EuthanasiaEnding the Pain? | Krishna.

com

Page 1 of 3

ABOUT

Home

About Krishna

Books

LANGUAGES

Audio

SIGN IN

Videos

Art

More

Store

Dear visitors: This week we ask you to help Krishna.com. We're sustained by donations, and only a tiny percentage of our
visitors give. If everyone reading this gave $2, our fundraiser would be over today. That's right, the price of a mango in

Alachua, Florida (and Krishna likes mangoes.) We're a tiny non-profit with costs of a big website: servers, staff and programs.
If Krishna.com is useful to you, please take a minute to keep it online and growing. Thank you. If you give $25 or more, we'll
email you a gift of the Bhagavad-gita audio book. Click here to donate.

About Krishna
Krishna the Person

Krishna Consciousness
Overview

Topic Index
Glossary

The Reading Room

Home About Krishna Krishna Consciousness Applications Social

Issues

EuthanasiaEnding the Pain?

Mukunda Goswami
In 1996 Australias Northern
Territory legalized voluntary

euthanasia. In January of 1997,

contending forces in the U.S.

pushed the issue of euthanasia

all the way to the U.S. Supreme

Court.

Advocates of doctor-assisted

suicide say its purpose is to end

the unremitting and excruciating

pain that often comes with

diseases like terminal cancer. But

does suicide really stop pain?

According to Vedic wisdom, the answer is no. Rather, suicide prolongs

pain and even increases it. From the Vedas we learn that the eternal soul,
or atma, lives on after death. For the soul, the Bhagavad-gita says, there
is neither birth nor death. At the time of death the soul reincarnates, or
transmigrates from one body to another.

According to the law of karma, the soul who has attained a human body
has been put there to reform his life and finally attain liberation, in a

spiritual body free from birth and death. The souls term in the human form
is a type of captivity. How long he stays captive and how much he enjoys
or suffers depend on his previous acts. To kill oneself or someone else
interrupts the souls prescribed term of embodiment. This goes against
natural law, or Gods law, and generates further reactions or penalties.

By karmic law, one who commits suicide becomes a ghost. A ghostly or

astral body consists of mind, intelligence, and false ego. The soul living
in such a subtle body keeps his personality, his desires for human

relationships, and his physical desires such as thirst, hunger, and the sex

drive. But because of the souls disembodied state, he cannot satisfy these
desires.

http://www.krishna.com/euthanasia%E2%80%94ending-pain

21-12-2015

EuthanasiaEnding the Pain? | Krishna.com

Page 2 of 3

Ghosts routinely wander for years, their natural desires raging unfulfilled.
In an effort to fulfill such desires, ghosts sometimes haunt or possess
another persons body.

So while suicide may apparently give relief from days, months, or years of
physical or mental suffering, a lifetime of unabated misery is destined to
follow.

Physicians who take part in euthanasia and doctor-aided suicide are

unnaturally ending the souls prescribed bodily lifetime. In the Netherlands,

such acts are formally illegal, yet the courts have been allowing many

exceptions to the law. Every year about one thousand documented cases
come to light in which doctors cause or hasten death even without the

patients request. Almost routinely, such violations go unpunished. Unlike

civil law, however, karma is infallible and inescapable. According to karma,

the lives of such doctors will be cut short in their next birth, often by acts of
violence.

Karmic considerations aside,

what may be even more

surprising is that euthanasia is

most often performed for reasons

other than to relieve physical
pain.

The most comprehensive study

of the Dutch experience with

euthanasia is the 1991 Remelink

Report, which showed that pain

was a factor motivating requests

for euthanasia in less than half of

all cases. More importantly, pain
was the sole motivating factor in
just 5% of euthanasia cases. A

study of physicians who care for

nursing-home patients in the

Netherlands found that pain was

the main rationale in only eleven
percent of euthanasia requests.
In the U.S., a Washington state

study of doctors who performed

euthanasia or assisted suicide
found that pain figured in only

thirty-five percent of the requests.

According to Dr. Ezekiel J.

Emanuel, a professor at Harvard

Medical School, euthanasia is a

way of avoiding the complex and

arduous efforts required of

doctors and other health-care

providers to ensure that dying

patients receive humane,
dignified care.

The main reasons for which people want euthanasiadepression,

isolation, psychological maladjustment, and lack of carereveal a

pervasive spiritual vacuum. In an increasingly secular society, God has

been consigned to a minor role. And godlessness has bred callousness.

