An Indian Study of Love and Death/Meditations

by Sister Nivedita

Meditations

Of the Soul

It was evening, and we sat on our zenana terrace. About us, our hidden garden bloomed, and the wind blew softly in the neem-tree, while beyond the roof, to the south, looked down on us the Southern Cross. At first in loneliness. Then, as the darkness deepened, it shone to the front only of a whole network of dimmer stars behind it. And then again, these faded out, and left the Southern Cross alone. For the moon was rising. And it sank, as the hours went, slowly to the West. And we talked in low tones of those who love and those who suffer, and of the seven-times happy dead. Till there fell silence there beneath the stars, and the soul watched alone:

Q. Lo, wherever I look, I behold two. To-day, life and laughter; to-morrow, death and tears. I behold joy. True, but pain is its shadow. And there, in the darkness, where I can see no further, how shall I know that my Beloved still persists?

A. Because all things bring forth their opposites. Because life is a rhythm, a rhythm of rhythms, and rhythm is but a continuous movement from one point to the reverse. Every experience within life is made up of such movement between two, and we cannot conceive that life itself should be different from all its elements. But if so, it must itself, in experience, be succeeded by death. Bodily consciousness must be succeeded by bodily unconsciousness. Manifestation by non-manifestation. This mode of acting and knowing, by not acting and not knowing in this mode.

Yet as I am myself a constant factor, in my own waking and sleeping, in health and in disease, so there must be a factor which remains constant, and undergoes this experience, of death as well as of life. This factor we call the soul.

The soul then persists.

Q. Yet, since my Beloved is withdrawn from me, even though he persist, what is that to me? Why should I not be sorrowful?

A. Is he then withdrawn? Is he unconscious? Is his persistence indeed of no avail? Let us look closer into Love itself. …

In life, what was it that you loved? Was it his form, his bodily presence, the sight, the sound, the touch of the house wherein he dwelt? Or was it he, the dweller within the house, whom you rather loved? Was it his mind, his spirit, his purpose, in which you were at one? What presence was to you his presence? Was it this? Or was it merely the presence of the body. …

Nay, the question answers itself. Grief for the body is indeed without hope, full of despair; but it is short-lived. It lasts but a little time, when the body itself is gone. It is not different in kind from the distress we feel at the loss of a valued robe or jewel. The love that endures is the love of the mind, of the soul.

If then, in life, all joy was in the presence of the soul, if the experience of the soul was the whole of love, how, in mere dying, shall this undergo change?

For the soul dwells ever in the presence of the soul. At death, a veil that confused and dimmed has been withdrawn. Shall we weep for the veil, as for the wearer of the veil?

Was there union in life?

Then, two souls were set to a single melody. And they are so set still. In this setting of the soul is faithfulness.

To the soul, time does not exist. Only her own great purpose exists, shining clear and steady through the mists before her.

To her, death brings no change. Death changes the body alone. The soul loses not her own consciousness: she loses body-consciousness. And that is all.

The cares of the body are gone. The hopes and fears and memories of the body no longer exist. But that which was the life of the soul, the thought of God, or the yearning to bless, or the burning hope of truth, remains still, gathers ever to its perfect consummation in the eternal.

In that unconsciousness of earth-life, all the experience of the earth-life gathers together, unknown to us, and finds new momentum for the renewed expression that is to come. For this is the law of experience,—impression, thought-germination, expression. And life itself is but a single complex impression, which germinates in the silence and darkness, and rises to new intensity in the next effort.

The spirit that has passed out of sight knows nothing of my struggle with poverty, of my battle with things temporal, of my toil and my defeat. No. And would I have him know? Were he here now, is this the offering I would hasten to make to him? … But in supreme moments, when need or insight is quickened, so that the soul casts off her wrapping of flesh and rises alone, keen in her pain or spiritual joy, then who is to say that she felt not the stirring of her comrade? Who is to say that she was not enfolded by a prayer or a tenderness from beyond?

Look at the Catholic picture of a woman, brooding over the world, in its sin and sorrow, in eternal prayer.

Look at the Mussulman dream of a bride, setting between herself and God, as her bridal dower, the salvation of every Mussulman.

These are race-visions. And they are true. They are the great pulsations, the heart-beats of Humanity, made up of a million tiny pulses, the efforts of individual souls.

The dead do intercede, do pray, do remember us in God.

Death, then, makes nothing different. Where the soul was, at the moment of the coming of sorrow, there it remains. And its friend and lover remains ever at its side.

All that was purely of the spirit, we share still. Grief is nothing but a clouded communion. His soul progresses still towards its own beatitude. Mine still serves that beatitude in him, and on earth carries out the purpose of his life.

Where, then, is there room for pain?

The mother watches beside her sleeping child. Does she weep, because at this moment she cannot hear his voice, cannot feel his tiny arms about her neck, cannot play and laugh and chatter with him? Or does she not rather surround him with peace and love and happy faith, knowing well that the sleep he needed carries him on to a stronger and more perfect manhood?

It may be that we, could we but see with sufficient clearness, should weep for the Beloved at his hour of birth into the bondage and limitation of the flesh, and rejoice at the moment of his release. For to the soul gone out, the memory of the earth-life must seem like a dream of impotence and darkness. And to the watcher left behind, even the body is lost, only as it is lost in sleep, or as a garment is laid aside, till it be again called for.

For still can the Beloved be served by prayer, by loving thought, by healing benediction, by charity wrought on his behalf, and by service given to the purpose of his life.

“Of that which is born, death is certain: of that which is dead, birth is certain.”

