Page 20 - All India Magazine Dec-2024

One dies only if one consents to die
You have said: “One can neither hasten nor delay its hour.” But
death comes if one stops progressing. So, if one progresses, one
can put off the hour. Or does this mean that from one’s birth the
day and the moment of death are predestined?

No. This is altogether something else and on another plane. I
have written elsewhere that one dies only when one consents
to die — which seems to contradict what I have said here. But
this is the truth. I have told you this once already, I believe; in any
case, I have written it somewhere. There are two points of view.
Here I have taken quite an ordinary, material point of view, that
of the physical consciousness. But I have explained somewhere
that there are, as it were, different “layers of determinisms” in
our being. The physical existence has a determinism; the vital
existence has a determinism; the mental existence has a deter-
minism; the higher mental, the psychic have a determinism. And
then the higher existences have determinisms — the supramental
existence has a determinism. And the determinism of everyone
comes from the combination of all these determinisms (I am
sure I have written this somewhere). If, for instance, at a given
moment, when the entire physical determinism must necessarily
bring death, you suddenly enter into contact with an extremely
high determinism, like the supramental one, for example, and you
succeed in joining the two, you change your physical determinism
completely at that moment: death which had been determined by
the physical determinism is abolished, and the conditions change
and are pushed back. ...
If you do not make a higher determinism intervene, truly you
can change nothing. That is the only way of changing your physi-
cal determinism. If you remain in your physical consciousness and
want to change your determinism, you cannot...
CWM 6: 47-49

20 All India Magazine, December 2024