Go to heaven NOW or hell later (audio)

Coast to Coast, Aug. 26, 2023; Pat Macpherson, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Rebirth is the automatic default option.

It's time to go to heaven (sagga, akasha deva loka), celestial worlds superior to the human plane inhabited by "angelic" light beings called devas and more glorious (bright and streaming) brahmas or "divinities" -- gods, godlings, deities, divas, humanoid "shining ones," who watch over the human realm and offer guidance, help, clarity, enabling us to remember why we came down here (were reborn here) this time around.

What were we thinking? We had a mission, had a plan, made a contract, agreed to learn something -- but we've lost our way and have forgotten our purpose. It's time to get answers, get back on track, and clarify those things that are too precious to leave to the afterlife to come (in the endless Round of Rebirths called samsara).

One needn't hold a Catholic, Christian, Islamic, or Jewish (Abrahamic) view. Be an atheist, a Taoist, an agnostic, a Hindu, a Sikh, a Flying Spaghetti Monster worshipper (Pastafarian), a Jain, even a Buddhist.

Whatever one's religion, world-view (paradigm), preferred science, or place on the opinion spectrum, there is a "heaven" (the world to come), and we can get clear about it and our position in the grand scheme of things:

Visiting heaven (while still alive)

Coast to Coast AM (8/26/23) Hypnotherapist Regan Forston (visittheafterlife.com) joined regular guest host Connie Willis to discuss his three-hour-and-thirty-three-minute visit to heaven and how anyone in a deeply relaxed state can visit heaven (whatever you want to call the life to come), too.

• AUDIO: Visit Heaven | Coast to Coast AM

These first two hours were bolstered in the second half of the program, when David Dave "The Mystic" Barnett talked about his personal journey from aero science to seer and all of his research into the extraterrestrials (visitors and hybrid human-alien ETs) hiding in plain sight ALL around us. He gave tips on how to spot them.

Buddhist "hell" can't be real, can it?

Rob Bell (huffingtonpost.com) edited by Wisdom Quarterly

This isn't a depiction of hells but samsara, the Round of Rebirth, in six realms with Death.

.

Question: Who is in the hells [purgatories]? Christian evangelicals, particularly the American ones, are known for a rigid adherence to the literal truth of sacred scriptures.

But now one of them, Rob Bell, is questioning the existence of [Christian] hell as a place of eternal damnation. His views have stirred controversy.

However, in the Buddhist community, radical interpretations of the hells have been around for a long time. Eyebrows rise at some extreme views, but generally Western (rather than ethnically Asian) Buddhists tend to be evenhanded in their approach to controversial issues in Buddhism.

The historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama (Shakyamuni, the "Sage of the Scythians"), was born into an ancient pre-Hindu Vedic/Brahminical culture 2,600 years ago.

Based on the principle of perpetual rebirth (samsara), later Hindu interpretations of hell (claiming to only be a continuation of the Vedas) is a stopping point where eternal souls burn off evil deeds before proceeding to the next life [and the next life and the next life ad nauseum].

In this respect, the Buddha's insights about the many hell realms are similar to American evangelist Bell's, in that they are not regarded as permanent -- although lifespans can be on time scales that are vast and hard to comfortably imagine.

Hindus have come to believe that human consciousness transmigrates into an afterlife through an after-death experience.

• [EDITOR'S NOTE: It would be a great misinterpretation to think that Buddhism teaches any such thing. While the Buddha had a tremendous impact on Brahminical and later Hindu teachings, as well as revealing the meaning of many Vedic teachings lost through the millennia, non-Buddhist teachings have always clung to things the Buddha flatly and unequivocally rejected: a permanent self or soul (atman), the permanence of anything other than the Truth, or the belief that dependent things (composites) can bring lasting satisfaction and fulfillment. The Three Marks of Existence that the Buddha saw and taught a doctrine for others to become able to see are: All things are disappointing, impermanent, and impersonal (dukkha, anicca, anatta). The first two are relatively easy to discern, while the third is almost impossible to believe or hold until one awakens to the ultimate truth of things. It is the prerequisite for entering the first stage of awakening called stream-entry. One is then, with persistent practice of the Dharma, very close to full enlightenment.]

The hells are recorded in lurid detail in the earliest Buddhist texts, known as the Pali language canon.

The Buddhist scholar Prof. Peter Harvey of Lancaster University contextualizes hell as one of the classical Buddhist six [heaven, human, animal, hungry ghost, demon, hellion] realms of existence in his book, An Introduction to Buddhism: "The worst realm is the hell-realm, comprising a number of hellish rebirths.

• [Sadly, this is an over-simplification of what the historical Buddha taught, namely, 31 Planes of Existence, large general categories of countless specific worlds. Mahayana Buddhism, a reformed school that is now reconciled almost completely with Hinduism, took the teaching of 31 planes and dumbed things down to six basic categories.]

These hellish rebirths [purgatories where unskillful karma bears its bitter fruits and resultants] are described as involving experiences of being burned up, cut up, frozen, or eaten alive, and being revived to re-experience more torments.

• Niraya refers to the "downward path" of rebirth as an animal (tirrachana), ghost (peta), demon (asura, demigod), or hellion (naraka, which refers to the lowest and most miserable of all 31 Planes of Existence -- including a few other hells that are not specified in the list of 31 but mentioned in the texts, such as "interstitial hell" and the "hell of laughter"). These ironic hells are experienced in ways that are very specific to one's karma (past deeds and present choices/reactions ripening as fruit and mental resultants. The eight great hells are very general, and the very worst of them is called avici or "the waveless deep." Most Christian conceptions of "hell" as if it one just one place with no levels, but perhaps rings as in Dante's description, are of avici, a furnace of unimaginably brutal torments).

