Adhyatam Upanishad #4

nWe even know the body only from the outside. As someone might circle a palace from without, see the outer face of the walls and think “this is the palace,” so we too look at our body from the outside.

What appears from without is not the body itself. Look at the body from within, and at once you are freed of the body. The outward appearance you see is covered, veiled; from within, the body’s real condition is revealed—as it truly is.

Buddha used to send his seekers to the cremation grounds—to look at corpses, at bones, at skulls. From within, the body is like that. Everything is wrapped in a sheath of skin. Otherwise, such attachment, such infatuation, such possessiveness toward the body would not arise.

If you ever try to look at the body from within, this sutra will become clear. Go to a hospital sometime; stand beside an operating table; watch a surgeon at work. What you see inside—that is the body’s factuality.

This sutra is of great help in meditation. Know clearly, there is no condemnation of the body here. Religion is not eager to condemn anyone; nor is it keen to praise anyone. Religion is eager only to know things as they are.

So when it is said the body is a heap of bones, flesh, marrow, feces and urine—remember, there is no tone of contempt. It is not an attempt to debase the body; the body is as it is. The point is simply to lay bare what the body in fact is.

The sutra says: “This body, born from the impurities of father and mother, filled with filth and flesh—abandon it as one would step away from a chandala or shudra standing very near to oneself. Renouncing the body thus, become Brahman and be fulfilled.”

Chandala, shudra—these are precious words. Ancient Indian psychology says: whoever identifies as the body is a shudra. Shudra means one who has assumed himself to be the body. Brahmin means one who has known himself to be Brahman.

No one becomes a Brahmin by being born in a Brahmin household; nor does anyone become a shudra by being born in a shudra household. Shudrahood and Brahminhood have no relation to households or lineages. Shudra is a state of mind; Brahmin is also a state of mind. All are born as shudras; only a few manage to die as Brahmins. The whole world is shudra. Shudra means: everyone lives identifying with the body. A Brahmin is very hard to find. Being born in a Brahmin’s house is not difficult; being a Brahmin is very difficult.

Uddalaka said to his son, Shvetaketu: “Go to a rishi’s ashram and return as a Brahmin.” Shvetaketu asked, “But I am already a Brahmin, a Brahmin’s son!” Uddalaka spoke sweet words—yet sharp: “In our home it has never happened that one became a Brahmin merely by being born here. We have truly been Brahmins. So go to the guru’s ashram and return as a Brahmin. Has anyone ever received Brahminhood from his father? It comes from the guru. In our house there has never been a Brahmin in name only; we have always been Brahmins in essence. Go—and when you have become a Brahmin, then come back.”

This sutra says: Move away from the body as one would from a shudra, as from a chandala.

You don’t even have to push it away. If you truly see the stench, if you truly see the urine and feces, the flesh and marrow—if you see it—moving away begins on its own. We are drawn where we imagine fragrance, sweetness. We shrink back where we sense stench.

Our desire to stay near the body is only because of our ignorance about the body. We don’t even know what our body is.

So look at the body from the inside. Become your own surgeon; lay yourself bare. The skin is not very thick, it is very thin. And yet, for what lies beneath that skin, how much passion we weave! We live as though it were our all-in-all—and so we cling, we bind ourselves.

As the body’s true condition comes into view, you will find distance falling into place; you don’t have to force it—distance begins. Thereafter, if you wish to come close again, you will have to make an effort. But if we are still close to the body, it only means we have never looked at it from within.

We too know our body by looking in a mirror. What you see there is only the outer casing. It would be wonderful if science could invent instruments as it has the X-ray—if not today then tomorrow—so that when a person stands before them, he appears exactly as he is inside: bones, flesh, marrow, feces, urine—everything visible. Such instruments would be most useful.

If you come to know the body in its entirety, you will instantly feel a distance between yourself and the body. The bridges will break; the attachment will dissolve; and the gap will widen.

The rishis of the Upanishads sought to give you that eye by which you can peer within—beneath your own skin—within your own skin.

Truth is liberating. Even the truth of one’s own body—when seen—sets the mind free. Untruth is bondage. What we do not truly know is precisely what binds us.

“O monk! Like the space within a pot in the vast sky, merge your soul into the Divine and, in an unbroken mood, be ever serene.”

