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comes into the world, although the conflict becomes conscious and deliberate only much
later. For every indisposition, every illness, every malformation, even accidents, are the
result of the action of the force of disintegration, just as growth, harmonious development,
resistance to attack, recovery from illness, every return to the normal functioning, every
progressive improvement, are due to the action of the force of transformation. Later on,
with the development of the consciousness, when the fight becomes deliberate, it changes
into a frantic race between the two opposite and rival movements, a race to see which one
will reach its goal first, transformation or death. This means a ceaseless effort, a constant
concentration to call down the regenerating force and to increase the receptivity of the
cells to this force, to fight step by step, from point to point against the devastating action
of the forces of destruction and decline, to tear out of its grasp everything that is capable
of responding to the ascending urge, to enlighten, purify and stabilise. It is an obscure
and obstinate struggle, most often without any apparent result or any external sign of the
partial victories that have been won and are ever uncertain — for the work that has been
done always seems to need to be redone; each step forward is most often made at the cost
of a setback elsewhere and what has been done one day can be undone the next. Indeed,
the victory can be sure and lasting only when it is total. And all that takes time, much time,
and the years pass by inexorably, increasing the strength of the adverse forces.

All this time the consciousness stands like a sentinel in a trench: you must hold on, hold
on at all costs, without a quiver of fear or a slackening of vigilance, keeping an unshakable
faith in the mission to be accomplished and in the help from above which inspires and
sustains you. For the victory will go to the most enduring.

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 is still alive, and then to return from this
region and re-enter the physical body, resuming the course of material existence with full
knowledge. But for that one must be an initiate.

Bulletin, February 1954

— The Mother*

*The Mother. Collected Works of the Mother, Volume 12. 2nd ed. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo
Ashram Trust; 2002, pp. 82-7.

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