To Die Is not to Die

Lecture delivered by Ekkirala Krishnamacharya

Brothers and sisters!

Today’s subject ‘To Die Is not to Die’ is all engrossing.

We have to know the right way of understanding what we call death and making the right type of preparation not to die but to pass through death to a stage beyond. There is much literature about death in the world. Every nation has its own scripture. Every scripture has its own literature about death and life beyond death. And there is no one in this world who is not conditioned by this idea of death. There are people who are not conditioned by the idea of birth because at the time of birth no one knows that he is born. He is not grown enough to think that there is something like birth. But everyone who is grown up has an idea of death. Sometimes it works in a positive direction to produce a World Teacher like Gauthama, the Buddha. 

He had been kept in ignorance about death since childhood and after a certain age suddenly he could understand that there was something like death. That gave him such a shock that he began to search for the real path of man; he could bring enlightenment to humanity. 

But everyone cannot be a Buddha. Everyone has his own or her own idea of death. Often, they are neither true nor are they scientific. In many cases they are emotional and sentimental. In majority of the cases a fear of death exists at the bottom most layer of consciousness, without removing which one cannot experience happiness in its true sense. 

Those, who are experiencing happiness, are experiencing in their own way because they are all ‘death’ conditioned at the bottom of their consciousness.

Almost everyone says to himself as he is growing in age: 

• “before I die I should earn good fortune”, 
• “before I die I should have a big house”, 
• “before I die I should clear off all my debts”, 
• “before I die I should prepare everything good for my wife”, 
• “before I die I should perform the marriage of my children.” 

So, in many minds there is the idea ‘before I die, before I die’. Whether he utters it vocally or not, whether he feels it distinctly on the mental plane or not, by birth everyone is death conditioned. All the actions and activity tend towards a wall, believing that they should stop at a wall where there is a dead end. And until this wall is removed or a gate way is prepared in this wall, no one boasts of experiencing of happiness. Because the bottom most layer of consciousness is death conditioned, how can one be happy?

There is a little story in the scriptures about death. A son was observing his father doing a holy sacrifice. The father was distributing all his treasures among those who came to him because he took it as his sacred duty in the sacrifice.
The son was very young, about 12 years old and asked his father,
“Father, you are giving everything to others.”
He said, “Yes, this is my austerity, so says my sacrifice”.
The son asked, “Do you give away everything that belongs to you?”
The father said, “Ah, why?”
Then the son asked, “Do you also give me away to someone else?”
The father was in hesitation. For two minutes he hesitated and then answered, “Yes.”
And then the son asked, “To whom do you propose to give me?”
The father had no ready answer, no ready reply. He was thinking and it would take a few minutes for him to reply. In the meanwhile, the son asked his father thrice the same question.
Then the father got irritated and said, “I will give you to the Lord of Death.”
The son smiled and said, “When do you give me to Him?”
The father said, “Wait”.
The son said, “I cannot wait. I want to approach the Lord of Death and know how death occurs. What death is. And why it is there. I demand that you should immediately give me to the Lord of Death.”
Saying so, the son added, “I take it for granted that you have given me to death, I am going.” And straight he went to the Lord of Death and entered the city of death.

Of course, the story is symbolic, I will explain what it is. He entered the city of Death and enquired about the Lord of Death. In Sanskrit, the Lord of Death is ‘Yama’. The secret lies that the first step of Yoga is also the same fellow. I told you there are eight steps in Yoga, the first is Yama, which means ‘regulations of life activity’. 

The story means that death occurs to give us regulation. 

Then we can ask, “If death gives us regulation, when are we to live and regulate ourselves?” 

Then the answer is “Death follows birth and a better body is given next time. Whenever we spoil our constitution with our ill behaviour, there are disease, old age, decay and death. Death is there because it wants to give us again a tender, beautiful body. Just as after 5 or 6 years we throw the old car in the junk to purchase a new car, Death exists in nature to give a new opportunity with a better body again to practise regulation. 

