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Dying in Love
When there is love between two persons, whether husband and
wife, father and son, mother and daughter, friends, guru and disciple
– if this real love is there between the two, there will automatically
develop a mutual respect, a mutual regard, even a mutual admiration,
perhaps, even a mutual worship. Because friendship must ripen into love,
love must ripen into adoration. Adoration must ripen into worship, into
surrender and then into the extinction of the self.
Therefore you see, loving is dying. To love is to die. And
when you cease to exist in love, that is, “I must be alive so that I
can enjoy my love, bask in my love, drown myself in my own love,” that
is narcissistic, psychologically speaking, and it is destructive. So,
to say that love and death are linked is also a lesser truth than to
say that love is death. Truly, when you love, you seek only the other,
you think only of the other – only the other exists, you don’t exist.
It is love which gives form to substance, to essence.
The spirit takes up matter, makes it fit for itself, embodies
it itself and there you have a body – white, black, tall, short, it
doesn’t matter. And when this idea comes, that this body is so wonderful,
this body is so beautiful, this body is so attractive – the ego comes,
the love of the self comes, the narcissistic love comes, selfishness
comes and love goes out of the door. That is why, today, there is so
little love in this world. It is all self, self, self! So, what is necessary
to bring back the bliss of love, the glory of love, the transcendental
experiences of love, and the ability to transcend love itself into a
final extinction of the self – to die to oneself, which is what Babuji
Maharaj, in spiritual terms, called the living death, the living dead.
So you see, if you don’t die in love, you will have a different
type of death – in fear, hatred, sorrow, misery. Death is inevitable.
One death is inglorious, painful, miserable, self-destructive. The other
death is glorious, worshipful, full of love, full of beatitude. So all
that we do, when we inculcate our children and ourselves with the spirit
of holiness, with the attitudes of holiness, the ability to worship
that which we love, to adore that which we love, to surrender to that
which we love, to finally die for that which we love – we are seeking
a form of death which transcends death. It is no longer death. I die
without dying. Death, for me, no more exists. It is erased from the
slate of my existence in eternity. Such a person never dies, because
he has died to himself, by himself. For such a person, death can have
no fears. Since he cannot die, we call such persons immortal. They are
there forever. Their love is inextinguishable. Why is it inextinguishable?
Because they no longer love – they are love. So you see, how closely
love and death are linked. To die in love means to live forever.
To die thinking of yourself, in your selfishness, in your own personal
vainglory, is to die forever. So, one is the way to immortality; the
other is the way to hell; to recurrence – eternal recurrence, as one
psychologist has called it, again and again and again, until we learn
to love, to sacrifice, to die to ourselves.
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