Tattva-viveka
Faith Crisis
Gopisvara Dasa - November 8, 2011 6:44 pm
Recently, I had the most tragic experience of my life. My partner, Nancy, committed suicide horrifically by setting herself on fire in her car. Since then, I have been insane with grief, living in hell. The loss is manifold.
My loss: the loss of my partner. Her loss (her life) which is also my loss because I care deeply about her. And the loss of my faith, because it feels like the rug has been pulled out from under me. I want to know that she is not tormented as she was in life. And what she did would only make things worse. Being a survivor of a suicide is very disturbing, unsettling and confusing and all I can honestly say I know, is that she is not here.
Anything beyond that is just belief. Like when my mother died, my sister said to me, "she is in Heaven with dad", I didn't think that was the case (according to the Vedic philosophy). It was something she believed which probably wasn't true.
So my question is: how do we REALLY know? We can have faith, subscribe to a certain theory or belief system, we can think we know and as long as nothing serious happens, it isn't such a pressing issue.
If you were to send your child abroad with a guide, you would want to know that they are responsible. You would want to know for sure. Similarly, when a loved one has left the world and you are concerned for their well-being, you wouldn't want to just believe something that you are not sure of(like my sister). I have been told by devotees to read the books and associate with devotees (all good things of course) but you could also go to a butcher's convention and be influenced to think like them. Just because you are around people who agree with each other, doesn't make it so.
The Gita states that the wise lament neither for the living nor the dead. By this standard, I am obviously not wise. And except for a very small number of people, I don't think anyone else, experiencing such a loss, would feel any different unless they were a sociopath. We like to think we are wise, especially since we have heard such wisdom from great literatures.
But what we think and what is real can be two completely different things, which takes us back to my question; how do we REALLY know?
Braja-sundari Dasi - November 9, 2011 5:59 pm
I`m so sorry for your loss! 
I`ve lost several friends this way and it was horrible and I cannot even imagine how painful it is to loose one`s life partner.
We cannot know, we can only believe. Of course there are some people who had near to death experience and one can say they know. Still, their knowledge is often flavoured by their believes.
But whatever we believe we are able to send good wishes for the departed soul. Good wishes, prayers, good energy always reaches the goal.
Lalita-sakhi Dasi - November 10, 2011 4:29 am
Gopisvara,
I'm deeply sorry to hear of your tragic loss. I honestly don't know what else to say, but my mind keeps going to Sri Gurudeva in whom we often find confirmation of our faith in that which we don't yet know for sure.
Many hugs.
Madan Gopal Das - November 10, 2011 2:53 pm
Gopisvara prabhu, what you have experienced is incredibly tragic and traumatic. We may naturally tend to have all kinds of philosophical questions related to such a loss, but it should not be at the expense of the experience of your real human emotions and processing of the pain. Not knowing you personally, I offer my deep sympathy for what you have undergone and the loss you continue to experience. I hope that you have some family and friend supports to take shelter of. I am sending you a message on this forum of some resources in your area for suicide survivors support groups. I humbly and lovingly urge you to contact these resources. I think your philosophical questions may be sorted out all in good time through the process of dealing with the emotional trauma you have undergone. Devotees telling you to associate with devotees and read the books is just dogma, and you require a spiritual realization, not just a formula for sidestepping your feelings. I wish you all the very best in this difficult time, and I'm so sorry.
Syama Gopala Dasa - November 11, 2011 6:22 pm
Shocking news, I wish you all the best.
Babhru Das - November 12, 2011 2:12 am
Dear Gopisvara, I'm terribly sorry to hear of your losing your partner in such an awful way. I can't help thinking that she must have been feeling tormented. I wouldn't worry about any dogma about suicide; each person has an individual path to tread, and she was dear to someone devoted to Krishna, so please don't torment yourself on that account. I also agree with Madan Gopal: if you have devotee friends who can help you process your pain in a way that enhances your faith, that's fine. But if they're just going to preach dogmatically, you'd be much better off with her family members and friends, someone who will hold you as you cry your heart out, or someone who's professionally trained to help you deal with your own pain. You can work on your faith after you've begun to heal.
Many years ago, my older daughter, Krishnamayi, lost a close friend from high school to pneumocystic pneumonia due to AIDS. He was only 19. it really threw her for a loop. Her question was why Krishna would kill this young man just because he was gay. I tried to help her understand that Krishna doesn't work like that. Sam died because he caught a terrible disease, not because he was gay. Besides, he had knowingly befriended a devotee (and she was a hard-core sadhaka in those days, and every bit as "out" at school about being a devotee as Sam was about being gay) and liked prasadam and chanting Hare Krishna. She went through a really rough patch, questioning everything about Krishna consciousness, although it never occurred to her not to follow the "four regs." (To her, those have always just been part of being a decent human being.) She worked her way through it. As painful as it was for everyone, she came out stronger, with Krishna consciousness being her chosen path, rather than just what she grew up with. I think it was Hemingway who said we often grow stronger in the broken places.
