As you know, N.S. has left his body. It was the result of an accident (he had a weak heart, and he worried about it). He took a fall, probably because he fainted, and fractured his skull: "loss of consciousness" due to cerebral hemorrhage (that's modern science speaking!). When the accident occurred, he came to me (not in a precise form, but in a state of consciousness I immediately recognized), and stayed here motionless, in complete trust and blissful peace - motionless in every state of being, absolutely ... (gesture of surrender) total, total trust: what will be, will be; what is, is. No questions, not even a need to know. A cosy peace ... a great ease. They tried, fought, operated: no movement, nothing moved. Then one day they declared him dead (by the way, according to doctors, when the body dies the heart beats on faintly for a few seconds; then it stops and it's all over). In his case, those faint beats (not strong enough to pump blood) continued for half an hour - the kind of heartbeats typical of the trance state. (They all seem to be crassly ignorant! But anyway, it doesn't matter.) And they all said, even the doctors, "Oooh, he must be a great yogi, this only happens to yogis! " I have no idea what they mean by that. But I do know that although those heartbeats aren't strong enough to pump blood through the body (thus putting the body into a cataleptic state), they do suffice to maintain life, and that's how yogis can remain in trance for months on end. Well, I don't know what type of doctors they are (probably very modern), but they're ignorant of this fact. Anyway, according to them he had those pulsations for half an hour (normally they last a few seconds). All right. Hence their remarks. And he was here the whole while, immutable. Then suddenly I felt a kind of shudder; I looked - he was gone. I was busy and didn't note the time, but it was in the afternoon, that's all I know. Later I was told that they had decided to cremate him, and had done so at that time. The violence of the accident had brutally exteriorized him, but when it happened he must have been thinking of me with trust. He came and didn't budge - he never knew what was happening to his body. He didn't know he was dead! And if.... Then and there I said to myself, "This habit of cremating people is appallingly brutal!" (They put the fire in the mouth first.) He didn't know he was dead and that's how he learned it! ... From the reaction of the life of the form in the body. Even when the body is in a thoroughly bad condition, it takes at least seven days for the life of the form to leave it. And for someone practicing yoga, this life is CONSCIOUS. So you burn people a few hours after the doctors have declared them dead, but the life of the form is every inch alive and, in those who have practiced yoga, conscious. It made me a bit.... Given the state he was in, it made NO difference to him whether he was dead or alive; that's what was interesting! He remained in a blissful, trusting, peaceful state and I probably would have gently led him either to the psychic world or elsewhere, according to the indication I received as to what he had to do. He would never have known he was dead. [[Later, Mother commented: "This experience is interesting. He would have been able to EXIST in a psychic state (psychically, of course, one is immortal), he would have existed not knowing that he was dead ... if they hadn't burned him." ]] page 241-42 , Mother's Agenda , volume 3 , 4th July 1962.