The Mechanics of the Corporeal Prison: Luminous Breaches in the Bodily Structure and the Fascination with Death

I. The Corporeal Prison: Definition and Structure

The material existence, perceived from a higher consciousness, is often experienced as a system of profound limitation and artificiality.1

A. THE BODY AS A GAOL

The immense material world itself is designated as a gaol.2 It functions under a rigid regime where a “stone-eyed law” stands armed across every road, and “huge dim sentinels” pace at every gate.3 The fundamental reality of life here is described as a slow and strange uneasy compromise of limiting Nature with a limitless Soul.4

The body is the primary prison, and the human condition is characterized by confinement to the sensations of the gross world.5 The mind that fabricates the details of everyday life acts like a narrow prison, making the individual feel cramped into a personal formation or “eggshell”.6

The perception of the body’s confinement is acute even in the cellular consciousness; the body has the feeling of being imprisoned within something, “shut as if inside a box,” which sees and acts in a limited way through a barrier that must eventually disappear.7

B. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CORPOREAL BEING

The human body is material, yet life and mind are fundamentally involved within it.8 The complete human structure is complex, composed of various layers or ‘bodies’ (often called sheaths in English occultism).9

1. Layers of the Physical Body: The physical body is organised into multiple gradations, of which three are typically discernible: the material physical, the vital physical, and the mental physical.10 Beyond these, there are the supramental physical and the Ananda physical, which are currently very difficult to know.11
2. The Cellular World: The physical is an innumerous or myriad world at the scale of its cellular constitution, where consciousness and light must be infused into tiny points, a long and slow work.12 The consciousness of the body’s cells is beginning to wonder why indefinite growth in light and consciousness is not maintained.13
3. The Nervous Envelope (Vital-Physical): The vital-physical body is the first thing perceived when the material barrier is broken.14 It forms a surrounding ‘nervous envelope’ or subtle body, which is essential for protection.15 This envelope is intermediary between the subtle body and the most material vital body.16 It is constituted by a physical basis and the vibrations of psychological states, such as peace, equanimity, faith, and cheerfulness, which give it strength and substance.17 If this sheath is strong and intact, it provides perfect protection against diseases.18

II. The Mechanics of Mortality and Physical Vulnerability

The sources explore the causes of suffering, disorder, and dissolution, identifying the mechanism by which the corporeal prison breaks down.

A. THE MECHANISM OF ILLNESS AND PAIN

Disorders in the physical body are symptomatic of deeper failures in consciousness and external invasions.19

1. Entry of Disease: Illnesses are movements of conscious forces.20 The force of a disease must break through the nervous envelope (vital-physical) to reach the body, except for attacks on the most material parts.21 If the nervous envelope is damaged—by fatigue, worry, emotion, or psychological disorder—intrusions can occur.22 The particular location of an ailment in the body indicates the nature of the inner disharmony or resistance.23
2. The Function of Pain: Pain is experienced when the body is acutely aware of its own incapacity to open, give itself, or change.24 Physical pain is also seen as resulting from hostile attacks that use bodily weaknesses as conduits to depress consciousness and weaken resistance.25
3. Lapse into Unconsciousness: From the perspective of transformation, illness is always a lapse into unconsciousness due to the incapacity to sustain the movement of transformation.26 If the body is left alone, without interference from mental constructs, vital reactions, or fears, it spontaneously attempts to re-establish equilibrium.27

B. THE PROCESS OF DISSOLUTION (DEATH)

The phenomenon typically called “death” is fundamentally defined by a failure of cohesion, rather than a mere stopping of physiological functions.28

1. The Abdication of Cohesion: The mechanism of death is rooted in the way the body suddenly comes apart.29 This happens when the force or consciousness that groups all the cells together abdicates its will to hold them unified.30 Death is therefore the decentralization of the consciousness contained in the body’s cells.31 This willed cohesion may collapse due to a feeling of irreparable disharmony or disgust at carrying on the effort of coordination.32
2. The Defeatist Subconscient: The reason this dissolution persists is profound: because physical death has always been the conclusion, the subconscient is defeatist.33 The struggle for transformation involves countering this ingrained feeling that all effort will inevitably end in dissolution.34
3. An Ancient Habit: The habit of dissolution is ancient, preceding man, as all forms—plants and other life—constantly take form, live, and dissolve.35 Man merely “dramatized” this process.36
4. Death as an Accident: To the Consciousness working for transformation, death is clearly defined as an “accident” that has persisted.37