When the vanity of the body becomes visible, when its insubstantiality is seen, when it appears to be only a heap of filth—and when distance from it begins—only then does nearness to the Divine begin. The nearer to the body, the farther from the Divine. The farther from the body, the nearer to the Divine. The more tightly we are bound to the body, the greater our distance from the bodyless consciousness. When we turn our back to the body and move away from it, that very movement away from the body means a movement toward the soul.

The soul is one pole; the body is the other; we are in between. Cling to the body, and the soul recedes. Move away from the body, and you draw near to the soul. This is why moving away from the body has been used as a method of meditation. It has had side effects too. When Indian scriptures were first translated in the West, it seemed to them as if these people were enemies of the body.

It is not so. It is simply a device. Seeing the body’s factuality, consciousness immediately starts an inner journey. The very moment the body is rightly understood, the grip on it loosens. To allow that grip to loosen, we must intensify this understanding.

Contemplation on death, reflection on the body’s actual condition, bringing its stripped reality before the inner eye—these are methods of meditation. Through them, one begins to slide inward. And the sliding becomes natural; it requires no strain. If you try to go inward without understanding the body, it will be very difficult, because the mind remains invested in the body, tied to it.

A monk of Buddha’s once passed through a village. He was very handsome; meditation had added a certain majesty to his beauty. Silence had deepened within him, and its rays shone through his eyes and face. He seemed haloed. A courtesan fell in love with him.

Rabindranath wrote a very tender song on this incident.

The courtesan descended from her mansion and invited the monk to rest for a night at her house. The monk said, “It is not our rule to refuse an invitation. I shall come—but the time has not yet come. When the true state of your body is revealed, then I will come. Right now, you are in illusion. The day you awaken, I will come.”

The courtesan could not understand. “Courtesan” means one who understands no other language than that of the body. So do not think that if someone is a wife, she cannot be a courtesan. If only the language of the body makes sense, that is courtesanship. Until the language of the soul is understood, no one rises above being a courtesan. And do not think “courtesan” means only a woman; men too can be courtesan-like. If only the body’s language is understood—if all bargaining rests on the body—that is the essence of courtesanship. The mind is anchored in the body; that is the trade.

The monk said, “I will come—but when your body stands revealed as it is.” The courtesan said, “You are mad! This is the time: I am young, my beauty at its peak. My body will never be in better condition.” The monk replied, “I am not concerned with ‘better,’ I am concerned with the real. When it is real, I will come.” She pleaded, “I do not understand—please make it clearer.” The monk said, “When no one at all comes to you, I will come. For then the body will be in its true state. Then the body will look on the outside as it is within. Right now, it does not appear outwardly as it is inwardly. When no one will come to you, I will come.”

Years passed; the courtesan grew old; leprosy spread across her body; limb by limb she rotted. The village threw her out. This was the very village that once hovered around her door! The very people who couldn’t gain entry into her house, who felt blessed even to glimpse her from afar—those people cast her out.

On a dark new-moon night she lay parched outside the village, no one to offer her water. That night, the monk came. Placing his hand on her head, he said, “I have come. Now the body is in its real state. Now no one comes near you. Now the body is outwardly what it always was within. The barrier of skin has dissolved. The flesh and marrow inside are visible outside. The inner filth has come out. Now your inner and outer are one. So I have come. I promised—for this very day: when no one comes, I will come.”

“As for me,” the monk said, “I could see even then what has now come out. You could not. Even that day I could have been your guest; I had no difficulty. But it would have increased your delusion: ‘Now even monks come as my guests!’ I had no difficulty; I could have come then too, for I was seeing then exactly what you and the entire village see today.”

But even as she lay abandoned outside the village, the courtesan did not look at her body. Eyes closed, she savored the memories of those days when her body was beautiful, when she held prestige and glory in the town!

Even in old age, people ruminate on youth. When the body itself reveals its truth, the mind still covers it over. When even the skin refuses to cooperate, we close our eyes and relish what is long gone.

If an old man is still savoring the taste of youth, know that he will die a shudra. If a young person can see old age in the body even before it arrives, know that he will die a Brahmin. One who dies still craving life dies a shudra. And one who, in the full bloom of youth, begins to contemplate death—know that a Brahmin is being born. It is necessary that we clearly see the body’s reality, so that our back turns to it and our face turns toward that which is consciousness.

