After learning about the cause of El Collie’s death, I felt the need to know more about the subject of suicide and its connection with the “dark night of the soul.” The processes of spiritual transformation are extraordinarily difficult; therefore, when the moment comes to descend into the depths of the human psyche, it is crucial to be well informed. This is also the purpose of the present article.
James Hillman on Suicide and the Soul
I was seeking an understanding of suicide that would not be banal, and I found it in James Hillman—a post-Jungian analyst, the founder of archetypal psychology, and the author of the well-known book The Soul’s Code. He devoted an entire book to this subject entitled Suicide and the Soul, published in 1964. I managed to find its core ideas in an essay by Sylvester Wojtkowski from 2012, written as a tribute to Hillman’s work.
Here is what Wojtkowski writes:
“In Suicide and the Soul (1964), Hillman explores the special relationship between soul and death in a provocative and profound way. As early as 1964, he had begun to express his unique critical style and radically fearless thinking. Even now, almost fifty years later, we continue to appreciate how deep and fundamental his analysis of suicide was. He sees death as a permanent inhabitant of the psyche, and Thanatos as a formative agent of the soul: ‘The experience of death destroys the old order and, since analysis is a prolonged “nervous breakdown” (and also a synthesis that goes along with it), it signifies dying’ (Suicide and the Soul, p. 68).
In the analysis of the suicidal patient, he recommends valuing the person’s soul more highly than life: ‘the loss of soul, not the loss of life, should be the analyst’s greatest fear’ (p. 83).
Positioned in the middle—simultaneously experiencing and observing—the analyst occupies a unique position with regard to suicide: ‘he is able to understand suicide better than the one who wishes to commit it’ (p. 53).
Hillman advocates the development of a conscious philosophy of death; he demonstrates that death and life are not psychological opposites and shows that ‘every act that keeps us away from death simultaneously keeps us away from life’ (p. 61).
He believes that suicide is something natural—‘a possibility of our nature, a choice open to every human psyche’ (p. 63).
The task of the analyst is to help the person understand such a choice—which may be far more essential for his individuality—rather than to protect him from it. He understands suicide as ‘an attempt to pass from one reality to another by violent means through death’ (p. 68).
Consequently, fantasies of suicide aim to separate the ego from its habitual way of seeing things and to direct it toward standing face to face with the soul. In order to be faithful to the soul, the analyst must follow the wish for death. The analyst must enter analytic despair: ‘to hope for nothing, to expect nothing, to demand nothing’ (p. 88).
By passing through this Dantean gate, in which he abandons all hope and accepts ‘the patient’s experience that nothing more can be done… he offers nothing beyond the experience as such’ (p. 89).
To maintain such an attitude is extremely difficult; nevertheless, the analyst must remain faithful to hopelessness and to the analytic despair in which he accompanies the patient in the experience of death: ‘at this moment the analyst plays the role of a true psychopomp (∗∗)… By protecting him here and now, the analyst nevertheless does the best he can to prevent actual death. By fully entering the other’s position, the other no longer feels isolated.’ (pp. 92–93)”
- “Dwelling Imaginally in Soulless Times,” An Appreciation of the Work of James Hillman, Sylvester Wojtkowski, PhD
Pamela Kribbe: The Desire for Death Is a Desire for Change
Hillman’s logic is perfectly clear—when it comes to the desire for suicide, the choice is not between life and death. It only appears that way from the perspective of the body. From the perspective of the soul, the question of how to continue one’s life looks entirely different, because the soul does not die. The death of the physical body is not an end for the soul. Moreover, after death as a result of suicide, the soul’s suffering may even become more intense. At this point, I would like to continue with a quotation from Pamela Kribbe’s book The Dark Night of the Soul.
“Even if earthly life ends by your own will, you are immediately confronted with new choices on the other side, so there you will once again have to experience your feelings. The darkness with its anxiety and pain that you felt during your life may come even more sharply into the foreground in a less veiled form. Sometimes the astral realm you enter after death greets you with the very emotions that oppressed you, and they begin to flow again.
