WARNING A WOULD-BE SUICIDE

　　　CHAPTER XXI

　WARNING A WOULD-BE SUICIDE

　A LETTER submitted to Silver Birch was from a man in great difficulties who said he intended to commit suicide. He wanted to know what the guide of our circle had to say to him. This was Silver Birch's response to the troubled inquirer:

　"I cannot counsel any soul to behave in a way that will make things worse and not better. It is not for you, by an act of self-immolation, to put an end to your existence on earth. If you do, you must pay the price. That is the natural law. There cannot be any in your world against whom the scales are so unevenly weighted that they have not the power to overcome the obstacles that come in their pathway.

　"Indeed, I go so far as to say that the obstacles that they meet are necessary for the development and growth of their character and their spirit. They will not lessen the obstacles by putting an end to their physical existence. It is impossible; it is against the law. You cannot flee from divine justice in your world or mine, for justice is unalterable and its decision con-veyed to each according to the soul growth.”

　"This man,” said the member of the circle who submitted the question, "rather suggests that his present position is due to injustice.”

　"I know," replied the guide. “You who live in the world of matter sometimes are standing on your heads, and you are attempting to judge with a very imperfect knowledge. You have free will within marked boundaries and you exercise your free will, but none can escape the working of natural law. The mere exit of the spirit from the physical world into the next stage of life will not free the soul from the respon-sibilities which are its own by virtue of what has transpired. Surely that is quite clear. How little we all know in comparison with infinite knowledge, but surely all those of us who know just a little more than the little that you do must use that know-ledge to help you."

　"What," asked a sitter, "is the status of a suicide in the spirit world?"

　Silver Birch gave this answer: "You cannot answer that right away. It depends upon the earthly life that has been lived; it depends upon the qualities that have been developed; it de-pends upon the soul's progress; and, above all these things, it depends on the motive. The churches are wrong when they say that all suicide comes in the same category; it does not. While you have no right to terminate your earthly existence, there are undoubtedly many cases, ameliorating factors, miti-gating circumstances, to be considered.”

　"But would you add," was the next query, "that in no cir-cumstances at all is it helpful?”

　"No, never," said Silver Birch. "No soul is ever better off because it has terminated its earthly existence. But it does not automatically follow that every suicide is consigned for æons of time into the darkest of the dark spheres."

　At another sitting, a letter from the relative of someone who had committed suicide was read to the guide. It contained the following question: "Does the suicide suffer any great setback when he takes his own life?"

　"Of course," was the answer.

　"You once said," a member of the circle put in, "that nobody has more trouble than they can bear, and yet these people who commit suicide seem to me to have more than they can bear."

　"No," said Silver Birch. "First of all there are always ex-ceptions. There are those who are abnormal, or even obsessed. I am not dealing with them. They form a minority and not the majority. I think it is true to say that in the vast majority of cases suicide is the coward's way out. Instead of facing up to responsibility, he grasps what he thinks is an easy way out of all difficulty, a hasty exit from the world—and oblivion. But he still has to face up to himself. He still has to bear upon his spiritual shoulders the responsibility which he tried to shirk on earth and that cowardice creates an aura of darkness. It is a net which shuts him off from those he loves. It is the closing of a door. Sometimes it takes many, many, many long years to open.

　"As you know, in all such cases I always say the motive is the dominating interest. What was the motive? If the motive was to escape from awkward situations, then you have not escaped. If the motive, as it sometimes is in a few cases, that the person desired to put himself out of the way as the only solution, not through self-interest, but through altruism, however mis-guided, that makes a difference. But your soul is judged on its own conduct. You write with your own hand your own book of life. The entries are indelible; you cannot cheat. You judge yourselves. The law is fixed and unalterable.

　"We say, face up to your responsibility. No situation is as dark as you think it is. If you are determined, light will come. If you call up your courage from the inexhaustible source that you possess, strength will come to your aid. You will be admired more because you have sought to face up to responsibility, and help will be forthcoming. No one has a greater load to carry than he is able to bear, because the load is the load he has made for himself.

　"It is not the load that the Great Spirit says, 'I will put upon his back.' It is the load that is the result of what the individual has done, and that load is of the exact weight of his past trans-gressions. Just as he was capable of creating the load, he is capable of removing the load, for the same power, when used the right way, will do for him, the right way, what it has done for him when used the wrong way."

　"The law of cause and effect?"

　"Yes, that is all it is," said the guide.

　"Isn't it true," asked somebody, “that a man commits suicide because his physical and nervous systems have gone completely and, that being so, he has not the courage to live? In the next world, he has no physical or nervous system and therefore is all right again.”

　Silver Birch took up the point: “I speak carefully because I do not want to be regarded as sympathising with suicides or as giving the slightest hint of encouragement to one in-dividual who may be wavering to take that step, but just to answer what you say, that nervousness is often the result of a refusal to face up to responsibility. If, at some previous stage, the individual had said: 'I have done wrong, I will pay for it. I will take whatever punishment is my due like a man. I will not attempt to shrink from it. I will face my obligation,' then the trouble would have been nipped in the bud. But it does not happen that way. The individual thinks that there can be some temporising, and perhaps it is one more thing to add to the difficulty. Instead of facing up to it, gradually, the nerves begin to be shattered and the mind ceases to function in its true balance.

