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The Essence of immortality*

11 — Immortality is not the survival of the mental personality after death, though that
also is true, but the waking possession of the unborn and deathless Self of which body
is only an instrument and a shadow. 1

There are three statements here which have raised questions. First, “What is the mental
personality?”

In each human being the body is animated by the vital being, and governed, or partially
governed, by a mental being. This is a general rule, but the extent to which the mental being is
formed and individualised varies greatly from one individual to the next. In the great mass of
human beings the mind is something fluid which has no organisation of its own, and therefore it
is not a personality. And as long as the mind is like that, fluid, unorganised, with no cohesive life
of its own and without personality, it cannot survive. What made up the mental being dissolves
in the mental region when the body, the substance which made up the body, dissolves in the
physical substance. But as soon as the mental being is formed, organised, individualised, and
has become a personality, it does not depend, it no longer depends on the body for its existence,
and it therefore survives the body. The earth’s mental atmosphere is filled with beings, mental
personalities which lead an entirely independent existence, even after the disappearance of the
body; they can reincarnate in a new body when the soul, that is to say, the true Self, reincarnates,
thus carrying with it the memory of its previous lives.

But this is not what Sri Aurobindo calls Immortality. Immortality is a life without beginning
or end, without birth or death, which is altogether independent of the body. It is the life of the
Self, the essential being of each individual, and it is not separate from the universal Self. And
this essential being has a sense of oneness with the universal Self; it is in fact a personified,
individualised expression of the universal Self and has neither beginning nor end, neither life
nor death, it exists eternally and that is what is immortal. When we are fully conscious of this
Self we participate in its eternal life, and we therefore become immortal.

But there is some misunderstanding about this word “Immortality” — and this is not
something new; it is a misunderstanding which has recurred very frequently. When one speaks
of immortality most people understand it as the indefinite survival of the body.
The body can survive indefinitely only if, in the first place, it becomes fully conscious of this
immortal Self and unites with it, identifies with it to the extent of having the same capacity,

*Heading provided by the Editor.
1 Sri Aurobindo Birth Centerary Library, Volume 17. Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust;
1971, pp. 80.

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