by Sri Bimal Mohanty
VOL No. 48
February : 2005

 


  Atma
 Knowledge
 Creation
 God
 Spiritualism
 Sanatan

 Questions
 e-mail

UNDERSTANDING DEATHLESSNESS OR AMRITATTVA

Part1

"Based on the lectures by Sri Bimal Mohanty"

The importance of knowing what is ignorance as well as what is knowledge, is also found in Sri Aurobindo’s observations in The Life Divine. He says and I quote“ To live in cosmic Ignorance is blindness: but to confine oneself in an exclusive absolutism of Knowledge, (mark here the word ‘exclusive’) is also a blindness: to know Brahman as at once and together (mark again the word ‘together’) the Knowledge and the Ignorance,…. is the integral knowledge; that is the possession of Immortality.” Unquote.

To possess immortality and be fully conscious of the state of satchidAnanda and enjoy that state without the fretters of fear born out of ignorance is in the real sense, what immortality is all about.

This may appear to be just a philosophical statement to ordinary human understanding, but when we think of great seers of the past whom we consider as immortal, we are thinking of this very state. The state of being in fully consciousness of knowledge, the one and only satchidAnand, the truth, its realization, and the Ananda or the bliss that flows out of it. They had no doubts of the mind that distracted them from this experience.

Again let us ponder over these words of Sri Aurobindo from The Life Divine: Quote “ For the individual to arrive at the divine universality, and supreme infinity, live in it, possess it, to be, know, feel and express that alone in all his being, consciousness, energy, delight of being is what the ancient seers of the Veda meant by the Knowledge; that was the immortality which they set before man as his divine culmination.” Unquote. That, when you come to think of it, is a very apt definition of the AdhyAtmic view of knowledge and immortality.

The Kaivalya Upanishad says ( which is also repeated in Mundaka):

Vedanta vijnAna sunischitArthAh sanyAsayogAt yatayah shuddhasatvAh

Te brahmalokeshu parAntakAle parAmrtAt parimucyanti sarve

The clear understanding of Vedantic knowledge, practice of non attachment to all worldly distractions, and purity of purpose, allows the seekers the freedom and entry finally to the domain of Brahman, which is immortality at its highest.

This helps to understand clearly from the highest spiritual viewpoint the inter-relationship between knowledge and true immortality.

There is also a counter statement, that if, Brahman is immortal and I am derived from the Brahman, then I am immortal already. That argument is very valid and even then we still jump out of our skins at the very mention of death.

Why is the jiva or the individual soul, unable to comprehend that he is immortal already? Why does he clutch on to the physical existence? The wise men will tell us that this is because of our identification with the body which is material and when we see the material body disintegrating right in front of our eyes day by day, the fear grips us.

One argument is that one must tear apart the worldly fretters and get released from the material state to the spiritual state by the power of tapas and sAdhanA. But another quite plausible argument is that, we are all already in that path of ascent. There is no need to be afraid of death and hanker for deathlessness as that process in the divine scheme of things we are already programmed for.

The crux of the problem is to come out of our delusion born out of ignorance – the Maya- and realize our true nature of self, which is already free from mortality

However, this release from the delusion, which is the characteristic of the material world, to the spiritual state will only become possible, when our purpose of being in the material world in the first place, is achieved and completed. Not for nothing we have been born into this world. In the divine scheme of things the material world happens to be my first workplace, my karmabhoomi. The so called MAyA is my first teacher for acquiring knowledge. And I have to and I must work my way through this material existence, gain the primary knowledge and then transcend eventually to higher state of gnosis. That is my sAdhanA.

Knowledge, a comprehensive integral knowledge is the spring board for all my forward movement.

In one way, this defines the very agenda of life itself. That agenda is life’s constant endevour to acquire knowledge. If you are not engaged in doing that, the precious human life is being wasted away every minute.

It is knowledge then, that will convince me that all are essentially immortal anyway. Sarve amrtasya putrAh. All are offsprings of immortality, hence all are immortal.

We are all immortal because, the life force that is the primary cause that differentiates death from life happens to be a single universal life force. We all live by one life, the life eternal. All of us have acquired this from the same and only source. The life force by which you live, I live, is the same life force by which he or she and all others live by. The same breath that enters unto me and comes out, also enters unto you and comes out, enters unto all beings in the creation, and by that all live. That is explained in the sloka-

Yastu sarvAni bhutAni Atmani eva anupasyati
Sarva bhutesu ca AtmAnan tatah na vijugupsate

He who sees all beings resting only in the Supreme Self and the Spreme Self supporting all beings, naturally does not have doubts about his own existence. Why should he get perturbed about death?

I am not separated from the universal life force. The universal life force does not die. So how can death conquer me?

How does spirituality helps us to free us from this obsession with physical existence and make us truly understand the higher purpose of life for which we are destined? We shall analyse this aspect next.

(CONTINUED)