So, the Lord of Death is what is called the process of regulation. The fellow directly went to the city of Death. Here, the word death means change. Can you understand any minute in your life that has no change? We believe that the blood and flesh and bones in our body are there continuously. We believe that they are ours. My wife believes that this is my hand. But we are happy with our hand because we are foolish not to understand that everything is changing every moment. If we remember that every second in our body, atoms are going out and new atoms are entering immediately. Understand that this is not our body. And the wife understands that there is nothing like her husband’s hand, because every moment things are going away and coming in. It is very difficult to understand the speed of the matter in our body. Unless there is that speed of change of matter, we have no possibility to live on this earth.

We are living here because matter is changing in the body. Every day when we eat and drink, all the matter is going out again, and every few seconds we are breathing air in but breathing air out also. We cannot claim that the air in the lungs is ours, but if we are asked to utter our name, we have to utter only with the same air and breathe. See the ridiculous part of it. We have to utter our name with the air which is not ours, which is not inside. It is coming in and going out but still we say ‘myself’. So, the idea of myself is only an idea and there is nothing in the material aspect of the body. So, this understanding is called the gateway of death and also the city of the Lord of Death. But it is kept in darkness because many of us are not prepared to remember it. 

Even though we understand it, we are inclined to forget about it and live in this world believing that the Kgs weight in our body is constant. For example, the earth is going around the Sun with tremendous speed and going around itself also with a great speed. We know it but we are inclined to believe that the earth is stable and we want to stand on this earth, stable. Without this idea we cannot lead our life on this earth because we are habituated to earth life and we are not yet habituated to the finer life, which is more true. Similarly, it is the same with this body also. We are habituated to believe that this body is constant and we are inclined to believe that this is our abode. So, we live in it. And we believe in its existence. Not only that, we do many things on the basis that we live in this body for a long time, we begin to build our house believing that we live for long time in that house. Unless we have this belief we cannot live and do things, yet in a layer of mind we know that this is not true.

There is an eternal existence in which all these changes are taking place. There is a background on which the worlds are coming and going. So, the boy went straight into that city and he enquired about the Lord of Death. And his officers told him that he was very busy for three days and the boy was asked to wait. That means that our existence is three fold – matter, force and mind, the boy was asked to understand the three layers of existence. So, he was asked to wait for three days, because the Lord of Death was very busy. When the Lord came, he said,”Boy, how do you do? Are you not afraid of me?”
The boy said, “Hallo” and smiled.
“What do you want?”
Then the boy asked him, “What is there in the room? The door is open, but nothing is seen, everything is dark.”
Then Yama said, “It is called ‘dark room’ or the ‘room of death’.”
The boy asked, “I came all the way here to know what is there in that room.”

And Yama said, “It is very dangerous, don’t question about it. All the people in this world are afraid of that darkness. You are a little boy, and there is much career for you still. Take care of your future. Therefore, don’t question about that darkness. You can question me about any branch of learning. You can question me about soul, about God, about creation, about sun and moon, about astronomy, astrology, any science, any arts. But don’t question about that darkness. That is called death, people enter it and no one knows what happens. I am taking care of this room, except myself no one knows what is there inside.”

Then the boy stood in adoration of Yama and said,

“For this same reason I came to you. There is no one in this world who knows what is there in that room, you are the only one who knows it. That is why I take you as my Master who can teach me what is there inside.”

Then Yama was in trouble, he said, “Till now nobody questioned about it. There are many fine things in life. You can question about them. For example, you ask me what is marriage, I will tell you. You ask me what is child birth, I will tell you. You ask me what is sex life, I will tell you. You ask me what is supper and dinner, I can explain you.”

Then he said, “Only for this purpose I came here. And I have already decided you are my Master, I hope Masters don’t disappoint disciples.”
And then Yama said, “You know that there are rulers and administrators in this world. I will send you back as a great ruler and administrator for hundred years. But, don’t question about it.”
Then the boy said, “What happens after hundred years?”
Then he said, “Death.”
Then the boy said, “That’s why I am questioning about it.”
Then Yama said, “I will give you thousand years.”
And the boy asked, “What happens after thousand years?”
Then Yama said, “I will give you ten thousand years.” Then he said, “What after that?”
Then Yama was sweating!
And the boy smiled,
“Therefore, you tell me what it is.”

