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stress. So, too, the true devotee strengthens his endurance and resilience by passing through the white hot furnace of suffering. As the potter uses fire to harden his pots, so does the true aspirant use suffering and hardship to cleanse his soul of Karma and to restore it to its pristine purity.
And what, after all, is death? It is merely a change of clothes. And surely, it should make us happy to shed old clothes! Why should there be long faces and wringing of hands at the thought of shedding this old, tattered, worn-out rag which is our body? Death, like marriage, should be celebrated with rejoicing and festivities; celebrate it as a valediction. And if one asks you: "Whither do you go?" then say: "I go to the abode of God.” For death is merely a phase of life. But your feebleness, your thirst for material possessions have made you forget this and have planted in you the fear of death, and given death a terrifying aspect. As youth is a phase in life, as old age is a phase in life, so, too is death a phase. The essence, the core remains eternal; it is the outer form or shape which is transient, mutable. Before death there is life and after death life continues, and one of the profoundest truths is that death cannot put an end to life, for life itself is imperishable, eternal; and
