What is Hell?

In tantric yoga, "hell" is just a metaphor for suffering, not some irrevocable, final, ghastly, eternal damnation; nor some sort of grotesque punishment; nor any other religious fear-dramas often associated with the word.

1.

In the 500-year-old German Faust legend there is a conversation between Dr. Faust and Mephistopheles (a messenger or instrument of the devil) who tells Faust that the real hell is not fire and brimstone but the unspeakable pain of being cutoff from God, of not being in the Presence of Divine Grace. In Christopher Marlowe's play based on this story, "The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus" (c. 1592), Mephistopheles tells Faust:

"Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?”

2.

For the spiritual aspirant, and to misquote the Rolling Stones, "I can't get no yogic traction" is a feeling of stagnation in one's daily spiritual practice especially regarding meditation. It's a feeling of frustration from not being able to connect with the deep stillness of Divine Presence. It can sometimes go on for days. It most noticeably seems to happen for no particular reason and mystifying the aspirant. It's one thing to know that something the meditator did in his/her daily life caused an interruption of meditative accumulation, but it's unsettling when one cannot see any reason for it. As I mentioned in my last post, the perception of losing connection with The Divine Presence can be unsettling until one regains that connection and realizes that one really was never separate after all. It was just the illusions of the human brain's perceptual and ego apparatuses. But that perceived separation is a form of hell for someone who has been seriously practicing for a long time. It is keenly felt. So, with experience one learns this pattern and just keeps meditating anyway because if one is consistent and sincere, the stagnation will pass. Spiritual growth is largely a mysterious process.

3.

When I was about 9 years old and persevering through Catholic grade school, my slightly older sister introduced me to the concepts of critical thinking, figuring things out for yourself, and thinking outside the box. And even if it meant heresy, these approaches to life's challenges were OK things to do. Fearlessly going one's own way is a good thing. But for a Catholic, that spelled hell and damnation for sure because independent thinking is not allowed.

One day, in that time of childhood, totally out of the blue and unrelated to anything going on at the moment, my sister suddenly said to me, "There really is a hell...and we're in it right now." That statement blew my young mind and I felt a whiff of fresh air in the malaise of daily Catholic dogma. It was a new kind of fresh air I didn't think was possible, at least for me. (And even though I had already had several mystical experiences by then, I didn't yet have the perspective of them as being outside the box like my sister's thinking.) My sister's statement revealed she was (and still is) blessed with the gift of genuinely not caring about what others think no matter what their status or position of power in life. She always logically and carefully figured things out on her own which got her into trouble with the church and my parents many times. But she was also a deft defender of her convictions.

So, with that inspired statement, she had thrown aside Catholic dogma in one sentence. But as I found much later in life that made it even more surprising is that she was also unwittingly talking about an aspect of karma, something that neither of us would have ever heard in Catholic school or in our every day social lives in mid 1950's. 

The Christian Hell is a consequence of one's actions and so is karma, but the structures and contexts of how those consequences play out are very different. Rather than an eternal revenge of a wrathful god, karma is an indifferent balancing out of consequences over (usually) long periods of time, with an eventual return to the equipoise of being in the Divine Presence. I once heard someone describe karmic processes as the ultimate grace of God that allows us to keep repeating things until we get them right, i.e., getting realigned with God, not a one-size-fits-all permanent, unchangeable damnation. At any rate, considering the spiritual dogmatism and societal environments in which we both grew up, how my young sister would have figured that out I don't know. 

4.

Hell can also be seen as just fear itself. Fear is actually a construct of our brains intended for basic survival but gets hijacked and re-invented by religions (and others) in order to gain power and control over us. But we can also manufacture our own hells of fear through our own inner mistakes, machinations and imaginations. Who needs a formalized hell invented by religions, politicians or whoever when you can create a hell of your own through self-inflicted fear? Humans love to make shit up.

Many people are surprised to learn that thoughts and emotions (such as fear) are biochemicals and that they are, in addition to the body, not who we truly are. We are consciousness which emanates from The Divine Consciousness. Emotions also often get confused and conflated with feelings. It's too much to get into in this short essay, but suffice it to say that emotions are biochemicals while feelings are the interpretations of experiences via consciousness which is not biochemical. (For instance, intuition is not biochemical but rather is of consciousness.) Getting entangled in the seemingly endless kinds of messy and sticky stuff of life is an entrapment--a hell. It can also happen through others who do a number on you by making you believe that you have no choice, kind of like gaslighting. Getting entangled with fearful, dogmatic, controlling and dysfunctional religious, political, medical, social, media, sexuality groups, etc., of all kinds and sizes are forms of hell. Fear accomplishes nothing useful or productive in the context of authentic spirituality and most certainly interferes with getting to The Divine Presence. Fear and God are on opposite ends of the existential spectrum.

5.

Going a bit deeper, the five pain-bearing obstructions to peace, freedom, happiness and getting to The Divine Presence are ego, ignorance, attachment, repulsion and clinging to life. These are the root reasons for fear and entanglements that interfere with our spiritual progress. The power of these five obstructions have over us is our own fault. They range in effect from persistent distractions, irritations and seductions to a more extreme forms like addictions and psychoses. In other words, degrees of getting stuck in fear can be degrees of hell. 

6.

Thus, it seems to me that when Buddhists talk about relieving suffering they are talking about getting out of the private hells we either create ourselves or that we get handed in life (i.e., karmas). Relieving suffering is done by "getting on top of" our emotions, fears and self pity which are forms of ego. Critical thinking and having the courage to think outside the hell box that others have created can provide for some real spiritual progress. Meditation is an efficient and effective way to build a bypass around or a disconnect from them. And by doing so, one attains an internal peace and stillness that sets a foundation for awakening and liberation. After all, isn't getting out of hell in any sense of the word the whole point of any authentic spiritual path?

7.

So, we must learn to participate in life without creating personal hells by giving into fear, attaching or making something up that isn't there—among other obstructions I've mentioned. To be in it but not of it. To be the observer. And, like the sailors of ancient Greek lore, we must learn how to sail past the wailing sirens that attempt to pull us off course. In one way or another it all passes if you let it. But if you attach, when you pass (die) without letting go of the attachment you'll pass with it. In that sense, there really is something that you can take with you when you die--and then get pulled back with it until you learn to let go of it and finally pass without it. 

So, there are ways out of hell after all.

But, still, after all is said and done, only God matters.