Hell Examined

The concept of hell as understood today—a place of eternal punishment, hell fires, devils and so on, a place we enter after the final judgment at the end of time or, in the popular mind, right after death—does not have the same meaning that it had in its own time when the word Sheol was used in Hebrew. It meant the grave, the pit, or the abyss. And indeed, the etymology of the word points back to saal, meaning to burrow or to dig. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia (here), it is the place where “the dead meet (Ezek. xxxii.; Isa. xiv.; Job xxx. 23) without distinction of rank or condition—the rich and the poor, the pious and the wicked, the old and the young, the master and the slave—if the description in Job iii. refers, as most likely it does, to Sheol. The dead continue after a fashion their earthly life.” Understood in this way, Sheol is therefore pretty much the same sort of place as the Greek Hades, the under-world. Not surprisingly, when the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, the word Hades was used to translate Sheol. Both are realms of shades, not specifically of punishment. And, come to think of it, our own word, hell, is derived from hole, hollow, and the Anglo-Saxon helan, meaning to hide. In Latin it is infernus, thus the “below.”

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia (here), the meaning associated with this word changed with the rise of Christianity. After Christ’s ascension to heaven, the just go to heaven and hell then becomes the place of the damned. Thus references to Sheol in the Old Testament refer to a realm of shades where everybody goes; in the New Testament a new word is often used, Gehenna, derived from a term meaning Valley of Hinnom, an actual geographical location where in Israel Moloch had once been worshipped.

The upshot of all this is that our concept of hell is relatively new and closely associated with Christianity and the doctrine of redemption.

Now, of course, Old and New Testaments are both considered the Word of God, literally by some branches of Christianity. Therefore concepts like a vengeful God—e.g. “The Lord is a jealous God and avenging, the Lord is avenging and wrathful; the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and keeps wrath for his enemies.” Nahum 1:2—are combined with the New Testament concept of hell. And from this combination of concepts arises the popular controversy over hell in our times. On one side are those who cannot believe that God could be vengeful, never mind what Nahum of Elkosh said. Therefore the concept of a realm where the wicked go to be eternally tortured is thought to be unworthy of God.

The other side, in effect, argues that actions have consequences, that a law governs reality, and that you can’t simply “get away with it.” But. And there is a but here. But given their beliefs, particularly in the authority of the Bible and its literal truth, they give this idea—actions have consequences—the most lurid form possible, thereby weakening that idea’s unassailable logic.

But the much more scary thought, for someone of my age—when the Heavenly Gates become visible ahead—is the Hindu concept of hell. It simply is that we must come back, if we are bad, back into this dimension, starting as babies again—and if we’ve been very wicked in this life, our re-entry will be at a much less favorable level than we’ve enjoyed in our current life. In the Hindu conceptualization hell is right here; and now. And if you wish for proofs of that, study history and read the papers. And if you are well off, comfortable, indeed complacent, just ponder a rephrasing of one of Jesus' famous sayings: “Satan’s house has many mansions.”

Three Ways of Seeing

If I take the very big view of humanity’s systems of belief, they divide into three categories—and roughly along geographical lines. In the west prophetic religions and materialism form two of the camps. That fact at once suggests that the debate about God’s existence is essentially a western preoccupation; the reasons for that will become clearer as I go on. Asian cultures see reality as a—well, let me call it a dispensation. Using that word I mean “a broad acceptance that reality arises from a transcending source”—but in a different way than we picture that process in the prophetic religions. In China it is Heaven or the Way (Tao); in India it is Brahman, the Ultimate; the cosmic law experienced by humanity is karma.

