The loss of a loved one is one of the most painful experiences any of us go through. At the height of grief, we feel like following our beloved one to the Other Side so we can be with him or her again. We actually find ourselves fantasizing about suicide because all we want is to follow him or her on his or her journey. Attachment is the cause of all human suffering, so the Eastern religions teach us, and loss is the revenge our attachment plays on us.
Does this mean that we should stop loving others? That we should abandon our loved ones, as Prince Siddhartha abandoned his young wife and children to become the Buddha? That we should refuse the invitation of all new attachments? My short answer is no, of course not. Prince Siddhartha had to become Gautama the monk long before he became the Buddha. In Deepak Chopra’s telling, Gautama suffered long and hard missing his wife’s caresses. He was overwhelmed with a feeling that was, if not guilt, then at least a sense of futility in his willful decision to abandon her and his children before the fire of enlightenment burned Gautama away so that at last, the Phoenix-like Buddha could arise in his soul.
At least to a Westerner in the twenty-first century, the moral of the story would appear to be that enlightenment is a worthy goal – in effect, the only worthy goal for a human being – but that causing the suffering of others and increasing one’s own suffering by abandoning them is a useless and selfish act. The great Indian masters did not fail to love their adherents and devotees, nor did Jesus fail to love his disciples. For example, the portrait Yogananda paints of his guru, Sri Yukteswar, is that of a man who has invested his whole being in the care and nurturing of his charges, albeit that it comes in the form of a truly tough love.
An amazing thing happens during the grieving process. The love one has for the recently departed beloved burns brighter than ever in one’s heart until at long last the flame dies down to glowing embers for lack of a fresh breeze of oxygen from the (missing) physical presence of the departed. This immolation in the heart is in fact a purification process. Perhaps the symbolic nature of the fire explains why the Hindus ritualize death on the funeral pyre. In the end, the burning away of a human love in the purification of grief can allow love for God to enter the void left in one’s heart. We love the departed one, who is gone forever, and we know that the only Being who truly shares the nuances of our love is God Himself. Then it occurs to us that it is God who created and destroyed our beloved and a glimmer of understanding begins to dawn: an understanding that love for all of our fellow beings resides in the larger bosom of a love for God. I remember vividly my bitter tears, with at times their growing solace that God loved me for loving another being of His Creation. In this way, our love and attachment toward others can be distilled into a love for God.
What God must want of us most is always to elevate our love and our natural spirituality to a higher form. With his higher spiritual understanding, Sri Yukteswar somehow knew how to love Yogananda and his other charges without forming an attachment to them that would compromise his greater love for God. This difficult attainment must also be another explanation for why so many forms of religion teach sexual abstinence: sex arguably represents an expression of one body loving another more often than it elevates itself into the expression of one soul loving another soul, not to mention the Creator. To live is to grieve for others we have lost, but to be wise is to know that no beings live forever on planet Earth. Loss is not only a test for the soul but a purification of our Spirit.
Bird of Spirit 