Suicide: a false solution

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 'no one has come back to tell', as a naive justification for such an act of cowardice that they confuse with courage. Parapsychological research suggest they are wrong: ever since mankind exists, conscious beings freed from matter interact with the 'living' through mediumistic inspiration or communication.² There are innumerable accounts of the so called 'dead' lamenting their painful situation in the afterlife, and those in the worst conditions are invariably the ones who committed suicide.⁵ Warning: The following paragraphs may include potentially disturbing content. The reader may wish to proceed to the section titled 'A new path'.

In the excellent book Memoirs of a Suicide, we find valuable insights on the condition of the conscious beings who caused their death, intentionally or not; "In general, those who resort to suicide, forever hope to get rid of troubles deemed unbearable, sufferings and problems considered insoluble (...) I was wrong, however; and struggles infinitely more vivid and harsher awaited me in the coffin, in order to lash my disbelieving and revel soul, with deserved justice. (...) My spirit, roughly violated, had somehow fainted, suffering ignoble collapse. The senses, the faculties which express the rational self were paralyzed as if indescribable cataclysm had disrupted the world, but above the wreckage of my body, prevailed the strong feeling of annihilation which had fallen upon my being."³

"I felt freezing cold. I was shivering! An uncomfortable impression as if ice robes had clung to my body, provoking an unpleasant malaise. I couldn't find air for the free mechanism of the lungs, which led me to believe that, once I had wished to get rid of life, it was death that was approaching with its cortege of lacerating symptoms."³

The similarity between this description and certain symptoms of the panic disorder is notable: the sensation of imminent death, an irrational and profound fear, the typical chest pain and mental chaos, etc. In the face of such similarities, some inevitable questions arise: Are such symptoms in the 'living' the result of unconscious remnants of a previous experience in the afterlife? Can such memories, now resurfacing into the conscious in the form of a vague but painful intuition, be the cause of the otherwise unexplained psychosomatic symptoms? And finally, could the individuals with Panic Disorder have committed suicide in a previous life? This is what experience suggests: hypnotic memory regression therapy performed over the years by psychiatrists Jaider Rodrigues de Paulo and Brian Weiss M.D.⁴, among others, all point to a traumatic (and guilty) death experience through accident or suicide.

The concept of reincarnation is therefore necessary to understand the cause of current illnesses such as depression and anxiety disorders. What we call a disease would in fact be the effect of an underlying, metaphysical and purely mental cause, a cleansing process which gradually exteriorizes unconscious content in order to restore inner equilibrium. Similar results are obtained in therapy for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, when the patient is lead to re-experience a traumatic event, in order to re-contextualize and compare it with the current situation of safety. An illness is thus a necessary corrective in favor of one's own spiritual growth, because suffering, in this context, is an educative force par excellence, a true lever of progress, forcing the individual to change and acquire personal virtues and values towards life. This explains why most people who overcome a serious illness are inwardly changed forever. 

In regards to suicidal tendencies, depression and panic disorder, besides the psychological problems of the individual, we must also point out a possible aggravating factor: external spiritual influence and disturbance, a complex subject to be discussed in another article.

A new path

Along with the necessary psychological and pharmaceutical treatment, understanding the transcendental nature of man is the foundation of self-knowledge. Much to the disdain of skeptics on the question of religion, spirituality in the patient is now part of the curriculum in medicine faculties worldwide⁶, where faith is used as a powerful ally against physiological and mental illnesses. Although certain doctrines such as Spiritism⁷ better explain parapsychological phenomena and reincarnation, when it comes to healing, the choice of creed is insignificant. Faith is particularly helpful if its experience is intimate and healthy, far from the torments of fanaticism, exclusivism or excessive focus on external manifestations of worship, which often deviate the individual from the initial proposal of re-connection with God (religion: re+ligāre, to bind, tie).

There is nothing that cannot be overcome or supported by the force of will. Nothing.

As a final consideration, people often believe that their problems are unbearable. It is thus imperative to take a new perspective, to realize that countless people live and struggle in situations far worse than ours. We must transform inconformity into resignation, pride into humility, and recognize ourselves as mere students of life, losing a valuable existence and opportunity of personal growth, immersed in self-pity and unproductive pessimism. Metaphorically, it is overcoming our inner shadow that we learn to radiate light.


Simon Baush

References
¹STEVENSON, IAN M.D., The Evidence for Survival from Claimed Memories of Former Incarnations - Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research (1960)
²WILLIAMS, BRYAN J., Mediums, Spirits, and Science: 50 Years’ Exploration of the Afterlife by the Psychical Research Foundation (2014)
³PEREIRA, YVONNE. Memoirs of a Suicide (1954)
⁴WEISS, BRIAN. Many Lives, Many Masters (1996)
⁵KARDEC, ALLAN. Heaven and Hell (1865)
⁶BAKER, LOIS. Spirituality Courses Become Part of Medical School Curriculum - University at Buffalo (2007)
⁷KARDEC, ALLAN. The Spirits' Book (1858)