[Der Selbstmord und dessen Folgen]
Translation from the German by Robert Hütwohl[1]
It may sound strange to speak of the consequences of suicide; for then some will think: “What consequences can suicide have for the suicide? After all, everything ends with death.” This argument may be reassuring to the ignorant materialist; but anyone who has delved deeper into the mysteries of higher natural science knows that the death of the body is by no means the end of everything; because the death of the same means nothing other than that the human being has left his earthly, material shell, which he inhabited in this material world, and that his life, consciousness, perception and sensitivity has withdrawn to his finer, but nevertheless material, etheric body, so that after leaving the physical body he is still exactly the same person he was before, although he no longer has a physical body visible to everyone.
Unfortunately, only relatively few people know this fact, and that is why many people die voluntarily because they believe they will find salvation from real or imagined evils or inconveniences. The number of suicides has also increased alarmingly in recent years. The main cause of this lies in the completely wrong and long outdated religious education, which causes people to always place their hope in external help and undermines all true self-consciousness. There, it is taught that one should not trust in one’s own strength but in God, and one imagines “God” to be a bogeyman or tyrant who is outside of his creation and rules it according to the whims which befall him. One believes to draw near to God by assailing him with all sorts of selfish entreaties, telling him what he wants, and giving precise instructions as to what you think he should or should not do, but the power of God cannot help us unless it is within and is active in ourselves. If it comes alive in us, we work in God’s power, which is then ours. A God whom we do not know and of whom we only know from hearsay does not know us either and will not do that what it is our own task to do. Jakob Böhme says: “Beg, scream and blare as much as you want; God cannot hear you as long as he has not become alive in you.” If we could and would do anything to get a god to do our will, or compel him to gratify our personal desires, that would be an act of black magic. Therefore churchhood founded on selfish pursuits is nothing short of commendable, and H. P. Blavatsky rightly says: “The first crime was committed when the first priest invented prayer for the fulfillment of selfish ends.” Hear what a self-conscious Protestant pastor did (August Pauli) who says in his “Battle for the Office” about the modern orthodox church:
“The Church God is something completely different than what God is for me.”
“For me, God is the source of that power which gives us inner superiority over everything finite, so that whatever happens to us in our external existence, we are not affected at all in the depths of our being; it is for me the driving force of my innermost self, with which I must be in tune, and to which I must always return with regret when I have strayed from it, because without it I cannot live; for me it is the will that drives all world events towards a goal, which wants to use me as an organ in order to overcome the hardships of existence through meaningful action and to help lead it towards harmony. For me, what happened externally as such has basically nothing to do with God; I see in it alone again his grace after his anger, it does not trigger any real religious feelings in me, I also do not expect from God that he arranges or changes it in my favour; for I have had the experience that he allows the powers for inner overcoming and creative reshaping to grow step by step in me, and that is where I recognize his grace. But for them (the sham Christians) God is the ruler, whom they imagine to be above the clouds, on whom they believe themselves to be dependent, who can send them happiness and misfortune, good and bad days, life and death, and with whom they are on good terms have to ask, so that he lets them go well and wards off all external evil from them; therefore they go to church, show him the due reverence, offer him the supposedly demanded sacrifices and services and expect in return the proofs of his mercy in life and in death.”
“For me, God is an experience, not an idea; an experience, not a mere opinion; For them it is something they accept and believe, a thought with which to look at and illuminate things. For me, God is the ruling center of life, the ground in which I am rooted and from which alone I can draw the strength to become master of my life and to shape it. They have a great many natural supports upon which their existence rests, from which they seek help in times of need; their own strength, their skills and their work, the people around them, the money, the doctor and then, when all of them are no longer enough, their God in heaven, who for them is just one factor among others to secure their existence.”
“The church has never had any understanding of the emergence of new life from divine forces, but has always and everywhere sought to replace it with human action and making in every respect and direction. This is the religion of the future and the true culture at the same time, that we no longer comfort ourselves with the idea of God for external and internal hardships, but that we understand God in his essence and goals, feel the tendency of the advancing world creation and put ourselves at their service as tools.”
In his inmost being man is God; his personality is only a passing phenomenon. True self-knowledge and God-knowledge are one and the same. If we realized this, we would look at life with different eyes and would know why we are in the world and what the ultimate goal of human evolution is.
But this truth, that God is the essence of everything, and therefore everything essential, is God, though taught in the Bible[2] and affirmed by all Christian and other mystics, is no more understood by the majority of modern theologians than it was understood by the scribes of yesteryear times; for man cannot truly know that he is God at heart and one with Deity until God-consciousness is awakened in his heart. Only through this awakening does the Son of Man become a Son of God; a man who imagines in his head that he is a god is a fool, and his divinity is a pipe dream. Because of this teaching of the omnipresence of God in the universe and the immanence of the divine being in human semblance of existence, Jesus of Nazareth was crucified because he said: “I and the Father are one.” Because of this teaching, Giordano Bruno and Servetus were burned, Hypatia murdered, and many martyrs tortured and burned. Even today the world cannot grasp this teaching because people have not yet come to true self-awareness.
