A relative of my friend killed himself. But not in the way you might think.
Having grown weary of life, he killed himself with magic. It wasn’t any specific rite which belongs to a tradition or anything. Hell, he most likely wouldn’t even call what he did magic. But, regardless, it was magic by definition. He willed himself to die, he decided to die. In a ritualistic manner, he pretended as he was already dead - he wrote a will, he went on with whatever he had of his life left as he was already dead. And voila, after some time, he died.
It wasn’t a short process by any means. It took him a few months to send himself to the grave. But here’s interesting part: before and after his death, the doctors had the same conclusion: his organs were fine, there was nothing physically or physiologically wrong with him. By their words,
“He decided to die.”
It blows my mind when I hear people say that mind is just an illusion or that mind is a mere product of the brain and other crap like that. This man wasn’t the first nor the last person to kill himself with his mind only. It was a painless death, too, because according to his family members (and himself when he was dead), he was quite happy during the death process. He wasn’t suffering.
Thus, his departure hasn’t impacted his family members as strongly as it might’ve if he had committed suicide via mundane suicide methods, which are painful.
@Baal Such a waste of potential I must say. It’s not really surprising though. A lot of Necromancers do just that, though the idea is that they are meant to come back as well.
@Baal True. Some don’t want to come back. They really would be powerful Spirits either way though. The idea is that in that threshold between life and death a certain transmogrification can occur so that at that point just before death the sorcerer transforms into something more. Their are eyewitness accounts of stuff like that happening in Tibet. Physical transformations in front of other people.
I will definitely look into those examples in Tibet you speak of.
But, I must ask you this because you’re more versed in necromancy than me:
Does a sorcerer necessarily have to do something right before his/her death to be this powerful spirit? Is walking this dark path, accumulating power and making other preparations in life not enough for him/her to continue his/her existence as a powerful spirit?
@Baal The way I understand it there are rites to be performed at the time of death so the soul can be transmuted. There are wildly varying versions of course. Though the essential concept is similar in both the more Western/Middle Eastern Necromantic traditions and the Eastern Tantric arts. From a purely scriptural standpoint the answer is not really, though some have been taught the rites after they died. You could be a very powerful Spirit through walking the dark path alone, but not what I am talking about. In practice? I personally wouldn’t risk it.
@Baal There are many, many examples of very powerful Spirits who simply walked the dark path until death. Perhaps even equal in power to the beings I speak of. I am not very sure if they are really the same thing though. They seem to be something else. Similar, but different. At the end of the day it’s really that it’s not worth the risk to die without knowing for sure that you will return as something more.
Indeed. Though I imagine that there are the lucky ones who already were spirits but incarnated for whatever reason, and then upon their death, they return to being a spirit.
I’ve heard about people actually doing that sometimes with no explanation for the death other than the person willing it and it’s quite amazing that we’re able to do that (but personally I wouldn’t do something like that unless I had a terminal illness). I wonder if those who “die of grief” go through a similar mental process, except they just want to get away from emotional trauma even if it means not feeling (and therefore not being alive).
You would have to be really desperate to be able to die without much of a show, though. I used to have a suicidal mentality but I’ve never tried to die because I was afraid of death (and if-I-fail consequences) at the time. I found that for me coming to terms with death is also to come to terms with life. The origin and purpose of life and death can be mysterious but I don’t think it has to be feared.
Fear of death is normal. I think it’s more common for suicidal people to fear the failure consequences than actual death itself.
Imo, I think death is but a process, a phase of the life-death cycle: the end of your current form/identity, and beginning of your new form. Except you might not be “you” anymore if that makes sense.
Its your essence without the memories or personality is how I take that. Kinda like when people get amnesia. Its them, but not the same person because they dont remember their experiences or anything about their lives/selves.
Indeed I had the idea “Perhaps it’s possible to want death, deciding to die only with the mind’s power”… About death itself, I always feared the “nothing” (at least, eternal and extreme suffering in hell would be worse) but that’s only one of the possibilities.
There are also two spiritual points of view: a drastic solution would be to become nothing during life, anyway what is gained through spiritual growth survives and, even if there wasn’t reincarnation, “something” will surface again as an individual ready to continue on the path.