Paige, Emily, and Abby - The Best of Friends!!

In Paul Brunton’s Search in Secret India and The Secret Path you will learn that he lost his wife with whom he had led a happy life for eleven or twelve years. In his grief he seeks solace. He does not find solace in reading books and would prefer to tear them up. He does not intend to ask questions. Paul would say he simply wants to sit quietly and derive what solace he can in the company of the many sages that he met.

This has been my intense experience as well, often in quiet introspection into the question of who am I and where is Emily? 

It was only a few days after Emily had died that a real change in my life took place. It was quite intense and sudden. I was sitting alone in Emily's room on the floor in severe physical and emotional pain. The thought of Emily's death became my own death. I truly felt like an inert bag of skin and bones. I was nothingness, yet the spirit and love of Emily was strong. At the same time, I knew I would soon have to have her body cremated. This fierce grace has and will always be without words, but forever has changed me. This light of love is incredible and continues to grow stronger.

The death of a loved one is very painful. My realization is that this pain is however because of one’s outlook being physical; it disappears if the outlook is that of the Self. Upon deep inquiry you will discover the truth that the loved one is dear because of the love of the Self. If your loved one and others are identified with the Self, how then will pain arise? Nevertheless, such disasters shake the mind of philosophers also.

We are happy in deep sleep. We remain then as the pure Self. In such sleep there was neither the loved one nor others nor even ‘I’. Now they become apparent and give rise to pleasure or pain. Why should not the Self, which was blissful in deep sleep, continue its blissful nature even now? The sole obstruction to such continuity is the wrong identification of the Self with the body.

The Bhagavad Gita says: “The unreal hath no being; the real never ceaseth to be; the truth about both hath been perceived by the seers of the essence of things.” “The real is ever real, the unreal is ever unreal.” Again: “He is not born, nor doth he die; nor, having been, ceaseth he anymore to be; unborn, perpetual, eternal ancient, he is not slain when the body is slaughtered.” Accordingly, there is neither birth nor death. Waking is birth and sleep is death.

Was your loved one with you when you went out to the office, or in your deep sleep? He or she was away from you. You were satisfied because of your thought that he or she was somewhere. Whereas now you think that he or she is not. The difference lies in the different thoughts. That is the cause of pain. The pain is because of the thought of the loved one's nonbeing. All this is the mischief of the mind. The fellow (i.e., the mind) creates pain for himself even when there is pleasure. But pleasure and pain are mental creations.

The experience of deep sleep clearly teaches that happiness consists in being without the body. The wise also confirm it, speaking of liberation after the body is given up. Thus, the enlightened one is awaiting the casting off of the body. Just as a labourer carrying a load on his head for the sake of wages bears the burden with no pleasure, carries it to the destination, and finally unburdens himself with relief and joy; so also the sage bears this body, awaiting the right and destined time to discard it. If now you are relieved of one half of the burden, i.e., the loved one, should you not be thankful and be happy for it?

Nevertheless, you cannot be so because of your physical outlook.

There will be no pain if the physical outlook is given up and if the person exists as the Self. Mourning is not the index of true love. It betrays love of the object, of its shape only. That is not love. True love is shown by the certainty that the object of love is in the Self and that it can never become non-existent.

Still, it is true, pain on such occasions can only be assuaged by association with the wise.

Sherman Dahl
The Emily Dahl Foundation
February 1, 2023