　"Ultimately it may be true that the individual is so nervously deranged that he hardly knows what he is doing. But, start with the beginning, when it could have been so comparatively easy to put it right. Your landーand this is quite a good simileーcould have chosen to throw in the sponge when all seemed hopeless and foolish to continue the struggle. Yet it did not, and events have shown that it was right to go on rather than to give in. Is not the comparison true in the case of in-dividuals?"

　And this is what Silver Birch replied when asked to give an opinion as to whether there was such a thing as "accidental death":

　"That is a very difficult question because it all depends on how you define the word 'accident'. If by accident you mean the interplay of blind forces, completely motiveless, the result of pure chance and whim, that I cannot accept, for I know the whole universe is ordered by natural laws of cause and effect which follow in unalterable sequence. But within the realm of natural laws, there are laws of free will. In reality, there is no such thing as pure chance, for chance itself is the result of some preceding event. Chance is the effect of some cause. Accident is due to some circumstance and the circumstance is controlled by law.

　"What you must visualise is a universe of laws within laws, each having control over some aspect of the universe, but none so rigid and watertight that it allows for no interplay of forces. It is like the old question, 'Are you creatures of free will or are you restricted by predestination?' You can argue both aspects of the case, for the truth is that both are correct, but it depends on the interpretation."

　"Do spirit guides approve of cremation?" was another question put to Silver Birch.

　"Yes, always,” he answered, "because essentially it has the effect of putting an end to the idea that the spirit is in the physical body. When the physical body has served its pur-pose, there is no point in making any attempt to surround it with all those appurtenances which will revive memories that, in turn, bring sadness and sorrow. Far too much attention is paid to the corpse that has mouldered and has returned to the elements of which it was composed. It has served its task and the spirit has gone marching on into the land of fuller freedom.

　"I am in favour of cremation because the purifying flame is the last rite for the body whose task is done and the spirit, having severed its connection, no longer is dependent upon it. It helps those who come to our world who do not have much knowledge and who are constantly attracted to cemeteries because the emotional output of those who love them causes attraction still to go on.

　"There are other questions of hygiene involved which are not necessary for me to touch on. The only warning that has to be uttered is that an interval of three days should lapse before the cremation takes place so that, in the case of unevolved souls, there should not be any shock to the spirit body when it has not completely detached itself.”

　Someone asked, “If a medium smokes, takes alcohol or is not perfectly truthful and upright in every way, does this have any effect on the mediumship?"

　"Yes, of course it does,” said the guide. “It always must be true with any, particularly mental, mediumship that the higher the quality of the instrument, the higher the quality of the communication. Anything which helps to coarsen the body and the mind has a reaction, a coarsening reaction upon the spirit. You must remember that body, mind and spirit are related to one another. In fact, they are interrelated, there is constant interplay of forces and emotions. The world of spirit and the world of matter are in reality two aspects of one life. Always they impinge on one another; they blend with one another and there is no line of rigid demarcation between them. When you understand that, you know that whatever affects the physical body also affects the spirit body, and that whatever affects the mind also affects the spirit; so that naturally anything that coarsens the temple of the spirit must have an effect on the quality of the communication which is trying to come through that instrument.

　"The ideal would be a perfect instrument, and then you would have the perfect communication. But having said that, it must be realised that we are dealing with earthly instruments who live in a world of matter, and as long as they do these things in moderation there is no serious harm. But always the ideal must be kept in front of them."

　Yet another question was, “Is there any truth in the assertion that illness is sent to a person to teach a lesson, or to build up character?''

　Silver Birch answered: “There is truth in the idea, but when you say 'sent,' the word is not quite in keeping with the cir-cumstances. You are living in a world of law, just as I am, and illness is the result of being in disharmony with the law. Illness is part of the price you pay for the lack of evolution. But there is a law, and a compensation, and all things that happen have both an advantage and a disadvantage.

　"Experiences which may be most advantageous from the physical standpoint may be most disadvantageous from the spiritual standpoint. It is part of the growth of the spirit. It is part of the lesson which has to be learned. There are many ways of learning lessons, and some of the best ones are learned in the hard school of pain, the school of bitterness, the school of diffi-culty. These are the means by which character is strengthened, or should be.

　"Often the greatest spiritual lessons have been learned in times of illness. All life is light and shade; it is not one long monotone. And so the spirit grows through cheerfulness and depression, through good health and illness, through sunshine and storm, through harmony and discord, for the Great Spirit is in all life, in all its ramifications. If you can cultivate the attitude of mind which says with every experience, ‘I will make this part of my equipment, I will learn from this, so that I can grow stronger in spirit,' then you will be wise, and your growth will be accelerated.”