Page 19 - All India Magazine Jan-2026

take a new one, is it not better to make of one’s death some-
thing magnificent, joyful, enthusiastic, than to make it a dis-
gusting defeat? Those who cling on, who try by every pos-
sible 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.... 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 beautiful thing of it, a very beauti-
ful thing, as of everything. And note, those who do not fear
it, who are not anxious, who can die without any sordidness
are those who never think about it, who are not haunted
all the time by this “horror” facing them which they must
escape and which they try to push as far away from them
as they can. These, when the occasion comes, can lift their
head, smile and say, “Here I am.”
CWM 4: 354

Step back and smile
Did you ever have spontaneously — spontaneously with-
out effort — the perception that you had made a mistake?
I am not speaking of an external reaction that gives you a
knock, wakes you up suddenly and you say: “Oh my God,
what have I done?” I am not speaking of that. When you do
a thing, feel a thing, when you say a thing — take simply the
petty quarrels like those I hear about at least a dozen of them
a day (at least), idiotic, (I wonder how, having one’s reason,
one can quarrel about such things), well, at the time you ut-
ter those words that should not be uttered, that are simply
silly, do you see that you are truly stupid — not to say any-
thing worse — spontaneously?... You always give an excuse.
You have always the feeling that the other person is wrong,
and that you are right and that, indeed, he must be told that
he is wrong, yes? Otherwise he would never know it! Isn’t

All India Magazine, January 2026 19