For example, someone may feel despair and terror after the transition, realizing that life has not in fact ended. Or they may see the emotions of their family left behind on Earth—their grief and sorrow—and suffer deeply because of this. These sensations initiate a new movement in the newly arrived soul. This can lead to a breakthrough. The soul opens itself to the help of its guides, who are always available—both on Earth and in the Heavens.
Help is always available to you, if you are open to it.”
— Pamela Kribbe, The Dark Night of the Soul
Pamela Kribbe continues—the “opinions” of our earthly identity (the ego) and of our higher Self (the soul) differ with regard to what must die.
“From an earthly perspective, you want to die because your life has become unbearable. From the perspective of the soul, you are already dead, and this experience becomes so unbearable that you want to do something to bring it to an end. In reality, the desire for death is a desire for change, a desire to begin life anew.
People who want to commit suicide are in fact not striving for death, but for life. It is precisely this inner sense of necrosis that drives them to extreme despair. It is precisely their striving for life that compels them to end their physical life.”
— Pamela Kribbe, The Dark Night of the Soul
I am drawn to paradoxical explanations, because very often the truth is exactly the opposite of what we think. The truth about the longing for death is that it is a longing for life—though not in the way the ego imagines it. The essence of the desire for suicide is a striving for radical change, but not where we are accustomed to looking for it. That is why, when despair and unbearable pain arrive, it is good to see what we are actually choosing between—and what is the change that must take place.
The Attraction to Death – Symbolic and Literal
A brief definition of suicide is “an act of voluntarily taking one’s own life, arising from extreme forms of despair.” According to statistics, the most common reasons for taking one’s life are mental illness, problems in intimate relationships, a recently experienced crisis, physical health issues, problems at work, and financial difficulties. What actually drives people to suicide, however, is not the specific cause but the way it is experienced—despair. It is a matter of intense suffering, accompanied by thoughts that one can no longer endure, that there is no way out, no meaning, and that this agony will last forever.
This is how Eckhart Tolle felt before attaining enlightenment. After many years of suffering from suicidal depression, one day he reached the limit of despair and told himself that he could no longer endure, that he could no longer bear himself. And he asked the question: “If there is one who cannot bear himself, then there must be two, and if there are two, then one of them is false.” This question caused his mind to come to a standstill, after which there followed a falling into a “dark hole.” The next morning he awoke with the feeling that the light streaming through the window of his room was love—and that this love was everywhere. Later he understood that the mystical experience of the death of his false Self (the ego) is called enlightenment in spiritual traditions.
I greatly appreciate this story from Eckhart Tolle’s life. In such a clear and unequivocal way, it shows that the desire to harm our body comes from the false self. To listen to its voice means to thwart the birth of our true Self. For death and birth are a pair of opposites and, in this sense, a duality—that is, at their core they are identical. At the very moment something dies, something else is born—the death of the earthly self is the birth of our immortal Self. If we wish to understand the symbolic meaning of the desire for death, this is the most essential point: the attraction to death, the pull toward the underworld of Thanatos, is in its essence the soul’s desire for transformation and rebirth.
We already know from the relationship between mental health and spirituality that literal thinking is characteristic of low levels of mental health, whereas symbolic thinking is characteristic of high levels of mental health. If a person has not developed a sufficiently high level of mental health, they will perceive their attraction to death literally—as a desire to take their own life. I believe this is the reason we still need taboos around suicide—the collective consciousness interprets impulses toward spiritual transformation too literally.
By contrast, the symbolic—that is, psychological—level of understanding is very different. When the thought arises that we want to end our life, we know that what we truly want is for the pain to stop. Usually this unbearable pain is emotional rather than physical, and as such it comes from the astral body, where desires reside. That is why the end of the physical body does not put an end to emotional agony. We are compelled to take the narrow and steep path and to follow the call of the soul, because this is the path of crucifixion—but also the path of resurrection.
