Page 280 - Complete Works of Dr. KCV Volume 1

The Problems of Man
There is in all men an aspiration for a better life. This aspiration is seen in all beings, and it is to have a wider range of experience and greater ability to achieve things or adapt the things around us for our needs. Such needs may well be needs of life - from the physical necessity to survive in a hostile world; from the physiological necessity to appease hunger and establish growth to the fullest maturity of powers; from the biological necessity to reproduce one's kind; and all these needs are seen to become nothing before the self-same biological fact of inevitability of death which has to be overcome if the efforts for adaptations of the biological being are to be rewarded with success.
At different times every individual faces this crisis-the ultimate and inescapable crisis. Man has been trying to overcome this biologically through evolution, and this has made for the basic processes of anabolism and katabolism integrating themselves within the organism. He has at least lengthened his span of life, and is, in fact, dreaming of lengthening it still further. There have been legendary figures in Indian Puranas, called Ciranjivis, whose span of life is said to cover thousands of years. There have been those who have attained so-called physical immortality-like Markandeya and the Rbhus, and Yama himself. But it could certainly be shown that the need here is for an extended life beyond fear of death. Nevertheless it is an important problem whether interminable life is desirable, if it also means interminable toil and tears!
Life in freedom - this is the most desirable and not life in bondage. Such a life in freedom may be something that is not had by any one who has not known why, indeed, he is on this strenuous struggle for a life in pleasure and comfort which are terminable. Death, in fact, is preferable to life in bondage. In fact, though it may appear pessimistic, it is necessary to show that death is a good friend, for it makes one not only forget the past with its grievous and unpardonable sins of omission and commission, but also starts a life with a tabula rasa of present experiences. One hardly forgets one's past. No one in this world completely forgets one's own past or even that of others. Once one commits a mistake or petty crime, even when in his teens,