Lack of true religion is a major cause of suicide. But when we speak of a lack of religion, we do not mean a lack of theology and church life, but true religion. Religion in the true sense is that which binds man to God, the Higher Self of all men, and this is not a pipe dream, nor the upholding of theological opinions, but the God-consciousness in the heart, the source of our own divine indwelling Power. The modern church with its liturgies and formalities has outlived itself and has become powerless; we need a religion which elevates us and awakens divine self-consciousness.
And as with the lack of true religious self-awareness, so too is the lack of true knowledge. Orthodox science has dissected and studied the physical body of man as much as possible, and, like a tailor, mended the coat man wears; but it still knows next to nothing about the actual person who is in the coat. But higher natural science, which deals with spiritual things, knows how to tell us about facts of which blind materialism has no idea and of which popular “monism,” which degrades the deity to an intelligenceless natural force, knows nothing.
This science reports that the inner spiritual man has, besides his gross material visible body, other physical bodies, though invisible to our eyes, and that when he leaves the physical body he lives on in an etheric body. This etheric body or “astral body” is the exact image of the physical body and cannot be anything else, since it is the model body on which the physical body was formed. There are also some people who have the ability to leave their physical body consciously and awake, and for such the existence of their astral body can no longer be in doubt. In this way, after the death of the body, man enters another suitable environment for him, in an astral world, which is just as real for him as the material world is for the physical body of man; because everything, and thus also our earth, has its astral image, not spatially separate from it, but filling and permeating it, and being both around and above it.
Let us now consider the process of dying as presented to the seers and knowers: A cloud forms over the body of the dying, visible to the clairvoyant, which gradually assumes human form and thickens; then the life which separates from the dead body enters the newborn form of the astral body, and finally the spirit enters the same. The further process is not the same for everyone; for in some the transition takes place fully consciously; for others, they wake up later. The deceased is still the same person with all their instincts, passions, views and opinions; he is in familiar surroundings and many people do not understand at first that he has, as they say, “died”, i.e., left his mortal body.
In the case of some suicides and people who have died a violent death, this separation from the body is often said to be very painful and is described as ripping every nerve out of the living body. This is also understandable, because we see in the external nature that a certain maturity is required for every separation. When the fruit is unripe, the peel is difficult to separate from the core; with a tire it falls off by itself. As long as the inner man is still attached to the mortal body with all his strength, he is bound to it and not ready to die; when he has reached the necessary maturity, he already lives partly in the spiritual world and leaving the earthly is welcome to him. A painful illness which precedes death may often be a great boon, as it is easier to let go of the body to which you are attached. In the case of violent forms of death, the complete separation of the human being from his corpse can perhaps only take place after a few days and can lead to conditions which it is better not to describe. That is why the prayer commonly used in some Catholic areas: “The Lord save us from the five fiery elements and a quick death,” has a deep scientific background, even if it is not always understood by superficially thinking people.
The conditions during dying and after death may be very different, depending on the circumstances surrounding them. One dies easily, another hard. A natural death at the right time, when life comes to an end, is a natural process and should not be painful, but a blissful sensation. Let’s take a typical case:
Man enters this world naked and his astral body is born naked from the physical body. He awakens to an existence in the etheric world, and his thought creates the clothes he is used to. He sees his corpse and can, if he pleases, attend its burial. He sees the familiar surroundings and those present. He may attempt to communicate with them or to make themselves known to them, but rarely succeeds unless their inner senses are opened. After a shorter or longer time, a change takes place in the aura surrounding him, concentric layers of ethereal substances are formed, as it were, with the coarser components of his nature gathering at the periphery. As a result, the outside world takes on more and more hazy forms for him and finally disappears from his sight. He is now only receptive to those impressions and vibrations that correspond to his outside; finer vibrations from higher worlds cannot reach him. During his earthly life he was free to rise to heaven or sink to hell; now he can only temporarily reach what corresponds to his outer shell, as long as this too has not been discarded. He now lives in the inner world he has created himself, and there, like meets like. In this way everyone gets to the place and environment to which they belong according to their nature. So if, for example, a devilish person were in the middle of heaven and surrounded by angels, he would not perceive any of this, since he has no receptivity to heavenly influences and only rough impressions can reach him. We also see in this life that people who are materially minded have no sense for the good and the beautiful. For them neither the majesty of God nor the beauties of nature exist, they are only receptive to what promises to bring them a profit for their stomach or wallet.
