Page 17 - All India Magazine Dec-2024

Moment of Death

Right attitude towards death
Whatever the circumstance, if your mind is accustomed to look
at it as something favourable, it will no longer be unpleasant for
you. This is quite well known; as long as the mind refuses to accept
a thing, struggles against it, tries to obstruct it, there are torments,
difficulties, storms, inner struggles and all suffering. But the minute
the mind says, “Good, this is what has to come, it is thus that it must
happen”, whatever happens, you are content. There are people
who have acquired such control of their mind over their body
that they feel nothing; I told you this the other day about certain
mystics: if they think the suffering inflicted upon them is going to
help them cross the stages in a moment and give them a sort of
stepping-stone to attain the Realisation, the goal they have put
before them, union with the Divine, they no longer feel the suffer-
ing at all. Their body is as it were galvanised by the mental concep-
tion. This has happened very often, it is a very common experience
among those who truly have enthusiasm. And after all, if one must
for some reason or other leave one’s body and take a new one, is
it not better to make of one’s death something magnificent, joy-
ful, enthusiastic, than to make it a disgusting defeat? Those who
cling on, who try by every possible means to delay the end even
by a minute or two, who give you an example of frightful anguish,
show that they are not conscious of their soul....
CWM 4: 354

Death is only a means
After all, it is perhaps a means, isn’t it? One can change this
accident into a means; if one is conscious one can make a beauti-
ful thing of it, a very beautiful thing, as of everything. And note,
those who do not fear it, who are not anxious, who can die with-
out any sordidness are those who never think about it, who are

All India Magazine, December 2024 17