The chief difference between these systems is how close or distant their adherents imagine themselves to be from the Ultimate Power—and whether or not this power has anything like a coherent self and consciousness. Some scholars in the west are so influenced by their experience of or familiarity with prophetic religions (in which God is most definitely a person) that they hesitate to call Asian faiths religions at all or add words like “philosophical” to modify the world “religion”; some simply call Buddhism, Taoism, Jainism, and Hinduism “philosophies.” Western religions, by contrast, are “revealed” religions; that very word signals the personal qualities of God as understood in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

In materialism, ancient and modern, no conscious presence exists behind the cosmic whole. The cosmos is assumed to have a lawful behavior, conceived either as innate in matter and/or arising from random motion. In Lucretius, for instance, atoms, the only real existents, move uniformly; but from time to time, arbitrarily and unpredictably, their movement changes by means of a “swirl.” This motion is the source of all change and also of freedom as experienced by humanity. Consciousness here comes from very subtle atoms—and they also “swirl.” The most severe version of modern materialism in effect recognizes only the law of statistics. What we ordinarily call the laws of nature are, in this view, only movements that recur with a very high probability. In this, the materialistic view, the Ultimate is simply atoms or particles or waves—alone or in some kind of combination. Consciousness, personality, selves (and so forth) are invariably but temporarily emergent properties that disappear again as soon as the arrangement that gave rise to them change.

Now to the Asian traditions. In these the functioning of divinity (or simply of the transcending) is also experienced as law, but consciousness within or behind the cosmos (or both) is accepted but not emphasized. And this for a reason: the cosmos is a dispensation, not a perceivably intentional project the object of which is humanity. Heaven’s actions manifest through the world; they are observable in the world’s very arrangements. Human violation of the dispensation is corrected by the very workings of karma, by the Tao, or by the mandate of Heaven—and we discover these outcomes by experiencing them—whether here or in the realms beyond. We know the law by observation, not by revelation—and it works infallibly whether we observe it or not. In outer forms these religions are similar to the Western prophetic religions—not so in their inwardness. Hinduism, for example, has its own trinity, arising from Brahman, the unknowable ultimate. The three are Brahma (notice the difference in spelling) the creator, Vishnu the maintainer, and Shiva the destroyer. In China Heaven is conceived as the ultimate agent, but subsidiary powers are admitted as well. The difference lies in the fact that the observable cosmos as a whole is the message or contains it. There is no specific communication, beyond or within the cosmos itself and specifically directed at humans. Indeed in this form of religion human beings, narrowly considered, are viewed as a spark of divinity. That conception explains human powers and also translates into human responsibility to discern the law and to apply it to specific circumstances—or suffer consequences.

The third way of seeing reality takes the form of revealed or prophetic religions. All three arose from Judaism. The unique character of this view lies in the manner in which the Ultimate communicates with humanity. The form of that communication is between God and selected individuals—who, in turn, then communicate with everybody else. Thus we have a succession of prophets. Alongside the ordinary laws of nature and the inner intuitions every person has, these religions project a special communication to humanity by an indirect method (God to prophet, prophet to public) as I’ve indicated. In Christianity, finally, one person of God—who is in that faith pictured as having three persons—actually becomes a human. Thus in revealed religion we also have a dispensation, which can be read by people, and a special law directed at humans through humans.

This brief encapsulation should make it obvious why it is that faith is such an important concept in the revealed religions—and why it is that atheism is not really an issue in the Asian cultures. Both materialism and dispensationalism (if I might so characterize the Asian systems of belief) leave decisions to the individual and rely for their authority entirely on human diligence in observation—and individual interpretation of the same. You don’t believe that Heaven has its way and cannot be opposed? That’s up to you. The prophetic religions, by contrast, demand assent to the idea that God would communicate specifically and in various contexts with individual humans and, by that method, provide yet another and higher law than is discernible by direct and personal experience.