Six [of 31] general realms of rebirth. The Buddha points
to Dharma wheel as the instructions to get off carousel.

"They are realms in which a tortured consciousness [conjuring a body appropriate to the karma that brought about the unfortunate rebirth in a particular hell] experiences abominable nightmares, where every object of the senses appears repulsive and ugly...

"While life in the hells is measured in millions of years, no rebirth is eternal, so a being from one of the hells will in time reach [another level, maybe even] the human level again."

Prof. Richard Hayes of the University of New Mexico recalls visiting a Thai Buddhist temple in Toronto with a group of students: "What surprised them most [were] the murals filled with very graphic pictures of people being tormented in various hell realms. The message was clear enough to all the lay people who went to that temple."

Prof. Hayes points out that Buddhist texts are filled with detailed descriptions of the hot and cold hells and all the pain and suffering that goes on there.

"Of course, hell realms, like every other realm in samsara (the illusory round of endless rebirths) are temporary [no more real or eternal than rebirth in any of the many heavens in Buddhist cosmology].

People stay [find themselves stuck] there for a while and then move on." But not all Buddhist texts adhere to a literal interpretation of hell as a place where dead people go as a result of their misdeeds.

Prof. Hayes says his personal favorite is found in the scripture Kamalaśīla's Bhavanākrama. "Each of the realms is treated as the counterpart of a segment of society:

1. The heavenly realms are likened to the world of the very wealthy and privileged [in the human realm].
2. [The average person's experience of the human realm.]
3. The realm of the "jealous gods" (devas full of envy and animosity) [called asuras, who are often referred to as "demons" but not always in the strict Christian sense of the term] is likened to the segment of human society that aspires to be wealthy and powerful.
4. The animal realm symbolizes those people [in the human realm] who must work very hard and who struggle to make their daily livelihood.
5. The realm of hungry ghosts represents the poor and homeless.
6. The hell realms stand for people in prison."

The Buddhist atheist

The Buddhist atheist author Stephen Batchelor (Confession of a Buddhist Atheist) says he is "agnostic" about reincarnation [which should only be called rebirth because there is not a "self" that is repeatedly incarnating into flesh, as it appears] and that in his view, the experience of hell corresponds with various types of suffering in human life:

"I simply [am agnostic] don't know what happens after we die, and as far as I can tell nor does anyone else. I think the only way to make sense of descriptions of hell is to treat them as symbols.

"A continuous cycle of death and rebirth strikes me as an ideal metaphor for hell – and the various hell realms can be associated with different states of mind like anger, hatred, jealousy, or depression.

"It can also apply to physical pain, the devastation of a tsunami, or to a life cycle like Charlie Sheen's or John Galliano's – feted as heroes one minute, drowned in opprobrium the next."

He is probably closest to Carl Jung's theory that the peaceful, joyful, and wrathful deities of the Tantric Buddhist pantheon are archetypes representing aspects of the human condition.

A last word from psychotherapist and author Lara Owen (Growing Your Inner Light): She adheres to traditional Buddhist views but accepts that mortality is still a huge taboo:

"Ultimately it comes down to the universal existential crisis of being in a body that will one day die. Some people can only cope with that by denying all unknown quantities." More

• The idea/assumption that there is a "being in a body" that is eternal (will not die) when the body is mortal (will die) is WRONG VIEW. But why it is wrong is very subtle and hard to understand. That's not what people want. We want simple. The fact is, it's not simple -- if one cares about being accurate and in line with ultimate reality. The body will die. Things will continue in spite of that. That being (impersonal process of consciousness) is dying at every moment and sub-moment. What is there then, if not a higher-self/soul/ego/personality? There is Dependent Origination (an impersonal causal linkage of how ALL things, including this idea clung to as "self," arise). The Buddha, in teaching how to become enlightened/awakened, goes to great pains to explain the minute details of this, the Five Aggregates (form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness) that cling. It is not a self/soul clinging to these five heaps, five collections, but rather feeling feels, perception perceives, and so on. While "consciousness" seems to be the doer, the one who experiences the result, but that is not really what is going on. And it is possible to see what is going on. And unless that is seen, there will be no awakening, no end of all suffering.
• Think how much easier it is for every other religion to become popular, with easy explanations and intuitive answers that "make so much sense" because they are in line with our desire, with the way we want things to be. Minds prefer illusions. Truth seems too scary. If minds only knew the Truth is beautiful and liberating. The illusions are hiding great danger, a world of suffering to come that is too difficult to contemplate or believe until it's too late.
• How can anyone in his/her right mind say, "There is no self"? It's easy. Look up anatta (not-self) and, realizing that understanding this at least at a conceptual level is necessary for understanding what the historical Buddha actually taught and understanding this at a direct experiential level is necessary for reaching the first stage of enlightenment, it will become clear why so few humans and devas become enlightened. It is an extraordinary feat of mental purification and letting go. We would rather be intoxicated with views and delusions, assumptions, easy answers, religious certainties that do not ask of us any direct mystical experience of the Truth. For such people, engage in skillful karma (good deeds) and be happy for a long time to come with rebirth in fortunate destinations, avoiding the pitfalls of unskillful deeds and their consequences in miserable rebirths that last a long time.