Grief

 

 

[She says: I wanted to ask you about my father. He committed suicide, and it's like a shadow that just stays with me. Well, I couldn't grieve for him for a long time -- not until this year, and then within the last three, four months, it all came out -- sadness and grief. In the throes of it I decided to come here, and I've been feeling better ever since I decided to come.]

 

 

No, it will go. In fact you should have grieved before. But one has to pass through it; it is natural. If you don't pass that natural state, it can linger on for your whole life. Sadness is a passing mood -- it comes and goes -- but if you don't allow it, it can become like a wound.

 

So somehow you managed not to allow it. It is happening to many people in the world because we are continuously being taught to control everything, and grief is felt as if one is weak. One is not weak, one is simply sensitive -- and to be sensitive is to be human. Somebody dies and you loved them. It is natural to feel sad. There is nothing to feel guilty about.

 

[She answers: I wanted to say, but it was as if it was too much to feel the pain.]

 

No, it is never too much, it is never too much. And it is such a beautiful experience. It is so cleansing and purifying... nothing like it. It has its own beauty, it has its own joy, if you allow me to say so. If you really grieve and go deeply into it, you will come out completely new and fresh and young, as if all the dust disappears with it; the past disappears with it. But it will go. So this time, if it comes here, allow it -- and enjoy it.

 

I'm not saying only allow it, because one can allow it very reluctantly. One can allow it very distantly. One can remain aloof and allow it, but then it will remain somewhere -- a lingering shadow will continue -- and that is bad; that is very dangerous. It can become a continuous hangover and that can destroy your present.

 

So the account has to be dosed. And when it is a question of father or mother, it is a very deep account. In fact, if you can close your account with your father, you will for the first time become mature, because the disappearance of the father is the disappearance of a certain security, a certain centre. With the father, the past has disappeared. You are no more a child -- you have become grown up.

 

And because it was suicide, it is more difficult to close the account. When a person dies naturally, you accept it. When a person commits suicide, you go on feeling that it might have been possible for it not to have happened. So somehow it is difficult to see the point -- that one has ended. When a person commits suicide we go on feeling in our minds that there must have been some way.... It is possible that he could still be alive, because it was not a natural death. But in fact no death is unnatural. It is just our understanding that makes the distinction. It was natural for him to commit suicide. That was his way of dying. And as far as I can see into people -- into their life and their death -- people who commit suicide have a certain very distinct individually.

 

In fact they are more individualistic than people who die naturally. They live their own way and they die their own way. Their death has their signature. They will not allow it to just happen. They like to give it a colour and a shape and a date. It happens many times that rare people commit suicide.

 

[She says: He was rare.]

 

So, nothing to be worried about. One should be happy about it. He was a rare man, and he had his own way of death. He lived his life, he died his way -- and it was natural for him.

 

There are people for whom ordinary death is unnatural; it won't fit with them. It will be simply like an accident that they died on their bed just by accident. It won't fit with them. There are people for whom it is natural to put their lives aside and take the jump and the plunge into the unknown. Because we cling too much to life., suicide looks like a sin. It is our clinging -- because we are clingers, and if somebody commits suicide we condemn. But it is not necessarily that it is bad. The person may have taken a plunge into the unknown. He has known life, he is finished with it, now he wants to know what death is -- and he wants to know it very consciously.

 

In india there exists one of the most ancient religions, jainism. That is the only religion in the world that allows suicide. It is very rare. It says that when a person, out of his meditation, comes to feel that now he has lived his life and there is no more to it so why go on repeating, he surrenders his life on his own.

 

That is the only religion. And I feel that sooner or later that is going to become part of every country and every constitution, because a man has a fundamental right to live and to die. Nobody should be allowed to prevent anybody. If somebody wants to dissolve himself, it is perfectly okay. It is his way. If he wants not to live, then who are others to force him to live? Then it is an imprisonment.

 

I can see you, and just through you, I can feel that he must have been a rare man. You have something of him in you. So take it naturally. That was natural for him, because in fact nothing unnatural ever happens because it cannot happen. Whatsoever happens is natural, because only the natural can happen. Once you understand this, you accept everything.

 

And the grief will come. This time just go into it. You are here and I am here, so no need to be worried. Even if it seems too much, allow it. And you will feel very good. The burden and the shadow will disappear. And it will be good for your father also -- not only for you -- because whenever one party clings, the other also somehow remains attached. Once you have closed your accounts and you have said a clean goodbye, he is also free. Then he is not involved with you. Love always gives freedom -- and this is the last freedom that is needed.

 

Love gives freedom in life, and love gives freedom in death too.

 

-Osho, "Dance Your Way to God, #17“