C. THE AFTERMATH OF DISSOLUTION

Upon death, the physical form is dissolved.38 All vital elements—desires, attachments, cravings—persist, leading to frustration and disappointment, unless preparations (such as the abolition of desires) were made.39

1. The Obscure Vital World: The departing vital being is projected into the most material vital world, commonly called the “domain of death”.40 This region is dark, filled with adverse formations and small, elemental entities that feed upon the outgoing vitality, acting like vampires.41
2. Vulnerability: The body acts as a fortress and protection against the fluid, invading forces of the vital world.42 When the body is destroyed, this defence is lost, leaving the consciousness vulnerable to a “perpetual nightmare” if it enters this domain in ignorance or passion.43
3. Protection: Protection is afforded by a powerful light and force radiating from within, or by concentrated thought and love from living people.44 In rare cases, there are “protected passages” built in the vital world to cross over dangers.45 
4. The Psychic Path: The psychic being is untouched by vital dangers and is free to rest in the psychic worlds, assimilating life experiences before preparing for a new life.46

III. The Fascination with Death and the Cruel Domination

Mankind has given central importance to death, food, and money.47 The fascination with death often stems from a profound psychological tendency towards drama and ignorance.48

A. THE TASTE FOR DRAMA AND THE FASCINATION WITH THE UNKNOWN

The human tendency to dramatize dissolution is identified as a factor reinforcing mortality.49 This is linked to a universal taste for drama and the need for catastrophe pressing on the earth.50

Humans actively and foolishly weave a colossal, dreadful spider web of death around themselves through their media, literature, science, and philosophy.51

The fascination with death is pervasive:

• People love to remain in uncertainty and find interest in predictions, such as reading their own life line.52 This taste for the unknown is akin to the taste for theatre or the marvellous.53
• The raw violence or brutal nakedness of death can open a luminous breach in the bodily prison for those immured alive in it.54 This suggests that the pursuit of peril, ruin, and the drama of pain is motivated by the soul’s yearning for transcendence.55
• Conversely, the spiritual life of many is regarded as an attempt to find the Divine again by annulling creation (escape), which is a distortion of true spirituality.56

B. DEATH AS A CRUEL FRAUD AND DOMINATION

The ultimate nature of death is revealed not merely as a consequence, but as an oppressive force.57

• Death is a cruel domination over life in matter, which is “abominable” and dreadful.58
• The core work of transformation is to expose this fraud—the falsehood that attempts to convince the body that it is dying and that this cruelty rules life.59
• It is Death that lives, trying to scare the living being into submission, not life that dies.60
• The constant “brooding” presence of death is only a crude means used by the universe to intensify the manifestation and hasten progress in its infancy.61 Death, in this sense, is a whip to lash us towards our deathless state.62
• Suicide is not a free or willed withdrawal from life.63 It is an act of excessive egoism and great cowardice, driven by dark forces and morbid disappointment, leading the vital being into a state of perpetual nightmare or descent into blind worlds of darkness.64

IV. Luminous Breaches: Transformation and the Conquest of the Prison

The potential for transcending the corporeal prison lies in the transformation of Matter by Light and Consciousness.

A. THE BREAKTHROUGH OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND LIGHT

The moments of surrender and intense consciousness create breaks in the rigid structure, hinting at immortality.

1. The Response of Grace: At critical moments, the body’s complete abdication of its existence (more than surrender) is immediately filled with light and force—this is the Response or Grace.65 During such difficult moments, a profound, very calm, vast joy is experienced, and the cells feel a broadening.66
2. Flashes of Immortality: The cellular consciousness, when fully concentrated on the full sense of the Presence everywhere, had the feeling that once the secret of the present disorder is found, it is immortality.67 Occasionally, a flash of light creates a sudden access to a wonderful consciousness, briefly making the body feel it has escaped the law of death.68
3. Dispelling Darkness: True transformation requires achieving a keen, wholly awakened state of consciousness in the body’s cells, which dispels all darkness (darkness being the sign or cause of disorder).69

B. THE PATH OF PHYSICAL TRANSFORMATION

The final goal is to achieve an Integral Immortality (immortality on all four levels of being, physical, vital, psychic, and mental), leading to the restitution of a glorious body.70

