Daily Theosophy

He waited about half a minute, and jumped.

(46)

(Shano’s 59 year hell)

He fell and fell.

Halfway he gave an enormous cry, which made some people look up from the street. He suddenly realized that he did not want to die. That it was not his own decision. He had been influenced by some evil force from outside himself. But it was too late now. Only seconds were left. He saw everything that had happened in his whole life pass in detail before his vision, the important, but also many seemingly unimportant things. He now understood why things had happened as they happened. And he regretted his suicide now. His body splashed on the stones, head first, and his skull burst open, his brains oozing out. All his ribs and bones were broken. People around the spot yelled and shouted. Police and ambulances came. Too late of course. Someone remarked: “He is stone-dead.”

That is exactly what Shano had expected. But that was not the case. He was not dead. His body was destroyed, but not he himself. He found himself in a state of half-consciousness. And what he felt was horror. No physical pain, because he had no more body which could feel such pain. Because he had died so suddenly, the normal, slow processes of dying had not taken place properly. This had as a result that all the coarsest and worst of his emotions he had had on Earth and especially during his fall, clung to his consciousness, and he could not get out of that also. It is a law of life, a law of Nature you can say, that whoever is born will live a particular period. In the case of Shano this would normally have been 76 years. Until that time, one cannot die. Therefore suicide is as evil a crime as murder. In both cases the one whose body is destroyed cannot die before his time. He remains in a limbo, as they call it – a state between physical life and real death. So this was the case with Shano also. He now lived in his stardust body, that means he had all his emotions, but was aware only of the worst of them. He also still felt all his attractions he had felt on Earth, but could not reach them. Impossible to go back to his friends, his mother, his room, his music and other things.

Then see what happened:

Shano wrote a letter to his mother. It only had a few lines: “Ma, I have always loved you and I still love you. You have done all you could. I always hoped to see you again. Maybe we meet in heaven.”

The next thing he did was to go to the highest building in the city. He took the lift to the highest floor. It stopped several times to let people in and out, and he greeted them friendly, as he had done his whole life. From the top floor was a staircase leading to the roof. The door to the roof was not locked. Quietly he walked to the edge of the roof. He waited about half a minute, and jumped.

He fell and fell.

Halfway he gave an enormous cry, which made some people look up from the street. He suddenly realized that he did not want to die. That it was not his own decision. He had been influenced by some evil force from outside himself. But it was too late now. Only seconds were left. He regretted his suicide now. His body splashed on the stones, head first, and his skull burst open, his brains oozing out. All his ribs and bones were broken. People around the spot yelled and shouted. Police and ambulances came. Too late of course. Someone remarked: “He is stone-dead.”

That is exactly what Shano had expected. But that was not the case. He was not dead. His body was destroyed, but not he himself. He found himself in a state of half-consciousness. And what he felt was horror. No physical pain, because he had no more body in which to live. All the coarsest and worst of his emotions he had had on Earth and especially during his fall, clung to his consciousness, and he could not get out of that also.

He was living in all his fear and disgust and regret. It was like hell.

Shano wrote a letter to his mother. It only had a few lines: “Ma, I have always loved you and I still love you. You have done all you could. I always hoped to see you again. Maybe we meet in heaven.”

The next thing he did was to go to the highest building in the city. He took the lift to the highest floor. It stopped several times to let people in and out, and he greeted them friendly, as he had done his whole life. From the top floor was a staircase leading to the roof. The door to the roof was not locked. Quietly he walked to the edge of the roof. He waited about half a minute, and jumped.

He fell and fell.

Halfway he gave an enormous cry, which made some people look up from the street. He suddenly realized that he did not want to die. That it was not his own decision. He had been influenced by some evil force from outside himself. But it was too late now. Only seconds were left. He regretted his suicide now. His body splashed on the stones, head first, and his skull burst open, his brains oozing out. All his ribs and bones were broken. People around the spot yelled and shouted. Police and ambulances came. Too late of course. Someone remarked: “He is stone-dead.”

That is exactly what Shano had expected. But that was not the case. He was not dead. His body was destroyed, but not he himself. He found himself in a state of half-consciousness. And what he felt was horror. No physical pain, because he had no more body in which to live. All the coarsest and worst of his emotions he had had on Earth and especially during his fall, clung to his consciousness, and he could not get out of that also.1

He was living in all his fear and disgust and regret. It was like hell.

The stardust world is the world of emotions, desires and passion. It can be beautiful if your emotions and desires on Earth were beautiful. This world has the property that strong emotions can repeat themselves – as you already know from your emotions on Earth. If you want something passionately, you can, with some effort, stop thinking of it. But when you are dead, it keeps repeating itself. Shano’s emotions while jumping and in the period before that had been very strong, so they kept repeating themselves. And every time he jumped again and cried and regretted and splashed on the ground. This went on for a long time.

(47)

(Shano’s Future)

As he was 17, and should have become 76, he had some 59 years to go before he could really die.