Ah, but it is precisely that it DOES crumble that life can exist! Otherwise, life would only be a frozen, static, and dead thing. There must be change for life to exist, and change must then include death, or more accurately, transformation. But don't you see? It's all really just a Grand Illusion that the world is real and that it lives and dies. It can't live and die because it does'nt exist in the first place! And this again is Chopra's point, and why he isn't afraid of death, because there is no one who lives that can die.
Be still and know God!
"There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust"
TS Elliot
The ego wants to go on forever, to be gratified forever. It is afraid to die, to become inconsequential dust, and will play every dirty trick in the book to go on, to be 'somebody', even to the point of creating an afterlife of a Heavenly Reward and a Hellish Torment as both incentive and deterrent. But alas, no matter it's endless and varied machinations in its attempts at 'becoming', it always ends up a 'has-been', as it's existence is based wholly on the dead past or the non-existent future, and not on the living present.
Remember this, from the parable of the Lilies of the Field, otherwise known as 'The Wisdom of Insecurity'?:
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
Matthew 6:19-21
