About yourself there is already a strong conviction “based on fact” that you have made yourself immortal.Sri Aurobindo
Letters of Sri Aurobindo
Volume 1. 1935
Letter ID: 1293
Sri Aurobindo — Nirodbaran Talukdar
March 26, 1935
It was Y who said to K the other day that Mother told them in an interview that you and Mother have conquered Death, that S needn’t die and that even if such a possibility came, if they called you fervently Death would recede.
What the Mother said was that there was no necessity that S should die – of the possibility both S and Y knew – and if death came, yet if they could call in the force it would have to recede. This was a statement of the principle and it is a thing that has happened to many. It was not an affirmation that S would certainly live. The sadhaks have a habit of turning spiritual truths into crude downright statements of a miraculous kind which lead to many misunderstandings.
About yourself there is already a strong conviction “based on fact” that you have made yourself immortal.
On what fact?
In one of your talks in the early days you seem to have acclaimed yourself as immortal except under 3 conditions – accident, poison and Ichchha Mrityu.1
It must have been a joke taken as a self-acclamation. Or perhaps what I said was that I have the power to overcome illness, but accident and poison and the I.M. still remain as possible means of death. Of course, the Mother and myself have hundreds of times thrown back the forces of illness and death by a slight concentration of force or even a use of will merely.
And just lately I came to know that the first two also have been conquered and the last, Ichchha Mrityu, depends on your Ichchha.
Great heavens, when?
Another conviction which all of us shared is that you could never have any illness; but your “eye”, due to whatever cause, has shattered it.
It is long since I have had anything but slight fragments of illness – (e.g. sneezes, occasional twitches of rheumatism or neuralgia: but the last is mostly now outside the body and does not penetrate) – with the exception of the eye and the throat (only one kind of cough though, the others can’t come) which are still vulnerable points. Ah yes, there is also prickly-heat; but that has diminished to almost nothing these last years. There is sometimes an attempt at headache, but it remains above the head, tries to get in and then recedes. Giddiness also the same. I don’t just now remember anything else. These are the facts about “having no illness”. As for the conclusion, well, you can make a medical one or a Yogic one according to your state of knowledge.
You have written that with the growth of the inward consciousness, one can feel the forces of illness coming and if one knows how to stop them one can do so. Then surely you can see what is coming, why don’t you prevent it? How does this theory coincide with what you have written namely that illness can be conquered only by the Supramental rooting itself firmly?
Always the same rigid mind that turns everything into a statement of miraculous absoluteness! It is my experience and the Mother’s that all illnesses pass through the subtle consciousness and subtle body before they enter the physical. If one is conscious, one can stop it entering the physical, one can develop the power to do so. We have done that millions of times. But that does not mean that every time we will do so. It may come without one’s noticing or when one is asleep or through the subconscient or in a sudden rush when one is off one’s guard etc., etc. Let us suppose however that I am always on guard, always conscious, even in sleep – that does not mean that I am immunised in my very nature from all illness. It only means a power of self-defence against it when it tries to come. Self-defence may become so strong that the body becomes practically immune as many Yogis are. Still the “practically” does not mean “absolutely” for all time. The absoluteness can only come with the supramental change. For below the supramental it is an action of a Force among many forces – in the supramental it becomes a law of the nature.
Can the supramental really make immortal a tottering old man, with all his anatomy and physiology pathological?
Well, don’t you know that old men sometimes get a new or third set of teeth in their old age? And if monkey glands can renew functionings and forces and even make hair grow on a bald head, as Voronoff has proved by living examples,– well? And mark that Science is only at the beginning of these experiments. If these possibilities are opening before Science, why should one declare their absolute impossibility by other means?
In Yogic Sadhan2 I find that by Yoga every cell in the body can be changed in structure and function; but to expect that in a grand old man – well, isn’t it too much even for the Yogic Force?
Now that the omnipotence of this Force is being questioned, will you kindly write that promised letter “by means of examples” on what Yogic Force can do?
There is a difference between Yogic Force on the mental and inferior planes and the Supramental Nature. What is acquired and held by the Yoga-Force in the mind-and-body consciousness is in the supramental inherent and exists not by achievement but by nature – it is self-existent and absolute.3
Not now. I am too busy trying to get things done to spend time in getting them written.
Last night I was taking a walk in the yard when I began to feel that it was not I who was doing the walking, but some form which I did not know at all. It seemed to be devoid of much vitality or consciousness. As I came into the area where it was a little darker, the things that were lying about looked peculiar as if they existed in dreamland,– and in the midst of them was this form walking about like one in sleep. Is it all imagination?
It is a very usual experience. It means that for a moment you were no longer in your body, but somehow either above or outside the body consciousness. This sometimes happens by the vital being rising up above the head or, more rarely, by its projecting itself into its own sheath (part of the subtle body) out of the physical attachment. But it also comes by a sudden even if momentary liberation from the identification with the body consciousness, and 
this liberation may become frequent and prolonged or permanent. The body is felt as something separate or some small circumstance in the consciousness or as something one carries about with one etc., etc., the exact experience varies. Many sadhaks here have had it. When one is accustomed, the strangeness of it (dreamland etc.) disappears.
I propose to go to the hospital 3 or 4 days in a week, because I think it will help my work. But please don’t say later on that I was following closely my predecessor Esculape, in trying to be a big doctor.
Mother fully approves your attending – she considers it helpful in many ways. So have no scruples Esculapian or otherwise.
May I use a cycle to go to the hospital?
Where will you keep the cycle there? If there is a safe place, you can have the cycle.
1 Death by an act of will.
2 A small book written by Sri Aurobindo in an automatic manner in 1911. He did not want it to be included among his works.
3 The text of this paragraph is reproduced from the 1st Edition (1969) of Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo. The original version of the paragraph is given below. The changes were probably made by Sri Aurobindo, but no written record of his revision remains.
There is a difference between Yogic Force and Supramental Nature. What is acquired and held by Force in the one, becomes inherent in the supramental and exists by nature – it becomes self-existent and absolute.