Grief because of our loved ones

Grief because of our loved ones

About life, death and suffering when our loved ones part

VOICE: Dear Gururaj, what is the nature of grief in the loss of a loved one?

GURURAJ: What is the nature of grief in the loss of a loved one? First we must know what grief is all about, and we must also know what a loved one is all about. (Could you ‑‑ the hum.) Yes. Where does grief stem from? Does it stem from love, really? Or does it stem from a supposed love, which is not a true love? And how many people can truly love? Many people do grieve because of the loss of a companion. Many do grieve because of the loss of a child which they regarded to be their possession. So there are many causes for grief. There is one sect in India that has a party when someone passes away; that from this misery this person is going into another plane when there is less misery. That is what they believe. And when a child is born, then they grieve that this soul has now come into the realms of worldly misery. That is, of course, their belief. What we are interested in is the nature of grief. What causes grief, really? And that which causes grief is not so much a loss of the loved one, but a loss to oneself. It is not the loss of the loved one that causes the grief. To a certain extent, yes. But the grief is the loss to oneself.

Now, what has one lost? That is the question. One has lost companionship, one has lost the person on whom one could be dependent, one has lost someone that provided the bread and beans. So grief is caused by personal inadequacy, insecurity, and possession. The possessive idea one has in mind of the one that has left us causes the greatest grief.

Now it is quite natural to miss someone who has gone away. Now if that grief was genuine, then it would last until you leave this world. Why does time heal the wound, so to speak? Why does time lessen the grief? Because it was not genuine grieving. It was the loss of a particular kind of need that was felt at that time. And getting used to the idea of not having that need any more in the passage of time one grieves less and less and less.

So from the angle I am speaking of it is this, that grief is mostly selfish. My son, my mother, my father, my daughter, my this, my that. You say it as if you possessed it. Now if you lost a piece of valuable antique furniture or a real Ming vase of the fourteenth century and it broke, you will also feel grief that this prized possession of mine is lost. And the quality of the grief would be the same. So where does grief stem from? It stems from the sense of possession, and all possession is selfish.

Now how would a selfless person react at the loss of a loved one? The selfless person would react in this manner: that we are all wayfarers on this path. We are all co‑travelers, young or old. And someone would have to reach the end quicker than others. Someone will have to reach the end far sooner. That is the understanding that has to be developed for grief not to be so intense. For there’s only one certainty in life, and that is death. It is unavoidable. Anything that is born must die. If a person dies five years earlier or five years later, or 10 years or 20 years later, what difference is it going to make in the whole scheme of things?

For when a person passes over you are in timeless time. And the time we measure here is of no importance at all in that plane of existence. In that plane of existence there is no time, and the subtle body of a person that has passed over will feel so much freer. There would be a great sense of freedom because it has unloosened itself from the physical changes, from the physical chains, rather. So the person that passes over is in a much more happier state than one can imagine.

The greatest thing people fear in life is death, and as I said, that’s the only certainty you can expect of life. Why do they fear death? It is because they feel they are losing their personality, their ego, of which they are so possessive. And yet it is the very ego that’s causing misery. So you are possessive of your own misery. You do not want to let your own misery go, therefore you fear death.

Now there are some books: Life After Life, Life After Death, and things like that. I read some articles, some review on those books. They maintain it was research done by doctors and many of you might have read them. They say that every person at the time of death a light approaches them and takes them to another sphere. That is a fallacy, it is not true. I’ve died thousands of times consciously and gone beyond and have come back by will, so I can tell you what actually happens. What actually happens is this, that what you see as that light coming to fetch you is not a foreign entity, but it is the projection of your own pure spirit which is light that you meet up against. That which you have have failed while you were living you find at the moment of death, when you come face to face with your own spirit which abides in you, that light which abides in you. I’ve seen that light during the living states as well as during death states.

Now I had an experience in India, I went through an experiment ‑‑ and I did it just for the sake of an experiment‑‑ where I got myself buried for six days. On the verge, on the brink of death. The total heart beat slowed down so much as if it was imperceptible. One breath taken only before this certain practice was done, and they put me 12 feet deep in a box, sitting up position. When I came out I was fresh as a daisy. So that one very breath contains so much prana, or life force or vital energy, that could keep you alive for quite a few months. I did it as an experiment. I heard it done so much I said, «Let me try,» and I did it.

