Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Sadhana in Pondicherry
1930s

The Conquest of Death [1]

In one of your talks in the early days you seem to have acclaimed yourself as immortal except under three conditions — accident, poison or icchā mṛtyu.

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.

Another conviction which all of us share is that you could never have any illness; but your eye problem, 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. Those 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.

26 March 1935