LOVE AFTER DEATH

What is meant by love after death? Surely that love does not – and cannot – die.

We are ostensibly born as the product of love between a man and a woman.  That ‘explains’ our flesh - but where does our spirit originate? 

Those of us unable to dismiss spirit as non-existent tend to acknowledge it as of Divine origin.  Few could claim it to be the result of human union.  So, coming from a non-human source, it is not ‘ours’ in the sense that our bodies are.

We house spirit within us during our life span, but upon death it returns whence it came prior to our birth. Do I have proof of this?

Yes, in that I have witnessed the essence of loved ones leaving as their bodies died – and hovering near me at their graveside!

No, in scientific terms because to the best of my knowledge science is not yet equipped to evaluate spirit!

I just mentioned ‘essence’.  My dictionary defines this as ‘the quality or qualities of a thing that give it its identity; the intrinsic or indispensable properties of a thing; the most important ingredient, the crucial element; the inherent, unchanging nature of a thing or class of things, as distinguished from its attributes or its existence; a spiritual or incorporeal entity’.

While alive we are not necessarily conscious of our spiritual selves.  We feed our bodies and often forget our souls.  Maybe we don’t even believe that we have a soul.  But most of us believe in the power of love.

If we’re fortunate, we feel this love from the moment our mother first holds us in her arms.  It is a tangible thing, giving us warmth and a secure feeling.  We are loved and so we learn how to love – first our mother, father and family.

Then, as we grow up, other loves come to us.  Ultimately, we fall in love.  How mind-blowing those feelings can be!  They take us over, body and soul, so that we experience oneness with another.

We also, at such a time, tend to experience oneness with the whole universe.  Our life is suddenly sublime.  We are whole, where before a crucial part of us was missing.  We have opened our heart to the infinite.

It is perhaps when we’re in love that we come closest to our Source.  Those feelings of bliss and of completion are akin, I think, to remembering our divinity.  We are mortal – yes, of course – but we are also immortal thanks to the divine spark within each of us.

It is said that God is love.

Rudyard Kipling wrote:

 ‘Once upon a time, or rather at the birth of Time, when the gods were so new that they had no names, and Man was still damp from the clay of the pit whence he had been digged, Man claimed that he, too, was in some sort a god.

The gods weighed his evidence and decided that Man’s claim was good.

Having conceded Man’s claim, the legend goes that they came by stealth and stole away this godhead, with intent to hide it where Man should never find it again.  But this was not so easy.  If they hid it anywhere on Earth the gods foresaw that Man would leave no stone unturned till he had recovered it.  If they concealed it among themselves they feared Man might batter his way up even to the skies.

And while they were all thus at a stand, the wisest of the gods said “I know.  Give it to me!”  He closed his hand upon the tiny, unstable light of Man’s stolen godhead, and when that great hand opened again the light was gone.

“All is well,” said Brahm.  “I have hidden it where Man will never dream of looking for it.  I have hidden it inside Man himself.”’

Where better to hide our spirit than within us?  As for the love we have experienced in our lifetime – and which we still feel when we die – isn’t this integral to our essence?

So our love for others doesn’t perish with our bodies.  It lives on in spirit and will echo through eternity.  Love after death?  You bet!