case. Besides, there is much confusion and wrong conception as regards what should be considered a "good result" or a "bad result". For example, when a sadhaka starts moving on the path of the Divine with an ardent and very sincere aspiration it may sometimes happen that his outer life and its circumstances are overcast with dark clouds of misfortunes of various kinds; viz. his friends and relatives may become perceptibly cool towards him and may even withdraw their affection from him. Well, in this case an ostensibly good and right action engenders an "opposite" effect.

On the other hand, this too is sometimes seen that a person indulging in a series of 'bad' deeds and showing manifestly "bad" behaviour, is visited with lucky circumstances in his outer life. For example, he may perhaps become the Mayor of a city corporation

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or, why not, a deputy minister in the Government of the day, although in his private life he may be a notorious black marketeer or an adulterer of food-stuffs. Why is this discrepancy if the principle of "like begets like" is universally valid?

As a matter of fact, the Grace and the blessings of the Divine may at times take the form of so-called misfortunes in the outer life of a man whereas the prosperity and happiness of another man may actually indicate the Higher Power's displeasure towards him.

So we see that we cannot always indiscriminately apply the principle of "a good karma invariably producing a good fruit of the same kind". Any attempt to do so on our part cannot but lead to utter confusion and inexplicable paradoxes.

Even in our daily life of mutual dealing amongst fellow human beings, it is not rarely found that my doing positive good to a person not only does not produce in him a sense of gratitude and goodwill towards me but creates instead a mood of ill-will and even a downright inclination to do me some harm.

Do we not remember in this connection the classic remark of Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar when it was reported to him that a certain gentleman was spreading censorious lies about him and calling him names? Vidyasagar pithily replied with a feigned tone of surprise: "Is it really so? But why? - I have not done him any good!" As if ill-will and ingratitude should be the normally expected reaction to any good done to a person!

Hence is the witty observation of Sri Aurobindo in his The Problem of Rebirth, p. 146:

This is not at all true that "generally good done by us to our fellowmen will return in a recompense of good done by them in kind and posted back to our address duly registered in the moral post office of the administrative government of the universe." Rather the reverse position proves generally to be true. Sri Aurobindo writes again:

"And even an unegoistic virtue or a divine good and love entering the world awakens reactions. Attila and Jenghiz on the throne to the end. Christ on the Cross and Socrates drinking his portion of hemlock." (Ibid., p. 148)

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2. Traditional View. The distribution of rewards and punishments is the pith of the operation of Karma. For, this represents the verdict of judgment delivered according to the principle of universal justice which impersonally governs the universe.

Our View. The idea of retribution, of the awarding of rewards and punishments, has to be completely discarded from our mind. The world manifestation has a deeper, greater and sublimer purpose and significance behind it. The Divine has not created the world merely to serve the function of an implacable judge in a gigantic Court of Justice.

But do we then mean to say that a man will not suffer even if he commits a mistake or does a wrong deed? No, not so surely. He will suffer but not as an act of punishment but as a natural reaction of his action as the unavoidable operation of the Laws of Nature. Let us refer to some obvious examples.

If you put your finger in a raging fire, it will surely get burnt and you will suffer pain, irrespective of whether you are a king or a beggar, a yogi or a wicked man. If you swallow poison, its deleterious effects will manifest in your body. There can be no exception to this rule: none can hope to be exempted from the action of the universally operative laws of Nature. And this has to be accepted as true so far as it goes. But why bring in unnecessarily the ethical idea of rewards and punishments in this matter?

It is true that man, in his attempt at maintaining order and discipline in his social organisation, has devised the means of justice and judgment and the conferment of rewards and punishments on the doers of actions. But this is a purely human system invented and set in operation by the imperfect mind of men. But how can you expect to see the exact reflection of this limited and crude human system in the government of the entire universe? It will surely be an act of absurdity to try to unravel the mystery of the operation of cosmic Nature by the sole application of the rigid formula of rewards and punishments invented by the mind of man. She does not work in this way at all. All that happens in the kingdom of universal Nature is governed by her intrinsic principles and laws, and the evolving soul of an individual man has to learn through them necessary "lessons of experience" and follow a course of

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ascending progression in the cosmic school of Nature's education. In order to banish from our mind the erroneous notion of "rewards and punishments" and adopt the right attitude towards the events and circumstances of our life, we should do well to ponder deeply over the implications of the following statement of Sri Aurobindo:

"... the reactions of Nature are not in essence meant as reward or punishment; that is not their fundamental value, which is rather an inherent value of natural relations and, in so far as it affects the spiritual evolution, a value of the lessons of experience in the soul's cosmic training.... in all Nature's dealings with us there is a relation of things and there is a corresponding lesson of experience." (The Life Divine, Cent. Ed., p. 814)

Now, these "reactions of things" Sri Aurobindo speaks of are popularly interpreted as "karma-phalas" in the case of an individual man and may assume different forms depending on the situation, circumstances and the antecedents of the individual jīva. To satisfy the curiosity of the readers we give below the names of a few of these "reactions" otherwise called the "Laws of Nature" (Because of dearth of space here we content ourselves with the bare mention of the names only without trying to speak more about them.):

(a) Law of cause and effect; (b) Law of rebound or boomerang; (c) Law of action and reaction; (d) Law of reinforcement; (e) Law of return; (f) Law of imperfection inviting mishap; (g) Law of immoderation leading to ill effects; etc.

3. Traditional View: Karma and the consequences of Karma centre purely and solely around the individual. Hence, in order to seek the explanation of the events of his life, we have to follow the linear development of his own life alone, life present or past. The original cause must be lying somewhere along that individual line.

Our View: No, the situation is not so simple and linear in nature. The affair is multidimensional and very much complex in character. And the reason is that no man is entirely separate and isolated. He has a universal being as well as an individual being. As a result everyone is indissolubly linked to every other person.

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And the inevitable consequence of this inner solidarity is that the actions of "X" have their reactions on the lives of others just as the actions of others will cast their reactions on X's life. What makes the situation still more complicated is the occult fact that these reactions may actually manifest after the lapse of a long, even very long, period of time.

Thus an individual may have to undergo the consequences, not only of his own individual actions, but at the same time those of various groupings to which he belongs. He cannot, for example, evade the liability of his "family Karma", "national Karma", and others.

Sri Aurobindo has drawn our attention to the far-flung effect of 'national Karma' which can sometimes overleap the bounds of centuries and produce fruit at a later age. An example is drawn from the history of Belgium. Here is how Sri Aurobindo narrates it:

In one of the past centuries a certain cruel-hearted greedy king of Belgium sent his ravaging troops to Africa and heaped unspeakable atrocities on the innocent people of that continent. In course of time he died an apparently peaceful natural death without suffering any adverse consequences for his misdeeds. But two centuries later the power-hungry soldiers of newly resurgent Germany invaded the same Belgium, plundered and massacred its people, burnt its villages and towns and inflicted other kinds of persecution. The strange thing to note is that the dark consequences of national misdeeds jumped over centuries and became realised in the lives of the Belgians of a posterior generation.

As in the case of national Karmas, other constituent factors of karma-phala may have their first origins hidden behind some unknown events of the misty past. So, if we would like to know the veritable reason of why a particular person is suffering in a particular way now, it will not suffice to analyse his own karmas done in the near past of this life. This will need a yogic vision which is far-extending and can scan every nook and comer of the whole past. The Theosophist scholar Bhagavan Das has quoted in his book Essential Unity of All Religions an interesting Sanskrit saying:

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Yadi nātmani, putreṣu,

Na cet putreṣu, naptṛṣu;

Na tveva tu kṛtādharmaḥ

Kartuṁ bhavati nisphalaḥ.

The above Sanskrit sloka means in essence: "Man's karma-phala is ineluctable. If it cannot seize the actual doer of the deed, it shall strike his son. If the son also manages to escape its clutch, the grandson has to pay the price. And the series will continue uninterrupted, till the karma seizes its prey; for, a karma once done cannot be made infructuous."

(4) Traditional View: The result of an action done by a person must be by its nature quite simple and easily comprehensible. For example, a conventionally judged "good" deed must always produce a "good" fruit and a so-judged "misdeed" cannot but engender an unmixed "bad" consequence. There need be no complexity in that and the course of an action should be quite foreseeable and its fruit unambiguously foretold.

Our View: This facile presupposition also is not true. A particular deed of a particular individual can produce a result which is bafflingly complex and mixed in character. Because the very psychological constitution of a human being is itself not simple but heterogeneous in character. Many different forces of many different compositions are simultaneously operative in his psychological field and we should not forget that a karma is in its real nature "subjective" and not so much the visible "objective" movements of the organs of action, karmendriyāni.

Now, behind the final external manifestation of any particular action, there might have been in operation in the psychological arena of the doer a medley of subjective passions and impulses each one of which will tend to produce its separate result following its own natural line. All these various results may understandably vary in quality and intensity depending on the prevailing situation. And all these separately produced results will compound to constitute the final outcome which cannot but be very complex in character and heterogeneous in effect. For, as Sri Aurobindo has reminded us, "A mixture of any two kinds of energy sets up a

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mixed and complex action of the output of the energy and the return..." (The Problem of Rebirth, p. 141)

But this is not all: there are other things to complicate the situation further. We consider ourselves normally to be unique individual beings because of the "concrete" sense of a unique representative ego. But, in reality, behind this apparent unicity each one of us is a multiperson. Every part of us - intellect, will, sense-mind, desire-self, the heart, etc. - has each its own complex individuality and natural formation independent of the rest and follows its own separate line of destiny.

Now, it may often happen that one of these lines of destiny may become relatively very strong and dominate for various reasons, and even temporarily suspend, the actions of all other lines.

Also, it may sometimes happen that more than one of these lines may coalesce and produce a mixed action that is widely different from the separate effects that could have been engendered by the lines concerned acting separately and independently. Thus the whole situation becomes a jumbled-up affair and it is well-nigh impossible to ascertain the reason why a particular event overtakes a man at a particular junction of time. Hence is the warning of the Mother:

"... we are not a single being, a simple entity which necessarily has a single destiny that is simple and logical. Rather we have to acknowledge that the destiny of most men is complex, often to the point of incoherence. Is it not this very complexity which gives us the impression of unexpectedness, of indeterminacy and consequently of unpredictability?" (CWM, Vol. 15, p. 308)

This is so far as are concerned the different lines of destiny followed by the different personalities hidden and operative behind the surface ego. But there is one other factor that makes still more unascertainable the nature of the karma-phala that befalls an individual. This factor relates to the different destinies affecting different instrumental parts of his being. Thus there are for him operative at the same time (i) a physical destiny, (ii) a vital destiny,

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(iii) a mental destiny, (iv) a psychic destiny, (v) a spiritual destiny, and others.

Thus, the whole thing presents the picture of a highly intermingled complexity which makes it impossible to foresee and foretell what exactly is going to happen to a person at any given moment of his life.

(5) Traditional View: The supreme Divine who is the sole Governor of this world is at the same time All-Wise and All-Just. No injustice can ever enter into any of his providences. It should therefore be an axiomatic truth that a morally good man's life will always be rewarded with victories and happiness while a morally wicked man should always meet with defeats and disasters. Is not our assumption valid?

Our View: No, it is not. We do not deny that the Divine is All-Wise and All-Just. This too we accept that all his actions are in conformity with absolute justice. But what is justice after all? Why should we be allowed to impose upon the Divine our human standards of "moral" justice which are, to say the least, ignorant, imperfect, and absolutely relative? Let us look into the matter a little more closely.

