Almost every day, there are reports of people committing suicide all around the globe. Close to 800,000 people die by suicide every year. The primary cause of suicides is linked to stress and depression although other reasons reported include failure and loss, phobias, frustration, conflict with others, violence, loneliness, abuse, discrimination, a relationship break-up, financial problems, chronic pain and illness, etc.

Even many acclaimed and Successful people have taken their lives out of sheer frustration and depression. Earnest Hemingway, the Nobel Prize-winning author committed suicide in 1961. Arthur Koestler, the famous British writer and thinker, committed suicide along with his wife, Cynthia, in his London home in March 1983. At the time of his death, he was 77 years of age.

Why should a man who had everything that one could wish for in this world commit suicide? Mr Koestler had won renown as a scholar and writer, and had acquired sufficient wealth to leave £400,000 to a British University for research in parapsychology. The reason for his suicide was his overwhelming sense of horror and frustration at the evil being perpetrated in the world all around him—feelings which were reflected in the many books he wrote. In his famous Darkness at Noon (published in 32 languages), he excoriates the so-called ‘people’s system of the Soviet Union, which perpetuates all the cruelty and exploitation which it was supposed to eradicate.’

In a collection of his discourses published in 1974, he puts his finger on the crux of the matter: “There is a striking, symptomatic disparity between the growth curves of technological achievement on the one hand and of ethical behaviour on the other.” He subsequently expresses his disillusionment with modern civilization when he writes: “We can control the motions of the satellites orbiting distant planets, but we cannot control the situation in Northern Ireland.”

Leo Tolstoy (d. 1910), regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time, considered suicide the only option for him at the time when he was considered as a completely happy and successful man. He writes about his views quite graphically on this issue.

“My question, the question that had brought me to the edge of suicide when I was fifty years old, was the simplest question lying in the soul of every human being, from a silly child to the wisest of the elders, the question without which life is impossible; such was the way I felt about the matter. The question is this: What will come of what I do today and tomorrow? What will become of my entire life?”

"Expressed differently, the question may be: Why should I live? Why should I wish for anything or do anything? Or to put it still differently: Is there any meaning in my life that will not be destroyed by my inevitably approaching death?" (Confessions)

Life cannot but appear meaningless to a person who has no conception of the afterlife. The significance of the present world can be understood only in the context of our present life being followed by the Hereafter.

Failing to find a convincing answer to this question, he says:

“I grew sick of life; some irresistible force was leading me to somehow get rid of it. It was not that I wanted to kill myself. The force that was leading me away from life was more powerful, more absolute, more all-encompassing than any desire. With all my strength I struggled to get away from life. The thought of suicide came to me as naturally then as the thought of improving life had come to me before.”

(Ibid.)

Tolstoy was so driven to commit suicide that he had to take tremendous efforts to avoid committing this act.

“And there I was, a fortunate man, carrying a rope from my room, where I was alone every night as I undressed, so that I would not hang myself from the beam between the closets. And I quit going hunting with a gun, so that I would not be too easily tempted to rid myself of life. I myself did not know what I wanted. I was afraid of life; I struggled to get rid of it.” (Ibid.)

Fatal Disequilibrium

Animals do not kill themselves, but man does commit such act. After weighing up all sides of this question, Arthur Koestler came to the conclusion that in different parts of the human mind, an imbalance had occurred during the process of evolution. It was this imbalance which explained man’s killing of man on a stupendous scale.

The researches done by Koestler, however, did not bring him any peace. His final philosophy was that the best thing for man in modern circumstances was to commit suicide: “Death could be a welcome and natural relief for someone whose only alternative was pain and suffering.” (The Guardian, London, March 13, 1983)

Applying this theory to his own life, Arthur Koestler separated himself from a world which was not of his own making and which he did not have the power to change. He saw that man opened his eyes in a world of brightness only to enter the dark realms of death. He saw that despite extraordinary progress in technology, the moral progress of humankind was still to be attained. Man could control satellites, but man could not control man. Animals never killed their own species, but human beings were eternally plotting the death of their fellowmen. He could see that man planned to reform defective systems of living by making the optional use of human and physical resources, communism being one such attempt, but such ‘reforms’ had proved abortive, bringing more darkness than light to the human situation. Frustrated beyond measure by these glaring defects in human existences, Koestler committed suicide.

No amount of worldly success gives one fulfilment. Everyone wants more, but everyone achieves less. This is the reason for lack of fulfilment and consequent depression. Man, by nature, wants eternal life and total fulfilment. He wants to live in a perfect world and enjoy being in the ideal situation. But the planet Earth is a limited world, while what man desires can be achieved only in an unlimited world which lies in the world Hereafter.

Life cannot but appear meaningless to a person who has no conception of the afterlife. The significance of the present world can be understood only in the context of our present life being followed by the Hereafter. Unless this notion is ever-present in the human consciousness, a descent into negativism is inevitable. In the face of an inexplicably hostile world, such shocking incidents of the more sensitive souls being pushed irrevocably towards suicide will keep coming to the fore.