The Hell planes

[Gerard]

edit... I shouldn't say I have a "real issue" with it(or Gerard for that matter), mostly just trying to understand where this line of thinking comes from. It honestly seems very bizarre. I can understand "karma" in the sense of trying to change ones habits or transcend ones own proclivities that holds them back, but when we start speaking of other lives etc...I get the snake oil vibe. And since Gerard says in his OP that the hell realms are "as real as the real world"..well, I would really like to understand that. We are told from a young age that we need to feel guilty about things we have very little control over(religion,etc) .. Now Im supposed to feel I need to make up for something I may have done..in another life? hahah.Sometimes I am glad I haven't read most of the ancient texts or whatever where these things seem to be taken on blind faith. A lot of People seem to have an all or nothing arrangement with them as opposed to taking the sensible parts and using them and burning the rest.

 

 

Hi there,

 

Line of thinking?

 

The task of the spiritual practitioner is not to think but to experience, to realise Universal truths...and Karma is one of them.

 

I am a full time practitioner, I don't work and my main goal is meditation. Nothing else is on my mind right now, hence when you put all your energy into this, then things become very clear.

 

There are as many astral planes as you will ever imagine and also infinite Universes each with a common cosmological structure.

 

Thinking/rationalisation is one of the biggest adversaries a seeker will experience.

 

If you feel that discernment is far more important than real practice, then I have something that may help you understand how Karma operates:

 

Kamma

A Study Guide

by

Thanissaro Bhikkhu

 

 

themiddleway

 

Criticism and negativity won't help you understand how the whole mechanism of karma and rebirth works and anything else for that matter. Take up some serious meditation work and things will become a lot clearer. All the best!

 

This is the main problem of Internet forums: too much talk and little action.

 

Go to a Vipassana retreat in one of the Thai wats and check the faces of the meditators after they complete a 3 week retreat meditating 24/7 during that time. They all look like children, with the shen and hun showing so brightly on their faces. This is what I saw when I first arrived in Chom Tong. Silent retreat, meditate alone in your hut and nothing else.

 

Thanks everyone.

 

Edited August 8, 2016 by Gerard

[Gerard]

Hm, no, I don't believe in this. I don't believe that the purpose of life and nature is to reach "enlightenment".

 

Andrei,

 

I am afraid it is, you evolve after each lifetime, wisdom is gained slowly during the process. And it doesn't come easily. Hard work and a strong will is required.

 

Find out for yourself instead of debating it.

 

What do you do as your main practice and for many hours a day?

 

[Andrei]

 

What do you do as your main practice and for many hours a day?

 

Nothing in special. I am just floating on the river of life.

[Orion]

My suggestion would be not to take such images literally. They are archetypes and symbols of your own subconscious that only you can decipher and bring into conscious awareness.

 

The law of human progress means that human beings will never end up in such literal hell dimensions. It is not our trajectory, even among the worst of us. Progress only plateaus, it does not regress. What seems like a regression is actually still taking place within a larger progression.

 

The fire and brimstone hell depictions were invented by Dante's Inferno in the Middle Ages, inspired by the Greek depictions of the Underworld.

 

When a human being does wrong or works contrary to their own nature, they are not sent to hell. They have to endure expiations. The goal is not to punish but refine the spiritual component of the being toward greater perfection. The Divine does not abandon anyone.

 

Saying that human beings can be born into a firey hell dimension is no different than claiming human beings can be reborn as animals. Both claims are absurd. All of the learning, growth, perfection, trials and expiations you could ever need on the road to enlightenment are achievable right here on this Earthly plane, at least for this portion of your learning.

[Taomeow]

Ok can we get some names of people who are now in hell please? I'll kick it off with two obvious candidates.

