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I am the Soul
439 What gets disintegrated is the body, for it is made from a collection of inanimate pudgal. Therefore, it has to get disintegrated. The body gets disintegrated and it is burnt. If body were animate, it need not have died, need not be burnt. But the state of the body that is formed from the atoms that get together and break apart from time-to-time, is ever changing. It undergoes many changes and at the end it has to turn into ashes, but the atoms never get destroyed.
Thus one who has a true belief through experience of the eternal nature of the atma, that atmu never fears over the disintegration of the body. But if death is imminent, it has to be prepared for. In fact, a human has to be prepared for death from the time he is born. Indeed, this might sound very odd. But one does not know when death may befall after birth. It is necessary to be alert at every moment. When death comes, you can go laughing. No attachment or aversion should be bothering him. At the time of death there should not be any recommendations due. But when the indication of death comes, everything else should be abandoned and one should try to stabilise within the self. Nothing else but the Lord Atma should be recollected.
To be prepared in such a way, the jiva's nature of being subject to reasons needs to be changed. It is necessary that the self advises the self that no reason, big or small, shall disturb the jiva. As and how the jiva takes advice, it begins to stabilise in the self. It gives up being subject to the instruments of attachment and aversion. It gives up mixing with the reasons for attachment and aversion. Once there is a daily drill, a daily practice, then one will be all decked up and set when death comes calling. Brothers! This is the preparation for death. The self is prepared within the self. Then there is nothing more to do!
Here Gurudev has offered strong arguments about the eternal nature of atma to the disciple and has convinced him that atma is different from the body, independent, and eternal. And the
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