Main Mrityu Sikhata Hun #2

These two statements are not opposed. The Divine is one; in truth the soul is one. But bodies are of two kinds. One is what we call the gross body, which we can see; the other is the subtle body, which we cannot see. When death happens, the gross body falls away, but the subtle body does not die.

The soul abides within two bodies, a subtle body and a gross body. At death the gross body drops. This body made of earth and water, of bone, flesh and marrow, falls. What remains is an extremely subtle body—of thoughts, subtle sensations, subtle vibrations, subtle filaments.

That filament-woven body begins the journey again with the soul and takes birth anew by entering a new gross body. When a new soul enters a mother’s womb, it means the subtle body has entered.

At ordinary death only the gross body falls, not the subtle. But at the ultimate death—which we call moksha—the subtle body drops along with the gross. Then the soul is not born again; it dissolves into the Vast. That mergence into the Vast is one—like a drop falling into the ocean.

Three points need to be understood.
- The essence of the soul is one.
- In relation to that essence, two kinds of bodies become active: a subtle body and a gross body. We are familiar with the gross body; the yogi becomes familiar with the subtle. And those who rise beyond yoga become acquainted with that which is the soul.
- Ordinary eyes can see this physical body. Yogic vision, meditation, can see the subtle body. But what remains beyond meditation, beyond yoga, beyond even the subtle, is known in samadhi. When one rises even beyond meditation, samadhi flowers; and what is experienced in samadhi is the experience of the Divine.

For the ordinary person the experience is of the body; for the ordinary yogi, of the subtle body; for the supreme yogi, of the Divine. The Divine is one; subtle bodies are innumerable; gross bodies are innumerable.

The subtle body is the causal body. That same subtle body takes on a new gross body. Here we can see many bulbs lit. Electricity is one; there aren’t many electricities. That energy, that power, is one, yet it manifests through different bulbs. The bulb’s bodies differ; its “soul” is one. The consciousness peeping out from within us is one. Yet for that consciousness to peep through, two instruments, two vehicles, are used: one is the subtle instrument, the subtle body; the other is the gross body.

Our experience usually stops at the gross body. This stoppage at the gross body is the whole darkness and misery of human life. Some may stop at the subtle body too. Those who stop at the subtle will say there are countless souls. But those who go beyond even the subtle will say: the Divine is one, the soul is one, Brahman is one.

There is no contradiction in my two statements. When I spoke of the soul’s entry, I meant the soul whose subtle body has not yet dropped. That is why we say that when a soul attains ultimate liberation, its birth-and-death ceases. In truth the soul has no birth or death—it was never born and will never die. But when even the subtle body has dissolved, there remains no birth and death, because it is the subtle body that is the cause of new births.

The subtle body means the integrated seed of all our thoughts, desires, passions, longings, experiences, our knowing—the condensed seed of all this is our subtle body. It is what carries us on into further journeys. But in the person whose thoughts have been destroyed, whose passions have withered, whose desires have dissolved, in whom no desire remains, there is nowhere left to go, no reason to go. There remains no cause for birth.

There is a wondrous incident in the life of Ramakrishna. Those who knew him closely found it very hard to understand that a paramahansa like Ramakrishna, a man immersed in samadhi, was very eager about food. He would be so impatient for food that he would often get up, go into the kitchen and ask Sarada, “It’s getting very late—what is being cooked today?” A discussion on Brahman would be going on, and in the middle of it he would leave the talk of Brahman, go to the kitchen and ask, “What has been made today?” and start looking around. Sarada told him, “What are you doing? What will people think—that you leave the talk of Brahman and at once descend into talk of food!” Ramakrishna would laugh and keep quiet. His disciples too said many times that it caused great notoriety. People would say, “What realization could a man have whose palate still longs so much for food!”

One day Sarada, his wife, reproached him a great deal. Ramakrishna said, “You silly one, you don’t understand: the day I show disinterest toward food, know that only three more days of my life remain. I will not live beyond three days. The day I become indifferent to food, know that three days later my death will come.” Sarada asked, “What do you mean?” Ramakrishna said, “All my passions have withered away, all my desires have dissolved, all my thoughts have been destroyed—but for the welfare of the world I wish to remain. I am deliberately holding on to a single desire. As if all the chains mooring a boat have been loosed and one chain alone keeps it fast; if that one chain breaks, the boat will set out on its infinite journey. I am staying by deliberate effort.”