1. The Necessity of Transformation: True conquest of death is possible only when the Supramental has driven its roots into Matter.71 This necessitates a radical change in the physical functions and processes.72 The result is not merely the disappearance of death, but the changing of both life and death into something new and different—at once dangerous and marvellous.73
2. The Work of the Cells: The cellular consciousness must achieve a plasticity and suppleness that abolishes the necessity of death.74 This transformation starts subtly and progresses slowly into the material field.75 When the Divine Force flows through the body, it brings comfort.76
3. Conscious Change: The transformation of the physical being requires replacing mechanical concentration with willed centralization of the cells by the divine Presence.77 The power of transformation involves finding the secret of how to create a body with transformed, illumined, conscious cells before the dissolution of the gross material body.78
4. The Transitional Body: The current state of beings undergoing transformation is characterised by the simultaneous experience of extreme fragility (where a tiny movement could end existence) and the sense of eternity.79 The body is moving towards a new physical existence driven by light and consciousness, where the concept of death becomes entirely meaningless.80 This new body, the corps glorieux, is conceived of as luminous.81

C. THE CONQUEST OF COLLECTIVE SUGGESTION

A major obstacle to be overcome is the mental battle against the massive, overwhelming, collective suggestion of death.82 This suggestion is rooted in thousands of years of experience, but must be rejected by an unshakeable conviction and unbending will.83

• Immortality as a Way of Being: True immortality is not about endlessly satisfying unchanged human desires (which would be undesirable and tiresome).84 It involves living in the Divine consciousness.85
• The Difference is Small: In reality, the difference between what men call “life” and “death” is very small, and it grows smaller as the problem is studied in depth.86 Many who are “living” are already half dead, and many who are “dead” are very much alive.87

The ultimate realisation is that only death can die.88 It is at the point of dying—when held sufficiently in the grip of death—that the being begins to emerge through intense aspiration in the body.89 The solution to mortality is definitively physical, not an escape, but a victory realized here in matter.90

- Narendra Gehlaut (India) 