A clairvoyant observation cannot but reveal to us that a particular person may be at the same time engaged in more than one line of "tapasya" or energized effort. He may be able to successfully apply his energy in more than one field of activity.

Now, there is a Great Power operative in the universe - call it the Divine or the Cosmic Nature, it does not matter - which is impersonally assessing every energy-output of every man and is crowning it with success or topping it with failure depending upon its efficacious employment. And this is what real Justice means and does. Otherwise, what sort of an absurd expectation is this that simply because a man is "ethically good", the Divine should justifiably make him the winner of the gold medal in the Olympic's 100-metre sprint? I may be from the social point of view not a very good and just man, but if I am intellectually sufficiently endowed and put in necessary energy and effort, why should the Divine deprive me of success in that particular field? I may be conventionally bad in nature but if my artistic consciousness is well

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developed and I make sustained effort in the field of art, why should I be frustrated in my aspiration to flower into an accomplished artist? The Divine will be quite pleased to grant me success in these respective fields of activity and that is what should demonstrate that He is really just.

So, we have to cancel from our mind the erroneous preconceived notions that (i) divine Justice acts in the same way as human justice; and (ii) a "good" man should be allowed to score success in all fields of his activity; also (iii) a "bad" man should automatically be deprived of success in every possible field. Such a misconception of God's way of justice will land us into total confusion in understanding the affairs of men and the real reason behind the vicissitudes of an individual's life. Here are two excerpts from Sri Aurobindo's writings which may throw more light on the point:

"... the statement of the Law [of Karma] errs by an over-simplification and the arbitrary selection of a limited principle. Action is a resultant of the energy of the being, but this energy is not of one sole kind; the Consciousness-Force of the Spirit manifests itself in many kinds of energies: there are inner activities of mind, activities of life, of desire, passion, impulse, character, activities of the senses and the body, a pursuit of truth and knowledge, a pursuit of beauty, a pursuit of ethical good or evil, a pursuit of power, love, joy, happiness, fortune, success, pleasure, life-satisfactions of all kinds, life-enlargement, a pursuit of individual or collective objects, a pursuit of the health, strength, capacity, satisfaction of the body. All this makes an exceedingly complex sum of the manifold experience and many-sided action of the Spirit in life, and its variety cannot be set aside in favour of a single principle, neither can be hammered into so many sections of the single duality of ethical good and evil; ethics, the maintenance of human standards of morality, cannot, therefore, be the sole preoccupation of the cosmic Law or the sole principle of determination of the working of Karma." (The Life Divine, pp. 809-10)

It follows then that the variety of differences between the energies loosed forth in action cannot but produce consequences widely different in nature.

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"... there are many factors and not only the ethical-hedonistic standard. If it is just that the virtuous man should be rewarded with success and happiness and the wicked man punished with downfall and pain at some time, in some life, on earth or in heaven or in hell, it is also just that the strong man should have the reward of his cultivated strength, the intellectual man the prize of his cultivated skill, the will that labours in whatever field the fruit of its effort and its works." (The Problem of Rebirth, pp. 114-15)

(6) Traditional View: The position fundamentally held is that whatever happens in a man's life does so because of the deeds done by him in the past. It thus invariably follows that if we find now a person suffering from the pangs of poverty and ignominy and other kinds of misfortunes, he must be judged to have been a sinner in his past life who has been now paying for his past misdeeds. Even if he seems to be a virtuous man with sattwic temperament in this life, that cannot invalidate the assertion that in one of his past lives he must have been a sinful individual. Is not this surmise correct?

Our View: No, it is not. Here too there is an obvious fallacy vitiating the line of argument. And this could not but be so because there is a radical defect in the very thought-structure that leads to this conclusion. For, in truth, the Law of Karma is nothing but a law only, an instrument in the hands of the Agent and not itself the agent. The real Agent is the Divine: He uses the Law as an instrument in the furtherance of His purpose in the world. He may use it if He so likes; He may bypass it if that serves His end. Thus the application of the law of Karma is not altogether rigorous.

But what is this purpose of the Divine in this world of manifestation and in particular in the life of a man? Well, it is worth knowing that the only goal the Divine aims at in the life of men is to bring them to a state of perfect Union with the Supreme Reality through a progressive growth of their consciousness, also to radically change all their instruments of manifestation such as the mind, the heart and the body and finally to divinely transform them so that a divine life can be established upon earth itself and a bridge be built between the heaven and the terrestrial existence.

And the Divine will do all that is necessary for this sole purpose.

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His Grace is always at work, in every individual's life, under all situations and circumstances, of course keeping this sole goal in view. And for this, He will provide the individual with all necessary experiences at every moment of his life, be these experiences in appearance pleasant or unpleasant, joyous or painful. Good luck or bad luck are altogether immaterial here. What is of sole relevance is how much a particular experience at a given time will help the person concerned to advance towards the destined Goal. Sri Aurobindo has beautifully described this point in Canto 4 of the First Book of his epic, Savitri:

Even through the tangled anarchy called Fate

And through the bitterness of death and fall

An outstretched Hand is felt upon our lives.

It is near us in unnumbered bodies and births;

In its unshaken grasp it keeps for us safe

The one inevitable supreme result

No will can take away and no doom change,

The crown of conscious Immortality,

The godhead promised to our struggling souls...

One who has shaped this world is ever its lord:

Our errors are his steps upon the way;

He works through the fierce vicissitudes of our lives,

He works through the hard breath of battle and toil,

He works through our sins and sorrows and our tears...

Whatever the appearance we must bear,

Whatever our strong ills and present fate,

When nothing we can see but drift and bale,

A mighty Guidance leads us still through all.

(Savitri, Cent. Ed., p. 59)

Yes, "a mighty Guidance leads us still through all", and this divine Guidance is really inscrutable for the ignorance-shrouded intelligence of man. It will therefore be a sheer folly to conclude in a facile way that man is surely reaping the malediction of God whenever we find him suffering from worldly ills in life. Who knows, that may perhaps be the manifestation of His Grace which

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is actually helping the person concerned through these adverse crcumstances to advance on the path of spiritual progression. And that is, after all, the only purpose behind all divine action and the sole essential thing needed by the individual. Both Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have elaborately discussed this point at many different places in many of their writings. The essence of their teachings is as follows:

Apparent happiness and outer success and good fortune is no doubt very very pleasing to man's lower vital; but gross enjoyment and prosperity is not the ultimate objective of life. That a soul accepts rebirth is not to square accounts for its past good deeds or misdeeds. In actual fact, rebirth is the effective means for the spiritual progression of the soul. All his experiences, his happinesses and sorrows, successes and failures, good fortune and ill fortune, all without exception are inseparable elements of his comprehensive spiritually oriented adventure covering a succession of lives.

The soul itself may at times choose sorrows, poverty and ill luck, if it considers them appropriate steps for a rapid ascension to its goal. It may reject with disdain success, prosperity and immediate realisation if it finds them creating in him a mood of laxity and somnolence of consciousness.

So, we have to reject the popular traditional view regarding the true purpose behind the phenomenon of rebirth. The soul is not reborn only to wear out through experiences, both positive and negative, the fruits of his past karmas, but to advance incessantly on the path of the ascent of consciousness through the intermediary of almost infinitely varied experiences affecting the triple instruments of mind and heart and body. This is the essence of the matter and all else is "sometimes a consequence and sometimes a means" but never the principal thing.

And the so-called Law of Karma is such a "consequence" and such a "means" employed by the divine Guide, and surely not an independently operative self-sufficient agent.

So, we cannot subscribe to the commonly held popular notion that the very presence of sorrows and sufferings in the present life of a man cannot but unexceptionally indicate that he must have done some serious misdeeds in his past life.

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(7) Traditional View: A man has to perforce suffer the consequences of those karmas which belong to the class of "prārabdha" or the "sprouted ones". Be he a Mahayogi or a great Mahatma, nobody can escape the clutch of a "prarabdha" karma: he has to annul it by actually undergoing in his personal experiences the consequences of the said deed.

But before we can meaningfully discuss this point, we have to become clear in our mind what is meant by a "prarabdha" karma.

So far as the traditional idea goes, an individual is always acting whether internally in his subjective domain or externally in the objective field. Each one of his actions is producing a karma in the form of an ungerminated seed. All these karma-seeds are getting stored in what is called the "karmāśaya" (the "receptacle of karmas") of the man. These constantly stored action-seeds constitute what are called "sañciyaindnā karmas" or karmas which are being currently gathered.

A certain percentage of these karmas germinates in this very life and starts producing visible effects in the form of the doer's happy or unhappy experiences. These are named "prārabdha" karmas. A larger percentage of karmas remains stored in a dormant and potential state for manifesting its fruits in future lives. These go by the name of "sañcita karmas".

Now, according to the traditional view, when a person becomes a siddha-yogi, and gains "ātma-jñāna" or spiritual "self-knowledge", all his stored karma-seeds (sañcita-karmas) get burnt up and become infructuous for all time to come.

And as he becomes a Jivanmukta yogi, he is from then onward free from all desires and attachments (niṣkāma nispṛha) and his nishkama karmas (desireless actions) fail to produce any karma-seed. So there is no question of any further addition to the stock of his sanciyamana karmas. But there remain for him the prarabdha-karmas which have already started sprouting and are bound to produce karma-phala, even for the realised soul, for his past deeds. When the "bhoga" (the "enjoyment") of the karma-phala is over through the actual experiences in consciousness, the body of the yogi drops and he becomes "videhamukta" or "liberated without any physical embodiment". For this yogi there is no more return to

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the earthly existence, and all necessity for rebirth ceases for him (janmacakra-nivṛtti). And, from the traditional point of view, this is the destined goal for any human being upon earth.

Our View. There is no Karma, whether "sancita" or "prāra-bdha", which cannot be made infructuous. The effects of all actions can be annulled by suitable means. Therefore, a sadhaka of the Integral Yoga should not be unduly worried by seeing in his imagination possible future disasters. He should not indulge in vain thoughts like: "Alas for me! Who knows how many types of misdeeds I may have committed in the past, in this very life or in a life before but in the meantime forgotten. They are perhaps waiting behind the wings as prarabdha karmas to pounce upon me at any moment and overwhelm the smooth flow of my life with a threatening burden of heavy karma-bhoga. Thus the course of my life is looming before me with an ominous uncertainty. All the vim of my life is gone, for I have to live always under the shadow of an unknown but impending doom. It is true I am no more doing any wrong deed; the problem of sanciyamāna karma, that of gathering new karma-seeds, is not there for me. But that alone does not bring solace to me. For I know not at all how many venomous seeds of prarabdhas are there swarming in my karmāśaya, in my receptacle of karmas, only to germinate all of a sudden and destroy the happiness of my life! My future is thus being constantly threatened by my unknown past. And this is creating a ceaseless trepidation in my heart because of the enervating anxiety that anything disastrous may happen to me at any unexpected moment of my life. Is there none or nothing which can save me from this distressing situation?"

No, a sadhaka of Sri Aurobindo's Integral Yoga should not and need not entangle himself in the web of such tormenting thoughts. For, whether the theory of "prarabdhas" corresponds to any truth or not, it is absolutely certain that one's past need not inevitably bind one's future: one can always nullify the actions done in the past, of course by adopting suitable measures.

