Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Life and Death in the Ashram

Death [3]

How is one to look at the death of D? Is it a defeat of the healing force or the absence of receptivity on her side?

It is a defeat of the healing force due to absence of receptivity in the body to the healing force.

I have heard that she had said she would not and could not give up her attachment to X. Perhaps her receptivity to Mother’s force was very little because of this attachment. But whether that should be so little as to lead to the dissolution of the physical is a question.

Perhaps the attachment to X was only one side of the same thing that stood in the way of her receiving.

Four or five days ago I felt so strongly that she was to die that I found it difficult to find arguments against it.

Yes, the chances were all along adverse and at the end it was a fight against the inevitable.

Today I had a peculiar feeling — that nothing dies and that there is nothing like death; that death is an illusion. “She is” — that’s the only fact.

Of course, that is the real fact — death is only a shedding of the body, not a cessation of the personal existence. A man is not dead because he goes into another country and changes his clothes to suit that climate.

4 October 1936