1. When one looks at the world of men from the supramental consciousness, the dominant characteristic is a feeling of oddity, of artificiality—a world that is absurd because it is artificial. This world is false because its material appearance does not at all express the profound truth of things. There is as if a discrepancy between the appearance and what lies within. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: February 1958)
2. A gaol is this immense material world. Across each road stands armed a stone-eyed law, At every gate the huge dim sentinels pace. (Sri Aurobindo, Savitri - I: The Symbol Dawn)
3. A gaol is this immense material world. Across each road stands armed a stone-eyed law, At every gate the huge dim sentinels pace. (Sri Aurobindo, Savitri - I: The Symbol Dawn)
4. In this enigma of the dusk of God, This slow and strange uneasy compromise Of limiting Nature with a limitless Soul... (Sri Aurobindo, Savitri - I: The Symbol Dawn)
5. Almost every human being is a slave to his external circumstances, confined within the sensations of the gross world. Mental activities rely on those external sensations, and the intellect is incapable of transcending the narrow limits of the gross... The body itself is the prison, and the ignorance of the body-identified intellect is the enemy in the form of the prison. (Sri Aurobindo, Writings in Bengali and Sanskrit: Tales of Prison Life)
6. And it all exists PRIMARILY because each individual is shut up in his own little personal formation (Mother forms an eggshell), a formation of the most ordinary mind, the mind that fabricates the details of everyday life; it's like being cramped into a narrow prison. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: March 17, 1961)
7. One might say it in this way: the body has the feeling that it is imprisoned within something—yes, imprisoned—imprisoned as though in a box, but it sees through; it sees and it can also act (in a limited way) through something which is still there and which must disappear. This "something" gives the feeling of an imprisonment. How is it to disappear? That I do not know yet. (The Mother, Notes on the Way: 21 December 1968)
8. The human body is material – but there is life and mind involved in it. If one can properly observe, he will find a sort of life and mind in the cells of the body – the life is not organised life as we generally see, nor the mind similar to what we ordinarily call mind. (Sri Aurobindo, from a conversation on 6 August 1926)
9. The complete human structure is complex, composed of various layers or 'bodies', often called sheaths. Each sheath corresponds to a different plane of reality, and the occult process involves becoming aware of these subtle bodies to act in their corresponding worlds. This can be done through successive exteriorisations, where a more subtle body is made to come out from a denser one. Each such transition is like passing into another dimension. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: November 4, 1958 and Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: The Physical Consciousness)
10. At least there are five gradations of the physical body and three of them can be easily known – e.g. the material physical, the vital physical, the mental physical; but the supramental physical and the Ananda physical are very difficult to know. (Sri Aurobindo, from a conversation on 4 September 1926)
11. At least there are five gradations of the physical body and three of them can be easily known – e.g. the material physical, the vital physical, the mental physical; but the supramental physical and the Ananda physical are very difficult to know. (Sri Aurobindo, from a conversation on 4 September 1926)
12. When you descend into (or I may say, concentrate on) this cellular constitution of the body, on the body's scale, it's a myriad world! A myriad world. Everything is as though made up of myriad tiny points, and each point has to be awakened and flooded with consciousness and light—a long work. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: December 6, 1967)
13. But the body consciousness is beginning to wonder why it’s like that: Why, why isn’t there … a growth in light and in consciousness, an indefinite growth? Why? The body itself wonders why. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: May 10, 1969)
14. Thus when one can break the material barrier, the first thing he knows is the vital physical body. The vital physical is outside the material body – in the material body it acts through the nervous system. (Sri Aurobindo, from a conversation on 4 September 1926)
15. The vital-physical body forms a 'nervous envelope' around the physical body, acting as a protective sheath. For a disease to affect the body, its force must first break through this envelope. If this sheath is strong and intact, it provides perfect protection against all attacks of illness. However, it can be damaged by fatigue, worry, emotional distress, or psychological disorder, creating vulnerabilities. (Based on Sri Aurobindo, Evening Talks and The Mother, Questions and Answers (1929 - 1931))
16. The vital body surrounds the physical body with a kind of envelope which has almost the same density as the vibrations of heat observable when the day is very hot. And it is this which is the intermediary between the subtle body and the most material vital body. It is this which protects the body from all contagion, fatigue, exhaustion and even from accidents. (The Mother, Questions and Answers (1950 - 1951): 27 January 1951)
17. This body is built up, on the one side, of a material basis, but rather of material conditions than of physical matter, on the other, of the vibrations of our psychological states. Peace and equanimity and confidence, faith in health, undisturbed repose and cheerfulness and bright gladness constitute this element in it and give it strength and substance. (The Mother, Questions and Answers (1929 - 1931): 16 June 1929)
18. If this envelope is absolutely strong and intact, you can go into places infested with the worst of diseases, even plague and cholera, and remain quite immune. It is a perfect protection against all possible attacks of illness, so long as it is whole and entire, thoroughly consistent in its composition, its elements in faultless balance. (The Mother, Questions and Answers (1929 - 1931): 16 June 1929)
