The phrase “portals of the birth that is a death” is a beautiful description of this sorrowful world, this world of ours, description of our mortal lot, our mortal state, of the conditions in which we make progress through them both together, through birth aided by death. In just a few words, we have here an incomparable picture of this mortal world, mŗtyuloka. Its poetic enchantment is such that the obscurity and the cheerlessness and the falsehood in which we live turn into their happy benign opposites. What we have in this mortal world is the sorry “birth that is a death”. Yet the two together are there to build the House of Life wherein the higher powers of the Spirit could come and dwell. If one knows that, as the Isha Upanishad says, that by which both the Knowledge and the Ignorance are known, then, by the Ignorance one crosses beyond death and by the Knowledge enjoys immortality. Truly enough, Life in the present stage of evolution cannot make progress without Death; Death gives the helping hand, is the supporter of growing Life. As a matter of fact, without Death Life would simply get swallowed up by the large hungry mouth of the Inconscience, the Light quenched by the darkness of the Night. A very astounding process this, and we should really wonder at the wisdom that framed it.   more »