Perhaps no one understood this at the time. But three days before Ramakrishna’s death, Sarada brought a plate of food into his room. He looked at the plate, closed his eyes, lay down, and turned his back toward her. She suddenly remembered his words: that three days later death would come if he showed disinterest in food. The plate clanged down from her hands; beating her breast, she began to weep. Ramakrishna said, “Do not weep! What you used to say—that, too, has now been fulfilled.”

Exactly three days later Ramakrishna died. One tiny desire had been deliberately held. That tiny desire had been the basis for the continuation of the life-journey; when even that went, the whole basis of the journey ended.

Those we call Tirthankaras, those we call Buddhas, sons of God, avatars—even in them a single desire remains. And they keep that one desire for the sake of compassion, for the welfare of all beings, for the good of all. The day even that desire becomes exhausted, on that very day this journey ends and the beginningless journey of the Infinite begins. After that there is no birth, no death, and after that… after that there is neither one nor many. After that, what remains cannot be counted by number.

Therefore, those who know do not even say that Brahman is one, that the Divine is one. Because saying “one” is pointless where counting “two” is impossible. “One” is meaningful only so long as two, three, four are meaningful. Only among numbers does “one” have meaning. Hence those who know do not even say “Brahman is one”; they say Brahman is advaya—non-dual—not two. It is a most wondrous statement: they say the Divine is not two. They say there is no way to count the Divine within number; even by calling it “one” we are trying to count it, and that is wrong.

But reaching that is far off. For now we stand on the gross, the bodily, which is endless, many. Enter within this body and another body becomes available—the subtle body. Go beyond even that, and that becomes available which is not a body, the bodiless—that which is the soul.

There is not the slightest contradiction in what I said yesterday; there is no inconsistency in it.

It can. But there is no meaning or purpose in entering another dead body. Because that body died precisely because the soul living in it had become incapable of remaining there. That body had become useless; that’s why it was left. There is no purpose in entering such a body. Still, the possibility of entering another body does exist.

But it is not a valuable question to ask how to enter someone else’s body when we don’t even know how we are sitting in our own. What benefit can we gain by pondering the futile idea of entering another’s body? We do not know how we ourselves entered this very body. We don’t know how we live in our own body. We have no experience of separating from our own body and seeing ourselves. There is no purpose in entering another’s body. Yet, scientifically one can say it is possible to enter another body—because the body is neither another’s nor one’s own; all bodies are “other.” When a soul enters a mother’s womb, it too is entering a body—only a very tiny one, an atomic body, but a body nevertheless.

That first-day atom that forms in the mother’s womb contains the entire blueprint of your body hidden within it. The possibility that your hair will turn white in fifty years is hidden in that tiny seed. The color of your eyes is hidden there. How long your hands will be, whether you will be healthy or sickly, fair or dark, whether your hair will be curly—everything is potentially concealed in that tiny seed. It is a small body, an atomic body, a molecule-body, and the soul enters that molecular body. The soul enters in accordance with the structure and the situation—the whole configuration—of that atomic body.

And the reason human life and consciousness are falling lower by the day in the world is that couples are not creating the conditions for superior souls to take birth. The conditions being created favor only the birth of extremely inferior souls.

After a person dies, it is not necessary that the soul immediately gets another birth. Ordinary souls—neither very superior nor very inferior—find a new body within thirteen days. Very inferior souls also wait, because an opportunity inferior enough is hard to find. Those inferior souls we call ghosts and spirits. Very superior souls also wait, because an opportunity sufficiently superior is rare. Those superior souls we call gods.

In the old world the number of ghosts and spirits was very large and the number of gods very small. In today’s world, the number of ghosts and spirits has become very small and the number of gods very large. For the chance to be born as a godlike human has become scarce, while the chance for ghosts and spirits to be born has become readily available. So those ghosts and spirits who used to remain held back from entering human beings have all entered humanity. That is why it has become difficult today to see ghosts—there is no need; just look at people and you have seen them. And our faith in gods has weakened, for when godly men are not visible, it becomes difficult to believe in gods.