Of Love

Let me commune with my own heart, and bid it tell to me again what were the tokens by which, here on earth, I knew him whom my soul should love!

Were they not secret tokens, passed by, by others, unnoticed, but to me full of significance, by reason of their response to something in myself? Outwardly, our lives had been different. But inwardly, we saw them for the same. One had led to just that need which only the other could understand. One had led to just that will, in which the other could perfectly accord. That aim which I could worship, embodied itself in him. I had dreamt great dreams, but did he not fulfil them at their hardest?

Were there not moments in which I seemed to look through the windows of the body, and see the soul within, striving and aspiring upwards like white flame? Then knew I the Beloved, because he sought loss, not gain; to give and not to take; to conquer, not to enjoy. And I took him as my leader, and vowed myself to his quest, and knew that while I would lose myself to him, I would yield him up in turn for the weal of all the disinherited and the oppressed.

Such were the tokens, by which I recognised my Beloved, of old, and long before, the companion of my soul.

Nor is he different, now that he is withdrawn from sight. His life was as a single word, uttered to reveal the soul. The soul that was revealed, remains the same.

Much was there that the strife with earth made difficult to tell, and this has grown in him, not lessened.

That reply that my mind made to his, the reply that was the soul of love, remains eternally apt, eternally true.

Then can I not watch and pray beside him while he sleeps, or wait to join him in that self-same silence?

Of the Inner Perception

There is more knowledge perhaps in simple folk-ideas of death than we often think.

For we have all known death many times, as well as life, and unconscious memories often haunt our dreams.

Like the large pulsation, made up of innumerable small pulses fused in one, so is every great and clear act of the mind, or intuition of the soul, made up of the results of countless efforts, countless experiences of the past. An irresistible conjecture is often unremembered knowledge.

And again:—

A true insight into, and discrimination of, life, is at the same time a revelation of all that comes to us outside of life. For experience consists inevitably of opposites, and the only constant is that which experiences, the Self.

Here, then, an ever-accumulating sense of weariness and loss: there, an accumulating sense of rest, and renewal of vigour.

Here, meeting followed hard by parting: there, an abiding sense of deep communion. Here, separateness: there, oneness.

Further:—

Have we learnt to discriminate with certainty the pain of the yearning that accompanies the transition from one plane of perception to another?

A pang of longing came to me for the sight of one, and at that very moment, his step was on my threshold.

My heart went out to the Beloved, in his absence, and at that very moment a letter was put into my hand, or his thought, it may be, suddenly touched mine.

Those who have watched their own experience, know this. Grief for absence is often but a veiled perception of presence.

And if there be indeed a unity in all things, then this is a consequence we might almost have deduced. For the sense and the object, the sorrow and the fact, come out of a single order, and are but two different formulations of the same thing.

What then is the message?

The message is—Be at peace. Peace is ever true. It is alone true. Whosoever is at peace can see truth. And he who is not at peace can see only distortion and violence.

Be at peace. For all is well, O sorrow-stricken soul, with thy Beloved!

Be at peace. For even now can thy peace serve his uttermost beatitude.

Even now can thy soul in prayer companion his. Even now canst thou fulfil his purpose, and satisfy his desire.

Be at peace. For even now, it is also true, thou hast it in thy power to shake his calm, to trouble his joy, with the sound of thy sobbing upon earth.

Think, when he was beside thee, what he was! Could he then have left thee to weep alone? Couldst thou leave him?

And now that he is stronger and freer and more himself than he ever was, could he be less tender than he was on earth?

Be at peace. Dwell altogether in that setting of the soul wherein ye were as one. For the soul, there is no time. Years may pass, but her purpose burns only clearer and brighter. Thought is eternity.

Faithfulness lies in community of soul-life.

Separation is but an austerity that passes.

When soul is one-d with soul, then is union deeper for the dismissal of the body.

Ye journey to a higher goal. In all great love, there have been many separations.

Of Peace

But always the wheel of Birth and Death! What then of the goal?

As long as ego remains, so long the wheel revolves. Lose ego in love. Lose love in sacrifice for others. So the Beloved becomes the Divine, and the lover forgets self.

And know thou, moreover, that when self is forgotten, then, even for the Beloved, there is no loss. For to him also, in that moment, is the Divine revealed.

Thus we cannot wander outside the circle of God’s Heart, that mighty love that has revealed itself to us in glimpses here and there.

We can home to it like the soaring eagle, and the personal can become the impersonal. Or we can wait in peace, beside the empty praying-place, knowing that he who knelt there beside us once, will kneel beside us there again.

For his beatitude and ours are one. And peace is truth. And truth is found in peace.

Of Triumphant Union

——And of that knowledge, the knowledge of the Beloved, presence and absence are but two different modes.

Either, without the other, is incomplete. For had presence been prolonged, we should have thought that presence, that companionship, was the end. But they who think thus are deluded. Union is the end.

And union is not an act. It is a quality, inherent in the natures that have been attuned.

And that infinite music, whereby our spirits are smitten as they were harp-strings, into endless accord of sweetness and sacrifice, that music is what some know as God.

Only through God can human beings reach each other, and be at one.

Therefore must love be in restraint of sense. And separation by death is to a lover the severest of all austerities.

It is also the highest, because it is imposed by God alone.

Pain borne with intention carries us to fresh heights.

Separation consecrated by faith reaches to deeper union.

Thus Love is crowned by sorrow. And Love, to be made perfect, needs sorrow as well as joy.

But when he is crowned, then doth Love put sorrow beneath his feet, and shine forth alone. And this is in truth, O blessed soul, the very Triumph of thy Love.