Hello Everyone,

I came to this website today because a friend recently committed suicide.He jumped off a cliff in front of his father.He had suffered from depression and had divorced which adversely affected him.

The thing that I didn't like about my friend was that he was too easily controlled by other people. I often wished he could be a little bit more independently minded. Consequently, I drifted away from him. It was this very factor that I believe greatly contributed to his death. In other words people took advantage of him.

I have had little contact with him during the last 18 years of his life (I spoke to him once about 18 months ago) but the bottom line is that he was an extremely kind, decent human being. I feel extreme compassion towards him and his family and I find it quite offensive when people suggest that suicide victims go to hell or find themselves in limbo. Surely, If I can be compassionate then so should God.

I would like to know if there is anything that I can do for him now that he has gone. I don't like the thought of him being trapped somewhere.

Unfortunately, this is now the third person in my year at School that has killed himself and all of them were good people.

Another point that doesn't make sense is that people say you choose your life here on earth. I dont see how that follows when some children are rapped by their own parents. Surely, most people would prefer to choose compassionate parents than evil ones.I hope this board is not suggesting that you have to experience everything in order to move to a higher plane.

I hope someone can answer these questions.

Best regards,

Bill.

Bill,

Sorry to hear about your friend.  I think the idea that people who commit suicide automatically go to hell is one of the most ridiculous and cruel myths ever invented by religion.  Most people who kill themselves are victims, not evil people.  Having said that, I also should say that I don't think suicide is the answer in most cases where people choose to do it, but there are plenty of exceptions to the rule.  Just because somebody kills themself doesn't mean we should love them any less or that God loves them any less, or that they will have to endure the tortures of hell.

Hell is a much overblown subject, IMHO.  Many people who believe in a religion or an afterlife seem to think an awful lot of people end up in a state of severe suffering after death, but I disagree.  I believe God is good and has ordered the universe to work in a way that is good for all beings.  Any suffering we must go through either on this side or the other side of the grave is also an opportunity to learn something or help others learn something.  Hell, if it exists, is simply a way that God has arranged for people to be challenged and purified of whatever is holding their soul back from rising to the level of goodness it was created to be.

If your friend killed himself because he had depression and too many problems in his life, I doubt if he went to hell.  Even if he did, it would only be temporary, because there is no such thing as eternal torment -- that is a myth based on mistranslation and misinterpretation of the Bible.  It is also important for us to realize that nowhere in the Bible is suicide specifically condemned as a sin -- and certainly not as a sin that would cause one to go to hell.

I doubt the validity of any near-death experience or vision of the afterlife that claims that suicide automatically produces a state of suffering after death.  If this were true, we would be living in a fundamentally unjust universe, because many suicides are not the result of evil, but utter hopelessness.  God gives hope to the hopeless, not make them suffer even more.

Peace,
Freebird

Raj,

You are of course free to believe in whatever religious doctrines you choose, but evidence from near-death experiences shows that many suicides do not result in hell or separation from God.  Some do, but some don't.  It depends on the person's motive for killing oneself and the effects it produces in the world.  Suicide when done for the wrong reasons produces a lot of negative effects and could result in punishment after death, but there are plenty of situations where it can actually be a good thing, reducing the level of suffering of others rather than increasing it.  In these cases it is not a selfish act but an act of self-renunciation, deserving of no punishment or even social opprobrium.

Most suicides are the result of incurable mental illness.  Very high percentages of people with lifelong clinical depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, etc. end up killing themselves when the disease becomes too severe and uncontrollable (for some of these diseases the suicide rate is 20-50%).  I seriously doubt if God punishes the severely mentally ill, who have suffered enough already in ways that the mentally healthy cannot even begin to understand, with even more suffering after death.

Why would God or anyone else in heaven criticize a person for opting out of a life of insanity?  Would you want such a life?  Would you expect your loved ones to endure it for years and years, requiring you to pay for their hospitalization in a mental institution and knowing that every moment of their lives is continuous torment?

Brain diseases are nothing to sneeze at.  The brain is an organ like any other, and when things go wrong in there, people think and do all kinds of things against their will.  They can be full of morbid thoughts, perform perverse acts, curse uncontrollably, yell at people for no reason, disturb the peace, get in fights, commit violent crimes, and often commit suicide.  Does God punish people for having heart disease or kidney disease?  If not, then why would He punish people for having brain disease?

It could be argued that the mentally ill are this way because of bad karma from past lives.  Maybe so, or maybe not.  But even if that's true, I believe there are better ways of paying off bad karma than by being insane and causing all kinds of problems for other people on earth.

I believe suicide is a personal choice that should only be taken after very careful consideration of its effects and failure of all other options.  It should be rare, but not unheard of.  It should not be done with pressure from others, and it should not be refrained from for fear of divine punishment or condemnation by loved ones, if the situation warrants suicide as a morally legitimate option.

Freebird

I do past life work and various types of regression therapy in my clinical practice. I had a suicidal woman who was frazzled from overwork in a family business. Regression found that she had gotten into this life because in the last life she had committed suicide due to being overworked by the family. The solution was to review her options, in this case to work elsewhere.

Your friend is in the process of learning about life, and this is part of the learning process. He needs to understand that he has other options next time around, that he has love and support available, and that this was, at very worst, simply an error. Prayer is effective, sending love is effective. Going to look for him directly should be effective, although he might feel pretty bummed out still. Note Bruce's methods for altering attitude in that case.

I had a patient who was being starved to death chained to a dungeon wall in a past life. She got spaced out from hunger and went to "hell". She described it as a place where everyone was so full of themselves that they were utterly alone, hostile, unhappy, rejecting and fearful (sounds like some hangovers I've had), and stuck there until they altered thir outlook. She was very happy to get back to her nice comfortable dungeon wall. Other pople have reported a "cold, grey, lonely path in the mist", a far more common experience.

Send your friend love, your best wishes for his developing wisdom, comfort and joy. It might be useful to keep in mind that after he gets it right he becomes a part of God - as does everyone. This is just a side trip.