Life is Eternal – An exceptional elderly care Institute
Purpose
The purposes of the Life is Eternal is to offer within the framework of a campus,
- A care and an environment conductive for the higher aspiration of the soul to be realised in this life and the next.
- Taking advantage of the latest innovations in health and longevity, to help expand the life span and the digital avatar of the inmates
- If and when requested, help prepare will (last testament) of the inmates and their execution.
Explanation
Sri Aurobindo and the Mother have explained that the beings of the new world – the new species – will have different kinds of bodies with different substances. One of the attributes of the new body will be perpetual youth. This is in the future…a distant future. Meanwhile, in our own times, people age and die. Their psychic beings (souls) are born again in a new body. An appropriate environment and care can go a long way in their happy and healthy living in their advanced age, and the best conditions for transitioning from one life to another in the best state of consciousness.
The title “Life is eternal” is actually the Mother’s answer to a close disciple, Madhav Pandit. On seeing her frail physique during the last months of her life, he told her that he would lay down his life if that could add a single day to her life. Mother took Madhav Pandit’s hand in her hands, gazed long into his eyes, and softly said, “Life is eternal.”
This title has been chosen to remind ourselves that this body is only one of the innumerable garbs we wear in the forward march of the human soul, the growth of the psychic being.
Bhavana Dee, a pioneering Aurovilian from the USA, wrote an article about her own aspiration and thinking during last days of her life after she was dragonized with cancer. She knew she was approaching her death. One of the things she wrote was that, besides listening to audios readings from Sri Aurobindo’s epic Savitri, she was thinking and visualising the circumstances of her next life, that is to say, which kind of new environment she will have, which kind of friends and family and psychological constitution she would like to have.
Eleanor, another elderly Aurovilian from the USA, one of the exceptional human beings I have met in life, who was formerly associated with the then well-known international magazine Life and who, as a part of her work, had even interviewed Winston Churchill, told me when she was on her deathbed at the Auroville Health Center, to recite to her some lines from Savitri. I recited the lines referring to the “..Omnipotent’s heavenly pioneers …Sun-eyed children of a marvellous dawn…, The forerunners to the divine multitude…Their trade one day shall change the suffering world… And justify the light on Nature’s face.” I then noted that she was far away, withdrawn in herself.
After the passing of J. R. D. Tata, a renowned Indian industry leader and staunch friend of Auroville, Frederick, a pioneer Aurovilian who was in close contact with him, said, “When I last met him in Mumbai, we wanted to hear more and more about Auroville. He was like a child. Now that he has left his body, I feel his next life has already begun.”
My mother, aged 100, attends to daily two-hour daily exercises, yoga-asanas, breathing exercises (various kinds of pranayama), and leads a regular life, helps in the house work. She also likes to look at plants and water them, see fruits grow on trees and see the wonders of the world on home television. But she could still have a better and more spacious environment which would add to her happy and healthy living.
Following these instances, Life is eternal envisions offering an inspiring psychic, spiritual, and physical environment in the light of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother to those deserving / qualified elderly people who need it on a non-profit basis.
It goes without saying that the staff of the campus will have qualities of empathy, patience, service, enlivening presence, enjoyable company.
Also, it goes without saying that, in the present circumstances, such a campus cannot be established and managed without the financial contribution / support of the inmates and well-wishers.
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Second aspect of the Life is Eternal will to take advantage of the latest innovations and discovery in longevity and health…for extending the life span of the inmates.
Also, with their permission, their digital avatar can be created for joy of their loved once.
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Further contextual readings from Sri Aurobindo:
“The psychic being’s choice at the time of death does not work out the next formation of personality, it fixes it. When it enters the psychic world, it begins to assimilate the essence of its experience and by that assimilation is formed the future psychic personality in accordance with the fixation already made. When this assimilation is over, it is ready for a new birth; but the less developed beings do not work out the whole thing for themselves, there are beings and forces of the higher world who have that work. Also, when it comes to birth, it is not sure that the forces of the physical world will not come across the working out of what it wanted — its own new instrumentation may not be strong enough for that purpose; for, there is the interaction of its own energies and the cosmic forces here. There may be frustration, diversion, a partial working out — many things may happen. All that is not a rigid machinery, it is a working out of complex forces. It may be added, however, that a developed psychic being is much more conscious in this transition and works out much of it itself. The time depends also on the development and on a certain rhythm of the being — for some there is practically immediate rebirth, for others it takes longer, for some it may take centuries; but here, again, once the psychic being is sufficiently developed, it is free to choose its own rhythm and its own intervals. The ordinary theories are too mechanical — and that is the case also with the idea of punya and papa and their results in the next life. There are certainly results of the energies put forth in a past life, but not on that rather infantile principle. A good man’s suffering in this life would be a proof according to the orthodox theory that he had been a very great villain in his past life, a bad man’s prospering would be a proof that he had been quite angelic in his last visit to earth and sown a large crop of virtues and meritorious actions to reap this bumper crop of good fortune. Too symmetrical to be true. The object of birth being growth by experience, whatever reactions come to past deeds must be for the being to learn and grow, not as lollipops for good boys of the class (in the past) and canings for the bad ones. The real sanction for good and ill is not good fortune for the one and bad fortune for the other, but this that good leads us towards a higher nature which is eventually lifted above suffering, and ill pulls us towards the lower nature which remains always in the circle of suffering and evil.”
Sri Aurobindo
(Letters on Yoga; Part I; PP 444-445)
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Following extracts from an article “Mystery of Death: by renowned writer Manoj Das
Present status
Just an idea and dream of Aryadeep S. Acharya.It might be necessary to hive it off into an independent undertaking.