We all would like to think that God is on our side and in principle believe that spiritual truths are good for us.

We often forget that underneath it all there's this assumption that spiritual truths are by nature convenient things to live by and they just make common sense, perhaps similar to the useful household gadgets we have that make our lives easier and more comfortable. Sometimes I wonder how true that is.

A story attributed to the great Indian mystic Baba Muktananda illustrates the point rather well.

One day the disciples ran to Baba with the bad news that ashram's only black swan was sick. It didn't act normally as it was swimming in the lake.

Baba dismissed them by replying: Don't worry. The swan is okay.

The next day the swan was not okay. Now its neck was drooping so low its beak was scraping the ground.

Believing in their guru's infinite powers, the disciples again ran to Baba and asked him to do something and save the precious swan.

Baba again said don't worry, he is going to be alright. He will definitely be alright.

On the third day the disciples found the swan dead! They all rushed to Baba with a mixture of grief and disappointment.

Baba, they said, you told us that the sawn would be alright. But he is dead! What happened?

Baba looked at them with a twinkle in his eyes and said: Well, just like I told you. He IS alright.

That's when the disciples realized that for them to be alright was to be physically alive in the present body whereas Baba was perhaps looking at the matter from an entirely different point of view.

From where he was looking, even leaving the physical body behind could be alright and okay. What is common and obvious might not be so from a spiritual point of view.

Should the black swan have been taken to the vet and made to live perhaps another year or two?

Or did the swan (just as possible according to the Hindu and Yogic tradition) is now roaming the earth as a human being, as a creature with much higher chances of illumination, since it had the chance to shed its last non-human body and gained the chance to reincarnate as a Homo Sapien?

Is this why he died but it was still okay?

I'm not sure. But I'm still thinking.