Page 13 - All India Magazine Dec-2024

What is Death — Physically

Q: What is death, from the physical point of view?
Death is the phenomenon of decentralisation and dispersion of
the cells which make up the physical body.
The consciousness is, by its very nature, immortal, and in or-
der to manifest in the physical world, it assumes more or less last-
ing material forms.
The material substance is in course of transformation in
order to become a multiform and increasingly perfect and lasting
mode of expression for this consciousness.

Q: Does the decentralisation occur all at once or by degrees?

Everything does not disperse all at once; it takes a long time.
The central will of the physical being abdicates its will to hold
all the cells together. That is the first phenomenon. It accepts dis-
solution for one reason or another. One of the strongest reasons
is the sense of an irreparable disharmony; the other is a kind of
disgust with continuing the effort of coordination and harmonisa-
tion. In fact, there are innumerable reasons, but unless there is a
violent accident, it is above all this will to maintain cohesion which
abdicates for one reason or another, or without reason. It is this
which inevitably precedes death.

Q: In the expression “dispersion of the cells”, doesn’t the word “dis-
persion” have a special meaning? If so, what is it?

I used the word dispersion of the cells in its most concrete sense.
When the concentration which forms the body comes to an end
and the body dissolves, all the cells that have been especially de-
veloped and have become conscious of the divine Presence within
them, are scattered and enter other combinations in which they
awaken, by contagion, the consciousness of the Presence that each

All India Magazine, December 2024 13