There was a time when gods were as much a reality, as actual, as any other truths of life. If you read the Vedic rishis, it does not seem as if they were speaking about imagined gods. No—they speak of gods who sing with them, laugh with them, converse with them; gods who walk the earth, very near to them. Our connection with the divine realm has been destroyed because among us there are no such men who can become a bridge, who can stand between gods and men and declare what the gods are like. And the responsibility for this rests on the arrangement of human matrimony. The entire arrangement of human conjugal life is ugly and perverted.

First, for thousands of years we have stopped love marriages and we marry without love. A marriage without love never produces that spiritual relationship possible through love. Between the two, that harmony, that unison and music never arise which are necessary for the birth of a superior soul. Their so-called love is only companionship, a habit of living together. In their love there is no movement of the soul that fuses two beings into one.

Children born on earth without love cannot be loveful; they cannot be like gods. Their state will be ghostlike; their lives will be lives of hatred, anger, and violence. A small thing makes a vast difference. If the basic harmony of personality, the basic rhythm of personality is lacking, astonishing changes occur.

You may not know why women appear more beautiful than men. You may not have noticed why a certain roundness, a sculpted grace seems to belong to a woman’s personality but not to a man’s. You may not have noticed why there is a music in a woman, a dance, an inner dance not seen in a man. The reason is small, not a big one—so small you could hardly imagine it; yet on such a small cause such a vast difference in personality is born.

The first cell that forms in the mother’s womb contains twenty-four units from the man and twenty-four from the woman. When the two twenty-fours meet, a first cell of forty-eight is formed. The being that arises from forty-eight becomes a woman’s body. Her two “pans of the scale” are twenty-four and twenty-four—balanced, in equilibrium. The male unit is forty-seven: twenty-four on one side, twenty-three on the other. The balance of personality breaks right there; equilibrium and harmony break.

The two pans of a woman’s personality are equally balanced. From that arise a woman’s beauty, her sculpted grace, her art, the rasa and poetry of her being. In the male personality there is a tiny lack. One pan of his scale is made of twenty-four units—the one received from the mother—and the one from the father is of twenty-three. The male units are of two kinds: twenty-four-unit and twenty-three-unit. If the twenty-three-unit one meets the mother’s twenty-four, a male is born. Hence a restlessness remains in man throughout life—an intense discontent: What should I do, what should I not do? Anxiety, agitation—should I do this, or that? A man’s restlessness begins with a small event: on one pan of his scale one unit is missing; his personality’s balance is less. A woman’s balance is complete, her harmony complete, her rhythm complete.

Such a small event brings such a big difference. Though it made woman beautiful, she could not become evolutionary—because where there is complete symmetry, growth does not happen; it comes to a standstill. Man’s personality is asymmetrical. Because of that asymmetry he runs, grows, climbs Everest, crosses mountains, goes to the moon, will go to the stars, explores, thinks, reflects, writes scriptures, creates religions. A woman will not do these things. She will not go to Everest, nor to the moon and stars, nor search out religions, nor write treatises, nor conduct scientific research. There is a balance in her personality, and that balance does not fill her with an intense urge to go beyond.

Man developed the whole of civilization because he is short by one unit; and woman did not develop civilization because she is complete by one unit. Such a small matter can create such different personalities! I say this because even biologically—a biologist would say—so small a difference gives birth to such different beings. And there are deeper differences, inner differences.

The soul that is born from the union of a man and a woman depends on how deep their love is, how much spirituality, how much purity, how prayerful their hearts are as they come to one another. The loftiness of the soul attracted to them depends on this. How vast a soul is drawn toward them, how great a divine consciousness makes that home its opportunity—this depends on that.

Humanity is becoming weak, abject, impoverished, and miserable. Deep down the reason is the distortion of human conjugal life. Until we ennoble and culture the conjugal life of man—until we spiritualize it—we cannot improve humanity’s future. And the blame also lies with those who condemned the householder’s life and made great clamor for the life of renunciation. Because once the householder’s life was condemned, we stopped thinking in that direction.

No, I want to tell you: by the path of renunciation very few reach God. Very few, some particular kinds of people, very rare types reach God by that path. The majority reach through the way of the householder, through marriage. And the surprising thing is that the householder’s path is extremely simple and accessible—yet no attention has been paid to it. All religion till now has suffered under the overinfluence of renunciates. Religion has not been developed for the householder. If it had been, then from the very first moment of conception we would have thought about what kind of soul to invite, to call, to allow to enter life.