“O monk! Like the space within a pot in the vast sky, merge your soul into the Divine and, in an unbroken mood, remain ever serene.”

Turn your face away from the body, and then look toward the vast sky. That vast sky is very near. Take a pot, place it upside down on the ground. The pot looks toward the sky—but it sees only its own clay; it does not see the sky. If the pot is upside down, facing upward, what will it see? Only its own shell, its own body—the sky is not visible.

Turn the pot upright, mouth open to the sky—now it can see: “I am not the body.” Now the pot also sees that the little space within and the vast space outside are one and the same; there is no gap between them. We are indivisible; I am continuously opening into this sky; this sky is continuously pouring into me; and in between there is no barrier, no boundary, no wall at all.

Exactly so it happens. When you face the body you are placed like an upside-down pot. You see only the body. When you turn away from the body, you become the upright pot. Now your mouth opens to the sky. The moment one turns from the body, one faces the sky. And for the first time it is seen: there is not even a hair’s breadth of difference between the vastness and me. I have become the vastness; the vastness has come to me.

“O monk! Like the space within a pot in the vast sky, merge your soul into the Divine and, in an unbroken mood, remain ever serene.”

And the very moment this is seen, peace descends.

What is restlessness? What is our unease? It is this: we are vast—and we are imprisoned in the small. Our unease is like forcing an adult into a child’s clothes. He cannot move; he is bound at every point. And the clothes are not cloth but iron. The obstruction you would feel—that is our plight.

We are great—not merely great, we are the vast—and we are confined in a tiny body. The house is very small; the resident immense. Everywhere there is obstruction—limits everywhere, harassment everywhere. Where is the exit? None is visible. Worse, we have mistaken our prison for our home. So we are busy decorating it. We adorn it. We beautify the walls, lay out gold and silver, embellish the prison walls with ornaments. And we remain imprisoned there—with our face turned to the walls, not to the door.

It will remain so; our face turns wherever attraction is. Where there is attraction, there is the face; where there is aversion, there is the back. As long as we are attracted to the body, our face will remain toward the wall. The moment aversion arises toward the body, our face turns away—our back to the body.

Your body too has a door. But you will see that door only when attraction to the body dissolves. There is a door in the body. That door is called the heart. What you call the heart is not the heart. You call “heart” where the pump beats—that is not a door. There is only the machinery of breath and blood—the meeting of blood and air—hence the beating. That is not the heart.

“Heart,” in the language of yoga, names the inner door that appears when you turn your back to the body, when you are no longer even curious to look at it, when every taste for the body is gone and dispassion is born. Suddenly you are standing at the place of the heart; from there is the doorway; from there the pot opens to the sky.

There are many doors in your body. You become aware of them only when you arrive at them. A small child has no idea that there is a door of sex in his body. He will grow, become young, and one day suddenly discover the sex-door—through which he can enter the world. That too is a way out of the body into nature. And note, this is why sexual desire is so urgent: for a moment we flow out of the body. But only for a moment. For a moment the body is forgotten and we are drowned in nature.

There is a door toward nature, downward; and a door toward the Divine, upward. When the mind is filled with lust, we are closest to the body. And when we are closest to the body, the door opens that leads into the world of other bodies. When we become tasteless toward the body and distant from it, the door opens by which we enter the world of souls. The body holds both doors—the one that leads into matter and the one that leads to the Divine.

But becoming disenchanted with the body will not happen by repeating it in your mind. You can go on thinking, “The body is bones, flesh, marrow—nothing.” Mere thinking will not work. The thinking itself shows you don’t really know—hence the need to think.

Many people spend a lifetime muttering, “What is there in the body?” But they know there is something—that’s why they keep saying it. Why the need to repeat, “There is nothing in the body”? They are persuading themselves, pleading with their own mind: “Mind, don’t get into the body’s affairs; there is nothing there.” But who is this mind that is drawn to the body? It is they themselves. The mind’s taste remains; hence the self-lecture.

No, this sutra is not for self-persuasion. Do not sit and recite it with closed eyes. This sutra is for revelation. Understand it—and with closed eyes search within the body: is it true that it is flesh and marrow? Do not accept it on faith. If you merely accept it, you will fall into the danger of repetition. Explore it, inquire into it. Perhaps the rishi was joking; perhaps he lied.

