Beyond a Humdrum Heaven and Horrific Hell

Although I had seen the ABC TV 20/20 special, Heaven. Where Is It?  How Do We Get There? when it aired a year or so ago, I forgot how bad it was and ended up watching the rerun on December 22.  I had a very difficult time enduring the interviews with various religious leaders, especially the evangelical, whatever his name was, and I would have changed channels were it not for the fact that I knew there would be a few near-death experiencers offering testimony. I could not remember what they had to say and was a little curious.   I also forgot that the 20/20 people presented a biased view of the NDE by allowing a debunker to say that the near-death experience is nothing more than the imaginings of a dying brain, while not offering the testimony of one of many credible scientific researchers prepared to counter such a statement. 

Unfortunately, the NDErs came at the end and so I struggled through the preceding hour and 40 minutes of the two-hour program. Had I had been a skeptic beforehand, I would no longer be a skeptic.  I would be a total disbeliever.  The religious leaders, including the evangelical, a Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi, an Islamic scholar, and the Dalai Lama offered no enlightenment.  They simply gave their versions of what ancient books and tradition had to say about a dichotomous afterlife, i.e., the old humdrum heaven and horrific hell stuff.   

Host and interviewer Barbara Walters approached the whole subject with the assumption that 1) there is a "heaven" and a "hell," as taught by orthodoxy, or 2) there is "nothingness," as the closed-minded debunkers would have us believe.  This premise was consistent with the beliefs of all, except perhaps for the Dalai Lama, who made no attempt to expound on Buddhist beliefs concerning a multi-dimensional afterlife, and the "all-knowing" woman who heads up the American atheist organization.  One was left to conclude from the testimony of the religious leaders that we end our earthly lives being labeled as either "righteous" or "wicked" - no in-between - and our environment is then either positive or negative - heaven or hell.  

In the blissful state of heaven, we should find, according to some religions, souls who led selfish and hateful lives but who repented on their deathbeds along with other wicked souls who "found" their Savior just before dying and suddenly became righteous.  Among the tormented, we should expect to find souls who led righteous lives for most of their years but who transgressed just before dying.  It is difficult to reconcile much of this with the loving, forgiving and just God they see as governing that afterlife.  Indeed, their God often appears cruel, capricious, vindictive, jealous, and wrathful.  The "religious" respond to such a charge by saying that God's ways are beyond our comprehension, and we should not attempt to apply our own standards of justice to something we are incapable of understanding.   What a copout!

All of those so-called leaders, except possibly for the Dalai Lama, are clearly locked into ancient beliefs because they accept translations that suggest revelation ended with whatever old book or books they subscribe to. Any revelation since those books were closed is rejected as fraudulent or inspired by the devil.  They disregard the fact that their books have many parables, many metaphors,  many similes,  many allegories, and so many translations,  interpretations, and elucidations of ancient writings that the subject matter lends itself to a semantical maze or nightmare.  If my sources are correct,  the word nephesh is used 754 times in the Hebrew Bible,  but it takes on 30 different meanings, ranging from "soul" and "the dead" to "fish" and "dogs," while the Greek word aion is found in the New Testament 108 times and is given 10 different meanings, including "forever," "ages," "occasionally," and "never."  What we read in the English Bible as "everlasting punishment" meant "age-long pruning" in the original Greek.  The modern English versions translate the Old Testament as saying "the dead know nothing" and that we should not be communicating with the "dead."  However, the original Hebrew word referred to the "spiritually dead," meaning low-level or earthbound spirits.

If the dead know nothing and we shouldn't be talking with them, why or how can we "test the spirits, as to whether they are of God," as we are instructed in 1 John 4:1?  Why should anyone bother to "discern" what the spirits have to say, as we are counseled in 1 Corinthians 12:10, if they know nothing and we shouldn't even be communicating with them?  Didn't Jesus say that he had much more to say (teach) but the people of the time could not bear (understand) it?  (John 16:12-15)  Are we to assume that the people of today are as uneducated and incapable of understanding as those living 2,000 years ago?  Could it be that the religious leaders feel threatened when established dogma and doctrine are upset by new teachings?

