THE BARGAIN BETWEEN NACHIKETAS AND DEATH

Nachiketas said: ‘Some say that when man dies he continues to exist, others that he does not. Explain, and that shall be my third gift.’ Death said:  ‘This question has been discussed by the gods, it is deep and difficult. Choose another gift, Nachiketas! Do not be hard.   Do not compel me to explain.   ‘Nachiketas said:  ‘Death you say that the gods have discussed it, that it is deep and difficult; what explanation can be as good as yours?  What gift compares with that?’        Death said: ‘Take sons and grandsons, all long-lived, cattle and horses, elephants and gold, take a great kingdom. ‘Anything but this; wealth, long life, Nachiketas! empire, any­thing whatever; satisfy the heart’s desire.  ‘Pleasures beyond human reach, fine women with carriages, their musical instruments; mount beyond dreams; enjoy.  But do not ask what lies beyond death.’

Nachiketas said: ‘Destroyer of man!  these things pass.  Joy ends enjoyment, the longest life is short.  Keep those horses, keep singing and dancing, keep it all for   yourself. ‘Wealth cannot satisfy a man. If he but please you, Master of All, he can live as long as he likes, get all that he likes; but I will not change my gift.

‘What man, subject to death and decay, getting the chance of undecaying life, would still enjoy mere long life, thinking of copulation and beauty? ‘Say where man goes after death; end all that discussion. This, which you have made so mysterious, is the only gift I will take.’                —Katha-Upanishad

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True sex, in the sense of the highest creative function, which results in the harmonizing of all other  functions-whether in creation of children in the physical image of their parents, in the creation of the arts, or in the creation of the individual’s true role in life is fulfilled  only with the development of higher emotions at the prime of life. But the full expression of this function is dependent on the growth of new powers and new capacities, potential in man but only realizable with very special work and knowledge. The key to these new powers lies in the possibility of man becoming conscious of himself and of his place in the surrounding universe. For from this may arise in very fortunate cases a fully-formed soul, or permanent principle of consciousness.

In the ordinary way, there is neither permanence nor consciousness in man. Each of these functions speaks in him, automatically and in turn, with a different voice, for own interests, indifferent to the interests of the others it’s the whole, yet using the tongue and the name of  the  individual.

‘I must read the paper!’ intellectual function says. ‘I’ll go riding!’ motor function contradicts. ‘I’m hungry!’ declares digestion; ‘I’m cold!’ metabolism. I will not be thwarted!’ cries passionate emotion, in the defense of any of them.

Such are the many ‘I’s of man. And in them lies the key to all the inner and outer contradiction, which plunges him into such confusion, cancels his best intentions, and keeps him busy paying the debts recklessly incurred by each of his many sides. Each function of his essence, as well as each imagination of his personality, makes promises, incurs obligations, for which the man as a whole must accept responsibility.

Thus the first condition for a soul, or  unifying  principle, lies in the gradual confinement of each function to its proper role, through self-observation and awareness, and the gradual removal of contradictions between them through their common  recognition  of this single aim.

A summary of the functions which enter at successive points on the line of man’s life, will thus show that though from one point of view his life is running down as he grows older, from another point of view new powers working with finer energies and having ever greater possibilities periodically unfold in him. {…}

Yet we have every reason to believe that the impact of ever higher energies at successive stages of  development does not end at the prime of life. At the next stage on a logarithmic scale, which is equivalent  to  about  seventy-five or seventy-six years, a still higher and more penetrating energy is projected into man’s  existence  by  nature. related, not by time, but by the intensity of the energy which informs them. But this energy  differs from  the others  in  that   it  is too intense to be contained within a body of cellular structure; in just the same way that the energy of lightning is too intense to be contained within the body of a tree, which when struck is immediately blasted and destroyed. This final cosmic energy is of such a nature that at its impact the cellular body of man is immediately split off from any more enduring life-principle which may exist in- him, and is left to disintegrate.   This phenomenon  appears  to  him as death.

Negatively, this supreme energy destroys the physical or organic body of man. But  what  does  it  positively do?  We may say that it connects death and conception. This means that it is of such a nature that it works outside our time . Through it the final sum or essential signature of an individual  is conveyed back to the moment when the chromosomes of the fertilized ovum perform the pairing-dance by which all the subsequent qualities of his organism are to  be determined. How can this be? Our sense of time derives from the physiological unfolding of the body, just as our sense  of warmth derives from the temperature of the  blood.  The cellular body is both our clock and our thermometer.  The shock  which  destroys  it  frees  us  simultaneously  from   tem­perature and from time. At death we enter timelessness or  eternity.  From  that state of timelessness, from that enjoyment of eternity, all points within time are equally accessible.  Or  rather they are related, not by time, but by the intensity of the energy which informs them.

Rodney Collin, The Theory of Eternal Life,