And this is going to constitute the theme of our next chapter.

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VI

Fate and Karma and a Sadhaka's Duty

We have advised our readers at the end of the preceding chapter that a sadhaka of the Integral Yoga should not torment himself with the apprehending imaginary thought that some of his unknown "prarabdha karmas" may be all the time hiding behind the veil and pounce upon him at any moment to bedevil his life. No, he should know that whatever the heritage from his past, it is possible to wipe that out without any residue left behind; there is no "karma-seed" which cannot be prevented from germinating. The chain of Karma is not unbreakable; it is not that only actual experiences can exhaust the effect of a karma or action done in the past.

Fate and Karma can be completely neutralised and this can be done by three different means:

(i)by the application of personal tapasya and effort;

(ii)through the mediation of divine Grace; and

(iii)by the agency of yogic power.

The Mother and Sri Aurobindo have both discussed in their writings all these three means in great detail. Because of dearth of space we cannot but succinctly give their gist here.

(i) Let us first discuss the factor of personal effort and tapasya. It is true that it has been asserted with force that "niyati kena bādhyate", "Who can frustrate the action of Fate?" But the wise men of the past have also affirmed at the same time that "niyatirapi puruṣena jīyate", "Even Fate can be conquered by personal tapasya". The sage Vasistha has unambiguously stated in his Vedantic treatise, Yoga-vashishtha:

Aihikaṁ prakṛtaṁ vāpi

Karma yad sañcitaṁ sphurat;

Puruso 'sau paw yatno

Na kadācana niṣphalaḥ —

meaning thereby: "Puruṣakāra or personal tapasya never fails to

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annul a karma done in the present life or in the past,"

Here are two short but pregnant messages of Sri Aurobindo concerning this issue:

"Because God has willed and foreseen everything, thou shouldst not therefore sit inactive and wait upon His providence, for thy action is one of His chief effective forces. Up then and be doing..." (Thoughts and Aphorisms, 1992 ed., p. 21)

"... man is mightier than his sensations or vitality or the sensational or vital forces of the universe. Our fate and our temperament have been built by our own wills and our own wills can alter them." (SABCL, Vol. 17, p. 258)

(ii) Let us now come to the procedure of the annulment of Karmas through the intervention of divine Grace.

If the sadhaka becomes truly pure, washes himself clean with the tears of genuine repentance, and ardently prays to the power of Grace of the Divine, it will surely be found that the action of that Grace will either scorch out all his past karmas to ineffectivity or will so arrange the circumstances of his life that these very karmas will produce great good for the sadhaka's spiritual progress.

But the Mother has warned us at the same time that the aspirant should not nurture a false hope which may be formulated in this way:

"Let me repent a little for my past misdeeds and address my prayer to the Divine: this will surely neutralise the bad consequences of my actions. I can then indulge in a new misdeed in a great sense of security; for, why fear? I shall repent again and pray. And so on and so forth."

No, this sort of indulgent attitude will not do: nobody can deceive the Divine. For, this is not repentance at all. The Divine will accept that the sadhaka is truly repentant, only when, along with repentance and prayer, he tries his best to eradicate the bad impulse which prompted his bad action. He must not continue to entertain even the slightest fascination for the weakness which was at the base of his former misdeed. As the Mother has reminded us:

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"The truth is that when you ask forgiveness you hope that the dire consequences of what you have done will be wiped away. But that is possible only if the causes of the error you have committed have themselves disappeared. If you have made a mistake through ignorance, the ignorance must disappear. If you have made a mistake through bad will, the bad will must disappear and be replaced by goodwill. Mere regret will not do, it must be accompanied by a step forward." (CWM, Vol. 10, p. 47)

The Mother adds: "Therefore it is not a vague and abstract forgiveness that one should ask of the Divine, but... to make the necessary progress. For only an inner transformation can wipe out the consequences of the act." (Ibid.)

And if the aspirant is sincerely ready to fulfil this condition, he can rest assured that there is no karma done by him in the past which cannot be wiped away by the action of the Grace. Here are the words of assurance from the Mother:

"... each thing... always produces an effect and... this effect produces still another and that other produces yet another and so on... indefinitely....

"An act carried out has always a consequence and this consequence brings along another and so on. And this is absolutely ineluctable.... And you cannot escape it except through the intervention of Grace. Grace is exactly something which has the power of changing all that. But only the Grace can change it. It [universal justice] is so strict a law and so terrible that once one has entered within it, one cannot get out.... Do you understand?... Unless the Grace intervenes. And as the Grace is omnipotent, it can change everything.... But without the Grace there is no hope." (CWM, Vol. 5, pp. 362-63)

"... the Divine Grace completely contradicts Karma; you know, It makes it melt away like butter that's put in the sun." (Ibid., pp. 91-92)

(iii) Now comes the third means of neutralising the fruits of

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karmas. This relates to the effective application of Yoga-Shakti (Yogic Power). But before we can hope to understand the true rationale of this action, we must make some basic ideas clear to our mind.

The very first thing we have to know is that the level of mental consciousness in which the general run of humanity is at present living, is not the only or the highest level possible to consciousness. There are many ranges of consciousness above the human level, one after another, in an ascending scale, till one reaches the paramam dhāma, the supreme abode of the Divine.

Now, through the successful practice of yogic sadhana, it may become possible for any individual person to ascend to these higher levels of consciousness, dwell there and even act from there.

Now, one of the principal characteristics of these supernal ranges of consciousness is that the more a sadhaka reaches a higher level, the more freedom of action he acquires, and the more liberated he becomes from the knots of Karma.

A second important point to note is that if an aspirant sadhaka manages to climb to a higher level of consciousness and become able to make its characteristic law of action descend below and be operative in the field of the functioning of our normal lower level, the whole arrangement changes, and the "karma-phala" already having the lower outer existence of the doer in its iron-grip changes its character for the better or vanishes altogether. Let us listen to the Mother giving her views in the matter:

"Freedom and fatality, liberty and determinism are truths that obtain on different levels of consciousness. It is ignorance that makes the mind put the two on the same level and pit one against the other....

"In the plane of matter and on the level of the ordinary consciousness you are bound hand and foot. A slave to the mechanism of Nature, you are tied to the chain of Karma, and there, in that chain, whatever happens is rigorously the consequence of what has been done before. There is an illusion of independent movement, but in fact... you revolve helplessly on the crushing wheel of her [Nature's] cosmic machine.

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"But it need not be so. You can shift your place if you will; Instead of being below, crushed in the machinery or moved like a puppet, you can rise and look from above and by changing your consciousness you can even get hold of some handle to move apparently inevitable circumstances and change fixed conditions." (CWM, Vol. 3, pp. 29-30)

And the Mother significantly concludes: "This precisely is the aim of Yoga, - to get out of the cycle of Karma into a divine movement." (Ibid., p. 30)

Sri Aurobindo too is quite explicit in stating that the bond of Karma can be easily loosened, if one practises the life of sadhana in all seriousness. He says: "Neither Karma nor Astrology... points to a rigid and for ever immutable fate." (Letters on Yoga, p. 468) He further adds: "Here too [in the case of the 'utkat prarabdha karmas'] the achievement of the spiritual consciousness and life is supposed to annul or give the power to annul Karma." (Ibid.)

It is thus manifestly clear that the chain of Karma can be disrupted, its so-claimed ineluctable consequences be annulled, either through the automatic result of the dawning of spiritual self-knowledge (ātmajñāna) or by the invocation of the divine Grace or by taking recourse to yogic powers. But a point of curiosity may tickle our rational intelligence: "What happens to a realised soul after all his karmas have been exhausted or made infructuous?"

The traditional Karmavadi's answer is direct and simple: The body of the Jivanmukta drops off in time like a withered leaf of a tree and he attains to what is called "videha-mukti", the status of "disembodied liberation", which then endures for eternity. The Videhamukta will never again assume a new physical body and come upon earth to lead another round of worldly existence. For him will cease the intractable "cycle of rebirths", "janma-cakra-nivṛtti". And that is supposed to be the ultimate spiritual goal placed before all sadhakas.

And this is so because the traditionalists affirm that man's physical life upon earth cannot but constitute an uninterrupted series of karmas and each karma represents a new fetter for the soul tying

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it to Ignorance (avidyā) and to the painful wheel of rebirth. Therefore, while still in life, the only principle of sadhana the spiritual aspirant has to assiduously follow is to renounce all actions, karmasannyāsa, and thus to terminate the round of earthly existence and depart and merge in the static Silence of the spaceless and timeless Transcendence.

Well, that may be the view and attitude of the traditional yogis, but the sadhaka of the Integral Yoga has another Vision and another Goal in view. He does not fear or shun rebirth; for he knows that the earthly life is not meant solely for the exhaustion of karmas through the "bhoga", the "undergoing", of rewards and punishments for one's past deeds. Human life has a greater and sublimer purpose behind it. But what is this purpose? That purpose is for each soul:

(i)to reach the perfection of Sachchidananda through the progressive development of his consciousness;

(ii)to establish divine life upon earth itself in a human body if possible, through the integral transformation of the triple instruments of mind and life and body;

(iii)to be a willing and effective participant in the divine action of achieving collective liberation and perfection on the earthly plane.

Now, as there is no end to the self-manifestation of the Divine in the earthly field, nāsti anto vistarasya me, we shall not seek to draw a "finis" to our repeated rebirths upon earth in physical bodies. We shall rather willingly and joyously welcome this phenomenon of rebirth, punarjanma; for Sri Aurobindo has told us:

"The will of man is the agent of the Eternal for the unveiling of his secret meaning in the material creation.... This is his [man's] dignity and his greatness and he needs no other to justify and give a perfect value to his birth and his acts and his passing and his return to birth, a return which must be - and what is there in it to grieve at or shun? - until the work of the Eternal in him is perfected..." (The Problem of Rebirth, pp. 91-92)

This is so far as the Purnayoga-sadhaka's attitude towards

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re-birth is concerned. But still a lurking sense of unease and fear may remain there underneath to trouble the mind and heart of the aspirant. For the sadhaka may reasonably argue: "A new life upon earth cannot but be a new series of 'sañciyamāna karmas leading to all their adverse fruits. How to avoid the consequences of these karmas if we have to live a new life upon earth?" The answer is:

No karma as karma is a bondage. It becomes a source of bondage when it becomes polluted with the sense of ego and desire, ahantā and vāsanā. The sadhaka of the Integral Yoga should try to do all his actions non-egoistically and in an attitude of "utkrānta-vāsanā", "free from all desires for fruit". The sole motive-force behind all his activity should be to serve the Divine in conformity with His Will alone. In that case, no action will be able to stain him nor will it lead to his being tied down to the chain of Karma, na karma lipyate nare.

So one need not be scared on that account and seek to terminate the ever-unfolding self-manifestation of the soul in time and space and escape into the peace of Static Brahman. Sri Aurobindo has expressed in the following words the right attitude of the sadhaka of the Integral Yoga:

"... who shall persuade me that my infinity can only be an eternal full stop, an endless repose, an infinite cessation? Much rather should infinity be eternally capable of an infinite self-expression." (The Problem of Rebirth, p. 95)

It is time to close this chapter on Fate, Karma and the Sadhaka of the Integral Yoga. But before that we would like to address a few words of recommendation to the sadhakas of Sri Aurobindo's Path.