If religion were rightly taught, and if each individual were given the right direction, imagination, and feeling in the religious sense, then within twenty years the coming generation could be made entirely new.

The man is a sinner who descends into sex without sending a loving invitation to the incoming soul. He is a criminal—his children are illegitimate, even if born within marriage—if he has not called them with deep prayer and worship and remembrance of the Divine. He is a criminal, and will remain so before all posterity. Who enters within us determines the entire future. We worry about education, about clothing, about the children’s health—but we have entirely abandoned concern for the children’s soul. From this, no good humanity can ever be born.

Therefore, do not worry much about how to enter someone else’s body. Worry about how you have entered this very body.

To the friend who has asked, I would certainly say that if he wishes, he can be led into past-life remembrance. But one should enter that experiment only after much thought. The anxieties of this life are enough; its troubles are many. To forget this very life, a person drinks, watches movies, plays cards, gambles. Just to forget the day, he drinks at night. One who cannot even remember the day that has just passed, who lacks the courage to face life as it is—how will he muster the courage to remember past lives?
It may surprise you to know that all religions have opposed alcohol. And those ordinary, utterly uncomprehending leaders who go on telling the world that it was opposed because it destroys character, because it ruins a household’s wealth, because it makes people quarrelsome—these are foolish reasons. Religions opposed alcohol for one reason only: the person who drinks is devising a way to forget himself. And one who is working to forget himself can never become acquainted with his own soul, because to know the soul one must devise a way to know oneself. Thus alcohol and samadhi have become two opposing poles. Those other reasons have nothing to do with it. For the truth is—and this is worth understanding well—people generally think the drinker is a bad man. I know drinkers, and I know those who do not drink. From thousands of encounters I have found that in many ways the one who drinks is better than the one who doesn’t. I have seen more kindness and compassion in drinkers than in teetotalers. I have seen more modesty, more humility in drinkers than in non-drinkers. I have seen less stiff-necked arrogance in those who drink than in those who do not.

But religions did not oppose it for any of those reasons. These commonplace leaders who keep explaining it that way are wrong. The opposition was because the person who tries to forget himself is abandoning the courage required for remembering, for mindfulness, for memory. One who is preoccupied with forgetting even this life—how will he remember past lives? And if he cannot remember past lives, how will he transform this life?

Then a blind repetition goes on. What we have done again and again, we will go on doing again and again. The process is endless. Until remembrance happens, we will be born again and again and keep repeating the same stupidities we have repeated before. There is no end to it—no end to this boredom, this chain. Again and again we die, again we forget, and it all starts over. Like a circle, like the bullock tied to the oil-press, we keep going round and round. Those who called this life samsara—do you know what samsara means? It means the wheel, a turning wheel, in which the spokes go up and then down, up and then down.

And that wheel on India’s national flag—who knows for what reason the thoughtful people of India placed it there. Perhaps they don’t even know; who knows what they were thinking. Ashoka had that chakra carved on his stupas so that man would remember that life is a turning wheel, the bull at the oil-press. Everything circles back to the same place and starts revolving again. That wheel is a symbol of samsara. It is not a symbol of a victory-march; it symbolizes life’s daily defeats. It signifies that life, as we live it, is a repetitive boredom, a wheel that goes on repeating. But because each time we forget, we start repeating it again with great relish.

A young man moves toward a young woman to fall in love. He has no idea how many times he has moved in just this way, how many women he has chased! Yet once again he moves, thinking that for the first time such an event is happening in life. A marvelous event! This “marvelous” event has happened many times. And if he were to remember it, his state would be like someone who has been made to watch the same film ten or twenty-five times. If you go to a film today, that’s one thing; if you are taken again tomorrow, you might tolerate it. On the third day you will start saying, forgive me, I don’t want to go. But if you are forced—policemen on your heels, dragging you to the same film for fifteen days—on the sixteenth day you will try to squeeze your own throat and die: I won’t watch this film any more. This is the limit; I’ve seen it fifteen days—how long must I go on? But if, after each show, you were fed opium so that you forgot you had seen it, then the next day you could buy a ticket for the very same film and enjoy it immensely all over again.

