Page 38 - All India Magazine Dec-2024

you become wholly independent of your body; your conscious ex-
istence does not depend on it; and this body is only one of the tran-
sient forms through which you have manifested. Death is no longer
an extinction, it is only a transition. All fear instantly vanishes and
you walk through life with the calm certitude of a free man.
The third method is for those who have faith in a God, their God,
and who have given themselves to him. They belong to him inte-
grally; all the events of their lives are an expression of the divine will
and they accept them not merely with calm submission but with
gratitude, for they are convinced that whatever happens to them is
always for their own good. They have a mystic trust in their God and
in their personal relationship with him. They have made an absolute
surrender of their will to his and feel his unvarying love and protec-
tion, wholly independent of the accidents of life and death. They
have the constant experience of lying at the feet of their Beloved
in an absolute self-surrender or of being cradled in his arms and en-
joying a perfect security. There is no longer any room in their con-
sciousness for fear, anxiety or torment; all that has been replaced by
a calm and delightful bliss. But not everyone has the good fortune
of being a mystic.
Finally there are those who are born warriors. They cannot ac-
cept life as it is and they feel pulsating within them their right to im-
mortality, an integral and earthly immortality. They possess a kind
of intuitive knowledge that death is nothing but a bad habit; they
seem to be born with the resolution to conquer it. But this conquest
entails a desperate combat against an army of fierce and subtle as-
sailants, a combat that has to be fought constantly, almost at every
minute. Only one who has an indomitable spirit should attempt it.
The battle has many fronts; it is waged on several planes that inter-
mingle and complement each other. ... There is yet another way to
conquer the fear of death, but it is within the reach of so few that
it is mentioned here only as a matter of information. It is to enter
into the domain of death deliberately and consciously while one

38 All India Magazine, December 2024