19. Physical ailments arise from both external attacks and the individual's inner condition. Resistance, revolt, or an unwillingness to respond to protection can create openings for adverse forces, which often manifest as illness. The specific location of an ailment in the body is symbolic, indicating the nature of the inner disharmony or resistance that has allowed the illness to take hold. (The Mother, Questions and Answers (1953): 22 July 1953 and Questions and Answers (1929 - 1931): 16 June 1929)
20. Diseases are movements of forces. There are conscious forces behind the diseases. (Sri Aurobindo, from conversations in 1926and Talks with Sri Aurobindo)
21. The force of a disease has to break through the 'nervous envelope' to reach the body — except for the attacks on the most material parts. You can then feel the disease coming and also feel in the nervous envelope the part of the body which it is going to, or intending to, attack because what is in the nervous envelope has a material counterpart in the body. (Sri Aurobindo, from a conversation on 4 September 1926)
22. The protective aura can be damaged by excessive fatigue, worries, tension, and depression. When altered, it no longer protects properly, allowing intrusions to occur. Any shock or disorder can create "holes" in this envelope. (The Mother, Questions and Answers (1954): 30 June 1954 and Mother's Agenda: August 5, 1961)
23. Each spot of the body is symbolical of an inner movement; there is there a world of subtle correspondences.... The particular place in the body affected by an illness is an index to the nature of the inner disharmony that has taken place. It points to the origin, it is a sign of the cause of the ailment. (The Mother, Questions and Answers (1929 - 1931): 16 June 1929)
24. For instance, there are painful, difficult moments, but it’s per-fect-ly aware that it’s because of its incapacity to open, to give itself, to change. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: February 19, 1969)
25. The pains in the body come from the same source as the trouble in the vital nature; both are attacks from the same outside Force that wants to mislead or, when it cannot mislead, to trouble and disturb you. It is really an attack on the nervous part and a weakening of it for the time that gives you these pains. (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: Illness and Health)
26. Illness is always a lapse into unconsciousness through the incapacity to sustain the movement of transformation. And death is the same thing—the same thing, somewhat more total. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: January 25, 1967)
27. The body, if left to itself, is remarkable, for, not only does it aspire for equilibrium and well-being but it is capable of restoring the balance. If one leaves one's body alone without intervening with all those thoughts, all the vital reactions, all the depressions, and also all the so-called knowledge and mental constructions and fears—if one leaves the body to itself, spontaneously it will do what is necessary to set itself right again. (The Mother, Questions and Answers (1954): 19 May 1954)
28. Death is the decentralisation of the consciousness contained in the body's cells. The cells contained in the body, or composing the body, are held in form by a centralisation of the consciousness in them, and as long as that power of concentration is there, the body cannot die. It's only when the power of concentration disappears that the cells scatter. And then one dies. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: December 17, 1969)
29. To this Consciousness, it’s … it’s clearly what we might call an “accident,” but an accident … that has persisted. And it’s now showing how one dies, that is, how the body suddenly comes apart—and how it might very well not have come apart. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: May 10, 1969)
30. With that consciousness (the consciousness accumulated, compressed in all those cells), when the heart stops beating and it's understood that, according to human ignorance, you are "dead," how does the force that groups all those cells together abdicate its will to hold them all together?... (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: August 10, 1963)
31. Death is the decentralisation of the consciousness contained in the body's cells. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: December 17, 1969)
32. What precedes death is accepting to cease the centralisation in the form for some reason or other. I have noticed that one of the strongest reasons (one of them, very strong) is a sense of irreparable disharmony. Another is a sort of disgust at carrying on the effort of coordination. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: June 3, 1968)
33. Because of physical death, the subconscient is defeatist. You see, the subconscient feels that whatever the progress, whatever the effort, it will always end with that, because up until now, it has always ended like that. So then the work now being done is to try to bring faith and the certainty of the transformation into the subconscient. And that... is a struggle at each second. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: December 22, 1971)
34. Because of physical death, the subconscient is defeatist. You see, the subconscient feels that whatever the progress, whatever the effort, it will always end with that, because up until now, it has always ended like that. So then the work now being done is to try to bring faith and the certainty of the transformation into the subconscient. And that... is a struggle at each second. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: December 22, 1971)
35. Of course, it’s not something new that came with man, because it was the same thing with all that preceded him: it would take form, dissolve—take form, live, grow, and dissolve—everything: plants and … The mineral kingdom was more stable by virtue of its unconsciousness (!), but all the rest was like that, constantly taking form, losing form, taking form and losing form again …. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: May 10, 1969)
36. Then man made a fuss about it, of course, and a drama. He dramatised it, and because he dramatised it he endeavours not to get out of it, but to adjust himself—to understand and adjust himself. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: May 10, 1969)
