Week 7
Day 5

    Listen:

Resurrection

Suicide

And Saul said to his armor-bearer, Draw thy sword and thrust me through with it, lest these uncircumcised come and thrust me through and abuse me. But his armor-bearer was not willing, for he feared exceedingly; and Saul took his sword and fell upon it. 1 Samuel 31:4

No one is reformed in a state of mental disorder (animus), because disease of the mind takes away rationality, and consequently freedom of acting according to reason. For the mind (mens) is sick and unsound, and a sound mind is rational but not a sick one. Such disorders of the mind are melancholy, spurious and false remorse of conscience, hallucinations of various kinds, grief of mind (animus) arising from misfortunes, anxieties and mental anguish from a vitiated condition of the body. These are sometimes regarded as temptations, but they are not; for genuine temptations have as their objects spiritual things, and in them the mind is wise; but these states have as their objects natural things, and in them the mind is unsound. DP 141

No one is reformed in a state bodily disease, because the reason is then not in a free state, for the state of the mind depends upon the state of the body. When the body is sick the mind also is sick, because of its separation from the world—if for no other reason.... DP 142

It was told me [these spirits] were such as had formerly slaughtered whole armies, as is recorded in the Scripture histories [e.g., Judges 7, 2 Kings 19 at the end], having induced insanities upon them, for they rushed into the chambers of their brain, and then inspired such terror that one slew another. That they were able to strike such terror I was assured, but it is seldom done at the present day. It is extremely rare that the bonds are loosened to any of them at this day, and only takes place in the case of someone who is of such a quality that it were better that he should be permitted to perish as to his body than as to his soul, and in regard to whom, unless he perished bodily in this manner, by means of insanity and suicide, he could not well be prevented from perishing to eternity. SD 1783

Concerning one who had killed himself. A certain one in the life of the body had committed suicide by stabbing himself with a knife, having been driven to desperation through melancholia, to which he had been driven by diabolical spirits. He came to me complaining that he was being miserably treated by evil spirits, and said that he was among the furies who were continually provoking him. The place where he was, was in the lower earth, a little to the left. He also seemed to me to have a knife in his hand which he wanted to drive into his breast; he labored hard with that knife, wanting to cast it away from him but in vain. SD 1336

Of what quality they are with man who cherish hatred towards anyone. There was a certain female who inwardly cherished such a hatred towards her parents at home that she thought of taking them off by poison. And as she imagined that I was willing to marry her, and deceived herself with the phantasy of being married to the man [of her choice], she was at length [upon finding herself disappointed] seized with such a hatred that she thought of murdering me, had it been possible (Sara Hesselia). She having died not long after, and before the faculty of speaking with spirits was opened with me, it happened that I was impelled to put an end to my life with a knife, and this impulse so grew upon me, that I was forced to hide the knife in my desk, and thus to remove it out of my sight. I have now discovered that that woman was the spirit who prompted the impulse, she having become excited as often as I saw the knife, and, from the enmity which she had conceived against me, having held the object fixedly in my mind. From this it may appear that men may be unconsciously infested by the dead, who have cherished hatred towards them. SD 4530

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