Question: What is Immortality?

Sri Chinmoy: The word itself explains its meaning: that which lasts. We know that Divinity exists. Again, there are many undivine things on earth which last for a long time. When we see a thing that lasts for a long time, we feel that that very thing is immortal. If somebody stays on earth for eighty, ninety or a hundred years, sometimes we cut jokes and we say that he is immortal. When we see a banyan tree which has lasted for hundreds of years, we say that it is immortal. But real immortality is consciousness.

When we speak of immortality, it is the immortality of consciousness that we are referring to. Consciousness does not die. Consciousness always has to be expanded. Right now we are living in an unconscious world, but a day will come when we will all be conscious, divinised and transformed. This consciousness which is already immortal will be enlarged when our human nature is transformed. Immortality means that which will last forever, and what lasts forever is our consciousness, our aspiring consciousness.