Hell has been conventionally portrayed as a place, a location, to which that part of the personality which survives death is consigned if the life led on earth was bad. It is presumably the mind-soul complex that would survive physical death, and since this has interwoven into it all our memories and emotional responses from earthly life, it would, logically, find itself in the psychic environment where it was most immediately at home. However, this view of the soul's departure is inadequate, and the picture of heaven and hell as places in the hereafter is far too simplistic. When Jakob Boehme was asked by a disciple where the soul went after death, he threw the question back by commenting: "It is not necessary for the soul to go anywhere." Indeed, the soul is in eternal communion with God through the spirit within it, and, depending on how fully the spirit reveals itself in the life of a person, so his soul will know heaven and hell.
Hell then is a psychic atmosphere where the naked thrust of evil impinges itself on the bare soul, causing it intolerable pain that will persist until the person comes to himself and starts to repent. But what do we mean by evil?
As good a way as any of considering evil is to see it as the principle of negation, as that which denies the life-giving power of God and brings the creature back to the void of nothingness from which all creation was fashioned (Genesis 1:1-2). We do not need to go far to identify this nihilistic principle, because it is there in our own psyche. It shows itself as a forbidding, destructive power that casts its baneful shadow over all productive labour and creative relationships. It works towards the isolation of the personality, and its end is the disintegration and death of the person. And yet it is an integral part of life, for without its challenge and its perpetual witness to our inadequacy as people, there would be no growth of the person beyond static comfort to wider relationship with all living beings. In the world of form and multiplicity, good and evil work in intimate juxtaposition to stimulate movement and evolution of consciousness.
The Hindu trinity of divine essences, Brahma the creator, Vishnu the sustainer and Siva the destroyer, brings out this creative aspect of destruction very forcibly. Everything that is made has a finite existence in front of it; it has to pass away in order to give way to a new creation. But its passage is also illusory, for nothing that is created by God is obliterated. What passes on beyond our sight is transformed into something else, something that we will know when we too are changed. "The perishable must be clothed with immortality" (I Corinthians 15:52). We, alas, enclosed in mortal vision, can see destruction only in terms of loss, as that which has disappeared and can never be recalled except in memory. But if our lives were frozen into a finite mode, even one of the greatest happiness, they would soon become intolerable. Hell, in its ultimate manifestation, is an experience of complete insulation from all outer response, so that one lives a private life for ever with no other creature to care for one or even to be aware of one. No wonder the element of destruction is essential before a new birth can begin.
In Taoist philosophy, the creative essence of the Tao, the way of life, is portrayed as the eternal complementary action of the positive, directive principle of the Yang and the negative, receptive principle of the Yin. It is in the harmonious balance of opposite polarities that life's progress and creativity flourishes. Is this complementary action of the forces of creation and destruction destined to proceed eternally? The world of multiplicity - of growth, decay, death and rebirth - is one in which these two principles are perpetually interlocked. "The light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never mastered it" (John 1:5). This is true enough, but the contrary proposition, that the light still has not mastered the world's darkness despite wonderful spiritual teachers and impressive higher religions, is equally undeniable. Indeed, these higher teachings, have, from time to time, been the source of such oppression in the hands of deranged followers that terrible darkness has accrued from the very religion that was founded to spread the light of God. It seems that the forces of light and darkness will be remorselessly in combat until the end of time.
On a purely philosophical level this solution may well be acceptable, if not inevitable, but all that is noble within the soul of man cries out against cruelty, hatred and injustice. It would seem that the world of separation, of multiplicity, of perpetual change, is not the final world. Beyond it, yet supporting it, is the realm of ultimate reality whose nature is divine, whose Name is unspoken but which is identified with the Godhead. Its experience is nirvanic; its end is the deification of all things, their assumption into God. But before this ultimate state can be grasped, there must be a full acknowledgement of the powers of negation. They must, paradoxically, not only be known for what they are, but they must also be given their credit, even their due of love. It is by the way of suffering that this terrain is entered upon and explored, because suffering soon tears off the mask of respectability that we show to the world and brings to the surface the inferno that rages within all of us.