Then Yama said, “You are the one disciple who deserves initiation into that dark room. It is not to discourage you that I talked all these things. It is only to find out whether you stop in the middle and go away or not, because people live in this world to know many things, to do many things, to discover many things, to achieve many things. Foolish fellows die in their attempts. So, they forget about their journey, they are attracted by many valuable things in this world. They are engrossed in their own plans which appear very, very valuable to them. Some of them are engrossed in their wives and children. Many of them are foolish enough to get engrossed in their ideals. They create their own ideals and they die; their minds die with their bodies; their ideals die with their mind. So, many people do not pursue the thing, they do not understand life from birth to death, they do not have the awareness of existence. The fellow who has a continuous awareness of his own existence is the only fellow who can know what is there in the dark room. I will take you into that room”. 

He made him cross the arc of that room. On the top of the door there was the picture of a skeleton, a skull and then the word ‘death’ and then a dagger was falling and rising to cut the neck of any fellow who puts his head there. 

Then, Yama said, “Put your head.” The boy put his head and the dagger stopped. “Look here the dagger stopped”, said Yama. “It stops for those who do not fear. It inevitably cuts the necks of those who do not want death. That is why it is cutting the necks of millions and millions of fellows who come to this earth. But with your neck it stopped there. That means you can enter. Come on, come inside.” 

Yama took him in. There was nothing in the room, only empty space. He took him into the room and asked the boy to look at the same gate from inside. There was the picture of a room where a maternity was being conducted and a lady having labour pains, a child being born and crying. People were taking smilingly the child into their hands. He said, “It is the same gate which is called birth from the other side. So, through this gate people cross but because they fear this gate, they become unconscious before they touch the gate, and then when they wake up, they wake up as children in the next birth. This is the gate which I am asked to look after and you are the first one who could know it.” And then he taught the boy many things, of course. 

Now, we are concerned only with this particular aspect. To know about this in the right way, I will give you a little example.

There was a big circus tent in Geneva, where circus was played every evening. Many lions, tigers, elephants and horses were there and many people came to see the circus. We also went to the circus and enjoyed the play. After six months we went to Paris. We saw the same circus in Paris. We went to see the circus. We saw the same animals, same persons and the same fellow issuing the tickets and the same fellow who was tearing the tickets and the same fellow with a big wart on his face showing us seats where to go and sit. How could the same fellow come to Paris? So, there is a group of people who tour from place to place. They have some animals with them, they have some servants with them, they have some material to erect the tent with them. 

So, when they complete the circus in Geneva when they move to another place, what is the procedure they follow? Do they take the whole tent from Geneva to Paris? They will pull everything from the earth, they will fold all the tents together, they make it convenient to make a journey and they shut the animals in the cages and they have their own way of doing things. And we could not see how they travelled from Geneva to Paris. We can see the performance in Geneva if we purchase a ticket, we can see the same performance in Paris by purchasing a ticket, but we can’t observe how they travel from Geneva to Paris, unless we begin to travel with them. 

Compare our life with circus tent with many fellows working inside, whom we call the Devas that is the Angels and the Arch Angels, doing their duties in the body. And after the circus is finished in this town, they take what is all necessary from this and they travel to another place. We cannot see how they travel because we care only to purchase a ticket and see the performance. We have not yet proposed to join the circus company. Unless we join as one of the members of the circus company, we cannot know how they move and travel to other places. When they go, do they take the sand and the earth and the clay from Geneva to Paris? No. because sand and earth are available in Paris also. 

