Immortality

An extract from Zarathushtra: The Transcendental Vision by Phiroz Mehta

Continued from part 1 and part 2

In the next chapter, he (Zarathushtra) says:

Since, O Mazda, from the beginning Thou didst fashion for us physical bodies, discerning souls and directive Intelligences through Thy own Mind; since Thou didst infuse life into the body, grant us capacities to act and true doctrines to guide so that one could hold whatever faith one wills.

Therefore each one loudly announces his belief, be he speaking incorrectly or truly, be he enlightened or unenlightened; but Armati, standing ever close, appeals to the heart and head of each one through his spirit, to resolve his doubts.

Ys. 31.11, 12

It rests with each man to make the right choice. Should he do so, Sraosha (from the root sru, to hear), divine obedience, stirs into action within him and guides him. Armaiti’s ministrations are largely responsible for stirring Sraosha into action, for where there is that devotion which naturally and spontaneously moved the heart of love to Transcendence Itself, it becomes easy to listen to the inner voice. Obedience (ob + audire, to hear) basically means “to give ear to”, to hearken. And it is noteworthy how Zarathushtra emphasizes this meaning:

Give ear to the Highest.

Ys. 30.2

Who giveth ear to and realizes asha becomes the soul-healing Lord of Wisdom, O Ahura. To spread true teaching he becomes capable and eloquent of tongue.

Ys. 31.19

Hearken now with your ear. Listen to me all ye who have come from far and near, yearning to know.

Ys. 45.1

The implication associated with such hearing or listening is that the listener will seriously reflect upon what he hears, and translate it into action out of his free choice. This, and not a thoughtless or unwilling conforming out of fear to a forcible imposition, is true obedience.

In this inward spiritual listening, no words in any language are heard. If the attentiveness is intense and the brain is alert and quiet, free of the endless inaudible chatter which is its usual state of turmoil, the mode of awareness undergoes a transformation, giving rise to deep insights rather than spasmodic intuitive flashes. This transformation can affect the psycho-physical organism favourably and subsequently give rise to illuminating concepts clothed in appropriate and telling verbal formulations. The intellectual clear-sightedness of enlightened consciousness often finds powerful, poetic expression. Very significantly, the great scriptures of the world are couched in poetic language, uplifting and inspiring. Truth and Beauty are close companions.

Our usual mode of awareness — as I have propounded earlier — is the mode of finitude, temporality and mortality. Living the religious life as taught by the Holy ones transforms this mode of awareness. Consciousness evolves, becoming increasingly free of separativeness and isolativeness, and culminates in awareness in the mode of unitary Wholeness. Ordinarily, we are conscious in terms of beginning-proceeding-ending — the usual birth-death process of successive events in our lives — and of our mental states, and of our own psycho-physical organism. Whatever begins or is born at some instant ends or dies afterwards. Something else then begins and also ends. Between the end of one and the beginning of another there is a gap and a break in consciousness. These recurrent breaks in our consciousness throughout our lifetime is one meaning of being aware in the mode of mortality. When there is a break in consciousness we cease to attend, and any cessation of attentiveness produces a break in consciousness.

If there is no disjunction in attentiveness, constant wakefulness prevails. Thus, by going beyond awareness in the mode of mortality, the deathless state is present and the immortal is realized in consciousness. If this happens to you, it does not mean that the psycho-physical organism will continue to live for ever. The organism, like all matter (whether gross or subtle, corpuscular or radiant), is bound within the constraints of space-time, the context of finitude and temporality and the inexorability of change, of beginning or birth and ending or death. The passing away into non-being of whatever comes into being is indeed ineluctable: So, the realization of immortality whilst the deathless state prevails through your organism is limited to your experience of timelessness bounded by two points in time, namely, the moments of immergence into and emergence out of that state.

It is, however, not exclusively yours. For, in that state of deathlessness, the context in which your consciousness functions is the context of the Infinite-Eternal, which fully subsumes and wholly interpenetrates the finite, temporal and hence mortal context in which your psycho-physical organism subsists. As a particular individual in that state you are wholly integrated into the one Total Reality. But the existence of your living psycho­physical organism compulsively re-imposes the limitations of finitude and temporality — the body has to feed, eliminate, sleep, etc. — upon that transcendent state and you “come back” to your organic state and discriminative consciousness. If you did not come back, the psycho-physical organism — you, the person known in the world — would die.

Continued in part 4 and part 5

Comments