152. Why haven't you engaged yourself in the active field of service to humanity, Swamiji, just as Gandhiji had done? Unlike him, you have secluded yourself on the banks of the Ganges without entering the political field at all.

God has endowed each man with certain talents and marked out the field of service for him. Wisdom lies in finding out those talents and utilizing them in selfless service to humanity, in accordance with His will. Gandhiji's was a political field of service. Mine is the field of renunciation, Sannyas and Nivritti. For us to exchange places would be like a cobbler and a tailor exchanging places!

But, do not allow the mind to form the impression that only that man who indulges in politics serves the Lord's children...

153. Why is suicide considered a sin?

Pleasure and pain in life are respectively the rewards of the good and the bad actions of an individual. If a man suffers, it is a reminder to him to ennoble his life and make his future happy through the performance of good deeds, self-discipline and right effort.

When a person, convicted to a term of imprisonment by the court of law for having committed an offence, escapes from the prison, the law demands that he should be rearrested and given added punishment, because he had not only committed an offence but tried to avoid the punishment therefor. So is the case with trying to escape from one's suffering by inflicting death on oneself, rather than attempting through self-effort to improve one's future or accepting philosophically what is beyond all help.

One has, besides, no right to take a life, even though it may be his own, since it is a crime not only in the eyes of God but also in the eyes of social law. The person who commits suicide will suffer more in a spirit-body for a period of time, and then take a lower form of birth, to work out his Karma. So, one will not be benefited in any way by committing suicide.

154. The Atman is different from the body and is not affected by the latter's doings. The body is reborn a number of times according to its Karma and goes through life and death as per the Supreme Will. If this is so, then who goes to hell or heaven?

The real experiencer of anything, in an individualistic way, is neither the Self nor the physical body. It is the mind that is the centre of individuality, that individualizes and imprisons a ray of the Atman in what is called the individual soul. And it is this mind, as embodied in the subtle body, that undergoes the pleasure of heaven or the pains of hell, or for that matter, any experience through a gross or a subtle body.

The mind appears to have consciousness on account of there being a ray of the Atman in it, in the form of a reflection, very much limited by its own constitution. Hence it will be clear that the individuality of a person is as much real or unreal as a reflection of a real object.

Though everything happens according to the Supreme Will, the Karma of the individual determines the form or shape of the experience that is to be had under the dispensation of this Will. It is not the Atman or the body that has any type of relative experience, though the body is a gross means of experience; it is the mind that has all this.