Realm of Shades

Many years ago already, long before the Internet dawned, I’d reached a kind of tentative conclusion. It was that the soul-realm nearest to ours is a subtle world, to be sure, but primitive or of a lower order. I based this solely on trying to understand why it is that the majority of mediums and psychics report nothing of interest from “over there.” When such psychics occasionally write book-length expositions, these books are thick with mounds of pious clichés. Mind you, I had also reached the conclusion that mediums do communicate with the beyond; some may be, but the majority are not frauds. But if I accept that they do—communicate—and with another realm—a good explanation for that might be that these psychics are mostly interacting with a lower realm—not with the peaks of the soul-order. Back in those days I also became acquainted with near-death experience (NDE) reports. The vast majority of those concern a distinctly superior realm; not all of them, mind you; but so-called “negative NDEs” tend to be kept out of books because reports like that would certainly dampen the sales of this new genre of spiritual literature. But I’m interested in reality, not in obtaining feelings of consolation. The very presence of negative NDEs also supports my view that lower realms exist—and probably closer to ours than the heavenly.

In the new age of the Internet, evidence for this conclusion has become much more readily available. Not only have populations become literate, but the web provides people an opportunity to share experience that (say in the eighteenth century) would never have reached print. Hundreds if not thousands of people with psychic gifts at various levels have web pages now; these are often linked to many others so that one has access to a huge deposit of raw data. The sites are extremely mixed in character, of course, but with the right background and a well-developed feel for such material, one can discover multiple sites where their authors are actually reporting experiences—and often skillfully enough to be enlightening.

Content of this kind tends to repel those culturally advanced—the very people who ought to take an interest. Few of the authors are educated in the round or deeply or have absorbed the western philosophical, literary, or scientific culture well enough to stand firm. By and large they’re off the reservation where the academically-trained are comfortable. Not that that surprises me. What proportion of the population is?—thus qualified, I mean. Moreover, many of these people have been coping with unusual abilities that society these days routinely and automatically classifies, minimally, as mental disorder. Therefore, on these sites, the authors keep saying, over and over again, that they are sane, well-adapted to ordinary life, employed, not crazy, not delusional, believe me, take my word for it, and other emphatic phrases no doubt occasioned by the social consensus which holds out a stiff arm in attempts to marginalize these people.

At the same time, and by way of contrast, to someone deeply steeped in the lore of the borderzone going as far back as we are able, in every culture around the globe, what these people have to say has a familiar ring. The very fact many of these people themselves are almost never familiar with ancient human traditions that say the same thing (although the labeling may be different) tells me that I’m reading about actual experience if couched in modern structures of reference. To point at one particular phenomenon, we might take the fact that humanity has always reported on demons and evil spirits, but in the modern setting these entities are rendered as alien abductors who perform unpleasant physical examinations aboard space ships. Ancient people—who’d never heard of aliens or space ships (space in our sense was not a concept for them)—used other language to report “encounters,” often negative, while they were in certain states.

I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that the realms tradition labels as hell and heaven both have their basis in the actual experience of living people who, for some reason, are more open to the invisible dimension than the majority. NDEs and similar psychic experiences have painted the higher levels while ordinarily occurring psychic abilities have produced what humanity has called the underworld, Hades, hell, or the realm of shades. Are the shades that remain behind, as it were, the pool from which souls incarnate again? Is this a very populous realm? Does it take special energy—call it grace—for a soul to reach more paradisaical vistas? Is that famous tunnel we encounter in near-death reports a transit through a lower zone of shades? I wonder. But I’m not surprised that notions of a heavenly and of a darker world are universally found in human societies. There seems to be empirical evidence for them, even if not reported by a majority.

Innovative Products...in the Borderzone

Early astronomers developed not-quite-accurate cosmologies because they imagined that the cosmos would display perfection. That out there was God’s domain, after all. Planets therefore had perfectly circular orbits, no doubt about it, because the circle is the perfect form. Close, but no cigar. Creation has a peculiar characteristic; in my own private lingo I say that it is “naturalistic,” meaning that it escapes pure geometry while, at the same time, employing geometry—but as a servant. We find law and order out there, but we cannot quite exploit it. We always overlook some aspect of the situation that later comes to bite us. Humility, therefore, turns out to be a practical virtue. Be humble—or else.