What the rishis said is not for believing but for seeking. Search within. Feel your bones. Sink your fingers into your flesh and examine. Touch your skull and see what is there. Become acquainted with your body from every side. The day this acquaintance happens—and why should it be delayed? It can happen today. The body is already with you. But you have never searched it, never investigated it.

And man is so strange that even you could be forgiven; yet I know doctors whose entire education is bones, flesh, marrow—and they too are equally enchanted by the body. For a doctor to be moonstruck by the body is a miracle. It means the blindness is tremendous, beyond measure. A surgeon cuts bodies on the table daily—and still sings love-songs like a Majnun to his Laila! That is the marvel. Sai Baba producing talismans is no miracle; this is the miracle: a man slices flesh and marrow every day, clamps his nose against the stench, knows each bone and nerve—and still, inside, imagines there is some “beauty” there.

Strange things happen. I told a doctor friend this. He said, “Because you say it, I recall: I was operating on a woman. When I opened her abdomen, nausea—deep disgust—arose inside. And at the same time my nurse stood beside me, and I felt attraction toward her! Here I am opening a belly, wanting to finish quickly—because I plan to take the nurse to a movie!”

Such is the human mind. We are masters at self-deception. He will go and take the nurse’s hand—and utterly forget what a hand is!

An ordinary person could be forgiven. But compared to the doctor—no forgiveness—because the body is right here with us, and still we remain unacquainted with it. And people set out to seek the soul! Not even familiar with the body—and off they go seeking the soul!

People ask, “How to find the soul?” Kindly, first know the body properly. It is the nearest. Becoming acquainted with it becomes the first step toward the soul. For one who becomes acquainted with it will turn away from it. And one who turns away from the body turns toward the soul. His face turns toward the inner sky. And when the inner little space meets the vast space, the event that happens is called peace.

Restlessness is being locked in this prison. Peace is the experience of being outside the prison, one with the vast. No one has ever become peaceful without meeting God. Hence, all your efforts to become peaceful will prove futile. At best, there will be more or less restlessness—sometimes more, sometimes less. What you call peace is only less restlessness, nothing more. Normal restlessness, ordinary restlessness, and one says “all is peaceful, all is fine.” When restlessness increases a bit, we feel troubled.

Psychologists say their whole business is to keep you ordinarily insane. In the world there are two sorts of lunatics—indeed, only two sorts of people: extraordinarily insane, whom we must keep in asylums; ordinarily insane, who sit in shops and offices. The difference is only of degree. Any one of them could be bumped from the shop straight into the asylum—no obstacle—just raise the dose a bit.

And every day you come near the asylum several times. When rage engulfs you, you are mad for that moment. There is no difference between you and a lunatic. You will do what a lunatic does. The only difference is that your madness comes and goes; someone else’s has become fixed—ice instead of water.

Psychologists say our whole job is to pull those who have gone too far back to the ordinary crowd. We cannot do much more—just adjustment—returning a man, after years of counseling and drugs, to his old shop. Enough madness to function, not so much that it disrupts work.

Restlessness has become our nature. It is almost inevitable, because peace has only one meaning: what happens when the Ganges falls into the ocean, that moment of confluence is peace. When your stream too falls into the ocean, the event of that meeting—that is peace.

Without meeting the Divine, there is no peace.

“Become your own support, self-luminous, established as the very ground of Brahman—and cast away both the microcosm and the macrocosm as one would discard a chamber pot.”

Not only should you let go of this body, but this vast body that appears as the cosmos, this great world that appears…

Man in small is a picture of the great world. Outside you is a body—that is your form. Within is the hidden lamp of consciousness—your soul. Exactly so, the whole vastness has a body—the world—and within it is hidden Brahman. This body you must discard; and along with it, the vast body spread outside also becomes useless—discard that too.

When a person turns away from his body, he experiences the soul. Understand the wording precisely: when a person turns away from his body, the first glimpse that arises in his eyes is of his own light—the light of the soul, the “space-in-the-pot.” And when someone becomes free even of the cosmic body of the universe, then the experience is of Brahman’s light.

Between atman and paramatman this is the only difference. Atman means you have experienced a small flame. Paramatman means you stand before the great sun. Letting go the body brings the experience of the soul; letting go the cosmos brings the experience of the Supreme. The difference is one of magnitude. Therefore, one who has reached the soul will have no difficulty in taking the second leap.