Whatever may be the ideas and beliefs of others concerning the so-called puṇya-karma and pāpa-karma, merits and demerits of one's deeds, these should not unduly bother the sadhaka. He should know that from the point of view of the Integral Yoga a "good" deed is one which helps him to advance on the path of his spiritual progression, and an "evil" deed is one which either retards his progress or makes him stagnate on the Path or even

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reverses the gear and pushes him on a retrograde movement. There is no other definition for him for a "virtuous" or a "sinful" deed. And, from the deeper point of view a particular action of the sadhaka will be adjudged to be a "merit" or a "demerit", depending on whether it is done in conformity with the divine Will at that moment or not.

But a question may immediately arise in the sadhaka's mind which requires some satisfactory answer. For, the aspirant may reasonably argue that he is still a novice on the Path, not by any means a Siddha-yogi. So, how can one expect that he will be able to discern at every step of his daily life which of his actions is in conformity with the Divine's Will and which ones not? Thus the practical difficulty remains for him in all its seriousness; for, has not the Gita warned: "Gahanā karmano gatiḥ"? - "Inscrutable are the ways of Karma"?

But let us hasten to add that the problem is not so serious as it seems to be at the first glance. For, what the sadhaka is expected to do - and that he has to do always without fail - is to maintain at every moment of his life, under all situations and circumstances, the really right attitude behoving a sadhaka of the Integral Yoga. And if he can do that, he will find to his happy surprise that the Divine Providence itself will arrange at every moment all that is really good and beneficial to the growth of his inner consciousness. And that is what is most important in life, not the acquisition of outer prosperity and happiness, or the avoidance of what is ordinarily considered as failures and sufferings. For, the object of all his deeds should be the union with the Divine and the establishment of a secure spiritual consciousness in himself. He will never seek any "punya" or "merit" for the sake of obtaining any earthly or heavenly reward; nor will he deliberately refrain from doing any "papa" or act of "demerit" simply to avoid punishment here or beyond death: these are of no concern to him. The only consideration behind his choice of any action is whether this action is what is expected of him as a sincere and fully dedicated sadhaka. The only fruit he will always yearn after and which he will surely be privileged to have is constant advancement on the path of the Divine. In Sri Aurobindo's words:

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"There must be no demand for fruit and no seeking for reward; the only fruit for you is the pleasure of the Divine Mother and the fulfilment of her work, your only reward a constant progression in divine consciousness and calm and strength and bliss." (The Mother, Cent. Ed., Vol. 25, p. 16)

To sum up: A sadhaka of the Integral Yoga should not bother about Fate or Niyati or Karma; he should always stay on the path of the Divine and, having completely surrendered himself to the Divine Mother, fearlessly move forward into the bosom of the still unknown future with the confidence of someone who knows that the divine Mahashakti is always with him with her protecting arms guarding him in all situations. And there is no agency either in the visible world or in the invisible ones who or which can do him any harm.

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VII

The Mystery of Rebirth

On a dark but clear moonless night if we gaze at the wide expanse of the sky, billions of star-clusters from millions of galaxies will meet us with their inscrutable silence and lifelessness. Except for one small-sized planet (earth) of a medium-sized star (sun), the whole immensity of the physical universe shows no sign of life anywhere, and that from the beginning of our cosmos since the mysterious moment of the Big Bang. And, relatively speaking, only in the recent past life suddenly sprouted on that one privileged planet and went on flourishing with prolific variety. But why? What can be a greater mystery than that?

But there is a second mystery to confront us. In this teeming kingdom of life upon earth everything organised itself in "units", whether as individual cells or as individual trees and animals or as individual human beings. We ask again why so? What is the purpose behind this formation of "individuality"? The "birth" of the individual is the second mystery of the terrestrial life manifestation.

Now comes the third mystery, a still more puzzling mystery: the mystery of "death". If life appeared upon earth, it could have very well continued without being challenged by any contrary phenomenon! But, strangely, the most mysterious "death" appeared on the scene as if from nowhere and claimed its inalienable right to end every individual life after some time short or long. But why? In Sri Aurobindo's words:

"Birth is the first spiritual mystery of the physical universe, death is the second which gives its double point of perplexity to the mystery of birth; for life... becomes itself a mystery by virtue of these two which seem to be its beginning and its end and yet in a thousand ways betray themselves as neither of these things, but rather intermediate stages in an occult processus of life." (The Life Divine, Cent. Ed., p. 742)

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And death itself does not represent the final process of mystification for us. For, although, in a way, it destroys life, it fails to annihilate the "individual": the individual, at least the individual soul, is "reborn" in the world of earthly manifestation. Thus, "rebirth" is the fourth element of mystery to confound us.

Man has sought to solve these mysteries since the beginning of the recorded history of mankind. Speculations have been galore and various theories and hypotheses have been advanced to no universal acceptance and satisfaction. After all, the solution depends upon the nature, origin and object of the cosmic movement, and as we determine this, so we shall have to conclude about birth and life and death, the before and the hereafter.

The first question we have to answer is whether the before and the after, the situation before the birth of the individual and that after its death, are purely physical. If Matter were the sole principle of the universe and physical energy were its sole "mover", as the Materialist alleges, then no further questions would be possible and we have to wrap up the issue. But, for various valid reasons, which we cannot elaborate here, we cannot accept that Matter is the prime principle and self-existent. We have, therefore, to reject the easy and obvious materialistic solution and fall back upon other hypotheses.

One of these is the religious myth and dogmatic belief of a God who constantly creates immortal souls out of his being and associates them with material bodies, thus vivifying these latter with a spiritual principle.

But this theory involves two paradoxes. Firstly, the hourly creation of beings having a beginning in time but no end in time and, moreover, being born by the birth of the physical body but somehow not ending with the dissolution of that body. Secondly, these individual beings are arbitrarily given a ready-made mass of qualities, virtues, vices, capacities, defects, temperamental and other advantages and handicaps, - not made by them at all through their own growth, but made for them by arbitrary fiat, - yet for which and for the appropriate use or misuse of which they are held responsible by their creator and judged at some stage and rewarded or punished as the case may be.

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Obviously, this hypothesis does not appeal to our rationality and we have to seek for some other theory. Let us see what follows if we start with the postulate that the human soul is eternal and immortal without any beginning or end. But even before that let us see whether the "soul" is real at all or something fictitious.

There are, indeed, two theories which do not admit the immortality of the human soul nor its eternity in time nor even its reality. They start from opposite ends but arrive at the same conclusion. Both these theories start with the fundamental idea that there is an original Unity from which all things in phenomena begin, by which they live and into which they cease at some time or other. Of course, these theories differ as regards the nature of this primal Unity.

One theory asserts that there is a cosmic Inconscient which creates a temporary soul and consciousness which after a brief play are extinguished and go back into the original Inconscient without leaving any trace behind.

The second theory posits a sole-existing Superconscient Reality, the Transcendent Brahman, the eternally unmodifiable Being, which admits through an inscrutable Maya (the power of creative illusion) the illusion of an individual soul-life in the world of phenomenal Mind and Matter which themselves are ultimately unreal. For, as we mentioned at the beginning, the one unmodifiable and eternal Self or Spirit is, according to this hypothesis, the only reality: everything else may be pragmatically existent for some finite interval of time but is never real.

There is a third theory which admits neither the primal Inconscient nor the original Superconscient but a Nihil or Void as the substratum. There is somehow imposed upon this Nirvana an energy of successive becoming, called Karma, which creates the illusion of a persistent individual or soul by a constant continuity of associations. Its simplistic analogy is that of a collection of a thousand honey-bees leaving the branch of a particular tree to move on to a branch of a far-off tree. Now, while in flight, these multiple "bees" (sanskaras, sensations, etc.) give the false impression of an "individual soul" in movement. But if the honey-bees disperse and the artificial group disintegrates, the whole thing vanishes: in the

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same way, if the "glued" sanskaras, sensations, etc. get disbundled, the artificially created fictitious individuality of the human "soul" disappears.

Now, in their practical effect upon the life-problems of humanity, all these three theories are practically one. In all, the apparent soul or spiritual individuality of the creature is not immortal in the sense of eternity in time but has a beginning and an end; it is at best a creation by Nature-Force or by Maya or by Karma or Cosmic Action out of the original Inconscient or Superconscient, and is therefore intrinsically impermanent in its existence. In all three, "rebirth" of the "individual" is either unnecessary or else illusory, for none of these theories assume any ultimate purpose of fulfilment here upon earth. Therefore, a single birth is all that can be asked for by a "conscious being" who is fortuitiously engendered as part of a purposeless creation. Take the analogy of a wave which rises on the surface of the sea, remains in existence for half a minute or so, and then vanishes back into the undifferentiated waters of the sea.

In the way of the wave, an individual being has come into existence in the sea of real or imaginary becoming and will surely founder there and cease to exist. It is not at all eternal, and its only "immortality" is a greater or less continuity in the Becoming. It is not a real and always existent Person who maintains and experiences the ever-unfolding stream of phenomena.

For theories of this kind it is not indispensable that there should be a psychic entity always the same which should persist and assume body after body, form after form, until it is withdrawn from terrestrial manifestation by the cessation of the original impetus which created this cycle. "In none of these theories of existence is rebirth an absolute necessity or an inevitable result of the theory." (The Life Divine, p. 747)

Let us now consider some alternative theories of existence which admit the reality and the immortality of the human soul. But apart from this basic agreement, they differ in many ways among themselves both in their approaches and in their final conclusions. The starting-point of divergence is rather subtle. Let us move slowly in our elucidation.

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If the soul is admitted to be real and immortal in nature, it must also be eternal in time, beginningless in the past even as endless in the future. But even if the individual reality is assumed to be eternal, there remain two separate possibilities. It may be either a changeless self unaffected by life and its turns, or an eternal spiritual Person manifesting a stream of changing personality.

If it is such a person, it can only manifest this stream of personality in a world of birth and death by the succession of successive bodies; that is to say, by constant or by repeated rebirths into the forms of Nature.

Readers must have noted that we have advisedly employed the expression "constant" or "repeated" rebirths. But why mention these alternative procedures?

The reason is that a particular theory may or may not accept a second basic postulate, the postulate of the existence of many other supraphysical worlds of manifestation apart from our well-known physical plane of existence.

If a theory does not accept the existence of any supraphysical realm of manifestation, the terrestrial life and body being the sole fields of activity for the persistent unevolving soul, it has to adopt an idea similar to that of "Pythagorean transmigration". In the Pythagorean transmigration, as we know, rebirth is confined to a constant succession or direct transmigrations of the soul from one body to another; death is supposed to be immediately followed by a new birth without any possibility of an interval. The passage of the soul is thus a circumstance in the uninterrupted series of a material procedure. The soul has no freedom from Matter; it is perpetually bound to its physical instrument, the material body, and dependent on it for the continuity of its manifested existence.

But there is an alternative theory which seeks to avoid this lacuna of the hypothesis of direct and immediate Pythagorean transmigration of the soul. It accepts the existence of many supraphysical worlds of manifestation and the possibility of the human soul moving to these worlds after the dissolution of the physical body. Thus the necessity of constant immediate rebirth is avoided and the soul's capacity for passage to other worlds followed by a subsequent return to terrestrial birth is admitted. But even this modified

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theory does not automatically necessitate for the soul an unending series of repeated rebirths upon earth. For, it may be supposed that the human personality, once capable of attaining to other planes beyond the physical, may not care to return from those supraphysical higher planes but pursue its existence there. In this way it would have finished with its terrestrial life-evolution.