 

 

One of the shocking revelations that awaited me when She (mediated by ayahuasca and two shamans) took me to hell (this is common in shamanic initiations, by the way -- if not obligatory) was an encounter with a few people I know who are still living.  Apparently one does not have to wait to die to lose part of his or her soul.  "Soul loss" is behind all disorders in the shamanic view, but when someone innocent (e.g.  a frightened or abused child) loses pieces of her soul, they are usually stuck in the upper world where they flee.  With not-so-innocent adults, you sometimes can't tell, so the shamans specializing in "soul retrieval" travel both to the Upper and Lower worlds (under various names -- the Lower world is usually very similar to the cold and wet hell under the  Amazon I'd been taken to.  This is the reason a shamanic initiation involves a visit to hell -- you have to know the road if you're going to take on looking for, and retrieving, the lost souls in your healing practice.  So shamanic journeys are never into the peaches-and-cream alone.)

 

So, anyway...  yes, and among the souls (perhaps fragments of souls) of the people I know who are still living were our guide and his GF, which surprised and shocked me -- I didn't expect to meet those two in hell at all, they were supposed to be so very spiritual, the GF is actually a bruja but I didn't know she was that kind of a bruja, and the guy, despite multiple new age deviations of the mind, presented himself as an honest seeker and in the world of the living, under the influence of Her brew, appeared god-like to me.  So, well, I knew his god-like aspect and now I was being shown the other side.  I was truly incredulous. 

 

Well, those two wound up cheating us out of a considerable sum of money in the end.  I wasn't half as upset and half as surprised as I would have been if I didn't know by then where the bulk of their souls already resided. 

 

Perhaps a larger chunk now, after the cheating episode. 

[3bob]

Also think predators, (stalking between realms to a certain extent)  try to imagine dealing with a hungry, malicious  s.o.b. spirit being on our ass,   such can and will give us 1st hand and personal info besides all the second-hand accounts of others - which could be put on the shelf until we have comparative proofs.

 

This 1st hand info idea also goes for a compassionate being trying to help our ass out of a jam!    

Edited August 9, 2016 by 3bob

[Gerard]

My suggestion would be not to take such images literally. They are archetypes and symbols of your own subconscious that only you can decipher and bring into conscious awareness.

 

The law of human progress means that human beings will never end up in such literal hell dimensions. It is not our trajectory, even among the worst of us. Progress only plateaus, it does not regress. What seems like a regression is actually still taking place within a larger progression.

 

The fire and brimstone hell depictions were invented by Dante's Inferno in the Middle Ages, inspired by the Greek depictions of the Underworld.

 

1. When a human being does wrong or works contrary to their own nature, they are not sent to hell.

2. Saying that human beings can be born into a firey hell dimension is no different than claiming human beings can be reborn as animals. Both claims are absurd.

 

 

I am afraid my dear friend that you are being wrong in here.

 

2. If you just knew my experiences with animals (particularly a jack russell dog and his female owner who 4 years ago told me: Gerard, I thought I was going crazy...and I stop here because some of you will be critical again and still this is not the main point of practice.

 

Visions come and go, worlds come and go, your current life will come and ego and it will start all over again unless you are determined enough and persevere in your practice until the moment of liberation finally occurs and if it doesn't no big deal, your Heart will be strong enough to cope with anything thrown at it.

 

Ajahn Fuang once said:

 

"It's good that most people can't remember their previous lives. Otherwise things would be a lot more complicated than they already are."

 

Very wise statement!

 

The main purpose of this thread was really because I don't wish anyone to be reborn in such a horrible realm (not really about anyone posting on this forum because anyone posting on Tao Bums has evolved enough to lead a singnificantly sound moral life and if they don't do, well it's time to get started! )

 

Painful enough is for many humans to cope with life on Earth especially for those living in extreme poverty like in one of the worst Thai slums:

 

http://www.missosology.info/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=515441&start=30

 

What would be like a rebirth in a hellish plane!

 

You reap what you sow.

 

It is the way it is. A life marked by poor conduct thinking there are no future consequences for ones actions will be payed off accordingly.

 

Right speech

Right action

Right livelihood

 

A life spent entirely breaking this code of conduct guarantees a future poor rebirth. If you think this is snake oil, OK try and see how it goes.

