Illness of the Soul

In times of desperation and extreme mental anguish, when all hope is gone, people naturally seek a means to end suffering. In what seems to be logical reasoning, some consider taking their own lives. Yet, suicide is a false solution. Those who hope to free themselves from suffering by committing suicide are terribly mistaken: bodily death does not represent the end of consciousness, let alone the end of suffering. 1 Destroying the transient vehicle that should serve as a means of learning, trials and atonement of past faults is the greatest aggression that can be perpetrated against someone's own individuality. A little too late and to their greatest confusion, the people who commit suicide soon realize that it has solved absolutely nothing. To the contrary, the individual is still very much 'alive', but somehow bound to a body which now lies dead.     The suffering resulting from suicide far exceeds the one used to justify it. The skeptics will claim that 'n...

Depersonalization is an altered state of awareness about oneself or one's surroundings, giving the impression of being outside one's own body or that the world is unreal or dream-like. Although it may cause an impression of impending madness or loss of control, such outcomes never occur and the individual recovers shortly afterwards. It is considered normal and only becomes pathological if it is recurrent and debilitating. Despite the fear and confusion it can cause, there is no greater threat to the individual. Within the context of the panic syndrome, depersonalization appears as a symptom 1 , when the mind unconsciously resorts to dissociation as a means to escape unbearable internal conflict, excessive anxiety or fear. Proper therapeutic and pharmacological treatments for anxiety reduces the strength and recurrence of panic attacks, and consequently, the related symptoms like depersonalization. Understanding the disorder allows a calm and patient reaction, thus prevent...

A natural manifestation of the instinct of conservation, the fear of death is common in all living beings. In some individuals, this fear is so intense that it becomes pathological and prevents them from having fulfilling lives, forcing them to reduce their activities to a state of anguished survival.     But what exactly is death? The intuition of an 'afterlife' or continuity of consciousness after bodily death is present in all peoples and eras of mankind, including the most isolated communities on the planet.¹ Most religions are unanimous in some form of survival of the soul in the afterlife. With the emergence of science, many beliefs and superstitions have been demystified and discarded for not offering tangible 'proofs' to justify their existence. Nevertheless, if science has enlighten mankind on many subjects, it also managed to obscure it on others. The fact is that both the experimental method and human reasoning are limited and fallible, especially whe...