Death is an Asur who was once a Sur. He is the shadow child of Sun. Sun is the guardian of the law of Truth that builds immortality in us. Death is the guardian of the law of ignorance that subjects us to division, disintegration and mortality. His domain is the subconscient underworld, Patala, where his scribe Chitragupt (the subconscient that registers everything big or small faithfully) makes notations of human deeds to subject his soul to all kinds of misery and pain. But the Divine Beings and the Divine Law is never a law of suffering nor does He ever inflict punishment. The Divine Law, the Law of Truth is a law of progressive growth and evolution towards Light and Freedom and Bliss and Immortality. Death opposes this grand plan by subjecting us to the iron grip of ignorance and thereby inflicting suffering upon us as if through our own deeds making life a growing register of calamities. It is man who has turned this fellow into a god out of fear and a misplaced belief in the sole material reality. The day man discovers his immortal Self, the day he will stop believing in Death, this darkness grows huge due to human fear will leave shedding his dark and terrifying attire. Then the face of Truth shall shine out again from behind the mask and earthly life will experience the beauty and bliss of the Infinite:
“Oh, surely one day he shall come to our cry,
One day he shall create our life anew
And utter the magic formula of peace
And bring perfection to the scheme of things.
One day he shall descend to life and earth,
Leaving the secrecy of the eternal doors,
Into a world that cries to him for help,
And bring the truth that sets the spirit free,
The joy that is the baptism of the soul,
The strength that is the outstretched arm of Love.
One day he shall lift his beauty’s dreadful veil,
Impose delight on the world’s beating heart
And bare his secret body of light and bliss.”
But now we strain to reach an unknown goal:
There is no end of seeking and of birth,
There is no end of dying and return;
The life that wins its aim asks greater aims,
The life that fails and dies must live again;
Till it has found itself it cannot cease.
All must be done for which life and death were made.
But who shall say that even then is rest?
Or there repose and action are the same
In the deep breast of God’s supreme delight.
In a high state where ignorance is no more,
Each movement is a wave of peace and bliss,
Repose God’s motionless creative force,
Action a ripple in the Infinite
And birth a gesture of Eternity.
A sun of transfiguration still can shine
And Night can bare its core of mystic light;
The self-cancelling, self-afflicting paradox
Into a self-luminous mystery might change,
The imbroglio into a joyful miracle.
Then God could be visible here, here take a shape;
Disclosed would be the spirit’s identity;
Life would reveal her true immortal face.
One may ask what will happen to destruction then? Is it not needed to maintain the balance of creation? Surely destruction is an integral element of creation. It makes way for new life to emerge. This is what is required of Death, his real job description so to say. He is Kaal that simply measures out the period of time allotted to each species for the balance of creation. But this normal life span has been disturbed especially because the various imbalances (viruses of fear and deceit and selfishness and greed and lust and ambition) rise up from the subconscient terrains and fill man’s life with foulness leading to untimely deaths. This is never an original plan of nature. The human mind consents to this upsurge, and the death from his subconscient domain sends these hostile broods to stalk human life. He knows that as long as human life is under the grip of these forces of ignorance and darkness he will continue to dominate. By so doing he seeks to become the dominant god rather than Surya the original One of whom he is the shadow. He is also the Restrainer, Yama whose task is to restrain human life when it strays far from dharma. But instead, he uses or rather misuses his powers by restraining and putting a stop to everything, including all beautiful and divine efforts that can uplift the soul. He engenders the human fall from the heights so that his reign can prolong. This is the evil mystery of life’s change which is connected to the mystery of change in Death itself who is supposed to be only an instrument of perpetual life.
Sri Aurobindo assures us that the time has come for man to shake off this slavery to ignorance and death, for a few at least. Though these initial pioneers and adventurers and wrestlers will be few yet once they reach a critical number it will be enough for the balance of earth and humanity to be restored. It is only when this happens that death will return back to its original function from which he has deviated. He will become an instrument of life which he is meant to be. It would mean restoring the world once again to the law of Truth, Dharma, from which man with his mental ego has turned away. Of course there will be those who would then completely escape the law of death and pick and choose when and how they would depart if at all they would. It would be a conscious choice and not a blind compulsion as it now is.
One day the Face must burn out through the mask.
Our ignorance is Wisdom’s chrysalis,
Our error weds new knowledge on its way,
Its darkness is a blackened knot of light;
Thought dances hand in hand with Nescience
On the grey road that winds towards the Sun.
Even while her fingers fumble at the knots
Which bind them to their strange companionship,
Into the moments of their married strife
Sometimes break flashes of the enlightening Fire.
Even now great thoughts are here that walk alone:
Armed they have come with the infallible word
In an investiture of intuitive light
That is a sanction from the eyes of God;
Announcers of a distant Truth they flame
Arriving from the rim of eternity.
A fire shall come out of the infinitudes,
A greater Gnosis shall regard the world
Crossing out of some far omniscience
On lustrous seas from the still rapt Alone
To illumine the deep heart of self and things.
A timeless knowledge it shall bring to Mind,
Its aim to life, to Ignorance its close.
