Death and the soul

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 and all uncertainty. But 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. 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, see and grow into 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 always suffer from this limitation. The body will become 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 will not be inevitable. In fact, we shall not even see the face of death.

At present the body dies, and the soul takes rest. But the soul does not forget to carry with it the essence of the experiences that it acquired while it was in the land of the living. 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. Then it begins to choose its new birth, new environment, new circumstances, new personality and new mission. Afterwards, the soul goes to the Supreme for an interview and, with the divine approval of the Supreme, descends into the physical world.

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 as 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 everlasting experience of the Supreme, then alone will God’s Eternal Life permeate our human existence.