After all there will be difference in sand and earth. So, the minerals of the body are not carried from birth to birth, the minerals are left there which we call the corpse. They are busy in the process of decomposition. We wrongly call it decomposition. But the minerals are being replaced to their original places. They are temporarily borrowed to serve the purpose of the soil of the circus and again in another place some minerals are selected and they are being attracted into the mother’s womb, and this body is being constructed. It is only a matter of colour difference from race to race and from nation to nation, just as there is colour difference between the soil of Geneva and the soil of Paris, but the same fellows are conducting the same circus. You will find the continuity of the circus. Similarly, you will find the continuity of life from birth to birth. There are things that are left away and there are things that are taken. And because we can see the things that are left away, we cannot call it a change, we cannot call it a shift from one place to another, we call it death. We understand it as a total end of things. This is one aspect of it.

On which plane of understanding do we exist? From one point of view, death is true as anything. See, how some people are totally and mentally and emotionally affected by death how they are cruelly separated by death from beloved ones. They have great shocks and violent reactions which will exist life long for some people. It is the truth. Everyone is going to die. It may be after ten years, after twenty years, after thirty years, but he feels the death of a fellow who dies earlier. See, if you observe the sheep that is being carried to butchery if there is something for it to eat, if there is fine grass, it pulls to that side to enjoy the taste of the grass. But within a few minutes it is going to be cut into pieces, yet it wants to eat grass and enjoy the taste. This nice way of deception is true with the earth life. Unless this self-deception is there, unless this grand illusion is there, life is not livable on this earth. But this illusion is only a place for us to get trained to know the higher truths.

Ignorance is a necessary platform to reach knowledge but it is not a place where we spend time eternally. The egg shell is not a permanent abode for the chick inside. It is a protection until the chick solidifies and takes a shape. Unless there is the egg shell the chicken would not have formed at all. But once formed it is the breakage of the shell that gives the chicken required expansion of wings. 

In the same way, the illusions of this earth life, the emotions, the complexes and the tensions of mind – all these are necessary to protect us to survive on this earth, to fight the life of competition until we begin to know the truth of life. But someday or the other, the shell is to be broken and the illusions of life are to be broken, truth is to be sought. And before that stage, after the stage of ignorance, there is a stage of transition which gives great restlessness, great pain, great suffering and all this suffering helps us to progress in our way. So, we are shunted forward in the next step to have a better understanding and better way of behaving and knowing the meaning of birth and death.

So, when we pass a span of life, we are expected to know the meaning of the span and emotional understanding of what we call death. To give us experience, death occurs many thousands of times to everyone of us; a change is expected to be properly understood by everyone of us. A similar phenomenon is given to us every day in the night to understand what death is. What we call sleep is in no way different from death. The only difference is, we wake up in the same body from sleep, we wake up in some other body from death. So, before what we call death, we have thousands of deaths taking place in the name of our sleep. Suppose, a fellow sleeps in his room and finds himself in the same garments with which he slept; there is another person who is made to sleep for medical purposes, for example, with chloroform or some anaesthetic and then his garments are taken away, new garments are given and when he wakes up he finds himself in new garments. 

This is the difference between what we call sleep and what we call death. But the mind and the senses with which we understand things cannot understand the continuity of life because the garments of our body are changed, name is changed, identity is changed, environment is changed. And we are afraid of such a change because we have what is called ‘attachment’. We are attached to our own people and environment and things. This attachment gives us a terror of death. The more the attachment is, the more painful the death is. And conversely, the fellow who has ‘detachment’ in life, not in teaching but in practice, has no fear of death. All other things can be taught to others; without practising but happiness without suffering cannot be taught to others, it should be experienced by everyone.

Suppose, I stand here and teach to all of you ‘don’t fear death, don’t be sorry for anything, be always happy’, in the meanwhile suppose there is pain here, I suspect that I may die. Immediately you will feel my face becoming pale. That means the teaching that I make is of no use at all to me. Unless a change takes place in ourselves this knowledge is not valuable to teach, but it is valuable only when practised, because happiness and unhappiness are not teachings but subjective experiences.

Happiness is something which we experience and not to explain to others. Unless we understand death in such terms, we cannot have a scientific understanding of death. And if we approach the issue with our mind and senses we can never understand it because mind and senses have no capacity to understand what death is since they have no capacity to understand what sleep is. Every night they go into sleep whereas the greater intelligences in charge of the functions, like respiration and the heartbeat, don’t go to sleep. And we identify ourselves with the mind and the senses. That is why we die when we go into sleep, and only when we wake up we understand that we slept. We can never understand that we are sleeping. 

