We all get a little low at times and we then feel life is too much. Now that is quite human.

It is but Satan in us that suggests any kind of self-harm ; we should never yield to this wicked suggestion.

I live in India, my younger son studied in San Francisco. I have seen pictures of the Golden Gate bridge there. I think it is so beautiful, an engineering marvel. But,just think of how many try to use it wrongly, to kill themselves ! I thought bridges were meant to help people cross, and not drown themselves, but alas ...! I was watching the movie 'The Bridge' where I actually saw some in the act - it's so bad, such loveable souls perpetrating such a heinous act ! I read that in 2004 alone, as many as 24 people terminated their lives by jumping down the bridge, and many more thought of, or attempted, it.

Can we blame the bridge for it, no - not any more than we can blame the knife for killing, or the atomic energy for bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WW-II. Give the same knife to a surgeon and he will save a life, or you can similarly use well the same atomic energy in a nuclear power station - we just need the wisdom to meaningfully use the power of that scientific knowledge, that technology . Well, suicides occur everywhere ; in India, many poor, debt-ridden farmers killed themselves by consuming handy insecticides - it's sad and terrible.

The world is a school, life is all about learning, each experience is a lesson. Those who commit suicide are drop-outs. And what happens to students who take drops ? They repeat the class.

We can appreciate how people with suicidal tendencies feel, the agony and frustration that they undergo. They need our love and encouragement. But they also need to understand that by making a timid escape from life by killing themselves unnaturally and cruelly, they will only repeat that 'class', with the disadvantage of an extra karmic debt for killing. A murder is a murder, let us realize, whether one kills another or oneself. Suicide, in a way, is the murder of the worst kind, because love like charity must begin at home, with oneself.

It is rather so selfish to run away from life like that. Everyone has problems, it is how we look at and treat it, that decides whether it becomes a 'ladder'or a 'snake' in life's game. Those we leave behind, were not having a cake-walk anyway (if ever walking on a cake was actually easy ; wonder how this proverb came into being !) ; they had their challenges. If one had relationship problems with them, they must have had problems with that person too because it is usually mutual. By suddenly leaving them like that, one makes it even more difficult for them - more lonely and saddened.

Nor is there any fun for the person concerned. The whole thing is so sad but avoidable by just a change in the way we look at life and ourselves -one only needs to pause for moment and take another perspective ! We are not what we gain or lose here ; my Master taught me these are just dream experiences. We need to keep identified with the Observer or Dreamer, not the observed or dreamed.

What then is the game behind this creation, what is the mystery ? Is there God and if He is, what is He trying to get out of all this mess ? Can there be a meaning to it all ?

Why a perfect, loving God who sends loving, beautiful prophets like Krishna, Christ, Buddha and Mohammed to earth, permits such pain and suffering for so many, why doesn't He interfere, in stead of indifferently watching all this nonsense ?

We shall continue to think over this in the next part ....

Hans Dholakia
http://www.hansyoga.com