|
After
Death - IV
Page
2
Man
has an extraordinary power of creation. He has created a whole
set of godheads in his own image, having the same faults as
himself, doing on a bigger scale, with greater power whatever
he does. These beings have a relative existence, but still
it is an independent existence, just like your thought. When
you have a thought, a well-made mental formation which goes
out of you, it becomes an independent entity and continues
on its way and it does that for which it was made. It continues
to act independently of you. That is why you must be on your
guard. If you have made such a formation and it has gone out,
it has gone out to do its work; and after a time you find
out that it was perhaps not a very happy thing to have a thought
like that, that this formation was not very beneficial; now
that it has gone out, it is very difficult for you to get
hold of it again. You must have considerable occult knowledge.
It has gone out and is moving on its way... Supposing in a
moment of great anger (I do not say that you do so, but still
when you were in quite a rage against someone, you said: "Ah!
couldn't some misfortune befall him?'' Your formation has
gone on its way. It has gone out and you have no longer any
control over it; and it goes and organises some misfortune
or other: it is going to do its work. And after sometime the
misfortune arrives. Happily, you do not usually have sufficient
knowledge to tell yourself: "Oh! It is I who am responsible'',
but that is the truth.
Note
that this power of formation has a great advantage, if one
knows how to use it. You can make good formations and if you
make them properly, they will act in the same way as the others.
You can do a lot of good to people just by sitting quietly
in your room, perhaps even more good than by undergoing a
lot of trouble externally. If you know how to think correctly,
with force and intelligence and kindness, if you love someone
and wish him well very sincerely, deeply, with all your heart,
that does him much good, much more certainly than you think.
I have said this often; for example, to those who are here,
who learn that someone in their family is very ill and feel
that childish impulse of wanting to rush immediately to the
spot to attend to the sick person. I tell you, unless it is
an exceptional case and there is nobody to attend on the sick
person (and at times even in such a case), if you know how
to keep the right attitude and concentrate with affection
and good will upon the sick person, if you know how to pray
for him and make helpful formations, you will do him much
more good than if you go to nurse him, feed him, help him
wash himself, indeed all that everybody can do. Anybody can
nurse a person. But not everybody can make good formations
and send out forces that act for healing.
In
any case, to come back to our paradise, it is a childish deformation—ignorant
or political—of something which is true in a sense but
not quite like that I have told you many times and I could
not repeat it too often, that one is not built up of one single
piece. We have within us many states of being and each state
of being has its own life. All this is put together in one
single body, so long as you have a body, and acts through
that single body; so that gives you the feeling that it is
one single person, a single being. But there are many beings
and particularly there are concentrations on different levels:
just as you have a physical being, you have a vital being,
you have a mental being, you have a psychic being, you have
many others and all possible intermediaries. But it is a little
complicated, you might not understand. Suppose you were living
a life of desire, passion and impulse: you live with your
vital being dominant in you; but if you live with spiritual
effort, with great good will, the desire to do things well
and an unselfishness, a will for progress, you live with the
psychic being dominant in you. Then, when you are about to
leave your body, all these beings start to disperse. Only
if you are a very advanced yogi and have been able to unify
your being around the divine centre, do these beings remain
bound together. If you have not known how to unify yourself,
then at the time of death all that is dispersed: each one
returns to its domain. For example, with regard to the vital
being, all your different desires will be separated and each
one run towards its own realisation, quite independently,
for the physical being will no longer be there to hold them
together. But if you have united your consciousness with the
psychic consciousness, when you die you remain conscious of
your psychic being and the psychic being returns to the psychic
world which is a world of bliss and delight and peace and
tranquillity and of a growing knowledge. So, if you like to
call that a paradise, it is all right; because in fact, to
the extent to which you are identified with your psychic being,
you remain conscious of it, you are one with it, and it is
immortal and goes to its immortal domain to enjoy a perfectly
happy life or rest. If you like to call that paradise, call
it paradise. If you are good, if you have become conscious
of your psychic and live in it, well, when your body dies,
you will go with your psychic being to take rest in the psychic
world, in a blissful state.
But
if you have lived in your vital with all its impulses, each
impulse will try to realise itself here and there... For example,
a miser who is concentrated upon his money, when he dies,
the part of the vital that was interested in his money will
be stuck there and will continue to watch over the money so
that nobody may take it. People do not see him, but he is
there all the same, and is very unhappy if something happens
to his precious money. I knew quite well a lady who had a
good amount of money and children; she had five children who
were all prodigals each one more than the other. The same
amount of care she had taken in amassing the money, they seemed
to take in squandering it; they spent it at random. So when
the poor old lady died, she came to see me and told me: "Ah,
now they are going to squander my money!'' And she was extremely
unhappy. I consoled her a little, but I had a good deal of
difficulty in persuading her not to keep watching over her
money so that it might not be wasted.
Now,
if you live exclusively in your physical consciousness (it
is difficult, for you have, after all, thoughts and feelings,
but if you live exclusively in your physical), when the physical
being disappears, you disappear at the same time, it is finished...
There is a spirit of the form: your form has a spirit which
persists for seven days after your death. The doctors have
declared that you are dead, but the spirit of your form lives,
and not only does it live but it is conscious in most of the
cases. But that lasts for seven or eight days and afterwards
it is dissolved. I am not speaking of yogis; I am speaking
of ordinary people. Yogis have no laws, it is quite different;
for them the world is different. I am speaking to you of ordinary
men living an ordinary life; for these it is like that.
So
the conclusion is that if you want to preserve your consciousness,
it would be better to centralise it on a part of your being
that is immortal; otherwise it will vanish like a flame in
the air. And it is very fortunate, for if it were otherwise,
there would be perhaps gods or types of superior men who would
create hells and heavens as they do in their material imagination,
where they would imprison you; you would be imprisoned in
heaven or in hell according as you pleased or displeased them.
It would be a very critical situation and happily it is not
like that.
1
July 1953
- The Mother
|