The result is, we have no experience of sleep at all. When we have no experience of sleep, how can we have an experience of death? Without an experience of death, if we go on studying volumes and volumes on death, and the volumes on life after death and the volumes on how we go up in the astral body, how we travel in the astral body, and then how we recollect all the life, and how we experience the joys and sorrows, all these things if we read, they are only cock and bull stories because we are reading them without any experience. They can be fine stories and novels.

We should be able to pass through the stage of death. And for this, a training is required. Once again the training is what is called Yoga, Yoga not only as practice but also as an outlook of life. First of all, understand that there is a continuity of life passing through birth and death just as a string passing through the pearls. Understand yourself as the continuous string of consciousness and compare the bodies with the pearls. The more you begin to establish in yourself, the more birth and death become false. They are only formalities like our sleep and awakening. 

Every death is given as a renewal of life. Just as every night we sleep only to begin the work afresh the next day. If we fail to do something today, tomorrow we begin to try once again and may succeed. We understand where we failed and then we again experience not to commit the same mistake. And then tomorrow or the day-after, after a few sleeps and awakenings we try once again and succeed in what we failed. 

The same purpose death serves to us, when we fail in the mission of one life that is understanding what life is. When we are going into the continuous awareness of the Omnipresence and realizing a life of no want and no problem, then we are getting fully convinced that life is a solution and not a problem. To that end death helps us. Whenever we fail to understand it, we die amidst many worries and blunders in many tensions, in angers and complexes. 

Every time we make a bad arrangement of things and then die and then we are reborn again with a better body. The fellow who misuses his body and makes it sick, he suffers and dies, he will be given once again a fresh body to know how to behave with it, conduct the same experiment more successfully. To make the same experiment with mind and the senses with the objects of the senses, with the relationships to others, with neighbours and with friends and enemies, with relatives, wife and husband, children, with wealth, money and ideals. 

We are given another chance to make the experiment once again to see that it is made a success, to understand why we failed in the previous birth, to know how to succeed in this birth during which process mastery will be gained by us over the body, mind and senses, to understand the machine of the constitution, to know the technical use and technical know- how of this machine and lead a life of accomplishment. 

There the training period is complete, then there is what is ‘real life’. After some thousands of births and deaths we gain mastery over everything in us. We begin to understand how we have to behave with the body and the senses, with the mind, with food, drink, sleep, etc. Then we are free from the polarities that is the pairs of opposites that is attraction and repulsion, likes and dislikes, convenience and inconvenience. We are free from all these things and then starts what is called ‘real life’. 

It also includes births and deaths but the purpose is different. Previously we lived for ourselves and we failed miserably, we lived to eat and enjoy the taste, we lived to enjoy sex, we lived to earn money and build houses, we lived to enjoy high position in society, to have control over other people, we lived to gain much strength, name and fame, we lived to write books and throw them on this world. So, we lived to do something for our own satisfaction, for our own money, for our benefit, for our own happiness. So self-centered we were!

Now we understand we need nothing, we live because this body is given to us and we know that the body goes once again, therefore we know that there is no death. Then we mind our own business, that is, for what we come to this earth. For every one of us we have something to do and we die without accomplishing it because we are on this side of evolution, we are very busy with our emotions and complexes, we are very busy with what we think most valuable, self-made ideals. So, we are entangled in the self-made ideals and we have no time to accomplish what for we are born. So, we die a helpless death not accomplishing what is expected of us.

But after crossing this point, we understand that we come to this world to do something. Every minute we will be able to understand what we are expected to do. Our environment teaches us where we are expected to live, whom we are expected to serve and what we are expected to do. Instead of complaining against environment, we will understand that environment is given to us. Today, we may be in the name of a husband or wife. That means they are expected to be colleagues for some time and again go somewhere and do the work. 

