Hayagrīva: As an example of suicide, he gives the..., he says that at the procession of Jagannātha in 1840, eleven Hindus threw themselves under the wheels and were instantly killed. And he also mentions the satī rituals of the woman throwing herself into the sacrificial fire, the fire of her husband's funeral pyre.
Prabhupāda: This is not suicide. This is... Our life is continuation, but on account of impure understanding we are getting different types of body and you are suffering different varieties of miseries. So this suicidal, this is not suicidal, that voluntarily accepting death, so that by dying, if he thinks of the spiritual life, he gets it. Just like Kulaśekhara, he has got a poetry that... In the Bhagavad-gītā it is stated, yaṁ yaṁ vāpi smaran bhāvaṁ tyajanty ante: (BG 8.6) we get next life according to the desire at the point of death. So generally, when death takes place, one sometimes remains in coma, all the bodily functions becomes defunct, he dreams in different ways and so on, so on. So he cannot dream or think independently. Therefore sometimes the intelligent class, they think that "If I meet death in sound health, then I can think of my next life, go back to home, back to Godhead, and I achieve it. Because at the time of death my thinking will be taken into consideration. So if by thinking of Jagannātha if I die, then I go back to Jagannātha."
Hayagrīva: Yes.
Prabhupāda: That is not suicide. That is voluntarily accepting death so that immediately he can return back to the spiritual world.
Hayagrīva: And that works?
Prabhupāda: What?
Hayagrīva: That's an actual...?
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Hayagrīva: Caitanya Mahāprabhu—of course, that's different—threw Himself in the ocean, but that wasn't, that was probably...
Prabhupāda: No, no, that is an ecstasy.
Hayagrīva: That was different.
Prabhupāda: Different.