So with the heart just slowly pulsating ‑‑ I did it as an experiment and there was also a purpose. I had to fix up some of these arteries. So standing there on the brink of life and death, I could view both sides. And the other side ‑‑ if people would only understand that the other side, the subtler side is so much more pleasant. There is no suffering on the other side of this life. Because, although you take the subtle body with you and drop the grosser physical body, the subtle body does not suffer in that state because it goes through a process of evaluation. And there is no evolutionary forces there to push you on. There are no conflicts there, while with the body there are conflicts. One part of the mind is pulling you this way and the other part of the mind is pulling you in another direction. And you are fragmented. All these conflicts are there. All filtered through what we call the brain.

But on that side only the mind is left, the brain is not there where these conflicts can be filtered through. The organ is left behind, yet the mind, intermixing all the experiences, goes through a process of evaluation and not evolution. In that stage you are not complete enough to evolve, you have to have a body to evolve, combined with the mind and the spirit.

So after the body is dropped, the mind exists empowered by the spirit. And when evaluation takes place about what lessons one still has to learn, there is no suffering and you welcome the lessons you have to learn. You choose the next life that you would have to take, be it in abundance, or be it in abject poverty.

So now, if the subtle body of man ‑‑ or you could call it the soul of man ‑‑ was suffering in the other side, then it would never choose adverse circumstances. It would never choose a body of illnesses. Some children are born ill or deformed. It would never choose to be born in poverty, it would always try and choose rich parents. Because there is no suffering on the other side and only a process of evolution, that it would choose the proper thing for its own progress. Which is, of course, conditioned and patterned by the karma and the experiences one has gone through.

Now if people would understand this they would grieve less. That there is no suffering on the other side. And any grief that a person feels, be sure to know that it is because of possessive ideas, possessing a person as if it was an object. It is selfish to grieve. It is selfish to grieve because it is not in your hands. That which is in the hands of the Divine plan, or that which is in the hands of the Divine law, that what has to be has to be. So if you think in that way, how can you grieve for the person that has passed over? If it was controllable by you, and you have made a mistake, then if you were the master of life and death, then grieve, yes. But if you have no control over it, why grieve?

So all the selfishness comes in. All past memories come in of the pleasurable times. That oh, I had such‑and‑such a time with John, or I had such‑and‑such a time with Mary. Now those remembrances make you grieve. Or if your son ‑‑ young man ‑‑ passes away, you had all the hopes for him that he will become this, he will become that. Every parent has hopes. So because you have lost ‑‑ what have you lost? You have lost your hope. Therefore you grieve: that my son is going to become a great violinist, or a great musician or a great physician, great artist, great anything, you name it. And because he’s gone he can’t become that. So you start grieving.

So you are grieving over an idea which is in your mind to which you are not at all entitled. For that person is an entity unto himself, if he was alive or even not alive. So grief, to repeat again, is because of one’s selfishness. Grief, to repeat again, is not because of genuine love. Not true love, but possessive love. And how can you call something love when it is filled with possession.

I would not grieve if the closest one to me would pass away. The reason would be this, that I love my wife, I love my son, I love this one or that one. And because I love selflessly I shall not grieve, for I would know that this is a step which is necessary for that particular person, for my son or daughter, or whatever. That this step is necessary. That the stage has come when the subtle body or soul is now ready for evaluating itself. And in the Divine scheme of things you can never overstay. You can’t be a burden to your host. The time for the guest has come to depart.

So, and it is all but just a departure. Just a departure from one place to the other. I will depart America and go to South Africa. Finish. Are you going to grieve about it? No. No. Or if I should depart from here to go to another plane of existence, would you grieve about it? No. There should be no such thing as grief. Grief is a projection of one’s own mind. Grief is because of an imbalance of one’s own mind. There can be concern ‑‑ that is something different. But in all grief there is always an «if,» the impossible «if.» «If» he had to live then this would have been that; «if» he had to spend ten more years then this could have been that. Oh, my son passed away and in my old age I have no one to look after me. You see. The grief is not because you’ve lost the person. The grief is because of the loss to yourself. You have lost yourself. Therefore the proper attitude in such circumstances should be: we have come on a visit and the person has not expired, the visit has expired. Do you see? We have come on a visit ‑‑ I have come on a visit to America but I have not expired but my visit has expired. Right. And I’ll be visiting somewhere else, and there my visit will expire too, to go on another visit.