When I speak of acknowledging, accepting, and finally loving even the powers of negation, the powers of evil, in our lives, I do not suggest that we can do this by a single-minded act of will. We love because God loved us first (I John 4:19), and only when we are infused with God's love can we flow out in love to all the powers of the universe. By that love alone can their final salvation come. Suffering is the means by which we are ultimately and fully open to God's love, though one must be realistic enough to see that only the few can respond in this positive way to the ego-shattering force of personal loss.
Suffering comprises two kinds of pain, the outer pain of loss and the inner pain of self-disclosure; it is this inner pain that follows the descent of the person into the inferno deep within himself. Indeed, it would be impossible to conceive any radical self-exploration that was not precipitated by suffering. That most searching of mind-exploring therapies, psychoanalysis, is seldom entered upon unless the life of the analysand has been so unsatisfactory that a complete re-appraisal of the psyche is accepted as a necessary part of its healing. The process of analysis has its terrible moments, but at least the support of the therapist is freely available. The autoanalysis wrought by intense suffering has to be borne, to a large extent, by the person himself, as Job discovered when he was confronted by the shallow sophistry of his three friends. Few outside the sufferer can begin to understand his dereliction, for the natural tendency is to flee away from any dark disclosure of the psyche. It is sad that even the trappings of religion and other allegedly spiritual agencies frequently are used to escape from the deep encounter with the self that is the essential prerequisite of the spiritual life. The first step in the authentically spiritual way is a journey into the wilderness whose lord is the devil, as the temptations of Jesus, immediately after His baptism and the descent on Him of the Holy Spirit, graphically attest. The spiritual baptism of lesser people is an experience of dereliction following some personal misfortune. In ourselves we experience the temptations that Jesus knew, and on our response depends our spiritual development.
The first interior revelation that suffering brings is to make us realise how lonely we are by nature. When all goes well with us we can admittedly lose ourselves in a heedless jumble of people whom we call our friends. But when we are suffering, these so-called friends disappear to leave us all alone. Thus after Jesus' betrayal into the hands of sinners, He was bereft of all His disciples who fled in horror and amazement. The man who was to be His successor as head of the community denied, on three successive occasions, ever having known Jesus. In this particular example of the unreliability of one's friends, fear of association with a dangerous and now apparently discredited public figure is the reason for their flight. In the more ordinary misfortunes that strike us, our acquaintances move away because they find any sort of trouble embarrassing in that it challenges both their own shaky equilibrium and the security on which it is based. Furthermore, the sufferer makes an implicit demand on other people's concern, and this is both time-consuming and threatening. We have, in fact, to come to terms with the truth that even when our efforts are flourishing, the human situation is one of loneliness, but good fortune can divert us from this understanding by filling our minds with surface attractions. When these are removed, we are forced to survey our natural condition with greater discernment.
It is possible to be isolated and alone even in the midst of a crowd of convivial acquaintances whose company one genuinely appreciates. It is a paradox of human relationships that we often use the companionship of other people to escape contact with the dark void that lies deep within us, and consequently to avoid any deep communication with them also. Conversation is often a deceptive way of escaping from a real communion with other people; a barrage of empty words can shield us from the inner scrutiny that truth demands. True communication consists in giving of oneself to another person in the deepest concern; this necessitates giving of one's full attention to that person from the depths of one's consciousness. Only when the inferno within oneself is known and mastered can one communicate from one's depths to another person. This inner hell is solitary in terms of human companionship, but it contains a milling throng of demons that inhabit the deepest recesses of the mind. Their master is the spirit of fear, around which they cluster "prowling around looking for someone to devour" in the words that have already been quoted from St Peter's first Letter. The ones particularly in danger of being devoured by the demons within are those of our associates whose lives appear to be successful and happy. The demons rejoice in the names of anger, hatred, jealousy and a deep desire for annihilation both of the self and the world.
It is terrifying to discover how superficially placed these destructive emotions are within the psyche. Whenever we are thwarted, they come to the surface to assert our own frustration. Furthermore, they have to be acknowledged; the psychological mechanism of repression simply confines them to the deeper part of the psyche where they can involve themselves in a much more dangerous subversion of the whole personality. The psychic energy they unleash will then be used against the body and produce diseases of psychosomatic origin. It may be necessary to suppress these emotions temporarily, but in due course they have to be faced and acknowledged. We soon realise that only a small part of the personality has really grown up into adulthood. We contain within us powerful forces that behave like the spoilt children we once were; they rage against the world if they are not immediately and completely satisfied.