The problem is what work it is. What is the work of those intelligences of nature that are working in us? Those intelligences are helping us to respire and making our heart beat. Same is the work. Wherever we are, we are expected to do the work there. Suppose, I am in your house for one day, I am expected to do the work in your house. Suppose tomorrow I am in some other house, I have to work in that house; every day I have my meal and what is important is the continuity of the work. So, the Masters teach us that everyone has a continuity of work. 

And the question is, what is the result of the work? Suppose, I am born as a teacher. I was appointed as a professor in the university and I worked for twenty five years, what is the result? The money I get is one result, but we must understand that it is not the purpose. I am expected to teach and what is the result? No result. It is good work and I get myself purified by doing it. Suppose, I am asked to help the sick people, to heal them, what is it that we get. The professional doctor gets his money. But suppose he is also a spiritualist and he is also a God-man, immediately he understands that it is not for the money that he is doing it. He distributes the money for good purpose. He gives some money to his wife and children and the remaining for some charity purposes. He understands his work different from all these things. Whenever he is asked to heal a person or select a medicine for a person or administer a dose to a person, he will understand that it is a training for him, a discipline for him to make his mind and senses pure, to purify himself from the motives, from the complexes, from the polarities, from likes and dislikes from all the impurities he has.

The good work I do may be useful for others but it is foolish to believe that we are doing it for the benefit of others because if we do not do it, there are people who do it better. Therefore, it is not for the benefit of others that we are doing good work, it is for our own benefit we are doing the good work. That is to purify our own vehicles from the motives and complexes, to purify the mind and the senses and emotions, to distill our consciousness and make it pure to purify it from emotion, to solidify it into devotion and have it as pure inspiration. 

This is the purpose of life and it will be a continuous purpose of our living through births and deaths afterwards. So, there is a series of births and deaths before we realise this and also another series of births and deaths after we realise this. The new series of births and deaths is called ‘God given births and deaths’. This is known as ‘divine life or life eternal’. We have perfect mastery over ourselves and choice is given to us to be born in any place we may require. Because we have no desires or requirements, we are entrusted with certain amount of power and mastery. The independence given to us is directly promotional to the good behaviour we show towards nature and others. The purpose of death is to give us a new opportunity again and again to succeed and reach this state of divine consciousness.

Unless there is death, we live a continuous monotonous life without any opportunity to rearrange things, because unless mind is completely taken away from us, unless a new mind is once again given, we are not at all ready to leave off our likes and dislikes and attachments and affections. So, death is necessitated by nature because nature knows that it is not death. But we believe that there is death because that belief has its own terror upon us. And the terror has its own medicinal effect upon us. This is something about death and the process of death is actually nothing. It is a truth which takes place in nature. We should just notice its existence and there is no use of trying to analyse what death is, just as there is no use of trying to analyse what sleep is.

A psychologist wanted to know, for example, what sleep is. Every night he waited to understand how he would go into sleep. He could not understand because every night he slept. The next morning he woke up and said, “Yesterday I slept, today let me understand what sleep is.” So, every night he went into sleep until he went into death. So, it is useless to try to analyse what death is. After all when the time comes, the body is dropped off. There is a fellow inside who decides when to take the body and when to drop it off. But since we are living a little bit different from that fellow and since we live in our head and since that fellow lives in our heart and since that fellow decides when to die, we weep and fear death. 

But when the moment comes actually, the connection between body and mind is cut off, life is withdrawn from energy centres and if we know how to cooperate, there is no death because it is a conscious and painless process. But if we try to resist, it is a painful and unconscious process. Just as anaesthesia is given during surgical operation, during the process of death there is a surgical operation going on unconsciously between the body and mind, the first three principles of our existence that is physical, vital and mental. And there are four more principles. The first three are cut off at every death from the real ‘I AM’ who includes the fourth principle called ‘will’, the fifth principle called ‘love’, the sixth principle called ‘all love’ and the seventh principle called ‘divine presence’. 

So, we have seven planes of existence in every one of us. In the books of Alice A. Bailey, they are called 

• the physical vehicle, 
• the etheric vehicle, 
• the mental vehicle,
• the buddhic, nirvanic, 
• the para-nirvanic and
• the maha para-nirvanic. 

