The following passage on the fate of suicides is taken from the
_Theosophist_, September, 1882.
We do not pretend--we are not permitted--to deal exhaustively with the
question at present, but we may refer to one of the most important
classes of entities, who can participate in objective phenomena, other
than Elementaries and Elementals.
This class comprises the Spirits of conscious sane suicides. They are
_Spirits_, and not _Shells_, because there is not in their cases, at
any rate until later, a total and permanent divorce between the fourth
and fifth principles on the one hand, and the sixth and seventh on the
other. The two duads are divided, they exist apart, but a line of
connection still unites them, they may yet reunite, and the sorely
threatened personality avert its doom; the fifth principle still holds
in its hands the clue by which, traversing the labyrinth of earthly
sins and passions, it may regain the sacred penetralia. But for the
time, though really a Spirit, and therefore so designated, it is
practically not far removed from a Shell.
This class of Spirit can undoubtedly communicate with men, but, as a
rule, its members have to pay dearly for exercising the privilege,
while it is scarcely possible for them to do otherwise than lower and
debase the moral nature of those with and through whom they have much
communication. It is merely, broadly speaking, a question of degree;
of much or little injury resulting from such communication; the cases
in which real, permanent good can arise are too absolutely exceptional
to require consideration.
Understand how the case stands. The unhappy being revolting against
the trials of life--trials, the results of its own former actions,
trials, heaven's merciful medicine for the mentally and spiritually
diseased--determines, instead of manfully taking arms against a sea of
troubles, to let the curtain drop, and, as it fancies, end them. It
destroys the body, but finds itself precisely as much alive mentally
as before. It had an appointed life-term determined by an intricate
web of prior causes, which its own wilful sudden act cannot shorten.
That term must run out its appointed sands. You may smash the lower
half of the hand hour-glass, so that the impalpable sand shooting from
the upper bell is dissipated by the passing aerial currents as it
issues; but that stream will run on, unnoticed though it remain, until
the whole store in that upper receptacle is exhausted.
So you may destroy the body, but not the appointed period of sentient
existence, foredoomed (because simply the effect of a plexus of
causes) to intervene before the dissolution of the personality; this
must run on for its appointed period.
This is so in other cases, _e.g._, those of the victims of accident or
violence; they, too, have to complete their life-term, and of these,
too, we may speak on another occasion--but here it is sufficient to
notice that, whether good or bad, their mental attitude at the time of
death alters wholly their subsequent position. They, too, have to wait
on within the "Region of Desires" until their wave of life runs on to
and reaches its appointed shore, but they wait on, wrapped in dreams
soothing and blissful, or the reverse, according to their mental and
moral state at, and prior to the fatal hour, but nearly exempt from
further material temptations, and, broadly speaking, incapable (except
just at the moment of real death) of communicating _scio motu_ with
mankind, though not wholly beyond the possible reach of the higher
forms of the "Accursed Science," Necromancy. The question is a
profoundly abstruse one; it would be impossible to explain within the
brief space still remaining to us, how the conditions immediately
after death differ so entirely as they do in the case (1) of the man
who deliberately _lays down_ (not merely _risks_) his life from
altruistic motives in the hope of saving those of others; and (2) of
him who deliberately sacrifices his life from selfish motives, in the
hope of escaping trials and troubles which loom before him. Nature or
Providence, Fate, or God, being merely a self-adjusting machine, it
would at first sight seem as if the results must be identical in both
cases. But, machine though it be, we must remember that it is a
machine _sui generis_--
Out of himself he span
The eternal web of right and wrong;
And ever feels the subtlest thrill,
The slenderest thread along.
A machine compared with whose perfect sensitiveness and adjustment the
highest human intellect is but a coarse clumsy replica, _in petto_.
And we must remember that thoughts and motives are material, and at
times marvellously potent material, forces, and we may then begin to
comprehend why the hero, sacrificing his life on pure altruistic
grounds, sinks as his life-blood ebbs away into a sweet dream, wherein
All that he wishes and all that he loves,
Come smiling round his sunny way,
only to wake into active or objective consciousness when reborn in the
Region of Happiness, while the poor unhappy and misguided mortal who,
seeking to elude fate, selfishly loosens the silver string and breaks
the golden bowl, finds himself terribly alive and awake, instinct with
all the evil cravings and desires that embittered his world-life,
without a body in which to gratify these, and capable of only such
partial alleviation as is possible by more or less vicarious
gratification, and this only at the cost of the ultimate complete
rupture with his sixth and seventh principles, and consequent ultimate
annihilation after, alas! prolonged periods of suffering.
Let it not be supposed that there is no hope for this class--the sane
deliberate suicide. If, bearing steadfastly his cross, he suffers
patiently his punishment, striving against carnal appetites still
alive in him, in all their intensity, though, of course, each in
proportion to the degree to which it had been indulged in earth-life.
If, we say, he bears this humbly, never allowing himself to be tempted
here or there into unlawful gratifications of unholy desires, then
when his fated death-hour strikes, his four higher principles reunite,
and, in the final separation that then ensues, it may well be that all
may be well with him, and that he passes on to the gestation period
and its subsequent developments.
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