We now come to the theory advanced by the older Adwaitic Vedantism based on the teachings of the Upanishads. This theory admits an actual and temporal becoming of the Eternal and therefore a real universe. The individual too assumes a sufficient reality in this theory, for each individual is in himself the Eternal who supports through him the experiences of life in manifestation.

The continued turning of this wheel of manifestation is due to two factors: the "desire" (tanhā, tṛṣṇā) of the individual for existence and the mind's "ignorance" (avidyā) of the eternal Self. It is this double obstacle which keeps the individual attached and bound to the preoccupations of temporal becoming. Once this "desire" and this "ignorance" cease, the Eternal in the individual withdraws from the mutations of individual personality and experience into the timeless, spaceless, impersonal and immutable Being.

Thus the reality of the individual soul is quite temporary in this theory; it has no enduring foundation, not even a perpetual recurrence in time. "Rebirth," as Sri Aurobindo has pointed out, "though a very important actuality in this account of the universe, is not an inevitable consequence of the relation between individuality and the purpose of the manifestation. For the manifestation seems to have no purpose except the will of the Eternal towards world-creation and it can end only by that will's withdrawal... The will to creation could then accomplish itself through a temporary assumption of individuality in each name and form, a single life of many impermanent individuals." (The Life Divine, Cent. Ed., p. 753)

Here ends our rapid survey of all possible theories of existence and their views regarding the problem of the rebirth of the individual. This shows that "rebirth is a complex affair", as Sri Aurobindo has emphasised in one of his letters. (Letters on Yoga, p. 448)

But this is only a preparatory study. Our real purpose in this

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chapter is to know what Sri Aurobindo's Yoga-Philosophy has to say concerning the problem of rebirth and its purpose and culmination upon earth. The following section will be devoted to this issue and the elaboration will be mostly in Sri Aurobindo's words, although at times abridged and adapted.

Rebirth in the Vision of the Integral Yoga

The universe is a self-creative process of a supreme Reality whose universal presence makes Spirit the substance of all things in existence. All things are there as this Spirit's powers and means and forms of manifestation.

Sachchidananda (an infinite and absolute Existence, an infinite and absolute Consciousness, an infinite and absolute Force and Will, an infinite and absolute Delight of being) is the supreme Reality secret behind all appearances of the universe. Its Supermind (divine Mind or Gnosis) is the real creative agent and has arranged the cosmic order not directly as such but indirectly through the three subordinate and limiting terms of Mind, Life and Matter.

The material universe is the lowest stage of a downward plunge of the manifestation leading to the involution of the manifested being of Sachchidananda into an apparent nescience of itself. But out of this starting nescience the evolution of the manifested being into a recovered self-awareness was from the very beginning inevitable and that is what is happening upon earth.

Now, it is through a conscious individual being that this recovery is possible; it is in him that the evolving consciousness becomes organised and capable of awaking to its own Reality. The immense importance of the individual being, which increases as he rises in the scale of evolution, is the most remarkable and significant fact of a universe which started without consciousness and without individuality in an undifferentiated Nescience. This importance can only be justified if the Self as individual is no less real than the Self as Cosmic Being or Spirit and if both are powers of the Eternal Transcendent. It is only so that can be explained the necessity for the growth of the individual and his discovery of

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himself as a condition for the discovery of the Cosmic Self and Consciousness and of the supreme Reality. Thus the world is real, the individual is real, and the manifestation is real and not illusory without any purpose behind it. There is a great purpose and that purpose is to usher in the full manifestation of the Transcendent Divine in time and space.

And if we adopt this hypothesis, that leads to two important inferences: (i) the reality of the persistent individual; and (ii) the necessity of the rebirth of some kind of the individual for the unfolding of the intended cosmic purpose.

The next conclusion that follows is that human birth of the individual is a term at which the soul must arrive in a long succession of rebirths: it must have had for its previous and preparatory terms in this succession the lower forms of life upon earth; it has passed through the whole chain that life has strung in the physical universe on the basis of the body, the physical principle.

Now the question arises: Once the human birth is attained by the individual soul, does the necessity of rebirth still continue and, if so, how and by what series? But even before that we have to settle a further question: Why a succession of many human births and not one alone? The answer to this second question is simple: For the same reason that has made the human birth itself a culminating point of the past succession, the previous upward series. It is because of the inexorable necessity of the always ascending spiritual evolution:

All life is fixed in an ascending scale

And adamantine is the evolving Law;

In the beginning is prepared the close.

(Savitri, Cent. Ed., pp. 342-43)

Thus the soul has not surely finished what it had to do, by merely developing into humanity; it has still to develop that humanity into its own higher possibilities. We may reasonably doubt whether even a Plato or a Shankara makes the crown of human birth and therefore signifies the end of the outflowering of the Spirit in man. At any rate the present highest point at least must be reached

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by every individual soul before we can write finis on the recurrence of human births for the individual.

But there is something still beyond. For, after the maximum possible human development, man is to move from the ignorance and the little life which he is at present in his mind and body to the Knowledge and the large spiritual life. At least, the opening out of the spirit in him, the knowledge of his real self and the leading of a genuine spiritual life as distinguished from a religio-ethical life, must be attained before he can go definitively and for ever elsewhere.

But even that is not all. Still there is a beyond. For, as the imperfection of man is not the last word of Nature, his spiritual perfection too is not the last peak of the Spirit.

Mind, the present leading principle as man has developed, is not the highest principle. Also, Mind itself has other spiritual ranges as yet only imperfectly possessed by the developed types of the human individual. Therefore, a prolongation of the line of evolution and consequently of the ascending line of rebirth to embody them is inevitable.

And still there is a further beyond. For Supermind, as a power of consciousness, is concealed here in the terrestrial evolution. Therefore, the line of rebirth cannot stop even when the spiritual-mind planes have been possessed. It cannot cease in its ascent before the mental has been replaced by the supramental nature and an embodied supramental being becomes the leader of the terrestrial existence.

This then is the rational and philosophical foundation for the phenomenon of rebirth in earthly life, and this is supported by the spiritual Vision-Experience of the Integral Yoga.

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VIII

Some Knotty Problems of Rebirth

(In Questions and Answers)

The process of successive rebirths of an individual human soul in different physical bodies upon earth is not a simple affair. It is an issue bristling with many problems of understanding; man's rational mind becomes inquisitive to know more about many of the tricky factors involved in this mysterious phenomenon. We give below a representative list of questions which puzzles man's mind faced with the prospect of rebirths he may have to undergo in future. The questions have not been put here in any logical order; they have been mentioned pell-mell as they have been actually referred to the author by his students. Each question is followed by an answer or an explanation, short or long, depending on the complexity of the question but in all cases authoritatively based on the Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's writings. Because of the disordered sequence of the questions, there may at times be some overlapping of the answers: readers are requested to ignore this unavoidable flaw in the style of composition. To impart a touch of authenticity, all the answers in this chapter have been given in Mother's and Sri Aurobindo's words.

(Question 1): Do animals incarnate in a human body?

(Answer 1): Not the animal soul as such, for there is a great difference in the development. But a very tiny part of the consciousness may enter a human body. This happens when the particular animal possesses a great aspiration. The Mother cites the case of a cat she knew, which had aspiration to become a human being. When it left its body, it entered a human body: this cat leaped over many births, so to say, to enter into contact with a human body. (CWM, Vol. 17, p. 100) [Adapted]

"Except for very rare cases, animals are not individualised and when

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they die they return to the spirit of the species." (CWM, Vol. 15, p. 137)

(Q. 2): When does the next rebirth occur, how much time after death?

(A. 2): "...no rule holds good for all cases. Some people are reborn almost immediately.... Some people, however, take centuries and even thousands of years to be reincarnated. They wait for the necessary conditions to mature which will provide them with a suitable milieu." (CWM, Vol. 3, p. 145)

"Every fully conscious and developed psychic being is free to choose what its next life will be and when that life will take place." (CWM, Vol. 15, p. 136)

(Q. 3): When does the soul enter the new body at rebirth?

(A. 3): "If one is yogically conscious, he can actually prepare the body of his next birth. Before the body is born, he shapes and moulds it, so that it is he who is the true maker of it while the parents of the new child are only the adventitious, purely physical agents." (CWM, Vol. 3, p. 145)

(Q. 4): Do men retain their identities after the dissolution of their bodies?

(A. 4): "Well, it depends. The ordinary mass of men are so closely identified with their bodies that nothing of them survives when the physical disintegrates.... What [little] survives has not the clear impress of the exterior personality because the latter was content to remain a jumble of impulses and desires, a temporary organic unity constituted by the cohesion and coordination of bodily functions, and when these functions cease, their pseudo-unity also naturally comes to an end." (CWM, Vol. 3, pp. 145-46)

"The outer form only dissolves; unless that too is made conscious and is organised round the divine centre. But the true mental, the true vital and even the true subtle physical persist: it is that which keeps all the impressions received in earthly life and builds

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the chain of Karma." (CWM, Vol. 15, p. 134)

(Q. 5): Does the old personality survive in rebirth?

(A. 5): "The condition of your being after death depends very much on whether the vital has been converted here or not. If you are only a medley of unorganised impulses, then at death, when the consciousness withdraws into the background, the different personalities in you fall apart, rush in hither and thither to seek their own suitable environments. One part may enter into another person who has an affinity for it, another may even enter an animal, while that which has been alive to the divine Presence, may remain attached to the central psychic being. But if you are fully organised and converted into a single individual, bent on reaching the goal of evolution, then you will be conscious after death and preserve a continuity. (CWM, Vol. 3, pp. 144-45)

(Q. 6): What happens to the mental personality in rebirth?

(A. 6): "As long as the mind is... fluid, unorganised, with no cohesive life of its own and without personality, it cannot survive. What made up the mental being dissolves in the mental region when the body, the substance which made up the body, dissolves in the physical substance.

"But as soon as the mental being is formed, organised, individualised, and has become a personality,... it no longer depends on the body for its existence, and it therefore survives the body. The earth's mental atmosphere is filled with beings, mental personalities which lead an entirely independent existence, even after the disappearance of the body; they can reincarnate in a new body when the soul, that is to say, the true Self, reincarnates, thus carrying with it the memory of its previous lives." (CWM, Vol. 10, pp. 27-28)

(Q. 7): What is reborn? Our total external personality?

(A. 7): "... there is a common misconception about rebirth.

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People believe that it is they who are reincarnated, yet this is a palpable error, though it is true that parts of their being are amalgamated with others and so act through new bodies. Their whole being is not reborn, because of the simple fact that what they evidently mean by their 'self is not a real individualised entity but their exterior personality, the personality composed of the outward name and form.... what does remain constant is the psychic being which is not the outward personality at all, but something deep within, something which is not the exterior name and form." (CWM, Vol. 3, p. 145)

(Q. 8): Is it necessary to have knowledge of past lives?

(A. 8): "If it is necessary you will know it." (CWM, Vol. 15, p. 137)

"Knowledge of past lives is interesting for an understanding of one's nature and a mastery of one's imperfections. But to tell the truth, it is not of capital importance, and it is far more important to concentrate on the future, on the consciousness to be acquired and on the development of the nature, which is almost unlimited for those who know how to do it." (CWM, Vol. 16, p. 353)

(Q. 9): When one is reborn, is it always in a more advanced and in a more favourable state?

