Death³

I have two rooms: a living room and a bedroom. In my living room I work and talk to people. Here people have to see me living and I have to show them that I am living. I call this room Life. In the other room, where I sleep, I need not work or talk to anybody, for there I go to rest, either for a long or a short period of time. Life, in the ordinary sense of the term, need not be displayed there. So I call that room Death. Needless to say, that room too is mine.

You are afraid of death because you feel that death is not yours, whereas life is. You think that life is home, certainty, whereas death is elsewhere, abroad, uncertainty. This is not true. Both life and death are in you.

In our inner or spiritual life, we call those souls "dead" who are not aspiring or making any progress. Now what is required of the one who wants to aspire and make progress? Consciousness. One has to be conscious, fully conscious, of the mind, the vital and the physical and turn them inward in order to feel and see and grow in the ever-energising and ever-transforming Delight of the Soul.

Death is inevitable because our present body is imperfect. It refuses to grow divinely and unendingly. It does not open to the Life Eternal. But we shall not suffer from this limitation through Eternity. The body will be more conscious, the body itself will aspire to bring down more and more Light, Bliss, Peace and Power into its inner and outer existence and eventually it will grow into perfection. At that time, death can never be inevitable. In fact, we shall not even see the face of death.

At present the body dies. The soul goes into rest. The soul is always wise. It does not forget to carry with it the essence of the experiences that it acquired while it was in the land of the living. The soul silently and steadily returns to its own region. While taking its rest, it assimilates the essence of its past. When the assimilation is over, it starts to prepare itself for a new journey. When the preparation is over, it begins to determine the new birth, the new environment, the new circumstances, the new personality and the new mission. When this set of decisions has been made, the soul goes to the Supreme for an interview. There, with the Divine Approval of the Supreme, the soul descends into the physical world.

We have been thinking of death. Let us now think of birth, for birth and death are inseparable. Birth precedes death; death succeeds birth. What we need to connect both birth and death is Life. Strangely enough, this Life existed before our birth, it exists between our birth and death and will exist after death, stretching its far-flung arms into Eternity, Infinity and Immortality.

An advanced seeker sees and feels that at every moment he is having a new birth and a new death. And his soul is moving from one momentary experience to another. When the body, the vital and the mind live in the soul and experience, nay, become the ever-lasting experience of the Supreme, then alone God's Eternal Life will permeate our human existence. Divinity will grow in the aspiring soil of humanity. Humanity will discover its Divinity. Divinity will discover the truth that humanity transformed is the common goal of both man and God.

From:Sri Chinmoy,AUM — Vol. 3, No. 9,10, Apr. — 27 May 1968, Aum Centre Press -- Santurce, P.R., 1968
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/aum_26