Edited August 9, 2016 by Gerard

[Orion]

I never said that life can't start over again, or that that this is the only life. I said we don't move backwards. I love animals and many have been my dear friends over the years, but they cannot realize spiritual consciousness. It's obvious that humans have a different spiritual trajectory than they do. What we share with animals is an animal body, and various survival egos; but unlike animals, we have a spiritual body that can transcend them. We have animal and spiritual bodies, as humans -- we have language and society along with all the complex abstractions they contain. Humanity has the substrate for the more complicated spiritual trials and expiations that we must undergo as part of our more advanced learning. The animal kingdom can't provide that. That's not to say that animals aren't on their own trajectory, and that there aren't more advanced animals than some others -- but none of them will be born as human, and we won't be born as them.

 

Humans are certainly not the "most advanced" in the universe, but we don't go backwards. Maybe at some point in our distant collective past, we had more animal consciousnesses... more survival based, more material. But now most of us are more immaterial than the animals that surround us. Humans don't reincarnate as animals. Animals can't contain the complexity of our current spiritual consciousness, nor can they provide the format for our next stage of learning. Take one aspect of consciousness - the intellect - which is just as much an outpouring from the spirit as it is stuff acquired in this lifetime. Why would the spirit reincarnate into a form that is incapable of manifesting its spiritually-ingrained intellectual abilities? Its senses? Its full faculties? That doesn't make sense. You aren't born into an existence that doesn't match your level or your trials.

 

As an aside... I've worked closely with people who have done past life regressions in a highly succinct, accurate format for many decades. Not one person has ever expressed an animal lifetime prior to being human. It's more likely that before each of us were human, we were some other kind of pre-human sentient life. People who think they were animals in the previous lifetime to this one are usually on ego trips or living a fantasy, often rooted in their personal disconnect with their relationship to their own humanity. They want to be other creatures because the human world eludes them. Rather than face that trial head on, they'd rather adopt a fantasy existence. There are also living human beings who think they are part animal, right now. There are conventions and gatherings for such people. Sadly deluded, unfortunately. That doesn't mean you can't work with animal spirits or animals as part of your human level learning experience. But you'll never be an animal. A human spirit is a human spirit. Why would Nicholas Tesla or Albert Einstein be reborn as ants, or bunny rabbits? They entirely lack the faculties to develop further intellect or morality. What about Mother Theresa becoming a butterfly? It sounds poetic, but what would she learn? How would her love and charity continue?

 

The stuff that comes from some of the Eastern traditions, about humans being reborn as animals or into hell realms as a result of karma, is mostly non-sense. They teach that stuff so that people will take advantage of this "one and only precious life" by adhering to their strict religious dogma. I was taught in the Tibetan sect that human life is as rare as a turtle swimming on a planet entirely made of water, surfacing every 100,000 years -- and if it happens to surface with its head bursting through an egg yolk that happens to be floating on the surface, then that tells us how rare humanness is. But it's BS. You were human before this life and you'll be human in the next life. Teaching people that this is their one and only chance to reach enlightenment is as immoral as teaching people that they better do X, Y and Z or they'll go to hell. There is no escaping being human, until such point that you've mastered all the lessons that humanity can teach you as part of your spiritual design, and you ascend to the next level.

 

Yes it's true, you should do as much as you can with your human life, but you don't have to reach enlightenment or be perfect in this life time -- your soul has all of eternity to do that, under the direction of its guides and helpers, and the Divine influence. Enlightenment happens to the spirit, once it has reached a certain level, which emanates from that particular human body at that moment, making it seem like that human personality "did it", but it was a spiritual phenomenon. When Jesus appeared on the scene, his spirit probably had thousands of lifetimes to get to that point, before becoming Jesus and gracing us with the gifts that we witnessed. (As an example.) Jesus would not in turn be reborn as a goat, or a whale.

 

And if you do something horribly bad in this lifetime, you'll be reborn into situations where you have to learn humility and compassion the hard way, through relevant trials. But you're not damned to hell. You've just created a living situation that you yourself have to learn through, in order to attain greater progress, evolution, and perfection towards God. Even the worst people were somehow instruments in the grand design. Some of the worst mass murderers, the worst tyrants... they will probably be expiating all the horrors they unleashed on the world for lifetimes to come (maybe); on the other hand, they set the stage for humanity to evolve, through harsh wake up calls and suffering. So in that sense maybe they did us a favor. After all, we progress collectively just as much as we do individually.