(A. 9): "[The] idea that if the body is changed the next one will necessarily be better, is also a mistake. It is only when one has profited fully and to the utmost by the opportunity for progress which life in a physical body represents, that one may hope to be reborn in a higher organism. All defection, on the contrary, naturally brings in a diminution of being." (CWM, Vol. 16, p. 164)

(Q. 10): Does the phenomenon of rebirth really exist? Is there any reality behind the idea?

(A. 10): "Those who have had the memory of past lives have declared the reality of rebirth.

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"There have been - and there still are - beings whose inner consciousness is sufficiently developed for them to know for certain that this consciousness has manifested in bodies other than their present one and that it will survive the disappearance of this body." (CWM, Vol. 16, p. 398)

(Q. 11): In our next life do we start from where we have left in our last life?

(A. 11): "... a new birth, a new life is not a taking up of the development exactly where it stopped in the last, it does not merely repeat and continue our past surface personality and formation of nature. There is an assimilation, a discarding and strengthening and rearrangement of the old characters and motives, a new ordering of the developments of the past and a selection for the purposes of the future without which the new start cannot be fruitful or carry forward the evolution. For each birth is a new start; it develops indeed from the past, but is not its mechanical continuation: rebirth is not a constant reiteration but a progression, it is the machinery of an evolutionary process." (Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Cent. Ed., p. 802)

(Q. 12): Is not the absence of any memory of our past lives a clear disproof of the phenomenon of rebirth?

(A. 12): Not at all: A very wrong and ignorant fallacy is involved in this type of conclusion.

"...if even in this life it is difficult to keep all the memories of our past, if they often fade into the background or fade out altogether, if no recollection remains of our infancy, and yet with all this hiatus of memory we can grow and be, if the mind is even capable [in some critical cases] of total loss of memory of past events and its own identity and yet it is the same being who is there and the lost memory can one day be recovered, it is evident that so radical a change as a transition to other worlds followed by new birth in a new body ought normally to obliterate altogether the surface or mental memory, and yet that would not annul the identity

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of the soul or the growth of the nature. This obliteration of the surface mental memory is all the more certain and quite inevitable if there is a new personality of the same being, and a new instrumentation which takes the place of the old, a new mind, a new life, a new body..., (Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, pp. 819-20)

(Q. 13): Is not the lack of memory of the events of the past life a serious handicap to the evolutionary growth of the being? Would not the retention of memories have helped the conscious development of the individual?

(A. 13): No, not at all. On the contrary, "if a constant development of being by a developing cosmic experience is the meaning and the building of a new personality in a new birth is the method, then any persistent or complete memory of the past life or lives might be a chain and a serious obstacle: it would be a force for prolonging the old temperament, character, preoccupations and a tremendous burden hampering the free development of the new personality and its formulation of new experience. A clear and detailed memory of past lives, hatreds, rancours, attachments, connections would be equally a stupendous inconvenience; for it would bind the reborn being to a useless repetition or a compulsory continuation of his surface past and stand heavily in the way of his bringing out new possibilities from the depths of the spirit.... The law that deprives us of the memory of past lives is a law of the cosmic wisdom and serves, not disserves, its evolutionary purpose." (Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, pp. 818-19)

(Q. 14): Are there really other worlds besides our physical universe?

(A. 14): Yes, there are. The physical universe is not the sole manifested world.

"It is a fact that mankind almost from the beginning of its existence... has believed in the existence of other worlds and in the possibility of communication between their powers and beings and the human race." (Ibid., p. 771)

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"... the experiences there [in the other worlds] are organised as they are in our own world, but on a different plan, with a different process and law of action and in a substance which belongs to a supraphysical Nature. This organisation includes, as on our earth, the existence of beings who have or take forms... (Ibid., p. 775)

"These worlds are not evolutionary but typal..." (Ibid., p. 784)

"[Thus,]... premier importance cannot be given to our own plane of material being..." (Ibid., p. 780)

"Their [of the other worlds] existence and influence are a fact of primary importance for the possibility of an evolution here. (Ibid., p. 785) [Adapted]

(Q. 15): Do all the souls go to the other worlds in the internatal period between death and the next rebirth ?

(A. 15): "The necessity for an interregnum between birth and birth and a passage to other worlds arises from a double cause: there is an attraction of the other planes for the mental and the vital being in man's composite nature due to their affinity with these levels, and there is the utility or even the need of an interval for assimilation of the completed life-experience, a working out of what has to be discarded, a preparation for the new embodiment and the new terrestrial experience." (The Life Divine, Cent. Ed., p. 794)

"But this need of a period of assimilation and this attraction of other worlds for kindred parts of our being may become effective only when the mental and vital individuality has been sufficiently developed in the half-animal physical man; until then they might not exist or might not be active: the life-experiences would be too simple and elementary to need assimilation and the natural being too crude to be capable of a complex assimilative process; the higher parts would not be sufficiently developed to lift themselves to higher planes of existence." (Ibid.)

In such cases there would be immediate rebirth for the individual. "For the soul personality, as it develops, must get sufficient power over its own nature-formation and a sufficient self-expressive mental and vital individuality to persist without the

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support of the material body, as well as to overcome any excessive detaining attachment to the physical plane and the physical life. (Ibid., p. 797)

If the conditions are not fulfilled, there would be immediate rebirth and no sojourn in the other worlds in the intematal period.

(Q. 16): Does the soul remember the experiences of life even after the death of the body?

(A. 16): "Recollections last only for a time, not till rebirth -otherwise the stamp would be so strong that remembrance of past births, even after taking a new body, would be the rule rather than the exception." (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 435)

(Q. 17): Do two departed souls retain the same relationship in successive rebirths?

(A. 17): "... possible, but not a law - as a rule the same relationship would not be constantly repeated - the same people often meet again and again on earth in different lives, but the relations are different. The purpose of rebirth would not be served if the same personality with the same relations and experiences are incessantly repeated." (Ibid.)

(Q. 18): What compels the soul to take birth in a body upon earth ?

(A. 18): "[It is the] psychic being that goes to the psychic plane to rest till it is called again to another life. There is, therefore, no need of a Force to compel it to take birth anew. It [the psychic being] is in its nature something that is put forth from the Divine to support the evolution and it must do so till the Divine's purpose in its evolution is accomplished." (Ibid., p. 439)

(Q. 19): What progresses from life to life?

(A. 19): "... within the individual, contained in each form, there

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is an organisation of consciousness which is closer to and more directly under the influence of the inner divine Presence,... [and] has a life independent of the physical form - this is what we generally call the 'soul' or the 'psychic being' - and since it is organised around the divine centre it partakes of the divine nature which is immortal, eternal. The outer body falls away, and this remains throughout every experience that it has in each life, and there is a progress from life to life, and it is the progress of the same individual." (CWM, Vol. 9, pp. 214-15)

(Q. 20): Does the soul, in its next rebirth, come back to the same place, in the same circumstances, or with the same relationship?

(A. 20): "No, it is not at all certain." (CWM, Vol. 17, p. 370) "The number of beings who consciously return to a place of

their choice is very small.

Those who have returned are mainly the beings who, before leaving their body, asked to return in a new one." (Ibid., pp. 370-71)

(Q. 21): After the dropping of his physical body, does a sadhaka come to the Mother?

(A. 21): "To say that it is your body which separates you from me is sheer stupidity.... To think that if you leave your body you will come closer to me is a big mistake; for the vital being remains what it is, whether the body be alive or dead, and if the vital being is, during one's life, incapable of feeling the nearness, the deep intimacy, how can one reasonably hope it will suddenly be able to do so just because it has left the body? It is ignorant childishness." (CWM, Vol. 16, pp. 163-64)

(Q. 22): Why does not rebirth immediately follow the death of the preceding body? Why is there an internatal interregnum, short or long?

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(A. 22): In the answer to Q. 11 above, we indicated that a new birth is a new start: there is an internatal reshuffling.

"Part of this rearrangement, the discarding especially of past strong vibrations of the personality, can only be effected by an exhaustion of the push of previous mental, vital, physical motives after death, and this internal liberation or lightening of impediments must be put through on the planes proper to the motives that are to be discarded or otherwise manipulated, those planes which are themselves of that nature; for it is only there that the soul can still continue the activities which have to be exhausted and rejected from the consciousness so that it can pass on to a new formation. It is probable also that the integrating positive preparation would be carried out and the character of the new life would be decided by the soul itself in a resort to its native habitat, a plane of psychic repose, where it would draw all back into itself and await its new stage in the evolution." (The Life Divine, p. 803)

"This would mean a passage of the soul progressively through subtle-physical, vital and mental worlds to the psychic dwelling-place from which it would return to its terrestrial pilgrimage." (Ibid., pp. 802-03)

"The terrestrial gathering up and development of the materials thus prepared, their working out in the earth-life would be the consequence of this internatal resort, and the new birth would be a field of the resultant activity, a new stadium or spiral curve in the individual evolution of the embodied Spirit." (Ibid., p. 803)

(Q. 23): What is the necessity of rebirth?

(A. 23): Not of any significance in the Adwaita Vedantism "but is an indispensable machinery for the working out of the spiritual evolution..." (The Life Divine,Cent. Ed., pp. 754-55)

(i)"...rebirth is an indispensable condition for any long duration and evolution of the individual being in the earth-existence." (The Life Divine, Cent. Ed., pp. 735-36)

(ii)"...[by it alone the ascent of the] individual soul-consciousness in the body... can... take place... within the ascending order..." (Ibid., p. 758)

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(iii) Necessity for a spiritual Person to manifest its stream of changing personality in the world of birth and death. (Ibid., p. 754) [Adapted]

(Q. 24): What is the place of personality in rebirth? Does it continue to be the same in successive lives?

(A. 24): "Personality is only a temporary mental, vital, physical formation which the being, the real Person, the psychic entity, puts forward on the surface, - it is not the self in its abiding reality. In each return to earth the Person, the Purusha, makes a new formation, builds a new personal quantum suitable for a new experience, for a new growth of its being. When it passes from its body, it keeps still the same vital and mental form for a time, but the forms or sheaths dissolve and what is kept is only the essential elements of the past quantum, of which some will but some may not be used in the next incarnation." (The Life Divine, Cent. Ed., pp.816-17)

(Q. 25): Does the soul progress continually from birth to birth; or can it suffer a retrograde movement?

(A. 25): "There may be what seems to be retrograde movements but these are only like zigzag movements, not a real falling back, but a return on something not worked out so as to go on better afterwards." (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 434)

(Q. 26): Does the soul follow the same line of sex in successive lives?

(A. 26): "Usually, a soul follows continuously the same line of sex. If there are shiftings of sex, it is, as a rule, a matter of parts of the personality which are not central." (Ibid., p. 440).

"As far as I know, the births follow usually one line or the other and do not alterrnate.... If there is a change of sex, it is only part of the being that associates itself with the change, not the central being." (Ibid., p. 447)

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"But the altervation of sex cannot be declared impossible. There may be some who do alternate." (Ibid.)

(Q. 27): Is there any sex in the psychic being?

(A. 27): "Not sex exactly, but what might be called the masculine and feminine principles." (Ibid., pp. 447-48)

(Q. 28): Can the psychic being take up more than one body at the same time?

(A. 28): "No, the psychic being cannot take up more than one body. There is only one psychic being for each human being, but the beings of the higher planes, e.g., the Gods of the overmind can manifest in more than one human body at a time by sending different emanations into different bodies." (Ibid., p. 442)

(Q. 29): When and where is determined the personality, etc. of the soul for the next birth?

