Page 16 - NAMAH-Apr-2025

Namah Vol. 33, Issue 1, 24th April 2025

Death facilitates renewal, within individuals with its changing seasons represents the flow
as well as collectively within societies, nations of life. With birth and death harmoniously
and civilisations. As the old disintegrates, aligning to create ever newer cycles of evolution
the emergent new can be a, “…. constant in consciousness.
enlargement or new application of the power
of the soul idea or life idea in its being, it may Death as the Means of Transformation
pass through many such cycles before it comes
to a final exhaustion (7).” This view of death as a salvific and regenerative
mechanism, as an enabler of life, is a positive
This lofty vision is corroborated by studies construal, far removed from the negative
on the epistemological impact of death on theological construct of Abrahamic religions
families and communities. Literature on post- where death invokes fear in the heart of man,
traumatic growth in family caregivers after as the ‘wages of sin’. Novello (17) attributes
the death of a loved one has been consistent centuries of theological neglect to have led
in its findings over the last several decades (8, to the corruption of the view of death in
9, 10,11, 12,13). When a death occurs, people Christianity. He argues that in the Christian
can report that there is an appreciation of life, view also, death is redemptive, regenerative.
a call to living it more vividly and fully. This The pastoral and liturgical implications of
is sometimes consolidated into new habits of Christian theology on death conceive of
living more deliberately, i.e. with a receptivity Jesus Christ’s crucifixion as the privileged
and sensitivity to the present moment, rather moment of actualisation of God’s Grace —
than routinely from old mental frameworks Jesus created anew as Christ by the power of
and habits. The dissolution of old forms — the Spirit. The Islamic view of death is less
physical, mental, emotional — inspires birth redemptive, with the sceptre of punishment
of new and higher levels of consciousness. for unethical and immoral life choices. Death
Bereaved individuals may experience changes is a stern judge of individual character and
in the way they understand themselves, their actions, and hence an object of fear.
existence as mortal human beings and, their
connection to something transcendent (14).
The mechanism of death is disruptive. The
lived experience of the pain of losing a loved
one can initiate a process of re-examination
of the key elements of our assumptive
world (15). The greater the disruption to the
assumptive world, the greater the motivation
for enquiry, motivating plasticity in one’s
mental, emotional and even physical states Sri Aurobindo’s writings reconcile these
(16). Life thus continues to flow and create dichotomies with a much wider view. He
newer and higher forms facilitated by death perceives of death as the indispensable
as the dissolving agent. mechanism, in the absence of which
transformation and progress may not be
Death is salvific and regenerative. Nature achievable. Death as a mechanism for

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