Edited August 9, 2016 by Orion

[Michael Sternbach]

Ultimately, we make your own heaven and hell. The safest way to the latter is believing in dualistic perspectives.

[3bob]

there ain't no getting to non-dualism except by a "return" through dualism...

Edited August 9, 2016 by 3bob

[Andrei]

 

People who think they were animals in the previous lifetime to this one are usually on ego trips or living a fantasy, often rooted in their personal disconnect with their relationship to their own humanity. They want to be other creatures because the human world eludes them. Rather than face that trial head on, they'd rather adopt a fantasy existence. There are also living human beings who think they are part animal, right now. There are conventions and gatherings for such people. Sadly deluded, unfortunately.

 

Orion I concur with all what you say but what if all people ever lived were living a fantasy? What if nobody is ever "awaken"?

 

I have friends who believe they are ninjas, samurais, taoist monks, shamans and what not and they do everything to embrace that way of living, they read books and watch movies related to their world and dress like they believe they are and practice and teach and give lectures. How is it different than believing you are a Jedi knight or a Starship trooper and you go to a Comicon cosplay and show your costumes and makes your fantasies alive?

 

What if we choose and embrace the archetypes that exists (as I said inherited culturally- not necessary same culture you were born in, there is a lot of cross-pollination between cultures) and then we format our minds and reproduce the "way of living" of such archetype?

[Orion]

Orion I concur with all what you say but what if all people ever lived were living a fantasy? What if nobody is ever "awaken"?

 

I have friends who believe they are ninjas, samurais, taoist monks, shamans and what not and they do everything to embrace that way of living, they read books and watch movies related to their world and dress like they believe they are and practice and teach and give lectures. How is it different than believing you are a Jedi knight or a Starship trooper and you go to a Comicon cosplay and show your costumes and makes your fantasies alive?

 

What if we choose and embrace the archetypes that exists (as I said inherited culturally- not necessary same culture you were born in, there is a lot of cross-pollination between cultures) and then we format our minds and reproduce the "way of living" of such archetype?

 

Creating a persona is a different phenomenon than saying you were an animal in a previous lifetime. No matter what persona you create, you're still a human spirit doing it.

[Andrei]

When I was younger I owned a Doberman bitch and two black cats all females. I remember the dog she was running and barking in her sleep, she was dreaming. The cats too were dreaming. And they tried to copy us humans in all our actions they were very curious. I always thought that animals that live with humans want to be like humans and this desire will make them humans in their next life. I wished them to be reborn as humans in their next life if that would be possible. And if dogs and cats could be reborn as humans why not humans would think they were dogs and cats in their previous lives. I guess these kind of humans have more sensuality and more animal spirit than other types of humans.

 

Here is an interesting idea, I don't necessary agree with that but the interesting part is that this guy say that Hell is on the bottom of the ocean, living as a bacteria eating sulfur, starting all over again the life evolution from the first step.

 

http://www.truthcontest.com/entries/the-present-universal-truth/big-picture-life-past-future.html

 

What is more darker and wetter than the bottom of the ocean? Also where would "you" see lava fire flowing from the depths of the earth?

[3bob]

if one comes to know themselves as the "lifeforce" to which being would they be limited to...

[Bindi]

I ended up believing in past lives because of experiences/self-knowledge which couldn't ultimately be explained in any other way, and it is only a very small step to go from belief in past lives to belief in karma. 

 

To me, cultivating the dantians is directly embodying and resolving my personal karma, I wonder if actively working through karma in this physical life could be seen as the equivalent of being in some sort of hell (or at least purgatory) on earth anyway?

[thelerner]

Ultimately, we make your own heaven and hell. The safest way to the latter is believing in dualistic perspectives.

Yeah, and it seems people get/imagine aspects of the afterlife they imagine.  I'm more worried about the heaven/hell I'm making on earth, for myself.. and how I affect others.  The afterlife will have to take care of itself. 

[daojones]

Hi Gerard!

Lately I've been coming to the conclusion that this world we live in is hell.

