Heaven and hell (updated)

Does heaven and hell really exist? Or rather, does it exist in the form that religion portray it to be? Let's look at the various religious view of hell first (heaven is all hunky dory so that makes hell the more interesting of the two don't you think so. :-p)


Even within Christianity there are differing views of hell. From Judaism to New Testament... there is Hades, Gehenna, Gehinnom, Sheol etc etc. They describe hell as unquenchable fire. From wikipedia, Hell is generally defined as the eternal fate of unrepentant sinners after this life. Souls are said to pass into Hell by God's irrevocable judgment, either immediately after death (particular judgment) or in the general judgment.


Modern theologians generally describe hell as the logical consequence of the soul using its free will to reject union with God. It is considered compatible with God's justice and mercy because God will not interfere with the soul's free choice.


This is just some of the christian (or related) views. What more when you compare with other religions. The Moslems say there are 7 hells if I recall correctly. The 7th hell Hawiyah being the lowest and most damned Jahanam (Gehinnom in Hebrew). Moslems believe that different types of tortures await different types of sin in hell.


The above are just some of the views of hell by Monotheism religions. What about the rest?


In Buddhism, there are 5-6 realms of rebirth, which are further subdivided into degrees of agony or pleasure. Of these realms, the hell realms, or Naraka (neraka in malay) is the lowest realm of rebirth. However, Buddhism also teaches that like all realms of rebirth, rebirth in the Hell realms is not permanent, though suffering can persist for eons before being reborn again.


The Taoist (or rather chinese believes) have a very interesting take on hell. Hell or Diyu is a place ruled by yanluo Wang (king of Hades) and it has many chambers for judgement and punishment for different sins. There also numerous levels of hell like the Moslems. But the interesting part is this, when a person passes away, his/her relatives can, through a Taoist priest, help the deceased through judgement/purgatory by "bribing" hell's officials! Wow!


Anyway, all these differing views of hell have one thing in common: Hell is a place "reserved" for sinners. The definition of sinners may differ in that some religion considers non-believers as sinners too. That practically means everyone alive right now is going to hell when we die because if there are 10 religions in the world now, we're non-believers of at least 9 :-)


I have a different take on hell.


Has anyone watched "What Dreams May Come" acted by Robin Williams. It is about a pair of soul mates who marry, have 2 kids and then their kids died in an accident. That event sent the wife into a severe depression upon which she almost couldn't pull out of. And just as her husband was about to give up on her, she pulled out of it and they continued living a happy life. Until another accident took the husband's life. The husband (portrayed by Williams) is a happy go lucky man and thus he went to heaven where after a while there he even reunited with his kids. Back on earth however, the wife again fell into depression and she committed suicide. Thus began his journey to save his wife's soul. His wife soul resides in a dark room that resembles their home but it is all dirty and dusty (definitely not hellfire) and she is in a state of perpetual depression. Despite other souls telling him that he can't do anything to save her, his soul journeyed to "her world" (read as hell) in an attempt to save her. But the overwhelming energies there (of depression) eventually sucks him in. At the last moment, his wife snapped out of her state of mind and she pulled him out of there. And so they returned to "his world" (read as heaven) and reunite with their kids. Then the couple decided to choose to be reborn and to meet up again in the world of the living.


Very interesting movie and I must say, the most accurate portrayal of heaven and hell ever.


Hell is a state of being. It is said that when we pass on, time ceases to exist (time exist only in the physical plane anyway) and our whole life zooms in infront of us like fast forwarding a movie (purgatory) and since we're no longer constraint by our physical body and it's limitations, any emotion that we feel will cause similar emotions (energy) to come rushing at us instantly. Hence any feeling of remorse would draw even more feelings of remorse until it overwhelms us and sends us spiralling down to a hell of our own making. Now, you may think that it can't be that bad if there is no hellfire. Think again. It may actually be worse. And this is probably why religion tries to portray it as fire and punishment, otherwise our little minds would think nothing of it. The most scary thing to us at that point of time when religion coined hellfire was probably...well...hellfire. You see, like attracts like. If you feel that negativity, that negativity runs headlong into you causing you to feel even more negativity and thus attracting even more of the shit to you. Law of attraction folks. It is also said that you will relive those last moments for eternity until your soul snaps out of it (with the help of others, your soul mates or group of souls perhaps). So... Actually those suicide bombers who think they will become martyrs are plain dumb asses. Their souls are most probably reliving those last moments for eternity. If they cannot snap out of it, they end up as lost souls condemned to relive that state for eternity. Now that's scary.


Of course, if we recognise that we're the cause of all that emotions rushing to us, we can then choose not to feel such emotions and thus maintain a higher frequency. Then higher frequency feelings come to us. This then creates our little heavenly pad. At the end, our souls are pure energy full of compassion. So ya, we can toil away at our little pad but we'll most likely want to start exploring and learning and meeting "You Know Who". Not that you can just go up to HIM. Think of it like this. If you connect your house directly to the powerstation, what happens? Your house explodes. You need a transformer to transform the current down so that your house don't catch fire. And so with guidance from angels, other souls, advanced souls, our soul mates, higher beings etc we then decide what we would want to experience or make good or learn next. Hence we may choose to re-incarnate into the physical realm again.


That's my 2 cents on heaven and hell.

:-)