Anger follows the frustration of our plans and ambitions. It is aligned to the concept of justice and is often called righteous indignation. When we are righteously indignant about an injustice wrought against ourselves - or more particularly against someone else about whom we are deeply concerned - by some external human agency, there is often a genuine desire for God's justice to be vindicated. But when the anger is over the frustration of our schemes by impersonal forces of misfortune, our fury is directed basically against life itself, or even more positively, against the author of life and justice, whom we call God. To be angry with God is not reprehensible. Neither Job nor the Psalmist restrains his anxiety over God's hiddenness in so much of the travail of human life, nor his anger over the apparent misfortunes that harry the way of the righteous man. In the confessions of Jeremiah that are scattered through the account of his prophetic ministry, he speaks in harsh, direct terms about God's intrusion into his private life. "Alas, alas my mother, that you ever gave me birth! A man doomed to strife, with the whole world against me. I have borrowed from no one, I have lent to no one, yet all men abuse me .... Why then is my pain unending, my wound desperate and incurable? Thou art to me like a brook that is not to be trusted, whose waters fail." To all this complaint in Jeremiah 15:10-18, God simply tells the prophet to stop grumbling and get on with his work. "If you will turn back to me, I will take you back and you shall stand before me. If you choose noble utterance and reject the base, you shall be my spokesman" (verse 19). Later on Jeremiah says of God: "O Lord, thou hast duped me, and I have been the dupe; thou hast outwitted me and hast prevailed" (Jeremiah 20:7). He curses the day he was born, as Job, probably constructed fictionally on the life of Jeremiah, also does at the beginning of his debate with his three friends. The life of Jeremiah is one long saga of suffering in order to bring the word of God to a heedless people whose doom appears to have been predestined - as may well be the case in our generation also.
Anger becomes demonic when it severs its connection with reason and becomes purely destructive. Then it enters the phase of black hatred against another person, or society, or life itself. It longs for destruction, and is the author of persecution and massacre. Much apparently praiseworthy criticism against the abuses of society is based more on hatred than on love. To project our own sense of grievance against some class of society whom we personally detest, because it possesses attributes that we lack, is particularly enjoyable if we can do this in the name of solidarity with the downtrodden and oppressed. Only the minority of social reformers are motivated primarily by the spirit of charity and compassion; the majority are impelled by a deep hatred of the prevailing establishment. It is no wonder that governments dedicated to social reform tend to become even more oppressive and tyrannical than those they so recently supplanted. Even permissiveness in sexual morality can be a protest at the restraints of past discipline rather than a genuine concern for those whose way of life is aberrant, and who need unreserved acceptance in love.
Suffering has the virtue of bringing us to face the demonic anger and hatred that energises so much of our psyche. At first these emotions run riot throughout the personality, but in due course they are brought under control because they are seen to be unavailing. A child's tantrums may be appeased by its parents' tender solicitude, but an adult's rage simply estranges his fellows and separates himself even more completely from God. Thus prolonged suffering brings us to the truth of our native condition, that of a selfish child parading itself in the body and concepts of an adult. It also shows us how much we resent the prosperity of other people when we ourselves are in distress. The core of jealousy within us is easily masked by pious attitudes when all is going well, but when our own security is threatened, we soon lash out at others.
A variant of anger is jealousy. It should be distinguished from envy, which though equally unacceptable, is not so destructive as jealousy. The envious person desires and inwardly covets those attributes of someone whom he considers more fortunate than himself. The first stage of envy is often one of admiration, which in itself is unexceptionable. But this is followed by the insidious tendency to compare oneself with the person who is the object of one's attraction, seeing oneself as inferior to him and resenting that inferiority. The next stage in this process of inner covetousness is that of dwelling upon and even assuming the attribute in one's own imagination. This causes great suffering because the fantasy cannot be realised in outer life. In due course, if the envy is not healed by a growing maturity of understanding as to the limited nature of all talents and abilities in the reality of life, there is a descent to jealousy. Here the covetousness of envy is allied to the destructiveness of hatred. There is a mounting desire to disparage the person who is envied, to show that he too has feet of clay. Aspersions are cast on his integrity and his private life, and he is subtly diminished. The unobtrusive evil of mischief making works towards the total demolition of the one who is envied. There is no more terrible cancer of the soul than jealousy; it eats away all other concerns and interests until it dominates the full range of consciousness. It erodes relationships by destroying all that is noble and compassionate in the darkness of hatred and malice.