(A. 29): "The psychic being at the time of death chooses what it will work out in the next birth and determines the character and the conditions of the new personality." (Ibid., p. 443)

"The psychic being's choice at the time of death does not work out the next formations of personality, it fixes it. When it enters the psychic world, it begins to assimilate the essence of its experiences and by that assimilation is formed the future psychic personality in accordance with the fixation already made." (Ibid., p. 444)

"It should be noted that the conditions of the future birth are determined fundamentally not during the stay in the psychic world but at the time of death - the psychic being then chooses what it should work out in the next terrestrial appearance and the conditions arrange themselves accordingly." (Ibid., p. 441)

"After leaving the body, the soul, after certain experiences in other worlds, throws off its mental and vital personalities and goes into rest to assimilate the essence of its past and prepare for a new life. It is this preparation that determines the circumstances of the

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new birth and guides it in its reconstitution of a new personality and the choice of its materials." (Ibid., p. 434)

(Q. 30): Earthly existence, as it is, being so imperfect and almost incorrigible in nature, is it not advisable that one should try to adopt some spiritual means to end the cycle of rebirths and escape elsewhere?

(A. 30): "One is bound to the necessity of reincarnation as much by one's affections, by one's feelings, as by one's desires. However, in the matter of reincarnation as in all things, each case has its own solution, and it is certain that a constant aspiration for liberation from rebirth, together with a sustained effort towards the elevation and sublimation of the consciousness, should have the result of severing the chain of earthly existences, although it does not for all that put an end to individual existence, which is prolonged in another world. But why think that this existence in another, more ethereal world, should be the 'following state' which, relative to man, would be what man is to the animal?... a deeper knowledge confirms this certitude that the following state too will be a physical one,... [a] physical... magnified, transfigured by the descent, the infusion of Light and Truth.... now the time has come for its concrete and tangible realisation. That is the very essence of Sri Aurobindo's teaching...." (CWM, Vol. 15, pp. 263-64)

So why should the sadhaka seek to terminate the cycle of rebirths upon earth and spiritually escape to some celestial world or even to merge himself in the repose of the Transcendent?

(Q. 31): Does the soul never come to an end of its pilgrimage? Must it always take a physical body?

(A. 31): "Not necessarily; but the soul needs to have achieved a before it has the power to choose whether to return to the physical life or to rest outside the manifestation." (CWM, Vol. 17, p. 78)

"Other seekings also there are and these too find their means of self-fulfilment; a withdrawal into the supreme peace or ecstasy, a withdrawal into the bliss of the Divine Presence are open to the

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soul in earth-existence: for the Infinite in its manifestation has many possibilities and is not confined by its formulations. But neither of these withdrawals can be the fundamental intention in the Becoming itself here; for then an evolutionary progression would not have been undertaken, - such a progression here can only have for its aim a self-fulfilment here: a progressive manifestation of this kind can only have for its soul of significance the revelation of Being in a perfect Becoming." (The Life Divine, p. 682)

(Q. 32): At which stage does the soul enter the new body when it is reborn?

(A. 32): "As regards the stage at which the soul returning for rebirth enters the new body no rule can be laid down, for the circumstances vary with the individual. Some psychic beings get into relation with the birth-environment and the parents from the time of conception and determine the preparation of the personality and future in the embryo, others join only at the time of delivery, others even later on in the life and in these cases it is some emanation of the psychic being which upholds the life." (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, pp. 440-41)

"... the psychic being coming down into the human consciousness and body ready for it; that descent might be at the time of birth or before or it may come down later and occupy the personality it has prepared for itself." (Ibid., p. 442)

(Q. 33): Is our old personality retained at rebirth?

(A. 33): "... common popular blunder about reincarnation. The popular idea is that Titus Balbus is reborn again as John Smith, a man with the same personality, character, attainments as he had in his former life with the sole difference that he wears coat and trousers instead of a toga and speaks in cockney English instead of popular Latin!

"That is not the case. What would be the earthly use of repeating the same personality or character a million times from the beginning of time till its end? The soul comes into birth for

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experience, for growth, for evolution till it can bring the Divine into Matter. It is the central being that incarnates, not the outer personality - the personality is simply a mould that it creates for its figures of experience in that one life. In another birth it will create for itself a different personality, different capacities, a different life and career.... the central being develops a new character, a new personality, grows, develops, passes through all kinds of terrestrial experience." (Letters on Yoga, p. 451)

"It is not the personality, the character that is of the first importance in rebirth - it is the psychic being who stands behind the evolution of the nature and evolves with it." (Ibid., p. 452)

"The psychic when it departs from the body, shedding even the mental and vital on its way to its resting place, carries with it the heart of its experiences, - not the physical events, not the vital movements, not the mental buildings, not the capacities or characters, but something essential that is gathered from them, what might be called the divine element for the sake of which the rest existed. That is the permanent addition, it is that that helps in the growth towards the Divine." (Ibid.)

(Q. 34): Have we passed through many forms before being born as human beings?

(A. 34): "If we go a little way within ourselves, we shall discover that there is in each of us a consciousness that has been living throughout the ages and manifesting in a multitude of forms." (CWM, Vol. 15, p. 134)

"What we see of Nature and of human nature justifies this view of a birth of the individual soul from form to form until it reaches the human level of manifested consciousness which is its instrument for rising to yet higher levels. We see that Nature develops from stage to stage and in each stage takes up its past and transforms it into stuff of its new development. We see too that human nature is of the same make; all the earth-past is there in it. It has an element of matter taken up by life, an element of life taken up by mind, an element of mind which is being taken up by spirit: the animal is still present in its humanity; the very nature of the human

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being presupposes a material and a vital stage which prepared his emergence into mind and an animal past which moulded a first element of his complex humanity....

"We arrive then necessarily at this conclusion that human birth is a term at which the soul must arrive in a long succession of rebirths and that it has had for its previous and preparatory terms in the succession the lower forms of life upon earth; it has passed through the whole chain that life has strung in the physical universe on the basis of the body, the physical principle." (The Life Divine, p. 761)

"... certainly, this inner divine spark has passed through successive forms in order to become more and more conscious of itself... . before becoming a psychic being as it is found in the human form..." (CWM, Vol. 9, p. 215)

(Q. 35): Can the soul, having once arrived at humanity, go back to the animal life and body, which will be a retrogression?

(A. 35): "It seems impossible that it should so go back with any entirety, and for this reason that the transit from animal to human life means a decisive conversion of consciousness,... It is surely impossible that a conversion so decisive made by Nature should be reversed by the soul..." (The Life Divine, p. 762)

"It could only be possible for human souls,... in whom the conversion was not decisive... to ensure the safety of this assumption [of a human body]... at most there might be, supposing certain animal propensities to be vehement enough to demand a separate satisfaction quite of their own kind, a sort of partial rebirth, a loose holding of an animal form by a human soul, with an immediate subsequent reversion to its normal progression." (Ibid.)

"But the soul, the psychic being, once having reached the human consciousness cannot go back to the inferior animal consciousness any more than it can go back into a tree or an ephemeral insect. What is true is that some part of the vital energy or the formed instrumental consciousness or nature can and very frequently does so, if it is strongly attached to anything in the earth life.

"It is when the vital gets broken up, some strong movements

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of it, desires, greeds, may precipitate themselves into animal forms,... The animals represent the vital consciousness with mind involved in the vital, so that it is naturally there that such things would gravitate for satisfaction. (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, pp. 445-46)

"...these formations [vital fragments of a dead person]... are things that do not leave the earth and... simply attach themselves to some human rebirth... which has some affinity and therefore does not object to or resist their inclusion." (Ibid., p. 446)

"The soul does not go back to the animal condition; but a part of the vital personality may disjoin itself and join an animal birth to work out its animal propensities there." (Ibid., p. 434)

"It is not the soul (the psychic being) that takes a lesser form, it is some part of the manifested being, usually some part of the vital that does it, owing to some desire, affinity, need of particular experience. This happens fairly often to the ordinary man." (Ibid., pp. 434-35)

(Q. 36): In the act of rebirth, what exactly is reborn: the Spirit, the psychic being or the frontal natural personality? Can this confusion be cleared?

(A. 36): "It is necessary to understand clearly the difference between the evolving soul (psychic being) and the pure Atman, self or spirit. The pure self is unborn, does not pass through death or birth, is independent of birth or body, mind or life or this manifested Nature. It is not bound by these things, not limited, not affected, even though it assumes and supports them. The soul, on the contrary, is something that comes down into birth and passes through death - although it does not itself die, for it is immortal -from one state to another, from the earth plane to other planes and back again to the earth-existence. It goes on with this progression from life to life through an evolution which leads it up to the human state and evolves through it all a being of itself which we call the psychic being that supports the evolution and develops a physical, a vital, a mental human consciousness as its instruments of world-experience and of a disguised, imperfect, but growing self-

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expression. All this it does from behind a veil..." (Letters on Yoga, p. 438)

"But a time comes when it is able to prepare to come out from behind the veil, to take command and turn all the instrumental nature towards a divine fulfilment. This is the beginning of the true spiritual life." (Ibid.)

"The soul is able now to make itself ready for a higher evolution of manifested consciousness than the mental human - it can pass from the mental to the spiritual and through degrees of the spiritual to the supramental state." (Ibid., pp. 438-39)

"Till then there is no reason why it should cease from birth, it cannot in fact do so. If having reached the spiritual state, it wishes to pass out of the terrestrial manifestation, it may indeed to do so - but there is also possible a higher manifestation, in the Knowledge and not in the Ignorance." (Ibid., p. 439)

"...the outward instrumental nature", the formed instrumental consciousness, and the outer personality have "been prepared for it and by it... for the present life." (Ibid., p. 439) Now, there are two possibilities:

"If he is originally an evolutionary being,... he must proceed by the evolutionary path to either the negative withdrawal through Nirvana or some positive divine fulfilment in the increasing manifestation of Sachchidananda." (Ibid., p. 442)

(Q. 37): Has Karma anything to do with the soul's terrestrial existence?

(A. 37): "Karma is only a machinery, it is not the fundamental cause of terrestrial existence - it cannot be, for when the soul first entered this existence, it had no Karma." (Letters on Yoga, p. 439)

(Q. 38): Sometimes people claim to have memory of their past lives. Is there any truth about such claims? Can one really remember one's past lives?

(A. 38): "...if anything is certain, it is that the ...[animal] has no contact whatever with the psychic consciousness and so transmits

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not one jot of his experiences to it. The impressions of his exterior [animal]-nature vanish with the crumbling of his animal body: to pretend to a knowledge of them is to betray the grossest ignorance of the actual facts of the problem under consideration." (CWM, Vol. 3, p. 148)

"Even with regard to human lives, it is only when the psychic has come to the fore that it carries and preserves definite memories, but certainly not of all the details of life unless it is constantly in front and one with the exterior being." (Ibid., pp. 148-49)

"For, as a rule, the physical mind and the physical vital dissolve with the death of the organism: they disintegrate and return to the universal Nature and nothing remains of their experiences." (Ibid., p. 149)

"Not until they [the physical mind and the physical vital] have become united with the psychic, so that there are not two halves but a single consciousness, the whole nature unified round the central Divine Will.... not until this happens can one receive the knowledge belonging to that consciousness and become aware of the entire series of forms and lives which were upheld by it as its own successive means of gradual self-expression." (Ibid.)

