Suicide, mistaken and useless act

An important newspaper in São Paulo published an article that has gained great repercussion in social networks, about the vertiginous increase of cases of suicide committed by young people belonging to the different layers of society.

It is evident that there are innumerable factors that can lead a person to suicide, and we cannot also rule out, as an important element, the infirmities and the spiritual influences of obsessive character.

Suicide is not a recent phenomenon in earthly society, as much that in composing his main spirit work in the mid-19th century, Kardec devoted 16 questions to the subject, which, if the complexities of the theme are not exhausted, offer us important information that allow us to understand it.

Relevant reasons exist, no doubt, capable of leading a person to despair and hence the suicidal idea. The financial ruin, the tragedy that victimizes the whole family of the person, the painful illness without a prospect of cure, a deep psychological shock, depression, the state of disturbance that leads the individual to total imbalance...

It happens that there are situations where no apparent or real reason exists. How then to explain, in such cases, the escape of life?

Kardec would not, of course, ignore the subject, and so he presented the disembodied instructors with the following question: "Where is the disgust of life born, which, without plausible motives, seizes certain individuals?

They answered:

"Effect of idleness, lack of faith, and also satiety. For the one who uses his faculties with a useful purpose and according to his natural abilities, the work has nothing arid and life drains more quickly. He supports the vicissitudes as much patience and resignation, as he works for the sake of the most solid and lasting happiness that awaits him." (The Spirits' Book, question 943.)

The disgust feeling of life will not always, of course, arise for the individual the idea of ​​killing himself. When this hypothesis occurs, there is certainly another factor in the case, as shown by reports by individuals who have passed through the world of suicide.

In his work entitled Heaven and Hell, originally published in the year 1865, Kardec presents us with nine cases.

Here are the following, together with the reasons given:

1 - The Suicide of the Samaritan. A 50-year-old man killed himself with a razor because he felt despised in his own family.

2 - The Father and the Conscript. A Paris businessman committed suicide to relieve his only child of serving the Army as soon as the Italian war began.

3 - François Simon-Louvet. A poor wretch, overcome by the displeasure of a life of misery, threw himself from the Francis I Tower, shattering on the stones.

4 - Benjamin C.'s mother not bearing the loss of her eldest son, dying at age 21, hanged herself in a barn.

5 - Two suicidal lovers. Married to the wrong person by deference to her parents, the young Palmira joined the suicide four years after her marriage to her former boyfriend, then married to another, explaining that they killed themselves to avoid prevarication.

6 - The cobbler Luís G. Repelled by the bride, Luis G. killed himself at the door of his intended, on the eve of her wedding.

7 - The atheist. Mr. M.J.B.D., an atheist and materialist, committed suicide because of the tedium of a life without hope.

8 - Feliciano. A rich man, learned, honoured, and still endowed with poetry, having committed his fortune and being unable to repair it, due to his advanced age, he decided to hang himself.

9 - Antonio Bell. Cashier of a Canadian banking house, committed suicide after a long obsessive process during which he used to lose sleep, he lamented, beat in the chest and saw scene of a crime committed by him in the previous life. (Heaven and Hell, 2nd part, chapter V.)

Contempt, disgust, despair, boredom, hopelessness, obsession - these are the present reasons in the cases, as diversified as their consequences, as the instructors told Kardec in answer to his question: - Which, in general, to state of the Spirit, the consequences of suicide?

Here is the answer given by the immortals:

"The consequences of suicide are very different. There are no specific penalties and in all cases they always correspond to the causes that produced it. There is, however, a consequence to which the suicide cannot escape; the disappointment. But luck is not the same for everyone; it depends on the circumstances. Some expiate the fault immediately, others in a new existence, which will be worse than the one whose course they have interrupted." (The Spirits' Book, question 957.)

Disappointment always and difficulties of all order - this is what awaits those who escape the fight, whatever are their motives.