Death does not Liberate !
(First time, this article was published on this blog, on Friday, 18 November 2016. Edited minorly on June 15, 2020)
At times we are overwhelmed by our problems which normally are more psychological than physical. Finding no way out of the web, believing that the world is only what we see and concluding that our ordeal will end with our death, we take the ultimate plunge into the abyss of death.
But, Death is not an escape to eternal Peace. Seers of India, who see beyond the material world, see this world differently. They have a different view on suicide. In this context, I have put the words of two great people on Death and Suicide, hoping that it will make us wiser, courageous, and help us choose Life instead of Death.
Important takes from the words of Paramahansa Yogananda and The Mother given below:
- We do not die - we just pass from this world to another world.
- Death doesn't liberate us. We start the next life exactly from the state we left.
- To change one's situation, one has to make efforts and all the efforts can be made only on earth while one is alive. Thus an act of suicide doesn't solve one's problem.
- If you leave before your work is finished you will have to come back to do it again under much more difficult conditions.
- On earth, our body acts as a protective sheath and saves us from terrible attacks from the vital world. After death, one doesn't go out of existence. One has to pass through a vital world that is made of all these passions and ignorance. So the troubles one wanted to avoid in this world, one finds again after death and now without having the protection which the body gives.
Paramahansa Yogananda:
"Don't depend on death to liberate you from your imperfections. You are exactly the same after death as you were before. Nothing changes; you only give up the body. If you are a thief or a liar or a cheater before death, you don't become an angel merely by dying. If such were possible, then let us all go and jump in the ocean now and become angels at once! Whatever you have made of yourself thus far, so will you be hereafter. And when you reincarnate, you will bring that same nature with you. To change, you have to make the effort. This world is the place to do it."
Ref: (Teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda)
The Mother (Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pudducherry):
Q. Why does one suffer when one commits
suicide?
Ans. "Why
does one commit suicide? Because one is a coward….When one is cowardly, one
always suffers."
Q. In the next life one suffers again?
Ans."The
psychic being comes with a definite purpose to go through a set of experiences
and to learn and make progress. Then if you leave before its work is finished
it will have to come back to do it again under much more difficult conditions.
So all that you have avoided in one life you will find again in another, and
more difficult. And even without leaving in this way, if you have difficulties
to overcome in life, you have what we usually call a test to pass, you see; well,
if you don’t pass it or turn your back upon it, if you go away instead of
passing it, you will have to pass it another time and it will be much more
difficult than before.
Now
people, you know, are extremely ignorant and they think that it is like this:
there is life, and then death; life is a bunch of troubles, and then death is an
eternal peace. But it is not at all like that. And usually when one goes out of
life in an altogether arbitrary way and in an ignorant and obscure passion, one
goes straight into a vital world made of all these passions and all this
ignorance. So the troubles one wanted to avoid one finds again without even
having the protection which the body gives, for- if you have ever had a
nightmare, that is, a rash excursion in the vital world, well, your remedy is to
wake yourself up, that is to say, to rush back immediately into your body. But
when you have destroyed your body you no longer have a body to protect you. So
you find yourself in a perpetual nightmare, which is not very pleasant. ---"
Psychic - is a growing soul, that doesn't die with body and moves from one life to next life. It is psychic that gives us a character and individuality.
Note: Emphasis by colour and highlighting are by the author.
