Life without Death by Satprem (free ebook)

Life without Death

“Life without Death” is written by Satprem originally in French and published in 1985 under the title “La vie sans mort”. It is a follow-up to Mind of the Cells, co-written with Luc Venet, and provides a glimpse of Satprem in his post-Ashram life in this period.

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Introduction

PART ONE: SRI AUROBINDO

The Door Is Open
The Earth
Man
The Mental Principle
Spirituality
The Body
The Future
Matter
The Layers of Being
The Subconscious
Death
The Only Solution

PART TWO: MOTHER

The Plunge into the Body
The Supramental Force
The Work
The Unreality
Back and Forth
A Body Still Human
“The Divine”
The Transformation of the Body
The Walk in the Dark
The Contagion
No More Wear and Tear
Everything Is Going There
The Battle of the World
The End of Habits
The Resistance
The Forced Departure
The End of the Story?

PART THREE: SATPREM

Let Us Try . . .
The Breakthrough
Let Us Try
The Double Mooring
The New
Uprooting Death
Life Without Death
The New Power
The Spell
The Cry
A Revolution in the Body
The Other Air
An Automatic Path
The Delight in the Body
A World Simply True

Book Sample

Life without Death

The world is about to change – but perhaps not as we may imagine. In fact, somewhere, the change is already accomplished. There only remains to implement it fully, in broad daylight. The goal of this short book is to try to explain the specific conditions of this change, how it can take place and is already taking place. In it will not be found any methods, formulas or speculations on the state of the future world, only certain patent human truths that each one can use as he pleases.

The change in question here is not external, mechanical or scientific, but internal and human. It is the human world that must change – or perhaps simply the way we see and feel and manipulate our world. It is a question of implementing another way of living on earth, a being after man as radically different from us as we may be from our ancestor, the ape. If such a being is to see the light of day on this earth, the evolutionary wisdom and simplicity will produce it from us, from what we are today, and not out of some mystical and misty heaven, or out of a proliferation of computers – there must exist a link between it and us. Thus, if we observe and study what we are without human complacency, with scientific honesty, we could say, we ought to be able to find in ourselves a key, a means for making that transition, or at least for taking a few steps on the road that leads to the future of our species.

This great adventure into the unknown future was begun by Sri Aurobindo more than seventy years ago. Methodically, using himself as a subject of experiment, he went down one by one through the various levels of his being, of his own human substance, what we usually call “ourselves” in such a simple and natural way that we never really pay attention to it. Sri Aurobindo paid a lot of attention, studied minutely, going down farther and farther, to the extreme limit, to the body’s material foundation, what sets the cells in motion, in order to understand how a human being really functions. “I have been testing day and night for years upon years more scrupulously than any scientist his theory or his method on the physical plane,” he would say. And what does set the human cells in motion? What is the real mechanism? Later, Mother, his companion, followed him there. She, too, went all the way down into the dangerous and fantastic realm that holds the secrets of the functioning of the human body. That “descent” into one’s own being is the whole difficulty and the key to the transition we are seeking. Their experiential observations, their discoveries are of considerable interest for whoever is concerned with the future. Indeed, they found the link, the connection in us that can open the door to the next being. Alas, man’s nature is such that for the most part he wants easy formulas, “gimmicks” to ameliorate everyday life. The few disciples that Sri Aurobindo had gathered around himself in order to spread the fruit of his discoveries in humanity at large found it more convenient to make him into a god, then, after his departure in 1950, to inflict the same fate on Mother. “Why do men want to worship!” exclaimed Mother. “It is far better to become than to worship. It’s laziness that makes one worship.” Thus, hardly anyone around Mother and Sri Aurobindo really understood that their discovery in the cellular consciousness of a human body was the key to an effective change to another state. One had, naturally, to be willing to question one’s own makeup, to be willing to leave an old, uncomfortable skin for another that one did not know – one cannot reasonably expect to go toward the new while prudently clinging to the old. Failing to use Sri Aurobindo’s wonderful discoveries on oneself, as an evolutionary leaven, it was no doubt easier to empty them of their universal content by reducing them to a dogma, and trying to make a new religion out of them.

Fortunately, there was a grace that did not let this happen. Indeed, we scarcely need another religion. What we need is to give meaning to our present life on earth, to comprehend our real position and where we are going as a species. We do not need more incense but more sense. If we could open, however slightly, the true door of our future, our present world would appear singularly lighter; we would perhaps understand what we are going through and the meaning of the disconcerting chaos that seems to rule over present life on earth.

Thus, by sheer luck, Mother was able to find a man who understood her, what she was trying to do. To “understand,” in this case, did not just mean adhering in principle to the idea of a terrestrial transformation, not just raising it to the status of a personal ideal that one wears everywhere like a necktie, the way disciples tend to do; to understand meant to begin to feel in one’s own flesh the first tremors of something new and rather frightening; it meant bringing to light certain deep-seated quirks buried in one’s depths, not always pleasant or “divine”; it meant accepting, every minute of the day, to leave a solid and concrete present for a mysterious and intangible future – it meant going against all common sense. One had to be a little crazy – or truly athirst for something else. Years later, Mother said to Satprem, “When I first saw you, it was . . . you know, like something saying, ‘That one.'” With Mother there was no need for many words or explanations; it was mainly facts that interested her.

At any rate, that one being understood and was ready to embark on the unknown with her is invaluable to us, left as we are with the human burden. Perhaps the secrets that Mother discovered in the depths of the cells of her body can be of use to us, in our daily life, and perhaps they can also be useful to the collective life of the planet? After Mother left her body in 1973, these secrets had to live somewhere, to be active somewhere – and not just sterilely consigned to some new Tables of the Law. One man had to open his heart and flesh to keep the little flame alive. A human body was needed to house that Fire. Let us rejoice, for the Fire is burning somewhere on this earth; nothing is lost. Whether that man is registered at City Hall under one name or another, whether he was born in France (like Mother) and dresses in Western clothes or not is rather unimportant. He is the Keeper of the Flame; that is the important point – the following pages will show it abundantly. When he can share the secrets that drive him with his fellow human beings, the face of this earth will change; it will be a brand-new earth – or perhaps simply the liberation of the old one. But that depends a little on us, too.

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