As the world becomes more materialistic and divorced from spiritual
principles, so godly qualities like gratitude, tolerance, self-control,

peacefulness, family unity, and human kindness retreat further and further
into the background.

The science of Krishna consciousness, which gives knowledge of the soul

and karma, needs to be pervasively and systematically taught throughout

the world. Only such education can rejuvenate a desacralized society and
return us to our normal, natural position of love, with an understanding of
who we really are and where we are going.

Whatever the U.S. Supreme Court, the Australian Parliament, or other

government bodies decide, involuntary euthanasia and doctor-assisted

suicide are likely to proliferate. Without understanding the nature of the

self and its movements through time and space, more people will blindly

http://www.krishna.com/euthanasia%E2%80%94ending-pain

21-12-2015

EuthanasiaEnding the Pain? | Krishna.com

Page 3 of 3

try to reduce suffering by acting in ways that will only serve to prolong and
increase it.

5147 reads

Like

Share

Join our family of supporters. Make a donation.

Thank you to the following individuals for keeping Krishna.com alive and vibrant:
Sunilkumar Patel, Lelis Gonzalez, Milan Tatalovic, Brian Peterson. Keith Fralin, Harakumara dasa, Gary Mark, Radhakanta Das,
Jnana Bhakti Dasa, Yogeswaran Supramaniam, Artista, Vishal Gandotra, Dushala Devi Dasi, Indra Dasa, Ekadasi Vrata Dasi &

Family, Siddharth Mathur, Vijay Varanasi, Samit Misra, Jitari Das & Rangavati Dasi, Maureen Witter, Dipankar Dua, Amit N, Suranjit
Paul, Srinivas Prakash Harshal, Ruth K Hurley, Renuka Muthumanickam, Yamaraja Dasa, Igor Nusinovich, Vishal Gandotra,

Amitangshu Banerji, Balakrishna Voruganti, Vijay Patel, Abhijit Deb, Suresh Jangid, Jimmy Brandti,Kapil Chawla, Jackie Parcell,

Prasad Konduri, Deval Shah, Geetha Shenoy, Gary Sund, Robert Goettler, Jai Devaki Parks, Sumit Patel, Manohar Nagaraj, Ranga

Sarangan, Joseph Milosch, Aditi Devi Dasi, Daniel Swanson, Heather Harrington, Laurence Peirce, Pravin Upadhyay, Seth Novak,
Hans Frankhauser, Rajendra Datta, Nitin Sethi, MD, Suhani L & Sumeet Bharat, Mahipal Reddy Patlolla, Lorraine Ann Groom,

Bhaskar Gurram, Chuck Reid, Sanjay Gupta, Ma-Sarada Priya, Jaydeb Kundu, Susan Koscielski, Rameshchandra Patel, Prinul

Gunputh, Ketan Doshi, Venkat Ramanan Krishnan, Venkata Subramani, Ramila Kaswala, Sraddhanjali Devi Dasi & Kalachandji
Das, Venkat Tadikonda, Rafael Molina, Francisco Picazo, Sharon Standley, Marina Hansen-Russo, Vashkar Chowdhury, Saksi
Gopala Das, Balai Dasi, Jack Phillips, Anirudh Kansal, Sharon Standley, Rosa Wallace, Ian Lubsey, Chris Downes, Gayatri

Gambhir, Carole Secord, Tapash Ray, Trinesen Pillay, Kirk Oeldemann, Kirti Patel, Jagdip Patel, Sail Agarwal, Tejas Mistry, Jatin
Vasdani, Kartik Khandwala, Milan Tatalovic

HOME

ABOUT KRISHNA

AUDIO

VIDEOS

ART

COMMUNITIES

STORE

About Us

Krishna the Person

Audiobooks

Srila Prabhupada

Paintings

Connect

New items

Newsletters

Bhagavad-gita

Live

Documentaries

Wallpapers

Magazine

Media

Contact Us
Founder
BBT

Donate

Opportunities

Krishna Consciousness
Overview

Magazine

The Reading Room

Glossary

Lectures
Music

Radio

Stories
Kirtan

Mantra Meditation
Krishna People
How-To
Saints
TV

Webcams

Photos

ISKCON

Temples

Kids' Playground

Festivals & Events

Food

Prabhupada
Education

Books

Clothing & Jewelry

Kids

Home & Worship

Bargains

Store Help

Copyright 2002-2015 The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust International, Inc. All rights reserved. | Terms & Conditions | Privacy Policy

http://www.krishna.com/euthanasia%E2%80%94ending-pain

21-12-2015