On Death
Sri Aurobindo & The Mother
Doom is a passage for our inborn force,
Our ordeal is the hidden spirit’s choice,
Ananke is our being’s own decree.
But greater spirits this balance can reverse
And make the soul the artist of its fate”
Change Nature’s doom by the lone Spirit’s power..
Its seal not Fate nor Death nor Time dissolve…. Let Fate do with me what she will or can;
Fate’s law may change, but not my spirit’s will.
I am stronger than death and greater than my fate….
My fate is what my spirit’s strength can make, My fate is what my spirit’s strength can bear;
And one great act unlock the doors of Fate
Savitri performs all her duties gracefully and lovingly, keeping the knowledge of her fate secret to herself and happily spends her days with Satyavan, inwardly preparing to meet her destined fate.
In Greek mythology, personification of compelling necessity or ultimate fate to which even the gods must yield. Ananke is our being’s own destiny: Ananke — that is Necessity is greater than the gods. — the utter unknowable. Presently we are governed by the blind Ananke of the Inconscience which must be replaced by the greater luminous spiritual Necessity. Necessity is a formidable force, but it can be mastered. Savitri’s task is to transform it. We live in a choice and fate follows our unchanging road. Ultimately we must realise our fate is choice of our soul, not something imposed from external.
Difficulties come because there are possibilities in you. If in life everything was easy, then it would be a life of nothing. Because difficulties come on your way it shows you have possibities.
The greater the difficulty, the greater can be the progress. Difficulties come always to make us progress.
I bow not to thee, O huge mask of Death,
Black lie of night to the cowed soul of man,
Unreal, inescapable end of things,
Thou grim jest played with the immortal spirit.
Death’s grip can break our bodies, not our souls.
Death is a passage, not the goal of our walk.
Our death is made a passage to new worlds.
Death is but changing of our robes to wait
In wedding garments at the Eternal’s gate.
Death is our road to immortality.
Immortality assured itself by death.
Death lay beneath him like a gate of sleep.
He has need of death to find a greater life.
His death is a beginning of greater life,
Death is the spirit’s opportunity.
Our being must move eternally through Time;
Death helps us not, vain is the hope to cease.
In a world of beings and momentary events
Where all must die to live and live to die
O Death, if thou couldst touch the Truth supreme
Thou wouldst grow suddenly wise and cease to be.
Men die that man may live and God be born.
Death is a stair, a door, strumbling stride
The soul must take to cross from birth to birth,
A grey defeat pregnant with victory,
A whip to lash us towards our deathless state.
Thou art his spur to greatness in his works,
The whip to his yearning for eternal bliss,
His poignant need of immortality.
Even there shall come as a high crown of all
The end of Death, the death of Ignorance.
In Death’s realm repatriate immortality.
Thou must die to thyself to reach God’s height:
I, Death, am the gate of immortality.
O man, the events that meet thee on thy road,
Though they smite thy body and soul with joy and grief,
Are not thy fate, — they touch thee awhile and pass;
Even death can cut not short thy spirit’s walk:
Thy goal, the road thou choosest are thy fate.
Yes, there are happy ways near to God’s sun;
But few are they who tread the sunlit path;
Only the pure in soul can walk in light.
He has trod with bleeding brow the Saviour’s way.
He who has found his identity with God
Pays with the body’s death his soul’s vast light.
His knowledge immortal triumphs by his death.
A seed shall be sown in Death’s tremendous hour,
A branch of heaven transplant to human soil;
Nature shall overleap her mortal step;
Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.
Thy spirit’s strength shall make thee one with God.
She is the golden bridge, the wonderful fire.
.. I am stronger than death and greater than my fate;
My love shall outlast the world, doom falls from me