One of our geometrical conceptions is that human life is a test. Be virtuous, die in a state of grace, and you go to heaven. Die in a state of mortal sin, and you go to hell. In the intermediate state—and we have experts who can precisely define which sins are venial and which are not—you undergo purgation and then are admitted to the state of bliss. You can also forearm yourself (or so it was once taught) by piling up indulgences. We might think of indulgences as liquid assets that could be turned into the currency of Purgatory to purchase shorter sentences. To be sure I am now describing a period of corruption in Christendom when innovative products, but of a spiritual kind, were introduced into the market and turned into ordinary cash.

We had a kind of financial revamping that swept all this away. It was called the Reformation. But our talent for simplification was not exactly rooted out. A new product came on the market under which faith without works was now the ticket to heaven. Yet other marvelous inventions surfaced. Among these was the belief that you were either saved or doomed even before your mother gave you birth. The art of salvation then became discerning from various tell-tale signs whether or not you belonged to the chosen or not. A fairly reliable indicator was thought to be whether or not you were well off.

But innovation did not end there. The most recent product is a kind of hedge-fund guaranteed to keep you hale provided only that you have the means to keep healthy until the last moment and, in the final days, well supplied with pain-killing drugs. This new product is called “You Only Go Round Once”; it’s also offered by the folk who bring us “Grab All the Gusto That You Can.” Both offer iron-clad guarantees that no claims will be made against your accounts after death because you will have disappeared.

Ah, yes. We’re a creative kind. But I shy from all of these products because observation tells me that reality is naturalistic, meaning that it's hard and lawful, to be sure, but with a strange twist that makes it ultimately unpredictable. It requires a much more comprehensive approach than these simple algorithms promise to deliver. You can’t purchase a winning ticket just by joining this or that group and acquiring all of its good habits. There is more to it than that. Knowledge alone is insufficient. We are not, repeat not, in control. To trust the Merrill Lynches of spirituality—trusting in their size, name, might—is not a sure guarantee of fat portfolios in heaven. Sometimes, indeed always, it is best to mind our own knitting. And a certain amount of holy dread is perfectly appropriate.

The Low and the High

Perhaps the most important concept in sorting out the problems and opportunities of life is that of hierarchy—but the word is repugnant to many. It suggests authority or dominance. Images of ranks appear, prelates in robes and pointed hats, generals bristling with stars and decorations. And the word itself is ambiguous. It comes from two Greek roots of which one is “sacred” (hieros), the other is “ruler” (archon)—so the meaning of holiness is present in it but deformed by the concept of compulsion—because a ruler never stops at leading by example but will have masses of cops and soldiers to carry out his will, whether we like it or not. Thus hierarchy is all tangled up with one level of experience for most—the social. Once it was more closely associated with social mind control, thus with religious ideology. In a secular era the word itself has been secularized to mean any kind of authority. A non-starter for people.

In my personal lexicon the word has lost these connotations long ago. I tend to use the word simply to mean “a structure of values”—and more precisely the notion that all experience manifests itself in layers, from coarse to fine, from gross to subtle, for simple to the complex. And this layered arrangement behaves, in actuality, in a fashion which is precisely the opposite of a human, social, power structure.

What I mean by this is that the highest of values are the least compelling and the lowest the most authoritarian. We disobey our body’s demands at our peril—and often obey involuntarily—whereas we follow our highest callings only ever voluntarily. Similarly, in ordinary experience, the lowest has the most noticeable positive and negative feedback; the highest demands a high level of cultivation even to perceive—and ignoring it carries no sanctions whatsoever—beyond leaving us at a lower level where we’re evidently quite content to be—just keep the beer coming.

I myself think that this arrangement works with the same lawful force as gravity’s. One of its consequences is that no one goes to heaven unless he or she chooses; no one is sent to hell; he or she prefers it. At the same time—and here a subtle distinction also appears—souls may want to go to heaven, but when they arrive, they don’t like it there.

