Assisted Dying and the spiritual consequences of suicide.

There’s an old Scottish joke about the sinner who finds himself facing eternal damnation and protests: “Oh, Lord! Oh Lord! Ah didnae ken, Ah didnae ken.” (I didn’t know.) “Wull,” says an implacable  Almighty, after a short pause, “Ye ken noo.”

I’m reminded of this by the current debate about whether terminally ill people should be helped to kill themselves, without legal consequences for those taking part in what is euphemistically called ‘Assisted Dying’. For this debate appears to be happening in a knowledge-free vacuum about the karmic debts that will inevitably be incurred by those involved, not only by the dying person but also by the people who facilitate their death.

This is yet another example of the difficulties we humans cause ourselves by our ignorance and denial of who we really are; that is to say, beings who live in both physical and spiritual bodies at the same time and who over many lifetimes move between incarnation into the physical world and excarnation into the spiritual worlds. There are spiritual laws that govern our lives and they are just as real as the universal physical laws which we all acknowledge, such as the Law of Cause and Effect.

We should pay more attention to the many people who have real knowledge about these issues and who are doing their best to make the rest of us aware of what is involved. I’ve just been reading a book by one such person, Iris Paxino.  By following Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophical path of development, she has cultivated the spiritual capacities, latent in all of us, that allow her to perceive and interact with those who have died and with the worlds they inhabit after death. She offers a detailed picture of the afterlife and describes the various stages a soul goes through on its journey after death. Among much other information, she writes about the difficulties experienced by those who take their own life.

Behind each case of suicide lies a very individual fate, telling of pain and loss, loneliness and despair, fear and hopelessness. Suicide is an existential act of desperation and as such bears the signature of a tragic life decision. Those affected find their situation hopeless and unbearable and see no other way out than to put an end to their existence. And yet, as Iris Paxino has found in her experience of counselling souls who have taken their own lives, they are horrified to find that, far from bringing an end to their consciousness, suicide has ended neither their existence, nor their suffering. To their dismay, they find that all they have done is destroy their physical body but the problems they wanted to erase, along with the feelings that oppressed them, remain part of their existence. What is even worse is that, deprived of their physical instrument, they cannot now intervene in their earthly development to change and reshape it.

It’s a great pity that the reality of the consequences of suicide is not more widely known. Does Dame Esther Rantzen, for example, herself a sufferer from Stage 4 cancer, who is currently leading an effective campaign in the UK to make assisted dying legal, realise that it is not just a case of extending to human beings what we do out of the best motives for our pets when they are old and unwell? Why doesn’t she know that taking the decision to end our life is an evasion which not only delays our further learning and development but will also have profound karmic consequences for ourselves and those who facilitated the suicide?

Paxino says: “Spiritual work with suicides shows that the proportion of those who must walk a challenging path after death predominates. I have never experienced a suicide that was ‘easy’ in the afterlife. The person affected must always endure stressful and difficult states of mind (…) Our inner being always experiences pain with this kind of death. It is only the quality of the pain that differs.”

Another perspective on this matter is provided by a general practitioner in Holland, Dr Zoltan Schermann. (I am indebted to Annie Blampied-Radojcin, course leader for the Quietude course at Emerson College in the UK, for providing me with the text of Dr Schermann’s lecture, which was given at the Goetheanum as part of the doctors’ conference in November 2014.) In Holland, assisted dying is widely socially accepted and has been governed by a law passed in 2002, which regulates the practice. Since then, Belgium and Switzerland have also legalised assisted dying, which in each of these countries is now simply seen as part of a GP’s field of work.

As an anthroposophical GP with 20 years of his career in general medical practice, Dr Schermann has always, through giving intensive palliative care and support, enabled the patient to avoid assisted dying, thus giving each patient the chance to live out his or her destiny. But he says that, in one case of a woman patient, nothing he tried had worked; he had never experienced someone suffer so much from an illness. There was no effective way of relieving her suffering, not even a little. The woman requested that she be helped to die. 

Dr Schermann said that: “I then really wrestled with myself over her request. Why did I not want to resort to assisted dying in her case? Just because we anthroposophical doctors don’t do that? Or because I was afraid that she would not die at the right time? Or that I would interfere in her karma – but what could I actually know of that?  Was I not just pushing her request, with which I now clearly empathised, away from me and hiding behind a rationalisation? Was I afraid of doing what the patient was demanding of me? Was I basically only a coward?”

Eventually, pressed by necessity and still feeling unwilling, the doctor finally agreed, much to the relief of his patient. A date was set, the doctor and the patient and her husband had thoroughly prepared, the couple had said their farewells and had talked over everything that was necessary for them. In Holland, how the doctor has to proceed is precisely prescribed: two medications must be employed which are in other circumstances used for anaesthesia and surgery. The first one is a very high dose of a barbiturate, thiopental, which induces anaesthesia. A very high dose of rocuronium (curare), which is a muscle relaxant, is then injected intravenously, after which the patient dies.

Dr Schermann has spoken about his perception of the dying process and in particular, about the departure of the etheric body from the dying person. (If you are unfamiliar with the concept of the non-physical bodies of the human being, please look here and scroll down for the description of the fourfold human being. And Iris Paxino’s book – see details below – is particularly helpful in its description of what happens to us after death.) 