“Fix the ego-intellect that has mounted the body in the blissful, conscious Self; abandon the subtle body and forever be only the Self.”

Let the face remain ever turned toward the sky—that is the meaning of sannyas. A householder, by effort, may sometimes glimpse—and then returns to his house.

Understand “householder”: it means one who returns again and again to the body. Griha means not the building you live in; it means the house you were born in—this body. One who has settled in it is a householder. Sometimes a glimpse occurs; he returns again. Sometimes the pot stands upright; then it turns over again. Being upside down has become a habit. Because of habit, upside down feels right.

If someone were made to do a headstand from birth and raised that way, and one day you asked him to stand upright, he would say, “Why are you making me stand upside down?” Naturally—his habit is to stand on his head.

There is a small tribe in South America—three hundred people on a small mountain. There is a fly there; its bite blinds everyone. So all three hundred are blind. Children are born with eyes, but within three months they go blind—the fly bites within that time. Hence the tribe has no idea that eyes exist. And how would a three-month-old know he had eyes? All the rest are blind. Within three months, every child goes blind.

If ever a seeing child were born there, the tribe’s doctors would surely operate on his eyes, because it would seem absolutely unnatural: “Eyes? Who has eyes? No one.” So the conclusion: nature has blundered. Surgery is necessary. Being blind is “natural.” It has become habit.

How we are seems natural to us; it need not be. Understand this clearly. Habit can pass for nature; but habit is not nature. What is the difference? Habit is what we do because we have done it. Nature is what remains even if we stop doing—what happens by itself.

Our bondage to the body is habit—of many, many births—not our nature. So once you truly taste your nature, the habit will break. But mere glimpses may come; they change nothing. A flash of lightning—and then deeper darkness. We settle back into the old groove.

A sannyasin is one who has decided: now I will keep my back turned to the house, and remember the open sky, and persist without interruption—rising and sitting, waking—and even in sleep, as far as I can manage—that my mind not bind to the body; let my soul flow into that vast ocean. And when I say “flow,” it is not just a word. When you practice, you will feel you are continuously flowing—the Ganges falling into the sea. Let this remembrance remain—let it be continuous.

“O stainless one! Just as a city appears in a mirror, so too, that in which the appearance of this world is seen—that Brahman am I. Knowing this, be fulfilled.”

As an image appears in a mirror! But what appears in the mirror is not real; the real is the mirror in which the image appears. Whether you notice it or not, when you look in a mirror you do not see the mirror—you see the image. Standing before a mirror, have you ever noticed you are looking at the mirror? You are looking at the face, not the mirror. And the face you see is not there at all—while what is there is not seen.

If a mirror could be made in which your face did not appear, you would not see the mirror at all. It is because the face appears that you infer “there is a mirror.” The mirror is inferred from the image. If the mirror is perfectly pure, it is less visible. If we could create an absolutely flawless mirror, it would be invisible.

The entire Mahabharata story arose from such flawless mirrors. A prank—costly. Duryodhana and his brothers were sons of a blind father. A cruel joke it was, for any joke that wounds is more violence than humor.

The Pandavas built a palace and invited their cousins. They installed flawless mirrors—so flawless they were invisible. If a mirror was set before a doorway, the door was visible, the mirror not.

Poor Duryodhana tried to pass through such doors, struck his head and fell. Draupadi laughed; from that laughter the Mahabharata was born. The revenge for that laugh. It was a small thing—but even a small laugh can be great violence.

So in the attempt to strip Draupadi in the royal court, the culprit is not Duryodhana alone; Draupadi’s laughter is implicated. The root cause is there. “He is a blind man’s son—so of course he cannot see. It will happen. You are seeing a door where there is none!” The only fact was: very flawless mirrors were in use. The mirror is not seen; the reflection is.

The rishi says: O stainless one! As reflections appear in a mirror, so too, that in which the seeming of this world appears…

Within us the soul is a flawless mirror; this whole world appears in it. We run to grasp the world; but we do not see the mirror in which it is seen, in which it shimmers.

A diamond appears—the Kohinoor gleams. You rush toward the Kohinoor. It does not even occur to you to ask: in what is this Kohinoor being reflected? What is this mirror within me that reflects the Kohinoor inside me? The moon shines in the sky—what is that within me in which the moon is mirrored?