Compulsion rules the world, but freedom rules the spirit. Religion represents a transitional ground. When compulsion is present in it to any degree, it is still merely a social phenomenon no matter what concepts it deploys in its persuasion. When it begins attracting the individual soul by its subtle force and more or less veiled message, it becomes a personal quest and the mechanics of the religion itself will become less and less relevant and, indeed, unimportant. Separating the social compulsion in religion from its inner life is the most difficult task of all—the more so because those who succeed in doing so will be, without fail, expelled from the reservation. But if they are genuinely qualified, they won’t mind this in the least. Threats and seductions will repel the adequate—but may shape and purify those as yet stuck in the world of compulsion. And therein lies the positive work of religion.

The secret also hides itself effectively. What I say here will resonate with some, will cause others to feel opposition—as if I were attacking something holy. The holy is beyond attack. It also can’t be bought and sold.

The principles I have just sketched also work with the same precision in every corner, including the most hidden, of ordinary life as well. There too the coarse will only beget the coarse, force will only ever generate a counterforce, and only dedication will produce rewards that those on a lower level won’t even envy—because they can’t perceive them.

How Far is the Next Choir?

As a general rule we can’t see into the borderzone. Sometimes individuals penetrate that region, but this almost always happens spontaneously: they aren’t trying. Some few travel deeply into the interior, others remain in the border region but on that side. We gain some knowledge from the experiences of such people. As a general rule, ordinary people credit such stories up to a point—especially if they hear them from trusted friends and family. The sophisticated classes in secular cultures laugh them off, dismiss them, and label those who report such things as mad or delusional. In religious times the sophisticated classes reserve the right to examine such people and either to approve of what they say or to lock them away.

The best known figure to claim such knowledge, himself of the sophisticated classes, was Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), the man who conversed with angels and claimed to have visited both heaven and hell. His best known work, Heaven & Hell, is somewhat tedious reading (my complaints are here), but hard work will extract some interesting facts, not least how far it might be to the next choir of angels.

People associate with those they like—and, according to Swedenborg, this continues in the other world as well. In our realm we find this obvious. We spend our leisure with those who please and avoid those who annoy us. If it weren’t so, divorce would not exist, for instance. But in this realm we often have to deal with all kinds of people in order to earn a living and to develop.

But let us now suppose that certain necessities fall away after we die. Without bodies we wouldn’t need physical goods to sustain us. In subtle bodies we might be able to move without walking, driving, or catching flights. To reproduce Swedenborg’s claims, let’s make some assumptions. One is that in the beyond we’d still have perceptions and could orient ourselves in the subtle environment. Let’s assume next that we could move toward those places where we perceive pleasing experiences and away from those where we do not. And let’s add two more. One is that our speed of motion would depend on the strength of our desire (speed toward) or our revulsion (speed away from). Under this assumption, we would move rapidly if we felt strong attraction and slowly if the attraction were only mild. Finally, let’s assume that the source of pleasure or annoyance would come from other spirits in that realm—as here it comes from other people.

Swedenborg’s writings assert that what we here merely assume is actually a fact on the other side.

Now speed and distance are intimately linked. If I can get there rapidly, it’s near, if it takes a long time, it is far. Swedenborg thus projects what might be called a relativistic geography in the Beyond. How far or near certain kinds of communities are from us (that next choir of angels) is determined subjectively. It all depends on whether we are drawn to them or not. The old sage claims that people choose their own places in the afterlife—and do so by affinity. Those who seek hellish regions are drawn to them, enter them because they feel at home with those who are like them; those moving toward one of the multiple heavens that Swedenborg claims exist are also drawn in their direction. And many remain in the world of spirits, a kind of intermediate place, if place is the right word, because they are intimidated by the higher spheres and repelled by the lower.

How far to the next choir? If you like the music, it is near.