As a beginning, it is worth asking ourselves the question: what is the soul? And what does it mean to lose it?
The Solution Is a Radical Requalification of the Mind
I return once again to Hillman, according to whom the soul is “that unknowable component which gives meaning, transforms events into experiences, communicates itself in love, and has religious interests.” Therefore, when we speak of saving the soul, what must be saved are the meaning of life and love. The false self—the ego—locates the meaning of its life in earthly matters, but the meaning of life for the soul is entirely different. It pertains to love.
Unlike the love of the earthly self, which is captive to opposing emotions and therefore oscillates between attraction and rejection, the soul’s love exists beyond duality. In fact, this is the very reason it incarnates on Earth—to give birth to a love that unites the dark and the light within itself. A love that “is patient and kind… bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” And therefore such love “never ends” (the Apostle Paul).
The difference between the ego and the soul with regard to the meaning of life and love is so vast that a radical requalification of the mind is required for such a transformation to take place. I have already shared the essentials on this topic on my website—for example, see “Something More about Calcination,” as well as “Morgan Scott Peck on What Love Is.” Here I will add only one further practical suggestion that helps the conflict between these two parts of ourselves become more conscious and therefore easier to transcend. It is to “place” these two parts—our earthly self and our soul—on two opposing chairs, and then to begin a dialogue between them. To converse between self and self for as long as it takes until these two parts begin to change one another.
Among the questions that explore the symbolic level of the experience are: Do I have thoughts telling me that I can no longer endure? And thoughts convinced that this will last forever? But are the things they tell me true—do I mean, can I state with one hundred percent certainty that they are true? And what is the thing I am so fiercely resisting and unable to accept? What is it that so strongly prevents me from accepting my life without conditions?
There are more questions, but probably the last two are the most important for understanding the true cause of suicide—resistance to suffering, to limitation, and above all to helplessness. This resistance resides in the mind, which pours oil on the fire and fans the flames. At the moment we remove thoughts that argue with reality, unbearable suffering becomes bearable. Then we will be able to cross over the Abyss without falling into it, supported by knowledge of the meaning of what is happening to us, as well as by the knowledge that darkness is greatest just before dawn—despair is the culminating point of the processes of spiritual transformation, at which reversal / ego-surrender takes place.
Summary
Thus, the symbolic meaning of extreme forms of despair and helplessness is that the time has come for radical change and a new way of life. Life has become unbearable only because within us there is a part that resists its “dark” half. The irony is that this is precisely the part that must “die.” To listen to what this part tells us means to allow the small and the limited to impose its view of how the Whole and the Boundless should be.
What helps us in this process of radical transformation is knowing that these are experiences of the “dark night of the soul,” which inevitably include despair, pain, and loneliness. An “ancient darkness” has begun to well up from the deeper layers of our psyche in order to be accepted and integrated in this process of inner wholeness. To resist the experience means to narrow the “passage” through which our new Self is born.
The second thing that will help us is maintaining the attitude of enduring the tension of inner conflict, knowing that this is the way opposites within us are united. The result of this union is a strong ego-center that transcends the duality of matter and is the bearer of a consciousness that even the death of the body cannot destroy.
The third is humility. On the stage of our inner life a new player has appeared—the soul, the immortal part of us—and the rules of the game on Earth are now different. The true purpose of the most agonizing experience of all—the feeling of helplessness—is to humble ourselves before forces unimaginably greater than our small ego-will.
Things regarding this difficult topic—suicide—are at once complex and simple. The simple part is that the time has come to make different choices—between the false and the true Self. When the call of the underworld god, Thanatos, arises from the depths of our own psyche, even if we feel helpless, there is always something we can do.
It is this:
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when we lose happiness in our lives, not to lose their meaning, which arises from the connection with the soul and the care for it;
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to see the value of the experience as it is, even if that experience is intense suffering and helplessness;
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to be able to express it in contact with others and thus overcome isolation;
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to transform thoughts of death into an occasion to ask the question of what it is that does not die, and how to care for it while we are still in a material body.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
