Sri Aurobindo

Letters on Himself and the Ashram

The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Volume 35

Life and Death in the Ashram

Death [4]

What you said about the immunity from death was quite correct. Immunity from death by anything but one’s own will to leave the body, immunity from illness are things that can be achieved only by a complete change of consciousness which each man has to develop in himself,— there can be no automatic immunity without that achievement. What had been established was a general protection and a defence against the entry of death while the sadhana was going on — but this could not be absolute. There had been since I came here in 1910 and since people began to gather afterwards, only two deaths on the outskirts of the Asram — one in X’s family (a baby) when they had not yet become resident sadhaks and one of Y’s mother who had come for a visit. But this comparative immunity was broken recently by S’s death and now by D’s. Formerly when there were only thirty or forty sadhaks and there was a universal faith, then without medicines or doctors the Asram was free from illness except for passing colic etc. cured in a day or merely brief fevers. If one had fever, one simply lay down for a day or two and got up well. Now, since the numbers increased and the struggle with old Nature is on the material plane, illness has increased in frequency and violence. But if there were the same solid mass of living faith, the old relative immunity might still return. But absolute immunity can be only by sadhana.

5 October 1936