Within me is a revolving mirror that sees the whole world. As long as you go to grasp the world, you are trying to catch reflections. The day you grasp the mirror, your entry into the world of truth begins. One who holds the mirror is no longer entangled in reflections. It is not that reflections cease; they continue. But the urge to grasp them drops. And the mirror is never stained by reflections. However many worlds you wander through, your mirror remains stainless.

Understand this a little. That is why it says, O stainless one! Addressed to you: O stainless! You may suspect the rishi has made a mistake—addressing us as stainless?

No—there is reason. However many “sins” occur before it, the mirror remains stainless. Place anything before a mirror—filth, feces—the mirror will reflect it. But does the mirror become guilty? Remove the filth; the mirror remains as it was—not even a trace is left.

So much has happened before your mirror, but only before it. Nothing goes inside; nothing can. Hence: O stainless one!

This is a very basic difference. Christianity says, “Remove your sins.” Hindu thought says, “Know that you are already stainless.” Christianity says, “Give up sin, drop faults, remove them.” Hindu thought says, “Remove what? Just recognize you are a mirror—and all is removed. You are inherently stainless.”

It comes to the same in the end. If one insists on removal, then clearing away what covers the mirror will make it seem stainless. It always was. You can approach from that side too. This is the difference between Jain and Hindu thought.

Hence the amusing fact: Jains too emphasize removal—remove the faults. As the faults are removed, the mirror—which is pure anyway—appears pure. Hindu thought says, why waste yourself on faults? Recognize the truth: you are the mirror. Then even if faults remain in front, you remain stainless.

Thus Jains and Christians feel Hindu thought is a bit dangerous. Because then there is little ground left for moral policing, sin and virtue.

It is dangerous. The deeper the truth, the more powerful—and power is always dangerous. In the wrong hands it is very dangerous; and the wrong are always in search of power. But Hindu thought is very profound. Its point: within you consciousness is only a mirror—just a mirror. Whatever you have seen is outside; nothing has ever gone in. Although it appears to be within. Place an object before a mirror—the image seems to be as deep within as the thing is distant without. By the law of angles, as far as the object is, so deep the image seems within.

So take a delightful formula to heart: the deeper something seems within, the farther it is from you. If something seems utterly “inner,” know for certain it is the most external thing there is. As often happens, people say love is very inner. Which means, it is the most outer matter. When you say, “Someone’s love has entered my very heart,” understand you are reaching for a very distant thing. It means someone is very far—and therefore appears so deep in your mirror.

Near things will appear near; far things appear deep. And the apparent depth of an image has nothing to do with actual inwardness. In a small puddle the moon appears as deep as it is far in the sky. The puddle is not that deep! How deep is your mirror? Lay the mirror flat—the moon appears within it as deep as it is distant.

However deep reflections appear, they do not enter within. Nothing has ever entered within; nothing can. It merely seems so because within there is a mirror. Consciousness is a mirror—the purest mirror. So pure! For glass, however pure, is still glass—still matter. But consciousness is purer still.

If we could ever make a mirror of air, it would still not be as pure as the mirror of consciousness. If air could serve as a mirror, letting images reflect without hindrance, you would pass straight through; the mirror would not obstruct. The mirror of consciousness is purer still—because consciousness is the subtlest phenomenon in existence, the purest force. In it this world is reflected.

The rishi says: O stainless one! As reflections appear in a mirror, so the seeming of this world appears within you. Knowing this, recognizing this, leave the reflections and know: “I am Brahman—I am the mirror, not what is reflected in it.” Thus be fulfilled.

Without this, there is no fulfillment. Until one recognizes the purity of one’s consciousness, one remains unfulfilled. Do whatever you will, gain whatever you may—everything gained will prove futile; everything done will be undone; the whole running about will be like drawing lines on water. You cannot finish one line before it dissolves. You draw again; it dissolves again.

At the end of life, those who chased reflections realize in the moment of death: we were drawing lines on water. Everything is lost—prestige, position, wealth, accumulations—everything is lost. At death, one sees the great mistake: we thought we were engraving on granite; we were scratching water. But then it is seen when nothing can be done.

If you see it today—right now—something can be done. You can stop drawing lines on water. And one who withdraws his hand from that futile task enters another world—the world where nothing ever perishes.

There is a world of death and a world of deathlessness. Whoever turns away from death attains the immortal.