Question: In your talk about death, you mentioned something that I would like you to elaborate on a little more. I understand that you asked yourself a question. You said, "Why does the physical body die?" And then, in answering that question, you mentioned that the time would come when the physical body would last indefinitely. Will you please explain that a little further?

Sri Chinmoy: Our span of life on earth is short. In India, it is forty or fifty years. Here in the West, it is seventy or eighty. In this span of seventy or eighty years, we do not have time to fulfil even our ordinary desires, let alone our aspirations. The physical body has to aspire for the spiritual life and it cannot do it even for a week steadily. Today I am aspiring and praying with the physical body; tomorrow I become a victim of inertia. I don’t get up in the morning to meditate because the body does not want to. The body disappoints me and becomes a stumbling block. It does not aspire continuously, not to speak of aspiring divinely. As soon as the body starts praying or meditating, immediately it thinks of the office, the children, the wife, the house. I mean, of course, that the physical mind thinks of all this. But a day will come when the body will try unceasingly to bring down higher and higher Truth, Light and Peace from above. This is what an aspirant will do, not an ordinary man. This Light, Peace and Power will permeate even the physical body and the physical consciousness. When our physical bodies are surcharged with the higher Light, Peace and Power, there will be an abiding spiritual truth even in the most physical movements. At every moment, there will be a continuous flow of Light and Joy towards the Absolute, towards the Ultimate; a flow without interruptions. Right now the body does not have even an iota of Light or Bliss. But through conscious aspiration the body will have everlasting light. When the body has that everlasting Light, naturally it will be the Light that gives Life. When divine Light permeates the entire body, we will be able to stay on earth indefinitely. At that time, we will have the opportunity to conquer death consciously.

Now we have to live and sometimes we wish we didn’t have to be here. But when the body is transformed, we will not feel a reluctant compulsion to live, but only that a divine opportunity has been given to us to go to the Highest. We shall also feel that this opportunity extends for a long period of time. This, you see, is the blessing that you get by invoking higher Bliss and Light. And once this Light enters into us, it gives us lasting Reality. This Reality is actually the breath of the Life Eternal, Perpetual Existence. Then the question of death does not arise because if you continue to aspire consciously and soulfully for two hundred years or so for the highest Light and highest Bliss, and also if it is done uninterruptedly, then the problem of death cannot exist. At present, we meditate for one day and then we take a holiday for ten days.