Please take care of yourself, and know that we're here for whatever help we can offer whenever you need it, even if it's just to love you.
Brahma Dasa - November 12, 2011 2:48 am
Dear Gopisvara,
We are so sorry to hear of your terrible loss and continued suffering and just want you to know that you are in our hearts and in our prayers. May you find some peace and rest even in the midst of this most tragic time. All of our best wishes to you.
Brahma and Lila
Syamasundara - November 12, 2011 3:09 am
Gopisvara,
it was so unsettling to hear from you after so long and in this context.
The knowledge available in our path is amazingly vast; what's more amazing is that it can be put into practice fairly easily, compared to other practices, thus turning knowledge into realization.
The weaker our practice, the more all that knowledge will remain theoretical, or like you say, a belief.
A constant absorption in Krishna, the best and easiest way to attain which is through chanting his names, won't give you an absolute knowledge or certainty about what happens after life, but it will give you a hands-on experience of Krishna's kindness and presence; and you will also see matter for how empty it is, and you'll see that you are not matter, but a spark of life, and so is everyone else around you, and Krishna is life, and joy.
Until then, you will see death and pain, naturally. You have no doubt about there being death and pain, because that's the dimension you're living in, so if you want to have no doubt about what's written about Krishna consciousness, you have to live in a Krishna conscious way.
The Gita is right in saying that it's unwise to lament for someone's death, but you shouldn't feel guilty for feeling pain for the loss of a loved one. As a jiva, you are a spark of love and eternity, so it's natural for us to love. The object of our love and the motivations may be questionable, but as long as you love, you know you are alive. Being eternal, anything that goes against eternity, like what we perceive as death, is also unsettling for the soul, or cause for pain. Pain is so real that it accompanies the living being all the way to the highest sphere. Especially the pain of separation. Does that ring a bell? Yasoda feels pain of separation every day, so does Radha, and the cowherd boys every night. So live your pain, observe it, and when you are saturated or about to be consumed by that specific variety of pain (which we are not meant for) think of how to sublimate it, how to make it become the pain that Krishna's devotees feel; a very blissful one.
Going back to the more pragmatical side of your question, it's your daily experience that every action has repercussions, some immediate, some less. If you throw a stone up in the air, it's going to fall on your nose, and if you throw it at someone, well, you can be sure that something is going to happen. The doctrine of karma and reincarnation is there only to wake you up to this reality that you experience anyway. So, as far as your concern for Nancy's well-being, I can tell you that whatever is going to happen to her will be nothing more or less than what is exactly right for her to go through and to learn, and progress. And this happens constantly, whether she is in a body you can interact with, or not. This is the world of justice after all, the bosom of Mother Durga, who may appear strict and merciless, but so did all our mothers at some point, and if we are lucky, when we've grown up, we can see that it was all out of love. Many people, though, are taken aback when told that whatever happens to us is what we deserve. Somehow they take it as cruel. My first reaction is usually: "Would you take more solace in the fact that all kinds of bad things happen to us, and we didn't even deserve it??" Anyway, they take that statement to mean that we are being punished because we are bad. First of all good and bad are such relative concepts. You may break a leg and miss a flight and think it's a bad thing, until you realize that plane crashed, and it becomes a good thing all of a sudden. There is a Chinese story to that effect that goes on and on to show the point. So death is usually considered bad, but mostly for those who remain. Those who die are the ones who move on. When my mother died it was apparent to me that she had stopped learning in her present birth, she had nothing going for her, and I was trying to tell her what I had recently learned of this knowledge, or "belief", but as nice as she was toward Krishna Consciousness, it was hard for her to learn from her own son. At some point I had the neat impression that changing her body was a good thing for her, because she would have been in the position of learning once again: to talk, move, walk and ultimately learn more important things, helped by all the prasada and holy names she came in touch with in her previous birth and with a favorable heart.
So you should take heart in the fact that whatever exposure she had to Krishna thanks to you is not going to go unnoticed. You can still offer her some Krishna-prasada if you are concerned for her well-being. If nothing else it will make you feel better, like you've done everything you could for her. Because that's the other side of the equation: those who are left behind by those who die. I usually tell people who question my faith: "Even if it's not true and when I die that's the end of it all, at least until then I've lived a life of satisfaction, fulfillment, joy, harmony with everyone and everything around me." That's no small thing.