37. To this Consciousness, it’s … it’s clearly what we might call an “accident,” but an accident … that has persisted. And it’s now showing how one dies, that is, how the body suddenly comes apart—and how it might very well not have come apart. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: May 10, 1969)
38. Life does not die, but the form is dissolved. This dissolution occurs when the universal force that held the form together withdraws its support for constitution and instead supports a process of dispersion. Real death of the body is this disintegration of the formed substance. (The Mother, On Education and Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine - I)
39. When you die you lose only your body and at the same time the possibilities of relation with and action on the material world. But all that belongs to the vital world does not disappear with the material substance; all your desires, attachments, cravings persist with the sense of frustration and disappointment, and all that prevents you from finding the expected peace. To enjoy a peaceful and eventless death you must prepare for it. And the only effective preparation is the abolition of desires. (The Mother,Words of the Mother - III: Old Age and Death)
40. Generally, "domain of death" is the name given to a certain region of the most material vital into which one is projected at the moment one leaves one's body. (The Mother, Questions and Answers (1954): 10 March 1954)
41. That material vital world is very dark, it is full of adverse formations having desires at their centre or even adverse wills, and these are very, very elemental entities which have a very fragmentary life and are like vampires, in the see that they feed on all that is thrown out from human beings. And so, at that moment, from the shock of death... those entities rush in upon this, upon this vitality that goes out, and feed upon it. (The Mother, Questions and Answers (1954): 10 March 1954)
42. The human being is at home and safe in the material body; the body is his protection. There are some who are full of contempt for their bodies and think that things will be much better and easier after death without them. But in fact the body is your fortress and your shelter. While you are lodged in it the forces of the hostile world find a difficulty in getting any direct hold upon you. (The Mother, Questions and Answers (1929 - 1931): 12 May 1929)
43. When one goes out of life in an altogether arbitrary way and in an ignorant and obscure passion, one goes straight into a vital world made of all these passions and all this ignorance. So the troubles one wanted to avoid one finds again without even having the protection which the body gives... when you have destroyed your body you no longer have a body to protect you. So you find yourself in a perpetual nightmare, which is not very pleasant. (The Mother, Questions and Answers (1955): 26 January 1955)
44. Protection is afforded when a person is much loved by others who are still alive; if at that moment these people concentrate their thought and love on the departed one, he finds a refuge therein, and this protects him completely against those entities. A strong light and force radiating from within the being also provides safety. (The Mother, Questions and Answers (1954): 10 March 1954and Questions and Answers (1929 - 1931): 12 May 1929)
45. Now there are bridges, as it were, "protected passages" which have been built in the vital world in order to cross over all these dangers. There are atmospheres, which receive people leaving their body, give them shelter, give them protection. (The Mother, Questions and Answers (1954): 10 March 1954)
46. But behind all this is the psychic being which nothing can touch, which is above all possible attacks, and it indeed is free to go where it wants. Usually—unless it has a special opportunity and has reached a state of complete development—it goes to rest in the psychic worlds. There it enters into a kind of beatific contemplation, in which it remain, and this is an assimilation of all its experiences, and when it has finished assimilating them and resting, well, it starts preparing to come down again for a new life. (The Mother, Questions and Answers (1954): 10 March 1954)
47. Death, food and money: this Consciousness feels those are the three "awesome" things in human life, that human life revolves around those three things—eating, (laughing) dying, and having money—and to it, the three are... they are passing inventions which derive from a wholly transitory state that doesn't correspond to anything very deep or very permanent. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: May 3, 1969)
48. The human tendency to dramatise dissolution reinforces mortality. This is linked to a universal taste for drama and a need for catastrophe. Man made a "fuss" and a "drama" about the natural process of forms dissolving, and this dramatisation is seen as foolishness from a higher consciousness. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: May 10, 1969 and Mother's Agenda: June 14, 1967)
49. Then man made a fuss about it, of course, and a drama. He dramatised it, and because he dramatised it he endeavours not to get out of it, but to adjust himself—to understand and adjust himself. And when you are in a certain consciousness, it simply looks like foolishness, nothing else. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: May 10, 1969)
50. The taste for drama, the need for catastrophe. That's what was there, pressing and pressing on the earth to bring about all the conditions for a resounding grand finale. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: June 14, 1967)
51. Humans do not realise. On the contrary, they spin, they endlessly spin all possible threads so as to be bound hand and foot by death. They spin them in every way: with their newspapers, their television, their science, their books, their novels, their adventures... And so the world is in a colossal, dreadful spider web – which they spin foolishly, you see, day after day. (From an unpublished conversation of the Mother, cited in Satprem, Life without Death)
52. Look, for instance, how many people, even the most serious, love to have their fortune told: reading the hand, reading the handwriting... even regardless of any spiritual idea, that sort of interest people find in being told, "See, your life line will last up to here...." People love it! They love it, they love to remain in their uncertainty. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: October 16, 1963)