The conditions in which the suicidal person finds himself in the “beyond” depend entirely on the conditions he has created for himself. We can spare ourselves a description of the underworld and the hells located there, since such descriptions are found in numerous writings, e.g., are described in Dante’s “Purgatory and Hell,” in the German “Edda” etc. We find there that the murderer, the suicide, like every earthbound criminal, because his nature compels him to think about his past deeds, he is also compelled to repeat them. The impressions last received continue until the vibrations which produced them are exhausted, which may well be many years. The executed criminal is always tried and executed anew; the suicide shoots himself dead again and again. He leads a dream life and his dreams repeat themselves; but they are a terrible reality to him.[3]
A sojourn in the lowest region of the astral world is therefore by no means pleasant or desirable, and it must be borne in mind here that it lasts as long as it is the destiny (karma) of the deceased. This means that every human being is destined for a certain length of life when he enters life; if he squanders his vitality, or if he shortens his life in a violent manner, he will continue to be an earthbound soul after death until the time of his allotted lifespan has ended. If the same, for example, intended to live eighty years, but he dies at twenty, he can be bound to the sphere of the earth for another sixty years.
Everyone brings with him in the “hereafter” his own “purgatory” which he created in “this world.” We all constantly create and are surrounded by thought-forms, be they good or bad. We create them through our imagination and enliven them by our volition. Everyone is the creator of the spirit world around him, and he who has not learned to control these spirits during life is even less able to control them after death, rather he is then controlled by these living thought-forms. Thus may each form a picture of the “beyond” which awaits him by examining the spirits within himself that he has generated or absorbed.
The more intense the will that penetrates a thought-creation, the longer it will exist, and the length of stay in the underworld undoubtedly depends on this. Anyone who dies burdened with strong passions will still cling to them after death, and it will then also be much more difficult for him to free himself from them than before, since he was still in possession of his physical strength; for after leaving the body the spirit gradually withdraws and with it the will energy necessary for self-control. Then it can happen that the helpless soul is irresistibly led by the animal instincts that fill it. Lacking the physical body for the gratification of her desires, she seeks to obtain one in order to satisfy herself indirectly; i.e., she possesses and acts through any sensitive person to whom she is attracted. In this way vampyres, “incubi” and “succubi” and the possessed of all kinds come into being. The current of thought which the suicidal man has created by his act can act on weak-willed persons and lead them to commit suicide; the spirit of the vengeful arouses and seeks to gratify vengeance; the spirit generated by the covetous kindles covetousness, etc. There are more possessed than one is inclined to believe; everyone ends up being more or less obsessed with the thought of others; no one is alone in the world; we are all surrounded by invisible forces which act upon us according to our degree of susceptibility.
But when the human ego has sunk so low that it has lost all control over itself and has become the plaything of blind natural forces and passions; if in him all higher self-consciousness has vanished and the spirit has vanished, how could his end be other than the loss of higher existence and immortality, so that only a spiritless larva remains of his personality?
Since neither the church nor official science knows anything about all this, and the large crowd, who blindly let themselves be led by blind leaders, is not informed, we see how thousands of people commit suicide every year for the most trifling reasons. They try to avoid small evils and thereby incur much greater ones. If people were aware of the consequences of suicide, they would not commit it; for they would understand that suicide, committed with selfish ends and with deliberation, is not only a crime, but an irreparable stupidity.
What we need is not a religion that lulls us to sleep and comforts us as children are wont to comfort. What we need is a religion that is neither idle chatter and formulae, nor sentimentalism, nor mere intellectual speculation and human work, but strengthens and elevates the true self-consciousness of man; and we need a science whose knowledge of human nature is not based on traditional and accepted opinions, on theories and dogmatism; a science which is not content with contemplating the coat that man wears on this earth, but which knows the inner man, whose visible manifestation is his material appearance.
Salvation from evil and ignorance is within ourselves. We are all God at heart, and need not become so; but we don’t recognize it. If we were to become conscious of the divine powers dormant within us, we would be free from all fear. Whoever truly recognizes God in himself and in everything is above life and death and all suffering. Only the one who has this knowledge is the right Theosophist.
Notes:
[1] Suicide and its Consequence. [Der Selbstmord und dessen Folgen. Franz Hartmann, M.D. Neue Lotusblüten 5, no. 11-12 (November-December 1912), 360-377] {This article was reformatted from the original, but with the content unchanged other than fixing minor typos. Translation from the German by Robert Hutwohl, ©2025}
[2] John, I, 1–4.
[3] An English family with a maid stayed in a hotel in Florence. When the girl did not appear on time the next morning, they looked for her and found her still in bed, paralyzed with shock. She said that before she fell asleep it seemed to her that a dead Italian officer, revolver in hand, was lying on the floor of her room; that the corpse rose and shot himself in the head, whereupon it fell down again, and that this scene was repeated until the girl fainted. It turned out that such an officer had actually shot himself in that room a few days earlier.