Every time a man changes his body, the doorway to the memories stored in that body closes. Then the game begins anew—the same play, the same old story, all that has happened so many times. Through jati-smriti—recollection of past births—there comes the recognition: this has happened innumerable times; this story we have seen again and again; these songs we have sung again and again; enough—it has become unbearable.

Dispassion arises from past-life remembrance; detachment arises from jati-smriti. In no other way does true dispassion arise. It arises through remembrance of the past, the remembrance of those births that have gone before. And that is why renunciation has diminished in the world—because there is no remembrance of past lives, no method for it.

To the friend who has spoken, I would say that my preparation is complete. Whatever I am saying is not merely a theory for me. On every single word I am prepared to experiment with stubborn persistence. And if any person is ready, it will delight me. Yesterday I gave an invitation to those who have the courage to make a resolve. A few letters came, and I was very happy. They wrote that they are eager—that they were waiting for someone to call them. Now that I have called, they are ready.

They are ready, and I am very happy; my door is open for them. I can take them as far as they wish to go, and as far as I wish to take them. The world now needs at least a few people to become enlightened. If even a few become enlightened, we can shatter all the darkness of the human race.

In India, over the last fifty years two experiments were afoot. Perhaps it has never occurred to you that in India, across fifty years, two opposite kinds of experiments were underway. One experiment was Gandhi’s; another was Sri Aurobindo’s. Gandhi tried to raise the character of individuals one by one. He appeared to be succeeding, but in fact he failed entirely. Those whom Gandhi thought he had raised in character turned out to be clay idols. A little rain fell and all the paint washed away. In twenty years their paint has washed off—we are all seeing it. Their naked bodies stand in Delhi; all their paint is gone. Not a trace remains now. What Gandhi had plastered and polished was all washed off in the monsoon. As long as the rain of power had not fallen, their faces looked splendid; their khadi seemed impeccably washed; their caps looked as if they would lift up the nation. Today those very caps are fit only to be burned in mock-holika in every village, because they have become the symbols of the bourgeoisie, of the nation’s corruption.

Gandhi’s experiment seemed to be succeeding, but it failed completely. Such experiments have been tried often, and every time they have failed.

Sri Aurobindo undertook another experiment. He did not appear to succeed, and did not succeed outwardly, but his direction was absolutely right. His experiment was this: Is it possible for a few souls to rise so high that their very presence begins to lift and call other souls upward? Is it possible that when one person’s soul rises, the overall level of the soul of humanity rises with it?

This is not only possible; today it is the only possibility. Nothing else can work now. Man has fallen so low that if we plan to change people one by one, perhaps the change will never happen. In fact, the one who goes to change them is more likely to be changed by their company—to be corrupted along with them.

You can see it: those “servants of the people” who go to serve the people—within a short time it is discovered that they are the ones picking the people’s pockets. They went to serve, to reform others, and soon people start thinking how to reform them.

No, that way will not do. The history of human consciousness tells us that at certain times the consciousness of the world has leaped upward in a single stroke. Perhaps you don’t realize it: twenty-five centuries ago, in India, there were Buddha, Mahavira, the enlightened Katyayana, Makkhali Gosala, Sanjaya Belatthiputta. In Greece there were Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus. In China there were Lao Tzu, Confucius, Chuang Tzu. Twenty-five hundred years ago, across the world, a dozen or so people of such stature appeared that within a hundred years the consciousness of the world seemed to touch the sky. It felt as if a golden age had dawned; never before had such radiant souls manifested in humanity.

With Mahavira, fifty thousand people lit up like lamps and went from village to village. With Buddha, thousands of monks stood up, and their light, their flame, began to awaken village after village. Wherever Buddha arrived with his ten thousand bhikkhus, within three days even the very molecules of that village’s air seemed to change. Wherever those ten thousand monks sat, wherever they prayed, it was as if darkness vanished from that village, as if prayer descended there, as if flowers began to bloom in that village’s heart that had never bloomed before.

A few people rose upward, and with them the eyes of those below turned upward. People look up only when there is something above worth looking at. There is nothing above to look at; there is much below to look at. The lower a man descends, the bigger a house he builds. The lower he descends, the bigger a safe he amasses. The lower he descends, the finer a Cadillac he buys. There is plenty to look at below. Delhi has settled in a pit—down below. If you look into the netherworld, into the underworld, there is Delhi. Whoever wants to reach Delhi must go downward—down, down, down.