Dr Schermann says that during his work as a GP he has been able to experience the death of a person quite a few times, mostly after a fatal illness:

 “When I look at the etheric body, I can perceive that the etheric body is just as large or perhaps slightly larger than the physical body. The physical body and the etheric body are, as I see them, almost the same size. That is the case throughout life. I have always been able to observe that the etheric body changes in a particular way at the moment of death. In the moment the soul leaves the body, the etheric body changes. It expands to a certain extent so that it extends beyond the physical body, but the form of the physical body remains. At about the height of the navel the etheric body begins to draw itself together and to rise up and stream out like a thread. The etheric body departs as a thin thread and disappears somewhere in the heights. This process of the etheric body drawing together, streaming out and withdrawing from the physical body lasts about three days, until no more etheric substance is left and withdrawal ceases.”

Dr Schermann’s patient and her husband were both convinced that assisted dying was right and that it was the right time for the procedure to happen:

“I came at the appointed time and found her on her sickbed. Only her husband was with her. Once again, I asked if everything was as she wanted it. She said yes and asked me to carry out the procedure. So first I injected the barbiturate, and then the curare. I waited for the moment of death to see what would happen. Then something completely different occurred which I had not expected. Instead of the gentle withdrawal of the etheric body, as I described before, the etheric body swelled up. It swelled up powerfully and exploded in countless pieces. The room was full of shimmeringly bright and swirling shreds. The process lasted only a short time, less than a minute, then everything dissolved and disappeared. The light in the room became dim as it was before and her husband seemed not to have noticed anything.”

“And I sat there, the syringe still in my hand. I was very, very shocked. Much became immediately clear to me. Immediately clear where the lie is. It is not only about premature death, and also not about the complete process of the illness. It goes much, much deeper, much further.”

(…) “People believe they are being merciful when they help someone. To help someone who can no longer endure his suffering from an illness. And afterwards everyone is supposed to be satisfied. That woman’s husband is to this day. But actually something quite different has happened. One does something that, viewed externally, seems helpful and human. But what happens? This human being is catapulted into the cosmos without a post-mortem experience of remembering, without a post-mortem vision of his life panorama, and without spiritual light, because his etheric body explodes.”

We have here a prime example of how the ahrimanic element works in our society to undermine the true interests of human beings. After a campaign by well-meaning people who think that they are advocating for a more humane system, Society develops a procedure for assisted dying. There is a precisely laid-out procedure designed to provide relief from hopeless suffering and to safeguard those who are dying from exploitation by the unscrupulous. This is put into law; it is effective, reliable and elegant as well as intelligent, reasonable and hygienic. Who could possibly object?

Most of us, however, do not have a consciousness which is sufficiently developed to see what is really going on. What seems to be really going on is that people who undergo assisted dying are thrust out of the natural process of death and remembering their lives, and thus lose all orientation in the post-mortem world. The ahrimanic element works all the more effectively because the procedure prescribes exactly those means which must be used and which will cause the bursting apart of the etheric body. Dr Schermann is convinced that the medicaments specified in the procedure are directly connected to the explosion of the etheric body. He says that he has never seen anything of that kind happen with the conventional medicines that are used in the final stages of illness, such as morphine, strong sedatives, tranquillisers etc. (Although it should also be said that Iris Paxino has observed that a diminished or weakened state of consciousness at the time of death, for example as a result of the effects of pain-relieving medicines, can lead to the deceased person only dimly perceiving their crossing of the threshold.)

But there is more to be considered, such as the effect of assisted dying on the practitioner. Dr Schermann continues his account of what happened:

“Because I was so shocked, I was perhaps a bit loosened up and could perceive more. Suddenly I became aware of an angelic form. It stood to the left of the dead woman. A tall and serious figure, frightening and powerful. I could sense how its power and might extended beyond human power and could not be compared with it. (…) It was clear to me that he had been waiting for me to notice him. But he did not say anything, he just looked at me seriously. It became clear to me that I had interfered with his work.”

“He came to me, held out his hand and pointed at me. And he wrote in me. I felt that he was writing in my bones. He looked at me, imprinted something in my bones and then disappeared. At that moment I had not understood at all what he had written in my bones. But I felt somehow relieved that he had done that. I literally felt right down into my bones that I would one day get the chance to make this good again. The threads are already spun. He will bring us together again.”

Since this experience, Dr Schermann has told his story to various patients who are thinking of assisted dying: “Without exception, all were glad and their doubts disappeared. From then on they have borne their suffering, differently, more courageously I would say.”  But he is also convinced that the materialistic world view will never understand what is happening and that other countries will follow the example of Holland, Belgium and Switzerland by legalising assisted dying.

This is of course part of the dilemma faced by anthroposophists in this age of the consciousness soul, who live in societies in which many people not only do not have the concepts that would allow them to understand the issues at stake but who would also regard the wider spiritual viewpoint with disdain and would look on Dr Schermann’s experience as fanciful delusion.

So, given these constraints, is there anything that can be done? Do we need all to be in the same position as the Scottish sinner who didnae ken until it was too late? (The Almighty is not implacable, of course, and there are all sorts of non-harmful ways in which we can help those who are facing a painful and distressing end.)  Can we try to look at assisted dying, not as a legalised means to bring about premature death but as an opportunity to accompany someone so that he or she is in a position to lay aside the physical body with confidence, at the right time and if at all possible with clear consciousness? This is by no means just a medical or ethical question: it demands attention from all of us and participation in the debate.

* “Bridges Between Life and Death” by Iris Paxino. Published by Floris Books. 

ISBN 978-178250-645-4