Ancient revelation - that giving rise to orthodox religions - appears to have come from the same sources as modern revelation.  That is, it came through mediums of one kind or another, even though those mediums, whether clairvoyants, trance types, direct voice types, automatic writers, or even near-death experiencers, might have been called prophets, seers, saints, or even saviors (or were translated as such).  What the ancients called an "angel of the Lord" might now be referred to as a "spirit guide."  Where it is written that "his eyes were opened and he saw a vision," might be translated today as saying the person was a clairvoyant.   The method by which Moses received the Ten Commandments might today be called "direct writing" or "automatic writing." 

 If they were to open their minds to more recent revelation, after "testing" it and "discerning" it, orthodox leaders might rethink their humdrum heaven and horrific hell.  As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the physician who created Sherlock Holmes, said, the revelations coming through spiraling mediumship during the late 19^th and early 20^th Century abolish the idea of an immediate grotesque hell or fantastic heaven.  Rather, we come to understand that the "afterlife" is made up of a number of spheres, levels, dimensions, or planes, however they might be labeled, through which we gradually rise until reaching Oneness - a state, which, we are told, is beyond human comprehension.  We also are told that we retain our individuality in this Oneness.

Contrary to what orthodoxy says, the new revelation tells us that we are not suddenly transformed into angelic beings or demonic spirits.  One spirit messenger known as Imperator, who communicated through the Rev. William Stainton Moses, explained it this way:

"As the soul lives in the earth life, so does it go to the spirit life.  Its tastes, its predilections, its habits, its antipathies, they are with it still...The soul that on earth has been low in taste and impure in habit does not change its nature by passing from the earth sphere any more than the soul that has been truthful, pure, and progressive becomes base and bad by death.  Wonderful that you do not recognize this truth!"

Moses, an Anglican minister, was among the Church clergy of the late 19^th Century who condemned mediumship and thought it was the work of the devil.  Intent on exposing fraud among mediums of the day, he discovered that he was a medium when he fell into a trance and Imperator and other spirits began speaking through him.   He wondered if he was being controlled by the devil, but he "tested" and "discerned" and realized that the messages, many of which were new to him and inconsistent with his beliefs, were consistent with a loving spirit, not a demonic one. ("By their fruits, ye shall know them.")

Alvin Mattson, a Lutheran minister who made his transition to the spirit world in 1970, is said to have communicated with his daughter, Ruth Mattson Taylor, through the British medium Margaret Flavell Tweddell. He, too, reported various planes of existence.

"From this point we can progress to higher planes - to higher levels of consciousness.  By ‘higher' planes I do not mean spatially higher but rather those planes which have a finer vibration."

Mattson went on to say that many of the religious denominations continue to practice the rites of their respective churches on the lower or intermediate planes, where he made his abode, but that he had been permitted to visit higher planes "where there is a unity of God-praise, not a segregation of this praise of God."   Thus, as we read elsewhere, the Baptist may remain a Baptist, the Catholic a Catholic, the atheist an atheist, after death, each still convinced that his or her belief is the correct one.  Mattson further communicated:

"Those on earth who are bigoted or intolerant or self-absorbed find coming here to be a very painful and disturbing experience because they continue to think in their bigoted, intolerant, and self-center way."      

In John 14:2, Jesus says, "In my Father's house are many mansions (abodes).  If it were not so I would have told you."  The usual orthodox Christian interpretation of that is that Jesus was referring only to heaven.  Modern revelation suggests that Jesus was referring to the whole spectrum of the afterlife, from what is termed hell on "up" (in vibration) through different realms or planes until we reach the Godhead, or true heaven.  This is mostly consistent with the Buddhist view holding many realms or dimensions until reaching Nirvana or true heaven.  Modern revelation further suggests that hell is the "earthbound" condition, when people do not realize they are dead or flounder about half conscious and half unconscious of their new environment.  It is a "fire of the mind," but it is not eternal. All can advance, although many flounder in the lower levels for many years of earth time.

In summary, whatever names we choose to attach to the various levels, the afterlife emerges as an evolution of the spirit through higher and higher planes of vibration until the Godhead is reached.  That afterlife is not governed by a cruel, capricious, vindictive, wrathful intelligence - One who would offer a horrific hell or humdrum heaven.  It is a plan of attainment and attunement, of gradual spiritual growth, of movement from the darkness into light, from ignorance to truth.

Some recommended sites:

http://www.victorzammit.com/

http://www.survivalafterdeath.org/

http://www.psychicworld.net/Mroll.htm

http://aaevp.com/

http://www.lightlink.com/arpr/

http://homepages.ihug.co.nz/~thegroundoffaith/index.htm