So I urge you a second time to increase your absorption in Krsna and initiate a dialog with him through japa, and that will at the same time give you a clearer mind as to the reality of things (life, death, etc) and transform the pain you are going through, that I can't even start to imagine, and turn it into bliss.
The journey of life is an individual thing after all. We can only save ourselves. We may show others how to save themselves, but we can't save them. Whichever the case, we are all in God's hands, more or less directly.
I hope I could answer your question to some extent. Sorry it took three days, but since Facebook Tattva Viveka has been a little dormant, and people don't log on daily anymore, it doesn't seem. I am confident that more qualified devotees will read your question and address it properly.
Take heart.
Nitaisundara Das - November 14, 2011 7:07 pm
Gopisvara, we don't know each other well, but my sincere best wishes to you in this difficult time. It was a close friends very unexpected suicide that moved me to look seriously at Gaudiya Vaishnavism and ultimately change my life. I hope in time you will feel this experience has made you stronger.
Gopisvara Dasa - November 14, 2011 10:10 pm
Thank you everyone for your kind words. Since this has happened, I have talked to many devotees and found them to be the most loving and thoughtful people (at least the ones I gravitate towards), truly a higher caliber of individuals. It has been said that for grief like this to heal, one must tell their story (I forget the number) something like 500 times. So thank you for the opportunity to express myself.
Grieving is a very powerful experience, forcing one to think and feel deeply. It makes you re-evaluate everything and separate what is important from what is not. And the suffering involved teaches one compassion for the suffering of others. It also shows us that although the body may be temporary and therefore considered unreal, the love for the individual endures because it is spiritual.
The situation that caused the demise of my beloved, was that she was trying to withdraw from Xanax, a dangerous, anti-anxiety drug, which she used as a sleep aid. It is well known that this drug can cause suicidal thoughts, especially when trying to detox. Since she was unable to get anymore (because her doctor thought she might use them to overdose) she was forced to go off of them cold turkey which is very dangerous.
Now in Krishna Consciousness, we are advised not to take drugs as they can alter our consciousness and enslave us to addiction. Yet many devotees think it is alright to take some of the most addictive, dangerous, mind altering poisons that can lead one to homicide and suicide(many documented cases), because they were given by an authority, their doctor. But the doctor is just a controlled agent of the huge pharmaceutical interest, who are exploiting the sick with their sorcery of suppressing symptoms.
I once heard an Ayurvedic Vaidya from Vrndavana speak in Berkeley who very nicely explained how all disease begins in the heart, from our departure from devotion to our Loving Source, who is nurturing us with everything we need to be "constitutionally correct". Then the problem manifests in our mind as material thinking, which then causes us to act in
wrong ways, following the senses which are a network of paths leading to death.
The very last place disease manifests is in the body and to simply suppress the symptoms with drugs is simply sorcery,
polluting the body further with toxic substances without addressing the real cause of the problem.
This is simply cheating. Just as, instead of eating natures bounty, rich in chlorophyll, which is of similar chemical constitution as blood, eating the cow and its blood.
Or instead of doing constructive work, gambling, hoping to gain by that.
Or instead of feeling good as a result of healthy lifestyle, love,yoga etc., taking intoxicants.
Or by bypassing the love in our conjugal relationships.
I say all this out of concern for those who may be being victimized by the financial interests of the drug companies.
Let us live long productive lives. We have a lot of sadhana to do and have been blessed with a superlative Guru.
I used to think that I would be happy when I got healthy. It is the other way around. Happiness makes you healthy (along with responsible living). And love is what makes us happy.
Now back to the topic of faith. Is there a stage in Bhakti where one really knows as opposed to having stronger and stronger faith? Or is it always just a faith in the unknown. Because in other religious traditions, the followers hold many beliefs about the afterlife that we would readily dismiss as erroneous and they may dismiss ours as well, regardless of if they are correct. Can we really know or is what really happens at death just a mystery that we won't know until it happens?
Citta Hari Dasa - November 17, 2011 4:45 am
Now back to the topic of faith. Is there a stage in Bhakti where one really knows as opposed to having stronger and stronger faith? Or is it always just a faith in the unknown. Because in other religious traditions, the followers hold many beliefs about the afterlife that we would readily dismiss as erroneous and they may dismiss ours as well, regardless of if they are correct. Can we really know or is what really happens at death just a mystery that we won't know until it happens?
There is definitely a stage in bhakti where one gets direct experience of the nature of being and knows, beyond doubt, that death is just a transition for the soul. As one practices faith (as you've used it here being synonymous with theory) gives way to experience; the theory becomes realization. We may not know the specifics of where a particular soul will go/has gone, but we will be able to make educated guesses as to a given soul's afterlife based on how the person lived.