53. They love that unknown—the unknown "full of mysteries." ... It's the same as the taste for theatre, it's the same thing... or again the taste for novels—the taste for the "unknown." But then that's very close to the taste for the marvellous. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: October 16, 1963)
54. ...more than a fascination with death, which also is only a means and not an end, although its brutal nakedness can sometimes open a luminous breach in the bodily prison—where we seem to have been immured alive—and we emerge into a new dimension of our being. (Satprem, in a letter to André Malraux, cited in The Mother's Agenda, Mother's Agenda: March 29, 1972)
55. It was drawn to hazard's call and danger's charm, It yearned to the pathos of grief, the drama of pain, Perdition's peril, the wounded bare escape, The music of ruin and its glamour and crash... (Sri Aurobindo, Savitri - II: The Way of Fate and the Problem of Pain)
56. The spiritual (what's commonly called "spiritual") boils down to the whole attempt at finding the Divine again by annulling the creation—that's what has been regarded as spiritual life (that's why the word got distorted). To annul the creation in order to find the Divine again.... (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: August 19, 1967)
57. ...you realise what a CRUEL domination has seized hold of all life – at least human life. It's a cruel, dreadful, horrible domination. It's . . . abominable. And that's the CRUEL DOMINATION over life in matter. (From an unpublished conversation of the Mother, cited in Satprem, Life without Death)
58. Death is a cruel domination over life in matter, which is "abominable" and dreadful. The whole work of transformation is to expose this fraud—the falsehood that attempts to convince the body that it is dying and that this cruelty rules life. (From an unpublished conversation of the Mother, cited in Satprem, Life without Death)
59. That's what the work is all about, you see, in a way to . . . EXPOSE THE FRAUD, this falsehood that wants us to believe that it rules, that it is life. Death wants us to believe that it is life. (From an unpublished conversation of the Mother, cited in Satprem, Life without Death)
60. It is DEATH that lives – it isn't life that dies; it's DEATH that lives. It created a sort of... revolution in the body, a complete reversal, a real breakthrough. (From an unpublished conversation of the Mother, cited in Satprem, Life without Death)
61. It is this kind of constant "brooding" or presence of Death and the possibility of death... Well, along with this, in the cells, there is a call for a Power of Eternity, with an intensity which would not be there except for this constant threat. Then one understands, one begins to feel quite concretely that all these things are only ways of intensifying the manifestation, of making it progress, of making it more perfect. (The Mother, On Thoughts and Aphorisms: Aphorism - 88, 89, 90, 91, 92)
62. Death is a stair, a door, a stumbling stride The soul must take to cross from birth to birth, A grey defeat pregnant with victory, A whip to lash us towards our deathless state. (Sri Aurobindo, Savitri - II: The Dream Twilight of the Ideal)
63. To characterise suicide as a willed withdrawal from life is the most astounding statement that would not bear a moment's scrutiny. Suicide is accompanied in most cases by a morbid feeling of disappointment with life, a violent revolt against what is considered the imposition of an unjust providence or an adverse malignant fate. It has nothing of the sense of freedom behind it... (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV: Dealing with Depression and Despondency)
64. A violent exit by suicide is an act of excessive egoism, not of freedom. It is driven by dark forces and leads the vital being into a state of perpetual nightmare or descent into blind worlds of darkness, as one finds oneself in the vital world without the protection of the physical body. (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - IV and The Mother, Questions and Answers (1955))
65. At the critical moment (there are critical moments), at the critical moment, this surrender (it’s even more than surrender, it’s a complete abdication of everything, of its existence and everything) is filled with light and force. That’s the Response. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: February 19, 1969)
66. The body is very conscious of its infirmity—and of the Grace. For instance, there are painful, difficult moments, but it’s per-fect-ly aware that it’s because of its incapacity to open, to give itself, to change. And a profound joy, VERY CALM, but very vast—vast, you know, the cells feel a broadening. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: February 19, 1969)
67. Once or twice, when the body's... what one might call its agony to know, was very intense, when it had the full sense of the Presence, this sense of the Presence everywhere, inside, everywhere... it had the feeling: Once this is found out, it is immortality. (The Mother, Notes on the Way: 21 December 1968)
68. Also, it’s constantly assailed by all the … well, the general corruption; and once in a while—once in a while—a flash of light, lasting … a few seconds: all of a sudden, something else. Something else and … a wonderful consciousness, and then the old routine goes on. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: May 10, 1969)
69. It's a keen state of consciousness, that is, wholly awakened. In the cells of the body, it drives away all darkness. Naturally, it's a long and slow work, but it drives away, it's a state that drives away all darkness everywhere. And darkness is always the sign (sign or cause) of a disorder. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: December 6, 1967)
70. By integral immortality, the Theons meant immortality on all four levels of the being: Physical, vital, psychic and mental. It would find its fullest expression on the physical plane: ‘It is on earth, as an integral human being, in our physical body, that we rightly shall recover the integral immortality that has been stripped away from us.’ This would lead to ‘the restitution of the glorious body’ and the achievement of immortality. (Peter Heehs, The Mother: A Research Biography)