These are only technical terms, you can use the terms of any school of thought. The truth is, we have seven planes of existence in us. And many of us live and die only in the first three planes just as the father gives to his son the same packet without opening the seal. The higher principles from four to seven are a sealed packet to many of us, we carry the packet on our heads as long as we live. We live only as the principles one, two and three. And when death cuts off the three principles, the higher packet is handed over to somebody else. Many of us are not able to use the valuable things in the higher four principles.

This works as a seed and then there is the soil of the lower three principles once again. We are attracted again to the soil by the desires we have before we die. And according to the law of magnetism we are attracted to such parents that are exactly fixed to give the required body and mind, for example, if we lived a horrible life in the past life to produce great diseases and a horrible mind, this seed will be attracted to such parents who give us the heredity of incurable diseases and a horrible mind with criminal tendencies, etc. We understand it either according to heredity or according to karma, not knowing that the two are one, because we are attracted to the type of parents that have the fitness of heredity and the fitness of mind that is, those who have heredity that is fit for us to receive. 

And if we are to receive a healthy body, if we have lived a pious and a healthy life in the past birth, automatically we will be attracted to pure souls as parents and we receive a good heredity of body and mind so that the continuity of the work is carried on. The good work which we have conducted in the previous birth is continued in this life. For example, in the previous birth you were a great devotee, you wanted to practise God-life but you were as the child of atheists who did not believe in higher things, and life long you had to fight out your way, it gives you a good environment in this life. Now, you are attracted to the type of parents you require.

For example, you will be attracted to holy and pious parents who have a simple and godly mind, who have real belief and who have instinctive mastery over their mind and senses so that your environment is no problem to you like this, the problems of one birth will be solved in the next according to the initiative we have taken in one birth. But if we have created some involvements in this birth, we will be attracted to parents who will give us more involvements so that we have to solve for ourselves and prepare a better part for the next birth. 

For example, a fellow who is a problem to his parents will be attracted to the same type of parents in the next birth so that the parent is a cruel idiot who creates problems to the child from the beginning. And the child has to lead a life of compromise so that his angularities are all rounded, and his emotions are all paved properly and in the next birth he can have a better choice. Like this, the continuity goes on until we cross the first three planes of existence and we begin to live in the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh planes of our consciousness. When we begin to exist in the higher planes, the lower bodies will die and again they will be given to us but the continuity is there because we never lived in the perishable half of our life, we begin to live in the imperishable half. This is the training we are expected to receive. To give us the opportunity for this training, death is given to us, and we are expected to practise an attitude of a ‘passivity to death’. You should neither fear death nor desire death. 

Some people feel that it is better for them to die soon. Some people feel a suicidal tendency, some people try to commit suicide and put an end to their body, some people think that it is holy to believe that they should die soon. All these foolish ideas should go away because life is given to us, it is never proposed by us and we have no right to fear death because this body is not ours, it is not gained by ourselves. It is given to us as an institution, as a school, to gain experience and to progress in evolution. We are permitted to live in it. We are not the owners of it. Even our parents are not its owners. The owner is nature and the indweller is the ego who is called ‘the permanent atom’ in the spiritual science.

And He has a beautiful story of man which He has to narrate himself through births and rebirths, and which He has to enact, as a drama at the same time enjoying as the audience of the drama also. Others form the drama to Him and Himself is the audience. This drama is enacted. When the drama is completed, all the emotional and intellectual inequalities and animalism are eliminated from us. 

Then there is what is called ‘divine life’ which gives us the births and deaths. We do not die when we leave the body, we are not born when the body is born. We live with such a continuous consciousness and go on doing the same work from birth to birth. This is the purpose of death. And as the evolution permits us to understand the significance of death, we will have a more scientific and less emotional understanding of death. This is something about the function of death. 

The story of the boy, who reached Yama, gives us all the clues of what death is. The word Yama means regulation that is discipline, the discipline required to gain mastery over senses and mind that is the first three lower principles and then follows existing in the fourth and the above higher principles. Then your life is called a ‘life of immortality’.