It is interesting how even the mechanism of envy is a perversion of a potentially beneficial attitude, that of the way of spiritual growth of a younger person who moulds his life upon that of a revered teacher. Both the envious person and the disciple of an esteemed master imbibe the desired qualities deeply in their own imagination. For instance, the imitation of the qualities of Jesus is a recognised way of progress in the Christian life. But whereas the disciple acts in humility, love and self sacrifice to the higher ideal, the envious person appropriates the attributes in his imagination in order to boost his poor opinion of himself and inflate his weakly developed personality. He does not grow in spiritual proficiency, and remains obsessed by the great gulf that lies between the ideal vainly imagined and the reality that lies within himself. Since he cannot attain what he seeks, he becomes increasingly imprisoned in his own impotence, so that his thoughts are totally concentrated on his lack. It should be noted, in passing, that this is also a hazard in the development of those devotees who model their lives upon that of an idealised master of the spiritual way. Indeed, this approach to spirituality has only a limited value despite the stress laid upon it in a number of religious traditions. An experienced spiritual director will guide his pupil's devotion to God along the unique way of that disciple, while he keeps himself discreetly in the background.
The end of the hatred that blazes forth in anger and jealousy is a desire for annihilation of the world and of the person himself. When Job was tested to the point of losing his self-respect by developing a repulsive skin disease, his wife told him to curse God and die. Job admittedly chided her, reminding her that good and evil both come from God, and we are bound to accept both as part of our lives on earth. But then he, like Jeremiah, cursed the day of his birth and longed for death. As far as we know, the writer of the book of Job had no scheme of survival of death to anticipate other than an insubstantial wraith-like existence in Sheol. This would probably be a vain shadow life devoid of action, relationships and future hope.
Whenever a person behaves abominably to his fellows, we should spare him a prayer instead of merely judging him according to his actions. Those whose own lives are unhappy bring unhappiness upon others with whom they communicate whether in their home or at work. It is a way of relieving one's own suffering to visit at least some of it on to other people. Of course this is an entirely negative mechanism of unburdening oneself, and its logical conclusion is destruction of everything around one, including oneself. Race hatred, religious intolerance, and fear of strangers are all testimonials to the inner turmoil of those who profess these destructive social attitudes. They can, to some extent, be relieved by attending to the adverse social conditions that cause men to fight against their neighbours in the guise of self-preservation. But the root of this hatred that would destroy all others who pose a threat to our own flimsy existence, lies in ourselves. Until we as individuals have come to a solid core of inner reality which is the centre of the soul, we will always equate inner security with outer possessions, be they money, prosperity, social position, intellectual proficiency or even bodily health. While all of these are of the utmost importance in our lives, especially health of body and mind, none can be reckoned on indefinitely. Suffering may have to render us naked of every one of these appurtenances, including also our treasured relationships with other people, before we can attain a knowledge of the one thing needful for salvation, the word of God that is deeply implanted in the soul where the spirit joins us to Him eternally.
The complete process may be summarised thus. The natural life of a heedless man is one of unconscious selfishness. The life of suffering that, in due course, ensues is one of intensified, morbid selfishness, but the person is no longer heedless. The end of suffering is the total destruction of the selfish personal ego as the soul is broached and its spirit now informs the personality and controls the life of the person.
But it must be acknowledged that this third phase is seldom attained in this life on earth. At most it can be glimpsed as the way of progress in the life beyond death.
MediationWhenever I feel especially hostile to another person or revolted by an event in the world around me, may my gaze be directed inwards to see the flaw in my own personality and to offer it to God in prayer. Only then can I be worthy of offering myself as an agent of reconciliation and healing.