There is nothing above to look toward. Whom should one look to? Who is above? And could there be a greater misfortune than this—that there are no souls above to look toward, seeing whom the heart feels drawn, seeing whom the heart cries out, seeing whom the heart reproaches itself: This lamp I too could have been! These flowers could have opened within me! These songs I too could have sung! This Buddha, this Mahavira, this Krishna, this Christ—I too could have been!

Once this thought arises—“I too could be that”—but there must be someone to see for this thought to arise—then the life-energy begins the journey upward. And remember: the life-energy is always on a journey; if it does not travel upward, it travels downward. It never stands still. There is no stopping, no station, in the realm of consciousness where you can halt and rest. Either upward or downward—life is in motion every moment. We must raise up beacons of consciousness.

I want a movement across the world. Not of a great many people, but of a few courageous ones who are ready to experiment. If a hundred people in India agree to experiment, and a hundred people take a vow that we will take the soul to the very heights possible for man, within twenty years the very face of India can change. Vivekananda, at the time of his death, said: I kept calling for a hundred people—come, a hundred come—but those hundred never came, and I am dying defeated. If only a hundred had come, I would have transformed the whole country.

But Vivekananda kept calling, and the hundred did not come. I have decided I will not merely call—I will search, village to village; I will look into eyes to find who is the man. If someone will not come when called, he will have to be pulled. If even a hundred can be brought, I assure you: the rising souls of a hundred people will stand like an Everest, like a Gaurishankar, and the life of the whole nation can move forward on that pilgrimage.

So to those friends who feel my challenge is right, who feel the courage and the strength to walk on a path that is very unknown, very unfamiliar—on that path, on that sea for which we have no map—whoever has the courage to enter it should understand that such courage is there only because, deep within, God must have called him; otherwise such courage and daring would not be possible. In Egypt it was said: When someone calls out to God, he should know that long before that, God had called out to him; otherwise the call would not arise.

Whoever has that call within carries today a great responsibility for the world. Today one must go to the corners of the earth and say: Let a few people step out and dedicate their entire lives to experiencing the heights. All the so-called truths and experiences of life till now are turning false. The heights touched so far are becoming imaginary—myths. A hundred, two hundred years from now, children will deny that people like Buddha, Mahavira, and Christ ever existed—they will say these are only stories.

Someone in the West has even written a book declaring that a man like Christ never existed. It was only an old drama that people gradually forgot was a drama and began to take as history.

Even now we enact the Ramlila. We think there once was a Rama; therefore we perform the Ramlila. A hundred years from now children will say: The Ramlila used to be performed, and people fell into the delusion that there once was a Rama. First came the Ramlila; Rama came afterward. It must have been a play that continued for so long that people began to believe it was true. Because when, before our eyes, men like Rama and Buddha and Christ stop appearing, how will we believe they ever existed?

And the human mind is never willing to accept that anyone can be higher than itself. Only under great compulsion does it admit that someone is above; otherwise it never accepts. It tries hard to find some flaw, some defect, so it can declare: This man too is low. Then it can be satisfied: Ah, that was wrong. If nothing can be found, it invents something—so that you can be at ease in your stupidity and feel: I am perfectly fine.

Gradually man will deny everyone, because their symbols and signs are nowhere to be seen. How long will stone statues testify that there were Buddhas and Mahaviras? How long will words written on paper persuade you that there was a Christ? How long will your Gita be able to prove that there was a Krishna?

No, it will not last much longer. We need living men—like Jesus, like Krishna, like Buddha, like Mahavira. If we do not bring forth such people in the next fifty years, humanity is about to enter an exceedingly dark age. It will have no future.

Whoever feels they can do something for life faces a great challenge. And I will go from village to village issuing this challenge. Wherever I find eyes that seem as if they could become lamps, in which a flame could be lit, I am ready to give my total effort. On my side, the preparation is complete. Let us see that, at the time of death, I too do not have to say: I searched for a hundred people, but I did not find them.

You have listened to my words with so much love and silence; for that I am very grateful. And in the end I bow to the God seated within each of you. Please accept my pranam.