Q: When is the best time to live for myself?
RAMI: This question is similar to asking «When is the best time to get cancer?» Or, imagine, your liver asks the body: I want to live for myself for a couple of years, when do you think is the best time?
This hedonistic idea is quite popular and is often recommended by western psychologists and media. You see, westerners do suffer from the Mother Theresa syndrome – they just can’t sleep at night, thinking about how else they can help others, what else can they sacrifice 😉
We can only be happy when we selflessly serve others, at the very least the people who are close to us and, on a higher level, all living beings and, consequently, God.
When we stop serving others, caring for them, when we lose an altruistic approach to life, we become more and more like a cancer cell.
Of course you should take care of yourself and have rest, but in the context of doing so to serve others better.
Q: How can I stop suicidal thoughts?
RAMI: One needs to philosophically understand that suicide does not exist in the bigger picture. If you simply rest your exhausted head on rail tracks or under a car, you will not achieve any more than destroying your physical body, but not your mind and even less so your immortal soul. The person just gets rid of their body (or disfigures it) and becomes a ghost.
Suicide is the ultimately selfish act; it is a spit in God’s face and the face of the whole universe. It signifies lack of desire to get out of the situation, which is self-inflicted in the first place — a result of our own thoughts and actions.
For example, let’s say you were meant to live for 70 years, but you are tired and you wonder around complaining: ‘What kind of a life is this?’ …Suicidal thoughts are very dangerous. Discouragement from life is already a form of suicide – it is a protest against God. A lack of will to live is disharmony. Either way, if instead of living the given 70 years, one throws themselves down a cliff at 30, then the rest of the intended life on earth (40 years) they spend as a ghost, disturbing those they loved,,. and afterwards they go to the lower realms of life and reincarnate into even worse conditions in order to learn and work through the lessons they could not learn in this life.
The desire for pleasure is going to remain and the mind cannot satisfy it without a body. Getting rid of your body will not resolve the mental issues; you can’t run away from your mind!
We can be unhappy with the people around us or the situation or even ourselves, especially at a younger age. There is no ego in this world, which is satisfied. If it does happen, it lasts for a very short time. Everything in this world is impermanent, relative. Ego and the mind cannot ever be pleased. The mind quickly gets used to a particular pleasure and then gets bored of it and needs new satisfactions. Ego also always wants to grow — ‘My whole village knows me!’ Then you want the whole city to know you and then the whole world and then onto the other worlds!
The mind and the ego are insatiable.
Pretense: why did God create a world like this, in which I suffer so much?
Suicides are committed by selfish people, who do not truly care about those close to them
What can you do if someone close to you committed suicide? We give an answer to that question in Self-Guide to a wholesome personality – 10 steps on the way to health, happiness and success.
Death does not kill anyone who doesn’t already have preferences and antipathies, misconceptions and thinking habits. Death does not kill anyone who doesn’t already suffer from mental frustration, doesn’t cling to desires and hopes, which give way for worry and fear. Death can’t do anything to those who aren’t spoilt by jealousy, whose body and soul aren’t already burning in the fire of anger and hatred, grinding on the mills of lust and desire – those who are calm and steady in their knowledge of absolute Brahman and whose minds aren’t jumping like chimps. (Yoga Vasishtkha)