And if, one may say well this world and your reality will be what you make of it - then why can't this apply to more classical definitions of hell as described in your original post. And if that's the case - then what's the difference between your hell and my hell?

My main point is actually this. How do I not go to hell?

Who is deciding what is right and wrong anyways? If its brahman or a mainstream theological god, then how do we know what is right and wrong really? Through religious doctrine written and propagated by man? If so, then who has really got the most True religion - because that's the one everyone should follow in order to be good and not go to hell.

We all know what dangerous path this line of thinking leads to.

If one is to brush aside the above, and state to be just generally be good and do no evil - then what does this really mean in terms of actions? Except via the broad strokes of the ten commandments or the noble 8 fold path, how do you really accomplish being good (and not going to hell). It seems very reasonable to assume that we all just take on some normative pragmatic and/or cultural framework and then plow on being good.

However, we here at TB know life is just not that simple. 

I postulate that most of life is a moral grey area. A choice between evils one may say. 

And even if one disagrees with that statement, my original question slightly modified now would still stand unanswered: who decides what is good/right in the grey areas?

I'm really not trying to be facetious. I just feel like you've brought a geniune message, and that there's a whole lot of practical and philosophical history of failure with respect to addressing the pragmatic consequences of such a message.

How do you make sense of it in light of the issues I brought up?

I've been feeling particularly swayed by Nietzschean thought recently. I do believe his line of thinking would represent the cutting edge of philosophical thought in this area. This sort of ties into my first paragraph. If life is what you make and/or perceive of it, then why doesn't this apply to "le good". Can we not make our own good, and then be sent on karmically according to how we did based on our own rules?

p.s. I really like thanissaro bikkhu. will be reading that kamma study you posted from him!


Edit: for addressing this
 

Criticism and negativity won't help you understand how the whole mechanism of karma and rebirth works and anything else for that matter. Take up some serious meditation work and things will become a lot clearer. All the best! 

 

This is the main problem of Internet forums: too much talk and little action.

 

Go to a Vipassana retreat in one of the Thai wats and check the faces of the meditators after they complete a 3 week retreat meditating 24/7 during that time. They all look like children, with the shen and hun showing so brightly on their faces. This is what I saw when I first arrived in Chom Tong. Silent retreat, meditate alone in your hut and nothing else.

 

I had a couple of friends go to wat chom tong. After 2-3 weeks of a regular meditation retreat schedule, they did 72 hours straight meditation to cap it off and felt completely awful at that point! I never made it there, but did hear good things from my friends even though they didnt feel good at the end. There's also another wat for meditation retreats out near mae hong son/pai area that I heard was very nice. I did a 2 week session at wat umong, which is on the outskirts of CM, so doesnt quite count as forest style even though theres a big forest where monks live beside the wat (there's also convenience stores around too). I averaged around 6-9 hours of meditation per day, which I know is not on par with what's expected, but it was the best I could do. I wouldn't recommend wat umong as it's not as legit as wat chom tong or others by a long shot. I still had a good experience, despite the neo-nazi monk who ran it at the time I was there (not joking). I don't think anyone can pull of 24/7 for 3 weeks though.

I hope you don't see my post as over thinking things. There are serious pragmatic consequences to how one should act if kamma, hell, and morality are to be taken seriously. I'm not saying kamma doesn't exist, and perhaps meditation can and does help one realize the existence of kamma, but so what? How does one pragmatically deal with such a conclusion?
  

 

Edited September 2, 2016 by daojones

[thelerner]

On the third hand.  What if..  <grr, I shoulda read the above post a bit closer, since we end up in the same playground>

 

We're in hell now?  Living a short life, in a heavy physical realm, in deteriorating needy bodies.  Born into a world full of strife and want.  This is hell, we've merely adapted well.

 

In that case, its still cool.  Living in Chicago has prepared me well.  I might find heaven kinda boring after this.

Edited September 5, 2016 by thelerner

[daojones]

Ya, that's what I'm saying!

The body is one major factor making this world a sysphysian effort. 

If the first noble truth about suffering is correct, then surely we must be in hell.

 

[Edward M]

**EDIT--oops wrong thread!**  

Edited December 18, 2016 by Edward M