Question: If a person is suffering for a long time, ‘mercy killing’ of that person is practiced in America. Won’t that affect the spiritual life of the person being killed? How will it affect? Will the doctors also incur sin by this? Please clarify.
Answer by Romapada Swami:
For clarification sake, I am assuming that your use of the term ‘mercy killing’ is restricted to the category of medically assisted suicide.
None of us have the right to take the life of another living entity, not only by ethical standards but by spiritual standards too; the only exception is when it is specifically sanctioned by scriptures and that also by the authorized upholders of law only.
Suicide — and therefore likewise ‘mercy killing’, by logical extension — is not condoned by scriptures. By prematurely terminating a person’s life, it is to be understood that we are interfering with their karma. The intended purpose may be to put an end to the person’s suffering; but due to lack of understanding the soul and its eternal nature such an action in fact prolongs the person’s suffering.
By nature’s arrangement, the soul is awarded another gross material body after death. But when life is ended untimely before the end of one’s allotted duration, as in a suicide for instance, it is understood that the person suffers for the remaining period without having the opportunity for getting another suitable body. The soul remains in the subtle body in a ghostly form, which is an unbearable condition of suffering. In addition, they still have to undergo, in their future life, the due reactions of karma which is the cause of their present suffering. Thus ‘mercy-killing’ is not so merciful, after all, and all parties involved incur stringent reactions.
A greater act of compassion for the suffering person is to consider their ultimate well-being, both in this and future life, by providing spiritual care and facilitating their final days with some opportunity for devotional engagement such as hearing the Holy Names and glories of the Lord which alone can free one from the complicated meshes of pain and death.