71. The conquest of Death would mean the conquest of illness and of the psychological and functional necessity of Death of the body—that is one of the ideals of the Yoga, but it can be accomplished only if and when the supramental has driven its roots into Matter. (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram: Death)
72. A radical transformation of the functioning and, it may well be, of the structure and certainly of the too mechanical and material impulses and driving forces of the bodily system would be imperative. The physical functions would all have to be transformed, otherwise the body would be incapable of holding the Supramental Power. (Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga: The Divine Body and a conversation on 2 November 1925)
73. Not that death disappears, mind you (death as we see it, as we know it and in relation to life as we know it): that’s not it, not it at all. BOTH are changing into something we don’t yet know, which seems at once extremely dangerous and absolutely marvellous. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: July 12, 1972)
74. The very clear vision of this plasticity so particular, this suppleness so extraordinary that if it were realised... once it's realised, it obviously means the abolition of the necessity of death. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: February 3, 1968)
75. The work of transformation begins subtly and descends very slowly and progressively into the more material field. This process is often gradual, requiring a slow preparatory phase to instil stillness and openness in the physical consciousness. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: April 18, 1970 and Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - III: Descent and the Lower Nature)
76. The body is comfortable only when it is conscious of the divine Force acting... when "That" comes and flows through it. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: June 7, 1972)
77. The very first step towards immortality is to replace the mechanical centralisation by a willed centralisation ... which comes from the inner Presence, which means that through its will, the divine Presence concentrates the cells. (The Mother, Notes on the Way: 15 February 1969)
78. There is a way, which is to prepare within oneself before death a body with all the transformed, illumined, conscious cells — to assemble and form them into a body with the maximum number of conscious cells. Once this is completed, the consciousness enters this body and the other one [the gross material body] can dissolve, it doesn’t matter anymore. (Georges Van Vrekhem, Beyond Man)
79. For the body itself, there is a growing experience... at the same time of its fragility (extreme fragility: just a little movement could stop the present existence), and at the same time, at the same time, simultaneously, the sense of an eternity!—that there is an eternal existence. The two at the same time. It is truly a period of transition! (The Mother, Notes on the Way: 21 December 1968and Mother's Agenda: May 31, 1972)
80. Death can be overcome only when it no longer has any meaning. The path of transformation leads to a state of consciousness where this concept loses all significance, marking the beginning of a true, material divine life. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: December 4, 1962)
81. Théon (Mother's teacher in occultism) spoke of the transformed body as luminous, le corps glorieux (the glorious body). This implies a new physical basis created by the Supramental itself, potentially with a constitution different from the current one. (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: Transformation and the Body)
82. A major obstacle to transformation is the formidable collective suggestion of death, rooted in millennia of human experience and reinforced by science, religion, and culture. Overcoming this requires creating an immortal consciousness within oneself, free from the ingrained ideas and movements of the human race. (The Mother, On Education: The Fear of Death and the Four Methods of Conquering It and Questions and Answers (1953): 14 October 1953)
83. The first battle to be fought is already formidable: it is the mental battle against a collective suggestion that is massive, overwhelming, compelling, a suggestion based on thousands of years of experience... In spite of all this, the mind must remain unshakable in its conviction and sustain an unbending will. (The Mother, On Education: The Fear of Death and the Four Methods of Conquering It)
84. The common misconception of immortality as an endless continuation of human life with its unchanged desires is rejected as undesirable and tiresome. (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: Transformation and the Body)
85. True immortality is defined as living in the Divine consciousness. Divinising the body is presented merely as a potential material expression of this state. (Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga - I: Transformation and the Body)
86. There isn’t so much difference between what men call "life" and what they call "death"; the difference is very small, and grows still smaller when you go into the problem in depth and in all the details. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: October 4, 1967)
87. One always make a clean cut between the two—it's quite stupid: some living are already half dead, and many dead are VERY alive. (The Mother, Mother's Agenda: October 4, 1967)
88. Only death can die! It's . . . really the truth. Oh, you know, it's so extraordinarily simple! (From an unpublished conversation of the Mother, cited in Satprem, Life without Death)
89. You see, it is right at the point of dying that you begin to emerge. "At the point of dying" – you can die in your heart, die in your mind, die in your . . . in fact, we never stop dying in this life; that's all we do! But it has to become sufficiently . . . that death has to hold you sufficiently in its grip . . . so that there is such an intense aspiration in the body, you see – as when it is asphyxiated. (From an unpublished conversation of the Mother, cited in Satprem, Life without Death)
90. The salvation is physical—not at all mental, but physical. I mean to say that it is not escape, it is here. A complete perfection is through the ascent to supermind and the conquest of the physical also by the supramental substance so that man will be able to command a diviner physical life and conquer death in a divine body. (The Mother, Notes on the Way: 31 May 1969 and Sri Aurobindo, Essays in Philosophy and Yoga)