The Mother and Sri Aurobindo on death

What is death?

…the cells contained in the body, or composing the body, are held in form by a centralization of the consciousness in them, and as long as that power of concentration is there, the body cannot die. It’s only when the power of concentration disappears that the cells scatter. And then one dies. Then the body dies.

(Mother’s Agenda, 17.12.69)

Death is the phenomenon of decentralization and scattering of the cells making up the physical body.

Consciousness is, in its very nature, immortal, and in order to manifest in the physical world, it clothes itself in material forms that are durable to a greater or lesser degree.

(Mother’s Agenda, 18.5.68)

But people are so ignorant! They make such a fuss over death, as if it were the end – this word ‘death’ is so absurd! I see it as simply passing from one house into another or from one room to another; you take one simple step, you cross the threshold, and there you are on the other side – and then you come back….

But it’s simply that – you take a step, and you enter another room. And when you live in your soul there is a continuity, because the soul remembers, it keeps the whole memory; it remembers all occurrences, even outer occurrences, all the outer movements it has been associated with. So it’s a continuous, uninterrupted movement, here and there, from one room to another, from one house to another, from one life to another.

(Mother’s Agenda, 24.6.61)

But there is NO LONGER any of that sensation people have of a brutal clash between life and its opposite, death – death is not the opposite of life! At that moment I understood, and I never forgot: death is NOT the opposite of life, it is not the opposite of life. It’s a sort of change in the cells’ functioning or in their organization....

(Mother’s Agenda, 16.3.63)

I have reached the conclusion ... that there is really no such thing as death.

There is only an appearance, and an appearance based on a limited outlook. But there is no radical change in the vibration of consciousness.

(Mother’s Agenda, 7.3.67)

Last night or the night before, I spent at least two hours in a world – the subtle physical world – where the living mingle with the dead with no sense of difference, it makes absolutely no difference there.

(Mother’s Agenda, 12.10.62)

That’s what I said to T. (I don’t think she understood), I told her that there isn’t so much difference between what people call “life” and what they call “death”; the difference is very small, and grows still smaller when you go into the problem in depth and in all the details. People always make a clean cut between the two – it’s quite stupid: some living are already half dead, and many dead are VERY alive.

(Mother’s Agenda, 4.10.6)7

So we could correctly say that there are kinds of GRADATIONS in death. Gradations in life and gradations in death: some beings are alive to a greater or lesser degree, or if we want to put it negatively, some beings are dead to a greater or lesser degree. But for those who know, oh, for those who know that this material form can manifest a supramental light, well, those who don’t have the supramental light in them are already a little dead. That’s how it is. So there are gradations. What people have conventionally called “death” is just a purely external phenomenon, because it’s something they can’t deny – the body going to pieces.

(Mother’s Agenda, 14.6.67)

Why is there death?

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 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.

(Mother, Questions and Answers, 5 May 1929)

So, when the earth no longer needs to die in order to progress, there will be no more death. When the earth no longer needs to suffer in order to progress, there will be no more suffering. And when the earth no longer needs to hate in order to love, there will be no more hatred.

(silence)

It is the quickest and most effective method of pulling the creation out of its inertia and leading it on to its blossoming.

(Mother’s Agenda, 15.5.63)

Death is no longer necessary

…the whole of humanity believes firmly in death; it is, one might say, a general human suggestion based on a long unchanging experience. If this belief could be cast out first from the conscious mind, then from the vital nature and the subconscious physical layers, death would no longer be inevitable.

(Mother, Questions and Answers, 1929)

And when Matter is supple enough to be transformed under the action of the consciousness – a CONSTANT transformation – then this need to abandon here something that has become useless, or is in impossible conditions, will no longer exist. That is how it will be possible, for the requirements of the transformation, to have at will a continuity, at least, of existence for a form which was transitional.

But yesterday, the impression was that it [death] is now only an old habit, no longer a necessity. It’s only because ... First, because the body is still unconscious enough to (how should I put it?), not to “desire,” because that’s not the word, but to feel the need of complete rest, that is, inertia.

When that is abolished, there is no disorganization that cannot be mended, or at any rate (the field of accidents hasn’t been studied, but let’s say in the normal course of things) no wear and tear, no deterioration, no disharmony that cannot be mended by the action of the consciousness.

(Mother’s Agenda, 21.10.67)

And then, you see: as the process grows more and more perfect – “perfect” means integral, total, leaving nothing behind – it NECESSARILY, inevitably means victory over death. Not that this dissolution of the cells which death involves stops existing, but that it would exist only when necessary: not as an absolute law, but as ONE of the processes, when necessary.

(Mother’s Agenda, 30.12.67)

Each cell of our body will have to become conscious. It is the work I am doing here. It will allow the conquest of death. It’s another story; that will be future mankind, perhaps in centuries, perhaps sooner. It will depend on men, on peoples.

Auroville is the first step towards this goal.

(Mother’s Agenda, 28.2.68)

What happens after death?

The soul takes birth each time, and each time a mind, life and body are formed out of the materials of universal nature according to the soul’s past evolution and its need for the future.

When the body is dissolved, the vital goes into the vital plane and remains there for a time, but after a time the vital sheath disappears. The last to dissolve is the mental sheath. Finally the soul or psychic being retires into the psychic world to rest there till a new birth is close.

This is the general course for ordinarily developed human beings. There are variations according to the nature of the individual and his development. For example, if the mental is strongly developed, then the mental being can remain; so also can the vital, provided they are organized by and centred around the true psychic being; they share the immortality of the psychic.

The soul gathers the essential elements of its experiences in life and makes that its basis of growth in the evolution; when it returns to birth it takes up with its mental, vital, physical sheaths so much of its Karma as is useful to it in the new life for further experience.

(Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga, Vol. I)

Hell and heaven are often imaginary states of the soul or rather of the vital which it constructs about it after its passing. What is meant by hell is a painful passage through the vital or lingering there, as for instance, in many cases of suicide where one remains surrounded by the forces of suffering and turmoil created by this unnatural and violent exit. There are, of course, also worlds of mind and vital worlds which are penetrated with joyful or dark experiences. One may pass through these as the result of things formed in the nature which create the necessary affinities, but the idea of reward or retribution is a crude and vulgar conception which is a mere popular error.

(Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, Vol. I.)

These things are very interesting. They must form part of the work I have come on earth to do. Because even before encountering Theon, before knowing anything, I had experiences at night, certain types of activities looking after people who were leaving their bodies – and with a knowledge of the process; I didn’t know what I was doing nor did I seek to know, yet I knew exactly what had to be done and I did it. I was around twenty.

As soon as I came upon Theon’s teaching (even before meeting him personally), and read and understood all kinds of things which I hadn’t known before, I began to work quite systematically. Every night, at the same hour, I was working to construct – between the purely terrestrial atmosphere and the psychic atmosphere – a path of protection across the vital, so that people wouldn’t have to pass through it (for those who are conscious but without knowledge it’s a very difficult passage – infernal).

(Mother, June 24, 1961, in a conversation with a disciple)

Not long ago M.’s sister died (psychologically, she was in a terrible state – she had no faith).

Well, on that day, [May 17, 1959.] just when I came to know that she was passing away, I remember being upstairs in the bathroom communicating with Sri Aurobindo, having a sort of conversation with him (it happens very often), and I asked him, ‘What happens to such people when they die here at the Ashram?’ ‘Look,’ he replied, and I saw her passing away; and on her forehead, I saw Sri Aurobindo’s symbol in a SOLID golden light (not very luminous, but very concrete).

There it was. And with the presence of this sign the psychological state no longer mattered – nothing touched her. And she departed tranquilly, tranquilly. Then Sri Aurobindo told me, ‘All who have lived at the Ashram and who die there have automatically the same protection, whatever their inner state.’

(Mother’s Agenda, 24.6.61)

How should one treat someone who has died?

For there’s a consciousness of the form, a life of the form. There’s a consciousness, a consciousness in the form assumed by the cells. That takes SEVEN DAYS to come out. So sometimes the body makes abrupt movements when burned – people say it’s mechanical. It’s not mechanical, I know it’s not.

I know it. I know that this consciousness of the form exists since I have actually gone out of it. Once, long back, I was in a so-called cataleptic state, and after a while, while still in this state, the body began living again; that is, it was capable of speaking and even moving (it was Theon who gave me this training)….So I don’t like this habit of burning people very much.

(Mother’s Agenda, 28.5.60 )

The violence of the accident had brutally exteriorized him, but when it happened he must have been thinking of me with trust. He came and didn’t budge – he never knew what was happening to his body. He didn’t know he was dead! And if....

Then and there I said to myself, “This habit of cremating people is appallingly brutal!” (They put the fire in the mouth first.) He didn’t know he was dead and that’s how he learned it! ... From the reaction of the life of the form in the body.

Even when the body is in a thoroughly bad condition, it takes at least seven days for the life of the form to leave it. And for someone practicing yoga, this life is CONSCIOUS. So you burn people a few hours after the doctors have declared them dead, but the life of the form is every inch alive and, in those who have practiced yoga, conscious.

(Mother’s Agenda, 4.7.62)

Last time you said, ‘They are burned, or shut up in a box without air and light – fully conscious…’

And it is hideously true.

But what should be done then? Should people wait, or what?

I have looked at this a great deal but…socially, conventionally, it’s impossible – there’s nothing else to do. The living take their stand with the living, naturally. So the only thing I’ve seen is that, as always, there must be a grace associated with that state….

If at death you withdraw from physical circumstances, from ordinary physical consciousness, and unite with the great universal Force, or the divine Presence, then all these little things…It’s not that you are not conscious of them – you are very conscious: conscious of what others are doing, conscious of everything, but…it’s not important.

But for those who are attached to people and things when they die, it must be a hellish torment. Hellish.

But then, is it better to be buried or burned?

Had you asked me this question a week ago, I would unhesitatingly have said ‘buried’ – and advised people not to do it too quickly, to wait for external signs of decomposition.

Now, because of this, I can’t say any more. I just can’t say. I have the feeling I am learning a lot of things about this transition called death.

(Mother’s Agenda, 16.10.62)

The attitude of the living towards the dead is one of the most loathsome expressions of mankind’s selfish ignorance.

It’s either a complete I-couldn’t-care-less attitude, or else, “Ohh, anything to get rid of that!” I have some children here (they’re no longer children), who live here with their fathers and mothers (who aren’t very old), and some of those children told me “dreams” in which they saw their fathers or mothers dead and coming to them ... and they sent them back violently, saying, “You’re dead, you’ve got no right to come and bother us”! ...

You’re dead, you’ve got no right to come and bother us. There you are.

That’s ... few will be frank enough to say so, but it’s very widespread.

Many things must change before a little bit of truth can manifest – that’ all I can say.

(Mother’s Agenda, 10.8.63)

One can help the departed souls by one’s good will or by occult means, if one has the knowledge. The one thing that one should not do is to hold them back by sorrow for them or longings or by anything else that would pull them nearer to earth or delay their journey to their place of rest.

(Sri Aurobindo Letters on Yoga, volume 1)

Almost all extracts are from “Death Doesn’t Exist: The Mother on Death,” a compilation by PRISMA. Only for circulation within Auroville.