THEOSOPHY
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Suicide Is Not Death
By
William
Q. Judge
As a
student of Theosophy and human nature I have been interested in the discussion of
the subject of self-murder to which The World has given a place in its columns.
The eloquent agnostic, Col. Ingersoll, planted his
views in the ground with the roots of them in the grave, giving the poor
fellow to say nothing beyond the cold earth to cheer
him in his act, save perhaps the cowardly chance of escape, from responsibility
or pain. Those who, as Nym Crinkle says, occupy
themselves with replying to Col. Ingersoll fall back
on the mere assertion that it is a sin to kill the body in which the Lord saw
fit to confine a man. Neither of these views is
either satisfactory or scientific.
If suicide
is to be approved it can only be on the ground that the man is only a body,
which, being a clod, may well be put out of its sufferings.
From this
it would be an easy step to justify the killing of other bodies that may be in
the way, or old, or insane, or decrepit, or vicious. For if
the mass
of clay called body is all that we are, if man is not a spirit unborn and
changeless in essence, then what wrong can there be in
destroying it when you own it, or are it, and how easy
to find good and sufficient reason for disposing similarly of others?
The priest
condemns suicide, but one may be a Christian and yet hold the opinion that a
quick
release from earth brings possible heaven several
years nearer. The Christian is not deterred from suicide by any good reasons
advanced in his
religion, but rather from cowardice. Death, whenever
natural or forced has become a terror, is named "The King of Terrors."
This is because, although a vague heaven is offered on the other side, life and
death are so little understood that men had rather bear the ills they know than
fly to others which are feared through ignorance of what those are.
Suicide,
like any other murder is a sin because it is a sudden disturbance of the
harmony of the world. It is a sin because it defeats nature. Nature exists for
the sake of the soul and for no other reason, it has
the design, so to say, of giving the soul experience and self-consciousness.
These can
only be had by means of a body through which the soul comes in contact with
nature, and to violently sever the connection before the natural time defeats
the aim of nature, for the present compelling her, by her own slow processes,
to restore the task left unfinished. And as those
processes must go on through the soul that permitted
the murder, more pain and suffering must follow.
And the
disturbance of the general harmony is a greater sin than most men think. They
consider themselves alone, as separate, as not connected with others. But they
are connected throughout the whole world with all other souls and minds. A
subtle, actual, powerful band links them all together, and the instant one of
all these millions disturbs the link the whole mass feels it by reaction
through soul and mind, and can only return to a
normal state through a painful adjustment.
This
adjustment is on the unseen, but all-important, planes of being in which the real
man exists. Thus each murderer of self or of another imposes on entire humanity
an unjustifiable
burden. From this injustice he cannot escape, for his body's death does not cut
him off from the rest; it only places him, deprived of nature's instruments, in
the clutch of laws that are powerful and implacable, ceaseless in their
operation and compulsory in their demands.
Suicide is
a huge folly, because it places the committer of it in an infinitely worse
position than he was in under the conditions from which
he foolishly hoped to escape. It is not death.
It is only a leaving of one well-known house in familiar surroundings to go
into a new place where terror and despair alone have place. It is but a
preliminary death done to the clay, which is put in the "cold embrace of
the grave," leaving the man
himself naked and alive, but out of mortal life and
not in either heaven or hell.
The
Theosophist sees that man is a complex being full of forces and faculties,
which he uses in a body on earth. The body is only a part of his clothing; he
himself lives also in other places. In sleep he lives in one, awakes in
another, in thought in another.
He is a
threefold being of body, soul and spirit. And this trinity can be divided again
into its
necessary seven constituents. And just as he is
threefold, so also is nature - material, psychical or astral, and spiritual.
The material part of nature governs the body, the psychical affects the soul
and the spirit lives in the spiritual, all being bound together.
Were we
but bodies, we might well commit them to material nature and the grave, but if
we rush
out of the material we must project ourselves
into the psychical or astral. And as all nature proceeds with regularity under
the government of law, we know that each combination has its own term of life
before a natural and easy separation of the component parts can take place.
A tree or
a mineral or a man is a combination of elements or parts, and each must have
its projected life term. If we violently and prematurely cut them off one from
the other, certain consequences must ensue.
Each
constituent requires its own time for dissolution. And suicide being a violent
destruction of the first element - body - the other two, of soul and spirit,
are left without their natural instrument.
The man
then is but half dead, and is compelled by the law of his own being to wait
until the natural term is reached.
The fate
of the suicide is horrible in general. He has cut himself off from his body by
using mechanical means that affect the body, but cannot
touch the real man. He then is projected into the
astral world, for he has to live somewhere. There the remorseless law, which
acts really for his
good, compels him to wait until he can properly
die. Naturally he must wait, half dead, the months or years which, in the order
of nature, would
have rolled over him before body and soul and
spirit could rightly separate.
He becomes
a shade; he lives in purgatory, so to say, called by the Theosophist the
"place of desire and passion," or "Kama Loka." He exists in
the astral realm entirely, eaten up by his own thoughts.
Continually
repeating in vivid thoughts the act by which he tried to stop his life's
pilgrimage, he at the same time sees the people and the place
he left, but is not able to communicate with any
one except, now and then, with some poor sensitive, who often is frightened by
the visit. And often
he fills the minds of living persons who may be sensitive
to his thoughts with the picture of his own taking off, occasionally leading
them to commit upon themselves the act of which he was guilty.
To put it theosophically, the suicide has cut himself
off on one side from the body and life which were necessary for his experience
and evolution,
and on the other from his spirit, his guide and
"Father in heaven." He is composed now of astral body, which is of
great tensile strength, informed
and inflamed by his passions and desires. But a
portion of his mind, called manas, is with him. He
can think and perceive, but, ignorant of how
to use the forces of that realm, he is swept
hither and thither, unable to guide himself.
His whole
nature is in distress, and with it to a certain degree
the whole of humanity, for through the spirit all are united. Thus he goes on,
until the law of nature acting on his astral body, that
begins
to die,
and then he falls into a sleep from which he awakens in time for a season of
rest before beginning once more a life on earth. In his next
reincarnation he may, if he sees fit, retrieve or
compensate or suffer over again.
There is
no escape from responsibility. The "sweet embrace of the wet clay" is
a delusion. It is better to bravely accept the inevitable, since it must be due
to our errors in other older lives, and fill every duty, try to improve all
opportunity. To teach suicide is a sin, for it leads some to commit it. To
prohibit it without reason is useless, for our minds
must have reasons for doing or not doing. And if
we literally construe the words of the Bible, then there we find it says no
murderer has a place but
in hell. Such constructions satisfy but few in
an age of critical investigation and hard analysis. But give men the key to
their own natures, show them how law governs both here and beyond the grave,
and
their good sense will do the rest. An illogical
nepenthe of the grave is as foolish as an illogical heaven for nothing.
William
Quan Judge
First
published 1894
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