"Before this is done, it is meaningless to speak of one's past births and their various incidents." (Ibid.)

"This precious oneself is just the present impermanent exterior nature which has absolutely nothing to do with the several other formations behind which, as behind the present one, the true being stands." (Ibid.)

About remembering former lives:

"But this is a dangerous subject, because the human mind is too fond of romance. As soon as it comes to know something of this truth of rebirth, it wants to build up beautiful stories around it.... All this has nothing to do with spiritual life. The true remembrance of past births... cannot be got by that way of imaginative fancies.... here there is much chance of invention, distortion and or false building." (CWM, Vol. 3, pp. 40-41)

"To reach the truth of these things, your experiencing consciousness

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must be pure and limpid, free from any mental interference or any vital interference, liberated from your personal notions and feelings and from your mind's habit of interpreting or explaining in its own way." (Ibid., p. 41)

"... a certain state of inner organisation is necessary for this [the] psychic being to be able to have memories in the way the mental being has them..." (CWM, Vol.9 , p. 216)

"...neither the mental nor the vital being can remember past lives..." because it is not they which are bom again." (CWM, Vol. 15, p. 135)

"Only when one is consciously identified with one's divine origin, can one in truth speak of a memory of past lives. Sri Aurobindo speaks of the progressive manifestation of the Spirit in the forms in which it dwells. When one reaches the summit of this manifestation, one has a vision that plunges down upon the way traversed and one remembers." (Ibid., p. 361)

"But this memory is not a thing of the mental kind... What remains is the memory of those instants when the psychic being emerged from the depths of your being and revealed itself to you - that is to say, the memory of those instants when you were wholly conscious. That growth of consciousness is progressively effectuated in the course of evolution, and the memory of past lives is generally limited to the critical moments of evolution, to the decisive turns that marked the progress of your consciousness.... it is not the memory of your civic status that remains. On the contrary, you lose all consciousness of these petty external things, accessories and perishables, so that you may be wholly in the flare of the soul revelation or of the divine contact." (Ibid., pp. 361-62)

"And this will explain to you why the so-called memories of past animal lives are the most fantastic: the divine spark in them is buried much too deep down to be able to come up consciously to the surface and be associated with the outer life. One must become a wholly conscious being, conscious in all its parts, totally united with one's divine origin before one can truly say that one remembers his past lives." (Ibid., p. 364)

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Nature of psychic memory:

"The psychic decants - that is exactly what happens. The psychic does not retain things in their totality - it decants, it gradually decants the vibrations. The psychic memory is a decanted memory of events. For example, in past lives there have been moments when, for some reason or other, the psychic was present and participated; in that case it retains the memory of the circumstance. But the memory it retains is that of the psychic life of that moment; so even if it retains the memory of the image, it is a simplified image such as it is translated in the psychic consciousness and according to the psychic vibration of all the people present." (CWM, Vol. 16, p. 350)

"It is through contact with the psychic that one gets fragmentary memories of past lives - the memory of events in which the psychic took part. This happens spontaneously when these same elements of the psychic become active again. Any deliberate mental effort is liable to produce misleading imaginations." (CWM, Vol. 17, p. 371)

"The departed soul retains the memory of its past experiences only in their essence, not in their form of detail. It is only if the soul brings back some past personality or personalities as part of its present manifestation that it is likely to remember the details of the past life. Otherwise, it is only by Yogadrishti that the memory comes." (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 434)

(Q. 39): What is the main purpose behind the assumption of new bodies at successive rebirths? Is it for enjoying or suffering rewards and punishments for one's past good deeds and misdeeds?

(A. 39): No, not at all. That may be the popular idea, but there is great difference between the popular conception of after-life interval and rebirth and the true truth of things.

"... both rebirth and the after-life [have] a different significance from the colour put on them by the long-current belief about reincarnation and the after-death sojourn in worlds beyond us." (The Life Divine, Cent. Ed., p. 804)

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Popular idea about reincarnation:

"Reincarnation is commonly supposed to have two aspects, metaphysical and moral, an aspect of spiritual necessity, an aspect of cosmic justice and ethical discipline. The soul... is on earth as a result of desire and ignorance; it has to remain on earth or return to it always so long as it has not wearied of desire and awakened to the fact of its ignorance and to the true knowledge.... It does not, however, remain always on earth, but alternates between earth and other worlds, celestial and infernal, where it exhausts its accumulated store of merit or demerit due to the enactment of sin or virtue and then returns to the earth and to some kind of terrestrial body.... The nature of this new incarnation and its fortunes are determined automatically by the soul's past actions, Karma..." (The Life Divine, Cent. Ed., p. 804)

"[Thus,] there is a double punishment and a double reward for sin and virtue; for the sinner is first tortured in hell and afterwards afflicted for the same sins in another life here and the righteous or the puritan is rewarded with celestial joys and afterwards again pampered for the same virtues and good deeds in a new terrestrial existence." (Ibid., p. 805)

True truth: Vision of the Integral Yoga:

"... a law or chain of Karma is only an outward machinery and cannot be elevated... as the sole and absolute determinant of the life-workings of the cosmos..." (Ibid., pp. 807-08)

"... the Spirit within is [not] an automaton in the hands of Karma, a slave in this life of its past actions... If a certain amount of results of past Karma is formulated in the present life, it must be with the consent of the psychic being which presides over the new formation of its earth-experience and assents not merely to an outward compulsory process, but to a secret Will and Guidance. That secret Will is not mechanical, but spiritual... Self-expression and experience are what the soul seeks by its birth into the body; whatever is necessary for the self-expression and experience of this life, whether it intervenes as an automatic outcome of past lives or

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as a free selection of results and a continuity or as a new development,... that will be formulated..." (Ibid., pp. 808-09)

"...Karma - cannot be accepted as the sole determinant of circumstances and the whole machinery of rebirth and of our future evolution." (Ibid., p. 809)

Real purpose of Rebirth: Not for Rewarding and Punishing:

"Cosmic existence is not a vast administrative system of universal justice with a cosmic Law of recompense and retribution as its machinery... It is [the]... [field of] a self-developing movement of consciousness, a movement therefore of Spirit working out its own being in the motion of Energy of Nature. In this motion takes place the cycle of rebirth, and in that cycle the soul, the psychic being prepares for itself, - or the Divine Wisdom or the Cosmic Consciousness-Force prepares for it and through its action, - whatever is needed for the next step in its evolution, the next formation of personality... for each new birth, for each new step of the Spirit backward or forward or else still in a circle, but always a step in the growth of the being towards its destined self-unfolding in Nature." (Ibid., pp. 815-16)

"... the idea of rebirth and the circumstances of the new life as a reward or punishment of puṇya and pāpa [sin or virtue] is a crude human idea of 'justice' which is quite unphilosophical and unspiritual and distorts the true intention of life. Life here is an evolution and the soul grows by experience, working out by it this or that in the nature, and if there is suffering, it is for the purpose of that working out, not as a judgment inflicted by God or Cosmic Law on the errors or stumblings which are inevitable in the Ignorance." (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 441)

"If indeed rebirth were goverened by a system of rewards and punishments, if life's whole intention were to teach the embodied spirit to be good and moral,... then there is evidently a great stupidity and injustice in denying to the mind in its new incarnation all memory of its past births and actions. For it deprives the reborn being of all chance to realise why he is rewarded or punished or to get any advantage from the lesson of the profitableness of virtue

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and the unprofitableness of sin vouchsafed to him or inflicted on him." (The Life Divine Cent. Ed., p. 818)

"The object of birth being growth by experience, whatever reactions come to past deeds must be for the being to learn and grow, not as lollipops for the good boys of the class (in the past) and canings for the bad ones." (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, p. 445)

(Q. 40): Is the attainment of a human birth the last possible term in the progression of the soul upon earth? Does the process of terrestrial rebirth stop there? Is there any culminating point in the phenomenon of rebirth?

(A. 40): In ancient theories, even in Indian theories with their idea of Karma, "there was no suggestion of a progressive evolution from type to higher type, still less of birth into a kind of being [gnostic being,] that has never yet existed but has still to evolve in the future.

"If evolution there is, then [according to those theories,] man is the last stage, because through him there can be the rejection of terrestrial or embodied life and an escape into some heaven or Nirvana. That was the end envisaged by the ancient theories and, since this is fundamentally and unchangeably a world of Ignorance... that escape is likely to be the true end of the cycle." (Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Cent. Ed., p. 833)

That is the ancient view, but our way of looking at things is different. We affirm that in the Vision of the Integral Yoga the consummation of a triple immortality is the crown of rebirth. Let us explain.

"... normally, when we insist on the soul's undying existence [the immortality of the soul], what is meant is the survival after death of a definite unchanging personality which was and will always remain the same throughout eternity. It is the very imperfect superficial 'I' of the moment, evidently regarded by Nature as a temporary form and not worth preservation....

"It is [the] secret Spirit or divinity of Self in us which is imperishable, because it is unborn and eternal.

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"The psychic entity within, its representative, the spiritual individual in us, is the Person that we are; but the 'I' of this moment, the 'I' of this life, is only a formation, a temporary personality of this inner Person... It is the inner Person that survives death, even as it pre-exists before birth; for this constant survival is a rendering of the eternity of our timeless Spirit into the terms of Time.

"What our normal demand of survival asks for is a similar survival for our mind, our life, even our body....

"This consummation of a triple immortality, - immortality of the nature completing the essential immortality of the Spirit and the psychic survival of death, - might be the crown of rebirth and a momentous indication of the conquest of the material Inconscience and Ignorance even in the very foundation of the reign of Matter." (The Life Divine, pp. 821-23)

This, the triple immortality, would be evidently an immense victory of soul and mind and life over the basic limitations of material Nature. But is the conquest of physical death at all possible ever in the future upon earth? For, as Sri Aurobindo has warned us:

"Even if Science, - physical Science or occult Science, - were to discover the necessary conditions or means for an indefinite survival of the body, still, if the body could not adapt itself so as to become a fit instrument of expression for the inner growth, the soul would find some way to abandon it and pass on to a new incarnation. The material or physical causes of death are not its sole or its true cause; its true inmost reason is the spiritual necessity for the evolution of a new being." (The Life Divine, p. 822, fn.)

In the present book we have sought to throw some light on the basic mysteries of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth. But the greatest mystery of all is: Why is there death at all? And, is it at all possible for man to score a victory over physical death? We should have spoken about these mysteries too. But we have refrained from doing so for a valid reason.

The author has already penned and published a book bearing

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the title The Destiny of the Body* whose entire Part Five is devoted to the discussion of the problem of "The Physical Conquest of Death". The interested readers are requested to refer to this Part of the aforesaid book. The fifteen chapters of this Part are respectively entitled:

Here ends our book on the quadruple mystery of Death, Fate, Karma and Rebirth. The author will feel immensely gratified if the detailed discussion in this book entirely based on the yogic revelations of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother bring some clarity and consolation to the mind and heart of at least a few amongst our bereaved and/or inquisitive readers.

For after all, the ultimate goal before men is:

...the sons of Death have to know themselves as the children of Immortality. (Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, p. 685)

Abolishing death and time my nature lives

In the deep heart of immortality.

(Sri Aurobindo, More Poems, p. 72)

* Jugal Kishore Mukherjee. The Destiny of the Body. (Publishers: Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education, Pondicherry-605 002).

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