Questions and Answers

Question: I thank you very much for your servitude. You have given examples without speaking of the instinct, because you have not spoken on that. When you have spoken of the young boy, it is a question of a legend, it is a tale. And then you spoke of the sheep that wanted to eat grass. This is an instinct of conservation. When you speak of the sleep, we do not get sleep because we know that we are awake. It is our fear of death. My question is, “Isn’t the instinct of conservation a necessary fear?”

Answer: Yes, instinct of conservation is always necessary and to the animals fear is also necessary for self-preservation. But since we have crossed the evolution of animal stage and we are given the power to discriminate, we can have the same preservation without the necessity of fear. That is why discrimination is given to the human kingdom.

Understanding is given to us which is not there in the animal kingdom. Therefore, the animal requires fear to protect itself. And for the human being self-preservation needs only instinct and no fear because the intellect has replaced fear; we have no actual necessity of fear of death. It is only the degree of evolution that gives us freedom from death, just as a fruit when it is completely ripe is freed from the tree. Similarly, when our evolution is complete when there is no need to fear, self-preservation is left to us and the fear of death will be removed from us by the same nature. Not fearing death is not foolishness, it is not the foolish way of running into risks but it is a full understanding and a better understanding of things, just as the expert in conducting feats of circus can manage things without risk because of his training. Similarly, the trained fellow in the God life can manage with the instinct of self-preservation with the help of his passive attitude so that his time may be better used for more valuable work. That is what they mean.

The legend of the boy, it is not a question whether it is historical or a legend, when something carries a truth for us to understand and when something has a deeper significance, it is always true whether it happens or not. For example, when a novelist writes a novel we know that the story is false and it has not happened. Even then, we are reading the novel with great interest. In the same way a story, which has not happened and which is a legend, is much more valuable and true than a novel because it carries eternal truth with it. For that truth, we care for stories and not for the historicity of any incident.

Question: He speaks of the two cases. One person has killed himself. Another tried several times to commit suicide but did not succeed. What happens in each case?

Answer: The crime of committing suicide is the same in both the fellows and the proposal of the crime has its own stamp on both the fellows. The one who has succeeded will experience the agony of his criminal act after his death and before the next birth. Whereas the second example, he experiences the same agony before his death.

Question: What could be done about these persons? Can we do anything for them?

Answer: That is a question that cannot be solved because once again his individual karma is there to permit us to help him or not. The best attempt to help and save him is the only thing we can do. The rest exists with his previous karma. Whether he permits us to help him or not does not depend upon us but depends upon him. So, it is for us to make a sincere attempt. There ends our duty.

Question: You say that we should make a difference between the fear of death on one side and the fear of the way we are going to die. She says that people fear in the way much more than they fear death itself. Please explain.

Answer: Of course, it is also equally emotional because we understand the fact that the way in which we die depends upon the way in which we have lived. It can also be received without any emotion, because the way in which we die directly depends upon the way in which we lived our lives. So, a proper understanding of this will give us a more scientific and a less emotional attitude towards the way of death also, because there are people who gained mastery enough to look at their own pain in an objective way. In the next birth they will be able to live a better life to have a normal and natural and instinctive death. It is those people who die within a split second doing their work and being active. That requires a life of some principles that depends upon our behaviour, habits of our food, drink, sleep, work and sex, and our attitude towards others. So, one’s life training is necessary for the nature of death of that life.

Question: How we have to train to die like Mahatma Gandhi?

Answer: It is a very good question. Not only Gandhi, there are many such examples. Yes, after certain stage of evolution, Masters begin to live in the higher principles whereas there is no karma to the lower three principles. And in such cases, it is the karma of the nation or the race or the country that reflects upon them and it results in an incident. Just as the karma of the whole human kingdom of this planet earth resulted in the crucifixion of the Lord Christ. So it is not their karma, but it is the karma of humanity. 

Thank You.

Photo:© Johannes Stasing,  www.sta-fotografie.de