Life does not end with death. Survival after death is as true as death after life. To live in order to die, or to die in order to survive, would be a poor proposition indeed. The death that follows life is not a lifelessness, nor is life after death a deathlessness. Life is a positive manifestation of the true Existence which negative death cannot extinguish. To end the ceaseless succession of lives and deaths, death itself has to be annihilated in life. On annihilating death in life by completely freeing consciousness of all illusion, man becomes God in the naked truth of His own true existence. He remains infinitely conscious God, irrespective of His keeping or dropping the gross, subtle and mental bodies, just as man remains man whether he is dressed or undressed.
As long as man remains ignorant of his divine Self he may as well be a stone; a man lives and a stone exists, and both remain equally ignorant of the Truth. As Kabir says, while man cannot achieve TRUTH he is no better than a stone. Man’s full consciousness, painstakingly earned through the endless illusory experiences during evolution, is trapped within these very experiences that were so necessary to enable him to gain the consciousness achieved. In man, consciousness is complete. Augmenting of consciousness is no longer needed, but merely the directing of it towards man’s real identity.
Only in the human form is it possible for life to attain its final goal, which is to realize the all-pervading and infinite Divinity. Only in the human body can one attain realization and fulfill the purpose of creation. Hence the supreme importance of attaining the human body.
For all practical purposes, attaining the human body is the journey’s end, but the sanskaras (impressions) amassed in the travail of gaining this consciousness block man’s view of his eternal Self. All the suffering and struggles man undergoes are to wear out this obstruction, and this involves an interminable process. Man cannot of himself remove the block, but a Perfect Master can do that for him, when his grace is deserved.
– Life At Its Best, p17