[1] For example, the Sutta says: ‘If a man is fond of sleep, fond of society, and does not exert himself, but is idle and ill-tempered, that is the cause of spiritual ruination.’ The Sutta concludes: '‘Having contemplated these ruined men in the world, the wise and noble man with perfect vision of things according to reality partakes of the world of the fortunate.'
For Buddhadasa spiritual death stems from attachment to good and evil, and means dukkha, i.e.
Spiritual death is dealt with in the Bhagavad Gita Chapter 16, which says that those of demoniac nature engage in harmful, horrible works meant to destroy the world.
Whether the soul is destroyed in unclear, but certainly the Hindus and Christians are united on the cause of spiritual death, namely evil conduct or sin.
"[1] And this is from Geoffrey Hodson: "When a person deliberately and without due thought of the consequences—especially broken vows—gives up the whole enterprise of endeavoring to quicken the rate of evolutionary development for the sake of all humankind, he becomes traitorous...
When a person does fall by continuing to direct attention to material goals; to assume old and undesirable habits of body; and to take pleasure in uncontrolled, sensual emotions and selfish, possessive, prideful thinking, then inevitably a curtain or veil is drawn across the hitherto gradually thinning barrier between his higher and the lower natures, thereby shutting off communication between the immortal, spiritual soul and the mortal, personal human being."
[11] Followers of Ascended Master movements such as the Theosophical Society, I AM Foundation, and Elizabeth Clare Prophet have a different definition of the second death, the final extinguishing of the identity of a soul deemed by God to be beyond redemption.
[citation needed] John B. Calhoun saw the social breakdown of a population of mice given ample resources as a second death.
He saw this as a metaphor for the potential fate of man in an overcrowded but resource rich environment and made reference to the second death of the Book of Revelation.
[13] In his famous anti-war address "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," delivered 4 April 1967 at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City, Martin Luther King Jr. observed that "[a] nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."