For the soul of man is immortal. It is eternal. As far as the spirit is concerned, the mind and the body are of no importance, whatever. Because we attach so much importance to it fallaciously. That is also another cause of grief.

We grieve over things that are mortal. We grieve over things that are mortal. There’s a lovely Sanskrit prayer that says [Sanskrit] «lead me from mortality to immortality,» and death is one of the stages that we have to go through. Many saints have said, «I die a thousand times every time.» And doctors will prove that to you also, that all of us die so many times every day. In between two heart beats there’s a gap. That gap is death. That split second gap is death. So passing from one body to another body is the same thing in a different form. There is that gap that is required. The heart needs that rest from one beat to the next. So the soul of man also needs that rest and period of evaluation. So we should be happy. That is why we pray «may his soul rest in peace.» We pray that, don’t we. We don’t need to. Because it is going to a greater peace. For sure.

When you say «may his soul rest in peace» you are referring to yourself, that let my soul be in peace. That’s what you really mean, perhaps not consciously but subconsciously, that is what you mean. For what do you know about the other soul, and what kind of peace that soul is going to. So «may» is an assumption. You assume. Wishful thinking. But in truth it goes to greater peace.

When this body has to be discarded within this certain Divine plan, it has to be discarded, and there’s nothing to feel sorrowful about. Nothing at all. And perhaps that could be the very lesson that you might need for your evolution. The loss of a loved one could be that lesson you need. How do you know that in past lifetimes you have not caused so much sorrow to others? You say you love your child very much. Young child, growing child, and the child is snatched away from you. You call it «snatched away.» You call it snatched away because you think it is your possession, or taken away because you think it is your possession. When that little child ‑‑ rather we say «When the little child leaves us.» When the child leaves us and we feel sorrowful because of the patterning of our own little minds could be a period of learning. Could be a period of learning to aid our own evolution. For us also to know what it feels like, that agony is like, and by going through that agony you are cleansing yourself.

So everything in this world has its time and has its place. There everything functions in perfect precision. Grieve for the living. Yes. Grieve for the living. Grieve at the misery the living are going through. Feel sorrowful for them. And say, «How can I help the living to lessen their burdens, to lessen their sorrow.» Grieve for the living, but never for the dead. Do you see.

It’s very simple, really. It is a matter of understanding. For, to repeat again, the existence on the other side is always more peaceful because the subtle body goes to a plane where the vibrations of that plane are more conducive to it and conflict ceases. And when conflicts cease, then that subtle body, that subtle mind, has a chance for evaluation. But if there are conflicts you cannot evaluate. If you have a problem, a mathematical problem or any kind of problem to work out, and your mind is not at rest with a hundred or a million worries, you can’t work out that problem. So this is logic enough to show you that on the other side there is peace. And I talk about this through experience.

So grieve not, grieve not. And your prayers will not affect that soul at all. «Let us pray for the dead» ‑‑ another fallacy. Another fallacy. Yes. Pray for the living, you’ll be doing a good service.

How strong are your thought forces? How strong or how pure are your thought forces to reach that one particular entity? They’re not strong enough. So when you do pray for the dead, remember you’re praying for yourself ‑‑ selfishness again. Self, self, self. Grief is to do with the self. Right. Pray for the living. Send good thoughts to the living so their lives could become better lives, enlightened lives, joyous lives.

So grieve not for the dead. Feel sorrowful for those that suffer while in life. Pray not for the dead, but pray for those that are alive and are suffering. We’ll be helping the world much more in that way. For the body that passes over will have no control over itself. The body that passes over has no control over itself, it is going through this process, a vital process, and a very necessary process it is. Now if we have this understanding, then when a loved one passes over we can really be consoled within ourselves. And the greatest consolation is this, that that entity is working within the framework of Divine law, as you are also ‑‑ within the framework of Divine law. And there is nothing you can do to stop it. You see.